001Good evening everyone. Good evening fellow trustees. I'd like to call this WJ USD Board of Trustees open session to order at 5 0 1 we'll move on to item B Approval of board agenda. Are there any changes? Okay, see no changes. Can I ask for a motion to approve the board agenda? so moved Second trustee Brubaker makes the motion and seconded by trustee Garcia any discussion. No. OK. Then we will do the roll call and we will start with Trustee Garcia. How do you vote. Yes. Yes. Trustee Brubaker. Yes. Trustee Rodriguez. Yes. Trustee Villagran. Yes. Trustee Rodriguez-Mohica. Yes. Trustee Richardson-Fowler is absent. So we have approved the board agenda with five in favor and no opposition and no abstentions and one absence. Very good. We'll now move on to item C, public comment for items
002on closed session agenda. I believe we have one public comment. Kelly Timothy? Button. Okay, there we go. Hello, my name is Kelly Timothy and I stand before you tonight representing Gibson Elementary School. Five months ago, several classified and certificated teachers filed a complaint with concerns about our site principal engaging in unprofessional conduct and lacking leadership skills. We want to thank HR for responding to our complaint and conducting a thorough and comprehensive investigation. I have to be honest. Me standing up here tonight is risky because the feeling of retaliation from all areas is real. Some staff did not come tonight because they are scared of retaliation. But after 26 years at Gibson, I believe in us and these people standing behind me. And we believe in these next three minutes, you deserve to hear the whole
003scenario or as much as I can fit in. Which is why we are asking you to take action tonight in closed session We are asking you to ask questions and to gather background information Ultimately about the final outcome of the investigation that Gibson Elementary brought forward against our principal Gibson learned of the final results just yesterday. The decision is to keep our principle at our site, providing corrective action. 11 allegations, six of the 11 were substantiated by a preponderance of evidence. These aren't minor issues, but foundational leadership failures, which now apparently are acceptable. Six out of 11 claims showed merit. standards such as unprofessional conduct with, in front of, or about staff, communication which is inaccurate, intentionally, untrue to staff, and missing deadlines. If for a moment you remove all the names and relationships from
004this complaint, you will find, bottom line, you are knowingly returning your principal to a site on both sides where trust has been broken, morale is damaged, strained working environment, potentially staff movement, all which affect the students. In general, when you envision a WJUSD leader Do they have six out of 11 substantiated claims on them? We ask you, do you feel resolute in this decision? Do you feel it's in everyone's best interest? Do you believe all parties involved will be productive? Corrective action at the same site where six out of 11 substantiated claims occurred is not a reset, is flat out disregard. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Timothy. And that's the only public comment, correct? Okay, thank you. Thank you. All right, moving on to item D. We'll convene in closed session and return to open
005session at 6 p.m. and perhaps later, depending on length of closed session. Thank you. We'll start in about five minutes. Five minutes, we'll start. Okay, one more minute. One more minute and we'll start. Okay, welcome everyone and we'll reconvene in open session at 619 p.m. And we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance Thank you and this evening the land acknowledgement statement will be Read by trustee. Thank you We should take a moment to acknowledge the land on which we are gathered. For thousands of years, this land has been the home of the Putwin people. Today, there are three federally recognized Putwin tribes, Katcha-de-Hebe and the Winton Indians of Colusa Indian Community, Ketso-de-Hebe Winton Nation, and Yocha-de-Hebe Winton Nation. The Puebloan people have remained committed to the stewardship of this land over many centuries. It has
006been cherished and protected as elders have instructed the young through generations. We are honored and grateful to be here today on their traditional lands. Thank you, Trustee Villagrana. And I will read the equity statement. All students deserve excellent schools which are culturally responsive and set high expectations, a high quality learning environment, and equitable resources to ensure that they are reaching their full potential. WJUSD will be purposeful about providing equitable access to all essential educational opportunities for all WJUSD students, especially diverse and disadvantaged students who have historically been underserved by educational institutions. And our Board of Trustee agreements will be read by Trustee Garcia. Yes. Board of Trustees agreement. Check in. Remember our larger purpose. Boundaries. Remember that individual decisions are not personal. Open and inspired to finding common ground. Having empathy. Being respectful. And assume
007the best intentions. Thank you, Trustee Garcia. And we'll go to item. 5 e 5 which is announcement of any action taken in closed session The Board of Trustees took action in closed session by unanimous vote to approve the dismissal of a permanent classified employee the dismissal passed with a motion by Trustee Richardson Fowler and the second by Trustee Rodriguez Mojica the vote was as follows trustee Rodriguez. Yes, trustee Brubaker. Yes, trustee Garcia. Yes, trustee Richardson Fowler Yes, trustee Rodriguez Mojica. Yes and trustee Villagran Yes. And that was the action that took place in closed session. We will now move on to consent agenda. Are there any items that need to be pulled from consent agenda? Yes. The purchase orders and board minutes. Can you give me the number? G1A. G1A. And? G3A? G3. G3A. G3.
008The March 12th, correct? No, G3. G3. Sorry. You want all the minutes? You're putting all the minutes? Okay. All right. So can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda? Can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda minus item G1A and G3, the entirety of G3? Motion to approve. Motion was made by Trustee Garcia. Second. Second by who is that? I'm sorry. Second by Trustee Rodriguez-Mohica. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. The consent agenda is approved minus G1A and G3. And we will go back to those items. Item G1A. Trustee Villarreal. Yes, it's on purchase order 28 it's for 55,000 and If actually can get clarification is that one time or? Ongoing per year. It's per year per year Indefinite yes The reason I'm bringing
009it up is because the way I read the current agreement we have in place that we have access to future facilities and includes the word pools in it. And so we're paying $55,000 a year or if we sign a new agreement. But with the current agreement, we don't have to pay. And so I'm wondering why we would do that. Superintendent, do you have any information? Yes, after discussions with the city manager. They did some research regarding other cities around the area and with similar facilities and they did a cost analysis and so they brought forward a new agreement. With the current pool that they have, they do have additional expenses in order to maintain the pool and continue to offer it to the community as well as the school district. And so they are, just
010like they did with the community center as well. Now when they built the new community center, they also started charging for the use of the community center. We also pay to use the fields when we have soccer games. So that's what they've done with, for example, the community center as well. And so that was the rationale the city gave to me in discussing with the city manager. I agreed to begin discussing and bring it to the board because I believe that this pool, it would be a benefit for our students to use the new pool. And I do recognize that there is a cost to maintain facilities. And I also know that we probably would never be able to build our own pool, at least for not a very long time. Is there a... Is
011there a deadline that we are facing in order to sign this MOU? Not necessarily. I know that the city council is waiting to bring this to vote. They're just waiting for us to go give this opportunity to have a discussion here with you first. Trustee Villagrana, would you like more information? Would you like to pull it? Bring it back at a different time. I mean that's up to the rest of the board but From what I understand we have access to right now under the current agreement, correct? superintendent right now They've given us access to the pool not necessarily because of an agreement is be and with the understanding that we were working towards this agreement That was my understanding. I don't know that would change if we were not to move forward I would
012have to have additional discussions But right now we are having discussion that students are using it at this time because it was the understanding that we would be moving forward And then what did we didn't want to cause a disruption to our students? Okay, so you just want to bring that to everybody's attention before we I don't think that we should pay when we don't have to. Again, we built facilities since that agreement that the city has access to that we don't charge them for since the agreement was signed. There's cost to us as well to maintain those facilities. But again, if the board decides that, yeah, we know we should pay to help them pay for it, then I'll be voting no. But I just want to bring it up to everyone's attention so
013everyone's aware of what the agreement was doing. Superintendent is there is there something? is there any indication that this agreement somehow is Out of proportion with other agreements that may be similar to this. Is it unfair in any particular way? When you compare what other cities do with their agreements and pools and seeing that data and from that perspective I think it is a pair Fee that they're charging based on what the information that was provided by the city on their assessment of this in regards on how the city is approaching like the community center with a new facility that they Did start charging and that pool is at the community center So that's the direction the City Council Is going with that particular facility with the rooms with the fields any of the anything
014that we use the community center we we pay for Unless we have some kind of special agreement and so this the pool is there and so they're just kind of going in that same the same direction I think There are in regards to other agreements They we do charge some some to the city. Yes. Well, I believe I'll use of our facilities as well So it's not like they use everything for free neck. I might need a Lewis to come explain on that I don't recall the details. I wanted to make sure Jim was here I know there's various facilities that we do charge the city to use I think the one that comes to mind and Jim could help me with this. It's the Woodland High School Stadium? Yes. It's a pretty nominal. For
015the 4th of July. Yeah, for the 4th of July. It's a pretty nominal amount, but we do charge them for the usage of the utilities for the event, and we work closely with them to organize everything. But we have been charging them over the past few years for that. And then in addition to another place where we build a city is when, for the Brooks Pool, Jim was describing to me how we take it. We figure out the impact of the pool and the PG&E that it has on our facility at Woodland High School, and then we turn around and we invoice the city back for those charges. And so there is some back and forth between the city and the school district in terms of using our facilities. But what I would clarify in
016terms of what Trustee Villagrana has identified is that the current use agreement that we have in place. does it could be inferred or implied that all facilities meaning the current facilities and the ones that are built after the agreement that's in place it could mean that those are could be interpreted that those are free Of use but what I how I view it is I what I heard the superintendent say is that the city is saying Yes, we understand that but we're proposing The new Aquatic Center that is coming in This is the cost or the fee that we would like the district to pay to utilize that facility. That's that's how I understand So basically in exchange for these new facilities where the city is asking for this new MOU. Correct. Yeah. Okay, are
017there any other question trustee? When our students that was really loud when our Student athletes are using the pool Will it be open to the public at the same time or so? Well, well our students be getting exclusive use when the city would otherwise be getting payment from the community So they have a schedule where we would be using exclusive use I know they have different parts of the pool I haven't actually been out. I mean I've been by there but I haven't paid too much attention to the types of pools but they do have exclusive use when our students are practicing here at the one by one high school and they have the same thing here so they blocked out time for us for you know exclusively for wooden students for our swimming athletic
018students. Okay are there any other questions? Thank you So the superintendent had explained to me kind of what the what the cost would be and how it is fair, right? Especially compared to other areas. So I think that's really helpful But I did not know though before that we already have an agreement with the city that actually says In in language that looks really clear to me That we would receive access at no charge now or here and after So that have we had that conversation with the city explicitly and said, you know our agreement that we have now says that why why is there a change and is there going to be a change on other things to like that's a concern now that I have if they're not really Sticking to this so
019it's not so much about the cost like it sounds like the cost that they arrived at is fair But if we already have an agreement with them Are they going back on all of it or is it just this new pool? I guess that's where I'm just a little confused now. It's just specific specifically about this pool because of the cost for this pool Even though in the agreement it says now or here and after Yes, and so that's why they brought specifically this pool forward Okay Because this pool is different than just having a building than to have a pool because you're there's Liability cost is more electricity cost. There's maintenance of the pool chemicals that they use they the people who Safety safety guards of what they called lifeguards. Thank you lifeguards. So
020there's additional expenses versus just a regular room So they they view that the pool differently and there's a lot of anybody who's got a pool There's a lot of electricity that goes to keep the pump going to keep your water in the pool clean and sanitized and so because it's specifically of the pool and it's new and it's a it's why They requested for the specific MOU Can we read out loud the text for the agreement just for the rest of the board to say is that okay to do? Sure. Yeah. Okay. So The reason I'm confused is because it says use of city property and facilities City hereby agrees to make available at no charge to school district those facilities now or here and after be operated by the city including multi-use rooms swimming
021pools community centers meeting rooms and fields and parks for the use by school district and for use by groups by the groups or activities sponsored by school district. So it does include the pools, right? And I understand all those additional costs that you outlined, but I don't see how those are different than the pool that's already, the language that's already there. What I can share is since the community center has been open, we can't use the community center for free, nor the fields. So since, and so there's been different, that's something that our schools pay for to use. And so that has been an agreement. I'm not sure how old the agreement is, but this particular city council and city manager have approached us with this MOU. Are you through with your comments, Christy? I'm
022still puzzled, but I think I'm through for now. And I don't know how the rest of the board members feel. I hadn't seen this language before, but to me it's just a little concerning that now they're going back on this. Yeah, no city council do City Council a new board so I So yes that they this is what the direct that their request Does anybody else have any other comments Justin Brubaker? Do we know when that language that trustee? Mojica just decided was from 95 1995 so I mean I think either So either we think that we don't have to renegotiate an MOU, right, considering we do have new facilities, right, because of the language, or you consider that the MOU is fairly old, 1995, and that sharing costs is a way that we bridge
023and move forward with the city. I think pretty much those are the two ideals that we're looking at right now. Does any other trustee have, no? Superintendent or Lewis, any other? No, I was waiting to get back to the city. Okay, so given that we've heard everything that trustees had to say, is there a motion to approve item G1A? So moved. Motion made by Trustee Brubaker is there a second. Second. Second by Trustee Richardson Fowler. Any other discussion. Okay. And we will start with Trustee Brubaker. How do you vote. Yes. Yes. Trustee Rodriguez yes. Trustee Villarreal. No. Trustee Rodriguez-Mohica. Abstain. Abstain. Trustee Richardson Fowler. Yes. Trustee Garcia? Abstain. Abstain. Okay, so that is three yeses in favor, two abstentions, and one no. So that is not enough to move forward with this particular item. So
024is there any information that any of the board members would like to ask for specifically to be brought back if we bring this item back? I would like to know the athletic cost to our students if we don't approve this MOU. Will they have will they lose access to our community pools? I would need to have conversation with the with the city You know, they went ahead and allowed our students in good faith that we would hopefully get this approved So I'm not sure what reaction they will have so I'll have to come back to you with more information on that And I think we also want to get our legal counsel involved to take a look at just the overall issue of that particular contract and what legally is fair or not fair in
025regards to trying to transition into using this new pool. Right. And again depends what the City Council Council also says So I think I just like to get our legal counsel advice on You know whether this is something reasonable that is asked for so the old council did look at the new agreement But we haven't we did not ask for them to look at the old agreement So we will go back for the other portion of it Is what was brought up tonight? We were moving forward the new agreement so the new agreement is it's been vetted through legal and they feel it's fair and the language is appropriate and the cost is appropriate but we'll now go back and take into consideration what the old contract said Trustee Richardson fellow since this is going
026to be brought back And Monica, I'm gonna rattle off a lot of questions. So feel free to like revisit this tape some Poignant and probably salient relevant questions to be asked are since this contract were language in 1995 when did the relationship begin that we started paying for facilities or they started paying us to rent our facilities if we can get an accumulation of how much either of us have paid each other that would be fabulous if we can get an accumulation of what other districts are paying their facilities maybe what a Sparta was paying what Davis West Sacramento is paying that way we can have comparative information to make this decision. The cost-benefit analysis of if we don't do this, what's gonna happen to our students, that would be relevant. This is a 30-year-old
027agreement, 31-year-old agreement. They've built new facilities, they've upgraded. We've gone through a great recession and this economic turn. It makes sense that they would begin to charge us. That being said, I am growing. so concerned about how often we are going to our attorneys to figure out squabbles that are happening on this board. At some point, I'm gonna wanna know how much we're spending on attorneys to figure out what's going on comparatively to how much we've spent in the past. Okay, are there any other comments? Nope. Okay. So we're going to do some homework and then bring the item back. All right. There's still another outstanding item, which is G3, the entirety of G3, A, B, and C. Trustee Villarreal. Actually, I'm going to ask if we can move to community engagement just so we
028can have our guests come and then bring it back even after J. I want to just take care of it. That's fine. Okay. All right, trustee Vigarano. So my question is what has been the process in the past for approving edits from trustees to the minutes? My first question. So if there's a request for an edit, maybe sometimes there's a word choice change or clarification. the board trustee will email me if I agree with the edit and it's aligned to our practice then I make the change if it's out of line of our practice then I take the suggestion as best as possible and then move forward with our current our current process. So you as a superintendent make the decision as to whether it moves forward or not? Yes and then if the trustee
029still wants to bring it up here then they can. And then with my request on the minutes what was the process for that request. For this one particular the recent one. What was the request. Which minutes. To on the leadership initiatives. So that 3A. What was the request. To outline the support or opposition of the trustees in the minutes. And by outline you mean. Can you state specifically articulate who supported and who didn't trust to be Iran? Can you specifically describe what it means to outline? Yes to Illustrate in writing the who supported and who opposed it. Okay. Thank you Justin Brubaker Was there a vote taken on that item? No, there was no and I'm not mistaken. The second one was pulled to have a question on the floor Hasn't been answered Sure. So
030the question is being asked to the superintendent? The question was asked, yeah. What was the process that was followed for this request? For this request, I believe you emailed us and we responded back. I have to go back and look because I wasn't sure I was going to be asked this question tonight. But my normal process is that I'm assuming I did the same thing. Either myself or my staff responded back and saying that there wasn't a vote. This is how we are going to put the minutes forward The reason I ask is at some point to the trustees were involved in the conversation, but that's not usually the case But in this case that was that's what happened, right? Can we repeat that again in this case with my request to other trustees were
031involved in the decision as to what to do with the minutes? Not our original. No, no, but peace. Yeah but once when is that when then when the minutes were posted Which is on a Friday. I then the board members review the board packet. I get emails and questions I get lots of questions everyone And I received that question from you. Oh No, I yes, and then I also received a different request about the minutes and both requests were not Aligned to how we how we do the minutes and I did not Honor those two requests. I went ahead and consistent with our practice and I took an extra step and asked legal to make sure that I was correct in my assessment and my opinion and And that what the attorney agreed we reviewed
032the video And we helped me with the wording to make sure that we can make it a little better if and So at that point I did talk to The board president and And inform the board president that if anybody wanted to make a change that I would need to get four hands Because I respond to four people Right and it's difficult when sometimes this difference of opinion I do my best to make sure that I'm fair and then I follow our regular process and if the board want me to do a different process Then I'll do that if I'm directed to buy at least four or the majority of the word Okay, do you have any other questions? Just I guess the comment that you know in this case Oh in the past when
033I made requests you know they come to the board and the board decides yes or no in this case. Again you know the president I spoke and there was conversation that was taken back and then my request didn't come through in writing for the board to consider it. So that again to me that was different than normal practice in the past that's what happened. In this case it didn't happen. So. Trustee Richardson-Fowler you had your hand up. In the past when we've had trustees bring up ideas and proposals to see if the board wants to move forward on them and We don't take a vote. Do we usually single out trustees to articulate in our minutes who has supported the proposal and who hasn't The only thing that we're required to do in the minutes
034is any action the board took Okay, so typically when we don't take action on an item that is being proposed And the person who proposed it pulls them we don't articulate who supported those items and who did not because we didn't take a vote Right. We just do action or any direction. So the request was out of our common practice, correct? Oh my the request From the minutes. Yeah, um not necessarily sometimes Like today we had some requests from from trustees that want saw the wanted some additional slides or information added to the ELOP No, I'm talking about the minutes. They're talking about the minutes. Okay, so sometimes in a similar way Well for me, whatever item it is a trustee may ask This actually this person wasn't here or you know, or this is
035can the are you Can you change this word to this and if it doesn't change the meaning or the intention or the of the minutes then I accommodate I'm just a little concerned that you're getting a request that is out of the habit of what we do in our minutes if we don't take an action, we don't single out trustees For example when I brought up this exchange program And we didn't take any action on that. We decided to not move forward, not investigate further. I didn't call and ask for everybody to be singled out who didn't support that. And we moved on. We don't have a habit of doing stuff like that. I'm just wondering why we're spending so much time on it right now to single out this one aspect. It just feels
036off to me. Are there any other comments? along those lines and the minutes of March 22nd during the board reports the normal practice is not to clearly state the comments usually it says you know trustee shared report or trustee made comments. In this one it was actually very clear it says trustee Villagrana made a comment advocating that we no longer include retro pay in negotiations to avoid any legal so it's very clear very outlined which is not the practice. So this is a contrary to. practice so we that needs to be changed then to be in line with what just been stated by several trustees well I think we I think it's worthwhile to go back and maybe to take a look at our bylaws you know underneath this this issue but I think you
037know the other context here that's important to understand is language that we can all agree to It's not not a problem to put in the minutes because we all agree. It's when we have a disagreement on the description or what happened. Right. And that's what we have here today. And so that's the context for it. Trustee. Thank you. You and I agree 100 percent. And to me the issue was that the language didn't make it in the minutes for us to be able to discuss it. It was stopped. You know like in my opinion. Two trustees wouldn't come forward. So if I had come forward, we would have been able to discuss it and do exactly what you described right now. We would have had that conversation. And then the board would have said yes
038or no. But it didn't make it in the minutes. I just want to say yes, but right now we have the opportunity to do that. So it's not like we're taking away that opportunity, right? This is we're having the opportunity right now to add your addition or not add your addition. I want to clarify that I did not discuss the request with trustees. The president and I discussed it. Yes. Trustee Brubaker. I want to clarify the situation. It's become a situation. There was a request by a trustee to add language to an item that they brought forward. And then as a change happens to board minutes. Or anything in the board presentation ahead of the board meeting after it's posted we are all emailed of changes so that we'd already gone and looked at the
039Agenda we know that we need to go back and look at something and in that was changes to the minutes That were not accurate to what actually happened at the meeting and I reached out to the superintendent to say this is not accurate We did not take a vote To be perfectly honest. I was willing to continue having a discussion on that item. So saying That there was not support was not accurate. That was my that was me Objecting to your language that was not accurate to the meeting Okay so At this point you've pulled you've asked for g3 to be pulled that's in all the minutes is Are What what more would you like to do with that? Are you going to make a motion to so nothing on the minutes? I guess I
040guess at this point then I would like to to request that those two items come back next meeting so we can actually take a vote on them then. What two items? The two initiatives leadership initiatives. Since we didn't vote on them I would like them to come back at the next meeting. You can put in a yellow sheet. No. So OK. Well here we're talking about about minutes. So I know you asked me what I wanted right. Yeah. Answer your question that's what I would like. OK. So that would take an act of. That's basically to me is an issue in regards to bringing putting the issue on an agenda. Right. So that we go through the agenda planning process which is the yellow sheets. That's why I'm saying that's the yellow sheet. Right. So
041then I make a motion to suspend the bylaw that governs agenda planning for this one vote and a motion to direct the superintendent to bring those two items for a vote at the next meeting. Okay, just to be around just made that motion is there a second there appears not to be a second so the motion would die for a lack of a second. Thank you. Okay. Can I get a motion to approve G3 board minutes A, B, and C. So moved. Trustee Richardson-Fowler it's moved. Is there a second? Second. Second by Trustee Brubaker. Any other further discussion? No, okay. Can I get a show of hands all those in favor say aye aye I Have three to have four. Nope. Okay all those opposed one abstentions so We have three in favor one opposed
042two abstentions. That's not enough to pass these minutes so If we do not pass our board minutes What implications are there? Well, there's purchase orders and things some actions that we've already It jeopardizes some of the actions that we took especially the The purchase orders I'm trying to remember what's on the agenda So all purchase or basically all actions that were taken during that warming are void because they're not been approved of all three means The actions that were taken at that board meeting because the minutes it's back up so back up Confirmation that that's what the board took action on trust to be around. Yeah. Yeah No, the it was approved when when the board did it the fact that the minutes aren't approved doesn't negate That the board did something. So yeah, I
043don't agree with that I'll have to check with legal as well because many times we get asked especially with school funding We get asked for a backup from the minutes to make them official. And so I would have to review and see if there's anything in there that was approved, any contract. I think there was several special education contracts that were approved that could potentially be jeopardized if we get asked because of the funding that we use. Trustee Rodriguez-Majica. Thank you. I just wanted to share my reasoning for my abstention. I was not privy to the conversations that were had about the minutes when they first started. I don't even know when they first started, so I learned of them today. And quite frankly, I'm really, really confused, and I wasn't able to follow the
044entire conversation that was going back and forth. Always always want and I feel like the board always wants full transparency as much as possible. We asked for it From our staff. We asked for it from our superintendent budget across the board and I'm just really confused right now. And I don't really, so that's why I abstained. I did not vote yes or no, because I'm just really confused and I don't feel like it's being fully transparent right now. And that's what doesn't sit well with me. What are you confused about? The entire conversation that came, like was going back and forth. Like I said, I was not privy to it from the very beginning. So the whole conversation about the minutes and the changing it, I was not a part of those conversations. And I
045learned about them again today. And I myself, I don't know how others feel, but I was not able to follow all of this that was happening. So again, that's why I abstained. I want to clarify that when there's three board members talking about a topic, I, the superintendent, can't communicate with you. about that topic so there was nothing done intentionally or Or anything for transparency, but now that we're all speaking here together. I had one trustee asked for names to be added for an item that was there was no action taken I had another trustee who wanted a different word I Did not follow either of those Requests and I followed our regular process I I shared with a poor president if one of those two trustees want to spring it forward here with ever
046all of you To direct me to change it one way or the other or approve the way I suggested with legal advice That's basically in the national what's happened Just just for transparency, you know one is trustee via grana and just to be clear trustee Brubaker mentioned She was the other one. So they were brown acted with the three of them Just yeah, Rebecca just to clarify the only reason I even requested a change of a word was to the original change to the minutes I was perfectly fine with the original minutes because they were accurate to our meeting and our our our practice already Yes trustee Thank you. And I understand I don't it's not that I feel left out. I'm actually grateful that I was not a part of that conversation. And I
047understand the way that the Brown Act works. I'm just trying to share my process and why I abstained again. And I appreciate you doing that. But I just have a lot of thinking and processing to do that. I feel like I can't do this minute in order to be able to vote yes or no. And again, that's why that's why I abstained. Okay, so it sounds like we should just bring back all the minutes. However, if I can bring back we can bring them back I will send you our bylaw that outlines what we do in the minutes You can look at the recommendation by that help that my legal counsel helped draft this because I was worried we're gonna have this discussion and I want to make sure I had another set of eyes
048on this but but in a nutshell the minutes for school boards reflect any action or direction given to staff if the Motion is made a second motion. You know, we don't get to that point then that does not get into the minutes Trustee Richardson-Fowler. I'll just clarify why I voted the way I voted. I think that if we start a practice of requesting that the people who didn't support our proposal be named in the minutes, we are going down a slippery slope. And it felt punitive from the discussion I heard. that the only reason we wanted to include names in a way that we have never done before is to make sure people were singled out and articulated that they didn't support a proposal for two ethnic groups. And that can be messy, considering we
049don't do that and we don't have a practice of doing that. So that's why I voted the way I did. And so again, there wasn't agreement that could be reached about language. So we thought we'd bring it back over here, right, where language could be. Talked about with everyone, but we'll have to give it a second shot. I am particularly worried about any Any anything that gets canceled out or stopped? With the minutes so we'll have to make sure that that's not an issue because if it is an issue then we may ask for a special meeting to come back and make sure that Nothing no progress is stopped on any particular Thing that's very important. Okay. All right I think we can move on now to item H, community engagement, recognition of graduating seniors
050from the superintendent's youth advisory council. Yes, I am so excited. We have four students from the superintendent youth advisory council that started from the beginning. of this whole group who are graduating seniors. And please stand up. Brandon, come on up. Julieta, Eva, and Ximena, come on up. I'm gonna say a few words to you and then I wanna give you your skulls. These four students in particular, I'm going to miss you, all of you. It's going to feel so weird not seeing you around, and I'm very, very proud of you. They have been very serious about taking on this role from day one, and they have jumped for any opportunity to learn and grow. Brandon, I'm going to miss all your funny questions and your curiosity. You should have seen him running around our district
051and the buildings. technology area he really wanted to know. Julieta and Jimena and Eva have been very involved also in the camp. taking on leadership, actually being peer trainers. And Julieta has always been very involved. I mean, she's one of the first ones that gets up and starts taking notes and talking to the group and giving her perspective. And so it's just been amazing to me and an honor to see you grow. And these last couple of years, seeing you in this role and how serious you've taken it. And I just want to wish you the best luck. and I know that you're going to be successful with anything that you do. So I have for you some stools, some special stools for you for your graduation. I wanted to do them tonight because I
052know you have lots of ceremonies coming up the next couple weeks. And then I have a personal card, just a few words that I wanted you to have for me. Okay, so I'm going to give them to you now. In the Superintendent's Advisory Council, I learned a lot, and I'll take this experience with me as I go into college. I wish you guys the best of luck with future superintendent advisory councils and wish me luck for going to college. Can they share what college they're going to attend? I'm going to UC Berkeley. I want to thank everyone for allowing me to be in the superintendent advisory council. Me and Ava, we were... We helped during a leadership camp, and we've been facilitators for the past two years. And we finally got the opportunity last year
053to join the council, and I'm very grateful for this. It has taught me a lot of leadership that I hope to take to college and future jobs. So thank you for everyone, and I hope you guys have a great time. I'm going to UC Santa Barbara. Thank you. I'm going to CSU Monterey. And then I have learned a lot from the council. I have learned like a lot of leadership skills and how to work with people with different ages and I'm transferring to Davis. And kiddos check with Ava just two pictures of all of you guys getting your ropes. So she's got pictures to text you. OK. Up next is H2 Farm Workers Week resolution. Our guests to come up please to the podium. I don't normally read the entire resolution I usually actually. I
054forgot one. Actually I'll read it from here then I'll go up there so I don't have to take my laptop with me. Let's see. All right. Just a little bit about the organization that's going to receive the resolution. This is a version we'll share with me. So the organization is the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation. And just share some background. So California is home to nearly 885,000 farmworkers, the majority of whom are undocumented. who along with other low wage and mixed status communities face wage wage theft labor and civil rights violations environmental injustice deportation threats limited access to legal counsel these challenges are compounded by legal deserts where in rural areas the the attorney ratio was 1 to 626 versus urban which is 1 to 175 so so quite quite a a gap in resources.
055Founded in 1981, California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation addresses these gaps, particularly where federal restrictions limit services to undocumented individuals and constraint litigation and advocacy. In Yolo County, CRLAF provides immigration legal services, impact litigation, legislative advocacy, outreach, and technical assistance to support farmworkers and their families. as a backbone organization to support the farm worker movement and ensure farm worker self-determination, CRLAF, advances farm worker self-determination and recognizes farm workers as an integral member of the community, the workers, their parents, their children, whose reliance and aspirations extend far beyond their labor. So again, normally I don't read full resolutions. The first time we're doing it and I'm going to read the full resolution. So please bear with me. This is resolution 44-26, Farm Workers Week, which will be May 4th to the 10th. We're asked there are approximately
0562.6 million farm workers in the United States. Agriculture is a thriving industry that generates approximately 9.5 trillion, not a billion, trillion in economic impact and provides food for more than 342 million people in the United States and beyond. And we're asked farm workers are the critical first step in our nation's food supply chain and provide all Americans with access to safe, healthy, and affordable food. The contributions of farmworkers are essential to the well-being, nutrition, and food security in our communities, yet their work often goes unseen or under-recognized. And whereas farmworkers perform highly skilled labor under physically and mentally demanding conditions, often facing extreme weather, health risks, and economic challenges, farmworkers have continued to meet and exceed the challenges of natural conditions, public health crises, including the pandemic, and other global challenges with resilience and dedication.
057And whereas the need for farm workers continues to grow as the United States works to meet the demands of an increasing global population. And whereas this board honors the contributions, resilience, and cultural. and economic impact of farmworkers and their families and ask educational institutions and community organizations to play a key role in raising awareness and supporting the success and well-being of farmworkers and families. And whereas the farmworkers have historically and currently faced systemic discrimination from agriculture agricultural growers including labor law violations sexual harassment in the fields disability discrimination and use of threatened deportation discrimination based on race national and national origin and language and whereas thanks to the united farm workers movement significant strides were made in securing rights and improving conditions for agricultural labor including higher wages safer working conditions and the malaysian of
058the dangerous short-handed hole and whereas the ufw work in increased visibility of farm workers helping foster oh wait this is a gotta all right here we go um The work of the California Rural Legal Assistance, the United Farm Workers, and the Royal Chicano Air Force increased visibility of farm worker issues, inspiring continued advocacy for farm workers' dignity. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Woodland Unified School District hereby recognizes May 4th through the 10th as Farm Workers Week and encourages students, staff, and community members to acknowledge and honor the invaluable contributions of farm workers and reaffirms its commitment to supporting the educational success, health, and well-being of farm worker families in our community, our state, and our nation. And again, the reason I invited... well, the director, and to represent organizations because they have done
059tremendous amount of work for decades to improve the lives of the people that literally feed the nation and the world. And so I yield the floor. Buenas tardes. I am deeply honored to accept this resolution on behalf of our larger community of farmworker advocates and activists and the campesinas and campesinos whom we honor through this resolution. My name is Amagda Perez, and I have the privilege of serving as the executive director of California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation and even more to be the proud daughter of farmworkers. Trustee Villagran already explained a little bit about CRLA Foundation, so I'm just going to... Move on to talk a little bit about what this resolution means to us This resolution matters not only because it recognizes farm workers But because how it does so its name reminds us
060that the farm worker movement has been built by the collective power of thousands of farm worker women and men elders and young people who organize, who persist, and who raise their voices every day to demand dignity and respect in our jobs, in our schools, and in our halls of justice. While history often lifts up a few names, today we recognize the many whose names may never be printed, but who step forward with extraordinary bravery to demand dignity and justice, not just for themselves, but for their families, their community, and future generations. I also want to emphasize something that feels especially important today in this place of educational leadership. Our stories must be told. We are so grateful to be here today with you to take up one piece of our shared responsibility. to teach and
061celebrate our histories, not as individual names, not as footnotes, not as moments of struggle alone, but with pride and joy that we who come from these communities know so deeply. Formworker history is the story of resilience, of brilliance, of leadership, and for love of our children. When our children learn this truth, they do not just understand the past, they see themselves as part of a powerful legacy, and they can see their bright futures much more clearly and grounded in this self-knowledge and pride. This room is filled with legacies of our farmworker parents and the fruits of their sacrifice. Both my parents worked as farmworkers for more than 40 years until their bodies no longer permitted them to do the artist's work. My father worked from sunup to sundown six days per week and made at
062most $6.50 an hour. My mother often worked two jobs to ensure my siblings and I had what we needed to succeed in school. For one of my daughter's school projects, they were asked to interview a living hero. And so both of my daughters interviewed my parents. And when they asked them what did they consider to be the greatest accomplishments, they both answered without a second thought, sending our five children to college. The hard work, sacrifice, and accomplishments of our farmworker parents go beyond ensuring our nation's food supply and sustaining the economy. Their hard work has resulted in a future generation of justice warriors. Because of farmworker parents, our community had the first Chicano Associate Supreme Court Justice of California, the Honorable Cruz Reynoso. And now has the first Latina Chief Justice of the California Supreme
063Court, the Honorable Patricia Guerrero. The first Chicana Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ana de Alba. The first Chicana Superior Court Judge Sonia Cortes. The first Chicana Sacramento Superior Court Judge Emily Vasquez and a statewide farmworker advocacy organization whose majority of attorneys, outreach and legal advocates and legislative advocates are the children of farmworkers and teachers and trustees on the Woodland Joint Unified School District Governing Board who are committed to the education, equity and social justice. With your permission I would like to ask that the farm workers and children of farm workers present in this governing hall to please stand So this is them and and thank you for the trustees as well So so today collectively we accept this resolution and we do so with so much pride as part of our community, our entire
064community, and with a great deal of gratitude. Gratitude for those who came before us, for those who continue to lead, for those in this community. And we are so proud to make sure that our commitment echoes here tonight. We are committed to continue building a future where every farm worker is protected, when she raises her voice, and that she is supported to thrive. Muchas gracias y adelante hacia la justicia. Thank you very much. Oh, boy. Thank you very much. That was beautiful. Right. So anybody who'd like to be in that picture? President Rodriguez. Yes. May I make a comment while the picture is being taken? I want to thank everybody on the board for approving the recognition to farmworkers and for Farm Workers Week. I want to thank Magda, who is smiling beautifully for the
065photo right now. I don't want to make her laugh. For sharing such a beautiful speech. And for also the beautiful singing. I am the daughter of farm workers as well, both my mom and my dad. And I remember learning and singing the colores in Head Start when I was a very, very little kid. And we sing it through many, many years. So it's really a pleasure to hear it again and from such a beautiful voice. So mil gracias. Es un orgullo ser parte de esta historia. Y muchísimas gracias por todo lo que siguen haciendo. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you. Moving on to H3, presentation resolution, child abuse prevention month. If I could get Cristina Maciel to meet me up at the podium. And so just a quick introduction, Christina Maciel who works at
066Child Welfare Services, a program manager for Yolo County Health and Human Services Agency. Thank you for all you do. I'm going to read portions of the resolution and then let you go ahead and fill in. Thank you so much. for being here today. Again, Child Abuse Prevention Month, whereas resolution, whereas America is a country where all of us should be able to pursue our measure of happiness and live free from fear, but for the millions of children who have experienced abuse or neglect, it is a promise that goes tragically unfulfilled. National Child Abuse Prevention Month is a time to make their struggle our own. and reaffirm a simple truth that no matter the challenge we face, caring for our children must always be our first task. And whereas realizing that truth in our society means
067ensuring children know that they are never alone, that they always have a place to go, and there are always people on their side. And whereas scientific studies confirm a direct link between child abuse and a significantly greater risk later in life of alcoholism, depression, drug abuse, eating disorders, obesity, sexual promiscuity, smoking, suicide, and certain chronic diseases. And whereas in Yolo County there are numerous committed agencies, parents, relatives, community volunteers, public policymakers, and professionals who are collaborating their efforts to eliminate child abuse in the county and give our children hope, security, and safety. And whereas the district joins in the positive and important efforts of the Yolo County Children's Alliance, First 5 Yolo, Yolo County's licensed foster care homes, and the many public and private agencies and programs serving children and families in Yolo County to
068work together, not only to prevent child abuse and neglect, but also to build healthy, safe, and strong families. and healthy safe and strong communities children do well when their parents do well and families do better when they live in supportive communities now therefore be it resolved that the woodland joint unified school district of trustees hereby declares april as child abuse prevention month at its regular board meeting on april 23rd 2026. i'll present you with the resolution thank you so much Have a few words good evening My name is Christina Maciel and I'm one of the one of three child welfare program managers for Yolo County child welfare services I've been working for Yolo County child welfare now for 12 years in June, which is quite a long time I currently oversee multiple programs including our
069continuous quality improvement administrative support staff resource family approval foster care eligibility in our practitioner training unit Thank you to Woodland Unified School District for inviting me today to speak to you all about child abuse prevention. April marks Child Abuse Prevention Month and this year's theme is Strong Families, Safe Futures. It reflects a core principle of our work. The most effective way to ensure child safety is to strengthen families before crises occur. In Yolo County, many families are navigating significant pressures, economic strain, limited access to childcare, and gaps in our support systems. At the same time, we see strong informal networks, extended family members stepping in, neighbors offering support, and community-based organizations meeting critical needs. These are not peripheral. They are central to prevention. We also know that prevention is most effective when systems are coordinated.
070The Child Abuse Prevention Council continues to serve as a cross-sector table, bringing together child welfare, public health, education, and community-based partners to align efforts and strengthen the overall safety net. This work requires a shift in focus from reactive intervention to proactive investment. When families are supported early and consistently, the likelihood of systems involvement decreases and outcomes improve. I'd like to highlight some current data and key areas of focus. This data underscores both the urgency and the opportunity. In 2025, 725 children in Yolo County were subject of abuse or neglect investigations. and 125 entered foster care. These numbers represent not only system involvement, but also points where earlier intervention may have changed trajectories. We also need to consider the broader context. With a county poverty rate of 16.3%, many families are operating under sustained financial stress.
071While poverty itself is not neglect, it significantly increases the likelihood of instability. particularly when combined with limited access to child care, housing, and health care. In addition, disparities remain a critical concern. Black children represent approximately 2.5% of the child population, yet account for 15% of foster care entries among children ages 0 to 5. This is a structural issue that requires targeted, equity-centered responses. Research consistently shows that stable, supportive relationships are one of the strongest protective factors for children. That reinforces the importance of community-based prevention strategies and trusted connections, not just formal services. As we move through April, our goal is not only to raise awareness, but to reinforce a shared responsibility across systems and sectors. This includes strengthening upstream supports, improving coordination, and ensuring that families experience our systems as accessible and supportive rather than
072punitive. Ultimately, prevention is both a moral and a strategic investment, strengthening families reduces system involvement and leads to better long-term outcomes for children. Thank you. Okay, we will continue now to student reports and we will, is Izzy Tafoya ready? Yep, come on up. Representing Woodland High School, thank you. Good evening, Board President Rodriguez, Trustees, Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin, Executive Cabinet, and our community. My name is Izzy Tafoya, and I'm here to present Well Then High, and my report tonight is the following. Our co-ed tennis has clutched their first league title this year. team earned an impressive 11-1 record in Golden Empire League and is expected to host the first round of playoffs starting May 1st. We hosted a WHS versus PHS staff and student dodgeball game yesterday, and currently our juniors are taking the SBAC tests. Our
073AP courses are preparing for their AP tests at the beginning of May, and along with that, our theater will be starting their performances of their spring musical, SpongeBob the Musical, tomorrow. So buy your tickets so you don't miss out. Along with that, some of our FCCLA students are off competing at state leadership conference. And ASP is preparing for Grand March and prom. A Night on the Bayou will be hosted at Woodland High on May 16th. And that concludes my report for tonight. Thank you, Ms. Tavoya. We could get Nicole Pimentel from Pioneer High School. Good evening, Board President Rodriguez, trustees, Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin, Executive Cabinet, and our community. Today, my report is on the following. Yesterday, Pioneer had a dodgeball match against our rivals, Woodland High. The first round was staff versus staff, and the second
074round was student versus students. In the end, Pioneer took the win. Prom is coming up next weekend on May 2nd at 8 p.m. Tickets are $45 with an ASB card and $55 without. The theme is Masquerade, and it takes place at the Woodland Flyers Club. Senior ceremonies are also approaching fast. Award night takes place on May 20th around 6.30 p.m. Scholarships, medals, and other awards will be given to seniors who have received one. In addition, senior finals start on May 25th. The following week after that, seniors get to do fun activities at Pioneer. Lean Crew has an upcoming crew connection with freshmen next Thursday. It is birthday themed to celebrate all of the freshmen's birthdays. Spring sports have also started celebrating senior nights. Baseball, tennis, and swim recently honored their seniors. Congratulations to all of
075them. ASB elections have also started this week for the upcoming 26-27 school year. All candidates have been promoting themselves with posters and on social media. Voting officially starts tomorrow and closes before lunch. Results should come out by then. Good luck to those who are running for a position. AP exams are also coming up in two weeks. Pioneer AP classes are offering lots of support during lunch by giving out study guides and mock exams to prepare. And lastly, juniors have started SBAC testing this week, and all other grades have been entering school at 1045 to ensure that juniors have no distractions. We are proud of juniors for working hard during testing. And thank you. That concludes my report. Thank you, Ms. Pimentel. If we could get Maris Ibanez from Cache Creek High School. Hi, good evening
076Board President Rodriguez and Trustees, Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin, Executive Cabinet, and community. My name is Amarizy Vanez and I am a junior representing Cache Creek High School. My report tonight is the following that students are continuing to complete their credits as we get closer to the end of the school year. We are up to 34 graduates this year and we expect a few more in the coming week. We completed CASP testing last week, ELPAC testing this week, and we'll take our third round of NWEA tests next week. The day before spring break, we hosted our spring carnival for the kids of YOLO. We hosted an Easter egg hunt, played games, handed out snacks, and made sure each child had an Easter basket. The Easter bunny visited with all the kids and everyone had a great time. We
077could not have done it without the support, donations, and participation of the YOLO Library, Unidos, and Empower YOLO. Two weeks ago, Mr. Coronado took a group of his art students to Pioneer School to visit the SDC classes. Our Cache Creek students worked with the students in those classes to create artwork, learn about each other, and everyone had a great time. But next Wednesday is our open house from 530 to 630. We hope you'll be able to join us to check out our artwork, have some tacos, and enjoy a snow cone and some popcorn from our culinary students. Overall, things are great out at the Creek. Thank you, and this concludes my report. Thank You mr. Banya okay great job everyone moving on to item J public comment for items on the agenda do we have
078any public comment we do not very well moving on to item K reports superintendent report yeah make my report as brief as possible just a reminder of our priorities And I just want to share with the board that Cache Creek held a spring carnival. It happens in Yolo County and it's held at the school where community members from Yolo County come out. They do Easter egg hunts and do a little celebration before the spring break. And it's just really nice to see our Cache Creek students also participate in this event in support of the Yolo community. I WANT TO THANK THE DIRECTOR OF ALTERNATIVE PROGRAMS, LORI CURRIO, FOR COLLABORATING WITH THE YOLO COUNTY COMMUNITY TO MAKE THIS POSSIBLE. Also is open house time as you have been seeing on your calendars and I know it's
079really hard to get to all of them but I've had an opportunity to attend as many as possible and it's really nice to see students and families excited to learn what their students have accomplished and students showing off showcasing their accomplishments. Teachers beaming with lots of pride of the things that they've accomplished this year. So I want to thank all our teachers to opening up their rooms to not only their the current classroom students but to other parents who are just checking it out trying to make decisions for next year and I saw just a lot of welcoming of welcoming discussions until I want to thank the teachers for all their work to making this a very successful and important event for our families and Then we have some other winners. We keep having all
080these winners. So Our Woodland High School co-ed tennis team wins first league title in the Golden Empire League. So congratulations to our team. We have a lot of talented students and they just keep winning, winning, winning. So we want to hear more and more of that. So thank you to the coaches and the parents who really support our students, all our athletic students. It does take, it's a family event, the time and all the driving that it takes and to be there to cheer your children on and thank our students for being so devoted in the sport and also learning how to balance. life and activities. So congratulations to the co-ed tennis team at Wilton High School. And then lastly, our superintendent advisory council just wanted to share, they have one more meeting to go,
081but I did meet with them on April to discuss their opinions and their thoughts regarding the student board member. So there were some surveys and there were some discussions there was group discussions They they took Notes that we put it back out They had poster paper around the room and they gave me plenty of feedback to help me finalize the the resolution I'm going to bring to you for approval or the policy that being for your approval and I if you'd like I can tell you a sneak peek of what they wanted. Okay They voted, they discussed and agreed that the best option was from their perspective is the rotating. There was a lot of discussion about having one person on the dais. They felt that that was a huge commitment and that they recognized
082that that would be a very a lot of burden on one student to be the whole year. They were worried about time and other activities involved. They also were worried, had a lot to say about rotating and wanted to make sure that all students were, all schools were always considered. And so they wanted to make sure that the three student board members work together at all times, but that they rotate and else Another interesting thing that they all agreed on was that they also surprised me excited even they came up from them I didn't even bring this up as an option if we were thinking a rotation every trimester But they said they prefer to rotate each meeting Because that makes sure that they're all on top of it and they're communicating and that their
083voice are being heard throughout the year So that was their perspective and their input on that. And that concludes my report. Okay, great, thank you. Next up, K2, report from California School Employees Association, CSCA. I'm Rebecca Roster. Let me know that she called in. There was no report. I don't know who she called it into, though. Okay, so seeing that there's no report, we'll move on to K3, report from Woodland Education Association. Thank you. All right. You'll have to forgive me. I lost my voice to spring students. Good evening, President Rodriguez, trustees, superintendent, and members of our community. My name is Becca Bernard. I'm president of the Woodland Education Association, and I've taught seventh grade science at Douglas Middle School for nearly a decade. Spring break has come and gone and now it's hard to
084believe that we have only 30 days of school remaining. This is the tender season when we are both looking forward to summer rest and preparing to say goodbye to the classroom communities we have built. It is also open house season a reminder that even as we close one year we are already preparing to welcome the next group of students into our classrooms. At the same time, this is also the season when contract issues tend to rise to the surface. Right now, WEA is navigating grievances related to safety, transfer and reassignment, athletic director prep periods, and retroactive pay. The grievance process is not about being controversial. It is the tool we have to enforce the contract that both parties negotiated and signed. Our agreement is over 130 pages long, and WEA uses this accountability process when
085there is concern that the district is not following through on its commitments. We want to work collaboratively, but the contract must be followed consistently. One especially disappointing example is retroactive pay. WEA has moved this formal grievance to step two which is mediation after members were told that retro checks tied to our newly ratified agreement would be delayed into the 26-27 school year with no clear date. I want to sincerely thank payroll and HR for continuing to work on this. We know staff across the district are limited by time and capacity but Your employees should not have to fight beg or grieve to receive raises already promised through a tentative agreement Trust is a two-way street and it matters whether employees believe this district will honor its word Later on the agenda you will review the
086West Ed special education report First, I want to acknowledge the RSP and SDC teachers, service providers, psychologists, paraeducators, and general education partners doing incredible, complex work every day. The WestEd report makes it clear that WJUSD has deeply committed staff who care about students and families. But it also confirms what educators have been saying for years. Woodlands special ed challenges are not caused by lack of dedication. They are caused by inconsistent systems, unclear expectations, unsustainable workloads, and insufficient support. At a well-attended WEA special ed forum on April 16th last week, members raised many of the same concerns reflected in the report. Unclear roles, lack of protected collaboration time, unsustainable caseloads, uneven IEP responsibilities, insufficient behavioral supports, and the need for stronger communication between the district leadership and sites. Members were especially concerned about expanding co-teaching or
087inclusion models without the infrastructure to make them successful. Inclusion cannot simply mean placing another teacher in the room and calling it support. It requires planning time, training, curriculum access, shared expectations, and adequate staffing. Members also emphasized that caseload numbers do not capture the full reality of special education work. Assessments, report writing, IEP minutes, service minutes, case management, family communication, behavior support, and crisis response all take that limited resource time. When those realities are ignored, staff burn out. Our forum made it clear that special ed staff overwhelmingly feel like they are drowning. And in a district struggling with roughly 30% special ed turnover year after year, that is a retention warning we cannot ignore. The district should not need to pay another outside consultant to listen to teachers. Educators are one of this district's greatest resources
088of information. They know where the system is working, where it is breaking down, and what students and staff need to succeed. On a more hopeful note, WEA and the district returned to the bargaining table last week on April 14th to begin the 26-27 reopeners. Both teams came ready to work, and we were able to reach an agreement on Article 21, Personnel Action, adding an additional step in the progressive discipline process. We appreciate the collaborative and productive tone of that conversation. The district also shared an MOU proposal around Wednesday collaboration days and professional development days. WEA raised concerns about the impact of additional PD days, especially with late notice to members, and we are gathering member feedback before responding. We return to the table next week on April 28th to continue work on salaries, benefits, class
089size, elementary prep time, and the working conditions that shape student learning conditions in Woodland every day. I often have to remind myself that real change is collective. It does not happen because one person, one department, one bargaining team, or one report says it should happen. It happens when district staff, the school board, educators, CSEA members, families, students, and community members come together around a shared commitment to making our schools better. We are seeing neighboring districts make meaningful gains around salary, benefits, staffing, and student support. Woodland cannot afford to fall further behind. If we want to recruit and retain excellent educators, stabilize programs, and improve student learning conditions, then bargaining this spring is critical. The decisions made now will shape the years ahead. Lastly, WEA is looking forward to our annual member celebration event on May
0907th at Woodside Park. After a long year, we are excited to gather with our membership, celebrate one another, and continue building the relationships that make our union stronger. At the end of the day, our union is only as powerful as our members, and this year has shown that Woodland educators are standing stronger together. Thank you, and this concludes my report. Thank you. We'll move on to item k4 report from board members any board member like to start Anyone any reports trustee Richardson Fowler? This year I was able to support one of the clubs at the HOSA club at Pioneer High School. They had their delicious tri tip dinner. Sorry I couldn't remind you guys about it but highly recommend for next year. This is my second year going to it and just driving and picking
091up that food and knowing that you're supporting a good cause fed my family very well. Sounds delicious. Trustee Brubaker. All right, so I have been running myself ragged the last week and a half, two weeks going to open houses. My goal was to try to get to one every night. I missed last night because I kind of burned myself out. So I'm going to circle back to Dingle because I don't want to leave them out. But it's been really great seeing our families interact with our teachers, seeing the environment our students are learning in. I've seen such impressive projects on our students' desks. One of the teachers, I want to say at Tafoya, had a science fair in her classroom. She said they do it every year. I think it was sixth grade, but don't
092quote me on that So it's been it's been really wonderful seeing The on-the-ground work we do every day we as board members see something everything works such a high level it's so rewarding to see the the Experience where students actually have day-to-day. I also wanted to share Something the superintendent I have been talking about for a while after I attended a conference Don't even remember when this year is crazy There was a session where they talked I think it was a Vallejo Unified talked about how they do what they call budget roadshows where they bring a present budget presentations into the community to better inform the community of How budgets work and then what the reality of things like the governor's budget actually has on the school district and that's something that I think we're
093gonna be implementing going forward which I'm very excited about and I also ran into a former board member several months ago who served during the Great Recession and I sort of this was when we were going through our budget reductions and I was like hey do you have any words of wisdom what were strategies you used to try to balance continuing to serve students while having to make cuts. And he said that they at that time had a budget advisory committee. So I asked the superintendent if that's something we could we could bring back and she said since that's something was never disbanded. Eventually we can get that going again, so I'm very excited about Utilizing that tool for our community and our decision-making And then I also want to give kudos to the board
094before me Are we're gonna be hearing shortly about the special education review This is something I am deeply invested in and very excited about, but I also want to acknowledge the humility it takes for an organization of this size to acknowledge that they need help. If a school district in this country or anywhere says that they do special education perfectly, they're lying because it is not possible. Special education... ALL EDUCATION TAKES THINKING ON YOUR FEET AND BEING WILLING TO LEARN AND DO BETTER. AND THIS IS US MAKING THAT REALLY FIRST IMPORTANT FIRST STEP AND I'M REALLY EXCITED AND I'M GRATEFUL TO THE BOARD MEMBERS BEFORE I JOINED AND MANY WHO ARE STILL HERE FOR TAKING THAT FIRST STEP AND I'M EXCITED TO SEE WHERE WE GO FROM HERE AND I AM DETERMINED AS LONG AS
095I'M HERE WE WILL SEE THROUGH ON THE REALLY HARD WORK WE HAVE AHEAD OF US. SO THAT'S IT. Thank you with any other board members like to make a report Okay seeing no others I will make a report similar to Trustee Brubaker I was able to visit Tafoya also Freeman and Maxwell really impressed by our classrooms and all the devotion dedication that our our teachers put into their classrooms with art with you know instructions about behavior. None of the classrooms that I went to went to were you know, dull in any way. They're all very impressive. So, you know, congratulations to all our hardworking teachers and the amount of work that they do to prep their classrooms. Thank you also to the teachers in Freeman who showed me some of the plants that they're harvesting
096out there. And I promised to return to pick one up, but it was really great to... be able to hear them talk about how working with the earth, planting different vegetables really is a great way for our students to learn in a particularly different manner and how much it helps them when they return to the classroom. So that was very enlightening and just a... Thank you also to our community schools organizer. I think she was at one of our schools where she organized kind of a fair, so to speak, of different types of either whether it was giving out books or clothing or giving information, general community information. It was great to see that. that kind of development of what it means to have a community school and the kind of extras that are happening
097because of it. Also went to the WCC opening of their soccer fields, tremendous soccer fields, tremendous accomplishment. I think it can do nothing but help any of our students who are currently doing really well in soccer seeing themselves as WCC athletes. with a top notch field. So looking forward to seeing some of our students play on that field and maybe some collaborations in the future. Okay, that's it for my report. We'll move on to board committee updates. Are there any updates? None, okay, seeing none, we will move on to L1, governance support. We will continue discussion on trustee board engagement procedures. So we we talked about about three items I believe that that we can came to a conclusion that we wanted to Guide our Guide our engagement procedure One was each trustee is given
098five questions or comments when it's their turn to speak Either or writes a combination of five whichever questions or comments Each trustee can decide how they how they will use that The other I think general agreement we came to was once the trustees hand is raised and acknowledged by the board president the order of the trustees Questions comments will flow down the line in order Probably to the right. And then the other was that the board trustee will determine if voting will be a roll call or all votes at once. I think the only thing I want to just make sure and clarify, and the first point is when each trustee is given five questions or comments, and or comments, when it's their turn to speak or to address any of the presentations. That's each
099time. So you're given five. Trustee Villagrana has, it's his turn to address one of the presentations. He has five either questions or comments. We go down the line, everybody gets five. We come back to Trustee Villagrana. Now he starts again with another five. Just to be clear. So once we go through, once we go through everyone having a chance to address the particular presentation, we will go back to the next person. They'll have another five. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So is there any other comments on these three different guidelines? We can implement them right away if there are any other changes. Do we all agree that this is what we'll move forward with? Just show hands quickly. Yeah. Trustee Villarana? I already stated my objections the last time, so I'm fine. Thank you. Okay. All right.
100So we will move forward with these three. Thank you. And we'll implement it right away. All right. L2, information action. Discuss opening for board committees. So with Trustee Zavala's resignation. From the board it did open up to Committees that she was involved with one of them is a collaborative of women youth And there's information in the report to let you know the rest of the dates So there's one seat available if a trustee of any of you are interested. We don't We can continue on with only two trustees, but if there's another there is another seat available and I want to make sure That would open up the opportunity for anyone to be interested in that the other one is the Budget advisory Committee, that's not like an ad hoc committee. So that's not going
101to be an ongoing committee And so there's all the trustees about it also served on the boundary Boundaries committee Oh, boundaries committee, sorry. And so there's an opening there, two openings there as well. We're going to have up to three. Right now we only have Trustee Villagrana on that committee. So I think we should start with one first and then have discussion. Sure. Is there anybody interested in joining the Collaborative for Woodland Youth? No, okay seeing no interest. We'll keep it at two representatives Go on to the next opportunity. Is there anybody interested in joining the boundaries committee with trustee viagra? Okay, it looks like it's trustee Garcia and myself just Rodriguez No one else. No Okay, so I think that'll constitute the new boundaries committee trustee. Viettana trustee Garcia and myself We'll need to
102take formal action. Okay on Okay, so So can I make a so I'd like to make a motion for Just I guess to acknowledge that nobody else was interested in joining the collaborative for Woodland youth and then also to accept trustee Garcia and trustee Rodriguez as joining trustee on the boundaries committee Do I have a second? Any other discussion. No. Trustee Regera. Just to clarify you made a motion to show that nobody was interested. I'm not sure. I just kind of trying to just set for the record that there was no other no interest to join to join the collaborative Woodland youth. Yeah I get the motion on appointing but I was not clear on the motion and nobody was interested. So that's why I ask for clarification. Do you would you would you like
103to have it? No, just asking for clarification that that's that's what you were doing. That's all. Thank you. Okay. All right Rodriguez you can also just request that the notes or the minutes reflect rather than doing a motion if that's easier either way, okay So we'll do that let the notes or the minutes reflect that there was no one else interested in joining the collaborative for woodland youth and then We'll make a motion to have for a vote for Trustee Garcia, Trustee Rodriguez, myself, to join Trustee Villagrana on the Boundaries Committee. And I made the motion, somebody second. Trustee Rodriguez-Mujica, any other discussion? No? Okay. Trustee Villagrana? Yes. Trustee Rodriguez-Mujica? Trustee Richardson-Fowler? Yes. Trustee Garcia? Yes. Trustee Brubaker? Yes. Trustee Rodriguez? Yes. Very good. Unanimous vote to add Trustee Garcia and myself to the boundary
104committee. Thank you. We'll move on to teaching and learning. M1, information. This item is information. Report of special education review, findings, and recommendations. We have helped Associate Superintendent Dr. Gracie Guerrero introduce our guests today who are going to be presenting to you the findings and recommendations of our special education review. I want to thank all our staff that have been working on this review in collaboration with WestEd, all our teachers and parents and everyone involved in giving input on this very important document that's going to help us give direction and focus on the areas that we need to improve on. So this is part one of this because you'll see there's some recommendations that are being made and the next step will be working on developing an action plan to guide the work and direction.
105So I'm going to go ahead and pass it to Dr. Guerrero. Hi, good evening everyone. Superintendent Lampkind, esteemed board members, indeed it has been a long time coming and certainly a lot of work. We are grateful for all the staff, their time, our parents who gave their voice to be able to draft this. Result this report we are very grateful to have Partnered in essence being able to work with Wested Donna Minders was very instrumental in the work. She is a great listener, a great thought partner, and then also a great collaborator as we choose very carefully and very strategically the next steps to be able to move forward. This is great work. It is also challenging and hard work. that will take a little time to be able to make the changes that we
106need to. We certainly agree that there's a lot of foundational systemic implications for the work, and we need to be able to ensure that they... they do take hold. Donna is going to go over the timeline. You were instrumental in being able to make this happen as well. And she'll be able to go into the different sources, the data, and then I'll have Mr. Wesley Hester, who you know is, will be our director for special education in 26, 27 already. working on some steps that he'll be able to outline on things that are going on and then be enabled as the head of educational services being able to see how everything is indeed connected because special education is not standing on its own but definitely a collective effort as was mentioned earlier of Everyone being
107able to make this work together. So without further ado and Donna It's you, and here is the clicker. Thank you. Well, thank you. I'm Donna Minders. I'm from West Ed and sounds a little loud. I'd like to say thank you to the board president Rodriguez, to the trustees, to Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin, the executive leadership, cabinet leadership, and all of the staff, community members, and participation, great participation across the board. And so what I'm going to present with you, oh, yes. So sorry to do this as you've just started I couldn't find a good time to interject can we get a five minute? Do you mind? Okay. Okay. Yeah, it's important for us to be able to focus on this presentation. So let's get a five minute break Thank you Okay, thank you very much. We'll resume
108our meeting now. And thank you for your patience. But we definitely want our board primed and ready to soak in everything that you've got to tell us. We've been waiting a long time for this moment. So thank you. All right. No, and we've got to take care of personal needs first. I guess as I start, I do want to say thank you for taking on this study. As it's already been mentioned, it's challenging for a district to take on something like this and to be able to see the things that are happening and really look at the issues that are out there in addition to being able to find the wonderful things. And so I think one of the things that you'll hear from the report is we have identified some of the strengths, which
109you have a lot in your district, but we are going to hear more of some of the challenges. and issues that have come up because that was part of the process and that's what you as a district had asked us to do. So I don't want to negate any of the wonderful things that are happening, but just know that we recognize that it's a strength of your district to be able to take on and to listen to the challenges that you have and take those on and look for solutions. So having said that, this, let's see, here we go. I just wanted to introduce the team. We have a team that works on our review process. These are all special educators and educators in the field. All of them come with many years of experience
110through all types of education, administration, psychologists, speech and language specialists, teachers, classroom teachers, and all of them have worked at various levels of the system, and so we bring a great deal of... of resources, but being able to bring those resources and work across the country. We do see a lot of similarities in districts all over the country, and we are able to share some of those great ideas that districts have taken on with you all, and so that's some of the strength that we as a team can bring into this. Okay, let's see if I can get this moving here. I'm doing the one on the right, is it just slow? This one, right? Oh, okay. We're not going to rush through this presentation at all. All right. We have been doing these types
111of reviews with districts for about the past 20 years Through that they have changed a great deal and we've learned a great deal about processes But we've also learned a great deal from districts as I was saying we've developed a process that is in three phases So the first phase in this district really started in August so August and September we focused a lot in working with the district leadership team on setting the goals and the expectations for the further report We then develop study questions with the collaboration of the district leadership team and then develop the data and communication plan. So the second phase is where the the meat of the work takes place. It's where the data collection occurs and the data analysis and then developing those themes and recommendations. So this phase
112was really from September through November. And then we will share out preliminary results with the district, develop the written report with some action plans, and then work on some implementation activities. with the with the reports because our reports are lengthy any of you that have had a chance to look through it you've seen that the report itself is over a hundred pages even the executive summary is is rather lengthy we actually finished the report in January and so the data that you're seeing here is data that was taken in the fall and and There have been changes that have been occurring all along so your district has not only embraced the listening to the to the to the to the the issues that have that have been occurring because we've been meeting with leadership team
113all along but you've also taken on action and so there have been actions that have occurred already along the way that really show the commitment of of of you all as a district to um... to actively engage in um... in looking for strategies and and working on solutions As a part of the process, we've developed these five theme areas. And these are the theme areas that we broke our report into. We look at the data in various... various data collection processes and divide them into the areas that they fit but you'll see a lot of overlap across the areas because systems work together so our first area is systems integration and this is where we're really looking at how well does the district work together what kind of communication and shared responsibility is there look
114at data and problem solving what kinds of systems are in place for that and then tiered instruction and intervention so looking at a system such as an mtss system where multi-tiered system of support Where it brings these all of the supports together and a framework is developed across the district We then looked at policies and procedures. So this is looking at really some of these special education regulations the accountability the guidance and the individual education plans we look also at programs. We also had learning environments. This is where we look at instructional practices, supports, and the various environments and the access to various environments that students have. The fourth area was human resources and fiscal responsibilities. So we were looking at your selection, your recruitment, your retention, educator quality, and then also within this category
115we're looking at budget and resource allocation and some professional learning opportunities that go along with that. And then Finally, the fifth category was family and community partnerships. So here we're looking at family supports and advocacy, but also within this we look at the various other ends of the spectrum in terms of looking at the preschool, so pre-K and post-school outcomes within this category. As I said, we did develop a leads team with your district, and we met with them on about a weekly basis to not only continue to communicate but to help with the logistics of gathering all of this information. One of the first tasks that we took on were developing the study questions that your district was interested in finding out about. So I'm going to go ahead and read this to you
116just so that you get a gist of where the study began. So the first question is, are the program and services of the district appropriately designed to maximize the outcomes for students receiving special education services, including your duly identified students who are multilingual learners? The second question is the district's organizational structure designed for effectiveness and efficiency in improving results for students receiving special education services. And the third question, are the district staffing and fiscal management structures designed for effectiveness and efficiency in improving results for students receiving special education services? And so that was the framework that your district asked us to look into. We use these questions then to develop all of the questions, the protocols for surveys, for our focus groups, interviews, as well as looking at the observational tool and develop our tools
117around these questions to ensure that we're getting the... appropriate data to answer these questions. We also worked with your leaders team to... identify some selected peer districts the districts are similar to your district in terms of demographics and location kind of rural versus urban so forth and so we brought forward the data around the demographics of the districts and then also worked with the team to be able to identify any districts that you typically compare yourselves to and so these districts were selected we use these uh... districts these peer districts to be able to look at data on publicly available data so any of like the special education indicators or student assessments and so forth we can kind of give an idea based on the publicly available data where you stand in relation to similar
118types of districts The demographics of these districts, I just put this in here just to show you how similar they are and where they may differ a bit. The green bars are the students with disabilities subgroup population, and you can see they're fairly similar across the districts. Then the kind of blue bar next to that are your English learners. The little teeny... lighter blue bar, which is hard to see because the populations are small, of foster youth, and then finally the purple bar are your socioeconomically disadvantaged students. And so these were areas that we looked in terms of how similar and where do they differ from you. The methodology that we used throughout the study, the time frame we actually started in July, worked through some of the beginning contract and development of some of
119the... agreements and so forth, but our actual data collection was from August 25 through November and then November through January working on the report development. And these are just, this is just some of the data collection opportunities that were included. So you can see that we had four surveys. We had the central office leader survey, site staff survey, which included all personnel on the site. So site administration as well as office staff and teachers and everybody on a school campus. And then parent surveys in both English and Spanish. We also did interviews. We interviewed key leaders, site leaders, staff, and parents, and anybody that wanted to provide some individual input to us. And then did focus groups, various role-alike focus groups, where folks, all virtually. where folks were able to participate in a group of
120no more than 15 and go through a series of questions and respond to the questions. And then we were able to visit the nine school sites and saw 43 different classroom observations. Just a few of the strains that we saw. I think the longevity of staff in your district is remarkable considering the difficulty of recruitment and retention of educators across the country. You have staff, and we heard this over and over again, that stay in your district because of the culture and the community. And that was expressed overwhelmingly with all staff, but also with the special education staff and staff that... that have a lot of options in terms of other places that they can go because they're needed in a lot of places, but a number of them mentioned to us that they stay
121here because of that community involvement and the strength they get from that and being able to feel like they're a part of the culture of the community. We also had a lot of comments from parents and staff. together talking about the dedication, the compassion, the commitment of staff to really be able to provide the resources and the experiences that students need and also expressed an ability, a commitment to really wanting to look at being able to provide the best possible education experience for all of the students and really looking at the importance of expanding access to more inclusive. environments. So these are just a few of the strengths. As I said, there are a number of them, and we do list more in the report as well. But I just don't want to negate that
122this is a district that has a strong, committed staff and are staying here because they're committed to being here. All right, so we're just gonna go through the same areas, present a little bit of the data, and then some of the key discoveries that we made for each of those areas, and then we'll talk about some recommendations at the end. So one of the first things we looked at in terms of systems integration was your changes in enrollment. What you can see from this chart here, the green bars are your change in enrollment for your overall enrollment, so all students. The purple bars are the change in enrollment for your students with disabilities population. This is really over a five year period because we used 2019-20 as the baseline year, as the base year. And
123if you can see that the green bars show a decline in the overall enrollment. And so overall the cumulative change that we saw in the overall total enrollment was a decrease of 5.35%. In the students with disabilities enrollment we saw an increase cumulative increase of 24% and so we're seeing a large increase in students with Students being identified in special education or needing the additional supports while you're seeing some change some change some decrease in your enrollment over time This is a critical factor because it tells us that there are Not enough supports that are happening within general ed to ensure the students when they struggle Are able to get the kinds of supports that they need and so oftentimes continue to struggle and then end up needing some additional help And so this is
124a critical factor to keep in mind and something to continue to track over the years. We also looked at Woodland and the peer districts as well as the state of California average in terms of the percentage of enrollment of students with disabilities as a part of the total enrollment. We know that individuals with disabilities occur in the overall population at about 15% between 12 and 15% we look at our school populations as trying to maintain those similar types of enrollment numbers And so what we want to see here are lower numbers not higher numbers But you can see that you Woodland as a district had a larger change increase in the percentage of students that were Receiving special education services just as kind of the slide that I just showed you but in comparison with
125the other districts you had a greater change in enrollment, increase in enrollment of your students with disabilities than the other districts did and then of the state average as well. And so it's just again, factors to keep in mind as we're looking at the recommendations as we go through here. So looking at systems integration and as I was saying, it's really looking at how do your systems work together? Do you have a system that, a multi-tiered system of supports framework or an umbrella that really integrates the academic behavior and social emotional instruction and the interventions that are provided early on? So the discoveries that we made in this were that the vision and strategic plan alignment were really unclear for special education. When we looked for When we look for the operationalization of those goals
126in educational priorities, we were seeing that there was a limit in that linkage to the needs of the students in special education, as well as that kind of limits this coherent district-wide direction. And so we really felt that there needed to be some focus around really looking at how do you integrate the vision for all of your students. We also talked about the enrollment trends, just spoke about that, but how that is stressing your system and creating this urgent capacity need and resource pressures by having more and more students being enrolled in and receiving special education services. We looked at MTSS and other tiered supports implemented across the district and we found that they were being inconsistently implemented. So looking at an overall system process of how does the how did the Tier 1 instructions,
127which is general education Tier 1 instruction, as well as the interventions that are occurring in Tiers 2 and 3, existing across the various sites across your district. And what we found were that some sites were doing really well. There was some information that the district had already been working on in terms of MTSS and the structure that exists, but some sites were not able to implement our... take on those various resources. And so we really felt that this was increasing the referrals to special education because students were not receiving the kinds of interventions or supports that could really help them earlier on. We also looked at a positive here, the site wellness team, which were mentioned at several of the sites. That is a part of an MTSS process, but it's an interdisciplinary wellness team
128that really looks at identifying students with various types of needs and bringing together and aligning those various types of supports, interdisciplinary types of supports, and they've had a really positive impact on not only the students that were identified as needing services, but also for staff in terms of being able to identify and provide some systems interventions and some actions at the sites overall as well. And so it's a strength, but it's also something that you, as you're developing an MTSS system, want to look for where are those positive impacts that are already occurring. We also found that leadership instability and limited collaboration time were called out frequently in the beginning of our data collection. So when we started in the fall, we heard a lot of... concern around the changes that had occurred in leadership
129that there was a lack of responsiveness that communication was poor that the the trust between families and and schools and even schools the schools and the district office were not coordinated and they were not being implemented in a consistent and fair fashion and so a lot of this is it was like I said we heard about it early on and now that we're seeing that the district has already taken some actions in is some of these are already being implemented and worked on and improved just in this short period of time. We also looked at policies and procedures and overall policies and procedures. You know, special education does have a lot of procedures, a lot of policies that are needing to be followed in some very consistent ways. Part of that is what are your...
130programs and resources look like within special education and having some definitions around what do those programs look like, what do the staff do, what are the roles and the exit and entry guidance, which I'll talk about in a moment, that staff reported confusion around these. They didn't feel like they had the same type of responsibilities existing across various types of similar roles, and that the accountability and documentation that provided that guidance were missing or outdated or hard to find. And so this is, again, an area that the staff has already taken on. and is working on that. So for this element, the systems integration element, we found this as an emerging area and the evidence is the things that we've already talked about and I think this is a trend that we'll see across the
131district in terms of looking at where you as a district are functioning within these various elements. The second area was policies and procedures. This is an example of one of the survey questions that was asked both with the site staff and the district administrators. The question was, is the current organizational structure in special education designed in a way that's supportive of staff and ensuring quality education for students with IEPs? And you can see that there was strong disagreement both from site staff and district administrators on this. Another survey question that staff responded to were the process of which students with disabilities were identified as deficient. And again, this area, not a strong disagreement in it, and you can see that what we're seeing here are some sites where the process works well, some sites where
132it doesn't, and so we're seeing a lot of... answers on both sides here. And so again, that's something that's a concern in terms of whether or not it's occurring and that it's mixed in how it's occurring. So it's not consistent across the district. So the discoveries in policies and procedures, we found that procedural guidance, as we just talked about, was fragmented or missing. The special education procedural manual was revised last year, but it was the accessibility of it in terms of district knowing where to locate it and the training that was needed to go on around the elements within that were not provided. And so it's important that the guidance be there. staff know how they can access it and then there's training and coaching around the guidance so staff are doing the kinds of
133things that they should be doing meeting compliance addressing the timelines and looking at the program guidance that exists roles and accountability were unclear this is a part of that special education procedure but I think in terms of keep key operational tasks and compliance items that really looking at who's responsible for certain types of compliance issues or operational tasks. There was a lot of overlap, a lot of confusion about who do I talk to, where should I go, where's the information located. So some of those definition of roles and who supports those roles were unclear. And then professional learning and procedural guidance are inconsistent. So ongoing training around. compliance around IEP development and implementation was infrequent and unevenly distributed. We also looked at this area in terms of looking at data for instructional decision making and
134we found that it was being underused, that assessment data and progress monitoring data were not routinely being leveraged to really target with those interventions that are needed nor were they used to demonstrate student growth. And we can see this in the review that we did on IEPs and looking at The areas that need improvement was only 11% of the IEPs included baseline data and that baseline data that is around instructional decision-making is really critical when you're writing an IEP. Then we saw next that only 4% were adequately meeting the standards for the present levels of academic achievement and functional performance. So that's where you make a statement and provide data on an annual basis. about where students are functioning, how that is impacting their learning, and that we found only 4% were adequately doing that.
135And so those are critical factors in terms of really being able to identify the areas that students need support in and how to best do that. And then we also found that 16% of the IEPs that were reviewed have measurable goals and measurable annual goals linked to present levels and services. So again, it's that alignment between the various... various components of the IEP working together to be able to provide that program that really works well for that addressing that student's needs. We also found some strengths within the IEP review. We found that 94% of the IEPs included parent input and that 84% included documentation of services and the frequency of those services, which again is critical in terms of being able to identify staffing. Again, this is an area that we We rate it as
136emerging with the factors that we just talked about. The third area was learning environments. And so this is where does learning take place and how do the supports and services support the learning of the students. One of the indicators, special education has a number of indicators that districts report to the state and then the state has to report to the federal government and so it's areas that there are certain certain targets that need to be met and if they're not met then that's where you as a district can be found out of compliance this is the amount of time that students with IEPs spend 80 percent I'm sorry the percentage of students with IEPs that spend 80 percent or more of their time in general ed so there is a target for these and you
137can see the targets on the far left column there those are the targets that are set for the state and they increase on an annual basis and districts are are to try to meet those targets and exceed those targets when they can. So this is a data point that you want to see increasing. You can see that Woodland was well above the targets that are set as well as above the peer districts as well. And so this is an area where you have done well. You had put a focus on offering inclusion to students. You had structures in place. the data shows that this is a positive area for you. emphasis on inclusive education and the training and the supports that went along with that were occurred prior to the pandemic. And so once the
138pandemic came along, though, those supports, as well as the training that was necessary to go along with that decreased. And so it's something that as we look at the next year of data, which just came out, we see a little bit of a decrease in your in your. data from this year. And so it's an area to continue to track. We then looked at, so they're spending time in general at how are they doing. These are the graduation rates for all students as well as students with disabilities. So the blue bars are the all student data for graduation. The green bars are the students with disabilities. You can see what we have on the state is the average. There isn't a... target for this per se but the average and so what we're looking at
139here is while the total student population is doing well in Woodland you can see that the students with disabilities graduation rate is not meeting the targets and it's a little bit lower than the other districts the peer districts that we're seeing for the most part. We then looked at the assessment results for students with disabilities as well as all students. So again, this is for English language arts. The blue bars are all student scores. The green bars are the students with disabilities. And you can see in Woodland, again, not meeting the state, these are targets, not meeting the state targets in the data for the students with disabilities. And a little bit above are similar to the other peer districts. We look at the assessment results for mathematics for students with disabilities. It's very similar
140Again not meeting the state targets But a bit above all the other peer districts now if you if you look remember back to the side that we saw on inclusion We know that students that are supported in inclusive practices and it's well developed that your scores should be better than the other other peer districts and so what we're seeing is that while you have students in classes the and the supports and the training that needs to go along with that to make it effective for students is limited and not occurring. So one of the discoveries that we found was that while your district has emphasized inclusion, the training, the scaffolding are lacking the ability to find that differentiated instruction, even accommodations. We oftentimes did not see that occurring within general education. And we also found
141that the data that I just reported that even though your inclusion is high, you're below state targets in graduation as well as in assessments. We also looked at the supported instructional practices such as co-teaching. We found examples of it across the district in various ways, though we didn't see it all across the district and we didn't see it happening in being implemented in really effective ways. And so it's again, there had been training, but it's training that, whoa. It's training that needs to go on on an ongoing basis as well as the support that goes with that. We also found that behavioral and the social-emotional learning supports lacked a cohesive framework. So there is a need to really look at that prevention to intervention. So looking at not just responding to a crisis move, but
142really being able to put together a framework of supports that can support students as they're struggling. uh... in in behavior or in in uh... s c l uh... needs And then we also found that there were procedural barriers that limited access to additional staffing. Again, as we started the data collection, there was a lot of concern around staff requesting additional supports or additional staff, and it was bottlenecked in not being able to get the supports that they needed. And so we have, as I said, some of this is beginning to change now, but it was something that we heard frequently in the beginning of the data collection. Another area we found that you were emerging in this, and I think the one factor that he didn't really call out in the... in the discoveries was
143the ownership of students with IEPs within the general education, that was a critical mindset factor that we really felt needed to be addressed. So it comes with those roles and responsibilities. It comes with being able to give teachers the tools and the strategies that they need to be able to work with all diverse learners. And I think... barring that occurring we're seeing a lack of that ownership that that expecting special education staff to be providing all of the various types of support or accommodations for the students and so again that's a mindset that needs to be needs to be worked on over time human resources and and fiscal survey question was the staff at our district have received the appropriate level of training and support to adequately meet the needs of students receiving special education
144services including multi-lingual learners who also receive special education services and you can see that staff strongly disagreed with this they really didn't feel like they had the tools the strategies and the supports necessary to be able to provide the appropriate types of instructional supports to students to our students. We also looked at expenditures and this is just one of the slides. There's a number of other data in the report around expenditures. One of the things that we looked at were woodlands in the green here. The instructional costs are costs that are really looking at what's happening instruction So teachers and and para educators the other supports where you're seeing Woodland having an increase there are other supports that go along with trying to being able to provide the instructional environment for students and this is
145an area where you look at the the costs are including agencies where you're having to contract out with an agency for paraeducators for Speech and language and any other other staff positions that you can't fill. It's also other things like like transportation other types of you know some of the some of the building Needs rentals and so forth and so you're looking at the issue of the expenditures here is really being one that as you as you begin to build those those Resources to bring staff into your school and support them to stay some of those costs should should change and should should decrease. So in this area, as everybody knows that staff recruitment and retention, particularly in special education positions, are very challenging and pervasive. And we see that across the country right now.
146And so really being able to have an environment where New new staff come into a district and feel a part of the culture but also that are provided the training and support that's needed to be able to Appropriately feel like they can do their job And so part of the the issue here is that the turnover rate is high Some of the people that are hired don't are not fully certified and that it causes that instability or that weakness in the in the program we also found in this and just the the last bullet there around onboarding, mentoring, and job-embedded coaching are insufficient. We heard from a number of staff, particularly the new staff, that they didn't feel like they were getting the appropriate level of support. In fact, several of them said that they
147were leaving to go to another district where they felt like they might get more support. And so I think it's critical at this juncture to be able to look at, we talk about the policies and procedures, the guidance and the guidelines and so forth. Those are important for... for new staff knowing where they can go, but also that training, that mentoring, that having someone that can help you learn the job, not only learn the job, and maybe even learn the woodland way of doing the job, and feel supported, and that they are part of a culture and part of a team are really important. We also felt that the staffing decisions lack transparency in a data-driven formula. It's something that we've talked about a bit in terms of there's a need to really look at
148how allocations are are made looking at caseload, workload, service minutes, and that increasing reliance that you've had to have on contracted providers. And so it's really critical that some time and energy be put into looking at what are the appropriate allocation metrics and how should you be doing that so that you're better meeting the needs of staff. You heard from the report that came from your From from the your union representative saying that that staff or staff were were out there Out there dying because they feel like they just don't have the support that they need and so being able to really look at the allocations Related to not only the the caseload but the workload so the number of minutes the things that they are actually spending their time doing And having an allocation
149that goes along with that We also found that this again is something that the district staff have been hearing some of the data. They've begun to work on this, and they're really looking at addressing any of the requirements that are occurring in Ed Code around caseloads. We also found that leadership positions, particularly around supporting students receiving special education services, lack some clear role definitions and are under-empowered. And so we really are speaking of the site leaders and program specialists here, that the roles that they have are not clearly defined in terms of who's making decisions, how can they provide support, and the support to them as a leader was something that we didn't... we heard a lot of complaints about. There really is a need for looking at the role of your program specialist. We
150feel like they're... they felt like they were limited in what they could do because it's not an administrative position. And so being able to, they were kind of the go-to person and being called into a lot of crisis situations where they really didn't feel like they had the authority to be making decisions. And so looking at where is that authority, who makes those decisions, and how can they be, how can you support those folks that are out there in the field working on an ongoing basis with the staff and students at the schools. And so putting some operational assistance and being able to help provide the the training and support to those roles to help build that that support for staff again the fiscal alignment issues that we saw that we looked across the districts
151and really the spending on special education was comparable. But we felt like there could be more collaborative planning between special education leadership and the business office, particularly in terms of inefficient contracting and out-of-district placements as enrollments raise. And so those are kinds of things that really cost a lot in your district. So really being proactive about decisions that are being made around that. but how the business office and special ed work together on that. We say the fiscal government was more reactive as opposed to being proactive. And so again, being able to look at being strategic and how decisions are being made. Again, felt like this area was emerging and primarily around looking at that support that's needed for staff to be able to really build not only that culture but that climate of we're
152in this together and we're going to support each other. And the final area was family and community partnerships. This is your data around preschool inclusion. Preschool inclusion really struggled in a lot of the districts with COVID. Some of the issues that came about, you can see reflected in the data here, that has improved in Woodland. We've seen an increase in that, but still not at the state target and kind of in the middle of the peer districts as well. And so it's something that staff are working on, but it's an area that can really... could grow with the appropriate types of staffing and training. We heard a lot of comments from families and again as we started families were angry They felt like there was inconsistent communication that communication protocols didn't exist that decision-making was
153decisions were being made without any kind of influence or input from them and they they felt like there were there weren't getting their questions answered, that communication was inconsistent. They also felt like the knowledge of IEPs is high, that came about from a lot of their own folks working together at that. But families indicated this lack of ability or influence in district decisions. So families want to be involved. They want to not only know what's happening, but how they can provide input to that. One of the things that came up frequently was around your Special Education Parent Advisory Committee, or your CPAC. They felt like the visibility and the role of that committee was very limited. They didn't feel like it was being advertised. They felt like They were being talked at instead of it
154being a collaborative group where they can also provide input, and they felt like it was poorly structured. They couldn't even find it on the website. So this is an area that I know that the staff has already worked on, and we've seen some really positive meetings in the last several months. I think initially this was an area that we heard a lot of issues around, but I think we're seeing some changes in that occurring. We also looked at preschool services, again, unevenly integrated. It is recovering, but the alignment between preschool, transitional kindergarten, and kindergarten services need improvement and transition planning between those. And this is something that a lot of districts struggle with. So when transitional kindergarten was put into place, it was a structure that existed kind of outside of the structures that were
155already in place, so preschool to kindergarten. And so the alignment pieces need to really be discussed and you as a district need to work on improving that, particularly looking at transition planning that goes on across the three various areas. And that preschool staffing shortages. reduce the capacity for early services. Your post-secondary services are lacking a bit of consistent direction, but staff have a lot of interest, and I know it's an area that's being worked on. So it's a positive, but it's an area that needs some support as well. Again, we found this is an area of emerging. So finally, I'm just going to run quickly through some recommendations and then I'm going to turn it over to Wesley to be able to kind of talk about some of the things that have already been put
156in place and some of the factors that are beginning to emerge from this. So these are some major recommendations in the report. We talk about some overarching or major recommendations, which I'm going to talk about here. We do go into detail on each of these within the report, as well as resources and planning around those various pieces, as well as what's the evidence base behind them and strategies for how to best look at implementing them. So the first major recommendation is really being able to strengthen that special education leadership and communication. We felt building up that culture of support so that... staff feel like they're supported being visible in the sites so that because we heard from staff a great deal that leadership doesn't come and see what we're doing they don't know what the
157needs are they don't know what we what we do or what we need so really being able to get out there and provide that that visibility see what sites are doing that stable provide a more stable kind of special education leadership and then develop that that district department site communication plan with this feedback loop so that there's a way for folks to be able to provide input and a more frequent basis with clear point of contact The second recommendation was really around expanding your MTSS process into a phased-in multi-year rollout. And it's important to look at this framework of MTSS as being aligned across the district. So there are some things that are going to be non-negotiables. The use of some of the universal screeners, the toolbox, the data collection that goes along with it,
158the fidelity to that monitoring. Some of those... things are going to be non-negotiables because it's important that you as a district are looking at how these are being implemented across the district and so being able to look at this as a multi-year process you've already begun to develop some of the framework and some of the information that's needed to develop this this phased in process but being able to put that into place provide training and being able to continue to build up staff in terms of being able to implement this. And this will give you the alignment across, the ability to be able to collaborate more and talking the same language across the sites. And so I think this is a critical element. We see this effectively, when we see this effectively implemented in districts,
159we see fewer problems in terms of support as well as students being more appropriately referred to special education services. looking at the policies and procedures, really being able to codify the policies and improve the quality of your IEP. So creating and maintaining that accessible special education procedural manual with the standardized processes and protocols and entry and exit guidance for programs so that there's not only description, but there's information on how to do it as well as the protocols and the procedures as to how to do it. And then being able to provide that targeted training on how... how folks are supposed to write appropriate types of goals, how they're supposed to define that specially designed instruction that is special education, and how that aligns with the access into general education as well as in progress,
160using progress monitoring to be able to identify when staff are needing additional support or goals. goals and interventions need to change. The fourth one is being able to stabilize staffing by building capacity. Being able to look at, as I was talking about, kind of adopting a more workload-informed staffing model, and there's some resources in the report to be able to look at how do you go about identifying caseload and workload and doing an analysis around that, clarifying roles and providing the training that go along with that, and particularly looking at peer education. educators and program specialists where we saw a lot of turnover and that turnover is because they're being put into positions that they either don't have the appropriate authority in or they don't have the appropriate training or it's not one that they're
161feeling supported. So it's critical that those not only identify what those models are but be able to provide that onboarding, mentoring and coaching that goes along with that. And then also the same thing around the program specialist responsibilities and the site administrative staff need some additional support, particularly in programs where you have multiple self-contained special education programs and sites where you have that because that provides a very high level of responsibility for the leadership that exists there. And so really being able to look at How do we provide those supports to leadership as they, to site leadership as their needs are, as their needs supported? And then the last two, aligning the fiscal management. So really looking at a regular collaboration, as I said. just a few minutes ago in terms of special ed leadership
162and the business office for budgeting, maintenance of effort, monitoring. So that's where you have spent a particular amount of money in special education. You have to look at that maintenance of effort across the years, and there's a process for that. So being aware of that, but also being able to help staff understand the implications of if you're not monitoring that and you're not meeting the maintenance of effort, then what happens from that. And then really... being able to look at student and program level data, provide that in a way that's more usable for staff so that when they are collaborating, when they're talking about how support should be provided or what lessons should look like, they have the data to be able to best identify that. And then finally enhancing family and community engagement. So
163working on improving the CPAC visibility and access, standardized communication protocols for family, and then working on strengthening preschool and post-school, particularly in those transition alignments. So I'm going to stop there and turn it over to you or find out if there are any questions or after you're finished or whatever works. Is there a preference of the board? Does anybody have any urge to? Can we do that at the end? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Continue. Thank you. Donna, thank you. Superintendent, trustees, the report is incredibly detailed, which gives us a lot of guidance and support. So we've numbered this based off of the suggestions. So if it's numbered as one, it's related to that particular suggestion. So strengthen special education leadership. In November 2025, the department hired a special education administrator as a key leadership position and
164a special education director in April 2026 for the upcoming school year. In the process, clarifying roles to strengthen district-wide special education oversight, updating the job descriptions as needed, as will be more visible and available to the school sites. I want to add temporary targeted support positions to improve compliance, instruction, and the MTSS integration, as well as provide structured professional development for case managers, psychologists, and the site leaders. As it pertains to the community and enhanced family and community engagement, excuse me, communication and enhanced family and community engagement, ongoing two-way communication practices with staff and site leaders through standing meetings, agendas, and newsletters, developing a special education hub, web page, and standardized communication tools to be completed by August 2026. In addition, expanded family engagement through CPAC, hybrid participation, parent information nights and parent square updates
165as well as a clear special education mission and vision to guide communication and engage efforts will also be completed by august 2026. Scheduled and continued site walkthroughs, collaborations, and needs assessments with stakeholders to respond to those site needs, continuity of district programming, and the fidelity of the instructional supports. For the second area, design and implement a district-wide MTSS, focusing on special education leadership is a part of a district-wide team. That is working on developing an MTSS framework for academics and behavior across tiers. Some common screeners have been implemented, forms are being created to address service delivery practices, and defined intervention tools are being reviewed for implementation. In addition, professional development in the areas of MTSS and intervention best practices are currently being planned, including clarity of roles for essential team members. Currently exploring a district
166MTSS team and the process of annually reviewing district-wide special education practices to ensure that consistent implementation. The third area to codify policies and improve IEP quality The current special education procedures manual will continue to be annually updated. Revision of the referral, transition, and planning practices is currently underway for preschool and post-secondary supports to shape those services provided next school year. Methods to align data collection practices and fidelity checks for present levels, goals, program monitoring are being developed for implementation in the fall of 2026. A targeted training and onboarding resources process to improve IEP quality, compliance, and instructional practices are being developed for fall 2026 implementation. In the fourth area, Stabilize Staffing and Build Staff Capacity, a professional development plan is being created for a fall 2026 implementation to strengthen hiring, onboarding, and support for teachers,
167paraprofessionals, and related service providers. Clarity of roles, responsibilities, and job descriptions for all special education staff is ongoing, as well as a mentoring, coaching, and site-level leadership structure to support compliance and implementation of IEPs is being developed and will be implemented fall of 2026. And in the final area, aligning fiscal management. Currently, we are developing a system to oversee and monitor special education budgets to best align services and supports. Quarterly collaborations between special education and fiscal services have been discussed and will be established. And then ongoing monitoring and maintenance of effort, district needs, and expenditures to reduce general fund impact will be strengthened and will continue. Alright, so definitely you heard a lot of to be implemented in August of 2026 You heard some of the verbs of things already ongoing so definitely we've taken
168our diligent time in being able to review not just the items that were included in the report, but definitely the Recommendations which are going to guide our action plan for special education We're already implementing Some of the things we're planning for also implementation in 2026 and definitely being able to Go forward with the work that was included in order for our students to be able to get the outcomes that they deserve I will I want to point you back to slide 12, I believe. And this really anchors a lot of the things. And we're in slide 52 here. Can you just get me to slide 12 without me having to go through 42 different slides? And that is the slide that really brings things into... focus with we've heard a lot in recent months about
169being able to cut budget because of our number of students overall are decreasing. This really anchors the need and the urgency for the special education work because at the same time that our total district enrollment is decreasing, our number of students with IEPs are increasing. So yes, we have and are doing things in a more efficient way. but that doesn't take away the fact that we need to really be very strategic, intentional, and being able to do the best practices for special education students and for teachers and for district in general. So I definitely wanted to be anchored the work in that to just be able to look at the sense of urgency because of the sheer numbers. And as was the outcome of our report in being able to look at systemic changes, that's
170our first emphasis to be able to do that so that everything else can be built upon that. And if you can take me to the last slide, Andy, please, towards the end. And just I wanted to be able to bring into perspective just different... work that is going on not just in special education but in the whole district as a whole. As the person who oversees educational services I know how critical it is to be able to provide sound tier one quality instruction to all of our students. We know that special education is fundamentally a general education issue so definitely how well are we implementing tier one? How well is that communicated? And then what systems are in place, what process to be able to then stipulate a Tier 2? at Tier 3, and then
171I refer to special education. We do believe and we're working in the core work in that strong core instruction, differentiation, and tier supports in general education will reduce the need for a more restrictive services and ensure that all students, in this case, especially our students who do have an IEP, are able to succeed. I want to be able to underscore all that. with the discussions that we have in cabinet by our superintendent, being able to acknowledge the importance of collaboration within educational services, cabinet, business office, human resources. Because as you heard on the report, it is not just an instructional issue. It's how well the systems are established in the hiring, the mentoring, the staffing, and yes, the use of our resources. So definitely wanted to be able to underscore not only the elements included
172in the report, the recommendations, highlight some of the work that's already happening, but definitely ground this in an overarching approach to improving the quality of bell-to-bell daily instruction for all of our students. A byproduct of which would be being able to not only identify less students with the need of an IEP, but being able to provide those interventions in the classroom as much as possible so that a more restrictive, prescriptive, in essence, tier two, tier three, and eventually special education through an IEP be delivered. I know you may have some specific questions about the report itself or definitely any of the work that is underway. And we would be more than happy to entertain that, especially Donna, if it has to do with the report itself. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much
173for all your work and all the detailed information that we got And the different perspective over time. I think this is very much what the board wanted to see And the information that we wanted to understand So so thank you very much We'll entertain any questions from our fellow trustees, my fellow trustees, and we'll be starting with the five questions, or five questions and or comments. So it would be helpful to me, at least we can try it out, if you can just kind of name your question. This is question number two. Or this is, hmm? Trustee Richardson-Fowler. Donna I want to say thank you so much for the presentation you went through 47 slides and record time I got to tell you when I saw 53 slides I was like dear Lord Jesus we're
174gonna be here forever especially since I have to work tomorrow okay so Thank you again. I appreciate I'm just going to start with the highlight reel. I appreciate the focus on workload versus caseload. Even CTA and CSEA are moving that way. It's just is a no brainer. It doesn't matter if you both have 10 students if one student group only requires an hour of services whereas the other 10 require 10 hours per student. Just no brainer. We are definitely going to need a lot of humility in order to make some of these changes because they are systematic changes. I really love that you were talking about coaching because that coaching element is going to really deal with the low hanging fruit. I consider the IEPs the low hanging fruit that 11 percent without baseline just
175being taught and given a rubric on how to do it. Easy peasy. Present levels. I find that scary that only 4% have present levels. The thing that I find the most terrifying is 16% have measurable goals. When SMART goals are so easy peasy and if you're not doing SMART measurable goals, how are we tracking the progress of the student? Are they making progress? Are you fudging some stuff? So that's where I'm really concerned, but I do like the coaching element of it. I don't know if I missed it, but I do appreciate the highlight on SPED is really a general ed issue because all SPED students are general ed students reserving special education services. As a SPED teacher, I cannot highlight that enough. and that's why inclusion is so important because they're still general ed
176kids and I realize that's why the highlight is on the 80 percent or less that being said I do have a couple of questions will the alignment of the MTSS impact ESN and placements to support LRE and I give you an example sometimes we will have a kid who only has speech and language impairment in an ESN class and they're Teachers who are boggling their head out like if he wasn't in this class I would have so much more time for the other kids. Why is he in this class? So I'm hoping when we tighten those tears We will mitigate having kids in ESN and upping that caseload, can you talk to that? You should, I mean that's theoretically how that should happen is that you're providing the appropriate supports with the appropriate personnel doing
177that, that that should allow students to progress in a way that is more impactful for them. So theoretically, yes, and I think within MTSS, the reason that we highlight MTSS is that it looks at being able to provide supports that are necessary. across without necessarily placements into special ed which require a lot require a lot of funds and and uh... resources that go into that MTSS looks at being able to provide uh... those supports early on so you may be hopefully mitigating some of those needs that arise as students are are uh... not successful in their learning and so i think that that uh... theoretically in places where it's being done well, yes, you should be able to see that. And that will give us the tools to mitigate over advocacy for placement as well
178because we will have the data and the metrics of the interventions that were done and the progress and the results. So I think that would be amazing. Sometimes we have families who will say, well, I have three kids in SPAD, so of course it's kids in SPAD. and having those appropriate tiers would definitely help to mitigate that one. And I think the same can be true for like paraeducators, parents that really feel like the only support they can get is by having an adult, their adult with their child. So really being able, that's part of the education that goes along with that, that being able to help parents understand that that's not the least restrictive environment when you have an adult there, and that support should be provided in other ways to allow the students
179to be able to succeed. And even with general ed teachers, I know that will, when they make referrals to that as well. On slide 25, you were talking about the graduation rates, and I just wanted to clarify, were we talking solely, strictly graduation diplomas, or is that also encompassing certificate or the alternative diploma pathway? This right now is just looking at graduation, and it's four-year graduation. Okay. And I think, I don't know, I think that includes? Okay. Okay, so moving to our right, Trustee Garcia, do you have questions? Yes, so I'm going to start with a comment. Thank you so much for this big picture of all the special ed, and I really appreciate to have all this information here. I think from my perspective. From the time the trustee who ordered this item, I
180think we're doing some progress. Yes, and I would like to hear from you about all our strengths we have here. And I think you say we have a strength in our personnel. because they are doing by the hurt. So saying that, I would like to ask you to repeat what you say. If we start to implement the MTSS and all these other tools about take responsibility of those students, you're mentioning it's going to be take how long? Just see the result, right? Right. We see this as typically a three to five year plan because you're changing mindsets along with being able to change a lot of different factors in how education is being run. And so it has to be done in workable fashion, bringing folks along as well as being able to provide the
181structures that go within that. And so that does take some time. But I think I have to commend your district folks in terms of already. jumping on a lot of these issues and beginning to deal with them. And so I think there's a real commitment to be able to do that. And so you may be able to see this in a shorter time period, but it typically takes about five years in any kind of a systemic change process for that to really see the results. But one of the critical factors in that is identifying some of the data points that show those kind of quick wins and that success is happening along the way. And so that's part of being able to keep people engaged. and encouraged about what they're doing. So it's identifying those
182early wins, the data that goes along to show folks that yeah, this is making a difference, particularly in some of those instructional types of discussions around seeing that students are learning because we're providing them the supports. Those kinds of data are really helpful in that, but typically five years. Okay, thank you. So those are my question for now. Okay, Trustee Brubaker. So I'm going to start with a comment. I'm going to try and keep a tally so I keep myself organized. I have spent the last several years as an advocate for my own special education students as well as helping families in our community advocate for their own students. I want to sort of highlight what I see as our big issues that are very well represented in the report as collaboration between general education
183and special education, communication, and supports for our mild and moderate needs students. As our WBA president said, these are things we knew we needed to do, but having a concise written document that not only highlights those, but also has solutions. Because as I was reading this dense document, I was going, oh my God, this is so true, but how do we address it? And we have really excellent steps. And so I'm grateful for that. So thank you so much for doing the hard work for that. That's my first comment. I am curious though. What, in your professional experience, do you consider sort of like best practice for that collaboration between Gen Ed and SPED? We do a lot of professional learning communities in our school sites, but some of our school sites have one SPED
184teacher. Is that something that might be better to do across district or within our school sites? But maybe, what do you sort of envision as being an ideal situation for supporting that step? So typically the PLCs and the collaboration amongst grade level teams is the most supportive. So when you can do that and in schools that are small and have maybe one special ed teacher, we've seen one of the strategies is that they have their collaboration meetings at the same time for all grade levels. They hold them in the... in the cafeteria and then the special ed teacher is able to rotate between them at different times. And so that gives them a chance to be able to sit in with them. But being able to do that scheduling of being able to maybe do
185it on a rotating basis or whatever, those kinds of elements, that's where you're going to see the best outcomes in terms of that collaboration because then you can do on the spot types of strategies, strategizing, and in this lesson let's try this. The other place that we would highly recommend is really providing the tools to staff to be able to feel like they know what to do for all learners. And that goes not just for students with disabilities. It goes for your English learners, your students that are exceeding above the norm, all the various types of diverse learners that you have. So looking at strategies around how do we differentiate? How do we support students in a lot of different ways? And I cannot recommend highly enough but really focusing on universal design for learning,
186which really looks at different ways to access curriculum. different ways to provide access to that instruction, but also providing various other, kind of considering where students' needs are. But it's not just training, it's that coaching piece that's so critical in being able to do that. And in those PLCs, teachers that are going through that training can talk about those things together, and they can try out different strategies, they can see how they work. So the PLCs and the training that go along with that around providing that toolkit for teachers to be able to design their lessons. in a way from the beginning to be more supportive and accessible for all learners are two of the key recommendations, I would say. That's great. And then I'm also curious, we are already improving, I think, on the
187communication level, but is that something you think should be a top-down initiative or a bottom-up? What I mean for example is our teachers in the classroom Maybe aren't getting the support they need and they need to send the messages up and sometimes it sounds like in this report That's just not happening Is the is the best approach for initiating stronger? communication Which direction should that start? Well, it kind of needs to be both but it really I think initially needs to be copped down because the structures for being able to provide that that communication or that it that input to district-level staff have to be in place. And part of that is, one of the things that we heard frequently was that there were no longer special education meetings where staff could get together in
188their various roles and talk together, or they could share with, do some learning and do some sharing with administration as to how things were going. So being able to have those scheduled time on an ongoing basis is critical for that to happen. But then also being able to be out there. be visible. So for, and that's a hard part because there's so much that's going on and all these various things that administrators have to do to help build, that spending that time out in making yourself visible to the staff and accessible to the staff can do a great deal for really building those communication structures. So I think it has to, structures and the various types of ways to provide input and communication have to be put in place so people feel like they. they've
189got the opportunities, but that there's always that other opportunity you can be able to provide me and I'll return your call or I'll return your email, that kind of thing, because I think that was one of the most critical factors was that they just weren't, calls and emails weren't being returned and so staff are just feeling like they, and then the visibility of being able to be out and see what happens. So I think it's a 360 degree kind of thing. And then, let's see. I wanted to sort of highlight, and I think you did a good job in the presentation, but I just wanted to highlight that 70% of staff said they had not received adequate training to support students receiving special education. I mean, I think that our plan is to address that
190pretty immediately, so that's great. I just want to make sure. That everyone knows we are aware and we're tackling it because it's a very alarming percentage I think that that's for but I'm gonna organize my thoughts so I'm gonna pass it's also we asked staff for their top five areas that they wanted professional learning in and the number one area was the Accommodating and supporting diverse learners. I mean that means that means that they're open to learning which is they should be but it's always nice to hear Yeah, I'll pass it on. Okay. Thank you Well, first of all, that's a lot of information. It's also a really, in some ways, a stunning type of report in regards to all the different levels that need support, improvement, et cetera. One of the questions that I
191had. is about the IEP findings. And one of the findings was that only 11% contain a baseline starting point for instruction. And so in that baseline starting point for instruction, that's like one of the core to be able to try and develop a plan to kind of figure out what you need to do, right? And so does that mean that... GENERALLY WE WOULD THEN HAVE ABOUT 89% OF FILES THAT NEEDED TO BE ABLE TO. THAT NEEDED TO BE UP TO PAR IN ORDER FOR THEN OUR STAFF TO BE ABLE TO LOOK AT THESE FILES AND HAVE WHAT THEY NEED TO MAKE THE SUBSEQUENT DETERMINATION. So am I reading that correctly? Yeah. There's actually work to do. Before we get to any of this stuff, there's actually work to do in the existing files that are
192currently not up. Yeah. I mean, typically what we saw was that there were needs identified, but needs were identified in terms of communication or in terms of motor skills or something as opposed to instructional needs. And so really being able to... to test and to utilize that instructional data is critical for being able to identify where students are focusing and their needs are into curriculum. So that kind of training is critical. Yeah, the IEP is critical, right? Yeah. In the percentages when we asked, I think, administrators or staff about how well they felt informed or supported, speaking in general, you know, there was like 40, 50 splits, maybe 40, 60 splits. So to me, that indicates, let's see if you can help me flesh this out, that we have some sites that are actually doing
193fairly well and maybe have a system that is working much better. And we have other sites that are... that are just not, and that's quite, we have a split. And so did we identify what sites? Maybe we didn't do that. No, it's a fundamental belief of ours that in order to do this type of review, we need to look at the system because the system supports the sites. It also, one of the... critical factors of the process that we use is confidentiality. And so we, in order to get the input that we feel is critical to be able to really dig into some of the issues, we needed to ensure confidentiality. And when we start asking staff to identify where they're working and come up with data on individual sites, then it becomes, they become
194more fearful about being able to provide that. And so we focus more on the system. You have the data yourselves. That's something that you all can do. yeah but that you seem to be in line that that would kind of indicate that some of our sites are doing much better than others yeah okay um and training seems to be a very important part of all of this right our ability to to train all the way from the iep to the follow-up to the supports etc so uh you know that's uh something that would take resources as well um so those are just my three general questions my two comments are That I think that the amount of work that needs to be done Is it Even out, you know, we kind of get the sense
195from from the report But then the actual work the tangible work that has that is even kind of bigger than the report. I think And so I think I'll ask my colleagues to consider that I know we have a three to five year kind of range in which we want to try and do all this good work that we talked about. But I think we need to try and figure out how we can help expedite this three to five year plan. And by that, I mean that I think. that one of the things and one things that we heard at a staff say is that there needs to be more hands on deck in essence to be able to really work through all of these things. I think there needs to be a boost. I
196think that we have our one-time monies that are available and I think we should think very seriously about how we might use some of these one-time monies to help facilitate, you know. some of the good recommendations that you made, but that there is a particular, I think, urgency to all this when you read this report that we have to address by what we're doing now, but also probably looking at our resources and how can we reallocate them to help move this process along, given the enormity of work that we see. Okay, thank you. And I guess I just have to say it's also incentive. So having something like this, this data like this, is incentive for being able to make change and to implement those kind of things. So that's a time-limited process as well.
197So the fact that your staff are already jumping on it is just very... Heartens me. I know absolutely. That's a great sign right great sign. Okay trustee. You didn't Question for the superintendent. How soon can the board expect the the timeline for the five-year? Comprehensive plan to address a lot of these items I think right now we're in the end of the year. There's a lot going on. We have school plans coming up, graduations coming up. Our director is just officially will be a director on July 1st. And so we need time to process all this so that realistically probably sometime in the fall to bring full out because we would want to have input from staff. Also... Just to comment I mean we being go as fast as we can But we need to
198go as low as we must because people can only take up so much staff development and any time to process and learn more and fastest not necessary best is to have a steady plan and keep consistent with the plan and how I plan to Go towards so just want to be realistic that Providing a bunch of staff development at one time is too much for teachers to absorb Thank you. That's all for me Trustee Rodriguez-Mohica. Thank you. I want to echo all of my fellow trustees expressions of gratitude for all of the work that you put into this and also all the staff and families that took time out of their day to provide feedback for this report. It's a very very thorough report. I really appreciate everything that's outlined on here. My big I
199guess this question is aligned to what Trustee Villagrana shared is I want to make sure that we're able to take this into the implementation stage fully knowing that we can't do that all at once and it's going to take a period of time to do as well. So my big interest right now is in working on that plan and if fall is what you know what it takes for that timeline to be established then that is what it is and I appreciate our superintendent sharing. that it's important for staff to get feedback from teachers as well. I'm assuming that includes also paraprofessionals and families as well and all of these different elements. I do want to express that in this timeline it's important for it to be. To mirror the level of detail, not in
200the full report, it's over 100 pages, right? But at least be in direct alignment with the recommendations that you so thoughtfully presented in here. And to outline what we're starting, what are the different task items for each one? What year is it going to get started? When do we plan to complete it? And also a follow through with updates to the board. I think this is a huge investment already and a lot of work that was put in. So in addition to the timeline, it would be very helpful if we revisit this. I don't know what that date would be. If it's at least once a year, it could be a report. It doesn't have to be a full-blown presentation. But I do think it's important for us to continue to keep an eye on
201this and look at progress and shifts so that we can measure growth. So that's not a question. I already emailed you my questions and they were already and you met with us during agenda review which I really appreciate. So I just want to echo my support for a timeline and also just I like what you said also Trustee Rodriguez about about that boost in terms of resources while acknowledging as our superintendent said that we can't just throw a bunch of PD to our teachers, right, and expect that to fix it. I don't know that that's what, I don't think that's what you meant, but just more a concerted effort, right, in making sure that we can do whatever we can to make sure that we move on this, you know, quickly, and don't just let
202it sit. So those are my comments, no question. Thank you. Thank you. Trustee Richardson-Feldman? Hello again. Okay. So I'm going to go the first question I have. You said that accommodations and modification was the first number one PD that staff requested. By any chance was crisis prevention intervention the second. It wasn't but it was on the list and yeah. Can you give a tier. I'm trying to remember. I think it was. fourth or fifth we put them in the report just the kind of the but I don't I don't recall right off the top of my head okay and thank you for articulating the five-year portion of the plan because all throughout the report it was really steadfast on the three years and we know that in order to change systems and institution it takes
203anywhere from three to eleven years so I'd like to err on the side of caution we've had great reports come from West Ed one from 2008 2007ish was about academies and that was apparently brilliant. We can't find it here at the district. I've called West Ed a couple of times all over and they can't find it. My goal with this document is to make sure it doesn't go the way of the Academy's paper. I think in my time here on the board, we've had a couple of West Ed reports. This one is, of course, near and dear to my heart as we are a SPED family. That being said, I really hope that that plan is not just three to five years, but it. It lives. It's a living document that we keep revisiting and
204revising in all honesty. Okay, so that's my second one. So PLCs, I'm gonna circle back to this one. And for the first time ever at a site where there's multiple SPED teachers and we're doing multiple grades. And it's amazing that we can get together and collaborate. Our teaching is soared because of it. That being said, PLCs only work if you have shared curriculum. And I don't think most of our SPED classes with the ESN teachers are able to do that. I can see the utility for RSP teachers, but it still leaves the ESN teachers out in the lurch. Do we have a mechanism to kind of deal with this? I know we talk about somewhere in here regular meetings, and I'm thinking like they have to be comprehensive. They have to be like all SPED
205meetings, all ESL, all specialty meetings, then team meetings and site meetings. We've got to figure out, and I'm hoping that these action plans include them, we have to figure out a way to include them that's meaningful and not token, that's regular with fidelity. And I think that we're going to also have to look at excusing some of our SPED site staff from staff development or PDs. I can't tell you how many team meetings I go to and I'm like, there was absolutely nothing relevant for my class or my kids. And it was a waste of my time when I could have been doing case management and all of those stuff. It's not special privilege to the SPED staff. It's keeping a mine to where their priorities and needs are So I just hope that our
206plan takes those sorts of things into consideration And this is the last one I'll do right now. But I think one of the low-hanging fruits also is access to IEPs. Most people do not have access on day one of their full either caseload or as a general ed teacher, their IEP, students with IEPs. I'm really hoping that our plan has a mechanism for case managers to come back early and divvy out what needs to go out to the general ed teachers so before school starts they can gather the tools to accommodate and modify whatever is necessary for their students. So that's all I've got for right now. Yeah, the IEP at a glance, but also as a teacher with several students going into the same class, being able to combine and show where the similar
207types of accommodations or needs are being addressed for students can really help with that. And I think part of that is also, when I talk about universal design for learning, a lot of what happens within that is something that works for all students. So I think that's critical to be able to think. about well I don't have to do this and then this it's this is what this is how I plan my lesson absolutely yeah thank you mm-hmm and and there are CDE is working on some really good resources in the county office the Sacramento County Office some really good resources on that alternative curriculum and not in access to graduation, alternative graduation. So they're really working on some good resources around that and so I think we should be seeing some information to help
208with what you're talking about with students with more significant needs. I will say that as an ESN teacher, I much prefer to accommodate and modify general ed curriculum than to have our own teach town or any of that stuff. It just... Reeks of it. I know there's a thought on it. We were just talking about some some ways to look at doing that and making making Curriculum accessible and access to the standards accessible for all all students. Yeah Thank You trustee Garcia any questions trustee Brubaker so sort of piggybacking off of something trustee Richardson Fowler mentioned earlier about Workload instead of caseload Do you have any suggestions for strategies to make sure we are not overburdening staff with workload instead of caseload that we can put in place to try to prevent some of our
209sped teacher burnout? That seems like a hard ask, but maybe you have some ideas. So one of the resources we put in the appendices, there's actually two, it's on... helping to figure out, because it's not an either or, it's a combination of, in terms of really looking at the workload caseload and allocations around that. And so it's going to require some time spent on pulling apart the needs and the data that are identified as student needs and the amount of services that are provided. And so having those appropriate IEPs is really critical so that they're outlining not only the services, but the amount of time that those are happening in a way that... is critical for identifying what those allocations should look like because you should be able to do some of that work at
210the at the at the IEP level and take some of that data but but I think one of the things that and the reason I like this information that is on how do you figure those things out is that it's something that you can get a Task force of folks together to really put that to put that together come up with some data come up with some recommendations around that and that can be a way to begin to look at how do we how do we adjust this and meet the needs that we that we that are identified for our students so um and then this might be a question for our director um can we get some kind of written plan for you have had in the presentation great things we're going to try
211and implement by august can we get sort of that written up so we sort of know what our our teachers and families have to expect going into next school year Yeah, we can have something drafted and given to the superintendent in the coming months. That would be fantastic while I have you One of the things that because I've been going to all these open houses I would love to see this is not me as your boss sort of You in those rooms in our sped classrooms there as I'm sure you know and I've told you there's a lot of hurt in our community and in our sped families and having you be an accessible friendly face I think would be a very important step in healing that because quite often our sped students have communication
212issues, health issues. There's a whole other level of trust we put into our schools when we send them off in the morning that gen ed families don't always have. And knowing that we have people who respond to our emails, which you have been much better at, is important because we send our babies off and we need to make sure people there are going to be responsive. And I commend you on the work you've done, but I also know we have a lot of work to do to heal that. Think that's my second thing you're now excused. Thank you for saying thank you. And then I also wanted to say I'm probably gonna butcher this saying I tried to write it down from memory Systems only work as well as they're designed to I agree with
213what trustee Rodriguez said about Putting some money towards something I was trying to find the spot in the report that talked about this But I think there was something you recommended forgive me if I have the word wrong, an ombudsman that sort of could be a mediation between our families and getting their needs met. I don't know if that's what you had in mind, but that's sort of what jogged my memory when you were speaking. Can you sort of speak to that a little bit about what you envisioned such a position being? We've seen several districts implement a position like that, that's a parent, like a parent. coordinator, spokesperson, somebody that is really helpful in taking a lot of those parent calls and complaints and being able to help people identify where they can go
214for help, what help is needed, and then being able to filter some of that, but also being there to provide that support from the district level that can take things, can accelerate things if they need to be. So districts have, and if you want more information on that, I can. can send some of that but districts have done this in various ways a parent you know just a parent representative but a kind of an ombudsman person that is there to respond in a in a non-confrontational way and just take the information down and be able to provide support. So it's somebody that's gotta have some ability to communicate well with the leadership, but also have access to available resources and supports and so forth. So not just in the district, but also in the community.
215So that's it for me. Yeah, I think just have a comment. I think what I had in mind by saying, possibly using some one-time money is just the enormity of what we're this is this great plan we're working on but it's to me this is a huge undertaking um and i think not only do we have to in such a way where we can make this real. They also have to do the regular work that is coming in on a day-to-day basis. And to me, when you bring this plan on with the everyday work, that to me means there needs to be more hands on deck. This is not even talking about training, right? Some tangible physical supports that will... So for example, who's... Only 11% of the IEPs, you know, had... what they needed.
216So who's gonna make sure that the other 89% does it? How many cases is that? That's hands-on. You need a body, trained body. So I think in general that's a yellow sheet that some of us can work on and work with staff and the superintendent to figure out how do we... how do we take, you know, monies that we have available to us to be able to meet this tremendous need, which it definitely is. And that is, in fact, part of what we prioritize, what we say we would prioritize. So I think something like that needs to come in the future. And then in general, in terms of... how we keep track of how things are happening. I think that the report itself, you know, as you read it and as it kind of dawns
217upon you what our needs are, it dictates that we maintain constant. a type of vigilance over how the process is going. So for me, that means there should be quarterly progress reports. To me, when I read this report, it tells me our responsibility is to make sure we're on top of the progress that is happening on a continual basis. So to me, that probably looks like quarterly progress reports. Because now that we understand this in a much fuller way and complete way, it's our responsibility. to make sure that these things are happening because now we know the amount of work that we have to do. And so those are my particular comments. If I can add to that, in order for you to be able to monitor that, we have to have a plan to
218monitor. And so that's going to take some time to develop the plan. Also, we need to know what the plan will help also dictate what additional resources we will need. Just adding resources. I don't even know if we can find the people or what people type of people what kind of so we have to put some button to it so that we're being to our due diligence with the fundings that we do have limited funding that we do have and that whatever we do that we have a purpose And the plan that we can we can monitor and so, you know, I think It's been a few things that we've done already this year gain land over there Gerhardt ASSISTING AS WELL. SHE'S BEEN AN EXAMPLE OF EXTRA SUPPORT THAT WE HAVE GOTTEN THIS YEAR.
219ACTUALLY THREE PEOPLE. JANELLE, SHE LEFT, DIDN'T SHE? I FORGOT HER LAST NAME. CASTILLO, WHO USED TO BE HERE THE ADMINISTRATIVE OF SPECIAL ED, SHE'S ALSO BEEN SUPPORTING ON A PART-TIME BASIS. AND WE HAVE A RETIRED PRINCIPAL. HAS ALSO BEEN ASSISTANT. WE HAVE BEEN ALREADY MOVING ON SOME PART-TIME ASSISTANCE TO SUPPORT. THAT HAS HAPPENED BECAUSE OUR ASSOCIATE SUPERINTENDENT WAS GIVEN THE TASK. IT WAS THE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY. THEY WERE ON BOARD BEFORE WE HAD OUR NEW APPOINTED DIRECTOR. SO WE WERE ALREADY MOVING IN THAT. SOME OF THAT MAY BE A RECOMMENDATION THAT WE MIGHT WANT TO CONTINUE. I don't know. We have to develop the plan and bring forward to the board. Just want to note that it's 9.54. We still have a few items to get through. I want to see if we can get
220four hands for extending the meeting to 11.15. Not that it will necessarily take that long, but just so we have the time to keep moving. Can I get four hands? Is that five? Yep. Okay. So we will extend our meeting to 1115 and I'll move on to trustee Villagrana trustee Rodriguez-Mohica. Oh, do we have to have a vote? Official vote. Okay. Alrighty. So we'll start with, I would like to make a motion to extend the meeting to 1115. Can I have a second? Second. Trustee Rieker second. Any discussion? No. Okay. We'll start with myself. Trustee Rodriguez. Yes. Trustee Villagrana. No trustee Rodriguez-Mohica. Yes trustee Richardson Fowler. Yeah trustee Garcia. Yes trustee Brubaker. Yes. Yes. Okay five Five in favor one opposed we will continue to 1115. Okay My turn? Yeah. Okay. I wanted to say
221before Galen left, but she's gone, that we are so lucky to have both Galen and Janelle. I've had the pleasure of working underneath both of them, and they are fantastic administrators with huge hearts and huge experience. That said, my last question is... I noticed that the report didn't cover the role or the relationship between teachers service providers and paras. Most contracts union contracts have provisions for SLPs to supervise SLPAS and for OTs to supervise CODAS and there's no mechanism for teachers or RSP ESN or RSP teachers to supervise their paras and it gets in a very difficult situation where sometimes the teacher is instructing the paras to do things and the paras aren't or the Pairs aren't getting enough instruction and there's always somebody from the outside who has to come in. Is there a
222reason that that structure wasn't investigated or articulated. It just it didn't it didn't come up in our conversations very frequently and we just made some choices about. we were going to highlight, but I would agree completely. Yeah, it's a huge problem. I also think that allowing for that, not only identifying who's in charge of whom, but identifying in the roles and responsibilities, and that's kind of where we see that happening is in the roles and responsibilities of being able to see where does that leadership for the para come from? Right. Because there is so much that that para has to filter. They're hearing from parents. They're hearing from general ed teachers. they're hearing from their special ed teacher that they're working with, and then all of the related service personnel. And there's not a time
223for them to be able to collaborate and really sit down and go through that, as well as being able to even read IEPs and train. So it was just one of the items that we just didn't mention. It is true, though, and you've got people here that are hearing those. Conversations as well, but I think it's part of the defining the roles and responsibilities Thank you for all of this. I'm so optimistic about it as a SPED teacher and a SPED mama As am I I'm gonna check back on you guys to see how you're doing. Good deal Okay Are there any other questions? Yep. Okay trustee Brubaker. It's not a question. I just one last comment As a SPED parent, I would feel very nervous hearing discussion about SPED and budget thinking. That means
224they're going to take things from my kid. I want to say that's not the goal. The goal is in an environment where we have never been funded as promised for our SPED education and an environment where the future of SPED funding is uncertain. We have to make sure we are spending our dollars where they best serve our kids. That is the goal in this. I don't think I'm wrong in that. I'm getting nods, so yes. I'm going to quote our assistant superintendent in strategic and intentional, which I think was the perfect way to sum that up. We have to make sure we are... Serving our kids the best we can with what we have Because we are legally and more importantly morally obligated to do so So I just want to reassure our families that
225that's how we're coming at this Well, that would be our recommendation Okay I just have last comment I want to address my fellow trustees I don't know if if you support this or not but I'd like to see if I can get four hands to ask for a quarterly progress report for whatever that progress report shows or wherever we're at is there support to be able to get a quarterly progress report on the recommendations that we have in this particular report. I have an amendment. I think a bi-monthly report would be more meaningful. I have a list of what I would like for our bi- Monthly progress report? Mm-hmm. Via coming back to the meeting? I would like a bi-monthly SPED dashboard. It can be... on a Google sheet or whatnot just updated regularly that
226goes over vacancy rates of teachers paras related service turnover caseload versus workload ratios MTSS and these are suggestions I'm not demanding that these be done I'm just saying that this would be great information IEP compliance and quality indicators and percent of students that are in more than 80 percent of the day in general ed. It seems like metrics that came from the report that were indicators of what we were doing. What would you want in your report? I would just want the progress report to follow the recommendations. What progress are we making on the recommendations? As stated, both the recommendations and the ongoing work that's already being done. I mean, I think you can... I want to leave it up to staff to be able to come back and tell us what they need to
227tell us in terms of progress. I mean, you could definitely... I think you could send that information to the superintendent, say I'd like to see some of this, please include whatever is reasonable to include. But generally I just wanna make sure that we understand where we are on the recommendations and then on the progress that's already been stated. Are you opposed to bimonthly? So twice a month? Every other month. Every other month, oh sorry, okay. Every other month. I think I'm assuming this is not board reports, right? Otherwise, we're going to have a lot. No, no, no. I'm legit saying dashboard and just as updated. So Friday, Friday fact type of material. Yes. I mean, I just don't know what you mean by that. Some sort of an Excel spreadsheet that has the questions on
228it. I mean, oh, that has the questions from the yeah, it has questions from this document. Yeah. Okay, so so look can I just comment on that if it so I think they're I think Superintendent Ortega-Lemkin is right that it has to be based on the on the plan And that the data points have to be meaningful some of the data that you're describing is out annually. And so you need to be able to see where are the data points that you're going to see change in on an ongoing basis. And so being able to identify those critical factors that you will be seeing that change is going to be important. So I think as a part of the plan and before you commit to whatever that looks like, it has to be data that
229is going to be changeable and meaningful if you're going to be looking at it at that frequent of a basis. But there are pieces of data that you can monitor that way. And so I think there are pieces you're just not going to see at all. on an ongoing basis. How about we get two quarters worth of progress reports and then revisit and see if they're meeting our needs? How about we just wait till the plan and then we come up with the metrics of what we're gonna get? Yeah, I think if we come up with a plan first and you have a better idea of what the time and then we can discuss at that point how we report back to the board. Because right now we're talking about reporting something that we're not
230sure what we're reporting Well, I mean it would just it would be the work it would be what has already been pinpointed on the on the on the report right and even even Progress on what it is that you just stated right which is to come up with a plan. How is that progress going? That can be a quick Friday updates that I can provide just staff started working on the plan You're not gonna hear much from one month to one month because I'm gonna say they're still working on the plan You know, I'm just gonna take them a couple months to get to the plan so I I can provide that they're meeting on these dates It might I Don't want to cause more unnecessary work unless it's meaningful work to staff. They can
231work actually have time to work on the plan I just want the board to be informed about how it's going generally speaking right and if there are any issues that are impeding our ability to continue this work right I don't be well informed about so what I suggest between now and the plan I'll keep the board updated when there's any changes of progress on the process of the plan and then when we get the plan discuss more detail about whether the piece is there okay Just can I add a request to that that if if for some reason the target of early fall gets pushed back We're updated on that just so we have that so we don't think anything's falling by the way said not that we would think that but just So we
232all keep it top of mind Yes, thank you. I'll keep you informed Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for all your work. Thank you staff for for everything you've done to help us help bring this information to light. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to M2, information item, explore and report on sliding scale for expanded learning opportunities. We have our director of categorical programs and our administrator for the after-school programs. I don't think I got your title correct. We're going to be giving an update on follow-up regarding the discussion that we've had on the Expanded Learning Opportunity Program. But before they start, I just want to emphasize a few things. The ELOP program is for all students. Every student has the right to sign up or have an opportunity to participate in
233the ELOP program. But the way the state funded ELOP, the way they decided to fund the program because they wanted after-school programs for enrichment, for safety. And have kissing students engaged the way they decided to fund it was to fund schools districts based on the number of unduplicated students So the meaning the most needy students that way the districts who had the most needy students Received the most funds for this program However, it's not just for those students all students have that have the right to the parents have the right to Participate we get funded one way, but it's not just for those students But they are a priority because that's the way we got funded. They are a priority So we need to do everything that we can make sure that those students have
234the opportunity first To enroll and to participate and then we prioritize those students at the same time open it up for other students And and the goal is to offer it to as many students as possible. So I just want to make sure I state that And with that, I'm gonna go ahead and pass it on to Danielle. All right, thank you so much. Good evening, Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin, Board President, Trustees, and Cabinet. This evening, we'll be presenting a follow-up on the discussion of a fee-based model. I'm Danielle French, the Director of State and Federal Programs. And presenting with me tonight is Tori Peterson, our Coordinator for Explanted Learning. Students in our expanded learning program continue to be supported in the following areas of our LCAP. Goal one, we continue to work with community partners to
235explore career fields and interests. In goal two, students receive counseling support, access to MTSS systems at each school site, and receive intervention and enrichment based on their needs. In goal three, we work... With our EL services to write targeted professional development to build tutor capacity with EL support and in goal for we provide youth leadership opportunities, advisories and peer mentoring to the use of paid high school ambassadors to focus on youth engagement in our programs. This evening we will review the background of after-school care, compare regional district models using fee-based structures, and break down the costs and infrastructure required to eliminate our wait list before closing with our next steps. The Expanded Learning Opportunity Program serves as a vital extension of the academic day for our TK through 6th grade students. Spanning before school, after
236school, and summer intersessions, this program is intentionally designed to support the whole child. While we reinforce the academic day through targeted tutoring and homework support, our primary focus is fostering social, emotional, and physical growth. We leverage hands-on learning to ignite curiosity and help students visualize their future career paths. By utilizing a student-centered, results-driven strategy, Anchored in our rigorous continuous quality of improvement CQI process, we ensure this time is an enrichment of the school day, not a repetition of it. The Expanded Learning Opportunity Program is a state-funded initiative. Funding is allocated to the district based on the number of unduplicated students enrolled in our elementary schools. Each unduplicated student generates a per pupil funding amount. While this program is for all students, we are required to ensure we target and prioritize unduplicated students for enrollment first.
237As a reminder, the definition of unduplicated pupil is in the box on the slide. Enrollment in our expanding minds and YMCA programs is based on the California Department of Education CDE requirements. CDE explains offering access means we recruit students into the program by advertising and publicizing the program. This has been done by school sites in the district through social media, websites, Parents Square, site flyers in English and Spanish, and in person with our outreach to families. We understand the demand for after-school care across the entire Woodland area. Currently, the YMCA program at Spring Lake and Samora are the school sites that do not have expanding Mines program. We continue to actively fund YMCA, ensuring we have a baseline of support for students at those locations. The after-school demand is still outpacing our current capacity. Despite
238the existing funding and our partnership with the YMCA, a wait list persists. So under our current model, we are able to provide after-school care at no cost to families. That creates a simple and predictable structure for families and staff that meets the grant program requirements. The challenge we continue to face include finding ways to lower the number of non-unduplicated students on wait lists and all students in general to make sure that working families' needs for after-school care. are taken care of and to better understand how we might evolve our program we're looking at neighboring districts today we'll be looking at davis sacramento city unified and folsom cradova the commonalities that you will notice with these three programs that they all have an annual registration fee and they all have a fee schedule Our neighbor in
239Davis has a program called the SPARK program. That SPARK program in Davis has costs for TK or after-school care for K-6. DJUSD employees receive a discounted rate. Annual fees remain the same for all applicants. You can see that the fees range from $311 to $445 per month. In Sacramento City, they offer three different after-school program models. The first is the 4th R program, which includes a $100 annual registration fee and monthly fees ranging from $410 to $575. The Expanded Learning Opportunities program that they offer is free to all students in a separate program. And the Children's Center is another program that they offer, which is a fee-based program. And finally, we come to Folsom Cordova. Folsom Cordova has families pay a $100 annual registration fee, and their monthly fees range from $565 to $1,109. They
240offer both part-time and full-time options. This model demonstrates a tiered system where free and fee-based programs coexist. It helps to expand access and sustainability. And it helps us consider what flexibility and scalability could look like. This model outlines a potential partnership with the YMCA to expand access through a fee-based approach. We would maintain priority enrollment for the ELOP eligible students, ensuring those who qualify continue to receive free district-funded services. Families who do not meet eligibility would still have access by paying a fee, allowing us to serve more students overall. The YMCA would handle fee collection and management. reduce administrative burden on the district, and then transfer funds back to the district to support the expanded learning program in compliance with the CDE requirements. They would also invoice the district for students served to ensure accountability.
241Here is a snapshot of our district current enrollment numbers across the sites as of April 13th, 2026. Thank you. We did a community outreach survey to all of our elementary families. where we collected feedback from 601 families regarding a proposed fee schedule. The data highlights a delicate balance between the program sustainability and family access. Looking at the impact on enrollment, the results are split. While 45% of families are likely to enroll under this model, we cannot ignore the 36% of families who indicated that they were likely to drop if a fee was required. This represents a significant portion of our student population that risks losing after-school program care. The financial feasibility section further explains why nearly half of our respondents say that 45% explicitly stated they're not able to afford a fee at all. 43%
242are willing to pay between $100 and $200 a month, while only 2.8% responded that they can afford a higher tier of $300 to $400 per month. Additionally, we asked for additional comments or concerns regarding a fee structure. Families expressed concerns about a fee structure. They expressed concern about financial strain for families, the essential services that affordable after-school care, and how difficult it is to find in Woodland. Some families indicate that they'd be willing to pay, but only if certain conditions are met, such as guaranteed enrollment, higher quality programming, flexible days and hours, and fees would price out working families was a concern as well. In addition, we had an overall opposition to fees of 25% of the families who applied. So currently our program costs when we use both ACEs and expanded learning, it costs
243the district $3,600 per student per year. This is the baseline we're working for to ensure the program's viability. This is an average of $360 per student per month and aligns clearly with our operational costs while providing a clear predictable structure for our families. Yes. I just want to clarify something. Right now, currently at Spring Lake and Samora, they only receive ELOP. They do not currently receive ACES. Correct. So all the other schools receive ELOP and ACES. Next year they will also be receiving aces for the first time ever I think Yes, so That number is referring to what it costs in their general under all our schools Yeah, so the cost per student we took the aces and you law picks managers for the year and we divided by the number of students We are
244currently serving to be able to determine how much it costs us per student to serve in our program So to clear our current wait list and accommodate every student seeking after school care, we're looking at a total cost of about a million dollars. And while that is a significant figure, we have a clear path to making this feasible as our superintendent mentioned. without impacting our current program. So the primary driver is a substantial increase in the ELOP allocation, where per pupil funding for our district, since we have a significant amount of unduplicated students, has increased from 1,580 to 2,750. And with that increase comes the need to provide access to all students. This increase provides, excuse me, the majority of the necessary capital to expand our reach. And additionally, we've secured those new ACES funds
245that Superintendent mentioned for Zamora, which is over $152,000. And we've also secured an ACES boost of $15,000 for Tafoya. because they have due to their large size and it just keeps growing. These targeted funds ensure we aren't just sustaining the program but actively growing to meet the needs from the community. I just want to highlight our recommendation at the bottom here which is to continue our current model because we have significant amount of funding that we can utilize to creatively staff and reduce and limit the wait list. Finally, if we wanted to successfully eliminate the wait list, we would need to increase our internal infrastructure. This would require increasing our expanded learning office staff and custodial support to handle the higher student volume. On the ground, we need additional after-school program staff and site specialists
246to maintain quality across more classrooms. And our strategy involves maximizing hiring through the spring and the summer so that our new tutors get experience and working experience to ensure we're fully staffed on day one of our program. And finally, we're looking at some creative ways to use not just spaces, but staff to continue to meet our 20 to one and 10 to one requirement while not needing additional space so that we can keep our focus on people in programming. Okay, finally, it's your turn. So we're here to answer any questions you may have. Okay, just reach some follow. Just wanted to check so and I don't know who this goes to maybe the superintendent or you ladies But when the aces program goes to Spring Lake and Zamora next year will their fee be up
247to the 360 because they'll have the aces program now To clarify some Zamora will be receiving aces funding spring like will not okay So then the average of what we spend on all students enrolled in after-school program care in the district is $360 per month per student that includes our YMCA contracts currently as well as our aces funding and our ELOP funding I don't know if that can clarify that anymore. Yeah, I don't know because basically on the PO from our For YMCA it comes out to 1440 per student per year, right? We currently pay for YMCA for staffing only and materials and supplies That's what our agreement covers. So their program is less extensive than our expanding minds program Which I'm sure you have heard from community members. Okay, so the the YMCA does
248not We don't pay them for We pay our own custodial costs oversight indirect cost All the other costs to run the program the only thing we give YMCA is money for their staff and materials So Tori oversees the program we still use our business department human resources department and our fiscal services department to serve the program as well So just to clarify when we'd go to fee based services it will be an equitable fee across campuses. We are proposing not to have a fee based service but if we do have a fee based service we're recommending families that do not currently qualify for the program pay three hundred and sixty dollars per month per ten months of a year. Yes. Which would obviously if we're going to be requiring 360 across all school size we
249want to make sure that the Enrichment part over at some more and spring like are bumped up. Absolutely. Thank you for that Okay, just you Garcia trust your brew Baker so one of the attachments on this has the the waitlist numbers as of Jill June 6 2025 compared to I think now So my question at this point is is is that date in June when you would be planning staffing and How many classrooms are needed and all of that? So if after that date There's a large influx of people on the waitlist if we went to a fee based Program, would we then be able to accommodate all those people or would we have already budgeted out to? provide resources to those families who were initially signed up by June 6 or whatever it would
250be the for the share we would form classes based on what we have on the date in which we are forming classes however we are trying to hire based on what we had on the waitlist and say August September rather than hiring based on the number of families that are applying in June does that make sense yes okay so let me ask this a slightly different way because I want to make sure that I making sure I understand and also the community understands if there's a large influx in November of people who want spaces in the after-school program we would not necessarily be able to accommodate that even if they offer if even if they said here's my $360 per child per month I can't guarantee that right only because we still have to prioritize
251unduplicated students so even if And I know that's what the community asked for, right? They said, if we're going to be paying, we want guaranteed placement. The law requires that we prioritize unduplicated students first. That's the law. So if we have an applicant at the same date and same time, one's unduplicated, one's a paying family, we have to take the unduplicated family first. Okay. That's my only question for now. Thank you. How many students are we currently able to give that the after school care to? Let me pull up my little chart here. Hold on. Our current program. Oh, I did not include that information. Oh, wait. Here. It's on slide. I knew I had it somewhere. Currently, we're serving 1763 students of which 1352 are unduplicated. And that's all being done under these programs
252that we're getting state monies for? Yes, this is all paid for with ACES and expanded learning, yes. And so is this the... In the past, these services have not existed at these numbers? Correct. I think we were serving around 1,900 kids, maybe even 800 when we were just having ACES. They were very limited. It was like one or two classes per site, per grade level. So historically, we're doing more than we've ever done before. At least double, if not triple. Right. So we are, in fact, doing our best to meet the needs of our community, if you kind of look at it that way. We are. Go ahead. I apologize. Just within the confines of the programs that we're getting to pay for these services, right? I do think that because of that increase in
253funding, we have an obligation to increase staffing and be more strategic with those staffing numbers so that we can get more students off the wait list. I do think that's imperative, in my opinion. And so this is all being done because we're able to get the funding to make it happen. At the time, at any particular time, when the state decides to take away that funding, we won't be able to make it happen, at least not in these particular numbers. It'll be done congruent to whatever it is that we get in from the state. That is correct. So ACES was voted on a proposition, so a proposition would have to change that. Expanded learning is an ed code and was approved by the legislature of the Senate. So my comment is that we're doing what
254we can with what we have. And I think in... In talking about expansion, we just need to be very careful that people understand. Why we're able to provide services because these programs that we currently are being able to take advantage of but if those programs are no longer there We won't be able to and so this isn't a particular certainty necessarily moving forward. It's something that the district is is Recognizing to some extent the need that there is and we're doing what we can And we're doing it in large as large as numbers as we ever have Okay That's it trustee V. Rana No, no comments. Just that up. I'll be leaving shortly in What does what a shortening trustee again? Less than ten minutes ten minutes. Okay. Thank you Just you there. Yes, my
255good. Do you have question? Yes Thank you so much for the all the work that you put into this and especially for Going the additional steps and surveying the community, too I think that was discussed at the last board meeting and I appreciate you all doing that and and sharing those responses So openly and attaching them to the board to the board agenda, so I want to start with gratitude I did send already my questions ahead of time and you did respond to a lot of them. So What I want to highlight are the areas of confusion that I still have. I will start with the fee. So on page let me go to the updated one where it says 360. Slide 16. So slide 16 shows us that the average cost per student in
256ELOP is $3,600 right per year. When we go to the next slide though on slide 17 under budget feasibility It says under the first bullet that the ELOP allocation budget This year is my understanding of this bullet was 1580, but we got more money for next year So next year it'll be 2750 per student. Am I interpreting that right? Well, we did actually get the 2750 per student this year however, CD did not require us to provide the access portion. They gave us a year to provide ramp up to being able to provide access to all students instead of just unduplicated students, if that makes sense. But we did receive $27.50 this year? We did, yes. So what's the increase from $15.80 to $27.50? Is that from two years? That was the year prior, yeah.
257Okay, so from $25.00, $26.00. 2425 we received 1580 per student that increased last in 2526 to the 2750 per student after a conversation with CDE they recommended using this year as again like a rollout year to think about how we would make sure that we could provide additional spots off the waitlist for all students yes okay so then next year we're still at 2750 Per unduplicated pupil, correct. Okay. So that's the one piece of the math that is not mathing for me. So if we're getting ELOP monies at $27.50 per pupil, but the program costs $3,600, like what's that difference? The ELOP funding is the $27.50 per pupil. The remaining funding is coming from ACES right now. at the sites that have ACEs. I see. So that's what's making it up. So if we just
258relied on ELOP funding and we weren't getting ACEs, it seems like we're at a deficit spending per student, right? So we're only able to provide the program in such a way as we do because we have those ACEs fundings. Correct. Well, yes, but we provide the program we have based on the fact that... We can enroll more enroll more students which costs more money with staff which costs more money with custodial staff, etc Yes, okay. So that gap is due to the aces funding. Correct. Okay, perfect. There aces funding is about I don't know what it is per pupil But we get about two million dollars. Okay, so that's very helpful The other piece that I do, I still need clarification on is how we arrived at the 3,600 per year. I know that you
259include in the slide 16 right before this at the bottom that includes program staffing, enrichment contracts, summer school costs, custodial, and all of this, right? Correct. It would be very helpful for me, and I know to our community too, if we understood in a transparent way how we arrived at that $3,600. So basically a breakdown of the cost. So I would like to ask for board support to bring this back, not the full presentation, but just a breakdown. It could be a report. It doesn't have to be a presentation of just the math behind that $3,600. Because I know it came from somewhere. You didn't just pull it out of thin air. I absolutely know that. But just so that the community understands how we arrived at that number. So I'm asking for board support
260if anybody has any questions or comments about that. So you want a board report like a Friday fact? I would like for it to be shared at the next board meeting, but it could just be like a even like a memo. It doesn't have to be a full report. It doesn't what I'm trying to say is it doesn't need to be a full presentation. Just a breakdown would be shared with us and for us to be able to discuss at the next board meeting. So just to clarify. Staff took the entire budget by the number of students we project are going to be in the program next year and divided it. That's the basic math that they did. To break it down by student, I think, just so that I want to make sure that
261you know what you may be getting, right? All of that cost in the budget the entire budget on the second superintendent. Yeah, just you might go over there as you asked the question and she's explaining to you so I Need you to pay attention to what she's explaining Thank you. So the Think of it is when we get a DA for a student we get some students we get 8,000 12,000 high school students get more students, right and we use those monies for our entire budget of the district, and we use all that money to run the district. When you go to college, you pay tuition. The university uses that money. Each student has to pay a certain fee, and they use that tuition to run the entire university. So as to bring line by
262line about what that will, you know, we'll have to figure out how. I'm sure we can figure out something, but it's going to be a little, we can provide the big picture like I just described. And then we can try to give a sample of that. But just because the students feed that $3,600 may not necessarily mean that every student receives that. It's like if I go to university, I might never be used to the library, but I might be having, so my tuition may be going to the library. Does that make sense? So what staff did was just took the entire budget. Divided by the number of us and it's a guess it's all projections because we've never done this before right and I did not want to do anything to charge people more
263as you saw some of the other districts Pretty hefty prices. I said I'm not trying to make money But what it would what would it cost so that it doesn't hurt that we can still run the program And so they came up with that that that initial Way to determine what would we charge here? So we can provide a pie with that and we can try to give us a Come up with something to show what that 3600 would be but it's it's not like It's not that easy. That's not an easy thing to come up with like we could actually show you the whole budget and show you how much is budgeted for staffing which the majority of the monies are always bad staffing, right How much of it is for supplies? I mean
264go by that and take a percent of what it would be one student That's what I was going to mention. We can pull a little more detail from from our financial system in which we could look at like certificated salaries versus classified salaries versus Like books and supplies like by the hunt the thousands two thousands three thousands We could pull that information fairly easily trying to look at what? $3,600 looks like per student per year would be a intricate a difficult capture So I'm sorry did their question yeah, I mean about the trustee Rodriguez mojica And I think Trustee Feller had her hand up earlier. I don't know if she still does. Okay. So, Trustee Garcia, did you have a question? Yeah. From my perspective, I think if we're going to go forward with this
265item, I would support you, Rodriguez-Mohica, about your request. But for me, with all this information, I have enough. information to take a decision for now. So from my perspective, as being more than 50 years a parent in this district, and I think at this time, we don't need to start asking a fee for the parents. This has been taken into consideration that what you say, now we offer more places, and I see that. And really $360 per month for a family with the two parents working is not that much. I know by the fact you can pay per week for one kid. But for our families, I don't think they can pay even the half. And I think the families are... The ones that are on duplicator, the foster and low-income and English learner, those
266families, I don't think they can pay there. And these are the results. At this time, I can support that. Can I clarify for that? Yes. I just want to remind you that our unduplicated families would still be free. It would just be families who were above that free and reduced lunch line basis. But I was thinking, who is going to be in charge to take those quotes? Oh, they check. Yeah, they check. They will check the information to make sure that you qualify for either free? No, no, no, no, no. The poor person is going to have all the reports. You pay, you don't pay, you need to stay, you need to leave. And all this administration is an extra person to have to do that. Did you get my point? I get your point,
267but I believe that we have the capacity to do that. We do that with our preschool enrollment to make sure. For all the sites? Yeah, for all of the sites for preschool enrollment for the California State Preschool. For the payments, monthly payments. I take it. Yeah, that's for my experience. I have a business, and I've been in a nonprofit organization, and I'll see the extra time to collect the quotes. And how do you handle to say those people, you don't pay this month, you can stay here. Yeah, it's a lot of things that has to be implemented. So those are my points. Trustee Brubaker, do you have any? I was just going to add, can you pull up slide 11? It's kind of hard to see but one of the other things that makes it
268a little complicated is that it looks like they have a similar program where Students can be picked up at two different times, which would then change the cost analysis of each of our students So like for example at this district they have looks like 580, but I know that's maybe 530 Difficult to read those the snaps from their way. Yeah compared to a 6 p.m. Pickup has a difference of nearly $100 for the the lowest tier of the pay scale just to demonstrate sort of like another aspect of the complexity of trying to Figure out a line item for all of these expenses Still looks like 580 but that's okay. Anyway, that's that's my I think I went to the website. It was 545 but I could be wrong Right around that 550 mark Okay,
269going back to trustee Wake up with you. Sorry about that. I know you had a question you want to put out which was So I was asking for district support for a breakdown of the 3600 I think a pie would be fine. And again, it's just for transparency sake I don't understand how we I know I saw those numbers below but just to be able to show how we arrived to that and You know in some kind of way. I also want to share that I I obviously reviewed all of this and it looks like we have increased funding so I'm comfortable with not pursuing us a fee or sliding scale or anything. I'm trusting your recommendation that with this increased funding we'll be able to meet the needs of students on the wait list.
270So I'm asking for transparency's sake, not because I'm trying to justify that fee for next year. So all I'm asking for is for support from the board just to bring this back to share how we arrived at that $3,600 per student. And you're willing to accept their best effort to try and make that happen for you? I just, I want more that what's up there, right? The line that's underneath. If we go back to, where is it? There so all it is right now is just down below those words in red right cost includes I want I want monies tied to that that show you know in some way how we arrived to 3600 just for transparency I don't I don't want to make this a huge issue like it's just just to be clear
271about how we arrive that for the community So point of clarification. Yes, we're not moving forward with this per staff recommendation, but you still want to break down of the cost. Yes, right so And you're willing to accept whatever staff can give to you. I mean, I might have follow-up questions. I don't know what that's going to look like, right? The superintendent shared that, you know, it might be a pie. In my mind, that could be it. So, I mean. So just further, we want them to work on this even though we're not going to pull the trigger on it. I just want to understand how we got at that 3,600. So I don't know if the vote, you know, it's not an action item, it's just an info item. I'm not pursuing a fee.
272I just want to understand how we got there. You want to give direction to the superintendent to bring back that chart? Please. Yep. Okay. Do we have four hands to make that happen? Okay. There's only three. Is that correct? Yep. Okay. So direction does not pass. Okay. Okay. Was that all of my time? No, if you want some more. Okay, yeah, I wasn't done. So thank you, prioritizing our unduplicated students. I know that we opened up and it was all over the slide, so I appreciate that and also the clarification that it does need to be open to all students. We just need to make sure we're prioritizing our unduplicated students. So when I looked at that table, With the enrollment, I think it is on page 13. Page 13. Perfect. And I see the
273number of unduplicated students still on that wait list. It's 136. I'm sure it could be bigger than that. Right. So 136 given the size of our district is not terrible but it still to me is painful to see that number of at this point in the school year having 136 students that are unduplicated still on the wait list. So my. My question is, and I emailed this to you before, are... In what ways can we redo the way that we are prioritizing unduplicated students so that we don't have this high of a number of them on the wait list? Because to me, that tells me that they're interested. I'm assuming they missed the deadline and that's why they're still on there, right? But there was some kind of communication gap, I feel like, that led
274to them to still be on the list. So in what ways can we reimagine the way that we're prioritizing them? In some cases it may have been a communication gap but not necessarily all of them. Some of them can be just they just enrolled. Some of them may have been they weren't interested and then later wanted to participate. So there's different reasons. I just want to make sure that we don't assume that all 30 of them, 130 of them were a communication issue. But go ahead and respond. I was just going to say that yes, we're obviously exploring how we can make sure that our unduplicated students are enrolled first. While I can't save spots for them, I do know that our communication could be better. And Tori and I have been talking about, Coordinator
275Peterson, sorry. And I have been talking about how we can be more creative with our staffing, be more creative with our communication with families, and really utilize the numbers we had in August. To plan ahead so that we have spaces still available when those families apply But we also want to work on that communication as well I would just state that of that 136 that are on the waiting list for unduplicated students There's five that were on the waitlist at the beginning of the year so when we formed classes So and that was just to the really high demand of TK and K this year So just to understand your answer to my question is communication. We're working on improving that. But what else are we doing? I didn't catch what else we were doing.
276So right now we've been staffing as we traditionally staffed our ACES program, which is 20 kids, one tutor in a classroom. But we do have to just maintain a ratio of 1 to 20 with adults. And so we're looking at increasing the number of kids in a classroom, hiring another tutor, so that we can increase the number of kids at a grade level that can access the program. That to me sounds like a way to be able to reduce the waitlist overall, but I don't see how that's targeting then duplicated students. Yeah, well we would obviously enroll those unduplicated students first and back to increasing that communication gap. I think we could be creative with how we utilize our staff to be able to reach out a little bit more strategically. And our current students.
277Okay. So to that point are we are we heightening our efforts in recruitment for the sites that have the largest number of unduplicated or is it general across the board. We are heightening our numbers of staff across the board. However, we see like at Prairie in particular, there's a high number of students on the wait list. We are prioritizing Prairie as well. I'm sorry, I said recruitment. No, recruitment for staff, right? No, recruitment for families, like unduplicated families to enroll them. Oh, yes. We're doing that too? Yes. Okay. Our site support specials to be out to our unduplicated families that are on the wait list and who are already enrolled and who have declined the program to make sure that they are aware. Yes. But my question is, are we heightening our efforts at the
278sites with higher unduplicated students, meaning more efforts to recruit unduplicated students from Prairie since they have such a big number than, for example, I don't know, Plainfield? Oh we could do that yes. OK. But we're not yet but we could. Yes. OK. Thank you. Sorry I was unclear with your question. OK. I think we're ready to wrap up. We have a few things you have to get to before 1115. So thank you very much. And we'll move on. Is there any information that you want to share. I just want to make sure that we're moving. I'm hearing that the record. The recommendation is how what board would prefer. I know we're not voting, but would prefer us to move forward. We'll move forward with the recommendation and bring an update to the board in the
279fall once enrollment is settled and see where we're at. Thank you. We just want to be able to communicate to our families and open up our enrollment as soon as possible. Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, moving on to M3. It's the School Resource Officer Quarterly Report. Are there any questions on the School Resource Report from the board? No, okay. We'll move on to M4, Information Review Quarterly Report on Williams Uniform Complaints. Any questions from the board on that issue? No, okay. So before we go on to N, I wanna circle back to the consent agenda. When Trustee Villagrana pulled item 28, which was the pool item, that was one thing off of the PO list. So G1A. And so, Trustee Villagrana pulled number 28, but we did not then go back and approve the
280rest of the purchase orders. So we need to go back and do the rest, pulling his item out. Okay? So can I get a motion to approve G1A, the purchase orders, minus Trustee Villagrana's... Number 28 item. So moved. Second. Second by, moved by Trustee Brubaker, second by Trustee Garcia. Any discussion? No? Okay, we'll put it to a vote. Trustee Rodriguez-Molica? Yes. Trustee Richardson-Fowler? Yeah. Trustee Garcia? Yes. Trustee Brubaker? Yes. Trustee Rodriguez? Yes. Five in favor and so we have approved the rest of the purchase orders. Okay jumping back to n facilities information average daily attendance ad a Enrollment reports. Do we have any questions? For item n1 No, okay, seeing none. We will move on to item o human resources and that is a public hearing and I will open the public hearing to approve
281the initial proposal for the 26-27 school year from the Woodland Joint Unified School District Board of Trustees for the collective bargaining agreement between WJUST and California School Employees Association, CSEA chapter 118. Do we have any comments? We do not have any comments. Okay, seeing that we do not have any comments. I will now I will now close the public hearing And this is an action item. So it requires a vote So I would like to I'll make the motion to to approve the initial proposal for 26-27 school year from the Woodland Joint Unified School District's Board of Trustees for the collective bargaining agreement between WJUSD and California School Employees Association, CCA Chapter 118. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Trustee Brubaker. Any discussion? No? Okay. So we will take a roll call vote.
282Trustee Richardson-Fowler? Yeah. Trustee Garcia? Yes. Trustee Brubaker? Yes. Trustee Rodriguez? Yes. Trustee Rodriguez-Mohica? Yes. Yes. Okay. So we have now passed item 01. Thank you very much. Now on to 02, information action, revised board policy 4117, early retirement option. There's the policy that is a win-win for the district and for staff And basically we just made an adjustment to this policy so that if a teacher starts in our district comes from another district and then later on becomes an administrator and they're ready to retire but they don't have ten full years of teaching nor or ten full years of Admin that they don't get penalized for their retirement benefits this It could also happen the other way it could be an someone who starts here as an administrator and then goes back into the classroom
283and maybe they came from a different district so it's a win-win to Make sure that our people people here who decide to come here and then end up Being promoted that they're not penalized for that or if they decide to go back into the classroom So it's a win-win for as well as for us not to hold people in locked in when they really want to retire Because we want people to want there's there's still willing to work. Are there any questions from the trustees? On this item just rubric. I have a comment when I was sworn in I said that If people have things that they think they need to make sure we're aware of to bring that to us, and this is an example of something that was brought to me and to
284HR as a question one of our staff members had about what the effects their retirement would have because of this unclear policy. So I just want to highlight that. We do we do hear you if anybody is still listening at 11 o'clock at night and we do When we can make changes to accommodate those requests And so I just want to highlight that because I think that's important for our community to be aware of Okay, are there any other comments? None, okay. Can I get a motion to approve a revived board policy 4117.13 early retirement option? So moved. Moved by Trustee Brubaker. Can I get a second? Second. Second by Trustee Garcia. Any discussion? No. Okay. Trustee Richardson-Fowler, how do you vote? Yeah. Trustee Garcia, how do you vote? Yes. Trustee Brubaker, how do you
285vote? Yes. Trustee Rodriguez, how do you vote? Yes. Trustee Rodriguez-Mohica? Yes. Yes, okay. So we have passed the revised board policy 02. Moving on to P, public comment for items not on the agenda. Do we have any public comment? We do not. Moving on to item Q, information request for future agenda items. Any trustee have anything they'd like to state there? No? Okay, moving on to item R, information closing comments. Are there any closing comments by any of the trustees? Nope, very good. Okay moving on to s date and time of next scheduled regular board meeting Thursday May 14th 2026 Closed session starts at 5 p.m. Open session at 6 p.m. We reached adjournment Thank you everybody for hanging in there with us. Thank you trustees