001good morning and welcome to the west contra costa unified school district and west county league of women voters candidates forum today we will experience several first the first at-large to trustee area elections the first west contra costa unified school district's candidates forum on zoom and the first time for me as a forum moderator i'm linda whitmore and i'm a member of the league of women voters we have candidates running for the four trustee areas each candidate will have two minutes for an introduction they'll be asked ten questions and given one minute to respond and two minutes for a closing summary there will be a clock on the screen to keep time that we all can see and each candidate we're asking you that you please be respectful of the allocated time tyra wright is a
002member of our league uh and she is responsible for the zoom attendees and panelists the zoom forum technical operator and timekeeper is bobby jordan he's a district communications manager now it's time to start the first forum for trustee area one we have two members of the league of women voters who will be sharing and asking who will be asking the questions naomi williams raise your hand naomi okay and and muniz raise your hand in okay and we have two candidates who are running for a seat for trusty area one estella de paz and jamila smith folds now i want everyone to pay close attention to the candidates answers because on november 3rd you will vote for another first you will vote for another first you will elect the first west contra costa unified school district
003board of trustee for area one a couple more announcements before we start this webinar is available on or will be available on the district's facebook page on the league of women's facebook page and on the district's website and uh throughout the webinar we have spanish translation so now i think i've got all of my information given to you we're ready to start and i'm going to ask naomi to start with the first question and we begin now good morning who's up i don't see the name uh estella de paz and jamila smith folds i don't see them though that's what i'm saying i see the clock that's okay no oh okay i thought they were doing an introduction got their screen their name is in the bottom of their face are they gonna do the
004introduction first call their name who you want to do introduction but i don't see the face okay please give your introduction thank you so much everybody for having me here today this is really truly an honor um i'm estella de paz and i'm running to be area the area one trustee for west contra costa unified school district my deep appreciation for the american public school system started in 1981 that's actually when my family decided to immigrate from the philippines to america because my parents said if you get your diploma in america no one can challenge it so as a high school student i attended john sweat unified and i'm very grateful i was very grateful to actually get english as a second language classes which helped me become more proficient in my english more recently
005as a preschooler my eldest son here in westcott acosta unified was diagnosed with a learning disorder that led to an iep an individualized education plan we got services we got special day classes occupational therapy speech social learning and i have completely convinced that because of those special education programs that actually changed the trajectory of his life our education system is in crisis we have a 62 million dollar budget deficits that has been forecasted of course coveted 19 has changed our daily lives and the way we are doing school these challenges have also highlighted many social inequities that we must address and we need to overcome still we have to make sure that our focus remains our students we have to make sure that our 32 000 students get the quality education that is their right
006that is a responsibility of the district our current board is uh is ineffective and full of emotional decisions in their process i bring to the table 20 plus years of focused and deliberate experience in leadership i hold the pmp and i'm ready to lead thank you okay actually that was some of the answers for the first question that i'm going to ask you so you have to do it all over again okay thank you very much okay so before you start we need to give jamila smithfolds a chance for her introduction and then you start the questions because you're going to do back and forth questions so jamila can you have two minutes to do your introduction and then we'll start the questions yes ma'am my name is jamila smithfolds i'm running for west contra
007costa unified school district school board trustee board one i've been in the field of education for over 15 years from classroom teacher parent volunteer and community leader to school board trustee i will work to ensure transparency and accountability to policies while sharing programs are equitable sustainable and have built-in capacity for measured growth i was born and raised in alabama school was the place where knowledge flowed like a river that everyone could drink from my relationship with school led me to graduate from auburn university earning a double major in history in english with the credential to teach as classroom teacher i saw how important and intentional it was to create space for students and parents teaching in california and alabama provided a clear awareness to me that my relationship with education was not everyone's experience i
008know that it's not enough for schools to be a river they have to be barrier-free and they have to have containers for everyone to use i'm a parent volunteer and who has navigated the educational system i know what it's like to fight for our teachers and advocate for our students on the front line being a boots on the ground community leader means that i create and maintain relationships i know and i know as a school board member i will set direction provide support and continue to advocate for our students it's my authentic experience as a classroom teacher a staunch and fierce parent volunteer and community leader not to mention a parent of three school-aged daughters that motivate me to create consensus on the board and push for the desired outcome for our student success together
009we will ensure that no student remains thirsty while standing under the waterfall of education i'm asking for the opportunity to serve allow me to take your voice to the board it's time for me and for us to stop making ripples by throwing stones and to start making waves by throwing these boulders thank you thank you very much now i'm going to turn the questions over to our two league representatives naomi and ann and naomi you have the first questions okay how will you address the budget issues and this is for estella thank you so much for that miss naomi so um because of my experience as a project manager and having managed many multi-million dollar projects i'm very comfortable in managing and balancing budgets and working with many diverse and um fully engaged i hope
010community members so that we can actually have stakeholders in front of us as we move forward in figuring out how we address the budget i believe we need to start with process we need to create outcomes that are going to be our clear beacon of goals in making sure that our young folks actually have their well-deserved education that we have promised them we also owe our communities who are investing in our schools the kind of school system and education that prepares our young folks for college and career readiness that's not happening as effectively as we want and especially here in district 1 we're seeing a lot of gaps so those two things are the first two things that i would like to make sure we address as we move forward thank you okay and jamila
011how will you address the budget issues there are challenges to the budget that's clear what's not clear is how the district got here or how it will not stay here at food board trustee i come with a plan my priorities are to continue to provide service for our students and families i serve at the will of the people it's the community our collective community that agrees that we must protect the integrity of the education with the focus with my focus it's going to be on the 32 197 students that we have in wcc usd they cannot suffer from the mis the miss and grossness management of the budget the 90 percent of the budget that goes to people those are my friends my colleagues my ex colleagues my neighbors those are the people who are
012dedicated their lives to serving these students what i bring to the table is the practical not theoretical understanding that giving cpr to a dead situation is a waste of time we've got to talk to our labor and we've got to make hard decisions and a hard conversation and i'm the school board member that will be able to do that because i form those relationships thank you okay estella this question is for you first how will you address the issues around equality equity thank you um as an an immigrant and a parent of a special a special needs student it's important for me to make sure that we actually shine a light on all of these areas of inequity in our school system it's been happening for a very long time and systems like our school
013system protect itself they're built to do that i believe that what we need to do is engage and fully engage our communities to make sure that the conversations that need to happen those hard conversations will lead to actual agreement and outcomes so that we can actually change processes and follow our heart in the way we actually want to treat each of our students in an right now many of our students are not seen their voices are not heard it is important for us to make sure that our teachers our administrators and our staff actually have the type of perspective taking if you will that would make sure that each of our students are are seen and are heard and are supported and loved in our school district thank you okay jamila how would you answer
014it what would you how would you address the issues of equity thank you equity is in my bones i taught at gompers continuation high school in richmond by choice i chose to teach there i chose to take those kids voices not only to the board but let their voices be heard in the classroom i let them know that i choose you as a mother with a daughter with an iep i know how is important how important it is to make sure her voice is at the table i'm an advocate i'm an advocate for those who are historically marginalized in our school district there's not there's no no longer an idea of an achievement gap it's a chasm so what i bring to the table is understanding how you work in the classroom how do we
015get that information to all of our students it's called scaffolding we have to be able to hit every student at the level that they are and then be a motivator and an encourager to tell them where they need to go i'm able to do that with the experience that i have as a teacher as a mother and as a motivator as a coach i've coached i've been the assistant coach at the middle school for years now it takes a relationship building model to increase equity in student achievement now let me ask you to direct the next question i am okay thank you okay jamila for the third question is what would you do what do you feel has been the issue around distant learning thank you for that question i think what's been the issue
016around distance learning is that we were in crisis learning since march 16th it's been in crisis learning the issue with distance learning is the trauma we are sitting in trauma these kids are sitting in trauma and if we don't have high expectations and high support we can't continue the learning process what i want parents to understand no one is asking you to be the teacher we're asking you to be a great classroom aide and i am built and able to help parents with that i'm able to take that pressure off and help them be the classroom aid that they need to be to make sure that their child is still navigating the educational system what i do as a homeschool teacher i'm a registered homeschool teacher i have those transferable skills to help those parents
017who are texting me who are calling me and who are emailing me i am helping navigate them through this system it's something that we can do but we have to work together to do it and that's why i put up jamila's teacher tips every monday on all of my social media to give parents a chance to take a breath take a pause and let's walk through let's walk this road together okay um estella what would you do uh what do you feel have been the issue around distant learning so um i i appreciate very much that we have very um a one per one um way of addressing the issues very much the way that jamila said but we have a systems issues and we are talking about 32 000 students with very differing experiences
018um what i have done is work very closely with students of families of families of student with high needs and those families were struggling very much especially in march things are a little bit getting a little better but what we've got is not sustainable so we need to do really two things the first thing is make sure that we've got the right supports in place for our teachers because their life again has been changed and they need to do so much more the second thing we need to do a better job right now with how we're engaging these young minds parents have told me that they're concerned that when teachers are not around their students in fact are not paying attention those something that we can actually work on especially with the learning continuity plan
019thank you okay jamila what is your position regarding campus security thank you for that question everyone's trying to figure out what safety really looks like safety is a feeling it's not just what you see the district has made their decision as a teacher i've seen the sros in service in our com in our community and in their capacity but also as a teacher i've seen my students feel differently feel like they're treated differently equity matters the district did not show that when they made this knee-jerk reaction without a plan never take without giving the trust has been broken and it must be reestablished between the stakeholders it's time to have those real hard conversations and make sure that our school and our campuses are still safe we have to implement a safety plan all students
020deserve to feel safe and parents deserve a plan and students deserve to be valued and heard as school board trustee i will set the direction to stop under utilizing our health department and our counselors they are the ones to help our campuses feel safe and our students be safe we must make our campus safe and feel safe i'm duty-bound and determined to do the right to right this ship by commuting by creating community relationships okay estella what is your position regarding the campus security so i'm on the record ma'am for actually saying that that decision was very myopic so it's very short-sighted um what i have asked the board to do is to make sure that as we actually try and reopen our schools that we have a safety plan that considers when our students
021are not making good decision for instance when they're in crisis that we actually have a way to support our staff and the student themselves to keep everybody safe so that's very very important but above and beyond that i believe a more systemic approach to actually addressing this is to create the ability for our schools in a community schools model for example to make those kinds of decisions we have very competent very capable administrators staff and teachers in each of our school sites i think not being able to utilize them and coming up with decisions for their school and their site and their community actually is a missed opportunity so although we are in this situation that is sad i believe we can learn from it and we can actually take those learnings to move forward
022and i'm advocating that we actually create those community schools thank you okay estella this question is for you what should the new what should be the new priorities for measure r funding regarding our facilities master plan so um so the measurer specifically is for technology innovations and safety it's it's so right now there is conversation happening at the cboc um but in fact there's also other conversations that are happening here in area one that i've started with many of our um parents and so the conversation is really around how do we go about making sure that safety and technology enhancements for our schools are actually also equitable uh of course measure r one of the things that we were talking about are things like the ba period-based design of windows in richmond the fact that
023there are no air conditioning systems i've been hearing a lot of really great innovative ways of addressing those issues but the priority of course needs to start with safety that is a responsibility that we have as adults for our kids and then we can look at other things that we can actually make sure is part of that plan thank you okay pamela mila what would what should be the first priorities for the measure art funding regarding the facilities master plan i think that the first priority is to bring everyone back to the table covet has allowed us a chance to pause and it's allowed us a chance to reevaluate now that we have the opportunity that the kids are not in school for the foreseeable future right now now is the time to look back
024at that plan and make sure that the priorities that are listed on that plan are able to be measured and implemented in this time right now so the way that we do that is we bring labor to the table we we in we make sure that our cboc is leading this and we make sure that we also have parents and students at that table it's a way of interfacing to where we make sure that what happens in your community and on your campus is addressed in that master plan we have to make sure that all of us are at the table and all of us have a chance to bring into that input what we want our schools to look like surrounded by their facilities and surrounded by safely what do we want it to
025look like thank you okay thank you too i'll now turn you back over to linda thank you naomi i like how you're doing two and two good good job uh next will be anne muniz and she's going to do our last five questions and all yours yes yes good morning um i'll be asking you the next set of questions and um the first question is what programs or resources do you think the district can put in place to handle social emotional learning and estella so there are a number of things that we actually can already leverage i know that talking with parents we have some things that are already working really well around social justice for instance our pbis systems that have been adopted by many of our schools i'm not sure if it's actually
026adopted across the board but i know in district one several of our schools are using that model it's really helping make sure that we've got the connection with our young folks um even before so it's a very proactive solution to um social justice and to actually engaging our young folks and being seen so that's one of the things that i think we could leverage as a best practice the second thing is i would go back to community schools a community school is really something where socially relevant community-based type solution that leverages the value of the community and engages parents teachers staff everybody into what we need to make sure happens in our school that includes all the training and the learning that all of us as a group as a community need to do in
027order to support our students thank you thank you and jamila what programs or resources do you think the district can put in place to handle social emotional learning i think the first thing that the district has to recognize is the same thing that us as parents and teachers recognize we recognize that the kids are sitting in trauma the whole nation the whole globe is sitting in trauma so what we have to do is stop reimagine and then put implement programs and practices that help with that trauma healing that's the first thing a child cannot learn if they are preoccupied with the trauma that they're expressing in their bones so social emotional learning has to come from those who are already charged with and have the the professionalism behind treating trauma we have those people in
028our district already we need to let them take the lead let their voices be the loudest one at the table they will tell us what we need to do to help our children heal so as your school board trustee the biggest thing i can do is listen i listen then i learn and then i'm able to lead so i would listen to our school psychologists i would listen to our counselors i would listen to our climate team i will listen to our parents and i will listen to our students and then we move into that healing room thank you and jamila i'd like you to take the next question as well how should the district address the issue of colocations with charter schools thank you so much charter schools are here and what we have
029to do is learn how to be good neighbors we have got to learn how to be good neighbors and that means that we hold everyone accountable and everyone with open transparency we need to make sure that our all of our children all 32 127 are served we have to make sure that all of our students have that are meeting the need their needs are being met with equitable education so cohabitation of a campus requires being able to have and make and maintain relationships you have to be able to talk to each other for the best interest of the children the children are at the center of every decision that we make and that means whether we're public school or charter school we have to keep the children at the center and we have to have
030some hard conversations and we have to make some strong decisions it is not i'm a public school teacher and i'm a public school advocate but i'm also with the clear understanding that we have to have a good neighbor policy thank you estella the same question how would you how would the district um how should the district address the issue of co-locations with charter schools so um charter schools public charter schools are here to stay as jamella said recently though the cta the california teachers association actually came up with a um a i guess i would say a restated position on charter schools so um especially because of the four new laws bills that um our state has actually enacted what it does is it actually provides our school district and you know me as the
031board trustee more areas of actually looking for accountability accountability for their um at the outcomes that they deliver the um learning that we are actually getting for our students together with how they treat their staff because there's also a lot of public charter schools whose staff is actually getting into the unions at this point so i believe we start with accountability we also move into partnership but it always goes back to the data that we need to make sure we're relying on thank you thank you and uh the next question is how will you address the digital digital divide in our district uh stella you can take this question as well uh thank you ma'am so the digital divide project um i've actually been hearing a lot about this and it's not just you know
032um specific to our district of course it's been something that is a challenge especially in areas where there are a lot of issues around poverty and around inequity so i actually look at the digital digital divide project that's being proposed in the district right now as an equity issue if you're actually looking at our map of who does not have access for distance learning you would see a lot of concentration in the southern part of our district that clearly is one of those things that we need to make sure we're using with an equity lens and perhaps some of the things that are happening right now with our cvoc and our master plan is looking at that as well it's one of those things that i believe because we are charged with making sure that
033these young minds are getting the education that is their right we need to address those issues and create a way for us to come up with solutions that work best right now i applaud our technology department for coming up with some great solutions but those need to become more permanent than what we've got at this point thank you thank you and jamila the same question for you how will you address the digital divide in our district that's a good question the digital divide is not just about equality it's equity we're a one-to-one district so everyone has a tablet but if you haven't you can't access it because you don't have access to the internet or you don't have the people at home who are able to help you troubleshoot then that becomes an equity issue
034so what i want to make sure that is understood is equality and equity are two different things it's called a divide for a reason the division comes from the equity issue are all kids able to access the same materials that are given to every student in the district for us to understand that we have to ask the question we have to get down and drill down and ask the question do you know how to turn your tablet on do you have someone there who could help you do you know how to troubleshoot as grown-ups were having to do that we're having to teach each other we're having to rely on those people who know more than us those young people that know more than us it's time for us to take our the people who
035know the most and put them in positions of leadership it's time to take the people who know the most and can help solve the problems and let their voices be the loudest one at the table as school board trustee that's what i would do i'm humble enough to say help me so i can help you thank you estella what is your position regarding approving more charter schools in our district oh so so this is really a complicated question for me i've talked to many many parents about this and as as a parent of a student with special needs i know what it means for parents to try and navigate a system that's not meant to serve you because you are on the margins the fighting the negotiating the pushing that you're in the struggle that
036you just need to do in order to actually get the education that is yours your student your your child's right is really um a challenge and so therefore my my my my take on charter schools is that we need to have a conversation if for example a number of parents have come together and are dedicated and are fully committed to the long haul that they would need to put in place in order to have the programs and the services that is for their students i think we need to acknowledge that and i think we need to listen i am not comfortable and i will not take on saying no to something like that for our community thank you and the same question for you jamila what is your position regarding improving more charter schools in
037our district no that's that's a simple question but i can give you the longer version the longer version is i want to stop the bleeding of the impact to our budget that charter schools have right now we're not even right now before you approve a charter school you have the right to look at the impact that it would have on your district budget the impact on our district budget would be detrimental and continue to be detrimental however i am not arrogant enough to tell a parent where they should send their child but i'm smart enough to ask why are you sending them there and then i'm gonna listen and bring that back here because i want every parent that had the opportunity to take their child to a start charter school to have that in
038place at a public school so you took them there for safety let me make sure we have safety here you took them there for extra programs i got those programs over here that's what i would do with the charter school question i will ask those parents why and then i will put that answer into our public schools thank you and this is the last question and it's rather lengthy so i can read it more than once if you like estella will go first and the question is the west county mandarin school serves students from across the district the school has outgrown its current site at the cerric at the sarah campus in richmond and is slated to move to the temporary portable campus at portela in el cerrito families have requested that we move instead
039to the abandoned atoms which is blocks away from sarah and put portables there would you support the financial investment to have the school move to adams why or why not estella i think that we have to be really careful about that question because adams actually was condemned many years ago because of seismic issues so um i actually have had conversations with folks from um the mandarin school about this as well and was involved in a number of conversations and there was actually a board proposal about this too so i believe that the more prudent step is to actually allow the um the mandarin school families to move to portola because moving them in atoms when we know that this is actually an earthquake area and that particular site is sitting on a fault line is
040too much of a risk for us to take i i know the convenience and i know that it's easier for them because they're right across the street from sarah to adams it's only a couple of blocks it really makes sense but i i think what would make more sense is that we actually move them to portland for now similar to what we did with wilson by the way the wilson school also got moved in order to make sure that we actually have the place for them to to thrive and be safe thank you thank you and jamila i'll repeat the question the west county mandarin school serves students from across the district the school has outgrown its current site at the sarah campus in richmond and is slated to move to the temporary portable campus
041at fort potella in el cerrito families have requested that we move instead to the abandoned atoms which is blocks away from sarah and put portables there would you support the financial investment to have the school move to adams why or why not school board trustee i'm one of five votes so what i understand is that i need to be able to listen at a 360 degree level about everything but for me safety is paramount i have to be able to cast my vote for the safety of the children but what i also have to be able to do is have policies and programs in place to help the families so if there's an issue with getting to another campus i want to work to solve that issue i want to make sure that you have
042the ability there's child care there there's transportation issues that we are all working together to make sure that your child is not only educated but they're educated in a safe environment that's part of equity and that's part of sustainability so again as your school board trustee i listen i understand what the families are saying and i can with strong leadership tell you i hear you i understand you i may not agree with you but your children will remain safe under my leadership and then i will help you solve the problems that inconvenience that may occur from that safety issue but your babies are going to be safe under me thank you and that concludes the questions all right thank you ann i want to thank our candidates for um my goodness your response is right
043to our time that we allocate it i appreciate that you guys got a lot of information in and that little bit of time we gave you so thank you very much we did get a couple questions from the chat but we um decided the league in the district we decided earlier that we were only going to have questions that we received in advance we were not going to use any questions from the chat because we were trying to get all of our forums which is one hour this is our um we only have two candidates this one we want to make sure that all the candidates we have more in the other um area trustee areas um now we all had a chance to do 10 questions if we add questions now it won't work
044for our other forums other you know hours we're doing so we can't do that this one so i i want the attendees to understand thank you for your questions in the chat but we cannot do any questions from the chat today for our forums i want to thank again our two candidates um estella de paz and jamila smith foles i also want to thank naomi and anne for assisting with um area one candidates and now you have to get ready for your next forum which is going to be area two and so while we set up for the trustee area two um we're gonna show a short video prepared by the contra costa county election division this video should no no no this video will answer all of your questions about our voting ballots and
045how to ensure that your vote is counted so i hope you guys all pay close attention to these two candidates because on november 3rd like i said you will vote for another first you will elect the first west contra costa county unified school district board of trustees for area one and by listening to these two you're gonna have a hard decision so good luck ladies oh we're supposed to do their summaries we didn't do this summary right oh i'm sorry i told you i was first moderate first time moderating so we still need to have uh jamila and um estella back on please as panelists you're still there okay estella oh don miss uh whitmore i think we lost estella and jamila so hang on i apologize camila's still on yeah jamila is we want
046to get this there's a stella okay okay i think i made my first and only mistake for today you're doing great ma'am i hope so let's have uh jamilah since i uh caught your name give your two minute summary yes ma'am and i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt i just wanted to make sure we got this part in also yes thank you for yeah thank you no worries once again my name is jamila smith-fultz i have been in this for over 15 years i'm a server it's who i am and it's what i do i will take your voice to the board i hold the number one value every teacher should have i'm teachable i am humbly asking for voters to vote me in for change this is a movement not a moment i
047bring with me classroom experience parent navigational skills and community-centered mindset when you get me you get the good trouble when my mouth opens you get to hear your voice i am passionate about you and your children you have enough to worry about as a parent a teacher a student and a community member my shoulders are broad and my commitment is documented let me lighten your load your seat at the table is ready for you but if you can't be there every time if you can't pick up the phone every time the district calls if you can't show up every time you're asked no i'll be there for you i will be there for you and i will be there because of you i want to take just one minute to thank all of those who
048have endorsed me and supported my journey as is for your school board trustee thank you to my current and to my former teachers and staff at wcc usd thank you to the utr to the teamsters 856 to the ibew to the contra costa label council to the building trade the young dems the west dems the democratic party of contra costa the dp triple c and the california democratic party and panel for fair government thank you for the trust thank you supervisor federal governor thank you school board trustee mr phillips thank you mayor tom butt panel city council members and the city council member and hercules thank you for the trust i want to stand on those shoulders at the school board i want to make sure that i'm taking everybody's voice to the board the
049historically marginalized and the historically marginalized student population and the parents and the family in the community so please by november the third vote jamilah smith folds for school board trustee area one thank you and i'm sorry if i went over miss linda i did not see the clock so i just went on and took advantage of it well no okay i didn't see the clock either but thank you so now we're gonna have uh estella uh for your summary thank you miss linda i'm a local i grew up in the hercules and panel community i've seen this community become what it is i want to be i want us to be in this journey together my promise to you our community is that we will i will continue to share information that i continue to
050get as a candidate i will post them on estella for education facebook i already have a next door page called wccsd budget accountability forum rather lengthy i know but you'll find it in west on the next door i hope and i also send out regular updates on things that i'm learning about being a candidate about our district because it is a big district and there are varying and differing types of needs from what's happening in the southern part of our district and what's happening in our northern part of our district i'm asking for you to engage with me in this journey i want us to learn together because we have a lot of challenges ahead of us and having those contexts that relationship and best trust is very very important for me we have 32
051000 young people whose education is on the line one of them is my son who's actually a senior this year i think area one needs a representative who can hit the ground running and with my previous experience as a leader an organizational leader on the business side both in informational systems and in technology services i can actually and have the skills and the capability to fix many of these issues we have a lot of them we need a steady experienced hand to lead us through the balancing the budget accumulating communicating to all stakeholders managing risks that are in front of us what we need is a well thought out and decisive choice i have the organizational skills and the leadership experience i believe i'm the candidate that can effectively represent area one thank you very
052much for listening to me and i hope i've earned your trust please look for estela de paz in the november ballot thank you thank you very much and now i think i'm on the right track okay well i thank both of you again okay we're um and good luck with your candidacy we are moving on we have a short video which i explained to you but i'm not sure i'm looking at the chat uh robert said we're having a little technical difficulty so it's not just me um so i'm waiting to see he's going to try so we're going to put our video up and prepare for our next forum with our attendees to uh thank you again for for tuning in for our first forum for area trustee area one and we'll be starting
053our trusty area two at eleven o'clock but we have a video right now to show okay thank you very much can you hear me linda yes but the attendees can too so call me on my phone okay oh oh i can't let me messing my questions i'll talk to you later can you get a woman and send to me hold a chair do a private chat to me let me see bobby i'm not sure if you can hear me there's no sound on my end or my hand either or me either i see the video but no sound yeah yeah i see you over there then i saw you over there oh man okay can you hear me i don't see computer video though even what we do and we're committed to to serving democracy
054in the voters in in our county and i think it's really important for contra costa county voters to know that we really do have america's best election team and as we talk through some of the preparations and plans that we have i think you'll you'll understand why i feel so confident in in saying that next slide we have an award-winning team here national nationally recognized for for our excellence uh next slide it always takes all a lot of work and effort to prepare for a presidential uh election and we've known for years that this is going to be a historic election and we started planning over a year ago so last summer as we sat down and we started doing our plans we focused on cyber security and uh wildfires as being two challenges that
055we needed to be planning for and planning around as we went into as as we made our plans for the november election and as we went into the fall all of a sudden we we found a new challenge uh that cropped up is when we started having the power shut up public safety power shutdowns so we it started to incorporate uh contingency plans for those things as well uh and and then as we were coming down the home stretch uh for the march primary election uh we had the sudden departure of of of our clerk uh but things never missed a beat the the the elections division kept firing on all cylinders and we rolled out into march's primary election with uh a great plan and and actually a great election but just as we
056were starting to vote uh in that election we had the coronavirus pandemic uh hit us and be declared and we worked through that uh and and completed the canvas of the march election uh while this shelter at home orders were were issued um and we were able to complete our work in uh anyway and since that time we've been working from home the entire uh elections division has been working at home for months and we're going to be uh bringing uh our full cohort of folks back into the office starting next week so we can [Music] continue to prepare for the november election and as we continue to make our plans and refine our plans we we found that we continue to have new challenges that we need to take into account we have the
057economic shutdown we have social unrest and most recently we've had the politization of the usps it makes us wonder okay what else is going to happen the doctor talked about the flu [Music] coming back in the fall and there are reports that uh that certain political parties might have law enforcement uh patrolling uh polls on election day to secure the vote so [Music] next slide so we've taken all those things into account and uh we've put together uh our plan for the election and what what has changed we get asked that all the time what has changed and for most voters there's not going to be any visible changes 75 percent of our voters already have requested their ballot by mail and they get it and they voted and everything's going to look almost identical
058to them there's another 25 percent who are going to be mailed a ballot for the very first time which is about 160 000 voters for them it's going to look a little bit different and as we've uh as we've refined our plans to accommodate all these challenges we found that we only need to expand our existing programs we had we started our dropbox uh program back in 2014 and we had vote center early voting since 2016. so basically we've modified and just scaled uh what we what we're already doing so most of those changes are will really be behind the scenes and not really visible to most people next slide [Music] so i'm going to talk about some of the things that we've done to enhance our vote by mail processes and plans to expand
059our dropbox program to expand early voting and how we're maintaining our election day polling places and touch briefly on uh some of the ppe and distancing protocols and countermeasures that that we're putting in place but before uh i i talk in detail about those next slide um we're asked all the time what are the timelines when are the ballots going out so just briefly on september 24th our voter information guide is scheduled to be mailed to all voters in the county and on october 5th or earlier we will mail all the ballots out out to voters and in-person voting will begin in martinez uh we've moved it outside of our office to the former moose lodge or it's now a cornerstone church right across the street from our office so we can have social distancing
060and and health protocols in place uh we will open all of our ballot drop boxes uh as of that day and we'll begin uh receiving ballots so on october 29th we will have 16 early voting sites uh open up i'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute and on the november third election day we will have uh uh our our full complement of polling places uh that's also the postmark deadline for people uh who are returning their ballots by mail uh and one of the changes uh made by the governor and the legislature in response to uh the the current pandemic is that they will allow uh us to accept and and count ballots received by november 20th provided that they have been postmarked on or before election day next slide okay
061some of the things we've done for for vote by mail is we've upgraded our usps accounts to speed delivery and enable ballot tracking uh we've expanded the use of first class mail typically we mail because of the large number of ballots that we mail we mail them uh at a bulk rate uh we will mail the the first uh major mailing will be at the bulk rate but after that with it starting at uh 30 days prior to the election all ballots mailed out will be sent out first class but we have included i voted stickers oops please go back we've included i voted stickers for the first time in the ballots uh that that one incentive that people have of going to the polls are showing up in person we've we've tried to to
062uh accommodate by giving people their eye voted sticker right away we did an outreach to that 160 000 uh non-vote by mail voters that i mentioned earlier that for whom this is going to be new we [Music] mailed to them explain what the process is explain that they're going to get about in the mail and offer them an opportunity to update the signature that we have on file for them so we can ensure that we count their their ballot when they return their ballot and today we've had over 40 000 uh of those cards returned updating their signatures which is a 25 return rate which is astronomical uh compared to the normal return rate we get when we uh talk to voters so people are taking this seriously and people are very uh focused on
063making sure they're prepared to have their vote counted we're uh we're planning on getting our ballots in the mail as soon as they are ready uh the our uh etched in stone mailing date is october 5th but we're going to try to get them into the mail stream uh the week a week earlier just to mitigate any delays in delivery of the mail now we're we are also uh advising voters that if they have not received their ballot by the 19th of october they should contact our office by phone or by email and we will re-issue them a ballot and send them another ballot but we need to give a little bit of transit time for the ballots to get into the hands of voters but by the 19th or even by the 15th if
064voters don't have it they need to let us know also we're we are participating uh with the state in a program called ballot tracks that voters can sign up for it's a program they have to opt into uh if they do they will receive emails and text notifications of the status of their ballot at each step of the way from the time it's mailed to them to the time it it we receive it and we count it so that's a new program all details of all these things will be included in the voter information guide that is going out to voters okay next slide okay we're going to stop our our slides right now because we really have to get ready for the next uh forum which is area trustee area 2 and i want
065to make sure we have all of our candidates here who are running for trust for our trustee for that area so i'm waiting to hear from tyra um if they're all here so i'm looking at the chat that we're um well while we're waiting for tire to let me know if they're all here um i do want to make an announcement to the attendees in our first forum we had several people who wanted to ask questions from our chat and we had made a decision the league of women voters in the district that we were going to try to get our questions in advance and that was part of a publication that went out uh publicity about this forum that we were accepting questions in advance which we did up until friday yesterday at 12
066noon and then we got together and put the 10 questions together that you're going to that you heard the first form and you will hear this next forum we can't add more questions because we figured out our forums the one hour form to fit all the candidates so they all had the same amount of time to answer and and if we even though we had only two for the first um forum we have three for the next one and if we add questions they won't have the um they won't have time to do the ten so we're sticking to our ten i apologize that we're not able to do any questions from the chat um tara do we have our three candidates here can you let me know okay they're all here and um robert
067are they all on there i see one and see uh um guadalupe and it's all three here i don't i see his name and audra i don't see audra yet is she on the screen i don't see a visual there she is nope that's audrey shields i need to see audra goatee williams new baby so i i don't see um tyra can let me know is audra goldie williams is she on i see audrey shields i don't see goldie williams is she audra you are you on audrey audrey shields zoom linda i don't see her name i'm looking okay that's why i'm asking if audrey's shield is um audra are you using audrey shields zoom no no she is not okay well i'm gonna start my do the introduction because we're running our time is
068is set and i hope audra will come in in time for the information i like to give a little a few more minutes but i don't want to um interfere with the amount of time that the candidates had to answer their questions so tyler when she comes on please um put her in as a panelist okay okay let's see what time we have make sure we have time yep we have to start retire one more time do you see audra goldie williams no i don't okay well we're going to start and hopefully she will be able to arrive on time to do her to be part of our um question and answers okay so i'm going to start good morning and welcome to the west contra costa unified school district and the west county league
069of women voters candidates forum today we will experience several first the first at-large to trustee area elections the first west contra costa unified school candidates forum on zoom and the first time for me as a forum moderator i am linda whitmore and i am a member of the league of women voters we have candidates running for the four trustee areas each candidate will have two minutes for an introduction and they'll be asked 10 questions and given one minute to respond they will also be given two minutes for a closing summary there will be a clock on the screen and i'd like to mention about that clock we had roberts trying to make our clock smaller this time hopefully it works out so we have more of our candidates showing the less of a clock showing
070so he's working on that right now but we will have a clock on the screen to keep time and the candidates will be able to see the clock so we're asking you to please please respect the time allocated tyra wright is a member of our league and she is responsible for the zoom attendees and the panelists the zoom forum technical operator and timekeeper is bobby jordan he's a district communications manager now it's time to start the first forum for trustee area two we have two members of the league league of women voters who will be asking the questions naomi williams can you raise your hand and anne muniz and there she is the candidates are when i call your name just raise your hand right now okay fire uh all three christian there he is
071guadalupe and jana and audra goldie williams and i don't see her hopefully she'll come in on time okay i'd like to mention that before we start that this webinar will be available on the district facebook on the league of women voters facebook page and on the district website there's also a spanish translation is available during the webinar i want everyone to pay close attention to the candidates answers because on november 3rd you will vote for the another first you will elect the first west contra costa unified school district board of trustee for area two so now we're going to begin and i'm going to turn of the um the webinar over to naomi and to ann we'll be getting now thank you hello my name is anne munoz and i think we're going to start
072with an introduction a two-minute introduction of each of the candidates and the first candidate is um authority christian would you give a two-minute introduction 0-3 can you hear me no yes and see you okay all right good morning oh three i'm gonna stop for a minute can you see the clock it's important you see it for time i don't know i don't see the clock okay we gotta hold for a second robert they cannot see the clock okay can you see it now no no no no no i think okay naomi wait a minute okay there we go so all three i see it okay now we got you and the clock on it's all yours all right good morning my name is o3 christian and i am running for the west country college unified
073school district gravity board area 2. i'm running because i care about our children and i want them to succeed i graduated from jennifer kennedy high school i earned my ba degree administration of justice from howard university and my bs degree in bible religious education from southwestern christian college for the past 15 years i have served as the lead school campus safety officer at el cerrito high school prior to that i was a case manager for disadvantaged youth prior to that i was an intake officer at the juvenile hall i am the past president of the iron triangle neighborhood council and the richmond naacp i have spent my career protecting children safe schools allow children to look forward to look forward um and when children do not feel safe at school they do not learn and
074sometimes they stop attending school not only must we protect students from physical and emotional harm we must protect them from biological threats like covet 19. as adults our job is to create safe space for our children to explore and learn and grow as your school board member trustee i will promote policies that protect our children safe while removing barriers of learning i will work in partnership with our entire school community to give our children the tools they need to reach their full potential we will do this by centering our budgets and work around learning including entrepreneurship career and technical education because every child deserves an opportunity to succeed my priorities are safe schools centering the budget around student success and retaining and hiring the best staff for wcc usd once again my name is o3
075christian i ask for your vote thank you 03 and the next person for a two-minute introduction will be guadalupe and jana messena are you there hello okay okay i think she's changing um because of her sound she's getting another okay okay i just saw her go leave the screen while we're waiting for her although she's back on but we cannot hear her okay guadalup lupe will you um guadalupe would you um speak um she's not being heard okay robert can you uh assist any kind of way i don't know arnold can you hear us once you nod your head or raise can you hear us raise your hand can you hear us do you want to call in oh uh yes i will i'll put it in it oh why don't can she log out
076and log back in i might sometimes it works when you log out and come back in sometime the connection is better guadalupe why don't you log out and then come back in let's see if that works before we're going on the phone [Music] and while we're waiting um tyra one more time just checking did audra has she uh um connected i yes i'm here yes she's there i can try and see if guadalupe is reading why i see goldie that's your name now yeah so why don't we have goatee do her two-minute introduction and then then we'll go back to guadalupe miss williams uh would you please give your two minute introduction uh and state a little bit about yourself are you able to hear me yes can't see yeah we can hear you oh
077you can't see me give me one second let me just hold on let me give me one second are you able to see me now yes yes yes okay good morning everyone i just wanted to take the time to thank you for having me my name is andrew goldie williams i am the co-chair of the asset a volunteer parent group in wcc usd we fought to get a resolution by the school board for our african-american and black students and we won then we did a review and discovered that instead of 750 000 that was assigned to our children they were actually entitled to over 7.2 million so we went back to the board to fight again and we won and to date 3.2 million dollars has been assigned to the resolution i own a hr
078consulting firm and we specialize in dei diversity equity and inclusion i will bring this work to our district on the school board as well as my over 30 years of hr experience i've been fighting for our children from the outside now all of our children need me to fight from the inside i've spent the last 14 years serving our children our teachers our families in various volunteer capacities within the district and the community as asap co-chair on sec several times on ptas children's pastor high school cheerleading coach and i own and run a youth mentor program called got goals which i'm in partnership with girls inc change is not coming change is here i am that change i've been in this district district for 14 years if you look at my resume i've always been
079in the community and working with our youth youth not for a political career but because that's where my heart is i'm here i'm ready to fight i'm ready to represent all of our children and i'm ready to make change our children are not performing like they should our district is not performing like it should so anybody that doesn't state that we need to make change i don't know what they're looking at but from what i'm looking at change is needed change is here and on that change thank you very much thank you uh now is uh guadalupe and jana is she are you there guadalupe [Music] i don't see her name on the screen um robert yeah i fire you still can't hear her okay well we're going to start and i apologize but i
080know if we wait we might not have enough time for all the questions okay is guadalupe there though is she is she there she's here wait a minute i think it says connecting audio now hello okay now we can hear you oh can you hear me now okay yes thank you okay i i apologize to you all well good morning everyone my name is guadalupe jana and i am running for the wcc usd board of education i've been a lifelong richmond resident and mom of four i have been a student at west contra costa former richmond unified my experiences as a student now parent have been a big part of my commitment to this district i am rooted in this community and have shown that throughout my commitment participation and many years of volunteering in
081many different sectors in and outside of the schools currently i am the daughter of the richmond children youth oversight board for the city of richmond and the vice chair on the citizens bond oversight committee the city cboc for west coach acosta i also sit on the dlcaps and end deck my parents my parents after being elected in november are to have clarity and transparency around the budget and understandable terms and numbers so that the critical decisions that need to be made can be done with real accountability and understanding evaluating the distant learning program at a school by school basis data that can be then used to address the supports needed also focusing in on community schools model at its intended potential with all stakeholders at the table to envision the difference of the neighborhood school
082making it a hub not just for education but for family and community support that addresses the needs of a whole child i have been endorsed by the contra costa young democrats richmond city councilman melvin willis john maverick and eduardo martinez san pablo mayor arturo cruz the iron triangle president oscar garcia the 21st street merchants association and community leaders like um romney animal brown thunder of sofo softball sunday and i'm samuel ramirez founder of the moving forward for our future um i thank you guys for your invitation to participate and want you to know that this november go out you know hear us out hear the parent voice on the board and to do your due diligence and vote thank you thank you very much and now i'm going to begin the set of questions that
083we'll be asking and the first question is how will you address the budget issues and this question is first for you other reek can you hear me yes i can hear you all right first of all let me just by saying that our present budget right now is 363 million dollars and right now we're over budget where in this year that we're registering at 379 million dollars and so right now we are in the major crisis um cuts have been made uh and already and also we are faced with uh major issues that's coming up so when the new war takes place we have to be ready to go and figure out how we're gonna resolve these issues and how we're gonna uh deal with the current uh cuts that's gonna be coming and it's
084coming and so we're faced with a crisis and so uh as board members the new incoming board member we want to make sure that we do the right job on what areas and what what else needs to to bring our budget down um that we will be able to be in the means of of getting this district back in order so we have a lot to do so you need somebody that's going to get in there and get the job done thank you thank you very much and guadalupe how would you answer the question how will you address the budget issues can you hear me hello can you hear me now i can hear your yes okay i'm sorry to address the budget i think we need to look at the budget and translate it
085into terms that can be understood not just by the trustees but but i but all stakeholders um so that we can move forward with transparency and accountability you know the biggest problem that we have right now is not knowing the exact numbers and where they're being um put into um so i think really focusing in on the actual budget um the past budget that was passed won't you know be accurate you know this year just because of covid you know we're getting other funding our cola funding has been cut so really figuring out you know where we're at you know what do we need to do where do we want to be and how do we get there with the financial in in the financial restraints that we have so like i said figuring out
086what the budget is and translating it so that all stakeholders can be at the table when decisions are being made i think it's a time to listen and really address the issues that systematically and you know as a whole thank you thank you very much and audra how would you answer the same question how will you address the budget issues she's muted can you hear me now yes excellent thank you very much um there's a lot of things that we need to do um i would hold the superintendent accountable and his staff for producing accurate and timely reports we would need to discuss how every dollar impacts students i would support programs like ecolec to monitor annual measurable outcomes i would explore options such as external auditing i think community input and transparency are key
087we need to be accountable to our community members we need to measure and manage outcomes um the budget deficit from locals as well as covet challenges funds need to be managed properly i think that community impact is really important and we should consider things like multiple language forums so that all community members are clear what's going on we need to make the budget simple we need to present it in a simple way so that the community can participate partnership will be key and we need to listen it's not one person figuring it out it's us doing it collectively thank you the next question is how will you how will you address issues around equity and i'm going to start with audra thank you very much for that um my company is an hr consulting group
088and what we do is diversity equity and inclusion work so in our district currently there's not equity so the reality is some of the things that we're doing on asap is we're intentionally going out and looking for providers to specifically address our underserved communities our underserved students so one of the things that we talk about what i say all the time is equity in action is a lifestyle so to achieve equity it's not a thing that you acquire is something that you actually embody so we would have to be dedicated as a district to decide we're going to impact and people say dismantle systems of oppression dismantle systems of racism the reality is that's actually accurate systems that are currently in place are not working and those systems don't have equity so that means that
089we have to find systems that work that provide and bring equity everyone's going to have to roll up our sleeves we're gonna have to dig in we're gonna have to make a life choice to change the way that we do things that we've always done for equity to show up from top down down up everyone has to dig in and everyone has to be able to come to the plate to make our our district equitable to all of our students thank you and uh guadalupe how would you addre address um equity issues around equity well to me equity comes from a place where we're making sure that we're just not giving the students what they need but the supports to achieve the goals that we're studying for them um that's why my proposal for community
090schools is essential looking at what these are schools have how can we support those needs and how can we build partnerships to support the achievement of our students it's really essential that we focus in on our lower performing schools making sure that they have the resources there and available not just there so sometimes the resources are there but not available and that we have systems in place to be able to see what's functioning and what's not functioning we we spend a lot of time in figuring out you know where we're putting our money we start a lot of programs you know we invest a lot but then we don't follow through so i think it's time that we have we overlook and we actually sit down and have conversations with data that says you know
091this is working for our students this is not working and you know really figuring out what things are going to cost us what can we afford and what our goals are for the district thank you oh therese same question how will you address issues around equity yes i can speak firsthand experience working at elsewhere high school been there for 15 years uh working day in the day out and i see how how our kids are treated when they come in from the flatlands such as come from the crescent park or come from very other parts of richmond and when they come to estrella high school they always say christian you know we don't feel um you know like we wanted here or being brought into the family or making things across the board uh equally
092um and making everybody feeling good so like when kids come for low-income areas of going to el cerrito high school and maybe going to canola or so so forth but the thing is is that our district we have to work hard on making sure equity is across the board and that every staff every teacher everybody is on the same page to make sure that our kids are feeling safe and making sure our kids are loved on each and every single day because we have to build the minds of all backgrounds from all nationalities we have to do the job of making things better so i'm as a board trustee i would do that i'm there i see the reality of things i see everyday reality i see it and i'm gonna fight hard i'm in
093the midst i'm in the midst of the trenches and i see and i want to fight for our young people and making sure that everything that our young people is going to have so my job is to make it happen and along with the board and working together as a team we can do this thank you okay thank you very much the next question is what do you feel have been the issues around distance learning and i'll ask o3 again yes uh distance learning um due to the cult of 19 that we're in and due to the situation that we're we're facing that we never experienced before we are in a major crisis throughout this nation and so we if we allow our students to come back to the school at this moment without a
094vast scene uh without things that uh uh we don't have stuff in in position to help our kid we don't want nobody to get sick and die on us or uh uh this uh this to be taken home so distance learning we're gonna have to be in this so what we're gonna have to do is improve in this distance learning until we uh come out of this crisis until we can get back into our school buildings but at this moment um we got to make sure that every kid has a tablet making sure every kid has all the resources the internet uh making sure that the low-income families uh are being supported making sure that we are connecting with them day in and day out we have a job at hand so that's my job
095as a trustee for area 2 to make that happen thank you very much guadalupe how do you feel what what what do you feel have been the issues around distance learning to me the biggest problem has been the communication and lack of support to our most needed um we assume that all parents are tech savvy and can support the needs of their students that they can and communicate with teachers and staff there's a language barrier um how can we support how can we expect our children to get educated if we're not giving not just the students but you know the families the support that they need to be able to achieve the goals that we as a district are setting you know we are the ones that are setting these goals we are the ones
096that are putting the standards but we also have to form partnerships and communicate that to the families to the you know to the caretakers of the students that we're trying to educate you know it's been really challenging like i said to many parents um especially working parents to be able to facilitate you know me as a parent you know i'm i i'm a stay-at-home mom and it's been really difficult and i've been sitting with my children in and out every day making sure they're signing on making sure they understand making sure that they get over you know their their everyday so i cannot you know i can't not imagine what other parents are going through so i think you know we have a lot of communicating to do not just for those that are tech
097savvy but the ones that we haven't been able to reach you know right now we have 500 students around 500 students that are unaccountable unaccounted to um especially in kindergarten so how can we figure out where these students are you know what the biggest needs are and how can we communicate that to the people that we're expecting to support us in the sport support the education of our children along the way thank you and audra same question for you what do you feel have been the issues around distance learning you for that um i can speak personally and from what i'm hearing from other parents and caregivers my team and community our kids are getting more live instruction and support than they were in the spring however there's still lots of issues and concerns that
098they're facing a lot of families still are not connected that's key if a child is not connected there's no way that they're going to be able to learn just as guadalupe said if the parents are not connected there's no way the kids are connected currently i have my eyes on kids with special needs english learners and kids transitioning to new schools and i'm talking about new kindergartners new middle school new high school incoming freshmen and also their students that are transferring from other schools that are brand new to our district i think personally that we need to support our students mental health resources immediately and this is not some day soon immediately um i have a chair team and of my 30 children that are on that team i'm listening to the things that they're
099saying and what i'm hearing from them their friends what i'm hearing from my children what i'm hearing from the community some students are facing depression um because they don't have their normal way of living so one of the things i think we need to do immediately and i've actually started this i've talked to the jmp i've talked to rise and i'm going to post some things but our students and parents need resources immediately for mental health thank you the next question is what is your position regarding campus security o3 yes thank you i've been the lead campus safety officer at elsewhere to high school working with our children day in and day out i have done a lot to help our kids and many challenges and making sure that the safety of our young people
100day in and day out i could give a person an example of a situation that happened at elsewhere high school back in 2014 when we had a shooter outside the school and i was out there with some young people and i actually helped them to get to safety and make sure that the campus went on lockdown and made sure that uh every student was in and say uh until until the police and everybody came to deal with the situation safety means a lot we want to make sure that we don't have no intruders come on campus but then at the same time we want to make sure that uh our kids stay in that day in the day out that mentally that uh that they have the resources and then the protection as the campus
101safety officer elsewhere in high school i i talk to these kids every day i don't make a difference in none of the kids i show love to every nationality on campus i work closely with jmp i work uh closely with the restorative justice uh program to make sure that we break up i restored the justice i made sure that we are fighting uh to keep our kids safe um and it goes from emotionally to psychologically it's a lot of things but we have to make sure that we are constantly uh in the in the ears of these kids um listening to them and also making sure that they have everything they need as the campus safety officer going onto the board i will make sure safety is the number one making sure that all the
102resources are there to help our young people uh to feel secure secure and safe um and not worrying about anything uh that comes on that campus because when the child feels safe that child is gonna learn and so my job is to do that and as a school board member trustee i would do that to make sure our kids are safe thank you thank you very much okay ann and the moderator i'm going to ask our candidates to stick to the one minute allocation i know you all have a lot to say but we have to stick to our time and rain's going over our one minute robert might have to mute you if you don't stick to the time so please one minute answers thank you okay now the same question guadalupe i'll repeat
103the question what is your position regarding campus security my position regarding campus security has always been first two years ago on the dlcaps around the lcap we recommended that this that the funding for security officers be moved out of the lcap and into the general budget um with that being achieved i think right now we're in a deficit we have to look at you know cuts cuts have to be made and if it's not particularly going to educate our children then it you know we're making those hard cuts they you know that's one thing that we don't need um and not just based on personal feeling but also on the committees that the district has implemented and the recommendations that many of these committees have come forward with you know asap brought up you know
104the recommendations the lcaps have their recommendations on you know where that money can be better invested you know in the mental health services and you know supporting our students versus surveillance them you know we have to make sure that the system's in place not because they're there means that they're working so i don't agree with security officers on campus thank you very much audra what is your position regarding campus security this is a very difficult discussion for me and what i mean is that i think that we need to be really informed with something so serious what i do know teachers and administrators are not trained to handle crime and should not have to teachers and students need increased support services we need to think about increasing counselors restorative justice activities and programs and more
105interventions that get to the root cause of the trauma in our communities we're not in person yet so i think this is the perfect time to start thinking through a plan that is inclusive of input from teachers parents students staff and law enforcement there should be a collaborative conversation in my opinion if we were not in distance learning we may have even had some issues on campus without sros on campus who's to say but i think we need to come together to determine the best path for our district for our schools and it's a collaborative conversation thank you thank you the next question is what should be the new priorities for measure our funding regarding our facilities master plan and i'm going to start with you audra thank you very much um let me just
106say this it's not at all lost on me that in the same district we have schools that look like they should be on the front of a magazine and then we have classrooms that don't even have windows that's very disheartening for me knowing that this bond already passed i want to fight to prioritize our schools in richmond that are long long overdue we've been overlooked in this community once we're out of distance learning and we're back in the classrooms the research is clear that students do better if their environment is nicely kept and inviting that's what our babies deserve and not some of our babies all of our babies to be honest i'm very frustrated that kennedy has been skipped over for new projects that's not equity my big picture goal is to make richmond
107attractive for the future of businesses to homeowners to small business owners why because that means a good future for our students we need to change that image so our students can have pride in where they live and can secure a good future thank you very much guadalupe how would you answer the same question what should the new priorities from measure f funding what should be the new priorities for measure f measure our funding regarding our facilities master plan okay well first of all measure r is a measure for classroom modernization and safety updates as well as to be used for technology i am part of the cboc and we have been focusing in um when we approve this ballot on transparency and accountability and oversight also looking into the current facilities master plan um the
108master plan was um implemented in 2016 so i think really folks really looking at what that master plan holds and updating it to fit the current needs of the district thank you authority how would you answer that question yes thank you um number one that the bond measure that was passed measure r which we have 575 million dollars and we want to make sure that equity is done across the board we want to make sure that our schools in richmond the ones that are left undone we want to make sure speech elementary school is uh rebuilt and we also want to make sure kennedy high school is rebuilt and also we want to make sure that richmond high school is also rebuilt we want to make sure that uh our our our students uh get
109a nice school with clean air flowing through the building and they have windows and then they feel good and they feel uh positive about their school campus and they take pride in and and being there on that campus i can speak for example being at ulcerative high school being on a brand new campus where kids do take pride on being on the new campus and and enjoying the sports activities and so forth so what i'm saying is that make the the bun money that's been passed um i want to see our schools in richmond area too i want to see area 2 shine i want to see our low income area come up to a good high standard and where all of our families everybody feeling good about their schools i am the advocate to
110make it happen and i'm ready to push forward thank you very much naomi okay here i am can everybody hear me yes okay question six what programs or resources do you think the district can put in place to handle social emotional emotional learning and i'll take this one and give it to audrey audrey thank you very much i'm sorry i was on mute um what i'll say is that mental health and health and wellness are paramount to me it's something you're going to hear me talk about a lot not only through this campaign i talked about it before i started campaigning i engage with my team i engage with every youth that i'm involved in and talk about it as far as programs i'm not sure yet what programs are going to be most beneficial
111what i always believe in is equity and inclusion i believe that we should open up the table before i as an adult make a decision i should bring the most important stakeholder to the table our students so in my opinion we shouldn't just do surveys at the end of the day we need to hear from our students in multiple ways multiple times we need to hear from their parents multiple ways multiple times we need to do this as a community most of the work that we're going to have to do to actually change this system and create a new one we're going to have to work collectively so i think we're going to have to come together hear from our students and then look at data and determine which way to go thank you alterly
112i'll read that same question to you what programs or resources do you think that the district can put in place to handle social emotional learning yes thank you i appreciate that question because as i think about that question social emotional learning plays a major role we need resources through our counselors through many things that can help our kids overcome i want to say it is i was a student that sat one time in those scenes at martin de king school adams and graduated from kennedy i went through a lot as a kid coming up and a lot of things i spent but i didn't have the support i didn't have no one to help me to go to the next level and i struggled through school i struggled to make it to keep my grades
113up and um and sometimes i felt that i wasn't able to do it and so but but i didn't give up so when i see the kids today i'm looking at the same ones and i encourage every last young person um to don't give up and i and i point them with resources i send them to jmp or on the rise center or uh different things that can help our kids restorative justice many things that can help our kids because i used to be one of those kids that were out there and and i and i and i can identify and as a board member as a board trustee i'm going to fight for these young kids i'm going to fight for these students for every background every nationality thank you oh okay um lupe
114i'm gonna ask you the same question what programs do our resources do you think that the district can put in place to handle social emotional learning well to me right now this is a perfect time i think to be innovative i think we have to reimagine and restructure um the the programs and the systems currently being used you know we have to train our all our staff that means anyone who interacts with our students but we also have to have systems in place that can give us the data that we need of the implementation and success of these programs i think we have to be data driven and we have to make sure that you know we're getting that feedback of the programs that we're wanting to implement not just like you said you know
115what would i like i mean i can like many things but you know are those things necessarily going to be working for our schools for our student school so i think really focusing in on you know reimagining restructuring not going back to where we were at because what we had wasn't working so this is the time to like really reimagine bring stakeholders to the table and you know figure things out within our means okay thank you question seven how would the district how should the district address the issues of co-location with charter school and i'll start this question off with other v yes um charter schools are here we have the partnership and work um collaboratively to make sure um we don't need no more charter schools but work with the charter schools we have
116and making sure that all of our kids get an education making sure all of our kids are loved on and making sure they all have the resources um um as a board member i want to make sure that we build up our attendance in this district making sure that we um focus in on areas to improve in our in our school system here um making sure that we have the resources to see our school district uh stand out as the as a number one district in this area so my job as a board member is to make sure that we reach out to all those who have fallen by the wayside bring them back into the family that we can build a stronger education here in this district okay thank you the second person i'm
117go to for this question is lupe how should the district address the issues of the co locations with the charter schools i think we need to address the co-location of charter schools by really focusing in on the impact of not just you know the two schools being together but the impact that it will have um within our students you know making sure that our students are not going to be you know taken from to give to charter school making sure that you know when we were when they were talking about the expansion in pinot you know the co-location of pinot you know we were giving away one of our science buildings to the charter schools with the hope of you know building a new one for our public schools you know we have a lot
118of hope sometimes but i think at the same time we need to have plans in place before we even start having those conversations we need to really focus in on like i said the impact the impact that it brings to our schools the effect that it brings to our students and to the families so you know that's that's my feeling i think we we need to really have conversations around this and you know what what that does you know in the bigger picture okay the third person will be you audrey um how would how should the district address the issues of cold locations with charter schools thank you very much for that um i think that let me just say this just in general i really look forward to the day when every neighborhood school
119is fully is fully able to meet the needs of our students it's a really common topic and what i would say is i think we need to apply equity i think we also need to ensure that our students in our district are safe supported and in position to grow we're talking about change changing a system and now as we're talking about changing a system we've added some new things to an existing system i think as always you're always going to hear me say this we need to have discussions and we need to be inclusive about the discussion we need to bring the community in we need to bring and i'm talking about the students the parents the teachers the administrators so that we can address the concerns i noticed there was one school board meeting
120where there was a huge issue of a co-location scenario you've got to talk about it because you've got to get through this okay thank you i will go to the next question question how will you address the digital divide in our district and i think i'll start this one with lupi to me addressing the digital divide is not just something that we address within the west contra costa i think that's a bigger conversation that we need to have i think that we need to bring you know the conversations in with our elected city officials i truly believe in partnership i believe that you know conversations need to happen and i think that we need to start stop independently taking things on and you know looking to our cities for support looking to our city you
121know to get things done because you know right now the digital divide is it's a big one and you know in ensuring that you know that's something that that we're electing but it's all you know actually an essential thing right now you know if we don't have um children with internet then you know they're not getting educated you know if parents are you know they don't have the access they're not receiving the messages so i think really having a broader conversation with our elected officials and forming a partnership of how we could get that not just for our students but for our city-wide you know purpose okay thank you okay the same question how will you address the digital divide in our district you know this one will go to audrey thank you very much
122um to be honest a lot of the things that guadalupe said are things that i have talked about and i'm listing so i'm absolutely in agreement i also think that we may want to consider looking at outside funding i don't know what that exactly looks like but i know that there's a lot of technology companies that have partnerships in our district at this point we need to collectively come to them to say our priority is if our kids have tablets that's great without internet that's a problem we have areas where our hot spots aren't working for our children so i agree this is a bigger discussion than richmond our district wcc usd it's going on nationwide but at the end of the day we've got to figure out new solutions um what i'll say is
123that internet we've got we're we're intel accounts we're right next to silicon valley i think we need to collectively come together as a whole district and figure out who to write what's right we've already got some partnerships in place but let's figure out who our network is within our district who our connections are within our district and collectively bombard and ask these technology companies that are right here in our backyards to support our students [Music] okay uh the next person how will you address the digital divide in our district b03 yes thank you um it goes back to equity equity equity across the board uh number one uh that we got to make sure that our kids and especially in low-income areas have all the things they need we got to fight day in and
124day out that means we got to make it happen it has to become reality i want to say it is we never thought that we would be in a situation that we're in now we never thought we'd have a major uh uh uh uh being under cove at 19 where we all um trying to you know make sure we stay safe but in the midst of this it teaches us that we have to plan and look ahead in the future but i want to make sure that as we learn from this i want to make sure that we build a partnership uh with with companies throughout this area uh to make sure that our kids have these resources making sure that we apply for grants making sure that we're not wasting no time so when
125those uh individuals are in positions to do it they are able to make it happen so so we got to make sure that we just can't just have lip service we got to be about reality and seeing things done so i'm the person that to understand that that this is a must and then this is a need for every child to have the the technology okay this will be question nine what is your position regarding approving more charter schools in our district and i think i'll take this one too um audrey thank you very much so july 1 2020 ab 1505 was passed and the short of it is this the expectation is that we simply comply with what we're required to comply with that's the short of it we have to stay compliant we
126have to do what's legal if you look at that what's stated there's also language that talks about if there's going to be impact negatively to our local schools to our local communities we have the ability to absolutely deny a charter school so at the end of the day we should be compliant and do what's legal and then after that if there's going to be harm done to our community if there's going to be harm done to our kids if there's going to be harm done to them as students we absolutely should not allow anything in any form to do that to our students thank you okay uh that's the same question uh what is your position regarding approving more charter schools in our district and this one will go to o3 all right thank you
127um the answer to that question we don't need any more charter schools we already have a lot of charter schools in this area but let's continue to build education let's continue to build our public schools let's continue to actually let's make a campaign that we reach out and start building our schools getting our schools moving and bringing in arts breaking in uh trades bringing in uh all the the uh the technologies and things that can help our kids inspire inspire the the uh desiring them to achieve their goals because every every student every student has what it takes to make it every student has gifts every background has gifts and talents and we and if we empower our kids we don't need anymore chinese schools but what we have let's build let's grow and let's
128make this district a top number one district in this area okay what is your position regarding the approval of proven more charter schools in our district uh looping i agree that um in west contra costa we have the as school board members we have to abide by the law but with the addition of now being able to look at the fiscal impact of the charter schools on our district budget with that being said you know i would want to see and i would want to implement you know an oversight of our charter schools and when i say that is because you know we need the data you know we have been overwhelmed by charter schools and applications into this district um and if the charter schools that we currently have are working out for our
129district why don't we keep adding more so i think you know we need to really focus in on oversight not just our public schools but oversight at our charter schools so that data can actually be informed and inform the community because that's been a challenge how can we get the accurate data on how our schools are functioning if we have nothing to support it so like i said i think looking at what they're bringing to the table and making sure that we're not being outgrown by them okay thank you this will be the last question for all the west county mandarin school serves to students from across the district the school has outgrown its current site at the sarah campus in richmond and is slated to move to the temporary portable campus at petro porto
130in el cerrito families have requested that we move instead to the abandoned adams school which is the block away from sarah and put portables there the question is would you support the financial investment to have school move the school move to adams why and why not and i'll take the first question to o3 all right thank you appreciate that um number one um adam's is not safe it's on the head with fault line uh and then it would take too much money to actually put poor uh portables there so why not look at the place over in el cerrito it's already there where uh uh portland used to sit where the portables are already there and it would take too much money and number one we are already in a budget crisis our district is
131is is is way up there and so we don't need to continue we don't need to add the debt to anything but let's use what we have and so i'll be supporting for it to go over to where the the portland uh campus used to be okay um i'm just gonna read the part of the questions for you not the whole thing unless you want me to this would would you support the financial investments to have the school move to adams why or why not and i'll act loopy to me um that like you know that's a question that i always say you know we need to have conversation over you know this is not something that i will decide on today because we really have to have stakeholders at the table you know we
132can't keep you know working on this is you know going to be a hardship on our budget i want to see why it's going to be a hardship on our budget you know we have to support every action that we take so we're saying you know this is not a safe building show us why this is not a safe building you know we have to build that communication we have to build that relationship with the stakeholders involved to then be able to make these decisions we can't just keep talking to people we have to talk with people and you know once we have those conversations i think we can find mutual ground of what's going to be best for our students what's going to be best for the families and not just because they're being
133told but because we actually are presenting them with pieces on our wives and having to hear them on what their needs are as well okay okay the last person would you want me to say the entire question or i can just go to would you support the financial investment to have the school move to adams if so why and if so why not thank you very much for that question my short answer is absolutely not um the space was already declared safe so in order for it to be safe there's a large investment that has to happen for that to happen so my concern is i'm going to be very honest i'm saddened that we're having to have this discussion i'm saying that we're talking about this because the reality is the review plan um
134i would say we could review the plan and ensure it's equitable but it's unsafe it needs to have access we need to assess the actual cost and let me say this i think i'm concerned also for the equity in our district we have schools like kennedy who have been on list for years and it feels like other projects are able to play leapfrog and skip past kennedy so for me equity's really big it's always going to be on my plate so for me it's not safe that's the main reason but i think we should look at equity in our district okay thank you guys i'll turn it back over to linda now oh no no no yeah you have to do your yes go ahead go ahead nail me oh okay i would like for
135you guys to do your um what i'm trying to say the closing summary yeah the closing summary for this i'm my first time on tv two okay yeah you both have all three have two minutes each and so name naomi decide who do you want to go first okay audrey you go first i just went am i next yeah you're next to this one for your closing summary that seems okay so be it um first of all i want to thank you all for this opportunity to come and speak i've been in our district for 14 years and in that entire time that i've been here i've been working for our youth i'm a mother i'm a grandmother i'm a small business owner and i have poured into our youth in our community i've brought
136programs of my own to the district and voluntarily gave given them and gave them at coronado elementary when coronado elementary was on the chopping blocks to be closed myself and my young children were at the school board on a weekly basis showing up fighting and when we fought coronado remained open and was rebuilt as a member of asap and the co-chair we fought and as a result we have a resolution for our african-american and black students and we have 3.2 million dollars assigned to them so far i'm a fighter when i first came to richmond about my home in 2006 and i literally had to fight to get into it i'm a fighter richmond is known as the city of pride and purpose my desire is for our students to know who they are what
137they come from for there to be equity for our students to be successful for our students to feel good about where they live to feel good about what they contribute to their community and to feel good about their futures our children not only deserve to feel good about where they live they deserve to feel good about where they're going our children should leave our high schools in our system ready and prepared for their next level whether it be that they want to go to a trade school whether they want to be an emt whether they want to go to a two-year institution for college if they want to go to a four-year the short of it is this change is not coming change is here and i'm that change i've been fighting for 14 years
138in this district but i fought before that and i'm going to continue fighting after that so at the end of the day what i'm looking for is people to vote for me who believe in our kids and believe in our district and believe in me changes here okay thank you okay 03 you can go with your closing remarks please yes thank you i am a product from this area i was born raised grew up in richmond my family came here in the 40s um i have an aunt named lily may jones who fought hard in the community in the city of richmond if you look if you google lily may jones that's my auntie she worked hard vividly day in and day out and fought for the needs of our young people and people all
139over the community of richmond i'm going to fight for our young people why because i understand their needs i was a student at martin luther king school at albums and kennedy high school i struggled as a student i struggled day in and day out i i was bullied i was messed with but i didn't have nobody to turn to i didn't have no mentors i didn't have any but in me i wanted to make it i wanted to be that student to continue to push forward and i did graduate from kennedy high school and i went on to higher education but when i learned that my district failed me and did not prepare me like i should have been prepared i didn't get the things i needed when i got to howard university i i
140didn't realize that i missed out on a lot of things i struggled as a student i struggled and i had to sit out a semester at howard university but you know what i did i went to a junior college out there in washington dc to get myself together and then i sent my stuff back to howard and they said they allowed me to come back in and i went through and i graduated from howard i'm that student that's struggling i see these young people day in and day out from el cerrito high school and all the young people i communicate with i encourage them don't give up i i pointed them in directions to get resources to get help because i've been a mentor i've been there in a corner i've fought for them i
141haven't seen young people die on the streets out here in richmond i've been out here i live in an iron triangle i've worked in the iron i tried to improve the condition i was the neighborhood council president i worked hard thank you okay lupe you'll be bringing up well thank you very much first of all for this invitation um when you know i decided to run i decided to run because you know i i truly believe that everybody needs to be represented at the board as a mother with four sons you know we don't get a day off we're currently showing up i'm currently showing up i am a product of west contra costa i lived in richmond all my life um and you know as a young mother i i struggled i struggled very
142hard to make sure that the needs of my sons as well as the needs of other students have been met whether it be struggling through you know with my son through the special needs program at a young age a system that you know is predominantly put there to you know that's not supported you know so i think even me showing up here today you know me being here today shows you know that i am in it for the long run i'm not in it just for november 3rd i'm in it and i've been here and i can continue to be a support system for all our 30 000 students not just you know some but really focusing in on our students as a whole you know we we you know i'm a mother i'm not
143here you know being the expert of you know the know-it-all but i have invested a lot of time to learn to learn and to support the district the parents and the community to form partnerships you know to make sure that we're leading by example that we're present that you know we're talking to not talking at and like i said you know me being here you know struggling with my own things personal things you know my son currently is in the hospital um and that's been something hard to cope with but i'm still showing up i'm making sure that you know his needs are met that i'm you know constantly there for him but that i'm here also because i know the need that our community has to be accurately represented and i want to be
144that representation i want to be that voice of the parent you know and that's it that's you know that's what i'm wanting to offer and i'm here and you know i want to be your elected official okay thank you and i want to thank all the contestants that scoped the candidates that spoke and i'll turn now turn you back over to linda and congratulation you guys thank you i too want to thank all three christian guadalupe fianna and audra goldie williams for a great session a lot of information uh i want to thank naomi and and for assisting us today for our trustee areas one and two i just want to remind everybody that um uh when you vote on november 3rd you'll be voting for the first another first we talked about the first
145west contra costa unified school board school district board of trustees for area two you're gonna have a hard decision because all three of them really made some very strong um uh give a strong information and i think they're all strong candidates so thank you very much for coming on and sharing your ideas with us uh and good luck so we are going to now excuse me yes i would like to also thank you linda for the to be the first and the first hair and the first you thank you yeah i didn't know you were the first so we're both doing this together thank you so we are going to get set now for trusty area four we're right on the dot i think it's well that's supposed to start at 12 o'clock so we're
146going to not waste any time we have a few minutes so i want to find out from um i'm not sure um hanover yes perfect so we're going to start i want to see if we have our two league assistants are they on also uh that's cheryl and myrtle are they ready hannah deva is cheryl collier on and myrtle braxton uh they should be uh cheryl uh bobby can you help us with this yeah you're also there i think if you can keep an eye open we need to do you know what uh cheryl's email address or did she log on with her name i see there's a collier that's her that's her way to go but we also need myrtle braxton bobby i just admitted uh cheryl okay uh i don't see myrtle though
147naomi do me a favor can you give her a call okay she's there oh she's here [Music] your visual and for uh cheryl your visual see myrtle she looks muted i see his cereal now too they're both muted though there we go okay so i see myrtle and i see sure okay we're all set i don't see all the candidates i need to see uh ianad burrell uh dimitrio gonzalez hoy and matthew matthews right there okay i don't see um ian nod is she on excuse me i'm sorry i'm still looking for her i don't see her yet um hannah aviva is oh there she is your name and can you put your visual on here not please yes one moment okay no problem thank you and so i'm looking for a dimitrio all right
148there you are and um matthew where's your hand matthew perfect okay so we're going to start and now we'll come on visually when she um as she gets a set okay so we have our third hour of forums going and i want to say good afternoon to everybody and welcome to the west contra costa unified school district and west county league of women voters candidates forum today we will experience several first the first at large to trustee area elections the first west contra costa unified school district canada's forum on zoom or zoom webinar and the first time for me as a forum moderator so i am linda whitmore and i am a member of the league of women voters uh um let's see we have uh candidates running for four trusty areas each candidate will
149have two minutes for an introduction they'll be asked ten questions and given one minute to respond and two minutes for closing summary there'll be a clock on the screen that the candidates can see who are asking all of you to please respect the time allocated anovia calloway i see i don't see her can you um come on visually he know because they can see who you are anovia calloway where is she there she is when she gives us there she is uh is a member of our league and we ask that each cat um a mirror league and she's responsible for the zoom attendees and panelists the zoom forum technical operator and timekeeper is bobby jordan bobby is the district communications manager now it's time to start the first forum for trustee area four we
150have two members of the league of women voters who will be asking the questions to these three candidates and they are myrtle braxton can you wave myrtle to see who you are there she is and the west county president of the league of women voters cheryl collier will be asking questions cheryl you wave there she is the candidates are and if i mispronounce your names just let me know and i'll we'll go back and do it again okay ian nod burrell dimitrio gonzalez hoy and matthew trujillo perfect okay very good i want all of you to pay close attention to these candidates and their answers because on november 3rd you will vote for another first you will elect the first west contra costa unified school district board of trustee for area four so i wanted
151to say a few more things and we're going to start this webinar will be available on district facebook page on the district facebook page on the league of women voters facebook page and on the district's website and we are having spanish translation is uh during this webinar so it's available for those who need spanish translation during the webinar last thing before we start is that we are not accepting any open questions on our chat for this webinar we and our publicity did say we wanted advanced questions which we received up until friday at 12 noon and then the league of women got together with all the questions and selected 10 questions from those that were were um contributed for this web for this forum so we're not going to accept questions on the chat because
152we have our time scheduled for an hour so we all will have exactly 10 questions so now i'm going to turn the forum over to our candidates and to our two league league assistants who will be asking the questions and uh the first question will be asked by cheryl collier okay it's all yours let's begin okay good afternoon we'll start with inash and the question is how will you address the budget issue thank you my and before answering that it was my understanding we get two minute intros yes so right now we have introductions uh ian not you go first and then we'll um have vietnam dimitrio and matthew that order for your two-minute introduction thank you hello my name is ian burrell and i am a 25-year resident of richmond california and i am
153running for the west contra costa unified school district board trustee for area 4. with the combined 20 years of corporate experience in strategic development fund management executive leadership and training and equity diversity and inclusion facilitation as well as paralegal support in litigation and iep and securities filing my candidacy brings a different perspective grounded in real world experience as well my personal educational journey including my current dissertation studies has has impassioned my wants to ensure every student has an opportunity to be exposed to explore their gifts and talents in every way possible i am running for this school seat this school board seat because our children deserve representation that focuses on them where every board action taken is through the student centered lens i am running because our students deserve a trustee like me who really
154believes that viewing education through an equity lens is the only way to truly transform the educational paradigm for black latino indigenous and people of color students in the district i'm running because we need to guarantee our students not only have equitable access to a quality education yet have equitable opportunities as well including the professional development of all our staff stakeholders and every voice is constantly heard top priorities restore the public trust in the board by ordering a forensic audit of the district's financial reports number two work with the community and districts regarding creative funding and in this shortage on the budget lastly our our schools need to be safe havens for every child many children don't feel the environment is safe right now and that is absolutely something that will be addressed thank you ian
155nod um next we'll have demetrio for your two minute summary too many introductions sorry introduction thank you good afternoon to everybody watching thank you to the league and west contra costa uh for for giving up your saturday to listen to us my name is dimitri gonzalez hoy my pronouns are he him i am a teacher in the west contra costa unified school district and i'm running for area four i'm running because i deeply care about education in our district and advocating to give the tools students and educators need in order to succeed this is deeply personal to me as my family works for our schools my wife is a second grade teacher and my students who i've taught still attend them i have been working and been involved in our schools for the last eight
156years i have participated in a majority of the district committees i have been involved in major projects and issues that have risen over the years and have been attending majority of our school board meetings over the last six years the last four years i served as president of the teachers union have been able to learn what goes inside of our schools as well as the system failures that we need to work on i've listened to educators and families which is why i can tell you the successes and the areas for growth for many of our programs through that work i have shown that i can build relationships with all stakeholders i am proud of the many things we've done over the last few years and i'm most proud of the work i've supported between negotiations
157of labor and the district the resolutions and policies i've worked on directly and the collaborative culture have helped build my campaign is a grassroots campaign supported by teachers parents and students i'm being supported by the california superintendent tony thurman senator nancy skinner assembly member buffy wicks supervisor john joya the california democratic party our young democrats uh united teachers of richmond teamsters 856 who represent classified staff the contra costa labor council elected officials from every district superintendent lynn mackey the russian progressive alliance and various current sitting school board members i hope i can also count on your support and please go to our website dimitrigonzaleshoe.com to learn more about our campaign thank you okay thank you dimitrio and now we'll hear from matthew for his two-minute introduction good morning thank you to the league of women
158voters for hosting this forum and um thank you especially for making this form accessible to our spanish people what we did not specify is to which areas which schools are in so as listeners that may not know like one two four five they won't know what school okay um i'll start over if i may um shouldn't take me two minutes just very quickly thank you again for hosting this forum and thank you for making this form accessible to our spanish-speaking members of the community um a little about me i'm a certificated elementary school teacher i'm a former teacher having formerly worked in an underserved with underserved migrant populations in salinas i taught there for a number of years currently as i have been for the last gosh i guess it's been about eight years now
159i'm an environmental scientist and i have a special interest in the bay area um climate change adaptation and also equitable access to uh to the coast and our natural resources um i have experience serving on multiple boards of directors over the past 20 years i really enjoy this type of work and i'm running for the board because i know uh personally as a product of the educational system but also as a former educator the importance of a good education for our children um i couldn't have gotten where i am today doing the job i love to do for a great pay and being able to own a home in the bay area without the benefit of a high quality education is just would not be attainable however i'm troubled by the fact that so many
160of our students in this district seem to be underserved by the school district where 70 of the schools perform below the state average of performance expectations and i believe we are children a lot better than that and i believe that i will be able to deliver more opportunities if i'm given a chance to serve on the board thank you thank you very much and now um i'm going to turn this form over to the two league members cheryl and myrtle to ask questions and cheryl you're the first um to ask okay cheryl collier first question thank you i'm sorry i was muted okay we're going to start with question one and it will be with candidate anis um in the question one minute sir her name is ian nod oh ian i apologize and you're
161gonna probably have to correct me again uh i do have issues with names but i do apologize eonach ian nod ian nodd that's it i don't know if i'll retain it or not okay question one how will you address the budget issue right now we're looking at a huge gap in the budget we're looking at a tremendous deficit currently our budget right now is eighty percent on staff and only 20 on programs that means 20 towards students what is that about we have to figure out how do we get here we can't just jump in and say we're gonna fix it this is the one-liner how did we get here we need to have a bottoms-up approach when we think about the budget we need a forensic audit different from an audit forensic audit is
162every single line item has to be accounted for we have to know where it came from there needs to be a conversation with superintendent our parents our community and let's talk about this partnership what partnership technology partnership ousd just got nine million dollars from salesforce san francisco unified just got 9 million from salesforce wcc usd needs to get 29 million from salesforce who has that relationship i do i've had relationships in the tech industry for over eight years it's part of the work that i do ready to bring those conversations to the table the money is there but this budget will require creative yet accountable thank you okay um our next candidate dimitri the same question how will you address the budget issue yes thank you um so i've i've been part of doing this
163work for the last two years since we found out about the deficit it has been a really difficult work but in order for us to fix this issue we do need to understand how we got here as i've been involved i've been able to learn how we how we did get here we understand that departments overspent from the budget that they were given we understand that we're paying for programs with ongoing ongoing funding instead of one-time funding we understand that we invested in way too much way too quickly um i believe that we need to do three things one we need to hold staff accountable so that departments and schools cannot go over what they're given we need to rebuild trust and update our citizens transparency tool on our website which gives monthly updates on
164where we are on the budget we need to continue to update that to rebuild trust and then we need to uphold our superintendent and staff to make sure that they follow the priorities that are given under the budget so that we don't spend on other programs and other things thank you thank you okay next we come to matthew the same question how will you address the budget issue so i agree with you nod that we need a um a thorough accounting uh we do need an audit i would call it a top-down audit but um i referred her her phraseology the trouble with this budget is that um i don't believe that we can afford to cut really anymore in terms of services to students i really don't think it's a great idea that to
165cut staff or to cut salaries we're already you know dealing with some of the lowest paid teachers in the state um so you know i hate to say it but i think that while it's a great idea to um you know take a look at what's been done already in terms of assessing how we've gotten here i think that we need to continue spending at current levels until we have gotten a complete picture about what the problem areas are where are the wastes where the inefficiencies and try to avoid cuts to critical services i think if we did that for maybe the next year or two uh well probably a year um while we're getting our head wrapping our heads around our hands around where uh where we are as a as a district budget
166wise i think that we will be able to come come stronger next year and with a plan about what to do about this budget issue but i think it needs to float thank you very much okay um we're going to move forward to question number two and here i go again ian knott the question is how will you address issues around equity addressing equity is a national and an international conversation it's going to require a whole lot let's drill it down to this district this district is that this district has recognized that there is and that there are inequities they recognize that just about a week ago the superintendent posted the weekly fridays that are going to be happening around addressing that and my question was what exactly are you doing we need specificity who
167are the programs who are the speakers what's being taught who's teaching it are we doing the root information are we going to the root we can start high level we know it exists it needs to be fixed but we got to talk about the root to address it goes beyond conversation it's implementation look at the programming look at access look at curriculum what kind of look at our teachers look at the diversity or non-diversity of our teachers look at all all of those areas every single one has to be addressed specifically and individually and it needs to end with an equitable lens thank you thank you so next we'll go to dimitri for the same question how will you address issues around equity thank you and it's dimitri o with an o at the end
168justify totally fine um thank you yeah i know of course this is a great question um i have seen inequity in our system uh from the day i started teaching um i saw it in the way that we supported our students i started aware that we provided the tools and provided you know the needs for every single one of our schools for a long time our school district has provided blanket supports where every school gets the same pd every school gets the same resources and we cannot continue to to do that every school is different every school has different needs and i can tell you the schools that i worked that school that i worked at which is a flatland school needed a lot more supports than many others that might sit in different areas
169of the community we need to look deep we need to listen to our educators we need to listen to our staff our families and the students themselves to understand what they need i completely agree that there's been a lack of supports and um a lack of an equity lends into the decisions that we make we have to do better our african-american and english language learner students are are falling through the cracks because adults in our system are not making the right decisions thank you thank you so we'll go next to matthew and the question is how will you address issues around equity thank you um so 90 of our student body come from communities of color i believe it's a third a full third come from households where english isn't the language spoken at home
170or the primary language so for me i think that we need to start there i feel like language access is a huge issue not just for this school district but for all public services i don't think that we have a tradition in this country uh sadly not in this state either of giving um of honoring language uh as a as a driver for the way people connect with their governments and their communities and so forth and i feel that um people who speak different languages are often ignored and their needs are not met so that's where i would start i feel like that's low-hanging hanging fruit however in the classroom there needs to be a push for more cultural humility um you know sadly students are judged by their teachers all too often by the
171you know accents or by their the color of their skin or their type of hair or whatnot and their differences are not honored even though you know to look at it you would you would think that you know when you celebrate something like cinco de mayo oh hey you know they're doing a great job it's not when it comes down to results you know the numbers speak for themselves our students of color are performing uh less well than their white counterparts and that's just the fact so there needs to be training for teachers and staff in cultural humility humility not just training but also continuing education credits um we need to recruit teachers of color that means we need to provide them with better uh pay than what they're getting to to make it attractive
172but we also cannot overlook the importance of getting the parents and the larger community involved and that means we need to do a much better job of outreaching that means we need to provide uh initiatives that actively seek out participation from the parents and the communities of these communities of color these uh non-english speaking communities and we need to provide them with the resources that uh befit their language and their abilities okay thank you cheryl i'm sorry i'm stepping for a minute this is linda whitmore moderator i have to ask all all of the candidates to stick to the one minute time for your answers a few of you are doing it but but everybody's not doing it so please we have to have to respect the one minute time for your answers thank you
173um linda yes the clock was not moving on matthew not on my end okay i'll talk to robert about i apologize if i made a mistake but i was watching the clock and i thought he had went over so we'll we'll get that straightened out okay it started moving again but okay thank you okay thank you uh-huh so here i go again with question three and we'll start off again with iana what do you feel what do you feel have been the issues around distance learning one of the things i absolutely know have lived have seen is that learning is not monolithic and the way we learn is not monolithic business learning has brought us to a point to challenge not only how equitable and accessible our education is but it has widened and raised
174the shade of what many of us have known for years distance learning has to be approached in a very innovative 21st century thinking way what does that mean no a chromebook doesn't solve it just because it's in the household what does that mean our disabled students cannot just open up and and all of a sudden a synchronized programming is okay distance learning has allowed an opportunity while it's painful has a lot of opportunity for us to really figure out are you really serving students and student centered is their equity and education we have to figure it out and do it fast because in the meantime who's losing out on the students every day every second they're losing out our their fundamental right is being taken away we've got to fix it thank you okay the
175same question for dimitrio what do you feel have been the issues around distance learning yeah thank you um i mean i think that there's a lot of issues with online learning as we have transitioned uh obviously in the spring we had crisis learning which had even more issues and when thankfully we were able to learn from those few months in order to make our program stronger accessibility is what keeps me up at night a two board meetings ago the superintendent mentioned how seven hundred to a thousand kids have at the time had not logged in to learn uh to me it's so critical to find out what's going on with those families what's going on with those students how can we support them um i believe that apart from that the accessibility we have over
176a thousand students who are foster youth are homeless how are we supporting those students uh to have internet to have accessibility to a computer to have accessibility to a safe space um i am really proud of the work that district has done with nutrition uh but we also need to do better on them right how are they supporting families and picking up lunches picking up supper breakfast for kids that need that the most and also the support of our educators and all the work that they're currently doing thank you thank you okay we will move to matthew the same question what do you feel has been the issue around distance learning i feel that the issue well the biggest concern is of course screen time that um students get you know in front of their
177computers provide they have computers but i'll get to that in a moment um you know i don't think that it's not i don't think the distance learning necessarily has to be the exact same experience as being in a classroom you know for six hours a day um but um i believe that if you're that the screen time that you that the student does have needs to be that much more enriching and my concern is that it's that while there are many students who and and who have parents and families who are uh on top of it getting things done i think that there needs to be much more monitoring and enforcement to catch those who are falling through the cracks and to um provide them the support they need sure yes thank you okay cheryl
178i'm sorry i'll stop you one more time please try to um alternate who's starting the question and answering the questions you've been ian you've been doing enough first for the last three or four so let's mix it up a little bit okay let's give her a break and okay all the time i'll be happy to do so thank you uh-huh so we're at uh question four and um i'm going to start with uh dimitrio what is your position regarding campus security yeah great question thank you um so you know i stood with our students in support of removal of security resource officers from our schools a couple months ago um i stood with them because we kept hearing from students that even though it created this this sense of safety for adults it didn't create
179a sense of safety for students um so i stood with them at the board meeting and advocated that we use those resources and the funding to support our african-american english african-american students and the asap resolution that we passed i believe though that we also need to figure out what are the tools that our sites need to support our students why were we using sros in the first place a lot of adults were using them as disciplinary tools and the reality is that that was not the right way of dealing with those situations but educators and principals and staff need need other tools such as restorative justice supports we need to fund our health centers more like healthy richmond has has asked the board to do and we need to dig deep and understand what educators
180and students need thank you so we'll move to matthew and the same question is being posed what is your position regarding campus security i support the need for campus security um you know in in my estimation the dangers that uh our parents are concerned about but also that honestly face children our children um will not have gone away once we return to campus and um we do need we we simply do need security there but i do agree that um just like we're having a larger conversation in the country we need to take a look at our approach and make sure that um you know just as we're talking about defunding the police meaning to reallocate resources that provide better supports as opposed to strictly a police style model we need to incorporate that into
181our campus security plan and i think that this is an opportunity for us to rethink that while students are out thank you okay we will move to ian not same question what is your position regarding campus security campus security is so overhauled when i mean that when i overhaul not overhaul overall that monolithic view of the sros well yes i also supported that removal but it was the and that was missing removal and there's mental security that needs to be addressed there's food security that needs to be addressed there's social emotional learning that needs to be addressed so in speaking to students because we can't do this just for my seat i am not at the service of my feelings i'm not at the service of what i think i'm at the service of the
182students and making sure everything that i do is student-centered tell me what is reimagining safety looks like for you and what they said was i need help emotionally psychologically mentally i don't have food i'm afraid all of those things so what is so more holistic and how do we remember that in every single thing we do when the district reported the 750 students that didn't log in from march to june or july we didn't hear about it till july that's not safety thank you so we'll move to question five and i'll start with matthew what should be the new priorities for the measure are funding regarding our facilities mass master plan [Music] matthew i'm i'm here um what should be the new priorities for facility funding regarding uh measure r funding yeah in the master
183plan um i mean i suppose i'm not sure exactly how to take that question but i suppose in the context of where we are today it would be investing in if we're going to have to return to school before a vaccine say investing in making schools a safer place to be that would involve infrastructure new structures et cetera and i would like to see that funding however go to technology and access to remote learning opportunities okay thank you so we will move to eonod the same question what should be the new priorities for measure our funding regarding our facilities master plan thank you for asking prioritization has to be done through an equity lens period and i will use equity ad nauseam because it has it's a part of every day it needs to be
184a part of every day everything we do and think i've heard from parents who have voiced the fear of potentially being in trailers for another five to ten years we have look we have the cboc that allocates the funding and the priorities what we have to be at the table there as well when you think about area four valley view olinda sheldon murphy highland tara hills i'm looking at the trajectory of the attention paid in that district in that in that area what does that look like the prioritization comes from first and foremost equity from an equity lens what are the resources that are at these current locations that are missing or what what has been missing so the prioritization and let's think about this in this pandemic you have to look at that even
185more differently what will these schools look like to be prepared potentially for disaster in the future thank you so we'll move to demetrio same question what should be the new priorities for measure r funding regarding our facilities master plan thank you thank you so i was the chair of the committee that passed measure r in the spring throughout the whole campaign what we promised voters was going to be that we were going to be transparent that we were going to hold the district accountable the cboc doesn't set up priorities they ensure we hold accountability to the funds um and now that we're revisiting the facilities master plan we do have to do with equity we have to do a transparency we have to do with inclusion of all stakeholders um i can tell you that
186my priority will be looking at it through equity as well you know we've rebuilt the majority of our high schools the only two high schools that are left that we haven't rebuilt have the highest students of need richmond high school and kennedy high school i 100 percent support rebuilding kennedy high and rich richmond high 100 support of rebuilding our highest needs schools and we need to do that with inclusion of all voices not the loudest but inclusion of all voices in every part of our community and we need to do it well so i support the current process of looking at facilities master plan thank you thank you so we're going to move to question number six and we'll start with matthew what programs or resources do you think that think the district can put
187in place to handle social emotional learning matthew yes sorry i'm unmuting um what programs for resources do you think the district could put in place to handle social emotional learning this is for me the question about equity and i've um you know i've addressed it before i believe that in order to get to equity um we need to rethink just across the board how we're dealing with children of you know households and background disadvantaged backgrounds so again language access support for our teachers and our staff and training but also when it comes to services for students we need to get counselors back in the schools we need to get resources for our disadvantaged students um i mean not our dispatch excuse me our disabled students we need to build those up more robustly than they
188are and they've been funded in the past and i'm running out of time okay thank you we're going to move to gemitrio dimitrio um same question what programs or resources do you think the district can put in place to handle social emotional learning thank you so first of all i think that we need to fully implement our positive climate resolution that we passed a little bit about a year ago uh we need to fully support the work that lashanta smith and millie burns are doing throughout the district and implementing restorative justice practices and training our staff we absolutely need to support our health centers to continue to provide services to our students um and you know we need to invest in nurses we have 10 nurses for 30 000 students uh we need to invest
189in counselors our counselors have 700 students they have to see that's not enough they can't do their work like that and of course we have to invest in in resources like school psychologists speech pathologists spat supports um but and also more importantly we have to ensure we're listening to our students we're listening to our kids and we're listening to our staff for what they need know what we think you know the schools need but what they think they need our school administrators as well they know what's going on every day in our schools thank you thank you so we will move to ian nod and it's the same question what programs or resources do you think the district can put in place to handle social emotional learning to speak first to the resource back in
190the fall of 20 last year i shared with the district that the mental health services act budget for students had a grant out and it was a grant for health clinics within the district i sent it to the district crickets never heard back i even said i'll help you write it because i have over 15 years of grant writing experience fun development with nonprofits still nothing ended up going somewhere else huge missed opportunity if we're not listening i'm not a psychologist i'm not licensed in that area but i know our district has a number of them who are what are they saying about the social emotional program that needs to happen conversations with those experts that need we need to have and i need to know educate me enlighten me i have to be poured
191into with the intel in this area while i know broadly what it will take when it comes to specificity i need to talk to the experts and those students will will teach us what we would never learn in a book or a classroom hoping that thank you okay this is braxton uh thank you uh i'm gonna start with question number seven and uh my first person that i'm speaking to will be dimitri how should the district address the issue of co-locations with charter schools and give mr baxter for the question um so collocations we have two schools well three schools are co-located right now we have california charter school collocated in kennedy high school we have um a charter school clock here with central middle and one with crespi middle school in area 4. you
192know this is creating a lot of challenges as charter schools grow they take more space from our public schools this is creating and impacting our own students impacting our own educators for example at crespi they had to give up their science building they had to give up more and more classrooms they tried to work with the charter school and it wasn't successful we have to honestly listen to them i am not in favor of collocations because it creates a haves and have snobs system but if we are forced because of law then we have to find ways of of having them in the work together to find solution not just charter taking space but actually sitting down and listening to one another on okay what is what does each school need thank you same question
193to matthew how should the district address the issue of collocations with charter schools so i start with the i guess the premise that co-location of charter schools on public schools is a fact of life and so given that i think that that we need to look for opportunities that um enable enrichment um for the students of both schools so i'm thinking um collaborations among the uh the staff and teachers to design curriculums that the students can work on together maybe cross-pollination of methods and even taking uh classes um between so the students attending one school can take classes with another and so on and so forth um i think that you know if it's a fact of life and if there's if there's two schools i mean they just need to work together and work
194closely and i think that if they can come together they can design a way to make a very positive impact in the students and make it a a great place to learn for everybody thank you uh same question to ian out how should the district address the issue of co-locations with charter schools we are here the collaboration has happened the co-existing has happened now what how can we help how can we figure it out i have to tell you when you talk about students and having an opportunity to have a wider wider access how can we elevate that yes it is taken away from our budget that's not a good thing yes it has con has some controls that are not as high as our schools that have to support we know that yes we
195may have said no this is not a good thing but during state law they have allowed it to happen now that we're here now what how can i make this work to our good of the students let's talk about the parents why are you sending your child to the charter school why did you choose that let's talk and figure that out from them students what do you see some things over there that you like do you see some programs that you think you may want let's talk about that let's listen but now that we're here how can we figure out to make it work to our good and i see a lot of potential opportunities but we have to be open to the conversation thank you the next question will be to enr how will
196you address the digital divide in our district the digital divide is a national and international conversation for the district it's a chasm i call it a chasm it's beyond a divide one of the things i know the district has on their website is this collaboration partnership with sprint and the district to give everyone a hot spot that's not fixing and i'm not saying the district is not attempting to fix the divide but that's not fixing the digital divide the divide goes beyond access to the internet the divide goes beyond having a hot spot think about having a hot spot when you're when you live in a home with maybe six or seven other siblings or cousins or whomever and they're all diving in and connecting to that hot spot all at one time you're gonna
197get this circle you know the circle just keeps going going going and it never connects that divide is way beyond connectivity equity is going to go back to equity we talk about territories certain areas need a much more access than just a hotspot that digital divide will require back to tech partnerships other conversations bringing in funds that are innovative that are new and that are going to work thanks thank you same question to demetria how will you address the digital divide in our district thank you um so i agree i think that the digital divide is is larger than just our district i believe it is a state and nationwide issue um you know we do need obviously to advocate that this with the state and the federal government to get more resources and supports
198there in my opinion internet should be free to everybody um but obviously we cannot control that so what we can control you know we got over 30 million dollars in cares act from the federal government support online learning we need to leverage that fund uh we need to learn from what other districts are doing uh some districts are buying bans in order to you know drive around their district and provide supports to students and families who don't have access who might not have a hospital who might not have a computer who might not have a a safe place to be uh and support them in finding the resources they need to to be able to go to school in an online way we need to branch out and do that a little bit more i
199think our communications and and community engagement team are doing a really great job at trying to do that uh but we need to do more and we need to leverage those funds that we got in order to support our students every dollar should be spent on our kids thank you thank you same question for matthew how will you address the digital divide in our district right so like all of my fellow candidates i of course recognize that it's a um you know it's a much larger issue than we can really hope to address fully but that said i believe that there are things that we can do as a district i think that what we need to do um you know again given the current context of how we're educating our children these days we
200need to make this a top priority not the absolute top priority we need to dedicate resources to providing all of our students with all the equipment they need to learn from remotely if they don't have access to internet we need to provide that access to them at our own expense if we need to and i know this gets to budgets and everything else but there's just no other choice it's got to be done so i guess what i would say is i would address it by trying to stop the bleeding and not try to make it worse during this time and that's going to take a lot of attention and resources that we probably don't have to spare but we have to do it thank you the next question is also for you matthew what
201is your position regarding approving more charter schools in our district i maintain that um at their best charter schools are uh meant to be these hubs of innovation for trying out new um new techniques for educating our children what what makes an effective curriculum and so i maintain that if that i'm open to a new charter school if it can meet the standards that the board sets and these standards need to be rigorous they need to be thoroughly vetted and i would actually probably want to create a committee of school teachers and administrators to evaluate these proposals for the new charter school and get their their take on it as as part of the approval process but yeah if you have a great idea and you want to try it out and you have the
202incentive parents to do it um i'm open to it i would you know and ideally i would support it if i thought it was the best way thank you uh you know same question what is your position regarding approving more charter schools in our district i am in support of a moratorium on charter schools in our district not only as we know does it affect the budget let's take care of who we have right now and going back to the measure are in the funding and the prioritization and schools like richmond high and kennedy high that need the highest the highest prioritization right now bringing in more without even taking care of who we have right now a moratorium is where i sit on in terms of charter schools which has nothing to do with
203the in their impact on education or the students we got to take care of who we have right now we have to make sure who we have right now are kept at the forefront we have to make sure that equity is a part of every conversation and we already know those schools have who those schools that have been suffering already and are just waiting in line shouldn't have been a long line already but they're still waiting to be served that's where i stand on that question thank you thank you uh demetrius the same question what is your position regarding approving more charter schools in our district yeah thank you for the questions so um i would not support the expansion or any new charter schools in our district why because i helped co-write the charter
204school moratorium resolution that our board passed in 2019 why because i saw the impact of charter schools opening up the hill from my own public school that i was a teacher at i saw how they did not take our special education students they did not take our african-american students and not take our english language learner students or newcomer students which technically should be against the law but that's just simply not the case we have 14 charter schools in our district two of them do a really good job i look at you know having students that uh look at the same look and have the same demographics as our schools rcp and lps but they're outliers uh the charge schools that we see coming into our district now like rocket ship and many others are here
205to privatize education and that hurts our own public schools now at the same time i would never blame a parent from finding a better educational system for their student but that's why we have to make our schools better we have to listen to families and parents and what they need thank you thank you this is our last question and we're going to start with whoops when i get it in order we're going to start with you again demetria this is going to be a long question so you have to really listen the west county mandarin school serves students from across the district the school has outgrown its current site at the sierra campus in richmond and is slated to move to the temporary portable campus at portland in el cerrito families have requested that we
206move instead to the abandoned adams school which is blocks away from sierra and put portables there would you support the financial investment to have the school move to adams why or why not thank you so i i just want to start saying i 100 support on mandarin bilingual school um i did not support their move to adams for a couple reasons one um adams uh we deemed was not safe for a charter school to go there so why would why should one of our public schools go to that same place if it's unsafe for any student also uh moving this school to adams would have taken a lot of money from our bonds program um that it's right now it's slated for other schools there are schools that have been waiting for over 20 years
207to be rebuilt by bond funds so i did not feel it was fair to move uh up a school that is fairly new uh now i do i would work with the families and staff of the mandarin school to give them what they need to be successful at portala but i would have not i wouldn't have supported their move to adams thank you thank you uh same question to matthew the west county mandarin school serves students from across the district the school has not grown it's certain it's current i'm sorry it's current site at the sierra campus in richmond and is slated to move to the temporary portable campus at portland in el cerrito families have requested that we move instead to the abandoned atoms which is blocks away from sarah and put portables there
208would you support the financial investment to have the school move to adams why or why not um so i would yeah i'm going to caveat my answer on assumptions one that if it's a majority of families um who partake in the the current school uh are are calling for the move to adams then um that would give me reason to to consider this very closely and given that i think that it i think that we do need to look at um when we're making these type of decisions we need to look at what the community wants um how to best serve would it affect the students and the families negatively to go all the way to el cerrito when they could be put closer i am in general a great supporter of local schools being
209able to walk to and from school um it sounds like a good idea but i you know i simply don't know from the question whether or not but i mean judging based on you know simply what the question asks what i suppose i would support looking into it very carefully and if possible i would support moving to atoms uh the final person with the e and i and it's the same question the west county mandarin schools serve students from across the district the school has outgrown its current site at the sierra campus in richmond and is slated to move to the temporary portable campus at portland at el cerrito families have have requested that we move instead to the abandoned atoms which is blocks away from sarah and put portables there would you support the
210financial investment to have the school move to adams why or why i not appreciate each and every time a parent is involved in the education of their students especially at all levels location and everything when it comes to this particular move i'm thinking environmental this location that they're suggesting or would like to move to is on a fault line and we all know under ab617 right now richmond was one of the 10 i believe cities in the state to be part of the study around air quality and that's affecting children students parents all of us so i'm looking at the environmental impact that means health and everything that follows along that budget wise of course we don't have that right now at all and to prioritize based on safety education and and definitely including all
211the voices i would not support the move i want these children to be safely learning i want them to be healthy learning definitely want to make sure that the location where we do decide is going to be be fitting as well thank you thank you all for your participation i now turn you back to linda for your uh wrap up thank you i'd like to also thank our three candidates inaudible demetrio gonzalez hoy and matthew trujillo you guys did a fantastic job i'm going to remind our attend attendees that they have a decision to make on november 3rd it's going to be a hard one to decide on um you will vote on the another first which we talked about which would be to elect the first west contra costa unified school district board of
212trustee for area four okay so again thank you three of you for spending your time with us and sharing all your ideas i also want to thank our two league representatives cheryl collier and myrtle braxton and i ask you to get ready for our last forum which is going to be in a few minutes for area five okay thank you very much thank you so much have a great day okay so we're gonna move over to area five and again thank you everybody linda do they do a summary that's my okay i've made three mistakes now no more this before okay three you're out right no you're with me okay so um so cheryl i want you to decide who's going to do the wrap up and then we'll move on to area five okay
213thank you okay we'll start with matthew you have a a wrap up a two-minute wrap-up i believe yes um hopefully less than that so first of all again thank you to the league of women voters for hosting this panel it's been a great time and again thank you for making it accessible to um non-english speakers spanish speakers specifically um i just want to recap that the reason i'm running for this seat on the board is that i'm deeply concerned about the shortcomings of the district um in a district where 90 of the students come from communities of color i don't think that we can be satisfied with the fact that 70 of our schools are underperforming um and that in the year 2020 the district remains a highly segregated district along racial and socioeconomic status
214lines and that even issues such as equitable access remain a a distant long-term goal i believe that i can create positive change to address these these issues um i am a very well-rounded individual i have a a broad background i'm a trained scientist and a trade social scientist um i've lived many lives had many careers um but that's all to accrue to the benefit of the voters if they were to elect me because um i'm an experienced board member an experienced project manager um i take a rational approach to every question and every problem every problem has a solution and um every solution i believe can be solved in an amicable manner that benefits all sides if not please both sides um but also in me you have a success story my background is no
215different than that of the 90 of students that we serve and that makes me a role model and i take that responsibility as a role model very seriously and i think that that attitude is essential and a good board member so um if you want to know more about me please visit trio for schoolboard.com there you can look at my physicians you can uh contact me and support me thank you thank you so we'll move to ian nod uh for your two-minute wrap-up please thank you to the league of women voters for this opportunity thank you to for your patience you guys have been rock stars throughout this entire process i absolutely i love education which is why i went ahead and said i'm going to go to a doctorial program i specifically chose for
216my dissertation the intersection or non-intersection of technologies within communities of color with barriers to resources for mental health i chose that dissertation topic over three and a half four years ago having no idea we will be sitting in this right now our students are not the future of tomorrow they are here and now it would be my complete honor to serve as a trustee and share my time my talent and my treasure serving our students i have become uncomfortable being comfortable what am i what about what do i mean by that it has been uncomfortable for me to continually watch the academic learning and achievement gap are black and brown students not being prioritized equity and equality and diversity and inclusion not being at the forefront has made me completely uncomfortable over the years living
217in richard for 25 years serving on the healthy richmond communications co-chair for the past couple of years serving on the cpac committee with the county which is under the behavioral health services look doing all of that a little serving as a commissioner for the past eight years for the arts and culture commission of contra costa county all of those things pouring into kind of at a distance i'm ready and prepared to be closer to the fire this allows more impact of all the work that i've done over the years of all the things that i know will student center lens and allow this district to thrive thank you and next we will go to dimitrio thank you um i just want to start also by thanking the league ms braxton miss collier miss jackson thank
218you for for helping us throughout this whole forum and everybody watching um you know education also changed my life um i am a product of public schools when i first moved to the united states when i was 14 years old from mexico my school district was not equipped to support me i did not speak english and they put me into a special ed class and it was because of teachers who took me up took me up on their wing and decided to teach me english on their own time after school that i was able to succeed through high school and ultimately through college when i became a teacher i started to see the same systemic failures that i experienced as a student with my own kids that i taught here in west contra costa and
219that led me into this advocacy i'm being supported by so many folks teachers classified staff democrats california superintendent of schools because i've built their relationships and i've been putting the time and the sweat and the tears into making our schools better for the last eight years um i have been involved and mentioned in many different things as union president as advocate because i deeply care about students i'm not doing this for any other reason except for supporting our the kids that i've taught the kids that everybody of my colleagues teaches the kids my my wife teaches um and to break those inequities that i see in the system every day um i hope that i can count on people's support my website is dmitriogonzaleshoy.com and just super quickly some of our priorities that we have
220developed together in collaboration is the prioritization of african american students and english language learners closing the academic and equity gap stopped their constant turnover of staff and teachers that only hurt our flatland schools the most and of course you know they're they're reinvesting in trust and inclusion of all of our stakeholders um so thank you again for watching and thank you to lee thank you linda okay i think i got it right this time so i apologize again for the rushing at the end but i again want to thank iana barrell dimitrio gonzalez hoy and matthew trujillo uh guys all three did a great job and i um i want to remind our attendees again about november 3rd you're going to vote for the best candidate who will serve you as the first west contra
221costa unified school district board of trustee for area four our two representatives uh cheryl and myrtle thank you very much you have still some more work to do for uh questions for area five and i want to um i'm getting some questions in the chat about what schools do the areas serve and so i'm going to ask robert our communication manager to put up a map at the end of the forum which will show the divisions of the areas and the link robert where they can go to to find out what schools are in those areas okay once again thank you very much and we're going to get ourselves ready for um area uh trusty area five thank you very much thank you okay before we start i want to make sure we have everyone
222on board or on zoom we should say make sure we have tom tennis tom can you say who you are raise your hand for me you hear me very good i can hear you thank you and hope i pronounce your last name right thanos good leslie reckler thank you carolyn weisinger hi how are you i'm doing okay and i want to i know we have our two representatives here uh cheryl collier and um i'm sorry um myrtle braxton who'll be asking the questions okay i know we're running a little late but we're pretty we're doing okay i want to thank you for hanging thank you for hanging in there you know sometimes um you want to make sure you give all the candidates their fair amount of time so we didn't want to rush but
223we do have time limits which i'm going to go over with you in a few minutes okay we're ready to start so i want to say good afternoon to everyone and welcome to the west contra costa unified school district and the west county league of women voters candidates forum today we will experience several first the first at large to trustee area elections the first west contra costa unified school districts candidates forum on a zoom webinar and the first time for me as a forum moderator i'm linda whitmore and i'm a member of the league of women voters we have four trusty areas that candidates are running for and the one right now is gonna be for trustee area five the each candidate will have two minutes for an introduction they'll be asked ten questions and
224they will be given one minute to respond and then they will have two minutes for a closing summary there will be a clock on the screen that the candidates can see we're asking all of you to be respectful of the time allocated kenobia callaway can you um raise your hand see there she is and she is going to be she's a member of the league and she is responsible for the zoom attendees and panelists the zoom forum technical operator and time keeper is bobby jordan and he is a district communications manager now it's time to start the first the first form for trustee area five which is our last forum of the day but the first forum for this trustee area we have two members of the league of women voters who will be asking
225the questions myrtle braxton can you wave your hand myrtle there she is and we are very fortunate today to have the president of the west county league of women voters cheryl collier asking questions cheryl okay the candidates are tom panis leslie reckler and carolyn weisinger okay um i want the attendees to pay very close attention to the candidates answers because on november 3rd you won't vote for another first you will elect the first west contra costa unified school district for the trustee for area five i have a couple things i have to some housekeeping things to do before we start i want to let everybody know that this webinar is being videotaped and will be shown on the district facebook page will be shown on the league and women voters facebook page will also be
226on the district's website and the webinar is being translated in spanish so if you need to have a translation at the bottom of your zoom screen you'll see where you can click on for translation in spanish there will be no open questions on the chat when we publicize this forum we did say that the questions should be given to us in advance we received a lot of questions and we met the league of women voters on friday and we selected 10 questions which we thought covered a lot of the areas which we're going to give to you in a few minutes so we'll we will not be accepting any questions on the chat um i think that's it for me for right now so right now i'm going to turn the um form over to
227our two league women who are going to ask the questions and uh our web form starts now thank you linda i'll start with question one and um tom the question is how will you address the budget issue uh thank you very much for that oh we supposed to have an opening statement oh i am so sorry yes i can just go ahead with that if you want to have you yeah since you're up tom won't you start the opening statement okay statement an introduction okay good afternoon my name is tom panis and i'm a member of the school board i'd like to start by thanking all of you for attending today and also the league of women voters in the district for putting on today's forums i came to el cerrito when i attended cal
228and i've lived here for more than 45 years i met and married my wife anne here as many of you know both of my sons are on the spectrum and went through our district schools k-12 mike went to 11 different schools and now and went to 12. now i'm literally on this now that i'm on the school board this is literally my full-time job 50 to 60 hours a week i spend thousands of hours in schools meaning i've experienced the history and the ins and outs of our district for more than 30 years whether i'm advocating for special education families our lgbtq community our african-american community i'm a parent who can speak from experience for all those 30-plus years i'm a big fan of our hard-working teachers and i was instrumental in giving our teachers
229the raise they deserved making them some of the best paid teachers in the county and i've been endorsed by the west county teachers of the year for the last four years i'm also endorsed by california assembly member buffy wicks california state senator steve glaser retired congress member of congress george miller and student trustees for the last four years my website has testimonials from the highest performing principles in the district i am proud and humbled to have received these and they say more about me what i stand for what i believe in for our schools and how i govern than anything i could ever say here thank you thank you okay we'll move to uh leslie in order to make her two-minute opening statement please hello to everyone and thank you to the league for hosting
230this forum you guys are doing a great job i know how hard this is and thank you for this opportunity my name is leslie reckler i'm a parent with children enrolled in and graduated from our local public schools i'm running because i want to ensure that parent voice is better represented on our school board our schools are suffering from a deep financial crisis and due to covet 19 our traditional ways of learning and our community connections have been completely disrupted in this unprecedented time and yet we only have one school board member on our board now that has children enrolled in our own local public schools parent voice needs to be better reflected in the decisions that our school board makes so that our students families and schools are better supported for 14 years i've
231worked hard across this district and i'm with my sleeves rolled up fighting for students investment and i have a proven track record of real results some of my major accomplishments are work on 10 school funding measures winning over 2 billion for our schools across this district most recently i worked on and was the argument signer on measure r because i believe that every child regardless of neighborhood or zip code should have a safe clean modern facility in which to learn i was a member of the team that researched wrote and edited wcc usd school board resolution 49 1718 establishment of a positive school climate policy to eliminate willful defiance suspensions and take steps to improve our school culture and climate i was on the hewlett grant fund grant writing team winning 1.2 million dollars to
232improve our teaching and learning practices as a council pta president with responsibility of over 30 ptas i brought hundreds of parents to the decision making table which allowed them to advocate for their students and their schools i'm a mentor to richmond promise uc junior i love that work i also have a broad business background and 20 years of experience managing budgets value to a hundred million dollars recently thank you thank you i'm sorry to be rude but you went past your time that's okay i'll just keep going until you stop me okay next we have carolyn um to give her two minute statement please all right thank you so much thank you to wes contra costa unified and thank you to the league of women voters for having me my name is carolyn weisinger and
233i am running for wcc usd trustee in area five i'm running because i want to move this district from equality to equity and that is a very important distinction i have the unique experience of seeing the successes and the challenges of this district from end to end that's as a student a classified worker and as a teacher when elected in november i really will be championing our district focusing on reimagining all of our schools as 21st century schools so that means focusing on fiscal oversight that means that not only just making budget cuts but making sure that we're making mindful budget cuts so that we are not affecting student learning that's student safety we're going into a time where we've decided not to have our sros on campus we need to talk about what that
234looks like and what does safety look like from the perspective of our black and brown students and from our from our latinx and newcomer students educational innovation we need to talk about the digital divide that was created long before covet ever got here we also need to talk about creating new career and college pathways so it so talking about our hbc upac and our relationship with cte and labor unions and finally covert response our cover response has revealed so much about our district that we really need to reimagine and look for going into the future it's not about reopening schools it's about looking about what our education will look for into the future thank you so much again for having me and i look forward to speaking with you all thank you so we're going
235to move on to our questions and our first question i'd like to start with leslie okay i'm going to stop for one minute the candidates when you're not on uh turn your mic to mute because if you move around or you talk you'll pop on the screen so because while um carolyn weisinger was talking tom pandas popped up on the screen because you're moving around and the noise was picked up okay so mute until your turn to come on thank you thank you okay leslie your question is how will you address the bush budget issue so we have enough problems caused by the state and the way it funds public education so you know our own issues have led to the constant shuffling and laying off of teachers and staff it's beyond disruptive i have
23620 years of managing budgets value to 100 million dollars so i do come to this with a background in how to do this so everybody listening to me there's a few things you can do to help us the first thing is that you vote yes on prop 15 that might give us 18 million dollars a year second is you take the census third you call your state reps and you ask for the passage of sb956 then we don't have a lot of easy fixes here these are my ideas we have properties that are potentially revenue you producing those need to be explored our boards shut down those discussions we increase our enrollment and attendance with new programs where kids and parents want to send their schools we we fight for more accessible buzz budget presentations
237what is coming to the public is far too detailed and is not geared to the general public to establish trust and we're probably going to have to make cuts we do that collaboratively together thank you thank you we're going to move to tom and the same question how will you address the budget issue thank you so the budget for fiscal year 2122 should be created in partnership with the community as a new document focused on students budget development should start from scratch adding back to programming staffing and materials that have been proven to directly increase student achievement versus simply rolling forward existing programs obviously with our learning continuity plan we have a chance to impact the entire budget situation there uh i'm a retired cpa and chief financial officer and if you watch board meetings
238you'll note that i'm often pointing out errors in accounting and bookkeeping that appear in the board materials payroll reports that don't add up careless 4 million errors in our revenue projections cash flows that don't make sense so we need to do a better job of holding the staff accountable and for that reason like when i've requested we're receiving cash flow reports and position control reports thank you thank you so we're going to move to carolyn question one how will you address the budget issue thank you so much well the first thing that we would need to do to address the budget-ish budget issue is to address how we got here and we got here through mismanagement of the district and that's been admittedly in their presentations on the budget um so what we wouldn't first
239need to do is actually shuffle our priorities what is it that we're thinking of that's important one of the things that have been the conversation in the community is getting rid of our sros and safety so we know that just for instance wcc usd spent 1.5 million dollars on our sros we also spend 15 million dollars over our projected budget on bringing in administrators to police our black and brown students if we're saying that we're moving from being a police state i'm in a an education organization that teaches kids to be police we need to look at that and those are the type of budget decisions that we need to make we need to know what our priorities are and then we need to either make cuts or add in funds from that point but
240we can't do that until we know what the priorities of this district are thank you okay we're going to move to question two and i'll start with tom how will you address the issue around equity so equity is a huge issue in our district and one of my top priorities absolutely i shouldn't buy one my top priority is making this a completely anti-racist school district being in the fight against racism and all the injustice that is fostered in our community that's one reason why i'm so happy with the equity work that we're now doing on fridays in our schools but equity goes a lot further than that in our facilities master plan i have advocated for equity and i've advocated that we have more students and more parents on our prioritization committee i've proposed the
241governance committee and we're working for it moving forward on on developing a diversity equity and inclusion policy and also i'm proposing that in the same way that we have a fiscal impact for every budget item we have an equity impact for every budget item i've also gone through restorative trauma and foreign practices and positive behavioral intervention support practices for three weeks to better foster equity thank you oh thank you um next we'll go to uh leslie and how will you address the issue around equity so equity is a verb equity is action and i realize that i have benefited greatly from a white supremacist system and i realize this and i address it every day i've realized a long time ago that white parents had a lot of benefits and were entitled to a lot
242of things that other parents weren't and at that time i rolled up my sleeves and i got to work making sure that i could even the pain the playing field and make it equitable for all parents and i've done this work for years through pta i brought parents to the table and i've taught them how to fight for their schools and their students for the programs that they that they that they want i've taught them how to speak at board meetings i've taught them how to write letters i work on the dlcaps committee um very serious work about about raising parent voice for the decisions that they want i come to this work as a learner i have a lot to learn i try to be the quietest voice in the room and sometimes i
243apologize that i cannot hold back but i do it with love and the work has been meaningful to me thank you thank you okay we're going to move i've lost my place okay is it carolyn that will answer yes yes yes ma'am okay i i apologize okay so your question is uh the same on equity i believe how will you address the issue around equity the very first way that i will address the issue around equity is by doing what i'm doing right now which is running for this position and this is what we say when we talk about being a historical about the history of west contra costa formerly richmond unified school district and the award that's now known as ward 5. we know we need to do a better job of bringing our
244black and brown people to the table it's very disturbing to me that there have been black and brown teachers such as myself who have been talking about race and equity for years in west contra costa i'll even say before i was a teacher as a student and and we just now are having board members who are learning what it is to be anti-racist it's not it's not enough to just be learning what anti-racism is right now if you have to already know what it is and know how to actually take critical race theory and wrap it around every type of policy that you are making for each and every student in our district so that's how we'll do it we're going to bring that critical race theory we're going to bring those equity theories and
245we're going to wrap it around all of our our policy but we do need to do that by bringing more black and brown people to the table thank you very much uh we're going to move to question three and we're going to start with carolyn what do you feel have we [Music] have been the issues around distance learning so the issues around distance learning that's so broad and you know i had the opportunity to sit with my niece and nephew as they were doing their distance learning and learning a lot about what our young students are are facing as well as our our adult or whether our high school students our high schoolers were facing a situation where a lot of our teachers were not as up to par with our technology as we as
246a district were saying that we were making sure that we were we're facing a situation where we as a district were saying that we had a one-to-one ratio of our laptops and we did but those laptops were completely ineffective those of us who were working in the district knew that um this is something that needs to be addressed that's the very first thing that needs to be addressed then we need to address the way that what the expectations that we have of our teachers for our distance learning and we need to be honest about the fact that we are a district who is not just facing kobe but we face environmental emergencies all the time we need a plan when there's a fire that springs up that takes us out of the classroom we need
247a plan we were not prepared for this and that is the overriding problem with social distancing right now thank you very much okay we're going to move to leslie what do you feel have been the issues around distance learning so thank you i was on the school reopening task force and as a parent along with other parents we elevated a number of concerns and we are actually very glad many of these things are in the plan um uh cutting down on the number of platforms built-in sel built-in supports for students built-ins uh teacher training built in parent training to get them on the systems so we're very happy with the framework that was laid out and now as i spoke about on wednesday night's meeting this is now all about continuing cycles of improvement both
248at the site level and at the district level to improve the practice right away so what we've asked the district to do is how are you going to do it on what time table and what formats can information come back to you and how are you going to nimbly make improvements to the system so that's that's where we are right now we just rolled it out we're just in like our fourth week at school but we are expecting to see improvements and change going forward well thank you okay now it's your turn tom what do you feel have been the issues around distance learning so thank you very much so distance learning is new and it is very challenging um i've talked to many teachers about this and they're frustrated in many ways but even
249last spring when we went through the first round of distance learning teachers were discovering new ways that they could do things they intend to bring into their classrooms once we get back to a non-covered mode at the same time this has become a huge equity issue you know we discovered last spring that one-on-one did not actually mean one-on-one because we weren't one-on-one in our kindergartens and in our um first grade classes and so we had to to very quickly move to address that issue there's also a huge equity issue with access you know by the internet we worked hard on that we're continuing to work on it but like even now if if you're in a house with four kids does each kid have a private space to work does each kid have the ability
250to do all their work or is bandwidth constrained into the house so we need to work together to make sure we have the right hardware both internet connectivity and computers in our kids hands thank you okay um we're going to move to question four and take a deep breath tom you're up next what is your position regarding campus security okay campus campus security thank you um so campus security involves both sros and csos and we actually made a decision at the board recently to remove sros from our campuses um i actually voted in 2017 when this came up before that we needed to remove all armed police from our campus and i stand very strongly behind that decision and i was thrilled when it came back up just a few meetings ago and we were
251able to move forward on this but just removing the sros is one thing we need a safety plan in place we've been pushing the district to give us a safety plan covet has blessed us a little bit there in terms like we have more time to create that safety plan but we also need to make sure we're taking that money that we saved on sros and we need to be investing it uh in better more counseling and mental health services for our kids we need to use it to enhance our full service community schools and you know safety is a feeling on campus and i think having the sros gone particularly for our undocumented and other students has been great but i stood behind the sro decision thank you leslie you don't have to repeat
252it um so everyone wants to feel safe on campus there's absolutely no question about that students parents teachers if people don't feel emotionally and physically safe learning is impeded so what we do now is um we need to do a couple of things we need i think we need a couple of task forces so we should develop a district-wide task force we have a lot of talent in this district that knows how to do it um we comprise a team of csos we've got counselors we've got students and we form an initial framework for the entire district that suit that outlines all the needs and then we form campus teams because every school is not going to look the same as to what safety looks like on that campus and we have each of those
253sites devise a plan and we ensure that the resources are available so that they can enact those plans thank you uh next would be carolyn uh same question what is your position regarding campus security well first regarding my position on campus security you know the day that i knew that i was no longer going to be teaching was the day that one of my students was arrested on campus by our sros and we need to be very honest about these sort of things and a lot of times when you talk to members of our community they're members like me who've been in our community for over 40 years who went to west contra costa unified school district schools and they have a a a cognitive dissidence because they don't understand when you say campus security
254they don't understand the difference between sros and csos what we remember was the old school richard unified school district police police officers who are more like our sro our csos now so my position is that i definitely stand behind the student the amazing students who who ended the the contract with the sros we do need to really focus on reducing we need to work on preventative versus intervention so we need to work on reducing the amount of exposure that students would have had to what are now sros but we need to also focus on interventions what are the things that are causing students to have these issues so we need to work on both of those things thank you very much so we're going to move to tom this time and the question would be
255what would you what should be the new priorities for measure our funding regarding our facilities and master plan so thank you very much um we have a facilities master plan with a clear set of priorities laid out we have about uh 1 billion dollars i think it's 1.1 billion dollars uh in projects to do and we have about 600 million dollars that we can spend on that so the board is actually authorized that we update the facilities master plan and we're starting that process right now we need to do this completely with equity you know i pushed to make sure that all new construction is air conditioned which something had never been part of the district plan before and that's to me that's a huge equity issue because we had so many flatland schools that
256became unbearable at warmer times of the year i've also pushed to make sure that people can self-nominate to the prioritization committee because i feel like we need to get more than just district recommended people but more importantly the ec we have to make sure that we address the needs of all our flatland schools richmond high kennedy high lake many of school have been promised improvements thank you we're going to move to leslie and it is the same question would you like me to read it again no i think i'm good with it thank you thank you i very much supported measure r i was an argument signer on measure r mr panus did not vote to support measure r measure r meant the world to me because i believe that every child in this district
257regardless of their neighborhood or their zip code deserves a safe clean modern facility in which to learn i myself work at kennedy high school and i couldn't go in there one more day and work there and know that those kids were in that school so i was very much in favor of of measure r the master plan is about five years old it does need to be reevaluated and re-prioritized we absolutely must put an equity lens on the work that's done there in terms of the prioritization i am looking for critical needs first i don't want buildings falling down on kids and then i want i want kids in beautiful facilities where they feel safe and comfortable and valued and that's the work i intend to do on that thank you thank you okay we'll
258go to carolyn same question you need me to repeat it no i'm good thank you so much you know the priority for the measure our funds has to be rebuilding kennedy and richmond high and i'm going to just tell you a short story when i was teaching at richmond high school we had a electrical glitch which sometimes happens with large buildings um pg e came out to get it back up they got it back up it went back down we were out of our classrooms for about three to four days because they could not get the electricity at richmond high up basically it came down to the building is old i mean as i've said i'm my family is from richmond my mom was the first high school senior class at kennedy high school my
259mom graduated in 1968. okay we it's not okay and i'm running in ward 5. it's not okay that we have made sure that el cerrito vienza pinol valley coincidentally the schools that are not our title one schools have made sure to get their retrofit in their new building buildings and kennedy high and richmond high have not and we have to make sure if we're saying that we are prioritizing our school our students and our low-income communities those buildings come under that that has to be the priority thank you okay we're going to move to question six and i'll start with leslie what program or resources do you think the district can put in place to handle social emotional learning so um healthy school cultures and helping our skill our students develop skills and manage their
260emotions and resolve conflicts and you know make responsible decisions this is paramount to learning um it's all about forming great relationships with students and great trust and having great campus environments um some of the things that i really believe in are trauma-informed practices and understanding how trauma affects students where all every single one of us has trauma right now i mean parents could use the trauma informed practices as well um but to make sure that everybody knows about that it's also about creating senses of belonging teachers training to create belonging training our students about belonging and making people feel part of the school and the campus this can be done in a number of different ways through advisories support systems also community schools health centers counselor counselor networks small peer groups are all ways that
261we can help with seo thank you thank you so we'll move to tom for this question would you like me to repeat it so thank you very much so first of all you know if we're talking about literally about programs that all programs need to be castle certified that's the organization that certifies social emotional learning programs and so that's very important um positive behavior pbis positive behavioral intervention supports are crucially important in our district we've implemented those in a few schools and the idea is we're reforming our system of justice from punitive to being restorative and non-punitive and i've actually been to two one-week sessions on pbis and those are very worthwhile times um i also think that uh restorative and trauma-informed practices are key to social emotion proper social emotional learning in our school
262district and i actually went to a one-week training that we did with millie burns on restorative and trauma and foreign practices we need to make sure we're including student voice in everything we do in terms of social emotional learning and we need to make sure that we have enough school psychologists and counselors to support our students thank you okay carolyn um question number six for you as well i can repeat it if i need to um yes can you repeat it for me one right quick please i'd be happy to what programs or resources do you think the district can put in place to handle social emotional learning the best part about west contra costa unified school district is that everything that we have that we need to support social emotional learning we have we're
263just not using it effectively at all you know going back to the question about our our sros and securities on campus we need to be making better use of our restorative justice folks that are on campus we have teachers that are training restorative justice we also have great organizations such as catholic charities that are that are used on our campus but we don't use them enough we use them usually at the very last minute i'm very proud to have been in the very first cohort of what was called our conflict manager at el cerrito high school i think they have a new name now that was back in 1995. they are still around there at el cerrito high school that's something that we need to start bringing to the rest of our campuses we need
264to make sure that we're investing in our arts education we need to make sure that we are taking our community schools and effectively using them across our campuses at richmond high school the community school model was used very well between our health services i'm in between the counselors on campus so like i said we have all these tools we have the social emotional things that we need but we need to make sure as a board that our sites are actually implementing all of those thank you very much mrs braxton i'm you thank you very much i'm going to start out with uh question number seven and i'm asking tom this question first how should the school district address the issue of colocations with charter schools so thank you um you know the charter schools are
265here to stay um and i think we need to think really hard about how we can be good neighbors with them it's very difficult to have two schools located at the same site at the same time we should all be dedicated to making sure all kids get a great education and i'm actually thinking that we should have for example site councils that include principal and students from both schools to be meeting frequently to discuss issues that are going on i think we just need to have a good neighbor policy regarding this i'm hoping we don't have to do any more co-locations but if that comes to the board that comes the board and board members need to make tough decisions keep in mind that we're probably not going to have any new charter schools because
266of ab1505 but i think that a good neighbor policy and let's get along site councils are the way to go about this thank you same question to carolyn how should the district address the issue of co-locations with charles charter schools jamie caron thank you tom i've had the experience of working in co-located schools both in west contra costa as well as in la unified school district so i've seen both the successes and challenges on both ends and i think the way i would actually agree with trustee panis on the fact that we do need to actually have a better relationship between the charters and the colo and the the wcc usd schools i have seen unfortunately where we have our schools where we are limited on desk we're limited on rooms we need to have
267a better system in place as to how we determine who gets what and if it comes to the board the board will have to make those tough decisions as to making sure that our students are the priorities but of course we are dealing with the moratorium because of the the ab-1505 but if that does become the case we do need to have better communication but we do need to be able to make those tough decisions and advocate for our kids on those campuses thank you uh leslie same same question how should the district address the issue of co-locations with charter schools thank you this is an extremely problematic issue and one that we are living right now charters get in the fast lane at the expense of our own public schools and right now at
268crespy high school on crescent middle school we've had a lot of conversations about moving all of their facilities around to grow uh you know a charter school um this is the law we need to be responsible and adhere to the law but it doesn't make it easy at this point we really only have a good neighbor policy and that is what we do need to do and encourage both parties on that campus to work as collaboratively as possible together but as a board and as your own person you can advocate and now that they've fixed a few things with 1505 and you know the other laws that just came along the time is now to ask that prop 39 be addressed and that um the our legislators put together a set of laws that allow
269better coexistence thank you uh the next question will go to carolyn how will you address the digital divide in our district thank you i think the the digital divide will be addressed in our district by actually leveraging district partnerships you know i was a student in west contra costa which was in richmond unified the very last time that the district was in financial straits such as as it is now and it was actually leveraging partnership that helped get us out of that hole then and it will be the same thing with our digital divide now um i am the currently the president of the largest lgbt prize celebration in the world of san francisco pride and in that position i have been able to build a lot of relationships with organizations such as google such
270as facebook such as youtube who are ready and waiting to support districts such as west contra costa in in their digital divide issues so that will be helping us get new technology new laptops helping us actually get better app services helping us build technology build services that our teachers can actually use and actually get more training for our teachers because some of our teachers do need more training on how they can actually boost their technology in their classroom so it's really going to be partnerships and relationships and that's what i would actually bring to the board thank you uh leslie same question so oh i'm sorry how will you address the digital divide in our district so we definitely have a digital divide and i want to give a huge shout out to our tech
271team tracy logan who has done incredible work trying to bridge this over so every child in our district does have a tablet uh where we are falling short is on the actual what bandwidth wi-fi and i myself i wrote a grant to the national pta for fifteen thousand dollars that we could donate to our school system to improve and get hot spots for our students we didn't win it but i realized how serious it was um the district is looking at buying its own network for like five or six million dollars they did have one presentation at the board um there were three different options that were presented i highly support this effort and i look forward to that presentation bringing back being brought back to the board which would supply more of our students
272high quality broadband and then everybody who's on this call everyone who's listening you know get on the advocacy train and write to gavin newsom write to your state legislators and tell them we need free broadband for every student thank you thank you uh tom same question how will you address the digital digital divide in our district thank you so the digital divide does not just exist in our district it's a national an international program and it's just been made a whole lot worse by the covet crisis um it certainly is an equity issue and we need to be very focused on it rit department as leslie said has just like done an incredible job they they have worked so hard to get hot spots and find grants to buy hot spots and to add uh
273pcs and laptops to our inventory so we're ready to swap in swap out replacement that's very important but you know still at the home there's just a lot of people even with a hot spot that we provide if you've got three or four people in a home to the do the kids all have a separate space where they can work is there enough bandwidth to support them all it's a huge problem you know we did bring to the board uh discussion about creating our own network and that'll be helpful also you know we've got fibers strung all over the district and we could also perhaps look for a grant to provide um hot spots at selected places around the district thank you the next question will be for tom you the first one what is
274your position regarding approving more charter schools in our district okay thank you so as i mentioned like ab1505 means that in we're not going to be approving any new charter schools within the next two to four years uh because there's limitations on financial impact but in general you know i have been doing what i was sworn in to do which is follow the law while i've been on the board five new applications have come in for charter schools and i have opposed to and supported three of those three that i supported two actually became charter school so i wasn't the only voice advocating for those uh as a special ed parent you know my sons both you know it's not part of me to take away the right of any parent to choose the school
275where they want to go um my primary goal on the board is to ensure that all of our students are able to go to high achieving schools and that one day every parent will be thrilled to send their child to their neighborhood school that child will get a great education an equitable education and they'll be energy eligible when they leave school i also wanna say i fully support the charter school laws that have passed ab1505 1507 sb 75 and sb 126. thank you uh carolyn same question what is your position regarding approving more charter schools in our district give me apparently you just see me throw a tantrum i'm sorry i fully support the moratorium that the district placed on um on charter schools in our district and of course because of the the av
276laws that have been handed down we won't be approving any soon but i want to be very clear we need to have better conversations about the difference between the four-part for-profit charter schools that have been coming into wcc usd versus the grassroots schools and anyone who says that you can make any charter decisions without actually having that conversation without those nuance stories about the oakland community school about the marva collins school they don't know a thing about black education and black liberation half of the things that we've discussed on this call things like free lunch springs like free breakfast things like the social emotional learning all of those things came from the oakland community school and in the words of erica hudson from the black panther party who was one of the founders he said
277they created the oakland community school not to be in competition with the public schools but to be a template for what a school could be with more empathy to this child so we need to have those nuanced conversations and talk about what we are not doing as a district thank you uh this is our last question and leslie you're gonna have that question too so don't don't mute okay the west county mandarin school serves students from across the district the school has outgrown its current site at the sierra campus in richmond and is slated to move to the temporary portable campus at portland in el cerrito families have requested that we move instead to the abandoned adams which is blocks away from sierra and put portables there would you support the financial investment to have
278the school move to adams why or why not ma'am i definitely answered the charter school question would you like me to answer the mandarin school question first or go back to the charter school yes please okay um so i'll go with the charter school question so i also agree that under 1505 i don't think that anything is going to come to the board as a new charter partition anytime soon the one thing i do want to do is correct mr panis's record he talks about his new charter schools but uh he should be asked how many renewals he voted for and it's more than a handful so i'd like to point that out i i'm actually quite disappointed in this board because the reason why all these parents have gone to charter schools is because
279the board has not put their foot down and listened to parents and students providing new and exciting programs that kids want to come and parents will have come to this district and come to our schools as a matter of fact we have more kids now being educated in west county than ever before but they're not in our schools they're in different programs and that shows that we haven't met the need so now we have to go back and figure out what those parents want and we know it's about safety it's about rigor and it's about programs and as a board member i am going to be asking questions about how we get those families back thank you thank you i apologize leslie now uh start her time over because she's up first for the west
280county mandarin school question you want me to read it again no i'm okay on it and i also want to say that i really appreciate you and i do a lot of these too and it's a lot to keep advantage and i really appreciate you thank you so for the mandarin school um you know i want to do a little bit more learning on this but i am i'm really i am not in favor of putting this on the portal of campus um when the mandarin school was first formed and it came to the board i see this as an equity issue and here we go putting a great gem in my backyard right at the bottom of my hill where all of my neighbors in a well-resourced part of the district have another great
281option and honestly i'm not in favor of that um can you imagine being a parent from pinol driving down 80 every day to drop your kid off at the mandarin school i you know i'm i'm not in favor of it um the the population right now comes from all over the district i'm very sure these are people that would have gone charter or would have gone private or would have picked another option if the mandarin school had not been there it draws from all over the district and i'm very much in favor of having it have a central location where all families have access they're also out of time they need to make a decision quickly they're out of space thank you thank you same question to you tom the west county mandarin school serves
282students from across the district the school has outgrown its current site at the sierra campus in richmond and is slated to move to the temporary portable campus at portola in el cerrito families have requested that we move instead to the abandoned atoms which is blocks away from sierra and put portables there would you support the financial investment to have the school move to adams why or why not well thank you um so this this message this came to the board in july and the board made a very clear statement and i was part of that statement that we were not going to move the school the adam site is seismically questionable at best in theory we could put portables there but i see this as much as a big equity issue because we have 1.1
283billion dollars in school needs uh at least for construction and we only have 600 million dollars to do it and there are many people at kennedy high richmond high lake many schools across the district that have been waiting many many many years 10 15 years to get their schools rebuilt and i would love to have a wonderful school for the mandarin school wonderful site but i think that the portal of site will fit them just fine i'd also just like to thank mrexcel for pointing out that i've approved several schools i've also voted to close three charter schools while i was on the board thank you uh the last question is going uh this last question is going to carolyn the west county mandarin school serves students from across the district the school has outgrown
284its current site at the sierra campus in richmond and is slated to move to the temporary portable campus in portland in el cerrito families have requested that we move instead to the abandoned atoms which is blocks away from sierra and put portables there would you support the financial investment to have the school move to africa why or why not thank you so much and it you know we definitely need a great campus for our mandarin school i do not support it and moving to the adams site because i do not support the 11 million dollars it would take to seismically retrofit the site um especially as we've gone back to the last question about replacing kennedy and richmond high those need to be our our money priorities when it comes to buildings i'm to the
285point of parents having to come to the adams site um i live right on top of actually both cordless and adams and actually adam is more accessible than the portland site we have to remember that portland site is actually across the street from another private school so those of us who literally live on this hill would be in a nightmare every day but that's not a problem i'm i'm not considerate of this but i think that it would be more accessible for people to go to the adams campus and i don't support using the funds that it would take to actually fix it i think that the portland site would be suitable at this time thank you all for answering questions i now turn it back to our leader okay uh i'm going to get
286everyone uh a chance to do their closing summary and i'm going to go in the order of my list on my on my little notes here and so i have tom panda's first for his summary and then we'll have leslie reckler and we'll end with carolyn weisinger so tom you're first uh thank you and i'd like to thank the league in the district very much for putting this on uh because they can see i'm here for kids i've been endorsed by state assembly member buffy wick state senator steve glaser and our legendary retired congressman george miller but to me the most telling informational the most telling information on whether i've been a great school board member is the amazing testimonials that i've received from student school board members for the last four years teachers of
287the year for the last four years many high performing principles throughout the district one additional endorsement that means so much to me was given to me by a person who in search of a better life took a journey that many of our families have taken she immigrated to the united states with her parents from mexico without documentation when she was about to enter the fifth grade she wrote this about me tom panis is a relentless educational advocate who fights for kids and families across west contra costa in this capacity as board president and board member tom has clearly defined the focus of his public service to make fully informed and responsible decisions that will lead to opportunities and outcomes for every child in our district so they can succeed in life he prioritizes creating systems
288and procedures that stabilize and sustain financial health of the district communicating frequently with multiple stakeholders and learners serving in schools and district committees and taking the initiative to learn and be an ally in the continuous work of racial social educational and linguistic equity as a parent active community member and school board leader tom is fully equipped to continue building partnerships with families and fighting to improve the educational experiences for children in west contra costa so that was written by stephanie hernandez-jarvis who is now talented bilingual kindergarten class teacher serving students who share her story she's incredibly brilliant and unbelievably equity focused she has demonstrated tremendous empathy in her role as president of our school board to me to be endorsed by her should be everyone's dream and i am totally humbled that with her life
289story she would say this about about me i humbly ask for your vote thanks so much okay leslie uh you're next thank you tom so i'd very much like to thank the league for this opportunity and i thank the moderators and the district staff for a great forum i also would like to thank the other candidates all the other candidates for their participation and for running we know this is not easy but we do it for our kids and their futures and for the benefit of all of our communities this district is at a point of great inflection budget distance learning communities isolated overwhelming trauma as a parent with children enrolled in our district schools no one can fight for our needs better and the voices of parents with enrolled children have been underrepresented on
290this board for years what happens here really matters to me these are my kids these are my kids friends my neighbors i spent my my 14 years with my sleeves rolled up working for families across this district and i've got real track record of results in funding in advocacy in programs in new ways of doing business in the wcc usd so you have a choice right now do we like the last four years do we choose to repeat it or do we want fresh new experienced leadership a known full-throated advocate an out of the box thinker that's going to challenge us every day to think differently about what we are doing and how we get there i am endorsed by a broad local coalition that knows our schools best janet abelson and rochelle pardue okimoto
291of the el cerrito city council tom butt mayor of richmond gail mclachlan former richmond mayor current candidate for the richmond city council melbourne willis edward eduardo martinez from the richmond city council trustee consuela lara madeleine cronenberg former trustee todd groves former trustee annette lewis and sarah butler contra costa county office of education the united teachers of richmond has endorsed me teamsters 856 contra costa county building and construction trades and labor of coalition hundreds of parents students community members and teachers that know my work in community visit my website leslieforwccusd.com i think the choice is clear in november vote for me thank you for this opportunity thank you leslie and last of course but not least we have carolyn carolyn tom didn't tell me this time no i'm just playing thank you so much to the
292league of women voters for having me um and thank you to all the candidates and for everyone who's here i'm so excited about this opportunity to represent wcc usd we're at a time in 2020 where so many of our institutions are almost essentially crumbling around us which is a great thing because we get to remake all of our institutions and devin carvalho the professor of critical race theory said it's important that you take stock into into making good choices of the people who are giving you the choices that you get to make so this is an opportunity where we get to make new and bold decisions we don't have time to wait for individuals to learn about what anti-racism is we need to be able to do that critical race theory right now we don't
293have time for individuals to learn about the importance of why ice is scary to our newcomer students we don't have time for them to learn about why family detention centers are okay we need to be able to do that right now we don't have time to be figuring out how to make sure that our campuses are safe for our lgbt students we need to have trustees that can do that right now and they need to be able to do that while they are fixing our budget while they are looking at social emotional learning all these things need to be held right now i am a product of west contra costa unified school district not just of the district but i'm a product of one of the most legendary leadership teachers that this district has seen
294my students will tell you they fall from the maryland o'brien school of leadership i'm proud to be endorsed by marilyn o'brien and other teachers such as janet smith and edwina elsie i'm proud to be endorsed by the democratic party of california the democratic party of contra costa and anyone around this nation who has experienced my leadership that i learned at el cerrito high school has endorsed me i've been endorsed by mayor london brie from san francisco i've been endorsed by mayor robert garcia from long beach i've been endorsed by richmond city council member dimly johnson richmond city councilmember jl myrick el cerrito city council member gabe quinto i've been endorsed by assembly member rebecca barry cahan and the list goes on and on across this nation who have experienced a wonderful leadership that i learned
295at el cerrito high school and that i will bring to west contra costa unified school district thank you so much thank you so much and i want to thank all three of our candidates uh tom penis leslie reckler and carolyn weisinger thank you very much for spending the afternoon with us and sharing your philosophy and ideas for education i want to remind our attendees that uh on november 3rd remember you're going to be making those um a critical decision uh selecting the first uh west contra costa unified school district board of trustees for area trustee sorry for area five i want to thank cheryl collier and myrtle braxton for assisting us with trusty areas four and five with your questions i want to thank all of the candidates who shared this afternoon with us for
296the forums for trustee area one estella de paz and jamila smith folds for area two o three christian guadalupe ayanna and audra goldie williams the area trustee area four ianna burrell diametrio gonzalez hoy and matthew troja and of course for area trusty area five tom tennis leslie reckler and carolyn weisinger i would be remiss but i didn't think uh let you know this was our inaugural kennedy zoom forum and i'm very proud of it so we should all give ourselves a hand i want to thank the west that's right give yourself a hand cause i i feel good my first one i didn't make too many boo-boos okay it was not bad i want to thank the west contra costa unified school district and the west county league of women voters for reaching out to
297the community to help our voters make an educated decision about who they're going to select for our first trustee board of school board members and i want to give a special thank you to bobby jordan our communications manager for navigating me navigating me through my first time moderating okay around you we have our league women who volunteered their time we've been here since early this morning i want to thank naomi williams uh myrtle braxton henovia uh callaway tyra wright who am i missing and munez i don't see her on here and i think one other person i missed oh there she is our president of the west county league of women voters cheryl collier cheryl before we say good night to everyone do you want to say a few words as our president uh to
298um to kind of wrap up today's forum you're muted cheryl i'll be brief uh thank you um i simply want to thank the individuals that are running um all of them were so impressive everybody's gonna have a very difficult decision to make when it comes to the third of november and their voting um but i appreciate all of you for coming out today i want to thank um the league of women voters the volunteers and um i think it was just fantastic you did a wonderful job linda oh thank you i'm so proud of you and um and it is the league is all about education if i have to say anything else and i think that you did a good job today presenting uh the individuals here so we can make an intelligent decision
299thank you okay and for robert jordan's last job i've asked him to put on the screen for a few minutes the trusty area map so people can can see you know good idea what we're talking about who are not aware and also a link where they can go to to click on to find out what schools are in which area okay so that's his last job today as our um technical uh director for zoom webinar and with that if i haven't forgotten anything i don't see anybody waving their hands so with that we're going to say good afternoon and enjoy the rest of oh i'm sorry oh good afternoon and enjoy the rest of your afternoon what i'm sorry uh naomi do you have something to say you're muted can you hear me now yes
300i can i only want to tell the lady that's going to have a birthday 93rd birthday next this later on this month she can wake up now we're off the air that's myrtle braxton will be on october 21st tomorrow we're gonna wish you a september 21st first couple weeks september 21st excuse me september 21st i love a woman who's not afraid to tell her age because that shows sophistication and strength of character so happy 93rd birthday myrtle we're all going to wish you a fantastic birthday do we have time to sing i assume zuma sounds terrible so we're gonna wait until a little bit later i wish you a happy birthday thank you okay we'll call you okay i i robert's not not turning us off yet but so the map is there please make
301a note of the link and attendees thank you for sharing this afternoon with us um i'm very proud of the league in the district's partnership putting this on and thank the attendees for coming in i don't know how many people tuned in but reminder it's going to be on the district website webpage uh facebook page on the district's website on the league women voters facebook page okay so with that i'm going to say good afternoon thank you hey linda yes it was 51 attendees oh great 51. okay well have a good afternoon you did it thank you have a great afternoon hi cheryl hi how are you