Joint Board Meeting 2/15/22

001to this uh special warranty aboard me for february 15 2022 and have welcomed the trustees of both the widespread school district and division schools good to have everybody here you all we all are all volunteers thank you for your time thank you also for joining us at home for my video thank you of course to our teachers our staff and our cabinet and leadership here tonight without many of them so thank you all very much and of course a shout out welcome to our community as we begin the meeting tonight i ask for a motion to adopt the agenda all opposed thank you good evening we now have a flag salute and i guess we'll put a flag on the screen ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america

002and to the republic for which one nation under god indivisible with liberty i had an opportunity last week to take a one-week trip to the big island and some of you remember whenever i do that i bring back a lot of key changes so if you would like a key chain for the big one i'm going to pass around the back and just take one out and move it around and uh [Music] in the spring in 2008. first of all this is kind of impressive our net promoter score is above 70. plus 70 so that's incredible especially 790 families the lottery is coming up on the 10th [Music] our world was growing in the [Music] we opened our new dv connect high campus here in el segundo uh last monday yeah i left the island

003and it is beautiful i got to store it on thursday local residents and members the personal knowledge of the district and the community here ryan was on the line for the lord he has a couple i guess you have one home left is holly glenn his grandkids are going to be or are going to local schools i got here in 1953 and did the same so there's a lot of good good news around davinci right now as there has it's all good thank you my comments are about the goals of the day and i think the opportunity we have we all share the objective of building great schools for kids that's why we're all here well volunteers with no other agenda than doing that we're all interested in clarifying and solidifying the mlu and the

004fda we all celebrate successes and should celebrate successes so that eventually it's done suspension as well as advice and feel very proud of what we're delivering for both entities whole schools my quotes in this session is that we begin with the end in mind and i believe these are students to consider first overall that are our partnerships and this is at all levels for board cabinet teachers everywhere have a renewed positive celebrated partnership that's where we end for today i don't believe our goals are to solve anything per se that's just not realistic at a time we have but that we hear each other that we listen to each other and we learn from each other that we have a win-win attitude and recognize our interdependence that the actions of one impact the other and

005that by winning together we work together we in fact do win together finally my last message and hope for us is that we seek first to understand and then to be understood that we truly listen to and learn from each other because if we do that we win together and i think we're all in it to win so let's do that here tonight with that said let's move to public comments and i think we will start miss ubaki with comments from the public on the screen correct do we have any public comments at this time i do not have any public comments on the screen all right then we'll turn to public comments from the room any public comments mr mora one of our current but resigning board members or retiring rather and uh mr

006moore your thoughts please good evening everyone great to see everyone here just wanted to provide some some historical information i guess that's what i represent is history right but you know unification has been talked about for 40-50 years it's not a new conversation and you know when we took it on 20 years ago we looked for alternatives while we were doing the unification fight and that's how bemidji charters came about the idea of providing options for our community while we unified we then hired dr wonder for two years to see the school and then this nicole temple for a year that was paid out of life we helped to fix data with both weisberg dollars and whiteboard labor so that project was greatly done by weisburn and i just again for historical purposes these weren't

007expenses that were ever reimbursed it was weissberg helping to see and planned and executed the building of 201 north dakota we passed an 87 million dollar bond which was then matched with a 52 million charter bond which is a majority of what funded this high school so most charters biggest challenge is facilities and wiseburn took that piece away from the and handled it so that davinci could focus on curriculum academics and you know the running of the day-to-day school i can't stress enough to everyone how important that was to allow matt and his team to focus just on running the school and not avoid the fundraising building high school which is what most charters have to do time the thinking of chargers of the charters changed we started by with just one charter thinking that

008when we unified it would convert to a traditional high school as the charter did well we started a second charter and the third charter and then over time when we did notify the weisburn board i think wisely chose to keep them charters because it allowed a lot of ability for freedom and teaching freedom in hours and a lot of flexibility that is had within the unified high school that's just important to understand what we started with was definitely not what we ended with there was a lot of different ideas passed around so some people will say you promised a traditional high school you could probably say that that some people might have said that at the beginning but as things changed and progressed you know it became more and more obvious charters were a good

009thing so we kept the mass charters for that it's just important to understand that it was never from the beginning a set plan that didn't change throughout over the years it gradually morphed into what it is today if we create something simple no we did we created something unique that no one else has my knowledge in the state or in the country and so it isn't simple and now you know it becomes important for both these boards to understand that they have to come together and figure this out okay um there's a time sensitivity there's an opportunity to go for a school bond this year and these two organizations need to be on the same page if we're going to pass a bond in november good money for both pay day and nine to 12.

010so it's really really important that this happen meetings happen often and these things get ironed out as quickly as possible and then you know in a couple years there's a charter right and then that becomes really really important that these things be worked out so that we have a smooth track charter and i didn't work this hard and this long to have this fall apart but if these groups don't get it together that could happen okay that's the last thing i would want to see so you know the the weisberg community putting a lot of time effort unifying passing bonds they've worked at building this high school so when when the community says that they have a say understand why they say it wasn't just money it was time effort love and care that helped

011create this hospital and so it's really important that the community understand that their best interests are people against again i have a lot of confidence in this group and both groups and teams of people and i do wish you the best in solving this and i will miss everybody i have my son here so i have made other plans but i really appreciate the time i hope that everything works well thank you [Applause] so we'll now move to our discussion and this agenda has been designed to be an open conversation we will have time goals for each subject you can see in the agenda there's times affiliated with it each member uh conversation with dr brandt and myself can hold the floor for five minutes we hope we're succinct but in five minutes we'll ask

012you to kind of wind it down at the very very most i'll facilitate the meeting as best i can with fairness with balanced communication alternating who starts each subject so we're as equitable as we can possibly be and i hope we can learn from each other and share openly and grow together and as mr morris said so we can succeed into the future so with that said let's move to our recap of our previous joint board meeting and this is really more than a recap was take away comments or thoughts does anybody have any thoughts or comments on our board meeting that we met in september five months ago today go ahead yes were there any particular issues you found specific not required but anything in particular you felt was worthy of thank you brian

013doctor one of your chair um at least one of the folks on the webinar is having trouble hearing so i think we probably want to awkwardly move the mic every time a speaker how do we do that um if it were handheld we could share it i don't know how we physically move this maybe one of the tech experts here jason do we have an opportunity to turn this into a handheld or here you can't get to it if they can yeah just unscrew it i i don't want to break it but let me just put it we'll just do this do you want to come and see if you can unscrew this then we can share it because i agree that's a good point [Music] yeah it's hard [Music] you know our purpose in

014that meeting more above all so we can then share it thank you above all was to connect and make connections but i felt that in that meeting actually we came away with some productive ideas to your point that candidly we've all dropped the ball on that we could have worked on here including more collaboration more communication more coordination a survey follow-up after the meeting so i agree with you i thought there were subtractive ideas that we can in fact use and should don't want to belabor this with any other thoughts on the meeting last time oh sorry how much corn yeah that's all right i can easily project anyway um building on what brian said i think we should use some of our time in this meeting sorry joe to uh to decide what we're

015going to do about it because i think his comments are really important and i feel the same way and i think i understand we're all busy i know we all have commitments this is one of our main commitments as we talked about volunteering in our communities and so i'd like to figure out maybe we can use some of this time to figure out how we do proceed to build on uh the ideas that we shared and the relationships that we built in the last meeting i totally agree with what brian said [Music] mrs a little awkward but we'll make it work [Music] i'll make my comments brief i i too uh liked the fact that we had the uh the prior joint board meeting i'd like for us to continue and this is a representative

016sample of that i am particularly interested in the agenda for tonight because i think it does address some i think this is a starting point for us to have that conversation and make actionable items for those that maybe are online i haven't seen the agenda i really like our topics for today we have articulation athletic and arts governance which is a very critical piece for all of us facilities and funding deferred maintenance special education i think in a single meeting this would be hard-pressed to tackle any more than those topics and items and i think they were all discussed as well in that first board meeting uh the joint board meeting so i'm looking forward to the conversation today because these are some of the steps that we discussed and see how we can move

017forward and like potentially a subcommittee group so thank you neil and and dr dr silvers for putting together the agenda and getting us started looking forward to it since it's close enough to me um i will add that maybe a path forward is you know since we all didn't have an opportunity to look at that in depth at all the items that we had talked about in september maybe each board could go back and look at the minutes from that meeting and the list and maybe identify some areas that each board individually would like to talk to talk to and then compare notes jointly and then take some action from there thank you all right let's let's move to our next item and we wanted to start this meeting by recognizing we've had success in

018some areas and this area is of particular importance i'll speak for myself to me and i think it's the importance to literally everybody at this table and candidly i believe it should be and that is articulation between wsd and dv dr silvers uh take it i think we're turning to you here for a very brief presentation just a few minutes dr harvick thank you oh you know what as as she's getting prepared jennifer if you have a comment uh maybe mr bhakti you can keep a particular eye and and on jennifer if you want to have a chance i don't want to i want to make sure you're involved in the conference okay i'll let you know for sure i don't think the speaker was saying we have no sound oh do you have sound

019no sound can you hear me i hear you i can hear you jen they can't hear you but i can't hear you okay i'm so sorry well i guess we're all going to be listening now so dr harvey excuse us for standing we're here to talk about articulation between the two schools and you know first i want to thank dr johnson for her uh flexibility and her collaborative spirit in putting these needs together and we started by talking about davinci because we uh miss clark our principal at dana middle school asked to hear more about the pathways at the da vinci school so when we speak to parents we would be more informed so the principals and that his team came forward and gave us great presentation on all the schools and second we met

020i believe about mathematics and what's going on between the two schools particularly for our eighth grade students as they matriculate over to the high school our third meeting was about data we brought in miss mitsos miss clark again our eighth grade our data middle school principal talked about data and how we're going to have a system to bring our data over from the eighth grade to the high school for children that are coming here so that they're placed appropriately and that they're right all systems are go on that so we're real happy with those meetings we're going to continue as we look for those systems and this is uh dr ingram she also wants to come on just one second [Music] yeah we're just going to need somebody with a phd to figure out how

021to [Laughter] [Music] yes they are indeed in fact one we let them introduce themselves uh as we progress here okay so this is uh dr ingram she is our yes um so i just wanted to share that um dr johnson and i meet regularly to help ensure that we're building a structure where the counseling and mental health supports are aligned so for example we've talked about best practices for crisis protocol like suicide assessments and threat assessments we've also met to talk about strategies related to diversity equity and inclusion most recently we talked about aligning culturally relevant practices to ensure that required reading and libraries are supportive of our students and representative of their experiences good evening everyone i'm peggy mazzarella and i'm the director of psychological services for weisburn i think that in special education

022we have worked for years together uh prior to my tenure uh coming on board uh the two special education students from coming from dana and going to the high schools and that has been really successful um i've been working this year with uh lynne johns lynn rodriguez and johnson lynn rodriguez to um continue the collaboration we uh i had the i have the unique um position of having worked as a consultant for da vinci so i got to see those programs on that side working for allegra as her consultant so special education i got to see that view and from that perspective and so i take that knowledge with me into my position as the director of special education and you know just to try to you know see what we can do to help

023articulate between the two organizations um lynn rodriguez and i have communicated this year uh quite a bit to collaborate problem solve share resources we had a common professional development day for the school psychologists and the speech pathologists at the start of the school year we would like to have more of that and include teachers in the future and we have meetings scheduled next month to talk about articulation and really program development between the two organizations thank you [Music] thank you so i would just want to also echo the the gratitude around the spirit of collaboration i think everyone has come to every meeting with an open mind and an open heart and a real willingness to make actionable steps forward and i would just add that in all of our articulation meetings the the through

024line really is just making sure that kids are experiencing a consistent level and like care of support as they move between organizations so you know weisburn students are da vinci students we we feel that they are ours as well and we want to make sure that the experience the successful experiences they had in weisburn they're also getting when they move over to us in high school i didn't realize you had that relationship that's fantastic various endeavors in working together but are there roadblocks or problems that you feel we could help you to solve and if you don't feel like speaking up right now i guess maybe that's a little intimidating if you do have some of those ideas that you'd like to share with us that much appreciated and we could get them in writing

025or you could send us letters or you could let the various kids like dr silvers dr wonder know um but that's one of the things we'd really like to do we really appreciate the cooperation you just discussed and would like to help if we can in some ways as well certainly with encouragement but other ways as well so thanks thank you joanne you know articulation is vital to our respective organizations and serves both of our organizations right we do not want terminal programs in wiseburn we do not want programs to go k through 8 and die i would i would think da vinci would be best served with articulation as well because your students would be best prepared to succeed at davinci one other thing that i think is very relevant to share is that

026i know da vinci is proud to share it serve so many zip codes and that is something proud to be to be proud of wiseman also serves dozens and dozens of zip codes but they all come through the system and i think what's most important is that wiseburn dana students and wiseborn students matriculating into high school are the majority of da vinci students they're your number one group they're certainly the largest constituency and they're the number one group in addition to mr moore's comments about community so all these things come together i'm thrilled personally and i think the rest of the board members of all sides would agree that articulation is happening i would emphasize i would like to see that on steroids because it's so incredibly vital and useful for all of our students

027and both entities especially because we may be facing a or we know we're facing a declining market of students right there's a there's a decline in ada in our in all of california if we can have students who are coming say they love da vinci they'll come to wiseburn to get into vinci and we wanted so it just serves all of us if we articulate really well so i just wanted to make that point articulation absolutely yes you want to expand on that well i just want to make sure that that there are programs that davinci is articulating to wiseburn that that children are are prepared for the wiseborn high school experience and that there's that discussion between da vinci staff and wiseburn staff yes before you're not dying when they get into defense right

028thank you all right let's move to our next item which is athletics and and that concludes our meeting thank you i know if mr martinez were here he would have things to say and i did have a moment to share with him uh and he had commented on the importance of the history athletics he wanted to make sure that we all recognize that out of measure cl weisburn is contributing 180 000 to athletics to the da vinci program and how important athletics are just talk about athletics for a minute to him and arguably and i'll let the other board members speak but to the board to the wiseburn board and more importantly to the wiseborn community he had asked is there alignment on that do we have alignment on the importance of athletics and arts

029and you're free to have your opinion thoughts [Music] as a 30-year homeowner in weisburn i can certainly speak to how important athletics is to the community and da vinci should uh should be supporting athletics and the arts i think we have a number of programs at davinci for for athletics [Music] maybe it would be helpful to to remind the community every year every twice a year what those programs are i don't know if we need some sort of a committee that addresses community concerns about athletics and arts we very well may have that already but literally those are both very very important programs that that should be nurtured and and sustained and i don't think anyone on on the da vinci board would would argue with that but maybe i'm wrong can you hear me

030all right all right hi welcome to morgan can i just comment on athletics real quick um so yes i would also say that athletics are critical to both organizations i think we both uh advocate for that and want them in our schools um but i do when you speak meal and you say your community wants athletics and yep and nelson wants athletics are you getting data from the community to make sure you're hearing the whole community on that topic i just don't i i just don't want us to be hearing only one side um that we're being fair to the entire community and hearing from everyone you know that goes for arts that goes for uh immersion language you know all these things so what is weissburg doing to hear from the whole wise room

031community so the the question you're raising is to make sure we have a balanced input the whole community with what their expectations are uh for for athletics and arts programs and and maybe we're meeting a lot of those expectations now uh and we don't know it because we haven't surveyed um survey the community or or or parents specifically on what those uh what those needs and desires are i have a few comments as well on athletics um i think the athletics programs for years we've heard and they are very very important to the community and it's not just one individual in fact that was one of the founding principles of the authorization for davinci uh charters in the schools it's in our magna carta it's in it's in our mou so i i don't think

032anybody's questioning the importance of it i will remind everyone or share let me rephrase that let me share that when we started um wiseburn did con did contribute 125 000 as seed funds to start the athletics programs as the programs continue to evolve because the schools are just being established we made a commitment to contribute up to 180 000 per year for measure cl funds that was comments that we received from the community many many years ago and that has not changed uh but i do like the suggestion about doing the survey of bryant of brian brian i think it's we should always check again right make sure that we're in alignment with those things and uh did the interest in a certain type of sport change i mean the the details would come out

033in the collaborative survey that we can certainly send out very supportive of that of course um one of the things that we did i think lose in terms of our internal connection possibly as an action item for us is in our agreement we have that um the programs will be run by the end administered by the da vinci athletic director hired by davinci but that person will be supervised supervised by the wiser deputy superintendent when chris jones left the district for one reason or other you know we lost that connectivity so we also haven't seen as much of the connection as to what is happening in our community with sports we need to re-establish that and assign our wiseburn deputy superintendent where the athletic director is giving direct reports and updates and involved so we

034can work together to really promote the sports within the community that was always that was our intent um but things changed over the last let's just say five years or ten years when we established that i think it's an opportunity for us to revisit that and create some of that some of that connection because the wiseman community is funding those athletics and that's through the measure cl uh and as far as i'm concerned we're going to continue to do that i mean they're incredibly important i'd like to see us continue maybe make that as a as a subcommittee for sports i think someone else mentioned that as well and having this having some joint meetings or a working group for sports and with that it's also visual and performing arts look at where we're at

035today right i think they're equally as important the topic is centered around that because that's what we were talking about but they're in my mind they're both linked and they're both together i think it would be helpful to uh to to let the community know what we have accomplished in those areas you know before any kind of survey is done so there's some education around what kind of programs we've we've developed and you know your comment about the deputy superintendent i think is is is well taken um and it kind of dovetails into the concept of we created this document many many years ago maybe there's some augmentations to it that we need to do maybe the deputy superintendent is the right person maybe there's another role maybe there's another oversight model we should consider

036but we we should we should look at that agree [Music] thanks um i think we're gonna find the two boards are in vigorous agreement on this topic i think all of us as individuals see the value of athletics and art um i think particularly for young people being on the same team as other people it's sometimes one of their first experiences of cooperating and learning how to work with with other people it's critically important this year more than ever ever it is the 50th anniversary of title ix so i think particularly in terms of when we look at diversity equity and inclusion in all things sports is one of those areas where it is you can see it firsthand and you learn to work with people who maybe are from a different background to you

037so just from my opinion both art and athletics incredibly important but i do think you're going to find the two boards are in agreement on this thank you mr speaker you're next so i don't think i'm in the same space as everyone else has spoken before now i got here in 1953 as some of you know in 1954 little league baseball started in the united states of america i played that first year the dads built a field where the big houses are across from juan cabrillo back then and i played for five years before i went to hawthorne high and i've been a big sports fan all my life uh both as a participant and a spectator spend a lot of money and a lot of my time following football basketball and baseball and i

038think they're very important when i arrived here this afternoon for a meeting with carla our baseball team was just getting on the bus to leave for a game we belong to cif here which means you have to have seven sports for for girls and seven sports for boys but my main goal here is to have students develop into good citizens to have great careers and happy lives and i know the things that we're doing here centered around academics are what's going to lead to that not whether they play certain sports which they can do as well as the arts on the side i'm a big backer of the arts uh ever since the kaleidoscope program that was the number one program here when i was superintendent out in the desert arts and sports are a

039big part of my life but the goal here is let's get kids into careers let's get them happy lives let's keep them debt free with their families and supplement these other things as we can our main focus needs to be on academics it's working for us look at the results we've achieved and so i like you could give it lip service and how wonderful and everything is balanced but there's only so much time in the day and when it comes push comes to shove i want to spend that time on robotics and academics the things that will make a difference in their lives not whether they played three or four years of of baseball like i did that didn't end up changing uh my trajectory whatsoever so have a different point of view than than

040the rest of you have spoken goes to you matt i'm not going to throw it [Music] i just wanted to share some quick data um sue would acknowledge with with regard to athletics i think um given all that has happened we had a slow start rolling it out and i think we are rolling now i think we have the right people in the right positions um and i think our greatest number is we have 467 student athletes so i i agree with mrs morgan that surveys are important but i bet all 467 students who would say this is really important to them and it's going really well and that doesn't mean things are perfect but you know all schools are trying to grow and get better continuous improvement we have 15 varsity sports 12 or

041cif um thanks to vicente and dr our newish athletic director we're moving to an even more competitive league next year and if you look on this is out of my element because it's instagram and i barely know what i'm talking about but there are lots of pictures and there are lots of things to share success our kids are getting into cif playoffs so um i would i'm of a belief that there's room for both and keeping balance is important we also are putting our money where our mouth is so so roger's absolutely correct that wise burn has contributed through measure cl way back in the day 180 000. and da vinci has invested uh this year of a budgets uh just a little shy of 440 000 so um investments are being made i'll pass

042it to my my partner here to kind of share on uh vapa yeah so i think uh what joe said is really important i think we want the same things and at da vinci we offer a robust number of courses in the visual arts in particular i went through the master schedule today so many courses offered at all of our schools along with seminars too even in music appreciation i noted across the schools of course we have studio orchestra which is again another great collaboration with weisburn and toby harwell's partnership with us which is terrific and then at the beginning of the year we also we had a meeting with our weisburn partners regarding uh continuing to add to the arts program particularly in performing arts and i think i see ann tuttle back there

043too who is also part of that great meeting and we sort of paused on that with kovid there was a lot of concern around particulates being spewed in the air from choirs at that time to remember people were catching it so we paused on that temporarily but we'd like to revisit that conversation as case rates come back down so good work to be done there uh and then again another uh sort of collaboration dr johnson is also working on an advanced studio orchestra course description we had talked about that at the beginning of the year but paused on it because the uc portal doesn't open until february now it's open and so we're working on that advanced studio orchestra course description dr johnson and others including toby harwell so again work being done i think

044we agree uh and more work to be done so some great stuff going on and really excited to move forward in the visual and performing arts program [Music] that we're doing with the community and it would be helpful to explain where we started perhaps we are harmed by the fact that we kind of came out of the gate a little bit slow with respect to athletic so we're still living with that um with that as a perception and maybe we need to be better at explaining to the community through either community meetings or mailers or some sort of targeted emails or notices or social media explaining what we're doing it sounds like we're we've got a pretty robust program not exactly where we want to be on everything but we should probably talk about where

045we started where we are now and where what our plan is for the next two or three years perhaps perhaps one of our actions walk away from this meeting with action items is we talked about through this item setting up the subdomain for example we have a recreational committee but the members already assigned to that they may be our members and if we get a couple members from the davinci board or staff probably a combination thereof then we can move this this item forward and develop a communications plan also there you talk about funding where the which where the dollars are going how they're being attributed the management of just in athletics in general i'll let the committee determine the full agenda but i think what i'd like to hear from this medium is a

046creative path so that we can improve that collaboration and then those board members or committee members can make some presentations at different points in time to the davinci board of the lifespan board or if we stick to the minimum a three-month cycle for the joint board meeting those committees can report here as well and give us all a co-op and run this like a a joint board because that really looking forward to opportunities where we can be all in the same room at the same time and get that information to me that sounds very collaborative with both of the staff from both sides together presenting okay just to add it's ironic we didn't plan these necessarily this way but the two talk to each other we've talked about articulation of academics i think articulation of

047arts and athletics are also relevant to that conversation so it's not just making sure it's fabulous these things are happening want to make sure that we're coordinating so that we're doing these things together uh you know for example i know the ed foundation has made a significant investment in violins in fifth grade and that carries through to eighth grade to what extent is that carrying through in high school i think there's an opportunity for us to work together as building on your idea roger that we we're not going to solve everything but we have the object the conversation in the room we can do a better job and then communication becomes less of the issue it's more we've solved the problem or created opportunities well maybe having the end fund work with the school's fund

048as well [Music] you know for a integrated program thank you so i'm also a big fan of sports you know i grew up in the neighborhood i went to losing here i played baseball there i think that was a really fun experience but i'm also a big believer in academics and i like what davinci is doing from a balancing point of view like i thought the wonder mentioned um so i think it's very good idea to meet and have a committee to discuss the sports moves forward i like what they've been doing with basketball baseball and volleyball i think the one sport that i think is on the community's mind is soccer that's the one i feel like you know wiseburn has a big sports program here at the school and dana right every saturday

049there's a bunch of kids there playing soccer my kids wearing soccer and my kids are currently in the bay it's all leagues exam i think the community wants um i think they're looking for a soccer sport as well maybe that's something that we can be discussed at the committees all right let's move to our next topic the interest of progression and that is governance anyone wish to begin with thoughts on governance miss morgan you don't have to start here but i want to make sure we bring you in i'm i'm not ready to start i'll pipe in if i have something to share thank you you bet thank you way violently if we if you wanna i can start [Music] if you have an idea what you want to talk about so we should go

050there good thank you ray um jotted down several notes because this is an incredibly important topic for me in terms of governance and i think it is an important topic for all of us uh because it's really at the heart of how we established uh and i do say we because it was a joint effort uh davinci schools um i've said it in the past no one person established the schools who we're we're incredibly grateful to so many people so i'm not going to mention names but uh you all know who you are um just a little a little bit on the governance side because this one is obviously very personal to me uh with senate bill 126. um tremendous privilege and honor of my life to serve on the davinci board at the same

051time with with the wise burn board and when that senate bill 126 came up that was just a terrible bill for me maybe it was the right thing to do politically and for everybody else but i truly enjoyed and still enjoyed my time tremendously as a wise board member and i wouldn't give that up unless the community says otherwise because as a wiser board member i'm elected to the position but senate bill 126 really changed our agreement not about the law changed our excuse me senate bill 126 had a huge impact on our agreement meaning that in our agreement the way where our governance structure was that was that four dimension board members would be uh elected at large and confirmed by the weisbern board there would be one wiseburn resident that would be also

052part of the board but hadn't resided within the weisberg boundaries and two currently elected wisebring board members would also serve on the da vinci board making the seventh senate senate bill 126 i'm not sure there's an actual full-blown legal opinion but out of preponderance of caution we decided that israel maura and i would vacate our positions on the da vinci board and we elected to stay on the on the wiseburn board that really changed how we governed da davinci schools together with wiseburn because that direct connection being a part of those meetings having the hands-on connection is no longer there and it's not there now so i think that is a topic that we really need to look at as to how board members are elected or appointed uh to serve on that board i

053would like to also propose that we set up a follow-up subcommittee here because that core agreement was the reason that we have a 40 a part of the reason that we have a 40-year agreement in this in the in the magna carta without that we probably wouldn't have 40 years senate bill 126 changed that tenor i remember being when i was born president having many direct conversations at that time when we negotiated the uh the ammo the magna carta with chet pipkin and that was a very clear distinction as to why we would do that now with senate bill 126 throws this massive curveball at us it's very different today that's that was never the intent the intent was always to be very intertwined because wiseburn does not have nor does it does not have

054a separate high school da vinci schools is wiser why i'd like to hear i'd like to hear in the reverse too right why is vernon's davinci because i think we're that this is it these are the schools that we've built together and i think there's something that we lose uh by not having that joint connectivity and the responsibility to the community are there going to be disagreements absolutely how do we resolve those it's a very different dynamic right because and i'm just going to be as candid as possible because currently with our with our setup right now weisburn board is elected davinci board members and this is nobody in particular are not they're appointed without any recourse for the communities for any removals if they're dissatisfied again it's no comment on any board member so

055please do not take my comments uh in any other way i'm looking at it in the sense of for the future when this group is no longer here how does the community hold us accountable for our actions on the board for me come this november potentially they don't re-elect me right and i'm not on the board and they can choose someone else on the da vinci board doesn't work that way there is no recourse unless the da vinci board themselves chooses to remove somebody and again it's as candid as they can be because i think if we never talk about these items in this fashion we're never going to get to the core to try to resolve something again it's nothing with regards to any individual i want to keep saying that but i am

056looking at it for the future as to how do we craft an agreement similar to five years ago we were negotiating the initial magna carta with a cumulative or collective best interest at heart to preserve da vinci schools and preserve wiseburn and give that community a say um i agree with you brian i think uh it's time to revisit some of these items in the magna carta in fact there's a provision in it that says every 10 years or other period we should do that so i mean things change and i think if we don't change with with those items then we're going to continue to keep repeating some of these items so i'd like to uh i share that because governance is at the at the core of how we do everything here and

057i want to make sure that we're responsive overall to our community and uh i'm going to leave it at that but that's my opening sorry right i will comment please we'd like to hear your voice i'm not sure why you're saying sorry to me but that's the opening this is an opening no i i so i came to be on this board because of you because of this wise burn board that's my understanding right so i live in the wiseborn district i my kids go to dana now my kids play at the little league field i see as many community members as you all do probably more right that that is how i'm held to the fire okay i look them in the eyes and they say something's wrong they all see me here they

058all see me on the on the website they know who i am you guys know who i am right i came to be here because you wanted wiseburn representation on the board i'm here we should have a lot more communication we should have a lot more collaboration and i am that representation me joe jen raul [Music] that's why we're here i'll leave it at that thank you and the revisiting of that uh dr brand you and i successfully worked that through to create the new model uh of how not only board members were selected but also the restructuring of the after sb-126 so we can have success working this out and i encourage us to continue to do that i do want to share something that i think is inherently problematic in the model that

059is not people and i think this is super important to share there's challenges in the model that are not people meaning you could replace i believe you could replace every one of us with new people and there would still be challenges that would exist and i think we have to work through those but i want to air this issue and this is not there's no blame this is a model challenge let me explain i think it's fair and i'd love the da vinci folks to share this that da vinci wants autonomy uh or let me rephrase that da vinci has authority to large extent over da vinci but seeks more autonomy like wiseburn kind of leave us be let us do our thing especially at an operational level and i respect that feeling i would

060want to do the same i would argue wise burn challenges we have accountability and responsibility but very limited authority does that make any sense as elected board members we're not elected k-8 we're elected k-12 to the unified school district this is not a comment i actually hear what you're saying the challenge for us is we have elected responsibility for k-12 not just the people sitting in these seats forevermore whoever's elected to a unified school district has k-12 responsibility so i believe it's going to be very difficult forevermore for anybody who's in the wiseburn board seat to not to simply delegate and just be disconnected completely from nine through twelve candidly that feels almost irresponsible that's not that i'm not again no blame no issues just it's how do you do that so what roger was

061pointing to and i'm going to agree with this completely of sb 126 the the as i understand it and reading the document very carefully when we did sp 26 precluded anybody from sitting on a on a board of which there'd be a conflict of interest with competing interests and thus obviously the two groups would not have exact interests all the same time although we'd like to create them as much as possible and thus there was a legal preclusion for staying on the board i think one workaround and i would like to suggest that we pursue this is a consideration of working a and i've had we've had conversations on this for many years revisiting sb126 and seeing if we can get a legal carve out so that the original intent of the board having some

062direct influence on not not a power grab just responsible service on the davinci board as it was before i'd suggest we pursue that or look into that other comments and thoughts [Music] this working over there here so i go back to when the da vinci schools were authorized by the uh wiseburn school district board some of uh some of us were there that night like brian meets and nelson was there and uh israel joanne myself after a long study that matt did about charter schools because remember we were trying to find some alternative to hawthorne high school basically the parents were frantic and not wanting to send their children there and uh matt made his report in the spring of 2008 and i believe it was in march of that year that the the weisburn

063board authorized the charter charter schools to get going and there was a discussion at that time whether these schools would be independent charters or dependent charters and we thought independent would be better because we thought we could tap into more resources and philanthropists and foundations if we were independent and we did go that pathway the board asked me to serve on the uh da vinci board what came to be called the vinci and because they wanted a linkage between the community and weisburn and they knew i was that link that everybody if i'm on it they know okay that's around wiseburn where other people were on that board at the beginning from ladera heights and uh and other places so so we kicked that off got it started and it has proved out to be

064really effective at uh getting resources uh millions and millions of dollars every year that's worked well at that point in time there wasn't much hope that weisburn was going to be able to unify that effort was on the rocks we had started it in 2001 before 9 11. and tom johnstone was able to put together a uh a unique one-off team to come up with a solution the only time in california history uh to get cooperation from sentinel valley and other feeder elementary districts to not oppose widespread unifying and that eventually occurred in a vote where over 90 percent of the people voted to secede from sentinel valley and hawthorne high and and then shortly thereafter the wise burn the new wiseburn unified school district board asked da vinci to operate its high schools and

065in so doing in that act when it shifted the high schools to da vinci's responsibility it ceded the power to run those high schools but i don't think the public really understood the implications of that but that that was given away to the weisburn or to the uh the independent charter board which charter boards are not elected uh independent boards are not elected by the general public and so so basically you can't have your cake and eat it too you can't try to run the schools of an independent charter you that you've authorized you have to just be sure that the schools are meeting their responsibilities under the charter and decide if you want to authorize them again or if you don't then laco will authorize them so you have to make that call the

066next time this comes up whether you want to continue to be the authorizer or shift it over to laco like we have with uh davinci rise is with laco so there's just a lot of things here that the general public has never been informed about clearly because like israel said in his opening remarks this is a one-off the the thing that the hybrid vehicle that we put together here and people don't get it people in el segundo where i live keep saying who's in charge over there is it uh tom johnstone or matt wonder police chief so everybody nobody gets it because it is very complicated there's no other models you can look at so i mean what was done i think y'all at that time made the right decision we've been in business for

067five years we're really starting to rock and roll and uh we've just gotten better ever since then but you just have to realize we're going to run the schools we have the power to run the schools we're the independent board and you don't and if the public doesn't like the way we run the schools and they punish you and that's a consequence of your decision to outsource your high schools [Music] where's the like here it is if i made one thing to add to that i agree with all of that and don the model was having an independent board run it with sb 124 126 with two members of the weisbourne that's how we bridge the gap that's missing that that was the bridge so i think that's important for everybody to know that's that's

068the distinction not a complaint just a reality um that's all driven by the union the large urban unions want to destabilize the leadership of charter schools and every year they have a new thing they go after one year it's we're not going to fund you for growth the next year it's if you've got anybody elected to a public office you can't also serve on a charter board we had hit four of our seven people and i was the only one who walked away from my elected office right to stay with da vinci okay everybody else went back to where they were originally elected so that's just the unions are always not going to be willing to compete with charters they're trying to ruin charters they bought the legislature they bought the governor and it's a

069struggle for charters to try to maintain and it's just going to keep coming so that's where we're ready for that here and uh so that that's how we get into these fixes they come up with crazy stuff like 126 one size fits all and they don't see how it works out in the the general public they just don't get it and they don't care and i think we have an opportunity to look at that joanne you wanted to share um along the lines of what don was mentioning earlier because we are a unique one-of-a-kind operation between the weisburn unified school district and the da vinci schools i'm not prepared to say we gave away our rights to the high school and i'm not prepared to say that we have to like it or lump it

070don i don't feel that that's quite where we are i believe that at the time we passed a bond and passed unification and funded the building of this beautiful campus along with the da vinci funds that we defined a partnership that we believe in together and that we want to have a an articulation a matriculation from k through career as matt put it uh so beautifully when he came to speak to the weissman board when the da vinci folks came to talk about metrics and so on last week which really appreciate i love that phrase k through career and that's what we are here to do that's why we're all here together that's why we've all agreed to meet and we want to keep meeting because we do believe in each other and we do

071have common goals and we do intend to achieve those goals together weisburn this is our high schools we as a board are responsible as a k through 12 district to use that term to provide high school for our for our constituents for our residents and when we chose the da vinci schools to be our high school we did that with a lot of thought and a lot of belief that we would make this work together and and that's what we're here to do look at all the people here that's why we're all here together and i agree with what ray said i agree with what everyone else has said at the table here except some of the words you said done i don't believe we're here to lump it i believe we're here to work

072together and to cooperate and that's why we're here [Music] i just want to remind everybody that when the wiseburn school district board went for that bond they had no license to run a high school elementary district 114 years no license they did that for da vinci which had already started the bond passed eventually got uh over 50 million dollars to put with it all of that was before unification didn't come about for years after that so that was a one-off there's two things that the wise burn board has done that have never been done one was to go out for a bond for grades that they didn't cover and two was once a 13-year fight to unified took place and ended they gave away the running of the high schools to an independent charter board

073that's never happened and that may be why you can't find anything like this in california but that's what did happen [Music] um i i don't know where i end up on the sb 126 workaround concept i i have some um i have some sympathies for the thought of doing it but i i'd like to talk to uh to our board uh more about that but i don't think that as any kind of legislative relief from sb 126 is a panacea i think when roger and israel were were on the board the governance issues were still there they run deep they run deeper than just having two wiseborn board members on and i i think we need to get to more fundamental issues than just having wiseburn board members on on the da vinci board so

074that's my comment just as a point of clarification for myself based on a comment don just made um wise burn did not pursue a bond for da vinci that is an inaccurate statement we pursued a bond because the community asked us for a high school the result of it was that this building was built but it wasn't like we need a bond for da vinci that that is not what happened the community wanted unification we needed a high school we didn't for we didn't want to be a part of our current uh feeder uh so we and a lot of people here contributed to that obviously with regards to that but we wanted to break that tie with the current feeder so we took a huge risk as a ka to go for a bond

075to build a high school it ended up being with da vinci and part of that partnership but that was at a community's request and their vote to approve the bond it wasn't specifically for da vinci as was phrased so i just want to make sure from my perspective being active in the bond campaigner that's what i campaigned for just want to make sure that that's also reflected [Music] well just to maybe to wrap this section up because i think we've shared some some views and obviously need the subcommittees to take this further i want to also comment on ray's comments of you're coming to being in the community that is interesting that's very true i i have not thought about that i'm gonna i'm gonna dwell on that um if i'm also gonna dwell on

076if the community member is unhappy with me as roger suggested as a board member they can vote me out but if they're unhappy with with anybody who's on a non-elected board they don't have that right that that that opportunity and i think that in itself is problematic in that whether or not it's i would call it candidly taxation without representation you just don't have a voice a direct vote so i i'm gonna contemplate that because yes you probably feel the same pressures we do when you're in the community i'm not absolutely not going to negate that and i don't know that that isn't enough so i'm going to contemplate on that the other thing you said i thought was was right on the mark is that we don't talk enough we simply don't talk enough

077um i know joe and joe you guys have developed a friendship which is fantastic and i think we need we have the opportunity to do more of that brian i we enjoy each other you know we just don't take the time to connect as much as we should and i think we'd all win if we did that more so i'm going to take a play out of a page out of rey's playbook and i know you've reached out and we need to do that better so thank you let's move to our next topic and that is facilities funding and finance and we have 201 douglas and deferred maintenance i know deferred maintenance has been i'm not meaning to put the the i want to give the opportunity for the da vinci folks to share this

078i know deferred maintenance has been a subject of some uh frustration and i want to give you guys an opportunity to share your perspective on that not required but i'll leave that to you for a moment all right um on the subject of deferred maintenance i would say that da vinci has found funds to to complete certain aspects of the school that weren't completed when the school was delivered to us and i would like to revisit the concept of making a deferred maintenance contribution every year in light of the fact that we have spent several million dollars of da vinci funds and that was a a concept that we wanted to bring to you over 15 months ago when we submitted to you our proposal for a memorandum of uh of agreement um we wanted

079to go over many items and we did not have the opportunity to get a response from uh from weisburn on that and other topics and so like many things there are things you would like to change in the mou i'm sure things we would like to change including the deferred maintenance concept and we should sit down and have a conversation about that agreement and deferred maintenance all i had to say on that obviously our sub-topics here are this building i'd like to make a really nice comment a little lemony here uh on uh it was a friday friday um steve wallace brian myself we had a good meeting with sva architects that regarding the career technology education project has some really nice concepts from sba architects uh they've come up uh together with group on

080the subcommittee they come up with a an alternative location still roughly in the same place but it's a lower cost option due to uh some existing utilities so that's a really exciting project uh that's going to be coming to the board presentation and here in february to the davinci board and the subset will be to the weisberg board so everybody can see what's happening with career technology education and that believe it was a 1.2 or 120 million dollar grant that's really exciting to see um then brian and i just on the side also had a good conversation with regards to seeing what we can do as well to move our existing soccer field forward as it's an uncompleted project you know that's something that uh i think in our facility subcommittee we can also be

081talking about too i think it'd be great to be able to finish that out uh and open that space up for more students to use because right now it's just inaccessible so if there's anything we can do to continue to work together on that of course or we want to do that [Music] i guess neil what what's your thoughts on where do we go with that is the concept no no no no with with the concept of facilities and funding and finance are we going to develop a subcommittee to to evaluate this all these things so that what we were trying to do in this meeting i think was kind of shared what's your perspective where are you coming from so you can hear those views and bring them to the subject so we're not

082going to solve things today right but we'll certainly try to hear i i totally respect [Music] i totally respect the idea of we felt we spent money on something isn't it fair that we don't have to pay for something else that is a reasonable is that a fair i mean i'm reducing it very simply but just we spent money here so why do we have to spend money here and i get that that makes perfect sense to me my challenge is the application of it because deferred maintenance and i get that i mean again i don't want to take i totally get that but the challenge with deferred maintenance is buildings need to be maintained in fact you can argue if we add more buildings the money we've spent they actually add to the need

083for deferred maintenance so if we had tons of money coming in from other means you know we have what two percent total that's it's just not enough to cover all these things and we're giving money from measure ceo and other things i'm not complaining about that i'm simply saying our reality we have to have deferred maintenance to cover buildings will need to be maintained period i think that's where sorry i'm just where are we getting the funds otherwise that's the challenge and one other thing on on funding and finance that i think is relevant to share and the challenge we have i'll speak for myself is that anything we spend on da vinci at this point from lcff funding is coming from k-8 funds and we're not talking about connect here at least talk about

0849-12 the high schools so any funds that are spent now on 201 or other are coming from k-8 lcf funds or other k-8 funds that's hard to justify from my perspective because that's taking away from k-8 when nine through 12 is getting its own funds and candidly 9-12 is getting more ada per kid than k-2-a so it's that's you know these are reasonable positions to have on all sides but i want to make sure that we're understanding where we're coming from [Music] and we should look at what our deferred maintenance needs are and look at how we can share funds and make sure that we have funds available to to rebuild and replace things as they become obsolete or need to be replaced i'm just suggesting we we have a a conversation today about a

085building that exists today that didn't exist five years ago when we did this original deal as far as i'm concerned if we come up with a way to make sure that those those funds are available whether you call it deferred maintenance or something else fantastic that's a win for everybody just got to make sure that there's not a surprise 15 20 years from now when none of us are here and there are no funds to cover expenses for sure functionally there's some things like the maintenance of what gets replaced when um [Music] and we have in-house expertise here right so so i think that's some of the things and then we're spending that money we'd argue on deferred maintenance items and so how does it get replenished i think when we created [Music] this in

086the mou we were thinking of a future context and functionally there are some things that um we need to work through that don't make any sense that is no one's fault so look forward to those companies have repeated conversations on who pays for what i don't think it's unfair i think it's very clear that it says that davinci schools paid for all of these items uh we could all take a look at it maybe have a different interpretation of it where which pots and how do we do it is it the time to revisit it definitely open to that i'm not saying no personally i think it's very clear and there was there's a one percent deferred maintenance account that davinci is to contribute on a year to yearly basis one percent of ada up

087to us it's called the sinking fund up to 2.5 million dollars then there's a separate two percent for routine maintenance that davinci is also supposed to contribute to that if those are funds those are already set aside great i mean there's also a call on them and the magna carta for a working group to review those things and develop a maintenance schedule and review those things i think we just need to do that guys just as a as a general comment we can take a look at that and develop a schedule for maintenance budgeting can we create some flexibility with that i'd like to i mean i'm certainly open to that i think that's part of the conversation for that working group i would prefer that working group to really start to dive in and

088make some recommendations because if that model doesn't work anymore moving forward for a building that wasn't built then to today i'm certainly open to revisit brian and to the rest of the board i think we can we can look at that right i guess my point is that for some of these things that we had to spend money on arguably they they are deferred maintenance items that accelerated and then we've already paid for that that fund once and if we have to then recontribute to it and we're paying twice so i i think we should just have a conversation about it we're gonna have some disagreements for sure but uh but i think it's worth looking at and hopefully coming to some sort of agreement [Music] absolutely appreciate that any other thoughts on funding facilities

089or finance any questions from anyone all right we'll move on special education the sixth item special ed funding this was something that was as i understand it and probably roger you can help us here uh was created initially to kind of get da vinci going uh in the original contract or to cover you know maybe i should defer to you roger do you do you have the insights on that that was a huge challenge in our agreement that specifically talked about that and there's several several components of that in particular where wiser would also contribute or pay for services for students 18 to 21 or 22 years old because of the way charter school funding worked i am not an expert on special education so i would refer that to a subcommittee we could take

090a look at that deal but there is an agreement as well where weisberg contributes a certain portion of it for special education for those age groups and then of course with the lion's share and being through davinci uh for the students uh and then i think it's really important in terms of the designations you know who is entitled to that and that's part of like working together as widespread identifies students from the k-8 side for special needs or ieps and things like that we really have to take a strong hard look at those and recognize that whatever we designate davinci inherits so obviously we want to do the right thing for all our kids and if they have their they have those needs we'll provide those services um but we have to be cognizant of

091costs and potentially costs that we pass along right and uh we have a process maybe we can review that process as to how we do that it's just such a complicated topic it's not a fits all with special education there's so many different needs there but there is information that the full exhibit is the magna carta that i think is as a guide at least for what i understand it it's not all-inclusive i'm sure there's so many different components to that so [Music] that's all that's that's what i can offer [Music] dr silvers will just turn a few i'll just say go you know just real briefly i think the question that that comes to mind is uh when you have two organizations that are the same size and there's a there's an algorithm or

092an allocation model the funding for special education and one organization um the the 912 organization is it still fair um or equitable i guess it's probably a better word to ask a ka to pay for special education services for a 912 that receives funding federal funding and state funding i think that was a simple question guys again goes back to all funding is subcommittee needs to review this together money is at the root of all evil [Music] if it's a sports organization if it's an educational organization money matters and what you do with the money matters how you accumulate the money matters and how you spend the money matters there's laws that surround these responsibilities we have agreements that currently define these responsibilities just like we have an independent charter that defines how the boards

093work together so i think we need to realize that we have perhaps to be flexible in these definitions in order to be able to work together and in order to be able to support our communities and our students and i i think that we we really need to work on these items these are the root of our governance problems i think some of it is organizational as as neil described but a lot of it is financial and i think if we can handle these and if we can come to agreements on these that allow us to work together comfortably i think will go a long way in our governance as well [Music] so at this point with no other comment on special ed we're at the other uh item on our agenda and i believe

094we're right on time are there any other items anybody wants to wish up and bring up anything that we should be exploring in a subcommittee that we feel has not been mentioned or is worthy of a conversation i'm sorry you're having to do um i guess what i want to say is something positive and something encouraging and and that is if that if this was easy um we wouldn't be here sitting together tonight in a large group of folks trying to trying to work together if this was easy or obvious or uh already done we'd go home and watch the olympics or whatever else is going on this evening but it's not easy and it's not obvious and so we have to ask ourselves if we really want to solve these problems do we really

095want to work together and and i can answer that for myself yes i do want to solve these problems yes i do want to work together i have a tremendous amount of respect for everyone in this room on the on the who's watching us tonight and i think we have respect for each other and i i want to take that forward and put these committees together and have these hard conversations there's nothing wrong with a hard conversation that's what that's why that's what's fun that's what makes it challenging that's what allows you to make progress is by solving hard problems so so i don't want to go away from here feeling bad about myself or feeling bad about each other or anyone else in this room because i really believe everyone who's here is here

096for the right reason is here to solve these problems here to work for our kids here to work for our communities and i respect that on all sides and and i appreciate it [Music] you i'd like to um follow up or echo a little bit of what joanne just said i think is very appropriate joanne i remember when we were starting out to develop the the mou the magna carta i remember asking like where has this been done before is there a model is there a template is there something that we can look to use used to as a guide constant response that we got is this has never been done before so it's so anything that's in that the magna carta i mean we both da vinci wiseman we created it right is it

097perfect no right back then i mean i think we were we we took an opportunity to a certain extent we jointly took a risk and we bravely made some decisions uh and uh invested in each other to move our partnership forward um is this an opportunity now to revisit some of those items i think it is right and there's nothing wrong in my mind there's nothing wrong with doing that we're five years in i think it was to 2016 or so when we executed the magna carta we're right around that time let's revisit some of those items and if they don't work for one or both of the parties let's talk about those so i'm really excited about that subcommittee work because that's really when we could get into like some of those nuts and

098bolts and talk about uh creative solutions because just because there's no statute or law that says we can't or can't do some of these items doesn't mean that we can't come to an agreement as to how we're gonna how we're gonna implement it obviously we're not going to do anything illegal or things like that but if there's a work around something that works for both of our organizations i would ask us that we put all those items on the table and figure out if it works for us and just be very open have these hard difficult conversations and who knows maybe some of them won't be as difficult and uh and we move on [Music] i think joanne said it was you know similar to a marriage between the two organizations and every marriage is

099not perfect and there's lots of disagreements and lots of things you you don't necessarily see eye to eye on but for a marriage to be successful you have to agree on the the big items and um i i'm optimistic that we can agree on the big items we may have some skirmishes over herd maintenance things or articulation on arts or something like that but uh not that those are small things but but i'm optimistic that we can align on the big things and work successfully together [Music] i'm maybe not as optimistic as everyone is because 15 months ago derek boston and brian mease prepared a list of items that need to be changed in the documents and it's exciting we're all talking about sitting down in small groups now one-on-one or two on twos to

100do it what what happened the last 15 months why didn't those things get addressed why have we let a year and a quarter go by with these things not dealt with i don't understand what takes so long how process gets so bogged down that there can be no product or boxes checked from it there's just nothing been happening with this stuff we went with a couple of professors from pepperdine to help straighten the thing out they didn't but now tonight we're all excited we're going to have these meetings and talk about these things this should have been done a long long time ago and it wasn't it wasn't because da vinci wasn't ready they submitted the paper they matt was told yeah we're going to get our response to you in the next week 15

101months later there's no response tonight so i'm not so optimistic let's see if we really act like we talk [Music] about i think we need to be encouraged if we weren't able to accomplish it it's probably the fault of everyone in this room and i would like to make progress i don't feel like i need to be reprimanded i feel like i need to be encouraged and i want to encourage the people here here i do not appreciate a reprimand [Music] well the record does don the record was that you and i met and decided because tensions were so high we would actually engage in the process of having a third party consultants come in and we did that and we all participated in that and we took the path that this would take us

102forward i completely agree it didn't take us forward but we needed to let cooler heads prevail we were all at a difficult time i think we're now at a time that we have the opportunity to work for it i hope you'll be part of that don i i believe we're all the rest of us wish to be so i certainly do and i also will ask everyone i'll make a request of us all that we have this moment forward dwelling on the past and what we did or didn't do candidly gets us nowhere let's talk about where we're going from here and let's work together to make it a successful productive move forward with that said we've moved to our final closing oh thank you bro [Music] all right i will say that i share

103don's frustration because i participated in many hours trying to prepare that document but i want us to move forward and and move collaboratively together i'm ever hopeful i've worked with all of the wiser board members except for neil and neil and i have talked that even though we didn't serve on the board together we we served in other capacities together um i know you all have the best interests of students of wiseburn at heart and with that i i want to see us move forward proactively from here thank you leadership from either your perspective anything you'd like to add before we close out tonight and wrap up [Music] i think they're passing okay all right so we do have follow-up we had designated that we would follow us i think some additional ideas that come

104up tonight we do come to a conclusion as to what the sub entities are and reach out i'm open to suggestions here guys revisit the september committee the the wall chart if you will all um i just wanted to make sure that those of us who are here tonight have you really first hand experience [Music] as well as the facts that were shared are uh are conveyed to our uh to our colleagues because as we leave with an urgency here to to work together we want to make sure that all our boards that the entire board boards whatever um share the urgency and the uh and the [Music] encouragement i guess to to go forward so that was my only comment let's say athletics governance facilities and special education i believe an articulation subcommittee may

105or the team's already working on that i don't know if you want to do that as well but i think we should identify we can identify it send it not having all board members here okay i'd like to go back and then have everybody decide i agree they want to have i agree so if if we can do that i would suggest to move it forward um we when dr shilbridge when's our next board meeting so maybe if we can have that an agenda for the wiseburn board meaning to designate uh subcommittee members to for at least these four items or discuss a list if we want to add some other ones to that and share that as we as as we develop it with davinci as well and if da vinci once would like

106some subcommittees as well please let us know so that we can try to marry them up would not the subcommittees be the same i'm not sure that they would be for each topic there might be some more members that want to be there i think there's something that there'd be in our funding finance or governance subcommittees that we would have to work with both groups right the subcommittees would be the same so i want to come to an agreement what the subcommittees are going to be discussing and then the second question is who are the members in those subcommittees well and we have because it's probably not going to be each excuse me no that's right i think we have to be realistic at this moment we're looking at one board member per subcommittee on

107the weisbach side and not much more than that so if that's it perfect okay let's start there so i i just had a comment um just subject to the board president's agreement i'd like to make sure that staff is continuing to prompt us at board meetings perhaps having an agenda item on each each meeting to to to remind us of our shared desire to move forward on these topics so we are held accountable for uh for ourselves maybe make it a standing agenda thank you [Music] twice a year scenario i think we obviously need more than that i would suggest we want the subcommittees to get going and then meet again and have reports by those committees are there suggested timelines that we should be looking at that's realistic and and uh the leadership we're

108open to your suggestions here too [Music] i would say given the committees there may be different timelines for measuring success and deliverables for each topic and that we should maybe leave those timelines to any side once but for the committees to meet certainly i'm just talking about our joint board meeting [Music] two months three months it was five months at a time long time yeah well this was we had the january meeting that got rescheduled agreed it's too long three months enough to get our committees going all right may all right uh we wanted to end our meeting giving everybody the opportunity to have closing comments your opportunity we left a incredible time of a minute per person to be as long-winded as you wish to be so uh jennifer morgan if you're comfortable i

109want to if we can start with you and if you want to pass and come at the end i just want to make sure you're brought in thank you i'll just share i overall i think i worked with roger and chet pitkin and um who else was with us roger i mean when we were doing the magna carta and it was we spent saturday's long hours doing these documents together and and we worked well together so i'm confident in these smaller groups we'll find more solutions and we'll find better ways to communicate to each other and in turn communicate to our communities i'm very optimistic we're capable of that so um i just i encourage um us to do that moving forward i think we can get it done thank you jennifer thank you for

110joining us i know how hard this is to do remotely so thank you very much thank you for having me just in the interest of the microphone challenge uh can we start with mr meath uh roger and i have already uh established our own subcommittee we already started i think i've said enough tonight and appreciate that we got together thank you thank you brian [Music] similar on my end just looking forward to the the conversations to come and as jennifer mentioned there uh we've done it in the past no reason we can't do it again and just looking forward to the [Music] conversation uh i just like to say [Music] i i love the wisebring community it's the only reason i'm here i've learned to love da vinci and i'm meant to be the bridge

111i i anybody who's still online i encourage you to reach out to me if you have questions or concerns i do the same for the board for the wiseburn board i'm meant to be a bridge that's the only reason i'm here is to bring wiseburn concerns to da vinci so uh i'll end with that thank you i'm gonna play on on your comments ray that uh [Music] you're getting a call from me tomorrow and we're gonna do coffee or something because we can't communicate better jennifer you said it beautifully i think we have this opportunity and i i hope we can put the past in the past yes we've had our challenges but we have this opportunity moving forward if it took us we're here this is where we are there's nothing we can do

112about the past it's the sump cost this is where we are let's take this opportunity and move forward thank you i like to i like it when people do what they say they're going to do for example if you remember in the minutes that we uh reviewed earlier raul had a good suggestion at our last meeting five months ago that we would have an evaluation form on how these meetings go my guess is we don't have that tonight we didn't do what we said we were going to do before you leave here misinformed i'd like to do a fact check on one of the things that israel mentioned in his opening or maybe closing remarks about uh wiseburn supporting dr wonder salary for the first two years the operation of da vinci and they never

113were reimbursed i don't think that's accurate i think weisburn was reimbursed by da vinci from the funding that it got for its startup grants maybe we could have dave wilson and michael our business people uh review that and see uh see what the actual facts are but i don't think what he said is true and i think we need to get everybody on the same page with the same memories about what has occurred here since uh 2007 8. thank you [Music] thanks don i think uh you know ray and i and rahul we're the new guys we're the new guys we don't know the history we we hear it from you we don't know everything that happened but i think i speak for the three of us we are dedicated to trying to make this

114work this is a unique relationship you're right we're a charter school where we do not have a board that is elected by the residents of wiseburn but that's where we are different and in order to make this work we have to figure out how to work with each other and within the parameters of each other needs which each other needs so i for one completely committed to this i've loved working with the wise burn guys i've worked with one in particular but i believe we've got something really special here my kids have been through the education system with da vinci i think this is something very special very unique that we are bringing and i for one am very committed to making this work um i come from a family of immigrants my father had

115absolutely no formal education he had to stand in cow manure in eastern europe in order to keep his feet warm during world war one i come from a family that values education and patriotism and service to community and that's why i'm here i was taught that as i was raised i was it was infused into my system i hope i'm passing it along to my own children i want to work in our community it's one of the things i i have dedicated a lot of my time to and want to continue to do that i value the folks here i value the opportunity here to work and to serve and i want to continue to do that and i appreciate that folks include me in doing that i appreciate being reelected by our community a

116year or so ago and take that very seriously as a commitment to serve those constituents so um i'm also committed to work with the weisbern board members uh i think while i have a common goal and i think um i think we can make this happen and i'm looking forward to these subcommittees that roger mentioned and um um i love work living in the western community um i've been here for 16 years and so i'm excited my kids are in dana and peter burnett or 138th street now and they're gonna go to davinci so i'm excited to you know the articulation is very important to me i would like to you know get data metrics on you know i see my son in the classes he has and i would like to see you know

117what's the data that the percentage of kids as they go into davinci where do they fall in the math i think science and the english and that's important to me looking forward to working with her [Music] thank you well thank you all for your comments for your time i started this by saying we're all volunteers in it for the right reasons i believe i still hold that to be true and we can work this out and make this uh productive moving forward any other agenda or any other items anybody wishes to share at this time all right well our target was eight it's not even eight we're adjourned thank you everybody