001is joining right now trusty Phillips has joined welcome and trusty Letta as well welcome trusty Letta okay good evening everyone um welcome I would like to call to order the August 26 2020 regular meeting of the West Contra Costa Unified School District Board of Education thank you for joining us this evening I hope everyone joining tonight is doing well and that each of your families are in good health and staying as safe as possible um we continue to meet via Zoom for all district and board meetings as authorized by the governor's emergency executive order issued on March 17 2020 the West contra cost Unified School District Board of Education will conduct board meetings via video teleconference until further notice before we recess to close session I would like to remind the community that to be
002called to share their public comment they need to either raise their hand on the Zoom app or press asterisk 9 if they if star n if tuning in via phone call followed by star six to unmute once their name is called thank you do we have any public comment for close session I do not see any hands raised okay thank you so thank you um and we will be back at 6:30 for Open Session thank you everybody so we we'll re this to close session now thank you hi everyone good evening seems like people are entering now trusty L is here trusty Phillips trusty buas Mr Duffy so we can get started can everybody hear me okay okay so good evening everyone welcome I would like to call to order the August 26 2020 regular
003meeting of the West Contra UniFi School District Board of Education thank you for joining us tonight I hope everyone at home is doing well and that your families are safe and in good health we continue to meet via Zoom for all district and board meetings as authorized by the governor's emergency executive order issued on March 17 20120 the West cont UniFi School District Board of Education will conduct board meetings via video teleconference until further notice please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the plag the United States of America to the Republic for it stands stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you this is a for first board meeting of the new school year and I want us to acknowledge the tremendous work by
004everyone involved in the planning and implementation of distance learning the summer months consisted of endless preparation to be ready for the beginning of school the summer months also saw our nation and communities organized against racial Injustice and police brutality and we witness the youth organized and advocate for one another as well as solidarity across communities and the need to keep on pushing for equity and equality year round as we exit the summer months we are working together through the current Public Health crisis by taking steps to keep everyone safe by adhering to social distancing guidelines and by continuing Partnerships and Network to ensure families have access to the resources they need I want to thank each WCC as a student family employee and Community member for supporting each other working extremely hard to have a
005successful start to the school year and for completing the first week of the 2020 2021 school year thank you to each employee and volunteer Distributing meals at school and Community sites thank you to each student for their commitment to their education a virtual setting and for adjusting to their new schedules and classes thank you to every parent and student advocating for their needs so that they meet so that we can meet those with efficiency ra sooner and sooner rather than later we appreciate each of you I would like to share some basic instructions regarding how we are going to be using Zoom today and involve members of the public we will be having live public comment via Zoom this may result in some uncomfortable situations so we hope you will bear with us as we
006navigate any issues that may come up it is our hope for members of the public to be able to participate and share their public comment with a board in a space conducive to a respectful public forum for all during the meeting all board members and the super attended will be on video throughout the board meeting staff members are also present and will be on video when they present members of the public will not be on video will be muted throughout the meeting unless they have raised their hand for public comment on zoom in order to comment on an agenda item at tonight's meeting members of the public should raise your hand by pressing the raise your hand button on the Zoom app or by pressing star n by telephone when the board reaches the item
007on which they want to comment if you are calling in with your phone when your name is called press star six to unmute your phone when we get to the item a member of The District staff will call your name comments will be restricted to the amount of time allocated by board policy your hand must be raised before the first public comment is read on an agenda item after the first comment is read there will be no additional public comments accepted in order to be recognized to speak you must be using a first and last name thank you now I will share the same directions in Spanish for [Music] gracias I also want to note um the members of the public can translate the meeting agenda web page by clicking on the button labeled English
008with a globe next to it to translate the meeting agenda into multiple languages and we have interpretation services available via Zoom by clicking on the globe icon on Zoom at the bottom thank you um superintendent Duffy can we please have roll call yes president Hernandez Jarvis present trusty Lara present trusty quas here trusty Phillips I see trusty Phillips is um here but I wonder if he has the ability I don't know if he's joined as a panelist all right let's try to get him in here yes um trusty panis here and I see that he's a panelist but he's muted right now so maybe um Miss Logan um if maybe Miss Logan can communicate with trusty Phillips to see if we can get his mic working yeah or trusty Phillips feel free to text me
009if I can help in any way um also two student board members who are here Stephanie Garcia Aila should be on with us here great and uh Kaden cotton Blake here trusty Kaden cotton Blake great all right thank you um welcome trusty cotton Blake and trusty Garcia Aila it's great to um have you here with us today thank you Mr Duffy for the roll call um superintendent Duffy do we have a report out of close session we do we do just multitasking to make sure we get trusty Phillips on here so um first report out is the board voted to reject the government code claim presented by claimant named in close session dated August 3rd 2020 alleging property damage and personal injury and the second report out is the board appointed Charlotte Betson principal of
010Mira Vista Ka School those that is the report out thank you Mr Duffy Madam just a correction we didn't vote on anything in close session superintendent so it was likely four Z1 abson I apologize for that thank you thank you for the clarification Jesse um Mr tffi trusty Phillips uh noted that he needs to have someone let him into Zoom I'm wondering if he is under Angela Phillips name that has a hand raised um but potentially not oh he's he's no he's says he's under his own name so let's see uh he Mr Phillips is currently oh I think we just got him he was on the attendees so I think we've brought him in now hopefully as a panelist I was stuck in the um it was in a waiting room but when I
011was done here it took about two minutes I think to be able to be let in so I'm not sure if maybe he's experiencing the same delay right now for some reason okay okay so um we need to get him on here so if you can check back Mr Duffy too make sure that we help him thank you to get on here okay and my computer is freezing a little bit so I apologize for that um the next item that we have is item B5 and that is thank you to communications director Marcus Walton yep I am going to uh start that uh this evening and I I also looking to see if Marcus is with us or Marcus Mr Walton is here with us okay fantastic so as you all probably know by now
012uh Mr Walton is leaving us and he is off to the county uh director of communication so he will no doubt uh still be interacting and facing with us um but I'm hoping uh we could just pull up that agenda item um because there's some words I'd like to uh read on that preces in honor of Mr Walton okay while we do that hopefully we've got Mr Phillips coming on good evening all hang on just one sec I'm having a little technical difficulty myself hi everyone sorry I'm back my computer froze and then Zoom got me out so I'm back here so Mr Duffy are we um waiting for chuste Phillips to be l in is that a yes I'm not sure that's an I'm not sure because I don't see him in the attendees
013um he is listed in the panelists yeah and I've tried to unmute him but it doesn't seem to unmute okay he might try to come out and come back in yes maybe trusty Phillips Could you um rejoin because it looks like you are a panelist but it's not the audio is not working or the video yeah maybe um rejoin us yeah if you can hear that let's have Mr Philips exit and rejoin so we can try to work it again thank you and I apologize to the public for this um short delay so I have um up on my screen oh there it is okay sorry great all right so while we still work to get Mr Phillips here we will share some appreciations and celebrations of Mr Walton who after six years serving as
014communications director is headed to the Contra Costa County Office of Education as I mentioned Marcus understands the landscape of our community and district and from smoke and fires to our budget from the best moment to the most tragic Marcus has been right there to communicate to our community about what has happened and how we move forward Marcus grew up in the district attending Peno middle and graduating from penol Valley in 1988 after joining the military Marcus returned home and wrote for The Advocate at contracosta College before graduating from Sac State just to be clear and as a former journalist Marcus worked for the Sacramento Observer before embarking on his school Communications career at Sac City Unified then cap Stono unified and returned home in 2014 with his family and settled in Hercules Marcus's calming presence
015and wisdom won't be that far away and as he he reminds us he still lives in the district his children go to school here and he'll still be advocating for wccusd um Marcus has had ample opportunity for me to tell him how much I really appreciated his work and Leadership so again thank you so much uh Marcus and we really really appreciate everything you've done and I personally uh have such great uh respect and thanks to you and for you so thank you so much thank you um Mr Duff and if we can take a moment um for board members you know if you would like to share something uh with um you know uh some words of gratitud toward Mr Walton right now we can begin with um trusty quas trusty justy Phillips justy
016lettera and trusty Garcia trusty cotton Blake Garcia abam sorry trusty cotton Blake and then myself thank you madam chair uh Mr Walton uh I know I've uh engaged with you the whole time that I've been on a member of this board and it is with both um a sense of sadness that you're leaving this District but also a sheer excitement for the new opportunity that you'll have to serve not just the communities of West County but all the communities uh in contracosta via the County Office of Ed so I want to thank you and wish you well um I know that it's a tough job and a thankless job to be the person that shares information factual information information that comes with lots of different opinions that others impose on it but I through all
017of uh your work I've appreciated your steadfast professionalism and I know that you've done all of this while staying the dedicated father to your children so thank you so much Mr Walton for the way you've served our students and our families I truly appreciate you thank you trusty clas trusty Bas so Mr Walton I can't thank you enough for all the things that you have done for me I mean it has just been a real treat uh to know you and a pleasure to work with you and I'm so grateful for everything you've done for me and for our students and for our families and everyone else in our community you have been so dedicated and I could send you a message any time of the night or day and you would normally get right
018back to me it was like amazing I don't know what I'm gonna do because like my standard reply has always been checked with Marcus and I'm not sure what I'm gonna say now to people but thank you so much you know I not ter at the county and I know you're going to do great right there I'm really excited about this new opportunity for you thank you so much Marcus I'm going to miss you in a big way thank you Jesse buis Jesse Phillips uh thank you very much uh Mr Walton uh for the time uh that you spent here you've seen uh many people come and You' seen many people go um and along the way you've done uh tremendous work uh for our community um and I respect you for and I appreciate
019you for that but I also appreciate uh the ability to talk to you um and to bounce things off of you uh and to get feedback from you uh what I'm in the right and what I'm in the wrong um you have definitely been uh somebody to say that and I appreciate that because you need uh people around you who are willing to tell the truth right and who are willing um you know put to put their their best foot forward um and that's what you've done so man I wish you the best uh in your new position uh they are lucky to have you um I know that you're going to knock them dead um but you're still going to be around because you live here and and I look forward to um having
020a different kind of relationship with you so thank you very much for your service I really appreciate you thank you Mr trusty Phillips trusty um L yes uh uh I just want to say uh Mr Walton I really appreciate your high level of of professionalism kindness and positivity and and I've appreciated that I'm sorry to see you go but I'm very excited about uh this next adventure for your career and that uh we're just all G to miss you and glad you're just you're not going to be too far away bye thank you Jessa um Mr Walton thank you so much for your Prof professionalism your knowledge um just all of the strengths that you bring I think when I was elected to this board uh you really helped to onboard me and I appreciate
021that and I think um you really bounce back ideas well and I think you have a knowledge of the community and and just of you know the history here and and you've shown that you really care about all of the children here and I I'm really grateful for the opportunity to have work with you and to you know be able to communicate like we need to have communication in this way and you were so receptive when we were talking about um you know when schools were close and just that type of communications that was a lot more intense than you know than the regular in addition to all of the other uh work that you were already doing so I just want to thank you sincerely and say that I wish you the very best
022in your next Endeavor thank you president hernandz Jarvis we do have a number of hands raised um I just want to remind people that if you are raising your hand it is for the item we're currently on um let me know when you're ready to check on those hands um thank you uh Mr arelio so yes so if the public if uh you have your hand raised for this specific item um then you can leave it up but if you have it raised because you want to speak during public comment that's coming up then please raise it at that um Point thank you um so in in our trusty as well trusty Garcia Aila and trusty cotton Blake do you have any um words of gratitude that you want to share with Mr Watson well
023I personally would like to thank Mr wal Mr Walton for um all the advocacy he's shown um during his time working here um even in the short time that I have had the opportunity to work with him he's advocated for me and I've seen his professionalism in person and how he's just done great work in this community and our district so thank you very much for that yeah I just want to say just thank you for your hard work and dedication throughout these like years um I'm so sad that we didn't really get to work together but I just wish you the best of luck for your future thank you trusty cotton Blake and trusty Garcia Aila and Mr Walton did you want to um share anything with us too before we go to public
024comment thank you uh board president Hernandez Jarvis members of the board um superintendent Duffy um to our student board members as well and to the community um I I was born here I was raised here I went to school here um met my wife in this community um had my children uh in Sacramento but they now go to school in this community my parents went to uh Richmond unified school district schools and graduated from those schools and I attended school here and graduated and my children will attend school do attend school here and will graduate from these schools so um this has not been just a job it's been a labor of love and it's been um exciting six and a half years uh went by quickly and I I'm extremely grateful for the way
025this community has um embraced me and welcomed me back home and uh they're sending me off uh 20 minutes away but I will still be here um and there's work to be done it this was not an easy decision but um I will still be here doing the work from a different vantage point and I think that we have uh we know that uh there's a lot of potential and uh there's a lot of work that still has to get done and completed it's not um just about this job job for me it's my kids it's my cousins kids it's my nephews it's my friends children um folks I went to school with who are asking me what the best school is to send their children to um my cousins trying to find the best
026place for their children and my uh sisters and it's everyone in this community that's why we do this work um even during the difficult moments um The Late Late board meetings um the one thing that uh I I know that we're all working to make sure that all of our students uh can improve and are able to reach their potential and so um thank you again for this opportunity I I came back home at a really difficult time uh personally and for our family and this community's continued to embrace me and my children and I just want to say thank you to everyone for that so thank you uh good luck and I I will still be here thank you so much Mr wton we really appreciate you and we can't wait to see you
027again you know whenever you want to come to one of our meetings please thank you we we want to take public comment now yes so if any members of the community that have their hands raised right now public comment um for the thank you to our communication director uh Marcus Walton so anybody that still has their hand race right now okay and it looks we have less than 10 right now so let me open up with uh Leslie reckler thank you hi good evening to everybody and I'm glad this isn't live because I've got the tears streaming down my face um I want to thank Marcus for everything and wish him the best as he goes off on his new adventure I'm really excited that he has this opportunity but I also have to say
028that I'm really sad that he's leaving us and I want everyone to recognize what a huge loss this is for our district he's been the voice of the district for over six years and he's been such a great friend to our families and our students and especially to PTA and his dedication to his job and his work ethic is allc consuming and he's come to every meeting and he shared himself with the community in a completely selfless manner to the detriment of his own family time and just one night to tell you just the kind of person he is he sends me an email and he says I need to meet with the PTA board about the trustee elections and I said well we're actually at my house tonight and he shows up at like
029830 after like two other meetings that he's been to and of course I fed him but here's this guy who shows up because he feels it's so important to make sure that everybody's informed um you know just the unw and commitment uh to his job and to the community and to to really say thank you however on the other side I still get to work with him because we will be working together through the 32nd District PTA and through contracosta County fund Ed so Marcus when you get situated you know how to get in touch with me because we have work to do and so all the best to you and your family and I personally will really miss you thank you thank you m the next speaker is zon Harrison Miss Harrison Hi Marcus
030I'm so so so so happy to see you going to do something that makes you happy and as a chair of asset I want to say thank you for showing up for us and always you know answering our emails getting us information helping us understand them crazy we appreciate you so much and I'm so happy that you're going forward you always kept a era professionalism and and I just thank you for all the work you've done and I I'm not saying goodbye because I'm going to see you later I don't have all that stacked up Leslie hat but I'll see you all right thank you Miss Harrison thank you next we have Misha perish gash good evening can you hear me yes and it's my Isa but you're really close sorry you're really close I'll
031get it I'll get it so Marcus Walton imagine my shock and surprise but you know what we only have this one life and so I am happy for you and for whatever your reasons you know were for taking this position we will deeply deeply miss you and as someone I am an underclassman to you you're 88 Peno I'm 89 Kennedy High School probably came to um poo back in the day when leadership we would go to the other campuses and spend the whole day the leadership classes I went to poo Shing um so with all that being said um just once again our district we just continue to lose great talent and especially homegrown talent but with that being that as well I will continue to tell my students because I'm a teacher at Kennedy
032my arm a mo as I will continue to tell my students greatness is in your District greatness is in your school and you will be one of those people that I will let them know about that came out of our district that your level of greatness so um blessings to you and your family and um congratulations once again thank you Miss Harris Cas thank you next we have petronia Fernandez Miss Fernand hello do you hear me yes okay well good evening board members and staff my name is petronila Fernandez I am a paring Community leader actually I am a board um representing Ela but now I am expressing my War for first welcome um my new four graded teach teacher of forest school she is leading my four graders uh child in the classroom I
033want to say thank you to her because in the H the school year we having um teacher but I want to really really thank her for leadership and for having the opportunity to teach my child I am so happy with her but uh I have another thing to share I really appreciate the district please communicate with parent for example I like uh I am a mother I know to know in advance what is going on for distancing learning and I found out Mr Marcos Gonzalez is not anymore our executive director but I please send an email or communication to the parent who will be the person we can contact them for something we need to figure out for what's going on in our school I really appreciate again communication is the key and we want
034to each other collaborate and I am very positive I love to having my child in home to distancing learning is going well but um I want to thank her the teacher but actually maybe she need a little more support I hope the leadership in our school help her help her and giving the opportunity to give her support that is my my point for today and well to thank you Mr Walton for having the opportunity to meet you I know I am very strong but I want to say thank you either way and have a good um Estep in your life and God bless everybody that's is my comment for today thank you thank you thank you Miss uh our next speaker is Robson Swift okay hi Mr Walton I just want to say that um
035I had to speak because Mr Walton's one of the nicest kindest most dedicated people I've ever met in my entire life it was an absolute honor to work with you when I was um a school barard member and was on the lcap you were just the most helpful awesome presence ever whenever I saw uh Mr Walton I would always smile and I just want to say that you helped turn me into the advocate that I am today and I my only regret is that I didn't hold myself back a year so I can work with you more um so thank you so much and I do want to say that this district is losing somebody great but I hope that wherever you go you're going to thrive and um help other people while you're there
036thank you so much thank you thank you our next speaker is Jose Deon Mr delion yes um good afternoon board uh Mr Walton it's a pleasure to work with you uh thank you very much for the work you've done for our students thank you for bringing the debate um League to Richmond High I think was a great addition to our school and for our students um communication uh from you is always um well done uh very thoughtful and to the point um And Timely so thank you very much you will be missed but we will be bugging you to come back and talk to our students thank you and have a good evening thank you our next uh speaker is Estella deas thank you so much um good evening um everybody and um Mr Walton
037I just really wanted to say thank you so much for everything that you've done your professionalism your Steady Hand your patience your kindness all of those things have been a blessing to us uh thank you for not running away when I bring hard conversations your way and I especially appreciate all of the the um the the things that you have done I know behind the scenes that I hear about congratulations and this decision I do hope that this is going to be leading you to more wonderful things in your own professional and personal growth um I know that you're in district one so I'm hoping that here on the Northern side of the district we'll get to see you more and maybe engage you at a different level to make sure that our that our
038community and our students continue to thrive thank you Mr Walton and God bless thank you next speaker is Vieira Allen I'm sorry to in Miss VI Allen um in public I know that we have other people who raise their hands after um we started the first public comment when it was three minutes so if we can have it down to two minutes now because we have nine people with our hands raised we have eight actually now so two minutes I apologize for the change that's okay I'll try to talk really fast um Marcus congratulations um thank you so much for your service and and as much as I hate to see you go I am actually grateful that you are taking this opportunity to rise because we have so few African-American men in leadership within
039the district and it's so important that our children um get to see a black man doing so well and taking the opportunity to continue to rise and lift himself up so I appreciate that and having the opportunity to do that and also I'm very excited because you do still have kids in our district so that means we'll see you at Apex and that you get to be involved uh in our schools now and with us on ASAP so I'm gonna be coming for you and um and looking um and grateful for all your leadership and especially during these past few months you've just been brilliant um and so appreciative so thank you and good luck and everything thank you thank you our next speaker is Audrey Shields and just a reminder we are going to
040do two minutes hi uh hey Marcus I just wanted to say congratulations to you uh I have really appreciated you you've been such a nice guy I'm a new kid on the Block relative not that young but I'm a new kid on the Block and you've always been helpful and available and you've always tried your best to help make things work you support at the NAACP the elders the assets uh we really really appreciate you I'm glad you're sticking around in the county we will be seeing you around and hopefully we will get you at asset but uh I just wanted to let you know how much uh uh we appreciate you thank you and good luck thank you Miss Shields thank you our next speaker is Demetrio Gonzalez good evening uh Marcus hi good
041afternoon I just wanted to congratulate you you um there's obviously a million things we can say about you and I want to Echo what everybody has said there's there's very few people that has dedicated as you are to this work um in the last five years you and I have done quite a bit together when it comes to every emergency and the parcel tax and the bond um and you're always available at any time and it's pretty incredible because um not not too many people obviously put this work first and you do you have always done that um and you know I think that I always cherish all the memories that we had late late conversations but if I could pick one story it's La last year when we decided to close schools the following
042day we were all meeting and Mr Duffy's office and all of a sudden there were three uh TV stations that showed up at the district office and Marcus like Demetrio I need someone to come outside with me to talk to the TV stations and I was so not prepared I was in a t-shirt and jeans and Marcus gave me a shirt dressed me in that minute helped me and honestly we got through it and um it was I mean I was gonna continue to cherish all these amazing and crazy memories that that we had and you know I hope that I can be as an amazing dad as you are um so thank you for that as well I really appreciate it you on personal level and professional so good luck and we're looking forward
043to uh seeing you more in the district that's thank you so just a reminder uh speakers need to have a first and a last name listed so there's a person named Ivan I don't see a last name if you can rename yourself and then I will call you up uh Miriam Wong you're next Miriam you can unmute yes hello can you hear me yes hello yes we can hear you yes good evening Mr I just wanted to say thank you thank you because [Music] you you show us respect you make all the efforts to reach out to Thea Community I got to know you I found the wonderful person that you are with your values and always nice to col what was happening around you I can I miss you I can I miss you
044and I wish you the best and uh God bless you Mr W thank you thank you the next speaker is Guadalupe andan hello everyone hello Mr Marcus Watson I just wanted to say congratulations on your new position and also give you thanks I think everybody did a great job echoing how appreciative we've been of your work and your commitment and also your responsiveness to you know us parents and you know I know we've given you a hard time here and there but you know we I really appreciate you and you know appreciate the work that you've done and you know the commitment that you've held to like really give us the answers that we need and have a lot of patience your patience has been really extraordinary in a lot of cases and we're going
045to miss you and I know you're going to miss us and you know everything that has to go along with it but you know I hope that this new step in life takes you in you know bigger better things and I'm grateful for you know the time that we got to work together and the time that we had to you know correspond to one another so I just wish you nothing but the best of luck moving forward and to say a big old thank you to you and you know we did I did appreciate you a lot and thank you Mr Walton thank you our next speaker is Shakira Reynolds good evening um I just wanted to say on behalf of the parent leadership Council as well as the do caps committee how much we
046appreciate Marcus and his work especially during the school closure people have been talking about the six years but we have been in the trenches since schools closed and Marcus has really risen to the occasion the amount of dedication he has shown to this district and our families to move us through this to where we are now I can't say enough how much we appreciate that I appreciate your dedication to your family we know that you have done some you know 15 18 hour days and I hope that this new opportunity provides you more of the balance that you're looking for but also that it gives you what you want professionally we will miss you but we wish you the best of luck and so forward ever I'm so excited about what these next steps will
047bring for you so thanks again thank you next is aah narvas even I um Miss n is it's it's h really hard to hear you it sounds like there is some some background noise so annoying um we're I don't know if I'm the only one hearing this but I hear other voices too and then I hear the background noise more than your voice no right now do you hear me now we can hear you better yes okay thank [Music] you I [Applause] thank you Miss NZ we we're gonna stop it now thank you for your comments thank you next is Teresa Kerns graas and our last speaker um for this topic is uh Kate Burkhart Kate are you you're thinking about thanks Marcus for all that you've done over the years uh and good luck
048to you in the county we need you there as well so congratulations and good luck goodbye thank you okay can I just sorry go ahead sorry that's all of them great thank you and um I just wanted to do a quick audio check with everybody can everybody hear well or do you hear any feedback noise okay thank you thank you so much um Mr Watson I think that we cannot finish expressing our gratitude um for you you're going to be missed and I just I'm grateful to know that your kids are in a district so we're going to see you a lot still and and I wish you the very best in your um new position thank you thank you thank you to members of the public for sharing your public comment um for this
049item um the next item that we have coming up is item six B6 and that is the presentation of student board representatives from the youth commission for the first semester of 2020 2021 that's that's me and so we had originally placed this on the item because we thought the official first day of our student board members would be uh this uh Wednesday today but we were able to have them join us two weeks ago and they did have a chance to introduce themselves so I am pleased to introduce again our two uh new student board reps uh Stephanie Garcia Avila from Richmond High School and Kaden cotton Blake from middle college high school and something we've done a little bit differently for this board meeting and we'll see how it goes is during committee reports
050uh we have put um student board member report because at the end of our board meeting we have time to hear from our board members where board members have time to do some open public comment and share you know an update um from their work around the district uh but we often don't get to it uh because we finish so late and our student board members aren't here or when we do get to it our student board members have had to leave so we're going to get a chance to hear from our student board members during committee communication um so I think for tonight they can certainly just wave and folks can know who they are um and then we will hear from them uh a little bit later and if that is a uh
051structure that works for us we'll keep uh doing a student board uh report during committee time which is a lot earlier in the evening so again uh welcome Kaden welcome Stephanie um we look forward to hearing from you a little bit later tonight thank you thank you uh Mr Duffy for explaining that and I want to also again welcome again our uh students who are serving as trusties uh Miss uh kayen cotton Blake and Stephanie Garcia Aila so welcome again and we want to make sure that we hear your voice early on the meeting so we're going to try this um and if you have anything that you want to share right now please let us know um so we're going to until later today okay perfect thank you so much really excited to have
052you here with us our next item on the agenda is item B7 agenda review and adoption do any board members have any changes that they would like to make uh staff has a uh one recommendation um which is to move the consent item around the digital divide which I believe is um B6 no excuse me c s uh we would we would ask to hear that um just before public comment um when we sometimes do resolutions we have a few folks that would like to uh speak to that Miss Logan would like to share a little bit so we're asking if we could move C7 um before public comment so immed mediately after the presentation by um healthy Richmond yes okay so it would be item b11 no B B10 oh and we'd also like
053to pull the uh social media policy there's still some work we're doing with uh csba getting some information there uh we thought we'd be a little farther along um that is is the F4 we would like to pull as well and bring it back when it's uh more ready okay so then staff is recommending to have seven C7 immediately before public comment and to pull F4 for a later meeting when the board policy for social media is ready okay is there any other change that board members have trusty funas and trusty Phillips uh I I would like to pull C2 and C8 C2 and Char Charlie 2 and charlie8 Jessie penis can you repeat that I'd like to pull C2 as in Charlie and C8 got it thank you trusty Phillips I would like to
054pull C5 C5 yes ma'am thank you okay so board members the changes um being suggested for the agenda staff recommending to have C7 immediately before public comment and to pull F4 for when it's ready at a future meeting and items C2 and C8 and C5 having those pulled from the consent calendar is there a motion to approve the agenda with those changes so moved moved by trusty FAS is there a second for the motion second seconded by trusty quas quas thank you board can we please take a vote quas Yes panas Yes Bops yes L yes and I forgot to um remind us all that we're going to begin with uh students so board members um cotton Blake and Stephanie a uh Aila Garcia excuse me Garcia Aila I'm sorry coton Blake yes Garcia AA
055yes thank you nandes Jarvis yes motion passes unanimously to approve the agenda with those changes to adopt the agenda with those changes okay so up next we have item B8 approval of minutes for August 5th 2020 are there any changes or clarifications that need to be made for accuracy no is there a motion to approve the minutes for the August 5th 2020 meeting Madam chair trust I second Mr Pan's move of those agenda that those minutes thank you um can we please take a vote motion made by trust and seconded by tras beginning with our students please cotton Blake yes Garcia AA yes weas yes yes Phillips yes Lara yes and then this drive is yes motion passes unanimously to approve the minutes for the August 5th 2020 meeting up next we have the request
056to address the board Roan yoga from healthy Richmond good evening board members um I'm Rox good evening nice to see you all uh well uh good good luck I mean I'm glad that the first week of school has gone well um so uh I'm very happy about how things have proceeded so that that has a lot to do with all of you so thank you for that we'll start with um our uh presentation tonight which is um the healthy Richmond learning continuity and attendance plan and our policy recommendations for this year the next slide just has our contact information um if we can go to the next slide um so if you have any questions our email is there and then I really encourage you to go on our website because we just recently redesigned
057our website and you'll be able to see the racial Equity work and Resident power building work that we do in other areas um in addition to education we also work on economic Justice um Access to Health Care um and Community safe supporting Community safety and the transformation of Criminal Justice systems at the county level so I really encourage you to visit our website the next slide um I just wanted to start by saying that you know this year we we typically do our lcap presentations every year our policy recommendations and in the last few years we've allied with the lcaps and ASAT and others I think last year we all stood together but this year is a real opportunity to pull together as a community and support um the students and their families if we
058have learned anything this year has shown that the underlying racial inequities really have impacted our community and so many ways um and particularly in education um the next slide uh just wanted to let folks know that these recommendations were done in partnership with the healthy Richmond network of community stakeholders uh such as Community Based organizations resident leaders District staff and we had over 60 participants who attended two Town Hall meetings focused on the district's reopening plan um The Learning continuity and attendance plan recommend ations reflect the voices of a lot of Partners who represent black and non-black communities of color in our district who continue to be the most impacted by covid so we'll start with the recommendations the the recommendations so the next slide um we hope that you had a chance to look
059at our platform which uh we sent as well that details out the LCP um learning continuity plan uh areas that each of our recommendations address so you will see that um when you look at the the larger platform next slide for our recommendation one um we're this is a recommendation to really resource and incre you know increase funding for the school-based uh Health Centers to provide Mental Health Services for students to maximize maximize mental health and social emotional well-being during this pandemic and challenges of distance learning and increase and improve St uh service is for the elcap population this recommendation would bring together school-based Health Center staff teachers School administrators to strengthen the existing infrastructure by increasing communication and accountability within the care team to create shared goals to support the students well-being that leads
060to the achievement of school-based measurable goals the next slide just shows you a graphic of of what we're what we talk about in the more lengthy recommendation so school-based Health Center staff uh will provide teachers with training on how to identify students who may need support uh through Mental Health Services also strengthen the teacher referral process um and participate in the district's care team tree that is triaging students and then finally follow up with youth uh with teachers uh rather to see what the impact of those intervention has on youth when they return to the classroom and then finally just a statement that the model is really based on increasing communication transparency and agreement on shared goals between um everyone that's really working with the youth information will be shared appropriately in order to best
061serve the students interests and I just wanted to you know double score that because I think all the folks that are on school campus offices um the school counselors psychologists um the positive School climate folks um folks trying to work with the teachers to provide training um and the health centers all have the students best interest at heart so how do we bring those folks together to better provide services the next slide um moves us to um uh let's go to the next one um sorry uh slide nine is the positive School climate and for justice impact youth so this is these are youth that are coming back to our district from juvenile hall or the The Boys Ranch and we really put this in um to um build off of the work that started
062over the last few years under the positive School climate resolution so this is really focusing on getting grants and Community Partnerships um going through a competitive RFP process rolling out and coordinating re-entry plans and leveraging the existing work of the County Office of Education um creation and roll out of curricular educating teachers and instruction and instructors on the methods to better serve um uh legally in legal in systems impacted youth the next slide talks about um really prioritizing African-American Ser students in the delivery model um um but as I talked to some of my partners like safe return project they reminded me as we were creating this recommendation that Justice impacted youth are really the lcap population so many of them are also foster care youth English language Learners and low-income students uh the next
063slide um the recommendation really calls to increase academic and school Success for for um youth the these youth to relaunch the POS positive School climate workg group and with community members at the table to establish a case management system leveraging and existing uh the existing infrastructure of local partnering organizations coordinating and sharing information with the County Office of Ed and developing strategies to assess the impact of of academic achievement for black students uh next slide uh this recommendation um same recommendation would allocate funds to coordinate School District staff parents Youth and Community Partners to establish a run racial Equity uh a racial Equity Community oversight Council in order to Define and address anti-blackness and systemic racism that's rooted in policies and behavior so this is our third recommendation um in addition the funding would go
064to uh local racial Equity anti-blackness experts and Regional Partners who would provide input by sharing school-based models related to um I know the the district's um interest in establishing an office of racial Equity that would centralize um policies such as the Dei policy and streamline a a committee structure I know there's been cons some concern about you know the number of committees or structures to support this work um it would focus on implementation accountability and I think think really coordinating very closely with the office of American uh African-American student achievement um next slide um the uh Community oversight Council would improve and expand services for um the elcat population uh as well as prioritizing African-American students would address learning loss within distance learning context and provide Youth and families with valuable leadership opportunities and a
065really a platform to advance social justice um in the face of inequity next slide um the council would be Community Driven and institutionalized by the governance committee and would work towards some of the following goals um this is an intentional strategy to support parents and youth to actively participate in racial Equity dialogues development of racial Equity policies and impementation of anti-racist anti-bias framework districtwide we know that some of the high schools Richmond High most notably but um others have been working on on some of this work at the school level and certainly the district is is looking at moving this forward but this is really an intentional strategy to support Community um to be involved there's a strong connection between this recommendation and the governance work governance committee's work on the Dei policy and roll
066out of a anti-racist anti-bias framework and we're recommending that this oversite Council operate under the governance committee to ensure it's inform it is um informed by the committee's work the governance committee's work um last slide uh next slide um this Council will be Community Driven um and we'll be looking at academic achievements um that would be equalized districtwide um and specifically for African-American students and focusing on racial Equity anti-blackness anti-racism um and looking at really very specific things like classroom structure grading practices teacher practices ethnic studies curricula and teaching methods um the community oversight Council would also liaison with um School site staff so racial coordinators and administrators District staff who have been charged with establishing a districtwide racial Equity initiative and then we also noted in the longer um recommend platform um document that
067there's some existing structures within schools so you know the School site councils the apacs um ptas other um groups that already exist in in the structure of of the district and then finally um sort of a closing statement to say um that um in the next slide that this districtwide policy practices and guidance must be consistent and mandatory um including monthly opportunities to engage staff partners and the community oversight Council and one thing I wanted to say about that is you know there was some conversation at the governance committee level about providing trainings to staff is is important and good but uh I think some of the public comment during those meetings was geared at you know what happens after that you know is it you know just training or what happens after that so
068you know really making sure that that within that infrastructure teachers have the opportunity to do really deep reflection and create Affinity groups um to really um cement the work that they're they're learning through these specialized trainings and then for us to come together as a community and you know after doing this work for quite some time Community parents students and others really need support to do this work um in tandem with the district so it's important um to have this oversight Council um and just finally uh the last slide thank you for your time tonight and listening to our recommendations and um in the next slide we we have a picture of the the folks who who really brought together the daps recommendations last year but we really just want to thank you for listening
069tonight um and you know really implore that you look at the the funding that's coming into the district we know that there's a lot of competing priorities but really prioritize um the services that students need um during this time thank you thank you uh let's see um thank you very much appreciate it sorry one second um thank you to missa for the presentation on healthy Richmond for your recommendations I listen to them um I do apologize to the community I'm experiencing some health issues right now and um have asked trusty L as the board clerk to facilitate um for this meeting I'm going to stay present and I'll be um I'll be here but I won't be uh facilitating it because I need to take care of some things I'm dealing with um healthwise so
070I'm going to be here I will just need to step away for a few moments and and be listening in as well and um comment and have my votes uh but I have asked the board clerk to facilitate this meeting thank you thank you trusty L we do have public comment on this item when you're ready okay and uh thank you madam president please take care of yourself okay uh let's start with the um public comment sounds good thank you uh Cheryl Lane you're up first and we have over 10 so we're going to looks like we're going to do two minutes for now two minutes thank you and we might need to switch to one it looks like it's growing so oh okay it might be one minute soyl Lane you go ahead yeah
071I'm here thank you everyone hello my name is Cheryl Lane I'm the executive director of building blocks for kids also known as BBK I'm also the mother of a son who's is who is a student in our district I'm calling today to support Richmond's learning continuity plan policy recommendations and platform now more than ever the time to prioritze creating safe and and Healing Center spaces for students and our school communities especially as the new school year starts with distance learning and students families teachers and administrators working and learning in different learning environments we also see the continued social unrest as a result of police brutality social injustice and anti-blackness incurrent in our nation and here locally we have the opportunity with these recommendations to address trauma and the health needs of students to support healing
072and wellness we also have the opportunity to read out racism and Justice in our school system that diminishes the promise and academic achievement for far too many of our students especially black indigenous Latin X and other students of color so I stand with parents caregivers students and others who want funding priorities to reflect our values so I want to thank you for your time and consideration thank you thank you and we are going to switch to one minute for the for the rest of the comments thank you Miss Lane next up we have Shakira Reynolds good evening board um I am also calling to support healthy Richmond's learning continuity plan policy recommendations and platforms both as a parent in this district and as the chair of the DLC caps committee um it is extremely important
073that we make sure during this time and going forward that the pandemic is not just an emergency but that we use this time to create a new system that better meets the needs of our most vulnerable students programs like the James Morehouse project should be replicated districtwide not underfunded we have to make sure that our Justice impacted youth are given the support that they need to be valuable members of our community and be prepared for um their later lives and obviously with everything that is going on in our world we need to make sure our district is at the Forefront of meeting the needs and the moment of everything that is going on with social and racial Injustice and unrest so please fund these recommendations thank you thank you Miss Reynolds yeah next up we
074have Stephanie huckman Stephanie Hawkman Miss Huffman are you there trouble with my computer yes we can hear you now we can can you can you hear me now yes okay I'm sorry I had some trouble here I'm the director of Bay Community sources a longtime wccusd service provider and I'm also calling to support healthy Richmond's policy recommendations it's essential that we continue and increase funding for mental health services so our students uh especially black and non-black students of color can be supported through the health centers that we have spent years creating and need to continue services in those centers we can't be in the health centers right now but we know now more than ever students are f amilies are suffering with depression anxiety because of covid fears about illness and death isolation economic distress
075distress about racial Injustice and police violence against black and brown students throughout the country and certainly navigating the emotional challenges of remote learning we need to increase not reduce the services that are available to young people at this time we also need to work with the district to expand the school climate systems and establish a community racial oversight Council thank you very much for your time thank you miss hman our next speaker is Jennifer Raider hi um my name is Jen Raider and I'm the founder and director of the James moouse project the wellness center at elero high school and I am speaking in support of healthy Richmond's recommendation uh set of recommendations in particularly the first one around funding for mental health services at school health centers uh our Health Center as health centers
076across the district uh disproportionately serves our black and brown students um I want to give you a snapshot of this week we're Midway through week two uh we already have almost 40 referrals uh those are parents who are coming to us because their students are depressed or anxious and not connecting with distant learning distance learning uh there students um because of family crisis uh teachers referring students who've suffered catastrophic losses um we know that the district has funded coordination we're asking for additional funding to support these critical Services thank you thank you Miss Raider I just want to remind folks who are waiting to comment we do need a first and last name so if for example one might say healthy Richmond log out log back in with the uh first and last name please
077next up Carlos lus good evening board members my name is Carlos Lemos and I am a staff at healthy Richmond and also a Richmond resident and a family to our school district students uh thank you for the time and thank you to all our partners who have came to get who have come together since uh about a year now to uh collaborate on the set of recommendations especially as we prepare for the budget cuts from last year and also transition into uh distance learning and so these set of recommendations not only address the problems that have existed since my lifetime but also we there's this opportunity that we are either going to go into um an expansion of more institutional power and inequities or we use this opportunity as many of the young people and
078the rest of the country have to reimagine what we can do with our public funds and how we can address uh future problems so please fund these recommendations as they are both not just for covid-19 but for after thank you for your time thank you Mr lias next up uh Vieira Alan thank you so much um I think it's so important right now um especially given Co we're going to need those health centers um as we start to test and and move back into our school sites uh we're going to need those spaces um our community has been so overp policed when they're coming back they need more support not less and to often they come back to less and not more they need more I had the opportunity to collaborate on that third recommendation
079the oversight committee is an absolute must um this is something that is so badly needed we need to not only um follow the policy but we need to follow the money um because that tells you um really what your priorities are and so we need a group of citizens of people from our district coming together to really look at how we're spending our money how we're doing what we say we want to do and to make sure we're all in alignment with what is true and right and needed at this time time thank you so much thank you Miss Alan next up Robson Swift hello my name is Robson Swift I a Community member and a member of a calbas student organization called uh education reimagined which is focused on education Justice I'm calling in
080today to support all of healthy Richmond's LCP policy recommendations we need to save school-based Health Centers uh uh by increasing funding for mental health services so our students especially during and after this pandemic uh can be supported emotionally during these difficult times youth are experiencing social isolation and massive stress due to the pandemic and shelter in place and need support academic studies show that psychological stress and poor social emotional wellbe beinging are deeply correlated with poor academic performance and attendance and me mental health issues impact students of color the mo most so this isn't just a school climate issue it is a racial Justice and Equity issue if this District truly wants to be anti-racist we should be actively investing in these Services therefore I ask the district increase funding for school-based health centers and
081I don't have enough time but please support all the other recommendations thank you thank you Miss Swift next is Teresa Kerns see so thank you Miss G next is enan Burell or Burl yanan Burell or Burell yes good evening this is yanan barell and I have been volunteering with healthy Richmond for about a year and a half their access to Quality Health action team as the communications co-chair and I'm also a 25-year resident of Richmond I am in support of healthy Richmond's LCP policy I believe it is important for two reasons save school-based Health Centers by increasing funding for mental health services so our students especially our black Latin X indigenous and people of color can be supported emotionally during these difficult times last fall the district missed a tremendous opportunity when they passed up
082applying for the health center grant that was available through the mental health services act this mental health students would have need social emotional learning and that would have attributed to that opportunity also I am in support of establishing a community racial oversight Council to eliminate structural inequality in the educational system and bring the community into this policy as decision as part of the decision making process thank you thank you Mr Pell Rachel Ro insi hello my name is Rachel rinsky and I'm a member of Education reimagine a calbas student organization focused on education equity and Justice I'm calling in today to support all of Health richman's LCP policy recommendations and platform I believe it's important to save school-based Health Centers by increasing funding for mental health services so that the district students especially their black
083and non-black students of color can be supported emotionally during these difficult times numerous academic Studies have shown that black and non-black students of color have lower access to mental health care and that mental health is inseparable from student achievement the district needs to be the one to help eliminate these disparities as schools now more than ever are centers for basic needs such as child care food and especially mental health care I also believe it's important to work with the district to expand positive School climate for legal justice systems impacted youth so that they can have more access to trauma informed Healthcare and services and last but not least it's important to establish l a community racial oversight Council to eliminate structural inequality in the educational system and bring the community to this policy and decisionmaking
084process thank you thank you Mr rinsky next up is Tracy Mendes good evening my name is Tracy Mendes I'm the executive director of the California school-based Health Alliance standing on the shoulders of giants and here today in strong support healthy Richmond's policy recommendations I've been so impressed and excited by the growth in school-based health centers across this District in collaboration with your strong Community Partners I've seen how the trusted staff in these centers engage students and especially young men of color in the centers and their services they've worked on primary care and Mental Health Access Suicide Prevention tobacco and vaping prevention peer leadership trauma screening support groups and social factors like hunger that impact both health and education school health centers create a safe haven on school campuses where students struggling with a range of
085issues can receive professional support without leaving school you've built up so much and this is not the time to lose ground to strengthen the the areas outlined by healthy Richmond school-based Health Centers School climate trauma informed practices critical supports for justice and system involved Youth and oversight to ensure racial Equity students need adults to make these changes so they can become your comment thank you thank you Miss Mendes next up is Teresa Dade Boon hello can you hear me everyone yes hello good evening my name is Teresa da Boon and I'm a community schools coordinator with bacr I've been doing this work since 2007 and I'm and calling in today in support of the healthy enrichment learning community plan policy recommendations and platform especially for the recommendation of school based Health Centers um I feel
086that now more than ever students are in need of mental health we are closed up school to go home with a pandemic and in the last four months lots of students are home with possible potential perpetrators they're experiencing increased domestic violence and they're trying to cope with the anxiety and depression that they took home with them when we close in March and so increased access to Mental Health Services is right now extreme extremely important we need to help these students build their resiliency increase their self-esteem and also create a positive um image for themselves and build their self worth but most important is the relationships that we build with these students over their years of time with us that helps them to sustain their lives so thank you for your um time thank you Miss
087de Boon next up Miriam Wong my name is m Guang I am the executive director of Sal Latina center today I'm calling I'm calling in today to support the rich LCP policy recommendation and platform I believe it is important to establish a community racial oversight councel will help to eliminate structure inequality in the educational system and bring the community to this policies in decision making process the is Commendation and effort to devel District reques diversity equity and inclusion policy an anti-racism anti-bias framework to implement policing practices please found these recommendations thank you thank you Miss Wong next is Rosa menar um online in [Music] than thank you next we have John iringer uh yes can you hear me yes oh okay thank you um so uh this is in relation to theou uh and so
088uh what we're suffering here from in John this is not the topic um can you uh come back when we are on the topic of theou uh yes I will thank thank you very much sorry sorry about that okay I'll wait thank you our last one is is Guadalupe and Jana and Jana well hello board my name is Guadalupe and Yana and I'm a parent um of two students currently in um WCC USD schools and I am here today because I support healthy Richmond's LCP um policy recommendations because I believe it's important to save school-based Health Centers um by increasing funding for mental health services so our students um especially our black and brown um students can be supported emotionally during these difficult times I think this is an essential piece especially when we're talking
089about the money that we've already put into certain um systems into certain um things that we follow through I think we need to follow through with these centers because our children are really going through an emotional crisis our parents are are struggling and I think you know we need to have emotionally sound students in order order for them to um be educated you know education is a big part of what our responsibility is um as you guys as board members and I think this is a bigger piece you know we have to make sure that they're healthy that they're sound to then be able to come into the classrooms and get educated thank you thank you Miss Y and that concludes the uh comments on the recommendations from healthy Richmond trustees do we have any
090comments um yes kayen cotton Blake um just a brief comment it was an amazing presentation um a lot of extremely key points during this time uh my only question at the moment is what is the projected impact for um these recommendations thank you thank you uh and uh truste Garcia Aila comments questions yeah um I would also say it was such an a great presentation I would like to just comment on the mental health part I think it's really key to check in our with our check in with our students because I mean it's a tough time in our world uh but my question would be um how will the students get the resources available very good thank you and um trusty quas um no comments at this time just uh gratitude for the presentation
091and um I just want to remind folks that the the work that healthy Richmond does um is something that goes beyond just this moment in time uh healthy Richmond in my mind has been working uh to really uh meet and uplift or should I say lift up uh what some of those uh needs have been in our communities for for years and uh when we talk about who in community understands Community uh there's nobody else that I look to for uh really having a good sense of um representing um really a broad-based perspective so I'm looking forward to at some point seeing how we could move some of these recommendations into where they will will be reflected in um our practice or minimally um an update on where they're at already what will we what
092will we enhance and what's still needed in relation to advocacy and funding support thank you uh trusty guas trusty panis see so I just like to once again thank just as trusty Quaver said Thank healthy richond both for the recommendations and for the work that they do in our community and I'm hoping that we see all three of these things school-based Health Centers funding for mental health positive School climate work and the racial Equity Community oversight Council incorporated into our LCP great thank you trusty panis trusty Phillips I don't have any comments but thank you very much for the presentation thank you okay um uh my comments uh yes thank you for those uh for the presentation and uh a couple of questions came up this is an ongoing conversation and I'm sure uh this
093will come back again and maybe uh those questions will be part of that uh presentation as well and uh let me see uh okay well thank you again for these recommendations okay let's move on to the next and I believe that public comment yeah I just wanted to say very quickly one phrase um yeah I just want to acknowledge and thank uh Miss for being present to the presentation and for the work that healthy rich men um is doing and I I am in support of establishing the racial Equity Council um I I just want to say that your work is amazing and I'm looking forward to figuring out how we can work together to make things happen thank you thank you tra sorry for the interruption that's okay okay um believe we're going to
094public comment now we are and they're starting to come in right now we actually were going to do the uh closing the digital divide resolution before oh that's right I'm sorry yes you're right thank you for reminding me yep so we'll just pull it up we'll have uh Tracy Logan introduce it um and say a couple words about it just because it's it's so relevant to what's happening right now yes thank you good even good evening all thank you president Hernandez Jarvis and and board uh so I'd like to introduce this item this evening which is in relation to closing the digital divide to ensure that all students have access to high quality learning opportunities so as we all know that digital and Technology divide is not a new phenomenon it however has been exacerbated
095by the pandemic we see that happening in our schools we see this happening Across America in the very same way that our most vulnerable children are impacted by the pandemic our students of color lowincome students English language Learners students with disabilities and homeless youth have increased levels of lack of access to education due to technology access we're talking about both devices as well as primarily in our case the internet so this evening I'm not going to read through the resolution I know we have a packed agenda and I do want to honor everyone's time but I would like to thank the board for your continued investment in technology so that our students may have access and thank our partners for continuing to partner with us so that we can provide hotspots to students and families
096to work to close the divide and also acknowledge that a longterm solution really requires partnership investment in infrastructure at the local state and federal levels and in terms of public and private Partnerships so with that I'd just like to invite if our executive director of the West County Ed fund is available Miss Jasmine Jones to say a few words sure um I am here I'm actually going to uh keep my cameras off because I have poor lighting in the house right now so I didn't want to uh you have to deal with that so I am Jasmine Jones and I am the executive director at the Ed fund um good evening board trustees and superintendent Duffy um but I wanted to just kind of briefly acknowledge a couple things before I move on to the
097tech divide um or the digital divide one I wanted to actually acknowledge Marcus um and say goodbye to him and thank him for his service to our community and also just congratulate him on his next professional um piece in his career also want to just acknowledge and support healthy Richmond's recommendations particularly around culture and climate um in our fundraising efforts we are doing a lot around culture and climate which is reflected even in the proposal we have circulating right now um and I hope to come before you in the near future to discuss more about some of the things we're having conversations with our philanthropic Partners about um but this is what I'm here for today I'm here to actually discuss the digital divide work and really appreciate the board um bringing forth this resolution
098and kind of like standing um up for our youth and families here in the district and want to acknowledge that the Ed fund really stands with the board um and supports this resolution to close the digital divide uh we recognize that the responsibility to provide internet access for our communities has really fallen on the districts and local school districts when this is actually a state and local um government level uh kind of issue and it should be addressed there however we see so many districts around uh the country locally and here that are you know working hard to get hotspots and Chromebooks to our families and so as school leaders continue to put pressure on state and local official officials we will continue to partner with the philanthropic Community to figure out how we can
099fill the gaps we currently have a proposal circulating within the community the philanthropic Community um that's really detailing the tech needs around um des wccusd and what's happening here um this includes hotpots and Chromebooks but also just really the piece around literacy and so I think that's something that is even uh bigger than the tech itself is the literacy um the digital literacy part that is a divide and a gap there and so like how do we actually provide supports and professional development to families um but also just getting them the devices themselves so our goal um is to continue to uh partner with the school district to identify the needs and partner to with the philanthropic Community to bring other those resources in um we hope to put out a fundraising campaign over the
100next several months to kind of raise the dollars that are outlined in the proposal and so when we actually get this packet together we hope to get a social media packet together very soon but once we get this together we want to be able to share this information with the board and with schools so they can uh share it out widely so folks can become uh more aware of what's Happening Here um and so if you're interested in learning more details about kind of our efforts and we're doing at the Ed fund you can feel free to reach out to myself or Robert bunts and we both can share with you kind of how we're engaging with philanthropic Partners to uh support the community here thank you thank you Jasmine and I wanted to take
101a moment to see if either Miss zon Harrison or Stephanie sea are available to just share a little bit from the parent perspective and if not not that's okay we can move on okay okay uh do we have any public comments specifically on this board uh resolution we do have two hands up um let me go to the first one Viera Allen Miss Allen good evening trustees thank you Miss Tracy um for your presentation today uh certainly we know that our black and brown families do not have access to the tech that our students need to be able to uh succeed um this is the future this is where we are um and as a parent um here in the district and scrambling trying to make sure that my family has what it needs so
102that everybody can be online this is a big concern for us and even this week PG informs me that I'm going to get charged four times the amount because we're all online using more electricity uh so my bills are going to go up and I know our families are going to be impacted in this way as well um that this is going to be a big problem coming down for us um so I really encourage you to um do what you can to ensure that our families have all the tech that they need we need free internet and that's really what's true um it needs to be free for all of us um we need to partner with whoever Google and Apple and Samsung and all these big tech companies that reside here in California
103and getting this Tech out to our families Apple's made Apple made triple the money uh in the last six months off of us um because of of this shift in how we teach and are we're living Our Lives um and so this is a huge issue um and that we I think are in a unique position to really rise up and to advocate for all um of our students and really all um uh students across the state of California this is really a Statewide issue um Miss Jasmine HD it on the nose um and we really need to advocacy now massive letter writing massive actions happening to bridge this divide um we really have to uh have to do this we have no choice it it's time thank you I'm complete thank you Miss alen
104next is Kathleen Romero M Romero good evening uh trustees my name is Kathleen Romero I'm with the Teamsters Union Local 856 we represent classified staff at the district and we support this resolution conversation around the digital divide is broader than just a school district it is really a societal issue and internet and I agree with the previous speaker that internet should be free and this sudden shift where we have all been forced to go online and utilize platforms that we may not be fil familiar with affects all of us from students families and includes staff as well we appreciate the district making technology available and and training to the staff um but we believe that in the long run we need to go on a you know address this on a more broad level it
105should not just be the school districts that are having to bring everyone up into the 21st century thank you thank you Mr Romero and there's one last one sorry Guadalupe and okay the last one all right hello board members I also wanted to Echo a lot of what um the other speakers said you know I think it's really important that you know we start Bridging the digital divide I know as a district you guys have been doing your part and you know pulling resources together to try to get everyone connected um I think that's you know that has been you know really quick fix that's not going to really support you know us leading into you know the future with that because even with the hotspots there has been a lot of trouble with still
106children you know having connection issues especially when you have two and three children trying to connect on one device even one child trying to connect on what device has been challenging for a lot of families um and I Echo what um Yolanda said you know I have you know internet access at my home and I just got noticed that you know we've exceeded you know 100% of our you know internet and you know our bills are going to go up because our you know and we're having to pay more for services but I think you know really going out and advocating you know like I think that's going to be what it's going to take you know really partnering up you know with the different cities that West Contra Costa is in and holding some
107accountability there too and saying you know this is a us thing not just a we thing and I think a lot of it has been said on you know the school district to kind of you know for up the money that it takes to get you know the children connected but I see this as you know we all have to do our part and I think we really have to go out and you know think about what it's going to take you know moving into the future and what this might mean even for Education you know moving forward um so I think having those conversations with our city you know governance as well to be able to come up with a plan that's going to work and you know us having to pull out of
108money and do these quick fixes along the way is probably going to you know save us a lot of money in in the long run so I I thank you guys for doing your part I you know I I see but I think there's still you know a lot of kids that need that extra support that they're still not getting it with these quick fixes thank you thank you missana um um because of the late hour and how much more um of the agenda we have we're going to make sure all public comment is going to be have to be one minute uh trustees do we have any comments on this uh resolution uh trustee uh cut and Blake yes thank you so um thank you for this presentation and bringing up this topic specifically
109as this is uh I I believe we can all agree that this is at the Forefront of the issues we're facing right now during covid-19 um for students and so two questions that have come to mind during this presentation are first How are um you going to notify students of underserved communities and disconnected so to speak communities that may not be aware of uh technological opportunities or being able to receive devices hotspots things of that nature um and then the second question that I have is uh well actually I'll leave it at that for now thank you okay thank you um uh Mr Duffy did you want to address that very quickly yeah we could address it I also want to to share that um later a little bit later in the presentation not that
110much later we're going to talk about uh the opening of school and we're definitely going to talk about technology and what we're doing to get technology in the hands of our students and communicate that and communicate internet access um so I mean the brief answer is we're doing everything in every way possible um from working directly with families ways they can connect with us working through teachers working through principles Community organizations uh but we'll share later that we still believe we have students who are not connected and haven't enrolled in school because of Technology um and it's a concern for us um so we we are you know working every angle and we'll get into it a little more deeply um in the the opening of school uh presentation but it's a great great point
111from uh trustee cotton Blake thank you so much uh trustee Garcia Aila any commentation but um I don't have any comments thank you trusty quas no comments thank you madam chair uh trusty panis no comments for me I'm all for it trusty Phillips no comment and uh I don't have any comments either this is you know again another ongoing conversation all the time I believe now we are going to um the superintendent [Applause] report did we want to move this resolution yeah we want to move oh I'm of course need a motion I'd like to move resolution 20 2021 closing the digital V ensure that all students have access to high quality learning opportunities thank you motion by Tom trusty panis I'm happy to second that Madam chair second by trusty quas can we have
112a vote cotton Blake yes Garcia ala yes quas yes hnas yes phips yes l yes passes uh unanimously with uh president Hernandez Jarvis uh absent from the Das okay now we go thank you all for helping me out here uh superintendent report not yet we still have comment uh as our next item oh public comment I'm sorry comment but the official public comment is coming up right now right now okay and uh how many oh well we're everyone's going to have one minute for the uh public comment okay thank you okay so moving into B10 public comment um we're gonna start with Joanna Pace good evening this is Joanna Pace I'm a member of public Corp uh in the interest of increasing transparency I would um again like to ask that the zoom screen display
113the number of meeting participants uh I currently on my zoom screen I cannot see the number of meeting participants if the staff and board can see the number of meeting participants could you please educate the rest of us on how we can uh see that displayed on our screen and secondly also in the name of transparency when I tried to get the translation or the interpretation of the Spanish speakers I could not um successfully access the Spanish interpretation for people who are English only so um thank you for helping those of us who are not digital natives know how to get this information so we can more fully participate in the meeting thank you uh before we go there I know we don't comment on public comment so we'll share those directions for you later
114miss Pace but just 176 attendees and 20 panelists right now 176 attendees 20 panelists thank you next speaker Gabrielle M meletti good evening board oh can you hear me yes okay good evening board I'm Gabby MTI first grade teacher at verie elementary I'm sure you are aware that few things are as toxic in a brain as Stress and Anxiety the effects of the associated hormones are damaging to any brain but even more so to the developing brains of our students you have the opportunity tonight to mitigate some of the uncertainty that leads to anxiety and stress for students their families teachers and staff it is important that you pass the phase the safety tonight so that students families and teachers can know the precise conditions under which schools will reopen and knowing that they will
115not reopen until it is truly safe to do so I can tell you that while there is still much to be improved as it but as a teacher and what I'm hearing from my students and their families that distance learning is going infinitely better than crisis learning my daily check-ins with students I'm no longer hearing tired and sad rather I hear adjectives like excited proud and happy please commit tonight to making sure we do not come back until is safe for all do not rush us back into uncertainty and danger give students their families and teachers that peace of mind thank you m Melle next up Joseph glatzer hello everybody my name is Joseph glatzer it's my fifth year with the district and I teach seventh grade world history at Hercules middle I greatly miss
116working with my students in person but it's not worth risking Our Lives over please ratify the safety mou tonight not doing so means waivers could be issued to reopen special ed and Elementary in person which puts our are most vulnerable at risk let's let science determine our decisions not political pressure students Educators and families shouldn't have to risk Our Lives due to government failure to defeat this virus and to support the people economically our lives and health are precious we've already had a huge amount of consultation with all stakeholders we are all working so incredibly hard to make distance learning work if we reopen imp person prematurely we'll inevitably have to end up closing within a few weeks due to an outbreak if you don't approve this mou tonight and end up getting waivers for
117special at an elementary educators will have to quit or retire to save their lives and the lives of their families ratify the safety mou tonight thank you I do want to remind some of our speakers we do have theou coming up later if they want to wait and hold their comments for them uh next up AO Wilson good evening trustees in wccusd community my name is s Wilson and I teach African-American literature in creative writing at Richmond High School I am proud to formerly introduce the black Educators Network known as Ben to the 2021 school year as the president I would like to share our vision to support black Educators in wccd by providing a space and opportunity to network communicate support each other and share best practices to assist in increasing the academic and
118social success of black students we will also engage in discourse surrounding r racism and education and how to support each other in this work I am looking forward to collaborating with my fellow black Educators this year thank you thank you Mr Wilson next up Francisco Ortiz good evening board members and Community my name is Francisco Ortiz and I teach at uh Ford Elementary and this is my uh sixth year uh teaching at Ford I'm here to ask you to support the health and safety of our Educators families and students by voting yes on the health and safety mou without any delay this mou was written in collaboration with public health experts administrators parents support staff nurses and Educators it uses science-based standards from some of the most well-respected public health experts in the country and
119it's taken directly from the Harvard Global Health Initiative at the same time last last year our board decided to terminate mindfulness Services citing a lack of Standards now that we have the strongest standards from the premier institution of Higher Learning that centers health and safety for our most impacted students and families who are essential workers I it's unconscionable for me to imagine why anyone would vote no on the health and safety mou for our students families and our Educators who support them please vote yes tonight thank you thank you Mr oeli Garcia uh good evening everyone and board um I am a parent um and also residing in penol I have um I'm here to ask the district for support funding or oversight whatever is necessary for Elizabeth Stewart Elementary School K through eth and
120Peno um the over the past few years there's been a pattern of uh uh lack of uh new teacher hires or stable teacher hires for the school and this year the fifth and sixth grade is experiencing um some challenges and uh as students are on boarding um for the fifth and sixth grade combo this year I'm asking for the district um for additional support again funding or oversight so that children in the fifth and sixth grade as well as the rest of Stuart students are getting the education they deserve um at the beginning of the school year I hope the request is clear thank you thank you mccia thank you Vieira Allen thank you so much trustees um I'm rising today to speak about the $30 million that our district recently received um from the
121government for um Co relief I'm concerned because I know that this money is to go to uh our families as well as to our students to offset the cost at the burden of cost um that this disease and pandemic has caused I am asking that you please not use this money to offset the budget um the budget losses as a result of poor management and bad choices please use this money to buy the necessary PPE that we have to have and that our school communities need please thank you thank you Miss alen di through uh hello um um my name is Matel Cardona okay so this is for uh Mr Matthew Duffy and the school board uh I am I'm in the fifth grade for Stewart Elementary School uh the DLI program okay uh Dear
122Mr Duffy your lack of commitment to the DLI program is destroying the program we lost two very good teachers and four friends to this Ro teacher Miss Rodriguez was fired by the principal and she was a very good teacher our friends William Griffith Javier conas and Giani and marel Moraga left the school due to the lack of actually learning the program is falling and of and all of these parents are fighting for their kids to learn their language my point is we need a new teacher for the fifth SL sl6 grade DLI class the scho the school year has already started and we have no teacher we should not be waiting around like garbage to get a teacher unless that's your plan please give us a teacher me and the rest of my class are
123wasting our brain cells waiting around on a computer need a teacher now thank you our next speaker is Colleen Valentine hello I heard that you guys said we can wait till later but I can't because I teas and need sleep due to the stress of not having the assurances of your signature on theou my name is Colleen Ballentine I teach a mild to moderate self-contained kindergarten first second grade class I sit on the utr exec board as special services director and I am a member of the utrs bargaining team the health and safety mou assures the health and safety of students Educators staff and Community anything less than signing theou tells myself Heth students Educators staff and community that our health and safety are not a significant concern a no vote tells us the board's
124talk of health and safety is just talk and talk is worthless when presented with an opportunity to follow through do not rush safety keep myself my students the community and all of us safe give us your signature please vote yes thank you thank you very much petronila Fernandez petronila [Music] Fernandez okay we're GNA move on to Sarah shokry oh i'mm hi hello you can go okay um hi trustees this is Sarah sh cry I am a teacher at penol Valley high school and I would just like to say that I I hope with all my heart that you vote Yes on the health and safety mou tonight um this this mou is using science-based standards from some of the most respected Public Health experts in the country and it's taken directly from the Harvard Global
125Health Initiative uh Safety First please vote Yes families are depending on you for leadership please vote like your children live here like you live with your senior parents here like you stand to protect every human life here this mou will allow us to full focus our energy on improving distance learning and helping our families so I please please vote yes thank you so much for your time thank you very much for your comment Yan Burell good evening board members safety this is regarding theou yes Safety First and the groups most impacted by any structure of our school's reopening include parents and students this mou shows no participation or even acknowledgement or conversations with any with representation from these groups particularly asset and those representing our students with disabilities this mou one licensed medical professional or
126Public Health institution either mentioned or on the signatory page theou Loosely makes reference to a Harvard report without any citation to an actual report under 4C it mentions how notifications will be done but it does not State the hippoc citation law under 4D it Loosely says coordinate testing where possible a non-committal use of language under 5A it says District based contact tracers again without definition who are these people overall a very Loosely written mou that leaves many doors open and again the most impacted groups are not mentioned as parents and students yes safety first but please look at the contract closely thank you for your comments Jean k k Jean there it is hello I am a teacher at birie elementary I teach kindergarten I would encourage you to vote Yes for theou one of
127the important things to me is that we monitor the surrounding counties because our families and parents go in and out of our County to other counties and if we don't keep in mind the surrounding counties and their covid numbers we're bringing back into our community into our schools and to my school which is highly susceptible to co thank you and aah narz narz aah narz okay moving on John heringer can you hear me yes okay thank you okay uh so what we're suffering here from in West Pont Costa are the negative effects of the badly misplayed National C policy what we see time and again when schools reopen when there's Co in the community is they shut down very shortly uh recognizing this the district and the utr put in a in very short order
128put together a UT uh the mou all kinds of time pressure it's not going to be a perfect document uh but uh teachers have already invested time and effort to follow this tentative plan it was a needed plan because without it teachers would all have their own individual plans which is where we'll be if theou isn't ratified uh thank you thank you that concludes comments okay very good thank you uh next we need to go approve our consent items uh the consent items that have been pulled are C2 C5 and C8 so we need to approve the the remaining items mam chair move approval the remaining items I'll second that thank you moved by Tristy quas passed uh seconded by Tristy panis uh can we have a vote please cotton Blake yes Garcia AA yes
129weas yes and yes Phillips yes Laura yes ah there you are okay thank you passes unanimously and now we are on uh committee Communications do I have that right yes okay superintendent report thank you thank you good evening I'll try to keep my report brief because I know we're late on time and we have another report about sort of the opening of school um so it's been a a packed uh we can go to the next slide we've it's been an absolutely packed uh first eight days of school and want to congratulate everybody uh our teachers staff principles everybody uh who has been able to work so hard uh to create an amazing opening for our students I'm really really really proud of all the work that's been done and then just as we got
130through the week uh then we were you know hit with the smoke um so it's a it's a continued uh exercise in resilience and patience um and making pivots and turns and I just couldn't be more proud of the team uh across the district um we've held our back to school meetings uh this week high schools are tomorrow um to try to get our parents as much information as we possibly could uh with their teachers and one of the biggest pieces of work that we're doing is getting all of our students enrolled in schools uh we are low in grades tkk 7 and nine um and we're digging into those numbers reaching out to our families we know a lot of TK andk families because it's not a mandated grade uh may be choosing to
131keep kids at home this year have to make sure um cotton mention that to do been with a couple of other neighboring um San Jose some of the larger ones like a San Jose and Oakland are also experiencing the same phenomenon uh right now um so um we continue to be operating in logistics Logistics Logistics it's like we can't get information out uh fast enough how do we do this how do we do that um and so you know we continue to ask everybody's patience and understanding every day seems to be a new question that we have to answer um and really uh thankful to our team uh that's trying to work to get so many questions uh answered as much as possible um just some notes you know we had some media cover our
132first day and my report is posted so there are links to those on Univision KTVU and uh we had a we were on the front part of a story about National digital divide on CNET with CNET um you know so uh we're trying to share our story also widely um for the community but policy makers as well um so let's go to our next slide uh just really briefly next board meeting September 9th um really really really want to encourage everybody who's watching and everybody to talk to their neighbors and just make sure you filled out a lunch application um this summer we were supposed to do we were able to do what's called seamless summer where really anyone under the age of 18 um and then I think that got even more flex but
133could pick up a lunch or a lunch dinner um and now we don't have that flexibility so you have to have an ID to get that meal so you have to have your lunch form um and of course that's a huge source of revenue for us um and the federal government has not flx on that so we really really do need everyone um to fill out those forms um and we actually think we should be higher than normal because of the tremendous kind of economic strain that families are facing um wanted to just let the community know we'll continue with our Friday Communications so that's our expectation of ourselves that we put out something to the community consistently on Friday days um so please expect that with as much clarity as possible trying to get
134out our parent guide which a lot of folks have worked on uh including many of our parents out this Friday um and just a note and this will probably come up a little bit in phase two but we had originally talked about a hub idea for our students at some of our schools if and when we open them but since we're really not we're not able to do that right now I am working with a set of community providers that are interested in opening their spaces for very small groups of students um and really seeing what they need and if we can support them with any internet or any uh facilities ventilation help organizations like Bright Futures uh Richmond Police Athletic League um the YMCA rise Center folks who have physical spaces um that may
135want to host some students and help them get on their Zoom calls uh in any way so I'm working with the county on that U Martin Blake Community engagement and others to see if we can provide some support and service for our families who really need that um and again we'll talk more in our opening of school um report go much more in depth but that is that's my superintendent report um and I will be back on a little bit later so thank you very much uh thank you Mr Duffy raised I'm not sure we do have one hand raised oh okay go ahead Joselyn Rohan josn are you there okay sorry about that never mind okay all right thank you and uh next is our student board member report so this is like I
136said earlier in the meeting a first for us trying to get to hear our student board members before it gets too late um so I want to invite um let's just randomly start with uh Kaden truste cotton Blake um if You' want to share a few words um about sort of what's going on with you and your fellow students over um these last eight days of school and then we'll go to um Stephanie all right thank you superintendent Duffy um amazing opportunity by the way uh so good evening everyone um for those of you who don't know me my name is Kaden cotton Blake and I'm a senior at Middle College High School uh for those of you who may not know what middle college is it's a dual enrollment uh high school that's located
137at contracosta College we take our high school and college classes simultaneously so we are on a bit of a different schedule than the rest of the district um so we've been in school for this is our fourth week now um that we've been working with distance learning and we've been um doing pretty well so far since our last meeting my college and high school classes have officially resumed and my classmat tonight are glad glad to be back um it has been a challenge to get acclimated to the online learning but um with the support of our principal Miss pra our counselor Miss Martinez and the staff at middle college and Contra Casta College we're off to a great start um also one thing that's been really outstanding is our um ability to utilize the the
138zoom platform in such a short period of time um we started out originally with teachers uh fumbling in a sense trying to figure out their way around but with the help of not only um the staff but also some of the students like myself we were able to get on track very quickly and now we run just as smoothly as we did in school which is um really fascinating to see seeing that this is the first time we're doing this um and so so far we're doing great we've started our college classes now one issue that I may put up is that um and this only really affects Middle College as we have our college classes uh some of the classes have embedded uh software that they use let's say for keyboarding class for example
139they have a software that you can only use at the school that's embedded into the computers as well as the books that go with that software so there are some classes that were originally in our curriculum that had to be shifted and had to be changed because the college couldn't adapt quick enough necessarily um which hasn't posed in a large problem but it's just something that's been um a bit off compared to our regular years but so far we're off to a good start thank you thank you very much thank you it's great uh trusty Garcia Avila um for me I was a bit worried about the schedule going into like the school year because it was so different from like Richmond highs um we went from seven to now like having 4x4 um so
140it's like a different change but honestly like I think it's a great schedule um just having that time to just quote unquote chill you know after classes is nice um I usually get a break that's more than an hour um so it's nice to just like take some time and do asynchronous work and also synchronous um and I don't think I've had a problem with anything so far everything's been great um the shift has been a lot more smooth than um when we first came into it so yeah great thank you very much trusty Garcia Aila great all right um next is our uh do standing reports yes and we do have a few reports um first one will be Marissa gluten with utr let me um Marissa are you there hello I'm here can
141you hear me yes great thank you all so much for having me for those of you who don't know me I am Marissa gliden president of uttr um first I'd like to take a minute to recognize our Educators Educators have faced a challenging first few weeks of school not only are they learning a new way of educating students online but they also faced power outages wildfires air quality concerns and a global pandemic I been so impressed with the dedication and work that our Educators have been putting into dist learning I also want to thank parents for their support in particular I want to thank the parent leadership Council for their partnership and feedback I am hopeful that this distance learning experience will help Educators and parents form an even stronger connection I want to give
142an extra shout out to our Educators who are also parents they're not only balancing the needs of their students but also of their own children and most importantly I want to appreciate students it breaks my heart that we aren't at a safe enough point to serve our students in the classroom students are missing out on a traditional School experience because of the mismanagement and mistakes of our government our Educators want nothing more than to be in the classroom planning for distance learning is challenging and Educators became teachers and support providers so they could work directly with students not through a screen but the safety and health of our students and Community must be our number one priority our Educators parents and students are putting in the work with distance learning in order to keep our
143entire Community safe and healthy the virus has not gone away in our community and there's growing evidence that children can get and spread the virus in Contra Costa County 1,868 children under age 17 have tested positive and this has been while schools have been closed there seems to be a lot of misinformation about our mou so I would like to make a few things very clear over the last several months utr has worked in partnership with public health experts nurses parents including the parent leadership Council the other unions in the district and District staff to write anou based on the scientif ific guidelines provided by the Harvard Global Health Initiative which has been noted in the New York Times The Washington Post and several scientific Publications we also Incorporated student survey data that was presented
144by student leaders this summer these guidelines are written by some of the most well-respected public health experts and scientists from top universities It Was Written independent of political influence every part of our mou has been checked and verified by public health experts including infectious disease experts at ucsa who are currently studying covid-19 we have included extensive feedback from members of our community when creating this mou it was extremely collaborative process I'd like to emphasize a few important parts of theou unlike County guidelines the guidelines in this mou emphasize Equity by using zip code data rather than County averages to make decisions for example right now the county average over the last 14 days in our county has been 260 cases but in San Pablo there have been 900 6 cases over the same time period
145we cannot physically reopen schools until it is safe for all zip codes and our mou emphasizes that un like County guidelines our emphasizes increased testing and contact tracing right now there are not enough testing sites in hard- hit communities like Richmond and San Pablo and it can take up to 15 days to get testing results this is simply unacceptable and in order to sa safely reopen schools we need to meet testing and contact tracing standards like the ones that are included in our we also hope that this mou will encourage our County Health officials to increase testing contact tracing and free access to Healthcare in our communities we want to go back to physical schools but it should not be our burden alone to Bear if the federal state and County governments want to bring
146students and Educators back to campus they must invest their time and resources into making it safe by suppressing Community spread unfortunately many of our Educators wanted to speak up tonight but they're not able to stay up late speaking at board members as speaking at board meetings as they have their hands full with lesson planning I hope that you received the many emails that our members wrote tonight I'm speaking on behalf of them the nearly 1100 Educators who have signed a safe school pledge and are willing to support their colleagues in a safety walk out if health conditions aren't met because utr members believe that an injury to one is an injury to all educators are grateful that this board has emphasized the need to protect students St and staff some board members have even stated
147that they wouldn't feel comfortable sending their own children to school however our Educators need more than just your word the best way to show Educators that you value their health and safety is by voting to support our mou that has been used that used a collaborative process and vote on it tonight without delay this will provide peace of mind to all Educators and allow them to focus their time and attention on planning and providing excellent distance learning to our students voting yes tonight we'll show you to our members that you support Union agreements made at the bargaining table especially because we made an intentional effort to make it a collaborative process and most importantly voting yes tonight will show our community that you value their health and safety above all else thank you for your
148time thank you Miss glinton okay uh next standing report sorry I didn't realize I was muted our next report is D go with the CD good evening a couple of days ago I emailed a detailed letter to the board of education and relevant staff members with regards to the proposed request for qualifications and proposals for a new performance auditor for the nearly $700 million left in the district's Bond program I'm optimistic that the board received this letter and read it before tonight because I don't have all the email addresses for the 253,000 residents of West County I was unable to email them a copy of this CR critical letter and in the off chance that some of you on the board may have elected to read it at a later time please let me touch
149on the high points of the letter and the issues that brought us to this point in the months leading up to the March 3rd election where the voters cast their ballots to tax themselves through measure R for an additional $575 million senior District staff repeatedly told the voters that any previous distrust they had in the board and the district to properly spend their tax dollars was unjustified because the district had such a great Bond oversight committee and exhaustive and thorough audits shortly after measure R was passed though and the board had an opportunity to work with the cboc on updating the board policy covering the cboc what we heard and saw was some serious push back including suggestions that the cboc be eliminated even though this is in violation of what the people of California
150voted on when they approved Proposition 39 after nearly two and a half years of negotiations and working with board members and staff to finalize these updates the push back was severe enough at least for the time being to Simply let the matter drop at the facilities meeting of July 23rd staff proposed an QP requesting a new performance auditor while it's always good to put out such a request to keep everyone honest and keep the costs competitive this proposal reduce the audit scope down to only what is required by the state for lack of a better way to describe this scope this is pretty much Bare Bones and my comments to the facilities committee I suggested that the district go to walmart.com to order a generic performance audit where they simply inserted the name of the
151district and a few numbers and call it good I apologize but I couldn't think of anything cheaper or less comprehensive to compare this to if this proposal was used for educating our kids we would be limited to the three Rs Reading Writing and arithmetic and little more no Arts no social sciences sciences no ethnic studies nothing because the state really doesn't require much more than that do they of course I'm being factious but maybe the board and the public gets the point year after year this community has demanded transparency when it comes to the bond program do I have to remind anyone about the grand jury investigation and Report the wildely expensive forensic investigative audit and the numerous newspaper editorials and all excoriating the District staff and elected board members about what they believe to
152be the mismanagement of bond funds if the public knew about this barebones proposal what do you suppose their reaction might be paraphrasing paraphrasing cboc member Anton yir the CBC believes that this community would demand an audit of the effectiveness and results of the expenditures of the $575 million of measure R dollars and the remaining funds of the bond fund the last compliance audit the district had was in fiscal 16 and that audit was only eight pages and made made no recommendations the performance audit for last year had 29 29 Effectiveness and results recommendations of which the district did not respond as required by the Education Code so so we don't know if any of those have even been implemented if that same if that same facilities uh committee staff reported that and I quote adding
153additional scope usually translate to more staff time spent pulling documents for the audit completing only the statutorily required performance audit allows staff to redirect redirect their efforts on implementing the recommendation ations and objectives from prior year audits in addition uh adding more scope would cost the district additional dollars end quote we have no reason to think that the District staff would try to pull the wool over the community's eyes as they spend our tax dollars so if the real reason for the Bare Bones approach of the performance audit is Manpower and staff we may have a solution to your uh for your consideration at the August 10th cboc meeting we unanimously passed a motion stating that the district charged the cost of prop 39 school bond Financial Audits and compliance and Effectiveness and results performance
154audits to the building fund fund 21 to reduce the burden to the general fund make sure we were on Solid ground with this proposal we pulled up an opinion from the California attorney general an opinion from The District's own Bond Council an opinion from by fmat and then an opinion by the cbo's legal uh independent legal councel all validating their proposal is legitimate and on solid legal footing all this was attached to the letter that I sent you and tomorrow afternoon's facilities committee there will be a report on or presentation on this matter we have no idea what will be included in this report since there's nothing other than the synopis uh to the agenda packet in other matters the cboc is looking forward to the ribbon cutting of the Michelle Obama school we hope
155that the district will show its respect of inviting us to that event we're still working diligently to update the cboc website we appreciate the efforts that has been made on the in the cing month we or so we expect to go over item by item to ensure that everything is current uh as another reminder our next meeting will be hosted at 2 pm on Monday afternoon September 14th all are welcome as is it you can go to the district's website and pull down the link thank you thank you Mr cosney our next report is from Jose DeLeon Mr delion yes um board members Mr deffy uh first of all thank you uh for this first uh eight days of school um we have seen a lot of success as far as organizing from our principles
156to make sure the students are coming back to campus also I'd like to thank the principals that work tirelessly throughout the whole summer to make sure that the programs are up and running for students when they got uh on campus also all the planning they've been doing for material distribution for organizing their site and making sure that the staff that is on site is safe and continue to improve safety as we get closer to any type of reopening also um we'd like to make sure that we continue open conversations as we move forward in this year things are changing quickly we want to make sure that everyone's voice is being heard a lot of our principles have been doing a lot of work with our communities and we're finding that part of the technology Gap
157is not only for students but it's also for our parents they have been working very diligently to make sure our parents are becoming familiar with the technology that has being used by their students and also uh navigating the forms in the new digital forms that have to be done so we want to make sure that as more information comes out we're able to report to the directors in the different departments in the district for support additionally we are working hard to support the sites that are still have some staffing issues we need to make sure that as principles are doing their interviews to get people into the sites that can coordinate the quick process of teachers our students are always in the Forefront of of this conversation so I like to appreciate the thoughtfulness of
158the principles and assistant principles as they make decisions that keep the students at the center as much as we want to continue uh working to protect the the adults on campus we also make sure that that our students are safe also um like to thank the organization on sites as they're Distributing materials and they're keeping families safe as they're coming up to the schools to pick up the utensils that they need in order to continue distance learning technology is always on the back of our mind technology is the part that is the most essential during this time um and we' like to thank uh Tracy Logan for helping our staff um our teachers update their computer so they can work well from home also um would like to thank the teachers that are making the
159campus safe for those teachers who are choosing to teach from the campus overall communication is what we want to express to the board as we keep more communication open we'll be able to move forward through these times thank you have a good night thank you Mr Deon we do have one more report that is Shakira Reynolds Miss Reynolds are you there yes I actually wasn't giving a report I was going to comment on the report if you guys want to close I had a public comment okay ass that have their report okay so zalon can uh do the asset report and then I'll do public comment if that's okay Ruben yes no problem I'm gonna put you back in the queue and zalon are you thank you thank you so much and thank you Bo
160good evening good evening my name is Lan Harrison I'm the asset chair and I heard a lot this evening about um people oh Ruben I'm sorry um Yolanda's gonna be need needed to be unmuted Yolanda ver Allen because she's gonna actually read uh the report I'm just introduction right now Yanda you're uh available to speak now okay all right thank you um so I just wanted to let you guys know that I heard a lot about um um people wanting to support black students with closing the achievement Gap in the district how you guys are working one thing that you guys will hear um more about in our report mention us say that this is what we're going to do for black students say it don't just let it be oh this is a category
161and you guys fall in there call it out and also if you guys received that report um we referenced to Scotty Smith's letter however her name should not have been on end of our reporting an accident so please forgive us and with no further Ado Yolanda Allen our secretary is going to follow up with our report thank you good evening Board of Trustees superintendent Duff Duffy and the West Contra Casta School Community we hope you you and your families are safe and well tonight the Smoky Skies that we've been experiencing and so many of our neighbors of Blaze is really reflective of the the crisis in our district and the anticipated tragedies that are upon us all we have been yelling fire for several years and it starting to feel like you our Educators our
162firefighters are just sitting back and letting us burn our children's needs are not being addressed where is the water to quench their thirst for knowledge and put these fires out we started in January asking to be seen we came back in February to report no change in March we yelled fire again to no avail we warned then our children would struggle with distance learning we asked for intervention support we ask for engaging materials and provided you with plans and a budget for it and we got nothing we came back in April and May asking for summer intervention we watch while firefighters poured fresh cold water on homes that weren't even on fire now they're blooming and our children can't breathe lungs filled with smoke and Ash Midway through our second week of school and we
163are still waiting our Scholars are not receiving the support needed in the recommendations and allocations for our lowest performing students we are still invisible we engaged with the processes available to us we went to the relaunch meetings we gave our best thinking to our teams we have been meeting with Mr Duffy yet it is feeling like a big waste of our time we have been very clear that we need embedded programs and services to address the academic situation of African-American children this has gone unheeded of course we have been told we hear you Equity is at the front of what we do but when it comes to clear provision of resources we are nowhere to be seen we don't see ourselves in your plans mean meanwhile our superintendent has no compunction in coming to you
164to ask for 350,000 for his pet projects but when we protest reminding him that we are his roadmap priorities we're getting platitudes and empty promises we have asked Mr Duffy for the full allocation of ASAT budget we continue to get the same old story of not enough no money for us we can give you a little bit but we just don't know how we're going to make in Meet trustees our recommendation is that it is time to begin the search for someone who knows how to do this the continuity learning the learning uity plan as written has many ambiguities and fails to specifically call out the minutes of live teacher instruction it is lacking a spe on live versus video and it does not clearly delineate how and who will lead the breakout sessions for
165interventions these interventions are so important for our students they need that one onone they need your focus they need to be the priority 4S right now tomorrow please I'm complete thank you Miss alen so we do have two hands raised for public comment on stany reports okay um so let me Miss Reynolds um go ahead good evening again board um I am speaking now in support of the health and safety mou brought forth by utr and the teamsters I do want to say that there was by parents um we discussed this in intensely in our meetings and I just want to raise how important it is that we do things that are Equitable this has to be everybody's problem until it is no one's problem if we do waivers and things like that we will
166find parts of our community that have less people of color and less essential workers able to reopen their schools sooner than our flatland schools and I just don't want to put I I have special needs students I don't want to put my children and other students or parents and families and teachers in danger so I would really ask that you support theou right now so that parents and families and teachers can plan for the future um and as always I would also like to support ASAT in the lifting of making sure that the needs of African-American students are front and center in the LCP thank you thank you Mr Reynolds uh and last one Sarah shook right hi um I think I may have gone a little early before so I'm back again just to
167make sure that my voice is heard um I'm a parent and a teacher for wccusd um I love this place I love our families I just want us to be safe and I am here to support theou and to ask you to please vote Yes on theou in order to support the safety of our communities um please I I know that many of you are parents here and many of you are also raising your families here so please vote like vote for the safety of your families uh vote for all of our families because we depend on you and please vote like your children live here like your senior parents live here with you like you to protect every human life imuno comprom compromised everything within our district thank you so much for your time
168thank you that concludes that okay and now in memory Mr Duffy yes we do have an inmemory um agenda item this evening the district would like to take time to recognize the contributions of members of our school Community who have passed away the district requests the community to submit names to be reported as a regular part of each agenda Mr Arnaldo adal recent alal excuse me recently passed away he was an elementary teacher at verie elementary and worked for the district from 1999 until his retirement in 2015 our thoughts go out to the family and friends in their loss of their loved one you can take a moment of silence thank you thank you okay um Now we move to our discussion items uh an update on cash flow projections and I will remind us
169that we did in agenda planning try hard to put time limits on our items um but we can't always predict how many folks are coming and some very productive public comment this evening but uh we had uh initially slated 10 minutes for this item um E1 good evening Trust I'm going to try to go very quick if we can bring up the actual cash flow handout really quickly I'm going to do just a very fast summary previously we brought cash flow to the board and we talked about the fact that the board will the district will have an issue in the second half of next year of this fiscal year because of the state not providing apportionment for the months of February through June of 2021 that means that the district would not be receiving
170its full cash and still need to be making all of our payments we subsequently met with the County Treasurer and we've been able to confirm that as a teeter County the Contra Costa County Treasurer's Office shall consider the district to have received every dollar of our property tax for July so if you'll scroll down just a little bit on this 2020 cash flow document there you will see that we receive approxim um where it says other current assets there the $110 million there and so this is um last year if you can go to the next page on this document there should be the current years which is fiscal 2021 if you scroll down you'll see the 97 million that we receive in cash we're allowed to count that in our bottom line as far
171as the count is concerned without taking any loan and that will count towards our cash flow so if you take a look at the ending cash you can see that all the way through until you get to February where we're three million negative we do have positive cash flow in the month of February we would be able to utilize interfund borrowing because we have funds well over 10 to 12 million that we could use to maintain cash flow without having to do any loans the challenge becomes in the months of May and June there as you can see it shows ne5 and then the large negative of 62 million the county will allow us to borrow at the current rate of interest plus 10 basis points so today that would be just over 1.01% directly
172from the county we'll just have to pass a resolution in March or April as we monitor the cash we send it to them every month they're reconciling as well as we are and with that borrowing the district will be able to 100% meet our cash obligations this year even with the state not providing us our funding so that is the simple punchline the county contracosta county is stepping up and working with this District to make sure that we can pay our bills and pay our employees even if the state delays the funds with that I'll open it to any questions trustees do we have any questions or comments justy cotton Blake um I have no uh questions or comments at this this time truste Garcia Aila I don't have any questions or comments at this
173time Tristy quas uh I don't have any questions and I have plenty of choice words for the state and the federal government but I'm going to keep those to myself trusty panis uh thank you uh clerk I have a couple of questions here so um Dr W the board was supposed to receive a plan for inter fund borrowing for each month um when I look at the spreadsheet I don't see anything in the interfund transfers line does that mean we're doing no interfund borrowing this year the first time we may have to do interfund borrowing is in the month of February where we have that negative3 million however we have not Incorporated all of the cares act funds that'll be coming through as well as carryover cash that once we do our budget revision we'll
174adjust the cash flow so we may not even need to do that so as of today we have had no need to bring to the board that resolution but as we promised should we need to we will prior to it being necessary okay thank you um you know we haven't really seen much detail on the cares and the Esser funds and I don't think you have an affirm you today but perhaps in the Friday memo I'd love to see uh information individually for care is an Esser about What's the total amount we expect to receive for each of them from January 1st of this year going through June 30th of next year and when we you know I assume that's not all coming at once it's coming in pieces when we're going to get that
175I think that'd be very help helpful for us to understand this because for example when I look at our budget numbers at the last column of of the spreadsheet I see that our federal revenue is up $20 million uh from last year in fact it looks like we're actually showing a surplus throughout a deficit for the entire year the way the budget sits right now so that is correct on the 9th of September we'll be bringing forward the UN audited actuals we have not closed the books due to covid there's been quite a few changes that have delayed our closing and so we're scrambling to get it done for the nth but indeed we will have approximately $30 million over the two years that will come through our accounts plus the adjustments from the budget
176adoption there is going to be some significant carryovers that will change not only our cash but our budget situation and we will present how the cares act funds were used between March and June it's going to be very odd because we received none of those funds until about a month ago we're starting to get them but we're gonna have what's called negative carryover never done that before but it's a new Sach thing we're going to have to do where we actually charge things and I'll explain all that on the 9th to the board we don't have the final numbers yet because we've been unable to close the books due to delays with saxs coding and other pieces that are out of our control I understand I think it' be great if we could get that
177information about the total amount of the cares and Sr money that we're expecting for the for those TW for those 18 months yes and like when we expect to be receiving it so we have Clarity on that absolutely okay thank you those are my questions Madam chair just a point of clarification to Mr Pan's question Dr W I believe that all of the cares act allotments are publicly available on the CD website is that correct they are and it's approximately 30 million in the seven different pieces okay so anybody who wants to know specific dollars can go to the city website and type our school district in and you'll see how much yeah and and we will outline it all on the nth very clearly in that presentation right thank you okay uh trusty Phillips
178I do not have any comments thank you thank you um I don't have any comments either uh president Hernandez Jarvis I do not have any comments either thank you thank you Dr W yes thank you for the report and now we are on the back to school report that's correct okay so this is going to be a joint report from different members of Staff uh outlining different areas of the work that folks are responsible for um so we wanted to give an update to the board um about how things have been going what's in place uh and share as much as we can so as I mentioned in my superintendence report uh today is day eight of school um and we can go to our first slide um and again thanks to everybody working together
179see all the logos and names of the teams so really really really appreciate it we can go to our next slide um so you know we see the classic picture of the building the plane while we're flying it and I do think we did a lot of work this summer to be prepared and build this plane uh but we continue to learn um and new things come such as uh attendance and engagement we now have new words from the state Like official engagement and things that we have to learn how to do um on the fly so uh we're continuing to try to be as patient as possible and work through these new challenges okay um just moving my screen so we all we've said this uh from throughout the summer we were not going
180to open school as we knew it and that things are different um we did start with the long-term safety of our students and staff and that's really what brought us fully into distance learning and we've really worked in collaboration I really believe the model that we put put forward uh the program that we put forward really did reflect uh what we heard from folks through the spring and the summer so this is uh been a really big success for us uh the negotiations with our labor Partners you know we have five different unions uh in this District um and you know it's been an incredible SU success for us I hear from some of my colleagues around the bay and around the state just how difficult it has been to craft M us to get
181agreements to get everybody on the same page um and I really credit the work of of our whole team uh to get there and get us in a place where we could open School uh with that I'm going to turn this slide and a few of the next slides over to Dr wal so the key piece in the middle of this and bold is actually language that ended up in the states language as it pertained to engagement which is the care and direction of the teacher that is the official definition that came out of the state's guidance as we play out for how we are to address teaching in distance learning we put this together and entered into this semu before the state guidance came out and we're we really want to applaud all four
182of our bargaining units especially our teachers who really stood in there and recognized that we needed to build upon what we did on the flip immediately back in the spring to build a robust program that was going to make a difference for kids that was going to ensure that we're addressing our English language Learners ensure that we have ways to get to our atrisk students ensure that we're connecting with parents and students and so the teachers union really put that together they did more Outreach and focused groups beyond what the district did just to make sure that we were getting it right next slide please and so we really did try to put things together and have something that was flexible to meet those High need students and the fact that our schools are not
183the same if you're in a flatland school you're up in the hills they have different needs and we needed to have the ability to adjust and not try to create a one- siiz fits-all model that fits nobody we've all seen this signs of equity where people are on different boxes to look over the fence but the reality is you got to knock the fence over and that was our goal of being flexible and it was inclusive we really did listen to every stakeholder and put their feedback into what was finalized not every group gets exactly what they want that's part of the negotiations to get something done but the elements were there and we're ready to Pivot we can take our model and flip and go back when it is safe it's not safe to
184today but it will be at some point and we're ready to go we're adjusting as conditions change and this week has been the perfect example we've had to change every single day the first week of school there was some new challenge that our teachers and our Educators and our staff Rose above to make a difference and Equity was always on the Forefront when we talk about the budget on the 9th we're going to talk about how we were able to meet almost all of the goals the board asked us to do and have a way to get out of our budget crisis even during this pandemic because again we focused on equity and put our dollars where the most needy students were next slide please and so we've shown this before we're now in the
185inform train and engage function we have started and now our focus is Shifting to assisting those that aren't able to make the transition perfectly to give them that training and engage each and every student in their learning with that I'd like to pass it over to our chief academic officer Mr aelo to go through the academic components of theou yes thank you Dr Ren good evening trustees um so I have the pleasure to speak to the fact that we well we started school August 17th came and went um we were prepared and ready and I really do want to commend every staff teacher administrator custodio staff everyone who really pitched in to get schools open on the 17th um the amount of support we've Pro provided families getting materials out to students it's a lot
186of it was a heavy lift and everyone did a commendable job next slide and as of course it it wasn't going to be easy enough to just pull off a distance learning plan we had some uh environmental factors that played into the first week of school as you all are aware led into this week next slide so just to speak to a few of the components of our mou and our schedule uh we do have a schedule that accounts for 240 instructional minutes of learning daily now that is a combination of both live and independent work you're not going to see 240 of minutes of live instruction but you doce are getting families are getting to of work um day including Fridays we do have a daily live home room that is important because that
187allows for the social emotional connections that teachers can make with their students we get to see our students and it's also the place where we take live attendance daily there are office hours which allow for our teachers to connect in small groups oneon-one in a variety of different ways to intervene when necessary for students next slide now in addition to some of these you will find that each of our schools has a common Learning Management platform our default platform for the district is seesaw for the younger kids and Google classroom for older kids there are a couple exceptions to that but they are whole school decisions that were made Peno Valley High School is an example of that where they're using canvas as a pilot whole school and not necessarily using Google or seesaw we
188also made sure that for our high schools especially in secondary schools we have less classes in a given day so you're seeing block scheduling that spread out the courses um Richmond High for example is doing a 2 by two block where students take two courses a day much longer time frames for those courses and then I want to also point out that on each of our school schedules on Friday there is dedicated time for Family Outreach that's really vital in this environment we want to have the opportunities for our families to connect with their teachers and for teachers to connect with families when there are challenges or just to see what kind of supports they need next slide so one of the things that we're looking at or we planned for this year that's really
189important is how do we move an organization how do we really truly impact the tier one instruction that we know is vital and critical to improving the performance for our kids and one of the things we're banking on is the level of adult learning learning that's necessary and supported by our district so on Fridays which is our Wellness Friday a big portion of that time is for us to really impact the adults in our system and to make sure that they're prepared and ready to serve every child that we see so we've made a dedicated effort for race and equity and diversity professional development not just for teachers for all staff and so you're going to see that bringing in your custodians your office staff and really making sure that everyone in this organization is
190receiving that training and that support and it's not a oneandone you're going to see that Beyond this year it's it's we're trying to make sure that that is a systematic change in our organization so you also will find for our teachers we know that this type of environment requires more planning time so there is daily planning time every and then you'll also see that we have specific academic training um I want to applaud Tracy Logan and her team the amount of tech training they've provided not only for teachers but par professionals um office staff really the whole organization we're all learning for the first time together next slide so these couple slides really just show an example of the types of schedules we see these are more the generic schedules that then schools use to
191build off their schedule so these are two examples of the elementary blocks and you can see where Home Room fits in for some schools where there is Daily Office hours including the Family Outreach on Fridays next slide here's two examples of what secondary schedules might look like a 3X3 block or a 4x4 block and you can see less classes per day but really the emphasis on you know providing students with enough touch points and um time and energy next slide this uh slide here shows our schedule for professional development like I mentioned earlier we are doing a huge investment on ensuring our adults are getting the necessary training and we we Bank on that being the biggest impact quite honestly on student learning when you have a trained Workforce you you're going to see movement
192in the in the system as we can complete so we have a four-week f five-week schedule we know that week five only exist this once or twice during the calendar year um but in the 4-we schedule you'll see that there're centrally supported or centrally LED professional development for all and then there are opportunities for sta site and staff-led professional development as well next slide so this slide here really speaks to the types of opportunities that we have with our Wellness Friday so Wellness Friday in addition to providing the adults the opportunity to learn it's really an opportunity for us to provide our students um other opport other opportunities to work together so you're going to start to see as we build Wellness Friday out our partners coming in and supporting this work um you're going
193to see in addition to site based offerings we're going to have centrally based offerings so you'll you'll have schools that will be able to or students from different schools connecting as well it won't just be site based so we are working um with Community engagement and a number of different folks trying to build our partnership here to offer um a variety of things one of our Teamsters for example um who's on a committee with us he he would love to do an Iron Chef Friday where he leads students through different cooking activities so it is an opportunity for us to look at within our organization and even outside organization how we can support students in this Friday next slide please and I'm actually going to turn it over to Tracy Logan to talk about attendance
194and attendance tracking great thanks Ruben so as Mr Duffy was mentioning um we are learning a new language attendance and engagement are new terms that the state has given us and so we've been making sense of what does that mean exactly in our system how does that that show up and how are we making sure that we're consistent about it throughout the system so we talk about this in that students this year in distance learning will be receiving three kinds of marks an attendance mark an engagement Mark and a grade A grading Mark so attendance is something that we're most familiar with and you can see in this slide that as attendance taking occurs in home room every student has a Home Room whether they're in elementary or in secondary they're in that Home Room
195Monday through Friday and that Home Room will continue throughout the year so it's an excellent place to build community social emotional development and place for for teachers to really know who their students are and what's going on in their lives there's always an opportunity if a student has to miss Home Room that the student can interact with the teacher sometime before 3:00 that day in order to be marked present and this attendance taking happens in power school as it normally does now the second Mark is engagement so engagement is a little bit trickier concept so a student can be physically absent from a class but still do the work and when that happens that student is engaged and is marked as engaged so that it's very different to think about attendance versus engagement but those
196two markers together really tell you a lot about what's going on for students and the ways in which students need support so both attendance and engagement are coded by teachers in power school our student information system and then that data is tracked per Ed code once a student misses 60% or more either attendance or engagement we have to intervene so we're tracking that data and then there'll be course for Intervention when a student misses more than 60% for attendance the treny process kicks in similarly if they miss more than 60% for engagement then the care cost process kicks in and we look at what are the what's going on with this student what are the supports that they need so we can help them re-engage both are required to meet the instructional minutes and then
197technology access so not only we're learning new languages we're learning technology first and foremost is making sure everyone has access so over the last couple of weeks we have distributed 4,000 additional Chrome home books those primarily went to our youngest Learners our preschool students our TKS our KS and first graders we have distributed around in the neighborhood of 2,000 student hotspots by request and as needed we've been able to partner with six Community groups that are functioning as Community hubs so our Bright Futures and a number of our y Care Centers to get them hooked up with super spots to provide internet for students who are there doing their distance learning we've provided 550 staff laptops including our classroom AIDS not all of those have been distributed yet due to the air quality we had
198to postpone some of that but that is underway we've received in the neighborhood of 1,200 parent and student support requests over the last week um the phones and the emails have just been ringing off the hook and we've been getting to those as quickly as we can so that we can support families and students to get connected and get on online and then staff requests uh 2300 St staff requests so really busy connecting with folks and making sure everyone has the access that they need and so we've really had our staff has immediately shifted their roles many of our classified in particular their job has had to change dramatically from what their job description has and was and if you look at the classified mou they immediately came to the table and said okay we
199understand we're going to have to do different work let's negotiate so that our staff can be right there to help on the front lines as um Ruben stated Ruben aelo stated we do have we have a food service worker that's saying hey I can do some of that social support for you and help connect on that Iron Chef we've been doing the grab and grow meals we served over three million meals during the summer we're hoping to get that flexibility back to serve every child under 18 we're also adjusting those social spaces because every everything we've done is about ensuring the safety of our staff that are out there on the front line serving our students next slide please and so we built a robust contact tracing protocol that we've identified two individuals in the
200district that are the focal point for any concerns should we have an employee that tests positive we have process and procedure to go through to ensure that everybody knows how to communicate and that we're maintaining safety we're in the process of working on a public service announcement video that we hope to share if all goes well at the next board meeting to show how we're making a difference to make sure that our students and our staff stay safe all the way through with our district nurses and our district security officers part of that process to ensure next slide and so you can see that this is a large flowchart we're not going to go into detail there but it pretty much takes you down every scenario of what happened and how you can ensure that
201you're able to continue providing service each and every day even while we're shut down with that I'm gonna hand it back to the superintendent to close out our phase oneou back to school presentation and you're muted sir I mentioned earlier uh our work to um continue to look at Community hubs uh in a way to support our our students and really want to thank our team um you know our technology department has been able to get out and help certain Community organizations like the Y care facilities Bright Futures and others get some internet access that they might not have been able to have um and so we're again really trying to figure out um any ways that we can support support our students and families who need it the most um some of our next
202steps and key work big one is attendance and engagement monitoring uh Chromebook and internet access support that's a big one we continue to work on really ensuring proper special education services this is a big one for us really any way that we can make sure our special education students get the services they need and are mandated to have in their IEP that's what we're working on uh the student IDs for lunch pickup we can't emphasize that enough we wish everybody could just grab and go but that's not the rules that we're under right now uh really really deepening our quality curriculum our curricular unit so that students have real units of study that they're working on not just busy work not just do this long assignment for tomorrow but really deep learning which is what
203we've been talking about in our road map for quite some time getting our academic assessments of students done now so we really know where everybody is at uh continued parent and family communication and the programming of Wellness Fridays I do want to say um you know we had some comments earlier in during public comment around Stuart school and I really really um want to you know send my apologies out to those students um in that five six class that were not able to open with a teacher um we've been working hard we have a couple of possibilities so that that class will have a teacher there on the first day you know we've done well with just having a few last vacancies across our 1500 teachers um so you know I'm proud that we have
204qualified folks in pretty much all our classrooms but for the few students who had to start with a a substitute or not a permanent teacher you know that's never easy and never easy in the virtual environment so um to you all I'm really sorry and we're working to get that uh fixed as soon as we possibly can um and with that Mr Mr Duffy sorry to interrupt that board in public I just want to also um acknowledge that we have received information about that situation and I won the board and um you to work together so that we make sure that you know that class is taken care of because we want all kids to have a teacher and especially kids who have had already issues like this before absolutely absolutely thank you um and
205so that's where we are you know eight days into school uh proud of the work we know we've got challenges ahead of us um and we really thankful for everybody's patience and flexibility and resilience as we get the work underway that's our report trusty L I think you're muted you so much thank you again and now it's time for comments questions for about this phase oneou from our trustees uh trustee cutton Blake I always forgetting about that I'm so sorry I apologize yes comment okay so let's go to uh Eric Smith you have one minute hi uh good even trustees my name is Eric Smith I'm the executive director of The Ed Roberts campus in Berkeley and I'm a parent of a West Contra Costa student and my wife's a teacher with the district and
206I think it's been a great couple of weeks and I think we've really moved smoothly from I guess crisis teaching to now actual distance learning and I think it's been uh really successful and to keep the quality High I'm really asking you to support um the health and safety of Educators and families and students by voting yes on theou tonight and I think everyone stressed parents teachers students and we all really need some stability and being able to count on having a plan that we can all just stick to for a while um but a huge amount of work has gone into creating theou and voting yes tonight would really allow us to move forward and it's safe and I think intentional manner so thank you for that and thanks for um your commitment to
207thank you Mr Smith next is Maisha Harris cash good evening um I'm just kind of perplexed I'm not sure why this would even be a question of not uh supporting theou from any of the trust so if there's any reservation about s it I would say you Take the Lead first you take your children your grandchildren your nieces your nephews or whatnot and you go into the schools and either you teach some classes you drive some buses um you walk the hallways and be the csos you take the lead first and then we'll see and maybe we will follow so I'm just kind of not not even sure why we are where we are right now about even questioning um signing this mou after all the data and information that was uh put forth by
208by my union president and then just with that being said um Miss Hernandez Chavez I pray that you feel better and other than that everybody have a warmy blessed night and um that's all I have to say thank you thank you Miss gash I just want to clarify if the folks waiting to comment this is onou Phase One the next item is M phase two so if you have around the re that's the reopening and physical just want to clarify that so next would be Monica n okay let's move to Guadalupe and Yana and Yana hello board members I just wanted to really thank you guys for you know how we started the school year I think there's been a lot of information put out there I think that there's been a lot of communication
209um from the teachers I think that's something that we didn't have um when we ended last school year but I also want to take the time to think about like really how to move how do we move forward um how do we really be Innovative especially catering to the working parents and working teachers you know I know that there's teachers out there that have children that have to teach that have to you know be there twice and you know maybe this opens up the door to maybe shifting it you know a lot of parents want to be their present for their kids they can't sit there next to them during the day to help them get on so maybe you know we should start thinking about is it possibility to do an AM PM session
210and you know maybe start looking at Alternatives so that we have more engagement from the community so we have more engagement from the teachers and you know from the parents that want to be involved we want to see our children get educated and you know let's really be innovative and see how we can work in Partnership we really have a good thing going thank you next is brida rexa hello hello yes go ahead um yes hi um I'm a parent of uh two students at the St DLI program and third grade with Mrs Ortega going great once again unfortunately so sad I don't know why every year we have to be you know fighting for our kids to have a teacher we are the first class we are the pilot class every year we're going
211to need a teacher I don't understand how the district doesn't get it how the principal doesn't get it we're going to need a teacher we need a teacher every year it is so unfair if we count up all the time that our kids have missed with no education because either their teacher was out really ill last year for seven eight nine weeks to all the times that they started a month and a half in of the school year we're almost a year behind you the district has responsibility to educate our children the children have rights to educ education and so just having them log on so you can take a tza like last Friday they were logged on after I say your name you can go have a nice day that is BS I refuse
212to have my kid I'm we're not going to be logging on just so the school district can get the money for our kids when you're not doing our kids any anything anything nothing's happening for our kids uh next is Rachel gry hi can you hear me yes go ahead okay yeah I just want to acknowledge that you know it took hours and days for the bargaining unit to bargaining team to you know negotiate this phase oneou and including all trustees having agreed that opening the schools would not be safe so decisions were not made lightly and included input from all stakeholders included um you know before it was even ratified Educators and families deserve to have peace of mind and you know do not delay in voting yes on this mou thank you we have
213two left two left petronila Fernandez hello good evening my name is petronila Fernandez I am a part in a forest School a for graded uh student just want to make sure about the distance learning I am really really uh like it to to having my child at home because it's more safer but I really concern there you guys um I'm sorry you pretending to reopen our school please be safe make yourself um touching your heart if you want to send your child to the school risking to the covid-19 please I are really really concerning about that but actually I want to make sure again I don't say that my child new teacher at the school her name is Nela p I really appreciate her leadership and just want to make sure our school help her
214to be get more a succeed for our student thank you so much thank you our last speaker for this item is Zine Harrison hello can you hear me yes okay I just wanted to say um I think as we look at a lot of things we're doing different you have to look at your services different cultures in a different way so different Dynamics are coming into play I think um are not being addressed so like one speaker said before me if we work in Partnership more deeper we can get some things that look like a partnership so we can work together and have the type of outcomes the district likes and parents feel heard and what we need from the district and how things need to operate and also I wanted to say Richmond High's
215plan for the high school students is great all the all the youth I talk to that go there my kids go there too they like it so that High School plan may be one that you might want to implement at other high schools if you're um other high schools are having struggles because Richmond High has been uh um greatly viewed with the youth thank you that concludes the comments okay now now we can go to truste comments uh onto the phase oneou uh trusty cutton Blake yes thank you um I would just like to say uh thank you and this is just incredible work being done um by all of the unions in the district this amazing collaborative work so again thank you great trusty Garcia Aila thank you for that presentation I do have
216um a few questions uh will this anti-racism practice be just one year or will it be U more than a year because honestly being anti-racist does not happen in a year um how will we holding I mean how will we uh be holding like staff accountable to just be anti-racist and also how are we supporting Elementary School students with technology because I know I struggle with technology um and especially those uh students who whose parents don't know how to work technology how do we provide extra support for them good questions uh Mr Duffy can you answer some of those questions answer some of those questions um so on the technology front um we to restart our uh parent classes which we had last year uh where parents can learn more about their technology and you
217know a number of schools are doing that already using their school community outreach worker or others but we'll get that underway um the little the the younger students are using a different platform they're using seesaw uh instead of Google Classroom so it's a little bit easier uh to use it's a little more intuitive uh easier interface um but they still do have to learn um and I think that's one reason we're also seeing our kindergarten enr enrollments a bit low because you know families are making some choices about what they want for um their kindergarteners um and then your first question if you could just repeat that one for me yeah um how do like is anti-racism practices is it just GNA be like a year long or is it going to continue afterwards we
218hope not I mean we've done you know some of this work where we we could a couple years ago we did a whole Year's worth of work with the national Equity project um and it's work that we've been continuing to try to do the the challenge for us has always been time and this is a year suddenly that we have some time in the schedule on Fridays to be able to do that work um but it is work that we have to continue to do um it's conversations that we always need to be in um and we have to build a Common Language and a common understanding across the district um and also figure out where that plays in for students uh because we know a lot of students want to be in these conversations
219and that's something we hope to be able to build for our students and with our students on Fridays as well good question great thank you um I don't have any questions or comments Madam chair um our student trustees are are hitting it it tonight I know just d panis uh thank you clerk Mara so I have a few questions here um so I'm I'm really excited when I talking to principles I'm hearing about how their staff really stepped up over the summer and went way out of their ways to help make our distance learning successful so obviously um Everybody in the district gets kudos for that that's really exciting news um at the elementary schools as you said Mr like I'm hearing like some principal saying they're really down in their kindergarten and their TK
220classes and I'm just wondering if uh you said you're hearing that from other uh superintendent as well and I'm actually kind of wondering what does this mean about um are we going to be closing kindergarten classes or is the decline not that not that strong we're not going to close uh Kinder classes right now I mean we may need to rethink the Kinder model in some ways if we think there's something we could do differently that might attract more families back into um kinder the place we we might um close some classrooms or consolidate in the virtual world is preschool um because preschool is so under enrolled uh right now and so difficult to do 100% virtually that that may be a place we we look at but everywhere else um no unless there's something
221severely under enrolled um we're going to ride with the teachers we have in those classrooms okay thank you I'm hearing that uh even though site now site funds have been unfrozen schools are not generally being allowed to use site funds to hire staff that's right we are saying we're not allowing um sites to go hire 1.0 full-time FTE employees because we do know we have to make a big set of reductions going into next year and we really want it um put off sort of hiring people and then laying them off so if they're able to pay some of their current staff extra great um overtime in that way great uh tiny consult contract or something great but we are hesitant to bring on full-time staff right now because we're going to be at March
22215th before we know it and then potentially have to lay people off so that's the concern but we are trying to work with all of our schools about what's the need what are they hoping to have how can we support that okay I mean could they hire fire halftime staff or you're basically saying you just don't want to hire staff um if we're saying if that halftime sort of helped complete another half on their campus something like that we would be really open to it um but we are really worried about having to make reductions next year and if we don't have to bring on new staff I think it will save us the the struggle um by adding to our payroll and then having to take it out take it away okay so do
223we have a count of the number of teachers who are actually teaching from their site because obviously we have to open up every site where teachers want to teach from the site and I'm not saying teachers don't have Val reasons for doing that I'm just trying to understand that how many are doing it almost we have we put out a survey to every one of our sites asking basic questions about successes and needs and also in that was a question on how many staff members are coming in to their sites um and it's was a little bit wonky because of the fires um but we'll get you those numbers as soon as we have it I think it's about 10 to 15% of teachers and staff are actually coming in uh to use their their
224classrooms um but we don't have it that's my Quick Glance from before but as soon as we have the full rollup we'll give it to you U but that's still a decent amount of staff coming in who want the privacy of their classroom where they're undisturbed um and can teach out of there safely do we have any kind of a number on how many students have have had challenges logging in since day one and like are still having trouble for whatever reasons I'd ask Miss Logan to help me with that I think um I don't actually know in terms of just ongoing challenges um I think um she might be able to answer that I think that when we know students have a challenge I think we're able to address it it's it's more students
225who are you know really haven't been able to get in at all um so okay I mean actually that that raised the question there was that slide I noticed um that showed how many support requests I think it said like 1,200 uh parent and student support requests and 2,300 staff requests and I'm just running out the calling for different reasons I mean those numbers are literally huge orders of magnitude different from each other yeah um and I don't know if we can get Miss Logan back on for a minute or if she's off I'm here yeah I can speak to that sure um so the 2300 number for staff that's actually in the ballpark of what we normally experience at the start of school um it's very busy at the beginning of school making sure
226that all staff staff can log in their Equipment Works they know how to use it Etc um the parent number we've never served parents before um the spring was the very first time so I think it's a combination honestly those numbers of families learning that were there to support that we have the tech support available we have the email as well as the hotline so the message getting out I also think a lot of families contacted their schools directly or their teachers directly which is great um teachers can support students with logging in um and particularly the younger students and families so I don't think those numbers are representative only of families that were having access issues I think that's kind of a subset okay one last question here um so we're talking about maybe
227doing hubs with YMCA or Bright Futures or other organizations like what students would be going to these so right now okay right now we'd really be asking those centers to just work with their current clientele they have a lot of students who they know who have historically come to their centers families they know um so that's really one way but then if we do have you know three or four or five in our community then I think we can publicize that you know centrally and just be able to let families know you know here's a place you could go um and some of them are very specific right they you know their work they might only be serving lowincome students they might only be serving Foster youth so it's not just anyone in everyone can
228show up there so um and I know the County's doing some work and the county has some money to support it but it's that money is generally reserved for some of the highest need students uh but that said I think if we have a few options we'll publicize it um where we can but we've said to them just reach out to the the students and families you know which is they have huge networks um you know like the S I learned we had a big convening and I learned like the city of Hercules is offering you know some of these um type things during the day for groups of students um and the city of San Pablo is not yet but with like to you know so there's there's a lot of energy around being
229able to provide for students during the day if we can help make it happen Okay thank you very much y okay thank you trusty panis uh trusty Phillips thank you uh very much uh clerk Laura I have a few questions and the first question is how many students um are missing are since the beginning of school we have right now um we have a discrepancy uh between the number of students who are in power school and the number of what we call like live bodies or Warm Bodies right um so you could say that's a difference between students who are pre-registered and students we seeing um and that's somewhere between, 1500 actually and 2,000 so it's a big number but I will say that number was double that the first day and every day it
230goes down by 500 students or 400 students um but it's a big number um right now that we're looking at um and again when we've drilled into it we're seeing the big uh discrepancies at K7 and N right now thank you so when school started you're saying it there were approximately 4,000 kids missing yeah on the first day when we ran those numbers um that's all we had reported so some of it might have been Tech issues some of it might have been schedules not done some of it might have been students who couldn't get on so little by little um we're seeing this or little by little we're seeing more students and ENT in the system I'm going to assume at the end of the day we'll be down somewhat uh because I just
231think that the whole face of the community is changing right now um but I do think that number won't be as severe as it is right now in a few weeks at what point are we going to um start looking for these kids because at the end of last school year or during the Spring anyway uh we had kids that were missing that we never found so what are we going to do to not be in the same situation where we have missing children um and we don't know where they are yeah we're doing it right now we've been doing it since day one uh we have much clearer protocols uh with our front office staff with our schools um our data is much cleaner uh because we're able to take power school attendance every
232single day um so that is you know one of the absolute priorities is to get the real number um I mean if students have really left the area or less students are coming to the area um you know for example we've had a a a really strong um flow of immigr IM um students from Central America com coming recently right um and we I think that's really slowing down right now during the covid pandemic um and so you know we'll see what the demographics are looking like um but yes agree with you Mr Phillips we are on it um and it's you know we've had meetings with our principles this week about it so it's it's a number one for us thank you and then how many students um lack connectivity I'd bring on Miss
233Logan for that right now I think she has a kind of a ballpark figure of what um we think we're dealing with yes I can certainly speak to that and I'll also say it is it's ballpark um it's really hard to kind of wrap our head and arms around that number definitively so as I'm mentioned we've distributed about 2,000 hotspots over the last um couple of weeks um I think that probably accounts for the the largest need right now we're still plan on at least another thousand um we don't have at this time anyone waiting so there's anyone who's requested a hot spot has been given a hot spot or it's in route to them so there's no weight list per se but my concern is along your line of questioning uh truste Phillips which
234is the students who have not yet engaged and we have not yet accounted for and I do think that technology access digital literacy divide is part of that underlying reason and we're trying to get at that as Mr Duffy said through phone calls and Outreach um and various methods to figure out what is the reason and if it is internet that's something we can help with so I know this is probably not the case and and I know that the numbers will continue to go down um until they Plateau at some point um but let's just assume that there are I'm totally making this number up but let's say that there are 1,00 children uh who don't have internet access out of the existing 2,000 do we have the capability right now to provide um
235those children um connect ity and again the number may not be 1,200 but if it's a significant number of children do we actually have the ability to provide for them we do if we're talking about a thousand children 1500 yes we do if we're talking about three four 5,000 we don't on hand at this time okay but whatever the number is it is 2,000 or less um based on the fact that that's who has not connected correct that's what we believe yes okay thank you very much um the last thing that I want to comment on is something that you raised Mr Duffy around rethinking the K model uh so my son or one of my sons uh started kindergarten um this year and he uh is online uh with his little classmates um God
236bless them all um the teacher is fine um but I have uh concerns um watching some of this happen um around uh quite frankly having a five-year-old uh on the internet uh online uh for that much time um so um I think it would be great um I don't know what other kinder Garden parents uh are thinking um I know that you said that there is an issue with enrollment in TK and K uh but as one uh kindergarten father um I can say that um due to no fault of the teacher uh or the system um I just I don't really feel comfortable uh with my boy sitting at 5 years old uh sitting in front of a computer uh all day long um so I do think looking at other models um would
237be good um because I know my wife and I have been having conversations around um trying to figure out how we could just change the model for him uh ourselves uh if need be and I suspect other parents who are in kindergarten uh classes uh may be thinking the same thing so those are my comments on uh on this item thank you very much thank you trusty Phillips um yes I just have um I have some questions but uh you know I just want to say that this is an area what trusty Phillips said kindergarten preschool uh that I would like to have more information as you get it I'm sure it's changing all the time so it might be good for us to have an update uh about that you know about that area
238um so that we know how you the number and and what's you know what's happening there so that's one of my big concerns on this but otherwise though I thank you for the presentation that was what we needed to know and to hear about um so thank you for that and uh president Hernandez Jarvis are you there yes okay thank you um for checking yeah I don't have any uh further questions I think that trusty Phillips uh raised a lot of questions about techn techology and attendance that I wanted to ask um so that's been covered and and I look forward to to more answers and I think um also trusty Garcia Aila asked some questions about equity and and PD run racial um equity and you know I think that that's also something that
239I would like to just have more answers on but I won't be redundant since those were asked thank you all right thank you president Hernandez Jarvis um okay I believe we are moving mov on to the action items and the first one being to accept phase two conditions for reopening theou with the bargaining units yep I'll say a couple uh words about that while it comes up we've heard a lot of uh public comment tonight about this and really you know as a staff in in working with our bargaining units we really did take our lead from the board uh we had a big conversation this summer uh where we brought forth if you remember uh an initial plan and that plan even had um that original idea of hubs um and the board was
240you know very skeptical about that and really wanted to put Safety First and be as strong with safety as possible and we carried that message into our um negotiations um we feel like it's a really really solid plan a positive plan doesn't put us uh behind anybody else in terms of getting opened um and I'll turn it over to Dr wal who can go into a bit a few of the details um and then you know hopefully we can move it forward and uh really continue to dig into how to make phase one as good as it can be so as we go to the next slide we really did start understanding that before you can start serving students in person you need to make sure that all of the safety Provisions are in place
241we recognize that we would not be able to modify our facilities to such a point that we could bring all the students back at one time we don't have the ability to move all the furniture out and have enough rooms for everyone to be there and congregate and we've seen even this week Elk Grove just up the road Ro some students back and within two days they were shutting down again because students were coming down with covid we've seen it across the nation that coming back too quick and not having the safety precautions in place end up creating such an imbalance for your community that we really tried to design the right criteria so that we know when we come back we can do it in a phased approach that's safe and so it's about
242a health trigger then a capacity trigger and then also knowing that some students and some employees won't be able to come back immediately so there's going to have to be the ability to do both methods so if we can go to the next slide please we really did understand that there are a couple big pieces in theou that are important one of them is the ru the reproductive the RO reproductive rate of Co if you look at compared to other ones it has a rate that's greater than one that means for each person that gets infected more than one other individual is going to get infected and we're finding you're seeing anecdotal one person goes into Starbucks drinks without a mask 50 people end up being um catching it so that was an R50 we
243want to make sure that the r number gets less than one that for each person that's infected they're not spreading it and creating it especially in our high needs populations where more families are doubled up where you have people in closer proximity you want to make sure that there's a safety in all your ZIP codes universal testing is a real important piece the county continues to open more testing opportunities and they are doing testing but for quite a while it been two weeks before you get results we need to be able to know quickly if we're going to reopen so that we can pivot and adjust for safety and then you have to have protocols in place to know how everyone is interacting with each person so you do know how quickly it can spread
244we can go to the next slide so these are the metrics based on the research from Harvard that were put in there that followed along with what the board had recommended to us and the big thing as we looked at it was it's not just Contra Costa County we found this out last week with the power outages we had teach That Couldn't teach because their power went out because they live in a different city than where their students are we had students where their power went out the teachers didn't because they're in a different place and so we can't just limit our protocol to Contra Costa County many of our employees drive across county lines and some of our students come across county lines to go to our schools because we are a destination for
245education and so it has to be both the the region has to be safe because otherwise you open up and you bring it right back in and you start with another flare up we don't want to be the first to open and have to be the first to close again we want to be the first to open that stays open permanently and that's what our employees really listen to the board about we want to do this right and so that's why each of those pieces are in there that it is built on where our community and our community is our employees and our students and their families where do they interact so that we're we're protected and then we have all of the different measurements that are built in there to ensure that there is
246indeed contact tracing that we're able to validate that yes they're able to quickly be able to define the pathway we can go to the next slide this talks again about testing that we've built a protocol in place that as soon as somebody is exposed or showing symptoms they notify their supervisor we go directly to our security team and our district nurse they follow a protocol they go through a set of questions they immediately make sure anyone that could have been In Harm's Way is notified so that we maintain protection and as we do move towards hubs or doing any in person we'll make sure that that's in place so that all of those Services as the opportunity presents are available for our students and the parties have already agreed that once it is safe we
247will start looking at doing internal hubs once this criteria has been met if those are successful then we would move into the next phase bringing more students if that's successful we'd move into the next phase to do even more students until we get back to full and and we want to have each one be a successful implementation as we go forward you can go to the next slide please this goes back to the hub concept that that we talked about we're going to start with some outside Partners see if we can't pilot that make sure that we can get it correct before we even try to do something internal and we're not going to be pushing our most vulnerable students into this we're going to look at inequity lens to make sure that once those
248conditions are correct we can go forward so while we may not be the first to reopen we want to be the right reopening there and supporting our students to make sure it makes sense next slide and so this goes right down to the piece that we'll make sure that there's always the a correct pieces in the correct protocols we'll start by working with our partners and we are setting aside some carac money to be able to do some of that so that we can continue to serve we we know that we have great need we heard about it today the social emotional needs the mental health needs we also know that we have more students that are homeless than ever before that are having to double up and don't have the same Securities they've had
249before so we're setting up the ability as we identify who those students are through our engagement and attendance tracking to be able to find other opportunities and Partnerships even outside of our own system to be able to support them and this will take time it won't be done overnight but it's part of our process to go forward so we really applaud all of our unions have been involved all the way through our bus company has already partnered to begin soon the ability to potentially doing deliveries if we can get enough of our employees that are unassigned to be able to be part of that to deliver materials we're trying to expand meil Services we actually have advocacy at the US Department of Ed level this week trying to get that seamless summer back so we're
250taking every action we can to serve our students remotely based on what the board stated and so every Union proudly signed these conditions knowing that this was the right way based on what the board had asked us to do all the Indians are asking is that you accept this report and that you add your signature to it there this is our protocol we believe we've set the example we we followed exactly what the board asked us to do this summer in building that and we did it in Great partnership and we're actually standing up and we talked to other districts they're looking at us as the model and it's already been printed in multiple places that we were one of the first to step up and create a model that makes a difference for kids
251so thank you great thank you very much okay could we have a motion to extend the meeting until 11 o'clock second Madam chair moved by trusty pan second by trusty quas uh to extend until 11 o' um have one public comment so far and I do think if we're able to get through this item fairly quickly we can try to cruise through the others by 11 okay so all those in favor say I I quas yes um although not I do need to log off around 11 yes laa yes Yesa yes cotton Blake oh he he's not on anymore okay all right and um Hernandez Jarvis are you there okay and we do have two public comments now yes okay yes I'm sorry about that okay thank you uh unanimous except for trusty cot and
252Blake okay um let's go to the two public comments okay Joselyn Rohan good evening are you able to hear me okay yes wonderful um I'm a prep teacher at nram elementary and I'm really excited about the idea of the Hub model and I want to bring students back and utilize the school garden that I've been working so hard to maintain and I would love to use our magnificent campus as a place to host hubs and I absolutely would not feel safe doing it without having this signed I'm um immuno compromised myself and I do want to make sure that I'm safe I don't bring anything home to my family our students are safe and I I highly support this and I'd also like to add that I don't see anything about maintenance and operations and
253we often have broken faucets no soap no paper towels so simple handwashing wouldn't happen effectively and if we could address that at some point in the very very imminent future I'd appreciate it thank you the next speaker is Jean kinner hello um I work at verie as a kindergarten teacher and I first would like to talk about the um washing facilities for example my sinks and my kindergarten class you have to continuously push the button for the water to come out so there's no way to properly wash your hands when you have one hand constantly on the faucet the other thing that I just wanted to bring to the board I have five factors that predetermine me as being really risky for me to be in the classroom I would hate one to die but
254two for that my death to be a social and emotional trigger on my kindergarten students that would just be devastating thank you thank you okay that's that's all the comments that's all the comments okay trustees uh do we have comments or questions on phase two of theou um uh cotton Blake has left uh trusty gar AA yeah I just have two questions so how uh many times are we going to test students and staff and just for how long is that going to happen and especially for people who don't um have symptoms and if we do send students back how's Transportation going to look like so buses um how many students are going to be on a bus and if there's a time limit or you know school starts at some point like how are
255we going to make sure every is on time so th those are great perfect questions um AC Transit has already said that they're going to limit the amount of students that can be on their buses so until such time as we have full reopening to where you can have multiple students on the bus that's why we're looking at that phased approach even when schools could go open we may have to start in smaller hubs until we have the facility ability with transportation and with facilities to bring bring everyone back and so that's why this is such a measured approach as for testing you won't have to be tested every day to come to school the requirement is that testing is available for anyone that starts to show symptoms so that we can get those results
256and make sure we keep people safe that's why the number um is at a very reasonable level based on what the Harvard recommendations are per 100,000 so that once you get those rates down and right now we're 20 times that level and in San Pablo we're 60 times the level that's recommended so we're still quite a ways from where it's safe but those are the big protocols that are in place to make sure that we don't have issues that you just brought up thank you okay uh trusty quas um yeah it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that I'm going to be voting in favor of this resolution uh amended one um I've been consistent uh I actually think we need to spend all of our energy trying to find a vaccine uh that actually
257uh Works tested and works and widespread so that we can get everyone back into the classroom safely I don't think we need I think it's a false choice that we have to sacrifice lives um or take chances with lives uh to further education it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be ideal uh but I think that's the goal we should have so I'm feel like I'm even compromising in this instance where I'm saying okay if you want to test and you want to take that chance fine I still think it's not where I would go personally um but I absolutely believe that we do have to shoot for the um the higher goal here which is that we are keeping folks safe as far as the impact on children and communities it is without a
258doubt there uh as trusty Phillips mentioned I sat in on my nephew's first grade class um this week uh it is not the same I get it uh but I'm not choosing this this is a reality and we all recognize as adults uh that we have choices to make in in in situations that are not ideal and I will always work to preserve life when situations are not ideal um and that's part of uh how we as a human Society have been able to uh live this long on this Earth is we've found a way to preserve ourselves we need to do that and not make choices about who gets to be preserved uh it's happening unequally uh by race and uh class and ethnicity right now uh and it doesn't need to be that
259way and I'm certainly going to be clear about how I feel about it uh but I think this me voting yes for this this is in fact a compromise because I actually think uh we should be uh again in heightened social distancing uh until we find a vaccine and that's where all our energy should be uh but um this is not um this is just me being consistent with putting uh the public health uh before things uh like I said people there's not going to be any but there'll be folks who are not happy uh with this situation and that's what leadership is is making tough decisions when things aren't ideal it's easy to be a leader when everything's so clear cut and dry um so we all do need to just kind of pull
260up our big people pants and do what we need to do to protect life so uh that's all I'll say about that I'm not going to say anything else until we're ready to vote thank you thank you trust quas truste panis thank you Clark Clara uh so I'm all for this um I have been amazed and not just since we started discussing this since Co came around I have been so much more aware of people who have all kinds of challeng immune challenges and other things that like just put them at high risk and I think we have to do this right and my mind passing this mou does it right you know I've said in the past that just like we have a Financial impact for every item on our agenda I think we
261need an equity impact for every item on our agenda and to me passing you know the equity impact here is enormous if we pass this and I'm all for it so thank you thank you trusty panis trusty Phillips thank you first as a district parent and me of the school board I am opposed to sending our children volunteers and staff back to school this calendar year it is simply unsafe however that does not mean that I am willing to vote for anou without any meaningful discussion or consultation with experts in Medicine Science and Child Development second one day it will be objectively safe to send our children back to school whenever that day comes I would hate to keep our schools closed because we accepted this mou as written including Provisions that would prohibit us
262from reopening our schools until other counties are cleared I believe that could hurt student learning unnecessarily thank you thank you trusty Phillips uh I too um would vote to approve this um uh this mou uh I think uh as the teachers and other collective bargaining units have stated it was a lot of work they came to and they had a lot of resources to bring in and this was what they came up with and I trust that they made the good right decision so I would be definitely approving this um president Hernandez Jarvis if you're than you thank you um yes so I I agree that we need to create the conditions for kids to be able to focus and be supported at home and where they are in in the daytime so that they
263can get the education they need in a virtual setting I think that the work that has gone into this mou is very significant and focuses on keeping everybody healthy not just kids not just staff but whole communities and families and I think that we really need to ensure that students have a consistent supply of tech tools of access to um school supplies to all of the essential tools that they need to access their public education and the distance learning setting that we currently have and I think that it is an equity issue and it is a racial justice issue because we're seeing covid-19 affecting disproportionately um latinx and black communities and we definitely do not want to say like because parts of our communities already um are having a a lower rate of of infection
264that we want to open a certain way and then have inequities guid widen and I just don't want to I don't want to put anybody at risk and I think it's clear from the county and and from the different cities that are district serves that we are not at a point where we can safely go back on campus so I think that what this mou does it says that we're setting a standard for how we're going to clear the hurdles of you know unsafe practices or going going back to school too early so I I just want us to focus our efforts on strengthening the distance earning implementation on ensuring that every kid has what they need to succeed everything that they need not just you know paper and pencil but also the the tech
265tools they need the Internet the mental health and and the contact with their teachers I think that's going to be the most important piece um and I think my concerns lie with uh the the attendance piece and ensuring that every single child is accounted for and if there families you know if they're opting out for example kindergarten I've heard we are having a lower enrollment as well at the school that I teach at in Berkeley um across you know kindergarten classes and and so I think that a lot of parents may be opting out but I think it's just having that shared understanding that we're in distance learning mode because we want to keep everyone safe and at the same time we need to be accountable to everyone and make making sure that we can
266reach every child and communicate with families if they're choosing to not have their child in front of the screen um all day essentially you know like having that communication and knowing that the child is safe and how to provide their education in another way that reaches them so that's that's my um opinion on this and I I support this and I want to keep every child and family member and staff member safe thank you thank you truste or uh Madam president do we have a motion I'll move we accept phase two conditions for reopening mou with the bargaining unit mam I get that okay uh trusty panis moved uh trusty qua second and let's take a vote Yes Yes Phillips no herand Lara yes president Hernandez Jaris was that a yes yes okay all right
267it's uh 42 one with uh trusty Phillips uh voting no thank you all okay thank you all right we are going now to approve some new Jump descriptions so thank you again trustees we have been working diligently to meet many of the needs that have been talked about this evening and in tonight's job descriptions there are several that directly focus on equity and focus on race training so in this packet you will see there are job descriptions for the coordinator of African-American student achievement this is the beginning of the building out of the entire African-American achievement office under the new director will McGee this coordinator will be supporting that action you will also see a manager in human resources that is focusing specifically on the brand new needs that we have more than a hundred
268employees that have had to take different leaves because of health concerns and tracking them and making sure we're providing the appropriate training that position is funded by cig which is our workers comp incentive funds so it's ongoing funding that is protected from the general fund the third position is a combination of our director of um English learner programs we're adding in the engl the early literacy component because there's a natural Nexus with early literacy and English Learners if you do both well that puts those English Learners on the road to academic language proficiency quicker and it ensures that students are moving forward so we believe by putting those two together we're going to have a much more synthesized focus on our English learner population as they began that's going to be directly connected to our
269Core curriculum for early literacy and the final one is a new director of positive School climate and social emotional learning this is directly correlated to our significant investment in Fr Friday training this year by taking the entire year every Friday focusing on race and equity and having somebody dedicated to that work in an ongoing way because their funding is ongoing within the special ed Department we have disproportionately placed African-American students in special ed over time and we need to stop that pathway so we're going to directly focus on that race and Equity training we're going to make sure one of the questions well will continue in the future absolutely with this position dedicated to that work permanently which is not coming out of the past budget but it's directly related to that Focus to making
270a difference so again as you're going to see pretty much everything that we bring forward is directly connected to our previous lcap goals and the board's goals of focusing on English Learners and African-American student achievement and these positions will help us move that direction forward and continue to meet the needs that the community has asked us for very strongly tonight so we ask the board to approve all job descriptions and thank you uh are there any public comments on this there are no public comments at this point uh trustees do we have any comments uh truste Garcia Aila I think she's gone now okay uh trusty quas uh no questions Madam chair as a matter of fact um I'd like to motion that we approve these uh just for the sake of time and start
271discussion from there if there's a second I'll second it it's been moved and seconded let's take a vote let's have some discussion Madam chair I'm sorry discussion go ahead yes uh uh oh trusty quas did you have a discussion no no okay trusty panis I I I have a a concern here and that I I have kind of a strong feeling I'm not digging in my heels here that like any director level position above who's either directly uh serving students or directly serving staff should have experience as a site admin administrator and so for example um in the description of the director of English language learner achievement in early literacy it doesn't actually require it but it says experience as site administrator preferred I kind of wish I said highly preferred but it says preferred
272I would like to see that same language in in the director of positive School climate social emotional learning because it's a it's a director level job and it's directly deal dealing with certificated staff I mean there are probably other staff there too but I just feel like you learn a lot when you're a principal and you're a lot about kids and you learn a lot about managing people and I just think that experience is really valuable and I think it says something about us if we want to say at least we're shooting for that maybe we're not going to get it every time but at least we're shooting for that I just think it's it would say something about the way we look at this so those are my comments I mean I'm okay with
273all these positions I just like wish we were like I would love to have us be thinking about these positions that way thank you trusty penis trustee Phillips I do not have any questions uh I do very much like the idea of getting at the issue of disproportionality in special education uh it is an issue that has long plagued us and it has put many a child uh on the wrong path uh and quite frankly stunted their growth so the quicker we can get after this problem uh the better so thank you and I I do support these uh jobs thank you trusty Phillips uh I too support these job descriptions and uh president Hernandez Jarvis thank you uh trusty l i i do um want to Echo some of what trusty pun has shared
274about the the way that we um create things that we're looking for in job descriptions I think that's something that um spoke to me about that is that we have to make sure we we put you know explicitly how we want to recruit folks that have specific experiences that highlight the work that they'll be able to do in the positions that they're applying for so if we have something specific to school side administ ation or I think that those would be um great additions to the job descriptions that's all thank you okay thank you madam chair if I can have the floor real quick yes I think um as the motion or I'd be happy to if it sounds like it's you know super Duffy way superintendent Duffy ways in is just there's no harm
275in adding that because in the end it says preferred but it doesn't mean required is it possible to just uh consider a Amendment to the motion that adds that consistently across all the descriptions that what Mr panis uh referenced yeah right so it's it's only two job descriptions and I'd be happy to accept that friendly Amendment Mr Duffy do you have any thoughts on that um I can live with that just knowing that you know talented people come from all backgrounds I've always believed you know a principal perspective is really really important and you can see how many principles are directors and in the central office and at the same time we need to make sure perspective is balanced and we're taking people from multiple Fields who can put eyes on things from different angles
276so we don't get too insular but can live with it okay all right thank you um Mr Duffy and uh Mr so Mr P if you want to suggest Amendment okay so I would I would like to uh propose that we modify the U director of positive School climate social and emotional learning to include under experience experience as site administrator preferred and is that the only one that you want to amend that that was the only one that was a director level there was the coordin level okay okay so there's a that's fine um as a motion I accept that so Madam chair that the Mot is now uh for your leadership okay uh so it's been modified to add uh to that job description um site administrator preferred and so let's ready for a
277vote or a motion to oh we did that part we're ready to vote I think UMAS yes thas yes Phillips yes Lara yes andand start is yes it passes uh unanimously thank you and we are now at a new job description industry connector good evening so these are Grant funded positions that are for our CTE Pathways program um which prepare our young children our young students for College and Career and this is from our pathway program or College and Career department so uh an industry connector Health industry connector information technology and a work based learning liaison and these job descriptions have been approved by um by utr as well and these are all Grant funded okay uh public comment there are no public comments okay trustees um Garcia avalas she left okay uh trusty quas
278um Madam i' like to move this item move approval this item and open for discussion I'll second it and I have second it go ahead no comments I have no comments trusty Phillips no comment uh I have no comments president Hernandez Jarvis no comment thank you right thank you all right let's vote us yes Andis yes Phillips yes La yes sorry and um so it passes unanimously I thank you okay we now are at F5 500 Chromebook I'd like to make a suggestion um Miss Logan is going to talk about five six and seven and they all kind of go together in terms of what we're buying for technology and I wonder if we would allow her to talk about them all at the same time and maybe there's a motion to approve all three
279I think that would be a good idea if anybody does anybody have any objections to that we'll go ahead and proceed also we might need another 15 minute or yeah 15 minutes to go till 10 10 uh uh I'll move with 10 to 1110 I mean 1110 thank you any second on that okay so we're GNA try to make it all in five minutes all right Chromebooks yep three in one here we go less than two minutes so uh the first item is a total of a thousand Chromebooks so in the spring the board approved the purchase of 5,000 Chromebooks which was for our youngest Learners plus backfill this thousand is in addition to that uh we're trying to be very conservative and buy what we need and also make sure we have inventory sufficient
280um so that students are are not without at any point so these 500 would be for our classroom aids to support distance learning so that they can help in breakout rooms one-on-one instruction with um with students and support the teacher in our virtual classrooms and then the other 500 is for backfill where we found that we have lost Chromebooks or had damaged Chromebooks from students that either left our system and did not return them or just the wear and tear from having so many machines at home so that's number five number six similarly we are making sure that our staff has the technology needed to do their jobs to work remotely this 1004 staff primarily is made up of teacher laptops as well as clerical staff and our community outreach workers and then lastly number
281seven this is an app the remind app is used quite commonly by a number of our teachers throughout our system there are a couple of schools that are using using remind schoolwide this is an opportunity to use remind districtwide as our default two-way texting app what it does is that it allows teachers and administrators to text directly to families and to students in their home language and for the family or student to reply so it does allow that two-way uh communication that we've heard repeatedly in the spring is so important for amilies to be able to communicate we heard Lots in in various ways that we've done a good job getting messages out but the back and forth communication we need additional tools for so that's what this aims to do it would be the
282default tool to do that and schools of course would be welcome to continue using any of the other platforms that they're using for communication very good thank you uh any comments from the oh uh no public comments I'm assuming one so oh one okay go ahead they're gone oh okay um trusty quas Madam chair if there's no public comments in light of the resolution that we passed earlier um I'd like to move um unless anybody objects all three of these items uh for approval I'll second that I do have a couple questions all right first and seconded um trusty panis um so um regarding the uh the Chromebooks that we're buying um the Ed fund is as it should be running going around and asking our community for funds to support student achievement and one
283of the things they're asking for is $6 million for Chromebooks and I think we all knew that when we spend down the technology Reserve we're gonna have to Reser replace our Chromebooks at some point I'm just wondering do we have any kind of a plan or schedule for how we want to be replacing our Chromebooks because I mean the Ed fund must have got their number from somewhere but I don't know that the board has actually seen that information I can speak to that a bit and then Dr Wald if you want to add in as well so we are um at this point as you mentioned Mr panas um when we did away with our Reserve um that was the fund that would be used to replace our next batch of Chromebooks the way
284we've been doing Chromebook refreshes is in kind of a two batch cycle half and half half our Chromebooks represents about $6 million um we did that refresh for the Elementary grades last year and we're up to do that refresh for the secondary grades a year from now which is what that $6 million represents in all honesty at this point in time we don't have a plan um to refresh uh to pay that $6 million we're looking to restructure the way we do refreshes so that it's not such a large expense at one period of time that we do a grade level or two grade levels at a time and we can spread it out and build that into the operational budget but we have not yet reached that point okay that's great thank you very
285much for that information that's very helpful um I'm just wondering you talked you said schools could could continue to use whatever they're using in addition to remind um is remind functionally s different than black board I mean because I mean I've heard seems like we use some schools use Blackboard for this right now is Blackboard going to go away um no we will continue to have Blackboard so Blackboard is uh the platform that does several things it's our public website it's our internal intranet it's also the system called Parent Link which does allow us to send messages out via phone and via text the difference is that parent link is one way only so we can send messages out can't get messages back okay and and on remind is that an annual license or is
286that a one-time license is there maintenance in the future or it's annual it's annual so it's gonna be an ongoing thing okay fine thank you I'm fine thank you trusty penis trusty Phillips comments I don't have any comments or questions thank you okay and I neither do I and uh president Hernandez JIS any questions or comments um none other than I'm using remind um for my school district too um in Berkeley and it works really great okay we thank you thank you uh president Hernandez JIS are we ready to vote whoas Yes panis yes Daris yes L yes Philips yes and that passes uh unanimously thank you thank you all uh I believe correct me if I'm not right we go to the pulled items uh we have one we have one more C8 which
287is our oh there it is board authorization yes I'm sorry go ahead right so we have just a teacher consent um that again a the school board can authorize a holder of a credential um everything except an emergency to teach in a departmental class um if they have the subject area knowledge and they consent so that's the teacher consent and then the variable term waivers are those that have credentials as well but are still getting um getting credentials in a different area so those are our two right now okay uh any discussion or comment from the board trusty quas who's gone oh okay truste panis uh nothing for me and I'll move we approve the certificated board [Music] authorizations I'll second that so it's been moved by trusty panis and uh seconded with justy Lara
288so discussion justy Phillips or justy Hernandez jvis I don't have any comments or questions and this is a n ders i don't have any comments or questions either okay then we can vote pis yes Phillips yes Laura yes sorry erand Drive is yes okay it passes 4 to one with uh trusty quas having left we had C2 pulled um and I pulled that one yeah um so uh I had a couple questions here on the a2a system wasn't that something we cut last year did we decide it was a mistake or what what's cooking here we did cut it uh because it was a general fund expense they've added functionality that directly relates to engagement and with the new rules and requirements to connect with students they've added texting capabilities we're using one-time cares acts
289to continue our Outreach to our families to make sure that we're tracking both attendance and engagement and bringing them back with one time monies this year okay great okay fine thank you um I looking at the contracts the annual measurable outcomes for the the Mills College plc's have nothing about them I say I've sat in on these communities of practice that Mills is running and and the work is terrific but I don't see any reason why we can't come up with so there's got to be tons of measurable outcomes that come out of those and I'd like to see those in the contract so I'd actually suggest that we move the contracts uh except for the Mills College item and maybe we can have that come back isn't Mills starting next week though with principles
290yes it is so it would change our entire professional development model as we're trying to build that race in equity and that academic component in distance learning to pull it tonight okay so I won't pull up but I wish we could have annual measurable outcomes that were measurable rather than just lists of things we're going to do so I'll move C2 and we need a second for that yeah I'll second it and no more discussion let's take a vote panis Yes Philips yes Lara yes yes okay passes 4 to one Jas having left the meeting next C5 why don't we do C8 because M oh we'll go in order sorry C5 yes so I've pulled C5 which is classified Personnel changes I pulled C5 because uh back when we uh voted on the layoffs I
291voted against the layoffs I know they've already been done and I know that this is a formality uh but I'd rather not vote for it uh because I didn't vote for it the the first time around so that was the reason I pulled it if someone wants to move it we can get on with the show I'll move the uh class the uh classified report I'll second that and let's vote Yes Phillips no Lara yes jvis yes passes 4 to1 trusty quas having left okay uh what's next oh C8 sorry C and I pul I pulled C8 I'm curious if if staff can tell us what the differences are between this new agreement and the previous one because the previous one wasn't included and I wasn't around in the days when that one passed I
292don't have that information in front of me okay fine that's okay the agreement that the the all the districts have chosen to work with so I don't know any of the major changes um if there are any to be honest I think it's just updating Ed code because there has been changes in in District Ed code in the last five years okay it be it'd be nice if if you could pass out send out to the board at some point agreement so we just compare it um I I'd like to thank the staff because like we had two separate Friday memos on June 26 and on July 17 where you actually talked about the numbers of interdistrict transfers that we have I would really love to see you know for for maybe for last year
293because it's a complete year like what the demographic breakdown of those transfers are and and what the schools of Origins for the students were but you know with those comments I'm happy to move this item a second that no important discussion we can vote pamis Yes Philips yes Lara yes Hernandez Jarvis yes passes 4 to1 trusty quas having left the meeting okay we are so that's that comments from the board future agenda items or that's that where we are now any comments I'll start and I'll just I the staff has done a terrific job central office staff site staff getting this going I truly sincerely appreciate all the work that's gone on all summer and the work that's the craziness that's gone on the last eight days to make this happen I'm getting some really
294interesting reports back from principles and teachers about how things are going I'll also say like in terms of if we start start reopening I did attend a really interesting uh presentation last week with with some other people uh about uh opening via Outdoor Learning when we get to the point where we're safe to do that and I really enjoyed it and I think it's something we might want to think about I think I think the teacher from actually nro she was there as well um and she was speaking about that when she spoke to W public so those are my comments thank you very much thank you trusty panis trusty Phillips I do not have any comments this evening thank you everyone for the meeting you um and I want to also thank the district
295I'm really proud of this District uh it's moving we're moving ahead so you know carefully and I see especially in the Friday memo ethnic studies is moving forward project-based learning uh training and all of these wonderful Partnerships with Mills with Internationals Lindsay unified uh Harvard Berkeley Stanford East I mean we are really reaching out and doing you know best practices and I'm very impressed and I'm I just love it thank you um any more uh let's see oh president Hernandez Jarvis thank you tril L I just want to thank the community and everybody involved in opening the schools and starting virtual learning um I think that there are so many you know opportunities for things to go to go well and people are really finding en joy in the work and then everything they're doing
296to make things happen for kids and kids our kids are being amazing too at just adapting to the new schedules and routines so I want to thank the children and I want to thank their families and our employees everybody who is part of this team um and I also want to thank trusty lettera and the rest of board members for caring um on this meeting and for facilitating it I had to step away and I apologize to the public I just want to let everybody know that I'm present um and I look forward to our next meeting together so thank you all thank you I guess uh we're adjourned thanks everyone all right thank you