Feb 24 2016 Berkeley Unified Board Meeting

001I small and afraid to speak in my classroom. She struck down black students. She called a black boy out of the night. But none of us reported her because we were too afraid and we didn't know where to go. But this year I know that if you go to the Parent Resource Center, they're willing to guide you through the entire process. They will help you step by step to help you stay in your school. And I know that some of you are in the community, but for you, why don't you report teachers and not talk to your teacher or start a conversation with your teacher? and it takes too long, but when you try to start a conversation, it's just perfect for you. So if you feel like you're in a place where you can

002talk to this teacher and you can talk it out and work it out with your class or with the administrators, do that. But if you feel like you just need this to be addressed and you need it to be addressed by someone empowered, don't be afraid to use the recording process that they school all will have. And finally, create an open dialogue. So what I say is it needs to be, don't be afraid to talk about race. Black is not a bad word. You don't have to be afraid to talk about it. But it also means that if you're in a space where you need to be able to have a conversation with a black person, you don't need to have a conversation with a black person. Huh. And this one's not. Huh. And there's

003no... Ah. And if we keep going with this pattern of fast action and then waiting, nothing's really going to get done. No changes, no substantive change is going to happen. And so I urge you all to keep talking and keep open. Make sure your voice is heard. My name is Avi Peltz. I'm a senior here at Berkeley High. I am one of Berkeley High's two chief publicities, and I will be your third host here for the night. Next we have a good friend of mine, Alicia Harger and Dante Ryan. Alicia Harger is a community activist on the rise. She is currently serving as a BSEP representative where she discussions the budget for campus and enrichment programs. She also serves as co-president of the Black Student Union and a vocal proponent of new district laws. policies

004on sexual harassment with VHS Stop Harassing. Please welcome to the stage my dear friend Alicia. Just a quick clarification, Dante couldn't make it today, so I actually kind of absorbed his speech into my presentation, so it's like a nice little smorgasbord that I have for you today. So basically, as you can see, my presentation is on race and racism at Berkeley High with a focus on blackness and the context of education. So this seems kind of vague, but I promise it'll all come together at the end. The main reason I was invited to speak today is not really because of anything that they just said there, as great as that was, it's because something really terrible happened at our school recently and I was one of the people at the forefront of combating it. Along

005with my co-president of the BSU in the audience, Debbie. and many other PSU leaders and black staff members. So if you don't know what happened, I'm about to show you an image that was posted on a school library computer quite recently, a couple weeks ago. If there are any kids or people who are sensitive to racial slurs, I would look away in seconds. This is fairly graphic and shocking. take a second to read that. Obviously it's extremely aggressive and for those who don't want to look it's essentially a threat on black lives at Berkeley High in which they give a specific date where they claim there will be a public lynching and they claim to have, they sympathize with the messages of the KKK and claim to have hung about black person in the backyard

006in their home. So obviously this is very shocking. And when this was posted on the school computer at about 12.30, black students and students at Berkeley High started finding out that it had been posted individually on their own, either by text like I did or over social media like a lot of other BSU members did. So this was extremely shocking because you as a black student are finding out independently that your life was threatened and that your campus is no longer safe. Your safety has been compromised on campus. So, ten hours later, which is frankly an unacceptable amount of time, a complete lapse of judgment on the part of the administration, which they have apologized for, an email was sent out that in vague language said that there had been a threatening message on a

007school computer. And when we came to school the next day, something pretty fantastic happened. We had a rally on campus. Sure, let's clap. It was great. I thought it was fantastic. We had a rally on campus with probably 1,000, 2,000 kids and then we walked out to City Hall and we rallied there and then we realized we had so much energy and there was so much hurt and pain and we just needed a new way to emote and so we started marching and we realized that we needed to follow the path that had been taken at the Black Lives Matter walkout a year ago led in part by Khadija Means who's also in the audience and will be speaking. And so we followed that path and we marched with 2,500, some people are estimating 3,000

008people, across Berkeley all the way to Cal. It was absolutely fantastic. So, when we were marching, the administration came and spoke with me and Nebi and many other leaders many times. And we created a preliminary basic list of demands. And these three demands were maximum transparency throughout the investigation. So not leaving black students in the dark, not repeating what had happened when a noose had been found on campus and when the AMS yearbook page had been defaced and letting people know what was happening as it happened so that we didn't have to feel afraid on campus. We also demanded that there be heightened security on the 9th and that people don't take this threat lightly and that they don't take it as a joke and that they treat it like the serious threat that it

009is. And finally, we asked for a space in which black students can heal and come together. This was a tremendous opportunity. So now I'm going to start talking about trauma. And trauma, by a typical definition, people normally think of physical trauma or emotional trauma. And within those two categories, there's physical trauma, which often stems from abuse or domestic violence or violence against you in any form. And then there's also emotional trauma, which can be related to physical trauma or can be... separate in and of itself, which often stems from witnessing abuse, witnessing inter-communal violence, or witnessing any kind of traumatic event. But the type of trauma that I'm focusing on and that's affecting the black students at Berkeley High today and has been affecting us for entire lives is historical trauma or intergenerational trauma. So

010when we talk about this, some examples of what can cause this type of trauma are large events that happen to a community at a point in time and continue to emotionally affect the members of that community, potentially indefinitely. So some examples of this are the Holocaust, the genocide of the Native American people, the enslavement of black Africans. These events cause extreme amounts of trauma that emotionally affect people for years and years after the event. So some people refer to this in terms of these enslavement of black Africans, they talk about this as post-traumatic slave syndrome. And this means that any event can trigger pain again. Just like I think I said on the last slide, any trauma re-invokes similar previous traumas, which means that if something traumatic or violent happens again, that trauma will be

011re-invoked and will be brought back and will be a fresh wound again. So when these messages were posted on our school computer, that's what happened for the black students at Birdland High. So many people came up to me and they said, why does this hurt so much? Why does this feel like such a deep emotional pain? And one person said, I can feel this in my bones. I don't just know this intellectually. I don't just feel this. Theoretically, I feel it in my heart and I feel it in my soul and my bloodstream. And the reason is because this is a legitimate form of trauma. This is not just something that we saw and were upset about. It's something that triggers historical and intergenerational trauma, and it's something that needs to be addressed as such.

012When it comes to intergenerational trauma, there's no foreseeable end. You can't tell somebody to get over it. You can't tell somebody that it happened a long time ago, or that, you know, those messages on the computer, they were posted a week ago, and slavery was like, I don't know, hundreds of years ago, so it's not that big a deal. But the way intergenerational trauma works is that that pain is with you for your entire life. And so when something like this happens, that pain resurfaces in a very fresh and acute way. And we can't treat, like all other forms of trauma, we can't treat this like something mild. We have to treat this with seriousness, and we have to allow black students to feel dignity through their pain. And so, when we're educating on these

013traumatic issues, treat people with respect. Now I'm moving into a more general discussion, because we've, many classrooms at Berkeley High did the walkout and did discuss what black students need. And in some classes it went well and in other classes it did not go so well. Like it didn't in my class, it didn't go so well because the teacher refused to discuss it because he said that we had better things to do, which according to him was learning statistics. I beg to differ. Now, when we're talking about traumatic events, this doesn't just mean acute forms of racism like what we experienced on campus. We're talking about traumatic historical events like slavery or like the Native American genocide. So when we teach these events in classrooms, we have to treat them like something that could hurt

014students emotionally and create trauma for students emotionally and make learning more difficult for them. So when we talk about slavery in classrooms and we treat it like something that can cause emotional distress in students, we're trivializing the pain that is felt by students when we discuss it. So when we talk about slavery or we talk about the Native American genocide or we talk about the Holocaust, we have to make sure that this pain isn't trivialized and that these students are given respect. happens if we don't do that is that people remove themselves from their own history. Because it's very hard to learn about your history if every time you learn about it you have an emotional trigger that you can't even isolate or understand. And so this is something that we need to work on

015but we also need to work on black education in general. And when I say black education I'm not talking about what a former speaker talked about which is looking at statistics and trying to figure out what's causing the achievement gap. I'm talking about generally, how to educate black people in predominantly white classrooms. So when I talk about this, I'm mostly talking about IB or VIHS and AC because the other small schools are very diverse. But in these two small schools, black students will often find themselves one of two or three black students in a classroom, which in and of itself is not a fun experience. I can attest to this. I have a class where I am the singular black student. So when we're learning about blackness or black issues, and when I say blackness

016I mean black history, current events, anything that involves black people in a white context, we end up with students not hearing a full range of opinions. Because contrary to what some people believe, the black community does not have one singular opinion on every issue. If a black person is speaking for all black people, you're not really hearing the black opinion or the black perspective. What you're hearing is one person's voice on a topic. but too often that's generalized so that people genuinely believe they understand blackness when they've spoken to one black person in their classroom. Furthermore, it leads to black students feeling isolated and feeling afraid because it's very hard to speak. Your voice is generalized and if you're going to be made into the mouthpiece for your community. Now, learn about anything in a

017predominantly white black person and once again, I can attest to this because black students feel as though they're going to be judged. Because too often people in a classroom, if you're You speak and you get into it or you get excited and you become the overly aggravated black person. People shut you down and they no longer legitimize what you're saying and they no longer truly, they just see you as a stereotype. And so black students are afraid to be interested and to be animated because they think this is going to happen. Furthermore, like I said before, black students are forced to give a black perspective issue. And though that's not always requested, like they're not always forward, but it's a thing that shuts down black students as learners. Because if everything we say is going

018to represent everyone that looks like us, it's a very heavy responsibility that many people simply don't want to take up. And finally, teachers don't know how to address racism. Teachers don't know how to address racism. And we can't necessarily blame teachers for this. I mean, high school teachers are often taught to be one-topic educators. So if you're supposed to teach chemistry, you know everything about sophomore year chemistry. And that's your job, and you do it well. And until recently, educators weren't really expected to do more than that. Like, why should a chemistry teacher know anything about American history? I don't know. They're not teaching. But if an issue of race comes up in your school or in your classroom, educators need to know how to address these issues and pinpoint them and make sure that

019black students don't feel isolated in their classrooms. They need to teach to them, and not just to the part of the student that's trying to pass their class. And one way to address this issue, obviously, hiring more teachers of color, but specifically hiring more black teachers. What we often see is that we say, more teachers, we need more teachers of color. But what ends up happening is we don't end up with black teachers, we end up with children in my high school experience, I've had two teachers of color and no black teachers. Buenas noches. Gracias. Buenas noches, good evening. Before the board, we recessed into closed session and we're going to read. It's closer. Thank you. So I'm reporting out on our closed session items. We conference with legal counsel on point three point three

020point one point one. And the board made a motion to deny the appeal for a hearing. First from board member Josh Daniels, a second from director Karen Hample. And all were in favor. On the item of 3.21, we heard from staff on the property around the boardroom, and we approved a short-term lease agreement with the city for the use of the boardroom and gave directions to staff for the long term. A first motion by Board Member Judy Powell, a second by Board Member Ty Alpert. All in favor? And so now, sorry, we can start. So, one last notice again. Good evening. Before I call the... I'd like everybody to please pull out your phone and device and please put it on silent. Thank you so much. I think I should, no, I left my phone

021at home. If you want to follow on the agenda, you can do so on your phone or you can borrow a computer from Ms. Chavez and go to berkeleyschools.net, then the school board tab at the top of the page. And then you can click on board meeting information, scroll down to the page, to tonight's meeting of... February 24th and click on the online agenda. I'd like to remind everyone that our board meeting is being live streamed over the internet and also broadcast live over the radio on 89.3 FM and on TV on channel 33. The video from tonight's meeting will be available for viewing on the district's website by tomorrow morning. I'll now call the session open and would our secretary please announce to the community members present regarding translation. Director Josh Daniels. Here. Director

022Alante Keyes. Here. Director Karen Hemphill. Here. Director Angelo Paraiso Arroyo. Present. Director Judy Appel. Here. Vice President Ty Alper. Here. President Beatriz Leyva Cutler. Presente. So now we'll approve. Did you want to start? We have some recognitions for our program for the week here with our Deputy Superintendent Javera Cleveland. Good evening. I have the fortunate to have the opportunity to present our We Care Award recipients. No, you can't hear. It doesn't sound like it's on. Yeah. Okay, to present our We Care Award recipients. I'm fortunate this evening to present our We Care Award recipients for 2016. We're in our fifth year of these awards for our classified employees. So as of this month, or this year, we will have presented 51 of these awards over a five-year period. There's 600 classified employees in the school

023district, and this year we selected 11 to present awards to this evening. Some of the recipients are here. So I'm going to call out the names of each of the recipients, and the award is for customer service. And we care stands for willingness to go the extra mile, E for empathy, C for consistently providing services, A for aptitude and knowledge of their job, R for responsiveness, and E for effectiveness in how they perform. So the first recipient is not here tonight, but it's Kelsey Jones, and she's one of our bus drivers. Our next recipient is Walter Mitchell. I believe he's here. Please come on up. Walter Mitchell is a security officer who has a friendly and positive demeanor. And perhaps the reason he was nominated, he always has made and taken the extra time to

024support some of our students dealing with severe disabilities. You can see him supervising the campus at Berkeley High on a daily basis. But what you might not see is him greeting and assisting kids with disabilities as well as their families and instructional assistants when they arrive in the morning and when they board the bus to go home in the afternoon. His actions are that of compassion and inclusion, and he regularly makes the time to engage and support a segment of the Berkeley High School student body that many have a tendency to overlook. Our next recipient is Jesus Rodriguez, an instructional assistant at Willard. Okay, come forward, Jesus. Jesus works with our most vulnerable students on campus. He always makes sure that they are safe and have opportunities to learn and thrive. He genuinely cares and

025develops positive relationships with both students and colleagues. He is reliable and always uses good judgment. So, Jesus. Our next recipient is Vivian Wiggins. And she's an administrative assistant in our central office who was very instrumental in all of the versions of LCAP, all of the plans. She's not here. Our next recipient is Mark McNally. Mark McNally is a dedicated and caring employee who is extremely bright and well-skilled in our maintenance department. Mark has always had the willingness to do any job given to him. He expresses empathy when dealing with customers from school sites. He has shown consistency by showing up to work every day. He has a very high aptitude and catches on very quickly. He is one of our most knowledgeable employees in the maintenance yard. He is responsive at whatever time you may

026call and need his expertise. And once he arrives on the scene, he is ever so effective on getting the job done. Our next recipient is Shannon Brown. Shannon Brown is a security officer at Willard. Our next recipient is Lorraine Molly. And Lorraine is a secretary. She's a secretary at Craigmont. Our next recipient is Milagro Andrade. Milagro is a food service assistant at the King Dining Commons. Our next recipient is Miguel Dwin, a budget analyst. And he supports the facilities department and the, I think it's facilities department as well as the child development department. Our next recipient is... Chedrit Chambers. Chedrit? Okay. And he's a custodian at Berkeley High School. This year we did something special. We gave an honorary We Care Award to someone who's no longer with us, who passed. Her name is Gail

027Brent. And she... Gail was a downstanding employee, so we wanted to award, give her an award in her honor. Gail was with the maintenance department for six years. She was one of those people that everyone loved. Gail never, never not met a challenge, and she did not take, and whatever she took on, she took it on at 125%. She did it all with a smile, and so in her remembrance, Gail Brandt. Thank you to Deputy Cleveland for leading for five years of We Care program and giving us an opportunity to acknowledge our staff, our caring staff. So now we'll move to the agenda for tonight's meeting. Are there any requested changes to the agenda tonight? Madam President, are we allowed to place the first action item on consent, or do we have to actually take

028action separately? We have to take action on it. So I don't think it'll be any question. I think it'll be very quick. Consent to move it. I think you need action. It has to be a board action. And the only other thing is that it probably makes sense to do the action item number two and the discussion item number two. Next to each other just since they're related. Here's a 12.2 and you're saying an action and discussion or Just have them order one before the other I don't know whether they go we can move that first So we'll move at 3.2 to be the first before or or can I have a It would be helpful to me before I agree to move things around to get a sense of what people are here for

029because if there's a lot of people for an item that we're moving back, I think maybe we shouldn't do that. So perhaps, Madam President, you could get a sense of... Malcolm X? We have a lot for the adult education. Okay, so this is all public comment. Okay, so we'll leave the... We'll put the 2.2 and then followed by 13.2. 12.2 followed by... So we're switching 13.1 and 13.2. Just those two. We're just talking about them back to back. Yeah. So the point is we're talking about them back to back. 12.2 and... 13.2. Okay. And then we'll go to 13.1. And then we'll go back to 13.1. Yes. Okay, so can I have a motion to approve the agenda? Motion. Motion by Director Daniels. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Director Appel. So, all

030in favor? Aye. Okay, now, oops, oh my goodness, what happened to my script? Sorry, something happened to my script. Okay. Next, I'd like to provide a brief overview of tonight's meeting. We'll be addressing several important topics. The following are just some of the highlights of our consent, our action and discussion items for board members. Board members are welcome in their comments to also highlight items on the agenda that I may have not captured tonight. Some of these items we'll be discussing will be facilitated tonight by board members as they've been part of the planning and the presentation. in several meetings. So thank you, advance board members, for your leadership in tonight's discussion. I'll also welcome that at the end of the discussion of those items that we do our utmost best to reiterate clearly what

031are the board's directions for both our staff, our public, and our mutual understanding. So that might help at the end. So both Ty and Karen will be leading discussions today. So on the consent calendar we have California's high school voter education week that started on September 15th. This is an election year as you know. It's an effort to increase effort of our young people to vote in an education campaign. And it's an education campaign. that will be held the last two weeks of April and September 2016. State Secretary Padilla and Superintendent of Instruction Torlakson wrote the voter turnout in 2014 general election among eligible 18 to 24-year-olds was very dismal at 8.2%. A young person in this cohort was more likely to get arrested in 2014 than to cast a ballot. We need your help

032in fostering civic engagement. young people and participation in democracy is the most urgent than it ever is to get the vote out. Through your vote, all voters have an opportunity to change the course of things we don't like and what we want to see collectively. So please go out there and vote and it's on the consent calendar. Our first, our action agenda is on refunding our general obligations and by the board, that's the one that we discussed whether we're going to take action. By the board approving this, the refunding and refinancing of these bonds, we're able to obtain a lower interest rate and create an annual savings for our taxpayers and on the items of the bonds and on the terms of the bonds. Interest rates are low enough right now that present a value

033savings to our taxpayers and it is estimated to approximately 11% over 2.2 million with a future value. or actual dollar savings of over 2.6 million over the remaining 15 years of the bonds. The estimated savings is about 160,000 annually. We thank our staff, our superintendent and board member Josh Daniels for looking out for the interests of the district, for our taxpayers and taking advantage of this opportunity to refinance. We're going to hear an update on possible new facilities. This is exciting. Since 2012, the staff, the superintendent, the board, the community, and schools and sites and community members have been talking about facilities, capacity, enrollment, and a possible new school and accommodating new and increased enrollment in our district and the impact on facilities. Tonight, the board will receive and hear a staff report and provide

034the superintendent and the staff with direction and probably a whole lot of other conversations. considerations and questions on the possibility of opening a new elementary in the fall of 2018. This item will return to the board on March 23rd with more detailed information on the opening of a new elementary school or not, or alternatives. Vice President Tai Alpert will be facilitating this discussion and both Board Member Josh Daniels have both been participating in discussion with our staff. and have attended many meetings. And so for discussion tonight, we are having an update on the African American Town Hall update. The board will have a presentation and an update from staff and the superintendent regarding the district's initiatives and response to demands and issues raised at the Town Hall that happened on December 7th and from the

035Black Student Union event on December 9th. The board will also hear the superintendent's recommendation. on forming an anti-racism oversight task force. Director Karen Hempel with the superintendent will be facilitating the discussion as she has been part of this meeting also with the parents, staff, NAACP and our Black Student Union. We're going to talk about the consolidation of TK. The board will hear options for addressing and accommodating projected increase in student enrollment over the next few years. And tonight we'll hear a short and medium term solutions to accommodate this project enrollment. Now we begin the meeting with first our welcome to our public. Obviously you're all here to be engaged and come out to be informed about our Berkeley schools and second to also welcome the community that's watching live on TV and online and on

036the radio. The Vice President and I have organized the speaking request by the agenda item. The Vice President and I will rotate the cards to hear from at least one person on each agenda item and from each position. In addition, it's generally the board's practice to first hear from our students on a particular issue. If your name is called, you may cede your time to another speaker. I also want to add, next time maybe we should add people who have come with their young children to also have. Little bit more advanced so maybe we can add that to our cards if someone has come with a young child here To do so please rise one if it's your turn to speak state your name and indicate to whom you are seating your time to By

037seating your time you forego your opportunity to speak at tonight's board meeting and on that issue and no one else and no one can later see their time to speak on that each Couldn't can see their time to speak to you on that issue speakers are limited to tonight to two minutes Even if someone wants for two minutes when there's a at the at my discretion the president's extra time will give be given to those who need Translation or have other speech needs when there's one minute left the light at the lectern will turn yellow when your time has elapsed the light at the lectern will turn red and you'll hear some beeping and If you're still speaking when your time is up, you're allowed to finish your sentence. Please try not to go beyond

038that We're all trying to keep to our time and hear everybody speak as much as possible I understand that there are really important issues about which many people feel very passionate. However, in order to be fair to all speakers, we will cut you off at the speaker. The mic will go off. Please do not take it personally. It's our goal to be respectful to everyone, and I ask that you do the same for us and to the public. Please do not use swear words. or language that's profane or sometimes, as sometimes in the audience, we have young children and youth in the audience. We ask everyone to practice in public a respectful way of getting your message across. We'll hear as many speakers as we can within the 30 minutes, and we'll hold to 30

039minutes only. To keep things moving, I ask that the speakers whose necks are in line come forward and wait near the lectern, and I apologize in advance if I mispronounce your name. Later on we'll have board comments and board members also have just two minutes to speak and give their opening comments finally Other than thanking all the public that's here to speak to the board during the public the board does not respond directly to comments or Questions made during the public comment, please do not take this as an indication of our interest or level of compassion for what you're saying I can assure you that we all take your comments seriously and oftentimes wish that we could respond directly to your public comments, but then we would be here indefinitely. Board members can, if they

040choose, respond to the public comments during their board comments, which are scheduled to occur after the committee members' comments. And our superintendent staff also take note and oftentimes will follow up with the speaker. Board members are also, as you notice, and the superintendent are on the computers oftentimes during the public comment, typing and taking notes to follow up with the superintendent and our staff regarding raised concerns that the public has brought to us. We take very seriously that the community has taken time to come out to the board meeting instead of being home with your family. So thank you. We'll now hear from our youth. We'll hear from four students. Abby Stiekel. Maya Siskind-Levine, Lil Spencer, Rachel Siskind-Levine. Thank you. Good evening, Dr. Evans, school board and community members. My name is Abby Steckle, and

041I'm here with other representatives of the group VHS Stop Harassing. We're here to speak to you tonight about our continued concern regarding the climate and procedures for sexual harassment incidents in Berkeley Unified School District. On January 27th, we came to you and expressed our worries about the current Berkeley high school culture that tolerates sexual harassment. We alerted you that students are harmed daily because of it. We explained our concern that current policies are more reactive than proactive when they should focus on ways to avoid and prevent harassment before it happens. We were distressed by the handling of harassment cases as isolated incidents rather than the widespread cultural issue that they represent. We read to you just a few of the hundreds of stories that we have received from students who have seen and experienced harassment.

042In mid-February, Board President Leva Cutler wrote to us and communicated her dismay about the stories and problems that we shared as part of our Story a Day project. We are glad that she recognized the severity of this important issue, and we are back tonight to recommend some collaborative actions that we can take toward progress. Next, some other members of BHSSH will discuss some of what we're asking for. Good evening. My name is Maya Siskin-Levine. We, BHS Stop Harassing, are asking you to change the district reporting form and to distribute an incident reporting guide in order to create a more accessible and trauma-informed environment in which students may get help. On Monday, we sent to each of you the BHSSH Sexual Harassment Incident Reporting Guide and Complaint and Reporting Form that we have posted to the

043resource page of our website, stopharassing.org. We know that there are many more cases of harassment and assault that occur than ever get reported. And we know that it is difficult for victims to come forward for many different reasons. We strongly urge you to adopt and distribute these documents and to post them on the BUSD website in order to encourage students to come forward about harassment and discrimination that they have experienced. We believe that with a trauma-informed approach and more transparency in the reporting process, we can create a safer climate for all students. We understand that there is a new Title IX coordinator, Bev Bueno, who will start work next week. We are thrilled to have a full-time Title IX coordinator at BUSD, and there is certainly much for her to do. We acknowledge that this

044is a step forward for our district, but it is not sufficient in protecting our students, and we urge you to not let progress stop as she learns her position. Thirdly, we are urging you to take a proactive and comprehensive approach to student and staff training in all middle schools and high school grades. We have analyzed the survey results from the mini-lesson about sexual harassment and assault conducted at BHS on December 15th last year. From both the surveys sponsored by the BHS administration and the one conducted by BHS Stop Harassing, we found that the mini-lesson didn't improve students' feelings of safety around sexual harassment and assault, nor did it change their expectations that fewer incidents would happen, nor did it improve their understanding of the reporting procedures. In their comments, students said again and again that

045what they wanted to know was how to get help and how to avoid incidents of sexual harassment. Good evening. My name is Lili Spencer. To date, training for both students and staff has been spotty and has focused on what to do after an incident. This is insufficient. We are asking you to implement the Green Dot program at BHS. The Center for Disease Control endorses this evidence-based program, which provides effective training to both prevent and de-escalate sexual harassment. The CDC found a 50% reduction in sexual harassment perpetration in high schools who use this training method. Colleges and high schools across the nation have had great success with Green Dot. This year, we urge BOSD to invest in presenting this training for all grades 6 to 12. We have a few more stories from our Story a

046Day campaign that we would like to share with you this evening to illustrate the urgency of these issues. One story is, when I was in 7th grade, a guy asked me to hang out with him in a park. He was a little older and pretty cute, so I went. We made out, and he kept pushing me to do more. He sexually assaulted me, and later I found out that his friends were hiding in the bushes and had videotaped the whole thing and put it on Facebook. I had to walk around Berkeley High for two years and see his face every day despite reporting this incident to the health center. Another story. Good evening. My name is Rachel Siskun-Levine. I'm another representative from BHS Stop Harassing. Here's another story. In freshman year, I was sexually harassed

047every day by one of my male classmates. He said awful things about me to the class and no one would say anything. Not even the teacher who clearly noticed. I became infuriated with the people who were ignoring me so I went to OCI and reported him. I am so glad I did this because he stopped directly after. I am 100% supportive of BH Stop Harassing's mission. We want to clarify that this campaign's purpose is not to undermine the value of the services that BHS and BUSD provides. Rather, we hope to increase awareness about the necessity for training and for efficient and friendly procedures to enable students to avoid or de-escalate issues of harassment. Another of our goals is to ensure that school staff know how to intervene effectively when they see harassment happening. We would

048like to work with you to increase the safety of all students so that we can hear more positive stories like this one in the future. We hope you understand the magnitude of this problem and are prepared to take new steps to address it. Some of these will require investment of substantial resources of time and money. In the coming days, members of BHS Stop Harassing will be asking President Leyva Cutler and Superintendent Dr. Evans to meet with us to discuss the steps we've outlined here tonight. We urge you to continue dialogue with us because we believe that implementing these steps as quickly as possible will enable us to make progress towards our common goal of improving student learning and safety. Thank you. Thank you students for your leadership. We have Hannah Slightly-Weisberg and Bernadette Heron-Wilson will

049speak together. I think they'll share their minutes. And Donna Davis. Two minutes. This is Hannah. Come over here. My name is Bernadette. My name is Hannah. We love Malcolm X. We want our school to have the resources it needs. Gracias. So we have Donna Davis and Lynn Raposa. Thank you, students. Civic engagement. Donna Davis. Thank you for being here. Good evening. Thank you for being here tonight. My name is Juanita, and I'm here to tell you how the lifelong learning program has benefited my life. I'm enrolled in three of the exercise classes through the program, moving chi, dance fitness, and yoga. This past fall, I came across a seniors program in a last-ditch effort to try and save myself. I'm not technically a senior yet, not quite yet, though I'm getting there a lot faster

050than I would like. But for close to 20 years, I've been experiencing chronic pain on and off. Throughout that time, I've sought the help of at least a dozen professionals. They all have told me what's not wrong with me. And by the way, before you go, here, have some habit-forming drugs. Needless to say, it has been really depressing to be turned away by experts time and time again and to never be offered any real solutions. So the lifelong learning program has been a godsend for me. Only months after having started, I find myself stronger than I've been in a very long time, both in body and mind. I'd been through other exercise programs before, but because of my physical limitations, I found them too difficult and often overly competitive. At lifelong learning, everyone can feel

051safe and are indeed encouraged to move at their own pace. There, nobody cares about trying to outdo anyone. I'm sure I can speak for everyone at Lifelong Learning when I say, and I can't overemphasize this, that the ability to be able to heal myself with the help of some amazing instructors feels incredibly empowering. My current teachers, Naomi, Kathleen, and Herta, have between them at least a century of experience in their fields, and so they're immensely knowledgeable, nurturing, and all have a great sense of humor. Their skills and personalities create a warmth and cohesion that is apparent from the very start. Thank you. They make you feel, for lack of a better description, like you've come home. When I signed up for lifelong learning, I really didn't know what to expect. Excuse me. Your minutes are

052two minutes. Oh, sorry. Sorry. We'll have other speakers. I just want to say just one more thing. Go ahead. Come by and see what the program's all about and vibe off the positive energy, and I'm sure you'll be likely to return. Thank you. Linda Raposa and Nancy Bickle. Nancy Bickle and Jody Hardy. No. Evening, everyone. It sounds as though you're very likely to pass this item, so I don't have to talk about it too much. I'm Nancy Bickle from the League of Women Voters. I'm so delighted that you're going to be supporting and helping our young people register to vote, learn about issues and candidates, and then actually vote in the upcoming 2016 elections in June and November. So as Beatrice Lever Cutler said, it's urgent we expand our electorate to include all our citizens,

053young people, and people of all ethnicities and races, of all levels of education, income, and abilities. Our democracy can only thrive if the votes of every citizen count. You can help ensure our young people develop the early habit of voting that lasts throughout their lives. Here are some facts you can publicize and some effective actions you can take based on solid research. Now here's the big news. 16-year-olds can now register to vote. So then they will be able to vote as soon as they turn, right at the election after they turn 18, all the materials will come to them and they'll be all ready to vote. And the earlier you get registered, the more likely you are to keep voting. Registering students in classes would register nearly 100% of eligible voters. Registration at a school

054event registers many fewer. Student and student groups are absolutely essential to getting out the vote campaigns because research shows that people are much more likely to vote if they're asked to do so by people they recognize as part of their own community and even more important if they're asked more than once. So student members of the board, I hope you'll help with that and thanks very much. Thank you. So we have Jody Hardy and Patricia Simmons afterwards. I give my time to May Lynn Gill. Good evening. My name is May Lynn Gill and I am one of the seven transitional kindergarten teachers for BUSD. These are my fabulous TK colleagues. A main reason parents choose to enroll their children in our high quality TK program is so students can become accustomed to being part of

055the K-5 school community rather than remaining another year in a preschool. The three TK classrooms that you are proposing to relocate to a preschool site will no longer be viewed by the parents as a transitional kindergarten program. into our elementary schools. There will be an inequity between the classes at the preschool and the classes at the elementary sites. TK classes at the preschool will have limited access to administrative support, special education services, cafeteria and lunch services, PE classes, a full library, school-wide events, and involvement in PTA and monetary support from the PTA. Most importantly, these TK students and their families at the preschool site will not receive the benefits of being part of a K-5 school community, upper grade reading buddies, recess with kindergartners, school-wide assemblies, and PTA evening events for family involvement. If your

056own child were entering TK in the fall of 2016, would you prefer for them to be at the preschool site or at the elementary school site? In order to maintain equity in our TK program, it is essential for all the TK classes to remain at the elementary sites, receiving equal services. A number of elementary sites have flex rooms that can be used for this purpose. While it is not ideal to use these flex spaces, it is a better option than creating this fundamental inequity. I therefore respectfully ask the school board to reject the proposal for consolidation and request that you find a way to keep all the TK classrooms at our K-5 elementary school sites. Thank you. Patricia Simmons, Bima Sheridan. Patricia Simmons, Bima Sheridan. You're Patricia? Yes. Okay. And Bima Sheridan? Good evening. My

057name is Phyllis Bischoff and I'm very happy to be with you this evening. Oh Sorry. Well, I said I'm Phyllis Bischoff and I'm happy to be here with you all I have been a student in the adult school for ten years and I continue to learn learn Joyfully, I thank you for for your support of this transformative program I initially enrolled in moving chi in the hope it would help me to overcome a serious tendon injury that nearly immobilized me. And the class, through its techniques of self-administered acupressure and balance and strengthening exercises, enabled me to discard braces, canes, orthotics, and even sometimes a wheelchair. And yay. So now I can lead a normal life and I can even walk around Cesar Chavez Park, which is a great achievement if you can for a while.

058And my experience is not unique. It is echoed by that of many other students. We hope that in future you will continue to support these world-class programs blessed with its superbly qualified teachers. It is also our hope that today's children, when they reach our age, may also benefit from similarly magnificent programs. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Bima Sheridan, Kyra Armstrong. Kyra Armstrong. Oh, yeah. Just give it to him. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yeah. Oh, it's the little guy. Thank you everybody. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Bima Sheridan. I'm a parent at Malcolm X. I have two kids there. All my crew is standing up behind me. I have several things to say tonight. I'm mostly interested in hearing what you guys have to

059say about the possibility of opening up a new elementary school. Just just to see the numbers can all the parents of elementary school kids here tonight and teachers raise your hand stand up make some noise So I think I can speak for all of you hopefully in that we would like our flex rooms back and we understand that you are developing a plan to get those back to us and I remain neutral as to how you do that. I'm curious to see what your plans are. I also want to say for all of the people out here to support the adult school, in no way do I think that this should be cast as kids versus adults. I think I hope to be able to use the adult school when I get older. So I'm

060in full support of keeping the adult school as it is. However, I think we should look at the possibility of repurposing Franklin. I do not think that that means that we have to degrade in any way the services that are provided. I'll remind you that you probably all know that DSA does not have to review facilities for adults. They could go anywhere, perhaps in a place that's more transit accessible. Furthermore, by the way, you guys promised Malcolm, well, supposedly all the elementary schools are supposed to get Columbine locks, at least during major construction. Malcolm X is slated for construction this summer. Can you please throw in the locks for us? Thank you very much. Thank you. Kira Armstrong. My name is Ron Levy. My son is a third grader and my daughter a kindergartner at

061Washington. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here in the cleanest, most spacious, comfortable, and best equipped room in the BUSD. This is the space that must serve as a reminder every time each of us walks into it of the kind of facilities our students and teachers should be learning and teaching in, and the kind of quality experiences they should have wherever they are in BUSD. I want to talk with you today about special education inadequacies due to overcrowding at Washington and Malcolm X and the very serious effect this has on the students, teachers, administrators, indeed everyone at these schools and what you can do about it. At some BUSD schools, there are 150 students for each special education teacher. That's high enough as it is. But at Malcolm X and Washington, it's over 225

062to 1. This is unacceptable and it should be to all of us. And it's something that's been talked about and brought to you, the board, for many years now. At the top of the homepage of BUSD.com it says excellence, equity, engagement. Elsewhere on the site it says excellence in learning to teaching and service to our students and families, equity and access in resource allocation and educational outcomes, engagement with parents and community. Let's talk about equity. Teachers at Washington and Malcolm X are responsible for many more students than their counterparts at smaller sites. The practice of including our special education students in regular classes is phenomenal. It's the perfect example for so many of us of why we live and educate and teach our kids in Berkeley. However, inclusion only works when there are enough special

063education staff to allow regular classroom teachers to focus on the needs of all the kids. We are not asking that staff be taken from smaller schools, but that more staff be added to the larger schools. We need at least one more full-time special education teacher and ideally a behavioral specialist at each of these schools. This would be equity and excellence in action. And acting on what people say on this topic tonight is what engagement truly means. I know that this is not the big item. that the new building in 2018 is the big item tonight, but our kids at Washington and Malcolm X need your help right now. Thank you. You have the power to make things better this semester by allocating the budget. And if you do, every child and teacher and Malcolm and

064Washington will immediately feel the impact and you will be able to take credit for that. So do it. Thank you. Make it happen. This is the kind of thing we all dream about at work. You can make it happen. Do it. Thank you. Remember, it's two minutes. You're taking the time. Please remember, it's two minutes. Everybody's having their two minutes. So Jennifer Proffitt and then Riti Desi. Good evening. Thank you. I'd just like to introduce myself. First of all, my name is Fatah Mitchell. I'm the new president of the... BTEC Parent Teacher Student Association. Just want to introduce myself and say thank you and I just want to thank everybody in the room. I've been an educator for several years from the Bay Area to Los Angeles and I've never, well it's been very rare

065to see this much support for students so I just want to thank you all and give yourselves a round of applause. So just want to thank everyone. Also wanted to speak on behalf of BTEC. Berkeley High is one of the greatest high schools that I've ever seen. I went to El Cerrito, by the way. We were always rivals, but always loved Berkeley High. We had some concerns at our recent meeting. One of our concerns was that some parents brought up is that BTEC... There's some questions about our campus being moved and the parents were concerned because none of the staff and none of the parents were involved in a conversation So we're just asking in the future that we can be involved in some of those conversations if it's such a big Issue like moving

066our campus and we didn't know about it. Another issue that we had is mr. Mitchell from Berkeley High received an award for being an outstanding security guard over at Berkeley High. We currently don't have a security resource officer. There was a budget put in and I guess there was some confusion and we weren't considered in that conversation. Also, we are A to G school, but right now we don't have athletics at BTEC. And we have some outstanding students. We've contacted the NCAA and they're... They really want to entertain some of our students. However, we don't have a sports program. We're asking for a sports program or at least two. be able to compete with some of the students at Berkeley High. In conclusion, we also want good nutrition for our students. We would love a

067kitchen to promote vocational skills for some of our students. I'm a chef. I would love to go in there and teach some of our students. So we're promoting for a kitchen, which would only cost $50,000. In conclusion, I want to say thank you once again. And please consider us because we're often in the shadows of Berkeley High. So thank you for listening. Thank you. And remember, be tech. Thank you. We have Riti. Riti. Thank you for your time. I'm a parent at Berkeley Arts Magnet Elementary School located at Virginia and Milvia Streets. We typically... We okay, sorry, I'm a parent at Berkeley Arts magnet elementary school located at Virginia and Melvia streets We typically walk from our house on California Street to BAM and have been doing so for six years crossing an MLK way

068on Virginia Street Recently the crossing guard at this intersection went out on a pre-planned medical leave She will be added out for two or three or possibly four months and much to our dismay There has been no replacement and a lot of kids are crossing at King and Virginia Streets. I don't know how familiar you are with the intersection of Virginia and MLK Way, but Virginia Street is a bicycle boulevard and a street that is traversed by many pedestrians, including a lot of Berkeley Arts Magnet elementary school kids. MLK Way is considered a two-lane major roadway, serving northbound and southbound traffic. And as you can imagine, cars can go quite fast, be in a rush, and pay very little attention to pedestrians. Throw into that the BAM school kids who are crossing at Virginia and

069at Virginia at MLK Way during rush hour and it can be a very dangerous intersection. A crossing guard is essential. This intersection is dangerous for adults both on their feet or bikes, let alone children. Because we have no crossing guard at Virginia and MLK, I, along with a bunch of other parents, are no longer able to let our fifth graders or other students walk home from school. We have seen and have been involved with too many close calls. Several months ago, a few of us band parents surveyed three intersections with the Safe Routes to School program. Subsequently, we asked the Berkeley City Planning and Transportation Department to install flashing yellow lights at MLK. and Virginia to caution the cars on MLK that this is a school crossing, a simple yet potentially life-saving addition. We were

070told that this was unnecessary. I realize that the appointment of crossing guards does not fall under this board, but rather the police traffic division. However, I believe that you may have some influence in demanding that a crossing guard will be placed at Virginia and MLK immediately. In addition, I hope that you support and demand that the city install a flashing yellow light or something similar to raise awareness in this ever faster moving world on MLK and Virginia. Thank you. Mr. James Grandison, our last speaker. Good evening. My name is Robert Rubin, and I'd like to speak to an issue that you addressed in closed session, which is the denial of an appeal regarding harassment charges. against the high school basketball coach here at Berkeley High. I'm not really sure why you are defending the indefensible.

071The coach of the Berkeley High School basketball team is someone who has abused his team. He has abused his players verbally, psychologically, to a great extent. Your own investigator. Your own investigator. hired by you to investigate the facts in here found that DeLuca, the coach... There's no mentioning of names or positions of an employee. I can't avoid talking about the position. We're asking that you please... The coach of the high school basketball team has been found to often lose his temper. Your investigator found he often loses his temper. If someone was applying for a job and that was on their resume, would you hire him? I don't think so. And if he repeated that behavior just a few weeks ago after being admonished in a separate investigation into his behavior as to his inability to

072keep his temper, would you retain someone like that? I don't think so. So why would you keep this man on the staff right now? And while you grapple with that question, please consider the following. This is not just a personnel issue. This is a matter involving core values and the type of behavior that you want to have modeled for your students, your student athletes, and anybody involved in the Berkeley school system. But instead, you have set up as a model somebody who verbally abuses the students in its charge. who intimidates them from participating in investigations that this board has authorized to be conducted and tells them that they will be punished and not participate on the team if they participate in the investigation. He suspended, he cut from the team his star player who was

073scoring 20 points a game, somehow didn't find enough room on the team for him despite the fact that he was a model student, a model athlete, and yet what happened is that he was cut from the team in retaliation. While you continue to keep... That's the end of two minutes. You can come back at the end of the board meeting and you can speak. Thank you. You did. You took it. So this concludes this public comment period. Thank you to everyone. Muchas gracias to all those who came to speak and to the children, also the young children. If you do not get time to speak, you're welcome to stay to the end of the board meeting when we have an extended public comment period scheduled. Additionally, you can always email the board directly at boardofedatberkeley.net.

074Additionally, you can always email the board. Remember. Shh. Please thank you each board member also has office hours which are listed on the board packet as well It's our name at Berkeley dotnet Now there's an opportunity here for my unions. Do we? Who do we have our BFT? The district has four unions. The Berkeley Council of Classified, our Berkeley Federation Teachers, our LOCA 21, and our Union Berkeley Administrators. Each union has five minutes to address the board. We're going to hear from our union, so as you exit, can you please exit quietly? We'll give you a minute to exit. Thank you. I don't mind starting. Yeah, let's wait one quick minute. Good evening, board members and Superintendent Evans. My name is Kathy Campbell. I'm the president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers. I'm here tonight

075to talk to you about several of the items on your agenda. This is a really rocking and rolling agenda. So I'm going to cover four topics briefly, and I'm going to try to send you a summary of these comments so that you have them in writing as well. So I'm going to start, I'm going to go somewhat in order of priority. I'm going to start with the proposal you have in front of you regarding the educator effectiveness dollars. We want to thank staff for their consultation with BFT on this item and their consultation with various teacher leaders in our district. We want to really support that very small, you'll see like one sentence in the proposal, that's about reserving some funds to really create a very impactful. and excellent classroom management training for our new

076teachers and possibly for other teachers who need a refresher. This is something we have wanted for a while. This relates to our district's efforts around restorative justice, around prevention, around positive behavior supports. We see a critical need for this, and we ask you to maintain that in the proposal as it moves forward. We do want to tell you that in the proposal there's a major proposal regarding middle school ELA. Might need a little more time to think about that proposal. I will communicate with you more and I'm sure your assistant superintendent will have an opinion as well. I want to talk about the budget priorities item that you have in front of you. I want to be sure that everybody is aware that staff is proposing $520,000 in new ongoing expenses. This is offset by

077$150,000 through closing a preschool class. And we should just always have a moment of silence and mourning when we close a preschool class. That is a very sad thing. And we could have changed that preschool class into a full day class and filled it for sure. But we're closing it. So when you consider those $520,000 in ongoing new expenses, I want you to just really think carefully about it. It's a very significant amount. I urge careful consideration. I want you to know that BFT is strongly opposed to board approval for the second tier of expenses you are being asked to approve. That's another almost $500,000 in ongoing expenses that you're being offered as a second tier. We are opposed to approval of those items. I want to say that part of why we're so opposed

078to those items is that this board has a very serious responsibility and we know you understand it because of your past actions which have been exemplary. But you have a very serious responsibility to keep in mind the recruitment and retention of our high quality employees, particularly our teachers in what is now a very tight labor market. So committing to over a million dollars in ongoing expenses when we do not know what's going to happen with employees. 17-18 is something we're very concerned about I want to address the issues you've heard about at this meeting on the last one with regards to large schools I want to say a couple things about that one is we we urge creative use of the LCAP funds to begin to address this issue and we believe that staff is

079already thinking about that and we really appreciate that I also really recommend some staff engagement with the six large schools. There are six large schools, and I encourage staff to just be more in touch with the principals, the PTAs, the staffs. We need to look at this as a whole issue with regards to all six of those schools. I want to tell you, and this will not surprise you, that we are really grateful to see the proposal in your item about older adult education funding. We're really grateful for that. We want to work with the board and staff for long-term sustainable funding for this program. But we are happy about the proposal as it is now, and we appreciate this board and your predecessors deserve huge credit. for your stalwart championing of that program in

080these difficult times. On TK consolidation, I want to tell you that I really hope you'll think carefully about the information you heard this evening and that you've received in a letter. Our TK teachers have thought very carefully about this. They have strong thoughts, and we hope you'll give them careful consideration. On the new facility, this is the last thing I'm going to say. Two things. One, I'm confused about the timing. I want to urge the board to wait. for the Ed Specs project that you are paying for. You're paying for it. It's going to inform this decision. We should use it. And last, we need to wait and see what our class size goals are gonna be in our new measure. I think that's a critical piece of information. Thank you very much. Do we

081have any other union representatives here tonight? Okay. Sorry, I'm gonna scroll back up. So now there's an opportunity to hear comments from our district committees. Do we have anybody from our committees? Okay, now I'll hear comments from the boards and the superintendent. At this time, we'll hold to our two minutes we gave our public. So board members, student directors. It doesn't matter, it's popcorn. Yep, it doesn't have to go down the road. It's who's ready. Just the thing that I wanted to touch on the most was the BHS stop harassing. I talked to my peers who are on the committee for that before the board meeting started and I'd like to ask that you allow me to attend one of their meetings next Sunday in order to get a better feel of what they want.

082just allow me to go and then retrieve information and just get a better understanding of what they're doing for them and understand the Green Dot program. I looked it up and it's very sound. What they said is accurate and I believe it should be adopted at some point in order to reduce sexual harassment. I do follow their Instagram page on Instagram and every day they do release a new story and from what I see, I can't. I never see it personally at Berkeley High, but to even imagine that that even exists is almost disgusting to understand that I go to a place that I deem as very praiseworthy and to see that that's occurring really makes me sad personally. So I will be attending their meeting next Sunday. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Other board

083member? Moving along. I'll go. Director Daniels. Are you going to make comments about the recent incidents? Some of our students? Okay, so I will just extend my condolences, but I hope that our students recover quickly from the incidents that happened a week and a half ago. My office hours are this Saturday, February 22nd, 1.30, Take 5 Cafe, 3130 Sacramento Street. This Friday, Vice President Alper and I have a policy committee meeting. It's Friday the 26th at 3 p.m. in room 126 in 2020 Bonar, the admin building. We'll be discussing student intervention policy. and a draft of a policy around the naming of our facilities. In this room tomorrow is a huge BSEP event. Hopefully you all can attend. It's 7 p.m. if Natasha here. No. 7 p.m. here. As you all know, BSEP is crucial

084to our district in every single way possible. We need community input and feedback to make this effort successful. And then we are having a survey for all of our families available online in English and in Spanish. Hopefully someone who speaks Spanish better than me can announce it. but it's available at berkeley.net right on the homepage. It takes five minutes. We have Chromebooks here, I believe. You can take it right now. But we want as many data points from all of you and from your friends and neighbors and colleagues so that we can have a good sense of where we're at as a district. And thank you all for coming tonight and for giving us a lot to think about. Good evening everyone. It's good to see so many of you out tonight. I just want

085to piggyback on what Director Daniels stated Tomorrow is our community conversations the first one But we also have some other dates That you can participate and that's March the 2nd at Berkeley High School from 7 to 8 30 March to 10th at Rosa Parks Elementary School from 7 to 8 30 March the 14th at Malcolm X Elementary School Library from 4 to 5 30. March 15th at LeConte Elementary School Library from 7 to 8 30. And I'm looking forward to seeing all of you at least one of these events. My parent Black Parents Affinity Group retreat is this Saturday sponsored by the Office of Family Engagement and Equity. I hope you can join us in this room from 9 to 2 p.m. It's going to be really, really great. So, again, I hope to see

086you at that event. We do have a new Title IX coordinator, Bev Bueno, and she is joining us. And I hope that some of you will get a chance to meet her. So she's on board with us now after a long, long, long search. Finally, I just want to say two weeks ago there was a shooting that happened at night that left several of our students injured. And whenever situations like these happen in the community, they impact the school, and particularly our students. And I just want you to know we have provided resources and support to our students, and it's ongoing. And also been working with Berkeley Police Department in terms of safety for our school as well. And so we're still looking at other things that we can provide for the school. Thank you.

087Director Hempel. The superintendent, for those of you who had not heard of this incident before, I just think I want to say that it did not happen on our campus, but it did involve some of our students. And so we as a district want to make sure that we're supporting our students as they cope with what happened as well as making sure that we keep our students as safe as possible and we, our sympathies go out for the children, the students that I understand are recovering as well as to their families and that our thoughts and prayers are with them. I just want to quickly, since we're down to two minutes, is first start off with I will be out of town from Saturday, February 27th, and I will not be returning until March 8th.

088So because of that, I am changing my office hours that I would normally hold this Saturday to March 12th, still at Cafe Lila at 1030. And I've asked, and I hope that that's going out, that those have been changed. I will not be checking my emails during that time. I'm taking a little vacation time. Been very very busy working closely with the superintendent in the implementation of a lot of what have arisen around combating racism in our district met with BSU with PCAD and As well as NAACP also went to the elementary County School Board Association meeting efforts to increase the career technical education support that's given at our county level, and that was very interesting. And also PCAD and the Office of Family Engagement sponsored, I would call, a thought-provoking and somewhat controversial session

089on youth and violence this past Saturday, which a lot of things to think about. in terms of, and I think I would say that the focus, I would say, is the need to address internal issues with our students, whether it's self-esteem, whether it's navigation, whether it's trauma, as a way of, because that is usually the, where stuff is coming out of is from that. So it was a very interesting discussion. I will not, as I said, I will not be checking my emails, but I will be back March 8th. Thanks, Board Member. Good evening. Thanks to all of the both parents and staff and students who came to speak tonight. It's great to hear from everybody. I want to echo my... best wishes for the students who are injured and also just voice my concern

090that the incidence of gun violence in our streets and among our students continue and I really hope that we're I really want to urge us to not just work on how we're responding to care for the students, but also what we're doing to help identify and prevent these incidents before they happen, and particularly the intersection between social media and violence between groups, because that was the case here, and it's complex, and we have to figure out how we're going to work with our young people and their families. So I also, I have gone to several meetings over the last few weeks around the implementation of the comprehensive sex education requirements that were just passed into law last year. And I know we haven't talked about this yet, but I really wanna make sure that we

091are working to be in compliance with the new laws and make sure that our sex education courses are that are inclusive of LGBT people and also help educate our students in a way that's consistent with our values here in Berkeley. Finally, I did wanna thank people for coming out to my office hours last Saturday. I got to hear from many of you. It was great, it's always great to have more time one-on-one over a cup of coffee. I am changing the time of my office hours. I've been crowded out by a writing group that meets at the time that I meet, and I'm gonna meet from 10 to 12 instead of one to three on the third Saturday of the month at Mojo. So my next office hours are on March 19th. Thanks. So Secretary,

092you'll note that for the next agenda to be able to change that. Do we have another board member? What'd you say? No, I'm gonna keep it at Mojo. I realize if it's 10 to 12. Just the hour. Do we have another board member? I just wanted to make one announcement of an event which is being hosted by our teachers union, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers on March 3rd, which is next Thursday at Longfellow at six o'clock. The BFT has invited Brian Jones, who's a national leader, an education activist and advocate for public education and racial justice in public education. BFT has invited him to come speak. I was honored to be asked, I think because I'm old friends with him from college, to interview him as part of this presentation event at Longfellow next week.

093So the title of it is Racial Justice and the Fight for Public Schools, free dinner, pizza at 5.30, and the event will start at 6. So I hope that some of you will come out and join us. Thank you. Director? So my comments are... I'd like to acknowledge the passing of two former students of Berkeley Unified, Sam Geldman, a graduate of Berkeley High School and of the Counseling and Rich Program in 2014. He died last week and was involved very much in Berkeley High School and the Aikido Club. And then this is another student that ends up being a student that was in my childcare program and also his father was in my childcare program. So David Antonio Ponce. David is a former student in my childcare and a student of Berkeley Unified. And he

094died in a fatal accident, car accident, and he'll be missed a lot by his family and friends. Both his parents went to Berkeley schools too. So this is a reminder to... to our students, to our families and our community that we want our students to all live a robust life and we almost remember how fragile life is and our hearts and prayers go to the families. I attended yesterday the Assembly for Black History and heard former Black Panther Mr. Billy Eck speak to our students about the history and struggle and the mission of the Black Panthers. It was full house of students. in the little theater and they were all quiet and attentive and asked very thoughtful questions of the speakers. There was a great video that introduced the speaker that was made between of

095both Black Panthers and our students walk out and I thought it was very impressive, moving and I hope that we can show it at the next board meeting. It's very powerful. I am an owl of our students and their power in showing their voice. And it's just a wonderful moving video. I hope we all can see. I'd also like to encourage our adult education advocates who are out here to speak to us about adult education to write to the governor. and our elected officials because they were the main they were the governor was the one who made the decision about not including the kinds of classes that have been enriching and been providing for our senior adults we need to write to them to find the funds for adult education both Karen and I participated

096in hearing what Alameda County is doing around adult education it's not just us it's all adult education programs in our county in the state that are being cut so we need to We asked our governor to advocate for our adult seniors who, you know, like the speaker said, I one day will be wanting to take that yoga class. So let's write to them. We will write to them and take an advocacy role. And use ARP. ARP is a great lobbyist up in Sacramento. Let's get them to advocate for adult education. So I encourage us to do this. And next time maybe we can have a table with voter registration. We have a captured audience here. we can always direct our young people who do come to the board meetings to vote and to register. So

097that concludes. And Josh challenged me to say something in Spanish about the survey. Okay back to my script so now we need to approve our Have approval for a consent calendar Do I have a motion? I'll move to come to Adopt to approve the consent calendar. Do we have a second? We have a second first from director debt upheld a second from director Hempel and all those in favor So now we move to our discussion item starting with the resolution 12.1, the resolution for refunding the general obligation. You mean action item? Oh, we're going to do the action item? Yeah. Okay. The discussion items. I thought we were doing action item number one. Yeah, 12.1. We're going to do that first. Just put it out. So unless we want to talk about how much money

098we're saving, I'll move the item. Yeah. Go ahead. You can say how much we're saving. A huge amount of money. I want to just thank Deputy Superintendent Devetta Cleveland for her work on this. $2.2 million. Okay. So do we have a motion to accept? I'll make a motion. Okay. We'll have a motion from Director Daniels and a second by Director Alper. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay, so now let's move on. Director Alper will be facilitating an update on possible new school facility and consolidation. We're gonna do those back to back. They might. So before we start that item, I just want, well, first of all, thank you for staying for this particular item. This is something that we've been working on since last year to deal with the overcrowding that we had experienced at

099some of our schools. And so we're bringing back to you what we think are some possibilities of whether or not we should explore a new facility, a new school. We have some Issues or some concerns that we feel that the board needs to address and provide some direction For us in terms of reducing and balancing the size of elementary schools across the district Retaining flex learning spaces Reducing portables at existing sites Eliminating the the need to have transitional kindergartners, classrooms at the preschool, and also to accommodate some of the flexibility that we might see in the future. We realize that at this point there are certain things that we don't have, and you might have heard earlier that the... The BFT union president mentioned there are certain things that we don't know. We don't have

100a completed copy of the ed specs, nor do we know what the B-set measure will be. So those are two things that are out there that we don't know that could impact whether or not we need a new facility. So with that, I am going to turn it over to our executive director of facilities. And as the director... Lava Cutler said Director Alper will be facilitating this discussion. Thank you, Mr. Superintendent, Director Alper, President Layla Cutler, and our governing board. The item before you today, as well framed by the superintendent, is an item to discuss the possibility of a new school and the potential for that need. What we have before you today is a very short presentation to facilitate this item. It is effectively called capacity analysis. And I do want to call your

101attention to the format that we want to present to you. Today, as you are aware, we did hear some comments a little bit earlier about an educational specification being in progress. It is, as of now, incomplete. What we're going to present to you today to inform the question is our best thinking around this. this area and utilize some of the information that we have to date and characterize what we know and also ask for information and clarity on those issues that we need additional information on that we've classified in our presentation as variables. Those things classified as variables including the items I think that the superintendent just read off. are all items that feed into informing the need for a new school. And so we definitely don't want to lose sight of those. We do

102want to open by giving some context to the entire discussion. And in the context, you can see that this district has been grappling over two years with the issue of enrollment and capacity. The board engaged in several public sessions and board meetings looking at capacity based on a... at least a report in part from Davis Demographics in 2012 that anticipated a set of growth across our grade level. And we wanted to make sure that we were prepared to accommodate that growth. In response, this board and superintendent came up with a set of strategies to accommodate the eventuality of enrollment, the eventuality of the enrollment projections. Our short-term strategy, which to date has actually been completed, was to use the existing flex spaces across the K-5 elementary schools. That process has been completed. What we're in

103the progress of right now is midterm strategies, and our midterm strategies included the installation of two portables, specifically at Lacan Elementary, and what you heard and will hear a little bit more of detail about after this presentation about the consolidation of TK as part of our midterm strategy. Long-term strategy is the discussion we're going to have today in terms of exploring does the district have a need for a new school. And so to be succinct to frame tonight's discussion question, does the board want to give staff direction to return in March with more information regarding a new school? If you look at the first known, probably the most important known for us is the enrollment. And as we said a little bit earlier, the demographics report from Davis Demographic has been inaccurate. We know that

104over history. It was a demographic report commissioned in 2012 and has not produced the type of growth that was indicated in the report. Conversely, the... integrity of the projections of Berkeley Unified School District Student Assignment Office has been very very accurate to to a degree and you're actually looking at those projections right now over the next three years and as succinctly as possible, we know that our enrollment over the next few years until 18-19 is going to be enrollment that has very low growth over the course of time. For us, the second known is the fixed inventory of our real property assets. Based on classroom inventory and the current use of 15-16 school year, we know that we have 227 classrooms across the district in the distribution as shown in the bar charts. Out of

105those 227 classrooms, we're fully utilizing and loading 210 of those rooms for active instruction during the daytime, leaving a balance of about 16 spaces in our inventory that are not being used for that instruction. Some of those spaces are flex spaces, and some of them are not flex spaces. Finally, we actually have one SDC classroom in the entire district. And I'm actually very impressed by that. You actually heard a little bit earlier today in the board meeting about how great, as a school district, the board is doing with inclusion. And a testament to that is a single SDC class at one elementary school. So finally, the final known, given some of the data that we've looked at, and looking at the number of classrooms and how they're loaded, we've actually... included our average classroom loading,

106which is 21.6. Given 210 classrooms loaded at that rate, we have a capacity effectively right now of over 4,500 seats to accommodate our 2016 enrollment. I apologize about the optics of this slide. But what it is intended to show on the on the right hand side is a site map that identifies geographically where the distribution of our elementary schools are and and where the portables are located across our district and so as we start to introduce the slides that talk about the variables for us the variables are things that we need to be informed on. As you heard the superintendent allude to earlier, there's a possibility of portable either removal or portable maintenance we can keep those or we can remove them it's at the board's discretion what is our constituency basically desiring and this

107is one variable that we would want to engage the board on to make a determination on how to proceed relative to a new school the the portables as installed in our school district are primarily located at Washington and BAM We're involved right now in the planning of an additional one, an additional site that will have portables, the LeConte school site, as we said, will receive two portables, increasing effectively our capacity in the school district by over 40 seats. The next variable for us is ideal school configuration. Again, as you heard earlier as well, flex spaces are a very valuable commodity for our schools, and how we use them as a resource is extremely important. I do want to say that for us, we believe flex spaces are a part of how teachers use their classrooms,

108and in Oakland, we defined a certain amount of flex space to accommodate our teachers prep periods and so for every teacher who had six different classes per instructional day if she were given one if he or she were given one prep period, that would mean that they would have one period during the daytime when there would not be kids in that classroom. Those kids would have to be accommodated in another space. And so that formula of one... prep period out of six equates to two flex spaces for an elementary school site in terms of a standard. Whether or not we use that as a standard or our standard is less than two flex spaces, it is a variable that we want to engage around to get some clarity. Finally, a variable associated with the ideal

109school size. I've said several times in the presentation so far that we've heard comments from the audience about some of these issues associated with new school planning, associated with the capacity at their existing school, or associated with some amenity or feature at their existing school that they may or may not have. And so as we look at this variable, how different are our schools across the district's inventory? and how are we providing services and resources across not just our schools but across our different zones as well. This variable is really important as well in terms of making sure that the board has a standard if it desires in terms of the ideal school size. Is it 360 for elementary school? Is a school such as Malcolm X that's approaching an enrollment of nearly 600 okay?

110ideally is that the type of experience that our community would ultimately like to have so finally we wanted to wrap up by saying that there are a lot of different reasons that you could programmatically make some decision around a new school but for us our next steps are going to be listed here and We would like to engage the board around the variables to set direction for staff to return at a later date to inform the need for a new school. And additionally, we want you to give some consideration to the fact that 2017, about 18 months from now, we're going to inherit an inventory of about 17 classrooms as the realm lease expires. when the realm lease expires and The charter school no longer occupies the property next door We actually will inherit those

11117 classrooms and need to discuss the board's desire for how address those. Finally, given the discussion we had a little bit earlier about the demographics and the report from Davis and the discrepancies there, we do believe one of the next steps that should be taken is to commission a new demographic study. Superintendent and I have talked about this in some detail and believe that that demographic study would be necessary to validate some of our findings. With that, I close this and open it up to Director Alper with the question, does the board want to give staff direction to return back in March with additional information? Thank you, Director. So we have allocated about another half hour for this discussion, and we have a busy agenda tonight. So let's start the conversation. I just want to

112remind my colleagues that the question that we will be... that we're asking, that staff is asking for our direction about is whether to direct staff to come back to the board about a month from now with more detailed information regarding the possibility of opening up a new elementary school. So we're not being asked to decide whether to open a new elementary school, but we're being asked to provide direction whether to come back with more information to keep exploring this option. With that, are there comments, questions? Director Hempel? I'll jump in. Thank you for this. This is a lot of work and very helpful. I think for me, though, I... We still have a lot of balls in the air. We still are not sure what our class size is going to be that's going to

113be funded by our BSEP measure at this point. We are in the process of developing ed specs that could have something that could, to me we should have our ed specs done before we kind of go further. I also think there's a whole lot of questions that you have wrapped up in this one item, which to me are not either or questions necessarily, so I'm kind of not ready to make either or answers. So for example, it is useful to have knowledge of how much a new school would cost to operate, but for example, there was work done to look at where we could perhaps add permanent classrooms to existing schools as opposed to a whole new school, and I haven't gotten a whole lot more information on what those possibilities are and what that

114might mean in terms of addressing our capacity. I do think it is important that when we do, actually I think all the board at this point has been interviewed around the ed specs, but for me it is very important for there to be flex spaces and so. we still haven't finished that work and so it's a little hard for me to make decisions around a new school and the size of that school and which all goes into the operating costs when I'm still looking for the ed-spec study to be completed. I'm still not quite sure what our class size is gonna be in K through five. And as I said, I think that there's some other possibilities. I know, for example, my kids both went to Washington a long time ago, and even then there

115was discussion about having maybe like a two-story permanent addition to that school in the front of the school right now. For those of you who are familiar with Washington, you have to go. Office is located in, to me, a very bizarre place in terms of security as well as just welcoming families. You have to go through kind of, I don't know, really it's just kind of a black-topped area with a picnic table, up the steps, through part of the black-topped playground, into... uh... a side hallway figure out from there where the office is and so in order to get to the office you're essentially going through the entire school grounds potentially not even seeing an adult until you're actually within the school. So the idea of having a two-story addition where the office would be

116on McKinley is something that I know has been discussed by families in Washington since my kids were there, and my oldest is now 25, so it's been a while. So I would like to have a little bit more understanding of some of those options and what that means. At the end of the day, we might still need another school. but it could make a big difference in the size of the school. I also am very interested in finding out more about the demographics. I know that we are leveled off, but I am interested to see if that has changed because certainly I see a lot of kids, a lot of families with strollers in my neighborhood in South Berkeley. So that's also another factor. So I just think there's a whole lot of moving parts

117now. I think it's important that we're making progress. I think the ed specs is an important piece of that. I think doing this kind of work is an important piece of that. But I still think there's more information that at least I feel that I need to have before I can give more direction. So what I would say, if it's just to get more information in March, that's fine. But there's... additional information that I think is needed before we can get to a final decision. Hi, first of all, I have to say that was an excellent, excellent presentation. And I feel like we had all of these presentations last year and. I don't know that was just really clear. I appreciate all the visuals. I wanna see those two slides that didn't come up because

118I'm sure they were also brilliant. So I want to, I guess to some extent echo what Director Hemphill was saying and what Kathy Campbell said earlier. I appreciate the board members who brought this forward because of the need to make sure that we're holding ourselves accountable and keep moving forward and at the same time I I for me it feels a little bit like the cart before the horse we had a certain amount of urgency last year in the year before when we had a demographic study that projected a huge amount of growth in our student population and we haven't actually seen that growth so we have come up with a solution that will allow us some more space and I don't think we've ever had an ed spec before and we're doing that now,

119we're investing in it and so I really need to see what everyone else is saying before I can even answer the five questions that were presented. So the information that I need really is that piece of information. And so my question for you is when is that projected completion date for the ed spec? Tim, do you know? Do you have a projected? So I mean, I'm curious to hear what exact information the other, I know there was a couple of school board members who brought this and we haven't had a chance to talk. So I am very curious. I trust you. So I'm sure you had a reason. So I'm curious to hear what that information is. I'm not against it, but I do, I am hesitant to get too far along this road until

120we have that ed spec document, which I believe is like a. planning document that lays out kind of some bringing together best practices with the conversations that have been had with board and staff. And then I think also as Ms. Campbell mentioned, we're gonna be having some conversations related to the new tax measure, which also could impact facilities. So I think... Before I would really want to go too far down the path of even discussing a new site, I want to have a clear idea of what it is we're trying to create so that we're using our resources productively. So that being said, I did have two additional short comments. One of them is I think we keep calling, one of the key questions is around spaces that aren't classrooms in our schools. And I

121think when we call them flex spaces, which I think they are, because they're flexible spaces, it also, for me, it almost implies that they're extra. And I think by having this conversation as a part of the EdSpec process, it helps reiterate that these aren't they're not extra, they're critical parts of creating the kind of schools that we want for our students and that we need to make sure that, so I guess it's, you know, so for example, I would imagine the Ed Specs document would include what kind of formula other districts are using. So like you just mentioned, what OUSD uses, so that would be helpful. As a part of that and then finally I just wanted to say that I do support Investing in a demographic study. I don't wear I keep thinking that

122Donald's over here but I don't remember how much the demographic study cost but Whatever we paid for it It was not it was I don't know I just it just clearly there was for whatever reasons and I'm sure they there were reasons for it but it did not seem to accurately predict our growth and So I think that we really again like for me in order to know whether we're gonna how much more space we need I need to know have a better idea of how many students we're gonna have So we've reached but I feel like I'm missing something because those things all seem Reached out to Davis demographic and I do want to say that they're you know a reputable firm and have a good reputation in the school district business community, and

123so we did reach out to them. They have offered to kind of come back and do some cleanup and work, and so we'll be working on that as well. I don't know how my board feels about them coming back to scrub their data and kind of work on it, but it's an offering, so I think we want to avail ourselves of it. Director Daniels? If they want to give us half off on the next study, I think we'll go with that. Half off on the data. I guess I will focus my comments on two parts. If you could go back to the slide that had the bar graphs. I know it's hard for the audience and the thousands who are watching to see, but... What the slide shows is orange slash yellow for existing classrooms

124with assigned teachers and green Not there you go and green For quote-unquote alternate use spaces. So these are spaces that are not do not have a dedicated sort of traditional elementary school class Flex spaces or alternate use mean various things to various schools. So for example at Thousand Oaks I see the numbers were changed since I last saw this but It so I guess one of the one as an example director what if you could talk about the two spaces at LeConte Okay Well So the two spaces at LeConte, just be clear that these spaces that are highlighted in green, we believe that if need be, they could be used for classrooms with a teacher and a regular cohort of students. Is that true? The way we characterize these spaces is... from site walks and

125observations that our consultant did at the individual sites including I think classroom schedules that showed how they were actually using this space. And if you could talk about the size of the two spaces at LeConte that are labeled as alternate use spaces, are they the same size as all the other classrooms at LeConte or they have a different size? I believe they're all comparable sizes. So they're not, I thought one was significantly like two-thirds the space of the other classes. So the way of the characterization is classroom-sized rooms, and so they counted all one, excuse me, 227 as rooms that they felt were comparable in terms of being able to have instruction in per se. So I just think it's important to be clear that Not all rooms are created equal and so these are

126the rooms that meet the minimum legal requirements of a classroom I would agree but not necessarily the same size as we have ideally had or that as the average size across the district and so an alternate use room technically could be used for a classroom if need be but or not necessarily as of the same size or quality as the average room. And I think that's important because I don't want us to somehow assume that we have 16 classrooms just sort of sitting there that are of equal size and value to every other classroom being used, that we can just use in an emergency. The second point I'd like to make... and I think that I am more comfortable with the need for a new school than perhaps my board colleagues, at least some of

127them, is that right now, if we were to tell you to say, go, open a new school, the opening date for that school in real time is going to be fall of 2018, which means that we're dealing with the 2016-17 school year. as the status quo, probably with the consolidated TK program, depending on what we do. And then the 17-18 school year, again, under that same impacted scenario. And if we delay giving a yes to opening a new school, in all chance that we're talking about is another year. So we're talking about then three years under the status quo. And that's the status quo that will be for next fall with the consolidated TK program and a number of school sites with no flex spaces. And if, since we have all expressed a desire in

128one form or another in public for at least one flex space at every school site, I think the need to wait for the ed specs to tell us what we already know we feel is not particularly revealing. And even if we were to adjust class sizes, I'm not sure that that solves all of the concerns we have. around sort of the impact of our school sites. So my concern about waiting is that I'm not sure waiting gets us that much more useful information and it has the impact of delaying the opening of a new school, which I think we will decide on anyway, for an entire year. Now I may not be around when that happens, so I don't have to deal with the consequences, but many of the people on this board and on

129the staff will. And so I don't want to leave future staffs and future boards to dealing with problems that we know are coming. There's no indication that our enrollment is going to be going down at all. Even if it slightly grows or stays the same, we're living with the status quo. Some schools, as you know, are fine. Emerson, John Muir have basically existed as they have for many, many years. But other schools, as we know, are not. You know, as those who watch us regularly know, I'm not a huge fan of just spending money willy-nilly. And so I'm very conscious of the fiscal impact of opening a new school. I don't take that sort of issue lightly. But I think that I don't think that the status quo is sort of over the long term

130where we want to stay. And so, you know, why wait? President. That's okay. Well, part of me is such a visual learner that I would be interested to see. We could potentially have another Emerson, John Muir, Oxford if we were to do Bonnard in terms of another school site here. What would that look like? What would that cost? I'm curious. I mean, what would the ed specs tell us? in terms of to build or not to build? What potentially could it tell us that we don't know already in terms of the numbers and the enrollment? Our ed specs is going to help us determine how we build and what standards we actually build to. I think as a rule of thumb, it'll help us define if we do build a new school, what do we

131put into that new school? Will we have standards for specialty rooms such as computer labs, art rooms, CTE? How big will our kindergarten classrooms be? Do we have a desire to increase them beyond the 960 square feet? In Oakland, we came up with a new specification that I felt was good. It increased the square footage of kindergarten classrooms from 960 to 1200 square foot, actually included restrooms and breakout space. And so it will actually help define. along with Pasquale and the teachers, what kind of spaces do they actually need to deliver instruction, teaching, and learning in. And so for us, I do believe EdSpecs will inform, further inform any kind of new school process. I'm also in agreement with my fellow board members in terms of we don't know in terms of how BCIP will

132also impact, but at the same time, I think we all are seeing our community change in terms of new families moving into Berkeley. And for me, the demographic study would be really important, but I think we all know and we all see in our neighborhoods as we walk around, we see a lot of new families and children and babies in... in strollers and newborns that we're going to see much more in the next four years. And I think we've all been doing our own demographic study just walking around our neighborhoods. And in front of our houses, we'll see all the for sale signs and new families coming in with new babies. So I am... I'm thinking of how we can repurpose some of our schools, two of our, Bonnard for one. I think it's a

133great opportunity. I'm a little scared of it, but I also would like to see what would be the cost of both repurposing versus both facilities in terms of what that would cost. You say both facilities, you mentioned Bonnard. Yeah, the adult or this. because it could conceivably be as big as Emerson, John Muir, or Oxford, and how much would that take pressure off our other schools in terms of size and numbers in either looking at either or? I think this also goes hand in hand with the consolidation of the TK preschool program. So I'd like to, yeah, let me see my other notes. Well, that was me I was just thinking about in terms of the jump in enrollment We haven't seen that as much as we the demographic studies had projected And I wish

134that's the part I wish that we could see what it would look like in two years' time in terms of who's coming into our TK. And I say this because there's new regulations, new laws around the TK that children who are turning five between January and June can enter our preschool programs, our TK programs, excuse me. So how many families will access that? opportunity to come into TK. Before the cutoff was, you know, they had to turn by September 1st, but now there's new regulations or policies that those children who turn five between those months can access those TK programs. So I wonder how this will impact size capacity between now and... when we build or expand or what our plans will be. So I want to sort of pick up where Director Daniels left

135off because I see this pretty similarly to the way he sees it. What I think Director White, the presentation, which I agree was excellent, shows us is we can handle the status quo for the next few years. You know, we've got... The capacity that our admissions office, which has been a lot better than Davis demographers at projecting, is projecting is essentially what we have the current capacity to provide under the status quo. So I think the question for us as a board is do we want to ask you to continue exploring a new school in time, as Director Daniel said, to possibly open a school by the fall of 2018, or are we comfortable enough with the status quo that we're willing to say put the brakes on this and slow it down, push it

136back, push back the possible opening of a new school in fall of 2019? remembering that we will, as you said, inherit about 17 classrooms worth of space in the fall of 2017 in this facility. Are we comfortable enough with the status quo to push back that decision another year? Are we comfortable enough telling schools that we have imposed a medium-term solution which involves the... potentially the consolidation of TK classrooms at a preschool site, all of our TK classrooms in the south zone of the district, you know, where I, portables at the Cont, you know, where we've told the community this is not a permanent solution. I, you know, Director Daniels said, you know, schools like Emerson has sort of... They're fine. I don't know exactly what you meant by that, but I do think it's

137worth asking sort of, you know, we talk a lot about a world-class district. Can we really be a world-class district where interventions at Emerson are occurring in the custodian's closet? Can we have a world-class district where... There are students, you know, students can't have to put their backpacks outside the classroom because they can't fit in the classroom because the teachers can't walk around. And can we be a world class district where lunch starts at 10.50 because all the students can't fit in the cafeteria? You know, can we be a world class district where the entire community at our largest elementary school can't even come close to fitting in the auditorium for our student performances? You know, I... I don't I think we there's a huge fiscal impact it's mitigated somewhat by some of the expenses

138that that the medium-term Solutions cost for example we now you know we know that consolidating TK at the preschools will cost us somewhere around $100,000 a year ongoing So it's mitigated somewhat, but it's still it's still a big expense to me. It's it's a threshold question we need to provide adequate facilities to to ensure the educational programming that we want for our kids and then work around that, which will require, I think, real tough decisions around other budgetary questions. But to me, if we feel like we need it, then that's the threshold. And to me, I think we need it. We don't have to make the decision. So to Director Hempel's point, I think the questions you asked are the same ones. The way that the item is written is that staff is seeking direction

139to return in March with refined cost estimates, fiscal impact, programmatic and operational needs, location and facilities options, and projected timelines for new elementary school. I don't even think, if I understand it, that staff is saying we need to decide in March. the ultimate question. But the question is should you keep going? Should you keep exploring this? And my feeling is that we owe it to the community to say yes, keep exploring this. Director Rappel. It's very helpful to hear both you and Director Daniels express why you brought this to the board. And I think that we all, I think we're all aiming for the same goal, which is to provide the facilities for the kind of classrooms and classroom and educational experience that we all believe our kids should have. I, as you know, I'm

140a planner. I have a planning degree and I feel, I just, I kind of. Why are we doing this ed specs if we're not gonna listen to it? It doesn't make any sense last year We were all you know gung-ho behind doing it and so I I want to make sure that if we do build or repurpose I mean it seems like me the next thing to look at is repurposing this building because it's gonna be available so that's so whatever we do with this kind of I Want to make sure that we it's a model whatever we're creating that's new is a model that's gonna do all the things that you said and I just I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. So maybe we can do both things. Maybe we can keep

141exploring and really make sure that we do get this document back in the beginning of May. And maybe it doesn't need to be March. Maybe it can be April to give staff a little more time to be concerted in their preparation. I do have a question about the timeline. We're talking about building a new school. Is it a two or as Josh was saying, more like a three-year timeline if... it's repurposing an existing school site like this one for let's say an elementary school or whatever the other whatever other purposes would that also take what's the timeline on that you know and i've i've actually been a little hesitant to kind of get locked in on a date because as you're talking about a date i'm not it's not grounded to a particular place or

142a particular scope and so i i like to just have a open amount of time to say from a point of decision is made and we know where we're going to be doing what and what that what is it'll take us about a year in terms of the planning and it may take about a year in terms of the actual even if it's here oh it may it may be a lot less if we actually are going to a place like 2020 bonar and it's some small scale kind of renovation but I don't want to give this board or this community the impression that we can quickly throw something together to accommodate what this may be. I think it needs to be thoroughly thought out in that if we're talking about world-class programs, they should

143be in world-class spaces, and we want to make sure we do the due diligence to make that happen. President LaVecchia? One thought that kept occurring in my mind is these children are going to go to middle school. And so the capacity, how this impacts in the future also, our middle school's capacity to accommodate our elementary students and then, of course, our high school. Because that is all part of the, I don't know that it can just focus on elementary, but also how this also ends up flowing down to our high school. Director, sorry. You know, I feel like in one of these conversations in which we sound like we're disagreeing more than we are, because I think no one is saying that we're not going to consider a new school, we don't want to consider

144a new school, we don't want information, the possibility. I think it's where we are in terms of what we, you know, in terms of feeling rushed to make decisions. that we might not be ready for when we still have things like the education specs. Some of the questions that I have, for example, is we're talking about a new elementary school, but there have been discussions that either have come to us from the community or from us about, well, maybe it should be a pre-K K school, or maybe it should be some variation of... the K through five model that we have at all of our schools. And so, you know, we haven't had that discussion. You know, there's the discussion on in the long run, do we want TK to be part of every elementary

145school, not just at a few elementary schools, but with every elementary school? Well, that's a whole different kind of. impact on what then we would need to kind of free up from those schools in order to add essentially a whole grade to every classroom and still have the I'll call them non classroom space, you know the the the the spaces for something like the therapeutic spaces or art and science spaces. And so we're still having that discussion. So it's a little hard. So I just feel that. It might be helpful to me if I kind of had from staff kind of all of these issues, kind of like a Venn diagram, and some kind of visual thing for me or at least some kind of chart that kind of talks about all of these issues.

146Because I think, for one, it will help the community understand that the discussion. isn't kind of one discussion after one discussion it's several discussions that need to happen at the same time to come up with our decision and i think it will help us to understand that some of these decisions are linked so so as i said you know if in the long run not what we're going to do for a few years is to have a tk with every school that's a different facility um challenge than if we have all the tk or most of tk in two or three places so That is why, for me, it's difficult to be giving you detailed instruction until we have had those discussions. But I think in the end of the day, I think we'll know

147what we need in terms of additional space. But again, I said, I'm not even sure if we just added permanent spaces to existing schools. It's more classrooms, but it's not a new school. And of course, that operational cost is different than a whole new school when you're talking about a whole new principal and stuff like that. So it's just. To me, it would be helpful for me to see kind of all the decisions that could be made as part of this so that I can kind of check them off and narrow it down so I can feel that I am ready to make a decision. That's exactly right. I think as an example, we've heard in this boardroom before that maybe Director Daniels has mentioned it, that some of our cafeterias... are so small that

148our kids have to eat in 15 minutes you we may have four or five feeding periods right and so ed specs will kind of inform that across the entire district and give us information to help inform our planning so it's more intelligently done and we can target our expenditures and our scarce resources in a way that improves academic and children outcomes. And so the way we ultimately address our deficiencies at our school sites, it won't always be with a new school. It may be several pieces of work to be done at individual school sites as they currently exist to correct some of those those conditions and I hope that the ed specs surfaces some of those so that we get an opportunity to address Yes, so So I think I'm hearing I think Karen you're

149right that we kind of can agree not to disagree because I think we there we kind of see it I think the same way which is that we I think but I don't want to speak for it Because I mean just to be clear, I'm agnostic. I think we need a new facility, but I don't know what it is or where it should be or whether it should be TK and K or K5, but I think we need it and I think that we need more, we all think we need more information. So if the request is for direction to come back to us, whether it's exactly on March 23rd or not, but if it's to come back to us with further information. In other words, don't just stop thinking about this until after the

150ED specs is completed or after the BSET measure is determined, but keep... you know we can do two things at the same time um i think that's the that's what we're being asked to give you direction about and i'm hearing some consensus about that is that right yeah i mean i feel like i i'm i think march 23rd is very soon so i think it's a lot to ask of staff after they did a lot to get this together so i would i would request i would suggest a little bit more time and um i think maybe one of the things that we can get at the next is some of the questions that Karen asked. I think it would be really helpful as we're asking the community for input on the B-SET measure and

151as we're, you know, get a sense of how that's gonna potentially impact space and then maybe a good sense, maybe a better sense of what exactly, what information, it seems like we have differing levels of understanding of what Ed Specs is gonna be and how that would impact our use of resources with our spaces. So that might be a helpful. piece of information. I agree, it would be great to keep moving forward. So Dr. Evans, does that provide enough direction? So what I've heard is that we, that the board, I don't know if we all voted, but I think we all agree, but so are we bringing back something March the 23rd, or are we delaying it till April, or, you know, I don't know that. So I need you to let me know in

152terms of the direction. This is an action item, so I guess we need a motion. Okay. Well... I mean staff was the one- I'm just clarifying. I mean staff gave us the date of March. We'd love the olive branch offered by Director Appel if it suits the superintendent. I just want to echo something Director Daniel said and also you, Director White. If we're thinking two years roughly from go to the opening of a new school and we're talking about September 2018, then we have to make a decision September 2016. So we can't- You know, and I would offer that to be informed maybe 30 days later by the full analysis would be very beneficial. Okay, and also I mean as it was mentioned, you know if the if there is a new school that's located

153in existing space not necessarily two years and so and Also, we don't know how we're gonna roll out a new school I mean are we gonna have like day 1 K through 5 or day 1 K and then add 1 and then 2 then add 3 all of those are kinds of So I don't agree that it would be, I think it's quite possible to have something by 17, 18 that would make a real difference in this location. So I think it's a good question. I think it's a good question. I think it's a good question. So just let me just saying so I just in terms when you come back I am hoping that I have I have some support by my fellow board members is if we could have kind of a list

154of the questions that have come up or maybe offline we can give them to the superintendent because i think understanding what all of our questions are and how they interrelate will help us all understand kind of where we all are in terms of a comfort zone to be making these these series of decisions um and i think it'll be clearer you know that for example if if you know that something like where is tk going to be in the long run well we've got to address that you know before we can make those plans and so there might be lots of things that we have to discuss that are i would say indirectly involved as opposed to just a matter of budget and and you know location so i'm going to make a motion Okay,

155I'm going to just to get us. Yeah, sure because why not so I'm going to move that first of all I want to thank directors Daniel director Daniels and vice president Alper for bringing this back up so that we're continuing to have this important conversation and then I'm going to move that we have an update in April I don't remember what our April meetings are after spring break that will and and that we will communicate with the superintendent which specific questions we want to have addressed and the president and vice president can direct that. Is there a second? Director Hempel second. Any other discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Director Danos? Shrug. Okay. Okay so the did you get that? Staff will bring it back to us in April and we will all commit to

156Getting our questions to dr. Evans and discussing it offline with him Okay to the superintendent superintendent. Yes, I Was the questions or a list that they want to be addressed when we bring it back in April and maybe the subcommittee of the ad hoc subcommittee of Alper and Daniels would be the best to work with the superintendent with the superintendent sure Just say if there's another board member who wants to get more involved I'm not sure I'm the best person at this point because I mean I really want to move forward and I want to reflect the the where the boards at and So I'm gonna push to bring this forward as fast as possible Which I think is not in line with the majority and so maybe another board member is better suited to

157work with Vice President Alper than me on this I actually think that tension is actually good I'll work with you Oh, wait. Oh, you think the tension of the two of them working together? But they agree. He means the tension of the two of us and you. Oh, the attention. And then the three of us. I will listen to the president. If you would like me to do it, I'm happy to do it. Okay. Okay, so we're gonna bring the next item. The next item is consolidation. And first of all, I do wanna thank the TK teachers for coming forward tonight. And we have heard you. Some of the things that you mentioned were concerns of ours as well. But there is no easy fix to this situation. And so we looked at all the

158scenarios out there. And so we're bringing forward to the board what we feel is I have to be careful when I choose my words because I know somebody, people are listening to me. And we're bringing, so we're bringing to you what we think is one of the best solutions. Now, all the solutions, I mean, that we. all the options that we had brought to us, we looked at those, but this is the one that we think works best for us. And so with that being said, I'm gonna turn this over to... our assistant superintendent scuderi to walk us through uh what we're proposing and and i do want to mention that um that there's a cost associated with all of this as well um and then again uh director alper will facilitate this conversation and

159uh we've allocated 30 total minutes for this i'll be very brief uh as the superintendent said this is thanks You can submit your comments to us through email, but we can't stop this process we were in following our agenda. I'm sorry I'm sorry you can submit you can send it to us on email Probably will be here till 11. Thank you Okay, so as the superintendent said this is a solution that we have been considering over the course of the last year and a half. It was first brought about at the beginning of last year when we talked about options for accommodating growth. Currently our admissions division is projecting that we need a total of two additional classrooms next year, not necessarily two new TKs or new kindergartens but to accommodate the growth that we've

160seen over the last two years, even though we've acknowledged leveling off. This has been a proposal that we've talked about a lot. I'll run through it pretty quickly because this solution or this proposal has come to the board a number of times. It's here to help address the impact of additional classroom needs for at least 16, 17 and the 17, 18 school year. The plan on the table is to have the current seven sections of transitional kindergarten that are in the district. be housed at three locations, Malcolm X, LeConte, where we're adding two portable classrooms to accommodate this, and also at the King Child Development Center. We'd be adding three sections there. The classroom usage for King CDC in 16-17 would look like this. And those two tables represent the eight classrooms at the King

161CDC campus. Currently, there are six preschool classes there, a library slash flex space, and a resource slash flex space as well. There's been discussion tonight and an item in the general fund budget priorities which talks about closing one of the part-day classes Which would result in the table on the right for next year if this proposal is enacted so for preschool classes at King CDC three transitional kindergartens and then a little tighter Use of the remaining flex basic King CDC because there'd have to be food service They want to retain some library space and some flex space as well in that remaining classroom. So the costs and considerations, some of these are in your board packets. They revolve around administrative coverage, food service, transportation, special education services and support, and some additional considerations, which we'll

162go through briefly. Food service, as your packet reads, we're estimating that it'll cost about $30,000, and Director White could speak to this if there are more questions after, to modify that remaining flex space, a slight modification of that room at King CDC to have a food service line. We believe we'll require a satellite operator that's a food service employee as well as a noon supervisor. Keep in mind we're going to have certificated teachers in those transitional kinder classes. And so unlike preschools... The food service won't happen in the classrooms. So we're going to need a noon supervisor to create a staggered lunch schedule at King CDC so that those three sections of TK can all have a lunch and that those certificated teachers get their duty-free lunch time. Administration has been an issue that we

163are working on resolving for next year if the plan moves forward. Staff has an absolute clear preference to have that administrator, the person supervising these programs. Be site-based there are a whole host of reasons why that is important direct supervision of the classrooms and the teachers that will be evaluated by that administrator someone on site for Emergencies contingencies what happens on sub days what happens if you have to combine a class because there's an unforeseen event, etc We're working with Yuba. There's a planning meeting tomorrow with HR and preschool administrators. What we're looking to do is renegotiate an existing preschool administrative program and administrator, forgive me, to cover these three classrooms at that site and include that in their existing duties. Transportation. We got this yesterday, so in the packet, the board packet, this isn't

164reflected in the additional cost, but a conservative estimate is that an additional driver, at least a .80 FTE, will be needed to accommodate getting kids to the school, getting kids to the after-school programs that are also providing services to them, et cetera. Special education, this is a variable, a big variable, but it's something that we are going to need a couple weeks to fully get our heads around because when school assignments are finalized in mid-March, we'll know the number of students with IEPs that will need support. And Director Graham and I, who Director Graham also will be looking at this with Francisco Martinez and admissions, once we get the actual numbers of students with IEP that need special ed supports. We'll have to come back to you with a plan for how we're going to

165accommodate special ed students at this consolidated site. After school programming, met with Aaron Jorgensen and Pat Sadler today. We talked about this. Our assumption is that because of some shifts in demographics and because the idea is that the consolidated TK site will be the north, will serve as the north zone TK, if you will, that this may require an added learn section. We don't know at the site yet. We're looking at LeConte. We're looking at Malcolm X. We're looking at other options for where additional after school staffing could be added to accommodate these students. Our current estimate for an instructional technician for 10 months would be an additional 17,000. Student assignment will happen pretty much in accordance with what admissions does. Sibling preferences, sibling placements can be considered with preschool and TK. So Mr. Martinez

166and preschool administrators, myself, will have to look at that carefully as we finalize student assignments mid-March. And I mentioned the TK zones would look like this physically. All the TK schools would be in the south, but we would want to make some delineation for the purposes of student assignment. Additional considerations, and you heard some of these from the TK teachers, these are still things that we're working out, parent committees, parent participation. support and resource adjustments things like literacy support RTI services etc how are we going to accommodate students in those ways coordinated lunch and recess periods we're going to be integrating TK kids who have a different type of lunch service and recess needs with preschool students so again there's a series of planning meetings in the next week or two to talk about those

167specifics and specific sports I think I already mentioned RTI and lid supports so those are the the lion's share of the issues and you can see that some of them are close to being resolved and some of them still have to be resolved. But given the discussion in this in the last year and a half, this was our leading medium term solution. And that is what we're proposing for 16, 17 to you tonight. Thank you. Assistant superintendent questions. Can you explain the thought? Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, I see both an opportunity and also a challenge in this. I think the opportunity is number one for T. preschoolers and transitional kindergarten to be able to delineate more clearly what is the curriculum between preschool and transitional kindergarten. I think that that is an opportunity

168for as a school district to be able to really look at it. Also, I see less transition for our younger population of students, preschoolers and TK children not having to bus to another location for after school programming. So I think that that helps also in terms of the challenges that young children have. I'm concerned about how space will be used for resources, library, food for RTI, for special ed, in terms of having the space that other classrooms have to be able to serve those children. Conceivably, the existing children right now at King, of those... Six classrooms how many of them would qualify for this transitional kindergarten moving ahead? They might have or it would have been a nice consistency for those children and families to have the same place familiar place versus Let's move again.

169And then let's move again the next year to kindergarten So and these children would have been here two years already some of them and so moving over is a smooth transition for the children I see that I you know I see what happens to children who are in transitional preschool, then they make a change to transitional kindergarten, then they have to make another change to kindergarten. And these are our younger, most vulnerable population of young children. So in that place, I see it as a positive. I'm concerned and I want to hear a little bit more in terms of the supervisor administrator. Are you saying that our existing supervisor for the preschool programs would have the added responsibility of TK or would it be another administrator? Another administrator within the existing preschool program. We're looking

170to renegotiate title and compensation to reflect the addition of the new duties. So it would be a new duty? Wouldn't be a new administrator and you're a totally new person to do it. Okay a Current employer current administrator. We have a coordinator that works with the preschool program Which is an administrative position and what we're trying to find that's that vice-president That's a is that the position that's funded through head start. Yes, so in that position Because it's half of their salaries from head start and half is ours or their whole salaries from head start I think it's closer to the full salary the full salaries head start. So then we would be hiring somebody else to do what she does? No, I think what we're trying to get at is that there is a

171potential increase in that existing employee's classification and compensation that would be sufficient to take on the duties of supervising three classrooms, a total of 60 kids. And the preschool. In addition to existing preschool responsibilities, yes. In addition to preschool. That's pretty big. That's pretty big. I'm concerned about that. And also just the other support that the vice-president, that position has to the other school sites too. Is that your lawyer? Take the fifth. So just in terms of that position right now also supports the other two sites. And so that person would no longer do that. No I don't think that's what we're suggesting we're looking at the existing responsibilities of that position and seeing what might work and be fair in order to add compensation to that position so that they could include these new

172three TK classes in their existing responsibilities. That sounds big to me so I. There are two. There's one. We're hoping not to negotiate this position here tonight but we do have an intent to. Yes absolutely. OK. So yeah there's still there are still two administrators for the preschool program. We would be trying to find a way to add the. So just. We've under earned in our contract for our preschoolers already by 10% by 10% so we haven't been able to Bring in because there's obvious right now in terms of low-income families living in Berkeley who don't have less families that are Being able to access it because they're not here and so it's you know I don't see an issue with that, but I also see that if we are under earning with that contract,

173why are we not pulling that money out for bearers to give that to our bearers contract so that we can serve these children and after school, which you can do. You certainly can. That's one of those questions that we can look into. Yeah. So, okay. Director Daniels. Thank you for the presentation and I want to acknowledge the fact that staff is putting forward a difficult proposal and I think it's important when that happens that we even if How we feel about it that that is not always easy and so I want to you know and I think the way it was presented was clear and Really thoughtful and with good analysis I think it's helpful to look at the history of this issue a little bit. It actually started before last year. There was a

174proposal by former director Lou Jones to consolidate some classes at Hopkins two, three, four years ago, which didn't go anywhere because basically the board was interested, Hopkins families turned out. And then last year it was on the table as a medium term option. It was rejected at that time too on a- razor thin 3-2 vote. Deferred. And then obviously now we're considering it. But I do think it's important to mention that we did have multiple medium term options, which included portables at John Muir and at Thousand Oaks, which we've put off the table. So what that meant is that we're down to this option. or we're down to using flex spaces. And if the TO community were here, they would cheer that. Maybe they're watching for all we know. But I just think it's important

175to get the sense of why we're here today and why this is what we're being asked to approve. I had a technical question. Do we have to... So let's say we approve this. There's now a physical separate site that is housing TK through five kids with its own administrator, no matter how that position is framed. Does that mean that from the, say, for example, the state's perspective or from reporting attendance, is that going to be technically a new school? or is it going to be part of one of our existing elementary schools? Yeah, that's a really good question, and I will find the answer to that. Because it doesn't just... The distinction in how ADA is calculated. It's not just ADA, and we decided not to open a new school, but in fact, maybe we

176are opening a new school this way. We have BSEP concerns because we have SGC, we have site funds, and we have a school site plan that we're legally obligated to do. I don't know whether it exists for preschool or not in the same way. but certainly it will if this is a separate site. And if it's not a separate site, that means that that school site is going to have to do a site plan for two physical separate sites. So I think it would be nice to get a sense of how that plays out given that we are transitioning. If this exists for two years, we will be transitioning out of the existing B-SET measure and into a new B-SET measure with technically perhaps a 12th on paper elementary school and how that plays out.

177We have a PAC that asks and a P&O committee that has school assignments from every single elementary school. So does that mean we have to for three classes? So I think obviously these are not the primary reasons to open or not a new school. but they do have an impact on how we operate our district and some of the key decision-making bodies and obviously our B-SET measure. So it would be helpful to get the answer to that. And then I believe it was last meeting or maybe two meetings ago, we approved the opening of a special ed preschool class mid-year. And so my understanding, but I may be wrong on this, is that that is just for this year. that it's not part of the plan for next year but if next year major comes

178around and we do need to open a new special ed preschool class in the middle of the year where does that class go now my understanding at Hopkins is there's one available space which has been prone to flooding now I don't know if it hasn't flooded recently from director white for this question yeah I think that issues been resolved okay On the mic, please. On the mic, please. On the mic, please. Yes. Yes, we've resolved that issue. Okay. So, thank you. So, we don't have to worry about that problem, but what that would mean, though, is we would be using up the only unassigned space at Hopkins so that there would be no library. At Hopkins, I believe I think that's about the library space. There'd be no additional pull out room for anyone or

179am I am I incorrect on that? Just just the impact of let's just assume that next year major we have to open a another special ed preschool like we had to do this year It would go at Hopkins What space is that what? What is that Kurt? What is that space? being used for if not for the special ed preschool class that space is the library and Resource space. Okay, so we would be moving that into one of our small conference rooms and we would that's right a roaming or Okay, moving like that's go all your screen went off Okay, so so just to be clear that we have no I assume we have no indication whether that's gonna be likely or not to happen but I just think we should be aware that by

180making this decision that is a possibility and we won't know until we see our kids for next year whether or not that's a realistic possibility or not That's true. Is that an accurate assessment? Once all the student assignments get finalized in March, we'll know, Director Graham will know whether or not based on the assessments actually that she's, some of them being conducted right now, whether she's going to need that extra section. Okay. But it is a distinct possibility. So we have nine minutes left and we have two other big items. So Director Appel. I just wanted to be clear. We're not, this is a discussion item, so we're not being asked to make this decision. Correct? Any other comments or questions? Okay. Thank you. Not to take over your role, Mr. Vice President, but Superintendent

181Evans, do you need more from us than what we've just given? So we will bring this item back as an action item. We did want to know what the concerns were so that we could address the concerns before we bring it back to the board for approval. I'll just... Oh, go ahead, Director Embo. I just want to echo Director, what is your name, Josh? Oh. That when I looked at this proposal, I mean, it's not, I mean, it's... I'm glad that you gave the history of how we got to this point because I think that puts it in context. I would say that the thing that concerned me the most, the question that I have is it concerned me, I felt that there were too few flex spaces, particularly if we are dealing with some

182students with special needs. And there are times, particularly when they're young for that age, where a timeout, not in a corner by yourself, but the kind of timeout when there's an adult comes. goes with you and gives you a chance to kind of collect yourself is necessary at that age or just the space to be able to do pull outs or do therapy and so I'm a little concerned about or would like to know a little bit more about how that's going to work in this proposal. That's a very important point and just to be completely candid if there The way we're looking at it now, having to modify that and conduct food service in that room a good deal of the day, it's on paper it's a flex room, but you're not going to

183have access to that for those type of situations. That was what I was looking at, was how can you be preparing food and holding and addressing a child's psychological needs. There'll be a partition in there. Or is there a speech therapy? Whatever is needed. I don't think you can do speech therapy while someone's chopping vegetables. There will be significant parts of the day wherein certain services will not be appropriate given the modification. I guess I'll just sort of jump in just for one minute and just say, you know, I think this is the best option we have, but I really don't like it. And I think it's, you know. Can I be on record as echoing that sentiment too? Yeah. Because from an educational perspective, this is difficult as well. Yeah. But we're kind of

184at the intersection. What about portables? Sorry, it's no it's I mean, you know none of our the point might the point is I think none of our options are good Portals aren't good. They're expensive. Using more flex space is something we've decided we don't want to do. This is an expensive option. It's a huge logistical hassle. It reduces the quality of the preschool programs. It reduces the quality of the TK programs. As several people said, it's not a transition to kindergarten when you're in a preschool facility. See, I disagree with that. My child did that. I mean, you know, it could be. It's not how I viewed TK. So I think if we do it, and it sounds like we should, we should be really clear that this is a short, you know, it's the

185medium-term option, but it's for a limited amount of time before we figure out what our long-term plan is. And to tell the communities that are being affected, that are being affected greatly, teachers, kids, parents, that this isn't the status quo going forward for the end of time. Yeah, I want to echo that because I mean, I actually think that Bridge K can be very easily in a pre-K site. It's just that it should be built in that way. And this is not, this is kind of trying to plug and play and it's not consistent throughout the district. And our teachers have been very clear that they think the best approach is to have our kids on the elementary school site. So I think we all agree with that. I guess, you know, when it comes

186back to us, the numbers, since we are building two more portables, I guess I'm still a little unclear. I have to be honest. I feel a little stupid about this, but I'm a little unclear about the numbers and why we need this next year, given the fact that we're going to have two more portables. I know Josh is gone, but we are actually building two portables that we think we're going to put transitional kindergartens in. So I guess I'm wondering, particularly given conversations we're having about class size and... that I'm just really, I guess if, maybe that was there and I missed it, but if we can get a clearer idea of how the classrooms allocate next year, given the two additional classrooms that we're building, that would be helpful. Because from what I understand,

187we don't have 40 new kids, so. No, we have two classrooms worth of students in k5 that need to be accommodated So I think if we don't do this next year when you look at the numbers We're back to the discussion around existing alternative or flex spaces. So that's where we'd be Okay, so but not for next year because next year we'll have two additional classrooms for those two additional classrooms worth of kids No, because those additional 40 kids are spread out across the entire K-5 spectrum. So it's three kids in this grade, five kids in that grade, et cetera. Okay. And I guess if there's other questions that we have, we can direct those to Dr. Evans. Sure. So I think that's it. Thank you. Yeah. No, it wasn't on. So before I actually

188start this item, I do want to thank... It's not on? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Before I start this item, I do want to thank Director Hemphill for your role and your leadership in working with staff in terms of helping us with some of these short-term or immediate responses. and also the matrix and so forth. But before I even start, I just want to say that the board on January 13th approved the staff or accepted the staff's summary of the community concerns and also the proposed demands from the BSU. So tonight the board will get an update on where we are on our short-term or immediate immediate Solutions and also I want to direct your attention to the matrix, which is this right here That

189is a draft that we have worked on to provide Some direction and where we are in each one of the items So as my assistant excuse me I just wanted to mention that copies of the copies of the staff report and the matrix as well as the Hate Policy are in the back if you want to follow along or pick them up for future reference So my assistant is working pretty hard trying to get this up for everybody and also back At the table in the back, we also have a copy of the policy that the board approved last year on hate speech, crimes, and so forth. The other thing I want to say is that this has been very difficult. for for all of us as we address some of these needs because our

190goal is for all of our kids to be successful number one and so when kids are not feeling successful then that's the responsibility responsibility of all of us in the district so I want to address the short-term responses quickly and I want to get into the task force that we're proposing tonight and so the responses the short-term responses are just an update but I do need some direction in terms of the task force so there were a couple of short-term responses from the community And to provide you an update on the seven of those items, the first one was develop a communication protocol to inform all stakeholders. And this is scheduled to be completed by the end of April. Number two, there was a board policy to address hate crimes and racial harassment, which would

191define and reference protocols. The policy committee met. and reviewed the existing policy on hate speech crimes and found that we needed to provide more direction on responding and communicating with the community regarding those threats. Number three was develop an anonymous reporting system. We are reviewing a reporting system right now, and we're hoping to implement that within the next month, not the end of April. We think we can bring that on board by the end of March. Establish board policy protocols. We will be agendizing that sometime in spring. Provide a safety officer training and update expectations on the roles and responsibilities. We're scheduling training for spring and also for this summer. And increase African-American black parent guardian mentor presence at schools. We will be working with the Office of Family Engagement and Black Affinity Group. And

192they have... Had quite a few workshops already for parents and also they'll be having something an event this Saturday we also had some demands that We also had a couple of demands made by our black Student Union and I actually had the opportunity to Attend their meeting that was held last week with the administration and the students and all, pretty much all of my district staff was there. And it was a very good meeting. It's the first. It was very short. And I know that we need to have more meetings. in the future, but they were really concerned about African American history, funding of the African American Studies Department, the Resource Center, and training for all the Berkeley High students, or the teachers, on racial sensitivity. This week, I actually had the opportunity to attend

193the Teacher Leaders Group at Berkeley High, I just want you to know that each department as well as each school reported out what they were doing to address the curriculum and projects and so forth for African American students. I don't have a list of all the things that they're doing, but I'm here to report that there's so much that they're doing. And as soon as I get a list of all the things from that meeting, I will share those with the board. And then finally, we are proposing an anti-racism oversight task force for the board. In this proposal, we are proposing that the scope, timeline, and composition be one that is two-fold. The scope of the work is to make recommendations to the district staff on prioritizing some of the short-term, which we've already done,

194but looking at some of the mid-term as well as immediate solutions and prioritizing those as what should be done and when they should be done. and how they should be done. And then bringing those recommendations to staff and then staff bringing those recommendations to the board. And I don't want this group to be, or this task force to be confused with the PAC, the Parent Advisory Committee or the 2020 Advisory Committee. This is a separate task force that will be given the responsibility of just the solutions that we are talking about tonight. We are proposing that the task force consist of representatives from the following organizations, PCAD, Children of African Descent, Black Student Union, NAACP, Berkeley Federation of Teachers, and the School Board. We're looking at individuals from, let's say, the high school, the principal,

195office of family engagement coordinator, equity teacher leader. These are some of the people that we're proposing to be on this task force. Of course, this task force would be led by myself, and we're hoping that we could meet as early as March. So that's a little bit about the scope, the timeline, and what they're being charged with doing for us. So with that, I'd like to open up for discussion, and I guess it will be facilitated by Director Hemphill. Thank you. I apologize for not having everything on the screen. Hopefully we can get that up and running so we, because I know you have a PowerPoint that would be nice to be able to show. So hopefully we can get that going on. As Dr. Evans laid out that, okay, great. So should I continue?

196Did you want to? Oh, okay. So. Okay, there is a PowerPoint. There really is a PowerPoint. As Dr. Evans laid out that what the board is being asked to do this evening is really just to hear the update. One of the things that was clear from community comments is the need for the district to be proactive and to take this work seriously. Racism and its impact on our district is a complex challenge that will require commitment from all of our stakeholders, community, district administration, teachers, staff, as well as the school board to be significantly addressed. It this is really these initiatives are really the beginning of that work. I think that Much of what you see here really is coming directly out of the comments that were made at the town meeting in response to

197the string of racial incidents that occurred at Berkeley High but there's a recognition that those incidents don't happen in a vacuum and They're just not issues that are at Berkeley High Racism permeates throughout the United States. It's unfortunately part of our American culture, and though Berkeley tries to be its own republic at times, the truth is that Berkeley is part of the United States, and we have our own struggles with racism to overcome here. In addition to this work, there are many initiatives that have relations to this work. Our ongoing work to address the opportunity gap in education between our African American and Latino students versus our white and Asian students. That work is not all. illustrated here as the board knows and most of you know. The LCAP process, our Local Control Accountability Plan,

198which guides our use of funds that we receive for the state for targeted students and African American black students are among those targeted, is where most of those initiatives are. So for those of you who follow that and don't see a lot of that here, it's because These are really specifically more addressed on our anti-racism work that came out of the community and BSU response and is not at all all of what we are doing. So the last thing I just wanted to mention before we start with the board discussion on the task force is that the matrix that there are copies of does have a little bit more detailed information of where we are with many of the issues and demands that were given to us by the community and BSU. So please take

199those with you and we'll be receiving, I don't think it's been decided or staff hasn't said how often, but. regular updates and this would be something that this task force would be involved in. So for the board tonight, if you wish to comment on any of our current efforts, that would be great. But the main thing we wanted to do is to get. Board approval and direction on this task force. It would be considered a superintendent task force, but it would still be noticed and made open to the public so anyone in the community that wishes to attend the task force meetings would be able to do so to be part of the oversight and part of their recommendations. So with that. If there's anyone who wants to jump in and make a comment either

200about the initiatives and where we are with the immediate ones or has a comment or a revision to the staff proposal regarding the task force, this would be the time. I'll start. I want to thank our staff and our community for spending considerable time that, you know, is long overdue, but necessary and important to our schools. I want to say this in the backdrop of some schools, some colleges actually reducing their funding for ethnic studies when we're seeing these kinds of issues and problems popping up in our schools, in our communities, in our cities. So it's an action that we're taking differently from what the colleges are doing right now in terms of how do we strengthen our schools and our focus on our students of color. I am in support of the... the superintendent's

201task force. I think it's really important to have, I think just as when we had the dual immersion task force, I think a lot of other things came up that were really important, but I think it's also important to how do we ensure that this task force also helps us district-wide always have this lens in terms of what is racism, what is hate, and that we hold this and how do we in all the work that we do with our students and our teachers and our administrative staff. I'm sorry, I lost my note here. One of the things that I was thinking about in terms of this plan and the reference to our LCAP plan, that how do we integrate so that people don't have to dig through the LCAP, even though the LCAP is

202very much infused with how we support our disproportionality and our African-American Latino students in our special ed, how can we embed in this where you can find how we support our students otherwise through our LCAP? It's referenced either through a hyperlink or the page number where you can find how we do this. And we actually can do this because we like to look at this as almost like a subset of that. Correct. So I think it would be good for our public to also have that easily accessible. The other part that I had spoken when this incident happened I talked about not only having a policy But what do we do both during an incident like this it happens and how do we also post? Respond to an incident of hate and I don't you

203know It's something that I feel that we need to articulate in a better way. We had students who stayed behind We had students who walked out what's the role of our teachers? You know, if this ever happens, hopefully not, but we need to have, when something like this happens, what do we respond to? And I would hope that the task force would look at that because there is curriculum around that in terms of responding to it. And how do we support, again, the community communicate to and hold everybody together in an unfortunate situation? So I think right now I'm very supportive of the task force and the work. I think there's a tremendous amount of work to do, but I think some of it is here. Just one more thing. I think it's the amount

204of money also that would be required to do some of this work. families and communities and parents also start to see that there is going to be some money that's going to have to be spent on implementing. It's not just a paper document, but it's also, in fact, a person and the cost that it would be associated with it. But thank you. Yes, go ahead. Oh, okay, like, too quick. Well, not really quick, but two things. For one, I was like, kind of want to see more like time emphasis put into these sort of things like this. It seems like like last minute bullet points. And then the second thing is for the task force, where is the representatives for BTA and the African-American Studies Department? That is something we actually can consider. We can

205consider that. That's why this was brought to the board for comment so that in addition to Staffs proposal that those kinds of suggestions that you just made can be considered Anyone else I'm sorry Josh. I didn't see you So I'll try to make a couple of comments quick So on these items, I think that any any item that is not completed say by the fall Maybe not every single one but many of these items can and probably should be added to our LCAP And the reason for that I think is not so much that we necessarily be spending Supplemental funds on any of these which we may of course but that the process of accountability in the LCAP I think has been shown to be one of the few processes in the district that is

206really sort of this continuous cycle of doing something, seeing if it works, following up, and then modifying it. And so rather than creating a whole separate process, it would make sense to include this in our existing process. So I think, although I wouldn't necessarily put every single one of these items in the LCAP, I think many of these things could and possibly should be in our LCAP. So on the task force, if it's a superintendent's task force, the superintendent has the prerogative to create any task force you want. So I appreciate you coming to us and asking for insight. I think, you know, BTA, BCC, there are a couple of other groups that I think might want representatives and we might value from their insight. But at the end of the day, if you want

207a task force to give you insight and you want a task force to help you oversee things, that's your prerogative. Speaking as a board member if you were to ask us as a board what you know we would like to see in a task force or I would like to see I am I think that having task forces With a very set period of time so call it three months or four months report back on a particular date with a very specific, you know Focus, you know, I want five or six items to help me solve this problem, it's a great use of a task force. I think we do have a PAC that we want to continue to empower to sort of help us move our district forward. And so a separate committee or

208a task force that basically serves the same function for these items as a PAC would doesn't seem to me to be necessary. And the last thing I will say is, Although I think that Director Hempel and I have discussed this at length and I think we see the process differently, I would still support, you know, sort of pre-allocating a set of amount of money and saying we're going to allocate, pick your number, and then we want the task force to come back and tell us how best to spend that amount of money. I think you may not hear the applause after I finish my comments, because it may be a high or low amount of number, but I think that the value here is that it focuses the task force on something concrete as opposed

209to... an unending list of 20 or 30 things without any focus. And I understand and I respect Director Hempel's in our conversations about this in the past that how can you know how much to spend? You don't even know a clear problem. So if you put the money before the solutions, then you're sort of limiting yourself. And I get that. But I do think that in this situation, coming up with an amount of money that we feel at least at the face of it makes sense or maybe levels you know you know if you had this amount of money to spend what would you spend it on if you have this amount of money to spend what you spend it on so I think that that that is a role for the board to play

210so you may want you know you could come to us and if you like that idea and if the board likes that idea you could come to us and say all right I want to give the committee, you know, these levels of spending and coming back with recommendations over the next six to, you know, 12 months or whatever, is that something that makes sense to the board in terms of the various levels that we're willing to consider spending? No one's committing anything at this point. So those are my suggestions, but I do want to reiterate that a lot of these, you know, as I made it on the... whenever it was in January 13th, a lot of these things you can take action on your own regardless of the feeling of the board, including the

211appointment of a task force. So those are my comments. So a couple things. First of all, thank you. I know, Karen, I say thank you all the time, but I really do feel gratitude because I do, you know, there's a lot of districts that I work with around the state where really bad things happen. People feel bad about it and then or they don't and then we just move on and I appreciate that there's been real effort and time put in by several of you to try to figure out where to go and not just a little hopefully not just You know to make sure that we have safety officers on the school, but to really deal with to address a value of an anti-racist So that's something to fill, that's a good thing. I

212support you setting up a task force. I agree with Josh, that's basically your prerogative to do. I have a couple of suggestions also. I think. One of the things is that in the conversations that I've been having a lot around school climate and culture and anti-racism and addressing and trauma-informed practices, I do think there are people having conversations in the district. And so it would be really great to make sure that one concern I have is that there'll be parallel conversations that are similar but come up with solutions that are not necessarily in line with one another. So, for example, some of the work that's being done at the high school around the redesign and some of the work that's being... done. around restorative practices, I think it would be good to have that align

213and then not just that the information flows from those efforts to this task force, but both ways. For example, maybe a collaboration on the restorative justice would be one example. I actually think this group sounds like it's different than the PAC. The PAC is parents, and I'm hearing this as being not just parents, so I actually do see a difference. And then another thing that I was thinking about that has concerned me a little bit since the events in November and the walkout is that one of the things that we need, I think, is my personal opinion that we need to do in building an anti-racist school district is continue to support the teaching of our white students and also positively reinforce the good behaviors that show them to be good allies. So I just

214am hoping, I mean it's not up to me as your task force, but I'm hoping that... I don't know if that's not necessarily a, like kind of the white privilege part of it and the anti, I'm hoping that that will be a part of the conversation. That's just my hope. I'm not, I just think there's a great opportunity. A lot of our kids stepped up, but walking out is one thing, but really, you know, how you incorporate those practices in your day-to-day is, that's, those are the kids, that's what we want to build in our white students. So, and all of our students around difference, but this particularly, I think, is, since this is specifically on race. I'll talk about white privilege. Anyway, so I think that it's, I appreciate all this and I have

215a couple comments on the hate crimes, this proposed policy and I will agree that a timeline would be really good and I think it's an interesting idea to put some different levels of funding just so we don't have a situation where we're you know, like with the last work group that we had about African American achievement when there was all these grand ideas and then what we could really do was really limited by dollars. So I don't know how you balance those things so you're not thinking limited, you're thinking big, but there's also some check with our resources. So that's something you can work out because you're the superintendent. But I do see where Josh is coming from with that. And if I wasn't clear, because I just talked in circles, I do support the

216idea of having this task force. So just briefly, I've been a part of and had a lot of experience with a lot of different task forces in a lot of different capacities. I would say the vast majority of which were failures and the small minority were successful. So again, not to repeat what everyone's saying, but with the understanding that this is your prerogative to do, I'll just sort of throw out there that I'm skeptical unless it's really carefully thought through. And I think that the task forces that are successful have very clear charges, have a very specific duration, and have sufficient staffing. And Josh and Judy have mentioned the sort of importance of a clear charge and duration. I think staffing is important, too. And so I would just offer those suggestions. I hope that

217if you decide to do it, that it works and that it is a real benefit. Can I comment on that? Yeah, of course. You've probably studied quite a few of these task forces. So what I'm asking is that you'd work with us in terms of developing. a task force that will be productive and successful. And I'm looking at all of you here with a lot of expertise. And so as I'm working with the task force, I'm relying on all of you with your expertise. And like Director Appel with the restorative justice, and I know you've done a lot of work, you know, on the advisory committee and Josh with budget and Karen's helping me right now. And I'm also looking for the student board members to for your input, too, and what you want. from

218a student perspective, I really do believe that this task force could be very successful with the expertise of the board. And I look at you, President Cutler, for what we're doing for our elementary schools and making that connection and transition and all of that. So I think that this can actually work. And you're right, it's not a... a committee a board committee it is a superintendent's committee but we're bringing it forth so that you know what we're trying to do and this feedback is is greatly appreciated yeah i um strongly support the development of the task force. I mean first of all I think that was something that we heard loud and clear from the community and the BSU that there is kind of eyes on this process as well as impid on this process

219and what the parent advisory committee does for the LCAP is really a much broader scope than this. And really what this task force is is to really work with the superintendent around our anti-racism issues. Now it's certainly true that when the community spoke and black students spoke, that it's difficult to just talk about very specific kind of anti-racism initiatives without the context of the other work we're doing around equity. So I think, to me, the challenge of the task force is going to keep it, is keeping itself focused and realizing that a lot of parallel things are happening that are really more going to be overseen by other groups. So one of the things that I think is the fact that equity teacher as well as the member of the PAC would be on this

220committee because I think as those come up in the task force, then those are folks who can say, well, these are issues that are being discussed or outside of this to keep. the task force focused. I don't think that the PAC has the bandwidth to be able to put the kind of focus on this that's needed with all their other responsibilities. In terms of the money, I think that's an intriguing idea of giving so much money, but I guess part of the issue is that a lot of what I was reading may not take new money, it's more of a reallocation of existing resources. So that is something that is true. And also that I think that we... There is a l cap process and again if you start giving another committee kind of budgetary

221authority You you've now mixed processes. So to me what this group would be doing and the staff report said That their first priority is making those recommendations to l cap, you know So that as priority so the l cap knows that when they are looking at their recommendations on how to use our money from the state that this task force has told them what of these initiatives in the next year that do need money are the ones that they are strongly recommending that the LCAP take on as priority. So that to me is kind of how I saw what this was saying was how that would go on. But it sounds like you did you went away in a little bit more just so there are two Responsibilities of the task force it seems like

222there's the recommending responsibility Which I'm assuming is limited in duration. It's going to recommend I THINK WHAT THIS SAYS IS THAT THE FIRST MEETING WOULD BE NO LATER THAN MARCH. IS THAT ON THE SLIDE? NO, IT'S NOT ON THE SLIDE. AND THAT THE FIRST PRIORITY IS TO MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SHORT-TERM IMPLEMENTATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MID-TERM FUNDING PRIORITIES. in time for inclusion in the LCAP and budget process, and that subsequently the task force would be scheduled to meet once per quarter. Okay. So just as a time check on that piece, the first draft recommendations of the LCAP come to the board in April. So that's very soon. So there'd be like one meeting of the task force and then the recommendations would come to the board and at some point they're going to go to the

223EAC and the PAC. So as long as that timeline has worked out. But it seems like there's a second responsibility of sort of not only overseeing implementation but actually physically in some sense supporting implementation. And I guess my question for that piece of the task force is how long would you envision that responsibility to last? A year, a month, two years until it was done? I mean, because to go to Vice President Alper's point about, you know, fixed duration, focused responsibilities, sort of a whole new committee that exists as part of our oversight structure is different than... committee that exists. I actually think that it's going to at least take a couple of years. This is not something that we're going to fix overnight or even six months or even within the next year. Particularly

224around we look at some of the recommendations because there might be a recommendation that may not work. and we may have to go back to the drawing board and say, look, let's come up with some things here because these things are not having the type of impact that we want them to have. And so we need to look at that as well. So I don't want to put a time frame on saying it's only going to be a year. IT MAY BE A LITTLE LONGER. ON THAT POINT, THEN, I'M NOT, AGAIN, I'M NOT, IT'S YOUR PREROGATIVE. I WOULD SUGGEST IN LOOKING AT THE COMMON CORE GROUP THAT MET AROUND CURRICULUM ADOPTION AND THINGS LIKE THAT AS A SORT OF SUCCESSFUL MODEL THAT WE'VE SEEN TO SUPPORT YOUR DECISION MAKING AND OUR DECISION MAKING PROCESSES AROUND

225THIS. if we model this after something like um so say the pno or the eac or the pac which is more sort of um oversight e um then i think that would be another oversight body and i'm not sure we need another oversight body i'm gonna say something And that I might be wrong, it just occurred to me. But I actually, I think as far as the work group that worked on Common Core, there's probably some lessons to be learned. But I also feel like this is a unique committee that you're suggesting setting up and that I would, you know, could also not look like anything else because it's... to be really responsive to the very specific need that you're gonna be addressing. So I don't know, it might look like something totally different. And

226I actually feel like that's kind of what I was trying to say in the beginning. I'm not patting ourselves on the back, but I think if we really wanna try to do something different than having an anti-racism, really, truly an anti-racism work group that's not just like a pro forma. the district comes and gives presentations and then the group has 10 minutes to talk or something like that but really is tackling these really hard issues. I think it could actually look really different and there are actually folks out there who work to do this in a really radical way and I think if we're gonna do it, let's do it. Like let's be innovative in that way. That's my feeling. I'm gonna make a motion to extend the meeting to 1120. We still have the

227budget, right? Okay. Is that enough time? Yes, for the budget. Okay. I'm sorry. Do we need to do the budget tonight? Can we push that off to the next meeting? I want to move to extend the meeting until 1130. We might not need it, but I want to give, there's a lot in that item. It's really important. We definitely need to do the budget Is that it? It's just 20 minutes on that I just want to remind the board that the budget calendar we We listed the approval of the budget priorities at the next board meeting on March the 9th because of concerns that were raised last year about timing March 15th letters and Also the ability to hire Employees that are being recommended. Okay, so the motion is to 1130 I'll second that can

228I make one quick comment Karen? I just want to I just want to just throw this out there, but we don't talk about it now. But if this is something different and if it's an anti-racism task force and if it is a longer duration than I was envisioning, there's something about it that makes me uncomfortable that there's... There isn't being envisioned representatives from our Latino community and from other communities of color in the district. So I just want to throw that out there as something to think about. If this is a broader committee than just responding to the issues raised by the African American Town Hall, but this is really an anti-racism task force, I just wanted to throw that out there. I would say that given... That the incidents that we have experienced have

229been specifically targeted toward black people that that's where we begin and you know as the work continues then I can certainly see that I mean anti-racism curricula isn't going to just be about you know racism regarding blacks, but whether it's Muslims or Jews or you know, whoever but you know given that What we've been seeing, the nooses and that kind of thing, those weren't targeted to some of the other groups that in fact experienced racism in the United States. Those were specifically targeted to black folks. And so I think for me, I mean... I don't want to dilute the effort. I want it to be very targeted toward what we've experienced. And then as that work takes place, then I could see it broadening. But I don't want to start by diluting what the, not

230diluting, expanding the committee scope to the point that we lose sight of that we had a very specific string of threats against our black community. And so we need to respond to that threat. I trust that the committee would be able to be sensitive and open to issues as they arise and being able to also see that bigger picture, what we're all trying to address. So I trust that. So now... So I just wanted to wrap up that piece a little bit. So it sounds that there are, I think some board members have some comments about making the matrix of an even... more helpful document and I think you had some of that. In fact, I think when I was looking at this, a lot of these in fact are already in the LCAP and

231so I think those hyperlinks would probably be not too difficult to do. We also had our school, our board representative from BTA make some suggestions about adding members to the task force, which It's your task force, but I think to include our other high school is a good idea. And on that note, I guess when we'll be hearing back again, when will be our next update? In April? Okay. And so by then the committee will have met the first meeting. Okay, great. Thank you, President Levy-Copper. Thank you very much, Superintendent and Director Hempel for the presentation and for Debbie, thank you. Thank you. And to everybody who added to this. So Deputy Superintendent Cleveland, are you ready for the next item? So the board asked us to bring back several items. They wanted more in-depth.

232Study of some of these budget items that we are presenting before you and so what we're going to do tonight is give you more information on those items and Review the calendar and let you know specifically what we what we want to approve Next month Okay, this item was brought forward to the board at the last board meeting and so this is just a follow-up And it also addresses some of the board's input at the last meeting So I just want to clearly state that the budget priorities is to look at what we can fund out of our base grant funds. We have other processes for developing the budget for BSEP Measure A and for the state funding related to the LCAP program. the area of the blue which is the largest amount of revenue

233that we receive is our base grant funding it's used for operational purposes as well as our core regular education program and so this budget priority doesn't include all of the funding sources that we have in the district it's mainly focused on where our most uh... uh... limited funding sources which is the base grant funding and also our most flexible funding source So as I mentioned, the presentation doesn't include in this list some of the other programs that will be coming forward. One would be the BSEP budget process, which has started and will be presented separately to the board in March through June 2016 as a separate process. And then also the budget. process for the supplemental grant funds for our targeted students based supported by our local control accountability plan has started as well and

234will be presented to the board in April through June 2016 a summary of the fiscal impact the projected deficit spending for 1617 is 3.8 million and I provided detailed slides that I won't be providing tonight regarding this and our ongoing structural deficit is $180,000. So our $3.8 million deficit is to expend down reserves, and these are planned expenditures. The deficit spending already incorporates planned use of designated reserves of $1,190,000 for Common Core, which that money came in last year. We're using it for this year and the board designated for this specific purpose. And $2 million for program support and expanding course offerings that cannot be supported by BSEP in the last year of the measure. And those program support includes literacy coaches, middle school counselors. and our expanded course offerings as well as a few

235other programs. A 3% bonus to be funded out of one-time funds is also a part of the planned deficit spending from reserves. There's an additional one-time revenue for mandated reimbursement of $2 million that's also incorporated in the 16-17 projection. The projected budget for 16-17 will change in the multi-year projections as part of the 15-16 second interim budget. So I just want to, that will be coming forward to the board on March 9th. And then also when the adopted budget is actually uploaded with more specific costs than a multi-year projection, those numbers will change as well as there will be new budget assumptions from the... if governors may revision that can impact the numbers. As we mentioned before, if we're looking at moving towards a consolidated TK program, there will be an additional 50,000 that's not

236included on the budget priorities list. The proposed budget priorities will increase the overall projected deficit by 398,904, net of the $148,000. if we reduce a child development class. And the 300, they would also increase the deficit by 355,000 in one time cost for a total of 754,744. I just want to mention that the items that was referred to earlier that are on our consideration list are not being proposed. So there's about another half a million dollars. that were considered but not being recommended by staff. Lastly, the projected undesignated ending fund balance at the end of 16-17 is estimated to be 3.7 million after consideration of all the budget priorities. And the board should also consider designating common core funding for the 17-18 school year from that balance. Over the past five years and I brought

237this to the board a list of the of all of our new costs the district has added 13 million in ongoing costs and 12 million in one-time costs Determining our budget priorities will be very key to the district staying solvent so I there's a lot of needs in the district and so at some point given the slowdown in the state funding that's going to be coming into the district we're going to have to really look at prioritizing all of the demands that's been coming forward over the last five years with all of the new things that we would like to do as we move forward including a possible new school so we just have to keep that in mind that things are tightening up we put a lot of things in the budget a lot

238of different support Staff and community members have come forward for the other items that we have approved in the last five years as well as some of the new things and this limited resources to do everything that we want and so at some point it'd be really good to have Some input from the board on what the real key priorities are for funding sources There was a request the last the first reading of this item about preschool additional information with the closure of a part-day program And have an impact on students and families Principal Carriato and I have talked and we do believe that even with the closure of that part-day program there are spaces sufficient to accommodate the families in those sections in those under rolled sections now there was also a question about

239whether the number of sections that would remain preschool sections might impact our eligibility for some new and forthcoming budget models that are coming about and we do not believe at this time that closing that part-day preschool class will jeopardize our our funding in that area There was also a request for additional information, some context on the IB coordinator, which is to be progressively funded over the next couple years so we get the full funding. Currently at Berkeley High School, there still is a .4 allocated to each department in SLC, so 40% of a full-time FTE to each SLC. On top of that, the math department is currently through Common Core getting a significant amount of release time to coordinate the new math program there. Some other examples AMPS currently provides a point two out of

240their partnership Academy funds for internship coordination aha Provides an additional point two through a County Arts grant for an arts coordinator other communities particularly the small schools They've intermittently used CPA funds to provide release time and the PD leads to 40% positions to serve all communities. So there was a request for kind of giving some context around what this release time or coordinative time looks like. special education Additional information was requested on this or some clarifying information This is an effort to return the district to an overall IE staffing ratio of eight to one or one to eight And it's an effort to reallocate the IAs for more equitable distribution across the sites There's a lot more detail on this item in your packet and director Graham is here if there's specific questions I want

241to add that we've been using hourly staffing 24 temporary hourly staff to instructional aids to perform these services for our students. And this is just to convert hourly staff to permanent staff. And there's so many benefits to doing that. Number one, for the staff themselves in terms of having health benefits when they're working all year. And then at the same time, providing consistency to the program. And another concern we've had is the concerns around the ability to recruit IAs. And so if we're looking at making this conversion, we should be moving quickly given the personnel commission process takes some time. And that's been one of our problems in terms of recruiting and not having the positions approved in time for recruitment. So if we're looking to do this, we need to take action in the

242near future. And all of that gives us continuity in that staffing. And as you can see in the Common Core budget and other places, we're starting to gradually allocate specific PD funding for IAs. Technology? Oh, no. He's not here. Oh, he is here. Okay. Consideration of computers as ongoing costs. This issue came up and so education services has a work group in conjunction with technology that's looking at a one-on-one model for computers and it includes a BYOD component because some students have their own computers. Some students don't want to use the computers that we would be purchasing and so there's a real savings and resources if we can balance between bring your own device and purchasing laptops. And so even though our request is for one-time funding, we do agree that there is some ongoing

243issues related to funding given BSAP. can no longer fund all of the support it has in the past due to increasing staff costs. So right now we're not looking to make a recommendation for ongoing support until the work group, which I believe will be finishing their analysis late spring, early summer, by the end of the school year, to really inform. and be strategic around what are the real needs before we identify how much funding would be needed on an ongoing basis. And this just summarizes the ongoing cost that we've proposed and any offsets for reductions. As you see, the education effectiveness grant, which came forward as a consent item, offsets our costs by $278,000 for three years. So I listed it in the one-time category because eventually it will go back into the base grant

244funding after three years. And this is just the second half of the spreadsheet, and it lists the other costs. The consolidation for Transitional K, those costs are there. Obviously, there's another $50,000 if we need to hire a bus driver. So until that decision is made, we just listed those costs on the budget priority list. And this is just what you've seen before in another format. One-time expenditures, ongoing expenditures. So I think this is our second read, and so it's kind of getting an idea from the board. Some things I think are urgent to go ahead to move forward at the March 9th meeting, either due to balancing March 15th letters if we're not going to fund page two. you know, trying to address staffing issues around the teachers and the credentials that they have. The

245other would be looking at hiring the IAs for next school year and getting an opportunity to move forward as quickly as possible if we're going to do that. And there's a few other items that... we would need some decision making on. I know our funds are limited, so is there something on the list that we don't, as a board, you do not feel should be funded or maybe just should be considered and not funded until we know more about our budget situation? I would need to know that as well. Or is March 9th a date you want to push and take the risk of being able to hire staff or make layoffs if needed? Directors do we have comments discussion directors I just a clarity question on this current slide. It's a child development reduce

246a part day section When I think reduction, I think savings not an expense So I'm a little confused. It's a contribution That would not have to be made this is this is it's a credit on my summary spreadsheet So I offset increasing costs with it The original contribution is 200 and something thousand. Put it in the context of this grid. Which will help with 2.6 FTE that's needed to meet compliance requirements and then the balance would no longer need to be contributed. So it would be a base grant. savings of a hundred and forty eight thousand years so the expense is really now 130 rather than 278 Okay, that's what I was getting a little right confused about okay director dance um Were there was there any? consideration of using one-time funds for OPEB and

247was there any analysis done of tiered staffing levels Well for OPEB I heard you I actually went back and watched the video to make sure I didn't leave anything out the reason why I'm not presenting any Recommendation for OPEB is that we currently have four million dollars in fund twenty we open up a new fund I'm just tell people what OPEB is all the many people. What is the thousands and his mother? It's our liability for retiree health benefits for employees who are provided with health benefits the district makes a contribution until age sixty five or sixty seven depending on the number of years of service with the district and so there's a liability that is projected based on an actuarial study that gives us how much money we need to set up in a

248fund in order to be able to fund all of those liabilities as people retire in age. I think that's summary and so I have some calls into our auditor who said we were paying as you go and some of that money was going to the vendors and some of that money has gone into fund 20 so of the two and a half million a year that supposed to be pay as you go we we charge that as an employer rate and there's money left over that's going in the fund 20. So there's four million there the actuarial study Person says that they won't count that unless we make it an irrevocable trust But it was counted in the audit report. It's going towards the liability, but what's our outstanding extra? Actuarial it's 16 million. I

249believe yeah, so it's right 12 million dollar gap that's correct so um i just want to get some clarification before i would even consider making any more of a recommendation but we are putting about a million a year into fund 20 based on our current payroll cost charge and is the is the gap growing year to year the gap is growing still by a half a million but i really want to make sure all the parties understand Where the funds exist to make sure that the actual? Person who does that study has all the information to make sure that he's making the appropriate recommendation level I Have other comments, but I got beeped we got ten minute and we have ten minutes left Is there any other questions I have a question but very quickly

250I support that reducing the ratio, increasing, reducing the ratio for the IAs. And I'm curious to know where that, what fund those, that is coming from and why SPED is not paying for the IAs and the OT. So special education has a really tight budget. They pay for the hourly employees. There's a difference, an increased cost for the health benefits of permanent employees. Right now, and I always scrub their budget, right now their budget doesn't have the resources to fund the additional $188,000 for the health benefit portion. So it would fund the salaries, but the benefit portion would have to be an additional contribution from the base grant to special ed. So I guess, and I'm assuming you've done this, look at the budget. I guess you're saying you've scrubbed it or you're scrubbing it

251to make sure that we can't find that. We're still scrubbing it. So in any event, if we're scrubbing it, we find room to fund costs, that I would do that and bring the board back that information. And then I just, just because it's in there, the theater manager, which is in the budget, I just want, I have a question about when we're planning on doing the renovations on the Little Theater because when we're doing that, we're not going to need that. I would imagine we don't need that position. And I, well, I have some thoughts about that position too, but I won't bring them up here because it's limited. But I did have that question about, you know, when we are slated to do the renovation of the Little Theater. Madam president. Yes. I know

252we were short on time, but I maybe on the March 9th discussion I would like to have information about the cost of the tiered staffing levels that we had asked for at the last meeting I Guess we can submit other questions to staff I'm not really because I listen so there was public comment at the last meeting about the need for additional special ed staff at Malcolm X and in other areas like say noon supervisors or admin support staff we do tiered staffing levels larger the school larger the FTE we don't do that with our two special ed positions so the question would be What would that look like from your perspective and how much would that cost? Yeah, we could bring what that looks like, but there's some contractual issues there that prevents us

253from changing the ratios at each school. So consider that a minimum. Right. And then do the tiered staffing beyond that. Consider that a minimum because we're not negotiating contract. I'M ASSUMING IT WOULD BE EVERY SCHOOL AT 400 OR BELOW GETS TWO AND EVERY SCHOOL 400 OR ABOVE GETS 2.5 OR 3 OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. I DON'T KNOW THE RIGHT. The right numbers. And I don't know the right cutoff. And obviously it depends upon the number of special education students, not just the number of overall students. So whatever metric you would choose, it would be interesting to see what that would cost and what that would look like. Unless my fellow board members don't want that, in which case you shouldn't do it. No, we do. No, I think we do. So we... If there's any

254other further questions or comments that board members would like to make and student directors, then we will filter them to our superintendent who will pass them on to you. So I assume I'll just bring everything back for approval with additional information and then we can make a decision. Is that? Correct is that the direct on March 9th? Okay. Yeah, and just on that point on the I appreciate the information on the BHS coordinator position It would be helpful those that seems like this would be an additional sort of support position that only BHS would receive to what extent is Like for example, there's nothing on that list about AC correct. So if we were to Distribute that same percentage of support on some basis maybe a DA or moment or something What would that cost

255be like or does it already exist? So for example, could you consider the aha grant position or the amps position an equivalent position? but that would be Helpful actually cost out so that if we have since we have to make a decision on the 9th It'd be helpful to know what that cost would actually be what a comparable resource in another community would cost There's a very specific roles and responsibilities associated with that position I understand but that's because of an external body forcing us forcing that upon us. That is correct. So well, so Well, I just as a time check. We stop in four minutes. Look we can talk a fine about about what I'm talking about. So Thank you, so Thank you staff So we are now going to go to open session

256of the public comment. Do we have, we have, we're gonna, we're gonna give two minutes to public comment because we gave that earlier. Do we have just one person? And then we have our evaluation at the end. We have two? We are scheduled to end at 1130. So we have one minute. Yeah, one minute. I'm sorry, Bert. Grace unto you and peace. My name is Don Hagelberg. I am a graduate of Jefferson Elementary School, thanks to Harriet Boyd. I am a graduate of Garfield Junior High, thanks to Mr. Jared, who allowed me to take a special test in woodshop. And I am a graduate of Berkeley High, thanks to Mrs. Mary B. Teeny, who was six foot tall and higher in higher heels. And yackety, yackety, yackety. So what? I am here to speak on

257behalf of Berkeley School System's life learning. lifelong learning. These courses are in many circumstances keep people alive. Why? Because all other meaning for them has died. Help keep these programs alive. Assign a communications officer from the extended staff of the employees at the Department of Ed and have that person contact the instructors in the life learning courses with the name of the person in the governor's staff who deals with funding for lifelong learning, the names and addresses. of the other lifelong learning instructors. And thank you. Thank you so much. Good evening. My name is Tara Foucher. I'm a product of the Berkeley schools. I went to Jefferson, Franklin, Malcolm X, King, and Berkeley High. And I currently teach at Malcolm X. I've been there for 16 years. And I have served on the SST committees

258and the RTI committees for the majority of that time. You need to know that Malcolm X needs your help. Due to the increased number of students and the lack of staffing, we need support for our students. Currently, our model is not working. and it cannot be sustained. We feel it is inequitable and it is not fair to our students. We need a model that looks at staffing and then distributes how many people should go to each school. Right now, we need your help at Malcolm. Thank you. My speech was much better when I thought I had two minutes. You can send it to us. Hello, my name is Mary Malkins-Martin. I spoke last two weeks ago. I'm the full inclusion teacher at Malcolm X. I'm a parent of a kindergartner and a third grader. Worked

259with Tara for the past 16 years. I felt like we were heard two weeks ago. We got some responses that I truly appreciate, but I am concerned because I keep hearing competing priorities. And inclusion in special education needs to be a priority for this board. Equity is a major priority for BUSD, and that was presented, and it should be. A year ago, we had professional development that was all about equity, and it was paired with inclusion, which was amazing. From then, equity has continued to be a focus in every PD, every staff meeting, but not inclusion. And you cannot have equity without inclusion. I had more to say, but in terms of the formula, you need a base amount for a school, big or small. to be able to do inclusion in an authentic, in

260a dynamic way. We should be really proud. But above that, you need to look at total student population. And then above that, you look at the very specific needs of those students. And that's how you can come up with it. Hi, my name is Lila Wilkinson. I also spoke. I'm also a product of Berkeley Public Schools. I went to Martin Luther King Children's Center in the 70s. I went to Malcolm X when it was a fourth through sixth grade in the 80s. And I'm also now a mother of a kindergartner at Malcolm X. I'm also one of the two full-time special ed teachers at Malcolm X. You noticed that there were other... people here from other large sites. It's a district issue. It's not just specifically. We're feeling it more because our site got really

261large really fast. But we're here because we believe in inclusion and we want it staffed adequately and we're here because we're dedicated to the 2020 vision and we're determined to close the achievement gap and the opportunity gap for all of our students and we're frustrated. because we don't have adequate staffing to meet our students' needs. We have a lot of ideas on a possible formula, so if you want to come talk to us, we'd be happy to share those. Our school is, I just wanted you to know that Berkeley Adult School is kind of better than ever now. bigger than it's been before. We're working in collaboration with city colleges and the consortium. We use all of our existing space. As it exists now, if Realm became vacant, we would not be able to fit

262into the space that was left. We would either be torn apart or we would lose a major part of our program. The site Realm that realm occupies we feel could be used as an elementary school and we could be left intact as a successful and wonderfully functioning school. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our board, but we wanted to do self-aware. Are you ready? Quick. Thank you. So just to remind. Just to remind us, we do a self-evaluation at the end of every meeting and I agreed to be the observer, which was really interesting. And we answer four questions. Did we frame the agenda items with an introduction and closure summary? I think that we did a pretty good job of that this time. I think that I wanted to, I think it was really

263great that we had a couple of board members who... Vice President Alper and Director Hemphill, who framed two of our issues and I think helped guide us along. I think we meandered a little bit, but particularly with the African American, the issue on the town hall, I thought you did a really excellent job of wrapping that up after a conversation that was, you know. It was a broad topic and you brought it back together. Allot time to agenda items proportionate to complexity, critical impact and timeline deadlines. Obviously we went over tonight. There was a couple items where it was really hard to keep us so I think maybe when you're doing the agenda you can allot a little bit more time. I think we did a pretty good job but obviously we didn't. It was

264a big agenda, very ambitious. Address the fundamental problems at the root of the issues not just symptoms. I think we got to a lot of really core issues I'd be curious to know what others think of that I think that some of the items were more successful than others, but we mostly did a good job. And mutual respect, effective interpersonal communication and civility. I thought we did a good job of that. There was a couple of moments, I think, when a couple of us were a little bit triggered, but we all brought ourselves back, even when we didn't maybe... get what we had hoped at the beginning of the meeting. And I felt like President Leyva Cutler did a really good job of showing leadership at the moment when we were trying to decide where

265we were gonna go forward with the facilities and you were very clear about how you wanted that to go and you made the decision that Josh and Ty would be that subcommittee and then we moved on. So I thought you did an excellent job and I think in general we got a lot done in our meeting tonight. So thank you. Thank you for that. Do we have a volunteer for the next board meeting? Do we have a volunteer? There's a possibility that I will be calling in to the next board meeting, so it can't be me. Student directors? Director Hemple? Okay. So it's a little hard to do both, but are you interested in doing either? Great. Great. Good. Director Keyes, you had a comment? And I'll do the second meeting in March.