Board Meeting 10-12-23

001We're ready, Todd. It's five o'clock. All right, welcome, everyone. We call this meeting to order at 5 p.m. Any items to remove? Yes, I'd like to remove item G4A. Before a to be brought back at a future you brought back at the next meeting where you had to make some We had the wrong attachment and we just changed this today We want to give more time for the trustees and the public to review that item So we're gonna move it for the next board meeting today or yesterday It was today. Okay perfect any other items That's it. Okay. Is there a motion to approve minus? G for a second Second move by trustee both this is a vala and second by trustee Garcia all those in favor say aye Opposition hearing none unanimous approval minus

002Absence of trustee versus in power and trustee mocked any public comment? Possession okay, we're gonna Reese's that 501 and we'll reconvene at 6 p.m.. Thank you Hello, it'll be ten more minutes for the board. Thank you. Good evening everyone We're going to convene an open session at 613. I just want to remind everyone, if you have signs, to not elevate them to the point where you block anybody behind you. And don't stick them on any of our walls either, please. And thank you. So we convened at the end. And if you all stand, please, for the Pledge of Allegiance. Before we continue with our meeting. We would like to dedicate tonight's board meeting in the loving memory of Evelia Genera, who passed away on October 1st. Evelia was a lifelong champion of public education in

003our community and in the region, actually. For nearly 40 years, she served in a variety of roles in our district, touched lives of thousands of students and families across generations. She started her decades-long career as a teacher at Beamer Elementary School in the 1970s. Over time, she became a counselor at Douglas Middle School, Woodland High School, and Cache Creek High School. Eventually became the principal of Freeman Elementary School before retiring as a principal for Woodland High School in 2012. Before retiring, she also served as the Associate Dean of Instruction at Woodland Community College and as a trustee for our district, Woodland Joint High School District. After retirement, she continued to support our district as an interim assistant superintendent of educational services and as a vice principal at the middle school. She was also very active

004in our community and participated in the League of Women Voters, CAVE, which is a California Association for Bilingual Education, the City of Woodland Safety Committee, and many, many other groups. Her years of experience led her to receive numerous awards from community organizations and education associations. Without a doubt, Avelia is the epitome of selfless service. a fierce advocate for youth and a strong supporter of public education. She lived in Woodland during her time in our educational system and was a cherished part of our community. We were very lucky to have her, extremely fortunate. In a news article about her retirement, Velia was quoted as saying, whenever I have a bad day, all I have to do is step into the classroom and see what our staff and our kids are doing. Then I think, it's okay.

005It's all worth it. Because that's where the rubber hits the road. It's in the classroom. It's appropriate that we take the time to... recognize again, Avelia, because she definitely was a big impact on a lot of our community members, schools. Many of the adults who are now working in the district were impacted by her. I know many adults who have said that they went on to college because of her. She drove a few people sometimes to campus at UC Davis to make sure they registered on time. They said that without her, they would not have gone to college. So if we can... Please join me in a moment of silence in honor of the General. Thank you. Any trustees would like to make comments before we continue? Seeing none. No action was taken in closed

006session. Any comments for consent agenda? I have one. Yes. May I pull item three of the purchase order? Oh, sorry. I was asking was there any public comments. Oh, sorry. No, you're good. That was actually going to be my next question, so perfect. Which item would you like to pull? Item three. Item three. Okay. And trustee? I would like to pull the item related to Lee Middle School ASB purchase. So. Which purchase order is that because or you want to pull the whole list of purchase orders? No, just the one related to the Lee middle school. What number I don't I just opened up my computer eight So purchase order. Thank you so much. If there's our motion to improve consent agenda minus purchase order number eight and minus G was a g4 you said

007purchase order three. Oh not item three Got it. Thank you. All right, so I'll risk it again a motion to approve consent agenda minus purchase order 3 and purchase order 8 The minutes were pulled at the beginning of the of the meeting motion to approve their second second Motion by Trustee Mott second by Trustee Rodriguez all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposition? Seeing none. The consent agenda is approved minus purchase order 3 purchase order 8 and the minutes were pulled from the agenda actually at the beginning of the meeting. And just so the public that wasn't here inadvertently there was another attachment that was placed in the set of the minutes. So we'll bring the minutes back at the next meeting to approve those. Okay, moving on to H1. Thank you. I don't

008have the resolution. I thought I was going to read it. Can we come back to the item? Yep, we'll come back to, we'll go to H2. First year of the guest. Yeah, if our guest from Tafoya Elementary would join me up at the podium. So I have the privilege of presenting the resolution for National Bullying Prevention Month and it will be when I'm done reading the portion of the resolution it's going to be my honor to present it to Foyle Elementary Student Council and so I will begin reading the resolution. National Bullying Prevention Month, October 2023, whereas the Woodland Joint Unified School District Board of Trustees believes that all students have a right to a safe and healthy school environment and the district, schools, and community have an obligation to promote mutual respect, tolerance, and

009acceptance. And whereas WJUSD has a strong history of working with parents, community agencies, public safety and other stakeholders in the community served by WJUSD to support the safety and positive development of our youth. And whereas bullying and harassment can take many forms, including physical bullying, teasing or name-calling, social exclusion, cyberbullying, peer sexual harassment, bullying about race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, gender identity or expression, religion, and disability. And whereas bullying and harassment affects students' ability to participate in or benefit from an educational program or activity, create an... create an intimidating or threatening hostile or offensive educational environment and can significantly impact a student's ability to concentrate and perform in the classroom. It also directly affects health and well-being and contributes to excessive absences from school and may result in physical illness or long-term social and emotional consequences.

010Whereas the Board of Trustees has adopted Board Policy 5131.2 Bullying and supports programs that address the prevention, intervention, and ultimate elimination of all types of bullying as part of a coordinated school safety effort at all WJUSD schools. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Woodland Joe Unified School District Board of Trustees does hereby declare October as National Bullying Prevention Month. If you'd like to say a few words. Good evening, Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin and President Villagrana and trustees. With me, I have two amazing students and they are actually members of our Youth Advisory Council. We also call it our Kindness Club or Friends of Rachel on our campus. And they actually originated from an assembly we brought to campus called Friends of Rachel. We actually borrowed that idea from Freeman from a few years back. And it

011goes, it really honors the legacy left behind from a Columbine event. many years ago and honors her life and the kind acts that she did to prevent bullying on her own campus before her own life was taken. And so our students then created the Friends of Rachel Club. And with that is our Youth Advisory Council. And our Youth Advisory Council, they help make decisions on our campus. They help go through our student survey data. They go through our school safety plan. And then they also plan activities to promote kindness and bullying prevention on our campus. And I'm going to hand it over. We have Donovan Sessions and Natalia Myrich. And I'm going to let them speak a little bit about our event. that have happened on campus because it's more exciting to hear it from

012them. One of the events that we did was chalk art that we did around the campus to motivate students and make sure no bullying happened. And then another event we also did to do this was a sticky note wall, which we put in the library to give positive messages. If somebody's having a bad day, they could just get one and they could replace it with another one for someone else. A third thing is we did these rocks where we painted kindness on them, and if you found one, you can read it and keep it for as long as you want, but you have to hide it somewhere else and make sure someone else can get a turn to read it and have a good day later on. Another thing that we have done is these

013posters where we... put where bullying is bad and we try to stop it everywhere and we put posters all over the school and especially in the office so everyone who goes into the office can read it and have a better day and stop bullying. Thank you. And I have to tell you one of their acts that Donovan spoke about is the sticky wall and that actually came to the district office last April or May and it was right out here on our board and it was Tafoya's turned to be on the board and we said, why don't we bring what we're doing on campus? And I had many members that are in the audience today come up to me and say how nice it was. They just took sticky notes on, not even just for

014themselves, but to give it to a coworker and just to encourage to have a good day. So something we started at Tafoya has lended itself all the way to the district office and brought happiness here as well. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Moving to H1. Thank you very much, President Villagrana. I am honored here today to present Resolution 9-24 related to Indigenous Peoples Day on October 9, 2023. Here today, October 12, 2023, I present this resolution as follows. Whereas Columbus Day is a national holiday in many countries in the Americas and elsewhere, which officially celebrates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in and in the discovery of the American continent on October 12, 1492, and whereas the land now claimed as the Americas was once populated by hundreds of different indigenous tribes. And whereas Indigenous

015Peoples Day reimagines Columbus Day and changes the celebration of colonialism into an opportunity to reveal historical truths about the genocide and oppression of indigenous peoples in the Americas to organize against current injustices and celebrate indigenous resistance. I would like to present this resolution and ask that our Board of Trustees approve the following. It is my intention and idea that we therefore resolve that the Woodland Joint Unified School District Board of Trustees hereby declare October 9th as Indigenous Peoples Day and encourage the students, staff, and administration to participate in meaningful activities that recognize the contribution of Indigenous peoples to the community, state, and nation. Woodland Joint Unified School District trustees are pleased to provide the following land acknowledgement statement for which the board commits to begin each board meeting with it being verbally read and directs

016for its use in oral or written format ceremonies and events as deemed appropriate by the superintendent. Woodland Joint Unified School District directs staff to use the following language without edit. I will read. We should take a moment to acknowledge the land, let me start over again, I'm very sorry. 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 Patwin people. Today, we are three federally recognized Patwin tribes. Kachil Dihi Band of Witton Indians of the Colusa Indian Community, Ketzel Dihi, Witten Nation and Yokodihi Witten Nation. The Patwin people have remained committed to the stewardship of this land over many celebrations. It has been cherished and protected as elders have instructed the young through generations, and we are honored and grateful

017to be here today on their traditional lands. I would like to thank the Board of Trustees for allowing the idea of this resolution 9-24. where we from now on will be beginning our Board of Trustee board meetings with this land acknowledgement and we direct our staff to use this such language for ceremonial events and as deemed necessary and appropriate by our superintendent. Thank you very much. I'm very happy that we will be starting our meetings recognizing the land that we reside over. The university has been doing it for a while for different events. And again, I'm glad that we're at this moment in the history of Woodland School District. So, what's that? Yes, of course. I'm very pleased with the board's direction to honor our indigenous people and our land that we are here living

018in and in this life that we have to make that thing a very powerful statement that that statement will be made at every single board meeting reminding us and then also I'm looking forward to working with my staff on including this land acknowledgement and other activities and also working with our Native American parent. community members to get some input from you about how we can do it in the most respectful way to support our students in our community to remember our and our history and to acknowledge the land that we are living in and communion and so thank you so much for passing this resolution and giving me that direction trustee thank you when When we were sitting for board agenda planning, I saw that we didn't have anyone, any of us signed up for

019the Indigenous Peoples Day and I wanted to do it. but I also wanted to take this opportunity to present a resolution with intent, right? We oftentimes use this opportunity to celebrate and bring forward our community, which is very important to our district. But I thought that this was also an opportunity to bring forward change and incorporate a land acknowledgement to our board meetings, but also to our ceremonies, our graduation ceremonies, our district events, and as deemed appropriate by our superintendent. So I just wanted to tell... how this came about and I want to acknowledge that our superintendent super board board members rodriguez and our board president were very supportive of this idea and i also want to encourage the board members that when we do sign up for resolutions that we use these resolutions as

020an opportunity for intent to make change because this is policy that we are incorporating into our school district and it's the right opportunity to do so yes as much as we want to celebrate the community we can do both we can celebrate the community but we can also bring forward policy to make for a better community and a better future for our students. Other comments? Seeing none, moving on to H3. I have the privilege of presenting the resolution for Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I am presenting this resolution to emerge here in our community. But first, I want to go over some facts. Domestic violence is considered violent or aggressive behavior within the home, typically involving the violent abuse of a spouse or partner. But I also want to bring attention, as we are a school

021district, to ACEs. ACEs is the Adverse Childhood Experience. Adverse childhood experiences can have a tremendous impact on the future violence and victimization and perpetration and lifelong health and opportunities. The CDC is working to understand ACEs and prevent them. Adverse childhood experiences or ACEs are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood from 0 to 17. For example, experiencing violence, abuse, or neglect, witnessing violence in the home or community, having family members attempt or die by suicide. Also included are aspects of the child's environment that can undermine their sense of safety, stability, and bonding, such as growing up in a household with substance abuse problems, mental health problems, instability due to parent separation, or household members being in jail or in prison. As a school district, we educate any child in this community. We have contact with

022a lot of them from zero to three if they are in special education, preparing them to get ready for preschool on through graduation. And these are the most vulnerable people in our community. Domestic violence doesn't just impact the person who is being abused, but it is a community problem. So I implore all of us to look at our community members with empathy and compassion and caring rather than judgment and disdain so that we can be part of the solution and not part of the problem. I had the pleasure of going to an immense training on trauma-informed and sensitive classrooms. And I'm very happy to be giving this resolution. I don't believe the folks are here tonight. They are? Oh. Were they able to check in? Great. We can't do everything. We can't do it alone

023as a school district. It takes partnerships. And we couldn't help our kids without community partners like your organization. So I am so happy to present this to you guys. Thank you. No problem. And you've got the floor. I hope you've got a speech. Perfect. Yes. Well, I... I didn't realize I'd be presenting in front of so many people today, so please apologize for my nervousness. For those of you who don't know me, because I don't really think I've met most of y'all here, but good evening first and foremost. But my name is Cesar Trejo, and I've had the wonderful opportunity of working with Empower YOLO for almost about a year now. For those of you who do not know of Empower YOLO or what Empower YOLO does, we are a nonprofit organization here based in

024Woodland, but we do have... offices all around yellow county we're primarily a support center for victims survivors of domestic violence sexual assault and human trafficking as well but alongside that we are also a family resource center for the community as a whole um i want to thank the board of trustees and everyone here and not just everyone here but everyone in my community because As Candace have mentioned, you know, it's not strictly a family problem. Unfortunately, like domestic violence kind of. It may start off in the home, it may start off somewhere very intimate because that is what it is. It is like a very cruel and intimate action that can happen. However, it kind of like spews and leads into all other aspects of your life, whether that's in education, whether that's in like

025the way you kind of view yourself as an individual or just the way an individual may like approach life. Unfortunately, domestic violence, sexual assault. These are all heinous things that happen and really like set us back as a community in order to move forward I don't think it's possible if like we as me I don't think it's I don't think it's possible for us to move forward if I'm the only one who's doing the like the best I can I I have my team and I know I have my community that I can rely on and I just want to thank everyone here for that support. I want to thank EmpowerYOLO for that support and I really want to acknowledge all the hard work that EmpowerYOLO does for survivors of domestic violence. I am a

026site coordinator for an after-school program called Assets slash La Semia at Willing High. We host after school programming like Monday through Friday and then occasional like weekend trips a lot of We're not necessarily teachers, but a lot of our I guess job description can be like narrowed down to counseling domestic violence children youth who view domestic violence at home oftentimes have to Add on another like layer of insecurity or another barrier that really like makes them feel a certain kind of way. There are already so many barriers in life that like a lot of our youth have to go through. It's a shame when you have to like add domestic violence or sexual assault on top of that and so us at La Samia Evelyn High we do our very best kind of like promote

027preventive education. As soon as like we have a new cohort of students that whether that's like incoming incoming freshmen or whenever a student decides to join our program we we have like honest and transparent discussions with them about like, hey, this is what we believe a healthy relationship is. These are like the healthy habits of a good relationship or a healthy relationship. These are the not so healthy habits of a good relationship. These are the unhealthy aspects of a relationship. And here's what we know. And here's how we can help you. You know, oftentimes, there's only so much us as an individual can do. It's really hard to tackle everything on by yourself. So if we don't know how we can help an individual or a family, we tell them, you know, I may not

028have the capacity to help you, but I do know, like, my legal department that can. I do know of so-and-so. You know what? You may not trust in me, but I know of, like, this wonderful person that you can possibly open up to and trust. But, yeah, all of that. I may be ranting a little bit right now, but all that just to say, like, I'm grateful to be given the opportunity to stand up here in front of you all today. And yeah, in case you weren't aware, October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And yeah, let's just kind of move forward with that. I do have some other words to say really quickly. And I'm going to keep it really, really short and quick. So with that being said, I also want to thank the

029teachers and community members who are here alongside CTA for their bravery and in standing up against bigotry and hatred in our community. Some of y'all may be asking themselves what any of this has to do with Domestic Violence Awareness Month, but I genuinely ask everyone how we can encourage safety in health relationships when people in our community would rather spew bigotry than let people be who they are as quick and as soon as possible. As I've kind of mentioned, working in education has you face the countless barriers your students face alongside with them. And all I want to say is like we often hear teachers, staff, older people say like, I want my kids to be as happy as possible. I want them to dream big. And yes, this is all very much like big

030and true. But what are we actively doing to like really promote these ideas in our youth? And how can we say that? Like, I want youth for. my kids but still exclude a sub like still like kind of like displaced and exclude other kids so I really want to say is protect protect trans youth arms you know like supporting use really means supporting all youth and It's as quick and as easy as that. Thank you. Thank you Nobody caught my big mistake this time We move on we actually without discussing purchase order three and eight. So we're going back to purchase order three and eight. But trustee Ristenfowler first. I have this feeling that I said emerge instead of empower YOLO and I just want to apologize for that. It's it's been a week. Yep.

031I was going to order purchase order three. Trustee Maldonado. Thank you President Villagrana. I'm looking at this purchase order and thinking about our CASIP results. And in the context of our CASIP results, this feels like a luxury item, honestly. Not so much the money, although of course the money, but also the attention and the time that it will take to do this. you know, it seems that we're struggling to instruct our students in the fundamentals of arithmetic and reading and I see firsthand in my life what happens when students graduate or not without having a firm grounding in those things. You know, they can't add up time slips. They can't write very simple labels. It makes life extremely difficult. And so for me, this is not a good use of our money or our teachers'

032time. We really should be focusing on the math and reading. Thank you. Comments? Questions? Point of clarification, can you state which purchase order you were talking about? Number three, she said. Yeah, but I would like for her to state what the topic of this purchase is. It's number three. particularly identifying and piloting appropriate books for the race and social justice class. I don't know very much about race and social justice materials. One that comes to mind are Frederick Douglass's works. And he wrote in a very complex style that we don't use today. And someone with a remedial education, say a sixth or seventh grade reading level, is not going to be able to understand that. And so we need to focus on the... Fundamentals so that when the kids get to high school they can

033understand what they're reading and they can understand What's going on around them? Thank you Trustee McDonald. Can you tell me what the fundamentals are? I would think that being able to add up your time slip so that you know how many hours you've worked in a week and you have some general idea. I'm particularly talking about academic instruction for the students that are here now, not your employees. Yeah, addition and subtraction and multiplication and also reading and writing. What are the fundamentals in reading and writing? being able to comprehend texts and legal documents that you may receive legal documents Correct. Most legal documents are written at, say, a 7th or 8th grade level. No, they're not. I would disagree. Okay, so I'm done with asking questions. I think it's really irresponsible of us to make

034curriculum and purchase instructions when we don't have all of the information of what's going into it. I hear that you're disagreeing with this purchase. What I also hear you say is you don't understand about race and culture and how that could be beneficial for students to learn. But at the same time, you are saying that kids need to understand legal documents. I'm a special education teacher, which I don't mind bringing up at every meeting. And when I have an IEP with my students' parents, I have to give them the procedural safeguards for their rights. It's written at a graduate level. So I have to also give bullet points so that my parents understand what their rights are. We're not teaching kids to read legal documents. We're teaching them context clues. But the first thing we

035need to do is teach them material that they actually want to learn and somehow engage the students with topics that they care about. We're not going to teach them any of the basics if we are just drilling and killing them. I respect the expertise of the teachers who've done their due diligence to figure out if this is evidence-based or research-driven, if it has curriculum that goes with it. But before you objected to this, did you check in on any of that? No, I was focusing on our CASA. But I agree with everything you've said I do want to clarify that the description says the purchase order is for consulting services for the district's ethnic studies work for the 23-24 square Just for the public awareness And we do have an ethnic studies graduation requirement and

036there's also policy and law that's coming down the pipe that would require for our students to graduate with an ethnic studies requirement. So I would say that this is money well invested for our students and the requirements that we need to meet. Any other comments? I have a few, but I want to wait for one to comment first. Trustee Rodriguez? I would just say that, you know, we are... very committed to ethnic studies. We were one of the first districts to be able to take on that issue and to make it come to fruition. And it's really important for all students to be able to identify what they're reading about in their academics. And it's especially important for students of color to be able to see themselves and what they read and the topics that

037they cover. And, you know, we don't talk about that race a lot here and race, racial issues, but those are real. And especially students of color do suffer through those issues. And it's important for us to be able to bring that out in ways that can be thought about deeply and thoroughly and being able to. HAVE THESE KINDS OF RESOURCES IS REALLY IMPORTANT FOR OUR STUDENTS HERE IN THIS DISTRICT. FOR ME, I'M A MEXICANO STUDIES MAJOR. THIS IS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS I STUDIED IN COLLEGE. FOR ME, IN HIGH SCHOOL, I JUST WENT THROUGH THE MOTIONS. I NEVER LEARNED MUCH OTHER THAN MATH READING, WHICH I WAS REALLY GOOD AT MATH. And I agree 100% that we need to have our young people learn basics and beyond basics, right? We want them to go beyond

038basics, not the basics. But unless young people see relevance and feel safe learning, no matter what we, like Trustee Svalder said, if we're just drilling them, it doesn't matter how much we do it. If they're not able to receive the information, it doesn't matter what we do. They're not going to retain it. And for... decades if not centuries, the education system was structured in a way of oppression, discrimination, segregation even in California, right? So the court said, no, the Mexican kids are not gonna be taught in the horse barns, right? They're gonna be taught in actual classrooms with the books and Mendez versus which Mr. I think it was a case. And that changed things. And that case was actually cited in Brown. versus Board of Education as well. So these investments are intended to

039create curriculum and courses that are going to be relevant to our young people in our community. And we have a large number of young people of color in our community. And we need to, and again, it's a requirement of the state. We're just going above and beyond. We're not going to the minimum. And so that's why I'm 100% in support of the continuation and supporting of the graduation requirement that we have as a district and without a motion to approve purchase order three. Any further discussion? Trustee McDonald? I agree with everything that everyone has said. What I'm saying is that as trustees, we may want to think about... focusing some effort and energy into having our students be more literate and be able to complete mathematical functions because we are not helping anyone of any

040color if we're letting students go and they can't. function in the world and We already have an ethnic studies and I would like to see our students our focus as a board be toward Narrowing the achievement gap for all students so that the students that you are referring to Can be successful when they're outside of Woodland Joint Unified School District Thank you Yeah, definitely are not mutually exclusive. That both can be done and you know $24,000 is definitely not a distraction out of 130. We're not 150 million dollar budget. It's a tiny Investment I agree with you again and we are doing that right we have the graduate profile we have our out cap goals are focused on those items we're Intensely focused on that to me to me. We're not distracted to me this

041Reinforces and supports those goals. I don't see that being a deviation so There's a motion in a second All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any oppositions? No. Okay. There's all but Trustee McDonald voted to approve purchase order number three. Moving on to purchase order number eight. Can I provide one clarification? Absolutely. The funds used for this purchase is one-time monies from the state. It can only be used only for ethics studies to support districts in getting it. going so it's not impacting any of our other funds can only be used as one-time funds does not impact the general fund and also just want to provide additional clarification in the class we also incorporate reading comprehension writing public speaking that supports all our literacy efforts thank you for that additional information number three great number

042eight Thank you very much. I am fully in support of this purchase order brought to us by Lee Middle School principal This is an opportunity to purchase 625 ASB stickers for 625 students and I just wanted to highlight a little bit about how this came together principal Shelly Freary has taken the initiative to encourage higher opportunities for our students to increase their participation in school events by providing each of our students at Lee Middle School an ASB sticker. This total 625 students and the purchase stands at 18,750. I think that this is a huge opportunity for all of our schools to be able to participate in extracurricular activities such as movies, dances, you know, all of that after school activity that may cost money or you may be able to get in for free or

043reduced cost with an ASB sticker. Not not just as a school board member but also as a mom as a neighbor but also as a former student I know that an ASB sticker is a lot of money I think just this year at Lee middle school exclusively it's $30 per student. That's a lot of money Especially when you add it up to buying P clothes and a yearbook It could add up to about $140 when you add up everything. So I just want to celebrate this opportunity, and I want to highlight it and encourage our other schools to look into how to use their supplemental dollars to be able to create this equitable opportunity for our students. I know that when I was in school, I didn't have an ASB sticker. My mom was a

044single parent. And when my mom worked late in the evenings, if I wanted to go to a volleyball game, I had to bring my little sister with me. So I had to pay for two entrances and I had to use my money. So I know it costs a lot of, it costs our students, it costs our families, but when we provide opportunities for like this one where we're going to give all of our students a free ASB sticker, not only are we going to take away a financial burden for some of our families, we're also going to give an opportunity to students to be able to experience something that they may have not. So I just want to say thank you to the leadership at this school and I just want to highlight it. to

045see if our other schools could could take on this opportunity because our our goal of our goal is equity and we want to be able to celebrate those opportunities so i just want to say kudos and thank you to our staff for answering my questions on this item thanks So when I had to me this is a great way of responding to go forward and it's called out in the language and again it's about providing opportunities and access to to what is on our campus and trustee about this alone I actually have had conversations about this in the past and have gone back and forth and again I also support again the school sites themselves taking initiative and providing these opportunities using their funding to again remove some of the challenges that that we know

046exist. So any other comments before I call motion. Is there a motion to approve. Second motion by Trustee Bautista Zavala second by Trustee Richardson-Fowler all those in favor say aye. Any opposition hearing none unanimous approval. Moving on to recognition of gifts to the district. And we'll start with Pioneer High School, Christian Sherrill, yes, Premier Chiropractic donated $500 to a monetary donation for the athletic department. Pioneer High School again, CIG Graphic Ware, Chance Jessica Tanner donated $76 to the ASB swim team. and Cash Creek High School Mod Pizza, $250. There were $50 single pizza cards for the Flex Academy Perfect Attendance Awards, great incentives. And then Ningo Elementary Sheila Wardrip, $150 Monterey donation to the Annette Parker Memorial Fund to purchase Spanish language library books. So that is a total of $976. Let's give our community

047a round of applause for their contributions. I just have a point of clarification for this list what period does it capture? I will need our assistant superintendent our associate superintendent Lewis Wiley to answer that question. And I'm sorry if it's like I'm just curious. So as they come into the office we get them on the subsequent board meeting so it's as we receive them they're not as of a moment of in time like the unaudited actuals or anything like that it's uh online real time. Can I just ask that maybe we add a line to this table that says what date the school site received such monetary or donation of whatever? Absolutely. I think it would be helpful. That way we can kind of gauge, you know, because let's say that a community member says,

048hey, I donated something, but it wasn't noted in the minutes. Okay. I will work closely with the superintendent to modify the report so that you have the information you need. That won't be too difficult to do? No, it should be. Okay, thank you. Moving on to our student representative reports. And today we're going to start with Cache Creek High School with Christopher Roa. Is this on? Okay, thank you. Hold up. Good evening, Student Intendant Ortega-Lampkin, Community and Border Trustees. My name is Chris Roa, and I'm a senior at Cache Creek High School. My report tonight is the following. The first quarter at Cache Creek ends tomorrow, Friday, October the 13th, and we have six graduates so far this year. We will be welcoming new students from Pioneer and Woodland High on Monday. Our first edition

049of the Creek newspaper was released in an advisory class. Students are encouraged to submit articles to share through English classes. In advisory, we completed a voter awareness lesson and promoted students to register or pre-register to vote. In honor of Chicano and Latino Heritage Month, art and culture students completed an identity project and created canvas paintings. They are currently working on Dia de los Muertos mask. On October 6, thousands gathered on Main Street in Woodland to honor and celebrate the contributions of our local farmworkers. Eight students, myself included, voted, oh no, my bad, volunteered, and many more attended the event with their friends and family. Before the event, we visited four different farms and passed out 500 burritos to farm workers and during the event we passed out free meal tickets to over 150 farm workers

050and their families. As a child of a farm worker I was awarded the first 500 scholarship dollar scholarship to further my education after I graduate. At least six more of these scholarships will be going out over the next couple months to more children of farm workers seeking higher attention. by brown issues. Thank you. Thank you. Pioneer High School, Leila Laverico. Good evening, Board President Villagrana, trustees, Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin, Executive Cabinet, and our community. My name is Leila Laverico, and I represent Pioneer High School. My report tonight is the following. Homecoming week has rolled in and we have many student events happening on campus. Each grade has come together after school every day to build their class float to present at our homecoming football game this Friday during varsity halftime. The overall homecoming theme is spooky and

051each class has the following themes. Freshmen are the Corpse Bride, sophomores are Coraline, juniors Hocus Pocus, and seniors are Spooky Pirates and Sea Creatures. Some of our teachers will be judging and ranking the floats at the football game. Our window decorating class contest also took place this Tuesday, with each window correlating with each class' homecoming theme. Seniors won first place, juniors second place, sophomores third place, and freshmen fourth place. In addition, today marked the end of the homecoming royalty voting for the final round. Winners for each class will be announced at our homecoming rally this Friday. Our homecoming dance is this Saturday and will take place in our school gym from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., which will be open to all grades. Today, our Anything But a Shopping Cart Parade, which is a parade

052contest between all the different clubs Pioneer offers, took place and was judged by our staff. We also wish our junior varsity and varsity football teams good luck as they will go against the Dixon Rams at tomorrow's football game. And that concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you. Our Woodland High School representative, Mahat Naim. Good evening, members of the board and community. I'm honored to report and represent Woodland Senior High School. The following are my reports. Woodland High School has been quite busy in recent weeks among the highlights we recently hosted, Robbery Rally and Robbery Game, where Pioneer High School came victorious. I'd also like to thank Pioneer High School ASB Leadership Class for making this event possible thanks to their hard work and support. We also hope to reclaim the trophy next year. First Woodland

053High School Music Concert of the Year took place last week as well. YBAL kicked off our Breast Cancer Awareness Month with the Pink Game on Wednesday, October 14th with the support from their community and their students. Waterport girls and boys have their last home game and senior night on 5th of October. Other events that are coming up include pink out at the football game tomorrow night against Casa Robles. Following that, Woodland High School has multiple senior night events next week. Flag football and volleyball senior nights are on the 18th of October. Football will take place on Friday the 20th where we will also honor our seniors in our music programs, trainers, cheer team, and also our ASB leaders for their hard work and dedication. At the end, I would also love to shout out our

054new athletic director and varsity baseball head coach, Daniel Olof, for his hard work and making sure our students not only have the best time, but are also safe prior to participating in sports as well as during the season. Thank you for having me today and have a great day. Did I pronounce your name correctly? Okay, good. Thank you. Help me out if I don't, okay? Thank you to our student representatives to to our new Today and it shows you're a little bit nervous, but it gets easier every single time. You all did a great job It helps the board, you know stay connected and aware as to what's going on in your respective schools So again, thank you for making time in your busy schedule, you know studying for whatever test you coming up Maybe

055tomorrow you have a test tomorrow any of you know, okay good No test. That's good. So again, thank you so much Alright, moving on to Jay and we have two voicemails and how many in person? 11, so we'll start the timer and let me know when we have a minute left or two depending on where it lands for the 20 minute total. If there's any topics that meet that or are they all over the place? Okay. Got it. Okay. So we'll start with voicemail, and then we'll go with in-person, and then voicemail, and then continue in-person. My name is Kim Sterner. I'm a community member and a parent of two WJUSD children. My general comments are regarding items H, community engagement, and facilities and finance, but are really a general comment. With the recent approval

056by the city of Woodland for the tech park in Spring Lake, this is where 15,000 people or about a quarter of Woodland's population will eventually live. I implore the district and the school board to make a plan to commit to building an elementary school in this area. For the turn of the century agreement, three schools were promised and two sites have... now and rezone and have homes on them. And currently there is one small lottery school that accommodates only 420 kids. This potentially leaves more than 900 elementary age kids who will live in the neighborhood without a neighborhood school once spring lake is complete. So I beg you to do the right thing and commit to building a school in the tech park. Use the fees that you've already collected from us that are already

057earmarked for a school that our area so desperately needs. You have all of the power, and I do beg you to do the right thing for Woodland and its kids and make a plan. Thank you. Tawny Sweeney. Good evening, everyone. I'm a fourth grade teacher at Ramon Estafue Elementary and a WEA executive board member. I serve as treasurer. And I wanted to take this opportunity during October, National Bullying Prevention Month, to thank the majority of the trustees on this board who marched with the Woodland Education Association and California Teachers Association at Woodland's first LGBTQ pride parade this last summer. personally and let you know how much that it meant to me and all our colleagues. We work day in and day out to create an inclusive and safe learning environment for all our students, as

058well as a non-threatening, harassment-free workplace for all staff. Actions of solidarity like marching in the LGBTQ plus pride parade or events like the recent Yellow is for Everyone rally where 300 people came together to stand against anti-trans bigotry speak powerful and memorable volumes. to all our youth and community. As someone who remembers what it was like for youth of the LGBTQ plus community growing up in Woodland in decades past where support for one's existence needed to be sought out from outside town, I am so appreciative of the members of the WGUSD school board who have been part of changing that, of working for progress and saying through actions, we won't go back. During October and throughout the year, let's continue to stand up to bullying, to not let dangerous and unsafe put downs just go,

059but instead educating about the dangers of trying to get people to fear a community and to hate others, and the power of standing up for yourself and others to say hateful language and actions are not safe. Stop. As Frederick Douglass said, if there is no struggle, there is no progress, and we won't go back. Next voice, please. Hello, esteemed board members. My name is Meg, and I'm a long-term resident of Woodland. I'm making a general public comment about a school site at the newly approved Tech Park. As you know, the school district is now obligated to enter good, safe negotiations with the developer regarding the purchase of the possible school site by December of this year. My understanding is that the developer is unlikely to sell the site to the district, much less pay any

060supplemental development fees that would make school construction feasible, without the district's commitment to actually build a school. Unfortunately, the district and board have repeatedly stated that no school is needed, and as far as I can tell, have absolutely no plan to build a school in the Tech Park. The board so far has not made time to even publicly discuss it, which makes any meaningful negotiations with the developer virtually impossible. I just don't understand why the public is being so shut off from decisions that affect their children. The decisions the board does or does not make in the coming weeks and months will have significant implications for the likelihood that the district will even have the option to expand school capacity in our area. The district has already given up two school sites in the Spring

061Lake area in the past, arguing that no additional schools are needed. This will leave the Spring Lake and Tech Park population of about 15,000, roughly a quarter of the city's entire population at the build out of the Tech Park, with only one small school with capacity of 420 students. And as we all know, DeFoya does not have the capacity. to accommodate all the kids. School site in the Tech Park may be our last chance of getting another elementary school in our area. Your decisions in the next few months really do impact the future vitality of the city. Will it be hard to figure out a way to fund a new school in the Tech Park? Yes, but picking the hard path is so very often the right path. If the district declines to act again,

062the developer in the city will be happy to build housing there instead, like they've done on the sites that were designated for schools in Spring Lake. Commitments have been broken and voices have been ignored by the board. It is truly your obligation to stop the short-term thinking and I encourage you to commit to building a school in the Tech Park. Thank you very much. Before we go to the next one to clarify that as I understand the language in the the agreement is that the developer has to negotiate in good faith to sell the land they don't have a choice whether they sell us a land or not is more about the negotiation of Of the price and this board has stated publicly many times that we want to buy the land We were told

063the city the size of land we needed set aside to be able to do that So as far as what the developer can do or not is whether they want to put additional money on the table but whether they sell the land or not to us is really not a choice. When they signed the agreement with the city, they committed to doing that. So I just did want to clarify that for the public. Next, please. Laura Brubaker. Can you announce the next one just so they're ready on cue after that? Dorte Jensen. Thank you. Hello, my name is Laura and I have lived in Woodland for over a decade and my children are currently students in WJUSD. I'm speaking today to draw attention to some things that as a Woodlander I find really upsetting. An

064extremist group called Moms for Liberty has been using social media to encourage outsiders to call in and attend our WJUSD meetings and make public comments, intentionally not mentioning that they live in other places and do not have students in our schools in an attempt to misrepresent the interests of the Woodlanders. and community as a whole. To that end, I would encourage any public commenters tonight to honestly state if they do live in Woodland or have students who attend our schools. If commenters fail to do so, I think our community can draw our own inferences about their divisive interests in our schools. I also want to encourage everyone to making public comment to remember what was discussed at last week's YOLO GOP meeting where the chair of the YOLO GOP relayed his conversation with Trustee McDonald

065who had requested that people make their comments about anti-trans rhetoric and the guise of parental rights. She also asked that commenters not mention her name as that might not look good for her. And frankly, I'm concerned that one of our school board trustees seems to be working with the YOLA Republican Party and the extremist group Moms for Liberty to draw media attention to our schools about the same prejudice that seems to have inspired the bomb threats in our neighboring school district of Davis over the last few months. Maybe since she doesn't have children attend our public schools, She's not as concerned about potential threats as I am, but I find it concerning. Trustee McDonald has failed our children and continues to fail them. I would also like to add that I took ethnic studies in

066Indiana in the 90s, and it was one of the most valuable classes I had in my entire education. It is not a luxury item. Thank you. You can announce the next person, please. The next person would be Ali Snyder. I thought you said door to Jen's. Oh, I'm sorry Yeah, my name is door to Jensen. I think every time I've come up here. I've said I live in Davis. I've lived there since 1969 pretty much You know year by year all the time, which is quite a while. I don't have any children at all They didn't so they didn't go to Davis or Woodland or anything at all. I don't have any children I don't know what else I need to say to say I'm good enough to talk here. It's kind of a strange

067thing to say you have to say your name or whether you have children or whatever. I'm just a concerned citizen and I'm glad I have the opportunity to speak. I want to say, yeah, teachers are not equal to parents. They may have their own children and that's wonderful, but when they're teaching other people's children, they're not the the parents of those children. Those children already have parents. And I agree with Emily McDonald's comments. The ethnic studies program is a luxury when I'm not sure what your statistics are regarding graduating seniors, how many of the group that started out in kindergarten end up graduating actually, or how many when they do graduate, what their proficiency level is in reading or writing or arithmetic. I would be like to know what that would be because it probably

068has declined since the COVID time when kids were not allowed to come to school at all. So it seems like you probably have a lot of room to make up. I wish you would concentrate on that rather than this ethnic studies stuff that will be funded, as you know. But anyway, so I think she was saying she wanted people to be able to. understand legal documents or well certainly they would need to if they graduated from high school and then they went and got an apartment they would need to understand what those legal documents would be or even if they went to to a restaurant there could be a like a problem for them to solve in their math class. Oh, so two students go to a restaurant, they want to buy lunch. One wants

069to buy a taco, one wants to get a hamburger. So what will the subtotal be? What will the tax be if the tax is 7.25%? So then what will the total be? And if they split it, what will each pay? Or how much will they have to leave for the tip if it will be 15% of the total? I think the kids need to be able to do that, and I don't know if they can. The majority... or whatever the proportion of it, graduating now versus before COVID time. You have a lot of room to make up. I wish you would concentrate on that. So what about the actual parents? Don't they know their ethnicity? Don't they like to support their child or their children's ethnic heritage and their culture at home? You are not

070their parents. You're their teachers. Teach them the basics, reading, writing, arithmetic. They need that to succeed in life. Let their parents do what they're doing. job at home that's my request i agree with emily mcdonald completely thank you after ellie is beth born hello my name is ali snyder i want to share a warning i recently gave the davis school district where i am a parent you should be aware the spreckels union school district recently had to pay a mother 100 000 for secretly socially transitioning her daughter You should also learn about the recent federal ruling against Escondido Union School District, which found their policies violated parents' 14th Amendment rights, as well as the rights of teachers who refused to participate in secrecy. Then there are the suits brought by the detransitioners, Chloe Cole, Layla

071Jane, Luca Hines, and Prisha Mosley. All brave young ladies who were groomed as kids by the gender medical industry. They lost their breasts and suffer constant pain. I've met these young women and many more. Detransition is not a rare occurrence. Layla Jane lost her breasts at 13 years old. Detransitioned at 17. Chloe Cole lost her breasts at 14 years old. Luca Hein at 15. More and more detransitioners are coming forward. Nothing can make their bodies whole and healthy again, but they will win big settlements, as they should. So are you ready for the lawsuits? This district is adopting policies to convince children their bodies are wrong if they don't fit homophobic stereotypes. It is keeping ideological propaganda secret from parents and has welcomed lying activist groups onto campuses to teach kids that puberty blockers are

072safe and reversible, that it's possible to change sex, and that they should alter their bodies to be authentic. These groups prey on gender non-conforming children and on children who are uncomfortable with puberty. all while repeating the lie that they will kill themselves if not affirmed in thinking their bodies are wrong. Children's healthy bodies are under medical assault for profit. Soon these kids will grow up and realize the profound mental and physical harm done to them by the adults who encouraged it, including school boards who promote gender indoctrination. So are you ready for the lawsuits? Because they're coming. This isn't bigotry. This isn't hate. This is raising awareness that children are being harmed. Look into it. What will it cost you to just listen to the detransitioners? Thank you. Question before you go. All the policies

073I read, I don't recognize anything that you referenced, so if you have a policy, if you can send it to me, I would appreciate it. Well, the California Healthy Kids? No, the policy that we passed that you referred to, if you can send it to me, I would appreciate it. So you're currently giving the children of this district the California Healthy Kids Survey and the Youth Truth Survey? Policy, yes. Yes. You have a policy that you're giving these children these surveys? That's not a policy. That's a state mandate. Oh, okay. Well, then semantically, I apologize for using the wrong word, but you are, that's not actually a state mandate yet to give those surveys. You adopted it earlier, right? Describes what you have what you described today. So if you can send me that policy,

074I would appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you After Beth born is Barbara Ryan Hi, I'm Beth, and I'm here mostly to speak about the gender ideology that's being pushed on our students here in the Woodland School District. But I wanted to first bring up this Ethnic Studies Institute contract that I think you just agreed to for $24,800. I think the ethnic studies that Carlos Hagedorn provided you for professional development for four hours. actually four hours total, two sessions to train professional development, $4,000. So $1,000 an hour to be trained on ethnic studies action team. And then he's got a couple other courses, art and culture course, race and social justice course. You probably are aware that there's quite a few lawsuits that are coming out right now against ethnic studies, mostly because it's so...

075oftentimes seen as anti-Semitic. I did send a Facebook post from Carlos Hagedorn to the superintendent and the president here of the school board where he has his pro-Palestinian Facebook profile shots. And that's one of the big concerns, right? If ethnic studies is decided by whatever activist group, in this case, I guess it's Carlos Hagedorn, you might be looking at lawsuits because you're... We've got the Israel conflict going on right now, and you have somebody who's going to be training, I guess, these students. If I look in what ethnic studies here for Woodland, it says here, as you've adopted the ethnic studies, that you're going to train the kids in the school district to be activists for a certain political viewpoint. So you probably want to look into what the political viewpoints of this trainer, that

076you're paying $1,000 an hour to train your development staff. But I'm really here to talk about the gender ideology. As you know, seven different school districts in California in recent weeks have passed new parental right policies, including Rockland, Dry Creek, Orange, Marietta, and Chino Valley. And I would really encourage you, this school district board right here, to have the same kind of parental rights. You've heard from your teachers. They are promoting gender ideology and they will secretly transition children There's no requirement that they tell the parents and I know they're laughing but that's the case So I encourage you to let parents have a right Loving parents let their gender non-conforming kids grow up to be gay lesbian bisexual or straight with her body intact Hate is telling a child that everything central to their

077physical being is wrong with them that they were born wrong, that their healthy body needs fixing with surgeries and drugs. That is the abuse, that is the hate. We can tell our children that no child is born in the wrong body and that every child here deserves to grow up to be a healthy adult. After Barbara Ryan is Vicki Mears. I did want to clarify, based on the math that I did, it was $500 per session, not the amount that was mentioned per hour. And also, I just want to tell the public that we don't determine. Excuse me. You're done. You're done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I read it as well. And also, it would be unconstitutional for us to allow or not someone to do something based on their political views. We're

078actually prohibited by the Constitution from doing that. We just can't take that into consideration. It would be illegal and, you know, we would absolutely be sued if we did that. And the last part of clarification is he's actually not doing any trainings for students. He's actually doing trainings for staff. So just clarifying those three points. Thank you. Hi, I'm Barbara Ryan. I live in Woodland. I'm too old to have any children in the school system. That would be a miracle. What I was happy to see was that it's anti-bullying month. And I'm here to talk about bullies. So bullies are really cowards with low self-esteem. That's really what they are. Bullies never bully solo. They have to have an appreciative audience around them while they're bullying somebody. Bullies are equal opportunity, and this is where

079this comes in. We've heard a lot about the trans and gay community being subjected to harassment and bullying. I'm here to tell you, bullies are equal opportunity. Trans, gay, artistic, overweight, ethnicity, basically anybody they think they can get away with. Here's my solution that's worked for me. I've been around a long time, as you can see. If you are getting bullied, ask the bully, are you bullying me? That will stop them dead in their tracks because they're expecting you to just cower there and hope that you're not destroyed. If that happens in school, go directly to the principal. If it happens online, go to your parents. They're there. That's what they're there for. There is no self-respecting parent that wants to think that their child is a bully or being bullied. I suggest you use

080every opportunity. The bully will tell you that, don't you tell anybody because I'll make it worse for you. No, I'm going to tell people and make it worse for you. The parents need to be called up. Public action needs to be taken. for the bully so that everybody in the school knows that the school district stands behind this so that nobody has to be bullied ever again. Word travels. Trust me. Kids are the biggest gossips going. They find out that a couple of people have been called up there and it's been publicly announced. See, I'm not for hurting anybody, but the bullies are already doing that. Announce it over the PA. Do they still call it a PA? Or do they? That's how old I am. So-and-so has been called into the office for bullying.

081Period. That crowd that was surrounding the bully won't want to be part of the bully anymore. And they thrive on that. And that's all I have to say. Thank you. Before we go to the next person many times of admitted whenever mistake and I went back and did the math I miss Beth born and I misread it you are correct. It is 500 per hour. Yeah, no problem It 500 per hour when you bring a 7500 divided by 15 hours is 500 per hour Again, you were correct. What you said 500 per hour. Okay. Thank you after Vicki Mears is Coleman Randall I am Vicki Mears. I'm a teacher at Ramon Tafoya Elementary School, special ed teacher, fifth and sixth graders, RSP. And this is only the second time I've ever spoke, but I just

082needed just half a minute to tell you that I am here in support of all of our students, leaving nobody out. They're all welcome in our schools. Thank you. Coleman Randall. Claudia Kurt Critch and then Bill Wagner. Good evening. Thank you for Having this session and letting me speak My name is Claudia Critch. I Am a teacher a retired teacher. I have taught in Woodland Davis Knights Landing my children went to Davis Woodland schools and Davis schools. I Really am sorry That you have to put up with this interference in the important things that you do. Teachers are trained professionals. It makes my blood boil to hear these insane gender ideology, gender indoctrination, cutting off breasts, medical, what was the medical one? Gender medical industry, how you will lose your breasts. Good heavens. Teachers do

083not have this brilliant ability to groom children, whatever that may be. We teach, and we teach important things. I have never met Trustee McDonald, but I just couldn't even figure that out. I'm also told that you do have children and that you homeschool them. And if that's the kind of education they're getting, I don't know how you do it. Of course people need ethnic studies. Of course people need to be protected. Of course the trans community, the LGBTQ plus community need to be protected. Ethnic studies means history. That's what it is. It's history. It's reality. It's truth. It's what really happens. A long time ago, I went to Delano, California, stayed in the home of Manuel Chavez, brother of Cesar Chavez. That's history. I know about the Great Boycott. My children, my own home children

084know about it. My students never learned about it because it never came up, and I taught elementary school. It wasn't something that we did. I don't know. Here's a piece of history. Ronald Reagan, when he was governor, said Mexicans, and he was talking about the Chicano program, are built low to the ground. That's why they're good at farm work. This is history. This nonsense about teachers indoctrinating children to become transgender. Transgender is real. It's real. It's normal. It's fine those people my family everybody. It's just plain Okay, we need to defend everybody. Thank you after Bill Wagnon is Anush Jojo Rian I'm Bill Wagnon. I Was just well, I want to say thank you for the domestic violence thing. I was a I was a product of that in my home And I saw my

085mother get knocked out many times, and I'm just glad she survived. And I have a sister that was gay, and I say that because she's no longer with us. And she did take her life back in 1980. And I have a lot of sympathy. Everybody here has friends that are gay or lesbian or transgender. Everybody has them. And you may not know it, but you do. But I've heard tonight the topic has been... expounded just crazy. Why is the school district dwelling on this right now when I looked at and not that there's anything wrong with these guys back here probably going he's nuts and I maybe I am but I was looking at on Woodland High School and we have 14 percent math proficiency. 44% or so in reading proficiency and 96 or 94%

086graduation. I don't get it. And I think that we need to change the direction on what's going on. Because tonight, it's pretty much all evening LGBTQ+. And I don't understand that. And I was looking over the board here and... what was mentioned was the $24,800 for hiring Mr. Hagedorn. And I was looking at what he taught, and he's taught some fantastic things, really. Introduction to Chicano and Mexican American studies, which is great. Introduction to Latin American study, basically the same thing. Race, Ethnic, and Power in America, that was at San Francisco State University, and that's great, and Ethics Studies Leadership Program was another one that's fantastic, but the one that got me was Radical Pedagogy at Prescott College, he taught, and I go, I don't even know what that is. So when I hear the

087word radical, like anybody, the alarm goes off. But here's the definition that I looked up for it. Radiopathography is taught by educators who believe in transformational power, radical pedagogy, and local political organization. Now, we don't need to be political. in our school districts. But what exactly do we mean by radical pedagogy? Essentially we view radical pedagogy as a pedagogy that uses the tenets of critical pedagogies. Queer, anti-racist, discrit, which I don't know what that is, culturally relevant and other liberatory pedagogies and rehumanize educational experiences for all students. A lot of that I agree with, but time's over. Thank you. I did want to clarify that we actually, don't have the topic on the agenda. If it wasn't for all the comments, we would actually have gone on to the next item. So the board actually

088has just for the public, as you made the statement that we were dwelling on this, we actually are not like that online. But the topic tonight is just no, that is not the topic. That's just the public has a right to speak on anything the board can consider. But that is not a topic. The board actually has has agendized and I don't know, over I've lost track of how many meetings we actually have not. Just to clarify. OK. Yeah. Thank you. I saw online. Mr. Pettit. And nothing is online. Yeah, no worries. Just clarifying. Thank you. After Anoush, I hope I said that right, is Debbie Lyles. Thank you. My name is Anoush Dordurian, and I am director of YOLO Rainbow Families, a project of the Davis Phoenix Coalition. YOLO Rainbow Families serves LGBTQ plus

089families across YOLO County, including Woodland. As part of DPC, it was our privilege and pleasure to accept the Davis Joint Unified School District Resolution for Bullying Prevention Month for our ongoing efforts to reduce hate, increase understanding, and prevent bullying and hate crimes. We were also, incidentally, supporters of ethnic studies in Davis with our Jewish community. First of all, as one of the organizers of the YOLO is for Everyone joint letter and rally that took place on Tuesday, I want to personally thank the WGAUSD trustees who have signed the letter so far. President Villagrana, Vice President Bautista Zavala, and Trustees Rodriguez, Garcia, and Mott. I also have so much gratitude to Trustees Rodriguez, Garcia, and Mott for speaking at the rally in English and Spanish, affirming that Yolo County is a place that welcomes, includes, and

090cares for all students in our county. Not just some. The letter, signed by over 1,000 residents across Yolo County, affirms that our public leaders, our doctors, our faith leaders, and ordinary residents want to see an end to the campaign of hate in our community and are committed... Excuse me to defending the safety of all of our school children our teachers and our school staff in the face of repeated threats of violence against Davis schools and our County Library In this vein, I want to raise awareness in Woodland that the chair of Moms for Liberty, who has given public comment today, was served with a temporary restraining order yesterday for repeated targeting of Davis teachers who support LGBTQ plus students by displaying pride flags in their classrooms. Teachers' names, schools, and room numbers have been posted

091publicly on social media by the chair. In the wake of this exposure, bomb threats were made against some of those teachers who were awakened at 3 a.m. by police to search their houses out of concern for their lives. Additionally, some educators have been harassed and intimidated in person by the chair. The TRO seeks to protect these educators from both online and in-person threats. We do not want to see these tactics of bullying, harassment, and intimidation happen to educators in Woodland. Davis Phoenix Coalition has a video about digital hygiene to help anyone who may be targeted by Moms for Liberty for being LGBTQ plus or LGBTQ plus allies. Just as we have in Davis, we are ready to stand with Woodland teachers for safety, security, and freedom of expression for all. Thank you. Hi, I didn't

092plan on speaking. My name is Debbie Lyles. I'm not a parent, never had children, but I'm so worried about the kids today. Not only are we not addressing climate change like we should be, but the hatred I keep hearing from parents that have children especially worries me. The suicide rate for kids is going up higher and higher every day, along with our military. I don't understand the fear of base, why people are so afraid. Insects in this world can change sexes, from one sex to another. Human beings have the right to be who they are, no matter whether they're trans, gay, or whatever. I don't understand what kind, what... Why people have to be so fearful if I could eliminate fear from my life my god would that be incredible and these kids today could

093grow and Nurture and know that there's no judgment especially done by their own parents I know too many gay people that have been disowned by their parents It's just this is our school system the teachers aren't here to change your kids I mean they're born that way if they are gay, so I just I don't know. I wasn't going to say a thing, and I was grateful I saw someone in Beamer Park talking about coming to this meeting, and I just don't understand it. The bigotry, the hate, the politics, you know, it's... Our kids do a better job of getting along with each other until we... kind of put our own crap into their minds and and and the more fear that we give people it doesn't make sense to me I know I'm coming

094to rambling I I just moms for liberty um is too scary I mean it's all based on fear and ignorance as far as I'm concerned because there are gays like the gentleman said gays have been as long as humans have been around the diversity is a wonderful thing It's not something to be condemned. And the fear about kids changing their bodies, the suicide rate is so high. There's little kids that are two-year-olds covering their genitals because they know it's not right for their bodies. That's what's real out there. So I just, I don't know, I just pray that people rid themselves of so much fear because it really stymies. I'm almost 70, so in my school I would have liked to have learned more about our history because the more we can know, hopefully I

095plan to always remain teachable for the rest of my life, and I'm so grateful for the teachers of today. I think they need to be paid more too, but I don't think they need to endure this stuff. Thank you. Is that it? Yeah. We'll call a bathroom break. We'll reconvene in a few minutes. I'm not. Thank you. 30 second warning, 30 second. You can walk to your seat, you don't have to run. Safety first. No bumping, please. Safety first. Thank you, everyone. If we can close the door, please, so we can continue with the meeting. Thank you. All right, starting with our superintendent report, K-1. Thank you. Few updates first. I'm Chris is crystal here. I want to just share with Chris that I'm very impressed with your presentations and Also, he came out on

096a video with brown issues and he spoke in the video So it's on our Facebook if you want to check out so good job on that as well Chris You're really working doing really good on your public speaking HE ALSO RECEIVED A SCHOLARSHIP. I WANT TO SHARE WITH THE BOARD THAT I LOVE FOOTBALL AND BASKETBALL. I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO SPREAD MY EXPERIENCE A LITTLE FURTHER WITH LEARNING MORE ABOUT TENNIS. I VISITED A TENNIS GAME AT BIONEER HIGH SCHOOL. I HAD A COMMUNITY MEMBER COME WITH ME AND JOIN ME. about tennis and to learn and I think I need a couple more lessons on that. There was quite a great experience watching our girls, Pioneer High School and Woodland High School playing tennis. So that was a great experience. I've also been at some girls'

097volleyball games and watched a game of girls' flag football. Let me tell you, those girls are tough. And then this Friday night, I'll be going to Pioneer High School to watch the football game at Dixon. So our students are out and about, really involved in sports. I'm looking forward to watching some of our water sports, too. So I'm just trying to get out there to different sports and not stick to what I'm used to. Seeing our students participate. We also had a delegation from la Piedad Mexico the sister city of Willand visited our schools We the city asked us to host them on Friday And we had a great time So showcasing and and sharing with the delegation from Mexico what dual immersion is and everything that we do here to promote language and culture

098in our schools It was really nice to hear our staff brag about being elementary and seeing the excitement of our friends from Mexico learning about what we do here in the United States to continue to maintain language and culture. Also at the same event we had our pink ribbon. Awareness for breast cancer that are the school participate in and I want to thank our pioneer high school cheerleaders who showed up to participate in the event With their pink pom-poms and they walked around the school making it very exciting for our staff So thank you to the staff who put the time in to welcome our host. It does take Time and coordination and I want to think our staff who helped contribute to that We had 58 students participate in the Youth Empowerment Summit at

099UC Davis. And we were the district that had the highest turnout of students participating. So I also want to thank staff for getting our students out there to participate in this very powerful leadership opportunity. Let's see. I also participated in the Fall Farmers Festival. And I want to thank the board again for passing the land acknowledgement statement that we're going to be making at our board meetings. And then we also had Spring Lake Elementary is finally completed. I want to thank our M&O department and Lewis and everyone at the school staff and parents and community out there in Spring Lake for their patience as throughout the years we've been slowly building onto that school and we finally finished the last phase. You need to go check it out. The field looks beautiful. Students were very

100excited and we had some garden boxes and plants that were donated by the construction and the people that helped. ENGINEERS, I'M NOT SURE WHO ALL OUT THERE, BUT THE FOLKS AT HMC THAT HELPED BUILD AND FINISH UP OUR SPRING LAKE AND FINISH UP THE SCHOOL, AND THEY DONATED TO LEAVE THAT FOR US. SO I'M VERY THANKFUL FOR THE PARTNERSHIP THAT WE HAD WITH THEM AND ESPECIALLY TO JIM FOR LEADING THAT PROJECT. VERY WELL DONE. And last but not least, this is Administrators Week, so I want to congratulate all our site administrators for all their hard work, for their leadership, and for the commitment of our district. And with that, I'll conclude my report. Any questions for the superintendent? Seeing none, we'll move on to the California School Employee Association report. Good evening, Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin, Board

101of Trustees and Community. My name is Irene Diffentorum, and I am here tonight to represent the California School Employees Association Woodland Chapter 118, which I am the secretary of. Last night, we held our monthly meeting, and we had our first round of e-board nominations. Our benefits committee is represented by our contract with WJUSD. And 20.5.2 reads, the Health Benefits Committee shall make recommendations to the respective negotiating team and all changes in health benefits shall be made through the negotiations process. While most of the time we were invited to these meetings and were able to voice our opinions, ask questions, and tell our experience with our benefits, we were not invited to a wrap-up meeting, which we were told would be held in September. Our benefits committee emailed late September inquiring about this meeting. On Monday,

102this last Monday. We received an email asking us if we could meet Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday of this week. We have told the heads of the benefits committee, Kenan, who represents who we receive our benefits through. and the district that we need to go to our members and it needs to be voted on because we are a member-run union. It needs to be voted on before it can be presented to or given back to the union or to the district for us to say, yes, these are the things we want. Last night we had to rush through a meeting giving all of the benefits to our members. And this is now being rushed through. We have to have it done through our state level. They have to okay it. They want to make sure

103we're getting the best benefits that we can. Our benefits fair was announced early in October before. Any of these things were put into process with us. An email that I received said, we decided that these would be the best benefits for you. I don't know who we were. We were not included in that talk. We ask for respect. That's what we ask for. And when our contract is not being followed, there's a lack of respect. The district should know by now, because we say it every year, that our benefits committee needs to be aware of what changes are being made to our benefits in a timely manner so that we don't have to rush. Each part of the committee Our volunteers. These volunteers include WEA, the district office employees, and CSEA. We should all have

104the same voice. And all of our voices should be heard. We're happy to announce that the completion of the 22-23 Reopener Contract negotiations. We're pleased with the addition of a new article and an MOU for specific professional development. We're currently going through the process of getting tentative agreements through our 610 process. That's our AOK from the state level. And we can take this to our membership for a vote. We have five MOUs ready to be voted on, and we'll go to our membership on Monday. Thank you. And this concludes our report. Quick question. If you can help me, because you said a lot of things, what is it you're requesting specifically from the board? That they make sure that when it comes to our benefits, that we are included and we are there to help

105make that last decision, that it's not made for us. And you're saying that's in the contract? Yes, it's 20. No, no, that's okay. Yeah, it is on our contract. And who's they? Who's we? Who's we that decided? You said they. That's why I know who they is so I can follow up whoever they are. Who is we? They is we. I don't know. Because this decision was, I mean, it came out as an email. Got it. It makes it harder for me if I don't know who they are. I realize that. And so I would talk to the business department. I believe they are in charge of the benefits part. Got it. Thank you. Moving on to K-3, which is the Woodland Education Association report. Good evening, Board of Trustees, Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin, Cabinet, and community.

106Thank you for this time on the agenda. My name is Becca Bernard, and I teach science at Douglas Middle School. I'm honored to be serving our members as president of the Woodland Education Association. The fall season is upon us. Pumpkin spice lattes, crunchy leaves on the ground, and traditions like harvest festivals at our elementary schools. Tafoya is looking forward to hosting their all-elementary school cross-country meet on October 26th. Students, parents, and teachers have been having a blast. I hope that some of you get to be there. It's a big deal to the elementary kids. It's a really big deal. Douglas Webb Leadership students are hosting a Hispanic Heritage Carnival and Mariachi concert tomorrow at both 7th and 8th grade lunches. I also hope that some of you will be there. It was really fun last

107year to see some of the trustees there. Our WEA bargaining team is excited to have reached a tentative agreement with the district on the articles left open on the table from last year. Our executive board has voted unanimously to recommend approval by a vote of our general membership that shall commence next week. Major highlights include timeline clarifications for filing grievances, improvements to language around vacancies and voluntary and involuntary transfer processes, compensation for special ed professional development beyond the workday, and striving to equitably distribute students with IEPs amongst teachers, stipends for special ed and dual immersion teachers, as well as additional coach. additional coach stipends. The only remaining item on the negotiations table from last year is the CTSO stipend, which we hope to receive from the district soon. Our bargaining team and executive board are

108finishing up our sunshine proposal based on member surveys, and we look forward to sharing that with the board at our next meeting on October 26th. Our negotiations teams will meet again in the spring semester to begin negotiating for the upcoming school year. I want to say thank you to the board for passing the Indigenous Peoples Day Resolution and your commitment to beginning each meeting with a land acknowledgement. It is important that we recognize the stolen land we are living and working on as that of the Patwin people. I wonder how we can use this as a momentum to deepen our relationship with Indigenous people in our community. There's a new beautiful mural at Douglas created and painted by Native youth and community members this past summer. I encourage folks to drive by College Street to

109take in its vast beauty. It's like 60 by 30 feet. It's stunning. There's also a wonderful video with student interviews on our district's YouTube channel documenting the process. The recent establishment of the Native Student Resource Center at Douglas is another example of how we can continue to amplify the voices of and empower our Native students. I do want to point out that that space is a shared space, and that kind of gives a certain vibe. that we're giving space to indigenous people that's not really their space. And I had a conversation with a leader from that group, and I would just maybe check in with them. Like, that is kind of a, like, I'm going to give you this, but, like, you have to reserve it. And that kind of isn't a very welcoming vibe.

110So I don't know if there's something that could be done about that, but just a side note about that conversation. I ask, how can we give these students the ongoing support and safe spaces they need to succeed in a system that was designed by their oppressor? Are we teaching a history curriculum that honors their past and present culture and traditions, or are native voices being taught only in the past tense? There is no easy answer to these questions, but we can continue to challenge our assumptions and question the structures we have created in order to improve the learning environment for all of our students. A wonderful opportunity to begin those difficult conversations is at the listening session for Native American Studies curriculum at Douglas on Monday, October 23rd from 6 to 7.30 p.m. Native parents,

111tribal nations, youth educators, and local educational agencies are invited to attend. I hope to see you there. That is in that space. That is the new Native Resource Center. Lastly, I want to say thank you to this board for adopting the National Bullying Prevention Month Resolution. It should be celebrated that the WJUSD Board of Trustees believes that all students have the right to a safe and healthy school environment and that the district, schools, and community have an obligation to promote mutual respect, tolerance, and acceptance. However, I would like to question why Trustee Emily McDonald voted to ratify this resolution when her actions and words have proven otherwise. Trustee McDonald has done quite the opposite of promoting a culture of mutual respect, tolerance, and acceptance. She has had every opportunity to apologize or rescind her comments,

112which created an unsafe and hateful environment for LGBTQ+, and especially our trans youth here in Woodland. Trustee McDonald, your comments have invited hateful extremists into our town. many of whom proudly remind us that they drive long distances to be here for our board meetings to spew hate and division amongst our community. You have yet to reject these supporters or reaffirm your support to our trans students and staff, and we must recognize that your silence is compliance. WEA has been rallying in our community with dozens of other labor and activist groups to collect signatures for your recall, and we hope to give Area 2 voters the opportunity to elect a trustee who is truly committed to aligning their words and actions with the resolutions that they vote on. For those interested in how to get involved,

113we canvass every day of the week, but especially on Wednesday evenings and Sunday afternoons. Please come out and spread the word that Woodland is a safe and accepting community for all students. Our WEA Executive Board, along with over 1,000 individuals and organizations, including five of our board trustees, signed a letter spearheaded by the Davis Phoenix Coalition, Yolo County is for everyone. It was publicly celebrated at a grassroots press conference on Tuesday evening at a beautiful event that celebrated the diversity of our community. Thank you, Trustee Rodriguez, Trustee Garcia, and Trustee Mott for attending and representing Woodland and for sharing a bilingual message that our community and schools are open to all students. I'd like to leave you with our message. Over the past several months, extremists have repeatedly attacked some of Yolo County's valued public

114institutions, including our library, our annual pride celebration, and our schools. They have protested against expressions of LGBTQ pride, such as rainbow flags in classrooms, rainbow crosswalks on our streets, and LGBTQ-themed books in our libraries. They have objected to scientifically-based curricula about gender and sexuality in our schools. They have publicly posted photos and the physical location of teachers. students, librarians, and advocates on social media platforms, placing them at risk from an angry network of anti-LGBTQ extremists. They have spread prejudice, disinformation about the LGBTQ community to arouse outrage. They have deliberately courted attention from extremist media, and in the wake of this publicity, our libraries and schools have received multiple bomb threats, each accompanied by vicious anti-LGBTQ language. They claim to want to protect children, but instead our children have been put in danger. Our county is

115not alone. Libraries and schools across the nation have been similarly threatened, both for being LGBTQ positive and also for promoting racial diversity and equality. Our experience in Yolo County is just one piece of a nationwide campaign to sow division, disrupt communities, and undermine the principle that public institutions must be open, inclusive, and safe for all of us, regardless of our differences. With the collective voice of all who are signing this letter, we declare that we They will not succeed. We reject the politics of division and hate. We do not simply accept the diversity of our county, our state, and our nation. We embrace it. Our community is stronger when our unique differences come together. We believe that a spectrum of experiences and a free exchange of ideas are hallmarks of our democracy. We know that

116truth has the power to keep us free and that lies carry a danger to inflame bitterness and hate. We reject tactics of fear and intimidation because they rupture the social contract. We assert that everyone has the right to go to school, visit a library, go to work, and live without fear of attack just for being who they are. We affirm that no amount of toxic politics will sever our commitments to each other. We insist on respect, inclusion, and safety for every child and teacher in our schools, every reader in our libraries, and every resident in our towns. So today we declare that we will not allow division to poison our community. In Yolo County, our values include equality. dignity and respect for everyone without exception. We stand firm and we stand together. Thank you and

117this concludes my report. Moving on to board member reports. Hands up if you. I'll go first. I'll try to cut mine very short. As all of you may recall, as a member of the California Latino School Board Association and vice president, a couple of weeks ago we held our very much anticipated Unity Conference. But due to some hotel undisclosed labor disputes with some of their union workers... we were forced as an organization to pivot. I want to thank all of our board members here and those statewide and all of the attendees who understood the circumstances and the decision for us to have to pivot and have to. take the hard decision to have to move our unity conference to a later date and run it and operate it virtually. I just want to say thank

118you to those who were able to attend, to our superintendent who were supportive during this very, very tough decision on site. I'm very... I'm very humbled to share with you that we had a keynote speaker, the iconic Dolores Huerta, who was able to applaud our effort and decision to stand with our union representatives and leaders on site at the hotel. And she was able to record a small video with us and just really show the collaboration between all the school districts and the unions as we stood. in support of their effort at that given hotel. But I do want to tell my colleagues and our superintendent and hear everyone present that this organization did pivot, but it only stands to show that this organization is strong and due to these circumstances, we've only become stronger.

119and it really shed light on resiliency. And even though we as a board for Latino School Board Association, even though we're part of different respective school districts, we're still able to operate and be able to continue operating and learn from this specific situation. Aside from that and the hard work and planning that went into it, I was excited to join the Yolo County Excellence in Education Award Ceremony a couple of weeks ago. And again, I want to congratulate all of the honorees. I was able to attend my 20th anniversary reunion and have lots of takeaways and ideas that I'm hoping to sit down and share with my superintendent as far as how we can continue a relationship with our alumni. I was very active in the host committee for La Piedad, Michoacan Sister City, and

120I also want to echo the sentiment and acknowledgement and thanks to all of our staff who helped us host the Sister City. I was able to attend the Spring Lake ribbon cutting for the final phase. Super excited that this is now a dream come true. And just to see all of our students there be super excited to be able to play on that new grounds is something very humbling. But I think that what I do want to share with my colleagues here is that we have an opportunity to share a new play field with not only our Spring Lake community, but to all with all of our students. This is an A grade grass field that has the size of a soccer field. So when we think about. multi-weather facilities, this is a multi-weather facility

121that we need to consider opening up to our students at other campuses. So that is something that I will be bringing forward in the next few weeks with the yellow sheet. Was excited again to see the farm worker festival come true for the second time in history of woodland and I want to give a special shout out and thank you to brown issues for coming forward and being the Organization to lend a hand and make this happen again I'm gonna end right there because we have a lot of work to do they want to just clarify the the committee for the Lucky that you were there as an individual right now representing the board. That is correct I am a part of la piedad Michoacan sister city delegation I am a part of the host

122committee as an individual my participation in any visit to let me check to Michoacan Has been at my own expense as an individual and not by any means paid by the school district. Thank you Other reports trust your biggest I just quickly want to mention that I also attended the ribbon cutting at Spring Lake Elementary for the field and the field looks pretty magnificent. It really is, I think, one of the premier fields that we have within our elementary system and I'm very happy that it really completes. the Spring Lake Elementary and that the Spring Lake community is able to enjoy this premier elementary school. I think that it would be wonderful to be able to not just have that field used for Spring Lake students, but if we could somehow have other... other elementary

123schools, other parts of our district be able to utilize that field as appropriate. It'd be pretty great. Also, I want to thank the neighbors that surround Spring Lake. There was a lot of construction going on, and thank you for their patience while we finished it, but our staff, our district staff, did a wonderful job in completing this project, and it just looks really great. Thanks. Other reports? Seeing none, okay continue to board committee updates would like to go first I'll go real quick About two Mondays ago we had excellence in education of which celebrates our educators all across the yellow county school employees not just classroom staff. And that was a phenomenal event. I did take home some of the flowers that were left over and provided by Woodland schools. And if I can brag

124on our CTE program those flowers lasted two weeks in my classroom. I just threw them away. um absolutely beautiful event um and so i thank all of you guys who attended and especially stay to the end to honor our teacher of the year who is also from woodland schools so go woodland trustee garcia yes i just want to say about the um collaborative for goodland joe is the city tomorrow we're going to have the the moving movies night on may And it's going to be tomorrow at 5.30 on the Heritage Plaza. And also for the Yolo County Office of Education, they're going to have a summit for students from kids from 17 to 24, October 27 at 9 a.m. So Trustee Rodriguez, you had to tell more. Yeah sure. So I also attended the collaborative

125for Woodland youth meeting. The city mentioned the the the their. Their event with the delegation from Mexico and they mentioned how they enjoyed visiting Beamer school and participating in the pink walk And so, you know our mayor Fernandez was very busy along with the all the working group to be able to Show the delegation from Mexico around woodland Y Coe talked about the brought up the issues of childcare again and possibly reestablishing the childcare committee superintendent Garth, what is Garth? Garth Lewis, sorry. Garth Lewis brought up the fact that there's still a tremendous need of childcare in not only in Woodland, but in the surrounding area. Zero to three specifically is a huge need. Childcare for special needs. Children is also a tremendous need. And so it looks like we probably will be reestablishing that

126committee to look into what we can do as a CWI organization or group. Also, YCOE is having their Transition Youth Summit on October 27th, and they are having a Youth Mental Health First Aid program on December 6th at the YCOE Office of Ed. Woodland Community College also mentioned that on January 19th will be the first opening for the Performance Arts Center. And on October 4th and 5th of next year, they'll also be hosting the Global Rice Festival. And so those are exciting things to look forward to. And generally, Woodland Community College also mentioned that the enrollment is up 10% more than last fall. So that's really good news and a good show of trending for more participation at WCC. And that concludes my report. Any other reports? So the boundaries committee Has made some progress

127there was a four firms one thing staff were collecting all the information that we needed we did some follow-up questions to the four firms and then from that we narrow down to two so we're gonna do interviews with those two firms and then come with the recommendation to the board after that so that is the update any questions Okay Seeing no other hands going up for community reports moving on to one information review the California assessment of student performance and progress results Good evening grateful to have the opportunity to share our California assessment of student performance and progress results. Now these results were released to schools starting in June and on a rolling basis they come out as the tests are scored. They have not yet been released by the California Department of Education so

128we cannot look at other districts data or statewide data for comparison at this time. But we can review our own data and use it for planning purposes. And we have been doing that since August of this year with both teachers and site administrators. Our CASP data really fits into goal two, which is in the academic needs part of goal two through quality first instruction, enrichment, and intervention. That is where our metrics that deal with academic achievement are mostly housed within the LCAP. So I'm going to begin by sharing a little bit of background information about the Smarter Balanced Assessment System, which is part of the CASP program. And then we'll review some of our own data. So as I said, we can't review statewide or other district or county data, but we can review our

129own. So I have slides with our data by grade, by school. by race and ethnicity and by language status. There are lots of ways, I think, as you'll see in this presentation and then when we get into the dashboard in my next presentation, there's lots of ways that we can review our own data. And so that's what we're focusing on. After the data review, then I'll just talk a little bit about our local control and accountability plan and the actions that are within the local control accountability plan or the LCAP that are directly supportive of student achievement in language arts, in math, and in science. And then we'll finish up with some next steps. So just to start out the CASP program is California's assessment system and Smarter Balanced Assessment is really a cornerstone of

130that program The Smarter Balanced Assessment System has a few different components The one we're going to talk about tonight is the summative assessments. Those are the end of year The end of your tests that have been used in California since 2014 Smarter Balanced developed these assessments to measure the Common Core state standards. Today Smarter Balanced has a variety of tools as you can see designed to support teachers. So there's a web page called Tools for Teachers that has lesson plans and tools for instruction. There are also interim assessments that are more short cycle assessments that test on a few standards and teachers use those to check on progress at intervals during the year. At the end of the year, all students in grades three through eight and 11, with a few exceptions, take the Smarter

131Balanced summative assessment. So just really quick on the students who take it. So it's students in grades three through eight and 11. Students who are newcomers do not take the English language arts portion of the test. And then students who are in special education with the most severe cognitive disabilities take what's called the alternate, the California alternate assessment for language arts and math. And that's similar for the California science test or the CAST. There is a California alternate assessment for science. So we'll start with English language arts or ELA, looking at performance by grade level. So this chart and each of the following charts, they show the percent of students meeting standard. Another way to think about this is these students are at grade level so at the end of the year they've met those

132those grade level expectations Another thing that you'll notice is there's only two years worth of data. So because of the COVID pandemic, we're just showing 21-22 and then 22-23. In 2020-21, only some 11th graders in this district took the Smarter Balanced test. So it really doesn't make any sense to use that data to compare with the next several years. So here I'm showing the results by grade level. So across the bottom, I'm starting with third grade on the left hand side to 11 and then we can see overall with 38, about 38% of students meeting standards. So overall in the district, we've grown by 1%, just about, in English language arts. We can drill down by school and so here are it's a little bit blurry but Here are the elementary schools and then secondary

133schools on the next slide We can see that the so this is the percentage of students meeting standard over two years The school with the most growth in English language arts is Spring Lake with seven points growth getting up to 70 percent proficient. And then to FOIA is the next highest growth with six percentage points in English language arts. definitely a wide range of performance and but what you'll see here and it shows up in math as well and really it's mirroring patterns of achievement across the country that the schools that have students with the highest socioeconomic status tend to have higher performance on standardized tests so that's a conclusion that we can draw Looking at secondary, we see Douglas and Pioneer making growth, 5 percentage points each, and then we do see declines at

134Lee and Woodland High. This is, again, English language arts. Moving into math. So the next few slides cover math. This chart also shows performance but by grade level. Overall, again, one percentage point growth in the district overall. So good that overall we are increasing. We see some declines in some grade levels and some increases in others. declines in third fourth and eleventh grade and then five through eight we do see some improvements looking at the school-wide performance again mirrors very closely with our English language arts data in terms of growth The school with the most growth in math is Freeman Elementary with five percentage points growth and then SciTech with three percentage points. And I know that if you speak with the principals at those two schools, they have had a very solid focus on

135professional development and data analysis and collaboration all surrounding. THE SUBJECT OF MATH. SO ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE HAVE HAD IN OUR LCAP AND YOU HAVE APPROVED REGARDING THE CONSULTANT, REGARDING PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES, THIS ALL STEM FROM PRINCIPALS ASKING EDDIE, DR. GONZALES, WHAT ARE YOU DOING AT YOUR SCHOOL? AND SO HE HAS BEEN REALLY WORKING REALLY HARD ON DEVELOPING A CULTURE OF DATA DRIVEN DECISION MAKING. He worked with his teachers. Every single week they meet, they review data, they tweet their lessons, they collaborate, they see what worked, what didn't work, and then they readjust and they do it again the next week. And so he shared what he was doing with... A school and all the principles were asked us can we want to get this training? To learn how to do the cycle

136of inquiry and work with our teachers on how to be a data-driven school So last year as you recall the principal's got trained on professional learning communities and this year now so that So that the principal's knew what they were going to be leading So because if you can't lead something you don't know so that's what the focus was last year and this year The principals are working with their teachers on training the teachers on how to use data to drive and make decisions and collaborate using the cycle of inquiry through the professional learning community. And I just want to make a point on that because we were investing a lot of money on that. And this is a data to show why people ask well why don't we look to see what's working. This

137is definitely making the work working in these schools and we're trying to replicate it district wide. Thank you. Moving into the secondary schools, Douglas made five points growth, which is a really solid gain for one year. And it's good to see that growth there. If we look at language status, so this is the percentage of students meeting standard by language status. So in the blue, we have English learners. The orange are the reclassified students. And the gray bar are the English-only students. There is a wide gap between English learners and the reclassified and English-only students. That's actually expected. Once an English learner is proficient in English, then they're eligible for reclassification. They become a reclassified student. But what we can see is that in English language arts, which is on the left-hand side of the

138screen, reclassified students outperform English-only students, but not for math, which is also something that we expect. But what's interesting also for both subject areas is that reclassified students improved more than English only students. For the last two years I can just add just to emphasize what is an English learner just to make sure everyone understands these are students who I Who have not shown proficiency in English? They're learning the English language and there's several levels of proficiency And so if you can imagine if you went to another country and you're trying to take a test in German you we would be probably in the you know, lower performing until you learn the language. But the research has shown for those students who we support their primary language and we provide the strong English language development

139that they will outperform. And the research is showing in our scores with our students. And so I want to thank Mariano's school and her team for the work that our English Learners Department is doing. So we were always going to have English learners because they're going to be coming and going. And so we will always have English learners And so our job is to make sure that those English learners are learning English as best as possible And as they become proficient, they will get the results that we get with our English learners And also, I'll just add that when we look at English learner performance on the ELPAC, which is the assessment for English learners, that last year, English learners made progress almost 6%, I think it was, almost 6% growth in terms of the

140number of English learners making progress on the English learner assessment. So while the... seven and six percent You know may not May not look That's not what we want to see in terms of performance, but we know that they are making progress and and so those numbers will continue to grow as They are learning English through the years and let me just clarify the English learner assessment is a test and how proficient and how well they're learning the language of English So that's really important for us to see. We need to make sure that those English learners that we see there in blue are making progress in the English language so that they eventually can master the language well enough to do better on our English assessments. Yes, thank you. Before you go on, what

141does the 6% mean? 6% is that's the percentage of English learners that met standard on the Smarter Balanced test. Okay, so I think one more slide for English language arts and math this is a combined ELA and math by race and ethnicity Shows the again the students percent of students meeting standard and just shows the the achievement gap that we have between all of our groups of students also shows that that Hispanic or Latino students and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students declined over two years. And so that's definitely not what we want to see. We want to see growth, even if it's small gains. Okay so we've been looking at the data and as I said we've been teachers and administrators both school site and district office have been reviewing data participating in school-wide

142data analysis receiving professional development as Superintendent Lampkin said on professional learning communities so I just wanted to outline kind of there's a lot of there's a lot of things that are happening a lot of actions that we've been putting into place and they are all um outlined in our local control and accountability plan so i wanted to point out some of those um some of those pieces and where they show up so as i said you know we're really addressing goal 2 with this presentation and so in goal 2 action 2 is professional development and As Elodia shared, professional learning communities, that's really a framework for improving student achievement. that really governs and talks about how we look at data and why we look at it and what we do once we do look at

143it and how teachers collaborate and principals. And we've been training teachers and administrators over the last two years. And we do know that it does take time for... for improvement efforts to really see the fruition of that. And I'll talk a little bit more about professional learning communities and what we're doing there in my third presentation tonight. So I'll move on. Goal two, action three is data analysis and review. And we do have... a lot going on there we have common assessments for english language arts and math district-wide K-12 now. The secondary English and math teachers have begun implementing interim assessments and those are common across sites. So that started last year and that's a really positive step. And then the school-wide data analysis like I've shared, we have been engaging in that district-wide at

144every site. And then goal two, action six, is early literacy. And as you know, the board provided funding in the LCAP to increase staffing to support early literacy. And there's also lots of training that goes along with that that our TOSAs have been engaging in with those staff members. And then kind of underlying all of it is our work with teachers in the action teams. And we have this year action teams for English language arts, math, and social science and science, and ELD. And those are meetings where we bring together teachers across sites. to review data, to work on implementation. For example, in the elementary action teams that we just wrapped up the first round, we were talking mostly about the social science curriculum and reviewing and looking at the social science standards to support

145the implementation of that new adoption. Okay, and so moving on from ELA and math to science just have one slide for The cast it's called the cast test students in grades 5 8 and 11 Take the cast test. It's part of the cast assessments in California The California Department of Education had created this assessment to measure student achievement on the next generation science standards a few years ago. And so it is relatively new in terms of assessments for our students and our teachers. The pandemic got in the way a little bit of its implementation. And so it's still, I think, very new to our folks. And so... That is we do not have curriculum at the elementary level and we have very very old curriculum at the secondary level so this is an area that

146needs some very serious attention and that we have it planned in the LCAP and You'll be hearing about an adoption The following year is it this year this year this year. We're going to the piloting. Yes, but the spring you'll be presented with recommendation for adoption of materials Yes, so great segue into my my last slide here. So just thinking about the actions that we've put into place to improve and support student achievement in science as a superintendent shared we our science curriculum is very outdated and Does not address the next generation's science standards the current Adopted science standards and so we are engaging in a pilot currently We have teachers across the district piloting curriculum, and we're expecting to wrap that up in hopefully by February and begin to have those conversations here. So

147that's that's a really foundational piece is just having the curriculum that addresses the standards is incredibly important at four of our elementary schools we have teachers who have been trained in a curriculum that's called project lead the way and So that's our steam curriculum that they've been learning about and others they're beginning to try that out this month Finally the assessment so these are the really key building blocks right of teaching and learning so curriculum and assessment in assessment the cast test there are interim assessments that have been developed to to help students and teachers learn and understand what's on the CAS test and to give students the ability to practice with the tools. It's a very different. thing to take a science test on the computer than it is the old CST that we

148took on paper. So we'll be reviewing and hopefully implementing those new assessments this year once they are rolled out in the next month or so. Okay, so finally, just to wrap up, the next steps supporting student achievement through professional development, assessment, and curriculum updates. Those are like the three big building blocks. We do have a process where... School principals are using what's called the school plan monitoring tool to look at data, review it on a regular basis, similar to what we do for the LCAP here in the district office. Once the CASP results are released by the state, then we'll be able to look at our growth compared to county and state data as soon as that's available, which will be in the next month, month and a half. And then finally, the California School

149Dashboard will get re-released, updated in December. mid-December sometime and so we will see our progress on the academic indicator on the academic indicator there so lots more data to come and looking forward to being able to see you know how how other districts and and what the message is from the state on progress or or not across the state this year I'll take some questions if you have them. What questions does the board have? None? Trustee Rodriguez and Trustee McDowell. I just have a couple questions. The first question is you mentioned that probably the biggest, I don't remember exactly what you said, but something like the biggest indicator of success or the socioeconomic status is reflected in the test scores. Is there a reason that we don't, show that on the, you know, we show,

150we break it out by ethnicity, but not by socioeconomic status. Is that a, um, Oh, um, No, there isn't a reason for that and I we do look at low income as a as one of the Categories of student group. I didn't include that in this presentation. But yes, we definitely do Look at that. I was just curious and that kind of leads me to my next question Which is and and I I apologize I didn't get this to you ahead of time. So if you need TIME TO THINK ABOUT IT AND GET BACK. THAT'S NO BIG DEAL. I WAS JUST CURIOUS. WHAT DOES THE DISTRICT DO WITH THE ADDITIONAL FUNDING THAT WE RECEIVE FOR THE UNDUBLICATED STUDENTS TO IMPROVE THEIR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE? Well, I would say just off the cuff, but it's probably a

151much larger and longer answer. The LCAP outlines how we use our supplemental and concentration funding to support our unduplicated students. The majority of our students in the district are unduplicated, and so we have a number of... district-wide actions that we use that funding for. Some of those examples are here in those actions supporting early literacy with the literacy paras, et cetera, the library techs, the professional development. A lot of those actions are. So if I pull up the LCAP and look at it, does it say, Is it specifically called out or is it simply just included in the, I mean, the actions for the unduplicated students are simply included in the overall framework of the LCAP? So we do identify in the LCAP specifically which actions we're identifying as contributing to increased services for those

152students. Yes. There is a table at the back. That outlines that. I'll look it up. And then the last thing, the last slide, let me pull it up here. There is a lot on this slide of next steps. This is a lot of stuff. Is there a, I guess, what's the plan? Is this in order of priority or is this just everything? I it's not necessarily in order of priority, but I would say that that top bullet is probably the one that will that gets the most attention and where we spend the most energy, because those are the really the three big sort of building blocks of teaching and learning, professional development, assessment and curriculum. Those are our sort of the big ideas of teaching and learning, really. Thank you. Yeah. trustee rodriguez so i'm

153looking at the performance by school for ela and And thank you for all your work. Thank you for disaggregating the data. I think that's something we've been asking for for a while. And it's great to see it because it really gives you a depth of understanding, not just of low scores, but where the low scores are, who's dealing with these low scores. I know we're putting in a tremendous amount of work to try and... deal with the issue of these scores. We have COVID behind us that didn't help us. But I just kind of want to, I think we have to acknowledge when we look at ELA scores like at Dingle or at Whitehead, you know, they indicate that 80% of our students do not meet. the average. And I don't wanna call these low

154scores anymore. These are like crisis scores to me. When you have 80% of your students not meeting standard. So, and you know what, we have several other scores at 70%. When we look at how we fund our students, our primary schools, or schools that are listed here. And we have something, we were supposed to look at some sort of equity formula to be able to give extra funding to schools that need the most help. Would you say that that... that that formula that we're using are going to the schools here that need the most help if you would just use say the ELA as a measure of who what schools are scoring the lowest. DIRECTOR MACKAROWSKI I might need to call in support for that question. I'm not the funding person here but thank you.

155I'll get Director Sharp up here. DIRECTOR MACKAROWSKI So the schools that are the probably as. Director Lambe had indicated the schools that were the least well performing tend to have the highest amount of low income students and we allocate our funding as the state requires and the federal government requires based on low income students for Title I funding and then our supplemental and concentration dollars do go out per unduplicated student to those schools as well. Okay, so you could tie in that funding Towards a kind of this equity formula essentially So we're required to have an equal way of distributing the funding So the state of the federal government requires us to allocate funding based on low income percentage for title one funding and then for our state funding we are required to have a

156formula to distribute that that is equitable across sites and that's our formula that we Establish from or that's a state formula. That is our formula. That's our formula. Yes. Okay, and Do we have a way of measuring whether how we created our formula and how how we distributed that money has it been effectively used. So the SIPCM monitoring tool is the tool that we utilize to determine whether or not actions within the school plans are effective and then we adjust actions within the school plan with the funding each year. So, and if we were to ask for information about what schools got allocations based on this equity type of funding, we should be able to kind of be able to grab that information. Yeah, I do have that information readily available, but again, the state

157of California requires that we distribute funding in a way that does not take into account the amount of Title I funding that a school gets, for example. We have to... be equitable about it. It's not necessarily dependent upon achievement scores. It has to be dependent upon the low income and unduplicated status. So not necessarily right not necessarily based on achievement scores but on low income. Exactly. Yeah. And English learners and and homeless students as well. Gotcha. Gotcha. I mean generally when I just kind of look at some of the lower numbers I just kind of wonder you know are we doing an effective job of trying to. Move resources into the schools that needed the most you know and that that's kind of the trying to figure out How you know how much have we

158done that and then how effective has it been? I think it's It's what I'm trying to get to and I would say if you're looking again at the schools that have the lowest performance Those schools to tend to get the most amount of funding and the most amount of resources from our district. Okay so So maybe I may put in a yellow sheet to try and understand that process a little bit better how monies are redistributed and and to see if they're to see if they're how they're being redistributed to our lower performing schools and try to see if there's you know something that we can look at in terms of how that money is affecting. Yeah, we can definitely revisit that. We are already funding our lower performing schools more because they have the

159most low income students and Title I students. Those are two tough, two areas of very impacted populations. So that's what the outcome will be. What I can say is that we probably I mean these these I agree these scores are are Concerning and we're going to continue to support those school sites working more closely about Sometimes not all about the money right is about implementation level implementation and there could be other other things that impact learning as well Not not just funding but the implementation and there's other Other aspects to that impact the school and I can think of some right now on those particular schools That we can help for the discussion on I know that's that's fantastic. I mean, that's I mean, that's the whole purpose of desegregating this data and presenting it

160right to give us an opportunity to look at it talk about it and be able to have the quality discussions which will you know help us be on our way to doing much better especially where it's needed. I can maybe just provide a concrete example for one of the schools that you mentioned at Dingle. So last year, the principal at Dingle engaged with her teachers to review student data. to identify those challenges that the teachers are facing with the student performance, student achievement. And through that process, they identified that, you know, some of the upper grade students, so students in grades four through six, were really struggling with some foundational reading skills. So those students, you know, had been online during the COVID pandemic. during some foundational school years. And so what we did was

161we worked on finding a supplemental curriculum that those upper grade teachers can use that's designed to support older students with foundational reading. And so the teachers were trained, they have the curriculum now. And so that's an example of Yes, it's about the funding. It's also about making really intentional decisions that are based in data to find the tools and resources that are going to help, that are going to provide the teachers with the support they need to teach the students that they have in front of them. And I think that's, you know, where it makes me feel really happy to know that we're taking on being a data-driven. and that we're actually putting money behind doing that and that we're moving resources to do that. When we share this kind of information, the community then

162also is able to see the work that we have ahead of us. And I'm glad because we're all able to kind of share in this work. It's gonna take all of us, right, to be able to. to really work on these test scores to improve the quality of these test scores, not just what we do, but also the community in whatever reasonable, relevant partnerships that we can make, right, to increase academic performance. So, you know, there's no question that we're aware of some of these scores, and we are putting intentional work behind being able to attack this issue. So there I have a figure. Yes. So I just want to say I'm very worried about especially for dingo and I used to have a conversation with the superintendent and to my college here and I

163have a question. So you say about you have a working with the teachers at dingo and my question is how long is gonna take to see that the scores improve? How many years? That's a really hard question to answer um I I don't this I'm not really sure how to yeah I say that yeah, that is a question that I'm hesitant to throw a number out there because I want to make sure that whatever I say is absolutely 100% accurate. But I can tell you it normally takes between when you start implementing and you implement Fidelity and you put systems in place, it takes three to five years to really see movement. It takes one year just to kind of understand. what's happening in the get-by-end, the second year, kind of like start testing and

164practicing. The third year, you start gaining momentum. Fourth year, you start really, you know, catching on, and then by the fifth year, you're flying it. And so I think the example of Freeman would be a good example of a school that Eddie has been working with. and has gone through all those steps, and now he's got momentum, so he's starting to show movement. So it really takes consistency. It's really important. It's really difficult for us when we have, you know, changes, administration changes. Many times when you have a new person come in, sometimes you experience a decline because everyone's kind of settling in and building relationships, understanding what's going on. There's different... different challenges at both of those schools in that way. Dingle has a challenge right now, and I've shared this with several of

165the trustees, and I'll go ahead and feel comfortable sharing it publicly. The dual immersion program, it's the teachers, one of the indicators of research that shows effective schools are schools that have strong collaboration. Well, it's really hard for a school to collaborate when you have two teachers and one teacher's in Spanish. and the other ones are just in English. So that right there takes away that very critical component of school success of not having that strong collaboration because of the way that school stood up. So that's something that we need to help navigate through. Whitehead last year had a shift in leadership and they didn't have, and leadership does matter. So there's different components. Like I was saying, it's not all about money. It's about other aspects of impacts. schools but in general it takes

166three to three three years and five three to five years thank you for the answer and also i wanna i wanna hear about um the parents what what are you giving the parents right now not just at lingo you have something from the parents christina are the promessa Is Promesa or is the literacy program? Yes. Let's call Maria, Director Maria Orozco, who oversees the CAFE program and our parent engagement. Good evening. Yes, Promesa grants, which has a huge component where parent involvement includes Dingo, Dingo Beamer, and Prairie. We also have Latino Literacy Project at all of our elementary schools, except for Spring Lake, because they're not Title I. I believe that's correct. So both of those programs are actively, happening as we speak on a weekly basis. Maria, can you tell us something about how

167is about the literacy program? Sure. So the Latino Literacy Project really emphasizes on focusing on early literacy. So our conference specialists were trained. We've invested a lot of title and money thanks to Director Sharp. And we focus on TK through second grade parents, but it's open to all parents. And we run these sessions, 10 sessions. on whatever time parents want us. Some have the evening, some have it after school, some have it in the morning. And we focus on. literacy skills for parents, how to read to your child. It doesn't matter what language you read in to your child. We know it's an effective practice just to have your child read. And so we focus on bilingual books. There are books that are delivered. So we do run the program in both languages, depending on

168whoever arrives to our sessions. And we train our parents to be partners in education. So not only are our teachers really focusing on literacy, we have our parents who also come to these sessions, learn how to engage with literacy practices with their early readers. and they take home, they have homework, they do projects, they do things with their students, and then at the end we have the celebration, and we also gift all of those parents who participate books to take home at the end to continue reading with their students at home. Thank you so much, Maria. Sure. No more questions. Trustee Regis and Fowler, and then back to Trustee Rodriguez. So if we can just take a moment to talk about like real talk about these standardized tests You've mentioned that their bias based on

169socioeconomics. We know that their bias based on culture race ethnicity They have gender bias language bias and disability bias, but this is the metrics with which we fund our schools So we have to play part of this game We have a population of parents who are very involved that tends to trend with test scores going up for their students But it's not just the PLC's and the pivot of the teaching of the teachers it's an impacted issue right if Parents are working two and three jobs to make ends meet. They don't have the time or energy to read to their kids Right. We just heard that the more you read to your kids, regardless of the language, it benefits your kids. So if these kids aren't getting that, they're already behind the curve. I don't

170know if we have solutions for that. We were just really told that teachers aren't parents and we can't do everything. So I don't know how we fix that situation. We are talking about school sites that don't have curriculum. So is it to be assumed that if we don't have a set curriculum we are teaching to a test? Can I just ask when you say we don't have curriculum? I'm just echoing back. Oh for science. So So in terms of a district adopted curriculum that meets the NGSS we don't have that right now That's not to say that teachers aren't teaching science in our classrooms. They've had to They've had to look other sources, especially it's the secondary level our science teachers and secondary are teaching science every day They've used resources from the Sacramento area

171science project They've gone on their own for training, things like that. So there is curriculum that's aligned to the NGSS, but it's not a district adopted curriculum yet. And so part of our efforts will be having that adopted curriculum and ensuring that everybody's kind of on the same page about it. Right. But would you say we are focusing on getting hmm? I don't know how to word this properly My fears were teaching to the test and we're leaving leaving out a lot of opportunities for our kids for engagement With the bodies of biases of this these tests when we're focusing on ELA and math We're exiting out vocational skills. We're exiting out social skill social studies and history A lot of our books that the kids are reading are not interesting to the kids, so

172they're not digging in to the literature. I remember being a kid and being all about the Bobsy Twins and Nancy Drew and Choose Your Own Ending because that was what I was interested in, and I was a voracious reader. I can still remember fake reading The Great Gatsby because it wasn't something I was into. Are we doing anything because we're trying to be very student centered and student driven. Are we engaging the kids and what they want and what their interests are. So let me let me try to answer your question I'll start by saying that Like for social studies, which you which you mentioned yes, unfortunately, and we saw this when we piloted the social studies curriculum last year that at elementary elementary teachers are really squeezed between you know, the priorities of English

173language arts and math. And so in some cases, science and social studies, you know, are not, they don't have the same minutes or time and energy spent on them. So one of our efforts this year for social studies specifically is now that we have this curriculum. What we've been doing with the action teams in elementary is finding, working on finding those connections between the social studies curriculum and the English language arts curriculum so that we end up with. really an integrated program so that, because there are those connections that exist and it will be more effective if teachers can teach in that more integrated way and give students the opportunity to read those texts that for some students, those are really what draw them in. I have a couple more questions, sorry. I think it's

174also important to note that the data that you have based on the third through eighth graders testing starting with 2021, I think it's significant to note that those third graders were in kinder during COVID. I think that is very important to highlight. Yes. So with the PLCs, what happens if you don't have a peer community on your site? Are you able to... Coalesce with other sites so some of the the principals are arranging their their PLC's in different ways depending on the number of teachers. I can't speak specifically about how Dingell's PLC's are arranged but but I know that for some schools like like Plainfield where there's a combo and maybe one and a half teachers in a grade level so they're pairing up teachers across grade levels. To have those those conversations I just

175want to make sure people aren't left out because they don't have their cohorts Can I add something that are through the promessa grant that The bilingual teachers at Dingle do have an opportunity to collaborate with the rest of the other bilingual teachers to the school they get together they've been meeting here and that has been very powerful looking at you know working on making sure that they're working together on the model and I think that's been extremely beneficial for the bilingual teachers at Dingle. So I love that the classes and the teachers are collecting data and moving into action teams. So here's a big question, and I don't think it's just for you. I think it's... And this may be a Lewis question too. When the data supports the need for more hooks more UDL

176strategy more time for teachers to plan and pivot. As a district are we going to be able to accommodate that time that they need to make their lessons more engaging find those hooks use those UDL strategies implement what's coming from that data that they're learning. What time are we going to give them to do that. So we are finding ways to increase the time that teachers have to meet. We have now... provided funding for school sites to have their teachers meet in collaborative teams to review data, talk about student progress and make those instructional plans. And so that's, there's, well, it's three half days per teacher for every teacher in the district for this school year. And so. So that that's our that's one of the ways in which we're trying to increase the the

177collaboration time that we can provide from the district office. There's also time that individual school principals are providing. Superintendent Lampkin mentioned Dr. Gonzalez has been providing time for his teachers after school to meet on a regular basis for several years now. Yeah. Last thing. Is there a way that we can get information about the support that the literacy aids are giving to the teachers. Does that look like push in. Does that look like pull out. What is the frequency or the length of time. I think it's also important to talk about class size and reading group sizes because when a teacher has 32 students to get to level you've already put them in a losing position. It takes three to five years to change any organizations and more than 20 years to change a community.

178If our social economic level, race, ethnicity, culture, and language already put us in a deficit for these standardized tests, how are we possibly going to dig ourselves out of this hole? I don't know. But I think we should also look at these numbers with compassion. And also remember the biases that these tests are written in. When I hear people talk about how troubling these numbers are all I can think of is that these tests were not built for our community and they're not measuring everything that's going on in this community. So for this to be one metric for which we judge our students by it's a faulty measurement. And it just frustrates me when people talk about our students of this district. with our mission and vision being to uplift them as if they are

179lacking. So a couple of things I just want to... to address. One thing that we'll do once we once we do have access to the statewide data then we have over the past few years been reaching out and visiting schools that have similar populations and are experiencing growth or increased achievement. So we will continue to do that. We really do believe that it makes sense to talk to folks that have similar populations and where their students are succeeding at high levels. So once that data is available, we will do that. The other thing... And yes, you know, there are declines here, but I think with the once the California school dashboard Comes out, you know what the state has really tried to do with that is to acknowledge that the summative test is just one

180piece of of Data and and only tells one side essentially of the story and so looking at the wide range of data that will be available and the different indicators that that we can look at there is really what's important to get a you know a really solid picture of how our schools are doing. I'm going to shoot you an email real quick if you can let me know what some of those comparable districts are. I would love to learn about them and coalesce with some of their board members. I love the discussion. I think you make some good points. This is just one measure at one time once a year. And there's so much more to know about our students. This is one test that was given a particular time of the year. And

181our kids are more than just this test. It's really important to me that we monitor not only this, because this is something we can't ignore either, but that we're also looking at our attendance, because if you're not in school, you're not going to learn. That we also monitor our suspension rates. You know, how are we addressing behaviors in school? Are we keeping students in school? Are we using restorative practices to make sure that students know how to behave and be successful in school and they feel good being in school? And there's just so much more than this. So, yes, this is not a whole full picture of our students, and we need to look at multiple measures. But at the same time, we can't ignore this, and we also have to understand what we're looking

182at. Our English learners are always not going to do well on the test that's in English because they don't know how the language to be able to do well in this test. So we have to be careful not to beat ourselves up and acknowledge that our English learners reclassification rates are one of the, we're doing very well. We're actually being highlighted for the California Together program as one of the. districts are doing a good job on the English Learner Roadmap and we'll talk about that later and celebrate that later. So we have to be careful how we look at this. This is not the whole story. So great questions. And also that our dual immersion programs, the data is always lower and those kids always rise around seventh, eighth grade. So perspective. Thank you. Mr.

183Rodriguez, I just have a... Yeah, just, you know, quickly. In talking about these particular scores It's all we also need to acknowledge that that some scores did go up as well, you know, so there is work Substantial work that is being done and there is good work here hard work has been put in by everyone And it is true what trustee what what trustee? what Candace, Trustee Fowler says, which is that this is an imperfect measure. But nevertheless, it is one of many measures, right? And I think that more than anything, again, the commitment to looking at this data. other measurements, putting it all together as Elodia said, understanding all our groups that we have. I think Trustee Garcia asked earlier, when will we see the scores go up, right? Or academic achievement go up?

184And I think the answer to that is not necessarily measured in years, but rather than OUR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCES, THE EXCELLENCE IN THIS DISTRICT IS GOING TO IMPROVE. IT'S GOING TO. THAT'S ALL OUR RESPONSIBILITIES HERE ON THE BOARD, OUR STAFF, OUR SUPERINTENDENT. WE ALL HOPEFULLY HAVE FOSTERED THIS EXPECTATION THAT OUR ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE, THE QUALITY OF OUR EDUCATION WILL IMPROVE HERE. And it will continue to improve as we learn more and we work together as a group Any other trustee? Thank you. I I'm just I'm curious if if this is an indicator like our current Performance is an indicator That we need to make a larger investment in order to strengthen The professional development opportunities that we currently have for our teachers and staff because when I'm reading when I'm just just at the information provided on

185the on the agenda itself it says that That just the data is indicating that we need to continue to focus on strengthening the standard base and the professional development but at that speed If we want to see stronger progress or I don't want to use the word quicker, but if we want to see stronger progress and commitment to improving the performance, would you say that this board needs to consider a stronger investment? That's a question in this direction where in this direction, yes I would say to you know what maybe our superintendent does need to share the stage I would say that We need we cannot overwhelm our teachers with giving them more staff development We're never gonna get it good at anything We keep changing things and we keep adding more and more and

186more we need to stay focused. We're gonna be focusing on literacy We're gonna be focusing on analysis of data and how to respond to that data. And we need to stick to it. And we need to give teachers a training so that they can understand the data, how to analyze the data, and then give them the time to plan. and develop lessons to target those needs and then revisit it again to see what worked and didn't work and just giving them that time. We just cannot add another thing to our teachers. And I think part of the problem- Let me just clarify, Lydia. I'm not saying to add. I'm reading verbatim what says here. Let me read it, okay? Okay, go ahead. The data provided by the CAASPP assessment indicates that WJUSD needs to continue

187to focus on strengthening standard-based instruction by providing professional learning opportunities to teachers, staff, and administrators by continuing to implement the Smarter Balanced Interim Assessments and by continuing to implement professional learning communities. So that, in my interpretation, in my understanding is... That we may need to make a larger investment in maybe a higher quality professional development or it could also mean More professional development because that that's what you guys have here. So that's why I'm just asking Tell us do we need to consider more funding for this? I think I said the same thing in the different words, but can you go to that slide so I can look at? That's in the, it's in the packet. Oh, okay. So professional learning communities are basically grade level meetings where. Teachers sit down and look at data

188that then if I like we're looking here and that then if I okay We're doing low here. Let's look at let's dig into the standards to see which standards we didn't teach Well who taught it who did who had good outcomes or what did you do in your classroom? Let's develop a lesson. Let's listen. Let's focus on the stent and the standard so it's it's um A cycle of inquiry we might be able need to do a presentation on you know having the trustees understand what the PLC's are Probably not for tonight because a very complex But that might I think I might benefit I think what we could mess more time and I think we put investing a lot right now with the training and We're also providing teacher every school site additional release

189time so that they can have these these are data conversations And what else are we doing for that, investing in this? With the solution treatment coming next week? Yes. Next Wednesday? We have experts coming out to every school site, supporting them. And then the principals are really spending a lot of time. on ensuring that we have these cycles in, but I would love to come back to the board and get a little more deep just on that piece since there's such an investment so that you have a better understanding of what our schools are trying to do and it'd be even better if they hear directly from our teachers. I would just I would have said exactly what Superintendent Lemkin said in that answer. But I think my message in the packet is that we

190need to continue. Doing the things that we're doing now so implementing professional learning communities providing the professional development that we're that we're doing now as Elodia shared we do have limited time and and limited individuals have limited capacity to To attend professional development at the end of a day and so I do really believe that we what we need to do is just continue to work at the things that we currently have in place and sustain that and that's what you see with schools like freeman and uh scitech in seeing the gains that they've they're seeing is is is the sustained attention um and effort and that's what that's what we need thank you i i just i mean There's not an action item, but you know my duty is to make sure that I

191ask the question Do we need to make a significant do we need to make more investment do should we is this something that we should consider? Never never do I want to do I want to add more? Professional development if it's not the direction of our superintendent But it is something worth worth considering, you know, do we need to take a different look at this? Do we need to take consider different opportunities? One thing that I asked the board president is is this an item? That the board feels that we should continue a conversation that in next board meeting and readjend eyes it because it's a lot to unpack It's only an info item. There's no action and we can consider dissecting this So I just want to put that on the table if anyone's

192interested because it is 927 ish and we still have some more items. I think that's a great idea So I heard two trustees want to bring it back for further So there's questions you all still have that you want to ask that we don't have time for tonight or what's the reason we'd bring it back for? Just a McDonald and to see these I thought trustee Fowler brought up some really good points And I don't think there's a silver bullet here But I would like Maybe to hear from staff on some of the questions that she had and I would like myself to go and Dig up the page of the LCAP that talks about what we're doing for the unduplicated students with our extra With the funding we get for them and then look

193at this data again So raise your hand if you want this item to come back at the next meeting and I'm only raising my hand because Just sitting here, having gone through my board briefing, having gone through the slides at home, one thing that came to mind that didn't come to mind earlier is how do our dual immersion schools line up and compare in the different items, right? So I just want to go back and really look at it more. Whether it comes back or not on the item, I'm still going to do it, but I would like to share my... So one of the things about data, you ask more questions and then you... Get those questions and you ask more questions and then you know, I can go on and on and on

194so I would like to request that We narrow what the questions are so that we can repair We're gonna end up in the same place next next time and there's a lot of other things that we need to cover. So maybe if I can work with the agenda planning committee about how to narrow and chunk it because If we can end up with questions and I would want make sure that we are able to answer all the questions at the next board meeting. So if we just have an open discussion like this, at the next meeting, we're going to end up in the same, if we're not prepared to answer fully. So. When do the numbers come out? The statewide data? Mm-hmm. Oh, to compare to other schools? Probably not until the, probably not until

195the end of November. That would be a good time to be. Right. Then we'll actually have some numbers to go over. And then we can add comparing programs, make sure we include some of the questions that we weren't able to answer, like lowest RCS students. We can do another round of data review with additional information. And I think, you know, a natural segue is what you were talking about earlier, Elodia, which is that you could go in and explain more about what we're actually currently doing so we have more knowledge, right? I think the more we have educational discussions and discussions on... YOU KNOW WHAT WE'RE ACTUALLY WHAT WE'RE DOING IN IN THE DISTRICT AND THE RESULTS OF THE DATA THAT THAT SERVES FOR A BETTER UNDERSTANDING A BETTER INFORMED BOARD BETTER INFORMED COMMUNITY YOU

196KNOW IF THEY'RE LISTENING UM AND SO I THINK I WOULD HAVE IT DONE BUT DONE AT YOUR DISCRETION RIGHT TO TO HELP US NOT JUST NOT JUST ANSWER SOME OF OUR QUESTIONS BUT ALSO GIVE US MORE IN-DEPTH INFORMATION ABOUT THE SIGNIFICANT INVESTMENTS THAT WE ARE CURRENTLY MAKING TRUSTEE RICHARD FEDLER And if I can, I would also like to welcome teachers to come and speak at something like that. Comment sections, helping with you, whatever. That way they can tell us what they need and what that looks like in their own terms as well. I think that'd be helpful. We do have a public comment. I'm just waiting for everyone to finish first before we go to that. So. What would be helpful then is for the trustees who have specific questions, can you all come in

197by Wednesday, 5 p.m. of next week to submit your stuff to staff, your questions or suggestions for the presentation? Is that reasonable? Yeah. The longer you take, the more you're going to forget. So if we say Wednesday, 5 p.m., then that's a good time. If you do it sooner, that's better. That's fine. Okay. Trustee Bautista-Vala as well? Sure. SPEAKER 2 OK perfect. We have a public comment. SPEAKER 3 Rebecca Bernard. SPEAKER 4 Originally it just spurred because he said something and I was like oh I got to say something. But I respect process. So. The CAS test has only been delivered for two years. And let me just say, there are questions I've gotten wrong with a degree in marine biology. Like, I had to look things up. It's also an eighth grade test for

198sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. It's 50 to 52 questions. Each question is, I have no, because I had to print them out, a full page for one question. I have kids despite begging them to try harder. Click through each question because they are tired. What does it actually look like for testing in a middle school? Four weeks of testing. four weeks in April if they're in the dual immersion program, three weeks if they're not, a full week of English, a full week of math, and then a week of eighth grade science, and then a week of dual immersion. It is mind-blowing that our kids, like, I would invite you to just go sit through. Like they are brain dead by the time they get to the math. Then they get to the science and they're

199like another one. And we spend three days on it and they will just boom, boom, boom, get through the questions because they'll get. just overwhelmed. It's graphs, it's data, it's questions that they know the answers to, but then there's like a whole page of reading. So if your reading scores are low, like you're hardly comprehending the test. We've practiced the last two years, giving them practice tests, working on group projects, jigsawing what questions look like. I mean, we're just working. like this is an uphill battle. Like we're giving them a test that truly from a teacher perspective is not grade level appropriate. And it's three years of content. And in our district, sixth grade teachers are not teaching science consistently throughout our district. And that's no fault of their own. There's no curriculum. They're not

200scientists. Like that is a struggle that we're dealing with as well. Kids come to seventh grade with varying levels of science. background. But yeah, that you read my mind. It is hard to sit as a teacher and listen to you guys talk about these things. And there's not a teacher at the table. And if you ask any teacher in this district, we know that the scores do not reflect our students actual ability. I have kids who, cause it was my first year teaching eighth grade two years ago. And I was like, yes, I finally get to take the test and I'm going to prove that I'm an amazing teacher. And I looked at their scores and I was like, my A plus kids not meeting standards and I watched them take the test, did their

201best and they were trying so hard and it was like heartbreaking. I felt like a bad teacher because my kids didn't do well and it's just, we all know teachers don't support standardized testing so like what are we doing to like change the system? Thank you for your perspective and insight. Definitely, we understand these limitations. These tests and we'll have other ways of measuring but that's what we're being measured by and you know We'll keep supporting how we can but yeah, I mean that understanding is important for us to know that You know, that's that's a marathon right and exhaustion happens at certain point And so I wish they were broken up more but again, we don't have control over that We're mandated to do it. All right, if we can also give that perspective

202that label for our kids how it feels to go into school and be told you're not doing enough you're not meeting standards and the kids are doing their best and they're trying hard and they're achieving but they're still being told they're not enough thank you uh moving on to update on district data dashboard christina i'm going to challenge you to do this in like 10 minutes If you can highlight the key pieces and if you can get down to the demonstration, that'd be great. We all read the PowerPoint. Okay, let me just get set up here. So, yes, I do have just a very short... slide presentation. Just wanted to share a little bit about the sort of background of the dashboard, but the real meat of it is to go into the dashboard itself

203and share with you the new dashboards that have been released and all of the powerful data that's available there. So we started back in 21-22 and in building the dashboard last year we focused on training administrators and secondary teachers released a few of the dashboards. This year we're continuing to add data and work on refining it and then also focusing on training and then releasing a few more dashboards that I'll show you today. I just wanted to share some of the ways in which the dashboard is being used. So another example that's not on the slide, I'll just let you read those, but an example that's not on the slide is, and I don't know if you remember, but there is a heat map on the dashboard that staff have access to. And I demonstrated

204it last year. So one of our high schools is using that to look at students who have been absent frequently in first period, right? So our first period, you know, high flyer absences and looking at where those students are. So trying to figure out if, so in looking at all of the different factors that might be contributing to students being late to school, so is there a particular area of town where students live that maybe has less access to public transportation or has difficult crossings? that students have to navigate. So there are lots of ways like that. That's just one example that the dashboard has been kind of integrating, being integrated into our daily data lives. I'm going to share with you tonight these three dashboards that have been sort of newly released. We haven't

205done a lot with training on these yet, but we will be focusing on that this year. So risk analysis, student readiness, and then community engagement. I'm not going to go through what's on the slide, but I'm going to show you what they look like and the kinds of information that we can get from them. So let me just disconnect here and get into the dashboard. I think that's my last slide. Yep. I don't see the boardroom as an option. One eight. Okay, here we go. So this is our community engagement dashboard. This is the homepage of it. It will be available tomorrow, the company assures me. It will be available tomorrow to the public. This is the dashboard that was built for the community to review student data, school data. Each of our schools has

206a page. in this community engagement dashboard. And so I wanted to show just one school's example so you can kind of see what it looks like and the kinds of data that are available here. So there's an About This School page. There's enrollment looked at in different ways. There's information about sports and clubs that are available at the school. There's ELPAC and SBAC data available. There's data on, I'll click on this one, on chronic absenteeism and suspension looked at in different ways for each of the schools. And then there's information about educator credentialing. The high schools have also graduation rate data available. And another thing I'll point out is there's what's called the school finder. And so there's a map. And if I zoom in, you can see the plot of each school on the

207map in Woodland. And this is where folks can click on the school to get to their page. We will also, we can link the pages for each school to their school website that they currently have. So that is just a quick overview of the community engagement dashboard. A through G as well as graduation percentages? I might need to check on that. I don't remember off the top of my head. Okay. Okay, so moving in to the actual dashboard that staff have access to. It's really small up there. But there's three dashboards within here that we have built and we wanted to share. tonight. So the first one that I wanted to talk about is the LCAP dashboard and it is divided into our LCAP goals organized by our four LCAP goals and it shows the

208metrics that are within the LCAP. different ways of looking at the data some of this data is also in our essentials dashboard, but It's presented in ways that match how the metrics are written in the LCAP. So so for example this is our goal one page and It shows here at the top the number and percent of 12th graders completing a CTE pathway by graduation year There's by school by student group Down below that is A through G course requirement completion by year, by school on the right hand side. And then one of the newer LCAP metrics is students completing both A through G and CTE pathways. And so that data is here. And then below that is AP data goes on. Is it separated or together the CTE and? So this one here on

209the right-hand side, this is A through G and CTE. There is a metric that measures the number of students that meet both. But you don't have one that separates them to know what? Yes, we do. So above that is the A through G, just specifically separated, and then above that is the CTE. Perfect, thank you. Yep, yep. Both individual and combined. I'll just go really quick. So across the top you have the goals and they're all they all contain different types of data that addresses the metrics in the LCAP. There's SBAC data like we just reviewed, different ways of looking at that. attendance, chronic absenteeism, all broken down by student group, by ethnicity, by program, et cetera. It can be very overwhelming actually. The possibilities are endless and as Superintendent Lankin said, data just results

210in more questions and so you can really go down the rabbit hole with this. Something I'll point out is that you can click, and I won't because we'll get a list of students, but you can click on anywhere here and get to a list of students that are within that whatever data point you're looking at. So if I wanted to see which students were at the standard met level and in which year, I can easily. do that. So principals are able to do that. Teachers are able to do that and access data for their own classrooms. Okay, so that is the LCAP dashboard. And then the other one I wanted to share was risk analysis. Risk analysis is actually a really high tech. dashboard that uses five years of our own district data to develop

211a prediction about whether students will graduate on time. And so it takes a bunch of data and has this algorithm which factors in attendance, behavior, retention, language status, academic achievement on a number of different assessments, and then kind of puts it into this formula that identifies students at risk. and it runs this data every week. And so here you can see that 154 students are in the red. So it says there's 154 newly identified students at high risk this week. And so we can drill down into those numbers and identify which students are at risk and why. Then also it does show us which factors are contributing to that student being at risk. It might be their attendance rate is below 80 percent. It might be that they were suspended. There's all a number of

212different factors that that really go into this algorithm. OK. And then lastly student readiness is the last dashboard that I'll share. So student readiness takes data from the National Student Clearinghouse and Gives us information about our students who are graduating or not and then whether they have Headed to college after they've left our system to a two-year Institution or a four-year institution whether they stayed after the first year and then whether they graduated from college and What degree they received if they received one? this is a another source of really, really interesting information where we can see how many students go to college or university. We can see if their enrollment was delayed, like they took maybe a gap year, or if they had a seamless transition between our high schools and college, and then

213whether they actually made it through to college graduation. We can also see which colleges our students attend. So this table here shows which four-year on the left hand side, I'll just read it because it's small, which four-year post-secondary institutions do our graduates most frequently enroll in? So if you guess Sac State that is the the number one this is the class of 2019 Right. So it's four years out because that's those are the students who would have graduated in four years. So Sac State Had the largest number of students enrolled from that class of 2019 and then and then UC Davis was was next after that There's another chart that shows persistent so did students enroll in a second year by school and so you can see do students at Sac State do they actually

214continue in college for that year two and then did they graduate with a degree? There's like 25 other dashboards I could show you but I know we're short on time So I just wanted to show a few things that hopefully demonstrate how powerful this this tool is and how much data is available we're still working through a lot of it and But there are lots of instances as we've been going through that where folks are finding ways to really integrate that data use into their um kind of daily lives at school so part of the challenge is um we have all this data a very powerful tool it could easily really overwhelm staff it took over a year to build the infrastructure to build this and you've been hearing about it before and they're starting

215to see the results of and there's lots of potential we just have to Being mindful about how we're gonna roll it out how we're gonna train staff and how we're going to target certain areas because we can't Look, we can be looking at that up. Just only look at that and freeze there so we have to look it in the way where we're gonna use where people can Digest it and then be to have some action towards it. So but this is a Very awesome tool and I hope that the company does come through tomorrow Because I'm about ready to call the president of the company if it's not Before we get into questions it's 953 so We have to consider how long we're gonna extend the meeting and then whether again we want to

216Discuss item three or whether we want to bring it back when everyone's fresher Not so tired. So that's the two questions Before we get into questions on this item. So do we want extended number one and then second? We want to keep item 3 which is the district leadership plan updates. I prefer to bring them back because it's any objection to I don't have any objection with bringing it back. I just think that I Bought agenda planning should consider at putting this towards the top Given that we weren't able to get to it. Yeah Okay. Yes. So we're gonna table the leadership plan to the next meeting and then Let's make a motion because these are two items shouldn't take too long Who'd like to make a motion to extend the time and how much

217time I motion to extend until 10 15 p.m. Is there a second second? motion by trustee About this of Allah second by trust Rodriguez to extend the meeting to 1015 all those in favor say actually any discussion Okay, all those in favor say aye Any opposition see none the meetings extended till 1015. Okay. What questions do you have here? No questions, really. Just, you know, there's obviously a lot to take in, but congratulations on seeing this tool come to fruition. I look forward to possibly getting some free tutoring lessons on how to use this and taking a look at what I can find myself. But I think it should be an extraordinary tool to really help us understand our students and understand the impact of how it is that we're going about doing education here.

218Thank you, congratulations, great job. Thank you. And Trustee Richardson-Fowler? I am so excited to fiddle around on this. Real talk, I will probably spend hours on this procrastinating from things that I'm really supposed to be doing under the guise of deep dive to try and figure out the district. But there's so much information there. Thank you. Other comments or questions? Okay. Seeing none, thank you. Moving on to, since we tabled. L3 we went on to L4. Any questions or comments on the school resource officer quarterly report. Trustee Odegas. I did have some questions. Yes. Can you go get. Policia. Danielle. She's. Go ahead. We'll do what we can. Trustee Odegas go ahead. Your question. Superintendent is ready for your question. Oh. I'm sorry we're dealing with the situation that's why I asked some of my

219people my staff to step out and so I'm calling Felicia back in and you'll be hearing about that later a little later. Oh what do you want. Go ahead. You can have better for me. If you have some simple questions you can ask me and then we can. Felicia's on her way. Oh what. Go ahead. I'll see that I can do. So bullet point two talks about SROs are prepared for school year. They meet with school staff and begin planning the great program. curriculum schedule and each SRO is teaching four classes a week of the great program and my general question is do we review the handouts the curriculum of the great program we work together with them or we actually show them how to do it they show us how to How does that

220work? It's a program that's already established, and they actually go get trained. The police officers. The police officers. Do you know where it comes from? Actually, I may be misquoting myself, but I believe it comes from Portland, Oregon. It originated there, and it's kind of grown from there, but it is a program that has been established. It's a curriculum that they use. Our officers are trained in that program. It is an ongoing training that they do receive. updated and they go for the initial and then they have updates all the time and it is a program that they present and they have their own pamphlets and curriculum and and such that they teach for the fourth grade and then again in our in our middle school years as well and so my question i guess

221is are do we review all that information that they give out so that we know exactly what they're going to give out before they give out or do they just give it out Thank you. It is the same curriculum that they use every year, so it has been reviewed. It's not reviewed every week as they do it. I believe it's a roughly 12 to 13-week program, and there are 13, I believe, lessons. They do have more than that, but they... pick and choose between, I believe there's 18 to 20 lessons in there and then they just do what they can in their weeks. So some may skip over lesson four and go to five and some may skip six and go to seven, but it is a program that is established already. So someone from

222the district understands exactly what they're showing our students. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. Second question. Shop with a cop with it was a huge excess. It sounds like 75 of our families were served. Yes They provide room with shoes and backpacks. Yeah in how were those 75 families picked so in coordination with the Salvation Army and Woodland Police Department and Yolo County Social Services is it's a coordinated effort to identify families. We do have identified families that we go to first. Our homeless and foster are always our first reach out in that sense. And then Salvation Army has a list. social services has a list and we combine that. And it's not just our families. Those are the ones we served. There are families from Esparto and Winters and local areas that don't have shopping centers

223that come to this as well. Gotcha. So all of the 75 families were from the district? Those were specifically from us. And our families, and I need to do a shout-out to Officer Wilson, she procured a separate grant that went above and beyond the shop with a cop dollars and was able to purchase all of our 75 families with their students with shoes. And so shoes are typically not included unless that's what they choose to shop for when they go in. But our families were given shoes on top of the dollars that were spent inside JCPenney. So she, again, did it on her own and procured that, a little extra for that. So shout out to Officer Wilson for managing that. Great. I have one more question. Sure. So this has the last bullet point

224in the report talks about our efforts began to pick up momentum. Our SROs were mentoring and coaching students with a history of poor attendance, drug use and fighting. And they were referred to our SROs through the wellness team referral at our elementary secondary sites. So can you kind of talk me through how. say a student has poor attendance. Okay. Right. How, how did they get referred over to the wellness team and how does a wellness team decide to. send them over to the SRO. Got it. Great question. And if I stick with the attendance, the lane of attendance, it would probably be easier than, because it could be a lot of different reasons. The reason our wellness teams exist are to support our level two or tier two students. And tier two students are typically

225students who are displaying some sort of need of support, one being attendance, lack of or poor, and it could be continued from the previous year. We now have our teams as our second year in existence, so things have carried from one year to the next. During that time, they're also discussing students who have struggles academically, struggles behaviorally, struggles emotionally, socially, perhaps more family need, whatever's displayed at school. So in that conversation, in those teams, we have an attendance liaison, we have behaviorists, we have our social workers, we have our counselors, we have our administrators, and students that... come to that level of additional need are discussed in that meeting. And so again, sticking with the lane of attendance. So our attendance liaison perhaps brings up Felicia. Felicia's struggling with attendance. She came the first day

226of school and she hasn't come back since. We've seen her two periods here, one period here, and nothing else. And so the conversation would go to the attendance liaison. What are we doing? How are you following through? What's the history? We find out Felicia's had a struggle all of her elementary years. We're in middle school and it hasn't gone away. And so the attendance liaison's like, I've done a home visit. I've done these three things. Nothing's worked. We're reaching out to the family. They're not calling us back. The next level would be as a conversation. Maybe the counselor suggests or the social worker says, I'm going to go with you to a home visit. See if there's something we can do for that family. Social worker and attendance liaison. out to the house. They do

227a home visit, door doesn't open, but they think somebody's inside. Or perhaps there's an inkling of a feeling that they need additional support. And I say that because sometimes there's safety issues that we're also facing. Also, maybe they've gone a third time, still no support. Maybe they're not getting a phone call back then they'll call the SRO. You know, we've had these three attempts This is what it hasn't resulted in anything. We've seen the student We've heard the students been out at the park We've heard the student here those kind of things would then we contact the SRO the SRO will then either accompany us with our liaison which is typical to the home or sometimes they do a I call it a banner day of visits and they'll just kind of go one after

228another and our liaisons aren't always with them but they have a list and they'll go and make visits to the home or if they have to the parents work whatever it takes to make contact so our sros are involved and it seems a little quick at the beginning of the year to get to that level but we were also dealing with families that were we were keeping concern with from the previous year that just fall into step that we are we you know we know we have continued concern and so at the point that the SRO finds either the student and or the family member what is it that they that they do exactly at that point they they discuss they do they do a lot of what we do the council Try to find

229out what the barriers are, work with them, contact other family members if it's maybe a struggle with... either transportation or communication, try to connect them with other resources. They use our social workers to help with that support. The police department also has their resources that they may involve. They really do try to counsel and find out why. They're after the why. They're not after the punitive. They're after the why. And sometimes in a situation when an individual like myself They may not respond, but when they see authority, sometimes there's a different response. And so, again, it's just one of our ways of trying to exhaust all different angles of trying to get a student or a family to realize that attendance is crucial for the success of the child. And it sounds like it's a

230step that's taken towards the end when... We've done our part. We do ask under our department, we do have a set standard of what we are expecting from my liaisons. For instance, with the attendance, at least three attempts with the home visit, at least unless we're met with some kind of adverse reaction, we don't involve the SRO until we get to that level, until we've done our part. Okay. And just two more questions that are along the same level because they're very different circumstances. Sure. So in the case of drug use, right, which is kind of a whole different issue, again, walk me through how there's a student, we find out that they either have drugs on them or they're drug use. How does it go to the wellness center and then how does it

231connect to SRO or does it? It can. So a student that perhaps has been caught on campus vaping. may have been brought up during the wellness team to discuss other resources or supports they can provide for the student. So has that student been involved with our drug counseling? Are they signed up for that? Are they showing up to that? Are they doing that? Are they following through with that? And then there's monitoring processes through that. So drug counseling comes first in terms of how you go. It's offered, yes. Trustee Rodriguez, there are levels. So, you know, I'm saying vaping is one thing. If I have a student on campus that is caught selling marijuana, it may be a little different of a response. So I have to say there are levels. Although we wouldn't forego

232drug counseling, but the officer may get involved earlier than some of the others. If I could just add, so our SRLs are not the first. point of resource we go to for a student who's struggling. And the first, we do everything before they even go to the wellness team. You know, what can the teacher do in the classroom? What can a parent conference, meeting with a principal, all those at the lower level, that's what we call tier one. And then tier two are the ones like, hey, all that's not working, so maybe we need to be in the wellness team. It's being a team together with a social worker, with a counselor, with a behaviorist, with, you know, different groups and brainstorm what's happening with the student, and then they make referrals. But definitely the

233SRLs are not the first point of contact and it depends on the situation. It depends. It sounds like it sounds like it depends on the severity of the substance. Right. So let's say the substance was of a high severity. You went positive real quick. I just want to ask for the next item is it vital that we approve it today or can we wait till next week. OK. Perfect. Thank you. So the substance is a little higher severity, right? Sounds like the SROs can come in at an earlier stage? They can, and it can by the number of violations in that area, too. So if the student is on their third or fourth... violation of substance abuse on campus perhaps the SRO will be involved sooner than wading through those steps yet again. There's a

234lot of variables that come into play but we definitely don't involve them like Superintendent Ortega-Lambkin stated it is not our first go-to. We have many layers of supports that we implement and then there It's like our last resort. We don't always want to create that next level. Although some of our officers do have relationships with students. They are a trusted adult on campus. And oftentimes, not oftentimes, but at times, students may request. the support of the officer versus one of ours. And it doesn't matter. As long as it's a trusted adult, you've got them. And so it is a role that they also play. They also play that support as well as that punitive if needed. And then lastly, the last example is fighting. Yeah. So how do they come into play when there's a

235fight? Sure. Again, it goes by level. And I will say oftentimes the secondary, I'll use my secondary as examples here. If the fight is egregious enough for there's battery involved, assault, which is typically why it's defined for a fight, and there's charges that are pressed. that is when our SROs will become involved. And again, during the wellness team, the conversation isn't the fight. The conversation in the wellness team is the reason for the fight or the struggles the student is having for whatever reason that might have led to another physical altercation. The SRO may be referred to as, you know, the student has had three physical fights on campus while no charges have been pressed. You know, we see a pattern here. Is there some counseling or supports that we can use you with as

236a conversation? Hey, we don't want you to end up here. You know, that. But it's the only time the SRO gets involved in that particular is when charges or citing needs to happen and charges are pressed. Okay, thank you. Those are all my questions. You're welcome. Appreciate it. Anyone else? No? Okay, moving on to M1. Do the trustees have any, oh sorry, well before that, do the trustees have questions? We have one public comment and we have three minutes left. So if there's questions, we'll push it back. If there's no questions, then we can hear the public comment and take the motion. No questions? Okay, public comment. Hello. Superintendent Ortega-Lampkin, President Villagrana, and board members, my name is Brian Coward. I'm a father, husband, and resident. I'm calling in regard to item M1. This item

237should be pulled and held until the special or restricted fund monies satisfy government code GC66001 and board policy 7110, 7000, and 7210. At present, the special restricted funds in fund 25 are meant for building facilities to mitigate growth, but there has never been any approved five-year report to demonstrate how those funds will be used as intended. That needs to be fixed before the district is allowed to use any special or restricted fund monies as a slush fund for their general fund. And in a related topic of how special or restricted fund monies are out of compliance, with government code and board policy. Fund 28, the Spring Lake builder fees are also in a similar state of disarray. These funds need to have a five-year report complete to demonstrate a financial plan to achieve their stated

238goal of providing facilities for unhoused students. This would be followed by meeting with the TOC group, turn of the century group, to get the funds approved for allocation into the tech park for the school there. This would help in negotiations that are now eminent and critical to building neighborhood schools with the money we have and in a timely manner. Those negotiations will require a consultant be hired by the district and that must be disclosed to the public. Please be sure as board members representing the public's interest that a consultant is hired, made aware of the necessary necessity to negotiate with the TOC for Fund 28 to be utilized in the tech park negotiations. code violation corrections and that the public is made aware of the consultant being brought on for closed session negotiations. Thank you.

239Bye. Is there a motion to approve? Is there a second? Motion by Trustee Richardson-Fowler, second by Trustee Bautista-Zavala. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposition? Hearing none, unanimous approval. Okay. Date and time of our next schedule board meeting this October Thursday, October 26 2023 closed session at 5 p.m. And open session at 6 p.m. Meetings adjourned at 1015 exactly Thank you