EWCSD Board of Education Meeting - Monday, October 9, 2023

001Good evening everyone and welcome to the East Whittier City School District Board of Education meeting. It is 6 p.m. And we want to welcome everyone in attendance and at home viewing. We do want to notice that we have all board members present today. Welcome back here. And we look forward to engaging with students from Scott Avenue Elementary. I would like to call up Let me see. Melanie Martinez and Ava Pimentel, who will lead us on the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you, Melanie and Ava. And at this time, I'd like to call up for our District Employee Recognition, Scott Avenue Principal, Ms. Rikki. Well, good evening, everyone. Good evening, board, cabinet members, and the whole East Whittier City School District community and our Scott Avenue team. I am Kelly Rickey. I'm the extremely proud principal of

002Scott Avenue Elementary School. So I would like to call up Mrs. Stephanie Hofer, who is our certificated employee for Scott Avenue last year. So come on up and stand next to me. I have some words I would like to share about Mrs. Hofer. So Stephanie Hofer embarked on her teaching journey with us in 1994. And since then, she has traversed the landscape of education, leaving her positive imprint on every grade level except fourth grade. Over the course of 29 years, Stephanie has been an integral part of what makes Scott Avenue an exceptional school today. Her commitment to our academic excellence is evident through her active participation in various committees. Stephanie's dedication to enhancing our math curriculum and her insightful contributions as a member of our school site council have significantly impacted our academic programs. As

003a valued member of the instructional leadership team, she has played an important role in being the first to try different instructional strategies and supporting her team as we grow instructionally at the school. But Stephanie's contributions go beyond the confines of the classroom. Her involvement in our PBIS program reflects her commitment to creating a positive and inclusive school environment. Through her efforts, she has fostered an atmosphere that nurtures both academic growth and personal development among our students and has helped Scott Avenue receive the Silver Award for the second year in a row. In addition to her academic endeavors, Stephanie has selflessly given her time and energy to improve the overall experience of our school community. Several years ago, she played a pivotal role in establishing our valet service for student drop-off and pick-up, streaming the daily

004routine for parents, and ensuring the safety of our students. Furthermore, Stephanie continues to find additional ways to pour into students. She is currently working with a colleague to keep our Paw Patrol, our student recess program, a remarkable initiative where fifth grade students are empowered with leadership skills. This program not only promotes a sense of responsibility among our students, but also contributes to a positive and supportive atmosphere during recess, fostering teamwork, conflict resolution, and a sense of community. Stephanie's multifaceted contributions both within and outside the classroom embody the spirit of an exceptional educator. Her dedication, passion, and tireless efforts have not only impacted the lives of countless students, but have also shaped the very fabric of our school community. As we applaud Stephanie Hofer, our employee of the year at Scott Avenue and the month for

005the East Whittier City School District, let us reflect on the profound influence she has had on our institution. It is educators like Stephanie who lay the foundation for a brighter future, one student at a time. Please join me in extending a heartfelt gratitude and congratulations to Stephanie and for her unwavering commitment as an excellent educator. Stephanie, your impact on Scott Avenue is immeasurable, and we are truly fortunate to have you a member of our school family. Hi, that's very emotional. I've been in East Whittier City School District for 29 years. I've never wanted to leave, especially Scott Avenue Elementary. The families there are amazing, and the staff is so kind and supportive. I'd like to say thank you to my staff. for all the support you give me. Everyone who's here, everyone who's not here.

006I have my grade level who can't make it tonight. I'd like to thank them as well. They're very supportive and very good friends for me. I'd like to thank my students because that's why I'm here. That's why I became a teacher. And I find that every individual is important and has something to give to our district, to their lives, and to their families. And I really try to help them find what that is. And I would also like to thank Kelly Rickey, my principal. I've been through four or five principals, and my first principal was amazing, and she is amazing. She is a no-stop. We're going to find an answer to this. how are we going to make this happen kind of person. She's really brought a lot to me personally and professionally. And she

007has just made Scott an amazing school to be at. And I can say that because I've been there for so long. I'd also like to thank my family who's here. I have my three sons, Luke, Griffin, and Kipton. And Griffin has his girlfriend here as well. She's so supportive. She even works in my classroom. My sister-in-laws, Julianne Hofer and Jeanette Pinovich, and their daughter, Amy, and my husband, Jeff, and my in-laws, John and Joanne Hofer. We have teachers in the mix and superintendents, so we love education, but thank you very much. All right, well, I am pleased to now invite up Ms. Robin Lewetsky, our classified employee. Although Robin's employment time in the East Whittier City School District has been only since 2021, her connection to Scott Avenue runs deep. Her journey with our school

008began in the 1960s as a student in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. She fondly reminisces about her most memorable time at Scott Avenue, a week-long camp in the mountains during sixth grade. It was a time of exploration, camaraderie, and independence and an experience that has stayed with her through the years. After her time at Scott Avenue, Robin continued her educational journey at Granada Middle School and Monta Vista High School. She further enriched her knowledge by taking classes at Cerritos Community College. Education has been a thread woven throughout her life and is heartening to witness her dedication to the school that played a significant role in her own formative years. Family, too, plays a central role in Robin's life. She is a proud mother of four children, Michelle, Walter, Jonathan, and Lynette. Their unwavering support and

009care for her happiness have been a driving force. What makes Robin's connection to Scott Avenue even more special is that her daughter, Michelle, is a teacher at Scott Avenue. A testament to the enduring ties that bind generations within the East Whittier school community. Robin's journey as a classified employee at Scott Avenue began during a unique period right after the pandemic. Hired as a substitute supervising assistant, she quickly became an integral part of our school family. In her own words, Robin expresses how she has thoroughly enjoyed her time at Scott Avenue, highlighting the exceptional nature of our staff, the collaborative spirit, and willingness to help. She notes, everyone has made her feel welcome and supportive from day one. Entering her third year with the district, Robin has found joy and fulfillment in her role. Working as

010a classified employee, she shares that every day brings something new and exciting. She recognizes that each child has their own unique story, and she takes pleasure in connecting with them and being a positive presence in their life. It brings me personal enjoyment when I hear students shouting her name after school, or when I hear stories how she's run into students in the community, and they're so thrilled to see her. Retirement for some may be a time to step back, but for Robin, it became an opportunity for a new chapter filled with purpose. She found something even better, contributing to the vibrancy and warmth of Scott Avenue School. Through her work, Robin believes she helps make the school a little brighter for our children, which she truly does. In conclusion, we honor Robin Lewicki as our

011classified employee. Let us reflect on the impact she has made. Her journey spanning decades showcases a deep love for learning and a genuine care for the well-being of our students. Please join me in extending our heartfelt congratulations. And Ms. Robin, your dedication and warmth has enriched our school community. Congratulations. I'm honored to receive this award. I want to thank my family for supporting me in this endeavor. And I want to also thank my Scotty family for their support. I enjoy my job and look forward to coming to work each and every day. Thank you. Well, I just want to say that I think some of the words I just shared about both of these exceptional individuals will also be evident in our school video that you're about to see. Thank you very much. Here at

012Scott, you can tell that the kids feel cared about. Wherever you go on campus, the kids are happy, they're smiling, and they're interacting. Scott Avenue is a really welcoming school, so we focus on making sure that the students feel that when they walk through our gates. We have an environment that's inclusive, engaging, fun, yet... providing a rigorous academic program. We want to make sure that we're helping the whole child. One of my favorite parts about coming to school in Scott Avenue is making new friends and learning something new every day. We have SEL lessons and it focuses on their social emotional learning, academic interventions. We have after school programs that allow them to socialize. not in an academic setting. And all of those different programs that are offered allows them to grow as people. Our

013PBIS program is a huge piece to supporting students. We bark at Scott Avenue. Bark means be a friend, act responsibly, respect all, and keep safe. Every Friday, we have a bark assembly. And it's a great way to end the week. It brings the whole school together. They get a kick out of it. They enjoy it. It's a fun time for them. It also, again, like I said, it brings the community together. It's super fun in the community we're in. People reach out, get to know each other. You get to build relationships with families. You have multiple children, sometimes cousins. Sometimes, you know, you get the grandkids back and a second generation of societies. I'm a former student, so I loved it so much that I came back. Everyone here is a family. Every time you

014walk down the hall, no matter who it is or what their title is, everyone is warm and welcoming to each other. It's great to see some of those traditions that have never stopped, like the Scotty Olympics. Scotty Olympics is big here at Scott Avenue. We started it about 19 years ago. Each classroom represents a country. They just learn about that country, the cultures, traditions of the country. There's six events and every child gets to participate in all six events. They have so much fun that day. Not only all the parent volunteers, but also the kids. It's just a wonderful event between the teachers and Mrs. Rickey and just the campus, all of our staff. I really love how cohesive we all work together here. I think my favorite thing about working at Scott, truthfully, are

015the smiles. And that to me, that makes being here wonderful because I know the kids really like to be here. Once again, thank you very much to Miss Ricky and the Scott Avenue staff and family members. And congratulations to the employee of the year winners. Don't forget, we are going to take a break in just a bit after our comments so we can take some pictures. So please don't leave so we can get those done. So at this time, I'm going to go ahead and move on to board member comments. I'm going to start off with our student board member, Miss Guzman. Thank you, um I actually have a lot of things to say first of all I've mentioned over and over again to get but you know get some money to the band program

016and I'm happy to see that Mr. Zola he told that name I think it was like two other teachers came and met with some people from the district. Thank you. I'm glad yeah, yeah Thank you, I'm glad my opinion was heard and you know was put so we could put my this And I'm very happy I could help and, you know, hear. And almost all the kids at the school and some kids from the other schools know I'm the student board member now. And now they have, you know, all the requests and questions of how they want to change the district and what they want. And so I'll get back to you guys on that. And I'm very glad that the band thing has gone forward and that I can keep on making positive changes

017in the school. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm going to ask Ms. Carrera. I wasn't ready. But it's OK. You want to? Welcome, everybody. Congratulations to all of you. What can I say? A lot has happened within this month. I am really, really proud of the work that everyone has done in East Whittier City School District. Congratulations to everybody from Scott Avenue. You know, we are, I think, top tier right now. So we should all be very proud. And it is a day to celebrate and look at the positive that we all bring to the district. I also want to bring up that I'm also happy that we're reviewing all of our board policies, and I'm glad that the committee, the grading committee, will be meeting soon. Right, is it in October? October 24th.

018So hopefully they'll be able to look at, we'll be able to discuss 5121, board policy 5121. Other than that, I don't have anything else. It was a great job with the flag salute and congratulations to the two people that were recognized. I didn't catch your names. I'm really sorry about that. And I hope that everything goes well tonight. That's my report. Thank you very much, Ms. Carrera. Ms. Debs. Ms. Debs, could you hit your microphone? Okay, thank you. Forgive me. Meliana Martinez and Eva Pimentel for leading our flag salute. Thank you so much for doing it so professionally and also for introducing your families. I also want to congratulate Scott Avenue Employees of the Year, Robin Lewitsky and Stephanie Hopper, so well deserved. And I do want to share something that was very special and

019will always be very special for me, Mrs. Rickey, with regard to Scott Avenue. When I ran for the first time for the board in 2018, nobody really knew me. But I made some connections with a couple of teachers at Scott Avenue, and I also made some connections with parents at Scott Avenue. And I was very, very warmly received by the Scott Avenue parent and teacher community. Because at the time, it was a community-wide vote. It was an at-large vote. And it was not in district areas. So I was very excited to just share that that meant a lot to me to know the Scott Avenue family was so supportive of me. And they didn't even know me. But just what I was sharing was something that resonated for them. And they felt that it was

020something that would bring a positive aspect to our school board. So that's something very special. And I remember that. And I'll always be grateful. As Mrs. Carrera stated, we have some. Wonderful things to be especially proud of. And I just want to add that we are especially proud of the Golden Bell Award that we have just recently received. It's in the area of leadership. And I know some of our board members may speak a little bit more about that as well as Dr. Patterson. But it's something very special. Many school districts across the country, or especially in California, rather, really aspire to seek that award. And we've won it in an area that we're very proud of. And so. I want the community to know, and you'll hear us talk a little bit more about

021that. But the Golden Bell Award, I don't want to go on and on about what it is, but look it up and you'll see it's something quite, quite special. I was able to attend the WASA meeting, which is the Woodard Area School Board Association meeting, about two weeks ago. And we were able to receive a check, as some other local districts also did, for $10,000 from Supervisor Janice Hahn. We're going to do a special presentation of that in a couple of weeks. But that $20,000 is going to go towards our homeless. We represented our board in attending. So you'll hear more about that in a couple weeks. Did you bring the big check? I got a big check. I'll be sharing it when you say it's okay in a couple of weeks. All right. Also

022was able to attend the Emma Worker. Emma is still coming up. And again, thank you to all our teachers, staff, administrators, classified staff, and custodians for everything you do, and our parents. Everything you do every day to support our students. Very, very grateful for that. I don't take it for granted. I know our board doesn't either, but thank you so much. Ms. Kennedy. Yes, thank you. I just want to thank the students for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you so much. And congratulations to Stephanie Hofer and Robin. I don't even want to go back to how far we know each other. I think way before you were pregnant with your youngest, I think. So we've known each other for like a long time. We started off, remember, I think, was it at Cal High? I

023can't remember. Oh my, yeah, let's see how far back we go. Oh my gosh, I'm so old. We were students together. We weren't students together, but we knew each other. We go way back, but congratulations. You can't have a better one than Robin. She's the best. Thank you. Thank you. That's very simple. Yeah, I just want to say also Thank you to Melanie and Ava for leading us in the pledge and all your work that you do at Scott Avenue So thank you for that Congrats to Stephanie and Robin on your award and we definitely appreciate all your hard work and your dedication to the Scott Avenue Families and the students and everyone so thank you. Thank you very much for that A big congrats to Leffingwell and Oceanview Elementary on their national blue ribbon

024awards Of course, that's a big kudos to the entire staff the students of families everyone plays a big Very very vital role in that so I just want to say congrats to Dr. Blackwell to miss songer But I said I think it just everyone in general that staff especially for all their hard work and dedication So I'm big kudos to the entire staffs of ocean view and left me. Well Lastly I was able to attend the East Winter Middle School Festival this last Saturday It's always a great event. And like I said, I know there's a lot of hours I get put into that event, a lot of volunteer hours. But Ms. Carnahan just puts together a great, great show for everyone Friday and Saturday. So it's a great event for everybody, for the whole

025community. Just, you know, when I went there, you got people from the alumni, you know, people who are in Cal High, Lucerna, you know, all the local high schools. Everyone kind of goes and kind of just go hang out. So it's a definitely great, great event. And of course, I know they're going to continue doing it. I know it's a good fundraiser for. It's kind of hand so like I said just you know kudos and thank you to all the in there So thank you for that and lastly just looking forward to attending a lot more fall festivals as well Thank you very much. Mr. Aparicio and you know as I'm hearing everyone talking It's nice to hear all the positive things that we got going on here and how our students are staff create

026an environment that really want parents want their kids here at the school and why we have so many students from outside the district coming. And so thank you very much for sharing all that because it's such a great things and other things that need to be worked on, of course, but many more positives and you parents and staff members are definitely a big part of that. So thank you for making Eastwood the best district in the county. And, you know, we're very proud of all the things that we're doing here. And thank you for being a big part of that Scott Avenue family. And again, with our two classified or sorry, employee members. HOFER AND LOWITZKI. OKAY. GOT IT. CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR AWARD THERE. AND THE NEXT COUPLE THINGS I WANT TO ANNOUNCE HAVE BEEN

027THINGS WE'VE KNOWN ABOUT BUT THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT HAVE COME OUT LATELY. FIRST WAS THE GOLDEN BELL. AS MS. DABS MENTIONED THE GOLDEN BELL. DON'T WANT TO TOUCH ON THAT A WHOLE BUNCH BECAUSE I KNOW WE'VE TALKED ABOUT IT A LOT BUT WE'RE VERY PROUD TO REPRESENT COMING UP NEXT MONTH AT THE IT'S ALREADY NEXT MONTH. Yeah, end of the month and first couple days in December. But representing East Whittier and going up to San Francisco and collecting the award. I know our district will have a presentation talking about the awesome program that have earned this recognition. So we're very proud to represent the district up there along with at the state level with all the other board members and school districts in the audience. So thank you and congratulations to all those who helped the

028visitation go well. I also want to again congratulate both Ocean View, Leffingwell, and the students and the parents who've done a great job for earning that National Blue Ribbon recognition. That is the top academic. education award for a school district to be recognized and we have both of those schools there so again it's another reason why we have all everyone wanting to come to our schools because we offer a place where our students are safe and we have high academic standards so thank you very much to both those schools we look forward to representing we have several representatives from our school district going to Washington DC to collect the blue river recognition and very excited about that and I think Dr. Patterson had mentioned it a while ago and a lot of the things that

029come along with it and he may share some additional information, but we're very proud to represent East Whittier and the two schools who are earning their Blue Ribbon and I know the PBIS awards. We have many schools who earned high PBIS recognition. I believe silver, I think we had a couple bronze, 13 silver and one bronze and so congratulations to all our schools who again PBIS is a is provides a place where students can come in positive behaviors at our school sites and creates again that environment where our students are safe and how we can deal with our behaviors and things at school and so our schools have earned that silver recognition and the one bronze and looking forward to recognize them because I believe we do something here at the board meetings with them

030or recognition verbal recognition to them and I see a lot of the posts on the social media regarding that so congratulations and then lastly we have all the fall harvest event harvest festivals coming up so looking forward to attending those my wife has gone told me I'm participating a couple of them to work them so we'll be I'll be there to to celebrate with their students and and be a part of that. And last thing, this is really the last one. You know, if parents, if you haven't had a chance to visit our new school website, if you're part of the social media, you probably have seen it, but if you haven't, I encourage those parents who haven't, go out and take a look at all the new video montages, the podcasts, and all the

031digital. communications that our communication department has put out regarding the district, regarding things that are happening at the school sites because it's an avenue that kind of has increased an insight of what's going on here at the school. So we want to thank Antonio, Dr. Patterson, and their staff for broadening the... information that's being shared to our community and so we want to thank them we had the podcast i know there's a series of annual we're at three i believe and so we have that's going out but we have a digital magazine we have a lot of video montage the clips just those things i think are important for our community to see what's going on because not all parents have a chance to be in the classroom or visit the schools at all times

032but being able to have access on that social media and then seeing those other forms that our communications department is doing for us gives us a great insight. So we want to thank them for the hard work that they are doing for our students and community. And that's it for now. So we are going to take a short five minute break. It'll allow for any of you who need to get home and finish some homework or get your rest of your evening done. I am going to ask that the two employees of the recognitions to stay behind. We're going to take some pictures and then we're going to reconvene the meeting in about five minutes. So break time. OK, thank you. We're going to go ahead and reconvene. Next on the agenda, we have reports

033from representatives. First, we'll have our CSEA comments. That's all. Hello, everyone. They could have gave you a little bit more. A little more? Yeah. Hello, everyone. I am Joe Riley. I work in the IT department here. And I am the representative for CSEA tonight. And I would like to say that we have no comments this evening. Thank you very much. Next, we have IWI comments. No, no, no. Okay. Next, we're going to go ahead and move on to Superintendent's comments. Dr. Patterson? that we've been receiving but that's okay um we were very excited as cyra had mentioned you know 13 silver pbis awards and one bronze does mean that every one of our 14 schools received that recognition so we're extremely proud of that at our next board meeting the whittier city council will be

034here to also bestow their congratulations to both Ocean View and Leffingwell. And then the following day, they've invited us to attend their meeting so that they can publicly recognize the amazing work of Ocean View and Leffingwell. We had a wonderful PTA meeting last week where we had an opportunity just to kind of brainstorm and talk about ways in which our PTAs and PTO can learn from one another and share best practices. Also, just to give a little bit more of insight, Syra did an amazing job representing our school and our district at the validation for the Golden Bell Award. And just to give a little bit of context, the Golden Bell is given to exemplary programs by the peers of our five board members. And it's a rigorous process to where you can demonstrate the

035impact that your program has on your district and your community and Syra was one of the ones that was interviewed by Miss Baird who is a trustee over at South Whittier and she gave Dr. Aceves and our team you know amazing accolades for the way in which our students carried themselves and we did receive official recognition that we didn't prematurely buy our tickets in CSBA. And also our board will be presenting a topic at CSBA and that is typically peer driven, colleague driven. So our board will be presenting on our focus of engaging the community in order to put an exemplary STEAM program into play. And also since you mentioned it, I did want to let you know that today our fourth podcast dropped. So you can check it out on Apple Podcast and go

036on there and follow us. We have one that is intended to be put out roughly every week to be able to talk about the amazing people and programs that we have. This week's guest was Jenny Gray from Cause. And so we're really excited about all of those different things that Antonio and his team. Antonio are doing to continue to spread the great word of what we do in our district. Thank you very much, Dr. Patterson. Yes, sir. I just want to say real quickly, I didn't even back the whole golden bell thing. I didn't realize how much work this should put into this, but seeing how many kids came and like all the presidents, the vice presidents, the secretaries of all the different schools, it was really impressive to see how much leadership we have

037in each of the schools. Well, thank you very much. And you're part of that too. So thank you very much for doing a great job. All righty. Next, we're going to move on to citizen communication period. Dr. Pearson. So just as a reminder, as we always do, we ask our speakers to stand over there up by the podium. We do have four speakers tonight, and each speaker is allotted three minutes of time. And if you do, I saw, Mr. Lopez, you had papers. If you do want the board to consider the papers, you just need to pass them to Ms. Valenzuela afterwards. So our four speakers are Brent Vogelman, Fernando Lopez, Monique Lopez, and Stephanie Vallee. Please make your way over to the side. As a reminder, if you can, each speaker, give your name

038and address so that way we can have it for public records. Good evening. I'm Brent Vogelman. I am a teacher at East Wheeler Middle School. I'm a resident of Huntington Beach, but a teacher in the district. So, Dr. Patterson, you visited our school on September, East Wheeler Middle School on September 15th to witness our students receiving the outstanding instruction that my colleagues provide and still provide to this day. Unfortunately, I was not in attendance that day. I was out recovering from COVID. At one point, UW-NES had an entire grade-level department out due to the illness, and this does not even mention the large number of students marked as absent from illness or quarantine in areas. On top of this, some of the lingering effects of COVID include brain fog, chronic fatigue, insomnia, aches and pains,

039breathlessness, and dizziness. So even upon returning to school, students and teachers might still be struggling to feel healthy again, and this will definitely affect their performance. I was lucky enough to really only have the lingering effect of losing my smell, which is slowly coming back to me. With the winter months rolling in, the chances for other students and teachers to contract COVID or the flu will only go up. But what's bothersome is that many mitigating factors to keep us informed. and to help prevent more illnesses have gone away. The dashboard on the district website is gone. Exposure notifications have stopped. At EWMS, the portable sinks provided to some classrooms to keep hands clean disappeared overnight. Air filters are no longer being cleaned, which renders them non-operational, so now they just take up space. Beyond what

040some of these expenditures initially cost, what worries me is that the health and safety of students, teachers, and staff is no longer a major concern. I know that we are meeting the standards of the Department of Health, but why can't we exceed those standards? We want students to exceed the standard on state testing. Let's do the same here. The first episode of the Inside East Whittier podcast focused on how attendance matters in this district. And it does, as attendance affects the grades, behaviors, and mental health of students, just to name a few. With nearly one quarter of our students missing close to a month of school, we need to do everything we can to improve attendance. We need more than banners, incentives, activities, and recognition, though. Frankly, a virus does not care about these things.

041If we're going to balance the safety and health aspects of COVID, we need tangible signifiers. Can we get those things back? Can we clean those air filters and make them operational again? Can we look into what is best to keep students, teachers, and staff safe? Our district mission statement promises to open the door to every child's future. Can we make sure that their immediate future is a safe and healthy one? Thank you. Mr. Lopez? Hello, everyone. My name is Fernando Lopez. I live at 8131 Whittier, California. I graduated from East Whittier Middle School. I went to Ocean View. My wife went to Ceres Elementary School in Granada. We met at Cal High. We got married two years after she graduated. So this has to do with item number 17, parent notification. But before I share

042that, shout out to Lisa, shout out to Mark and Antonio. And Ms. Guzman, you are a future leader. I am honored to see you now, and Lord willing, I'll see you in many years. In fact, we have a new group we're starting. It's called Future Leaders of Whittier. If you want to join us on Instagram, we actually started in 2018, I remember, because Lisa showed up, and I supported her before she ran, because I'm a community member, and a community member is involved in the community that I grew up in. And like many members of the community, I am busy. I have four children, three little girls that I love very much. And like many fathers who work for a living and involved in their parents, in just the community, I don't really have the

043freedom or the luxury to show up to everything and to know what's going on in every aspect of my child's life. Parent notifications. This is a parental rights issue. Children. And adults are protected by the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Constitution and the Supreme Court repeatedly affirms that a parent has the ultimate right to control the care and upbringing of a child. This is contrary to Janice Hahn, who actually just gave $20,000 back to the taxpayers. It's taxpayer money from the community. She also spent $4.2 million on a transgender medical service center. And that's what is being done. Children are being groomed by the same people who are putting an ideology that tells them that they are defined by their gender or their ideology. And I believe that children are little human beings that need to

044be loved and protected. My little girls are subject to peer pressure just like anyone else. And being forced to make these questions. about their gender and gender ideology is going to leave a lot of parents and children upset. I don't want you to think lightly of this. Janice Hahn and those who support that ideology are going to say that this is a loving, inclusive, safe thing to do to protect the children, but that is far from the truth. This is the same people who changed the language from male to female. My name is Fernando Lopez and I have some paper that shares more. Thank you. Monique Lopez? Good evening board. Thank you for having me and you did an awesome job. I'm so proud of you. I am Monique Lopez and I am the founder

045of Whittier Parent Alliance. I am a mother of three and a foster parent. I want to be clear our organization is not against the LGBTQ community. I know there is a lot of misinformation that's been going out there that we're against the LGBT community. We are not. In fact, my daughter who is here, who is openly gay, she's a lesbian. I have a 26-year-old son who is also openly a gay man. What I am against is... people grooming children, letting them think that they can be able to change their, that they have gender ideology, they have, you know, want to change their pronouns, and a lot of the books that are permitted in some of the schools that are today. There is a book that is called That is So Gay. And that book literally

046tells you how to hook up on Tinder and other apps to hook up with the nearest homosexual. While my son was in his first year of college, he used these apps in his first year. He was gang raped, left in the tub, full of blood bleeding through his anus. This is not a game. I'm here to fight for parent rights that we need to be involved. They said this is an outing bill or the parent notification is an outing bill. It is not. Parents need to be included. They need to be included. When I found out my daughter was a lesbian, it took me a little while to wrap my head around it because the fact that I didn't expect it from her. I expected it from my son, but not from my daughter. But

047it took me a little while to wrap my head around it and come around. I am willing to, and my organization is willing to be a peer support group to help other parents be able to cope with their children that come out and being gay. We want the Parent Notification Act to be implemented so there is no secrets between schools and the children and the parents. We need to be informed. We need to be involved and not be just silenced. And then with litigation stating that this is the law where the outing bill and it's not even placed in law. The cat's out of the bag. There is no law. AB 226 isn't a law. It's only the sports and bathroom law for Ed Code 22.1 that allows kids to use whatever bathroom. It doesn't

048state anything about not telling the parents. Thank you. Ms. Vallez? Stephanie Vallez? Good evening, Board. My name is Stephanie Vallejo, and I live in Whittier, California, East Whittier, and just like East Whittier City. So I'm here to talk to you about two things. The first one is to support Monique. I think that I agree with her that there needs to be a parental rights notification in our school boards, and that's something that it's very important. As a parent myself, my children went to East Whittier, Granada, Murphy Ranch, Lacerna High School, and my niece and nephew have attended those schools as well. So I think it's important to keep our parents involved. Number two, unlike Fernando, I disagree with your opinion on Ms. Hahn. I love her. She's a wonderful woman, and she's a very supportive

049person to community members. I think one of the things that we forget to do is listen to the community. We are a very diverse community in the city of Whittier. And we need to always keep everybody involved, bring everybody to the table. We all have something to say and not just a certain group. So it's really important to do that, I think. The last thing I want to talk to you about is Whittier term limits. I am the proponent of Whittier term limits for Whittier City Council. We are proposing a 12-year term limit, maximum of 12 years, period. Why do we want term limits? I think it's important to have term limits to keep people involved in the civic engagement. For example, all of you have done such a wonderful job as our board members.

050I would love to see you run for city council. I think that's amazing. And I think that's part of the process of that. You come to a board like this, you move up to the next board where you continue to create change. And it's a positive thing. It's not a negative thing. The other thing that our organization, Whittier for Term Limits and Local Reform, we're trying to do is change the election date in Whittier. Who here votes? Right. We all vote. That's wrong. We don't all vote. The city of Whittier has off-cycle elections. We have them in April. There are four cities in the county of L.A. that have off-cycle elections. Why is that important to know? It's important to know because we have low voter turnout. Out of 54 plus, let me be exact,

05154, 647,000 registered voters in the city of Whittier, only 8,000 people are voting. Why is that important? Because that keeps certain groups in control. It keeps the agenda rolling for a certain group. And that's not inclusive to the rest of us. We all need to be representative in the city of Whittier. So we're trying to change the election date to coincide with the state general election in November. So I hope that you support us. We need volunteers to collect 10,000 signatures. Thank you. So thank you very much. Whittier for termlimits.org. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Next, we're going to move on to our discussion items. First, we have our cast presentation. That's Dr. Seves. Good evening. So tonight we are here to present on our annual summative data Really our state assessment system our caste system

052and lpac system that monitors the progress of our English learners in California I bring with me our remarkable team missus of us Ramos Dr. Altana and Miss Clark will help me present tonight. We're gonna present on to Two different assessments. I know, I know. And Dr. Patterson, we noticed one slide out of order, so we'll let you know when we get there. But we're going to present to you again our two different systems, our CASP system that includes our math, English language arts, our California alternate assessment, and our science CASP assessment. And then we're also going to discuss our summative results as measured by our ELPAC and the English Learner Progress Assessment. I'm going to call up Mrs. Seves-Ramos, who's going to talk to us about our math and ELA assessment. So good evening board.

053Overall the next few slides you will see cast assessment results for students in grades three through five. This particular slide shows the percentage of students who met or exceeded the standard in ELA. The table shows the district percentage as well as grade level percentages. Data for the years 2019, 2022, and 2023 are provided. The data from 2019 is PRECOVID DATA. SO THIS IS THE LAST YEAR WHEN OUR STUDENTS TOOK THE CASP ASSESSMENT IN ITS FULL ORIGINAL VERSION BEFORE SCHOOL CLOSURES. THERE ISN'T ANY DATA FROM 2020 AS THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT SCHOOLS CLOSED. AND IN YEARS 2021 DISTRICTS HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO PROVIDE LOCAL ASSESSMENTS IN ORDER TO MEASURE STUDENTS SUMMITED PROGRESS AND WE CHOSE THAT. SO AGAIN YOU WILL SEE 2022 DATA. as well as 2023 data. It is important to note that in

0542022, the CAASPP blueprints were adjusted. So our students did take a modified version of the CAASPP in year 2022. And the same assessment was given this past year, 2023. OK, so when comparing 2022 and 2023 performance data, you will notice increases in the district percentage as well as increases in grades three, five, six and eight. You will notice that grade four stayed consistent again in comparing 2022 data to 2023. And when we compare 2023 data to 2019 data pre-COVID, we will see that we are exceeding those percentages in grades three and seven and performing similarly in all other grades, as well as our overall district percentage. So again, this shows that overall we are recovering from school closures and the effects of those COVID restrictions. This next table displays results for the area of math.

055It's formatted similarly to our previous slide that we saw in ELA really showcasing your comparisons from 2019, 2022, and 2023. Again, across our district and grade levels. Again, when you compare 2022 and 2023 data, you'll see that our district and all grades experienced increases in the percentage of students scoring met or exceeded. So again, that's something really exciting to celebrate, increases from one year to the next. and giving applause to our entire school community. And again, when comparing 2019 data to 2023, you will see that we have exceeded those percentages in grades three and then performing similarly across the other grades. This, sure. Mrs. Ramos, does this include English language learners? It sure does include English language learners. This includes all of our subgroups. OK, perfect. Can we move to the math one? Absolutely. Now,

056I find this very interesting because typically our students will score, in general, higher on math, period, whether they're ELA or fluent English speakers or English speakers natively. But I notice that the scores are lower than usual. So is there something that's changed in the assessment? I mean, I find this very interesting because typically math scores are always a little higher than language arts. Do you know? Right, so that might have been the case with the CST versus when we transitioned to the CAS. We're seeing more of a focus on problem-solving skills. We see lots of word problems where students are having to apply their thinking in more critical areas. So that is why we see And also, the data does show that across the state, districts saw about a 4% decrease from 2019 to 2020

057for ELA. But in math, it was actually 7% decrease in math across the state. Thank you so much for that clarification. Absolutely. Thank you for your question. So this next slide will then present the data across our district by schools. So once again, we see the percentage of students who met or exceeded the standard in English language arts. Again, looking across those three years, 2019, 2022, and 2023, you will notice that six of our 10 elementary schools saw increases in the percentage of students who met. or exceeded the standard in ELA in comparison to 2022 and 23. You will also see the three school sites, 2023 scores have exceeded their 2019 scores, which is also very promising. And three of our school sites are approaching their 2019 results, again, showcasing that we are just closing

058that gap. This particular slide again is similar although we are focusing on mathematics and again something great to celebrate we will see that all of our schools and our districts shows increases from 2022 to 2023 with Laurel Elementary School seeing the biggest increase of 15% which is really amazing. Also five of our elementary schools are exceeding the 2019 results. So again, just kudos to our entire school community who continues to work hard in supporting the needs of our students. Now I'll present Dr. Galdana, who will talk about the middle school results. Good evening, board. I have the pleasure of sharing with you longitudinal data for our middle schools. Here, as you can see for English Language Arts, the students who met or exceeded the standards, I want to highlight that two of our three middle

059schools have shown positive growth between the 2022 school year and the 2023 school year. I also want to show that we are performing relatively similar to our pre-COVID results back in 2019 in the area of English Language Arts. In math, we have better news. All our schools have increased slightly between the years 2022 and 2023. And we are definitely making positive movement towards the pre-pandemic results of 2019. Yes. I know you're new into the position, so, and I don't, yeah, okay. Almost a year. But... I noticed that there's a difference between the schools and one of the schools had just slightly different results. Have you guys been able to identify what are some of the reasons why there are some differences between the two? Is that something you're working on this upcoming year to try

060to, I mean, not that we want everyone exactly the same, but there's kind of a... difference between with one of them have you guys been able to identify what are some of the things that we can do or the reasons why? So just so we know that is it it's we're talking sorry I'm back at the ELA. Oh I think in both in both of the areas and again it just not that you want me not have the answer here but are you guys working on identifying? Absolutely so that one school if for ELA correct In math and math. Actually, they did increase in math. So Dr. Patterson, with regard to that and then going back to this is almost an explanation about how the CST was what it was and the shift now is

061for the problem solving and the word problem. As we're looking at our English language learners having to decipher language in math with regard to word problems. Are we looking at the data in such a way that we can see where our fluent English speakers, our native English speakers... where they're able to navigate, whereas our English language learners might still be struggling with the whole idea of actually reading the problem before they can actually calculate the problem mathematically. I also want to point out that we have about 673 English learners across the district out of 7,800 students. One of the initiatives, as you've heard from Dr. Aceves and working with the principals along with Dr. Vargas is of focus on English learner support as well as the support with students' special needs. So one of the

062ongoing themes with our principal meetings that Dr. Aceves leads is a deep dive into not only the placement of students and how we master schedule and how we provide that layer of support and what ELD blocks look like and what support looks like in learning center versus, you know, mod severe classrooms. Those are all intricate things that the team is really delving into and then having an opportunity to talk about, OK, disaggregating that to what does sixth grade look like, seventh grade look like, eighth grade look like, taking a look at feeder patterns and where students matriculate from so that we can start having conversations. I mean, continue to have, you know, five to sixth grade. conversations about the level of rigor and what kids are coming into with preparedness levels. So it's a big,

063as you guys both know, as principals before, it's a lot of different moving parts that our teams are really looking at. It's important that you share that because then based on what you just shared. our actual native English speakers are struggling then as well. Yeah, I mean. With English and deciphering word problems and calculating those mathematically. Now, I don't want to say that our English learners are not struggling more. They're definitely struggling more, but just looking at the sheer number of students, of 673 students being that, but I do want to say. if you were to walk classrooms at Hillview, you would walk classrooms at Granada, you would walk classrooms at East Whittier, you're going to see the same amazing instruction going on in those classrooms. Just sometimes it takes a little bit longer to

064get over the particular data that's coming your way and having those important but very hard conversations with grade levels about, okay, Did the teaching match the standard? Did the rigor meet the rigor of the standards? Just continuing to have those conversations. That's why the work with PLC Plus is so important, because it's not only looking at the data, but then did I receive, did I do something different in my first period group than you did in your first period group that gave me these results so we can start talking about instructional strategies, pedagogy, and the things that go along with. those results because we do need to take a step back and look at what is the adult interaction and what are we learning from one another which is like we talked about before like

065what's new about plc's but the plus is that whole idea of not only looking at what the students are doing but taking a close look at what we're doing is that particular school It's me. That was eerie. I know, everybody's like, where is she? Who is that? I know. Does that? I know everybody who's like, what? You sound like Syrah. No. Does that particular school have a high ELL learners, or does that particular school have a certain? number of population of students that perhaps the other two schools don't have and are we using all of our resources to get them to meet that. So I don't know the specific breakdown. Are you inquiring? I'm going to call the name of the school. Is it Hillview? So yes, so actually special education students. It's currently about

06612 to 13 percent of Hillview's population is classified as special needs. So that those scores are embedded in the Hillview scores overall scores. Thank you. And yes that includes English learners. That's good, and I'm glad you guys are already having a plan I look forward to hearing you know what that plan is as we as we move forward because I as you mentioned having Support staffs and supports for them because we have two new administrators that are new into their position a new principal and a new AP and so I'm glad having you in the position Dr. Donna to support them as well. I'm pretty sure you'll you'll definitely identify that and so to be able to support them because they need you know, with the two new admin, they'll get their experience. But for

067the first year, I'm pretty sure that they're going to need the support. So looking forward to that and seeing how we can continue that progress. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Okay. And now this is the subgroup data where we can see how our English learner population has definitely. Overall, our subgroups perform better in the ALA standards as they do as opposed to math. The learner, the English learner subgroup, continues to perform at lower proficiency levels in both ELA math when compared to other subgroups. Later in our presentation, we will share some of the information from the ELPAC performance and some of the strategies and action plan to support our English learners. Remember, the reason you're seeing 5100 is because this is a third through eighth grade assessment. Next is our CAS test. This is the

068science test which measures understanding for specific concepts such as earth and space science, life sciences, and physical science. This test is administered to 5th graders and 8th graders. In the 5th grade, we see a slight increase from the 22 to 23 school year approaching our 2019 scores. And I'm happy to report that the eighth grade results have increased from 22 to 23 and have exceeded the pre-pandemic scores in science. So here are some of the next steps that we were referring to earlier regarding student increased achievement. Here system of support or what we call MTSS and really the focus on tier one practices and I'm sure they'll share soon all of the six district goals that we have and amongst them is the tier system of support particularly in the middle school level. What is

069our first great instruction look like quality instruction that focus and what Dr. Patterson gets to see at his visits. There's also an instructional focus in writing and assessment, as well as math committees created to support that area as well. We have intervention programs during the school day at all three middle schools. Read 180 would be an example that are supporting our English classes. We also have supports for English learners in the ELD classes. And data reflection practices, this is where we use the data that we've collected, we identify the needs, and we inform our future, current and future practices. With PLC Plus, the plus being you, implementation and professional development, we're focusing on intentional grade level expectations, development, collaboration. There is, we're dedicated time within the school day to really look at the standards, to

070disaggregate them, analyze data, and share instructional practices. We have CTD, TTD, that is coming up, and Thursday professional development sessions with particular focus on English learners, data reflection, PBIS, et cetera. We have instructional leadership teams at every site, including our middle schools. And I mentioned earlier, teacher curriculum meetings for math and language arts. And we also have expanded to end us when the students feel comfortable and belonging at our school site and building relationships, thus also impacting student academic achievement and belonging. So we are focusing on meeting our student needs. I have a question. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Ms. Deb. I wanted to know that at what time or point do you offer students the resources such as intervention? You know, we have all of this. I'd like to know when it is so that

071they don't fail. Correct. So at the elementary level, I'm going to speak for the middle school level. At the middle school level, we have in our master schedule specific classes, periods that support intervention. We have periods where teachers, classroom teachers, really target standards that students have missed. and give them that additional hour of support in the standards that were either assessed or will soon be assessed. We have reading programs like Read 180. If there's a study skill class where they get support with organizational factors that could impact their scores or their testing skills, there's that support as well. It's just one of you. Can you also kind of clarify the role of the academic advisor as well? Sure, and we need to add that very importantly our academic counselors. This is the second year of

072academic counselors at all three middle schools who monitor our students who are constantly reviewing the DNF rate, who are making those master schedule adjustments if they need support. They meet with them regularly. Our parent liaisons that between the site and our parents and our students with the greatest need. So you did mention the DNF rate. So are students, are they notified at D or F? I believe we consider the D as a, it's in fear of failing, so that would include the D. So your baseline would be then at what percentage? Technically, the D would be a 60%. 60? Yeah. Thank you. I did have one more question. Read 180. Now, that program has been around. for probably more than 25 years. My question about that particular curriculum strategy as we're working with students with

073special needs, do we still see it as a viable? I think that's what I mean. As a viable curriculum. You and I are on the same page with this one. We've talked about the fact that we really do need to, especially as we take a deeper dive into the ways in which we support our students with special needs and other students who are struggling, we really need to look at the efficacy of that program and track students who have been in that program for one, two potential years because it's not only is it, you know. expensive but we want to be able to make sure that it is meeting the needs of our students because like you said it has been around for quite some time doesn't mean it's bad just because it's been around

074but it is one of those things where just we're not going to continue to do it just because we've done it but taking a deep dive into what the efficacy of the program is. And just one housekeeping matter. It says Ms. Gabriela Aldana. Can we please make sure to correct that to Dr. Gabriela Aldana? What are we looking at? In the public comments, the background information on the actual page. Yes. Dr. Aceves will make note of that. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. No further questions. I'm going to introduce Mrs. Lisa Clark. Dr. Clark, please go ahead. I'm sorry. Hey, good evening. I'm here to talk about the California Alternate Assessment. So this... Special needs for the most part it's students who participate in our moderate severe or extensive support needs classes or STC classes. There's

075students that are working on a modified like a significantly modified curriculum. The cause administered one-to-one and we have about 90 students that take the cost so you'll see you in 23 and it's score differently than the SBAC or the CASP. Level one is limited understanding, level two is the foundational understanding, and level three the student is showing an understanding of those standards. One more. Oh, this is where I, okay. Okay, and the supports in place for increased achievement for students in special education. We do provide supplemental programs like I-SPIRE, I-READY, READY Common Core, and some other programs based on teacher recommendation and research. And then there's also programs that the teachers use like the Gold Book and Pathways that help them select the... Essential standards and then how they're scaffolded back for students that are

076not yet meeting grade level standards in behavior We have a program specialist specifically for behavior that's working with all of our teachers, our school psychologists, and training instructional assistants as well in the area of behavior. During our SPED teacher collaboration, we really try to balance out the focus on instruction versus procedures. You know, there's a lot of compliance that goes along with special education, so we try to balance that time. This year we are focusing on the writing support, so our teachers will participate in teacher training with their gen ed peers and then during collaboration talk about how we provide accommodations or how we modify in our specialized settings. And then this year we do want to start with a CAU data reflection. We haven't done that previously as a district-wide group, so we'll start

077that this year with our Montsevier Extensive Support Needs teachers. We're also focusing on Least Restrictive Environment this year through our compliance and improvement monitoring process. This is one of the areas or the prioritized area of need that we are focusing on in special education. It will be it is and will be a collaborative effort between our gen ed and special ed partners We really want to make decisions based on data. It will be an ongoing study, but we're looking at how we Include our students with special needs in gen ed more of the time in you know studies have shown that the more time we spend in gen ed the better our academic achievement is so we just want to make sure that we are providing our students with that opportunity and making sure that

078our teachers are prepared to support our students in those gen ed settings. Question for you, Dr. Clark. As mentioned earlier, we talked about the middle schools and kind of the work, the plan that we have moving forward. And I know one of the comments were there's a higher number of students with special needs at one of the schools. Are we having a plan to, how are we addressing that too as well? What kind of additional support we may need that maybe the other two do not need and what you need from us and or supports to support that school? Yes, and in both settings too. We have three extensive support needs classes on the campus as well as for mom-mod teachers. So yes, in both. So moving forward, you're looking at probably more of an

079inclusion with the students. And the core classes, or are you looking at just, which classes are you looking at? We will. I mean, unless you're just experimenting. Well, it's case by case, right? Because it's individualized per student. But there will be students that are appropriately served in the gen ed classes, in core classes. Some will be only elective courses. Some will just be in PE. But there's a possibility in every course. Okay. All right. Thank you. And these are only mod to severe? Or are these all special ed? The cost scores are only mod to severe. And mod to severe are within the regular middle schools? So we have those classes at Hillview and at Granada. Great. Thank you. I'm going to continue to report. I need to go back one too? Yep, just if

080you don't mind, Dr. Patterson, going back. I'm going to continue to report and maybe answer a couple of the questions around English learners and the work that we're doing this year to really progress, monitor, and set specific goals for all of our English learners, as well as our students in special education. We do notice, if you did look at their, which you just did, I apologize, if you look closely at the special education. scores on the CASF assessment for those students who are taking the CASF assessment, not necessarily the CAW, but the CASF assessment in ELA and math and our English learners in ELA and math, you will see a significant underperformance in both of these groups. So both of these are big areas of focus for our principals and our instructional leadership teams. development,

081ongoing focus collaboration, and giving them the right data when they need it so that we can be sure that we're progress monitoring in a timely manner. So I just want to continue the conversation around our English learners because our English learners, as I mentioned before, also take the ELPAC, which assesses their language proficiency in English every single year. So yes, they take the math and the ELA CASF assessment if they're in grades three through eight. Every year in the state of California and of course as well as in East Whittier. So this particular slide shows us the number of students that were assessed. And four. So our goal is to always have as many students as possible reach that level four, which means they are fully developed in the area of English and as measured

082by this assessment. In order for students to reclassify, they must score at least a four and only a four on the ELPAC. So this test is very high stakes. This really determines their future trajectory and how their... access to elective courses at middle schools. So it's important that we work very hard early, early on, and are very diligent in getting our students to that four so that they are eligible to reclassify. So you can see not only the percentage of students in this on the left-hand side, but on the right-hand side, you can see how many students, the number of students who scored at each level. Thank you, Dr. Patterson. held responsible not only by the state of California for the number of students who are the percentage of students who take the ELPAC, but

083also how many increase at least one level. Because although it does take several years, research shows to acquire a new language, so we can't expect that every student become proficient in a year. The state of California holds us accountable for having students increase one level as measured by the ELPAC. every year. So this shows us how many students scored or the percentage of students who progressed at least one level in East Whittier, again, TK through eighth grade. You can see 47.2% of our students scored or increased by at least one level. So that is one part of the English Learner Progress Indicator. on the California school dashboard. On the next slide is the second part, and that's how many students we actually reclassified. So our English Learner Indicator is a combination of both how many

084students increased one level on that ELPAC, but then also how many students we reclassified in East Whittier. The important thing to note is that this incorporates all of our students. TK through eight. So we look and we see that we reclassified 140 students last year or 21% of our English learners. That's a really good statistic. That's something we're very proud of. And that means that we're reclassifying most students early. So then again, they can continue on with success in school. However, we don't want to mask the under the performance of our students who remain in the English learner program or identified as English learners. which is why we're looking at this this year with our principals and our school staffs and instructional leadership teams with both their performance on the CASP assessment and their academics

085towards meeting grade level standards as well as their ELPAC assessment results as well. So this year, this is a big focus for us. And you asked before about the timeliness of interventions. Interventions are very important to us. We know what we do all day long is the most important. So making sure that we're giving our instructional leadership teams and our grade level teams and department teams time to have quality data analysis and reflection on that data, but then also time to plan for best practices within that PLC Plus model with taking in mind. for taking putting forth first the priority on our English learners and students in special education as we see this underperformance in both of those groups. So this year our goals in this student achievement will really be around those two groups.

086So we are really focusing again on giving really good professional development. This last month we had a Thursday professional development session around English learners where our EL leads worked very closely with Ms. Roman in our office. to provide a data timely data for every teacher in every classroom about who English learners are what their levels are and then how to support them given their language needs we have our we have our our wonderful instructional coach team a lot of different resources that we can provide. And then, of course, working really closely with our wonderful English learner families, whether it be at the school site or district level, to be sure that we're partnering with them and constantly outreaching to them. Principals are all planning right now all of their after-school interventions, so we know we

087have built-in interventions, like Dr. Aldana mentioned, from our intervention specialists or TOSAs during the school day. However, after school, we will prioritize our English learners to be part of our after-school interventions first. We are at the close of cycle one. Here, this coming, right around now, we're here this week, potentially. I forgot the actual day. However, we are at that place now where we're looking at that cycle one data coming in and putting together intervention programs at every school site, utilizing ELOP funds for after-school interventions. That was it? Yeah. Thank you very much. Any questions? I just have one. I don't seem to shut up today, huh? So Ms. Dabbs did bring up a good point, and that was with ELL learners and even SPED learners when they're trying to decipher the mathematical problems. I

088mean, I have issues with my own daughter. So how do you guys plan to kind of conquer and attack that? And how do you also plan to get parents involved? Because I mean, parents were also. involved aside from the resources that the school provides. What do you guys have? So I just want to talk a little bit about the tier one supports that we have been really intentional about in the last year and a half. And this year, last year, we really focused primarily with the work around priority standards, redesigning our pacing and assessments for every cycle at the elementary level. And you can see there were some really positive growth in performance around in mathematics last year. And then we're also now doing that work again in middle school this year. Our middle school

089teams are working very closely with our instructional coach. They worked in committees last year leading up to this year to launch that work to really study carefully those instructional practices in the area of math that are highly effective in teaching the standards of mathematical practices. We know that the work that our students are asked to do within the CASP math is incredibly rigorous. We are still making some of those instructional shifts to meet the demands of what they are being asked to do and those abstract skills that they are asked to really demonstrate on the CASP assessment. So really looking closely at our cycle assessment data and adjusting our instruction, offering support, whether it be after school or interventions, and then also thinking about just the types of tasks we're asking. in the classroom and

090aligning them closely with the with the cast system we have access to some some resources that our teachers are putting put into our assessment calendar in the area of those cast items why am i blanking on the yeah no but the The IABs, thank you. The IABs, the interim assessment blocks are wonderful tools for our teachers to then expose our students to the depth of questions and the analytics that they need to be able to do. for their success on the math assessments now. Correct. And I agree with all of that. I just can't wrap my head around having a 60% target rate before you actually start doing something. I understand that the resources and everything, how the foundation works, everything that you are doing for them. when you wait for that student to fall

091down, doesn't matter what area or what label they are on. When we start at 60% and kind of, and just, you know, what. What do we do then? So, Mrs. Carrera, I believe what I heard you ask was when do we notify parents? And that's the specific board policy that we have that calls in what Dr. Aldana said was that it's in danger of failing. So the board policy that you have suggested, 5121, which will be the last time we left that as a governance team, was to get the feedback from our teachers through the grading committee. And once they give their feedback to bring that back, because at that time you were putting out numbers around 70%, 72%. So that will be something that the board can get into that particular definition of a

092potential number should they do that. What Dr. Aldana mentioned is our practice of notification of teachers, but I want to be very clear. That doesn't mean that's when teachers start to intervene. We have many other ways in which we intervene, which is what Dr. Aceves mentioned with Tier 1 support. Thank you. Really looking at that cycle assessment data, getting them in quick, offering those interventions either before school, after school, during the day. Okay. Anything else? Go ahead. I do. I just want to thank Dr. Aceves, Mrs. Clark. Dr. Aldana and Ms. Ramos, I want to thank you for this presentation. It's very detailed and you did as much of a deep dive as you can in the short period of time that you've been allowed. Thank you so much for answering all of our questions.

093We are obviously not attached to a classroom or to the classroom ongoings. So this is really important for us to have information ongoing in terms of how our students are succeeding and how our teachers are being supported as well as our parents and families. So thank you ladies for all your hard work. NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU VERY MUCH AS WELL. NEW SPEAKER NOW WE'RE GOING TO MOVE ON TO ITEM NO. 2 WILLIAMS QUARTERLY REPORT ON UNIFORM COMPLAINTS. NEW SPEAKER WE HAVE NONE. NEW SPEAKER GOOD TO HEAR. NEW SPEAKER MOVE ON TO ITEM NO. 3 2022-23 ATTENDANCE RATES. NEW SPEAKER DO WE HAVE A PRESENTATION ON THIS? NEW SPEAKER NO, WE DO NOT HAVE A PRESENTATION. We want to this is just one of those type those annual items that we bring to the board just

094so that you can see what the trajectory of attendance looks like and as Mr. Volkman had mentioned, you know, we see different attendance patterns based upon COVID and its lasting impact even though the regulations have been lessened. I know it does not mean that we are not feeling the impact of COVID and COVID symptoms across our district. That's why you see so many independent study. EWAs on the board agenda as well. Questions on this? Okay. And I know there's the campaign and try to really get them out and try to give students here and we all know how important that is. So yeah, we really like to see them get up to the pre-pandemic numbers because we were, you know, 97s, 98s. They were amazing numbers. And we know the percent is costly. Each percent

095district-wide is costly. So whatever our parents can do. schools and students to get themselves to school, of course, healthy, not if you're sick, but it benefits everyone. That was the delicate balance of trying to talk about the importance of attendance because our chronic absentee numbers are really, really high. But once again, it's balancing the whole idea of attendance and healthy attendance. So that is the delicate balance. Any questions on this? Okay, thank you very much. Let's go item number four first reading of board policy 1113 district and school websites questions You guys just change I'm sorry. No, I was gonna call you go ahead. This one just changed Websites you guys just made it into one word and added I'm like, yeah. I'm sorry, what's the question? Yeah, I'm looking at it, and I said,

096you guys just changed the word websites and added a few. Now, I did have about the, you know at the bottom where it says state and description, all of that? Is that new? I'm sorry, what page are you on? I'm on page two towards the bottom where it says state and description. State and description. And then it says, I'm assuming the BUS stands for business. And maybe professional code. It could be something different. I don't know. Right there. Right there. It's in front of you, Mark. Oh, so when you're explaining the head code, that's what I mean. If it's a state code. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So. Business and professional code. No, it's, no, I haven't seen it before. So I was just curious, you know, before I would only look like

097at head code and it wasn't like described. So this is going to be new. that we're going to be using? No, there are different policies that have different types of codes that are attached to them. And that's why we use CSBA, because CSBA does go through all the legal pieces. So the only things that have been added to this particular code, so business and professional code, all of those that are not underlined have been in there for quite some time. The ones that we're adding is the civic code with California Age Appropriate Design Code Act, and then those two ed codes. And then the Civil Rights Department publication on sexual harassment is another reference. And then the District Police Security Department, which is another reference of policy. But that's it. So all of these have

098existed. These all exist in our current policy. OK. Maybe they were single-faced when I saw them. OK. OK. OK. Any other questions? Okay, if not you can bring this back for a second reading. Okay. Move on to item number five first reading of exhibit 1 1 1 1 3 district and school websites discussion The title changed right from district to materials required to be posted We we have what was the changes on this? It says materials required to be posted on district website So that so once again the majority of these things have already been in our particular policy the only changes to that is that fact that If the board does approve this after the second reading, then we have to do all the things that are listed there under change of practice, which

099means we need to put the COVID-19 testing plan, the interim expenditure reports for the use of learning recovery emergency funds. And then we also have to start digitizing mental health posters and distribute it online to students, and then the rest of what it says. Yeah, I agree. I mean, those are things that should be going through. Yeah, they're on there. Question, who is the district? I'm guessing maybe it's possibly Jason, but the monitors, the school website, making sure that they are not posting anything that shouldn't be on there or principals have been trained. So the principals are the ones that are responsible for their own school websites. A lot of that information does cascade down from our district website, but there is a lead at each one of the elementary schools who might be the

100ones pushing things. THE DISTRICT WIDE CAN ACCESS THE INDIVIDUAL SCHOOL AND CHANGE ITEMS. ANY OTHER QUESTIONS? WE DON'T GO THROUGH EDLEO. WE HAVE AN ADMINISTRATOR WHO ADMINISTRATES IT. EACH ONE OF THE WE GO THROUGH EDLEO FOR CERTAIN THINGS THAT ARE HARD CODED BUT THE MAJORITY OF THE THINGS ANTONIO WILL CHANGE ON THE BACK END OR THE SITE. HE'S THE ADMINISTRATOR FOR EAST WHITTER. CORRECT. GOT YOU. THANK YOU. DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION, SIDA? NO. OKAY. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Bring this back for a second reading. We're going to move on to item number six, board policy 3555, nutrition programs compliance. All right. Discussion. Okay. So the significant change to that is when there's a complaint, where do we mail the complaint? So it basically goes to the CDE and to the California

101Department of Agriculture. Do we? Uh-huh. Okay. Oh, that's a typo. So we can take care of that. We can write that down, Belinda. There's a typo on page three with the quotations. Under number three. Does that need to come back as the second read? Okay. It's only changes of material. Context. Yeah. All right. Any other questions on this? Okay, the move so we can bring this back for a second reading to item number seven first reading of work policy 4030 non-discrimination in employment Discussion like only the employers that was yes sexual Can you tell me where you are okay, so it's somewhere in there does it make a difference words It's fine. Yes. Yes, and then it is it also fine if the government code If it's listed already in the paragraph along with the

102CCR or whatever, is it repetitive? Does it have to be listed again at the bottom? We can do anything that the board wishes us to do. Like I said before, we really look, just for clarification, when we're looking through the CSBA board policies, we are trusting that CSBA is providing us the best guidance because we do spend a significant amount of money to have them. The board can make any changes really to any of these board policies that you want. So if you as a board find things redundant or you even want philosophy change, we can absolutely do that. So I'm happy to take out anything that you would like to. Right, so some of these things are just, you know, they're like you guys have said this many times. where this board might be

103on the same page with certain things. We never know what's going to come down the road. So this is this is this is Ed code required types of things that need to be included so that people who make different decisions with their reproductive health are not penalized. OK. Anything else? All right, see now we go ahead and bring this back for a second reading move on to item number eight first reading or board policy 41 1 2.2 certification All right discussion. You guys are quiet today Okay, and anything Okay, I've seen has no Questions we're gonna go ahead and bring that back for a second reading move on to item number nine first reading of exhibit 41 1 2.9 employee notifications. So you are going to see, and a couple of board members did make

104a comment that I did not put these in numerical order. We tried to clump them by 4,000s, 3,000s, 5,000s, and 6,000s, but in the future, I will make sure that I put them in the descending order like we're used to. So that was my fault. I apologize. But it doesn't change the substance of any of these. They're all the same. So this one, these next several ones are kind of always confusing because you have a 40-100, a 40-200, and a 40-300. So you would have to specifically look for one particular change in language because one deals with admin. One deals with classified and one deals with certificated, but they are all essentially the same policy. It's just each one of those codes 4041 42 and 43 different deal with a different employee group Thank you,

105Mr. Chiaga. And Dr. Patterson, we've been clear to adjust this based on the new law that came into effect with regard to the notification of classified employees. All of these are, yeah. Okay, thank you. Okay, anything else? Okay, so we're going to go ahead and bring that one back for a second reading. Then move on to item 10, first reading of exhibit 42.12.9, employee notifications. This is our other group. Any other questions? Okay, so go ahead and move that one to a second reading. And then item number 11, first reading of exhibit 4312.9, employee notification. And our last group here. Any questions on this one? Okay, I see that there's none. I'm going to go ahead and bring that one back for a second reading as well. Then move on to item number 12, first

106reading of board policy 4218, dismissal, suspension, disciplinary action. Questions? This one is just a safeguard. Sure. Well, the problem is, yes, yes. So the real intent of the changes for this particular policy is to make sure that if an employee was going to be terminated and they requested a hearing, that there was no action taken until the hearing occurred. Okay. Any other questions? Okay, good. We're going to go ahead and bring that for a second reading. Move on to item number 13, first reading of board policy 4140, bargaining units. So just as the other three above, these all deal with admin, classified, and personnel. And this is basically saying that there will be penalties levied if any administrator attempts to dissuade people from joining an association. Any questions? Okay, we'll bring this one back for

107a second reading. Move item 14, first reading of board policy, 4240, bargaining units. Questions? We can bring that one back to our second reading. And then item number 15, first reading board policy, 4340 bargaining units. This is our third group. Questions? Okay, thank you. Go ahead and bring that back for a second reading. Item number 16, first reading of board policy, 5141.5 mental health. All righty here. And any questions on this? Yeah, so what about mental health like like the expenses we pay for like the counselors and stuff at the schools or what? So this is specifically talking about requirements and how we remember we had talked about how you saw the signs at your school about how to access this so these last two bullets right here where it says it requires districts to

108notify students parents and guardians twice a year requires each school site serving students in six through eight to create a mental poster that's why I did a double check with you to say hey you see these right you see these right and so she did see this any other okay we're gonna go ahead and bring that back for a second reading item number 17 first reading of board policy 51 45.6 parent guardian notifications Questions? So this particular policy just calls out the ways in which people who have particular impairments might be able to access our policy. So there's equity in the ways in which they can view these materials. And does they report that to the site team? Do they have to? What's the notification right the parent has to do? I didn't read that

109part. I'm guessing they report it to their case care. Questions? Okay, thank you very much. We can bring that one back. Move on to item number 18, first reading of exhibit 5145.6, parent garden notifications. Questions? I see all the list of all the notifications there. So are these the only ones or this is the first batch or you don't? These are just based upon the new laws and requirements at the time that this was provided. Okay. Any other questions on that? Okay, thank you. We can go ahead and bring that back. Where are you at? Move on to item number 19, first reading of board policy 5131.2, bullying. Questions? So staff had the opportunity to work very closely with Mrs. Carrera on updating some of this language based upon some concerns that were voiced at

110a previous meeting. So we tried to... Make all of those changes and make it the language consistent with you know our practices and policies Any other questions, yeah, mr. Chagat does this include bullying on social media? Uh-huh. That was one of the additions I'm trying to see what paragraph is that? Is it in the first paragraph? It's right there. It was not new language We had cyberbullying in there as well already. So that's why it's not under. You're looking at the underlying portion. Right. Cyberbullying is in there. It isn't. It is in there. It is. That's where I'm. If you look at the screen. Oh, I see. Thank you. Got it. Okay. Okay. Any questions? Other questions? Thank you very much. We're going to bring that one back for a second reading. Move on to

111item number 20. First reading of board policy 6159.2 non-public. Non-secretarian school and agency services for special education. Questions on this one? Okay, we'll go ahead and bring that one back for a second reading. We're going to move on to item 21, first reading of board policy 6173.4, education for American Indian students. I do have a question. Is there a reason why it says American Indian and not Native American? 100%. So I did look into that because I was surprised by that terminology. But that is how Latino, Latina, Latinx, there's differences in that community versus Hispanic and so forth. There is a movement at the current time where certain groups identify with American Indian versus Native American. So this is actually why that language is actually in there. OK, thanks for the clarification. Any questions? I

112know there's more state law, too. There was school. Yeah, so it was just, I had the same exact reaction when we were reviewing this in cabinet. And there's also still grants out there that call out just Indian grant. So there's just different things catch up at different times. Using the old vernacular, they got to get updated. Any other discussion on this one? Okay, we go ahead this will be brought back as well item number 22 first reading of board policy 6173 education for homeless children questions on this yes So those are all part of our our enrollment process, but dr. Savies could you give a little bit more clarity to that? What is that targeted homeless number for our district yeah, you know the number yeah You would know I know I have it because

113you told me to be prepared for it. So it was that 244 students are considered homeless in our district, correct? In one of those various categories that Dr. Aceves mentioned. So Dr. Patterson with the $20,000 that we are going to receive shortly There's four criteria for how it can be spent. So my question is do we one of them is to be able to provide a motel stay? Dr. Gonzalez and Mr. Renteria had talked about finding ways to get food vouchers, hotel vouchers, and things that are just necessities for many of our families. So we do get requests. Oh yeah, absolutely. And now we'll have at least temporarily. A little bit more money, yes. Thank you and thanks again for getting that money, Ms. Debs. GO AHEAD AND BRING THAT ONE BACK AND MOVE ON

114TO ITEM 23, FIRST READING OF BOARD POLICY 6173.1, EDUCATION FOR FOSTER YOUTH. QUESTIONS? THIS WAS MORE STYLISTIC THAN ANYTHING. MOVING IT FROM THE FRONT, I MEAN, TOWARDS THE BEGINNING OF THE POLICY. ANYTHING? DO WE HAVE THE DATA AS WE DO FOR HOMELESS? YES. I DON'T WANT TO PRESSURE YOU. 68. 68. CORRECT. THANK YOU. I think Mr. Urtiaga, he knew that question was going to come up when we met. Okay, any other? All right, so we'll go ahead and bring that one back. We're almost getting through this. Let's see, item number 24, first reading of board policy 6177, summer learning programs. Okay, questions? Let's just give us greater flexibility with the utilization of ELOP, but we don't really have a big problem spending ELOP. And it's nice to be able to have... Wholesome variety of summer

115programs that we can offer our students. So looking forward to that again this upcoming year Okay, any questions? Is there any um, is there any information from the state or from the governor's office as to if ELOP will be re- Allocated? The reason I'm smiling at you is because every time we talk about ELOP, Ms. Sorrell and her team always put an asterisk because they will not commit to what I'm willing to commit to. So that's why she's the CBO and I'm the superintendent. So that we don't know, but we are very, very, very confident that it's going to come. Awesome. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you very much. We'll go ahead and bring that one back. Move on to item 25. First reading of board policy 9270, conflict of interest. Okay. Questions? Anything

116else? All right. I'm going to go ahead and bring that back for our second reading. Item number 26, first reading of board policy by law 9320, meetings and notices. Questions? No more meetings or anything? Well, you guys not making these guys work hard tonight, are you? All right. How long it took to put 23 board policies? Yeah. Okay. They want to get you in there. In and out. Okay. So it looks like no questions. We are going to move this to second reading. Move on to item 27. First reading of board policy 9322 agenda meeting materials. Okay. Questions? Even though I still print out some of the, I still bring out just sometimes specific stuff. Still not 100% there yet, even though. Anything beyond that? Okay, we're going to bring that one back. Item 28,

117request to approve change order number three for the Granada Middle School Gym HVAC project submitted by the Nazarian Group. I move the recommendation of the superintendent of the Board of Education to approve change order number three for Granada Middle School gym HVAC project submitted by the Nazarian group. I have a question. One second real quick, please. Okay, moved by Ms. D'Aparizzo, seconded by Ms. Kennedy. Go ahead. I just wanted to say that's just the air conditioning, right? That's just the air conditioning in the office? Correct. Okay. Questions on that? I know your ears perked up because it was Granada. You want to talk about the ? It was just the same issue we had run into some of the playgrounds with the weight of these materials and the location in which they were being placed.

118Just needed to have a greater compaction. THE STRONGER FOUNDATION TO HOLD THE WEIGHT OF THE AC UNITS. ANYTHING ELSE? I KNOW YOU GAVE ME THE DATE LAST TIME. IS IT OCTOBER? NO. WHAT DATE DID YOU GIVE ME? I HAVE TO LOOK BACK. THEY HAVE HEAT TOO. I'LL GET YOU AN ANSWER BY THE END OF THE BOARD MEETING. I'M SURE OUR MIDDLE SCHOOL SCHOOL P.E. TEACHERS AND STAFF ARE GOING TO BE VERY HAPPY WITH HEAT AND AC. in the gym. I believe Scott's is turning on tomorrow or Wednesday. So they're so I'll have the new AC smell until it burns up. We haven't turned it on for a while or the heater at least. Okay, so any other questions? We're going to go ahead and call for a vote. Ms. Guzman? Ms. Carrera? Yes. Ms. Dabbs?

119Yes. Ms. Kennedy? Yes. Mr. Aparicio? Yes. And I vote yes. The motion is unanimously approved. Item number 29. I move the recommendation of the superintendent at the Board of Education, adopt resolution number 7-23-24, sufficiency of instructional materials provided by the East Wheeler City School District. Can I get a second? Second. Okay, moved by Ms. Aparicio, seconded by Ms. Carrera. Questions? Does this include paper? I'm sorry? Does this include paper? Well, if the material is in paper, yes. I'm just asking. Okay. Any other questions? No, it's not a joke. The schools are running out of paper. The schools are not running out of paper. Like line paper or like copy paper? Yeah, like copy paper. Yeah, copy paper. Scott Avenue. So just Scott Avenue. Each school is given a particular budget that they determine what their

120needs are. For a long-standing tradition, Scott Avenue PTA has asked the community for copy paper to engage in their work. I would also like to point out that we do have 101 Chromebooks from kindergarten all the way through eighth grade. But, you know, Ms. Ritke is aware that this has come up. And so, you know, that will be some potential conversations with their site. But in my opinion, as the superintendent, each school has the appropriate money in order to be able to do what they need to do. And they do not spend all of their funds every year. I believe you, but like I said, at the PT, their PT told me that. You actually ran out of paper? Oh, yeah. I'll have Mrs. Rickey circle back with her. So, Dr. Aceves, could you reach

121out to Mrs. Rickey and let her know that this came up at the board meeting as well? And just to figure out if there's anything else that we can do to support them? Thank you. That is not the only school. I was also telling her, you know, I thought it was a good idea to cut back on paper. I gave a three. And she was on board with that, but still, we were asking for paper. Any other questions? Okay, thank you very much. We're gonna go ahead and call for a vote. Ms. Guzman? Yes. Ms. Carrera? Yes. Ms. Debs? Yes. Ms. Kennedy? Yes. Ms. Jarparese? Yes. And I vote yes. The motion is approved unanimously. I move on to item number 30. I move the recommendation of the superintendent, the Board of Education approved change

122order number three for elementary school MPR HVAC project, beta package number two, submitted by Beta Investments and Contracts Incorporated. Any a second all right move by mr. Paris seal seconded by his Kennedy discussion No, it's that's total Yes 7200 total yeah Anymore, okay. Okay. So we're gonna go ahead and call for a vote. Miss Guzman. Yes, miss Carrera. Yes, miss Debs. Yes, miss Kennedy Mr. Apparicio. Yes, and I vote. Yes motion is also approved unanimously item number 31 And with the recommendation of the superintendent that resolution number 8-23-24 support of applications for eligibility determination and funding designation of authorized district representatives be adopted by the board of education as submitted. Okay moved by Mr. Aparicio seconded by Ms. Kennedy. Discussion? So these next two items are related to our Considering going out for a facilities

123bond in 2024, without these two particular items, we cannot continue the work to explore the idea of going out for a bond. We are scheduled to have our bond consultants come out on the November 13th board meeting to be able to give a presentation to the board to give you kind of a... full rundown of what the polling numbers came back from and what they suggest given their knowledge in the field and what is going on in the area. Exciting. Any questions? Okay, let's go ahead and call for a vote. Ms. Guzman? Yes. Ms. Carrera? Yes. Ms. Depp? Yes. Ms. Kennedy? Yes. Ms. Rappaport? Yes. And I vote yes. The motion is approved unanimously. And item 32. I move the recommendation of the superintendent that resolution number 9-23-24 beyond bond authority be adopted by the

124Board of Education as submitted. Okay, move by Mr. Aparicio, seconded by Ms. Kennedy. Any questions on this? Basically saying we're going to have them do the study. Okay. Anything? I do have a question, Mr. Aparicio, and also for you, Dr. Patterson. Is it appropriate to say in the first sentence, is it appropriate that we're saying the Board of Education has determined the school facilities within the district need to be constructed, reconstructed? This is language that is actually vetted through bond legal counsel, so this is the way in which this document needs to read. Interesting. Okay, thank you. Okay, any other questions? Okay, let's call for a vote. Let's go then. Yes. Ms. Correa? Yes. Ms. Debs? Yes. Ms. Kennedy? Yes. Ms. Traparese? Yes. And I vote yes. The motion is also approved unanimously. Next, we

125have the consent items. Is there any board member wishing to pull an item for a separate vote? Okay, seeing none, we're going to go ahead. Can I get an approval of the consent agenda items? I move the recommendation of the superintendent, the Board of Education, approve consent agenda items I-3 through I-12. I'll second. OK, moved by Ms. Draparejo, seconded by Ms. Carrera. Any questions on our consent items? I do. Yes. Dr. Patterson, I see that Darren Mayer is attending three virtual intelligence. Are you on? I'm sorry, where are you? I'm in the staff at Mount Muir Quest. OK. Darren Mayer is attending three virtual intelligence for teaching and learning. Is he going to bring back his learnings in a PD or how is that going to be disseminated? So as we've discussed, there's a variety

126of different ways in which we're doing it right now. Right now we're synthesizing the information and we are looking to see what the implications are for our district. We have really not had a huge... outpouring of requests for AI, but Mr. Meyer has been working with each one of the tech leads at the 13 schools in order to constantly get feedback from them of what the site needs are. He actually did a presentation at our principal meeting just to make sure that our principals knew what to look for. And he also walked everybody through the benefits of how AI and chat can help teachers. and showed them the different nuances of what it looked like to be able to provide writing exemplars, to create rubrics from the teacher perspective, and then talk to them about

127things to look for for students, and that chat GPT and AI functions are not necessarily as bad as they're made out to be if we have and are equipped with the ways in which to use them in a more intentional way rather than a plagiaristic type of way. But do you want to add anything to that? That's great. Would he then be a part of, because correct me if I'm wrong, we still have not adopted a policy with regard to AI. So would he be somebody that we would also want to include in discussions as we begin to look at adopting a policy? I mean, as soon as we would actually be waiting for CSBA to come out with some models of what that policy could look like. And you're very connected. Have you seen

128one yet from CSBA? Yeah, I haven't either. So just like we wouldn't rush into any other policy without having CSBA kind of vet through the legal aspects of a policy and the implications for that. So that's why we're tackling it from the practical side of professional learning and building the capacity of our principals and middle school teachers. And as the policy comes along, then we would obviously want to get, you know, tech lead input in terms of, you know, because CSBA policies can... either be short or exhaustive. So it kind of, where does it meet our needs? Because we also don't want to put something into place that's applicable to a unified school district or to Whittier Union High School district. But in lieu of that, are you prepared to take case-by-case issues that might

129come up? Okay. Okay. Thank you. I had a question on number eight. Number eight. The credential waiver? Yes. Yes. It says employees. Do we miss someone by any chance? It's just a typo, Dr. Vargas. Oh, I'm sorry. That number eight where it says approval of credential waiver, where it reads following certificate employees. It says employees, and we only have one person listed. I'm not sure if we missed maybe one employee. I think I missed the plural. Oh. I apologize. Oh, not a problem. I'm sorry. OK. I just had a question on the minutes. OK, yes, go ahead. Yes, go ahead. You know, I don't remember ever seeing this for you on the closed session. Is that OK? Oh, yeah. We did it in actual policy because this is an actual lawsuit that was filed in

130court. Because normally all of our things are anonymous in some ways, but this is a suit brought against us by this individual. I tried to get them not to call me doctor. Still questionable. Thanks to us. Any other questions? Okay, let's go ahead and get a vote on the consent items. Ms. Guzman? Yes. Ms. Carrera? Yes. Ms. Debs? Yes. Ms. Kennedy? Yes. Ms. Traparese? Yes. And I vote yes. The consent agenda is approved unanimously. And before we adjourn, do we have anything we need to share, Ms. Debs? Close out? I just want to say thank you to everybody for staying and for giving us your time and your attention and also to our folks that are on YouTube. We take our work very seriously here and we're very dedicated and committed to the district, to

131the community, to the teachers and the parents and most especially the children of our district. So thank you so much. I just want everybody to know that this weekend I'll be riding my bike for multiple sclerosis. And I'm very proud to put Ms. Carrera's name on my bib because that's a disease in that same class. So I'm going to have her and anybody that donated to this cause that has any kind of a, like has MS or anything close like Ms. Carrera, I will write their name on my bib. So that's what I'm doing. And two days, 50-some miles per day. 47 being the next state total of 100 miles. And it's, like I said, not a bit about me. It's about the people that cannot pedal and cannot make that bike ride. And that's

132why I do it. Thank you very much for that. I appreciate all that you're doing with that. I'm pretty sure Ms. Carrava loaned her picture up there. You put it on the front of your bike right there. I should have brought her picture and put it up there. Right there on your hat or something. OK, thank you. Sarah. Sarah. Do you have anything you want to share? Thank you all for coming. Have a great day. Ms. Greer? Same thing. Thank you. Thank you, Christine. I'm sorry. Thank you, Ms. Kennedy. I really appreciate that. Yeah, just thank you for sticking around, all the YouTubers that are out there, you know, teachers, everything, having it, keep doing, keep rocking it. You guys are doing a phenomenal job. Same thing with you, Mr. Patterson, to the board, everybody,

133keep it up. Okay, thank you. Mr. I'M GOOD EVENING. I WISH EVERYONE A HAPPY GOOD EVENING. LOOKING FORWARD TO ALL THOSE HARVEST FESTS AND CELEBRATIONS COMING UP SOON. I'M GOING TO GO AHEAD AND ASK FOR THE NEXT BOARD MEETING IS OCTOBER 23RD. CAN I GET A MOTION TO ADJOURN THE MEETING? MOVED TO ADJOURN. MOVED BY MS. CARRERA. SECONDED BY MR. ARPARICIO TO ADJOURN. GO FOR YOUR VOTE. MS. GUZMAN. YES. MS. CARRERA. YES. MS. DEBBS. YES. MS. KENNEDY. YES. MR. ARPARICIO. YES. And I vote yes. The motion is approved to adjourn the meeting at 8.15 PM. Have a great evening, everyone.