Open Session - Regular Board Meeting 9/10/20

001have her phone number at the moment who's that okay who wish the speech she told me uh she texted me she said that she's she's gonna she just wants if wendy could just read her comment all right all right so we are recording let's uh open this meeting september 10th at 7 20 p.m uh israel mora is on vacation long planned vacation so as vice president clerk i will run the meeting tonight welcome everybody nice to see everybody here and we're sorry we've had technical issues that we cannot reach out directly to our community we will record this so if you're seeing this now you're probably watching it in a recording but we'll do our best to reach your needs um let us have an adoption of the agenda can uh can i have a

002motion to approve the agenda please have a motion thank you nelson go ahead roger that's fine roger thank you very much uh wendy please take a vote uh mr ben willows aye dr goldman aye ms canada aye mr martinez aye let us now move to the pledge of allegiance and mr wilson thank you very much for volunteering and i'll be happy to play everyone please rise place your right hand on your heart ready begin i pledge to 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 [Music] all right tonight we have scheduled a special presentation uh we are foregoing that we will postpone that for another meeting and uh we'll now go to public

003comment and uh before we get there let me just say this is a gold letter day a gold star day in the history of wiseburn i know many folks will talk about it we'll leave you in suspense if you don't know and turn now to our from the public wendy okay um i cannot access that one second um why don't we keep going forward and let me let you know when i can pull that up all right so why don't we move to the board comments and uh we start relative to this uh gold star day uh roger mr vanuelos please yes thank thank you uh thank you neil i would like to share with the community that earlier today the state board of education did have on their agenda we were item number six

004and their item was to consider the transfer of territory uh for the choice blocks to join the weisbern unified school district this has been an effort that originated many many years ago i believe back in so it's been about 48 years nearly five decades of effort from many many uh people in the community that have long desired to be a part of the weisburn unified school district given the the change in boundaries before a little bit of history where the current boundary is that don't want to say excluded the choice blocks but it was it used to be a farming community here and that district boundary line was literally an irrigation a trench where the boundaries from lawndale and wiseburn were originally designated you move fast forward 50 years from now and now you have

005an area a pocket within which is actually considered delaric l.a county part of a del air area but it's affectionately known as well as weisburn and also wiseburn that the choice blocks but also rose crans and inglewood now exist and all those farming communities are no longer there so in today's meeting the state the california department of education and the la county committee and district organization recommended that the choice blocks be formally added to wiseburn unified school district uh and that they would be able to vote uh for themselves in terms of whether they can join the weisbern unified school district the committee that the state board of education took that action item today and deliberated for well over an hour and ultimately decided to to affirm the the recommendation of the cde and the

006accounting committee uh to allow the transfer of territory for the choice blocks to join weisburn unified on an 11 0 vote it was a unanimous vote so uh it's it's a beautiful day in a wise burn it's something that has been a a dream of many many people for nearly 50 years so i'd like to like to congratulate all those people that came before us you know in terms of this this effort i i don't know all the names i wish i knew all of the history of all the people that have participated i know a lot of people in this room have participated in it i personally have been involved with the petition for well over 11 for about 11 years since i've been on the board in different roles but i do want

007to have a some special recognitions on a couple of people as well that have had the opportunity to work with uh first and foremost the chief petitioners this was their drive this was their petition this is what they wanted to do uh and they uh reached out to weisburn unisplied if we were to accept them uh into the district should they be successful for their petition i'd like to thank the entire wiseburn board for saying yes and approving that because those choice blocks truly are part of our neighborhood and they have been for many many years um that is it's an incredible day in the sense that uh so many people have worked on this on this effort it's not one person and that's usually how great and monumental things occur i'd like to recognize

008the the most current uh recent chief petitioners uh siobhan to christmas uh and eddie uh uranda who were part of the presentation today uh blake dr blake silvers was part of the presentation to the state board of education as was i today but i also don't i don't want to forget another key individual as well from the weisburn unified school district that helped us spearhead this effort for many years as well in terms of the support when the petitioners reached out and that's uh also dr tom johnstone he's um a tremendous gem within our wiser and community i know he's a retired superintendent but i i called and congratulated tom today and i shared with him that i think he's the the gift that keeps on giving he may not be here today but this

009also had roots and tom johnstone and his efforts um so thank you thank you tom thank you uh shavonda and eddie as well as bill mcgoon who is also one of the chief petitioners and i apologize if i'm leaving out your name it's definitely not by design or intent that there are just a lot of people um i'd like to thank the uh a lot of the folks that called into the presentation today then they made public comments i know uh dr blake silvers make comments as well and dr neil goldman you made comments as well today there was uh nah i believe nine or ten comments in support of the choice blocks and uh again the decision was thoughtfully deliberated by the by this state board of education and ultimately it resulted in an

010affirmative vote of eleven to zero so i'd like to say congratulations to everyone and just give a round of applause if you would please to the chief petitioners thank you for an incredible effort that has culminated into into that um next step in case you're wondering uh the the board the state board of education approved it this will will have to go to an election uh more than likely it would be probably like november of 2022 for a general election that's uh that would be to be determined in terms of the next steps once it gets on the ballot the choice block residents would be the participants they get to vote and if they vote their own inclusion into weisman unified school district then it will become permanently and official so again welcome to the

011weisburn choice blocks you know where congratulations on your petition and we look forward to to that day when the vote comes and you're officially recognized as a part of the district so thank you thank you roger well said uh welcome to our community being part of our community so very very exciting um anything else you wanted to add roger on other on other areas yes uh real quick i do have a couple of things to to add one is i had the opportunity to attend the dana back to school back to school the night i'd like to thank our administration and teachers i thought it was really well done i i particularly liked the breakout sessions because it allowed for uh for more individual attention to the students and their classes and with regards to

012their pod and their their their home room it allowed for some interaction you know i think for for parents also to ask questions of their teachers and kind of and especially in a remote setting i thought that was a really good idea that it allowed us smaller breakout groups as opposed to just a presentation where nobody had an opportunity to ask questions students were engaged they had they were able to ask questions and i thought it was really well done very well done so thank you for that um we're starting with school uh one of the things i'd like to just touch base on and maybe ask blake and and eileen if we can take a look at you know and get a report back just to ensure that all of our students uh within

013the district have access to the internet and that everything is moving forward obviously there's i'm not referring to challenges that's actually a separate item i'd like to very briefly bring up as well but ultimately if students don't have a device or don't have a chromebook that's uh that they can't be educated um i saw a very uh disturbing article about two little girls up in san francisco where they want to learn and they actually had to go to let's just say a fast food restaurant because they had wi-fi but they didn't have wi-fi at home and that was really like gut wrenching and then sad to see is that in california and in a situation like that and uh a statement i believe it's either the fourth of the largest economy in the world um

014two young little girls and i think they were in fourth or fifth grade had to sit outside a fast food restaurant just to have wi-fi so i really would like for us to make to ensure as best we can you know please reach out to our teachers and our parents that they have the connectivity and if they don't let's figure out a way to make to ensure that they do have that it's just a gut-wrenching uh story to see and i hope that's not happening here and that we can look into that um as we move forward with zoom i know i know there's been some challenges as we implement that i mean that kind of goes along the lines of just access and you know unfortunately people also sharing the codes i do ask

015our parents our students as an administration as much as we can keep the access codes or the links you know private so that people do not have an opportunity to just join in because i think some folks have been kind of crashing some of the classes and we've been we've seen a few incidents that are just not appropriate um i'd like to like for us to just consider monitoring that as best we can maybe some training i said how do you identify the person once they've joined on to a zoom call how do you kick them out like as as soon as possible i don't have an answer to that but if we could take a look at that and work with rit departments and help our teachers out there i know that that has

016to be a an incredibly stressful situation because all the attention goes to our teachers and i want to thank them for their patience as well it's not easy when all eyes are on you as to what are we going to do right so and to the parents bear with us we're trying to make the best we can with the technology that we can use to to use the platform so um if we can look into those items i'd greatly appreciate it and that's all i have thank you thank you roger nelson thank you neil a few comments i also want to take the opportunity to welcome back staff and and students to another successful school year i know it's a little different obviously liberian education virtually and and and not physically but i i certainly

017uh echo rogers comments i certainly think everybody administration staff students and even the parents in this case as we're all working together to ensure that um we educate our children and everyone has to be obviously cooperative and patients and during these this this this period right um and so we're all working together um everything has been um from my standpoint as a parent uh seeing uh aiden aiden and colin now aiden in high school and cullen uh as an eighth grader um you know uh they're off to a good successful start of the school year uh i'll bite that it's you know um virtually it's it's been very successful and i credit the administration and the staff for making that happen so thank you everyone i know it's a lot of hard work um i

018also had an opportunity to attend uh dana school back to back to school night at uh for dana middle school um i agree with roger as well that was well done uh appreciated that definitely the breakout sessions and uh went very well so i commend everybody for making that happen i know there's a this is this is all new uh as we're uh encountering this uh and i certainly appreciate all the hard work that goes into making something this happened we had to do this in a very short turnaround so again uh a command administration staff uh you know the technology that's kind of behind the scenes that we don't uh see that they make it happen so just thank you to everybody for that i also wanted to leave the the meeting um with

019recognizing all the people that and their efforts with the choice blocks i think after tonight you know i i will refer to that to the to the the blocks it's 400 families i believe that this is impacted and now that you know they've always been a part of the wisebring community like roger said it's now done formally i want to recognize roger on our board who's been involved from the the inception on this and has continued throughout i know many of us here have attended several meetings and so forth but roger has really been involved with us from the beginning of the end and represented the board and i certainly appreciate all your effort and and supporting that really uh the chief petitioners and and and and the in the community uh that really has

020been wanting to just be belong to the comm to the community to our district which they live in the community of weiser and wiseman as we've all said uh uh shared and i i did want to recognize because i worked with her and i appreciate her leadership shavonna christmas i don't know eddie renda but i certainly appreciate her support as well and then bill mcgoon who was involved really from the get-go as well with this effort thank you you've made a wonderful impact to those families and and obviously the the students and uh you are now formally part of wiseburn it's a it's a great wonderful day and and as we all shared i all you know roger said it very well uh tom johnstone who also took this this on and he he has

021a gift and he he does keep on giving and we certainly appreciate him as well so thank you everybody a wonderful day and um i'd like to turn it over now to back to you neil thank you thank you nelson uh joanne hey folks good evening um just to pile on i think to congratulate the toys blocks uh folks that worked so hard to make it happen um having attended actual meeting today and listening to the vote it was very emotional um to hear the to hear the comments from the state board members hear their questions larry shirey did a great job the petitioners did a great job putting material together that actually worked they answered the questions and made sure that what was contained in their petition uh you know that it followed edcode

022that they were able to address all the questions that would have to do with encode it's an emotional subject but when it comes down to it it's a it's a law it has to be able that you have to satisfy so uh they were able to combine both the emotion of of wanting to make this change for their families and also describe why legally this was an important change so congratulations for that um and welcome to wiseburn we have only one more hurdle to to jump i think and that's the vote i would be very surprised if uh that went negative at all so but you never know so we have to keep our fingers crossed and keep encouraging folks when there is the election to actually vote so for that congratulations i also had

023a chance to attend um several back to school night sessions i was really uh interested to see the option of all the span of grade levels i attended cabrillo i attended kelly schumacher's pk presentation and uh emily wakowski's grade one presentation so um it was really interesting they did a great job of course the teachers were very enthusiastic knowledgeable of the schedule and knowledgeable of the technology the parents were so quiet uh most of the time and i think um you know i totally respected that they were listening and trying to learn excuse me half of the parents had the children sort of with them in the in the screen hold on a second sorry anyway um and then i had a chance to listen into uh 138th street school with mrs lazax for fourth

024grade rachel humphrey for fifth grade and i listened in to dana um this i'm going to say this wrong spadaforas sixth grade pod and so i had a sort of wide view of the different grade levels and different schools and teachers it was challenging you can tell that everybody's into it they feel like they're in it together which was um really pretty gratifying it wasn't the teachers just talking to the community it was everybody sort of okay we're all in this we all want to make this work these are what our tools are and some of the parents had good questions i would ask um i think you're probably i don't know what the process is for if a parent or family has a problem with a chromebook or with wi-fi do they go through

025their teachers to escalate that or one of the parents mentions that she had two daughters and one of the chromebooks worked great and the other one didn't so you know do we have a process or is it really best through the classroom i think we should make sure parents know what that process is we shouldn't just assume that um i think uh there was a lot of cooperation um just a lot of enthusiasm for getting it started it was of course very different between the tk and the one up to four or five and then into the sixth grade so the sixth grade those kids are ready they're ready the teachers are ready since learning is not is not a hurdle for them but the tk my goodness listening to kelly schumacher god bless her

026it's just uh what a challenge uh but she's ready for it too and i bet her kids are zooming in every day and i bet they're learning a lot so congratulations to everyone i don't know why my voice is going away but um thank you very much for to eileen tanisha to blake to our teachers and they are they are carrying a big load this year even more than usual so congratulations to them anyway thanks that's all i want to say thank you joanne nicely said uh before my remarks which i'll try to keep brief wendy why don't we turn to our public comments since now it's my understanding they're available okay i have one public comment from shavonda christmas and she says today is an exceptional day in the wiseburn area the choice blocks

027petition prevailed at the california state board of education with unanimous vote 11-0 culminating this portion of this quest six years after forming and launching the wiseburn residence for wiseburn schools is an extraordinary victory we know that for many residents here this victory surpasses their children's k-12 experience and even their own lives it is such a privilege to see this community so much closer to formally being made whole on the issue of school district and i want to thank each of the wiseburn board trustees for your perseverance and support and especially dr blake silvers and his predecessor dr tom johnstone who somehow found the energy and time to step in and talk through all the issues and stand with us as true allies as i said on our facebook page we've been adopted all right thank

028you and uh thank you wendy thank you shavonda thank you eddie congratulations to you joanne you said we're in it together well said it is a community it was really fun to hear the speakers not only from the choice box speak but also from community members who were not in the choice box but in our district also speak in favor with no opposition which is really terrific to hear so i'd like to informally dub you the welcome blocks and it's good to have you with us the couple things i'd like to comment on in addition to again this is the beginning of the year thank you teachers thank you sarah nitsos for all you're doing to help us get technology again blake eileen nisha everybody thank you uh dave getting our numbers in order really

029appreciate everybody stepping up we appreciate the community we appreciate the parents and the guardians who are helping our students we're all in this learning together if you have comments we're learning we need information and feedback please share with us please share with the cabinet the superintendent your teachers your principals let us learn so we can continue to improve and grow together it's going to continuous improvement process will get better with your help also want to make a couple comments as the beginning of the year dr silvers thank you for your optimism and your passion in the opening remarks as you said this is the beginning of the year but you're as enthusiastic and passionate as ever because education is what we're all about and that's we're getting an opportunity to start and do again well

030it's good to have that thank you for those thoughts i also thought uh i know and a couple of my board member colleagues i think joanne and i think roger nelson you might have been there as well uh the implicit bias presentation i thought was excellent and the uh not only one of kudos to the presenters but to the teachers and the participants for their questions and their thoughtfulness asking questions that i don't think even the presenters have heard before which is really a tribute to the bright minds in the group so thank you very much [Music] i think i will leave it there everybody's had a lot of good things to say so let us move on to uh comments from our cabinet and move to our chief business official mr wilson thank you

031dr goldman i'd like to share my screen can you all see it it's coming there we go yes so i i've been working with bill denny uh and annie on preparing a list of the deferred maintenance projects that we should be looking at starting to complete and so here's a list of the of the um the school the project estimated cost if we have it so the first one is the anza bell clock it's actually the bell clock and pa system um i think we have a quote i don't know why it wasn't included uh eileen it was what like 60k i want to say does that sound about right yeah that's about right okay all right so we know we'll start looking scheduling that to get going uh 138th street two units uh the

032air conditioning units uh we got one bid at 17680. uh looks like we're going to schedule that uh in the month of october uh 138th street repair replaced the kitchen roof which is i think now that that mpr building is probably about 10 years old now um it's probably not under warranty and so we're getting some quotes on that uh cabrillo we're looking at exterior paint this past year we painted the admin building stucco and painted the admin building and now we'll look at doing uh all the rest of the buildings there pending estimates um dana has a couple of uh hvac units that needed to be replaced and then also we wanted to schedule uh an independent evaluation of all of our roofing um needs at all the school sites and so bill walked

033with two contractors you can see on september 3rd and september 4th and we'll get a couple estimates on that and uh and see that the health of our of our roofs and dave where are we in budget for these are these all have these all been authorized are they approved are they budgeted for they're they're budgeted for uh we have you know deferred maintenance funds we still have some bond funds uh we have routine restricted maintenance funds uh in in total probably about a half a million dollars available um and then we also get money uh for the piggybacks that we do and hopefully we'll get some more revenue uh from those people from other districts using our piggybacks um so it's it's in that budget uh and uh and we'll uh you know once

034we get these numbers we'll bring them to the board uh for approval dave dave do we also have some monies in our developer fees or we utilize that uh we can't not can't utilize that for deferred maintenance uh we have been using that fund to increase the preschool uh footprint because it's increased enrollment uh and so we're using developer fees for the dell air project got it okay thank you dave dave on those projects that you just uh listed could we prioritize um you know after you get the um independent evaluation of the roofings can we prioritize uh the roofing just just to ensure that before weather comes we take care of those those items absolutely and david 138th roof not the ansa roof is there any thought on that as well we're going to

035look at that as well so i think once once that evaluation comes back it's going to shift our priorities and so some of these other things might fall down if we really see there's a greater need to replace repair roofs i would certainly like to see the whole complete list of what we need to do before we start approving anything so we prioritize right these evaluations should be taking place probably in the next three or four weeks uh and then we'll know the health of our of our roofs and so if they're really in terrible shape we'll make that priority number one before before the weather comes and then lastly uh dr goldman uh was inquiring about the um the cost to borrow money for the trans the tax revenue anticipation notes uh for our

036cash our cash projected cash shortages for this year because the state's going to defer um you know a lot of our apportionments into the following year and laco has has locked in two different rates 0.17 and 0.18 so the cost to borrow money right now is incredibly low um and we're going to take advantage of that so wow yes that is fantastic news 4.17 that's almost a transactional fee as opposed to interest right wow wow that's going to borrow the max dave yeah where were you with my mortgage [Laughter] there are limits on the amount that you can borrow uh you know because of irs and arbitrage uh so you know we'll we'll maintain the parameters that we're given we can't invest it never mind but we don't know all right that's all i have

037thank you more trouble appreciate it thank you our director of student support services uh dr dougal good evening everyone i also have a presentation for you or some slides to look at so give me just a moment all right um so i'm thinking in the last couple days many of you have heard of all of the updates that the department of public health has given in regards to opening up schools and having students come on campus for assessments or coming online or coming on campus cohort instruction and so just wanted to update you just first off on the recent updates and then what we're doing here in wiseburn to prepare for our next steps so first thing um just so everyone is aware beginning on monday schools tk through 12 may offer in-school services and

038what that is is they we can offer in-person assessments so i'll go into more detail on ieps and for english language learners as well as specialized services there is 17 pages of guidelines but just four quick bullet points so you're all kind of aware of what we're working with is no more than 12 students in a cohort with the same two supervising adults no more than 10 percent of the total school enrollment can be on campus at any one time strict cohort design so no cross mixing an example would be special education students in one cohort could not then go to a group counseling session of different students so the cohorts stay the same and then they do ask that we utilize outdoor space for at least 50 percent of the time so um we

039would need to designate outdoor areas for assessments as well as instruction so those are like i said there's 17 pages of guidelines but these are kind of the main ones um i think that would have been important that are important to our community and for board members to know about um in detail now in-person assessments so um when we bring students back there is the in-person assessment piece as well as the cohort and instructional piece so first the in-person assessments is special education students this would include any assessments to be completed in person so this could be speech language assessment psychology assessments occupational therapy so the gamut of the assessments that we give and then for english language learners um it's specifically for the initial english language proficiency assessment california or the elpac those will

040need to be done in person so we are working on what that may look like for us so once again there's in-person assessments and then there's also the in-person instruction or the cohort model so this would be for special education design instruction and services or dis services this would be a phased-in approach and would be specifically for specialized services next steps for us what we're going to continue to do and we've been doing this already but continuing to explore policies and practices uh to protect our staff and students if and when we begin to return for assessments or in-person instruction um continuing collaboration with our employee leadership so that will continue as well uh we will we have already been exploring measures to ensure physical distancing for staff and students so this includes um just

041the the six feet distance uh plexi class ppe equipment um how are we going to um ensure infection control so if there is a breakout what does that look like for us what are our next steps um and then finally one of kind of the leading forces of this is really making sure that we have equitable access to critical services and so um just this week uh we launched the special education leadership collaborative which i've emailed um all of our special education parents and all staff members to be a part of and this group is really a collaboration of various stakeholders not just special education to really discuss what the challenges are for our students identify some best practices that we can use and then obviously also discuss and dialogue around the phased-in approach what

042is it going to look like when we come back so just so everyone knows that we are continuing to explore both the in-person assessment piece and what in you know coming back on campus would look like before we go any further with any next steps just so everyone understands that this all has to be approved by um the l.a county department of health so part one is completing the 17 page document where you know we we have points of contact identified we can estimate the number of students that will be on campus making sure we have adequate uh ppe equipment what's our plan for testing and outbreak um so once we submit that form then the department of health will look at that form and let us know what um improvement we need to make

043in our plan and then and only then can we open so um it is a faith's approach we are going to be diligent and careful with how we go about opening but we wanted to let everyone know that we are exploring what that would look like questions for dr dougal um yes thank you for that i have one question like on this slide here on the first column it says uh estimated number of students at 10 percent of the student body and he should right now based on our enrollment and our with our students do we think we'll be close to that threshold are we under that or do we have a greater than 10 percent need it or is it is it too early to tell so we're at the phase right now and

044when we're looking at just say special education what what i've been having service providers do is actually identify case by case which students we would need to bring on campus we're not taking kind of a big approach of hey we need to bring back 100 kids but actually identifying which students would need to come on campus so i don't have a number yet of exactly how many because we are we are making an effort to do this case by case okay thank you i kind of just clarified a couple of things so one one is that there are certain services that obviously um it's not ideal and or even effective to do on a in a virtual world you know our virtual uh platform so those would be the first sort of the first phase

045of students that we may again may um if things were to add up be able to bring back to provide services that we couldn't do online or be a zoom or some sort of online platform um the second piece i just want to be clear about too is that you know la county is still in in tier one uh the purple tier i i think it is of the safer business reopening uh phases the new tiered system and so we're still in the widespread community um uh the widespread community transmission phase of covid so we're we're cautious uh we're going to be very um you know we're going to make sure safety is number one and as we move forward so just want to be clear too that there's still a lot of uncertainty out

046there in terms of where the virus is and how bad it is impacting la county in particular and and maybe uh dr silvers or dr dewell you can clarify this so i'm understanding that this is what can be done what needs to be done before it's done but i'm not sure i have clarity on what exactly is our plan to be done did that make sense so our plan right now is once again we're going to continue to explore what our policies and practices would be is that this is not a mandate that we must do um in person nor that we must do in person assessment and like dr silver says we are trying to identify which assessments which students we you know must bring back on campus um but we are right now

047at an exploratory phase of what that would look like and and neil to to that point too it's that we know that this is going to start getting a lot of um a lot of media attention and so forth across districts locally so we just didn't want the community we didn't want the board to be surprised as information starts going um starts running through kind of the circles of education different school districts opening up or not opening up and what does it mean to have these uh certain populations come back to school and cohorts versus assessment so we sort of wanted to lay the groundwork for what you know what we're looking at now so as we do start creating maybe a more specific plan of course we bring that to the board um and

048let you know that these are kind of next steps that we may need to take um should we do it should we be able to do it safely so this is really the ground the ground floor um as we're getting information just to keep everybody abreast of what may come tomorrow in the paper or newspaper or online you know not not paper but uh some sort of media there was no have a i'm sorry no please join go i just was curious if we had a particular school in mind where we would host these services or is that also premature we i'm having the nurse right now um with the health clerk explore that option is figuring out which site may be best to have you know deemed the assessment center and so she is

049looking at that for me including you know what equipment we have and what we may still need and so our priority is to have one center and one assessment center set up and then kind of move from there should we need more space thanks yeah i figured you'd want to focus on one location separately to get started yeah wow this is a different question so go ahead sorry last question for me tier one tier two tier three do we have any expectations of which services will be provided first in person which of our groups will support services will be offered or that's still part in the mix that's part of the mix and i i do hope that the special education leadership collaborative that we can bring that together and really have dialogue around which

050students would be best served to bring back and i think eileen as well you uh there's definitely a need and a timeline for english language learners uh to have their initial assessments as well so eileen you may you want to speak to that too right we have a we have a number of students who need to have their initial it's called lpac testing which is the initial test provided to students we did receive protocols on how to do that testing virtually uh we're looking at that closely to see if it's really feasible for us and to work with our parents we also have some options for bringing students on campus this is all new we've just gotten this information so we're just getting that and looking at it but we we do have a number

051of students that we do need to test there's a 30-day timeline on this that we need to adhere to there is a a proposal on the governor's desk waiting to be signed that would extend that that timeline for us so we're waiting to see about that too right now just i'm sorry i have to add students even if they're not identified yet through this test are receiving services until we can get the results of those tests so i just want to uh share that with the board i can appreciate what a really what a conundrum this is right we want to provide the best services we want to do it safely uh this is really really really a conundrum joanne did you have a further question you wanted to ask oh there you go it's

052a little peripheral to this but in selecting the campus um i noticed that in the back to school nights fully half maybe more of the teachers were actually presenting from their classrooms so um which was great you know i think that was a you know sort of a really you know if that's their choice certainly but it seemed like a you know great opportunity for them to do that so obviously we'd have to take into account what other activities are going on on a particular campus which we may or may not necessarily know right off the bat and because the teachers could choose if you monday wednesday and friday if you want to come into their classroom and tuesday and thursday you know they work from some other location so it seems like a really

053tricky puzzle to put together absolutely well thank you dr dougal for uh for leading us on this path so thank you very much you're most welcome all right dr harbeck our assistant superintendent of educational services thank you and good evening we are talking about tricky puzzles so i'll bring mine up which is the last time we met i shared with you that we had five professional development days for our staff and we just had outstanding attendance and participation from all grade levels and all of our wonderful teachers in learning these new programs and strategies for distance learning uh with plenty of time for them also to work with their peers and that was followed by um and i shout out to shannon tepper on this from 138th street she held three drop-ins for parents to

054learn about zoom online and she had just over 120 participants in those zooms we then had an all-day drop in for parents again to come in and learn anything they needed to know about programs with uh sara nitsos and joy and michael and we had just over 100 parents come to that as well so that was followed by the publication of a parent tech guide and so joanne you were asking about how we're supporting i just want to share a little bit about that this tech guide is uh it's a it's a instrument that parents can go to is put out by the before school started by the principals and it has a table of contents with live links it takes them to the direct pages of whatever they're interested in so if they want

055to know more about our programs not just zoom but schools plp which is being used in our elementary schools and uh arizona state university and and canvas our learning management systems it's all in there and uh in addition there is a dedicated helpline or help ticket system email for each campus so if a parent runs into trouble they can use that and that is in the publication but also the principals have advertised this so parents there's a live person at the end of that email chain so they can get uh help immediately if they need it we also uh provide that that guy on a google form so if we do need to change it it's live and we can let parents know as we discover their needs we have the same system for the

056teachers they also have a guide and the guide has not only written directions but links to videos if you prefer to listen to someone uh shareholds how it's uh how to navigate these different technology needs and those were made in-house by uh our own personnel in many cases we also are putting out we're in development for us a survey for both teachers and families and i'm just going to focus on the families for a moment we um we know this has been a big lift for them and we just so appreciate just the enormous uh amount of patience and caring that they've put into this and they do reach out to their teachers because they know the teachers have the answers so we appreciate that but we want to make it clear that we have

057other options for them if they need help too but the survey will help us understand what else is needed so this is in development should be going out the end of september we're focusing on three themes the first is to learn about the family's experience with distance learning and looking at the amount of time their child is online participating in learning activities we want to see if that's working out for the family too much not enough uh et cetera the second would be their comfort with technology are they getting the support they need do they have access and we talked about that earlier and then the third is this child's social emotional well-being their sense of connectedness to their school and their peers really key in these distance learning times so adding that survey and

058um i think dr goldman we had talked about this survey maybe being something that we could use more than once as a comparison piece through the year okay we'll do that with our teachers as well so just i want to just again put out there that the tech team has worked very hard um our school secretary is taking calls just everyone to help this to be a real smooth lift off this year for our families and our and our beautiful students that's that's why i want to share thank you thank you dr harbeck um you know actually roger raised a question that i'm not sure we know the answer to but uh do we know and i'm not sure if dr harvick this view or dr silvers do we know the number of hot spots

059that have been requested are they being used where are we on access blake do you wanna share um i i do i was gonna i was gonna share that during my uh my comments i'll show you right now that's uh dr silvers go rude in your normal remarks blake it's all good no i i could i could share them now so and eileen thank you for for giving this to me i wanted to to share some some positive news and uh dana middle school um has 458 chromebooks that have been uh given to families it adds to 297 at cabrillo 373 138th uh street school 309 uh for a grand total of 1 437 uh chromebooks handed out since august and then uh handed out loaned out last may uh we had 313. so actually

060the grand total of chromebooks out now to families is uh 1750 so 1750. in terms of hot spots we have uh handed out 84 hot spots um so far so um good work to a lot of people so i'm going to try and go into my comments uh thank you dr now it's all yours all right um well what a year what a week uh what a day uh today too i think that um a lot of us are pretty much overwhelmed uh emotional it was an emotional day so it's a good good overwhelming feeling uh so i i just want to thank everybody for for the support you know roger i i concur your support through the last uh you know last several weeks months and preparing for today was uh really critical so

061thank you for for that and uh to tom johnstone as well who took my calls at times and and i know he's uh i wish you were listening uh today but definitely want to reach out to him and thank him to congratulations to uh to shabonda and to eddie and to bill who really and carmen byrd who made a comment today these are just people who have been so important to the community and um throughout the years and this is just what a win uh for them what a win for the district uh to the community for everybody so i really uh wanted to start with that a second i want to share that the start of the school year although it's been unique to say the least it's been really positive i want to

062thank the teachers and the support staff those that are working in the main offices and trying to maintain the obviously the the same service to our community as as we do every year but uh from a distance it's challenging and it's a lot of really hard work going on um across uh across our district uh we started the school year last week uh with uh teacher of the year and and classified employee of the year and that just went to everybody and that was uh you know and it was meaningful it was something that we really mean that every teacher last year every classified employee every employee in the district had to step up and do something different and be put in uncomfortable situations or again unique situations that cause people to be flexible and

063have to have to grow in certain areas and be adaptable in other areas and so you know really from from the bottom of my heart and i think from i could speak on behalf of of the cabinet and the board that every every employee in weisburn was uh was the employee of the year last year and we look forward to a time when we're all back together again and being able to share in person uh we are working on shirts uh to provide our to our families and i'm sorry to our our teachers and employees um we're working on that and so hopefully we'll get there soon for that so i also want to share a unique opportunity that was presented just the last week and it's taking taking form pretty quickly and that is

064a partnership with the u.s soccer foundation in partnership with the city of hawthorne and hawthorne police department to erect a futsal field or a pitch i think they call it a mini pitch on one of our campuses so we're looking to to do so on the dana middle school campus i've been spending some time uh talking to the administration at dana i've talked to the chief uh chief ishii at hawthorne pd who would like to come and present uh or or be available to present at the next board meeting on the 24th so that we can find the right location on the dana campus so that we're not so impactful obviously to the current playground and obviously uh you know we don't want to disrupt current activities but also this is just a really really

065awesome opportunity for the community um and uh there are several of these courts across uh hawthorne the city of hawthorne and the chief uh was really generous in reaching out to wiseburn and saying you know there were none on the west side of the city and it's really important to him and to the police department i'm in their community policing effort to uh provide a presence and to be around and to provide to the community in ways that you know a lot of police departments can't do and so they're able to do that and they're reaching out and it's just really phenomenal so looking forward to working with the board working with the u.s soccer foundation working with the chief uh to be able to try and bring this to fruition here in weisburn it's

066just a really exciting time so um one wanted to share that as well with the board i also want to update on the on the name change for 138th street school um i do have to say with the start of the school year and remote learning distance learning and all of that we are a little bit delayed in that so i wanted to give a realistic timeline uh for how this could potentially go we're looking to maybe end of october uh bringing together a group of students um and then community members we want to start with students and have a student group and do a presentation with students uh lead that into a community group and then with the board obviously in collaboration hopefully by let's just realistically say maybe end of year uh you

067know just end the calendar year if not sooner uh but but just to give ourselves a little bit of a runway uh to be able to make it happen and do it the right way so we're not we're not rushing it and we're thoughtful um and and all that so just wanted to share i know it's i know it's i've received a couple inquiries and i just wanted to make that um that statement publicly um and last but not least you know today is a is a great day for wiseburn and this week has been a great start to the school year and i don't want to be the dark cloud but i i i certainly want to remember um you know tomorrow's patriots day tomorrow is a you know a day that that we

068um it's a solemn day in in our community in the in the country in the world um and so i do want to take some time to remember you know those people who lost their lives um not only on on patriots day but but also uh thereafter you know in in battling terrorism across the country so i'm across the world sorry so um just to want to my hats off to uh to all the folks that that um passed and those that support our country every day um our veterans and our active military uh folks and our police officers um and everybody that first responders uh firemen and so forth so um you know tomorrow is a solemn day and i just wanted to end with that thank you dr bulman thank you dr silvers

069and uh important important uh note let us move to uh our agenda and the minutes uh can i have a motion to approve unless without exception five one and five two both minutes from the preceding meetings you have a motion thank you nelson second thank you joe uh wendy please take a vote mr pan willows aye dr goldman aye ms canetta aye mr martinez aye thank you wendy is there a way that we could bring up the agenda do you mind sharing that since this will likely be posted later um can you see that yes yes thank you let's scroll down to 7-1 facilities to approve the five-year facility use agreement with the los angeles county registrar reporter county clerk in order for the wiseborn library to host a vote center dropbox this is right

070next to cabrillo school this will be a dropbox for the next five years that will enable drop-in voting 24 hours a day uh any uh can i have a motion please i think this is great and i'd certainly like to motion second thank you nelson thank you roger my only comment was uh i asked dr silvers if we can have any say on the placement and my request would be as far away from possible from cabrillo so we don't have backup into the school parking lot i was particularly curious why we have to give permission for use of a library facility because who the library doesn't belong to the school district so it does so we actually own that property and uh it's least it's one of the few county libraries that's leased from the

071district to the county absolutely i never knew that interesting thank you okay thank you mr goldman i'm sorry uh to your question dave you dave's actually uh put a lot of work in he's done the sidewalks and so forth with the group dave do you have a an update on the location yeah so it's going to be just to the left side of the entry doors and we walked with a member of the registrar of voters office and there's certain requirements uh that that have to be um met when you put these drop boxes in i think it had to be three feet in three directions and so we found a good spot kind of right there in a dirt area right to the left side of the door you know you can't have trip

072hazards uh so bill and his guys are gonna pour concrete uh and then uh once the concrete's poured and dried they're gonna deliver the drop box and get it all bolted in i don't know why i had the understanding or perception that was going to be a drive-by dropbox but this is a you have to park get out walk it to it yes there's a there's a drive-by dropbox for library books that would be a great location uh but it can't be if the area is too small to host both drop boxes got it so just out of curiosity have you has anyone seen one of these boxes yet i have not uh i think i saw a picture of one and it's similar to uh you know like a mailbox a little bit bigger

073i would hope that it's you know pretty secure and uh not easily vandalized kind of thing and yeah they come and pick stuff up every so often i mean do we know that so so we know 100 uh that they are going to protect uh from vandalism from any graffiti any type of uh any service maintenance that has to be done on the dropbox and um it is about mailbox size it's not it's not huge um you know and it's just an opportunity to for people to drop off quick and go and so the county uh has taken on the role of any time there's an issue we can call them and they'd come fix it or they're gonna do regular checks as well so thank you all right so uh let's call the vote

074wendy please mr ben willows aye dr goldman aye ms canetta yes aye mr martinez hi all right i i think i was waiting for one more vote realizing he's not here before we leave this area just for dave and you're thinking you're baileywick as well we've also agreed to have the voting center at dana again is that correct that's correct dana and anza and the september 24th agenda we're gonna bring uh a contract with gsg protective services who last time provided um security services for us and we feel it's still necessary to protect you know our multi-purpose rooms um from from the public you know wandering off into the facility so yes it's gonna be anza npr and dana npr terrific thank you very much all right moving on to fiscal uh i'd like to

075entertain a a uh move a motion to move 7.1 to 7.4 uh because i think we or 7.5 rather i think we want to save the uh finances for dave anybody unless someone has exception with 7.1 to 7.5 i would like to motion 7.1 through 7.5 neil thank you nelson have a second second thank you joanne any comments or questions on seven one through seven five none thank you very much wendy please mr pan willows aye dr goldman aye ms canada aye thank you very much eyes have it 7.6 approve resolution 20 2103 the gan appropriation limit we do this every year can i have a motion please a second uh thank you both uh dave we have this every year we know we don't exceed it and it confuses me every time it's more

076uh perfunctory in nature i can read you a statement if that helps to kind of describe it or there's a statement right there yeah okay gan limit summary the gan limit was established by the approval of prop proposition 4 in 1979 the intent of the game limit was to constrain the growth in state and local government spending by linking year-to-year changes in expenditures to change in inflation which is represented by per capita personal income and population represented by average daily attendance for schools the gantt limit has become a largely pro-forma calculation that no longer constrains governmental expenditures this is because the limit has grown significantly faster than appropriations subject to the limit excuse me i don't think that gets the that gets the gist of it so we're not we have to pass it but

077it's not constraining us it's if the limits are so much larger than we have issue with it's not really relevant correct all right any other comments questions wendy please mr ben willows aye dr goldman aye ms canada aye mr martinez hi thank you 7.7 approved unaudited actuals financial report i'm expecting dave you'll want to walk us through this can i have a moment joanne thank you very much a second thank you roger wendy i have a presentation can i share my screen oh i can't share it with you sherry take yours down right sorry excuse me there you go um one second can you see it now okay so every year we have four budget reporting uh timelines uh july one obviously is the july one budget then we have the first interim report that's

078due to the board to be board approved prior to december 15th of every year we have the second interim report to be board approved prior to march 15th of every year and then the unaudited actuals which are how we ended up for the current fiscal year both in revenues expenses and any fund balances uh the report has to be filed to the actually to the los angeles county office of education by september 15th um and then it gets on uh forwarded to the state and i just want to let you know in the budget report that was sent out to you it did not reflect the revised 40-day uh 40-day revised budget and that's because laco wouldn't let me import it into the software yet so once they will then i expect it'll be first

079interim you'll see the the revised budget that we had in there it'll be board approved budget and then first interim report and uh it will it won't reflect the july one so right now it's the july 1 budget's in there which was based on the may revise it was very doomsday we know that as the board took action on the revised 40-day 45-day budget it's a lot it's a lot rosier so if you were looking through that report i just i wanted you to be aware it's not the most recent budget uh so here's how we ended 1920. um you can see lcf for f revenues uh just over you know almost 21.6 million dollars federal revenue uh 912 000 other state revenue uh just over four million dollars of which 322 thousand dollars were

080one time in nature and if you look down at the bottom here uh 279 500 was for the special education early intervention grant that was one time in nature and then we did get some about forty two thousand dollars in senate bill 117 covered response funds that was uh directly from the state other local revenue uh almost 3.5 million so on paper combined just over 30 million dollars if you took out the one time it'd be almost 29.7 million dollars certificated salaries for the year 14 million 311 000 of which 22 500 were one time in nature and that was for the evaluation committee you know the teachers had an evaluation committee um and then we also had some code related additional hours in the spring classified salaries came in at 4 million 24 000

081employee benefits uh this is you know per stirs health and welfare uh 7 million 355 000 books and supplies about 597 000 of which 63 000 was one time in nature and that was for dana flexible seating i think the english language arts i had a number of classrooms that were outfitted with flexible seating we bought some backpack hooks for anza i believe and we also had some one-time covert related expenses ppe foggers uh masks etc uh then services and other operating expenses uh just over three million dollars of which 263 500 was one time in nature that was the lpa master facilities contract the remainder of it the cdc study with barbara and associates we had an slc expansion we added a restroom and another building back there we bought some windows safety film

082for both anza and 138th and we also had some other code related expenses and then capital outlay 36741 14 500 one time in nature and that was the ssb expansion as well and then other alco which is really our special ed education costs with uh our sharing of da vinci costs and the regionalized program just over 304 thousand dollars and transfers out one time in nature this was the transfers out we had we had to transfer to fund 63. the cdc fund uh the deficit that we ran in the spring so in total uh combined looks like we had a surplus of 68 776 if it was out if it wasn't for these one-time revenues and expenses really our true net surplus is about 425 for the year uh here's kind of a breakdown of

083where we were for the general fund expenses you can see certificated salaries just over 14.3 million makes up about 48 of the expenditures classified salaries at 13 uh benefits at 25 so these three make up 86 of our expenditures so this is the lion's share where people pit you know people-person business uh transfers out was one percent at 315 other outgo which are special ed cost uh you know one percent three hundred four thousand i'm sorry that was capital outlay uh capital outlay not even a percent thirty six thousand seven hundred forty one services and other operating expenses about ten percent and books and supplies about two percent um we'll talk about our reserves so our designated for economic uncertainties uh one million seven hundred forty four thousand which is about five point eight percent

084uh as compared to general fund expenses if you include our fund 17 ending balance it brings that percentage up to seven point percent and the excuse me elementary average or unified average right now uh statewide for for 1819 was about 16 17 for fund 1 and 17 so we're grossly under here um so we but if we looked at fund 20 uh which the state doesn't the county doesn't it would get it up to 17 percent but statewide average for these two combined is about 16 to 17 so i think we have some progress to be made on getting those back up to an average uh and that's just a safety net i mean you you really need your reserves for economic uncertainties exactly what it is uh you know you could get a lawsuit

085you could get a you know a student that moves in that's a high cost high need you could have you know kobe related issues or something else like that where where you need uh expenses or revenues to to mitigate those unexpected expenses um and here's just a summary of our other funds fund 13 cafeteria fund uh we took a loss this is just the inning balance we took a loss um we actually didn't have the participation that we normally would i think on average per week we were serving about 100 lunches a day uh and then during regular time it was close to you know 1 000 1200 lunches a day so we weren't getting the revenues in we weren't getting the state and federal reimbursements but we were still having to pay our employees

086and so i think the beginning fund balance was about 150 and unfortunately we brought that all the way down to 24 000 as it ran a deficit our deferred maintenance how we talked about earlier actually about 628 000. some of this is earmarked uh for you know current projects um our special reserve fund fund 17 about 528 000 isn't any fun balance uh our fund 20 reserve fund for post employment benefits uh just over 2.8 and of that 1.6 is the measure cl set aside that we uh you know when when we were within that lawsuit we weren't sure if it was going to go in our favor or not and so we conservatively only spent half of that money and when we were the lawsuit was found in our favor uh you know we

087we immediately had a reserve um and so that's i think earmarked right now for the destruction of the old dana's site we still have some funds uh in our some funds and our bond funds almost 410 thousand dollars developer fee funds again some of this is already earmarked for the del air preschool but right now sitting at 248 000 um state matching funds we still have some funds that we got from state matching about 75 000 and then here's our fund 63 our our dana after school and the wise word child development center showing a negative balance and that's because it's a it's not a governmental fund and it's a enterprise fund and our auditors requested that we show the stirs on behalf liability um and we we can't have a negative fund balance so

088this is just the stirs um the star's liability uh it doesn't account for um the loss that we had in the fall as that was you saw that 315 000 transfer in that covered that loss so this is all a negative balance due to stirs on behalf before you go and yes go ahead joe further sorry which fund which fund did you say was um for the destruction of old dana it's this uh reserve fund for post employment benefits about 1.6 of that balance is the measure cl set aside okay and we here we have earmarked that you know that's that's one potential project that we could spend that you know those one-time funds on one time expenses okay thank you thank you joe before you continue i've informally had this conversation i know with

089dr silvers maybe dave we may have but i'd like to formally request that all of this is related to what should our reserve levels be uh i'd like multiple parties giving us some advice that you could seek out a presentation on what that should be and for us to adopt a board policy as to what our target reserve levels are and then a pr a plan to get there because if in fact we do need to have higher level reserves that we're well underneath now um then spending that money on something that prevents us from getting to a board policy reserve that keeps us safe seems imprudent so i i really want to make that request that we have that report that report and then uh move towards adopting a policy uh within the next

090two board meetings if possible neil neil i agree with you on this one actually dave and i and and tom dave probably recollects we we've worked on this in the past our reserves um as dave has indicated right now are really low and our reserves for a small district should actually be higher than the average especially now being uh unified so we actually uh went through this process in the past and we actually increased our reserve so i agree 100 with you that we need we're at that stage where we need to really focus and and come up with the plan and i know dave we've done that before and correct i'm sure we can do that again if i recollect from my memory if my memory serves me well a district of our size

091day when we compared it to the state and other districts of similar size we should be somewhere between that 17 and 19 percent i thought if i if i recollect property that's my recollection as well and i know that the reserve uh you know the three percent if you're a larger district i think if you're over the 30 000 ada it's actually lowered to two percent and so yes a smaller school district should have a greater amount of reserves okay so i agree with you neil we need to we need to come up with the game plan and it doesn't happen overnight it's a plan that takes a a few years if i remember we kind of did it over a time period last time yeah max mcpeak will take us a while to get

092there but i but i don't want to wait months and months to come up with that number so i would ask us to put some speed on that joanne you want to well i was just going to ask you know during the 2008 9 10 uh time frame when the recession was so bad and you know we had another sort of financial crisis was um is this comparable to that time do you recollect that did we have low reserves at that time too we we did have low reserves and that's why we started showing fund 20 if we needed to transfer those funds to meet our three percent that's kind of when we started using fund 20 as like hey just in case uh yes uh but yes reserves were low as well and we

093had to use fund 20 to show that we could meet the three percent in our multi-year projections yeah so we've had a couple of real real challenging financial times um yeah and i appreciate what you're asking for neil because we um it helps us focus the discipline that we need to put into this yeah i'd like to add to that you know i know dave and i have had you know quite a few conversations about how to get there and i think it's very reasonable to to say in the next couple board meetings that we could come back with a plan um to the board you know the start of a plan to the board on how over a few years we can we can hopefully obviously not knowing what the what the financial uh

094future is of the state but we'll do the best we can to have a plan for for the board and thank you very much and again i would like us to have a uh a board policy in place that what is our target so this is something we're shooting for and thank you dave great presentation always uh really appreciate your work thank you sorry to belabor this dave one question though on that on the fun 63 i'm confused as to if we can have a purse or stirs liability without employees yes uh so we yes um absolutely there is certificated people that work in that uh there's it's it's going back years that they have now they want us to show ourselves liability right i understand now i'm with you okay it's not the current

095year this is the ongoing liability correct thank you that clarified it uh so therefore uh we have a motion let's take it to a vote this is 7.7 the unedited actual unaudited actuals mr ben willows aye dr goldman aye ms canetta aye mr martinez hi thank you item seven eight approve additional authorization with consultant quarter motion please a move to approve thank you roger this is second and thank you nelson this is helping us with our communications too i'm going to second but i have a question please joe um so we were asked to increase the amount in uh dollars but if i read this correctly it doesn't say what the hourly rate is so i'm not sure how to translate the dollar increase or the total value of the contract to an hour sort

096of what sort of you know sort of description work description is just goes with this yeah i could send the scope of work that we initially worked on but it's 50 hours okay thank you yeah i guess it would be nice it's not a high priority because i know it's really the work has that's been done has been pretty good so and that's a pretty reasonable rate i just wondered what the hourly rate was and and just so to back up to is that uh you know we're overhauling i know it's slow process but we're overhauling the the user friendliness if you will of the website trying to figure out what what pages had led to nowhere which we did have some pages that led to nowhere we had some outdated pages so we've been

097working on on that plan and obviously not not inundating it with a brand new look immediately but just kind of chunking it and and so we're working in collaboration with our you know the team here as well as with erica corder the consultant to help us have a map for our website this just makes a little bit more sense that's a never-ending challenge gosh we'd also had uh blake some conversations relative to all the the websites and some uniformity and some leveraging so all the principals aren't trying to manage that on top of their other lives that we could leverage that and make that more efficient uh is this relevant to that not quite yet neil um i uh we're getting there so that would be the step that would be the next chapter if

098you will i expect that to be in the next month or so we actually have another consultant who's a web designer who actually does the physical labor of web design so ultimately once this is all planned and our district website is connected it's connected to all the sites and we would hopefully have a consultant who could just update the website and that's the that's the job and then we'll be able to sort of cut down it's just you know it's a building process and we're just going through that but i i suspect in the next month or so maybe a month and a half we could bring to the board um at least a completed district website and then how that would look at each individual site in the work plan or the workflow to

099keep them updated does that answer your question neil i'm sorry it does we're moving in that direction thank you we are yeah all right um call question please wendy mr ben willows aye dr goldman aye ms canetta aye mr martinez aye thank you 7.9 approved one-year contract with ps arts to provide a distance learning visual arts program motion please motion you have a motion you have a second i'm sorry lesson um questions um can we understand exactly what we're gonna get where is it going i'd like to just chime in on this but the ps arts we've had a relationship with for for many many years public school arts and it's just a terrific organization that uh supports all schools we wanted to bring back some aspect of visual arts and when coveted 19 hit

100we had to you know let go of it for a little bit but bring it back with a consultant so what we're going to get for the for the cost is we'll have videos that are unique to our tk through five grade levels and uh they'll be split by grade level so they won't you know fifth grade obviously wouldn't fit for kinder and they're going to have 15 spread out between october 1st and the end of the year 15 different art lessons they're also going to receive and parents will uh receive an art box that would support these lessons so we're going to be really careful with what goes in those boxes that they're age appropriate and that they match the videos so there's a lot of planning that goes on there so we think

101it's a good price we also um and we'll bring this back to you later received a grant from the la county arts foundation which we have been able to l.a county we've been able to get that every year and they've given us the option to revise that grant in some aspect that might help support the cost of this um art program as well for our tk through five thanks during the back to school nights there were several questions about art and the teachers are bringing it up too so i'm guessing this is going to fill that need yeah that wasn't good yeah also thank you for the clarification uh i thought that was simply for the four nights and i was questioning the cost so that that makes a big difference so thank you thank

102you for bringing that up because this includes family art nights we didn't want to let go of those so popular with our families and then do we have any indication if we already get that grant again or or reuse that what percentage of that would be how much um the grant was for twelve thousand five hundred dollars so we'll see where where it fits some of it of course needs to go the middle school which had some uh original needs there in inside the first grant well very appreciative of the grantors and uh their generosity so thank you very much uh wendy please call a question mr ben willows aye dr goldman aye ms canetta aye mr martinez hi let's move to consent uh items 8.1 to 8.23 pending any comments or questions can i

103have them i'd like to make a motion uh for 8.1 through eight point two three neil thank you very much nelson a second thank you joanne comments or questions on any of these items i have a question for dr harbeck just on uh i know there's been terrific efforts on the uh pd days and the great work beginning of the week here can you just give it a heads up on how that's going to be going moving forward so we have our um our teacher survey going out we're working with the principals we actually have a meeting tomorrow to discuss what they see as the needs of their staff and when we can time that in we we have short uh pd's going on from between now and november 6 which is when we have

104our next all staff professional development day we actually already have um a school's plp vendor coming in to do more training as per need for our staff so it's a it's a long game but uh smaller pds are professional learning opportunities along the way it seems really relevant as we get started here just it's not to be overwhelmed and not to be too infrequent so okay thank you agreed any other questions okay wendy mr ben willows aye dr goldman aye ms canetta aye mr martinez hi moving to personnel 91 through 9 9 dr silvers is there any reason not to do any of these need individual attention in your view i would like to pull 99 for a separate individual conversation on that so be it so you want to move 91 to 98 yes

105i would move nine one to nine eight and i once it doesn't have to be necessarily pulled but i do have a question about nine five all right so let's have a second and then we'll ask the questions second thank you joanne ask away go ahead okay um so can we get a little uh explanation of why we're ratifying an additional 20 assignment eileen but it does have to do with math numbers and and so forth eileen do you want to just jump in real quick right so in in the middle school math isn't always specific to grade level so we have a sixth seventh and eighth grade math we also have algebra one that's offered and so students can accelerate at certain points in their career at the middle school and it doesn't always

106come out evenly so where you have eighth grade math classes and algebra one the way if unless we're going to overload some classes we ended up with a class an extra class what we call a section uh so we uh decide that the best thing to do for kids was to allow for an extra section rather than up the number in the other classes even in this difficult year uh especially with the difficulty with math for students at the middle grades we know that's a challenge and so we added a we added a section to lower the numbers overall so this so okay so marie garcia we all know who she is she's great so does that does she teach more than a hundred percent what does this mean so what a typical teacher in

107the middle school would teach five periods out of a six period day uh maria will be teaching six periods in that six period day so it is a 120 position uh maria has done this in the past and uh has found it to be successful for her okay okay all right this is a pretty common especially when you're dealing with math and distinct or sciences and those types of things to have it's it's it's uh it's just it's a benefit especially with maria teaching these higher level math classes it just it lowers our numbers as well as you know they get they get a great teacher too okay thank you thank you joanne any further questions nine one two nine eight wendy please mr ben willows aye dr goldman aye ms kaneda aye mr martinez

108aye thank you 99 uh approved superintendent's contract extension i know roger you had exception here so please comment yes it's not really an exception it's a rest easy dr silvers that's not the question it's a positive reformation roger we understood that you wanted to pull this item for separate consideration and so we can speak to it so as neil mentioned this is uh action item to extend uh blake's uh contract just wanted to make a couple of comments in that uh i'm really proud of the leadership and guidance that you have provided blake to our district uh including in such a such a challenging and difficult time as in particular focus at two more most most recent events with regards to the pandemic i think your leadership has really come through and the community you

109you develop an even greater relationship with the community built on trust and action you've always followed through on on things that have uh that are uh that need a response right um you're always open and willing to have those difficult conversations even if we don't have all the answers at the moment you're always willing to look into it and give us options so that is something that i'm truly proud of i enjoy working with you and you've also celebrated some successes you've been able to pick up the baton you know we talked about the choice blocks uh today but that does not happen by itself either you are also an instrumental uh piece and moving that forward in the transition of superintendents sometimes that's an easy thing to get lost what one priority is for

110a person may not be for another and i have to say that i value your commitment to that choice blocks as well i didn't want the moment to pass by and not acknowledge all of your hard work and effort on the choice blocks as well so thank you and that's why i wanted to consider it separate but not to take any kind of exception thank you roger thank you thank you thank you i would love to move that for approval i'd be happy to second it as well thank you joanne and i third that well one one comment uh to note in the contract that um it and i don't know if there's a if it's a clerical issue and just take a look at it the um the contract um is for an extension

111from july 1st 2020 to i believe june 30th 2024 however says three years instead of four years so if you can take a look at that possibly wendy it might be it's just something that maybe needs to be corrected sure it's at the beginning thank you yeah that was my question is it a three year or four year agreement well i'm i was confused on that what's the understanding if we can log blake for four or five years like roger said i think my recollection neil and maybe you can let blake speak about this i believe we have one year left in the current contract and we would like to extend it by three so that would be an overall four or more that he's under contract four but it's an extension of three because

112we already have one remaining so kind of it's close it's uh it was it ends in 2022 but every you add a year you the board can consider to add at least one year to the end of a contract every year you can consider that so this would just include this year plus three more which is the maximum amount of years to a contract so it would be a four year starting 2020 to through the june of 2024. okay remembering back to the interview time and the selection process and uh now that time that you served as our superintendent a lot of times when we have our conversations about some of the decisions and so on i wonder does he really want to keep doing this it's so hard it's it's so hard it takes

113so much of who you are and and that's one of the wonderful qualities that you bring to this work blake is that you bring all of yourself and we really appreciate it our families our community everybody benefits so much from your willingness to bring yourself to this work and it's a huge commitment and you have obviously made that commitment and keep renewing that commitment in times that are who knows what to do next okay well let's figure it out and we do figure it out and we do succeed and we do we are educating our students in a entirely new educational paradigm the parents are working in that paradigm the teachers are working that paradigm our administrators are working in it and it's like oh well yeah we just did that well congratulations because this

114huge accomplishment and thank you very much thank you thank you joanne definitely joanna concur with you in in short in in blake's short tenure as a superintendent with more than uh people can imagine and and including uh a pandemic with which typically you don't go through as a superintendent no you typically don't go through that right but uh i'll tell you um it's it's like joanne uh said and and roger uh you you just respond so well and and and a very professional and very positive manner uh that you know just brings everybody together and you've done it you've done it just eloquently uh in an amazing job in in your in your in your period so thank you blake for all the work and your commitment and your dedication to the district we're really

115we're really fortunate thank you enough agreed uh i wrote down some just words as i'm thinking about what everybody's saying and what came to mind was grace perspective wisdom love and vision and you bring each of those to us to our benefit and one thing you've also done remarkably well is figured out how to delegate sleep so i really give you credit one quick quick word uh i just you know joanne you brought up the um the hiring process and and i do remember one of the one of the comments i made was you know i live about seven or eight miles away but i really found a second home in weisburn over you know my my 10 years as a site administrator and then now you know obviously in the role now and it's

116been um it's just been uh one of the best experiences uh that i could have had you know the 13 years i think now it just seems like just yesterday i was an ap at dana and i think wendy has a picture of that first my first uh my first days so i just want to thank the leadership of this board um a lot of you know you you've all been on this board a long time and i've i've sort of uh become i've used you as mentors i've called and called on you and i've needed support and uh you've all been there and i really appreciate the mentorship the support the laughter the fun and as well as uh definitely the um the guidance so thank you all uh for that and for just

117being there when i call i it's just been it's been great and a great partnership thank you well it's a nice nice final uh action item on our agenda so wendy let's take this to a vote mr ben willis aye dr goldman aye ms canada aye mr martinez uh and uh you know a measure of a leader is the team he puts together so i know the three of you have had to listen to these accolades uh but let's also acknowledge uh what a great team you put together so to the cabinet thank you very much for your significant contributions absolutely absolutely all right so um i believe now are we going to go to closed are we going to have our second open at this point let's go to a second open and then

118we could just shut down with second close which should only be about five minutes now i don't know protocol here yeah can we just continue in this forum or do we need to formally close and reopen in a new zoom meeting close oh yeah i'm sorry can we can we formally close stay here and then reopen in the same zoom meeting wendy do you know i'm sorry i don't know i would i would say um yes we can formally close this meeting and then stay in this same zoom and then we will continue with the other meeting and we're not recording right i am recording on my laptop right now which we are going to put onto so how about this we stay on here just stop the recording and then turn the recording back

119on finish our current meeting with upcoming dates and events with a regular upcoming meeting september 24th then october 8th and then october 22nd all at 6 00 p.m standard meetings um any other events or things that should be shared for the community or ourselves is there any other school i think back to school nights were the sort of big events yeah at this point so are there i don't think there are any others oh i know it when i was online there were different um i think rachel humphrey was mentioning some fundraisers for the different schools and so the ptas have some events that they're planning yeah i don't know if it would be possible for us to find out what those are yeah dina just had a fundraiser a chipotle fundraiser this past week

120so yeah i think you're right joanna i think there's some fundraisers out there yeah it'd be nice oh i'm sorry sorry it'd just be nice if not that we can necessarily make them all but some of us might be you know what able to do we meet with the principals tomorrow let us gather a list of all the fundraisers and the dates at least we can get through september if not early in october and then we can send those out to the board yeah because those would be important to know about too sure thank you absolutely all right well this would be a good time for me to mention the utility of a calendar that's updated so uh we'll get there funny you've never said that before smile yeah we'll get there and i'm gonna

121keep pushing um yeah but it would be great to have these kind of things up that would that would probably yeah push driven not pull driven you're right we're returning all right um that concluded our meeting so we can stop recording and we will come back in a few seconds