0015.40 p.m. In closed session tonight, the board took action to approve a resignation agreement with a certificated employee. The vote was as follows. Trustee Hamm, aye. Trustee Jai Sinha, aye. Trustee Coleman, aye. Trustee Pickle, aye. Trustee Valdez, aye. 5.46 p.m. Let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Is there a motion for the approval of the agenda? So moved. is there a second second for the vote motion passed unanimously moving on to recognition uh mr jolly uh good evening president jayasinga school board superintendent peterson cabinet and mrs robeck um so it's my pleasure to introduce our head wrestling coach mr alfonso payas we're celebrating tonight a very awesome championship i'm coach payas i just wanted to say thanks to the board the merced district for this recognition it means a lot to us as a team
002and i want to you know thank my coaches for working hard especially these young ladies some of them i had a miss because they had to work that we worked hard all year And again, thank you. Thank you so much. They compiled a 19-0 record. They went undefeated through the whole season. And what makes this very special is that it's the first one in San Joaquin history. You know, for Merced District, for Livingston, for the whole district of San Joaquin. So the first one to ever win it is going to be Livingston. So it makes it even that much. more special and again thank you for the recognition we really appreciate it thank you so much Lexi Perez, Mia Ceja, Natalie Cervantes, Noemi Revolta, and Sarah Arroyo. Well, congratulations, ladies. Great job, coaches. Congratulations. Giant
003team. Looks like the place to be. Cool kids, huh? Yes, so it's my pleasure again to introduce Mr. Manuel Maria, our construction trades teacher, and his students tonight. They have a short video that they will show and then talk to you a little bit about their experiences. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the board. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? So how better is the showcase with a little short video? I also brought some of our woodcrafted projects here on the table. We'll talk about those later if you're interested. We've got a fundraising going on. So, yeah, let's get to the video. I apologize for the long video, but there's just so much good happening, you know, and that's how I feel. Lots of support and the great photos Viviana took. We used
004them all, right, in the slideshow. So, again, you know. This wouldn't be possible without support, you know, coming from the board and everybody backing us up, as well as LHS, Mr. Jolly, Mr. Lacey, and stakeholders and all, right? So I'm not able to do what I need to do being in my fourth, fifth year going into this without the support and, of course, without the students doing the work. So I want to just kind of a quick shout out, like, you know, go ahead and talk your name and where you're at and what year you are in the course. Go ahead, Alexis. As you can see the variety, students coming in and out. This year I made it a thing to have the girls included in everything we're doing. So I'm really shooting for equality.
005The girls this year stepped up, you know, being in the program first year. They drove, they did it. The boys, this is some of their second, third, fourth years with me. They did outstanding. Every competition we're doing, I'm always giving them the credit. Again, it's not me doing the work and wearing my bags in the hardware. This is hard work we're talking about. Being industry ready, what it means to us is being able to do the little things here that are involving us to be successful. So, like I said, very proud of these students. Again, this is the third, fourth year, my fourth year. We're growing, the program's growing, but without the support, we wouldn't be where we're at right now. So I appreciate you guys' time. Any questions? I have a question. So is
006this your whole class or you have more students in the program? This is basically... the finishers here. So these guys are the ones, this is not my whole class, these are the guys and girls that are coming with me to the competition. So I actually have two courses here. I have students in my construction trades course, and I also have students in the architecture engineering pathway course. So I teach two pathways here in Livingston High. So our pathways are designed around one thing in mind. We're designing, we're building at the same time. So it's two pathways coming together, and we're for surely showing the four C's here. We're collaborating, thinking, you know, critical thinking going on, communication, all this stuff is happening here. We're a work in progress, but again, you know, just with them
007doing the work, that's it. How many total students, when you look at the student population, how many students go through your program? Program every year. So this year, I believe I have three Construction I courses, and we're usually about 87 students, Construction I. Those are the intros. The second year. we're about 32 and the third year we're capped at 15 right now so a part of this is increasing the program and learning how to retain the numbers and as we're going along is getting more involvement from the girls i think that's the key is just being able to show students and giving them the opportunity to understand the pathway uh and completely right so just getting to engage more and more is the goal for us to come yeah just so you understand this is
008not a theory class I was able to attend the Elk Grove competition and they had 12 hours or so, part of one day and part of another day, to complete that full wood shed that they took the picture in front of, that last picture you saw. No instructors can help. They can give guidance, but they can't hammer any nails. you know cut the wood or anything it was all students it was all them yeah you're right you're right mr peterson so at times i bit my my fingers i was like come on let me in there let me coach put me in coach i want to do this But I did, and I stepped back and I let them complete whether we didn't completely finish, you know, but I think this year was part of
009just the whole growing thing, right? So building around another set of students, you know, being the girls, I'm hoping that we're to carry on the legacy of the boys and the older trades guys, having them leave and maybe bringing something new to the table as well. You know, it's part of just building the program, man. Well, Mr. Murillo, great job. And to the students as well. And great job on including. It looks like you have 50-50 on your finishers. Right. 50% female and male. Right. And to the students, it never hurts to have a college degree because you can be in management. However, just regular construction, when you guys, maybe you know this already, but when you build schools, you're going to get prevailing wage, which right now is probably around $80 an hour. So
010it's a great job to have. But again, management's even better. On that take right there, so I have different types of students. So we got students that are going to get into the skilled workforce. And I also have, like I said, students in the construction management force. So I have students in my courses, architecture. They're interested in engineering, the pre-management, pre-construction parts of it. So it's always, so what I'm teaching these kids is where do you fit in with these programs, whether it's going to a four-year college and continuing education. or you learn a skill trade so i'm about the skill trades i came i made my route earning and learning through the skill trades earning what they would call is uh work and earn but again you know it took time for me to
011understand that yeah education is good but long run said and done education is always going to be there and i went back to it when i was when i was ready Mr. Murillo, real quick, I saw a slide in your video. Yes. And it looked like you had young children building toolboxes. Can somebody talk about that? Because it looked like you did community outreach or something. That was awesome. So that was during our Centennial Festival. And we had a little workshop built. Basically, like you know how Home Depot does their workshops? We had a small workshop built. So I had students, Angel Moreno, along with some other students that are not here right now, but Angel Moreno and a couple others that were. So they were pretty much building components so these students can, so
012these kids can put these packages together and they can kind of do hands-on. I even had Mr. Jolly building it. Mr. Jolly was building toolboxes and yeah, he wanted to be a part of it. I was like, yeah, we got one for you, Jolly. It's all right, go step in. You know, he did really well, but the rest of the kids, they loved it. They loved it and they understood. So they were really excited about it and I got a lot of positive feedback within the community. I'm just trying to give back, you know. Mr. Murillo, good thing he brought this up. I've been trying to get Home Depot to come to an event we do with families with autism. So I'll be giving you a call. Yes, sir. I would love to do that.
013I got the students that are willing to do these things, and we got the skill, definitely. I'm always looking for opportunities to give back to the community one way or another. Always. Always, always. And like I said, at the end of the slides that you had, I think I had a slide, you know, follow us on Instagram. If you guys are curious about what we're doing during the normal school years, we have a link for our wood products. So we usually have stuff like this. We're trying to do a fundraiser here, getting rid of our round-up chairs, just to throw it in since we're here, right? So students have been busy. They've been busy in and outside of class. And this is just feedback for us to give back to the program. and tools and
014whatever else we need. Can you have him bring it and show us what you got? So this chair was designed and created by us here completely. It's a mahogany chair, African mahogany chair. So this chair is meant to sit outside in the weather as is for a good 10, 15, 20 years treated right. So everything about it, stainless steel components. type on three wood glue waterproof everything about it is solid so again students build this not i didn't touch one bit of that they did this on their own with instruction they learned how to read prints they learned how to read uh shop drawings and that's kind of what i'm showing them now so anybody can learn the skill but to actually learn the sharp drawings and build it from from scratch is one thing
015so that's when the management side comes into it so again you know designing it creating and building it yeah So that's one of them or two, but yeah, that's pretty much what we got. My kids barely, they made this thing, first thing at lunchtime. They came in at lunch, and they made these from scratch during lunchtime. Yeah, they, out of a scrap lumber, it's a little coaster. I thought it would be a nice touch to just kind of remind you guys of us. Yeah. Well, thank you. No problem. Thank you guys for having us. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. No, I am not skilled in wood, that's correct. Cool, awesome, awesome. Thank you guys. So sort of the theme for my principles report tonight is to celebrate and talk about the great things
016that have been happening. So we, in terms of celebrating, it's important. That is a tier one. support of students and the MTSAS model. We had LCAP awards night so total we've had 724 students that were recognized for all kinds of different things so GPA, perfect attendance, attendance improvement, our live gold character traits, and then Love Purple growth awards. So students that made goals with the intervention coordinator or someone else and were recognized for them making that personal growth over time. We were excited. We had our scholarship awards night already with $387,000 and $858,000. And that was awesome, again, to recognize the students who have been working really hard in academics and in all the other ways that they're involved to be earning those scholarships. We do Wolves of the Week every week, so there are
017five students. We've had 150 so far. These are nominated by staff. for students that we'd like to recognize for various different things, but just that they've stood out somehow through their character or their actions or their academics within a classroom. Mr. Schaefer actually brought Taco Tuesday this year as a way to work with students. Let's taco about it. And teachers and staff nominate students who have demonstrated one of the four C's in a certain way, and they get recognized on our Wolfpack News. Hall of Excellence is something we started this semester actually, which is administrative team recognizing staff members who are excelling in their instruction in some kind of way. We do that monthly. There are DOK levels, there are interactions, the engagement that they're able to create in their classroom. And Bud Powell is
018a tradition of teachers recognizing other teachers and also staff. So we also have classified staff recognized and nominated by each other. So far we're happy to have 571 certifications and 316 of those are STAR Academy. So we're just excited about all those opportunities. Again, all our data is not in there quite yet. I know Ms. Pellisier is here somewhere and she will be making sure that we have everything and we will make sure together because it's really amazing to be able to recognize students and have it be a part of ARIES. Some more updates. This time of year is a wonderful reflection time, although we're always reflecting, but we did the biggest kind of reflection you have for a school, which is the WASC self-study. We just last week were granted the six-year accreditation with
019a mid-cycle visit. And so, again, the whole idea there is we look at what our student needs are, what are we doing to address them, and what are we doing well, and then what do we want to work on. So out of that, we have six goals that we developed and actually plan around. We were excited, the CCI numbers came out since the last time we were here, and so we're very excited that overall for our school we had 56.1% of our kids, the graduating class last year, who were prepared according to the state of California through the CCI measure, which was a 15.4% increase over the year before. So we're excited to continue to keep working on that. That is what it's all about. We want our students to leave our high school feeling
020completely ready to go into the workforce, into college, and just life. MTSS Tier 1, so we've been working as a group, building consensus through setting some goals, looking at data, and then teachers have tried data cycles. So they chose a strategy to address a certain goal, and for example, on-task behavior. They chose the kind of different strategies they'd like to try, told us what it was, tried it out, reflected with us, and that's just an ongoing process. We started with the behavior goals. We'll be continuing with our other goals, academics. and deeper learning again, goal setting and reflection as part of our district initiative. So our teachers chose again the strategy they wanted to use and then decided how they would like to work with other staff or themselves or just reflect and plan together.
021So that's been a great having those conversations with teachers. and seeing the work in class. Teams working towards goals this year, so we've had instructional leadership team, our English language success managers, who are focused on EL English learners, and then our MTSS team who again led a lot of the work with the tier one activities. And then we were proud of our, one of the things that came out of our committee work from last year was our testing week. We had something for each grade level during testing week. So freshmen were doing physical fitness tests. Of course, 11th graders are taking the CASP test. And then sophomores and seniors had workshops that they rotated through throughout the day, focused on preparing for interview, other kind of life skills. We had one on gratitude and thankfulness.
022for seniors. Part of it in responding to, at the end of the year it's a great activity to do, and then also we wanted them to be able to respond well in their thank you notes to all the awesome people who came out to do senior interviews with our students. Which, by the way, they did an amazing job. It was inspiring. Because I had the fortunate opportunity to also do interviews that morning, so it was great. And that's kind of it. I wanted to keep it brief. Again, it's about celebrating the awesome work and things our kids are doing and our staff. And so it's our 100th year this year, by the way, for graduation. So we're super excited about that. Mr. Jolly, talking about graduations, how many students are graduating this year? 287. About
023the same every year. About, yeah. Next year we have a little bit larger senior class. So we'll see. It's closer to 300. Mr. Weimer, when are we going to make the high school like that again? I'm sure construction's trades could make us one of those. There you go. Thank you, Principal Jolly. Okay, so moving on to the general public comment period. The meeting is recorded. Individuals addressing the board are asked to fill out a speaker card located in the back of the room, complete a blue card to speak to an item not on the agenda, and a yellow card to speak to an item on the agenda. Please return the card to the Administrative Secretary of the Governing Board. Individuals addressing the board shall be limited to three minutes each with no more than 20
024minutes per topic. During this portion of the agenda, the public is invited to comment on items which are not on the agenda but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the Board of Trustees. The board will take no action at this time but may refer the issue for further consideration. Individuals who wish to comment on agenda items shall be provided an opportunity to comment after the staff report and before the board's consideration of that item. Individuals who cannot wait to address the board when the agenda item is listed may make their comments at this time. And we have one card, okay. We have one card from Mallory Perez. So thank you, Ms. Perez, for your comments. So what we'll do is we'll have someone follow up with you. We have your contact information. So you'll
025be contacted by someone from the district. Okay? On to reports and discussions. Yes. So induction program update, Ms. Berman. Good evening. Board President Jayasinghe, board members, Superintendent Peterson, cabinet, Mrs. Rohrbach. I'm very happy to introduce our MUHSD new teacher induction team. I want to individually introduce them in just a second if you don't already know them. But first I wanted to say that I'm really happy they get to present to you because there's a lot of great work being done by this team, super instrumental and impactful, the work that they do, because they are the ones equipping our new teachers, many of our new teachers, with the skills and resources and support they need to have a successful career in this district and to serve the students that we work with. So. just wanted to
026take a minute like i said if you don't already know them um so we have mindy crypts and becky gibson linda gonzalez and brianna pivarotto so i'm going to turn it over to them induction is a two-year program in which we mentor inspire empower teachers really to become the best version of themselves as educators At the end of the two years, the teachers are then, they clear their credential, and Merced Union High School District has had its own induction program, which ours is job embedded, which benefits the teachers and the students for 20 years we've had our own program. These are our numbers for this year. So we have a total of 51 teachers that we are working with. at all the different sites. We've put them out by years. And we also, this year,
027took in interns and pre-interns that are SPED teachers that needed the support. And so we have 51 total teachers that we are working with across all of the different sites. Types of support include, but is not limited to, because whatever the teacher needs is what we strive to give them. But the classroom management, I'm not going to read all of them to you. The goal-driven long-term growth, the ILP stands for Individualized Learning Plan. And that is a document that houses their goals. We have teachers, based on the CSTPs, we have teachers set goals every year and then... as the year progresses we have them show evidence of their growth towards that goal and we house that evidence also on the ilp which is a document and the impact cycle if you're not aware of what
028that is it is a framework for coaching that we have adopted in our district and it is a cycle that is has three stages and it's continuous throughout the school year and so they identify an area of need that they need to improve in and then they learn about how to get better through mentoring and then the last one is thank you then they improve sorry yeah all right so In addition to the types of support that Becky mentioned, we also have a Canvas course that houses all of the coursework that they do for our program. I'm not going to read all of those to you either, but I just want to pull out a couple of highlights because there are things that are part of induction that are mandated by the state, like the
029individualized learning plan that Becky mentioned. But then there are also things that we have worked together to develop that we think are valuable experiences for our teachers to have. One of those valuable experiences that we have them do is at the end of the first semester, we have them interview or survey their students to get feedback from their students about... things that they can improve in their classes, giving students a voice in what occurs. Another thing that I wanted to highlight, which we're going to talk about a little bit more, some of the other mentors are going to talk about these things, but we have seminars that we do once a semester where they get together with other teachers in the program and have a series of professional development. And then we also have induction
030rounds that they do where they visit and observe veteran teachers, so they'll talk more about those things. And then the other thing I wanted to pull out was the family communication logs. So we want them to establish the habit early on of contacting families when students are doing well or when they're not doing well and speaking with their parents and guardians to work together and have that home school partnership that we know is very valuable. And then... We have some feedback from our candidates. Now this information is pulled from an anonymous survey that we give to all of our candidates at the end of each school year. So again, not gonna read all the words, but just wanna highlight in that first quote there, one of the things the teacher found valuable was working on
031the goals that they selected in their individualized learning plan. And they felt that that didn't just help kind of get them through the year, but they were actually growing as a professional, which is the goal. They also found that the seminars were helpful because they got to work with teachers across the district, which is another thing that doesn't happen as often as we'd like to see it, but this is one opportunity where they get to do that. And then on the right, just acknowledging that the work of a teacher is infinitely complex, and so having that experienced mentor there to support them is what helps get them through. Like Brayna mentioned, we have a feature that supports our teachers known as the induction round. So I think the easiest way to explain it is it's
032a field trip that's instructionally focused. So we travel through all sites. We're part of all the sites in supporting them. So once a semester, we pick a site and host an instructional round in which we ask veteran teachers and second-year teachers, which I'll talk about in a minute, open their classroom doors for our candidates in the program. to come see some instruction beyond their site. Their sites already support them with many ways of instruction and seeing veteran teachers on their own campus. This gives them an opportunity to see a different campus, possibly different ways things are done and a new perspective with, again, different departments or whatnot from those different sites. So we round up a handful of them once a semester and visit a campus to see those wonderful instruction things happening elsewhere in
033the district. The other thing that we do during these induction rounds that are pretty awesome is we ask our year twos to open their classroom doors for the year ones to come visit them. And so when we talk about growing our own and giving our teachers the capacity to be leaders, this is an opportunity for those. And being the program to be an example and to be an instructional leader, showcasing all the wonderful things they're doing in their classroom and then having that conversation with the first years. So building that. role for them early on in their career and hoping they continue to be interested and take on those roles as they come. So yeah, this gives them an opportunity to visit other teachers and we've been doing this since 2023 and every site we
034had has hosted it thus far. We're really excited about doing that. Speaking with other induction programs not part of our district, this is very rare and different so we're excited to have that different facet of our program that helps specialize their needs as they move forward with their education. And then here's some feedback to the right in regards to those induction rounds. They just felt like, you know, it's great to see something from the different island they're from on their campus and new opportunities for growth in their own teaching practices. The response to the left is just about our induction program in general. And what we loved about this that I'll just pull out from the quote is that they felt that this journey through the induction program is personalized to them and not a
035one-size-fits-all approach to their experiences they develop as an educator. So I'm going to talk briefly about our induction seminars. These are held once a semester, so once in the fall, once in the spring. And teachers are pulled out of their classrooms all day. They come together at the disc, and we provide training or professional development on different topics. Typically, we mentors observe in the classroom often, so we will typically pick the topics. for the first seminar and the second seminar we do ask for teacher feedback in what areas they would like to grow in so what information they want and we present based off of that all of our seminars are very interactive so our teachers are up moving around experiencing the things that we're talking about or suggesting they do in their classrooms and
036it allows for a lot of choice because they are picking what they're working on they're choosing what we present to them We gather feedback. We typically do two days because we have a lot of teachers. So we'll split them by subjects or by years, depending on what we have going on. And we will look at our feedback. At the end of each day, we'll make adjustments even from day to day and then keep those suggestions in mind for our future seminars. So what's next for induction? Well, this year we brought on our interns. So we mentor interns this year in addition to our teachers who are needing to clear their credentials. And we are looking forward to the future where we may be allowed to mentor all new teachers. What percent of new teachers enroll
037in this program? Well, any new teacher that needs to clear their credential, we certainly have. And then any intern that is working in our district. we have now mentored as well so we bring them into the program i don't well we have 51 that we're working with this year but i don't know it's hard it's hard to say because there's no way to know from year to year where they'll be at in their credentialing process so for example in in the past few years when we've hired new teachers to our district they're not necessarily new so we'll have people come in like we had a 20-year veteran come into golden valley last year so that person wasn't part of our program but they still received support from their site instruction Sorry, I don't have a
038clear. It's great to hear that you're including interns. I know that has been a sticky point for a long time as a former site principal. So kudos. I'm glad to hear that. That's great. Thank you. quick to Erin's question too. I was trying to think, I think probably 60 to 70% of the first year teachers qualify, but they'll all, like the mentor said, they all eventually clear their credential, but it's just become much more common practice in California. I can't speak for other states for teachers to be coming in on various waivers, permits, internships, and things like that. So they will all eventually be in the program at some point. So these ladies have mentored. everyone up to a certain point. It looks like it's a very well thought out, developed program and you guys
039work and coordinate very well together. It's really a nice opportunity to build relationships with all those folks too. That is the NUHSD valedictorian and salutatorian update. Good evening board members and cabinet I'm coming to you again after last month's discussion on our antiquated valedictorian and salutatorian selection process Our next step we had brought three options for you to look at that we were discussing with our district leadership team which is our principals in our cabinet and We took those options three of the options were Valedictorian is the highest GPA and the salutatorian is second highest. We had another option of utilizing a percentage. So we looked at 1% of top 1% of the class being valedictorians, top 3% salutatorian. And we also looked at just adjusting the current policy that we use. It's a little
040bit difficult, but we could make some adaptations to it to make it a little easier and increase the... GPA to 4.4 based on a seven period day and multiple opportunities for honors courses. So taking that back to our district leadership team, we had a good discussion around all three of these options and we took a vote and the majority of our district leadership team chose option number one, which is choosing the highest. academic hopefully, but that's up for discussion still, but highest GPA for the valedictorian and second highest GPA is the salutatorian. There were a couple members of DLT that liked our current policy and thought maybe it just needed adjusting, but most people did settle on top one and two for our new selection process for valedictorian and salutatorian. So we just wanted to
041bring that back to you. we talked quite a bit about that selection process and how important it is that we really outline some different considerations in choosing that top one and two there's a lot of different variations that we can look at so i did throw up some considerations that i pulled from other school districts valedictorian selection process miguel if you could click on the considerations link So we did talk in depth about when does that student become part of the class to be chosen for that valedictorian? Do they have to start with us their freshman year? Can they start the first day of school their senior year and be part of that cohort? There were several different options that schools used. Option one, students must be enrolled in the high school issuing the diploma
042by the beginning of the senior year. So we could just take any student that is enrolled at that time. Several districts had students attending the high school for three years with the final two years at the same site. We do have a lot of mobility in our district. Students with an early grad status cannot be valedictorian of the new class to which they are assigned. I have seen that in several policies, meaning students need to complete eight semesters with us. If you are an early grad, you really are only completing six semesters with that, and that plays an important role in calculating that GPA. We've looked at, we have several different GPAs that are reported on our transcripts right now. We have total weighted GPA. That includes all coursework, including honors classes being weighted. That
043is what we have used in the past. up until this point. We have academic GPA that is also included on our transcripts and that takes out classes that we do not consider academic classes. Right now those are all of our athletics and PE classes that are not calculated in the academic GPA. There are several other courses that we offer, things like class assistant, librarian assistant, internships. We really need to go back and have a discussion at the district level about what classes are considered academic versus non-academic to make a decision as to what would be calculated if we chose that route of using the academic GPA. In the event of a tie, we do need to be specific that we would allow for covalves and cosals. And then this was another thing that I've seen
044in several policies which I thought was very interesting and I kind of liked it. That students must exceed state standards in the CASP testing in math and English to be considered for valedictorian. I think that helps some of our issues that we might be concerned about. Are students not always doing the best? What is the use of this test? Why are we, you know, what's in it for me? So I thought that was kind of a neat. I need option to put in there for considerations of what your valedictorian or salutatorian should look like. So these are all pieces of the process that we do not currently have. Correct. In our thought process around this. Right now we're calculating based on eight semesters, so we wait until the last minute. And really it only says
045that we're calculating only up to five honors classes, and we're using the total GPA. That's really the only. criteria that we have at this point. So are these bullet points part of the conversation that you had with the Edmonton? Yes, we talked a lot about these and these were just things that I pulled out of other districts. They're good, I think, very good considerations. What was the overall thought around some of these? I think a lot of people like the idea of the academic weighted GPA over total GPA to pull out some of those courses that students sometimes are concerned about taking, that it's maybe pulling their GPAs down. So some of our students will either choose not to do something or we've had situations where they've asked for things to be removed from transcripts,
046which we do not want to do. So yeah. What about the enrollment pieces? We didn't get too in-depth there. There are so many different, we had one principal that thought it should be part of the original cohort the second you start your freshman year. I don't know if that's right. We have a lot of movement in our district, but I think it is worthy of coming up with something that's very defined, whether it be transferring within the first semester of your senior year or within our district or you had to be in our district for a year or two. I'd hate to punish a student for having to transfer or come in from another district. It's not their fault. And they have to move a lot of times. So yeah, that one's up for more
047discussion though, for sure. Where I see that most is we don't offer any classes except I think academic decathlon. It's very difficult for our freshman students to have honors opportunities. Our English classes, our science classes are not honors classes at the freshman level. And I do see a lot of transcripts coming in from out of district where they do offer honors courses at the freshman level. So that makes a big difference in the GPA. So definitely what we need to consider is when do we consider them part of our graduating cohort. And I think the early grad discussion is really important too. We have two early grads from different sites this year that came in and bumped the number one. So definitely something for considering. Have you considered talking to students? I'm just curious because
048this has been, you know. Since when did, 98? 98, yeah. And I wondered about maybe having a roundtable with some of the valedictorians from this year. I mean, at LCAP there's 45 or 50, so you might get a robust discussion. Yeah, yeah. We've thought about it. One of the reasons that we have not attempted that is most of them have no idea how they became that valedictorian. You know, when Gina and Brandy, our college and scholarship counselors, when they start informing students, the students are like, oh, how did I get that? Or, oh, you know, we have some, some that know it, but most of them do not know our policy, and they're just, they don't even know that it's 4.24. So we have not done that. I'm probably worthy of checking with some of
049them. I think you would actually get some very intelligent discussion around it. And I think one of the things that we've heard is that it's pretty drastic to go from 50 at a site to one, right? You know, I don't know if a phased approach is appropriate or, I mean, I would support one-to-one, but I would really love to hear what students thought about it. Because we have definitely just heard, it's watered down. Why are there so many of us? It's not as meaningful. The students, the students say that. Yeah, oh, absolutely. I'm one of 45? Right, yes. That's not very special. Yes, yes. It is, but it's a great accomplishment. But yes, it's a little outdated. I do have two principals here. I don't know if you want to say anything, principals? Okay. It's
050a good time to step out. You know I was going to call on them. Any other questions? We hope to finalize this then and get that AR amended and really make sure that we get that out so that, again, looking at grandfathering with the class of 2029, so we want to get that information out there, get our websites updated so that people understand what the process is. Yes, yes, that will all be outlined in the AR. A, as freshmen, and B, as transfers? Absolutely. So I discussed that with our APs of counseling and our counseling leadership team, and they do do presentations in the beginning when they're out orientating with the ninth graders, and they briefly talk about graduation honors. I don't think they, I don't. I don't think a lot of our counselors understand
051the policy either, so I don't think they get into great depth, but I think this might allow them the opportunity to be able to explain a little bit more clearly, and you know, our gold cords and our CSF and stoles and pathway cords, and it's part of the presentation. I just don't think it's very defined right now because it's hard to understand. If they've had the college class and it's on the equivalency list and it is on their transcript then it is included in their GPA. So from the summer before ninth grade on, any college courses that are on there are weighted. But our own MUHSD courses, there are very few that a student can take as a ninth grader that are weighted. Does that make sense? Yeah, I'm wondering, is that something we should
052consider? Consider, we do count them as weighted classes coming in. So if they have it in the summer before ninth grade or the ninth grade college classes, they are weighted in their GPA. The college classes are automatically weighted, yes. That's not something that we can say classes only after this grade. at the college level could be considered? We could. We do have that on our transcript as well. That's the academic 10th, 12th GPA, and that's the GPA that the UCs use for their calculation. But they also limit the classes that they consider. They will only take eight semesters of an honor class, so that's technically four classes between the 10th and 11th grade that they will count the honors GPA. So we have students that have 28 honors courses, but the UC only calculates eight
053of them. So we actually have that GPA on there as well. It only includes A to G classes, and it only includes 10th through 12th grade. So really it's 10th through 11th grade because 12th grade they're already applying for their colleges. There's a lot of GPAs out there. It's very confusing. Very confusing. There's a lot of hard work that goes on in those four years. Yes. Any other questions? Yeah, we can throw that up there were there were some questions that were posed we had kind of done an FAQ can you thank you and We asked if you had questions and we would have Gina and Brandi try to get through them I don't know if they're the clearest answers they did the best they could but if you could click on that link for
054me Miguel As I was just mentioning, do colleges accept all AP honors classes? What we did was we linked the UC CSU GPA calculation right there. And that is a direct line from the UC bulletin that if students were calculating their own GPA, they give themselves an extra grade point for each semester of a UC honors level course with a maximum of eight points. So again, that's really four courses over two semesters and that's all they calculate. in theirs. Valedictorian status does not have an impact on college admission. Our valedictorians aren't even notified until their applications are already in. It's not asked on the applications. So I don't think changing our policy is going to affect college admissions. Class rank, we keep class rank on our transcript, although we don't use class rank for anything
055in the Merced Union High School District. It's not asked for on CSU or UC applications. Private schools who use the common app. They ask for class rank, but they don't get it from everybody, so they know it's a potential thing that can be put on there, but not all schools calculate class rank. So it is part of our student information system that we can choose to keep it on our transcripts or not. I know it's always, students are always looking at class rank like it's the most important thing in the world. We don't consider it for anything, but it's important to them because I don't think they understand all of the different GPAs. So we've talked back and forth about whether we should keep the class rank on there or if it's... It's misleading for
056students. I don't know, but class rank could be asked for. And I think we've talked about this before. Ms. Hamm, I think you brought it up. It may be asked for on some scholarship applications. I haven't seen it, and Gina and Brandy, again, they've looked for it. They haven't seen it specifically, although they've said students have told them occasionally it's asked for on there. Will it ask for rank? Okay, okay, good, good, good. And then I wasn't sure on the last question, changing the valedictorian calculation impacts students who are no longer B1 of 20. Will this impact students specifically? That one I'm not sure of. Brandy responded that she didn't believe it has a negative. I don't know what we meant by only having one versus having multiple. We didn't see it having a negative
057impact, definitely in the college admissions process, but scholarships potentially. Slightly toward the other discussion we were having about the change in college classes that can be allowed. I don't know if there's a way to specifically calculate this, but we've got these kids with grade 4, 6, and whatever. By limiting the number of college classes that are taken, does that limit their ability to get that 4, 6, or can they still get it? they can still, we still have plenty of classes on there. And again, only four of those classes, and that's if they're not in any of our own honors classes, only four of the college classes or any weighted class is considered in the UC calculations. There's lots of opportunities still. And I think in my last example, I was also showing one of
058our number one students at one of our sites really had very few, I think he only had two college classes, and the rest of his transcript was all AP and honors classes within our district. So lots of different routes to be able to achieve that. Thank you for doing all this research. It's appreciated. It's been fun. It's been interesting. I've learned a lot myself, so yeah. to say that when Amy was trying to figure out how our current one is calculated she she stayed in her hotel room instead of going out to dinner because she wanted to try to figure it out and she got stuck and then she figured out that it was based on a six period day not a seven I could not figure out a lot of math work with this
059that we appreciate I said I cannot go out for you know fancy dinner with you guys right now because I got to figure out this this GPA calculation from 1998 but yeah finally figured it out okay so this is an ar we don't normally bring ars to the board this is a special situation um so i would like to know or we would like to know are there any strong opinions on this item in the direction we're going i would i would love to hear what students had to say but directionally i would lean towards one and one and an academic gpa thank you Good evening. We just wanted to give you an update of summer school since it will be starting in less than a month now. So we approved the summer school calendar
060in November. So it does run for students from June 11th to July 11th. There are a few holidays in there. We decided that with Juneteenth being on a Thursday, we probably would have... many teachers and many students who would not want to come on friday so we went ahead and made that a holiday and it helped work out the calendar well anyway if you remember last year we did add a non-instructional day for teachers so they actually will report on june 10th so that they can get everything in order start calling students to make appointments and and have the time to do that we used to start just the first day of school and they had students in front of them summer school admin this year we have Phaedra Hoffman will be the principal at
061Merced High School and she'll be serving El Capitan Merced and Golden Valley Tiffany Gossman will be the principal at Buhat Colony High School and she'll be serving Atwater High and Buhat Colony Mr. Reese is going to be our Migrant Ed principal this year, and he will be having Migrant Ed summer school at UHUC Colony. And then Brianna Escalera will be our Associate Principal for LHS, and she works under Tiffany Gossman in that role. I did want to say thank you to Erica Carty, Tiffany Calderon, and then Mr. Nicholson here. They've all really helped with getting summer school organized. Mr. Nicholson is going to be Mr. Reese's mentor for summer school for Migrant Ed. Mr. Reese is new to this role and Mr. Nicholson has done it for a number of years. So he's going to
062go ahead and be a mentor there for him to help. We've tried to pair summer school down so students know what to expect. They know what classes they can take. Counselors know what to enroll students in. We've tried to set our dates in advance so that it's clear to everybody what's going on. So we did set some dates as the last day to schedule a student in would be June 23rd. There's still time to complete summer school if they got in that late. For students who are no-shows, we're going to drop them, though, on June 13th if they're enrolled and they do not show up for in-person. and then if they have no progress in admin-tum, then we're going to drop them on June 23rd. So we'll publicize those dates, we'll make sure students know
063who are signed up for summer school so they know what their responsibilities are, and that'll help clean up also some of our transcript issues we have with summer school as we move forward. The classes that we're going to offer are there for you. We do have our remediation classes, which is our credit recovery that we offer through AdminTem. That's done in an academic support. Yes, then like in an academic support model where students will come once a week and meet with an academic support type teacher, and then there'll be a teacher of record who's monitoring progress in that specific subject. They do have to come take their exams in person, though. We also offer advancement for our special populations, and those students attend every day in person, and they also have a co-teacher in the
064classroom teaching the curriculum on a daily basis. And those we offer are world history, U.S. history, and then life science there also. Our Migrant Ed Summer School, those students attend every day in person, and we're using Cyber High through MCOE for our Migrant Ed courses, and then they also participate in enrichment activities. And then we have special population supports, not just in the advancement classes, but also for our special populations who are doing credit recovery. So there's co-teachers in advancement. We have a case manager and co-teacher for remediation and credit recovery classes. And then we have paraprofessionals available just so we make sure that our students have the support they need to be successful. We did make a few changes this year. Math is not being offered in summer school. We've gone over the last
065few years kind of back and forth with this. We offered it in the credit recovery and mintum style. We offered it in person and our students just are not being successful. So then we decided this year that students who need credit recovery can take other courses and then they can take math in person during the regular school year. Just to kind of some stats on that, last year in summer school there were 1,589 no marks or no credits, so that's when a student either doesn't show up or they don't finish the class, and 30% of them were from math classes. So we just really didn't have the success of the students showing up. And then there were 836 grades issued for math, and 30% of those were Fs. So we didn't see that really students
066were taking advantage of that or being successful there. So we decided not to offer it this year. We also, go ahead. You have a question about that? Could a student who's taking a course for remediation attend in person if they wanted? Yes. Our teachers are on campus every day and students who need help can show up every day if they want to. But there wouldn't be in-person instruction. It would just be? It'd still be Edmonton. Yeah. But the teacher would be there to support them every day through that. We also, this year, we took away kind of the system, semester barriers that we had in the past. We used to run summer school, it's 20 days long, and we would say 10 days were a semester, so you had 10 days to finish your class.
067There really was no, that was arbitrary, so we took that away so students have the whole summer school time period to finish their classes in admin-tum. And then something that I'm super excited about is with our migrant ed students. We are actually going to offer a program through Merced College. There was a WorkNet flyer that went around that WorkNet was working with Merced College for out-of-school youth, and we saw it. And they were offering these three classes, customer service, essential skills for employment, and conflict resolution. So we reached out to Merced College and asked if they would work with us on something similar. So they are going to offer that. for our migrant ed students, we will bus them over. It'll be seven days long, six days they'll be working on these three classes, and
068you can see customer service and conflict resolution are for credit, so they'll be earning college credit while they're there. And the seventh day, they're going to do kind of a celebration for the students, where the students will get to go through dreamscape at Merced College, they're gonna bring in a taco truck, they're gonna have swag for them, to kind of make it something special for them. So we'll be able to send 35 students, 35 of our migrant ed students through that. One other last change for this year is in Parent Square. We've now, they have a feature where you can send a Parent Square notification to a parent and they can respond to that notification. So we'll be sending home notifications to students who are enrolled in summer school and has the class that they're
069enrolled in and the parent can acknowledge. that their student will be attending. We spend a lot of time at the beginning of summer school tracking down kids and sometimes we find that the parent didn't even know that the student was supposed to come to summer school. So we're trying to get some of that taken care of before that first day of summer school so our teachers can spend the time actually helping students complete classes. Like I said earlier, last year we had 1,589 no marks or no credits, so those were kids who, a lot of them just never showed up. So we added that in this year also. Any questions? Is PE through Edmentum also? Yes, we offer PE, but only during summer school through Edmentum. So what is the curriculum? It's like health-related. They
070do some activities. Yeah. So the teachers that are available for students to drop in for support, they're basically, they're a full day. Yes. They're being paid a full day. Yes. with potentially no student contact? No, they have to schedule meetings. Students have to come once a week to meet with their teacher. So they're scheduling meetings, but if they have more students drop in, they might have more students in there than just the student with the scheduled meeting. What was the rationale behind not having any in-person for remediation? I mean actual in-person instruction. Well, advancement is in-person, but for remediation, it's just where we have evolved since COVID. I don't know if you remember, every year we've tried a different kind of summer school, and this was the one that students were the most successful in
071and seemed to work best. Do they prefer it? I'm just wondering, is anything, I'm going back to kind of getting some student feedback. Do students have a preference? I don't have a, like, survey results or anything like that, but most of them seem to. They can plan around that. I'm just wondering what they thought about their own, you know, learning style, if they felt that they actually got something out of the online versus. Yeah, and that's definitely something to weigh, but keep in mind students already sat in the seat for a full year for that course, so they're repeating something they sat in the seat for already, so that's the way we weigh it also. Electives, and maybe not like full credit electives, but I feel like in the last couple years we've offered things
072like an open gym or some wood shop. So most of our sites are doing that on their own site versus through a summer school. So some of them are inviting their at-risk students to come in who are incoming ninth graders. They're reaching out early. They're doing a program with them to get them on campus. There are sports going on on all of our campuses, different activities through assets going on on all of our campuses. So that is kind of separate from summer school, but those things are going on. Thank you. Very quickly, to be able to issue capital appreciation bonds, it must appear on two board meetings. And so it is here as a discussion item tonight, and it will be back then at the next board meeting for an action. You can see from
073here what we have left in Measure M is $24,910,000. We are not expecting to be able to access all of it, but we're hoping to be able to get in the $19 million. so this will be back for an action uh on next meeting but we do have to have it here so that the public can comment if they are interested anyone why now why now dr weimer why do why do we want to take it now why would we take it now as opposed to five years from now next year i don't know um we still have some facilities that are standardized throughout the district that not all campuses have Second Jim's, Poole at Livingston. There's a whole list that we'll go through in the fall of projects that would qualify and that could
074qualify. But you're talking about us voting on this at the next board meeting? Yes. So we have to have it on two meetings. This is just the, we talked about it last meeting. This is just all of the paperwork is there for anybody to inspect if they want to. And then it would be an action item at the next one. And so we would probably go out sometime in the summer. either between June and August. I think it will be great to see an updated facilities improvement list. And that doesn't have to happen before the bond? That can happen while we're doing the actual collection of the money before we actually spend it? Because we wouldn't start any projects until the two stadiums are completed because it's going to take up most of our time.
075I guess it just goes back to my first question, which is why now? And if we don't have a plan for it, I don't know. Yes. but we always have a plan it's which one no do we have needs that what far exceed 19 million yes they need to be spent within three years and we have the bandwidth i mean we've got a lot going on we just finished the pools we've got the stadiums going is is this the right time you're proposing it so i am assuming that you believe that but i just i'd like to hear that yeah i mean so if we have three years to spend it we can spend it in three years Yes, we do have more than $19 million worth of needs and we would be able to
076spend that within the three years. Any other questions on this question? Thank you, Dr. Weimer. On to employee association's comment period. President Jaysinga, board members, Superintendent Peterson, I did not intend to speak tonight. However, listening to some of the things, I feel compelled to extemporize a little bit, so bear with me. As the parents spoke. and talked about a jailhouse mentality. I think that's probably a little strong language. However, I felt it incumbent upon me to bring up that we, the DTA, have brought similar issues to cabinet for the last four months when we meet with them. And I want to say this. A parent sees it. Teachers are seeing it because we're bringing it up. Students certainly see it. Classified certainly see it. And it's not jailhouse. What it is, it is different. And
077there is a handcuff being put on us from somewhere. We don't know what it is. And what DTA is asking for is not for a blanket change. What we're asking for is education. But what I want the board to know is that the reason we want this, we want to partner with the district and the board on this issue, because students need to know two things. Number one, they have a safe place to be educated. Number two, there are consequences for actions. And that's all I'm going to say about that. The district has never fought back on this. They've invited to educate us and help us educate our members so that we get a lot less griping and people that feel that we have a jailhouse mentality at our sites. And I don't believe that
078even in the slightest. Next. Another thing we talked about with cabinet was adminitum. And as we talk about adminitum, we suggested. that Edmentum courses be taken with a D, sorry, a P or an F option for if somebody wants to make up a credit. But if somebody wants a grade replacement. They need to sit through that class again and show that they can actually do it in a comprehensive classroom. That was a suggestion. We didn't get any fight from them either. They said they'd talk about it, but I wanted to say it out loud since it was kind of brought up this evening. Thank you very much. From CSEA. So moving on to the consent agenda, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Trustee Pickle, would
079you like to acknowledge the donations? Yes, thank you. The district would like to thank Pacifica Senior Living Merced, Laird Manufacturing, David G. Alexander Incorporated, Rustem Falahati and Rosa Maria Valado, Nancy Ann Goodman, and McNamara Sports for their donations. Thank you. I do have a question on the revocation of contracts. Maybe I missed it because I missed a meeting, but on the $424,000 for the college, can you remind me what that was for, what it's for? Merced College. On the contracts? Yes, on the ratification contracts. Yeah, Merced College is the fiscal agent for the adult school consortium, and so they're actually, they get, so our administrative adult school puts a program together. goes to UC Merced or not, UC Merced or Merced College? Merced College. Merced College. Goes to Merced College. The larger association approves that,
080and then Merced College gives us the money to implement that program. Got it. But we give it to them first? No. That's why it's all the way at the bottom. It's income. It's not an expense. Got it. Thank you. Discussion? All right. Call for the vote. motion passes thank you superintendent peterson did you have something to add thank you mrs uh i'd like to point out and congratulate that our newest ap adrian hurtado is here tonight adrian did you want to come up and say a few words or you want to save it for next month thank you thank you congratulations All right, so we're moving on to the action agenda. We have the Public Agency Retirement Services, PARS, Supplementary Retirement Plan by Dr. Wyman. So we had a mention of this at a previous
081meeting at the fiscal projects update. So we have it before the board tonight. Reasons for offering the PARs. Using one-time funds to reset the personnel to revenue ratios. Annual step-in columns go up about 1.5%. STIRs and PERS go up. Being able to have the one-time money to be able to bring down our costs is able to reset us in that 80% that we always try to target that ratio. So this gets us below that. allows for realignment of staff, so planned retirement versus random and annual. Independent studies is still a little bit overstaffed, so we have the ability to make a few more adjustments and do those types of things where we need to when credentials are at play so that we can balance those out. Last time we looked at, we saw the five-year
082savings. PARS is estimating between a 1.7 and a $2.9 million, depending on how many people actually take the program. Key points, it was the same model that we previously have had is in the proposal. So 60% for salaries must have been within the district for five years, must be eligible for STRS and PERS retirement, open to all certificated classified management, including superintendent. Anyone whose salary is set and provided by an outside agency or grant is not eligible. Occasionally we have positions. that are set on the salary schedule and you see that there is a set amount, they don't change as they go across. Those are set by outside agencies, so those people would not be qualified at this particular time. I don't think we have anybody in that particular situation right now. Orientation would take
083place in September with enrollment in December like we did at the last one. That allows us to be looking for teachers in January and February, which is the best time to be going out and looking for staff rather than trying to get staff in March and April or even later than that. It ensures a smooth transition. The resignation date for management employees, including superintendent, may be at a later date upon mutual agreement between the employee and the district. So that allows us to do transition planning and making sure we don't have key personnel leaving all at the same time. Superintendent recommends the Board of Trustees approve Resolution Number 13-24, authorizing the implementation of PAR's Supplemental Retirement Plan. Motion to approve. I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second the motion. Are there any questions, discussion?
084A few things. It was pointed out to me that Weaver has more like a golden handshake, and I was asked why our district didn't do that. That would be more appealing. I think Weaver offers something every three years. I asked Mr. Peterson about it. He looked into it, and it's more expensive, and it's not offered for... classified employees so that doesn't work because I think we want to treat everybody equally right I also want to say I voted against this two years ago when we did it and now that I think I understand it a little bit more and I know what for instance in particular what Mr. Nicholson went through in the hiring of nearly 80 staff members right in my mind what this does is allows the district to get out in front
085of everybody else who's hiring and make the process somewhat manageable because I do think we're going to have a large number of people retiring with this incentive and just life and whatnot. I think some of us have discussed we don't like the optics of the district offering it. in any kind of a cadence or routine. We don't want people to feel like it's expected or something that we'll offer all the time. I think it's really clear that the district is strategic about it to balance things out for planning, for budgeting and all of those things. And Dr. Weimer, you have budgeted for this, correct? Correct. This is a rather unique situation as we're coming out of the COVID era. We're coming out of the one-time fund era. So we do have, as you see in
086a lot of different districts, layoffs and all of those different types of things. We are trying everything we can to make sure we don't run into any of those types of issues. So this helps us reset. We also have the money budgeted and set aside for this. And we also have a spike of people who qualify at this particular time. That's not true for many years after this. We would have to be putting money aside for many years to be able to get the funds back in to be able to do one in the future. It's not something we could do very quickly. And you don't see that spike in the number of people who are eligible for at least three to four more years. And then I think last month you showed us the
087difference between 50% and 60%. And it's really, it's so minor. Yeah, PARS did the analysis for us on that. And it was a little over $100,000, I think. I don't think we all like the five-year. Ten years of service seems... We talked about that two years ago, too, and left it alone. I don't know. Those are my thoughts. If there is a consensus on that point, we would be able to take that into account. I agree with what Aaron said. Of course, the one that I would prefer would be longer would be the five years. more than five years. I really think that's really very short time for someone to work for the district that they just have this available to them. I agree with that too. Also with what Aaron was saying about this
088being the means to managing staffing and not just a regular expectation that it will be happening every two years or so. But it's with intent. Madam President, do we need to make an amendment to the motion that we put up there? Or do we just allow... cabinet admin to make the modification we talked about. That particular point is actually not in the actual resolution. That's something the administrator can change. So we've heard that there is a consensus on the idea that five is not a good one and that we should be going for a longer period of time and we can have the administrator put that in. Appreciate that. Any other discussion? Questions? Mr. Weinberg, if that does happen, how does that change the amount of people that qualify? You're going to make me remember
089my spreadsheet here off the top of my head. Going from five to ten years, I believe there were... seven people who would be eligible but that doesn't mean that they're all you know 60 years old or whatever they just would be qualifying it was probably three or four that would fall into the potential range but most of them are at the lower range not at the higher range where they're more likely to be interested anyway i did say most of them so if there's one person at home saying no that's me sorry Just to clarify where we are voting on it, but it's it's changing it to ten years Golden Valley High Point of Service Kiosk. So we are at the final stages of the kit grant, which was for infrastructure for the cafeteria. So
090this one is wrapping up this particular amount. We are hoping that there might be a few more additional grants that come our way to be able to increase some others. But this is the kitchen infrastructure grant. So the superintendent recommends the purchase of installation of equipment and kiosks for Golden Valley High School using... serve smart piggyback contract sweetwater union high school district board bid number 23-2847 dp motion to approve so moved is there a second second are there any questions thank you for getting a grant and putting it to work i like it call for a vote motion passes unanimously mrs ballinger with the early academic outreach program yes thank you This agreement aims to support equitable and accessible post-secondary opportunities for students through a partnership with CEP, which is the Center for Educational Partnerships
091with UC Merced, and the Early Academic Outreach Program. It's implemented to address equity and access gaps. We've been working with the Center for Educational Partnerships since the data that I have is 2002. and what it is is that the programs that they are offering have always been grant funded through uc merced since we were one of the first school districts to work with uc merced on this they never charged us a cost share in that now that their grant funding is being reduced they are asking that we pay our cost share in that and so this is our portion of that The collaboration builds on previous partnerships and aims to increase the number of students eligible for four-year institutions. So four of our six comprehensive high schools, they work specifically with the Early Academic Outreach
092Program. There are multiple grants through UC Merced that work with all of our schools. So this is for the four schools who are funded through the state. So the superintendent recommends the board approve the Early Academic Outreach Program Agreement. is there a motion to approve so moved is there a second second are there any questions i actually have a question um miss ballinger so um some of the things that um this outreach program works on a through g completion rate in the fafsa completion so is this something that they work in collaboration with our school counselors or how how does this work So they work with cohorts of students that many times they start in the junior high and then they funnel into our district. But when we have like our FAFSA nights or our
093workshop nights, they help support our counselors in doing those also. So since it's a partnership, they work with us doing that too. through this partnership, now that we are paying for the services, is there anything else that we can get support wise from them? For instance, I know a lot of our STEM students applying into STEM programs need that research opportunities in the summers. And having a UC in our backyard, it would be a wonderful idea if they could. you know, have a program where our high school students could spend summers doing research. Is that something we could get into a grant like this? I think that that's a really great idea. I don't know that it would be included in the grant, but I know that the Center for Educational Partnerships, like I said,
094we've been with them since at least 2002, and we've always been kind of grandfathered in for free, so they really didn't want to ask us for a cost share. And since they did, they were willing to help us with some other programs. as part of the partnership, so I'll definitely ask about that and getting research opportunities. We talked about some data platforms that they have developed at UC Merced that we might be able to use to help replace some of the data platforms we pay for to kind of help with that cost. So when I meet with Ms. Largo, I'll bring up the research also. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Dr. Wyman, where did that money come from? That one is LCAP. Thank you. to call for a vote. Motion passes unanimously. I
095do want to add, I felt that UC Merced has deep pockets and they should have absolved that cost. But on to the approval of the admin contract. It's Mallinger. Yes, we're back to Edmintum. So Edmintum addresses every student's needs with a robust collection of standard-based online curriculum. Edmintum offerings include core subjects, CTE electives, oral languages, and EL foundations. It's primarily used for credit recovery in our district and Independence High School. All of our students there work through the Edmintum platform. So the superintendent recommends the board approve the Edmintum contract. Is there a motion to approve? Is there a second? Second. Are there any questions? Call for the vote. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up is super- And that one is a lottery funds. Next up is superintendent's report. Thank you, Mrs. Jayasinghe. I experienced
096something that I have not experienced as a superintendent a couple weeks ago. I went to Kusumas Oaks College. and in their large parking lot were probably, Bibiana, 100, 80, 100 different schools? Consumas, yes. All participating in the construction trades competition. So it was just really cool to see everyone have their staff there, their students. and to work aggressively together as a team, the collaboration, the creativity. Not every project was the same, although most of them were wood sheds, and they literally had 12 hours to build them. And I just want to say thank you to the teachers that gave our students that opportunity, and they're doing that multiple times a year, and it was the first time I was able to see it in person. We do a lot of pretty cool things in this
097district. And there is nothing cooler than what happened yesterday, in my opinion. I don't know if that's just me. But the salute to service lunch and to see those parents and kids and the way they respond and the way our community responds is something special. And I want to thank Leslie and Heidi who are here tonight and everybody that has helped. That really is a, it's all of our stakeholders, all of our sites participate in that. It's a lot of work on the AP's part, the principal's part to get all of that together and showcase those students. And I really, really appreciate it. This month, the final weeks of school, today I had my staff visit and also senior feedback lunch here at Livingston today, and I will be doing that at every site which
098you all have received invites for. Please make it, if you can, as you know, those are always a good hour of honest student feedback that we all appreciate. that's it thank you so i think we all know this is the busiest time of year oh my goodness um and there's been so many incredibly exciting things going on you didn't mention hadestown but i know you saw that um superintendent peterson and and really loved it so if anybody hasn't seen hadestown at golden valley get there I was able to go to the league championship swim meet and the final event was the boys 400 free relay and L-cap. Merced High and Buhack. I mean it was a tenth, a tenth, a tenth of a second. It was the most exciting race that I've seen all season.
099That was really, really fun. I got to go to the election convention at Merced High and that was incredible student engagement and just, I don't know, a lot of positivity there. The security team was fantastic students and escorted a lot of people out just for the fun. Heck of it. It was fun. The project-based learning night at Merced High was exceptional. Similar to the military luncheon yesterday, the community engagement was really overwhelming. I haven't seen that in a really long time. So kudos to Merced High for the parents, the guardians, the grandparents, the aunts and uncles, the cousins. I mean, there were so many people there. And the students were not only proud of the projects that they presented, but they had learned a tremendous amount about building credit. not getting into too much debt
100with student loans, how to plant flowers and be a pollinator. Some of them were arguing about Senate bills that needed to be revised, and some were talking about campus safety. So anyway, it just was a great example of students and... they're learning and how they're not just regurgitating facts but actually taking skills out into the real world which is I think one of the things we really love to see. I was able to go to the MCOE Gateway Scholars evening and that's always fun to see the kids receiving the Virginia Smith scholarships and the, in some cases, very life-altering funds that they'll be receiving. And as of now, those are all students from our district, which is also really cool. Today I was at Merced High for senior interviews and I just, I spoke to
101some exceptional young ladies. I always love doing that. One of the students shared with me that she had been a Read 180 student and now she's in a senior English class and her resume was exceptional. Speaking skills were, I thought, how were you in Read 180? But it gave me just a great confidence in the fact that we offer that and students can remediate and help themselves in advance. So that was really great. And I just also wanted to call out some teachers that they acknowledged that had really made an impact in their life. Ms. Silva, Ms. Ratcliffe, Mr. Griggs. Mrs. Jester Griggs and Mr. DeSalvo and I really felt that those students were prepared for their next chapter. It was fun to hear. Just a couple other things. I feel like campus safety has
102been coming up a lot. It was part of the PBL projects. We had a parent talk about it. We had Mr. Puss talk about it. We've heard about some other campuses putting in metal detectors and there's varying opinions on that, but I'm wondering if we maybe should get more information, Mr. Peterson. Students, those that I've asked, like the idea. One student that I talked with today. like many of our students, is really frustrated with bathrooms being closed all the time. And she thought that if we had metal detectors, maybe we wouldn't have as many vape pens on campus and students would stop ruining it for everybody else being able to use the bathroom. I thought that just in addition to safety and no weapons on campus kind of thing might be helpful. And then finally,
103I'm sorry, I've taken a long time. I just wanted to bring up the counseling change that we made. Has it been a year or two years at this point? Two years? Two years? And just if we can consider evaluating, figuring out a way to determine if that's been a good and positive change. Has it benefited our students or not? How do students feel about it? How do guardians feel about it? How do counselors feel about it? and congratulations to everybody that's graduating and next week is classified week and we get to shadow some classified and I get to go to Atwater High with a counselor so I'm looking forward to that thank you I had the opportunity to go to LCAP today for senior interviews I wasn't able to to be there for a long
104period of time, but in the short time I was there, I was able to speak to some very exceptional students. Mrs. Pellicer was there, Mrs. Garman was there. Just very impressive, very inspiring, and you leave, I don't know, you just leave with a different level of motivation and inspiration, and just listening to them. And some of those kids have it. They have some ideas. They know what they want to do and they have a good skill base to do it. So that was really interesting and encouraging to hear. Congratulations to the wrestling, LHS girls wrestling, also LHS boys volleyball. They made it to, I can't remember what round it was, it's the farthest that they've gone, and I heard they had quite the following. Section final. Section final, yeah, and gave them quite a run,
105so congratulations to them as well. You know, Atwater had a nice prom recently. i know you had sent something out to mr peterson that they're all pretty stoked that luke bryan reposted their their video that atwater students posted in preparation for the the concert Also looking forward to graduation coming up in the next couple weeks. And also the classified piece that you spoke about, Mrs. Hamm, next week with, is it ACE is the program? Is that what it's called? Yes. ACE, yeah. So I'll actually be here at Livingston. So looking forward to that as well. And then just a comment on the bullying. I know it's come up. you know a few times and I'm just wondering if we have any statistics on how often it's occurring or at least being documented you know by
106by admin when they're dealing with the discipline issues to see how much of an issue it is and it's more place more of an issue in some places than others And then also wondering about the bathrooms as well, if there's anything we can do to make sure the bathrooms are open, more bathrooms are open regularly, so that students can use those facilities when they need to. And I know that we talked, one of the items about the money, and I think you referenced a $19 million, something about Dr. Weimer. There's enough to be done to spend the funds, something to that effect. When that comes back to us, can we have an idea of what those things kind of are? You know, what's top of the list? And that's it for me. Thank you. Well,
107you guys both hit pretty much almost everything. Yeah, it's a lot of data. Chaz, Mr. Jolly, thank you tonight for hosting us. Great presentation. Your construction trades, it was great to see them. to see them out in the community and kind of expanding that program. That was a great, great opportunity for them. I don't see the induction people, but they did a great job. Again, I appreciate them. I appreciate the fact that they have moved into working with our interns in that group because I know that was always a challenge. So I thank you for that. I have been handicapped for eight weeks, so I don't get to go out. So I appreciate social media so much. I repost a ton of things. So when you're out and about, you know, don't think nobody –
108I look morning, afternoon, and evening because I think Mr. Peterson could attest to this. It drives me absolutely crazy that I can't go places. So I appreciate when you guys post anything out there that I do. follow-up. I appreciate that. And the spotlight on seniors. I don't know whose idea that was, but that's a great idea. I love seeing that as well. Thank you. Well, like he said, and then, of course, I have attended some senior interviews as well, and the rest do come up. They have come up. And I also had some students tell me about the teachers that have helped, and counselors, teachers, counselors. and coaches that have helped them do better in school. So that was great. I don't remember all the names right now. I mean, I do remember a couple,
109but I don't want to say them because I don't remember everybody. So I don't want to leave anybody out. But some scholarship nights I've been to. I mean, it's normal. I mean, I guess some high schools, because they're bigger, they get more money, like Merced. But other than that, thank you, everyone, for what you do. everyone Mr. Jolly and the team and everyone everyone everyone here at the district I think you guys always try to do the best or do the best but we don't get recognized when we do that we only get you only get asked the questions when you know they're negative or there's concerns but anyways there are concerns about the restroom so let's look into that and I think that's it thank you Thank you so much for hosting us this
110evening and great showcase, great presentations. Kudos to the wrestling team. Lovely ceremony yesterday. So to Viviana, Leslie and Heidi and everyone else who put it on. It was short, very moving and you definitely feel something when you see all those baby faces I would say. 18, but still very useful heading out there to serve our country. So that was a great event. PBL showcase. I've forgotten all the things we've been to this month. Great participation, scholarship nights. Looking forward to next week and then all the senior lunches and exit interviews that we'll be participating in. Thank you to everyone who's in all the presentations. and everything you guys have done all year long. It seems like the year's gone by very fast and I can't believe this time last year I had a senior and
111now we're talking about this year's graduating class. So thank you to each and every one of you for all you do year round and then congratulations to the class of 2025. And I have one more thing that I forgot but it'll come back to me tonight. Anyway, thank you. That's pretty much all I had. And with that, if there's nothing else from anyone else, anything to add, we will adjourn this meeting.