09-09-15 Berkeley Unified School Board

001Okay, if I can ask my colleagues to please have a seat. Our closed session agenda, our closed session was adjourned at 5, I mean at 5.40, and I am calling our open session to order at 7.35. Before we get started, I get to do... I think like maybe the most fun thing and that is to swear in the newest member of our governing body, Angelo Paraiso Arroyo. And so if I can ask you to come to the podium, let's do that. Is your family here? No. Okay, welcome everybody. I'm really happy that everyone can be there, be there, be here, be there and be here. Those of you who are watching us on TV and those of you who are here in the chambers with us, I'm looking for my agenda here. Okay, so I

002wanted to, this is a little confusing. Okay, so I want to go ahead and ask everybody who's here if you can take your cell phones and put them on silent or on vibrate. And I think if you were here last week at the last meeting or if you were watching online, you know that we've moved to an online paperless system. And so if you want to follow the agenda. I don't know if the agenda is on. Is the agenda up there? You're all looking up there. I'm not sure if, okay. So the agenda's not up there yet, but what you can do is go either on your device. Do we have any Chromebooks? Or our board recorder, Liz, has some Chromebooks that you can use to access the online agenda. So if anybody wants one

003of those, you can go over to Liz and get one. And then if you want to follow the agenda, it is at berkeley.net. And you go to the school board tab and the board meeting information tab. And if you scroll down to today's meeting, you'll see the online agenda. If you have any difficulties accessing it online, you can ask Liz and she'll help you out or Mark. the guy with the camera. So does anybody need a moment to get to the agenda if you don't already have it? Great. Okay, so I've already called the open session of tonight's meeting to order at 7.35, so already we're starting pretty well. I want to remind everyone that our meetings are being broadcast live on Channel 33 on TV. They're also on 89.3 FM. and they are being

004streamed online and it's a really great system. You can look at the meeting now, you can look at the meeting later. If you forget a part of it, you want to come back because it was such a bright shining moment, it will be there on YouTube forever. So I'm really happy actually that we're able to provide that access to you all. So tonight our translator is not here. But Liz, I don't know if you want to make an announcement in case people need translation so that they can come talk to you. Here? Mm-hmm. Buenas noches. Si hay alguien que necesita traducción en español, pueden venir aquí al lado y podemos hablar juntamente para poder ayudarles a entender esta junta. Gracias. Okay. So that being said, would you please call the roll? Director Ty Alper. Here.

005Director Josh Daniels. Here. Student Director Angelo Paraizu Arroyo. Here. Director Karen Hemphill. Present. Vice President Beatriz Leyva Cutler. Present. President Judy Appel. I'm here. Thanks so much. So we've just concluded our closed session and in our closed session we had several items and you can see them all on your closed online agenda. We had conference with our legal counsel discussing several OCR cases and we did not take any action. We just had some. updates and a little bit of discussion. Then we discussed the collective bargaining with our attorney Roy Combs via telephone and we discussed the property and liability BUSD claim number IN2053 and we are going to return to closed session after the open session to discuss the superintendent's evaluation. We did not take any votes during closed session. So that being said let's

006move to approving the agenda Do I have any hate does anyone want to make any changes to the agenda? Can you do your mic here? Thank you, I'd like to pull the minutes from June 3rd 11 14 or I just need to make one correction to them to the minutes okay, so Okay, so there's a request to pull, I'm having a hard time using this system. I'm sorry, what did you say, June 3rd? Okay, so that being said, are there any other changes, anything else? Okay, do I have a motion to... to approve the agenda moving the minutes from the June 3rd meeting to the action items. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. A motion by Vice President Leyva-Cutler, seconded by Director Daniels. Anyone opposed? Great. Okay. So now we will move on

007to public comment and Well, let me just go through with you. Although I'm having again. I'm here we go. So our our meeting today is we really have two Two major topics. So just to walk you through a little bit what we're gonna do we're gonna have public an opportunity for the public to speak and we are going then we're going to have some comments from the unions and committees and the board members and maybe before we do the board members we might recognize we have some of our administrative staff in the house and we want to Recognize them and then let them go home to their families and then we We have a couple of items today action items. We'll be looking at our unadded unaudited actuals which is really important, so you should

008stick around for that so you get a sense of our priorities and where we're spending our money. And then we'll be talking about our, the superintendent is gonna give us kind of an overview of the. OF THE YEAR. IN FACT, MAYBE WE'LL WAIT AND PUT THAT BEFORE THE ACTION ITEMS. YOU HAVE A CHANCE TO PROVIDE THAT AND THOSE PEOPLE CAN STAY TO HEAR YOUR OVERVIEW OF THE YEAR. AND THEN WE'LL COME BACK AND DO THE BOARD POLICY PRIORITIES, JUST GIVE SOME INPUT TO SOME AREAS WHERE WE WANT THE BOARD POLICY SUBCOMMITTEE TO FOCUS ITS EFFORTS THIS YEAR. Okay, so let's move on to public comment. I have several cards here. We don't have a lot of people who want to give public comment today, so I'm going to let people who want to speak speak

009for four minutes if you want, if that extra time. So I'm going to ask people when you see the yellow light. You have one more minute. I'm going to ask you to please stop and respect the next people, respect the time of the people who are here so we can move on. If for some reason you don't do that, we do have the, just do it. I'm not going to say what we can just do it. Just respect the time because we're all here and we're all trying to work towards the same goals. And I just want everybody to know that we're not able to respond to you directly. So if we're up here and we're writing on our computers, we're taking notes, and we're hearing you, we really appreciate your being here, but we

010are not allowed to get into a dialogue with you. So that being said, I'm going to call. There's three names on the list. I'll call you in the order that I got them. And if you can just be ready when the next person before you speaks. So I'm going to start with Ralph Walker. Good evening, how y'all doing? I have an ongoing problem with Berkeley High's athletic director. It's not getting any better. And the superintendent and the deputy superintendent could have took care of this and stopped this a long time ago if they'd intervened. I made it go away, but they chose not to. And now I'm getting lied on. They hired a law firm to try to set me up, and I was threatened to be arrested if I came to the school board

011meeting, but I came anyway. There's been a lot of lies that have been lied on me, told on me, and I don't appreciate it. I want this to go away. And I've been kept away from my kids at Berkeley High's football games, and I don't like it. I'm a Berkeley High school alumni. I'm disabled. I'm not a threat to nobody. It's getting away out of hand. I need for it to stop. I need for y'all to step in and stop this. I gave y'all some paperwork. I hope y'all can take a look at it. Because I've been lied on. I've never been ejected off of Berkeley High School football. I've never been ejected out of Berkeley High School ever in my life. I've been going there for almost 20 years. I've never been ejected out

012of Berkeley High School. But they could have stopped this if they wanted to. They could have stopped this months ago. They hired a law firm. I don't know where they get the money from. Somebody okayed it for them to shut me up and stop me. Even with the rest to come here tonight. That was wrong. But I came anyway because I want to get this in court. That's why I came. I got stress. I'm on stress medication now because this is starting to affect my health. But I wish I would step in and try to do something with this and take the stairway order off me because it's based on a bunch of lies. Plus, the old stairway on October 3rd on the voicemail, I left some, I regret it. I left some bad words

013and I regret it. But they're using that same voicemail on the stairway right now. And they already punished me for it. They sent it to the law firm. They put another one on me. And that's wrong. They already punished me for it. I was away for 14 days. And now I get an email from the law firm telling me I got another one because I went down there because I wanted to file some more papers, some more complaint forms. So they put another stay away order on me just because I came down there to try to keep me away from Berkshire's property for no reason at all. That's wrong. I'm a faithful Berkeley High alumni. I deal with the kids. I'm a youth track coach even though I'm 100% disabled. I'm one of the respected

014youth track coaches in the Bay Area. I have a lot of success from Berkeley and in Alameda. I took my track club to Alameda. I started in Berkeley at Berkeley High School and I ran track there in 1971 and graduated in 1971. So this is a bunch of mess I'm getting tired of. It's starting to affect my health. It's been going on ever since October. They've been lying. Now they're starting to lie on me because they can't do nothing else. I'm not even no more threatening voicemails. Now they're going to start to lie on me and keep trying to keep me away from the kids and the bar for years since they was little. Now they're at high school and they ask me, especially football players, they're starting to ask me, Coach Walker, why you

015ain't been to our games? I can't tell them I'm barred. I got to stay away from them because they didn't do nothing. They wouldn't step in and stop this mess. They could have stepped in and stopped this. I see them in every email I send out to everybody. Thank you, Mr. Walker. Okay. Next we'll hear from Irfam Raymum and then Jim Hives. Are either of you here? Are you Mr. Hives? Hines, I'm sorry. Jim Hines. Good evening. My name is Jim Hines. I'm from Oakland. I'm from McClymonds High School. I graduated in 1964. In 1964, I was the number one high school sprinter in the whole nation, in the whole world. Four years later in the Mexico Mexico City Olympics I won two gold medals the world's fastest human and Also a gold medal and

016the four by 100 meter relay I Said a world record in the 100 meter dash that stood for 20 years It is the longest established record in the Olympics in terms of length of time and it still stands today for the Sprint's Even Hussein boat who was the greatest printer? right today Hasn't broken my record I'm here on behalf of coach Walker here I've been knowing him a long time. I knew him when he was at Berkeley High participating as an athlete and I know him in his coaching endeavors. I have coached with him for the past six years Four years here in Berkeley two years now in Alameda And he's a great person, he's a great coach, and he's crazy about kids. This, what is happening to him now, I'm not fully detailed on

017all of it, but to me it doesn't make any sense at all. When you got a man who's dedicated himself to working with young people, especially in the area... in which he grew up in, you always should be fascinated about that and thankful for that. If we had more athletes who did something at a high school level and come back to help their young people, that should be appreciated. And from what I'm hearing now that is happening to him up here in Berkeley, it should never be happening. to a person who's dedicated in the condition that he's in. And the only thing I have to say is he's a great person, he's a great human being, he's a great athlete, and I'm here to support him 1,000%. Just this past July in Alameda... We coached

018a young man for the first time. He made it to the Junior Olympics, Coach Walker and myself, and he won a gold medal. That means something. A young 10-year-old kid, first time running the sprints, and he makes it all the way to the Junior Olympics, and he won a gold medal in the 100-meter dash because of Coach Walker and Jim Hines. It's all about the young people, and Coach Walker is all about the young people. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hearing no more public comment, I'm going to actually take a pause before we hear from the committee and the unions to recognize our new administrators. And I believe that Assistant Superintendent Delia Ruiz is going to take the lead on that. Yes. It's always a pleasure to welcome administrators to Berkeley and also to

019congratulate those who are in new positions. Not everybody was able to make it, but I'm still going to recognize them if they're not here. So for the Berkeley High team, we have Sam Passero, our new Berkeley High principal, and Felicia Phillips, the new vice principal. I think it might make sense for them to come up so that they can, you can now say you're on TV. We have Katya Hasen from Washington Elementary School. Erin Jorgensen, our new program supervisor for extended learning. Flor and Palma, program supervisor for special education. Peter Gitland, our program supervisor for VAPA. We have Janelle Burini in a new assignment as vice principal of Berkeley High, joining the other Berkeley High team members. We have Thomas Reed, principal of adult school and career and technical education. We have Heidi Weber, who

020came back to Berkeley, and she'll be the dean at Berkeley High School. Chris Albeck, our VP for Willard Middle School, is not here, but we'd like to recognize him. Nicole Caldwell, our payroll supervisor. Ann Calgary, our new supervisor for family engagement and equity. Kim Sanders, our risk manager. And Tim Moll, our transportation manager. Everyone in the back, welcome back. for another exciting year and we will introduce you anyway. So please join us. We have Beth Ryan, Principal of Oxford. Oh, sorry. Yes. Renee Molina, Principal of BAM. Henok Tedesi, Vice Principal at Malcolm X. Alex Hunt, Principal of Malcolm X. Jen Korn, Principal of Thousand Oaks. Maria Carriado, Principal of the Preschool Program. We have Steve Collins. We're in maintenance. He's not new, but they're not new either. We have Tim White, Dr. Susan Craig, Maggie

021Riddle, Merlin Edwards. Who else? Jay Nitschke. Who else is here? We have Kathy Campbell, Ed the coach. Come join us. And Merlin's darling baby is back there too. Have another wonderful school year. Thank you all so much. May the force be with you. Okay, so I appreciate the patience of our unions and our committees, representatives. So I'm going to start with Steve Collins, who is speaking on behalf of Local 21. You all have five minutes to speak. Actually, I'm here. as a representative of the Health Benefits Cost Containment Committee. Can everybody hear me okay? I don't feel like I'm projecting. And here to talk specifically about the district's wellness program. It's called BUSD Step Up, and all of our activities are about to start, so I wanted to let you guys know about them. We're

022in our third year of activities. In October, we're going to start with five. different clinics where people get... Now this is all for employees, right? Because we've done a great job of doing healthy things for our kids, and so now we're starting to do a great job of doing healthy things for our employees, for the district. So we're going to do these clinics where employees can get biometric screening, where they get like blood pressure and they get their cholesterol checked and all that kind of stuff. They're talking to a real Kaiser nurse. And then they're also at the same time, at the same clinic, they're getting a flu shot. And last year, the flu shots, it was the first time we did flu shots and it was very popular. People really liked the flu shot

023clinics. So we had about 200 people do the flu shot clinic last year. We're hoping to get a lot more this year because word of mouth, it was popular, so word of mouth. And then our crown jewel of the program is our exercise competition program that we have. It's called Thrive Across America. This is all in partnership with Kaiser Permanente. The Thrive Across America is an online module that Kaiser has in their system. people go, you register to be, to participate in the program. You can create your own team and join a team. So last year we had about 100 people representing about 10 sites. Emerson actually had three different teams. The library program had a team. Maintenance had a team. And so you basically, individually, you log your exercise time, right? And as a

024team, it keeps track of you as a team and as an individual. And there's a map. This year is the Hawaii route. And so there's a virtual map of Hawaii where you will, as you log exercise time, it will show you jogging or walking across Hawaii. And the goal is to get to the end, but if you don't, you know, it's not the end of the world. That's right. That's right. We have prizes. We're giving away $50 Visa gift cards. We've got Fitbits that we're giving away. And some really nice backpacks that we're giving away. So I would like to invite you guys to join, to create a team. I actually had Kaiser create a... a category in the system for board members. You know, I could suggest some names for you guys, the executive

025steppers or the boardroom bookers or I don't know. We actually had a prize. We have had a prize for best name for the last couple years. Baby Got Books won two years ago. That was a library program. And Russell Mania won last year. So I'm going to leave you guys some information. This is actually how to log in and sign up, create a registration for yourself, create a team for yourself, and compete against everybody. Thank you. What do you guys think? Should we have a team? Let's do it. Who's in? Yeah? All right. You got us. I'm going to leave. Your first job is to find us a good name. Thanks. Is there any other union? Kathy, are you going to speak for BFT? Good evening board members. I want to welcome all of us

026to a new school year and I want to offer a really heartfelt and deep thanks to the staff. All of our staff, our site staff, our district staff, classified staff, district staff. For a great start to school I think it was one of the smoothest starts that I have experienced in my ten years of doing this job And so we really want to congratulate the staff on that we want to offer to a special thanks to the board for Helping to start this school year off so well for our Certificated employees the fact that we have a two-year agreement the fact that I'm not here with a very different kind of message The fact that our members have been able to come concentrate their full attention on their lessons, on preparing their classrooms, on building

027community with their parents and guardians is in large part due to the actions of the board and the district staff. And so we really want to thank you again for that. It's made a huge difference. I want to speak tonight on your agenda item regarding priorities and initiatives for the 2015-2016 school year. Obviously, a lot of that discussion took place in the spring, and I think we all feel good that most of those things are reflected in our LCAP and in other plans. But I want to offer a perspective on highlighting just some of the many things that we're taking on that I hope the board will consider spending extra attention on this year. I do feel like this 2015-16 school year is one that has rich opportunities. We're just set up in so many

028ways to really seize the moment and have just a fabulous year. I'm excited about that. And I do really appreciate the board putting this item on your agenda and having this public discussion. I really appreciate that. I want to say one other thing before I talk about some of these possible areas of focus. I want to really congratulate Deputy Superintendent Cleveland on our excellent budget report. And I want to say again, as I've said before, that we are so blessed to have Javeta's leadership and the strong position we're in and the ability to make use of these. opportunities and to have a strong financial foundation below us is in large part due to her leadership and we congratulate the staff on that great news. So tonight I'm just going to list some of the areas

029that I think could be areas of focus. I'm going to talk about some of them at future times and then I'm going to end by highlighting an area of immediate concern that I hope staff can... can put some extra attention into. So when we look at all of our plans, there's about six things that I want to call out as things that I think I can represent on behalf of our members. My members are particularly important that teachers see as high leverage opportunities for this year. So those six things are, one, continuing our very strong focus on closing our equity gaps. And I think we all agree that this has got to be. pretty much our top priority. Our LCAP is the avenue, hopefully, by which much of this happens. And I want to thank

030the staff again for the tremendous amount of work that was put in last year to creating and refining our existing LCAP. So that's number one. Part of that, I want to highlight one part of closing our equity gaps that I think is particularly important, and that's continuing to offer our teachers opportunities to increase their cultural competence. We've done a good job of that. We had four different academies offered to teachers between June and August, and that's a fabulous thing. BFT is supportive of basically making this a requirement for our certificated employees, and we continue to look forward to more opportunities. Another possible area of focus is our continuing discussion of assessment and progress monitoring. And that includes everything from the district level down to the level of the individual student. I want to really thank

031Pasquale, Maggie, Pat, and Debbie for what I consider to be a really robust professional discussion of assessment. sophisticated, it's not reactive, they're putting tremendous amount of time and resources into this and we're deeply appreciative of that. We want to continue to be a partner in that discussion. The recruitment and retention of teachers of color continues to be a high priority for us. The restorative justice pilot that's going on this year is very important and we believe needs monitoring. BSAP obviously needs to be just a huge priority for all of us, and I believe that's happening. And then we're really excited about the investment that's being made in PLCs and the work that's happening this year. I will email you about my immediate concern. Thank you. Thanks very much, Ms. Campbell. Is there anybody else here

032who is representing a union? How about a district committee? Okay, that being said we are going to move on to our to our consent calendar I'm wondering if our student director would like to move to pass our consent calendar Which is everything on here except for item number? 11 t 11 point 13 14 a motion to move is amended that's I have a second for that motion Seconded by Director Motion, by Director Parizo Arroyo, is that right? And seconded by Director Daniels. And any opposed? Okay, motion passes. So why don't we go ahead and move now to our first discussion item so that the people who are in the audience can. Madam President. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. I forgot our comment. How convenient. So now we're going to move to the board member. I'm doing

033it out of order to keep you all on your toes. We're going to do board member and superintendent comments. And why don't we start with Director Alper. Okay. Thank you. I had a prop but I can't find it. So three quick things. One is I'm very excited to announce the appointment of Damani McNeil to the Youth Commission. Damani's a senior in BIHS at Berkeley High. He's a real student leader involved in lots of activities and I think he's gonna make an excellent addition to the Youth Commission. So I wanted to announce that appointment. The prop I was looking for was that there's a, nonprofit called the Equal Rights Advocates. That's one of the leading nonprofits that advocates for equal rights for women in a number of settings, including education. And they just issued a report

034a month or so ago, but I wanted to mention it. They investigated Title IX compliance in over 100 area school districts. And what's significant about the report, which is online, is it's significant not only because it shows that we, Berkeley, are doing as well, or better than the more than 100 districts that they surveyed. But it also does highlight the work of our students who have been advocating around these issues. And I think that we should all take pride in this, the students who have been advocating in an organized and respectful manner and the district staff for responding with meaningful change. We all know there's more to be done. We're looking forward to the hiring of a Title IX and compliance officer. But we've already made great strides and to have that work recognized by

035one of the leading nonprofits, doing this work I think is a real testament both to the advocacy of the students and to how well we're doing in response. So I just wanted to highlight that. My office hours are the last Sunday of every month from 3 to 4.30 p.m. at Casa Latina. I hope everyone had a good start to the school year. I want to echo what Ms. Campbell said about the start to this school year going quite smoothly. By this time, we normally get at least a dozen or so emails complaining, and it's only two or three this year, so that's a good sign. I want to alert everyone to Senate Bill 172, which is relating to the Casey, the California exit exam. Some of you who pay close attention to this board and

036the thousands who watch us might remember that last meeting we approved a change to our policy that at the time was consistent with a new change in state law to give high school diplomas to any student in the class of 2015 who would have graduated, have all their credits and everything else except for passing the exit exam. And so we basically said, Even if you didn't pass the exit exam, you are eligible for your high school diploma. So SB 172 would do the same thing for every single student going back to the beginning of the high school exit exam. It basically undoes the last 12 years and however many billions of dollars of investment that the state has made into the high school exit exam. So it has not passed yet, but all indications are

037that it will be passed and signed by the governor. this week and so if you are a student who the only reason you did not graduate high school and receive a diploma was because you did not pass one or both sections of the case of the exit exam you are now entitled by state law to a high school diploma. So regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the KC, that's likely to be state law and all of those probably thousands of students are likely to get their high school diploma. Today, the results of the SBAC were released, and I'm sure that we'll be getting a presentation on that at some point in the near future. And I've not delved into any of the details. And we do expect, in general, the results to show

038that a lot of work needs to be done statewide and in Berkeley. As you may recall, these assessments focus on the... common core state standards which this district has adopted very enthusiastically. We think that it really teaches students to think analytically, to learn in a way in which we want them to learn. On average in math and English language arts statewide, less than half of the students who took the exam demonstrated proficiency. In Berkeley, it was more than half. So while that's not broken down by any nuance, not by subject area, not by grade, not by race, ethnicity, or subgroup, it does show that on average, in general, Berkeley did somewhat better than the state. We still have a lot of work to do, but to the extent that we think that those results tell

039us anything, that may be helpful for us. And then lastly, my office hours will be this Saturday. Because of a timing glitch with the cafe, it's only going to be one hour, two to three. This Saturday is September 12th. Sorry, my screen went dark. 3130 Sacramento Street, Take 5 Cafe. I'll be sending out an email blast about it like I usually do. If you can't make that hour, please email me and we can find another time to talk. Thank you. Thank you, Director Parito-Royal. Hello, if you do not know me by now, my name is Angelo. I'm the new school board representative. I'm very excited for my position this year. I hope to represent my school in the best possible way I can. I would like to commemorate all our teachers for starting school beautifully.

040Being here, I know firsthand. I see what happens at the school on a daily basis. I have fellow peers and friends in each small school. Knowing them and knowing what they have told me they have told me that they are fascinated with all that they are learning They are enjoying their curriculum very excited to take in all the information that I can from anybody who approaches me for any reason whatsoever My email you can be reached. It will surely be put on top of this shortly Thank you so much for allowing me to be here and Have a blessed day Thank you and welcome director Hempel yes, and Another school year and good to know that it started off so smoothly. And I'm looking forward to this school year as I do every school year.

041I will be out of the country, actually, starting tomorrow, and I will not be back for about three and a half weeks. So I have already told the superintendent and the president that I will be missing, unfortunately, the September 30th school board meeting. And usually I have office hours the fourth Saturday of the month, but since I will be out of town, I'm going to have office hours the first Saturday. as well as the last Saturday of the month in October. So I will be here to have office hours on Saturday, October 3rd at Cafe Lila at 10.30. And so I'm going to do that to make up for it. And I also had extra office hours last week as well. I WILL HAVE SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3RD SINCE I WILL BE MISSING THE LAST IN

042SEPTEMBER SO IT IS NOT TWO MONTHS BEFORE PEOPLE CAN COME IF THEY WISH. AND THEN I JUST WANT TO MAKE CERTAIN THAT I PULLED THE WRONG CONSENT CALENDAR. I WAS LOOKING FOR MY NOTES AND IT IS JUNE 24TH AND THE ONLY NOTE I WANTED TO MAKE WAS THERE IS A COMMENT ABOUT ME STATING THAT Berkeley Unified has the only CTE program in the state of California, and that's not accurate. What I said, it has the only fire science program that is A through G eligible in the state of California, which is true. So I just wanted to clarify that, because if someone read that, they would think that I am having illusions of grandeur, I think, in terms of this district or something. So with that, see you all in October, and I'm... I know

043that the school year is starting off well. Well, I want to congratulate all our staff that have been messaging our families and our student services department for... for messaging all our parents and our students about the importance of attendance. As you know, we passed the recognition. September is attendance awareness. We're really proud to have everybody back at school, but we want to keep you in school too. So we've also developed a resolution, and I won't read it all, the resolution, but in terms of the importance, chronic absence, missing 10% or more of any school. of school for any reason including excused or unexcused absences or just two or three days a month is a proven predictor of academic trouble dropout rates. Chronic Absence predicts lower third grade reading proficiency, course failure, eventual dropout. It weakens

044our community and our local economy. We want our students in school. Our teachers are ready. Our principals are ready. Our parent engagement staff are ready for families. So we certainly hope that we all can make the call. We're also very fortunate to have the city of Berkeley. Also passing a similar resolution citywide encouraging our students and our residents to get our students to stay in school. We will be looking back at this in terms of how did we do in terms of messaging at the end of September 30th board meeting. I'll make some comments and I know we'll have some information that we can also share. Where are your buttons? We're going to be, what day will we be in the schools giving stickers out to students? Is there a day that we've picked? Okay,

045so there will be weeks that we're targeting to going out to schools, and we'll send out an invite to the board members to perhaps go to your visiting schools and welcome kids to school and say, stay in school. Berkeley High is next week, so we can all go there and just give stickers to our high schoolers about being in school and how important it is for them. So thank you to the staff. We're working really hard. and our new attendance officer at Berkeley High. I sit on the student attendance review board and there's nothing more painful than to see an elementary child already on the path to being truant. And that's something we really want to address early on at all points with our students. So thank you to the staff for taking this on

046and we look forward to providing more positive results. I will be having my office hours just tomorrow from 4.30 to 6 o'clock. It says 4 o'clock, but I have to change it to 4.30 tomorrow to 6 o'clock at Casa Latina. Thank you very much. Thank you, Vice President, and thank you for all of your work on attendance in the district and our staff. But as on the board, I know you're really committed to helping. helping our kids stay in school. I want to apologize to the members of the public because I've been a little, for my confusion around the agenda and the order of things, I'm still trying to toggle between the paper agenda for leading the meeting and the electronic agenda and the guide that I have. So be patient with me. I should

047figure it out soon. I also want to welcome a couple important members of our visiting public. Today we have two director moms in the audience. Ty's mom, Lynn, and my mom, Vita, are sitting next to each other. It's pretty adorable. And anyway, which my mother will yell at me for later calling her adorable. We have to give them a real life. This is their life. And I also want to welcome you again to the board. And I know I speak on behalf of all of the other board members in asking you to please call us, any of us, any time for any support. We're really happy to help you figure out any questions that you have and any acronyms or anything. And we're looking forward to having a representative from Berkeley Tech Academy soon, hopefully

048by the next meeting. I did, Josh kind of stole my topics that I was going to talk, no, we're on the same page. I thought it was a really positive thing because we're on the same page starting the school year off. And so I wanted to thank you for mentioning the Casey bill because it's really important. And I also wanted to speak just briefly about the SBAC, the Smarter Balance results that were just posted today. So Berkeley, it's just like our... previous tests, Berkeley did well as a whole. When you break down the data, it's really disheartening, the gap that we see, and particularly for our African American students. And I know that we're doing a lot and we have a lot of initiatives that I think that Kathy Campbell from our teachers union talked

049about just some of them. And so I just wanted to acknowledge that. that we are focusing on equity. And I also wanted to say to parents that in the next couple of, I think in the next couple of weeks, sometime within the next month, you will be receiving the result of your child's. testing and I just want us all to remember that the tests aren't testing how smart your kids are or how much potential they are or how fantastic they are and so just we're going to accompany the the results with a letter to help maybe put a little bit in perspective the role that maybe tests should play in general but particularly this first round and so I really again would encourage you to talk to your school communities talk to your principals and

050really try to if you have any questions, reach out because we have to figure out how to use these tests as a productive tool and not as, to not give them more weight than they're due either in teaching our kids or in kind of supporting them, but more how we're guiding the direction. We have to figure out how to use the data in a really good way. Data is important, but at the same point in time, I just want to make sure that parents are... remembering the value of their kids regardless of how they score in their test, if it's high or if it's not as high. I have my office hours on the third Saturday of the month, which is in two weekends, and I'm going to change the location of my office hours

051to closer to my house, and I'm going to go back to Mojo's, which is on Sacramento near Dwight. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. And when you're the last person, there's not a whole lot you can say because everyone has already said it. But I do want to say to the board that we did have actually a great opening of school. And I do want to thank staff, teachers, administrators, everyone for that smooth opening because we couldn't have done it without all of you. Back to school night, it's tomorrow night for elementary schools. The only one thing that I do want to add in regards to SBAC, the testing, is that these tests, this is just one indicator. We have many other indicators that we use to help us with the performance of your child. And

052as stated before, you know, we are looking at the data, we're analyzing it, and this is a foundation that we will build upon in terms of closing the achievement gap that we see with our students. But there is a lot of work that we need to do, and so we are excited about that challenge. But overall, Berkeley Unified School District did fairly well. And then also Sunday is Solano Stroll. So I hope to see all of you out there on Sunday. It starts about 12 o'clock. So thanks. 10 o'clock. Starts at 10 o'clock. All right, so thank you very much everyone. We are going to I actually want to before while the superintendent is setting up for his state of the school to dress I Wanted to we have the that one outstanding item from

053the consent calendar, which was the June 3rd minutes So can I have them I know but we haven't passed it yet. So if we can have a motion to Adopt those minutes the June 30 minutes Okay, so moved by director hemp Hill to have a second I'll make it to the second. Seconded by Vice President Leyva Cutler. Anyone opposed? Great. And I know there were a few edits to those minutes that will be posted. Okay, so that being said. Excuse me, Madam President. Sorry to interrupt. Are we not taking it in order? No, I had said before that I wanted to go ahead and let the superintendent. Give his presentation before the action items and we didn't do that with the agenda But if that's okay with everybody, I think maybe some folks might see

054what he has to say Is that okay with you deputy superintendent? So we ready. Can you guys hear me? May the record reflect that director Alpers mother just bought him lunch It's for everybody So it's not every day that I get to sit down here and present to the board, but I'm really excited about talking about our priorities and initiatives for the year. This is actually my third year, and this is really the first time that I get to say to you and to the viewing audience what we're doing this year in terms of moving the district forward. We've made great strides my first year and my second year, but this is the year, as you heard from our... BFT president that we can really make a difference our funding thanks to our wonderful deputy

055superintendent has made us Has given us such a sound budget for us to build on and we have great programs to support our kids And I know I'm being timed and I will be within 10 minutes president upheld Thank you for reminding So I just want to provide our board and also our viewing audience just a glimpse or a glance at where we are in terms of our enrollment, our student body, and our financial picture. So as you can see right now, as of today, we have a little less than 9,800 students. And you can see the breakdown before you in elementary, middle, and high school. Even though if you add all of that, you won't quite get. uh 97 77 uh 97 77 and so what you will see is that we did not

056add our uh our non-public schools and so forth in that number and i just want to highlight that also that doesn't include our adult school program as well we are a very diverse school district and i just wanted to provide our viewing audience as well as the board with the breakdown of of that And as you heard and you will hear a little later on, our unaudited actuals as we close the books. We have a $130 million operating budget. We also, in that budget, includes our supplemental grant that brings in a significant amount of money. And with that money has helped us with our targeted high-need students, which is our low-income English learners and our foster youth. And then we also receive local revenue as well as money from property taxes and so forth in

057that local revenue amount. So. When I first arrived in Berkeley, I said I was going to do a lot of listening. And I did that and learned a lot about the district. And then what I found was that we had these silos of excellence. So my question was, how do we replicate these great things that we see across the district? And so year two, we reorganized and we found out what they were and tried to replicate those. So we reorganized our resources and we brought in some key people. to help us with monitoring what's happening at our schools and also help us to ensure that some of the great practices that we've seen at some of these schools could be replicated throughout the district. So that brings us to year three, which I'm really excited

058about, is how do we build on what we have? We have a lot of great things happening, but we need to strengthen the infrastructure to do the great work that we want to do. And I think strengthening the infrastructure will allow us or bring us closer to that world-class district that you've heard me talk about. So the next couple of slides is really breaking down the educational side of the house and the operations piece. operation side of the house. So what we've done in terms of the educational side of house is really look at expanding our professional learning for our teachers, for our principals and so forth. So we've actually brought in professional learning communities. provide training for all of our staff within the next couple of months. We're really providing professional development with our

059Common Core, more training on teachers' reading and writing program, story of units. We are also providing instructional coaching support to our teachers as well as our administrators. And the other thing that we've done is design time, set aside time out for our teachers to really collaborate. and talk about the curriculum and the students and what we need to do to move them forward. And a part of this, and the reason why I bring this up, because this is really the first time that we brought our ninth grade teachers together to really talk about, at our high school, our math teachers, to really talk about the program and giving them the time to plan and design the curriculum, because this is a new curriculum for us. Another piece that we've done on the educational side is

060create these coordinating teams. And what we've done is have a base group of folks who come together, and you can see there's the principal, the literacy coach, the RTI coordinator, the LD coach, the special ed case manager, all these people coming together to really talk about the students and what we need to move these students forward, looking at the RT model. And you see the RT coordinator as being sort of like the quarterback leading all of this. You know, we've talked about the equity gap. This is really one way of really closing that gap and really looking at the services that we're providing, Tier 2 and Tier 3 services for these students. And when I say RTI, I'm talking about response to intervention. We've expanded our restorative practices, and that will be also a part

061of the work of the coordination of service team. And also, one of the things that we've done is really for the first time is bringing all these people together on a monthly basis to really talk about the work, bringing all the LIT coaches together, bringing all the ELD coaches together, bringing all the RTI coordinators together. This is something that we have not done before. So having a consistent message throughout and about this work will help us get us to where we want to be. We've also made some changes in terms of operations. We are in the process of developing our comprehensive facility plan. I'll talk a little bit about that later. We improved our project accounting system for facilities, how we are managing our projects, our facility projects. We've improved the Internet speed and access.

062We are implementing our classification and comp study that the board approved earlier last year. and we're developing online purchasing system as far as tracking our absences for our employees. We have resources to support many of our initiatives and thank you, to support many of our initiatives. Okay. I want to talk about the Berkeley Schools Excellence Program, our Local Control Accountability Plan and also the funds that we dedicated to support Common Core. BSEP, which is our Berkeley Schools Excellence Program, is a local parcel tax, provides a little over $25 million. And I just have a graph to show you what are some of the things that it does support. And Natasha Berry will be here at the end of this month at our next board presentation to go in more detail about the planning and what

063we're doing. But I just want to say for our viewing audience that it does bring in $25 million a year to our district. It's going to be renewed 2016 and 17. We are in the process of planning for the next measure. We will be bringing to the board starting our next board meeting. some of our programs, papers, we're calling them green papers, to talk about each one of the different areas that we want to fund. We're looking at budget models that will talk about how we will... resource these programs. And then there's going to be a public process that really talks about the voter polls, the budget workshops, and focus groups. There will have to be a board decision that is based on the superintendent's recommendation. There's a public hearing, and then there's approval. Campaign

064begins June 2016, and of course the voters will vote November the 8th. Another funding source is LCAP, as you heard earlier. LCAP is supplemental grant that we receive for targeted or high-need students, which are low-income students, our second language learners, and our foster youth. It really gives us the opportunity to use this money to close our equity gap. And I just want to talk about a few of the... things that we're doing under each one of those goals. So goal one is to improve district-wide best practices. And so in that goal, we are providing RTI teachers or coordinators, math teachers, small group instruction. For goal number two is the end the racial predictability of academic achievement and We are in the process of hiring a teacher a special assignment to recruit and retain support teachers

065and ELD teachers at every school. Under goal three, we've created restorative justice programs. We are piloting the RJ model. and we've expanded RJ restorative justice at the middle schools and we're piloting a program at the high school and BTA and also we have provided coordinators for family engagement in all of our K-5 schools. We've also added more money to implement Common Core to support our Common Core curriculum. The things that I'm really excited about, again, is the amount of time that we've provided for our ninth grade math teachers to collaborate. And then we provided funding for integrating technology into the curriculum. And we've also expanded our professional development. And so... With all the things that we're doing, we really need to look at our facilities and on the operations side of the house to support

066all the things that we want to do on the educational side of the house. As far as our facilities, the board approved last year that we would not, they did not, you guys did not support a full master plan, but we supported the components of a master plan. And so two pieces are the educational specs. which include the articulation of our educational program. And then we had programs that drive the facility's decision-making and also the technology piece to that. And I know I'm almost out of time. I actually gave you a little bit more time. So, you know, as we are looking at our facilities, we're also looking at our enrollment. And the board approved a policy last year to allow us to. ensure that the students that are here in Berkeley have valid permits

067and are our students. And we implemented a registration at sixth grade and ninth grade. And then also we have a couple more policies that we need to work on, which is our inter-district policy. And so in terms of next steps, we still have the VSET renewal, which I'll be bringing to the board within the next. a couple of board meetings. And then we have the LCAP monitoring of the LCAP, looking at our programs to make sure that they are doing what we say that we want them to do. And those are the last two things that I think that we need to focus in on in terms of our next steps. I tried to rush through this as fast as I could to get my 10 minutes. Thank you so much superintendent Evans So why

068don't we now turn to the board members for questions or comments? Anyone have any questions or comments? Vice President of the color. I want to thank our superintendent for presenting essentially giving in our reporting of our state of our schools and where you've helped us brought us to at this point. This has really helped us. It's really helped in terms of both as you looked at it that both the educational and the operational aspects of of a school district. I know Ever since I've been on the board, one of the biggest things that I've been concerned about is how we are lined by elementary schools and our middle schools and our high schools. And certainly, I think we're on that right course. And it has brought everybody under the same roof to look at the

069same things and focus on the things that we could do better, and especially for our special population of students. So I want to thank you for looking at... our schools in that way and looking and expanding their vision for us and helping us to realize what are the things that we need to work on. So when you look at all of this, what do you believe will be our biggest stretch and where this district will see greater results? I think where we will see the greatest results is... And it's our big stretch. This is like really big for us to be able to do it. I think the key thing, let me go back. The important thing to remember is that we're building a foundation. And so that's what the infrastructure is all about, is

070having everybody not so much doing the same thing, but on the same page in terms of what we want to do. And so getting everybody on the same page in terms of speaking the same language about what we're trying to do is a big step. And I think that's going to take us a long ways. And how we use our funding sources, for example, LCAP, making sure that the programs that we are providing underneath. that particular funding source is targeted and strategic in terms of making a difference and using everything else to build on that. So I think that, I don't know if I answered your question, but I think being very strategic this year about how we are deploying our resources will make a difference. And which do you think will require everybody, all

071hands on deck, we all need everybody, is there any one that stands out? That requires, do you feel like we all need to be more, it's more challenging, essentially it's a more challenging item for us to take on? I think what is most challenging is really working on closing that achievement gap. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? the superintendent i know you guys have questions for me director hempel I'll keep this short. I want to thank you for doing this. I think it really helps not just the board but also our community to kind of have a look back to see kind of all the various initiatives that we've worked on. I know that most of the people who come to our meetings or listening at home usually are doing so for one specific

072issue that at that point is what they really want to follow. And they don't necessarily, except for our groupies, like mom groupies. THE AUDIENCE ACTUALLY FOLLOW BOARD MEETINGS TO GET A SENSE OF AS A WHOLE. OF COURSE, OUR BFT PRESIDENT USUALLY COMES, TOO, AND OUR STAFF. I APPRECIATE THE FACT THAT THIS DOES GIVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO GET AN OVERVIEW. I WOULD ACTUALLY LIKE TO SEE IF WE COULD GET THE SNIPPET. posted to our website just kind of as a standalone little snippet because I think that it will be helpful for either new people or people who would like to kind of get that review as opposed to you have to know what's on the agenda, they didn't have to go to the agenda and you have to click on, you know what I mean, that

073kind of thing. And I think it's worthwhile I think circulating this information and so I thank you for doing it. Yeah, I could do a video clip, it would be great. Thank you. Anyone else? Director Daniels? So one of the biggest issues, as we all know, is that this year is the long-term facility planning. And I know you had a slide on that. If you could just briefly go over that one, just so the thousands who are watching can have a sense of our timeline. And I would suggest that you do a slideshow with that slide, as awesome as your background is. There you go. Okay, so I think this is another area that... that we need to pay a lot of attention to, and that's looking at our facility needs in terms of space

074for the additional students that we are projected to receive. So based on the projection, it looks like in 2015-16 that we'll need two additional classrooms, and we did stay on track in terms of that. But for next year, we're looking at three to five additional classrooms. And so we will be bringing back to the board. What are some of options and I know that the board Gave me some direction towards the end of last year in terms of what facilities that we should use but this is really important as we look at what we will do with realm school And what they decide to do whether or not we will move the adult school or whether we will need a new school All of these things we will need to discuss within the next couple

075of months. And I'm hoping that we will have some decision in terms of what we will do. We'll have a sneak peek of what we think we might do in November. And then we'll make some decisions around February when we get the actual numbers that will come in. But all of that needs to be discussed. And that's a part of this slide. And thank you. I forgot to bring that up. Anyone else? Did I answer your question? You did. You did. Thank you. And so just to be clear, we know that we need to make a decision around the portable question in February. The new school question may or may not be decided in February. Is that correct? Anyone else? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Superintendent, I guess I have one question about getting this

076out to the families in the school community. I think Director Hemphill had a really good idea about clipping this video clip and posting it on the website. And I'm wondering if you also have any plans to present to any of the school sites or in any other venue. So we are. Booking me to you're speaking your speakers and so this actually this presentation will be modified somewhat depending on the audience, but I will be expected to go to the Rotary Club, the Democratic Club, places that I went last year and I had sort of the same presentation but a little different, modified. What about the school communities? I had not planned on doing that yet, but I will be speaking to all the PTAs as I did last year, but I can take this presentation

077when I speak with all of those groups. Thank you. We are, oops, of course. I just want to say I think it is a good idea for you to take it to the PTAs as well as like to our BSIP P&O, to our development groups. Because I think that sometimes we assume that people know the good work or the hard work that the staff district board is doing, but in fact that we do not. And so I think, and also I think it helps for school sites that are struggling with how to align their discretionary funds to, I mean, I think this is like another reminder that, you know, we do have district-wide priorities. You know, we have, you know, programs that we are trying to do with fidelity throughout the. the district and I

078think this presentation is another reminder for the help for the school sites to know what those priorities are so when they're making their school site decisions they have a deeper understanding of what we're trying to do as a whole and how they fit in. Thank you and you know it has it's really great to have this overview I know it it reflects a huge amount of planning on the part of staff and kind of boiling it down to one for a 10-minute presentation must have been challenging but I think it's very helpful. to have the guidance. Great. So now we are going to move on to our, we are going to move, we're skipping around a little bit, but I want to move back to the action items and hear the presentation. Are we having

079a presentation on the unaudited actuals? So our deputy superintendent is here and I saw our director of financial services is she leave. So do you want to set up and then? Well, why don't we um Yeah, I think we just we need to can we do the resolution before the presentation What do you think? Can you do the resolution before the yeah? Okay. Do I have a motion to pass to approve the resolution number? 16 0 0 7 the Gann limit I heard a move. Okay Moved by Director Daniels, seconded by Director Alper. Anyone opposed? Great. Okay, so now it looks like Pauline is back. That's okay. We're moving quickly tonight. You probably didn't think you were going to be up for another two hours. Pauline, would you prefer for us to move to the

080next item? We have another half an hour item, but I was going to put you first. Do you want us to? We'll wait. We can wait a second. This is the new world order. I think she's pretty ready, so that way she can go home. Oh, her email? Yeah, we don't want to... What? Well, good evening. Good evening, everybody. Sorry for being late. I really appreciate this opportunity to be early, not before 10 o'clock or midnight. So this evening, I'm going to be presenting the unaudited actuals, the way we close the books for fiscal year 14-15. So the overview we projected that our ending fund balance was going to be five point three million dollars and we actually ended the year with an ending fund balance of five point one million dollars The ending fund

081balance is two hundred and eight thousand dollars less than we projected And also within the ending fund balance, we've designated $1.5 million, so it's actually $3.5 million after assignments. It used to be designated, but now we call it assignments. So the interesting thing to note, though, we are getting more and more programs in the unaudited actuals. So we can't just look at, you know, it's not business as usual. So we have to start looking at all the other programs that are now included in the ending fund, in our unrestricted general fund. And we actually had $1.5 million in unspent balances that are assigned to be spent subsequently. The following slide goes through our assignments. So we have $284,000 for EIA replacement carryover, $47,000 for career technical education. Reimbursement of mandated claims, $610,000. LCAP 248. Ed

082services savings, $103,000. Gardening and cooking had $76,000. And emergency preparedness and our transportation had $93,000. So some of these balances are actually in the plan for spending in 15-16 for the budget priorities. that the superintendent brought to the board. So the EIA replacement carryover and the ed services savings that's designated for, what was that? For literacy coaches and math and science that was on in the class, in the teacher template. And we will be spending, we've already started to spend the emergency preparedness money. LCAP will be spent on LCAP. And reimbursement of mandated claims will be on Common Core. The summary of variances, that's pretty hard to see. It's pretty small, but we summarized our variances. Even though the difference was only $208,000, we had swings in our revenue and in our expenses. So you

083could see that our revenues came in $166,000 under budget. And that's because we had a prior period adjustment for state revenue of $520,000 that was partially offset by the increase in state and local revenue. In terms of programs and services, we had a savings of $770,000, and that was the $1.5 million in unspent balances, but then we had expenditures exceeding budget and the areas that we have to pay attention to are hourly budgets and overtime. Transfers and contributions, you can see the variance is $812,000. And we transferred $359,000 to our special reserve fund, and that's to meet our share of the 3%. We also transferred to our new fund, our Fund 20 for our post-employment benefits. $264,000 and we increased our contribution to special ed due to settlement costs and that was $230,000 and a

084minor change increase in our transfer from BSEP. So in summary that's the $208,000 that's causing the variance from our budgeted to our actuals. So the next probably ten slides or so we go through in detail, and that's on your book in the variance report. So this kind of goes through in more detail the variances that I summarized earlier. And if you have any questions, I'll be happy to discuss them later. So I'm just going to go through these variances pretty quickly here. In our explanation, this is a breakdown of the services where we had savings, and this somewhat mirrors what we had before, just that these are just the variances, whereas the previous slide we're actually assigning balances that will be spent in the following year. So some of these are repeats and some of

085these are new. So this is the $1.5 million that we actually had in savings. And this other slide kind of goes through where were we over the areas where we were over, $720,000. That's listed on this slide here. And then we talked about this earlier as well, the transfers. This is a little bit more detail on that. And then we decided, we looked at other funds, how did some of the other funds do when we closed the books. So we focused on these four funds. Adult education, they had an ending fund balance of $453,000. And as a reminder, they have a maintenance of effort, just like special education. Child development fund had an ending fund balance of $141,000, and we're still contributing. $311,000 and were budgeted to contribute that amount in 15-16. The cafeteria fund,

086they had a healthy fund balance of $671,000. And they actually had a surplus. They weren't deficit spending. And in 15-16, they're projected to deficit spend by $141,000. And then this is our newly established fund for post-employment benefits. And we're setting aside future costs for post-employment benefits. We're transferring it from our fund 76. And our transfers are based on audited financial statements. And the fund balance is almost $4 million. And that's the summary. It's a pretty quick summary of how we actually close the books. And I'll take any questions now. Any questions? We're very quiet tonight. Vice President LaVa Cutler. I guess in that last slide in terms of how much our reserve fund for post-implant, is there a goal, a certain specific target that we have by ex-debt year on this? Because we contribute a

087significant amount. Well, we have an actuary report that... lets us know how much we should be contributing every year. And remember, we were falling short of that. What you see here is what we were actually contributing per payroll, and it was sitting in what's called our payroll clearance fund. And so when we established the Retiree Benefits Fund, we just moved the money over there, plus the $400,000 from the seller property was also moved over to Fund 20. And so in our audit report, we're falling short of about $500,000 a year that we're not contributing. So we have built up a liability. The $400,000 from the seller property offsets that liability. But we still have a liability, so we're still not fully reserved, even with the $3 million. And this was contributed over the last five

088years. So this is five years' worth of contributions, less what we paid out to the employees in Retiree Health. That was in Fund 76, not in the general fund. And we just kind of moved it where we could be more transparent about it. But based on the audit report, we're still short over $2 million in contributions. And our plan is... Our plan technically is to contribute a half a million every year to catch up, or will there be more money besides a half a million? What we're contributing now is about $500,000 short a year. The only way we can make up the difference is if we bring a proposal to the board to increase the percentage per payroll to completely catch up, and that would come from our general fund if we decide to do

089that. Right now we're reserving. over a million a year. But to completely catch up, we would have to use more general fund-based grant dollars to do that. And that would be a board decision. There's no real urgency, but it's something we need to keep our eye on, so to speak. That liability will continue to accumulate if we don't increase the... the rate that we're transferring over to the fund based on our payroll. This is what everybody calls the under unfunded liability. Yes, we do still have it. Even with this 3.9 million that's been accumulated in fund 76, we're still falling short of what the actuary report says we should be transferring. So this money has always been sitting there. It was just in a clearance fund. So it's just now more transparent when you will

090now start keeping a better track of where we are. Let's have another question in terms of the child development. The ending fund balance, is that money that has to be returned because we did not earn our contract and that they have to, or that's, where does, what's the 141 come from? Their expenses were less than the revenue. So they are active because they're funded not only based on expenses but also attendance. So they met their contract but they did not use a $140 million. And we do not have to return it. It's within the limit that we can reserve. Yes. Thank you. Other questions? Director Daniels. I have quite a few so forgive me as I go through them. On what Vice President Leva-Cutler was referring to, just for the record, I would be interested

091in setting aside more, at least so that the unfunded amount doesn't grow. We don't necessarily have to close the gap immediately since it's not urgent, but we get ourselves into a hole and it just keeps growing and growing and growing every year. So I know we have a budget priority process that we're working on, but for the record, I wanted to put that plug in. I guess going from back to front, on the cafeteria fund. This is a fund that I keep coming back to because historically it was a fund that had a difficult time staying in the black. And we actually used this fund on an ongoing basis to help us close our budget gap during the Great Recession. And so it, I know that we were projected to have a fairly significant deficit

092this past year. It didn't materialize, it looks like. Do we anticipate a similar sort of positive result next year? I mean, right now we're projecting a deficit of over $140,000, which is okay, given that their balance is quite large. But that's still a significant... I think that the savings was in food cost. So we need to be able to get a better handle on estimating the food costs. In 15-16, there's going to be probably a negotiated salary increase as well as health benefit increase for the employees probably mixed in there. But I think looking at the food costs, I think that... The department always feels like they don't have enough budgeted for food, so we always increase the budget, and then they end up not using it. So I think it's just kind of like

093having that safety net. I'm not sure they're ready to make any major reduction in the transfer into the fund at this point after just one year of a surplus because they had deficits prior to this. Okay. I mean, I guess I'd prefer to be over-conservative in this area, I want to make sure that we're keeping track of it. On child development, initially during the budget planning process for this fiscal year, there was some uncertainty about whether or not we felt that their budget would break even. Are we still, at this point, relatively confident that where we ended continues to be more or less accurate? No problem. I was asking for promises, but there's no new information we have to make us change our mind. No, I know they were going to try to maximize the

094attendance, and I have not gotten an update since the school year started. And I'm sure we will in the next couple of weeks have a better idea on the attendance side. That would be helpful maybe in Friday notes. Okay. I don't know. On adult ed, are we ready to talk about the change in what they're going to be reimbursing us at this point, or do you want to hold off on that for another time? They're going to be reimbursing us for the $2.7 million, and of that, our concern is that it doesn't include some of our older adult programs, which we found out after we adopted the budget and they sent out the catalog. So I think what we're looking at is spending about, I think it's $150,000 or $60,000. $460,000 of this $453,000 that's

095in the reserve to kind of fund the program for this year while we bring forward budget priorities around the older adult program and some information about how we want to move that program forward. I think he was here tonight. He and I have had a couple meetings, so I know he is planning on bringing an information item to the board in October. Okay. And then also including some budget priority, some thoughts around what we can do during the budget priorities process. Is the older adult ed program, is that the program that we can and do charge some fees for? Yes, some fees. Okay. Yeah, that's why we were going to take a look at it. I think increasing the fees could have an impact on whether the older adults continue enrolling in the program. So

096I'm not sure that's the answer. But we're going to try to look at what some of the possibilities are and making sure that the program is funded. Okay. And then going back to the variances. The $500,000 520 that was an overpayment on a revenue limit. Yes. Is that just us or is that happening to? other districts around the state. I've heard it happening to other districts. Yeah, they did some type of recalculation. It was between transferring, what fiscal year was it? 12-13. 12-13. It was during that transitioning period. And so it looks like we receive more than we should have in our books if we look historically at that revenue. So it looks justified. It's one time, so it's not an ongoing reduction. But it was from several years past. And it doesn't affect our,

097because with LCFF, there's your target and then there's your 12, 13 starting point. And you go each year by the gap closure from one to the other. So if they readjust our starting point down, then in theory, even though our target may not change. It's each year. It's gonna be slightly below it So I'm just making sure that I trust you that it's one time But I would just be worried that they're not gonna come back and say actually you're 13 14 14 15 and 15 16 numbers are low I think it's the old revenue calculation, but you get my point right that I don't think it will yeah I think I get your point. We will take another closer look at it, but I think we're okay, okay I will trust you that they

098did overpay us. All right, going then to the C like Charlie on the variances, the L cap. So we, towards the end of the 2014-15 year, had anticipated a carryover of supplemental funds of below $100,000. It fluctuated up and down a bunch. So what we're saying is it's much higher than we thought. It's $284,000. And it wasn't just from unspent dollars. It was also from an adjustment from the governors. That's right. That's right. So it was a combination of the budget changing after the year was over, which was some of that, and then some of it was unspent funds. Okay. And per our now enforced policy, that goes into our supplemental fund reserve. That's correct. Okay. So I was a little confused because what was the figure you just said was 284? 84. And then

099C, the L cap, it says 174. That's the variance. Oh, that's the variance. The unspent portion was that and then there was an adjustment to the revenue that would be allocated towards the program. So the two add together represents the total. So the acceleration of African-American achievement, $80,000. I think I may let Mr. Scuderi speak to that. Isn't that the middle school? You want to speak to that? It was $80,000 that was coming back from the alliance for mentor. That never happened. It just sat there. It is available, and it just sat there. That's all I can say, right? So if I can just make a plug, I know that there has been a real challenge in identifying mentors. And so even though there was a stipend attached to being a mentor, there still was

100a struggle to be able to get the number of mentors that we wanted. So this is a call out for all of you to be... to consider being a mentor. But I mean, we're not continuing. I mean, the alliance has gone away. The mentor program never materialized. We're not, unfortunately. We're not doing it anymore. So we are looking at mentors, and I wish Mrs. Sadler was here tonight to talk about that because she's really worked with the university in terms of getting tutors. We did have some problems last year, but the program actually did get off to a rough start. And so we had, like Director Hemphill said, we did have problems finding tutors and so forth. But this year, I know... we have been working with the university to get tutors and mentors. So

101I don't want to go too far down this hole, but tutors and mentors are different. Right. And it's not clear to me that we even approved an allocation of this amount of money for a mentor or tutoring program. It was approved, and it carried over from a prior year. From the previous year. From the previous year, 13, 14 into, and we said we were going to do something with it. So that's why I carried it over into 14, 15. And then it was for stipends for mentors. Okay. So, so because we approved it in 13, 14, didn't spend it approved, carried over for 14, 15, didn't spend it carried over 15. So, so, so, you know, I think that at some point, as I think I heard someone say, you know, if we're not being

102successful, we have to find something different. So I'm not exactly sure. Maybe at another point, Madam President, we could, or you can work with the superintendent. I just don't want us to be here in a year and saying, well, mentoring and tutoring is really hard. It takes a lot of effort. And we knew that going into it. We've seen that. And I don't want to be just having $80,000 sit there when it could be spent on something else. So if staff is confident that it can work this year, great. But if not, if there's another way to spend the money that would hit kids we want to hit positively, I think I at least would be open to that change. Okay. Mandated claims, the $610,000. What is that a sign for? That's the one-time money

103that we received in 14-15, and then we're going to receive some more in 15-16. A lot more. And so we kind of put that together into a pot of funding that we designated and committed for Common Core. So that's part of the $2 million? Yes. Okay, because I was going to ask, I thought we had committed $2 million. Right, but we committed it in 15-16. Okay, so that's why it's not being reflected. Yes, you will see that when we bring back the first interim budget, you'll see this new fund balance going into 15-16, and then you'll see the committed funds for the Common Core. Okay, and so the reimbursement of the $610,000, that is not part of that $2 million? It could be, but it's money that came in for the mandated reimbursement for prior

104year that we didn't use in 14-15 for Common Core or any purpose. Correct. That is now in the ending fund balance. Plus, there's an additional, it used to be $5 million, but some of that went to the education effectiveness program. So, you know, it's kind of just one pot. And then we've decided to use a little over $1 million for 15-16. in terms of actual cost I think it was a million, a million dollars. And then another 1.1 million was committed. And then there's a balance left over we negotiated, you know, there's some other things that's in there, but. Okay. Thank you for your time. Anybody else? No? Okay. I think most of my questions were covered. I have just one, which is, and I left my book at home so I don't remember. So

105I don't have the actual numbers, but I just I did and I remember director sign I bringing this up last year about the Central and school site supplies that were underspent and I actually was going to ask our assistant superintendent who is Talking about serious educational issues with my colleague. It's very deep into the budget. I'm very proud of it. We're spending $80,000. All right, good, cool. So we'll expect to hear that back from you. I was going to say, I was actually going to suggest that your shop look at that. Absolutely. But I did have a question I just wanted to bring up, which is the savings in central and school site supplies. And I remember last year this was an issue that came up. And, you know, in the broad sense of things,

106it's not a huge amount of money. And I do think, you know, because supplies, they're... there's always a call for more. I'm kind of curious to know why, what's the process of helping to make sure that we spend what we have to get stuff for our school sites? Yeah, this is an interesting one. I think Berkeley High School was a bulk of it. And maybe because it was interim leaders. that somehow it wasn't all expended. But also with Berkeley High, we tend to get invoices after the year is over that are really for last year. So that may bring down that balance a little bit. But yeah, the supply budgets, we have a cutoff April 30th. I provide information to education services on the balances that are remaining in the budget that haven't been spent.

107And some reason, this is an area where we do tend to have savings when there are some schools have spent everything and then there's some schools who do not. So we could present a report on which specific schools had this carryover and which ones had, there's some that they expend everything. So it's not district-wide. It might be something for principals meeting. I just think, yeah, maybe the ones who are good at spending it can help teach the ones who are less good at spending it how to make. No, because it's, you know, it's an art. I mean, I do think that the potential reduction, I think it's more than just the potential will come down. We're actually having this conversation about textbooks and textbook ordering right now. You know, elementary schools, it's fairly easy to

108get stuff in in February and March. Sometimes that master schedule isn't done until March, and then teacher assignments, and then books and supplies, class sets and novels, new textbooks, you know, don't get into the hopper until April. Theoretically, though, that would roll over, so that would be true every year, and you'd have last year's. Right, right. So I think there'd... Yeah. Okay, it's not that big of a thing. It just seems like it's something worth mentioning. That's the only thing I had in addition to things that were brought up previously. Do we have anything else? Great well, thank you so much 920 Great so I think we just have one more item if I'm correct yeah, that's the one policy that's remaining and so I I put this on the agenda. I realized that we

109would have a little bit of space. And I know that Director Daniels and I are trying to work out, and staff are trying to work out the first, the superintendent are trying to work out the date for our first policy subcommittee meeting for this year. And what I wanted to do was... we've done this before usually after the reorganization meeting but I want to do this at the beginning of the school year to just kind of do a temperature check on where the board would like us to spend our time, prioritize our time coming up. And I can tell you some of the items that we have. we have on our list and I'm just gonna read through them and I don't, I actually, how many copies do you have, Liz? So Liz is gonna

110pass out the list, there's kind of like a master schedule and we can. just look at that. But I'm just going to say the things that we've, then this is a list that reflects our last meeting and then the items that we haven't yet gotten to. So one of them is the board bylaws. Josh and I have been trying to have each taken half of the remaining board bylaws, which is- I'm sorry, Madam President, to interrupt. We needed to take a vote on the unaudited actuals. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. And we did that. We did the gambling already while you were out. But okay. So thank you so much. So before we move into this, then why don't we go ahead and have a motion on the un-audited. That's a motion from

111Director Daniels, seconded by Vice President Leyva-Cutler. Anyone opposed? Great. That's why we govern as a group. Okay, so does everybody has this I don't have to go over it, but I'm just gonna read it through for anyone who's watching so we have several items that we've That we have on this and I think that one of the reasons why I wanted to bring this up is I want to make sure that we maybe can be Specific a little bit more specific and refined in our direction. It does actually take quite a bit of time to put together most policies Some of them are just pro forma and they're not difficult, but some of them take quite a bit of time. So I really want to make sure we are working on the things that we,

112the subcommittee's working on the things that we as a board want to prioritize. So just going to read through this for those who don't. There's a couple people in the audience. Do you, okay. So we have there's the board bylaws and those are the the 9,000 series So those are our board bylaws and this project that we started working on two years ago But we have made some progress. So Josh and I did split them up and we each Have made edits to one half of them and so we've you might remember we've actually passed the first five and so we're now going to be our goal is to bring some to each meeting and then pass them in pieces. So we have at least looked through them and we have proposals we just have

113to go through. There is an update to reflect current law and best practices on bullying, community process for facilities. I'm not sure that that's going to still be a policy, but we do have a new practice. Discipline, so this is restorative justice, but there's also been a conversation about reviewing the discipline practices and policies for the district discrimination the document retention Which was a did we do document? We'll have to check on that ed specs Enrollment policy we did take care of this. This is actually not a This is not a current list. Yeah. I'm just going to read these, although I can see this list hasn't been updated. Healthy families, naming the facilities, which we have, it's really to develop the AR, so I'm not sure if that would be at the policy subcommittee.

114A policy approval process, if we want to turn that into a formal. policy, return to same school after enrolled, the high school SSC, SGCs, and then the student-initiated policies. So this is, you know, you can see this wasn't like a, this isn't a formal list. This is just kind of a running list of issues that have come forward. So I'm hoping that each of you have had a little time to think about where you would like for us to focus our time in the next several months, maybe in the next year. And what I was thinking we could do is just go down the line. And if you had anything you wanted to either prioritize among these or else anything that's not on this list, why don't you go ahead and let us know if

115you can try to keep it. Well, it usually doesn't get to be that long of a list. So why don't we start with Director Alper, who's now at the end, so now gets to go first. I like that. I'm sorry if I'm missing it. I might make Josh go first sometimes anyway. Yeah. Am I missing it or is sexual harassment? We approved it. We approved it. So the new, yeah, once we get the OCR complaint, then we've agreed that we'll, I mean the response to the OCR. Okay, so we've just agreed to keep it on hold until we get that. But we can put that back on the list. Right, I'm sorry. I mean, if Director Rappert wants to add it, it's obviously his prerogative. We have a sexual harassment policy. I don't think we

116should presume that the result from OCR will require us to change anything. So I think if something comes up that requires us to... change something then we add it to the list. I don't think we should presume otherwise. I'm just gonna I don't want to spend too much time on this one issue but I do think that when we pass that policy we talked about revisiting it and so if that's something that people want then we should put it on the list and we can read you know we can I think if you have an issue that you'd like to have on the list we can I'd like instead of having back and forth about it right now. So if we can just go down the list down the road so I will put that

117on the list. And we can talk. Okay, and then another one that I, so you said enrollment was done, which I know we did. Part of it, but I understood from Dr. Evans that we still have the district. Right, homeless and, yeah. Okay. These aren't necessarily one, I'm not saying priorities necessarily. And then I guess. Since this is an opportunity, a relatively rare opportunity to hear from those of you who are on the Policy Subcommittee, can you say a little bit more about the discipline one, what that encompasses? Because it just says restorative justice, but can you say a little bit more? When we first, it says restorative justice here. When we first brought this to the Policy Subcommittee, we talked about having, it first started as a zero tolerance for, No, no, it wasn't.

118It was for, what is it called? Why am I forgetting? I'm having like a brain. Anyway, it had to do with willful defiance, right? So it's if we call it something different here, but willful defiance. And that's when where it started. We've actually as a district, we can still revisit that, but that's where it started. And then we talked about having a policy that would would promote restorative justice as a board policy. So that's kind of where this that where this came from. And then more recently, we've talked about revisiting disciplinary practices as a whole. So it's not very specific. Okay. Well, if I could just add to the list, I'd be interested in adding to that maybe the role of police in our schools and when it's appropriate for students to be referred to

119the police. And I think that's all I have. Great. Josh? Nothing? Do you have anything? What was yours? What were you going to say? I was going to speak upon the disciplinary policies at Berkeley High. See you. How those can be changed, possibly. I know there are better ways that I've seen at other schools, such as restorative justice programs. I don't believe personally in suspension, just because I don't believe students should have to miss curriculum for multiple days in a row and then have to catch up. On top of that, that going on the record, I believe there are other ways that we can divert their attention and try to change and let them understand what the... different kinds of consequences that they can take upon themselves and then build off that to try to

120build character and change and then allow them to still stay at school and understand their curriculum so that they don't fall behind. Karen? So for me, bullying, we fairly recently updated that policy. So unless... There is a need to address it immediately because we spent quite it was quite a bit of time spent on it and so to me Unless there is a need to revisit it as part of the feedback we get from the office of civil rights around sexual harassment Which is a form of bullying? You know then that to me is is a lesser priority because I think we have spent a lot of time just addressing the issue of bullying because it's an important issue So I'm not sure exactly why that's on this list It's on the list because the

121director of student services informed us that we need to update it to be in compliance. But I think that we should take a look at that in that context. So that would be that context. Discipline, I share our new student directors concern. I'm glad to see that I would keep that as a high priority. I am interested in looking at a disciplinary policy that is more restorative based and severely and does not see suspension as something that you do unless it's an absolute need for the safety of the student or the students around them. Discrimination. I would say... Again, it kind of I think with the feedback that we may get from the OCR that there might be some things for discrimination of all types that we might want to address and Then the naming

122facilities I would like to make that a higher priority at the medium only because we have had several emails about the potential of some in their community looking to rename schools and I would hate for the board to be in a position of not having a policy in place that we are willing to follow and to promote as what to do and start receiving kind of like petitions, if you know what I mean, that there's gotta be some threshold by which a process gets started and that process is done. And I'm just a little concerned if we don't, if that's a medium priority, we'll find ourselves in a situation where we don't have a policy, but we have a request. But other than that, I think this is great that you did all this work

123to put this out there and a lot to do. Well, yes, thank you for the format. This really helps. I agree on... I want to give full credit to Director Daniels for this organizational tool. Thank you. This helps give us a landscape view of it. I agree around the discipline in terms of high priority and the viewpoint of the students, too, in terms of... Well, I agree. I think between the enroll, if we were to, you put it on, it's on low, it returned to same school after unenroll. I think both of those things might be combined together too or somehow it should be looked at the same process. I don't know if we can have another category that says just revisit, which would be the... the bullying and the sexual harassment. We can have

124just the, you know, have it there as another category. And I would like to suggest one other one. And this came up because I happened to see a YouTube on protests of parents around gender-neutral restrooms. I know we have a practice, but it's also, I don't know, and the question that came up from the opposing community was, where's the board policy? And so I was more curious to see, and you would probably be more expert to know in terms of where that's existing. I know that not right now that we can go around and change all our bathrooms, but how do we, moving forward, how do we address that as a policy of our district? to whenever there's a new building or repairs to facilities and bathrooms in particular that we have that lens that

125we would address that. That would be all. Thanks for that, Patrice. I pretty much agree. I don't really have anything to add. I'm going to probably summarize. One that it sounds to me like everybody just didn't speak to this, but I know from from knowing him that I believe that you're also are in full support of a focus on student discipline and alternatives to suspension and out-of-class consequences and and and I think how we kind of weave that into some of the positive practices that we're, and changing school culture that we're trying to accomplish this year. So it seems like a very good time to do it. So I'm gonna just, it sounds to me like every one of us is interested in doing that, so that seems like an area where we might wanna

126start our focus. that we kind of started that process and I feel like we need to finish it. As far as the naming policy, I believe we've asked our staff to research some ARs for that. So this is a really good reminder that we should bring that. The staff, I think, should, my suggestion would be that the staff draft an AR and then we can look at it before bringing it back here, but it's not really a policy as an AR. So that's I'm just I think it sounds to me as far as priorities. That's that's where I would put our priorities I really like and appreciate your Suggestion that we look at gender inclusive agenda kind of not what they call all gender bathrooms As a policy so that was just a question I

127had so because we have a very robust policy in terms of you know gender identity and the use of our facilities including bathrooms that require a move to gender-neutral bathrooms or all gender bathrooms. So I wasn't sure what you were referring to in terms of... It is a policy of the district. Yeah, we have a very robust policy that is one of the best in the state. We have a transgender policy, so we have a policy that says you can use a bathroom of your choice. And I know that some of our elementary schools, and I think this year every middle school, and I think at least one or two in the high school, are... providing at least one bathroom that are all gender bathrooms so that kids don't have to choose and then face

128what, you know, they don't have to choose bathrooms. It's an option. So it wouldn't eclipse the other policy. It could potentially be an amendment to that. To some extent, it's, I mean, I don't know if you want to speak to that because I know that there's been work that's been going on. Yes, so do you wanted to clarify the the gender-neutral and the transgender? I mean, there's it different. They're different. Well to transfer the the policy currently is in in compliance with a law that was passed a couple of years ago that says that And it's actually just a policy that restates and clarifies how to implement the law that says that students can choose the bathroom that conforms to their gender, not their assigned sex at birth, but their gender identification. a kid who

129might have been born a boy and identifies as a girl can use the girl bathroom and that we're protected, they're protected under our policy. If you have a kid who's gender fluid or doesn't necessarily want to use the girl bathroom or some there are kids that came and testified when we passed that that said they actually changed their gender identity or kids who don't feel safe or they're somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. So all gender identity, all gender bathrooms just provide. kind of a separate bathroom where kids can go. Well, I don't know if it's a separate bathroom. How are they doing it at Rosa Parks? Are they doing, what's the? Yeah, at Rosa Parks, it is just a neutral bathroom. They've got, you know, they've altered the sign facilities just in Europe

130sometimes, I'd say that. The one. But it's an American made. Right. I'm sorry. Also, the issue at the high school that we're working with Sam on right now is how to provide access to that and also make sure that we have all of the safety implications addressed, not for the kids who will need it for reasons of the gender choosing, but the fact of the matter is we don't really have a standing to deny someone who requests access to the bathrooms to have a locking. You know, there's just. Okay, shins that we're trying to iron out at the high school So all that being said so having a policy might be helpful. Is that what you were? Yeah Here well, you know, I'll look at the policy again in terms of in yourselves Everybody else

131will look at it and just to see does it address both parts of it? But I was thinking more also along the lines because I was seeing repairs to bathrooms. And I was thinking, well, how do we as a district begin to start looking at our bathrooms whenever we renovate and whenever we're building a new school? We're looking at that too. So it's not just a policy, but also a policy around building. Facilities. Facilities. That might be under the gender specs too. Yeah. I think we can, yeah. So are there other, so maybe we can just go down and say on the priorities that I mentioned, is there anything that you disagree with as far as our priorities for the next, this next, kind of the upcoming few months? I talked about discipline. I mean,

132we all talked about discipline, the naming facilities. What did I just say? Where's my? Enrollment. And then, yeah. I'm good? Anyone okay great so that being said I think that is the end of our And the end of our agenda is there any public here who is would like to speak at extended public comment Kathy are you here to speak again? Great so that being said I am going to call I'm gonna we will recess back to closed session at 9 We're going to take a five-minute bio break.