001We're waiting for one more trustee before we start. It'll be at least five minutes before we start. Just got a text. Welcome, everyone. It is 5.06. Calls meeting. I'm blanking out here. Open session. To order. Thank you. That's what it was. I think myself. Is there any changes on the agenda before I call for approval? Seeing none. I have a request. I'd like to remove item D4. Oh, okay. And then also I would like to request to move one item a change of order under teaching and learning Like to move a family engagement efforts to first item We do have some family parents who are coming or you would like to have our guests present first move which one to our number three to First that the family engagement. Mm-hmm. Okay, so l1 sorry l3
002before l1 any objection and then I would Just do it right now. I'm gonna pull off the consent 5 C I'll be abstaining on that my resolution for excusing with that with those Day, thank you. G5 C with those edits. Is there motion to approve motion to approve second Second. There is a motion by Trustee Garcia second by Trustee McDonald all those in favor say aye aye aye. Any opposition seeing none. The agenda is approved with the modifications by all trustees present. Any public comment. None. We're going to recess or going to close session at 5 0 8. We'll be back to as close as 6 o'clock as possible. Thank you everyone. 30 second warning will reconvene in 30 seconds. All right. Thank you everyone for joining us today We're reconvening at 6 o 9
003from closed session into open session. I just saw the Pledge of Allegiance trustee Mott 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 Patwin people. Today, there are three federally recognized Patwin tribes. Kachil Dehi Band of Winton Indians of the Colusa Indian Community, Kletzel Dehi Winton Nation, and Yocha Dehi Winton Nation. The Patwin people have remained committed to the stewardship of this land over many centuries. It has been 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. We're moving on to reporting on action taken in closed session. The Board of Trustees took action in closed session by all trustees present to
004approve item E4A, which is expulsion of student number 24-02. Thank you. Any public comments for consent agenda? Whit Manley? The mic on, please. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Whit Manley. I've lived in Woodland for more than 30 years. Both my kids attended Woodland Public Schools and went on to receive college and graduate degrees. We appreciate all that the school district has done for our family and for families throughout Woodland. I want to let you know that I support the contract on your consent agenda. to authorize $2,500 for teacher training on handling LGBT issues that may arise. The money is not to promote a particular ideology. Instead, the money is to train teachers on best practices for handling these issues when they arise. We know that these issues will arise. They already have, and
005they do. Some folks may wish that we lived in a world where there were no LGBT issues for the district to handle. There are LGBT students. A world without them does not exist. I am very sorry that that reality makes some people uncomfortable. But we need to train teachers for the world as it is, not as a small minority wishes it to be. I understand that Some district teachers and staff have received training from this organization if anyone has concerns about the nature of the training I Recommend that you ask staff and teachers who have taken the training what they thought about it Whether they valued it. I've heard that they thought it was terrific and so I encourage you to Approve that contract. Thank you. Thank you Noah, I think it's Gardner. Hi, everyone.
006My name is Noah. I'm a parent. I live in Woodland. I send my daughter to middle school here. And I also wanted to voice support for funding for... Sorry. Okay. Good time. It's okay. Thank you. Wanted to voice my support for funding for training for handling LGBTQ issues. I heard that there was opposition, which is why I showed up. I just want to know, I guess, what the big deal is, you know? As the previous speaker just said, you can shake your fist at this guy all you want, but... Gay people, trans people, non-binary, LGBTQ broadly are going to live in woodland. Some of them are going to be kids, some of them are going to be adults. And it's really on us to decide what we want to do with that information. Do we
007want to hate that and try to put them back in the closet? Or in the spirit of Lincoln's birthday, which we're celebrating this week, right? support the ideas of equality and freedom and brotherhood and the abolition movement. Anyway, that's about all I got. Anyone who's here opposing that, I just encourage you to rethink the fear that you've whipped yourself into, because gay people, trans people, they're fine. MY DAUGHTER IS NOT HURT BY OR CONFUSED BY KNOWING ABOUT THEIR EXISTENCE. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. I'M GOING TO MOVE ON. EARLIER I ASKED TO PULL G5C. ANY QUESTIONS FROM TRUSTEES? TRUSTEE MUDAL. WHEN DO WE PULL, MAYBE I MISSED MY WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY, BUT WHEN DO WE PULL OFF THE Had a couple questions on the purchase order list. How's that come perfect timing right now? Oh good.
008Okay I'd like to pull items eight and nine you want to pull them just for questions or for your vote It's just questions. You can ask the questions. Yeah, I think I want to vote for for both of them separately separately Yes, so purchase order which one eight which is Puente AND NINE WHICH IS TRANS FAMILY SUPPORT SERVICES. MY QUESTION WITH RESPECT TO PUENTE IS THIS SEEMS LIKE A REALLY GOOD PROGRAM, BUT I HAD ASKED STAFF AT KIND OF THE 11TH HOUR HOW OUR how our acceptance to four-year universities has changed, you know, increased or decreased since we implemented this program, and they have not had a chance to put that information together. So I would like to bring this back once they've had a chance to look at that. Do you have your other
009question about now, or do you want to discuss this first and then go to the next one? I think maybe. Discuss this first and then the other trustees want this item come back or are you already about? I'm ready to vote. Okay, so I don't see any of the trustee you wanted to come back So we're ready to vote on it Just a middle do you want to ask you other question and I just just in general and yeah We didn't have time to put that together for you But just in general and you'll see when we are prepared to get that data to you our students who are in the point the program avid program outperform our general ed students and So looking forward to getting that report to the the board. So just
010to add that piece For now, well, I'll give you the numbers in the data. Thank you that that yeah, my question was in no way meant to Be critical of staff. I think I asked late last night or early this morning. It was definitely not enough time to put anything together So my second question is as far as the trans family support services. I I was curious to see their materials They have provided some digital training materials. I was not able to attend Any of the trainings and that material is not available to me. So I'm not quite sure what What I'm approving so that's my hesitation on that I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE MATERIALS. I THINK IT WOULD, YOU KNOW, CERTAINLY THE TRUSTEES SHOULD BE ABLE TO SEE IT. THANK YOU. ANY OTHER
011TRUSTEES NEED TO SEE THE MATERIALS BEFORE THE VOTE? OKAY. THANK YOU. SO ANY OTHER QUESTIONS FROM ANY OTHER TRUSTEES? SO WE'RE GOING TO VOTE ON THE CONSENT AGENDA MINUS PURCHASE ORDER 8 AND 9 AND MINUS G5C. IS THERE A MOTION TO APPROVE? Motion to approve second so motion by trustee Garcia second by trustee Mott. I was in favor say aye Any opposition No, and these are not the items We pulled sorry. Yes. Okay. Okay. So now we're going to go to purchase order number eight If you can repeat what number eight was again trustee McDonald I think it's Regents of the University of California, Berkeley. Perfect. Puente. Thank you. From actually personal experience and research that I've done myself, Puente is a phenomenal program. It has really high college-going rates. It really motivates students who
012are vastly first-generation, low-income, and a lot of campuses primarily Latino students. It was actually designed. to target that population. So I'm definitely ready to be in support. I definitely understand wanting to see more data on that. And there's some other items that I want more data on as well. But again, based on my experience and what I've seen and the results and conversations with individuals statewide, it's 100% support of a program like this. I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE AN ECHO WHAT THE TRUSTEE SAYS BY FIRSTHAND. MY SON IS A FIRST GENERATION AND I'M VERY FAMILIAR WITH THE PROGRAM AND I FOR SURE AM SUPPORTED. SO YOU HAVE BOTH SEEN POSITIVE RESULTS. ABSOLUTELY. 100%. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR SAY AYE. AYE. ANY OPPOSITION? Oh, sorry. Thank you. I need a motion. Motion to approve. Motion to
013approve. Second. Motion by Trustee Garcia. Second by Trustee Mott. Thank you for that. I'm still recovering, I think. I've been sick for too long. All those in favor, again, say aye. Aye. Any opposition? Say none. Approved by all trustees present. Moving on to first order number nine. Is there a motion to approve? MOTION BY TRUSTEE MOTT. SECOND BY TRUSTEE GARCIA. ALL IN FAVOR SAY AYE. AYE. ANY NOS? NO. SO TRUSTEE MCDONALD NO. OTHER TRUSTEES YES. AND THEN MOVING ON TO G5C WHICH IS APPROVED RESOLUTION 31-24 RESOLUTION TO EXCUSE BOARD MEMBERS ABSENCE OF MEETINGS OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES AND THAT'S ME I WAS SICK SO I WON'T BE VOTING ON MY OWN RESOLUTION. IS THERE A MOTION TO APPROVE? MOTION BY TRUSTEE RICHESON FOWLER. SECOND. Second but trustee Garcia all those in favor say aye
014aye Okay, any opposition? Thank you. So approved by Trustees and abstains by me abstention by me. All right Moving on to community engagement any public comment here. Nope trustee Richardson Have a cough drop in my mouth in case you're wondering why I'm talking so funny I have the honor of presenting the Black History Month resolution for this month I am NOT going to spend the time reading the resolution. I asked if we could have a video played instead every January, our CTA State Council meeting is dedicated to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And the African American Caucus put together this video of accomplishments to spoken words. So if we can play this. And then I will have the mothers of the African American Parent Advisory Committee accepting the resolution. How'd y'all do that?
015That persevere thing. I used to go by slave. Now you change your name to miraculous. The victors. Black girl magic. Black boy joy. The founder of all things cool over here. The motherland miracle. How y'all do that? How you survive slave ships, break through bullying and building bombings, cross the constant calling of William Jim Crow, give redlining the blue, survive the Tulsa Wall Street breakdown without a breakdown, and still place president and push through pandemic. How'd y'all do that? I'd be lying if I said I knew. I'd be lying if I said I'm surprised there must have been something in those whips that let us know that even though we were beaten, We were not defeated. They whipped Toby into our backs but couldn't whip the Kunta Kinte out our spirits, y'all. There must have
016been something in those chains that let us know that even though they got us... Nobody really got us like we got us. We are held together by passion, tears, and purpose, y'all. There must have been something in those ancestors that let us know that we are oxen strong, that our relentlessness comes in herds. It might just be might because the bigger the obstacle, the stronger you better be to overcome it. We are powerful. We persevere because we don't know any other way. They tried to break us. Yet here we are, zero acres and no mules later without a handout, a hand up. We handled ourselves with poise, dignity, and abracadabra because you did not see this coming. The ones constantly written off managed to pick ourselves up when America was the one who dropped us
017in the first place, constantly slept on. You made Dr. King show up to his own dream with a permission slip and we still peek out all majestic. All triumphant. I don't mean to make you marvel, but man, look at how something out of nothing we are. Look at how concrete roads we've been. Look at how masterpiece we are made. We never had a chance. And we are still here. So I don't care what Texas comes out with in those history books this year. Let it be written that we were great in every chapter of American history. proudly on the shoulders of our ancestors and still working on that happy ending. Dear ancestors, sometimes it seems like the view of freedom is the same distance as when you were here. The view doesn't seem too much
018better on your shoulders. Yes, we are a million marches closer, but it seems like they still have the finish line on a string and we still persevere. So let it ring from the new revised history books to the reconstructed museums. Let our story be all show and tell. Show you what we've been through. Show you how we still coming out 400 years later and tell me that ain't perseverance. Ooh, y'all, y'all must have had a God on your side. A cheat code, an inside man, bribed the bouncer, knew a guy, cause ain't no way you made miracle with the same shovels that tried to bury you. Cause after all the lynching, bombing, Jim Crow, segregation, waterhole, second class, church shooting, redlining, and marches, how do you not say I give up? You win. Because our
019DNA did not come with surrender. It came with I will not be defeated. And everything that was meant for our evil has to apologize and gawk. and what we've become. We are not all enslavement and plantation. We are flawed, but we still flourish. We hold some transgressions and some spots in office. We are bruised, but bodies not broken. They try to break us, and we are still here. So how do we persevere? I'd be lying if I said I knew. I'd be lying if I said I'm surprised. We just do. This resolution to the mothers of the African-American Advisory Committee is because as mothers, we are usually the keepers of our culture. I was taught to cook by my aunties. Just, Candace, can you get me some sugar and put it in that bowl? And
020then give me some butter and put it in that bowl. And it wasn't until I was high school that I realized that they were teaching me how to cook and giving me my culture and not just sitting back and being lazy. So to you ladies, I give this to you. I'm going to get some other copies made. Anything you guys want to say real quick? I, as a black mother of black kings, to be one day accept this resolution with honor and privilege. I thank you all for this time. Thank you, Candace, for being awesome. My counterpart, Shirees, and I believe this is the first of many of our acknowledgement and acceptance to this community. So thank you very much. Good evening, everyone. I just want to echo what this wonderful mother has said, but
021also know that we are working with you all the time. We are helping at home with the kids with you teachers and leaders the community people just know that we're doing our best and Thank you. I want to thank riches of trustee Richardson Fowler for that awesome video And thank the parents and please pass on my appreciation to the other committee members. We appreciate that you all give your time To give input to our district Trustee Richardson-Fowler, anything before we move on? Anything else? Thank you for giving me the time to play that video. And thank you to all the teachers at Woodland High School who shared that. Any comments from trustees before we move on? Trustee Garcia? Yes. I really appreciate to say we're working together. That's correct a hundred percent correct. So parents
022administrators teachers and all the District and we are working together for the best for our students and families Before move on definitely look forward to future collaborations with the Advisory Committee to provide Mean more meaningful engagement for for our youth Especially our african-american youth and in our district so more to come Moving on to H2 which is recognition of gifts to the district so Beamer Elementary School the elementary Beamer Elementary PTA Donated a monitoring donation towards the biological to go the Beamer of $100. So thank you so much for that Gibson Elementary the old Alt Lurie Foundation. Hope I pronounced that right contributed three thousand two dollars towards a combination of one thousand hundred one to the fifth grade class and one thousand one towards other teachers and classrooms and needs. So again, thank you
023so much for your very generous donation to our district. Moving on to our student reports. We're going to start with Piney High School. Leila Labarico. Thank you for joining us. Good evening, Board President Villagrana, Trustees, Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin, Executive Cabinet, and our community. My name is Leila Lavarico, and I represent Pioneer High School. My report tonight is the following. ASB has worked consecutively the past couple of weeks making Valentine's Day hearts, where we recognize our students by putting their names on a paper heart and attaching them on the windows of our school campus. A hundred of those hearts were stamped, which students could trade to receive a Valentine's Day treat. Today, during fifth period, ASB hosted a pizza party for our special education students in celebration of Valentine's Day. There was lots of food, music, and
024dancing, which both our ASB class and special education class enjoyed. This week, Pioneer held a Valentine's Day themed Spirit Week. The following days are Tuesday, Twin Day slash Twin Flame. Wednesday, dress as your relationship status, white, single, pink, complicated, and red taken. Thursday, dress as your type, and Friday, pink flags. Wear pink and write something you look for in a partner. Also, ASB interviews have been in the process, where we've had over 30 students apply from grades 9 through 11 and desire to be a part of the ASB class next year. Our current ASB seniors have worked closely to bring in new students and develop a class that will work hard to improve our student body next year. And that concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next, Mahad Naim. Good evening, Board
025President Wilhelma, Trustees, Superintendent Ortiga-Lemkin, and our Executive Cabinet with our committee members. My name is Mahad, and it's my honor to represent Walden High School. Woodland High School was busy with many events taking place previously from celebrating basketball and soccer boys and girls senior night. Woodland High School also had their first ever HBCU, Historically Black College and University event in which our community learned about HBCU colleges and its importance to our community. We also welcomed our new National Honor Society members as they were awarded with their excellence of maintaining 3.5 GPA with their leadership on and off campus. Wellton High School held a little ceremony for them as well. Wellton High School community also celebrated the ceremony of a new women-led mural which can be located at Wellton High School Library. The event was celebrated
026by our community members and students so I would like to thank the trustees to be part of that. Thank you very much. And for Valentine's, ASB also crafted hearts for every student and posted them around the campuses to show them love. From those students, two lucky students received gift cards. Lucky them. Spring sports is also underway, so make sure to buy your season tickets as well. Speaking of tickets, Woodland High School Mecha Dance will be taking place tomorrow from 6.30 p.m. to 11 p.m. And as usual, being a special one, I would like to end my speech by giving a shout out to not only Woodland High School, but also custodians from our district who make sure that our campuses are clean and a safe place for us to eat during lunch and hang out.
027A lot of students don't see how much work they put in. A lot of adults don't see how much work they put in. Without them, the truth is the school wouldn't be a place to be. So again, thank you very much for your hard work and thank you very much for cleaning up our messes. And that concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you. Next representative from Cash Creek High School and Jayden and I'm gonna let you see the last thing I want to butcher it then I'll learn it the second time course that is Perfect. Thank you. Good evening. You guys hear me? Yes. Okay a little nervous, you know, it's my first time. No worries Good evening president Villegrana board trustees superintendent with their Ortega Lampkin and our community My name is Jim Gortatis.
028I'm a junior at Cache Creek High School. I transferred from Pioneer High School at the beginning of this year. My report today is the following. Cache Creek welcomed 16 new students to begin the third quarter. To begin the quarter, we reviewed our transcripts advisory to all our students so they can know how far to graduate. I've earned 66 credits so far with the goal of returning to PHS next year. This semester our school-wide novel is The Circuit by Francisco Jimenez. This is about a migrant family working in agriculture in Central California. Next, we will make our sixth Tanada visit of this year. So far, 60 students have created art pieces from their culture, community, personal interests in two days at the workshop of UC Davis Extension here in Woodland, California. On May 14, we'll have
029an open house to display all students' work, and we'll make sure to invite you guys, you know, come by, slide through. We recently completed the winter NWEA test. This is language reading and math assignments, which provides school with data and student process on ingenuity pathway to catch up on the skills they may have missed in early grades. Average NWEA scores have showed up significantly improvements in our first administration in the fall. As well, Brown students issues, Brown issue students have been working on Agua for All campaign. Our first goal is to raise money and able to give a water filtration system to our school. We have been talking, or we've been taking a step further by meeting with lawmakers and advocates at the Capitol to push policy that would require filtered water throughout all public
030schools in California. The second Brown issue, REAG, damn, sorry about that. A little bit off there, but reimagining art show will be taking place on March 23rd. Students from Cache Creek, Sister Chavez, one high school will be submitting pieces that will speak the issue facing young people in our community. Thank you for your time. Jayden public speaking is one of the hardest things to do There's many people that are in their 50s and 60s and they won't go up in front of Mike So you did great job, you know be proud of Representing your school and thank you for being here. Good job any public comments Okay These young men requested to go together Alonzo Arteaga and Jonathan Angel Good evening. My name is Jonathan. And my name is Alonzo. And we're in fifth grade
031and we come from the school of Prairie and we are here to present reasons of why we think building swings on our school and our playground would be good. We are presenting to show the reasons why building swings will be beneficial and useful. Our goal is that you will see our dedication to raising awareness and funds for new swings on our playground. And the opinions of those who think the swings will be a good change. When we present we pass one of these pages. Depending on the audience to show if they are interested they will sign this page to support us to prove students and teachers are on board. We have gotten over 450 signatures. My classmates and I have been collecting signatures from students on the pages shown and we believe we have worked
032hard to demonstrate that many students are interested in building swings. We also believe that it will be very beneficial for the students who go to the playground now and for the entire school. This will be beneficial for the time school because children and the younger grades will come to this playground. The current mission playground has structures that are broken and kids with disabilities can access our playground. Other schools have play structures that are safe, inclusive, and functional. Perry Pumas deserves more than what we currently have. This will have lasting effects because each year more students will come to the park we use and have more play options. With swings, fights will be reduced because the students will be busy with the swings and not in conflicts or drama. Students are not going to get into
033fights since they are going to be entertained by new structures. With swings, students will have something to do in the playground and the floor will be more active in class. Our goal is to have six swings. We aim to raise funds through grants and fundraisers. Additionally, we will try to get the student council on board. The total cost will be around $65,000. Grants are a sum of money a company gives you for a project, which in our case is installing swings. We have already found some companies that could possibly give us the funds in order to do so. Those are reasons why swings would be a great addition to our playground We hope you agree with us so we can have more fun on our playground. Thank you for listening to us Before you go
034before you go if you can come back, please So I heard your fundraising what you're asking from from the board They made it events where they have games. They would give food, events like that. And people would pay to get tickets for that. And we're thinking that if they could agree, we could get money with that. Got it. Thank you. So when you start your fundraising, definitely count on the first $100 from me towards your fundraising, okay? Next. Barbara Ryan. Hi, I'm Barbara Ryan. That was a tough act to follow. I'm throwing in 100 on the swings, too. I think my favorite part, things I learned from coming to a school board meeting, my favorite part is the high school students. I wish they spoke the whole meeting. But the bigger issue here is I
035want to speak on the transgender thing. Let's dispel this notion. that people hate the transgender people. Nobody hates the transgender people. Actually, I find them, after having numerous conversations, to be very brave to make a life-changing, life-altering decision. We need to not confuse the transgender people with the transgender activists. The transgender activists are bullies. They're cowards. How do I know this? I got to experience it firsthand at the Davis Library. I had four people in my face while they tried to shut down an event. If you'll do this to adults, what are they doing to our kids? We don't know. So now we get to the recall. We're not even sure that the signatures were verified because they were turned in on a Friday afternoon, verified by Saturday morning. And then, mysteriously, Emily McDonald's rebuttal
036was left out of the voter booklet. Mysteriously, the only thing left out of the voter booklet. How in the world did that happen? But the thing that bothers me the most about this is, I know from my phone ringing off the hook that people were lied to when they were collecting the signatures for the recall. You won't be getting their vote, by the way. I also know that... there is tens of thousands of outside dollars being thrown into this. I thought this was a local issue. Silly me. Coming from everywhere. How do I know this? Because Aaron Reed was on Facebook bragging about it. Money coming from everywhere. So, including money from the teachers' union. I wish they were as passionate about education, the teachers union, not the teachers. Let's not confuse these two either.
037As passionate about education as they are about activism, but they're not. So I just wanted to let everybody be aware of what's happening with the recall. I'm not telling you how to vote on it, but it should be a fair fight. Thank you. Thank you. Do want to remind the public that the school district and the school board has absolutely no involvement at all in in the recall efforts again that strictly The residents or the constituents from that district itself other comments Michael Ganja Tano Good evening My name is Michael Ganja Tano and I'm here to say a few things about the the recall I was here before but didn't get a chance to express some of my concerns due to time constraints. First of all, I consider myself very fortunate to have had a
038great career, a fulfilling career as a clinical social worker and a school counselor in many different settings including medical, psychiatric, residential, child welfare, and primarily education. For the past 34 years, I've been employed here in the district. 26 years as a counselor, the last 24 was at Lee, until my retirement in 2016. For the last eight years, I have served as a substitute in the district in all five secondary schools, and I'm very appreciative of this district giving me that opportunity to make an impact on the educational journey of the students and families I've had the pleasure to serve. There's some people here and in the community that who are rejoicing at the results of the recall They see Emily McDonald as an enemy of truth She's been made out to be the devil and
039thus must be removed from her position as trustee She simply cannot be allowed to vote on matters affecting the entire district when she has disdain for a relatively few The crime she has apparently committed was stating publicly her concerns regarding the unintended consequences of these issues. When I contacted Emily McDonald about her concerns, I also complimented her for having the courage to publicly express them. Since then, I have met with her on several occasions and have gotten to know her in what I believe is the genuine Emily McDonald, something no one could possibly achieve through a few sound bites. I am convinced there's no place where hate resides in the heart, the mind, and soul of Emily MacDonald. The belief that she would support the needs of some students and others is ludicrous on its
040face. This country is thoroughly divided over many issues, none more than what triggered this recall. What troubles me greatly are those who are convinced they are the arbiters of truth. Anyone who dares to question this is punished mercilessly. Among those who apparently have partnered in this belief are the professions I've been aligned with for 47 years. I cannot remember a time in my career until now when I have been embarrassed and ashamed of my profession. There are many complex psychological, social, emotional, medical, cognitive factors that need to be assessed to treat problems, particularly with young adolescents. Apparently when it comes to these issues, these considerations have been abandoned. All members of the helping professions are educated and trained to uphold the practice first do no harm It now seems like an empty promise What happens
041if she get if she gets recalled who's gonna want to serve on this board? Thank you Again one reiterate for the public that the board has no way jurisdiction over the outcome of the recall other comments Laura Brubaker Hello, I just wanted to reiterate what I said at a past board meeting that as a parent of two Woodland Joint Unified School Districts I stand in support of the health techs. It was about six years ago that I stood at this podium after a special education parent advisory committee meeting saying relaying what we had talked about at a previous meeting about how desperately we wanted more nurses and more counselors on school sites because our students in special education are at much higher risk of mental health and physical health problems that need to have not
042one day a week staff on site in my own family's case we had several medical issues pop up that didn't happen to be the one day a week and our happened to be at the school site. So please as you're looking at budgets, which I know is a big job, consider finding a way to maintain our health tax, health tax. I know that there was some discussion earlier last year about doing a ballot item. I think that would be a great way to continue this program that I think. the community in general would really support and I know special education families would as well. Thank you. So my cause is not new. I've been here for many years. Yeah. Stating the same things. I'm deeply concerned that we're already a half a year into this,
043this school year. And yet I have not seen anything coming to help the special education students and their academic progress. You know, testing's coming up. That's a very stressful time for special education students. And. It's a very stressful time for teachers, especially education students, because a lot's riding on them. And it's just overwhelming. These teachers and students need help. They need support. I sit here and listen about. the help that the AL students are getting and the help that the GATE students are getting or all the programs that those students are getting. And those are great. And I'm really proud of the district because when I was a student here, that wasn't exactly the way it was. Inclusion's coming. And Woodland's way behind the ball on inclusion. And that makes me really sad. Because if
044we had acknowledged it when I came up here four, five years ago, like I asked, we would be in the forefront. We would be the leader. We would be the example. I went to a UDL conference today in Stockton. I did not see one person from Woodland there. I was really disappointed because there was some really great information and yet not a single person from our district was represented there to learn the newest trends, the newest resources, the newest help. That makes me desperately sad for this district. Woodland needs to wake up. Woodland needs to open their eyes. Woodland needs to look at all their students, not just some of their students. I keep hearing saying that you guys are here for students, and that's great, but you need to be here for every student,
045not just some students. This is one of your largest populations, and yet it is the most neglected population. I really hope sooner or later, that you open your eyes and hopefully that will be sooner so it's not too late. Moving on to K1, Superintendent's Report. Before I start my report, I'd like to read a statement on behalf of Trustee Zavala, Jiffra, board members, staff, teachers, students, and families. I regret to inform you that I'm not able to attend today's scheduled school board meeting due to an unavoidable personal commitment. I extend my sincerest apologies for any inconvenience my absence may cause to the proceedings. Please rest assured that I attended this meeting's board agenda debriefing and am committed to fully fulfilling my responsibilities as a board member. And I will diligently review the meeting minutes and
046catch up on important discussions or decisions made during my absence. Thank you for your understanding. Trustee Zavala. Tammy if you're still here, we're presenting an update on special ed at the next board meetings. You don't want to miss that. Oh Darn, well, we're preparing a presentation and you can always watch the video. I'll catch you up with everything we're doing with special ed and next step. So thank you for your comments. And our special ed students are definitely a high priority for us. I want to share with the board that today I attended the Mosaic Children Museum. They had a ribbon cutting event today. Mosaic, sorry. It was a... Quite a credit experience to see what's available for our students our little our little ones Lots of opportunities to play and learn and I'm hoping
047for a partnership that we can expose our some of our students To this museum and resource in our community There's a lot of effort from a lot of community members and it just shows how important our children and families are to our business partners or and community members also, I want to thank our HR department or getting some resources to support our teachers, to support their physical well-being. They were able to work out a discount for teachers from the InShape Fitness, also from Fitness Systems and the YMCA Fitness Center. So an email was sent out, I think, believe today. letting our staff know this opportunity to discount so we're very thankful also again for partnering with our community um for and to provide this opportunity for teachers and staff that want to take advantage of
048physical fitness and discount Our middle schools have been, and high schools have been participating in CTE showcases also, showing our students what's available to them, what kind of pathways, interests. So I want to thank the staff and their services and staff, our secondaries for putting this together to expose our students for these opportunities. LAST WEEKEND WE HAD SEVERAL STUDENTS AND PARENTS ATTEND A COLLEGE FAIR AT THE MEXICAN CONSULT IN SACRAMENTO. IT'S CALLED STEPS TO COLLEGE. IT'S A YEARLY ANNUAL EVENT. I WAS VERY PLEASED TO HEAR THAT WAS A VALUABLE EXPERIENCE FOR OUR STUDENTS. THERE WAS OPPORTUNITY FOR THEM TO VISIT WITH MANY COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES, FILLING FINANCIAL AID. information and just I heard there was raffles and our kids for whatever reason who are winning all the raffle prizes so they were very excited about
049that. Also, I attended the Promesa Poderosa mural, female mural event, and I want to thank our president, Javier Grana, for being there and doing the welcoming at the event. It was really nice to see this mural on our campus, to see our students help host this event. So we had our students make culinary arts, did the refreshments, and then our mariachi students also. played at the event and our high school, the students also made flower arrangements. So it was really nice to see our students hosting this event and learning about all the women who have made a huge impact in our region. Yesterday, if you'll see me limping around, it's because I injured my foot and it's been really hard not to be running around like I normally do, but I've been trying the best
050I can. I did make it to Esparto last week and I had a chance to visit Mrs. Fowler's classroom. Let me tell you she has a very relaxed and you feel it right when you walk in very relaxing very inviting classroom So it was fun to visit Miss Bartle elementary and visiting in your classroom. It's just nice that to know that You know, do you understand the everyday issues that our teachers are facing and you're in the trenches with us along with us Also, I stopped by really briefly at the African American Parent Advisory Committee and they were giving input and feedback on their graduate profile work that's coming. They'll be presented to the board in the coming months. And then I swung over by the Migrant Education Parent Advisory Group as well that meets
051at Woodland Prairie. Heard lots of comments from the parents of everything that they're learning about financial aid and the resources that we're getting They were also reviewing our weekly update with the parents I think Jerry said hey Jerry your information is being shared review what the parents and that was really nice to see our parents are very active learning about what's available to them and Then lastly I want to thank everyone that was involved in responding to the incident that we had at Maxwell Elementary School our everyone our teachers especially our teachers and the staff that were actually in the actual incident at the school during the lockdown it was uh some tense moments um but in the end uh you know we met our goal is to make sure that everyone got home safely
052i did meet with the police chief and the deputy Chief and I also want to thank the Woodland Police Department for their partnership and making sure that we responded as best as possible that we kept communication Open at every moment during the the incident I want to thank our parents for being patient as we were trying to navigate on real live time. What was happening? during incident, it is very, very important that when we have incidents such as the one we experienced that we work together and that we follow procedures so that we can let our students and our... and staff get through the incident as safely as possible. We did in any kind of emergency, like I have shared, it's never gonna be perfect because every incident is very different. And so, but it's
053really important for us to remain as calm as possible, to follow our procedures and to be flexible. to understand that we're dealing with an incident and being patient with the information. And so I want to again thank everyone, especially our staff that were at the actual incident and our students. Our students were very resilient. They, you know, most of them were not impacted, but there are some students and staff that were, you know, still dealing with the feelings of that moment. We're going to just learn from this incident and just get better at the next one. And again, we will stay calm, follow our procedures, do our best to communicate. And we will always be communicating on our website any communication that goes out during emergencies such as the ones we experience you can always
054look on the website and the Schools that are actually impacted will also be getting text messages phone calls and emails to regarding during the entire incident So again, thank you again to Maxwell Elementary and our police department for helping us through this event And that concludes my report. Thank you any questions for the superintendent Seeing none, moving on to K2, which is a report from the California School Employee Association. Good evening, Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin, Board of Trustees, Cabinet, and the community. My name is Rebecca Rossiter, and I am a library tech at Douglas Middle School. I also proudly serve as the president of Local Chapter 118 of the Classified School Employee Association. CSEA is continuing its work with the district to develop a plan now to begin the work of reviewing the draft job descriptions that
055are coming back from EMS as part of the classification study. Even though item M2, state and federal COVID-19 funds transition item. from last meeting is not on the agenda for the board to discuss. CSCA believes it is important to continue to advocate for the continued funding of a position that provides the first level of care to our students. Between this last meeting and this one, our e-board met with many members of the healthcare department. We've collected more information for you to consider. Prior to the pandemic, as you heard in one of the public comments, there was already talk and work being done to add positions to this area. The need for full day healthcare at each site is a basic safety measure. Not only do they support students in a variety of ways, but they
056have also supported our staff when needed. We have had employee medical emergencies where the nurse or healthcare tech is the first call as well. Some statistics we've collected at Woodland High School pre-pandemic, 64.7% of office visits were for the nurse. Post-pandemic, it's up to 84.3%. They're already projecting over 500 more nurse visits this year, with 1,653 as of the end of January. Pioneer High School, as of the end of January, are at 1,248. Prairie Elementary has 2,651 nurse contacts. SciTech has 973 visits as of the end of January. This site has one person in the office that this duty would fall on. Zamora in 2021 had 765 contacts, 2022, 1,341, and 2023, 1,176. Freeman this year so far has had 1,140 nurse contacts, and Maxwell so far this year has 1,587 contacts. After the board
057meeting where many people spoke up about the healthcare tech position, I heard feedback that implied some of the examples given were not impactful and were explained away in language like health techs are not trained to determine if a brone is broken or don't you think duties from ELOP, the after school program, is really a bigger concern for office staff. And I can understand those making these decisions based on a budget line item not understanding the impact this decision will make. Those who do not work on school sites or do not do the jobs these employees do don't know what they don't know. I do think it would be good practice to reach out to school sites and the employees that decisions like this would affect prior to making a final decision. It has been disheartening
058to hear that school board members have visited school sites since the last meeting and not attempted to connect with the health techs on site. In response to the comment that health techs are not trained to triage a broken bone, I would say that nobody in this district is trained to determine if a bone is broken. RNs and LVNs are not trained, neither are the principals, office coordinators, or the site admin clerks. However, the health tech position provides a specific person assigned to deal with that student that is not going to have the other duties of answering phones and dealing with office traffic, substitutes, and all of the other student contacts the office oversees. The nurse is able to attend to the child for the duration of their visit in the office whether that be five
059minutes for a band-aid or Several hours waiting for a parent to pick up their student with a fever or throwing up The removal of the health tech position stands to affect our most tiny and needy students in Regards to the ELOP duties that have been added to the school site office staff I would say that has no bearing on the additional duties the removal of the health tech position would have I think it really is further proof that a common theme is to look at job descriptions and figure out how to add duties to those already working in a full-time capacity. Now, I'm going to pass the remainder of my report over to our Executive Board Secretary, Leslie Estrella. Oh, she's the communications officer. Sorry. Sorry everyone, I didn't want the additional responsibilities. All right,
060so my name is Leslie Estrella. I am the CSEA communications officer, but I also work as the office coordinator over at Maxwell Elementary. So it's never not nerve-wracking being up here, but I did want to share a little bit about my experience during the lockdown. Our superintendent kind of mentioned earlier, as part of the office staff that day, it was a really difficult day. And it's actually, I've been meaning to write to you guys to kind of share my experience over how that all went down. But as you may have guessed, it's really difficult to speak on. I got to witness firsthand some of the... Honestly heroic acts that our teachers and our staff did that day Still a lot of processing so I'm just gonna keep to the facts right now. So the lockdown
061began at 1 50 and We remained in lockdown until 5 30 when the suspect was taken into custody Our students were starting to be released shortly thereafter and the last student was picked up at 6 40 so it was a very long day and like Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin mentioned, there is no perfect emergency. There's no way we could ever fully. prepare for the realities of what a lockdown and emergency situations like that can bring. But there are a few things that we did learn from it and take from it. And I think it's important as an employee of this district and a parent to two students at Maxwell Elementary for us to be able to share that kind of experience and that kind of knowledge with all other sites. So first and foremost, we figured out
062we don't have an official internal communication outlet or an app or a radio. So not all staff members as well as substitute teachers on campus have access to something like that that we can communicate through a safe and quiet and timely manner. So radios are great, but they're site funded. And they're only funded through discretionary funds, which... as we all know are slim and getting slimmer. So something like that is important for all of our members because we also learned during that lockdown that the intercom system is not the best way to access information as it started changing stuff that was happening outside with the situation behind our fences as well as our community members that were starting to gather in our parking lots. Another thing that became I mean, we all were already aware
063that our health techs are a really important position. But that day, we were lucky enough to have our health tech there. As soon as the lockdown began, as soon as we got that phone call, I was in the office with the principal. He got the phone call. Within a couple minutes, the police were at our door. Our admin had already ran out to go secure the perimeter, make sure all doors were locked and no students were left outside. I secured the inner corridors and all doors on the inside. At that same time, we had two students in the nurse's office. One was waiting to be picked up for, I think, a fever or nausea or something, and the other one was there with a stomachache because it was right after lunch. So our health tech
064created a makeshift fort so that our students weren't worried and they weren't scared, and she kept them calm and quiet during that entire event. And it wasn't until... the noise from the outside from the community members that were frustrated and confused and upset that these kids even realized that they were in any kind of danger. So thankfully, like I said, thank God for our health tech in that moment. And even once they did start fearing what was going on on the outside, our health tech... was able to take those students back to their classroom. All of which would not be possible because, as you guys are all aware, admin during lockdowns are the communication center. So he's in the midst of speaking to all kinds of different organizations, making sure all of the logistics are
065in place. Directors, everyone from the district office was heading over to the Woodland High to make sure everyone was ready for us in the event of an evacuation and things like that. I was helping make sure all of the staff and all of the students that I can reach through the inside were all calm and aware of what was going on. So those students would have been fending for themselves in the office. Our cafe specialist was helping. However, she's only part-time. So having a full person who's there, who's able to also administer medication because we were there for four hours, if not longer for some of them. Next bullet point though, schools have an awful lot of windows. Maxwell has a bunch of windows in front of our office as well as in each class
066door. We don't have the metal plates in front of our door. It's all windows, which is beautiful, but also a danger when it comes to lockdowns because we have visuals on everything. We've also, Maxwell was one of the sites that was warned by the fire marshal regarding window coverings. How they're against code and their fire hazard however, we haven't received any kind of word on official replacements or What we can use to aid in situations like a lockdown So we are still waiting to hear back about that because I know we're not the only site that has Had that kind of issue regarding a fire safe alternative to cover the windows Another issue that has been brought up is keys and I know keys are a sensitive topic Because with sites like ours once you
067have access to one room you have access to a lot of rooms however, a lot of our teachers don't have even access to locking adjoining doors next to their classrooms, so If I wasn't able to get to them and lock that door, that door wouldn't be locked until someone else with a master key can go and lock it. And a lot of our support staff also don't have access to keys. So there is no real great answer for that, but there is a solution that the district uses here in their office is the keypad. So we can have universal ways of getting through to certain doors using individual codes for members or for employees. or a badge system, which would work as well. The next day debrief, next day we did have emotional and mental
068support for our students. However, initially the staff did not have access to anything like that. We did have a debrief the following day and it was helpful, but it would have been more helpful if it was led by a trauma counselor because Everyone in that room that day was affected personally by the situation, including directors, including everyone who is a parent or who can imagine what was going on through the community members' eyes, as well as the students. And let's see, June. So it did leave a lot more questions that couldn't be answered in that moment because everyone was still very raw from all of the emotions. However, all of the staff members that were present during the lockdown, including the four substitutes, they all came back the next day. Everyone was present the following
069day for any students that decided to come back. And that in itself was beautiful. immense show of support and like the show of how much everyone cares about their students and is just happy that they were all safe. And then we did receive trauma-based emotional support that following Monday after the lockdown, but many didn't go to that meeting as it was optional and outside of their work hours or. because there was such a big delay from the initial event and the way they left the previous meeting, they figured it was just gonna be a meeting where someone shares the EAP number and they send us on our way. That's unfortunate because it wasn't. It was a social worker from Northern Valley Indian Health, and it was so helpful. I attended. They gave us a space
070to share our own experiences, and she was able to share her experiences with trauma and better explain everyone's reactions and how it's okay and how to cope with that kind of guilt and the what-ifs that start floating around. So there are a few things that we can probably work on. I know funding is always gonna be difficult, but it's really important that it's not just our site, but every site, because some of these things, luckily, we had a follow-up meeting this last week. The teachers were graciously allowed to miss a... training to be able to finish and heal from everything that happened and in that meeting we got a lot of answers and we've got a lot of suggestions about what we could do at our site that would help us but some of these
071things I think are important for all sites and all staff members to be able to feel better and for all parents within our district with that being said When it comes to a lockdown in an emergency situation, it doesn't stop once the last kid is picked up. It doesn't stop when the person's in custody. It goes on for a couple days. And we were fortunate to, or at least in the office, I felt it, that the support was there. We did not feel alone. There were, let's see. That night we called over to Rob Kirk because even our custodians were affected. Our daytime custodian was there. Our afternoon custodian was fortunate enough to show up early to work that day. And therefore she was also a part of the lockdown. So it was a long
072day for both of them as they were both in with students and other staff members trying to keep everyone calm and trying to navigate what that all is in that situation. And so by the end of the day, we still had police officers all over our campus making last minute searches, making sure nothing was left behind, nothing that was dangerous for the students to find the next day. So when we called MNO, we called Robert Kirk once it was all over and we asked him, hey, what can we do? What's absolutely necessary? And he helped us, guide us and told us what needed to be done that day and that the next day. They would be there to help us and they did. So we had about five vans full of different members from maintenance
073and operation to help our custodians that next morning to put the classrooms back together so teachers and students wouldn't be walking into the scene that they had left the night before. There were water bottles everywhere. There were desks pushed around to make sure the room was safe and everyone was secured during that moment. And when it was time to get out, they got out. And there was no looking back to go clean up. So that was amazing to see Jim and Rob there the next morning vacuuming and helping take out trash along with everyone else. And it was great. And we felt the support. I also forgot to mention that during the evacuation, we had 22 school buses lined up on Beamer, ready to transport over 400 students and staff in the event that we
074needed to evacuate. The director of transportation, Tony, was present on campus throughout the lockdown to assist with getting our students from point A to point B as safely as possible. And we received messages from Elizabeth Reith saying, hey, you're not alone. We are out here. You just let us know when you're ready and we'll go. And then the next morning as well. Spencer from food services sent an email very early in the morning the following day to let us know that they were thinking of us over at Maxwell and had prepared cinnamon rolls for the staff and hundreds of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies for the students. The treats were delivered to our office in multiple trays and still warm and ready to be passed out. It was a simple but huge comfort and For
075those of you that have had the cinnamon rolls from Food Services Kitchen, they have secret healing powers. And it was something so little, but it was huge. And to see how happy it made the students' face to know that someone was thinking of them and that these were made specifically for them, that this wasn't like a district-wide chocolate chip cookie day. This was, hey, someone cares about you and sent you guys cookies. And it was so beautiful. That was amazing. And then... During one of the following or one of the meetings following the lockdown It was mentioned that initially the district has never provided emotional or mental support for staff members after an event such as this However, knowing that to be the case and knowing that we did eventually still receive that type of
076support was comforting And I'd like to think that that type of support was never thought of because it was never needed thankfully But moving forward. I hope that Maxwell site and the event that happened there is able to enact small acts of change in how we respond to emergency situations throughout the district and how they're handled in the future. But yes. So thank you all for your support and Superintendent Ortega-Lemkin for being there the next day and helping us through it even with your hurt leg and everything. So thank you so much. That concludes our report. Hopefully it's not this long next time. Thank you Once the report from the Woodland Education Association, I don't know what's in the air tonight, but I've almost cried like four times So thank you for that wonderful report
077CSEA For really putting us in the shoes of what it was like during that. So thank you for sharing that. It's really valuable All right There we go. Good evening Board of Trustees superintendent Ortega Lemkin cabinet and community Thank you for this time on the agenda. My name is Becca Bernard. I teach science at Douglas Middle School, and I am honored to be serving our members as the president of the Woodland Education Association. I stand here as an elected leader of about 550 educators to speak to you all as the seven elected representatives, I know two of you aren't here tonight, of about 10,000 students and over 1,000 employees. That's over 11,000 unique lived experiences and perspectives. And it is inevitable that we cannot know all the details of the goings-on of every person we
078were elected to represent. It's just physically impossible. I try my best to stay connected and communicate with all 18 school sites, but there are just not enough hours in the day for us to know everything that's happening day-to-day in our schools. For example, I don't expect that you know that yesterday the seventh grade science teachers at Douglas shuffled students and juggled a tier two intervention test reteach and retake process to support students who didn't pass their unit four body systems test while simultaneously offering an extension activity for students who needed enrichment after demonstrating mastery of the standards. or that in the same time I facilitated that, I also resolved a social-emotional challenge for a struggling student and helped another student learn how to wrap a Valentine's gift for his crush while also grading test retakes
079while other students worked in groups on their posters and then helped break up a fight on the sidewalk right after school with four other teachers before we sat down for our staff meeting to reflect on how to improve student dialogue in our lessons and then collaborate with our PLCs on common formative assessments. My point is not to shame you for not knowing all of this, but to draw attention to the fact that there is so much that you are unaware of that happens on a daily basis in our schools. And this is just from my singular perspective. There are so many experiences like the ones I mentioned above in which one of our 550 educators are juggling six different situations at once, all with a smile on their face and probably a lukewarm coffee mug
080in another hand. I cannot know it all, but I can be quick to ask questions of the experts when I am lacking the answers or the experience to understand what their job looks like. That is why tonight I'm excited to be standing here with our seven certificated school nurses. They are here as experts in their field to share with you a little about what goes on in the nurse's office around our district to ensure that you make an educated decision that is best for our students and our staff. In order to make a well-informed decision, it is essential that you hear not just from the district employees, whose job it is to run the business side of our school district, which is a very important job. Power to you guys. Appreciate you very much. But
081also from the experts who can tell you the impact that your decision will have on the health care needs of our students, which is our certified nurses. Unfortunately, the slides I prepared for tonight were not able to be projected on the screen, but I was able to send them to you all via email earlier this morning. I hope you are able to or are able to at some point this week take a look at those beautiful faces of the 12 health techs who support our students on a daily basis. There is also a chart in those slides with some data that I'm going to refer to now as I introduce our nurses, but you'll be able to look at it for the numbers later. Is Shauna here? Shauna, sorry. Shauna represents three schools and 1,217
082students. We have Bridget. Is she here? Bridget represents 1,906 students at two schools. We have Jen M., who represents three schools and ALS, which is about 1,550 students. Kara, who represents 1,500 students also and two schools. And Jen S., who represents two schools and 1,537 students. Teresa. She is not here, but she's here in spirit. 1,350 students and four schools. And Tricia, who represents 405 students, which is one school plus IPAT and all preschool students. Power to you also. Thank you. These incredibly kind... compassionate, hardworking women are the seven district registered nurses for our 10,000 students in Woodland. They bounce between 18 school sites, which are divided based on number of students as well as level of acuity, which I learned from them is a medical term that refers to how critical a patient's injury
083or illness is and the level of care they receive, which is why some of them represent more students and some represent fewer. You learn something new every day. Where are we? They spend their time providing mandated screenings, treating acutely ill and injured students, as well as providing care for students that are medically fragile with ongoing daily needs. I was lucky enough to meet with all seven of these women last week to have a robust discussion about their concerns for the health care needs of our students here in Woodland. While it is clear that not only are these women highly educated and passionate about their jobs, they are also constantly seeking more information and better ways to serve our students. I would encourage any of you trustees to take them up on their offer to visit
084them in the field. Their office door is open to you all to spend a day or just an hour in their shoes to truly understand what it means to serve the health care needs of our students. So why are healthcare tech positions in our district so essential? There is a well-known correlation between poverty and lack of access to healthcare. Over 70% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch, and this is the highest it's been in the last decade. School is becoming the hub for catching students with hearing, vision, and other healthcare concerns, especially mental health, and the demand is only increasing. We are already only a staff of seven for 10,000 students. According to the National Association of School Nurses, suggested ratios of nurses to students for a healthy population is one nurse
085to 750 students. We are currently averaging double that, one nurse per 1,400 students. That is why we desperately need the additional support with the daily tasks of following up with families, inputting data, filing screenings, as well as basic first aid. An unexpected benefit of our health techs has been how much they've improved our data collection system. We've never been more informed about which students are coming into the office and why they're being seen, allowing us to follow up with families when we start seeing patterns of behavior and illness that might be affecting their attendance, which we all know is a growing issue in our district with ADA and chronic absenteeism. Our health techs play such a significant role in supporting our students. Because our nurses are split between sites, the health techs are the constant
086presence in the health office when the nurses cannot be there. They treat wounds, care for sick students, give medications, support students during times of mental health crisis and anxiety. This is directly supporting our LCAP goal number two, meeting social, emotional, and academic needs. Each student's individual social, emotional, and academic needs will be met through quality first instruction, enrichment, and intervention in a safe, supportive, and inclusive environment. How can we provide a safe and supportive environment while cutting the funding for those who provide the most basic safety needs of the student population? Without health techs, attendance will suffer, achievement and grades will fall, and the most vulnerable population will be unsupported at the most basic level. Woodland students deserve the best. The health tech positions were perhaps initially implemented as a temporary position to help with
087measures related to the pandemic. However, they have proven to be essential long-term for our students' mental and physical well-being. About eight years ago, the first health tech started at the high schools, followed by extra support starting at the middle schools shortly after. The elementary schools were left with access to a school nurse who was split between various sites and might only be at the school one to two days a week. Students didn't conveniently schedule their illnesses and injuries for the days when the nurse was there. Instead, our wonderful, hardworking office coordinators were expected to handle basic first aid despite not being trained or hired to do so. I don't know about you, but it seems unfair to ask the customer service representative at Costco's front desk to change my tires on my car when the
088tire technician is on their lunch break. Just because something was done a certain way before the pandemic doesn't mean that that was the best way for it to be done. We love our office coordinators and we are grateful for the role they played for many, many years handing out band-aids and supporting students. But now that we have seen what it looks like to have a trained medical support staff in every office, how can we go backwards? When we know better, we have to do better. Every day, dozens of students are seen by our health techs. Visits range from two minutes to two hours, depending on the level of need that they have, whether they need to leave school for their illness or injury. While our nurses are running between schools throughout the district all day,
089our health techs have been instrumental in responding to on-site, hands-on daily care when they can't be there. This ranges anywhere from ice packs to panic attacks to seizures and severe head injuries. The following data was provided in collaboration between our school nurses and health techs from their daily health office medical logs. I'm going to throw some numbers at you, but please don't do what my students do and glaze over just because I'm saying numbers out loud. I'm going to send this to you and you can look at it later. So far this year over 1,200 students have been seen at Pioneer 1,600 students at Woodland High 2,600 students at Prairie 1,500 students at Maxwell 1,100 students at Freeman Gibson averages 50 to 100 students a week Plainfield 60 to 65 a week Zamora 75 a
090week Whitehead 15 a day Beamer 20 to 35 a day Furthermore, at Woodland High, they have a lovely amount of data. I encourage you to reach out and ask them for this information. From 2017 to 2020, they had a sign-in sheet that was a Google form. 65% of office visits were for the nurse, and the data from 2021 to present is showing an increase to 84.3%. So we're seeing an almost 20% increase in demand for nurse visits. There our health techs are the eyes and ears for nurses when they're at different sites They update the nurses on health incidents that happen while they were at another site so that they can follow up and provide better care for students Not to mention our nurses are human beings also and they do get sick They have
091to stay home to take care of their own family members and they have life circumstances that prevent them from being at work on Days when a nurse is out. There's no replacement Having a health tech in the office ensures that our students are always able to receive the best possible care for their health care needs. We hope that this report has given you even more context to understand why our health techs are so essential for our students. We understand their positions were initially designed to be temporary, but your budget is a visualization of your priorities as a district. Woodland has the money, you just have to decide where your priorities are. These nine health techs are in direct contact with thousands of our students on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. As a board, you
092say that students are truly your top priority, but we need to see the board take action to prove that the students are the heart of every decision you make. Asking someone else on campus who's not trained by our nursing staff to respond to medical emergencies is not safe. Woodland students deserve a safe and supportive learning environment and our health techs are trained healthcare professionals who ensure that our students are given the healthcare that they need and deserve. Thank you again for this time on the agenda I'm so grateful to work with such talented passionate nurses And I am even more grateful that they were able to be here tonight to have this collaborative conversation I know that the item wasn't on the agenda tonight we expected that it was going to be and we look
093forward to having the discussion at the next board meeting when it is on the agenda and We hope that this allows you to make a more informed decision And as mentioned earlier, you have all been openly invited to visit our nurses' offices to walk an hour in their shoes. Thank you, and this concludes my report. Before we go on, I need a bathroom break, so call in a break. We'll reconvene in a few minutes. 30-second warning, 30-second. All right, moving on to board reports. Raise your hand if you have a board report. No hands going up. No board reports. Ah, Trustee Garcia. Yes. I want to share first in Spanish. and I want to mention that I really enjoyed this event, which was amenized, as the superintendent mentioned, by our music students and also the
094culinary arts students and gastronomy students were able to share what they have learned. In this event, there was also a lot of audience, including the proud parents of seeing what So I want to share, I also had the opportunity to attend the event for the Poderosas mural community event at Goodland High School. And I really enjoyed this event because I saw the proud, the families very proud to see what the students from our community did. The students from music and culinary arts are learning with a large audience, including community leaders. So that's concluding my report. Thank you. Other trustees? No? So I'd like to let the community know as well, Trustee Rodriguez is unable to be here. Circumstances are out of his control. He will share more once he joins us back on the dais.
095But he didn't want me to communicate that to the public. I want to share that I also attended the mural event and I was told that we're actually the first group organization to have the mural for a long period of time. It's another group that had it for two days, but we're actually gonna have it for two months and then it'll keep rotating. So we're the first group organization to have that privilege. And then also just recognize that one of my professors actually recognized on the mural. And so that's very cool to see her and she was definitely a big influence, a big impact in my development as a young man and in my contributions to the community. I had a lot of mentors and she was definitely one of them. And then the other
096part or the next part is I'm going to encourage the superintendent. I hope my colleagues join me in encouraging her to attend. I got this email. Maybe you all got it, too. It's called the Harvard Institute for Superintendents and District Leaders. And did you all get that email from any chance? Anyway, so it's in April 2nd to the 10th and I encourage the superintendent to look into that opportunity to see if it fits in a calendar So she can learn more and bring back I'm a strong proponent of professional development within my team You know when in my work area and I also want to support our superintendent continue to develop herself as well So if you're interested in learning more about it I'd be more happy to share that link with you and that
097ends my report Committee updates any updates from committee members? Trustee Richardson-Fowler. Yolo County School Board Association met. We are planning our year and I was re-elected to be the president of the Yolo County School Board Association. You don't sound too happy. We'll blame it on the foot. It's the foot. FROM THE WILLING COLLABORATOR FOR YOUTH, THE MINUTES ARE ATTACHED. SO HOPEFULLY YOU HAVE A CHANCE TO READ THOSE. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, WE WOULD BE HAPPY TO RESPOND TO THOSE. THE NEW PRESIDENT FROM THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE ATTENDED HER SECOND MEETING. THE CHANCELLOR ACTUALLY FROM THE DISTRICT SHOWED UP IN PERSON THIS TIME. I TOLD HIM THAT I'VE SEEN Chancellor from the district more in the last thing he's been there six months Then I saw the other Chancellor total in their entire time that there
098were Chancellor's so I really appreciate that he's coming around to to our town and Supporting the efforts that they're doing and they mentioned that they're gonna break ground actually on the soccer field also So we're excited about that Trustee that's anything you want to add Okay. Thank you any other committee. Yes. Yes for the ethnic study committee so we Get our meeting last week and we get update what what are they doing for there and the courses? We are previously approved it on June 23 of the last year That's concluding my report. Thank you and we the meeting we've decided to move out three in front of our one and so we're gonna go into information update on family engagement efforts Well money before you start I just want to point out to the trustees
099that during the board retreat, the board went through an exercise in identifying the board priorities and parent engagement was one of those priorities. And so this presentation is to address that priority and to update the board on what is happening with parent engagement, what are we doing, what progress we're making, the next steps. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. So they mentioned here to provide an update on our parent engagement as always just to remind us all that all the work that we do is are anchored in our four district goals and parent engagement is vital and key for all four goals and specifically for the success of our students Tonight I'm specifically going to provide an update on our parent advisory groups at the last presentation Last year. I did not review this. I thought
100it was important It is an effort that a lot of our directors are involved We lead and facilitate Parent advisory groups and so we'll be sharing with you about eight updates on different parent advisory groups throughout the district Then we'll continue with a community and family engagement program update, which is part of what we do. We provide parent training and workshops throughout the district. And we also have our CAFET team here they'll be speaking to today. And then we'll finish with a quick update on our student services and some of the trainings they provide. Just to review our board policy. We know that our parents are partners I was glad to hear or see your moms from our african-american parent advisory group that group has grown I would have seen a city always in size
101but mighty in force They're very active and lovely folks too. I facilitate that group. So I enjoy my time with them We know that parents are key partners or influential and student success of our students Not only do we want our parents to participate with us in education. We want our parents to become advocates Provide feedback and decision-making which a lot of our committees do or D lack our Elkhart provides specific feedback on Elkhart goals and eel services We want our parents to be advocates for their students not only for themselves or education You're gonna hear from one of our parents tonight Who's here to speak about her experiences and how she's an advocate for her her child and how she does that? That role her and her husband take Our parent advisory groups to
102start tonight, like I mentioned, we'll be reviewing about eight of them. We have LCAP Collaborative that focuses on the LCAP. We have different groups that focus on district goals and program implementation. Our Expanded Minings Program that Director Sharp facilitates. All of our groups provide us direct feedback on potential areas of need. Some of them have specific roles. You'll see that in the chart. As stated here, as you'll see here, we've listed our, not an extent, I'm sure that there's more groups out there. We've decided to focus on these for the interest of time. I'm going to steal Louis's line. We have our groups and our audience and really what we want to focus on is why we collaborate with them. So our first group that Director Lambie facilitates is our American Indian Parent Committee, which
103has been active for a long time in their establishment. They've been more active lately and they have. Their focus has been establishment of Title IV, correct? Title six I don't know my Roman numerals. Thank you I knew that was wrong engine education program and relate their focus the last year was a mural in our partnership with our native dads and developing the Native Resource Center over at Douglas Middle School and they meet as Well, and we have an audience that we invite to those meetings next we have our district English learner Advisory Committee Which is a committee that is required by state and federal law They advise on EL development and el cap development and it is required committee that districts with amount of English learners specifically have to have at the district level. Next
104you saw some of our lovely moms earlier. We have our African-American Parent Advisory Council that we had several years ago. Kind of went a little dormant during COVID. We brought it back and we're working really hard to build and they are really committed to becoming partners in education with us and facilitating and providing us feedback on how we're doing in serving our African-American students in our district. Next trustee trustee director Foster leads the special education parent Advisory Committee Which really focuses on engaging our families and providing input on how the LCAP impacts our families and their special ed for special ed families All these different groups you'll see on the chart. I'm not going to review them in front of you on me differently They have their targeted audience and then there's a range of
105attendance Some folks did arrange some people did how many parents have intended this entire year? Next is our lcap which is a required committee that provides input our lcap development They work on the lcap then then goes through D like it goes through site counts through then before it comes to the board we have our migrant ed advisory on committee that Superintendent a lampkin mentioned visited earlier this week. They provide updates to our families We work in partnership with them to how to better serve our migrant families in our district Last but not least we have our gate advisory parent committee in our expanded mine learning committee They meet quarterly and they are really in charge of providing input on how we are doing and serving our gate families as well as the expanded minds
106program is how we're How we're doing and providing after-school program for our students and we we have very robust after-school expanded minds programs Fully known as ACES and ELOP, our name now is Expanded Minds. So all of these committees provide vital feedback to the district, to the board, indirectly or directly. All of our directors meet with these and we're really proud of the growth that we made in all of these committees. We didn't have all these committees. And I would say even before COVID, we didn't have all these committees. So we have a robust group of parent advisory committees that we work hard to. engage with to provide feedback, direct feedback. So we feel like we have a good connection with a lot of those groups. Next, I want to highlight our CAFE, our Community
107and Family Engagement Program. And we want, as you know this, we have a robust CAFE specialist. group of folks and we have some of them here tonight. One of them will be speaking to you and we provide workshops around parent engagement, early literacy. We have the Latino Literacy Project which is we're in second year and then we started our yearly survey last year and we have created a schedule. Janet Alfaro, our cafe manager, you'll see in a bit. We are now creating a complete series of all workshops around what our parents said they wanted. Like I mentioned our Latino Literacy Project, we're in year two. This entire year we've had 10 sessions across all of our elementary schools. We've served over 300 families, parents who've come through that program. Really focuses on early literacy. We
108target our TK through second grade families. I'm hearing some pictures from this year. You'll see families with students. Our parents come. They learn. Our campus specialists teach this class. This class is taught by all of our campus specialists. They're trained. And they're on year two of delivering the program. And we're getting great results. Our families are reading. They receive bilingual books to take home after they complete the program. And we're really impressed with the progress in this program. In our dual immersion world, we continue in our year two, year three of the grant, but year two of our parent engagement program. We had in-person sessions the first semester. Now we're transitioned to online, Libro Terapia Book Club, which really focuses on very similar reading skills for our dual immersion families. So that is now happening
109online. And we had a parent reach out and ask for Yana to, they want a room in the building so they can all be in here together and do the Zoom. together so we're working on providing that for them And as mentioned we have just to list a couple of examples of the parent workshops are We had an a through G requirement session last August and we had the greatest turnout We were actually shocked we had to bring tables and chairs we had 90 parents in English and Spanish Just show up in every single parent brought their student without us telling them to it was amazing So we'll be providing that again. We're also be providing from workshops on transitioning from middle school to high school how to prepare for Kinder TK, Life After High
110School. We're also doing a project to inspire mini series. Instead of the 46 sessions, we're gonna provide only the most, some shorter series, dual enrollment. We just did a session on ELPAC for English learner families. And we're collaborating with our student services department on providing CPR sessions. Last year those were very popular as well for our families. And here again you'll see some pictures of our workshops from throughout the year. And next, I'm going to call up Yanet Alfaro, who's going to introduce our parents tonight and our coffee specialist. Yanet? Good evening. trustees superintendent Ortega-Lampkin. Tonight we're going to be hearing from Martha Magdaleno who is a dedicated and passionate parent within our school district. Her speech will be in Spanish and her daughter Ximena Izquierdo will actually be the one translating on her behalf.
111Following both of those speeches we will hear from one of our cafe specialists Carlos Morelia. He will be providing you guys with a brief summary of the services and support that our cafe specialists provide. families within our district. Agradecemos profundamente los programas que se nos brindan como padres, que nos equipan junto con los maestros para garantizar el éxito académico y social de nuestros hijos. Uno de esos programas, el programa CAFE, ofrece constantemente cursos e iniciativas valiosas para nosotros los padres. Estas ofertas son inclusivas y brindan experiencias de aprendizaje enriquecedoras. Recently, I saw the need to apply a lot of what I learned through these programs. The programs equipped me with the skills to advocate for my son in a peaceful and effective way, with the purpose of supporting him in his learning. I feel very
112proud, not only to help my own son, but also to lend my voice to help other students in his class. Mi esposo y yo somos orgullosos padres participantes de estos programas. Para terminar, me gustaría compartir una reflexión que resuena profundamente en mí. El que no es apto para servir, no es apto para vivir. Les agradezco su tiempo y atención. Buenas noches. Hello, my name is Ximena and I will be translating what my mother has said. Good evening, Superintendent Ortega Lumpkin and members of the Board of Directors. My name is Martha and my husband is Jose. Together we form a family of five. Currently our oldest son is in 12th grade at Pioneer, our daughter is in 8th grade at Douglas, and our youngest son is in 2nd grade at Tafoya. I deeply appreciate the programs
113you provide to us as parents which prepares us along with teachers to ensure the academic and social success of our children. One of those programs, the CAFE program, constantly offers valuable courses and initiatives for us parents. These offerings are inclusive and provide enriching learning experiences. Recently, I found myself needing to apply a lot of what I learned through these programs. The programs equip me with the skills to advocate for my son in a peaceful and effective way in order to support him in his learning. I feel very proud of not only helping my own son, but also lending my voice to help other students in his class. My husband and I are proud parent participants of these programs. In closing, I would like to share a reflection that resonates deeply with me. He who is
114not fit to serve is not fit to live. I thank you for your time and attention. Have a good night. Gracias por compartir su perspectiva. Thank you for sharing your perspective with our experience with our parent program. Good evening trustees, Superintendent Ortega Lemkin. My name is Carlos Moreta and I'm a cafe specialist at Prairie Elementary. I stand before you today along with some of my peers. I'm eager to share the vital role that we in fostering strong connections between families and our school community. As a CAFE specialist, my primary mission is to serve as a bridge between the school and our families, ensuring that every parent feels not only welcome but actively engaged in their child's education. Our role is multifaceted, surrounding communication, advocacy, and resource provision. Communication is at the heart of what we
115do. We strive to create an open dialogue between parents and educators, making sure that information flows seamlessly in both directions. We work tirelessly to keep our parents informed about our school policies, academic programs, and upcoming events. By doing so, we empower parents to be active participants in their child's educational journey. Advocacy is another crucial aspect of what we do. We act as a voice of parents, addressing their concerns. and ensuring that their perspectives are considered and decision-making processes. By advocating for our families, we contribute to a school environment that is inclusive, that is responsive, and reflective of the diverse needs of our communities. Moreover, we provide resources and assistance to families navigating the educational landscape. From helping parents understand the curriculum to connecting them with support services, our goal is to empower families to actively
116support their child's academic success. We understand that each family is unique and we tailor our support to all of their individual needs. Beyond these responsibilities, we organize events that bring our school community together. Whether it's literacy workshops, a cultural celebration, a community service project, these initiatives foster a sense of belonging and unity within our schools, creating a positive and collaborative atmosphere all around. In conclusion, we are committed to strengthening the partnership between home and school because we believe that when parents are actively engaged, our students succeed. Thank you for your time and continued support. Thank you, Carlos and Lisbeth and Mariana and Yesenia and Maria, Teresa. And Janet, thank you for being here. Thank you for everything you do every day for our families. Muchas gracias, señora. Y señor Jimena. Puedo decir algo antes de
117que se despidan? Bueno, quiero decir que quiero felicitar a la señora Marta, a Jimena y a su esposo, porque yo los conozco a ellos de hace tiempo atrás, como fui una mamá muy involucrada en diferentes talleres y todo lo relacionado con el distrito. Felicidades, he visto cómo han cambiado a otra persona, a la señora Marta, porque ella es muy activa, todo lo que aprende. I'm going to say congratulations, Senora Martha Jimena and family. I will see how she improves and she just learned something today and next day put in practice. So I'm going to say thank you to all the cafe specialists for all they're doing and Janet Alfaro also. Those cafe specialists are very crucial. That's a connection for my experience. Cafe specialists are the connection with the school. They can guide us. They
118can guide us, especially when we come from a different country or anything else because they can help the parents in any ways. So thank you so much. Gracias. There are 12 cafe specialists. They're all not here. And I have a question, Maria. So about the, you mentioned about the Promesa family literacy. It was doing a dual inversion. So that's including, right? Correct. It's for all of our three schools, yeah. So, and this is the second year? Yeah. And it's open to any Spanish and English? They offer everything in both, yes, correct. Okay. I just want to clarify this. Thank you. Finally, I just wanted to highlight some of the trainings and workshops that we've been collaborating with our student services department Specifically around bullying substance abuse. They had a session with the police department a
119few weeks ago They also launched the screen agers movie series. I believe next week is the second one, correct? Yeah and we'll be collaborating on CPR as well. So all of our departments collaborate and facilitate. We have an iReady session next week as well for all of our elementary parents just to review the iReady learning platform for our parents. I know they hear about iReady, but we'll be doing more and more collaboration between our North African American parents asked about that during our meeting this week. And I said, well, actually, we're doing one next week. So we'll be doing more and more. facilitating programs that we know our parents need support with. Last but not least just to highlight our next steps continue to implement we always continue to advertise there's Jerry's office a superintendent's
120office our cafe specialists make personal calls every month they Janet Janet does an amazing job providing The task and the monitor sure for parents get personal calls. We've called some families so much that now they've they've They're like, please don't contact us anymore. So we we check on those We definitely do a lot of outreach and we really want to engage our families. We do a lot of calls We're going to continue to focus on retaining the amount of parent involvement we have. We feel really proud of the gains we've made since COVID. Our parents are coming back. It took a while. for folks to feel comfortable at the beginning. People wanted to do things on Zoom and it was hit and miss. Now we're doing everything in person and we'll be continuing. And so
121we just want to build relationships, continue with keeping parents here. And then as we do our yearly parent survey, we'll adapt our yearly offerings based on what parents need and what we see as a need aligned to the district goals, which in this case are literacy and providing more and more literacy workshops to engage our parents and partners. That's it and here we have another picture of the foyer this was their Latino literacy project graduation ceremony where all the parents finished the series and they get diplomas they bring their students and we have a nice celebration for them Can you who's in charge of the special ed meetings that are quarterly? Director can you please send me an invite to those as well? Thank you. Um and Is there overlap in the community advisory committee
122with silpa? And the parent participation? Okay. Debbie. Dr. Foster's injured, so I wasn't sure if she was going to come up or if she can speak from there. Other questions or comments? I would like to share something. Yes, last meeting, the superintendent shared with us about our district was part of our Sacramento. It was... Our district was a district spotlight. So they asked Maria Medina, Janet Alfaro, and I to go and present what our district are doing for our families. And they are very impressed. And I feel proud. And I want to say thank you, Maria. Thank you, superintendent, because you're crucial to helping this. And they want to reply us. So I just want to share it with you. We have to be proud. Other districts would like to be and want to replicate
123what has been happening in our district. Everything that is provided or helped by the parents. And I was invited to share with Maria and Janet, as well as Mrs. Marta and also me. Any other questions or comments? Can you share? Either what stands out to you or just some of the with the training that the cafe specialists get to be able to be as effective as they have been Well, yeah knit and it's critical so that I mean it you can come up and maybe you can share We have hold monthly meetings as she facilitates her and I talk about what we see needs trends. We bring community resources As a team, we collaborate to see what type of needs our parents need district-wide. So we meet once a month as a whole team to
124talk about what we're doing at our school sites, what needs we are in need of, and depending on whatever they tell me, I bring in resources from outside organizations that could benefit families in our district. I definitely understand them. My question more was for the cafe specialists. What sort of training so you hire a new person? What sort of training do you provide for them? So they to be as effective as they have been so we provided them with Aries training obviously so they can know how to utilize that Parent square training as well. They talk amongst itself a lot So a lot of things that they might be in need of they reach out to one another as well She's being very modest again. She's being super modest. I'm going to jump in. She
125mentors them. We have actually a new hire. She was here earlier, Alejandra, and she probably had to leave. And we meet with them first day. We walk them through it. We drive them to their site. We set them up. She sets them up. And we monitor and support. We bring outside folks. But for example, for the Latino Literacy Project, most of our specialist, they're not teachers, right? And so they were pretty intimidated at first when I told Janet, yes, they're going to be teaching the curriculum because it's going to happen. We'd be teaching in the morning mostly. When the parents drop off their little ones, they go to class. Janet scaffolded those lessons. They collaborated together. They modeled lessons for each other like good teachers do. They did the first lesson together. Janet modeled. They
126did it, and they watched each other teach for the first year, and they help each other a lot. This is an amazing team. They collaborate. And Janet is just... amazing support for them and we make sure that they're successful. Any question they have, they have her number and they also reach out to me. So we do a lot of mentoring and a lot of, I know there's some new rules, laws that just came out for Medicare and Medicare that we weren't aware of, just came to our radar. And so we'll be providing the training through the CSEA day training for them as well. And so as needs come up, we just make sure that they have the skills. And I've seen some of them teach the lessons. They do a great job. You would not,
127they're, We're developing future teachers if they want to. Most of our graphic specialists have bachelor's degrees. They're doing amazing and building relationships. We have the mindset that we serve families no matter what family comes to the door and we serve. And that is our role as graphic specialists is to engage our families and to make sure that they feel comfortable and heard. So we do a lot of customer service work as well. And Yanet does an amazing job helping them all the time. That's her job. She just does an amazing job making sure that they're successful. Yeah, and my point with that question was, again, that... unless we invest right in our cafe specialists where we wouldn't see the outcomes that we're seeing so I just wanted you all to say it out loud so
128that again the trustees here in the public hears again all that goes in right there's inputs and then there's outputs if you don't put a lot in then you're not going to see a lot out and in the responses to my questions you know there's a lot of evidence there of the impact you know so I'm very glad that you know it didn't take a lot of convincing when I spoke to the superintendent and my colleagues back then about creating these positions and modeling similar to structure to the Yale specialist, right? Because I was already working, you know, I said, why reinvent the wheel? You know, again, it didn't take a lot of convincing for that to happen. I'm glad to see that years later, right, they're still making a difference. And like you said,
129there's a good place where we're at and we're a model, right, for the districts. And then we can bring improving as well right in especially in the secondary right all those research shows that Parent engagement family engagement and then every year every year right and it's across the nation is not just with us but Definitely having that such a turnout at our workshops is phenomenal and again I want thank you all for the time you've spent working with their families We see that you care about your work you love your work you take joy in your work you take pride in your work and we can see that and so i want to thank you for that those are all questions thank you and i wanna i wanna also even maria alfaro is not here
130i wanna congratulate you here because he is a must he gets some of the most parents the padres and I want to make echo what you Maria say about Janet, Janet when she started I start, you know, parent involvement is a passion. She is a specialist and we always look for potential when the position opened. First where we went we said who? who can we bring up and train and she's been an amazing asset to the department. And I see the increase from the first meetings and now the meetings are a lot of parents there and it's because her. Relationships, right? Relationships. Yes, and all the cafe specialists. And I want to say also for the high school cafe specialists are more work for them and I want to say congratulations to them. Thank you.
131We'll make sure they're here. Thank you. Moving on to L1, which is the district mid-year report on the local control and accountability plan goals and required expenditures. Before you start, Christina, thank you for being here. You can leave. You don't have to stay for the rest of the meeting. Thank you so much. Muchas gracias por estar aquí. Ya se pueden despedir. Si quieren quedarse, también gustan quedarse, pero con confianza se pueden salir. And also, nos vemos en CAVE. A lot of our parents are going to CAVE, and Ximena is going to sing at the CAVE conference in front of 3,000 who knows how many people. So it's going to make us proud. Congratulations, Ximena. Great job. Okay, good evening. I am here to present the mid-year report for our local control and accountability plan. We
132are in the third year of the current LCAP, which was written in 2021, in the spring of 2021. And so these are the goals that were... We're written into the LCAP that we have now, and we'll be talking about each of these four goals tonight. These are the content of the presentation for tonight. And then just to move into it, into the presentation itself. So the purpose of the mid-year update, this is actually a new requirement in Ed Code to present the sort of a mid-year accounting of the new year's income. the metrics, the data in the LCAP that can show where we are at this point in the year as well as where we've expended funds. So there's a combination of things here which is the metrics and the data and then also the
133expenditures. And you will see all of that detail. inside the attachments that are in the board item the slides just have the very kind of big picture overview so just to describe our process for review in developing the mid-year update so throughout the year we're gathering data and this is really not a project For just me it involves all of the directors and coordinators in ed services and in some of HR and business so we're gathering data on our metrics so that we can Analyze our progress as we're going throughout the year and that happens on a on a quarterly basis Then what we're doing now is reviewing the three-year outcome. So that was established in 2021 when the LCAP was written. And you'll see that listed on the attachments for each goal. The three-year
134outcome is where we wanted the goal that we set in 2021 where we wanted to see our data. And then what we're also presenting tonight is whether that three-year outcome was met for the metrics that we're sharing in this presentation, and then also the expenditures. So where are we in terms of our actual expenditures at this point in the year? And then as we go into each goal, so just to explain what's here. So on the left-hand side is a green check. And that means that for that metric, we met the goal. We have now met the goal that we set in 2021, which was a three-year goal. So at the end of this year. for many cases, and those are the metrics that I'm presenting about tonight, you can see that we have met
135the goal that we set for this year. The red stop sign means that we did not meet the three-year outcome or goal for that metric. In some cases, it's we haven't met it yet, but those are situations where, as we move into the LCAP development, process for the next LCAP, we'll be looking at those items really critically to say why did we not meet that goal. So conducting some root cause analysis on each metric that we're not meeting, what is it that occurred so that we didn't meet that metric. Okay, so moving into goal one. So on the left-hand side, you have the metrics that we met our three-year outcome for. And if you want more detail about each of these, those are in the attachments, which have the yellow heading. And those have what
136the metric was, what our baseline data was. for that metric back in 2021. It has the current year update and then what that outcome was supposed to be. So whether it was increasing by 10% or increasing by 5% or decreasing in some cases. What I wanted to point out about this list here is that in some cases we were very close. On the on the right hand side in the red so for example with work-based learning if you were to look at the attachment you would see that we our goal was to increase the number of students participating in work-based learning by 10% and our increase our actual increase was 9% so we were almost there. And then for ethnic studies courses, I also wanted to point this out. The goal was to have 10
137courses at Pioneer and Woodland High, and we currently have eight with two in the works. There are two that are kind of in the pipeline. So we haven't quite met that one yet, but we're hoping that by the end of the year, those courses will be approved and ready to go. And so that's another. one where we're just about there, or will be by the end of the year. Okay, moving into goal two. So goal two is our biggest goal. about supporting students social emotional and academic needs and there's I think about 42 metrics for this goal and so obviously this is not close to the majority of the metrics that we have all of the metrics will be reported on with the annual update in the LCAP so In about two and a half
138months, we'll have the reporting of all of the metrics. Again, you can see sort of a selection of metrics that represent academics and then social emotional supports. And then I also brought in the metrics to support our students with disabilities. And you can see the metrics on the left-hand side are the green. check where we met the outcome that we had we had set for ourselves back in back in 2021 for goal three Now goal three only has four metrics in it. So it's it's the smallest goal in terms of the number of metrics Not that there isn't a lot of work happening in goal three, but in terms of the metrics there's there's just three of them and As I shared in the last presentation um earlier in the month about the california school
139dashboard you know that um on the lp um we declined a little bit and so we did not meet the the goal that we had set for ourselves back in um back in 2021 and then finally in goal four um We have a couple of our areas of challenge in the red. So the students reporting a high level of meaningful participation in school, that comes from the California Healthy Kids Survey. That did not increase the way we had wanted to see that. And then also students providing input to the school plan through surveys. Our goal, I think, was... to have at least 50% of students providing input and we just haven't gotten to that level of response on those surveys. And that's goal four. So next steps. As Maria was sharing about the LCAP collaborative
140and the DLAC, they do provide input and feedback on the LCAP process. So I'll be sharing this mid-year update with both of those committees over the next couple of weeks. We are continuing to review the data on metrics and expenditures so that we will be... we will be prepared with a full annual update of the LCAP for 24-25, and we will bring that forward to you in the next few months. In areas where we did not meet the three-year outcome, we will be conducting a root cause analysis to determine what needs to either be adjusted in that action in order to meet that outcome. And then identifying those actions, partner with that based on that outcome data. And finally, the end result of all of this will be developing that LCAP for 24-25. Just a
141couple of things that I've highlighted. So ensuring that all metrics are connected to an action within the LCAP. I think this is still a growth area for us. And so that's something that we'll be working on for the next LCAP. A new requirement in the LCAP template is to address all student groups that have a performance level of red on the California school dashboard at the district and at the school level. And so you will see some changes within the LCAP itself because of that. We're currently just working on that process right now. And then presenting to the LCAP and DLAC and engaging in that feedback and review process. And then bringing the LCAP to the board in June for the public hearing and approval. So a lot still to come with LCAP development. And
142that is the last slide. Thank you. Who has questions? Trustee Richardson-Fowler? When it says address all student groups that have performance levels on red on the school dashboard. Yes What does that look like? So that is where so in our in our in our metrics for example say in chronic absenteeism the chronic absenteeism metric so we will we will have the in the in the data we will be setting a specific goal or outcome for each of the student groups that are in the red so like foster students I'm just throwing some out there, but English learners, maybe white students. And so each of those groups will be called out in the LCAP itself, and they'll have their own set of outcomes for each of those areas where they're in the red. So red is
143the lowest level on the dashboard, yeah. Would that also look like, so one of our dashboard areas would be our English scores? What would that look like then? Yeah, so many of our student groups are in the red or orange on the ELA academic indicator. And so for those student groups, then they would have their own set of on that metric for the academic indicator. We list each of the student groups that's in the red and then set a... an outcome for them. And then have something in our actions that supports that group. We also have to do that for every school that is in red on the indicators as well. Okay, thank you. Other questions or comments? Trustee Garcia? Yes, I have a question about what the trustee follower asked. About the English learner.
144parents, they know how this measure or this... SCORES MEANS? SO AT THE DLAC MEETINGS, WE DO PRESENT ABOUT THE DASHBOARD AND THE ENGLISH LEARNER PROGRESS INDICATOR AND TALK ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS. AND YES, THERE IS A LOT OF WORK DONE WITH PARENTS OF THE DLAC MEETINGS AND AT THE ELAC ACTUALLY AT THE SITE LEVEL TOO. YES. SO THEY LEARN AT THE SITES AND ALSO THEY CAN ASK AND DLAC OR LEARN. OKAY. I just want to make sure. Yeah. Thank you. Questions, comments? Trustee Mott and then Trustee McDowell. So looking at the expenditures sheet, I'm looking specifically at goal three, but for any of these, I guess, generally, there's a lot of times a little bit of a disparity or a lot of a disparity between what was budgeted for expenditures and what was actually spent.
145And I guess with respect to areas of... where we didn't meet goals. Can you talk a little bit about what the gap is between what's budgeted and spent? In some cases, because the expenditures are as of the end of January, so we still have several months left in the year, so we would expect to see more actual expenses captured. by the end of May when we're finishing the LCAP. Understood. So this is just capturing a moment in time and not representative of the total? No. So when we're talking about salary, when we're talking about positions, so those expenses are encumbered for the entire year. But when we're talking about, like, for example, a service. Maybe that like for example the Latino family literacy project so so maybe they're they're having meetings and our trainings and
146events and This is what has been paid up to this point But that can that's continuing and so as invoices come in then they'll be reflected Understood that makes thank you. Yeah, totally and just to add in some cases too if we're not able to fill positions For hard to fill positions, you will see that as well. We anticipated looking for positions and we're not able to fill them. One I can think off the top of my head right now is the director of youth engagement. That one's been hard to fill. We have other situations like paraeducators and other positions that have been hard to fill and so that will be reflected too on the carryover front. And just to add on, so, excuse me, in the LCAP that you'll see later on this year,
147if there is a huge discrepancy between the budgeted and then the actual expenditures, then that has to be explained. So it's not just kind of left so to lie it it it has to there is an explanation that that comes with it if it's a staffing issue or or something else I had two questions On gold number two, which is the goal that relates to quality first instruction as a board in a district we've been invested a significant amount of effort and money in the PLCs and the solution tree as an implementation of that. Where is that reflected in the LCAP? So in the LCAP, professional learning community training and implementation is in the actions. We don't actually have metrics for PLC implementation. So here in this data that you have tonight, there were no
148metrics established for PLC implementation when the LCAP was written in 2021. How are we going to know if it's working? So that is something that we have had discussions about that. I know it. at the board level when I presented, I think, about PLCs during the literacy plan conversation back in October maybe. And so that is something that I think we will need to discuss as we move forward into a new LCAP is there are some areas like PLC where we don't have metrics. And we probably should. And that's what I was referring to under next steps in talking about metrics needing to be connected to an action within the LCAP. Right, because the two main... AREAS WHERE THE DISTRICT HAS NOT MET ITS GOALS ARE MEETING STANDARDS IN MATH, NUMERACY AND LITERACY. IF YOU
149DON'T HAVE ANY METRICS FOR THE PLC, HOW ARE YOU GOING TO KNOW? IT'S SHOWING IN THE DATA THAT WHATEVER WE'RE DOING RIGHT NOW IS MAKING VERY SLOW GAINS. YES. This is our first year of PLC implementation this year this current year that we're in so we don't We won't see you know, it'll be a little while. Yeah, right. Yes. So my second question is what's the timeline for the LCAP? revision Does this coming year is a major overhaul is that right or could be? Yeah, so well so in March. I will be sharing this mid-year or next week with the LCAP collaborative or at the end of February, sorry, at the end of February with LCAP collaborative and then the beginning of March with DLAC sharing the mid-year update, beginning to have those conversations about
150what is working and what hasn't worked yet and how we might need to make adjustments, collecting feedback about maybe additional metrics that we might need to include. So that really kicks off the development process internally with directors. We are reviewing the data and doing that root cause analysis to determine where we might need to make adjustments. So over the next several months, that's what's... what's happening with the LCAP. And when would the new LCAP be adopted? In June. In June of 2024? Yes. Thank you. That's all. I just want to remind the board that at a prior board meeting, the board agreed to continue with our same goals. You know we'll look at what is within our goals that is making progress revamp some add things but we are gonna still have the same goals.
151I just want to remind everyone about that. That was my follow-up question interesting with the revamping whether you're referring to the internal parts or the goals the goal parts. No, I I knew that that we were keeping our same goals I was just curious about how you know how it was gonna work No, and I agree with the internal components and so there's no other questions. I can ask my questions, but so I had a lot of concerns with You know when we're not meeting right the objectives or the outcomes or metrics you know where we want to refer to and it was confusing seeing goal goal goal and documents I'm glad you I'm glad you you clear that up but I asked a lot of questions like what's the plan right to accomplish this
152and Let me know if I misunderstood the response a few times was that maybe was switching to another one but to me is that we have We want to accomplish something and we don't accomplish it. It's not like oh, let's not do it, right? It's like what do we need to do if we thought it was important? Maybe we decide it's not important and we remove it but because we're not accomplishing wouldn't be like and I'm gonna be extremely say a 3g We're not meeting it so that we're gonna not do focus now. We're gonna focus on something else, right? So I just want to make sure that again as we're looking at that that we're deciding What we want to remove or focus more on and put more resource into those those items So
153yeah, that was a big concern. And initially, when the document came to us, it did not have the A through G, which to me are super important, especially college and career readiness. And talking about college, I mean, A through G are fundamental to college readiness and college enrollment and college success. So I definitely want to see those, unless my colleagues disagree, moving forward, those need to be at every presentation on goal one. And then related to that, as you all are talking about what to add, I will be advocating for tracking our graduates right through the student National Student Clearinghouse to confirm enrollment. Right. So we can see where our students are going to. Right. And if they're persisting as well. So we can tweak whatever we need to do to help in their success.
154Because we're talking about college and career, you know, and I know we can track career maybe better, maybe not. I don't know. But. also tracking but there is a tool mechanism in place not perfect but definitely is very very helpful in doing that. And so again if my colleagues agree we'll go in that direction but I will be advocating to adding that as an indicator of our success or proof that we're doing what we're doing because we're saying college readiness but then we haven't we're not measuring and how do we know right if it's happening or not. You know thank you for answering all the questions I had. You know, you know some back and forth and follow-up questions and I'll follow up with the superintendent as one of you But, you know, again, I'm
155glad that we are continuing the same goals because everyone knows that if you have goals for a few years and you change, it's like kind of why even have the goals to begin with initially, right? To me, goals have to be in place for a while, and the activities or the strategy definitely can change to accomplish that goal. But these goals are good goals. They're strong goals. It's just a matter about not what we do, how we decide to invest in those goals. Those are just my comments again all my questions were answered ahead of time so I won't torture you asking those questions again Again, you all did a great job answering those I have a question. Yes I will Christina can you Explain me if I am not mother or are just coming
156to our district how how cafe specialist decides Tell teach the parents how do they know if the kids are below. So they had to wait until the first conference and how they know how to learn the grades on the first conference. I know some, but always we knew something. Are you asking how parents are informed about student progress? How they... know how to read the grades, the grades on the conference. So maybe I can help with that. Yeah, Maria. So during. Or money I can jump up to. So there's two things that happens. So when the state releases their test, like the English Learner Language Acquisition Test and the SBAC test, there are reports that are sent home to all parents so that parents know how they compare with the state standards. So those are
157sent by the schools every year. When we receive those reports in addition to that during parent conferences Our teachers meet with each of the parents to review the report cards explain what the grades mean To talk about what interventions are happening in the classroom where reasons are available at the school and and give them tips about how they can help at home So those are the two the two main ways that parents will be notified about how their students are doing making progress towards grade level standards. I hope that's what you're asking. Yes, they always get every reports and I ready test results from I ready so they get those notifications as well. So and then our cafe specialist and our ELAC and teachers do a great job on making sure that they're working with
158their parents and notifying them how their students are doing. At the secondary level. There's not a parent conference, but they do grade update. What are those called, those reports? Progress reports. Progress reports that are sent to our... parents as well you know they can also contact the counselor if they're behind on receiving credits towards graduation the counselors are definitely communicating with us families and supporting them and getting them enrolled into intervention courses to make up credits to sign up for summer school and those types of opportunities talking about a summer school what are the first STUDENTS WHO ARE QUALIFIED FOR SUMMER. SO THEY NEED TO BE REFERRING FOR THE TEACHER. THEY ARE THE IEP. Yeah, we usually target students that are below grade level. We give priority to migrant ed students, foster homeless, English learners,
159special ed students, and yeah, teachers help us identify students who need to attend. And then that's in elementary and 7 through 12, especially in high school. I'm speaking for Director Garrillo. It's credit recovery, right? We know which students have failed the course, and then they get to take those courses. I know Elodia mentioned it, so in DLAC. In ELAC we review those reports with families. We put one on the and we go through it. Now that's only for the families that do attend but we do review test reports. We prep them for conferences. We prep them with questions so they can be prepared to interact with families. Hi. For secondary summer school middle school is completely elective. So it's advertised. All the kids are encouraged to attend but it's whoever signs up and we always
160end up having room. whoever wants to go can go but for high school it's purely credit recovery so counselors meet with the students at the beginning of the second semester they start in January as they're doing course selection with the students they tell students who are behind in credits hey you should go to summer school here's what we're doing here are the classes that you need to take They give us the list of students that are recommended for summer school based on their credit needs. They contact parents, ask whether or not they want their students to attend. If they say yes, they put them in the database. And then the summer school coordinator confirms with families that they want their student to attend and then enrolls them. Thank you. So Lori, I have another question.
161Correct me if I'm wrong. So the cafe specialist is the person who contacted the families when the students are low sometimes? On credits? Yeah, on credits. They will help. Right, especially if there's a language issue, the counselor doesn't speak Spanish, the family does. And then when we are trying to confirm enrollment closer to the end of the school year, the cafe specialists will help us make those phone calls because there are often too many for one or two counselors to be able to handle. So especially at the end of the school year when they're dealing with seniors who are graduating or sliding into the finish line trying to make it to graduation. And it's the same when there are absentees, the cafe and the counselors contact the families, correct? Yeah, well, and also the attendance
162liaisons or the attendance specialists at the school, depending on the nature of the absences and the frequency. The attendance liaison has to be bilingual? No. Is not a requirement? It's not a requirement. Okay. Thank you. Sure. All those are my questions. Just to clarify, parents can also request because usually the spots for people to go to the programs are not full. So parents can also reach out and say, can my kid go to summer school if there's these spots available? For middle school? Across the board, yeah. Middle school, high school? Not for high school. High school is purely credit recovery. We don't do acceleration. So the only kids that get into the high school program are those that need it. Middle school, yes. Parents can send their children as long as they've done the enrollment
163piece. For elementary, I know they often have wait lists. So once they exhaust the wait list, then... Okay. Thank you. But we increased last year the summer programs, right? We did. Yes. Other questions? Comments? That's all. Thank you. Moving on to L2, which is information update for foster youth homeless services. Once again, this topic is also one of the board's priorities as one of the results from the board's board retreat where the board discussed priorities, and this is one of the ones that also came on. one of the top five areas and I just wanted to have an opportunity to for staff to update you on what we're doing for our foster and homeless youth. Good evening trustees and superintendent Ortega-Lampkin. I'm here to present on the foster and homeless youth program that we have
164here at Woodland Joint Unified. As always we ground our work and our goals. This clearly hits gold to the social emotional and academic needs of our students. Moving along, just so you have an overview of what I will be presenting, we'll be talking about legislation behind both the homeless, which is considered McKinney-Vento, and foster youth programs. We'll talk about the rights our students have as foster and homeless. We'll talk about our data, and then we'll move into the supports we have, and then we will be sharing a story just to kind of humanize a little bit of what's going on there. Okay, legislation, I'll be talking about homeless and then foster separately. Legislation revolving around our homeless is the McKinney-Vento Act. That is a federal legislation. And so that is to ensure that students have
165educational rights and protections of our homeless students. It gives them free access to an appropriate public education, including public preschools. So it's access. to provide students with what they need to be a part of our schools successfully. It defines, the McKinney-Vento defines the LEAs, which can be our school districts and our county offices. We provide our own homeless services here in Woodland Joint Unified with the support of our county as well. What is defining homelessness? Homelessness is when students or families, I'll just say families here, lack these three things, a fixed, regular, or adequate housing. So fixed is stationary, something that is permanent and not subject to change. Regular would be defined as something that a student has as consistent nighttime availability. Doesn't need to have daytime, but nighttime availability. on a particular, excuse me,
166predictable or routine basis. And adequate means it needs to be physically and psychologically safe for the student to be in. So that's what homelessness is defined as. When do we consider a student homeless? So homeless looks in many different ways. It could be what we call sharing housing or doubling up. Families that are in a financial hardship, they're sharing a roof, multifamily homes. Living in hotels or campgrounds is considered homeless. Obviously shelters. park benches, cars, things like that. Also considered homeless would be our unaccompanied youth. And that's something that oftentimes is not discussed. Those are students who are not in the physical custody of their parents. That could be students who, we've had students who have been sent here by families in other countries to live unaccompanied by their parents. Specifically, they may be living
167with a friend. relative but they're not with their actual parents. Also unaccompanied are, in fact we're working on a situation now, both parents have passed and so that student is living in between relatives with no formal court documentation that says you have custody and so that's what we consider to unaccompanied youth. Currently in Woodland Joint Unified, and this was as of this report printing last week, we had 106 homeless youth and 40 foster youth. We currently now, today, we have four more homeless youth that were brought to our attention this week. So we're up to about 110 now. That number goes back and forth. I'll move over to foster legislation. This is the definition and how students are qualified as foster youth. The California Welfare and Institution Code, WIC, defines foster youth as anything under
168the jurisdiction of the juvenile court for abuse or neglect. That's how we typically know of a foster is when a student has had abuse or neglect and they were moved from their home. Also, foster youth could be students who have been found in breaking the law. And for whatever reason, the courts have decided that the current situation is not acceptable and they will go ahead and place that student in a foster situation. The third way a student becomes fosters through tribal courts. And that's, again, something where they are placed in homes for licensed, again, foster home for foster homes. But those are the three ways in which students become foster. How we identify our foster youth here, there's several ways. We have social workers, probation officers, and tribal courts that will notify us. Our parents
169who are registered foster parents will also register new students with us, and then we come to know who those are. And then we also have a database that's actually expanding. It's actually quite... I'm not going to say exciting, but I will say needed. The database right now is when a student's foster, they go into a program so that districts across the state can identify when foster youth move between district to district. That database will be increasing to include all student record information. So student records will then be able to be transferred, which oftentimes with our foster youth, you can imagine, and homeless. Data or information like birth certificates, shot records are not something that is carried in between situations. And so with a database like that, we'll be able to identify if there's reports that
170students had and things like that so it becomes easier for our families. What do we offer? What are we mandated to offer our foster and homeless youth? One, they have the right to stay with their school of origin. What does that mean? When a student is homeless, and they are moving in between perhaps cities or perhaps areas in town, they are not required to move to the school of residence. They get to stay at their original school. This includes students who maybe live in Sacramento, but were in Woodland, they can stay in Woodland. And we will be providing transportation for those students. So it is required for us to do that, to keep that student with some stability. We know that our families are transient in nature. And I'll explain why our homeless are transient
171in nature in this town in just a moment. We are required to enroll students without meeting the documentation that's typical, shot records, birth certificates, things like that. They get to start immediately. That is not something that we hold back. We also, like I explained a minute ago, provide transportation if it is needed. And then our foster and homeless youth have graduation rights that can be applied. There are specific rules around the graduation. In our district, or I should say the state, the graduation requirement is 220 units. For our homeless youth that have certain qualifications, again, there are certain things that have to be in place for that, we can reduce their credits to 130 units. But there are some stipulations to that. But our foster and homeless do can qualify for that. which makes it,
172again, more appropriate for their need, again, with the transiency that may be involved. Our data, as you may imagine, we don't have foster data because the foster number is too low for us. We have 40. So you'll be seeing in some of these slides just the homeless numbers here. So the 2022-23 data, I compared homeless to just all students in our district. As you can see, In mathematics, 16% of our students meet or exceed standards for our homeless group versus our all student group at 24%. There is a gap. And I know Trustee Villagrana asked questions like what are we doing to address this gap? I will talk about that once we go through the slides here. It is not gone with, this does not fall on deaf ears. I want you to know that.
173For English language arts, you can see the difference between our homeless and our all student group, nearly 20% difference in what meets and exceeds standards. I know some of the reasons are obvious, right? One of the obvious ones is attendance, and that will be the next slide. This is suspension rates. I will say our homeless and foster youth, because this is data provided by the state. They are suspended and at a higher rate than are all students, about 10% here difference. Absenteeism is the biggest piece with our homeless youth. And I will say that the same in foster. That does seem obvious to say. But again, look at these numbers. I want you to know that this is not high school. High school is not included in this data that's provided by the state. So
17462% of our homeless youth are chronically absent. And that goes without saying that there are a lot of layers of trauma and need there. 36% of our students in foster and 27% for all students. What I will say is what are we doing to support our students through this? So these are some of the things that we do have. Currently that we offer within our school district for support Obviously we have referrals foster and homeless youth we have tutor We have a tutor specifically identified for our foster and homeless youth to support we provide counseling we provide housing in the form of vouchers for hotel stays and And things like that and food bank we have transportation clothing school supplies. We do things with outreach with all of our students here. Our foster youth liaison
175attends and homeless liaison, same person, attends IEPs, 504s and SSTs for all of these students. They review potential credits for ravers, like I spoke about the graduation requirement. They case manage. They network with our community partners. A lot of work is done with social services to support these families. Empower YOLO, all of our community partners that we use and connect students and families to their needs. And we provide training and support for our school district staff, both certified and classified, especially in our enrollment process with our foster and homeless and going forward like that. Our foster and homeless liaison, Rosie Carabello, went home very ill today. And I'm very sorry about that because I wanted you to see her in person. She is without question, I'll get emotional, amazing. So she personally handles all of
176these cases on her own. So she works with our homeless and foster families. When we are presented with a homeless family, She immediately provides their needs. So the story that I will share with you is a path of a homeless student or homeless family in our district. So we come to know of homeless families in a variety of ways. In this particular situation, the homeless family that I'm referring to was registering their student for the first day of school and didn't have an address. And so when they don't have an address, that's a flag. Our attendance clerks at our schools know that that's something that they tag. They tag that. It comes to us. Rosie does all of the outreach. So anytime we have an affidavit of non-permanent residence, which is I'm doubling up, anytime
177we have a situation where there's not an address, Rosie has to follow up. The beginning of this year, we had over 500 affidavits of non-permanent residents that she had to follow up with. There were a variety of reasons. Some of those led us to understanding the need of some of our students who were truly in a homeless situation. So this family came to us because they did not have an address. Rosie meets with them, provides them clothing, backpacks, all the needs for the first days of school. Unfortunately, in Woodland, there are no shelters. We have no shelters for children. They're only for adults. And so when we come across a homeless family, we are tasked with trying to figure out how we support them. This family came from out of state, came to live with
178relatives. That living situation did not work out, so they ended up in their car, car with three children. The children were in middle school and two in elementary school. One in middle school excuse me to an elementary so that situation Rosie helps with vouchers for the hotel. We can't provide vouchers more than two to three days at a time So we provide the voucher we connect them with social services They may get a couple of weeks from social services at a hotel Then they go back into their car and it's back and forth over several months like this During this time, Rosie is providing food, going shopping, meeting them at gas stations to put gas in their car, all of the things that they may need to survive. Helping the family connect with, again, services
179and all of that. At one point in the year, I would call it October, we lost the family. Students no longer show up to school. It's been three weeks. So we're desperate. What's happening? She goes driving around looking for the car. We have our SROs helping us look for cars. This is a constant thing. We can't find the car, so we work with our community partners, social services, and social services said, hey, the EBT card has been used in Sacramento and in Woodland. So then we contact folks in Sacramento and we locate the family. They've moved to Sacramento because Sacramento has a shelter. We do not. So they found shelter so they didn't have to be in the car because they ran out of all of their supports here for housing supports. The students are
180not attending school. So then we work with Tony in transportation. And we provide, we have to provide busing so we can get the students back. So we provide that. A couple of weeks go by. The students are no longer at the shelter. We lose them again. So we're without the student for about six weeks now. We do not drop the students because if we drop them, we lose them. So we keep the students on the books. We do everything we can. Lo and behold, the EBT card gets turned up. It's used here in Woodland again. So Rosie goes looking around trying to find them locates the family Gets the students set up gets the family set back up provides all the things and gets them back in school And here we are today where they've
181been in school for about the last month successfully So when we look at our attendance rates And we look at this is a typical pattern of our homeless families. We do not have shelters here in town Now if a student comes to us in a divest in a domestic violence situation, we have a shelter in Davis that we use But none of our shelters here take children So we are left in a situation where our homeless families are more transient than than than other County others this districts or towns So I just wanted to explain that part and we know without consistent attendance academics suffer so That's just a story that I wanted to share so you can see a picture of what it looks like and what the work that Rosie does on a
182daily basis. And that's just for one family. So we have families with all of that. Foster youth require a different set of services and monitoring, and all of that has done. And I wish she was here so you could see her and just admire her as much as I do. And I am finished. Do you have any questions regarding this presentation? Please let me know. I just want to give you a big applause. Felicia, those families are very lucky to have you. They're lucky to have her. Thank you. Yes, I agree. I agree. Thank you. Yes, I want to say Rosie is phenomenal. I've seen her working with families. I've seen her taking lead, being part with other stuff, even not within the district. No doubt, she is a... very strong advocate and she gets
183things done. She's a gem. She moves what she needs to do to provide the resources to the to the family. So you know they were sharing that story. It just helps the community and us understand the. challenges right that our families face under these circumstances and I'm happy to hear about how everyone comes together to do our best right to to find them and to try to encourage them to to allow their children to continue with their education so questions comments trustee Rizzo-Fowler and then Trustee Garcia thank you for this presentation these are the two populations that deal with a lot of shame and embarrassment because of their situations and predicament which oftentimes prevents them from asking for help. And so I like to see that we are doing a lot of the footwork for
184them, including educational case management. I know with foster youth, it's really challenging to figure out who has ed rights. I noticed that CASA wasn't on here, Court Appointed Special Advocates. Do we connect our foster youth with folks that can advocate for them outside of the district? Thank you for that question. Actually, we don't connect them with CASA. CASA connects with us. And so I will do it in turn that way. The quarter-pointed special advocates for our youth, typically our foster kids do come with a CASA. And so when they come to us, we have had training with our principals. They know. You have a CASA worker show up on your campus. You open that door. They have full access to the student. We do not question. We do not any. That is their advocate. When
185we have a situation in which a CASA isn't present, it's for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's because they're in a foster placement that is what we would call permanent because they're on the way to adoption. And so sometimes we don't have that representative. What I will say is that we do work well with our CASA, but it's never just all enough. When I said earlier, there are certain... Provisions that are made for foster youth our foster youth also comes come with attorneys. They each are assigned an attorney so anytime a foster youth is has any disciplinary action any action that requires special education Those kinds of pieces we our foster liaison liberate Rosie needs to reach out to the attorney to let them know that this is happening. So what I will say is,
186yes, you're right. We don't always understand who has ed rights. This is why attorneys are involved. And so that's a new legislation that came last year, last January, that started a year ago. And we're kind of getting used to that. That's a hard one because oftentimes schools in a disciplinary situation will suspend. When it's foster youth, they cannot do that. You have to hold, contact the attorney, let them know what's going on, and then issue the discipline. So there's a process here, and we are like a baby giraffe. We're stumbling through it, but we're getting there and retraining our folks on that. But I will say that the Ed Wright piece is complicated, and that is why that attorney exists. Another question. Should our students that are foster youth age out of the system before
187they graduate? Do we then treat them like a homeless, unhoused person and then get them the supports so that they can continue and get their degree? So with foster youth, they're tagged. I would call that an Aries as foster. And from my understanding, and I wish Rosie were here to officially answer, but from my understanding, you were, once you are tagged that at the beginning of the year, you remain that for the entire year, the entire school year. If you are a senior, you remain that until you graduate. So if you're a fifth year senior, you're still provided those provisions for foster. If the foster is now removed from the home and on their own, they're an adult. So that doesn't fall under the homeless youth. component, but it doesn't mean we leave them alone.
188So we do, we do. So we still support, they may be a homeless family, a homeless student at that time. And so we will provide that. I don't know that they officially get tagged homeless at that point. Cause not all foster youth become homeless. So it may be that they have a home. We just don't drop. their supports though. Um, and our counselors are amazing. I just have to say, you know, just as soon as it's a team effort, like you, you, you had said trustee Vigrana, it's all of us. It's not, it's not just one. Um, when, when you, if I could share stories about what our schools do for our kids, you would be in tears. Right. And I do want to just anecdotally add that one of my homeless students last year
189found housing in Woodland and now is attending a Woodland Elementary School. And I am dying to figure out how well he's doing because they're just the level of trauma that the kids have to go through when they're going through. I love that they have housing. Yeah. That takes a minute. We do put them on a list. We do have housing, but it does take a while. And so these families living in cars until then, I know. Anything else? Trustee Garcia? Oh, sorry. I thought you had a comment. Trustee Mott? Trustee Winnell? No? Thank you so much. Again, we don't know what we don't know until you tell us, right? So I appreciate all the information. And again, you know, my question was about how do we close that gap, right? I know it's hard, but
190we don't have a choice. We have to do our best effort. If we fail, then we fail, but we have to keep trying. And, you know, the example is great of trying, trying, failed, tried, failed, tried, failed. And then, you know, we're here succeeding with that one student. you know each student one at a time supporting those families so again please pass on my or our appreciation I'm sure I will to Rosie and to anybody who's part of you know supporting the young people. And I will say just to complete what you had said earlier, our wellness teams, now that they're in place, do support our students in more concentrated, specific, directed need. And so it may be an academic need, a connection to tutoring, a connection to after school pieces, whatever it may be.
191So they are also a part of our wellness team conversations. So that is something that is new to us this last year. Thank you. Thank you. So we have two written reports and then we've never had an understanding. Y'all good to keep going or do we need a break? All right. Yes, ma'am. M1, or MAMS, I should say, because I think you all want to hammer through. M1, information, average daily attendance, ADA enrollment report for 23-24 school year. It's a written report, so if you all have questions, someone will get up and answer. If you don't, then we'll continue. Raise your hand if you have a question. Seeing no hands, we're going to go to M2. Information, financial status report, including cash flow report, written report. If you have a question, please raise your hand.
192Mr. Lewis is eager to get up. No kidding. He's not eager. No hands going up lucky and then and action 22 and 324 moment of understanding with the yellow Solano teacher internship program Davis joining my school district questions move to approve Is there a second? There's a motion to approve in a second. But before that I would like to actually ask me and you to come up I know she's like dang it I just like would like her to explain because I didn't appreciate the discrepancy in the percentages They were in this document and she's gonna explain why? That's the case Yes, thank you. So a question was posed about where the percentages come from for the participating districts to pay in order to participate. And when I mean participate, that means that we're able
193to hire interns from that program and bring them into our district, which is huge. And so when you do the math, the percentages weren't coming out. Initially, the explanation I had was it's based on the percentage of total ADA that all the districts in Woodland and Yolo County share, and then you pay your proportional share. But it's actually much more complicated than that. Because back in 2018, when this program was initiated, there was an advisory committee that was made up of superintendents from the districts that were participating. And there were a number of different meetings. This was a new program. And to get buy-in and participation, those superintendents were at the table with staff from the Yolo Solano Teacher Insurance Program. And so when they made a decision, to do a straight percentage calculation, it
194would have disproportionately charged the smaller districts a lot of money. And then the three larger districts, Washington, Woodland, and Davis, would have paid a significantly higher amount than we are all sharing right now. And so in order to make it fiscally... in order to make it like hurt less, I should say, to the districts to participate and reduce that burden on the budget for each district and to encourage the districts to join. there was a decision made to adjust those percentages down. So for the largest three districts, that meant that the percentages were dropped about 5%. So you see in the packet that we're paying a 29% of a total amount. If you just went off the percentage of ADA share among all the districts, it would have been closer to 34% for our district.
195And so it was just discussions made with the superintendents and the advisory committees at that time. How do we make this more affordable? I do want to mention then also that our percentage will never change. So that's not going to it's not on a sliding scale. It's not going to increase and the the program is seeking to join districts from Solano County so then that would decrease the costs that have to be shared and ultimately would make it even more affordable and I know that the board understands the importance of this program for attracting and new teachers to our district. But the average cost, and this was a couple years ago, to hire a teacher was about $20,000. So if you think about, we have, I believe it was the last numbers we got from...
196from the program was that we've hired, I think recently in the past couple years, 10 individuals that went through this program and became our staff members. So when you balance that against even the small percentage of 29%, we get way more out of this program than what we pay on an invoice. Hope that answered your question. Yes, thank you. And it's what I emphasize, the return on investment, right? It's like almost exponential. So Trustee Risenfather, are you the one who motioned? And who was second? Trustee Mott. And all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposition? Hearing none, approved by all trustees present. Okay, moving on to O, which is information request for future agenda items. Any requests? We can talk about it. Okay. And then P, any closing comments? Yes. Aye. Lisa. I want
197to stay with the phrase from Felicia Wilson say variable reasons. I have heard from one parent. The person say the parents don't care about their children's grades, low grades, which I totally disagree. And this example for this family. It's made me more clear that each family has different realities for variable reasons. And the priority may be housing, maybe put the foot on the table, or maybe the barrier of the language. And I just want to keep with that. Thank you. Thank you trustee Garcia. I definitely Appreciate that about our staff that we do our best to meet the families where they're at, you know from the teachers to the cafe specialist to counselors to staff here in the office I've seen many many examples of that, you know witnessed it. So I'm proud to to
198serve our community with Individuals like that any other comments? Want to ask something yes, I appreciate that because you're right all our families have different realities and All of us have different experiences in different circumstances some of us are more privileged than other families and have background experiences, but every single student regardless of their background and the family circumstances are important to us. Whether it's a high performing student, whether it's a special ed student, homeless student, we need to do everything that we can to help them develop where they're at to the next level. And that's gonna look different for everyone. One of the things while you were thinking about that, I was visualizing that family. And I was just thinking what our homeless students went through during COVID, right? And maybe it wasn't much
199different than what they're going through now. But the whole connectivity with going virtual and being able to provide hotspots. to our families. Besides COVID, many of our families do not have internet and our curriculum, our way of communication is through, it's not going away. It's going to be even more technology. So hotspots, and I'm saying this because there was questions about why hotspots are being funded because of equitable access. Many of our families do not have. Internet and they may have something on their phone because a lot of people have iPhones But they don't have internet for their students to connect on so It just reminded me of that and just thinking about everything that our families went through and great Thanks to Rosie. She is amazing. Everyone knows her. She she's really out and
200about everywhere And so we have a jewel we have a real jewel with a with Rosie and the services that she helps us provide to our homeless families and foster youth Thank You superintendent hello, they're Lampkin with that said I actually want to thank my colleagues for Taking valuable precious time from their family to serve our community I appreciate you all doing that so with that said date and time of next scheduled regular board meeting is Thursday February 29th 2024 closed session at 5 p.m. And 6 p.m. For open session with that said meeting adjourned at 919. Thank you everyone