Board Meeting 3/30/21

001welcome everybody uh again thank you uh to our volunteer board members our cabinet here tonight and to our educator staff and everybody in our community who's watching and with us tonight this has been an exciting week at wiseburn with dana middle school opening yesterday each of our schools have now reopened with hybrid in-person learning so special thank you's to the teachers the staff and administrators of dana and of course at all our schools for diligently navigating these winds of change in covet 19. thank you everybody tonight we have a very full and likely lengthy agenda where we will address financial issues including some facilities funding options our annual financial audit rotary mini grant awards which is fun for our teachers at this point i also want to thank chevron and their donations director ms lilly

002craig long time supporters they they're they're longtime supporters of wiseburn and they've donated about uh exactly rather fifty thousand dollars in the past few weeks to us so thank you chevron for your generosity and your support of education indeed um we will also include a resolution denouncing xenophobia and the anti-asian american and pacific island pacific islander sentiment and a number of other issues in this rescheduled board meeting also present for many is the issue of the dv high schools reopening i and i'm sure my colleagues will personally plan to share some thoughts on this topic during our comment section later in our meeting we have received several pages of public comments so far so if needed in light of the ongoing conversations regarding high school reopening we will amend our usual public comment section tonight

003to expand it if necessary and during that public time open our chat room in a limited fashion during public comments we'll ask those viewing if there's any additional comments anybody wants to make if so we'll ask you to put your name in the chat box that will be open at just at that time and put the name that's your screen name so we can find you and our team will allow you to speak and bring you into the meeting this is indeed a challenging and defining time in our partnership we are committed to finding a path forward again i'll have more to say here and we appreciate all comments so with that opening let us now move to a motion to adopt the agenda please you have a motion thank you nelson that's it thank

004you joanne mrsubaki favor hi hi i'm opposed thank you all right uh let us as we always do move to the flag salute uh miss harbeck dr harbeck forgive me dr harbeck if you would be so kind of course please stand place your hand on your heart ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you eileen we will now turn to public comments but before opening to uh public comments in our general form we again want to thank those individuals who shared their thoughts on our share your thoughts section on our website uh basically the themes emerge were a desire for reopening for in-classroom and in-person instruction a number

005of folks spoke just to that side of that equation was a comment for a desire for lunches not to be required for all students at grab and go at our sites a family shared they were health conscious and seek to avoid processed foods so as not to require students to take it i don't think that's the the the protocol but dr schill which perhaps you can address that in your comments uh at that time um so thank you for these comments mitsubaki nuts now move to our public comment section thank you we have a number of public comments this evening we have a few who would like to read them themselves i'm going to take them in the order that i received the first person i have to read is julia bloomquest she was not

006able to be called at the last meeting um i t if you can transfer her over let's see um i don't seem to be seeing her again so we are gonna move on to the next one i will come back to you if i do see this name again the second person exactly if i may have we opened the chat so people can put their name and this miss bloom quest is on the line maybe she can tell us if she's using a different screen name thank you yep yep i have the chat open and um there's nothing yet but we will come back to that one just in case uh miss bloomquist if you do arrive please just uh write your name into the chat and we'll slide you over the second name i

007have is from juan ortiz um i'm to read this one for him dear members of the board first of all as a first-time speaker it was not easy at all to find the website information to provide input the flyer i received simply provided the link to the zoom meeting but no other links or information that facilitated comment i found your open letter to the da vinci board to be reprehensible and so incredibly transparent on the true motives of speaking on behalf of a small minority of vocal critics it surely doesn't represent my family's viewpoint nor all my fellow da vinci parents and their high school students i believe da vinci's cautious approach to very slow reopening it to very slowly reopening is the most prudent path forward it has been a difficult year and for

008some parents much more than others but what will we gain from rushing to a full open approach if we will just end up aggravating the copen 19 spread i find this way of thinking very short-sighted and lacks empathy for the teachers that will be putting their loved ones in harm's way by possibly transmitting copin 19 albeit they have been vaccinated also have you carefully considered the nature of children and their desire to socialize interact without being capable of policing themselves on maintaining the necessary distance and mask wearing at all times the potential for outbreaks and spreading of covid19 to other unvaccinated members of their families is too high of a price to pay being so close to achieving a much higher rate of vaccination throughout our community doesn't feel like the positives outweigh the negatives

009please reconsider your precipitated open letter and continue to trust the great leadership that davinci board has shown and continues to show thank you the next person is kelly schumacher if we could bring her over please uh hold on i think um kelly i'm not sure did you still want us yeah i'm here i did thank you yes good evening i'm kelly shoemaker proud mom of a 10th grader at davinci science a seventh grader at dana and a proud teacher at cabrillo school wiseburn elementary teachers have embraced the philosophy of cognitively guided instruction students learn that there is usually more than one way to approach a problem teachers guide their students to listen and reflect upon their peers thinking they learn to disagree respectfully ask questions and engage in conversation in order to deepen understanding your

010open letter to dr wonder and the da vinci school board dated march 16th the day before the high schools presented the details of their plans was unexpected and shocking i can understand that you might not agree with the da vinci plans or feel the need to support disappointed community members but i would have expected you to meet with da vinci's administrative cabinet ask questions and find out more it was confusing to hear you characterize the da vinci plans as perfunctory nebulous and ineffective perfunctory means carried out with a minimum of reflection at the march 10th and 25th da vinci school board meetings the results of student and parent surveys as well as the process administrators and teachers engaged in to design their plans were shared it was abundantly clear that these plans were developed after

011deliberate and deep reflection nebulous means unclear or vague i found da vinci science's reopening plan to be clear and flexible with room to become more permissive or restrictive as coveted numbers and county guidelines change as to whether their plan is ineffective that remains to be seen as students do not return to campus until april 12 giving their teachers time to be fully vaccinated the characterization in the last paragraph that the da vinci schools team appears to have deviated from its sole purpose of serving wiseburn students grades 9-12 is unfair in all of the meetings da vinci has hosted it was clear that while there is a vocal group of families who desperately want our high school to open more fully there are also a range of voices to be considered the da vinci high school

012plan strives to honor the needs of all stakeholders preserve instructional integrity and equity and keep everyone safe no educator is happy about this pandemic and its effect on schools students and their families we are all making plans that we think will best serve our students while not contributing to the spread of covet please be role models for our community please be strong thoughtful authorizer and oversight agency davinci and weisburn schools need right now please work to engage in purposeful dialogue and understand the thinking behind the high school reopening plans and let's speak to each other as the colleagues we are passionate skilled educators who care deeply about our community our students and their futures thank you thank you thank you kelly okay the next comment is from melissa craig i am in strong support of

013our district adopting action item number five it is recommended the board approved resolution 2021 24 denouncing xenophobia and anti-asian american and pacific islander sentiment due to the copit19 pandemic and affirming the district's commitment to the well-being and safety of asian americans as presented for the safety of our asian american and pacific islander communities within our district the next comment is from joe and shepard parking is prohibited on 134th street for student pickup on monday and thursday causing disruption with trash pickup blocking it is also in violation of the agreement made in public hearing when the new school was built there is this is the reason it once again fronts on 135th do not want to apply for a cease and desist order parking is only agreed to on wednesday the next public comment is from

014gloria and she would like to read that herself this is she is in the audience so slide over gloria please it's gloria g right can you hear me yes great thank you good evening board members thank you for the time tonight thank you for the letter of march 16th to the da vinci board thank you for changing tonight's meeting to accommodate the da vinci board that changed at the last minute um and again i want to thank you for the letter because as a wiseman resident and a parent of the senior and a freshman of the da vinci on campus science high school i'm in agreement with your letter i understand there are long unsettled issues between wiser and da vinci and maybe we have now reached the point to address them so i'm here

015to ask you what can be what can the community do now you've successfully opened a return of k-8 i ask that you give us the proper guidance and direction for the return of the on campus high schools you've done amazing and listening to us please continue to listen and then tell us what can we do how do we fix it how do we address so many of the long unsettled issues i want to note how disappointed has been that since receiving your letter there has been no industry indication or discussion of change for now or in the immediate future by anyone from da vinci the plans in place today are the same ones presented on march 10. to date there's been no communication with verifiable data on what's being done to move us forward towards

016solutions i ask that the wiser board exercise whatever oversight it has in order to bring the three on campus high schools back to the wiseborn residents that fought so hard for them thank you very much the next comment is from anne tiddle dear wise burn board members i would like to thank you for your ongoing efforts to urge the davinci schools board of trustees to reopen davinci science davinci communications and da vinci design for meaningful in-person learning the recent decisions of the dv board of trustees are contradictory to what is desired by approximately 60 of our community and to what is recommended by public health experts and the american academy of pediatrics recent and historical behavior of the dv board and dv cmo leadership has caused a divide in our community that is hurting our

017students our families and our community organizations as the leader of a community organizations i can attest firsthand that we are having increased difficulty with recruiting parents to join our school-based volunteer organizations such as the ptas and the ed foundation parents are citing doubts about the da vinci high schools high schools as the source of their hesitancy to volunteer with these organizations parents have said to me i'd love to join your board but we aren't sure about da vinci high school so we might be pulling our students out of wiseburn sadly at last week's dv board of trustees meeting i observed that some dv board members are more committed to defending the missteps and miscalculations of bvcmo leadership than they are to engaging with the weisberg community i felt that some dv board members even chastised

018parents for advocating for their child children's needs in addition i observe that there is an ever-present desire by some dv board members to focus on expanding the scope of davinci's offerings by creating new products for potential clients who live far away from our schools rather than focusing on the safe reopening of the 201 building high schools this continued disregard for our community is hurting our students and families wiseburn board you are a superlative example of a board that is truly engaged with the families it serves thank you for continuing to advocate for our students our families and our community grace house vikka dear members of the board of trustees i would like to thank you for your support in approving a board resolution denouncing xenophobia and anti-asian and pacific islander sentiment while the aapi community

019in wiseburn is relatively small it is a growing population as a small group the aapi community is sometimes told that we are insignificant in number and in turn are too insignificant to be acknowledged or have aapi issues addressed i am truly appreciative that this will not be the case in weisburn i recently saw this quote online and it really hit home for me it read i see no color is not the goal i see your color and i honor you i value your input i will be educated about your lived experiences i will work against the racism that harms you tell me how to do better that's the goal diversity is such an asset to our weisburn community i look forward to seeing what wiseburn will do in the future to create an even more

020inclusive community with gratitude grace house vica cabrillo eld teacher the next comment is from christy sterling and christy is here beside her over hello chrissy hello let me start video hello thank you for letting me be here tonight my family is three years new to this community my youngest is at dana 8th grader and my oldest is 10th at dvc my 8th grader is seriously struggling right now both academically and emotionally which just breaks my heart my 10th grader on the surface is doing fine his grades are great um he is doesn't seem depressed he's he's going out in the community he seems to be doing great where i see zoom school failing him is his growth his personality his leadership skills his drive to move forward to go above and beyond um all that

021to me comes from being in school it comes from being in class face to face challenged by your teachers challenged by your classmates um it comes from quickly thinking on your feet and adapting to your environment getting along with people that you get along with and that you don't um and this to me is what he is struggling with and will continue to struggle with it's the most important part that i see in being in high school i'm here tonight because i'm seeking help and getting through to the ceo of our high school i started reaching out to mr wonder i guess back in december late december early january where i noticed there was zero and when i see zero there was three emails sent to us since schools closed um purposeful communication coming from

022the high school something i thought was odd as we're shut down um sparing you all the details dates of countless emails sent to mr wonder and the board uh let's just say their lack of response um addressing specific issues and avoiding very straightforward questions my only takeaway is that they truly do not care about the student's school me as a parent or our community um i'm coming to you because there's nowhere else to go honestly mr wonder decided that he was not reopening science parent input even board input won't change his mind or even cause him to take pause and consider a better reopening plan that accommodates all the students uh despite the schools surrounding us including dana where you know my child starts this week our elementary schools um he refuses he refuses to

023open any of da vinci for any meaning meaningful input or in class uh purposeful learning for all the students for all of us not just a select few uh at this point it's just criminal government governing agencies have all said that it's safe uh k through 12 should be open period end of question uh so my questions are how can the only high school that we are districted to for our neighborhood be a charter school that's not governed or represented by the community uh two where does the responsibility lie when the ceo doesn't respond react or show accountability or any good faith when questions from the parents come um i'm scared that come august we're going to be in the same place we are now that we're not going to be moved any further along

024i just want to fight i'm not going to give up my kids our kids have a fundamental right to be in school and i need i need to know where to go from here i'm at a loss thank you christy um our next public comment will be from uh mr larry hubler larry hubler is in the attendee circle so you can switch hi mr hubler hello hello sorry well goody can i go ahead and start yes please thank you good evening i'm larry hubler i've been part of the weizmann community for about two decades i have a senior and a sophomore at da vinci science high school and they have attended cabrillo 138th street elementary and dana middle school i patricia participated with the community in getting three bonds passed to build new schools at

025cabrillo at dana middle school and at weisburn da vinci high schools we walked through the neighborhood informing residents how important it is to have great school facilities for our children i also served on the bond oversight committee for our new weizmann high school but that being said after the last davinci board meeting i've come to the conclusion that it was never matt's intention to reopen in person instruction there was some mention of some discussions that took place in august but after that there was no planning with teachers administrators maintenance or parents families just were never part of this process instead matt has been out speaking about the case against returning to normal this is actually the name of the seminar at the education palooza conference in which matt was one of the featured speakers representing

026da vinci schools for many families and students the normal is to the desire to return to school as soon as possible after months of physical isolation prolonged stress and exa anxiety but according to matt what if normal is the wrong goal this is only one example of matt's speaking engagements promoting telecommuting and remote learning more recently he's been speaking about the new porter schools where he is a board member what we need is a ceo or a superintendent that believes in the on-campus model and is focused on the da vinci science communication and design high schools we need a superintendent that will listen to the parents and to the voices of our community that were responsible for the unification of wiseburn unified school district and our beautiful wise verna high school facility matt needs to

027move to be just the ceo of the three other hybrid and remote schools and we need our da vinci high school superintendent who believes in the on-campus model and can better serve our kids and our wiseman community that being said i like to i i do know that for these three bonds that i walked through the neighborhoods with other community members for the last two decades developing three new facilities schools for the weisburn unified school district include da vinci high schools i know that several of the board members today i walked and made phone calls by by each and every one of you so i know your heart's in the in the right right place and and value the the communication with the parents and and also our community so thanks for your time thank

028you mr hubler the next public comment is from renee hubler here wiseburn board of trustees many of the community voices that you heard at the last dv board meeting and some of those that you hear tonight are people that poured their heart and soul to make unification a reality and are also the ones that supported the construction of our wiseburn high school facility without our strong community the da vinci schools would not have home have a home or even exist furthermore if it weren't for the community we would not have athletics and a music program the community had to fight to make these programs the community is tired of constantly battling with matt and has lost all confidence in him as ceo and we've lost confidence in the independent board that continues to ignore the

029voices of the community especially now with the huge issue of our kids not being given the choice to go back to in-person instruction by their teachers not via zoom you didn't listen to us before but please listen to us now and help us get out of this mess sincerely renee hubler the next comment is from monique gonzalez um it's from the share your thoughts page first i would like to thank thank the weisburn school district board members for holding all of our students educational rights to their highest interest and asking the da vinci board of trustees to revisit their high school reopening plans i was very disappointed by the lack of in-person planning that was presented at the parent meeting by da vinci communications yesterday i'm very confused why wiseburn as a school district has

030been able to come up with a safe reopening plan for our tk through 8th grade students while our high school students have been denied the same educational right our students and families in the district that are in tk to 8th grade were given an option to participate in a hybrid program or remaining learning virtually for the remainder of the school year and the district made it clear that it would be their responsibility to prepare and plan accordingly to offer each student and family their preference even if it meant hiring substitute teachers so after attending the parent meeting last night and hearing it is impossible to fit 24 students in a classroom as an immediate excuse to not being able to reopen is not justifiable this is also assuming that all students are opting to return

031which may not even be the case our tk through 8th grade schools have also designed cohort schedules whether that is an am pm schedule or a and b days in order to offer each student an opportunity to have some in-person instruction and have less kids in the classroom i feel that da vinci schools can get creative and offer in-person instruction even if it is just two courses as you the board members of the wiseburn school district mentioned it is the responsibility of the da vinci board of trustees and leadership to be creative during these challenging times the next comment is from helen martinez and she would like to read that herself if we could please slide her over hello hi helen we're here hi thank you are you ready there you go um dear wise

032burn board members as a mother of an 8th grade dana student i'm very happy to see our schools opening back again for some in-person instruction but i must share that my son is somewhat anxious and apprehensive about his return during the course of the pandemic and the time that students have spent at home i have noticed my son slowly lose motivation for school friends and all things social as a mom it breaks my heart to see how desponte despondent and unengaged my son has become during the last year and this is the case and theme for many parents that i speak to i'm not just worried for my son who's become a bit of an anti-social hermit but for so many kids that seem to be slipping into varying forms of depression there are many

033reasons why the cdc and the american academy of pediatrics have recommended students return to school for in-class learning but the social emotional part of it is a really big part i'm glad that weisburn is returning now and providing an opportunity for students to start their path for social emotional and learning loss recovery it is vital as the mother of a junior at davinci science i want to see the same type of options offered to our high school students our teens are suffering from similar issues and it's time that they get put on the same path of recovery instead of languishing for another four months and waiting until august weisburn board i ask that you continue to help to get our high school schoolers back in for in-person instruction i ask you to please find a

034way to help the parents in the community to be heard when it comes to our high school this is our high school we've put our blood sweat and tears into this school and it is a true shame that we feel that we don't have a voice and that we're not heard when we're addressing our count your counterparts at the da vinci board so please help us please help us find a way to put our kids on the path of recovery thank you the next public comment is from maria flores acosta my child was thrilled to resume in-person instruction at data middle school yesterday my concern is that there was no crossing guard at 135th and isis to assist students in crossing that intersection safely yesterday nor today i know that wiseburn unified school district is

035committed to student safety please ensure that the intersection of 135th and isis is consistently staffed with the crossing guard on days that students are in school in addition please provide a district contact to report when a crossing guard is not present so a replacement may be secured in a timely manner thank you for your immediate attention to this safety concern the next comment is from dr ethan criesworth um he wished to read it himself but it doesn't look like he's present at this time so i'm going to move on it looks like gloria may have put in a second comment i'm not sure um let me check here okay um gloria send me a message if you have a secondary comment um i'm going to read a comment from trisha mano good evening to our

036esteemed wiseburn board and administration i write to you all tonight in solidarity with the aapi community as a pacific islander myself it has been heartbreaking to see the events transpiring in our country we make up a small part of the population in our district so i felt it was important to use my voice tonight we are living in a very turbulent time and as an educator i am continually seeking ways to help my young learners not only process these specific events but the real world around them in general i was really happy to see the resolution that the board is considering tonight in regards to denouncing xenophobia and anti-asian american and pacific islander sentiment in regards to covet 19. as leaders of our district i know you understand your voices play an important role in

037our community so thank you for this resolution in condemning this hate and amplifying the voices of those who do not have your platform i also want to take this opportunity to address the history curriculum in our district now more than ever i believe it is extremely important for our district to show our commitment to diversity equity and inclusion from the protests last summer continued turmoil involving race and gender and these current hateful acts against the aapi community we need to update our curriculum the current materials are extremely outdated and are from one narrow lens if we are going to promote this diversity equity and inclusion amongst our community we need to provide resources and curriculum for our students to hear from a variety of different voices and lenses of the past and engage them in

038civics of the now i truly hope this is something we will be working towards as a district thank you so much for your time and for your consideration of this important resolution sincerely trisha mano the next uh public comment is from annie malik as the mother of a sixth grade dana student and a senior at da vinci science i would like to say thank you for giving my daughter an option to return to in-class learning at dana she is so excited to start tomorrow and on the other hand i'm now confronted with the fact that my senior will not have the same option how do i explain this disparity to my son it's very difficult when all the neighboring schools are also opening up some for hybrid and some are doing a full open with

039no cohorts whether it's 38 days 30 days 20 or even 15 of in-person instruction it's better than just writing off the remainder of the school year every minute or day of in-person instruction is gold and can never be compared to remote learning wise burn board please continue to hear the parents and community members and help us get some form of hybrid in in-person instruction for our kids thank you um ms gutierrez she sent me a message and she does not have a second comment i do have a comment that was to be read by harley hoff herself but her cell coverage doesn't allow her so i will be reading this for her uh forgive me i am zooming from wreck park in el segundo at my daughter's high school softball game it's a day i

040have been looking forward to throw a long time to for a long time i had hoped the word wise burn would be proudly worn across her chest i would like to start by thanking you for the letter to the da vinci board thank you wow i didn't see that coming at all i very much appreciate the community's voices were heard i know you heard from residents without students as well who also have a voice i think you've all heard my voice on this before you all know that many in the community including myself felt how i felt about the dv arrangement even so i didn't expect it to get this bad dv feels no obligation to our community plain and simple wow i'm speaking today to ask for your help help us figure out what

041is going on why is our campus high school getting lumped together with all the da vinci hybrid based models you all know i was surprised to learn of the separate boards immediately after unification this is even more shocking we knew the vast differences of the dv philosophies that don't fit everyone we knew they had a line waiting to get in and it would not matter what we had to say if we had any issues in the future i'm not happy that seems to be the case the wusd needs to have oversight of bv as our high school of record they live in the facility that was fought for and funded by stakeholders we will be paying on these bonds until our grandchildren's children it's too late for my kids it's crazy that i'm saying this

042because they were at cabrillo when i joined this fight for a high school but it's not too late for some others i hope that we can get this worked out and figure out how we can get our high school on the same path that you our trusted wusd school board is forging forward we know you we trust you you've proven to be a board that works very closely with community parents this is why it was upsetting after unification it's definitely not perfect like dana is still standing today we will save that for another day we need to get this right we need to make this right these decisions for the high school should be driven by the wiseburn community not 50 plus or other zip codes in other parts of los angeles thank you um

043the next comment is from cindy ramirez jesus to the wise to the wusd board members i'm writing on behalf of my two kids one is currently attending juan cabrillo and the other is at dv connect during the pandemic and in transferring my old eldest child i was offered two fantastic school settings unfortunately one of the schools did not have a plan in place and were making up the plan as time went on due to this fact i chose dbconnect which had a proven plan in place and was the better equipped school to handle distance learning during the pandemic the teachers staff were versed in the programs counseling was set up to ensure children's social emotional needs were met parent meetings occurred on a monthly basis with themed cats that led to wonderful open discussions known

044as fireside chats wellness wednesdays filled with art music meditation a chance for children and parents to reflect on the ongoings of the world realize we are not just living through a pandemic we are surviving this was the opposite occurrence of what my son received at juan cabrillo elementary being a special needs student my son relies on planning consistency and communication aside from the behavior meetings monthly and addressing his needs we have dealt with upheaval of school schedules adjusting to the learning styles of different teachers changing times reschedule school therapies rescheduling our one one to one to meet the ever-changing times as well as the turnover of the psychological and special services director who since the summer of 2020 has changed three times with no contact regarding the change but hearing it from other parents and

045our special education teacher two times as well i hold no fault to the wonderful teachers of the weisburn unified school district who are on the roller coaster ride of emotions and ever-changing schedules at the will of the board and certain parents who felt it was time to return to normal which meant again another change where the choice was not so much given to me as determined by the board and select parents to return to hybrid and lose our teacher or continue distance learning and lose our teacher either way it was an unacceptable loss the majority voice just returned to school which at the time was a voice of 30 or so parents relentlessly contacted the board won out this decision that was made did not speak to the diversity of our students and to be

046a part of the district that prides itself on diversity inclusion it fell short let's not forget how our board who once stood by our teachers and their constant pleas they made to the board for the ability to be vaccinated and keep their families safe fell on deaf ears as seen a week before the school was to open and teachers were chasing and networking with others to find the elusive vaccine in order to have some sort of protection prior to returning to school this is not something i will ever forget nor will i ever sit well with me fortunately for my daughter she was spared the so-called choice at davinci connect for that reason and so many others i applaud davinci schools for finding and choosing an equitable solution prioritizing vaccines for the teachers and staff

047realizing mental and physical health of teachers and their families is just as important as the students and parents and they shouldn't have to exchange for one another for not creating and contributing to the upheaval of creating a new plan that separates students from their teachers which has been the students very lifeline in their studies and social emotional health during the pandemic really realizing that as everyone is racing to focus on what is lost in regards to academic achievement instead focusing instead choosing to focus and acknowledge we are in a pandemic and our mental health needs to process this and creating groups maintaining that distance to come in for activities whatever that may look like thank you davinci schools and thank you davinci board most of all for focusing on the equitable solution and not a

048solution that may work for most while leaving out a minority thus remaining a school and school board that holds to its core mission and values to the wiseburn unified school board i really hope you take note that in order to maintain and adhere to the goals of inclusion equity diversion you must not merely say those words or bolster them on your site but you must be held accountable to those words in action the next comment would be from russell cale and we will move him over good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight for those of you that don't know me my name is russell kale my wife and i are proud parents of a senior at da vinci science an 8th grader at dana and a sixth grader at

049dana i want to start by saying thank you all of you i know many of you personally and i know that the hard work that you put in as board members as administrators in the wisebourne unified school district and as staff is a lot of time and i as i know many of you are are putting in just herculean efforts and so thank you so much the reason i am compelled to speak to you tonight is because i have serious concerns about the relationship between the wiseburn unified school district and the da vinci schools i was on or i am the chair of the bond oversight committee for measure a and double a i've seen this process my wife and i moved here in 2005 i've seen us go through the unification process i've seen

050us go through the bond measures i've seen it all and i know many of you know way more than i do because you were in the trenches through that whole thing so what i what i want to stress is that so many people in this community fought so hard for that to be our high school and i'm very concerned that we're starting to see a bit of a crack in the foundation and i want you guys to know that we have to make sure that we promised the community what they were told they would get our high school so i spoke to the da vinci board last week and now i want to tell you guys the wiseman community supported the unification process for years to get a high school the wiseburn high school so

051i'm asking you to do whatever it takes to make sure there will always be harmony between the wiseborn unified school district and our high school we've come way too far to lose that thank you so much for this opportunity and i know i i know all of you have the best interest of the kids at heart and i know that you will continue to do that thanks again bye thank you russell um i'm gonna turn back uh dr ethan criesworth is not able to read his comments so i do have it here that i can read many of us are ill-advised on who the dv board is and how they are elected that said when our elections held if no elections how do community members have a say as taxpayers of our high school i

052believe i have one from michelle gonzer thank you for opening up the school for hybrid campus learning my daughters are so happy to be back i am so saddened that my 11th grader doesn't have the option to return please continue to fight for us as dv could care less what most families want zoom learning is not effective at all as mr wonder claims students are successful with this model this does not apply to the majority of the students i know it's heartbreaking that mr wonder could care less about the well-being of our kids please please help us and i have a comment from miss lindesser i am writing to you to express my concern not only over recent events regarding the da vinci high school return to school plan or lack thereof but also long-standing

053concerns over the failure of the da vinci board members and ceo's lack of transparency collaboration and inclusion as you are all aware the idea of a high school for the wiseburn school district was born out of our community it took life through the dedication and comm commitment of numerous community volunteers parents students and other individuals who believed our district deserved its own high school a more recent example of this commitment was displayed when the section of our community family known as the orphan blocks willingly agreed to postpone their efforts to join our district so as not to distract from the unification of our high school something that was risky for them but a sacrifice they were willing to make this sacrifice is indicative of the spirit of all of wiseburn since the creation of the

054high schools however what has not been apparent is the willingness of the dv board and ceo to engage with the community to place value on our input and to promote trans transparency in its dealings it is time for the wiseburn board to hold the davinci board to its true mission high schools that reflect reflect and appreciate the wiseburg community and proudly display its name in its purpose not just as a banner um let me check once more for miss plum quiz okay i do not have her i do not have any further comments let me just check this i don't have any more public comments this time uh thank you to all of our community for your comments thank you to mitsubaki for a and quan for a magnificent job of balancing that that was

055done elegantly magically really difficult thank you very much uh thank you to all the people who commented from all perspectives we really do hear these they really inform us and we are better because of them again so thank you the uh board members and the cabinet will have comments the board may comment on many of the issues that were addressed here but as you can see from our agenda first we have some special presentations and uh dr silver let me turn it to you at this time to introduce our first presenters dr goldman sorry bear with me here i'm just we have a lot so i'm taking a look at which ones uh which one's first so the first one we have is uh king consulting uh we we actually had a pleasure and i

056actually asked dave to to give a little bit of background on this we had a pleasure to meet with um jamie and jen jennifer and i don't know who else is with them today but i don't see them in regards to some funding opportunities that we may have um for our facilities and and so this would be some some matching fund opportunities and um and the like so i think i probably won't do is do it justice so maybe turn it over to them dave i don't know if you wanted to share anything prior to the presentation uh sure you know we've been working with uh with with jamie and her team for a number of years uh specifically in our um opsc matching funds state matching funds so very talented uh very capable group

057and uh looking forward to their presentation okay um i can have can i please have jamie king eisemann and jennifer gibb brought over please good evening good evening board president goldman good evening uh dr silvers it is a pleasure to be here tonight and to see you all um jennifer i'll introduce myself i'm jamie king that was a wonderful introduction so i feel like i don't need one but i'm jamie king eisen the president at king consulting um we're a small firm of just four people we like to say we're small but mighty um i work closely with jennifer gibb as dave mentioned we have worked in your district for a number of years uh roger ben willis knows my business partner cheryl king very well and evelyn up in our chico office as well

058but jennifer and i are here tonight to talk to you about some opportunities for some state um some state funding and to talk to you a little bit about local and federal funding opportunities as well so jennifer if you'd like to introduce yourself thank you jamie i'm jennifer gibb i joined king consulting about a year ago and my previous life i was an owner i managed facilities and state funding opportunities with the help of king for about 10 years so i bring to the team the district's point of view and can assist your district and staff and um not only getting the money right our team helps get the money but we really want to help you keep it so that's where i come in and i'm happy to be here tonight we have some

059great opportunities to speak with you about i'm going to share my screen to share our presentation okay great so i wanted to begin the discussion uh with the status of a current state funding application that you have sitting at the state kind of awaiting a district decision about how to move the application forward um back when we submitted your charter school facility program application with davinci high we also submitted a new construction funding application for two classrooms that were part of phase two of that project with the in the gymnasium and pool area um the state regulations recently opsc recently changed how they processed the applications and state allocation board actually made some changes a couple years back and now you have to demonstrate that you have the eligibility both at the time that you

060submitted the application and when they pick up your application to process it well they picked up your application to process in the 2019-20 school year you did not have the eligibility um that they picked it up kind of as the year school year was turning over we ran it again with your 2020 2021 enrollments and because of covid you also don't have the eligibility in the current year um the issue surrounded the funding application would generate approximately one and a half million dollars if you could demonstrate that you have the eligibility and the eligibility is really just a comparison of your projected enrollments to your capacity to the number of classrooms that the state sees you having to house students and the real issue with this application is that um davinci connect specifically uh the

061state um it has to do with the way the state interprets interprets classroom based versus non-classroom based enrollments so and jennifer you can move to the next slide um the non-classroom based enrollments are are really the issues so historically davinci connect has operated a hybrid program and it precludes those enrollments from being counted when we project your your enrollments for your new construction funding eligibility um what's interesting is that the spirit of this regulation and i'm not going to read it to you don't worry um is that the state doesn't want to fund facilities that aren't full of kids for the full instructional time so really the spirit of this regulation was the state didn't want to fund a classroom that was only going to be used once or twice a week or you know

062once a month for independent study students let's say but really they've never run into this kind of hybrid program before where you have cohorts of kids that are moving through the classrooms and the classrooms are filled all day so the facilities are being used 100 of the time but the individual students are only there sixty percent of the time so unless the students were there eighty percent of the time you know per this regulation those those enrollments can be counted um we think that there's an opportunity here to appeal this application at least to start that process with the office of public school construction we work closely we've had over a 20-year relationship with their supervisors there in fact when i brought this to one of the supervisors they're like we don't think you can

063include those enrollments so we've talked this i talked with uh dr silvers and with dave about this um that we think there's an opportunity to have them kind of reconsider how they interpret this regulation and what the spirit of the regulation is we work very closely with tom duffy of murdoch walrath and holmes who's also the head of the her works closely with the coalition for adequate school housing we've explained to him the application and status and the regulation of the hybrid program and he also feels that there's an opportunity to have a conversation with the head of opsc and potentially move it forward as an appeal so really the two options for the application right now and that's a really high level overview of kind of all the nuances um jennifer if you could

064move to the next slide the two options are uh well three actually you could rescind the application without moving it forward you could appeal to the state allocation board to have the application funded without having any new construction eligibility but all of those appeals that have moved forward have failed um you could appeal to the state allocation board to have them to allow them to allow you to utilize the da vinci connect enrollments within your enrollment projection first new construction funding eligibility to fund the application it would give you ample eligibility to fund the application so so we think there's an opportunity here um but ultimately that's a district and a poor decision to make um so if there's no questions about that jamie can i ask just one clarifying question um i know earlier

065on there was a discussion as to whether or not we would have to make a material revision or approve a material vision to the charter this would not require that is that what you're doing it would absolutely not require that this would really be uh whether or not opsc can administratively say that we actually do consider you know we can include these enrollments because it's ultimately the way they're interpreting the regulation the short answer without belaboring the point is no it absolutely would not require a revision of the charter agreement whatsoever try to petition jamie if i may what is required of us to pursue this in terms of uh do we need an advocate do we need uh political what what do we need to pursue this i mean i think initially you just

066need jennifer and i to uh meet with opsc um with this with the supervisors there and really present them with the program how often the kids are in class what the schedule is the facilities are being used 100 of the time to see if opsc can do this administratively to see if they can allow us to right because they work as staff to the state allocation board so to see if we can avoid the whole appeal process um and also to do that that gives us some feedback from them as to whether or not they would support an appeal so in that meeting they would say you know we we can't do this administratively but we think this is a slam dunk if you take it to the state allocation board um or maybe they

067won't say slam dunk maybe we'll say we think they're we we might be able to support it or we think we would be neutral or they might say we would come out against this if you wanted to appeal it we don't think that this is a go so i think there's some really in the short term just some just a few hours of work to be done uh for jennifer and i since we're so familiar with the project of the application to set up a meeting with opsc to discuss it and then after that if you wanted to move forward with an appeal then um you would want to hire a lobbyist or you know someone who's familiar with the state allocation appeal process and they would move that forward for you we would help

068them with writing the appeal narrative it's a one-page document that needs to be filled out but then you want the narrative and the background and the district's position to go behind that um they really come into play at the end of it so we provide the information to support them and then they have the relationships with the state allocation board members with their staff so about two weeks before the state allocation board meeting they do those quick 15 20 minutes sit downs with each member to try and get one of the members to commit to a motion and to try and get enough other members to vote in a positive way for the district um thank you what is that is our timeline we have a short timeline here i imagine absolutely yes the the

069i am surprised that the office of public school construction hasn't uh pushed back on this right now but i think because it's covered they're giving districts a lot of a lot of room right now so but yes i would encourage you to make a decision fairly soon thank you you're welcome so i will do what i call my 50 000 foot level state school facility program overview and talk to you about some opportunity that we see here for you and then i will hand it over to jennifer to talk about the audit and expenditure reporting for the state program and then to finish it out with some funding through the california energy commission which is uh the application is coming up in just a couple days there's some opportunity there as well so we'll start

070with the new construction program since that's what i just um was referring to so the new construction program without going into too much detail it provides funds on a 50 50 basis and this is for new classrooms so this is for additional square footage you can also fund um ancillary facilities like multi-purpose rooms and gyms if they're considered undersized for your current student and current campus population you can use this money to add more square footage to an existing multi-purpose room or gym or to build a brand new one of the the size that you need the minimum size that you need um it's calculated like i said before using projected enrollments compared to capacity you update it annually and your new construction funding applications like i said have to demonstrate that they still have

071the eligibility for the project at the time it's processed now an important thing to note here is that districts who don't have the eligibility in this current year are submitting new construction funding applications for projects when they add classrooms because the state doesn't really know right now how to deal with this year where enrollments are really down because of covid and it's likely that when enrollments come back next year districts are going to realize an enrollment projection gain because of the way that enrollment projection is calculated so if you're considering adding new classrooms or if you have undersized ancillary facilities um then then this would be an opportunity for you to consider even in the absence of new construction eligibility in the current year the next program is called uh well that's the minimum essential

072facilities that i just mentioned i was jumping ahead of myself and that's the program that i mentioned that can expand your ancillary facilities the seismic mitigation program this is funded um these this funding in particular is for buildings that fall on the 8300 list in your district it's to seismically retrofit buildings that are category two type um so this is an opportunity for you to explore that if you believe you have any seismic retrofitting that needs to be done these applications move to the front of the line and they are funded immediately they're all funded on a 50-50 state and local match the modernization program you do have modernization eligibility we reviewed your master plan and your modernization eligibility is a little over 4 million we're not sure what it is by site but we're

073in the process of obtaining that information this eligibility never expires never goes away it's reimbursable so if you replaced a roof last year you can submit a modernization application to get that money now jennifer will tell you all the hoops you should have jumped through if you want to get that money um but it provides state funds on a 60 40 basis so the state gives you 60 you match it with 40 percent uh your local funds can be geo bond funds developer fees california energy commission money basically anything that's not state school facility program money can can match uh state school facility program many and the funding is based on or your eligibility is based on people that are housed in portable classrooms that are more than 20 permanent classrooms more than 25 it

074doesn't expire it can only go up if your enrollments go up it goes up if you have new facilities that come of age it goes up it's reimbursable like i said for previously completed projects you can also do mod like for like and now this is how we funded the data middle school um you know you have a certain amount of square footage that comes of age and then you say we want to reconstruct that same square footage somewhere else um and so you cannot add square feet with modernization funding but for example if you had five old portables that you wanted to demolish or take out of k12 use and you wanted to build in five new permanent classrooms then you could use modernization funding to do that aside from that it can basically

075be used anywhere on the site it can be used for track and field replacement it can be used for roofs anything that's not major deferred maintenance that can be used for facility hardship now this is a really interesting program and a lot of consultants will shy away from it because they think the bar is too high but we have projects funded through this program all the time it's a wonderful program these applications move directly to the line for funding we submitted a few yesterday in fact um so this helps you out when you have when it's been determined that you have a critical need for people housing because of the condition of facilities presents an imminent health and safety threat to the students and the staff of the site um they're submitted they're immediately processed

076there are some requirements that you need to have so you need to have dsa approved plans and specifications division of state architect or a division of state architect exemption if the project doesn't need dsa approval you need an industry specialist report confirming the imminent health and safety threat and then a letter of concurrence so if it was a structural issue you'd get concurrence from dsa if it was an earthquake fault you would get concurrence from the california geological society so it really depends on the project type the two types of projects are either replacement or rehabilitation there's a benefit analysis that you do i won't go into any more boring details about the program specifics i will just tell you that we believe that um and we've worked with the facility hardship team that potentially

077the cooling towers at the 201 north douglas location would qualify for facility hardship funding for replacement those cooling tower towers are not industry standard um for a school they were industry standard for what that building was before it was a school and so um we don't you know the the system is failing and um we've discussed it with the facility hardship team they will not close down your site they will not you know i mean unless the roof is about to collapse they will not close down your site um but i think this is a great opportunity uh for that project and there is bonding authority left to fund it um it is a 50 50 or a 60 40 program depending on the project type financial hardship is a program that provides the state

078match as well as you know your match as well as their match so in order to be considered for financial hardship you must have to be loving the maximum developer fee and then you have to have one of the four conditions you have to have current bonding indebtedness of 60 more or 60 or higher you have to have had a successful registered voter bond election for at least a maximum allowed under prop 39 within the previous two years be a county office of ed or have a debt capacity of 5 million or less this is an important program to keep in mind as you move forward so as you're passing bonds issuing bonds if you pass that 60 of bonding indebtedness then you would qualify for a financial hardship and so when i was talking

079earlier about programs having a a district match so they'll give you 50 and you match it with 50 or they give you 60 you match it with 40. if you're a financial hardship district they give you a hundred percent um the unfortunate part about that program is that you actually have to be out of money entirely for capital facilities all right i think that is a high level overview i'll end that just by saying that we um we go to all the state workshops we follow the state legislation very closely there are two bills that have been introduced for a 2022 k-14 state school facility bond and both of those will very likely introduce new programs including new rounds of cte new rounds of charter school funding they'll refill the pots for new construction and

080modernization there's going to be money in there for health and wellness that mental health and nutritional health so we're following that closely and of course the more we know about future funding opportunities we'll bring those to you as well that was a mouthful jennifer i will hand it over to you yeah um so really high level auditing expenditures like we said we like to get you the money and we want you to be able to keep it and um after um in around 2017 the program changed so the audit requirements changed and now it's more of a punitive process so we work very closely with your staff to ensure that you're going through the proper processes for procurement documenting your you know expenditures and then wrapping that up in a tight little bow and giving

081it to an auditor and then submitting it so really high level and i love this stuff but i know everybody else doesn't um i want to just show you this is from the very beginning of the process planning to the end you can see you can barely read it on the slide there are so many requirements that your staff has to do now but they're already doing it we just have to gather the information and dave's team is great about um tracking they've they've successfully most recently um passed a state audit that we just did for the charter we're working with them for any other funding that you're in line so we're good i just want everyone to know that this is what your team's doing in the background and we're helping to support them

082now if there aren't any questions on state funding i wanted to jump over to another funding opportunity um through the california energy commission it's 41. it is um coming up like jamie said in the next day or two and as of april 1st the applications will be open for school districts i am absolutely not going to read this slide this is just content for you and your community to understand there's two programs uh uh hvac so heating and air conditioning program and then a plumbing program that you're eligible for most of um we believe all your sites qualify um and that this first round is where you are qualifying at so um applications like you say open april 1st we want to get all your sites in that application submit it and get you um

083money for your hvac or plumbing opportunities this is not like jamie was saying uh the state programs a reimbursement or um like a matching program a 50 50 or a 60 40. this is a hundred percent funding for your projects and it's not um it's not like you do it and then maybe some of it will be funded the cc has come out with a really great process where you assess it you either you can repair it or replace it so that's the process this first round that opens april first is for the assessment process you submit that and then you get approved for the replacement or um repair process so it's it's helping your district and looking forward to those opportunities and not um having to put out money if you haven't already for

084things that you might not get funding for right absolutely they're probably critical needs but this process helps to support the district and not fronting the cash at um in the beginning jennifer femi would this be relevant cooler at 201 douglas unfortunately that is the only site that does not qualify in this first round and there are so the fir that's two billion dollars over the next three years that they're going to allocate and the first 20 and 25 of that funding correctly if everyone jennifer has to go to underserved communities so in this first round you qualified one of five ways four were geographical in nature based on um or sorry yes forward geographical in nature one is if you're within an indian tribe reservation and then the other three were based on the income

085level of the community that the site specifically located in the fifth qualification was the percentage of students on free and reduced lunch so juan dianza juan cabrillo 138th street and dana middle all qualify in this first round that's not to say that 201 might not qualify in the next round when they open it up to those schools that are within 500 feet of a specified um transportation thoroughfare and those that are within a um permanent place so what i think what the great this is where we come together with you know we're not just looking at you know sector of state funding or a sector of this local funding we look at everything collectively with your staff so um local state and federal money how do we use all those pieces to come together to

086support your facility needs so this is one where today you um you know like we were talking about jamie mentioned facility hardship for the 201 north douglas that is an opportunity but it's either 60 40 or a 50 50 so you have to come up with your portion we could in a later round of 841 submit that and get some local money through the cec california energy commission to help support your local match so that's where we really try to maximize the opportunities that you have for your district in looking at any opportunity for facility funding and match it to your project perfect and that is it for our presentation were there any questions wonderful we thank you so much for the opportunity and um if you we i'm sure we'll be working with dave

087and mike later thank you thank you jamie thank you thank you jennifer really appreciate it thank you so much thank you wow piece of cake right dave all right um we have another presentation uh that uh blake i'll turn to you and you may actually turn to dave as well i am going to turn straight to dave and he'll talk about the audio report uh so tonight we're going to ask the board to to accept the 2019-2020 audit in normal years it's due by december 15th that the board would have to accept it by december 15th but because of cobin 19 uh the state has has pushed that out to make to march 30th uh and so um we've asked our auditor uh the the lead auditor on our for our school district marcy kearney

088to present it uh we've worked with marcy and her team for a number of years uh they also audit davinci's books and uh we are um very happy to have have marciner team um as part of this process so with that i'll i'll welcome marcy hi there thank you so much for having me thank you for the introduction dave um i just wanted to give a big thank you um to mr wilson and dr silvers and um all the staff really at the district office it's really been a tough year for the audit fortunately um prior to the school closures in march of 2020 we were able to at least conduct our school site visits for the audit um we go to the school sites audit attendance procedures um then we also go to the

089district office in the spring and then again in the fall but with this year the district office visit had to be conducted purely remotely just for everyone's safety so i know that was not an easy task so thank you again for all of your hard work on that um and i'll go over the report i'm gonna go ahead and share my screen for the report itself let me make sure okay and can you see the report okay so um i just wanted to emphasize it is for the 20 19 20 fiscal year so i know we're always looking in the past so it's it's not to cover this school year yet so this is for the one that ended in june 30th of 2020. and so um as i mentioned we were able to conduct

090the audit remotely and and work with the online portal and the staff did really great um from the district side um i also wanted to point out that the financial statements belong to the weisberg unified school district the only thing that we as an audit firm own within this large document of 89 pages is the opinions and so i will go over the audit opinions but i also wanted to highlight some items in the financial statements themselves just because they made me more sensitive in nature so um there were no new accounting pronouncements that took effect um but i will show you that this note 1k goes over the new accounting pronouncements that will take effect next year due to covid there was a one-year delay so that made it a little bit easier as

091far as implementation but the key items that will be implemented for next year is inclusion of your fiduciary funds which is really your asb funds into the district financials and also um the standards on lease leases and how those lease agreements are handled both from a lesser and lessee side so again you won't have to really worry about it for um this year but going forward in the future it's just something to think about and i'm going to jump around a bit so i apologize but another one i wanted to mention that i think is a little bit sensitive is the business type activities or the proprietary fund which reports your activities for your weisburn child development center so i know it looks um like it has a negative like it's running negative it's 2.4

092million in the negative but honestly the fund itself is operating fine it's just that because there are salaries charged to the fund you have to account for this net pension liability here and that's really what that big ding is to that fund because that fund is a full approval meaning you have to report anything long-term assets or liabilities-wise whereas your normal fund financials your general fund cafeteria fund they look at modified accrual and so you don't see those long-term items um on the the face to the financials themselves were there any questions on that particular sensitive statement marcie just to clarify that's the the stirs the stirs liability correct yes the net pension liability directly relationship relates to stirs if you had any certificated personnel uh per calpers if you hadn't for your classified personnel

093now this was last year uh has this been rendered moot due to our move to right at school uh handling our prior cdc functions i'm sorry i'm not sure i understand probably for dave possibly uh you so if we cl if we close out this fund it would become a moot point correct yep sorry i wasn't aware of any uh closure discussions yet but as of june 30th of 2020 it was still in operation so um yeah if you were to transfer it to say a child development fund that's within the school within the district governmental activities versus business type activities it would be reported a little bit differently there um but in this case because it's seen as a business type activity it's in an enterprise fund and it's um reported full accrual i

094don't mean to belabor it i guess again a question for dave as i understand it this is a future liability based on employment of staff that we no longer have employed in these positions so would this now be moot because we don't have that future liability well this is as of june 30th 2020 so it was uh we did have employees for that entire year so this is a true reflection of that liability but moving forward if we decided to close out that fund uh because right at school is gonna take over uh this then becomes moved yeah as dave mentioned um the only reason really that you have this liability um existing is because you do have salaries charged to this particular fund so if you didn't have any salaries they wouldn't also uh

095you wouldn't have that related net pension liability as well sorry sorry mercy i didn't mean to interrupt you um dave so the i guess the question is so 20 what is it 22 this is move at this point our current circumstance if we close the fund out entirely yes correct why would we not close the fund out entirely that's my question i guess we'll still we're still going to run a preschool program and that's still going to have salaries charts to a preschool program so if we continue with that with this fund which is uh and marching in can can uh you know correct me if i'm wrong but because it's a enterprise fund it has to be fund 63 or a subset of fund 63 and so if we continue to have any salaries

096uh any anybody paid out of that fund uh we'd still have to have this this fund opened whether it be preschool or school age care yes because uh because the activity is is a business type activity that's where it gets pulled into that full accrual if you had a fund where you were receiving significantly more governmental um funding federal and state then it would be served more like the other the other funds that you have which i can show you or your general fund here you do have liabilities but again it's a your current or current liabilities you don't have anything long term within your funds and you'll notice that these um agree more to the um interim budgets that you're used to approving um it's not until the end of the year financial statements

097are prepared and compiled that you see the government-wide activity and that's where that these um huge liabilities come in where you see all of your bonded debt and also um within that long-term liabilities line you also see your net pension liability and your oped which is your other other than pension employee benefits any other questions on the financial statements that i could kind of help answer as i mentioned the financial statements are are that of the district and um the district management dave and dr silvers they take full responsibility over the financial statements themselves i will go over the audit opinion letters so the main key one um is on page one and i'll scroll down a little bit so you can see the opinion right here so essentially the financial statements are presented fairly

098in all material respect and in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles which essentially translates to a good clean audit opinion so no issues there i will also mention that because you receive governmental funds because you receive a large amount of federal funds and because you run a k-12 program there's three additional audit opinion letters and so i like to scroll to the summary page excuse me this summary page gives a good kind of um summary of those other three um audit opinions that i mentioned so over the financial statements because your government agency we also have to apply government auditing standards so in that sense we do not provide an audit opinion over internal controls however we do look at internal controls because we understand those processes can affect your financial reporting so if there

099were any instances of non-compliance or any instances of say a significant deficiency or material weakness to the financial statements because of internal controls we would make that known however in this case again good clean audit opinion no instances of any sort of significant deficiencies or improvements that are necessary there so yeah big thumbs up um and then for federal awards um because you receive a large amount of federal funding and you expend more than 750 000 we have to go through a federal single audit so this particular year we looked at special education programs they were significant and hadn't been tested in years prior more than likely in the um next year and going forward we'll see the sr funding and some of that coven cares act funding being tested because it's all brand new

100and the requirements are different there but again a good clean audit opinion no internal control issues over the um financial reporting for federal awards and also um no issues and non-compliance there and then with state awards again with being a k-12 you have to go through a laundry list of um of items that we have to test so mainly attendance because that contributes to your funding and also the unduplicated people count that plays into your lcf funding sources so that's where those site school site visits are so important um and then also um i mean dave knows there's there's a bunch of other financial related items that go into that as well but again um good clean audit opinion no issues there are no issues of non-compliance um really um this is overall best kind

101of great a you can get for a school district auto report so um i do think uh the business department and also the the program people you know being at the school sites i know it's not easy um going through all the compliance audit requirements that that us auditors have you know has to hassle them for so i do want to say thank you to everybody really good district that helped facilitate the audit any questions for marcy marcy any findings this year no audit findings again good clean audit opinions all around and no significant issues or deficiencies no issues of non-compliance found well marcy thank you very much obviously it's always fun to get good clean reports good news so thank you for your report guess we'll wish you a good evening at this point

102then thank you so much for having me you guys have a great evening as well thank you thank you and uh dave um we're still in good hands my friend thank you very much yet again another clean report we've had a state report state audit we've had a private audit again clean report uh the best you can get as she in her words kudos to you and the team and thank you very much thank you to the team for sure thank you dave congratulations thank you dude we have one more special presentation but wait there's more dr silvers please all right so you know just really lucky to have a partnership with the rotary in this case it's the hawthorne lax and linux rotary um and every year they provide an opportunity for uh teachers

103staff to be able to apply for mini grants um and so this year uh tom quintana and doug krauss will be sharing our mini grant award winners um i have them and i but i think uh you all are going to actually uh present them is that right doug or do you want me to i see you on here or do you want me to go through the awards did you want to share them we're ready to do it we can do it for sure go for it thank you it's good to see you all right all right well thank you again everybody uh and it's always good to be back in weisburn uh i i did well i guess you know and it's good to be back giving back so um real quick you

104know uh hawthorne lax lennox rotary club we've been around for 95 years actually this year um almost as long as you and you know we we do things all around the world but of course we specialize local and education is one of the foundations of rotary so this is part of uh something we do annually and we've been doing this for a couple decades now so we have three grants to award um tonight and let me read them off real quick for you um so again we do this every year into all the teachers that may or may not be listening um you know we uh we'd like to give it out so i mean it always is good to apply right you can't win if you don't try so uh first from cabrillo one

105of my alma maters uh grace kuzewika i'm at the project title of diversity inclusion and self-empowerment and so that's an award of 125 dollars um next amanda sass with the success learning center with a project title of developing life skills using technology and that's an award of 205 and then lastly teresa tibbets and stacy porter of the success learning center with a project title of uh adafruit circuit playground for computer science elective and that's an award of two hundred dollars so uh thank you all for your time thanks to the teachers for applying um we will we'll be getting you some certificates for the teachers and i'll work with wendy on that and a check why not right so thank you all have a good night uh hope you get to bed before midnight thank

106you doug see you all thank you very much thank you to lax thorny lax rotary really appreciate thank you thank you so much thank you all right bye-bye great to have community members and rotary giving back and congratulations to our winners excellent and thank you for applying uh you don't play you don't win and you do sometimes you do so good for you all right um just one final question uh dr silvers and uh and mr wilson relative to our first presentation will you be coming back with recommendations to us on how to what to proceed with dr goh you didn't get all of that in the in the presentation yes we will we absolutely i will we'll discuss and come back we wanted to do more of a global look at what we what

107options we have and then um maybe parse it down a little bit to what we have available now i know julie williams is also on the call she's um sort of managing and tracking as well so that we could make a make an informed recommendation for you all right thank you all right let us move now to uh uh information section from the board uh let's turn to our vice president mr martinez thank you dr goldman good evening everyone i would like to begin with sharing that rk8 is back yesterday dr silvers and and i visited dana middle school and we experienced the wonderful return of our students it truly brought me a lot of joy to see the smiles of the students the teachers the staff and the parents it's incredibly rewarding and inspiring

108to witness the uplift and excitement ticking around our school sites i certainly want to take this opportunity to thank our site principals teachers staff and the parents um our maintenance and operations our aides or our nurses or food services folks for all their hard work and effort um as they are the true backbone of our successful opening additionally i want to recognize our district superintendent our cabinet and staff for their leadership and guidance through this unprecedented uh pandemic situation it was through their leadership and foresight that we begin preparations to reopen last year on june 1st 2020 in many subsequent meetings thereafter forming the wiseburn reopening advisory partnership known as rap that consisted of board members community leaders pta members parents site administrators teachers staff maintenance operations and as a result we have been ready

109for these first days of the 2021 school year so to everyone involved thank you so much for making this happen um with that i have a few comments to speak about tonight with regards to our high school reopening last week i attended the da vinci board meeting via zoom as many of our community members and families did who wanted to listen to the public hearing on da vinci phase 2 reopening plan unfortunately the majority of the community including myself were very disappointed that there was no option or choice for that matter for meaningful instruction as i reflected back on the meeting the recent flood of emails that we've received the numerous calls that i've had with families parents and community members and the recent discussions with students i certainly understand their anxiety their frustration and

110anger regarding the status of our high school reopening from when i gathered it seems that the missing pieces are the following both the wiseborn and da vinci are not aligned this has been exhibited in the k-8 where we provided a choice for in-person instruction however the divi however the da vinci high schools remain distance learning parents and students feel their they've had no input they feel ignored da vinci started these discussions back in august 2020 but they never formed a committee or offered families an opportunity needed to be involved or provide input with regards to the reopening communication transparency many believe that the phase two reopening class plan caused much confusion among the families parents and students as it did not offer any in-person instruction and the lack of planning many are concerned that the

111necessary steps and protocols to reopen were not taken additionally last week at last week's meeting the community uh particularly i'm going to identify them mr russell kill missed their mr eddie urinda and mr john koppelman all spoke all spoke and highlighted the fracture between the wiser and da vinci partnership the senate bill 126 as we've discussed the pandemic and the turnover of db board members as a result of that senate bill 126 has certainly added to this minister and you heard from us russell kill tonight in my opinion both wiser and da vinci must revisit our magna carta and our mou and work to preserve the spirit of that agreement in and for end the high schools for our community at the end we're a unified school district and we have a beautiful widespread high

112school facility because of the wisebring community to the community and the and the public speakers tonight thank you for your public comments and for always advocating on behalf of our students we are listening to the issues you have raised into the concerns you have brought forward recently and tonight to my colleagues in the da vinci board we have listened to the community we must meet we must work together collaboratively to propel forward we owe it to the community to our families and most importantly to our kids thank you thank you mr martinez uh mr banuelos all right thank you dr goldman i have three comments tonight the three areas i'd like to share my input and feedback and also no celebration first one i'd like to get started with is dana middle school i'd like

113to i would like to say thank you to all the wiseborn unified school district team for working together to provide our students an option to return to in-person instruction at dana middle school thank you to district administration teachers custodial staff parents focus groups and of course the patients of our students thank you so much thank you for working and on and preparing many many drafts of what a plan would look like a lot of hard work and energy was invested into studying these scenarios so that we could make an informed decision having a choice is extremely important to all members of the community because one item does not fit all i'm excited for the reopening of the school personally in my family but we've opted for our seventh grader to stay in distance learning and

114be remote again one option does not fit everyone so i'd like to again thank the staff for providing and studying a thousand different class schedules and logistics for in-person hybrid and distance learning again as it was a tremendous challenge i am grateful for all of your hard work i know it doesn't happen by itself or on its own and uh my gran my immense gratitude to everybody that participated in that next item i'd like to touch base on is college acceptances i would like to say congratulations to our current da vinci science design and communication seniors as college acceptance letters are coming in this is an exciting and anxious time for all of them as they ponder the possibilities to make their choice ultimately they will select the right college they feel is the best

115fit for them our students are being accepted at these colleges and universities in part due to the great work and preparation they receive from our elementary and middle schools so thank you to our staff and teachers at anza cabrillo 138th street tv connect and dana thank you for developing and establishing their learning foundations while they are with you thank you to staff and teachers at davinci science design and communications while they are with you for their high school years again a huge debt of gratitude and thank you i would like to also comment my third item is on the da vinci reopening plans in education and schools as in life there are many moments to celebrate such as these dana middle school reopenings and college acceptances just as there are challenges to overcome one of

116those challenges are the davinci reopening plans i would like to thank all the parents and community members that reached out to me with concerns over the davinci reopening plans as it was being rolled out by davinci administration i would like to be clear that i do not agree with the plans as they were rolled out i attended all three of the school site presentations science design and communications on march 17th as well as the most recent da vinci board meeting last night on march 24th from my perspective there is a lack of choice for parents students and yes some teachers for which full distance learning is just not working this is not a plan for students to return for in-class instruction and has been requested and expected what was presented to the da vinci board

117was a limited plan for campus activities and visits and not for a return to live in-person student-to-teacher instruction as is allowable and doable under current cdc and la county department of public health health guidelines the davinci board was in essence presented an option for limited campus activities or to remain in full distance learning given those options the limited campus activities plans was the better choice the real challenge in question is where is the detailed plan to show how live in-person classroom instruction would look like come april at thursday's davinci board meeting we heard that an in-person plan had been developed sometime in august if so i have not seen it nor has it been presented to the community parents students and all stakeholders i would very much still like to see that plan and a

118timetable to return to full in-class instruction with the timeline to implement with such a plan in hand one can truly weigh the options solicit input and find creative ways to work it out this way there are options if your student is doing well perhaps even thriving in full distance learning they can stay in that model if they are not then there would be a hybrid option or options to address those needs over the coming weeks months and years there will be many more conversations and challenges to overcome one thing that we must focus on is communication to align expectations communication between the wisebrand and davinci boards and both boards to the community the widespread district boundaries and all the areas we serve i would like to recommend a few things we can do together and

119others independently one quarterly meetings our our mou between wiseburn and davinci requires these meetings i think we can calendar calendar those meetings at the same time that both boards calendar their regular scheduled meetings for the year and stick to those dates second is a standing board update perhaps a district representative from each of our each of our schools can be invited to each respective board meeting to share an in-person update or perhaps submit a written update on activities of mutual interest and coordination to start a dialogue a dialogue third individual board member communications thank you to those da vinci board members with whom i had an opportunity to speak with on this topic i look forward to continuing with existing board member relationships and also partnerships as well as developing new ones and lastly i

120would like for the why our weisburn school district to consider the following uh with our wiseman superintendent to study the position of a character school communications liaison title yet to be determined if that's in fact what we'd like to do this could be an existing staff member with added duties and dedicated time or it could be creating a new position altogether for wiseburn i would like to see what that could look like any time frame for review and for this board to consider thank you i truly i certainly look forward to continuing this conversation and what it looks like moving forward thank you that's all for me dr goldman thank you roger uh well said thank you very much uh mr mora good evening everyone um both nelson and roger uh spoke very well on

121the subject i i agree with both of them tremendously on on the options for the high school um i want to tell everyone this isn't a simple issue covet is a complex issue from the beginning bringing kids back with colbert as super complex issue for the whole society not just ours um so this is about one person being right and another person being wrong it's really a conversation about choices and i would like to hear more conversation from both the da vinci board and from the ceo dr wonder about mental health of students about social development and well-being of students and that being the forefront of the conversation i mean this is the real issue here it's not just about sending kids to school it's about kids mental health and where are they um and

122and i feel it's very important to consider that some kids really need to get back to the classroom um for their own health not just mental health but social development we've heard it before from other parents uh we've kind of lost a year here and kids are feeling the pain about it um so i i just asked that the in addition to what roger and nelson have said that we really focus in on these items um and and make it about the kids and mental health and and their development and not about other things we care very much about the teachers we do in weisburn we do in davinci we want them to be healthy we want this to be done safely everybody's had an opportunity to my knowledge from both davinci and wiseburn in

123early march to get vaccinated so those that chose to be vaccinated have and hence by april 12th i don't believe that should be an issue um so that's just want to clarify that too that that opportunity has been presented to both sides um that's all i want to say on that issue and we will continue to work hard um we didn't build something so special to just have it fall apart we're going to work hard to make it work i also want to commend on dr silvers the principals and all our teachers for the openings of dana and all the elementary schools there's just a lot of positive energy a lot of excitement and uh very appreciative i also want to thank the custodians um all the grounds folks everybody who's helping the aides everybody

124who's pitching in to make it all work this has been a team effort and then we are very grateful for that um that's all i have for today thank you dr google thank you mr mora thank you very much uh miss canada oh good evening folks even though i'm a still picture here in front of you this evening i'm definitely attending in person um just as an aside i had some surgery recently which uh believe me the picture on the screen looks a lot better than i do right now so appreciate your patience for looking at a still photograph this evening i do have a few comments i want to make first of all um as i think we've mentioned in the past or i've mentioned i'm really proud to be part of the weisburn

125community i'm really proud to be part of the weisburn school district part of the westbourne school board my colleagues that are on the screen this evening and those of the hundreds of others who are working every day as teachers and aides and groundskeepers and maintenance folks and all our parents all our students my goodness we have a um the a wonderful community who cares deeply about community about their students and about the schools that we that we support to provide education you know we're proud of da vinci also as israel was pointing out a few moments ago you know there's there's um times in families there's times in uh relationships where things are tense and right now it's very clear that the relationship between uh wiseburn unified and uh the da vinci tartar program uh

126is tense i appreciate at the board meeting last week um the vinci board meeting that both uh brian neath and raul raul ochoa uh spoke up um dennis meath that we all know as the previous weissburn board member or many of us know and served as fellow board members spoke up and said that he you know he knows us all as well and he realizes that we've kind of lost our way we've lost our relationship way and we need to mend that and i think we all want to do that and raul as a very new da vinci board member spoke up and said he wasn't satisfied with the plan uh the the davinci reopening plan as it was presented to the community uh so we'll see if his um request for a plan to

127open uh part at least partially in person is uh respected by uh the da vinci board and perhaps there'll be some plan forthcoming or at least a discussion of a plan i know we want to work together i know we all want to be successful together i especially respect the community speaking out on behalf of their own needs as families and their own needs as community members and i really respect helen martinez coming forward this evening to discuss something um very openly about the uh social emotional adjustments that our students are facing and our families are facing after this time of covet and and trying to learn and function in it in a totally different way um those are excuse me very real concerns uh and i know we respect those concerns i want to

128make sure we acknowledge them as real and i think many families are facing similar concerns and i really respect helen from coming forward and speaking about that um on another topic i know this evening we have a resolution before the board um uh speaking about uh that that talks to the uh aapi the xenophobia against the asian and pacific islander as a race and a part of our community most of you know that my husband is asian uh father of our of my second out of the four sons of our two cents together are hapas right they're half and um it is uh amazing in our country that every race seems to have something against it you can be any race at all and there's something wrong with it right now it's especially disturbing and

129this one is very personal for my family equity is so important and um just as the social emotional needs we were talking about earlier are important so is equity so is equality there's a lot of forms of equity right there's racial there's sexual there's income there's uh you know opportunity and i think uh as a board and as a community we are all very strongly supportive of the various forms of equity and we work hard as an educational institution to preserve equity and i'm proud tonight that we have that resolution uh on our agenda um i wanted to say just one more thing that i'm very proud of our district once again we in the spirit of equity of course provided vaccine opportunities for all of our staff and teachers who were interested to participate

130um i know davinci uh i believe i don't know i think but i believe davinci provided the same opportunities for their teachers and staff as well um so in the spirit of equity and in the spirit of cooperation um we want to work together and we want uh we are open all of us to those ways to work together roger gave some very specific suggestions nelson gave some very specific suggestions for uh ways to uh open up lines of communication uh or widen the lines of communication at any rate between wise fernando venti and i look forward to participating in those as well um sorry i'm looking at my notes here for a minute and i had eye surgery so my eyes are covered with ointment so to make sure i can read them all

131and anyway i think that's enough i think we've all said uh much of the same theme here and i respect the comments from all and uh and thank our community for for their huge participation um and speaking out on their needs thank you thank you joanne thank you for your wise words everybody's uh tonight it is a privilege to serve and be on this board with you all it's a privilege to be uh working with the cabinet uh till kudos on the dana opening kudos for providing options for our students to stay at home and continue distance learning uh so we can continue to serve our community and the choice and provide that choice there were a couple comments tonight that i i heard tonight before i make my formal comments uh that were shared

132uh relative first the grab grab-and-go uh lunches uh dr silvers i would ask that we thread the needle between making it safe to take a lunch but not requiring our students to take a lunch which i imagine is our intent any thoughts you have for us there um yes i know that is that the the challenge is is numbers and there there is a choice at the middle school i think our elementary students and we've actually received quite a bit of compliments on on the fact that all students are able to to grab the lunch i i understand there's food waste and we want to take a look at food waste and the quality of the food so i would say other than agreeing uh to some degree that we need to look at it

133i'll have to i'll have to come back to it with an answer i appreciate that and obviously uh we certainly respect families who don't want to waste um the uh the other another comment was made tonight was on the crossing guard at 135th i thought that was some some very thoughtful comments relative to a line for uh is that being serviced and is that do we have plans for that moving forward is that just an omission someone's supposed to show up and didn't or or kind of where are we yeah so we did um reach out to the company we planned this you know two weeks ago or so um i know dave worked with the company we're supposed to have someone there we've since been reaching out um and are expecting someone there in

134the morning so if they're not um email dave and uh if anybody's out there listening feel free to to let dave know as soon as someone's not there but but i'll circle around too i mean we'll be there and check on it make sure get that covered in the next couple days thank you very much i do appreciate um those comments i appreciate nelson you you going to the opening and visiting the classrooms i was able to get there early yesterday and then late uh so i saw early early drop off and late pick up uh and again fun to see dana and joining the rest of our schools open thank you to our teachers our staff our uh everybody involved it is a team effort as mr moore said so i have in three

135main comments tonight as we all have had the first and most important in alignment with joanne's comments is to condemn the recent discrimination racial animus and even violence against the asian-american pacific islander community i can only speak for myself but i i believe all of us on the board would stand in solidarity against biggerty bigotry and hatred of all kinds i believe our country overall and our district in particular is richer more innovative and more alive and engaging because of our diversity it's embedded in our assurances that's created by our community and when i last checked wiseburn was the second most diverse district among the 80 in la county so let us be welcoming and inclusive of our aapi community and people of all backgrounds diversity should not be denigrated but rather celebrated and that's

136what we intend to do here at weisburn i also would encourage us to send a note to our community dr silvers beyond just this meeting so more than those who are witnessing tonight can hear this message my second comment is regarding the pandemics and the request to everyone to please remain vigilant wear a mask and refrain from carefree social gatherings the pandemic is moving in the right direction but it is not yet over case rates are increasing in many states across the country we need just a few more months of vigilance where we can reach herd immunity but we're not there yet so please please continue to wear a mask respect distancing guidelines wash your hands and refrain from gatherings if you can if you choose otherwise and especially over the coming spring break we

137really want to protect our staff we really want to protect our teachers please know if you do choose to gather or ch or travel over the spring break period know that you may be asymptomatic please quarantine for 10 days contact your principal upon return for remote options and prevent the spread of the virus before returning to school or other activities that may put our community at risk ironically with that said we are really moving in a great direction and hopefully with our protocols we will continue to do so so if we remain safe thoughtful slow to fully re-engage and able to continue the path towards the yellow tier as we've moved to orange the yellow is the lowest tier in california's blueprint for a safer economy i would ask dr silvers and the entire team

138that we consider one more shift to a more fully opening of our schools with more in-person instructional time acknowledging the challenges this pose this is not an edict from as far as i'm concerned but if in fact we find we can provide more open opportunities for more time in school with more instruction to those who choose it and still maintain the benefit of the options for our distance learners i would encourage us to explore that please finally ask to the davinci reopening i appreciate as we all have shared what a vital issue this is to so many in our community we had a more connected and more direct voice as members of the da vinci board prior to the passage of sb 126 which has been mentioned a number of times tonight the absence of

139this inhibited our oversight role as it precluded members from our boards sitting on theirs as originally designed now there may be an opportunity to seek a carve out here for the future and if so we may pursue it it also appears that the dv reopening process included aggregated survey responses in their meeting making findings for the high school which is our primary concern unclear and a process at the start of the year as i believe one of my colleagues mentioned that throughout appeared to have little community input in their decision making as such we would absolutely seek a different path forward and his finances are always challenged at schools and that our seniors have had so little time or really have so little time left for an on-campus experience after so long without one i

140admittedly am disappointed that there was not mention of consideration of at least bringing seniors back in person to finish their year which is i as as i understand it and i know da vinci is very creative and they may get around this but as i understand it not bringing any one cohort or class back meant forfeiting in their case nearly six hundred thousand dollars in in-person instruction from covid relief grant funds now dollars alone of course are not the reason to do something but when combined with the opportunity to give seniors their last quarter with more normality at school to me they're not irrelevant let us also acknowledge the many great practices and outcomes of da vinci schools as my colleagues have done tonight and the belief that both organizations really do care about education

141and our students think about the great practices at davinci real world learning project-based learning career pathways the move to a mastery-based model college education 98 of students having an option because they've completed agency requirements to go to college and more in fact more than a thousand students are striving to get in every year when many local high schools high schools in our community are struggling with declining enrollment db has been a gem and wiseburn is a gem that does not mean we condone or necessarily agree with recent decisions regarding reopening or lack of community input but i do wish to say i believe and to use a tried expression we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater there is truly much to celebrate at da vinci let us find a way forward that

142keeps us working on what keeps what is working so well yet builds a bridge to the future to address governance integration articulation and perhaps most importantly community connection and input i and i believe it is fair to say we on the wise burn board remain committed to rectifying this and finding a positive path forward this is why prior to the current return to school issues at the start of my tenure as president just about three months ago we engaged the services of a consulting group to help facilitate and foster our future vision this is just one path that mr meath mentioned thank you brian and for his comments and reach out here the winds of the pandemic have shifted dramatically over the past year we at weisburn potentially plan not to reopen at all at

143one point but the science informed the data evolved and we changed course i earlier asked dr silvers to consider yet another change in expanding our reopening should prevailing positive covid wins continue in the same regard i would ask davinci to also watch the data and remote remain open to possibility remain open to revisiting plans once again as we move forward as my peers have shared it is important it's vital to maintain positive relationships with our partners community members and friends at dv as such we will continue our conversations with db board president dr bland brand and db ceo dr wonder both of whom i've dialogued with this week and we maintain positive relationships we will continue to work on a positive path forward we are dedicated to this that we are dedicated to solving this

144and we will not top stop until we do so so to our community and those of you watching now thank you for your passion for being such caring parents and guardians of your kids and also for your patience as we work through the current challenges to create a better more unified future for us all thank you with that said let us now move to our cabinet and move to the chief business official mr wilson thank you dr goldman uh you had inquired about e-rate savings and uh what e-rate is it's a government subsidy to make uh internet and internet uh connectivity more affordable for um other governmental agencies um and so right now we currently have three e-rate contracts we have two with spectrum and time warner and one with the los angeles county office

145of education and they're all for internet services i want to give you the total cost before the e-rate discount is applied so those three contracts before e-rate equate to 68 147 dollars uh we do get a 60 discount so in the end weisburn on that 68 thousand dollar three contracts we only paid 27 259 for a total e rate savings of almost 41 000 um and so that's why we continue to participate in e-rate and i believe uh last meeting we had uh asked the board to approve our e-rate consultant and uh and so it's definitely worth that that cost i think the consultant was about four thousand so that's a pretty good return on investment well done yep um secondly i would like to piggyback on uh the facilities uh presentation we saw earlier

146i know today julie williams our new director of maintenance operations walked our uh facilities with a firm called p2s engineering and what they are going to do or what they they did is they are assessing our hvac units uh to see if we can in fact qualify for that ab-841 funding which the application is actually uh becoming available april 1st so we're doing what we can to you know see if we qualify and get our foot in the door um so more more on that to be continued um and lastly later in the meeting we're asking the board to renew three of our piggyback contracts and i just want to give some some context to this so in 1415 2014 2015 fiscal year that was the first year that we had used these piggybacks and

147the amount of piggyback money received to date is 598 thousand dollars uh this fiscal year alone we received 53 000 and these all these funds get deposited into our fund 14 deferred maintenance and so it's definitely been worthwhile i believe this is the third renewal year out of a possible of five and i do want to mention that we do have some needs our vehicle fleet is getting is getting very old uh in fact of the van that we have uh i've asked staff not to drive anymore it's become unsafe the steering linkage is is uh not good it's um you know like i said it's unsafe and so with that i think i'm gonna ask the board you know can and dr silva and i do some research to see if we can in

148fact update some of our vehicle fleet very good okay thank you um if there's any questions that's all i have i don't have any questions dave i just want to commend you on the great uh audit the results of that audit report you and your team um it really it shows your dedication and certainly fluency with the systems that you support and um congratulations and please pass that to your team as well thank you joanne i appreciate that it's i can't take all the uh all the accolades it's definitely a team uh you know a team uh uh involvement and uh if it wasn't for the the great team that i have um it wouldn't be it wouldn't go as smoothly as it did so thank you very much thank you mr wilson let us

149move to the director of psychological services ms mazzarella good evening everyone um i just wanted to share that we are in the final stages of moving uh from the cdc sites whatever preschool materials we had moving them over to the delair site tomorrow in fact we have a big move of materials from cabrillo over to delaire and i really want to thank julie williams and the maintenance staff they've been on it and it's been a really challenging time of course we're trying to reopen schools and all of these things that we're doing with trying to keep everyone safe and the cleaning schedules and all of that and even through all of that they've been very responsive and they have been uh really helpful and not even grumbly about like we got to move all these

150things so it's been it's been really great and i just wanted to thank them so that is all i have thank you peggy and uh thank you again thank you very much from our assistant superintendent of human resources dr dougal good evening everyone um just wanted to give an update to our community and our parents that the right at school child care program will is going to be starting on april 12th at all four of our sites at 138th anza cabrillo and dana dana registration just opened up yesterday so middle school parents please don't forget to sign up there is programming for the hybrid days as well as the asynchronous days there's before school care after school care and full day care for parents for additional information you can visit our website go under enrollment

151and then it'll take you to the right at school uh registration landing page so once again april 12th right after spring break the child care program will be opening up at all four of our sites and we encourage parents who haven't registered yet so please don't forget to register that's it thank you dr dougal and the exciting times there as well neil sorry and i just want to comment also thank you dr google for sure and blake i know this was something uh being able to reopen that healthcare option for our community with something so high on your list of priorities and what a wonderful um how serendipitous this is all of our schools our elementary schools and dana are now open and will now have a child care option for our families um who

152choose to exercise that option i am so proud of all involved that are making this happen and um so grateful thank you very much thank you agreed thank you joanne let us move to our assistant superintendent superintendent of ed services dr harvick thank you dr goldman last week we went through the final phase of our la county arts grant in order to receive the funding we go through a site visit so in the past julian mccarthy who is the program manager for the la county arts education collective would walk around and be able to speak with students and typically see the great work that's been going on with our arts team and the funding that we've been provided and this year a little more difficult so sara nichos who's been guiding this uh project put

153together a presentation for jillian and walked her through it it was outstanding um hoping that you can all see it maybe we can send it to you but this was a uh outstanding presentation it had our dance nights with parents dancing and kids it had a padlet with all the student art and parent art that matched it uh because they were in on this and really that funding that was only supposed to be fifteen thousand dollars this year ended up being twenty one thousand so dave you can look forward to that check coming through because jillian was really taken back by this um by this presentation and just what sarah had to share so we're just so thankful to l.a county we do have our grant a proposal in for next year requesting 25 to

154keep it going along with the support that we get from west we also had our uh lcap committee meeting last week this is uh one of a few meetings that we'll be having in fact between now and may we have five more stakeholder meetings going on for this brand new local control accountability plan uh three year plan that we're putting together dave's been working on it with me and so we hope to end our whole cabinet actually so we're looking forward to putting that together bringing it to you in may uh just a big thank you to everyone that attended that meeting we had stakeholders from our dlac which is our english language uh acquisition committee for the district we had uh parents from all uh sites we had our board represent represented there and

155miss mozzarella was able to bring two representatives from the local sofa so we felt it was a very good representation at that meeting that's my report thank you comments anyone all right well thank you let's move to our superintendent dr silvers i couldn't hear you sorry all right how about now um thank you dr goldman i i just i do want to share that that we have been working on on a community message that we're going to send out um you know really looking at anti-hate uh particularly in towards our asian american and pacific islander community members and those in the greater community and so that that would look to send that out here in the next day or so i have quite a few comments today circumstances continue to evolve for school districts and

156communities amidst the pandemic now first i want to share that los angeles county continues to move in the right direction related to covet 19 case rates in the associated metrics well i'm hopeful that these numbers continue to move in the right direction as dr goldman shared i also encourage continued vigilance and adherence to safety measures good hand hygiene wearing face coverings are critical elements that continue to protect us and our loved ones and overall community health today marks the first day that l.a county reached the orange tier of the blueprint for a safer economy is quite a different from just a few months ago currently our adjusted case rate is at an all-time low of 3.1 per 100 000 residents and our positivity rate is at a mere 1.5 percent additionally the county continues to

157take giant strides towards providing vaccinations for those that want and or need them i want to talk a little bit about town hall meetings that we held prior to reopening the reopening of our schools for in-person live instruction required a concerted effort over time from many stakeholders i had the chance to attend nearly all of the town hall meetings that were held at our school sites i was thankful for the quality of the information and the presentation that was delivered by our site administrators their ability to answer questions from our families and their availability i also want to thank our families for taking time out of their busy schedules to attend and ask important questions a lot of them related to the health and safety many families also spent time prior to actual reopening to

158join our administrators at each site for quote unquote open houses or walkabouts the pandemic has lasted over a year our schools have been closed for over a year and some of our students have never stepped foot on the campuses that they would be or could be attending middle school reopening we can officially share that as of yesterday all five of our schools as was shared including the success learning center have reopened for in-person learning i share with our trustees that this work has been thoughtful and methodical and of course the complexities of such a task require a lot of moving pieces while i have such an admiration for the job of all of our staff i'm at the elementary schools during their reopening today i want to highlight the middle school specifically i want to

159thank our leadership mrs clark mr coronet for creating the safe space for our families to return and for supporting the staff through the process second i want to highlight the work of mr okasinski and miss angie for their work on recreating a master schedule and rescheduling approximately one thousand students this is one this feat is one that usually takes months of preparation deliberation and they did it in just a few weeks we focused on what our staff and parents felt was important keeping students with their current teachers and not creating a separate and rote self-guided distance learning academy our focus for all students whether in-person or distance learning was and continues to be continuity of learning as i mentioned earlier our county reached the orange tier today and dr goldman i note your comment this

160is still in consideration and planning phases but we do want to find effective and authentic ways to bring back students for longer hours and varied experiences we will spend time over the next few weeks identifying ways we can do this with as little disruption to our teaching staff and schedules as possible our current schedules and our commitment to continuity of learning do not provide extensive flexibility but we are creative group and i'm confident that we'll look for some opportunities for more in-person learning for our students whether it be an enrichment program fitness activities or other special opportunities i share this in a very general terms because our focus has been on the current reopening and i'm grateful today that our students had a choice a choice to have impactful in-person learning and effective distance learning

161thank you to our teaching staff for being the backbone that made this all work it's been a year of flexibility and compromise of continued dialogue and partnership moving on to the aquatic center the end of last week we reconvened for the first time since the pandemic the wiseburn el segundo aquatic center committee we we didn't meet obviously because of the pandemic this is the governance and oversight committee a joint team of the city of el segundo personnel wiseman usd personnel and dv schools personnel to discuss pool operations and finance the last meeting was just a meet and greet due to a large turnover in the city personnel a few future meetings will be agendized and posted to follow all brown act rules for open meetings lastly i want to talk about the elk cap i

162want to thank sarah and eileen for really coordinating this and i know dave played a major part in this and putting together meetings and really planning out how to gather uh stakeholder feedback stakeholder input i'd like to share with our families that if you'd like to be involved in this lcat process feel free to reach out to us feel free to reach out to dr harbach feel free to reach out to our team here at wiseburn so that you can be a part of the process we can make sure that we include your voice i'm also you know i do have a note here dr goldman that you did ask me to follow up on i believe it was yesterday on our air purifier systems um and i think the question was are they installed

163and are they actually working and so um i did get clarification that um we do we do confirm that there have been 211 air purifiers that were installed in all of our classrooms office spaces etc and they all have been tested by kaya in conjunction with hosue from our maintenance department to ensure that they're all working so they are all working um and and installed thank you um i guess lastly we're approaching spring break too i said lastly twice i think or three times maybe but this is the real lastly uh we are approaching spring break and i just want to wish everybody well i want to wish everybody health i want to wish everybody safety i want to wish everybody um you know all the good things that come with maybe a little bit

164of break um time with with family and friends and uh the ability to do those things that you like to do so i wish everybody well and i think i'll thank you a lot for all the hard work that's gone into this that's it for me dr goldman thank you thank you dr silvers let us progress now on to our agenda uh in a more traditional way let's go to uh a general 5.1 may i have a uh motion the word i'm looking for thank you mr mora you got a motion sir thank you sir all right thank you this is to approve resolution 2021.24 denouncing xenophobia and anti-asian and pacific islander sentiment dr silvers would be you'd be so kind as to read this decree wendy do you mind pulling that up on the

165screen [Music] thank you so this is uh the wiseman unified school district rep resolution number 20-21.2 denouncing xenophob xenophobia and an anti-asian american and pacific islander sentiment due to the coven 19 pandemic and affirming the district's commitment to the well-being and safety of asian americans whereas the wiseman unified school district adopted assurances to support the safety well-being and inclusivity of all students parents caregivers teachers and other school employees and visitors and whereas wiseburn unified school district commits to supporting all stakeholders through a lens of diversity equity and inclusion and whereas wisebring unified school district commits to engage empower and elevate all members of our community and whereas asian asian american and pacific islanders are integral welcomed and honored members of our community and student body and whereas hate incidents hate crimes discrimination and aggression against

166asian americans and pacific islanders are on the rise throughout the country as asian americans and pacific islanders are being falsely blamed for the copen 19 outbreak and whereas the asian pacific policy and planning council a nonprofit organization has documented over three thousand hate incidents against asian americans since the start of the pandemic and whereas president joseph biden in a nationwide speech on march 11 2021 condemned vicious hate crimes against asian americans who have been attacked harassed blamed and scapegoated and stated it's wrong it's un-american and it must stop and whereas scientists have confirmed that covet 19 is not caused by ethnicity and health organizations have cautioned against using geographic descriptors because they can fuel ethnic discrimination and whereas copin 19 is a public health issue not a racial one and the characterization of copa 19

167with racial and or ethnic monikers encourages hate incidents hate crimes discrimination and aggression against asian americans and pacific islanders and whereas the increased use of anti-aging rhetoric nationwide has resulted in asian americans and pacific islanders of all ages being harassed assaulted and scapegoated for the coven 19 pandemic and whereas wiseburn unified school district wishes to firm its commitment to the well-being and safety of asian american and pacific islander students parents caregivers teachers and other school employees and visitors now therefore be it resolved that the wiser unified school district hereby won announces xenophobia xenophobia racism discrimination and anti-asian american and pacific islander sentiment due to the coven 19 pandemic and two affirms its commitment to providing a safe welcoming environment for all students parents teachers other school employees and visitors of any race ethnicity and national

168origin thank you dr silvers with a strong affirmation miss tsubaki if you take a vote please neil can we comment oh please i'm sorry thank you roger thank you um i wanted to share a couple of thoughts as well regarding this resolution um first for within weisbern unified school district we absolutely value diversity equity and inclusion the acts of hate that have been perpetuated to the aapi community are simply not acceptable you are an integral part of our society and of our wisebring community community so for that thank you thank you for being a valued part of our community that's all i have thank you thank you roger i just wanted to comment again to folks um i commented earlier and i just want to say again how proud i am of our district for

169our uh not just the words that we say about equity but actions by which we show every day in every way that we are welcoming and appreciative of all races all ethnic groups and and believe in equity and practice equity across all of our programs and all of the work that we do so thank you for this resolution it documents something that we value very highly um dr silvers if i could ask a favor that uh this resolution gets sent to every employee in the district and talked about its sites i think that would be invaluable to our team sure thank you we'll do thank you all miss subaki please all in favor i i all opposed thank you all right let's move to some ratifications and i've been advised we need to take each

170of these independently so if we can have a motion thank you mr mora to ratify the resolution 20 21.23 regarding our insurance and volunteers you have a motion thank you you have a second questions or comments on this we do this every year ms tsubaki all in favor aye all opposed thank you moving to 5.3 and again we need to take this independently ratify a memorandum of understanding mou between wiseburn unified and the weisburn faculty association you have a motion a second thank you dr silvers did you want to add something here you know i think i would just distinguish the difference is um we're we're ratifying two mou's but uh with the wiseburn faculty association one is for elementary schools and the others for middle school so it's uh just uh that's five three

171and five four and i just would like to thank wfa leadership for their support collaboration um it's been a process right and and this was uh they showed great leadership in helping us move forward and to get to where we are today thank you and i echo that thanks to their leadership in challenging times very very appreciate much appreciated with no other comments miss tsubaki all in favor aye all opposed thank you now to the other memorandum of understanding between uh wiser and unified and wfa this is item 5.4 you have a motion thank you back a sec go ahead perfect never mind i think that was roger thank you and once again i think as blake said there were two separate agreements one really negotiating team pretty much across the board and i want

172to compliment blake and dr dougal because i know these were some of dr dool's first negotiations and blake as you've always participated um thank you to the teachers the rep teacher representative and to our staff i know these were unusual negotiations in an unusual time and i appreciate everyone coming together in good faith um with the goal of serving our students in our community so thank you thank you mr bucky all in favor aye aye all opposed i was an eye okay oh sorry i'm ahead of myself thank you thank you item 5.5 review the 2020 stark school accountability report card for slc um you have a motion thank you you have a second um go ahead uh dr silvers yeah eileen can you just comment on this i'm sorry or or peggy i'm not

173sure which one yeah um the sarc came always comes before the board every single year this is our school accountability report card you get um to review one for each site and we do um we've already brought the other schools before you this is a separate the slc they did write separately but it was on we want to make sure that it went through board approval as well i did notice one thing just not really the point of this report but it was just interesting looking at the numbers that we had so many seniors uh this year we seem slc i didn't realize would seem to be weighted significantly towards seniors and i'm you know obviously we know that the viability of the program requires a certain number of students and i don't know if

174we have any concerns about next year or who knows what we're going to get but just keeping an eye on that peggy can you comment to that i mean i think that that uh it's really an unknown i know it's a variable but you have any idea i do i do so we actually recently um have received several referrals from a local district so while we have kids that are seniors um but who will leave obviously we we have received several in the last few weeks i think because schools are reopening and kids are coming back into session you know everyone everything was kind of at a standstill before so the it is picking up i appreciate that and uh we have uh all five of our schools have reopened and uh thank you peggy

175for your team as well uh miss subaki all in favor please all opposed thank you moving now to action items facilities uh item six six one two and three these are the piggybacks that mr wilson referred to earlier we have can have a collective motion here please i would like to motion six one through six three thank you nelson a second second joanne yes thank you comments or questions from anyone uh with nana just for our community because we have negotiated these piggy banks we are able to get other districts using them and we gave some fees from this which is just terrific um and i appreciate the staff finding alternative and creative sources of income uh beyond our ada and lcap funds so thank you mr baki all in favor aye all opposed thank

176you moving to fiscal items action item seven seven one approved contract renewal with front line you have a motion thank you mr moore you have a second thank you uh we do this every every year um perhaps blake you can share again why we do this what this is uh yeah so this is actually our sub our subfinder um so it just it just sort of uh well does um systematize and make an electronic option uh for tracking and assigning subs so ourselves are signed into this and we do do this every year i think what's not on here is what our cost has been in the past um and why we don't take multi-year contracts i know i'm sorry you've all asked me to do that in the past and so we'll try and

177get those um those notes in from here on out but um i did ask mr wilson to look some of that up so dave i don't know if you've actually been able to locate that information but if you can uh that'd be great i have um so last year's contract for the 2021 school year was 11 452 so 2122 with this contract here that we're presenting is 12 008 so it went up uh 556 or 5 and i believe last year i did reach out to frontline i believe i did uh i could be wrong uh you know inquiring about a multi-year contract and i believe they were not interested in that so there are some vendors that are open to it and others that are not but we can certainly we can certainly try

178again i appreciate that are we how satisfied are we with this provider do we happy with it i'll speak from the hr side uh we are very happy with uh the program in terms of not just substitute call in but teachers and classified staff being able to report absences and us being able to track those absences as well so um at this time it is kind of frontline in terms of its programming and so we'd appreciate keeping it questions or comments anyone all right wendy let's take your vote please all in favor aye aye aye all opposed thank you moving to the audit report 2019-2020 7.2 motion please i'm motion thank you i like the second thank you nelson again kudos to the team as we've said and mr wilson we remain in good hands

179thank you hearing no comments miss cocky all in favor aye aye all opposed thank you item seven three ratify approved miscellaneous receipts and purchase orders do a motion thank you roger you a second thank you nathan any questions no questions for me roger's pursuing uh just a note that mr wilson i think in the past we talked about maybe especially because of the in lieu of taxes that pass through for da vinci just getting the other side if you could in the future provide no expectation this meeting especially the length of the meeting but that cash flow report we talked about would be helpful uh my plan is to present it at the april 15th uh meeting well done sir roger any questions no none okay uh mr barkley all in favor please all opposed

180actions items eight consent can we have a motion please for all if desired i like to um motion eight point one through uh what it's the last one there i can't see it eight point eleven you gotta give a second thank you any questions on any of these items no questions no thank you mr bucky all in favor please hi all opposed thank you and finally moving to personnel item nine uh a motion please okay do we can we motion them all good yeah nine point one through nine point five no motion i'll second that great any questions or comments uh from the cabinet anything we need to know here no questions i you know i could just i would just clarify that that we are we do have some um at least one a

181very long-term employee that we're going to want to recognize um and uh that's on here i guess it's this item that's that's currently on the screen oh neither does 9.1 sorry um miss candy gray so we all we will just as we've had with recent uh retirements and resignations that have come to the board at that meeting in may um i think it's the second meeting in may we'll acknowledge those long-term employees that are retiring or resigning yeah she's a she's been a great wonderful teacher just a wonderful person yeah 38 years wow good for her yeah yes my son's had her as well and she was amazing yeah all right miss lubaki all in favor aye all opposed thank you mr rocky because you didn't read enough tonight uh if you would make it

182through the upcoming dates and events please absolutely um we will be having uh cabrillo school will be having this week on thursday april 1st their spring break drive-in movie if anyone is interested in reservations for that they just need to go to www.cabrillopta.org and there's an invitation there that they can log into um next week or at the end of this week we will begin spring break at our at weisburn schools and that extends through friday april 9th with students returning um april 12th monday and uh cabrillo school will be having a spirit day in may uh may 21st it's a friday they'll be wearing uh cabrillo gear blue spirit day and on friday may 16th slc will be having an el camino virtual visit to the slc right that's all that we have for

183now well thank you as dr silver said uh everybody be safe have a great time over spring break obviously be be conscious of cohort 19 and uh and do enjoy your time away uh i do believe we do need a brief second close guys so if you could join us again at 9 45. uh pending any other comments uh can i have a motion to adjourn the meeting you have a motion to adjourn dr goldman did you say 9 45 i just want to did you say 9 45 i'm sorry yeah yeah okay uh with that said uh uh wendy the final vote all in favor aye i indeed all opposed thank you very much thanks everybody thanks everybody well good night bye