001Good evening. It's 5 o'clock p.m. And I'd like to call the January 14th, 2026 regular Board of Education meeting of the Englewood Unified School District to order. And I'd like to start with the Pledge of Allegiance. We'll ask Student Board Member Amaya Hazard to please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Ms. Hazard. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Hazard. I'm going to ask Ms. Zambrano, would you please call the roll? Board President Dr. Carlos McGee. Present. Board Vice President Mr. Brandon Myers. Present. Board Member Mrs. Joyce Randall. Present. Board Member Ms. Margaret Turner Evans. Board Member Mr. Ernesto Castillo. Present. Student board member, Ms. Amaya hazard. Present. Dr. James Morris. Present. Dr. Bernadette Lucas. Present. Dr. Brian coffee. Present. Mr. Rafael Guzman. Present. Please be informed that Spanish language interpretation is available during this meeting.
002Thank you very much, Ms. Imbrano. Moving on to approval of the agenda. I hereby approve the agenda with one modification under County Administrator's Item No. E2, Board Policy 5131.8, Mobile Communications. The proposed modifications are rescinded and we're going to... keep the policy as currently modified. It was just modified correctly last month. So it's just removing that item from the board policies. Otherwise the agenda is approved. Moving on to report out of closed section session actions in closed session. County administrator approved the following cases. Oh, H case number two zero two five zero eight zero nine six one. OAH Case 202-5090729. OAH Case 202-5091-023. OAH Case. Additionally, in closed session, county administrator took action to reject a skip claim 2513919. And with that, we're going to take just a moment to do very, very special recognitions.
003As you may know, this is school board member appreciation month. a time to honor the incredible leaders who serve our schools, students, and community with passion and commitment. Today, we're proud to recognize the following Board of Education members for their selfless contribution. Board President Dr. Carlos McGee, Trustee Area 2. Board Vice President Mr. Brandon Myers, Trustee Area 3. Board Member Mrs. Joyce Randall, Trustee Area 1. Board Member Mrs. Margaret Turner-Evans, Trustee Area 4, and Board Member Mr. Ernesto Castillo, Trustee Area 5. To celebrate their efforts, students from each trustee area will have an opportunity to recognize the board member. Please join us in welcoming our students. And we'll begin first with a student from La Tijera School. President McGee, my name is Delilah Holmes, and I'm in the eighth grade at LaTierre. I salute you
004for the school board member appreciation month because an excellent public education system is vital for the quality of life for all English students and vice principal Myers. My name is Jakari Cox. I am in the sixth grade at Bennett Q. I salute you this school board member appreciation because of the board education members are committed to children. We believe that all children can be successful learners and the best education is tailored to individual needs of each student and. And our next student is from Kelso. Board Member Randall, my name is Bishop Diaz. I am in the fifth grade at Kelso. I salute you, this school board member appreciation month. because Board of Education members continue to advocate to the best serve the children in our community each and every day. And we salute you for
005your service. Happy Board Member Appreciation Month. Board Member Evans, my name is Shauna Splana. I am in the 12th grade at City Honors. I salute you, this school board member, Appreciation Month because our Board of Education continues to act to ensure our academic, social, emotional, physical, and mental health needs are met so we can become our best selves. Thank you. And our student from Oak Street is next. Board Member Castillo, my name is Rozzy Canzo. I am in the 7th grade at Oak Street. I salute you to school board membership appreciation month because board of education members work closely with parents, school staff, education professionals, and other community members to create the healthiest environments possible where all students can thrive. And we salute you for your services. Happy board appreciation month. And maybe we could
006have all of our school board members and students together for a group photo. four members oh And we missed Mr. Myers in the photo because his student went to the parking lot too fast. And I think he was trying to find the student. So thank you. Thank you all. I know the school board members would all say words in a presentation from a student means the world to a school board member. Did you want to make any closing comments, President McGee? I think you said it all, and I think I speak for every last one of the board members. What we do here is really all about our students and our community, and to be recognized today publicly, it just means a lot. It means you see us, and we definitely see you, and we
007say thank you, all of us. Thank you. Thank you. And now we're going to take a moment to honor our student school board member. And I'm going to ask Mrs. Alice Grigsby, former Board of Education member, Board of Education member, to come to the podium. Mrs. Grigsby. It's my pleasure today to recognize your student board member. I am a member of the... National Sorority of Phi Delta Kappa. This is a professional organization of women in the field of education. They have a three-point program which stands for Youth, Education, and Service. Annually, the group recognizes a person in the community who is making a significant contribution. In December of 2025, We recognize two students here in the Inglewood Unified School District, Patrick Frues and Amaya Hazard. Ms. Hazard could not be present, so we were pleased
008that we were given an opportunity today to make this presentation in front of the board and the members of the community to recognize her service. So if you would join me, please. We have a plaque presented by the Delta Kappa Chapter, presented to Ms. Amaya Hazard in recognition of your unwavering commitment and commitment to service. It was presented by Ms. Barbara Satterfield, our president. And I'm glad to have two other members with me today to make this presentation to you, Ms. Hazard. We also want to acknowledge a recognition that was received for you from Ms. Gloria Gray, Councilwoman from District 1. I will not read the proclamation, but it is a commemoration of your service to the community. And lastly, our chapter wanted to give you something special to say keep on soaring. And so
009this little red envelope says keep on soaring. And lastly, because you are special, these flowers are for you. I'm sorry, let's make some noise for Maya Hazard. Thank you so much, Mrs. Grigsby, and congratulations, Student Board Member Hazard. We'll move on now to reports and presentations. Our first presentation this evening is the 2025 school accountability, sometimes called SARC. presentation by dr bernadette c lucas assistant superintendent of educational services dr lucas will turn it over to you thank you so much dr morris good evening board president vice president esteemed board members cabinet members and the community this presentation is very important they are on as dr morris indicated the school of accountability report cards there's some points i usually don't read my text but there's some points i don't want to miss This is an extremely
010important tool to ensure transparency for our community around the SARCs. It provides family, staff, and community members with clear, transparent information about our schools, including... student achievement, learning conditions, staffing and resources. Dr. Goolsbee will go over that in just a second. The purpose of the Sark is to ensure accountability, that the community can hold us accountable for that which we have committed to do for its children. By sharing this information openly, we affirm our commitment to transparency, equity, continuous improvement and high quality education for every single student in Englewood, unified by name and by need. With that, I would like to bring up Dr. Donyell Goolsbee. who has led this effort with tremendous, you can come on up, Dr. Goolsby, with tremendous acumen. I would also like to thank our school site principals who worked
011very hard on this. Dr. Coffey for the information from human resources, Mr. Rafael Guzman for the information that came from business services. So with that, I'll turn the mic over to Dr. Goolsby. All right. It is that time of year again for us to approve our school accountability report cards from all of our campuses. And this would be the first year that we have the approval of the IYC campus, I.V. and Young Center, their school accountability report card. So what's included? On our report card is our demographics for our schools, our school climate information, our academic data. as well as our school completion rates, class sizes, anything that you would like to know about our campuses. Just as a reminder, our school accountability report cards are a year behind, meaning that this report card is
012for the 2024-2025 school year. So it's reflective of our schools during that time. Um, some additional information is that every year, um, uh, before February 1st, all of the schools within the, um, the state of California, um, are to take their starts to the school board for, um, approval. And that's why we're here today. Um, these report cards will be distributed electronically and available via print for our families and they will be translated into Spanish. Um, also that's our largest demographic in which we translate any of our school documents. Um, and all of that will take place after today's approval. We partner with school innovations to help us with creating a document that is user friendly for our parents. Um, currently the state of California does have an electronic system for, um, uh, posting our,
013um, our, uh, school, our, our, our starts, but it's not really user friendly. So we, we have enjoyed the partnership with, um, school innovations because the document that they help us create is really simple and user friendly and engaging for our families so we would like to continue with that partnership And here is the timeline. So we started out all the schools received their questionnaires in October, just giving them an opportunity to share all the good news that's happening out of the school sites. Um, add any data that is not available via the state of California. Um, Then they submit those items. The CDE releases data like our state CAF scores, our attendance, any other information that comes directly from the state. They release that information, and then that's compiled to go into our SARCs.
014A draft is sent to the school sites for them to review what they have submitted, and then it comes to you today. for approval And Dr. Lucas already thanked many of the departments that are responsible. And here's a listing of all the departments that support with the creation of the Sark and generating the information from the Sark. It is not an individual effort. It is a team effort from multiple departments within the unified Inglewood unified school district. So thank you again for everyone doing their parts with gathering information for this. for this document. And here's kind of like a little draft on what it looks like for the Sarks. Again, like we said, it's engaging, it's user-friendly, it has charts and graphs and simplified and easy to, user-friendly and easy to understand language. So we
015want to make sure our parents and anyone who reads it understands what's going on in our schools. And then, like I said, next steps will be translating the documents. They will go on to the website for all to view, and we will also send a copy home. And that concludes my report, unless there's any questions. President McGee. I'll defer to the board. Are there any questions or comments? You got some questions, Mr. Castillo? I do. Okay. We have a one-minute limit. Okay. That's for the new year, right? New limit. It'll be quick. I just wanted to see, I know that we're going to make these report cards available, and I know the report cards are going to show one narrative, which is based on facts and based on data, but I want to offer the
016opportunity for the community to share what they feel or what they felt when they read the report cards and see how they match it with what they're feeling at the school site. So I guess my question is, is there an opportunity for a follow-up after the report cards come out with the community at the school sites? Um, if we can talk offline about what that looks like, then maybe we can put something together. Maybe it's something we can help facilitate to just once it comes out. If there's some type of questions or some type of follow ups that they want more clarification on it, it'd be a good way to show all the good work that we're doing and all the good work that I'm brainstorming. I don't mind brainstorming. Thank you. That's all. Thank
017you, Mr Castillo. Did anyone else Thank you so much for your report and Mr. Castile. Oh, you got something more? You get a half a minute. Just quickly, I want to thank Dr. Lucas, her staff, everybody who has helped to work on this and to thank everybody, teachers who got our students prepared and to show that we're closing that achievement gap that they keep talking about. We're working on it, and thank you, Dr. Lucas, for doing that. And I want our public to know that Englewood is on the move. That's it. Thank you. Excellent. I want to commend you on such a succinct report. I know that the full-blown report is available. But for Dr. Lucas, Dr. Goolsby, all the departments have had to bring this all together. It's a huge task. And the school
018experience survey. will reflect what parents think about what's going on at the school sites in this kind of report. So I don't know that we generate a separate parent report for this. I guess it doesn't hurt to ask, but definitely the school experience survey. So the climate survey that you're referring to? Yes, we do have that. Yes. Okay, thank you so much. This is a very good report. Thank you. Thank you. Great report, Dr. Goolsbee. I have a question in regards to when we gather data and we see that an area is insufficient, are there strategies put in place on the district's behalf to try to recover where those deficits are? I'm going to refer to Dr. Lucas. Sure. No, you're the vision head. Go ahead. So that is such a great question, Mr. Meyer.
019So the LCAP answers a lot of that. So we don't wait for SART to assess these areas that we need to augment, supplement, fill in gaps. We spend the entire year identifying strategies and working with the community and staff to put the LCAP together to meet just what you're talking about. And then we spend the rest of the year, we spend a whole year assessing the impact of those strategies. So that was a really great question. Thank you. No, you're correct. And I would like to invite the board to be a part of that. Every month we have meetings with the community. You're more than welcome to jump on to the Zoom and lend your ear. Or if there's, through Dr. Lucas, setting up times to have further discussions so we can make sure we're
020getting all of our stakeholders. So we have done a better job of our students are on point. We gave a lot of feedback from our students. We get feedback from the community. We're working on setting up regular times with our teachers because they come in through the community things, but we want a separate group for them. And we would also like to get your feedback as well. I want to thank the board for such great questions and intel into what this report. Put forth this evening. So again, we just thank you For a very well-developed report Thank you. Have a good one Thank You. Dr. Goolsby moving on to our second presentation this evening This will be the cash flow presentation presented by mr. Rafael Guzman assistant superintendent of business services chief business official. Mr.
021Guzman Thank you, Dr. Morris, and good evening, Board President Dr. McGee, our Vice President Mr. Myers, board members, community. Thank you for the opportunity to present the cash flow as of November. We would have liked to include December, but we still have some actuals that are not recorded yet for the month of December, so that's what we're doing. through November. As you know, we kind of go quickly through this presentation because we do this really every month. And just for the general public, if you're tuning in for the first time, cash flow really just looks at the actual cash on hand. And it's not to be confused with our budget totals or our fund balance. It's a different tool. However, cash flow is extremely important. We have to have cash on hand in order to
022be able to. proceed with transactions. And so we do reconcile this on a monthly basis. We look at how the cash has flown throughout the year. And the main source of funding that we'd like to remind everyone is our LCFF or local control funding formula funds that come in through local revenue, state aid and EPA. So those are the funding sources that come in. But just to draw your attention here, where we are with cash, when we look at the month of November here, we had about $122 million in cash that we started with. We had about $8.2 million that were received and then expended about $15.7 million. We had some essentially more. where it was expended then came in which sometimes happens in these months and what ended up happening was our balance went
023from 122 to 115. However we're expecting that to pick up back in December so we have that going on. What you really want to pay attention to is this ending balance has to be positive throughout the remainder of the year as you can see that's the case and it's very very positive which is good. I want to make sure we keep a good amount on there. It's not always going to be this 100 million as we start spending down our reserves. That money, that number is going to come down and you have to be a lot more careful because when that number starts to become 20 or 25, you're going to have to really be careful with your cash flow. Again, here's just a more detailed breakdown of how cash functioned through November. Um, here
024on this section, uh, we have our revenues followed by our expenses broken down by main category. And as you can see, you can kind of look at how some of these items are trending and what we're anticipating to happen throughout the remainder of the school year. Um, and, uh, so the items in gray are actuals. The items in light blue are the projections. Um, so all in all, we're, um, uh, the numbers are, are looking as what we had projected and made the adjustments at first interim, but we'll continue to revise that. As you know, a budget will change and that will impact how cash is expended. Um, finally the multi-year cash flow projections, uh, help us as a district make more informed decisions. So we do look at a multi-year projection to make sure
025that in the future we have sufficient cash. Um, and of course we want to make sure that that's a main source of our priority. cash is critical for operations. If we don't have it, it's important that we find a way to have it or plan for that. There are situations where school districts can not have sufficient cash due to when we receive revenues. That's not the case for us right now, but in the future that may end up being the case in the sense of how, you know, deferrals happen and things of that nature. When that situation happens, we need to make sure we look for loans that, you know, in the form of that for monies that we are going to be receiving in that year. So just making sure that everyone's aware that's
026the importance of cash flow because you never want to be in a situation where you don't have the cash. So there's avenues that you can take if you start running out of cash. However, we're in a good spot today. And that concludes the presentation. Thank you so much. And I'll turn it back to you, Dr. Morris. Thank you, Dr. McGee. Thank you, Dr. Morris. Is there anyone from the board? You again? Okay, don't. All right. Mic on? Okay, great. I think one of the main things that we decided to do as a board is to watch other board meetings to ensure that we're ready to govern. And when I'm watching these other board meetings, this part of the presentation is not always so positive and it's kind of a make or break moment for the
027district. So as we're trying to regain trust within the community, I'm very grateful that we have our money to show that we're heading in the right direction. We have the right people in leadership and we're going to make the right moves and make sure we have money to explore programs, to explore, um, teacher wages and to explore opportunities for our campuses to be the campuses they deserve to be. So thank you so much for all the work that you do. And thank you for this very concise presentation. Thank you, Mr. Garcia. Just one quick statement. No more loans. Thank you for putting us in the position that we're in now. Thank you for doing such a wonderful job. Dr. Guzman, Rafael Guzman, Happy New Year to you. Thank you. And thank you for this very
028positive report. And thank you for keeping the barn door closed. And thank you for always looking out for Englewood Unified School District. for all the hours that you put into this with your department. It's endless hours. I know I see those bags under your eyes. I thank you. I thank you. I thank you. Thank you, Ms. Randall. Thank you, Mr. Guzman. Wonderful presentation. Just a few questions. Sorry. I'm looking at the end balance for the total. Of course, we're at $20-$21 million. I believe that's the kind of deficit spending that we'll be making for that year, correct? Yes. Okay. So think positive, right? Ways to start slashing, recouping that money so we get on the right path. I'm looking at I know we can't cut salaries. Get it benefits are off the table. I'm looking
029at books and supplies. I see books and supplies. I see books and supplies for the beginning of July 2025, which is set at 21,000. It begins to increase in the 400,000s, 200,000s. Trying to figure out why is that the influx, right? And it leads all the way up to, it goes to 1.5 and then it goes back down to 1 million. So I'm trying to figure out like what's the, What's the mechanism in purchasing books throughout the school year? Sure. What happens here is on the gray side, these are the actuals. This is what we actually expended. So the variations have to do with when we place the orders for books or supplies. But in the category that you see as books and supplies, it really has more to do with not only books, but
030all supplies throughout the district. Anything that falls below a capital asset threshold. So anything of that nature. It also includes things like... gas for our buses and things of that nature. So all of the things related to that is under that expense. So you'll see some fluctuation from month to month. Initially at the beginning of the year, there's not much going on. So you'll see a lower amount. But as we start paying invoices, you start seeing that pick up. What you're seeing kind of in the trend line that you're asking about here towards later in the year, in June, you see a big expense, 1.5. What that is, is that we're really... Cash-wise, we have to make sure cash meets budget at the very end. So what we do is we say, well, if we
031continue this trend, you're going to be spending around this much. right now, then in June, you'll reconcile to that because that's what the budget says. But what will happen is at second interim, if we still haven't spent those funds, then it's like, okay, well, we need to adjust the budget for that because we're not going to spend that. Where you really see that pronounced is in your services. You can see like we're at like 5.7 and then we're seeing like increased projections. So that's what happens. Now, just so that you're aware, like the other thing that happens is as invoices come in, we are paying them. So sometimes invoices come in later and we pay those as they as they come in. So usually in June is when everything kind of that's not come in
032comes in. So we have to have enough. But what tends to happen is that second interim, we would revise these numbers downward. And so then those numbers get adjusted. But the other thing that we have in this formula in the spreadsheet is. we try to trend it to what the district has spent historically. So like if, you know, if we see that in, that's why those numbers are what they are. So in December and January historically we're spending around that much. And so that's why we kind of have that number. Um, and so that, that's kind of the mechanism behind it. But it doesn't necessarily mean that in June we're going to spend, you know, 1.5 million in books and supplies. It could be spent earlier or it could be not spent at all. And
033if it doesn't get spent, it just stays as cash. And my second question to that, and I'm glad you expounded on that, when you talk about marrying budgets and things that kind of projections that you've kind of spent in the past, I know we're tapering down as far as the district. We've closed schools, things of that manner. Has that been taken into account when developing this budget now? Yes, yes. Incorporating that current information? Yes, that's been taken into account as well. Okay. Um, and so, and as we go throughout the budget year, if we have a line in the budget that says we're going to spend a million dollars and by the time we get to second interim in March and they've all, and somebody has only spent a hundred thousand dollars, we should probably
034reduce that budget down to maybe $500,000, whatever. so we do that reconciliation in the second interim and then we do it again when we present the adopted budget. Uh, we have something called the estimated actuals and that's when you're, you're going to see changes to this. And so, you know, that's, that's the whole portion of monitoring your budget, uh, as, as the different time periods and making adjustments. Cause the opposite could happen as well, where we may have to increase the budget for whatever reason. Um, and so we do that analysis as, as we go through the different financial reports. Thank you for that. One final question. If we're looking at services, $76 million, and I'm looking at $200,000, of course, in the July actual, but then we looked at the projected amount for it,
035and what was that? Over time, I believe it's spending $5 million, $6 million, $7 million, $8 million, and $9 million. Like is there a clear explanation as to why those are increasing or those the same? It's the same trend analysis as we looked at how it trend how the expenditures trended last year and we projected based off of the trend of last year However, the same thing happens right at the estimated actuals if we see hey, this isn't which is what happened with actuals through April Yeah, then we would make that those downward adjustments and so unless you know what ends up happening a lot a lot of times in school district is you know um with the bigger services sometimes those invoices come in later throughout the year and um and then we start
036making sure those those get paid as soon as we can um in june is one month where a lot of bills come in and we make sure to pay those out um and so that's that's what happens it's really a trend but like I said, this is really how your cash is flowing. Your budget is the total, right? So at the end we're trying to make what we're doing here is we're trying to make that number equal the current operating budget. So the 76.4 matches the total of 76.4 so we have to make it equal. But at some point you have to adjust the budget downward if you don't think you're going to be at 76 million. Thank you. Thank you. I want to thank the board for just really thinking about what we're asking
037when cabinet comes before us. I only had one question and that was our estimated actuals. As we are closing down schools. Where are we seeing the, you know, where that used to be a cost to the district? And I'm sure there's still a cost associated with having to, you know, keep the schools clean and things of like things of that nature. But where would that be included in this budget? So when the budget was drafted in 25, the original budget, it had the factors that were influenced by the closure. So, for example, it's scattered throughout your certificated salaries, your classified salaries, these associated benefits, and the lowering of services, as well as books and supplies. All of that in each of those categories are now reduced because we don't have. that account. So if you
038were to look at our chart of accounts, um, those accounts don't exist anymore because, um, they're there, that those schools have been closed except for the ones that we, that you mentioned earlier. And, and, um, this is what we have to maintain. For instance, we have to have exterior lighting at the schools and so there's still some expense, but all of it is, was, uh, captured when we did the budget, uh, in early 25, 26. Thank you, Mr. Guzman. Those are just some of the concerns that were asked, and so I really appreciate you being able to explain it to us so that we can explain it to them. And for the board, if you have additional questions, I would encourage you to make an appointment. because the thing that's going to be really important
039is that we understand these budgets. And I think Mr. Guzman would be happy to make the time so that he can go item by item so that we all understand it. So thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. McGee. Thank you. Thank you very much and our final presentation this evening is the 2025-26 facilities program update and the preventive maintenance plan update presented by Mr. Rafael Guzman, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services and Chief Business Official. Mr. Guzman. Thank you Dr. Morris and Dr. McKee, Vice President Myers and our Board of Education and Community. We wanted to give this update on the 25-26 facilities program and preventive maintenance update. Um, before I start the update, I just want to recognize a couple of people here in the room, uh, that we have here just so familiarity
040of, of everyone. And, um, in the room we have our Balfour Beatty team. I'm going to ask if you could please stand. I know that you guys don't want all the recognition and stuff, but this is our Balfour Beatty team that is in charge of the construction at Inglewood, um, high school. And so we wanted to make sure that you were all, uh, meet them. Uh, they're the construction team that is making sure this happens. Um, so thank you so much for. being here today. We also have our architect who is here today from practice and we want to thank you both for coming and we appreciate all the design work that you guys have been doing for us. They're also the architect for the Englewood High School project. You'll see a video here that
041they put together so we appreciate you here today. Thank you. So we just want to acknowledge them. They're in the room today and I appreciate that they come and show an interest in being transparent. Um, so we're just gonna go quickly. There's a lot of items to cover and I'm gonna try to be quick because I don't want to spend too much time. Uh, and we have a video that we want to show you. That's about four to five minutes, not 45, four to five. Sorry. Um, sorry. Um, so we're gonna go over winter break projects, ongoing projects, upcoming projects, and then Mr. Miles will take over and go over and go in high school and then we'll finalize with some of the preventive maintenance plan items. So in the winter, uh, we had a
042lot like really aggressive um, list of projects that we wanted to do that when we talked with our team, they thought, Hey, there's no way we're going to be able to do this. Um, but I just want to applaud the facilities team and you know, for being able to get this work done in a very tight winter. So thank you so much to our team. Um, so we, I'll go ahead and go through these. So the first thing was this, the water bottle filling stations. Every one of our school sites now has at least three uh water bottle filling stations for our students that replace these old i'm going to say ugly fountains and now we actually have nice chilled and filtered water for all of our kids here at anywood unified school district we
043can boast about that these items are thank you they're chilled they're filtered And, you know, it teaches good dynamics of, hey, you know, bring your water bottle. It's healthy for the environment or it's good for the environment. And so we're really happy that all got done from October through the end of the winter break. Some of it bled over into January. So all of our sites now have at least three of these water bottle filling stations. It's not only the water bottle station, but it's also the traditional you push and you're able to drink water from there. So if you didn't bring your water bottle, you can still do it. When I go to the school sites, I drink some of that water. because it's really happy about that. The other project that we had
044was the security camera. Our district did not have cameras in the majority of our school sites. I'm happy to say now that every single one of our schools and the Unified School District has a functional security camera system. That's awesome. It's really great and I want to thank the board because I know that's that's something that you've always kind of said we want to have security and I think the Union as well for their support and and because they've also helped us to push this forward so thankful to our ITA members as well as our Teamsters for their support to getting this done. So each school site has at least 10 cameras and they're good cameras. They're the Vakata system cameras. We can look at them live. and we could set up zones and do
045all sorts of things with these cameras and we're able to get that done. We started some in the summer but the bulk of our schools got done throughout the winter break so they were hard at work getting that done. I also want to acknowledge The Fonder Solari team, which is our program manager for the bond, they did a tremendous job in making sure this got done, as well as Mr. Miles. So I want to thank you all for that support. The other item that was done over the summer was the Raptor system. This is something that has been long in the works. We've talked about it, but there's been some hesitancy in the past. I want to thank, again, our ITA membership for... the ITA team for really helping us push towards this and it's
046this Raptor system. So now every one of our sites has the Raptor system where when we have a visitor they are able to check in and they have a badge. What we want to do is that no one in one of our school sites should be walking around without either this badge or an actual badge that increases our safety and the security of our staff and our students at every one of our schools. So we're really happy and proud. They're all installed. the next phase is the training. So if you go to the school sites, they're all there. Now we just have to do the training portion. That's going to happen next week. We have the, we're setting that up. Mr. Miles is setting that up along with Dr. Kane. Um, and so once that's
047done, um, it'll be great and everyone will have to either have a badge or have one of these other badges. I'm really excited about that because it is a safety thing that we're finally kind of influencing at the district and just want to thank everyone that supported that. So thank you for that. We have this other project here. It's not complete yet, but the special education furniture, we talked to our families, and there's a lot of concerns about special education furniture itself. We were able to get two vendors to come out, one in October. Another vendor came out to Frank D. Parent in January. They set up a classroom for us for what a classroom can look like. for our special education mild-mod or mod-severe students. So we wanted that to be set up. We're
048getting feedback from our special education teachers and from, we're also asking input from our community. And so the goal is that next week, I believe they're gonna tour the rooms that were set up. And after that. We're going to be placing an order for all of our special education classrooms across the district. So every single one of our classrooms for special education, mild, moderate, moderate severe, will have new furniture. So we're really excited about that. That's happening. Again, that order is waiting, but we had that last day because we want to give our teachers. what they need. I don't want to just order what I think because I'm probably going to get it wrong. Right? So I want our teachers to give the input, our leaders to get the input and that's what we're getting
049now. And we're going to place that order and then we'll set the district standard for that. That's really important for the district to have standards when it pertains to furniture so that we can reorder and replenish in the future. Um, the other projects. We had some miscellaneous projects throughout the district. District-wide, we relocated the food kiosk to Coleman Field. At Inglewood High School United, we installed sinks in the science lab that was requested. We repaired some fencing. We actually installed an electric gate just like that last weekend. So that gate is now electric. And if you go around Inglewood High School United, it has some grass-stick fabric now. If you go around our Bennett Hughes School, we replaced the exterior chain link fence. There was always a complaint there that just because of the way
050that the school is, the fence was very, very low. I mean, I think it was like, I'm not a tall person. So the fence was, I think like up to here. So I mean, even I could jump the fence. And so we raised that fence. And not only that, but we also put some grass stick around it, which is the middle image there. It looks very, very nice. I've gotten a lot of compliments about how it looks. It's awesome. And it also increases the safety of our students because just in the past, anybody could just look into the school. Now it's, you know, the grass that kind of provides a little bit of security there and it just looks really nice uniform. So, uh, and, and that had a lot to do with the advocacy
051of, of our board, Mr. Myers, you know, and, uh, the, the, the, teachers at the school site as well that expressed concerns, ITA as well, and everybody just kind of came together. We were able to get that done over the break as well. So there's a lot of stuff that happened throughout winter break. That's just some of it. I know there's some that we didn't cover, but just want to, again, reiterate that. We do have some ongoing projects still. As you know, we have the City Honors Project for the painting, repainting the entire exterior and interior. We're doing our best to not disrupt instruction as much as we can. Um, but we're trying to make sure that we accomplish the actual job of the painting. Um, so we're doing everything we can to to not
052be disruptive. However, um, you know, this project should be completed by the summer of 2026. When it comes to CDC, we're really excited about that. As you can see, there's a lot of progress being made there. We actually increased security there as well. Unfortunately, there was some attempted break-ins at CDC in the construction site. So we're doing everything we can to keep security. But that project is ongoing, and it's on pace. Even with the rains, it's still on pace for a summer 2026 opening. Ben a queue as well. I went out there today or yesterday morning and the trenching is all getting done for an excavation is happening to install the utilities. So really excited about that because that's major progress. Um, and we anticipate also to be done summer of 2026 for next year
053for our students to be able to get in to a brand new, uh, building. We were calling it like a middle school building but it's really, you know, once the principal sits down with the team and you know however they want to really structure it but it has the six classrooms, maker space, restrooms, upgrades and the removal of some of the existing portables. We're also continuing with our campus re-keying. I wanted to go, like I said, I'm trying to accelerate here. Upcoming projects, we do have a roofing projects that we're going out to bid for here for city honors for the uh, district office as well. And we're just making sure that our roofs aren't leaking and doing everything we can with what we can do at the sites. Um, we anticipate to also be
054done with that in August of 2026. We also went out, um, I think it was a question posted one of the board meetings about what are we doing about solar. So we actually went out and got a company to really look at what it would take for England would unified to really, um, get into the solar, uh, array installations and everything like that. So we did have assessment that assessment conducted over the fall. So now we're going, we actually have a bid out and we're supposed to be receiving a bench of, uh, as we get the bids in, we're going to establish a bench to look at funding scenarios to see how we could do solar for our district. So we're going to explore different funding mechanisms for that. Um, District office relocation is also
055underway. As you know, this building here is going to be the YMCA and we're really happy about that. Thanks to our board again, Dr. McGee especially, and what's going to happen here with this building. And we have to move the district office. So that work is being done. And we have an architect that's helping us with that work. And we also have Oak Street. projects that we're doing there for new construction for early education. So that's ongoing. We are excited to say that, you know, all of all is going well with DSA. Um, so we're hoping to maybe another say, I'll put a big maybe in all caps, um, to accelerate that. I know right now we're like kind of thinking it's going to be 2027, but we're seeing what we can do to accelerate
056given that we're having good progress with DSA. Um, and I'm thankful to our architect for that as well. And I'll turn it over now to the kind of the star of the show here for Englewood High School. Uh, we're really excited to have Mr Miles present. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr Griezmann. Good evening members of the board, members of cabinet, members of the community. I'm excited to present an update on the largest facilities project that our district has undertaken. That is the reconstruction of Englewood High School. First couple of slides are kind of a refresh for you. So again, the scope of the project, 53 new classrooms, including six new buildings on campus, two of which will be dedicated to our pathway and career technical education or CTE programs. You can see the
057list of the rest of the project there. And again, this is a $232 million project. We're still on schedule to be completed by the end of calendar year 2027. Two quick updates in terms of a status update for this project. Right before winter break, we published what's called the Draft Environmental Impact Report, or EIR. It is a required process that we need to go through, an environmental assessment, saying that the impacts that this project will have on the local environment. We're currently in the 45-day public review and comment period that ends in early February, and so the public can provide comments to the district on the project. And so there are physical copies of the EIR here at the district office as well as Englewood United. It can also be accessed on our website for
058those who want to review that draft EIR document. The second update is we are currently in the bid process for most of the construction that you'll see on these upcoming slides. so that way we can generate what's called the guaranteed maximum price or the GMP. So again, we're going forward with what's called the lease-leaseback construction method for this project. That's why we have Balfour Beatty, the general contractor here. One of the benefits to having a lease-leaseback contractor is we have this GMP, which means that we reduce the likelihood of having change orders on this project. If there is an increase in price, the onus goes to the contractor or the subcontractor. So again, I know the change orders are kind of a swear word sometimes, and so we wanted to minimize those how we could.
059So again, because this project is so large, it also meant that the design was quite complicated. We broke the design into four groups or packages. So there's four different packages going to the state. the division of the state architect or dsa for review package one that you can see here in blue that's the largest of the pro of the packages that was submitted to dsa in april and that's most of the new construction on campus we are addressing the comments we've received from dsa now and we should be receiving approval from dsa by the end of the school year for that for that package Package 2, that's going to be the focus on the rest of this presentation. That's the rest of the new construction on campus, and that's in purple here. And that's the
060two buildings that will house our music and our CTE and pathway programs. Package 3 in red, that's the modernization work that will be done at the gymnasium and the auditorium. And then package 4 there in green, that's all of our site development and landscaping. Packages 3 and 4 were submitted to DSA at the end of calendar year 2025. And package two will be submitted next month to DSA, and that's why we wanted to bring this to you so you could see the package of the new CTE buildings before we submit to the state. So just a bit of an overview, these two buildings are at the heart of campus as the CTE programs will be at the heart, the lifeblood of our instruction. These two buildings comprise approximately 36,000 square feet of new space for
061learning. And we've been meeting with Dr. Lucas and the rest of the educational services team for about three years now on designing to make sure that the walls that we build for our programs really do maximize the space and that we're really building around our programs. So here's a look at building five. That was the northern building. So this building comprises of four standard classrooms and two classrooms dedicated to CTE, one that's a patient care pathway as well as a lab for anatomy and physical therapy. We have additional support spaces here, special education classrooms, RSP, workroom and restrooms. Here you can see some renderings of what this building five will look like. You can see the exterior renderings there and the interior renderings of the lab building as well as one of the standard classrooms.
062Building six, this is the larger of the two buildings. This is going to be our main hub for CTE. It also houses our band, orchestra, and choir rooms there as you can see on the upper part of that photo. And then the rest of the CTE. programs will be housed throughout the rest of the building. As you can see, we have animation and engineering, film editing, broadcasting, e-sports, digital music, sound recording, and graphic media. So we're really focusing on that arts media entertainment or AME pathway here in building six. Here's some renderings of building six. So as you can see here on the two upper photos or renderings, very similar aesthetic to building five. trying to match the aesthetic that the high school will have. And then you can see here the renderings of the
063interior classrooms. On the lower left, that is the film editing room, and then the lower right, that is our band room. And you'll be able to see those very shortly as we move on to a fly-through video that we have that will focus primarily on package two. This is about a five-minute video. So again, welcome to Englewood High School. I know that the first part of this video you've seen before, this is about package one, which again was submitted to the state about nine months ago. This is one of the two-story classroom buildings here to the left that includes administration. We'll be going through our campus commons here as we make our way through the Student Life building. So these are the two buildings that we'll be submitting to the state next month for their
064review and approval. We're turning towards building six, again the larger of the two buildings. This is going to be the main C2E hub for our students. So similar to the other classroom buildings that you've seen in previous design work, we have these larger, wider corridors. They can also be used as collaboration zones. I remember that we've talked about that in previous board meetings. One fun design theme here, as you can see, we have those accordion glass doors or walls. So it really does open up the space in many of those classrooms. You can see here we're right next to the new tennis courts, new landscaping here on the southern end of building six, next to the new parking lot. Now we'll be going between building six and the multi-purpose room or the cafeteria building, making
065our way north. At the far end there you can see the existing gymnasium. We'll be making our way back into building six, taking another look at some of these C to E classrooms. Again, here's the film classroom. You can see the green space there, as well as the workspace for film editing. Again, there's another shot of that accordion glass wall that allows the space to feel more open. The e-sports classroom. And then these are one of the larger classrooms. This is for band. So you can see the taller ceilings that we have here, as well as the acoustic paneling around, really maximizing the space for our musician. Then along this wall, we have storage space for instruments, as well as practice rooms on the wall here to the right. We're now making our way north
066just through the commons again on our way to building five which will house again a couple of our CTE programs as well as some general purpose classrooms. So again we have these wider corridors for those collaboration zones like we saw in package one for those two-story classroom buildings. Here's our lab for anatomy and physical therapy. Again taller ceilings. makes the space feel significantly larger. We also have a lot of northern facing windows so we get a lot of beautiful indirect light coming in. And I know we have a 3D anatomy table and so we made sure to include that in our design there so we're space planning for that table already. You can see the aesthetics of building five are very similar to building six and still tie into the rest of campus. And now
067we're on the western side of building five. Again, another wider corridor for our collaboration zone where students can gather here. And here's another view of one of our classrooms. Very similar environment to the classrooms that you saw in the two-story classroom buildings. And then this is a quick shot of what is packaged for. Again, this is the landscaping. The farthest west part of the campus will be our new practice fields. Now you're seeing some additional landscaping and paths of travel. This is where our new basketball courts will be. We'll get another shot here of building five, what it will look like from Manchester. And that is Englewood High School. And then just a very quick look ahead before I turn it back over to Mr. Guzman. We will continue to provide updates to the board,
068to the cabinet, to the community about our active projects and the upcoming projects. We'll also continue on with design efforts until we receive DSA approval, at which point we will then continue our bid process so we can keep our projects on schedule. We've recently held meetings with our facilities advisory committee as well as our citizens bond oversight committee. We'll continue to have that community outreach and receive community input on our facilities programs. We'll also continue to hold events related to our facilities like we have earlier this year with groundbreaking and ribbon cutting events. And then again, we'll continue to provide the board and community with regular updates. At this point, I'll turn it back over to Mr. Guzman. In the first few videos, you mentioned something about you were going to be doing something to
069the gym and the auditorium. What are you doing? Because they can't stay where they look with all this newness around it. What's going to happen with the gym and the auditorium? What are you going to do there? That's an excellent question, Ms. Turner-Evans. We are providing some modernization work to both the gym and auditorium. Right now, it's fairly minor. Most of it is code compliance and upgrades related to, you know, anything related to ADA or restrooms. And then we will also be working on exterior improvements, mostly painting, so that way it matches the aesthetics of the rest of campus. So I'll go really quickly. I know that this is taking up quite some time. The preventive maintenance plan, we presented this the last time to the board this time last year. It's part of the
070FCMAT recommendations. Just to kind of put it in context, preventive maintenance is maintenance that you're doing to prevent... certain situations like breakdowns or to be you know safety concerns or things like that routine maintenance is maintenance that you do you know routinely it's something that you do quite often and it could eventually sometimes perotta maintenance becomes routine maintenance and then you have deferred maintenance which is maintenance you save money for that you do in the future so preventative maintenance is something that the district didn't really plan for in the past uh in a formal plan so we actually have presented a program in this plan in the past uh to to you in in january of 2025 and we're coming back to just give you a quick update the plan addresses the major areas which
071is hvac plumbing electrical roofing fire safety playground and groundskeeping and landscaping those are the major areas so just to give you an update of what we've done in preventive maintenance across the district So in regards to HVAC systems, district-wide, we've done a lot of replacement of fans and just a lot of work on our HVAC units. For instance, at City Honors, we replaced two HVAC rooftop package units. Those are the traditional units that go on top of the building. We've also addressed some of our IDF rooms, which is the intermediate distribution frames rooms, which receive some new mini split HVAC units, which are more like the units that go on the actual wall, things of that nature. At IHS United, there was four wall-mounted HVAC units that were replaced in the C-Row. We also performed
072some restorative work in the auditorium and lecture hall that were down for a very long time at that site. Those are back up and running now. Bennett Q, we've dedicated HVAC units as well inside some of the counselor's offices. So there's a lot of work that's been done with HVAC. As it pertains to plumbing, we've begun jetting at all of our school sites. Jetting is, you know, with high-powered... pressure of our piping and their sewer lines. So we're doing a lot of that work. We actually did a lot of that over the winter break as well. And before students actually got on campus, we had some sewer line replacements at Englewood High School, at Oak Street. actually over the winter break we replaced a sewer line that was under the Admin Building to make sure
073that we're addressing some of the stoppages that we were having over at Oak. So we're doing our best to address this but a lot of this is the building, the structure of the utility itself or the utilities themselves are very old at some of our sites. So we're doing everything we can to jet them and some cases we can replace them but we're you know that's the work that we're doing to prevent. At New Kelso we also did some permanent maintenance work regarding the sewer lines and kitchen lines and things of that nature. When it comes to electrical systems, there was a lot of upgrades done as well. We said, especially at Avila High School United, the exterior lighting and we also just did some upgrades to some of our electrical rooms to prevent, you
074know, things from blowing out and affecting the electrical. So we upgrade those so that We can maintain it. One of the examples is one of our media rooms at Inglewood High School over the winter break. We upgraded the electrical there, so now it can actually run the program that it needs to run. Unfortunately, at CDC, we had to replace the copper line due to theft and vandalism. So those are some of the work that we did there. Roofing and structural systems, we did a lot of work with roofing to prevent from, when the water comes, obviously prevent leaks and all that. those types of items. We also at New Kelso, we constructed a new trash enclosure at old Warren Lane. constructed a new front gate at Oak Street. We added some perimeter gate keypads. That
075was done actually over the weekend as well. So we're really excited about that work. In regards to fire safety, over the winter break, all of our fire sprinkler systems were tested and maintenance was performed. We still have some items that are still receiving some maintenance, but all of our sites received that testing just to make sure that we continue with the safety themes across the district. We also did some backflow testing that was performed also during winter break. The playgrounds and outside facilities, we've done a lot of our playground work to prevent accidents over the summer. We reviewed that with the board already, but we just want to give an update of what that was. And Woodrow Smith and Roll, we also added some synthetic turf and installed it in order to support a clean
076environment for our students. Before there was dirt on some of those areas, so we did what we could there. Grounds keeping wise we're continuing to restore some of our irrigation lines some weed control efforts as well And some insurance extensive tree maintenance that was performed at various of our sites So we just wanted to kind of show that again. That's what we've done in regards to preventative maintenance Which kind of coalesces with with routine maintenance? So I want to give you an update I know this was a lot of information, but want to make sure we present it to you all And now we're opening up back to you for questions. Thank you so much Thank you so much. Mr. Myers, did you have any questions? Absolutely. Thank you. Wonderful job, guys. Great presentation. Just
077wanted to go back to the video. We're not going to rewind the video. You know, follow me for a little bit. So I know it's the, I guess it's the music room. I don't want to say the band room, but the music room. I'm seeing it on one level. I've been trained musically. Things are better elevated. You know what I mean? Choir come from a Pentecostal church. That's how I, yeah, I just feel that that would be more sufficient. for all of the students to see the instructions that are happening from a, you know, sort of like how it was at the old Inglewood High, their band room. Then I'm looking at the, I guess, the regular music room that they'll be in. I see it being one. Main room, but are there petitions or
078something that can break that one individual room up into like four or six different rooms so that you know, maybe the trumpets can practice while The the percussions are practicing, you know, I think just having everybody You know stuck together it creates that problem where everybody doesn't get their own individualistic kind of practice time and engagement So that's just one. Okay. My last one. And you can, you know, these are just suggestions. I'm not saying anything's wrong. Just, you know, just maybe my thoughts. And then the basketball courts. I don't know what type of glass that we have up on the windows. But I think the basketball courts, this may be an architectural issue. I think the basketball courts are faced the wrong direction. I play ball. When we put the hoops directly in line
079with the windows. Kids who don't have any game, they tend to throw it up against the wall in the building and then we have damages. So I think preventative maintenance, preventative damages, yeah, yeah, yeah, all in the same, I'm done. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Randall? Now that I have these physical challenges, I don't see any push bars anywhere for students who might be in wheelchairs navigating the doors. Going around the campus, I see clear concrete. Are those pebbles and gravel? Or is that concrete, the brown part? That's all concrete. Okay, so it's all concrete. Okay. Correct. We have multicolored concrete throughout. Ah, okay. I could have articulated that better, but what you're saying there is all concrete. Okay. Before I ask my questions, excellent presentation. Excellent work being done. These are just questions that
080I have. So the push bar is I'll send you an email. Because it does need to be ADA accessible. And we do have students that are in wheelchairs. I want to ask about, no, I want to commend you for the sewer repair at Kelso. Thank you so much. That little wooden plank. and the water kept coming up, that means it needs to be replaced. Thank you so, so very much for that. Thank you for the new enclosure for the trash. It looks so much better. It was an eyesore. It looks great. I want to remind you about the Margaret Bowers tree that we want to plant. So I'll send you an email on that as a reminder. I know you have a lot. This is a lot. But that's just one of the things I
081want to remind you. And I want to ask, and maybe this is not the right report to ask it in, but where will we find the information about what's happening at Englewood Adult School with the construction, the demolition and the construction that's going on? And if this is not the proper place to ask the question, just tell me. Ms. Randall, send us an email. So on the adult school, I'll let Mr. Guzman address that. But related to the work that was done. This is very, very good. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Randall. Related to the work that's been done at Kelso, I can take no credit for that. That was all Mr. Nunez and our maintenance team. So the kudos should go to our maintenance and operations staff over there. Well, I'll send
082him an email. Thank you. Perfect. And then before we address adult school, Mr. Myers just wanted to address the basketball courts. We had a probably too long conversation with the architects about which way those basketball courts should go. I gave the direction to have them go north-south because most outdoor courts you see are facing north-south simply because if you're playing east-west, someone's always going to be looking into the sun. So we're just trying to make it even that way. If we need to look into protecting our glass in a different way, we can certainly consider that more. And then also for ADA for Inglewood High School, Ms. Rangel, we will ensure that all of our doors, both interior and exterior, meet ADA compliance. And so there are push bars. Maybe they just didn't come across
083very well in the fly-through video. But the entire site will be ADA compliant. I have a whole different view since I have to use one. Thank you so much. Absolutely. And Mr. Gomez, can we finish the report and then you can come back and report on... Mrs. Randolph's question? No. Ms. Evans and Mr. Castile, they may want to weigh in. You mentioned the adult school, which was not in this report, and he was coming up. No, I'm going to have him come back up. Exactly. So, Ms. Evans, do you have questions? No, I don't have any questions. I just want to say you guys have been busy, and thank you. Yes. Thanks. Mr. Castillo. CHRIS RODGERS. Thank you, Madam Board President. I think with the basketball concern, we could also probably make sure we get
084some more basketball programs for our TK-8 schools. So because they're airballing that bad, I mean, that's an issue with talent as well, too. So we could address that as well. But the thought that's been kind of in my head throughout this presentation is during my first couple of years here on the board, you know, I get a lot of family, friends who have gone to the school as well. Some have gone with me at the same year. And they said everything looks the same. you know, uncles, aunties, great uncles, great aunties, generations, generations, everything looks the same. So I'm really excited for that narrative to change that, oh, wow, everything looks different. Everything looks better. And that's really going to do a lot to regain our trust within the community and regain our students that
085we're losing to other competing school districts. So it means a lot how our campuses look. We have amazing leaders at our school sites who bring the energy we need to make a good environment. um including dr collins who's here today and we want to make sure our our facilities match that energy and match the energy of our students who come with curiosity and uh so much intellect and hopefully you know better jump shots um and we want to make sure they they have the opportunity to do so so thank you so much for all the work you've done and thank you for the uh the team that's here i'm really really impressed thank you for everyone thank you i want to thank the board you can clap I just want to thank you guys for
086your very thoughtful questions. Ms. Randall had a question with regards to the adult school and the demolition. So if you're prepared to answer that or weigh in. Sure. We actually have an agenda item later on in the agenda that deals with the agreement in regards to what will happen with the facility. So I think if you prefer, we could wait till that. point in time we could give a little bit of an update if that's okay with you okay thank you so much and uh i knew you were dressed up for a reason today jordan yeah you look good all right thank you so much still showing thank you thank you now we'll move on to item eight on the agenda public comments on agenda and non-agenda items we're going to call for public comments
087to provide an opportunity for the public to address the County Administrator and Board of Education on agenda and non-agenda items. Public comment card must be completed and submitted to the safety assistant who's stationed at the entrance to the meeting room before the beginning of the public comment period. Members of the public who wish to speak about an item on the posted agenda must indicate the item number on the public comment card. Three minutes will be allotted to each speaker, a total of 30 minutes for public comments on agenda items and 30 minutes for public comments on non-agenda items. If public comment cards exceed 10, the time may be reduced to hear from more speakers. Speech or conduct that is disruptive, defamatory, or impedes the orderly conduct of the meeting is not allowed. At the discretion
088of the presiding officer, anyone who disrupts, disturbs, or impedes the orderly conduct of the meeting will be required to exit the meeting room. The guidelines for public comments will be in accordance with Board Bylaw 9323. The Brown Act does not permit the county administrator or cabinet members to respond to public comments. Ms. Zambrano, we'll turn it over to you for public comments. MS. Thank you, Dr. Morris. We're going to start with public comments on agenda items. The first public comment is from Ness Geffer. Pronounce me if I'm pronouncing your last name. MR. You want it on non-agenda? OK, so I'll move you to non-agenda. Um, so we'll start with Mr John Hughes on agenda items. Please come to the podium to address your public comments on agenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin.
089Uh, good evening to everyone. Um, my agenda item will be on the adult education, uh, demolition. Uh, that has been submitted. Uh, believe on the county administrators under his, um, jurisdiction. As a member of the Asset Management Committee, and we have our chairs in the audience as well, I distinctly remember the recommendations that came to us regarding that. I believe we passed it in June of last year, and it was about eight recommendations and concerning. the establishment of that property as surplus property and the use of the property, future use of the property that we felt. would be beneficial to the community. Along with that, authorization that's been used was a bunch of recommendations regarding further analysis, regarding the fiscal benefit to the district, regarding the benefit to the community as a whole, and most
090importantly, the students of Vingalwood overall. However, that was trumped. And it was trumped by a decision to enter into an agreement during the winter break that I feel was probably known at the time the last time that committee met, which was December. And none of us were apprised of any of that. None of that was revealed to us, although we had been assembled. So for me, it reminds me of James Baldwin's statement is I can't believe what you say because I see what you do and what you're doing had no reason to be done in a clandestine way. It should be done in the open and it should show respect for the community. In our organization, we have been constantly speaking about respect. And respect is manifest by listening to the community and not just
091going doggedly ahead with some predetermined constraint, because for us that's a farce. And you can't continue to say that you're a part of a community that you're not listening to. You can't continue to say that you have the best interest when it's only your viewpoint that seems to be coming forward. And regardless of what is said, regardless of... of how it comes across in a flowery or soft way, the end result is the same. If you cut me with a scalpel or you cut me with a sword, you're still cutting me. You're not respecting this community. You are not listening to this community. You're going forward with an agenda that seems to have an ulterior motive and that's already predetermined. And we are wholeheartedly reject that. Thank you. Thank you. Our second public comment is
092from Diane Sombrano. Ms. Sombrano, please come to the podium to address your public comment on agenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Thank you. I have to echo exactly that same sentiment. Because you know what? Everywhere I heard, nobody cared about kids. We like the color. We like our windows. We like our fancy building. But you know what? When I do the math, now I went to school, so I know how to do this. When we learned how to do math, unlike some of our cashiers, today, the maximum number of students, assuming you had many as when I was in school, 30 to 36, would be 1,590. But we're at this 24, 25, so you're looking at 1,325. When I went to school, Morningside had 2,000 plus and Inglewood had 2,000 plus. So
093are you planning for the community you hope will continually be devastated and forgetting that all these multi-unit, hoo-ha-ha, seven-story things are going in? We have a condo planned now, 13 stories high. Do you hope every last one of those children go somewhere else to school? Or are you then going to take our home so that you can build a new one? Because that isn't going to cut it. Never mind the fact that the environmental report should be available somewhere that is not 9 to 5. It should be in one of our real libraries, which are open just a few hours more. But this community should have the opportunity to respond to that draft environmental impact report. I just can't imagine how, after we have already spent $592 million. On buildings, you're telling us we now
094have to drop another $420 million. To me, the concept that you tore apart a building without the money to fill in the holes? is kind of like when you take your car in for an oil change and you get back to pick it up and it doesn't have the wheels on it. The brakes have been removed. The hood is open. Your trunk has been emptied. And oh, wow, there isn't any windshield or windows there either because, well, he thought maybe you need to do something else. This community has not received what it was promised for all of those millions over and over and over. And I wish Alice was still here. She's been a part of it. And she knows, and you can go ask her, that she knows there has not been accountability. And
095now we continue to not have accountability. I grew up in accounting and had 16 units I was responsible for, a little bit more than this district had. And we never planned to have deficits. You plan to stay within your budget. That's pathetic. really pathetic. The state would not be pleased. And our last public comment for agenda items is from Mario Sanchez. Mr Sanchez, please come to the podium to address your public comments on agenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Good evening. Uh, or members cabinet community. Um, I came in a good, uh, move today. I want to be easier. Thank you guys already here from the community. Um, I want to keep my lens from another perspective. We have gained a lot. I really cheers for what we have done so far.
096It's been a lot, still a lot of work to be done, and I know it's muddy. This is a community, seeing from every single angle. Academically, facilities, you guys have done great. Let me tell you the things that they... that I could hear from our community is like, the schools are looking nice, everything. You guys are putting the teachers where they need to. Yes, we know they need a lot of help too. They're new teachers. We got to give them the support that they need to be able to grow as well. They're probably new in the area. They cannot manage our children. I know how difficult it is to manage our children here. I know how difficult it is to encourage teachers from other areas to come and teach our kids. hard kids because I
097know I was one of those kids here. But thank you for all those wonderful teachers that support me. I'm here to support all those wonderful teachers that support me. And now I can see those kids that are coming back, that they want to support the community too. Again, I want to thank everyone for making this happen. It is a lot of work. You guys are going to continue hearing from us. And I really want to thank our board for all the wonderful things that you guys do because you guys have proved all this. All right, so that's on your record. Anything y'all prove is on you. And Dr. Morris, I'm going to come to you because you're the one who makes the last decisions. Even though they give you recommendations, you make those last decisions.
098So, again, I'm asking you. You're the only one who has to make this decision, but you've got to give that power back to our board. There are elected officials. Some of the kids in some of our communities have not been able to see the process that we need. We're working really good. We're working trying to get this a screws up and running But again, it's not going to be feasible to get another bond And get our community if I cannot go into my board member and ask them for What happened to the money that you came and asked for? also one thing No other bond can be positive you continue the the county continue opening more charter schools around and bleeding us out to death It has to be you as a representative of our
099community. You got to go up there all the way to the top because you can't continue bleeding a school district and building these facilities and sucking the money out of homeowners. When did anybody come and open a school and then close it next day? Thank you. Thank you. We're not going to transition to public comments on non-agenda items. The first public comment is from Ness Gifford. Please come to the podium to address your public comments on non-agenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Hello, my name is Nesca Farr. I'm the executive director of Black Star. I wanted to come with to get the conversation started about offering and expanding some opportunity programs for kids in Englewood Unified School District. I coach a sport where there isn't a ton of diversity, but it is
100the oldest sport in America. And I feel this would be a great opportunity to reclaim a sport where inclusion is the restoration and not necessarily the expansion. That sport is coming to the L. A. 2028 Olympics and it's called lacrosse. Um, what's our 501 C three? We're not asking you for any money because we have all the resources we need, but we are asking for written permission to start working with schools in Iusd elementary, middle school as well as high schools. Um, and getting kids into a sport where, you know, um, There's a lot of college scholarship opportunities. I've sent some kids from this neighborhood already to schools like Hampton University, which is a Division I men's lacrosse team. I sent another girl to Howard University, who's also a Division I women's lacrosse team. And
101recently, I just sent another kid to University. District Columbia who's been in our program for the last six years. I started this program at Edward Vincent Park, also known as Cinderella Park in 2021. And I want to continue to serve this community and give kids the opportunity to excel in non traditional spaces and have you know what it takes to go into other spaces and do the same thing and replicate the same success. So I just wanted to get the conversation started. Explain what I who I am and what I'm looking for. a big reason why i never came forward is because i was always working as a coach but i wasn't an inglewood resident i've been a resident now for the past year and a half so now i feel like i kind of
102have a stake to come in and say something i don't have any kids in the school district but i think this i heard someone mentioning closing schools and declining enrollment you know maybe offering some more sports outside of our favorite basketball, football, baseball, and soccer, might strengthen and hedge some of the bets some of these kids are putting on athletic scholarships or scholarships for school. So I think lacrosse, with it being in the Olympics in 2028 and Inglewood being a premier destination for sports and an innovator when it comes to sports and education, it'd be a perfect collaboration to start introducing the great game of lacrosse, a Native American sport, into the community. Thank you. Thank you. Our second public comment is from John Hughes. Mr Hughes, please come to the podium to address your
103public comments on non agenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Thank you. Um, our ancestors and our elders taught us to be kind, courteous, polite and respectful to those who are kind, courteous and polite to us. Um, so when we come back down to the issue of respect, A leader has to respect the people that are under their watchful eye in the community. And I'm going to keep on that point because we have some troublesome models here in Englewood Unified as well as in the city. The way things are being run are not right. Let me just be frank about it. the examples that we see of avoidance, the examples that we're seeing of disempowerment, the example that we see of disenfranchises. We have a whole matriculated group of young people who have
104never known anything but receivership and that their elected body has no power. And a lot of people don't have a problem with that. I do. You have to look in the mirror and UNESCO backs me up. Our children learn best from seeing a reflection of themselves and those in leadership in front of them and they see disempowerment. And that has been the example. They've heard constraint. They've heard refrain. They've seen the power consolidated in one individual. And it's the same model that America was founded on. And we see it out of control in the White House today. And people don't have a problem with it. I certainly do. I always do. As the blood flows through my veins, my ancestors have brought us to this point. We have to assert the habit of leadership. We
105have to demonstrate to our children and our future that inside of them is the power that they need to determine, to be self-determined in this society, in any place in the world that they step their feet on as the first, as the beginning, as the origin, as the prototype for what humanity is supposed to be. In creation, they have that power within them. And how dare we give it away without showing a challenge. So we have to draw the line. We have to say that there is a better way and we're manifesting that return local control. Thank you. Thank you. Our third public comment is from Diane. Some Ronald, Ms and Bronner, please come to the podium to address your public comments and non agenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Thank you.
106rumor has it there was community outreach about these schools but you know what my phone number's everywhere and i didn't get a call nor did i get one of those fancy letters that says don't pass it on to anyone about 420 million dollars of a bond think about that did you know that was out there that you all supposedly want us the taxpayers to throw another 420 million dollars at this administration to do more building Now, I don't know if you wrote your checks. Maybe your husbands didn't for the property tax thing. But think about it doubling. Think about what those poor people who mistakenly move into our community with no Prop 13 and a million dollar house. What are they going to be having to write a check for every blooming year? Think about
107it, $30,000 a year because somebody wants to float another $420 million bond so that some architects, some attorneys, some consultants can make a lot of money off of the residents of this community who have a significantly lower income. I want you to also consider that while we have these grand hoo-ha-ha. Festival things of ground breakings and this and that with all the subway sandwiches and all of the pastries and all of that I Heard that some of our teachers were denied the couple of dollars they needed to teach about electricity I went into the research 25 whole dollars is all she was asking for when I went to Home Depot Something is askew in this building seriously askew from the misrepresentations about what our facilities are and what they are not to what we tell
108the public that we are doing for our children because quite honestly every single second grader ought to be able to make change at Target and yet we've graduated children who can't and now we call them adults and employees Took me 20 minutes to get changed because I mistakenly gave a $5 bill with a quarter for the $4.05 bill. Whose fault is that? Something's wrong in these buildings because that little girl wasn't so little anymore, but she had her graduation diploma from Englewood High. Embarrassing. The primary focus of this building and every employee should not be about building buildings, giving architects checks and claps, but about teaching children. And somewhere along the line, we forgot that. Our fourth public comment is from Mario Sanchez. Mr. Sanchez, please come to the podium to address for public comments
109on non-agenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Good evening again. Thank you for broadcasting the majority of the meetings online. Sometimes I can't split and either I feed my kids and come over here and speak to you guys. And that's the reality when I have to leave as a person who has to work. and then feed my kids after school. So unfortunately, it's something that not just not me, but it's all our community. That's why you don't see a lot of parents here. They have to decide to feed their kids, feed their families, or come over here and speak to represent their families here. So I want you guys to think about two things. I want to thank all these wonderful teachers and administrators and community that are here because they have taken
110time, or their time, to come over here and support you guys and the wonderful things that you guys are trying to do. Because it's trying to do work together for the children. When I saw the data, Dr. Lucas, from Kilsun, it's mind-blowing. And also when I see the data when the schools merge, it's something that I would say like it's a stress on our children, stress on our families when you guys make those decisions. And again, these decisions are continually made not by our board, not by money, but one person. And again, I cannot make one person accountable. This is a community. We have to work together to get it done. Some of our children, like they said earlier, they cannot even read. Again, are we an institution of building buildings or educating children? That's
111everything I have to say. Because one of those children are my niece who has started school here. And I, she's a level one. Those that know what that is. Think about it. She's been here fifth grade already since kinder. How many years I had to give you to show that you are here to provide proper education to our children. Thank you. And our last public comment is from other Indy's. So missing Gisa, please come to the podium to address your public comments on non-agenda item. You have three minutes. You may begin. Thank you. Good evening, Dr. Morris and board, cabinet, members of the audience. I wanted to come up here and on behalf of the CTE animation. film teachers and also industry partners whom I spoke with today. I want to really make certain that
112we thank Mr. John Nunez, Mr. Anthony Boyd, and Dr. Osea James, Dr. Lucas, Dr. Morris, and everyone else. If I miss someone, my apologies for making certain that that electrical work took place over this break. because now they're able to start working on their animation projects with the industry that's coming in, as well as their film projects and participate in some of the competitions that are taking place. I also wanted to let you know that all the CTE students right now, we're working with the South Bay Whip to ensure that every student has a resume. They have to have a resume, and then we're also working with industry, so they have their portfolios. We're recruiting Kaiser TK-8. I know some, I forget who on the board asked about. the middle schools and elementary. We have
113more coming for the elementary, but we're doing the Kaiser Medical Program. We're in the process of recruiting sixth through eighth grade students right now. The counselors, the admin, teachers are all helping do that, so we really appreciate it. And we are, the next thing we're working on is making certain, thank you Dr. Hosea James and Dr. Lucas to make certain that our new CTE teachers. our animation teachers, our digital music production teachers, and we order the supplies and everything that they need for their class. And we're also working with the Inglewood High School United admin, Dr. Collins is here still, and our digital music production teachers so that we can design their rooms so that it does look industry standard just like we did with animation, make certain that when take the students come in,
114it's a workspace that they're coming in and they're coming in as professionals to work with industry standard equipment and the space reflects that as well. I think that is, oh, we're also following up with students who we had a meeting with. With industry, one of the things we were talking about with our students who have graduated, one of the things that we have to do is follow them to ensure that they are going to college in that major or they're in the workforce. And so we're working with industry as well as the colleges to make certain that they get their apprenticeships with our industry partners. If you're not following us, if you can please do so at Englewood CTE. Our marketing person has done. and continues to do an amazing job and so once again
115it's at englewood cte and all the different social media platforms thank you thank you that concludes our public comments for tonight Thank you very much, Ms. Zambrano. Now we'll move on to action items, and we're going to look at Human Resources Division Item 9A1 through 9A4. President McKee, any questions or comments regarding Human Resources Division 9A1 through 9A4? Does the board have any comments on that? Not at this time. Thank you 9a 1 through 9a 4 are each approved moving on to educational services division 9b 1 through 9b 11 dr. McGee board member questions or comments. Do you have any questions or comments? I have a question on number 9 Derek Fisher be better foundation to provide academic to provide professional academic support and sports enrichment to all students enrolled? Dr. Lucas? Thank you for
116the question, Dr. McGee. So yes, the foundation does provide, just as described in the agreement, academic supports. Many of our partners do more than one thing. So in order, the scholar athlete or the student athlete component is what's borne out in that agreement. And I can get you more descriptive information about that to all the board members and the board member. No, I researched it. We've had no relationship with this organization before, so I'm just wondering. I'm going to let it pass, but I just have a problem with some of these after-school programs that we enroll in. This has nothing to do with Derek Fisher. It has everything to do with Be Better Foundation. So we're going to go on and just approve this as it stands. Mr. Morris. Is the contract for just this
117year? I think if we are looking at governing, we have the right to pull that item. If it's going to save our community some money until we do our due diligence, again, we're not jumping in blindfolded. We're jumping in eyes wide open. If you want to pull it, pull it. Dr. McGee, would you like to have Ms. Babin do a follow-up and then see if we bring it back at the next meeting? It would delay services. I think what we would need to do is look at it and see what the modifications are. We can always go back. I would agree with Mr. Myers that moving forward, some of these things are going to get pulled because we absolutely don't agree with them. Okay, we can move to the next agenda item. Thank you very
118much. 9B1 through 9B11 are each approved. Moving on to Business Services Division 9C1 through 9C7. Does the board have any disagreements in looking at the agenda items? So we're not pulling anything. We're moving forward Thank You 9c1 through 9c7 are each proved moving on to measure Gigi and facilities 991 Do you have any concerns? What my concern is that I was told that the question that I asked was included in an agenda item In the next section, excuse me miss Randall. I didn't mean to interrupt. It's in the next section. Okay. Thank you Moving forward. Thank you. 9D1 is approved. Moving on to county administrators item 9E1 through 9E2. 9E1 is the agreement for the adult school six-month lease. 9E2 is a series of board policy updates. I think at this particular time they would
119like for someone to weigh in on that before we just totally say, yay. Thank you. So that would be an opportunity, Mr. Guzman. Sure. Okay. So the agreement, as Dr. Morris mentioned, is focused on, it's a temporary agreement. One of the recommendations from the Asset Advisory Committee was to evaluate short-term or long-term lease instead of outright selling a property. So this falls under one of those recommendations. Several of the recommendations as drafted and approved by the Advisory, Asset Management Advisory Committee talked about recreation or programmatic functions for the site that the district can enter into. This lease agreement is actually a joint use lease agreement. It's different from just a lease agreement where we just rent it out to someone and we don't have anything to do with it. It's a joint use lease agreement
120where our students will be able to utilize that facility. It is short-term in nature. As you know, one of the issues that the building had was that structurally it was found to be unsafe, which is why the program was vacated from there. One other kind of important piece of information is as we started getting kind of ideas of what it would cost to demo for demolition of that part of the property, we were looking at around the million dollar range to just demo the property. And so, you know, the agreement essentially provides for the district to still utilize it for our students to utilize it during that time frame and there is a thought of then making a building that's long term in the sense of structure. And that will then be negotiated later on
121down the road in another form of another lease agreement that is at this point we're looking at around a five year agreement for that. They also in regards to risk to the district manage the risk with the company that's going through with the demolition and installing the new facility there. that's temporary for the next six months is going to be responsible for state, local, safety, labor, and environmental laws. So we're not going to be responsible for that. However, the district does retain full access rights to enter the property to inspect it. And so that is kind of a summary of what's going on there. No district operating costs were incurred here. The cost of demolition and the cost of the temporary structure or the temporary items that will be placed on the property. is zero
122to the district. So in a way, this negates the district from having to demo the property and spending that money. In fact, somebody else is doing that for us. And again, it's a joint use, so the district still has the opportunity to engage. Several of the items in the Asset Management Advisory Committee recommendations are specifically outlined that align with this. And Dr. Morris, I don't know if you want to add some more to that. I think you covered it very succinctly. And I can provide the Asset Management Advisory recommendations to you if you would like. However, it is a public document that could be reviewed, and it's in the June meeting that the Asset Management Advisory Committee had. And I'll weigh in on it during board comments, too. Not now. So are we in agreement
123with passing this? No. I'm making a recommendation that we pull it. I know, but I'm making a recommendation. I'm still the board representative for the Asset Management Committee, and certain steps were negated. They were neglected. If we have the chair here and we just had one of the Asset Management Committee members stating that they had no knowledge, we skipped some steps. And I'm going to be the brave one and say we have to pull it. I know they knocked the building down. This is why we're moving too fast. And I have nothing against this company, but I think when you skip the steps of involving the community, you did wrong already. And that's why I say we got to pull it. That is the recommendation from Mr. Myers. It has to be an agreement. So
124are you saying to pull it, Mr. Castile, Ms. Evans, and Ms. Randall? I need some more clarification. The building has already been knocked down. It's knocked down. Is there an agreement with whoever knocked it down about what they're going to put there? Yes. So us pulling it does what? If we have one person that wants to pull it, you need a vote. You know what I'm saying? You already took my toilet. I got to go to the bathroom. In this agreement, did they say they're going to put a new toilet? I'm going to say, what am I pulling? I'm pulling this lease agreement. I want to pull this lease agreement that's done with this true, think true, okay? Because there's steps that the district skipped. There's steps where you have to go through the asset
125and management committee. I got that part. You have to go through those hoops and hurdles. I don't know when this deal. was introduced to the district, as Mr. Hughes said during his comments, I attended the Asset Management Committee in December. This was not mentioned. And so if there are steps that we as a district have to take to be according to the law, right, of dealing with anything, dealing with our property, we just can't jump. and skip over certain steps because at the end of the day, this is not our property to do such things. We have committees set up that will be introduced with this. I got that part. Right. We have committees that are set up, will be introduced with this, and then they will send us the recommendations as a board, and
126then we'll approve it. There was a step skipped where the Asset Management Committee was not included, and it immediately came to us after the building is down. I got that part. My question. before I make a decision. They knocked the building down. They did not do that arbitrarily. Is there a contract in place that is signed that says they're supposed to resurrect the building and put something there? So if we pull it, does it negate that contract? Yes. Yes, it would. Yeah. So just a couple of points of information. Yes, it is accurate. There is an agreement in place. The other point of information is just clarification on Mr. Meyer's comments on the role of the Asset Management Committee. By law, the Asset Management Committee completes a report and makes a recommendation. The Asset Management
127Committee doesn't make a determination about what happens after they offer their recommendation. Ms. Abrahamian is going to do a follow-up presentation at the Asset Management Committee tomorrow. Just so it's clear, the legal role of the Asset Management Committee... for that property ended in June. It doesn't go back to the Asset Management Committee following that. Once the Asset Management Committee completes their work and makes recommendations on all of the district properties, then the Asset Management Committee doesn't have a role any longer. They offer recommendations, and that's kind of the end of their role in it. And to that point, because I'm not going to... let anybody provide the, in a sense, perspective or viewpoint that I have. When I attend these asset management committees, I know that this information was not told to them. And then
128a few laters, I received a call from you about this. And so the timing is off. I'm just being honest with you guys. I'm not selling our land. I'm not leasing it unless we're involved. I can't have the county continuously making land deals without our engagement. And if we have an asset management committee that's set up that have a little bit more power and say so than we do as elected officials, then why not acknowledge their recommendations? And if they don't recollect giving this recommendation, then I don't see how I just don't. We've had the conversation. We're going to move forward. CHRISTIE WOODARD. Thank you, Dr. McGee. 9E1 is approved. Moving on to approval of the minutes, does the board members have any questions or comments on the minutes of the December 10, 2025 meeting?
129CHRISTIE WOODARD. Do we have any questions or comments? CHRISTIE WOODARD. The minutes of the December 10, 2025 meeting are approved. CHRIS JERRAM. Thank you. I'm sorry. 9E1 and 9E2 are each approved. I didn't approve the policies. Thank you, Ms. Zambrano. Moving on to student board member remarks, Ms. Hazard. Thank you, Dr. Morris. Good evening, Board Presidents, members of the Board, Dr. Morris, Cabinet, and members of the community. As a student board member, I've been working on gathering updates and highlights from schools across the district so that we can stay connected to the experiences on different campuses. I'd like to share a few notable highlights from December as well as ongoing themes that students have raised concerns about. So in December, City Honors students participated in several meaningful activities that reflect strong student engagement. These include
130the participation in the district CAS test celebration, recognition of two students as Heads Up Foundation award recipients, and a dedicated senior college application day supported by staff. Students also represented the district beyond California by attending a national youth summit at Vanderbilt University focused on digital wellness and media literacy. As city honors, December was a very strong month for them as they participated in the celebration as well as being recognized by the heads of the foundation as a college application day. I also want to highlight a few things from Engwood High School. The Engwood High School band has been doing an amazing job representing our community. They performed at the City of Refuge with Dr. Collins in December and are soon about to represent in the MLK Parade this Monday, aiming to place first for the
131third year in a row. That consistency really reflects the hard work and commitment of the Sentinels or my fellow students. As for student leadership, ASB is preparing to host our first annual sneaker ball in February, February 20th to be exact, which is exciting to see as a new tradition for our school. Our Englewood basketball team has also been having a strong season and bringing lots of school spirit to the campus. While these highlights showcase student success, students have also shared ongoing concerns that are important for the board to be aware of. These include delays for city owners accessing their ASB bank accounts, limited district-level recognition for their school achievements, and challenges created by shared staff serving at multiple campuses. Students have also raised concerns about representation, particularly for students participating in athletics and band through
132district partnerships who feel their home school is often overlooked. Additionally, students, parents, and staff from both City Honors and Englund High School have raised continued concerns regarding graduation venues. Challenges such as parking, seating comfort, and sound quality have prompted a request for the district to explore alternate venues that better reflect the significance of graduation. Overall, students across the district want to feel supported, recognized, and valued for both their achievements and their voices. I appreciate the board's willingness to listen to student perspective, and I look forward to continue to share feedback and highlights in future meetings. Thank you. Thank you very much. And Dr. McGill, I'll turn it over to you for board member remarks. Let's see. Let's start with you, Ms. Evans. Happy belated Founders Day. We'll start with you. Thank you, and happy Founders
133Day to you as well, and to all of my sorors in the room. This thing that has just come up, I wasn't aware that it had not been brought to everybody's attention or other people weren't aware of this. When I heard about it, I thought it was a good idea that we could save a million dollars in knocking that building down, and then it's going to do something for our students. I thought it was wonderful. But I was not aware of the steps that had been missed. So I don't know, we can't give the money back. This building's been knocked down, they spent their money. So what are we asking? To be done. What are what's what's the ask? I don't know where we are with this What do we do now because I think
134that's something we can take up offline because I think what's happening now and it's very real is that there is a sense of not being transparent and not allowing The community or this sports voice to be heard And so I think that's something that we're going to have to take up, not tonight, but it's a very real situation. And when you get these reports, it's important that you read them thoroughly. That's so important because each of us have an opportunity to talk to the cabinet and Dr. Morris. And that's when these things need to be brought up and flushed out. And, you know, we are under receivership, and the sad part is we are under receivership. Yeah, and Dr. Morris is not responsible for us being under receivership. I understand that, but I'm not responsible
135for being here for 13 years either. But it's all good. Mr. Castillo. I wasn't finished. Oh, you weren't finished? Okay. Because it's 7-0-9. I didn't forget what I was going to talk about. Oh. For one thing, I signed on as a member of SoCal Rock, and they had their meetings on Tuesdays. And I'm retired, but I still have a life. And now they've changed their meetings to Thursday, which conflicts with a lot of things that I do on Thursday. So now I'm just wondering, do I still want to keep this position? Or do I want to do something else? We'll have to talk about that too. But I just wanted to let you know that it's a conflict for me. It was something else I wanted to talk about. But now this thing has, we'll
136talk about it. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Castillo. Thank you, Madam Board President. And I think the energy we felt from that discussion is something that's going to carry on to us getting ready to govern very, very soon. And it kind of highlights the reason why we need to govern very, very soon. because we are making decisions that have lasting impacts and these are decisions that should be made by a functioning board, a governing board, and we're very, very close to getting there. So I want us to make sure that we're aware that we're so close to the finish line and there's so much more that we could get in assistance in terms of community support, in terms of support from Sacramento, and ensuring that when we are out of the FICMAT approved recommendation to get
137a receivership, we still have a loan to pay the state. and we have discussed legislation that could possibly alleviate some of that debt. But I think this legislative cycle, I think there's going to be more of a hunger to do something more forceful and maybe look into a full-on debt cancellation for the district. These are all things that we could advocate for with our state representatives. These are all things that we could go to Sacramento to advocate for, as we did last year. And I think that's something we should do to motivate ourselves and motivate the community to really make this a main priority moving forward. uh because we can't allow for the community to feel like they're not part of the discussion when it comes to properties at home by the district which is
138public land i also want to thank the school site leaders this week that responded very very abrupt and assuring that our students were safe and our parents were safe during pickup we had ice kidnappings happening in our in our city very close to our school sites too close to our school sites and sharing information as soon as we saw the videos and we saw the photos everyone was aware staff was aware school leadership was aware and they make sure pick up and drop off with safe as possible so that's really important that shows us a community you know staying up to the moment a moment that is unfortunately in the hands of a authoritarian figure as President Trump who has not allowed us to understand our civil liberties and has overreached in a way that
139is going to be remembered for years and years and decades and decades from now and it's the reason why there's the invasion of other countries because of this type of action taken towards its own citizens and its own people. So we have shown that as a community, we're going to stand together. We're going to work together. We're going to share information. We're going to make sure everyone's aware of anything that's a concern for our safety, for our students and our parents. And I'm really grateful to be part of this team. I'm really grateful for this board for doing the same and making sure that they found whatever way they could to support their schools as well in their districts to make sure that everyone was safe and was aware of what's going on. And I'm
140really grateful to be part. It's about to be 12 years since I think I graduated from high school here. And in those 12 years, we've been under receivership. It's a very long time. It's a very long time. And I don't want this to be another 12 years that the district has to go through this stuff. So we're almost there. I can feel it. Let's all buy in, community. Let's get people to enroll their students back into our district. Let's get our teachers to feel like we support them and they're energized to teach every day. And let's make sure that we're letting our community know that we're doing better and we're going to continue to try to do better because it's time for us to have the Engel Unified we all deserve. Thank you. Oh. One
141more thing, homework for everybody. There's an amazing documentary on Netflix called Rebecca, a Becky G story. And she's a former Englewood Unified alumni. And she has done a lot of great things for our students. And one of the most amazing things happened, historic, you could say, has happened. And it's in the documentary. I won't give it away. But if you watch the whole documentary, you're going to have a really heartwarming experience seeing some amazing things happen for our students here at Englewood. So I know the board has already seen it by Explorer. uh implore the uh the public to also give a chance it's only an hour and a half and it's on netflix i think most people hopefully have netflix so please give it a watch and let me know what you think thank
142you um mr moyers sure thank you um so I'm going to get to work on that, but I just want to start and say I want to celebrate our Englewood High School basketball team that will be traveling back east. And thank goodness I'll be heading there to celebrate with them this championship win against this Notre Dame Connecticut team. We're going to mop them. But then if you guys won't be in attendance, tune in to NBA TV, okay, at 7 o'clock Eastern Standard Time. That's when our Englewood boys will be. hoisting these boys up on the rim. So, um, that's, that's just a bit of good news. And I just want to thank my, uh, Benicu family for coming out and, um, showing their appreciation. Um, it's, it's greatly appreciated. Now, um, I want to kind
143of. Merge on over to this. So Ephesians 6 and 12 has been ringing in my head for the last few days, right? For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, right? And what are we doing here? What are we doing here? It's not flesh and blood, but what is it? It's the principalities. It's things that we can't see. Sister Evans, we gained a million dollars on our lease agreement. We still owe $700,000 on the mortgage on the building. What I'm saying is there's not a smart person at the helm. And please don't take this wrong, because I love all of you and I think all of you are amazing at your positions. But again, everything falls on the leader at the head. And if I'm mentioning these conversations, Madam President, in our one-on-one conversations with
144the county administrator, letting him know the downfall of this deal and how it will impact us. and how we're not looking at our students. See, what I've noticed is that our intention, well, not our intention, but the county's intention is to put assets on our land. We don't look at the, we don't dive enough, and this is no slight on you, Dr. Lucas, we don't dive enough into the true assets, which is our babies. So when we're only looking at three lands that have literally been... taking under your watch. I'll start with my old elementary school, Worthington. We just sold it to the city for $12 million. Where does that go? Was it ever discussed that these $12 million will be funded towards paying off the loan? Will it be funded towards paying off something
145that's going to improve student achievement, going to increase our ADA? Step further. across the street from Morningside. This is another thing that you neglected to tell the Asset Management Committee. I watch everything. Sorry, I do so much. That's why I got all these gray hairs. Sold it to the city for $900,000. You failed to tell the Asset Management Committee that there was water. There's a water running under that land, which now the city tapped into, built the water well, and now you see your rates going up. When we could have leased it with the proper knowledge to the asset management committee we could have leased it to the city for $900,000 a year and look at how much that would have revenue that would gain for our district. So when I'm talking about deals being
146made and there's nobody at the helm that's really thinking down the line lack of vision we perish. We perish. And this is why I'm adamant and I'm so stuck with us getting local control back. Mr. Ernesto, when I was sitting in this presidency, I was promised 18 months that we'll get local control back. Fool me once, shame on who. Fool me twice, shame on you. Ms. Randall, do you have any board comments? I want to thank you, Dr. Morris, for going to the Southwest Regional Carpenters Union. They want to form a partnership with Ingalls Unified School District to provide a career pathway for students. I have connected the leadership with Dr. Lucas on email, and I look forward to being able to develop that partnership to have a career pathway for students. During December, I
147was hosted at Kelsa. The principal, Dr. Fontaine, hosted us in a community day with Eva Overturf. and the community was able to go in and tour the school and see how the classrooms were being run. They were very happy with that. I'm very pleased with the repair work that is being done at Kelso. I'm very happy with the innovative construction being done at Englewood High School. I taught there for 11 years, and the physical plant just made you sad. So I'm very, very happy about the construction at Englewood High School. I do attend biweekly meetings with Dr. Morris. I had no idea the Asset Management Committee had a process and procedures. However, today I'm hearing that the Asset Management Committee's role ended in June, but they had a meeting last month. So I need clarity
148on that. I can't get clarity at this meeting, but I'm going to come back and ask for clarity on that. The Strategic Planning and Marketing Communications and Partnerships Committee is now on the district's website. I'll be putting together a report coming from Dr. Lucas and Dr. Goolsbee from the last three months of what's been going on at IUSD. For the ICE kidnappings, yes, it went immediately viral. The entire community knew what was going on. We were able to protect our kids and each other. I was very, very happy to be an Englewood resident because it went viral immediately. I was very, very happy about that. I'm very proud of the board members for our role in seeking transparency, the inclusion of the community. Not standing down when we have a question. I'm very very happy
149about that. I have never received an answer on How much were the developer fees that we got for the school that was supposed to be built in the new development? That wasn't built We got the developer fees. I have never gotten an answer on how much those developer fees were and how they were spent once that check got back to us. That preceded you. I left it alone, but now I want to know. So it's somewhere. I am shocked that Worthen was sold, the property of Worthen was sold for $12 million, which is why I'm very, very interested in the... in the Morningside property being retained by the district. And we've had that conversation previously. And I was told that Inglewood High could house 1,500 students, but now I'm hearing a different number. So I'll
150come back to that conversation as well. Thank you to the community. Keep showing up. Don't stop showing up. Keep showing up because sometimes we don't get information if you don't show up. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I want to thank this board for just being so consistent with being thoughtful, for doing your due diligence, and there's much work to be done. For being a good steward of your schools, that's important. They came here tonight, all of them, to just show us love. And we have a responsibility to receive that. but to honor it and honor it by being transparent, honor it by being accountable, and honor it by being trustworthy and honest. And when you see something, you need to do something. When I got your message yesterday, Mr. Castile, I was here.
151And when I tell you, Dr. Hosea, I mean, she was supposed to be having a meeting. She jumped out of here. That's because we care about our community. We care about ICE not being here. They have no business here. And so we were able to collectively check on our schools, check on our parents, because when you put in that text message about what was going on, it allowed me to share that information with people that I know are in that area. We are going to continue getting training on the Brown Act so that we don't violate it. We're going to continue getting training on audits and finances so that we understand it. We're going to continue to get training on media, what we should say and what we shouldn't say in public, because I want
152to make sure. that my legacy when I leave here, I've done everything I possibly can to make this a better place. So I thank you and I don't think anything else happened this month that was more significant than January 13th. So with that being said, Dr. Morris, I turn this meeting back over to you. CHRISTIE WOODARD. THANK YOU. JUST A COUPLE OF BRIEF COMMENTS. JUST SO EVERYBODY IS AWARE, THE FICMAT ON-SITE VISITS WILL BE FEBRUARY 2ND THROUGH FEBRUARY 21ST FOR THEM TO REVIEW THE LAST NINE STANDARDS, FACILITIES AND FINANCE. AND WE ARE HOPEFUL AND HAVE HIGH EXPECTATIONS BECAUSE OUR STAFF HAS WORKED REALLY, REALLY HARD TO MAKE SURE THAT WE HAVE THE DOCUMENTATION IN PLACE. and the evidence that we have met those last nine standards, February 2nd through 21st. We will not have school
153on Monday, and that's a time when we should take time to honor the legacy of Dr. King. That's the reason that our schools will be closed down. Our next Board of Education meeting is scheduled for February 18th. And I want to close out the meeting by taking a moment to wish the following board members a very happy birthday. Mrs. Margaret Turner Evans, Mrs. Joyce Randall, and a bit of a belated happy birthday to our student board member, Ms. Amaya Hazard. So I hope we can join together in singing a happy birthday three times as loud as we normally would sing it. Happy birthday to and the meeting will stand adjourned at 726 p.m