RBUSD Board Meeting 02/27/2024

001meeting to order at 530. I'm going to move the agenda around slightly and we're going to ask Mr. Brandt to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Place your right hand over your heart ready begin I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God Indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you Motion to approve the agenda as amended all those in favor. Aye any opposed? All right motion passes 5-0 can I all right we have no closed session today so we are moving on to section 5 approval of the minutes I have a motion and second for approval of the minutes of the February 13th 2024 regular Board of Education meeting so moved any questions comments student advisory vote

002All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 5-0. Can I have a motion and second for approval of the minutes of the February 21st, 2024 board workshop? So moved. Any questions, comments? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 5-0. Reports to the board. We have the Redondo Union High School Girls Cheer Team recognition by Mr. Brady. All right, this is a national cheer team. I think we need to give another round of applause. All right, I'll stick to the script now. Well, good evening, President Silverman Nemeth, board members, Dr. Wesley and cabinet. Thank you for having us this evening. Redondo Union High School has a long and rich history in athletics. Over 100 plus years, we've had league titles. CIF championships and state titles. But now we can

003also say that we have a national championship. Not only did these young athletes win a championship on the East Coast in Florida, but they followed it up with another win on the West Coast in Anaheim a week later. I would say days later. It is my pleasure as proud principal of Redondo Union High School to introduce Coach Hedspeth and Coach Isabel Cruz as they will present this amazing group of athletes that are the Division I Game Day Large Varsity Non-Tumbling National Championship Team. Thank you so much. Please excuse the voice. It's Florida. I just want to start out by saying Dr. Wesley, thank you so much for this opportunity for my daughter, Coach Izzy, and I to have just a wonderful adventure working with our sideline team and now our comp team. And we're very

004humbled by this opportunity. And thank you, Principal Brady. I just want to speak just a little bit on these 23 amazing, fabulous, kind leaders here in front of us, our athletes on our comp team. You know, we met not just a few months ago with our amazing parents. Oh, my gosh. And we had a meeting, and our motto started there. And I said, other schools go to Florida. And that's like the Super Bowl, the granddaddy of everything in cheer. It's the biggest competition, bigger than college competitions, all-star competitions, international. This high school one has so many athletes and teams there. And our motto was, why not us? We're Redondo Union High School. That means something. Why not us? It's our first year. It's our first year. It's their first year. It's their first year. It's

005all of our first year. We're like, eh, why not us? So it was wonderful to see the 23 athletes learn about game day, learn about being a competitive team, that they are going up against big teams all over the United States. A different... teams that have been going for decades and decades and not winning and decades and decades. And we're like, why not us? Let's go. And they worked hard and we were with them for a short amount of time. So that even makes it more of a Cinderella story for us. But that's what happens that I've learned. in this district that you put your mind to it and they put their work to it and she puts her choreography to it and our parents support us you got us cheer mats i mean who

006does this um you supported us we've got your names on the back of our shirts we appreciate you and we're so proud of them and what they did on florida you may not understand this and it's going to sound kind of corny but they get it they're now cheer liberties and that's a thing That's a thing and they are and they are stopped by Greenup County who has been winning. They're the most winning team They want to take pictures with them Modern-day they want to take pictures with them Downey want to take pictures with them Our cheer sisters down the street, Mira Costa, we are this close with them, and we support them, and they are learning that, that you support one another in this world, and anything can happen. But I just want to

007say thank you and congratulations. They believed it. I believe the hype. They believe the hype. And we are national champions, and I'm so excited to introduce our athletes right now. So we're going to start. Alphabetical order, ladies. Okay, Miss Abby, if you could come on up. Parents, we'll be taking pictures and everything afterwards. Kind of a little, they're going to come here, sit down. Then we're going to watch a video. And then we'll take all the pictures and all that. But that's the way that it will go today. Adriana, come on down. We're so proud of them. Ava and Miss Brooke. We have Cameron. Emma. Aaron. And we have Faith. One of our comp captains, Iris. Next up, Jesse. We also have Jesslyn, who's not here tonight, but let's give her a round of applause,

008please. June. Miss Caroline. Lauren. Another one of our comp team captains, Leah. And we have Lorelei. We have Maddie H. And Maddie W. And Michaela. Maya B. Another one of our captains this year, Molly. Maya M. And Miss Scarlett. You know, when we landed and we realized we had one more practice before we went to another nationals and we all looked at each other and we said, we could do this. And they did. And then we finished that practice or that competition, excuse me, and they came back and they're like, we miss it already. And that's a great sign to see of what's going to happen. I can only imagine what the future is going to bring. And again, we thank you so much for the opportunity. And wow, national champions in the room. Congratulations,

009ladies. All right. So we have a treat for you. We want to show what a winning routine in our nation looks like. So please enjoy. Next up, this is Redondo Union High School. Defense needs to make a stop here to seal the win. This is Rotondo Union High School. See the video when it is synced on Varsity TV and also when it comes out on ESPN. But again, thank you. Thank you so much. We're so excited. All right. This is the best in the nation. So please give another round of applause before we take pictures and ask questions. Board President, do you have any questions for our cheer athletes and or the cheer coach? Did you have fun? Yes. I'm just, you know, amazing and impressed. My daughter, when she was at Redondo. a while

010back was on cheer and you know that was like I think eight or nine years ago when she started and just the changes with the program and what's happening it's amazing you guys that just looks like a lot of fun so congratulations Anybody? I think we would. Sorry, can't thank you enough for the incredible representation you give because one of the things that strikes me is I've talked with some of you over the past year is your kindness and empathy. So this junior cheer camp that you do is just amazing and what it can do for some of our daughters, the younger girls out there who want to get into this is just fantastic. That's a program that will continue, I hope. We'll see more. See you in the summer too. Excellent. No, that's wonderful.

011I know it means a lot to them. And, you know, just the kindness you show these younger girls is really amazing, makes a big difference. I do notice in that video we had what sounded like a marching band. We didn't send our marching band there, too, did we? No, there is a band that is live, so your band doesn't stop. It's not the whole band, but that is another division. Okay, excellent. Hopefully we'll see the band in the future then. Oh, you have a great band. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Well, I know we'd like to take a picture. With the cheerlebrities. With the cheerlebrities. I'm just not sure there's enough room in here to take a picture. What do we think? If they turn this way. All right. Make sure. We're bringing a national

012title back to Rondo Beach! All right. Thank you. My neighbor. The young. Okay, we're going to move on with our agenda. All right, next on 7.2, we have the Redondo Beach Educational Foundation, Christy Bieber. And I have to follow that. So hopefully I could be half as entertaining as that, but I doubt it. So that's why I brought friends with me. Chair Nemeth, members of the Board of Education and District Leadership, thank you for having us here tonight. We are very excited to share a little bit more about what RBEF has been up to. A lot of you know already because you're kind of, you hear my reports all the time, but we have a lot of people who watch online and we have people in the room here who don't maybe hear that all

013the time. So I'm excited to be able to share. We can go to the next slide. Okay, so first I just want to talk about where our money comes from. We get that question a lot. Where does the money come from? And it comes from a lot of people in our community. The parents, so I want to give a huge shout out to parents. And I should actually have families up there because it's not always parents. Sometimes it's aunts, uncles, it's grandparents. And the last two years it's also been members of our senior class. Our senior class gives back to the schools as well to help fund our scholarships. Community members. local businesses through sponsorships and we just launched a new business partners program, corporate grants and private foundation grants. Next slide please. And we

014wouldn't be able to do what we do. I mean, we raise the money, right? But if we didn't have partnerships with school site principals and teachers and staff and all of the people that make these programs happen, our money would just be money, right? And so we want to give a special thank you to the partners that make the programs happen, especially to the teachers who accompany our students to robotics tournaments and eSports and Camp Pally and all the different camps. That's a big ask for our teachers, and we really appreciate that that makes sense. they make that happen. Next slide, please. So this is a slide a lot of you see at the beginning of the year. It talks about what we fund. And one of the biggest questions we get, the most frequent

015questions we get is, how do we decide what to fund? And the answer is, we don't decide. We do not decide what we fund. The district makes a presentation to us every year. Dr. Wilds works with district leadership and puts together an ask. And it has different areas, which you can see in that color wheel, and amounts that, are there's a gap in funding for those programs and then we talk it over as a board our board talks it over dr wilds comes to one of our meetings to answer questions that actually happened last night so this is very timely and then the board goes away and talks it over and decides Yes, we're gonna fund that very rarely are there things that we say maybe that doesn't fall within our mission Let's talk about

016this more but for the most part we trust that the the ask has things that the students need right We are not as experts in that you are experts in that So the board votes and then next slide, please We fund all these different fun things that you see right here. So I'm going to be done talking now. We're going to go on to the next slide. And I'm going to invite Andrew Elder up to talk a little bit about middle school intramural sports. Hello, my name is Andrew Elder and I'm a freshman at Redondo Union High School. I'm here tonight to talk about one of the many critical programs the Redondo Beach Educational Foundation provides for its students, intramural sports. I've played soccer casually as long as I can remember, but in eighth grade

017I managed to make it on the Adams soccer team. The season was incredible as the level of play was much higher than the one I was attuned to. and I got to play with classmates that I've never played before. The accumulation of the season was at SoFi Stadium against Paris, and it was amazing as we went from unlit fields that had bad soil and stuff to a professional stadium, and it was a huge step up, and I'll never forget taking the field and being part of that very special event. While it ended in a tie, Adams did win and go undefeated. Go Adams. Making it through. Making it through tryouts on the team is very difficult, so I would recommend any students to not give up because it can be pretty hard the first couple

018years, but the older you get, the easier it's going to get. I didn't make the team the first year I tried, for example, but I persevered and managed to make it in eighth grade when I tried out a second time. I'd also advise any students who are interested in going for any of the other intramural sports programs. provided by RBEF to try out because it's an opportunity and you don't want to miss out on it. Thank you, Andrew. One of the other things that we'd like to highlight is our eSports program. And I chose this one because the question we always get about this is, do you really fund video game playing? And the answer is sort of. There are video games involved, but as you're going to hear from Colin Ionescu-Mockery, he's going to

019tell you a little bit more about what the program is and that it's not just video game playing. Dear school board members and Dr. Wesley, my name is Colin and I am a seventh grader at Paris Middle School. I want to share how much I enjoyed the eSports program and I'm grateful for RBEF making this available in our school. When I joined eSports team last year, I thought, hey, I get to play the game for as much as I want and my parents won't be able to say no because it's an assignment. But esports is so much more than just playing a game. It's a team sport I learned to work with my team to not blame each other for when we lost a battle or take individual credit when we won I learned to

020find solutions fast because if you don't have that much time to make decisions in a game One more cool thing is that we got to visit SoFi Stadium and learn about technology. We got to explore the booths, talk to experts, and also explore the stadium. After participating in esports, I became more interested in technology, and thanks to that, now I'm a member of the Paris Vex robotics team. Thanks, RBEF. And you can tell from this picture how excited Colin was when he was in the eSports competition. And the last thing we're going to learn about tonight is our science camps. This was a new part of our ask last year is to help fund transportation to science camps. As we have learned, buses have gotten very expensive. After the pandemic, they doubled. And sometimes if

021you have to go up a mountain and pay up the mountain fees, which apparently is a thing now because of chains, they could be even triple what they were before. And so we're very happy that we're able to help offset those costs so that the students can still go to the science camps. I have a senior now, and I know that the first time he went to science camp in fifth grade, he's like, I'm not going. You're not forcing me on the bus. That's scary. And I ended up getting pictures of him like jumping off poles and doing this like ropes course that I never thought my kid would do. So it truly is. an enriching and life-changing experience for a lot of our students and if we if it was too expensive for students

022to go it would obviously limit the number of students who could benefit so we're gonna have Juliet Matthews talk a little bit about her science camp experience Hi, my name is Juliet Matthews, and I'm a current eighth grader at Paris Middle School. I went to Camp Pali in sixth grade, Camp Simi in seventh grade, and I'm looking forward to going to the Astro Camp in March. I really enjoyed these camps because you got to have fun but also learn at the same time. Learning science in a classroom environment is much different than going to science camps. Science camps give students the opportunity to experience more hands-on activities and be more involved in what they are learning at the time. At Camp Pali, we were in the mountains. We did... ropes courses, engineering activities, learned about

023stars and Greek mythology, did archery, and much more. I enjoyed Camp Pali very much, but Camp Simi had a very different environment. Camp Simi was on Catalina Island, and we snorkeled, went night swimming, hiked, did touch tanks, learned about different types of algae, did a gravity swing, and way more. I enjoyed all these experiences with my friends, which made it much more fun. Learning through experiences made school much more exciting to learn. Thank you. Thank you, so I'd like to ask if you have any questions for our students we lost a student Dan where'd your kid go? Okay, do you have any questions for our two of our students? No, okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I was still looking for Dan's kid All right 7.3, Attention to Attendance by Jens Brandt,

024Principal of Alternate Education and Director of Educational Support. Welcome. Thank you so much. I'm really glad I didn't have to follow the cheer program. I don't have a dance routine. I know you're all disappointed for attendance. Hold your applause after every slide, but congrats to them. It's really an exceptional honor for our cheer program. Go data. Here we go. So thank you for having me, Board President Silverman-Nemeth, board members, Dr. Wesley, leadership colleagues, and... All of our guests going to talk a little bit about attendance here in Redondo Beach and this amazing partnership that we have with A2A and school status. I'll probably use those two interchangeably. They went through a name change recently, but A2A is probably one of the easier ones to use, of course. So we can move on to the next

025slide. Thanks. So as you can imagine and you may remember, after distance learning and COVID attendance was a struggle. for quite a number of students and families, understandably. We all went through a lot. But a somewhat casual relationship developed during that time with school and attendance. I'm glad to say we have made a great recovery and much of that of course has to do with our amazing schools and teachers and site leaders and this phenomenal school district but another part of it has to do with this again partnership with that we have with A2A. I just want to go over some quick data more you can go back there just for a moment it's more qualitative but as you can see as you can see its source there. The importance of attendance and achievement gaps,

026you can see that students that are chronically absent tend to struggle more in school, particularly with reading and mathematics as we have our testing season upon us coming up with CASP, et cetera. The more students are in school, the more they learn, the better they do, not just academically, but socially and emotionally. Regular attendance also leads to higher graduation rates and college enrollment. Additionally, as you can see there, it also indicates positive life outcomes and higher earnings and better health in the long run. And last but not least, improved employment outcomes and higher earnings in adulthood. So it all comes together in terms of attendance, academic, social, emotional, and then better life in the future, health and happiness. We can move on. Thank you. Sometimes, and this is really good for the students and families

027in the room and those watching on YouTube, sometimes we hear, thanks so much, perfect. We hear, oh, it's just one day here, one day there. Oh, I'm late, you know, just for first period. Sometimes it adds up, as you can see. And we really want this to get across to our students particularly. It has a cumulative effect in terms of, for example, if you're missing, you know, one day per month. 10 days per year, two weeks per year. That's almost three quarters of a year in terms of a 13 year academic career for a student. This has long term, again, academic impacts, social emotional effects, and it really impacts your life in the long run. So we want to remind all of our students and families the importance of attendance on a regular basis. As

028you can see here, these are indicators of how students do in school. The number one, by far, indicator of how well a student does in school is consistent attendance. Yes, test scores are important. Yes, support is important. But we need our students to be at school consistently. So this partnership with A2A started about a year and a half ago, and it's available to all of our schools and implemented by all of our schools. And it has really a three-pronged approach. It sends out attendance letters on a weekly basis. It also holds on to that data for us to see as site leaders, district leaders. So it's really data-based, and we can set goals for our school sites. and for our district. And also, we're able to set up conferences for our students. And this is

029where we, and I've mentioned this a number of times in our principals and leadership meetings, it's combining accountability with care. And I really think that's. school district, Redonda Beach Unified School District, that comes across in our classrooms, at our school sites, in our communications. We want to make sure that there are high expectations for our students and families with regards to attendance, but we also want to make sure they understand there's accountability and a culture of care behind all of that and this makes a big difference. So what we really see is a huge improvement with regards to the impact of our communications in these conferences. And what we've seen is that our students, particularly students that are at risk, we've seen a big improvement with them being on campus more often and receiving that

030amazing instruction and support from our teachers and staff. We also have seen a big reduction, and one of the reasons we went into A2A is because, first, we wanted consistency across all of our school sites, but we also wanted to relieve the workload for our front office staff, for our counselors, so they can focus on other things. So this has seen a huge reduction and appreciation from all of our school sites, especially the front office staff. So now into the data and this is where we've seen this a big improvement and I'll get to a slide right after this one where you'll see even more significant change and Dr. Alpern will tell you and I've said this in a number of our meetings over the last year and a half we're actually a really easy

031district to understand monetarily we're essentially a hundred million dollar budget so every time we make a one percent difference in ADA that means a million dollars. So if we see an improvement of 1% or 2%, that could mean $1 million or $2 million. That's how schools are funded in the state of California and most states in the country. So as you can see, last year in 22-23, we had a 94.3%. ADA and that was an improvement from the year prior. I'll get to that slide like I said momentarily. And then this year we're at 95.1, nearly a 1% increase. So this is great news for everyone. Most importantly, yes the money is great, but most importantly it means our students are in classrooms more often getting that academic and social emotional support that I've mentioned.

032So as you can see here, you may have been curious what our ADA looked like pre-COVID versus post-COVID. And we, as a really phenomenal high-performing school district, have always had a high ADA, one of the highest in the state. As you can see there in 2015, we were at 97%, which is really exceptional. As you can see, there was a bit of a downturn. Just for context, in 20 and 21, those were the distance learning years and thankfully the state was a little bit more flexible with attendance taking there for a bit as Annette probably remembers. But that red number is what really stands out, highlighted of course, and you see a big drop off. Students really struggled with coming back to school and I see some people nodding. And we're working on that. And

033we've seen the academic impacts of that in our test scores, but we're on the rebound. And as I mentioned, we're making an improvement. As you can see there in 2023, we're almost at 95%, which is great news. One of the things that A2A really helps us focus on is our chronic students. As you can see here, that is the red and purple. We have chronic and severe chronic. It's about 11% of our school district. Those are students we want to focus on the most, and it's really backwards planning, if you want to call it that. where we can go in with earlier interventions for those students that are struggling again. And we get those conferences scheduled as quickly as possible. Usually the conferences or student attendance review teams are composed of an administrator, a counselor,

034sometimes a teacher is involved, office staff. And we're really connecting, again, with the students and families, highlighting the importance of being on campus, and also talking to them about the potential consequences of not attending school regularly. beyond, again, those academic and social and emotional effects. And here you can see, this is an interesting slide from A2A, and one of my favorite things about A2A is they are constantly updating their dashboards for us. It's connected to PowerSchool, which is phenomenal because we get... updates every single day and then on a weekly and monthly basis. Here you can see attendance does tend to waver a little bit as they get older but they yeah they do quite well in the upper elementary and middle school years and then as you all if you have high school students

035you know it can be sometimes a little bit more of a struggle to get them out the door and that's something we're constantly working on but as you can see here We're doing better than A2A's overall average. We're actually one of their all-star districts, and I'll show more data with regards to that here momentarily. Here are our communications. Raise your hands real quick if you've received one of these letters. I'll forget your face. But it's really important that, again, this is an intervention. It's important for us to, again, keep people accountable. We want to just ensure that students are aware that we want them at school every day. That district save rate, the 78%, is basically the impact of our communication. It means that 78% of our students and families that have received a letter

036don't receive a letter after that. Their average for A2A is as low as 54%. We're at the high end with the 78%, which is again a credit to this intervention that is going out on a weekly basis. Click, click. There you go. Thanks. So these letters, again, they go out every week. The school site staff have the opportunity to suppress letters. And this is a really important piece because I want everybody to understand we know there are unique circumstances. We know there are unique situations that families are contending with, whether it be medical, social, emotional, something happened in the family that's beyond their control. We have the ability to pull those letters back. For A2A school status, anytime your letter suppression rate is below 5%, you're in really, really good shape. Most school districts that

037they work with are as high as 15, 20, 25%. So that means our school office staff are most of the time not suppressing letters. They're letting those letters go out. That's the first intervention with regards to A2A. And I'm wrapping up here. I promise, Dr. Wesley. Conferencing summary. So this is, other than letters, the most impactful piece. As I mentioned earlier, it's when we connect with students and families to ensure that they're attending school consistently. And the goal is to... be higher than 70, 75% and we're above that rate, which is really amazing. It's a credit to all the school sites and our counselors reaching out and making those connections with families. So we're really proud of that data. We saw a significant increase from last year to this year with regards to our conferencing.

038And I'm really appreciative of fellow site leaders in terms of making sure those meetings happen. And I know the board always appreciates data. So the impact of those conferences. On the left side is the amount that students were missing prior to the conference. On the right side in the light green lime color, the impact of those conferences. As you can see, there's a significant improvement with regards to student attendance when we make those connections of care and accountability. Again, another number we're really, really proud of. So to wrap this all up, our focus as we continue with our A2A program here in the school district is to make sure that we're educating all families, hence this presentation, on the importance of academic success, social-emotional wellness in conjunction with regular attendance, making sure that our attendance

039rates at school sites and overall in the district continue to improve. As I mentioned the fiscal impact of attendance going up or down is significant again a million dollars With regards to 1% up or down and then our suppression rates were really proud of again are below 5% We're increasing our conference rates on a regular basis and then last but not least we're looking forward to recognizing celebrating our school site staff and principals and admin teams for all their hard work. Likely going to do that later in the spring, potentially before all of you. We'll see. Any questions? That is the presentation. Thank you. I have a quick question. Yes. Is this just for absences or is it for tardy as well? Everything. Yeah. So it includes tardies. Not that I would know anything about

040tardies. It includes tardies and absences. Okay. Does it include, so for example, at high school or middle school, if they miss one period, does that get a letter? Absolutely. Trying to put into perspective because we get a lot of parents. complaining about how many letters they receive. Right. Yeah. Initially, we actually increased the benchmark for the number of periods that a student would have to miss in order to trigger that because they were getting so many letters. So we actually increased it to six periods. At one time, it was three periods. Yeah. So that was a pretty significant change. Yeah. Yeah. Just an important clarification. Yeah. You know, when you have letters with multiple families with multiple students in different schools. I know that a letter would go to maybe if they had four kids,

041they might get four letters. And I want to make sure, I think we looked into it, that the district isn't paying the postage for... I'm so glad you brought that question up. I failed to mention that earlier. Another reason we went into the A2A program is the cost savings of paper, essentially. And all, again, the work volume that the school sites were having to do in terms of... literally stuffing envelopes. Well, and paying for each postage. It's included in the package that we... It doesn't matter if we have 5,000 students, 10,000, 15,000 students. It's part of our contract. And the color copies, too, I've also asked about. And I can tell you right now, based on our attendance rates, this program has already paid for itself and then some. Yeah, so a worthwhile investment. I'm

042not working for them, by the way. Just to be clear. Any other questions? In addition to the financial savings, though, the important piece, though, of course, is students are showing up and getting an education. Absolutely. And that's fantastic. That's the most important piece. Thanks for clarifying that. Absolutely. How does early checkout roll into this? Say if my son has a doctor's appointment, I have to check him out an hour early or something. Is there a cutoff point that it still counts as a full day? As long as it's documented. If there's a dental appointment or a medical appointment, we always ask that families provide that to the school site. So it's a difference between an excused absence and an unexcused absence. Okay. So it can be an excused absence and we'll get ADA credit for

043that. It depends on what portion of the day they leave after. Usually it's, and correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Alperin, but I believe as long as you're there for at least the first hour of the day, we do get credit for that. you need to be present for at least 30 minutes 30 minutes at any time of the day the school will collect the ADA students aren't learning but they do collect the ADA I think I love your presentation just to qualify something because I see teachers in the audience this is part of my shtick when I go and talk about the budget from the school from the state's perspective, they don't care the reason for the absence. We care, but the state doesn't care. So if you have a funeral to attend or

044you're going to Disneyland, it doesn't matter if you're not at school, we don't get paid. So just to be clear. Thank you. Go to school. Don't go to Disneyland. Save it for the weekends. Thank you. All right. Thanks, everyone. Appreciate it. All right. Next, we have Lisa Veal with the mid-year LCAP presentation. Good evening. Thank you, President Silverman-Nemeth, members of the board, Dr. Westley, and Cabinet for allowing me to be here today to update you on the LCAP mid-year plan. Oh, there it goes. A little background. SB 114 was passed in 2023 that requires LEAs to present to the Board of Education an annual update to the LCAP and the budget overview for parents prior to February 28th of that year. The report should include available mid-year outcome data related to metrics in the LCAP

045as well as available mid-year expenditure and implementation data on the actions and services in the LCAP. And then for the full LCAP mid-year report, you can find it on RBUSD's website at www.rbusd.org. Oh, you're pushing? Okay. So to summarize where we are currently in the plan, the LCAP operates on a three-year cycle. So this year marks the third year in the 21-24 LCAP. So in this year, we are going to continue to monitor and implement the goals and actions in the plan while simultaneously developing the new three-year LCAP. To refresh your memory around the LCAP itself, one key ingredient to it is educational partner engagement. We want to make sure that they have an opportunity for input and on the development of it. And then we have four goals in our LCAP. So the first

046one is around student achievement. The second one is around student engagement. We have a third one which is on equity and access. And then a fourth one on parent engagement and involvement. And then we also have the budget overview for parents and that pretty much has all of our allocations and the way in which we're going to use those monies to support student achievement. So I'm going to give you a quick snapshot of the students that we serve. Across our schools we have 4,378 elementary students. We have 5,201 secondary students. Our total budget is $128,158,649. Of our students, 4.1% are English learners, 16.1% qualify as low income, 0.9% are foster youth, and 0.2% are homeless youth. And then to the right, you will see our student demographics by ethnicity. So as mentioned, The mid-year report

047really should have available outcome data at this point in time. So at this point in the year, some metrics are known, such as CASP data from 2023, as well as ADA to date, like Mr. Brandt was reporting on. Others are in progress right now, such as the California Healthy Kids Survey. administration. In fact, it's being administered right now and we'll have some data towards the end of the year on our SEL goals. And then others are unknown at this point and won't be available until the year's end, such as map growth data for the full year. Similarly, we have actions and expenditures that are completed, such as the distribution of summer backpacks. I saw everyone there this summer, so that one's considered complete. And the implementation of a Tier 2 literacy-based intervention. Others are in

048progress such as after-school tutoring and the administration of a district-wide benchmark. They're ongoing and so they won't be completed until the year's end. And others still have not yet started or are in the planning phase such as a classified onboarding program, but they will be completed before the start of the new year. So I would like to share by goals some key actions and budgeted monies. In goal number one, Educate and Partner Feedback has led to an increase in on-site counseling services. Academic tutoring support in secondary schools was identified need post-pandemic, and this was the action that continued across the third year of the plan. Summer school credit recovery resulted in 586 five-credit courses being recovered, and Saturday school credit recovery is currently in session, and we have 180 students attending at this point, so

049we're hoping they'll be able to recover credits as well. As we strive to improve the academic achievement of our subgroups, specifically our English learners, we're proud to highlight a very successful elementary ELPD with planned activities for secondary. And then lastly, in grade four and above, a Tier 2 phonemic awareness intervention is being implemented. And in the bottom right, you'll see that the budget amount for Goal 1 is $57,602,874. And then at interim reporting October 31st, we had spent a little over $18 million on that goal. And goal two, the implementation of attention to attendance, like Mr. Brandt was speaking on, has supported efforts to address chronic absenteeism, and we are seeing a positive trend in that. In fact, we had two schools exit ATSI status, which is definitely positive. We have ongoing STL surveys that

050are administered to provide real-time data so we can support our students around their social and emotional needs. Whole child programs such as elementary music, elementary PE, secondary e-sports have been implemented to support students' well-being. We have ongoing safety and trauma kit training. to ensure that the school's efforts around safety is being supported. We currently have second step SEL curriculum taught in grades TK through eight. And then mental health services have increased through South Bay Children's Health. And that was another action that was carried across the third year as a result of educational partner feedback. And then a budget amount for goal two is $1,560,000 with a About 517,000 have been expended as of October 31st. For goal three, some of the highlighted actions. Our structured co-teach plan days are provided for all of our co-teach

051pairs so they can collaborate, they can plan, and they can receive training. We have secondary out-of-school tutoring support through Air Tutors. Again, coming out of the pandemic, we recognize the need for additional tutoring support. And then we have in-class support for our English learners at the secondary schools. And then the budgeted amount for Goal 3 is $726,000, with the estimated $188,566 having been expended at this point. And then for our final goal, which is LCAP Goal 4 around parental involvement, parent education engagement opportunities such as What I Wish My Parents Knew, Dangers of Youth Substance Use, and Fentanyl have taken place. We're heading into transition season and so you're going to see transition events taking place like Are You Ready Night, the Empowered Parents Support 9th Grade Student, and then other opportunities such as Fitness

052Day and the middle schools will have some transition events as well. Increased college awareness events including the distribution of an A-G Planning Guide, a financial planning for college event. El Camino Night and SoCal Rock Open House have taken place. And then to bridge the home to school connection and support that communication between our families of English learners, we've used translation services to support that. And then the budget amount for this particular goal is $145,000, excuse me, with $23,500, excuse me, and $585 being spent as of interim one. And then lastly, I'd like to share some of the ways in which we measure progress to goals. So when we're looking at how students are academically achieving, we look at the CAS data, of course. We look at the CAS, which is the science test. We look

053at ELPAC data, which is around our English learners. We look at our MAP growth data. enrollment in higher level courses for our subgroups to make sure that they have access to those higher level courses as well. We're looking at reclassification, how many of our ELs are reclassifying as English learners. And then we're looking at the number of co-teach offerings we offer so our students with disabilities have access to those high rigor classes. We'll monitor progress towards college and careers, graduation rates reviewed as well as A3G completion rates. We look at our CTE pathway completion and how many students are completing that pathway. We look at our college and career indicator which has multiple metrics underneath that. And then we're looking at how many students are in this state syllabi literacy. And then next year we

054will add the syllabus civic engagement. As we look at progress towards student engagement and well-being, attendance really is key, like Mr. Brandt was saying. We want students to get here every day. So obviously we look at ADA. We look at chronic absenteeism. We look at our suspension rates, our expulsion rates, our dropout rates. And then we look at the data from our California Healthy Kids Survey as well as our Panorama Education Survey. And then additional metrics that we monitor are teacher credentialing information. We look at our facilities and make sure they're being maintained well and we have a fit tool that we do quarterly to make sure that we're meeting that mark. And then for instructional materials, we look at the Williams Compliance Act to make sure that all of our students have materials on

055a yearly basis. All right, so that concludes the mid-year update. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have and please remember that the report itself can be found on RBUSD's website. Questions? I really appreciated the update on the slides. It was a lot easier to follow this year. Oh, good. Maybe it's just practice, but I really like how you presented it, and it was easy to understand. Oh, good. And remember, this is the mid-year, and so I'll be presenting again in June when we put to bed this last year of this plan, and then we'll be kicking off the new one. And so far we've had three meetings for our LCAP committee and we'll have additional ones just because there's so much work to do putting in bed one and then developing another.

056Who's on that committee? I was just going to point that out. It's under Ed Services. When you look for the LCAP, we have quite a few parent, teachers, and administrators. Yeah, we wanted to make sure it was well represented. I pretty much took anyone who was interested because we just want all those voices in the room. And so there are parents. There's a student this year, which is exciting. We have teachers, obviously. We have classified. I think Patty's in the room. Patty, where are you? I'm pointing you out. She's on the committee. So, yeah, it's well represented. it great thank you any anything else all right thank you very much all right student board member report thank you I'd like to start with a big congratulations to RUHS girls wrestler Kinsey Conrad. She placed eighth

057at the state tournament this past weekend, and she is the first RUHS wrestling state placer in about 50 years and the first RUHS ladies wrestling state placer ever. There are some photos of her from the wrestling tournament up there. And then next up, good luck to our boys basketball team who are competing in CIF State playoffs tonight in San Diego. And at REHS this week, we have our Day at Disney Spirit Week, which is ending with our spring rally on Friday. That is also Disney-themed. And lastly, next week is our annual UCLA Blood Drive on Tuesday, March 5th. Great. Thank you, Chloe. Dr. Wesley? Yes, this evening I just wanted to share a report on something that's a little odd for me, social media, because I don't have an account and I don't... I don't

058follow social media personally, but I am very much interested in what's going on in terms of promoting our school district. And I wanted to start by saying that we are excited to announce that we now have also a Facebook page. And so just want to quickly go through a little bit about our social media accounts and encourage people, stakeholders to follow us. So here's just a here. things that we keep an eye on, follower count, and it's a measure of awareness. Likes, shares, comments, and mentions are measures of engagement. So we just really want to see how our community is learning information. We understand that there's many ways to send out information, and we also are learning that social media appears to be a more effective way to also share information. Here's some quick facts

059about social media. I did a report. actually last March and at that time we had 2,935 followers on our Instagram page we didn't have Facebook so you can see how many we have as of February 15th we started Facebook recently because of the ownership of the page was tied to a personal account. So there is one out there that we just couldn't close down. So we created a new one. So you can see how to follow us on that. And what that means is our Instagram and our Facebook accounts are business accounts that can be managed by future leaders. They're not tied to personal accounts. So hopefully, you know, as leaders move on, these accounts will continue. And so you can see the chart above shows Instagram growth and since Facebook is newer We don't

060have meaningful data to show yet, but I look forward to sharing that later Engagement matters. So tagging a post means that we create a link to a content in another account's feed. For example, if we post a photo of students at Paris and then we tag the Paris account to help broaden the reach of that post. So we link to the school's individual accounts as well. Some of those are managed by their PTA. We mindfully follow other accounts, meaning we follow relevant RBUSD. peer or influencer groups such as Beach City's Health District, RBPD, or as I said, school PTA accounts. We don't follow personal accounts. So what do we post? We celebrate. We honor staff. We share information. We promote activities. We share time-sensitive information. We recognize our board, our community partners in our posts.

061We like to just show how learning comes to life. So if you follow us, you'll see posts weekly. Yeah, there's a special someone here Our goal is to give our school community a glimpse into the day or a week and day of life RBSD students and staff and keep our community informed about all the great ways our students are experiencing their educational journey in RBUSD. So we recently posted a brief video highlighting Bernie's STEM night, Dreisler students meeting with RBPD to talk about career pathways, and Bernie students participating in their annual interaction activity walk through California. So if you're the parent or guardian of a younger student you can get a peek into what is coming next for your RBUSD student. We also like to share what's going on beyond the classroom so recently we

062posted para students at the Museum of Tolerance. All RBUSD eighth graders are going to the Museum of Tolerance thanks to RBEF. We also posted fifth graders from Alta Vista at Wilderness Park for their fifth grade survivor day. We'll oops we'd like to show off our staff we posted a thank you to our grounds crew and M&O staff for making the campuses the envy of other districts we posted principles becoming human Sundays for a meeting Skechers walk goals district office staff highlighting mental health month as a fun reminder to all about mental health awareness and we posted a congrats to our 2023 teacher of the year Courtney Baker who has selected one of 15 finalists in the entire LA County LA County which is about 80 districts. We also post all that schools have to offer.

063And while they don't receive as many likes as posts of students, we do post flyers advertising upcoming events to help reach families who follow our social media more regularly. And we know that a lot do because they like it or tag us. We also post events that connect us with our community, in this case RBPD and Multicultural Day at Jefferson Elementary. So you can get information about that if you follow us. We post about triumphs of our RUHS athletes and middle school intramural sports teams, Adams and Paris, and so we are having a post of our wrestler coming soon. And of course, our accomplishments on the road. There's always something to celebrate. We want our school community to join in our celebration, such as our end of the year holiday jingle jam celebration, end of

064the year retirements, and the infamous RUHS graduation. And we don't mean to brag, but we do on social media. We celebrate students who are honored in placing state or nationally in competitions like a lucrative deal on Shark Tank. The second picture is a Bernie student who won first place in the West Basin Municipal Water District's Water is Life student art contest. And some of our very own RUHS students who are published authors and will be participating in author series inspiring other students at lunch on the RUHS campus in the library. So all of these are recent postings. We post school and district accolades such as our amazing niche ratings, our 2023 AP results, and a 90% pass rate with 1,133 students taking 2,185 exams. That is something to brag about. So I'm encouraging everyone to

065follow us. Every one of my superintendent reports ends with our IG and Facebook page, so I'm going to throw it up while I share that you can tag us, you can follow us, you can join the journey, you can peek into what's to come. Again, if you're a younger family, tell a friend, tell a relative, tell a future RBUSD family. We just hope that you will, again, join the journey. And that's my report. Thank you. Any questions? I just also want to share that on the web page the superintendent web on the district web page under superintendent all of my board reports are posted along with our monthly emails in case somebody wants to look at them. I would comment but I'm the last one besides you to comment on social media but I think

066I understand it. No one can respond though. That was my question. So it's not for chatter back and forth. It's just meant as the posting. We're moving on to our hearing section. Members of the audience may address the board on any topic, regardless of whether it is listed on the agenda. However, due to Brown Act regulations, the board cannot engage in public discussion on items not on the agenda. Topics not on the agenda which are brought to the board's attention may be investigated by the administration and a report made to the board either publicly or privately at a future meeting. Comments from visitors shall not exceed three minutes. I'm starting with the written requests in the order they were received, and that would mean we're starting with Pratik Prasad. Good evening, Dr. Wesley and board.

067My name is Prateek Prasad. I'm in fifth grade and I'm a member of Dr. Wesley's Student Advisory Council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today and express my thoughts regarding the decision to shut down fourth and fifth grade CDC classes from the next school year. I first stepped into Madison CDC in a stroller when I was a happy three-month-old kid along with my mom to pick up my older sister who's done in kindergarten. My sister attended Madison CDC for six years and is now a sophomore at RUHS. And I myself was fortunate enough to be a part of this incredible program for six years now as well. CDC is nothing short of a second home to many families. as both my sister and I were provided a ton of academic support, after school care

068supervision, and built up a lot of joyful memories throughout our elementary years by the CDC program. CDC is a very strong program that I truly believe our school district needs as it supports working families in our community and enables parents to be stress free in regards to child care and education after school. CDC has supported me in becoming a very strong contributor to our school society. I'm able to keep my engagement continued after regular school hours, complete my homework on time, engage in well-organized art and literature projects at CDC, interact with friends for longer hours in the day, and develop a very capable and engaged person. The CDC program has continued to support me during this summer. Since both my parents work, it enables me to have a lot of fun trips and activities during

069the summertime while continuing to keep the learning and new aspects constant. The decision to eliminate the program for the fourth and fifth graders is potentially jeopardizing many parents who can't pick their children up when the school day ends due to work schedules. With no place to safely and productively care for their children, people might leave the district. Ride at School and RAC are slowly taking over the after-school programs. A ride at school and rec can't compare to what CDC provides. Rides at school and rec are not as organized and operated with developed curricula as CDC. CDC provides licensed teachers to take care of the children. We CDC kids have formed strong bonds with our teachers. I've been tremendously supported and encouraged to develop my creativity and education by my CDC teachers. One of my CDC

070teachers helped me create the most incredible Halloween costume recently. He's in this crowd right behind me. Miss Moreno and Miss Medina, who are also here, gave me so much support when my mother had to travel to India to take care of my grandparents when they felt critically ill. Through the pandemic, CDC brought so much normalcy to my routine, and I was so thankful that I could still attend and see my friends. The CDC teachers spend long hours with us students and have made lifelong bonds with us. My sister still regularly comes to CDC to say hi, as she fondly remembers her elementary CDC teachers through the years. I believe that this decision to shut down the fourth and fifth grade CDC is a very poor decision. CDC provides more... CDC... Just go ahead and finish

071your thought. CDC provides more than any other after-school program. CDC teachers love their students like their own children. I hope you can reconsider this decision for the welfare of our community. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. And, well, okay. Thank you. All right. Blake Hubbard. Good evening, everyone. My name is Blake Hubbard. I'm a proud fifth grader at Madison Elementary. Today I am going to be talking to you about my thoughts on the sudden changes to the CDC program for fourth and fifth grade students. This program is extremely important for all elementary school ages, kindergarten through fifth grade. I have benefited from this program because of my full involvement in CDC since kindergarten. The recent changes make me feel, wait, this program has benefited me in so many ways. First, as homework demand increases

072in the upper grades, CDC has helped me stay on track and complete my assignments on time. For me, this is very important because I get all my homework done before I go to my sports practice such as baseball, basketball, soccer, and football. piano and Spanish classes. Some of the fourth and fifth graders serve as a support to the teachers helping the younger CDC classes. Just imagine how helpful they would be when they become more mature. Taking away the fourth and fifth grade CDC means next year students will not have the opportunity to help the lower grades and also help the teachers to keep their kids quiet and focused on what their current task is. CDC isn't just a regular after-school program. It is an enrichment program that teaches important life lessons. Many of these life

073lessons also are learned during the summer CDC program and the great field trips we take. Finally, most parents who put their children in after-school programs have jobs that don't allow them to pick their children up when the bell rings. Parents will either have to call a sitter or have their child walk home. Some fourth and fifth graders don't live close to Madison Elementary School, so walking home could be difficult. Think of what it would be like when it is raining and fourth and fifth graders have to walk all the way home soaking wet, sick and tired just to see an empty house. These are some reasons why I think discontinuing the fourth and fifth grade CDC is an unacceptable decision. Thank you. Isaac Granoff. Thank you for your time today. I think that it is

074awful that you are shutting down CDC for the fourth and fifth graders. We love CDC and hate to see it go. We love all the friends and teachers that work here. Our teacher, Miss Moreno, who is over there, is one of the best ever. One of. You have a good teacher who enjoys teaching us. She is one of the only teachers. One of the only. Teachers who knows what to do when we act up just not saying that we ever do Have you considered summer in the breaks that they have CDC? my mom talked to a person at the At the district and when she mentioned this her sentence was followed by silence This means that you have not even thought about it and one more thing This is probably the most important one of

075them all what our kids going to do after school Reckon RAS do not provide the same nourishment that CDC does when we were lucky enough to get a spot at CDC We were promised a spot till we graduated fifth grade by the district. I really think you should reinstate CDC Thank You Zoe Granoff Good evening. I'm Zoe Granoff. I'm from Madison Elementary. I'm in the fifth grade. I'm here to address the fourth and fifth CDC issue. I'm a part of CDC and I like it very much. I am the person I am today because of the CDC and because of the CDC, I got through the pandemic, which had a huge impact on my school and learning time. By taking away the CDC, you are taking away our homework and reading time. You are taking

076our time with our friends and time to learn. you are taking away amazing teachers from students who need them. By taking away CDC, you are also encouraging students to walk home alone, which is not safe. Some parents work later than others, and not all parents have the luxury of working from home, which is why they depend on the CDC to watch their kids late into the afternoons and evenings. As someone in the CDC, I highly encourage you to think about your decisions and how it will impact everyone. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Jeff Gall. Hi, my name is Jeff Gall, and I'm on the Redondo Beach Public Safety Commission, and we like CDC and REC too, and I'm sorry about that, and I hope you bring back the CDC for fourth and fifth

077graders. But just about the Redondo Beach Public Safety Commission, over the past year we have discussed in our meetings programs, grants, and solutions to improve school safety and overall public safety. I know Dr. Wesley mentioned ikigai. It's a Japanese term for reason for living. And I would say my response would be kyorioku, which is a Japanese word for cooperation. So I was told by district leadership a couple summers ago that all agency relationships were in place. And I appreciate the efforts of those agencies striving to optimize the safety of my fellow Redondo Beach residents. However, our commission leaves no stone unturned, and in September we had a chance to talk to Christina Derungs of Cal OES. It took about a year to set up that meeting through RBPD, but we talked about optimizing public safety

078at our schools, the STOP grant, and also opportunities for city and county to optimize partnerships on OES-related programs and independently with county. Then with the recent events, I took Christina's advice and contacted Natalia Romo at Supervisor Mitchell's office, and we brainstormed a bit on programs the county offers to help reduce risk and monitor emerging problems. So Natalia suggested the Trauma Prevention Initiative could be one way to provide these resources to Redondo Beach. In conjunction with the Office of Supervisor Mitchell and the Beach Cities Health District, it is my sincere hope that city leadership, management, and staff, along with school board leadership and staff, can more effectively partner with county and BCHD to bring more resources to bear on this critical issue, and I would be delighted to have the school board receive and file my

079communications with the stakeholders mentioned. thank you and i look forward to any feedback following the meeting thank you all right danielle rankin So if I'm not speaking in regards to CDC, I can't speak on any topic, correct? You have three minutes for any topic. For any topic. Okay, so actually I'm here today. I didn't know that kids were here when we were talking about CDC. I've been sick over time. So I'm now able to speak, but I'm here because I've been filing complaints. with the school district since 2019 in regards to discrimination. My children are the 4% that are here in this school district and I've been totally disrespected. I've spoken to Nick. Nicole I've spoken to a few board members here I've had meetings with individuals regards to this unfortunately nothing has been resolved

080all my complaints have been swept under the rug nothing has been taken seriously and in conclusion this subject has now been on the Board of Education's desk so like I'm just really really completely I'm hurt and bothered because I've been in this district for a long time, and I feel after like 20 complaints about my children using the N-word or being called the N-word, it's totally disrespectful. Nothing has been done. I have spoken to principals about this. I've spoken to teachers about this. I've filed complaints and there was investigation that was done and I've spoken to Nikki and Nicole and in the investigation it was recorded and Everything that I stated in the investigation. They did not put in the report so I don't know how to deal with that if we have members that's

081supposed to be as far as in command not doing their responsibility. I'm sorry. I'm just really taken back. So sorry. So I just really hope that we can get justice and something that can be done because my children don't feel comfortable here anymore. I don't feel comfortable anymore here. And I'm just completely hurt, so I'm sorry if I'm a little shaken up about this. I just feel like I shouldn't have to come to a board meeting with children here to say that I've been a victim and my children have been a victim of being discriminated. I feel like this should have been taken care of five years ago, and I'm still here talking about the same matter. So, of course, I'm a little bit shaken. I'm a little devastated. I'm hurt. I don't feel comfortable

082at all. and my children don't feel comfortable at all. And I don't think that any children should feel this way, and any parents should have to go through what I've been through. Being that I am the 4%, why am I being attacked? Shouldn't I feel comfortable? Even though there's not many blacks or African Americans here, why am I a target? So I have questions of what are we doing to make individuals feel comfortable here in this community? All right. Thank you. Is there anyone wishing to speak on either agenda or non-agenda items that did not complete a written request? Okay. Yes, come forward. If you can tell us who you are. Hello, my name is Melissa Turkinch and I am a senior at Redondo Union High School. I attended Jefferson Elementary, Paris Middle School, and

083now Redondo Union High School. And next year I will be attending New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. I've come here to speak about CDC for the fourth and fifth graders. I personally and also my brother was part of the CDC program for all six years from kindergarten to fifth grade. And ever since I heard about fourth and fifth graders no longer having the access to CDC in the upcoming year, I've just been, it's been like stuck in my head and I thought that should speak on this because fourth and fifth grade especially for me was I developed a lot during that time I really found out what I was passionate about and then that's when I decided that I wanted to be a filmmaker. CDC helped me explore all of the different creative

084realms. They taught me how to paint, how to make sunsets out of frosting on a cupcake, and I have all of these photos still that are saved onto my family's iCloud Drive, all from CDC, where I explored all of these different creative realms. And when we came to making a creative film during the summer of fifth grade, I... That's when I realized that that was what I wanted to do, and that's what jump-started my passion for wanting to become a filmmaker and brought me to where I am today. So if I didn't have CDC, I wouldn't be able to achieve my own dreams. And these summer programs meant so much to me, and I met my best friend through CDC in kindergarten, and we're still best friends to this day. Those fourth and fifth grade

085years really helped us get close and I wouldn't be here and I wouldn't be who I am if it wasn't for CDC and the amazing teachers and program and the curriculum and all of the field trips that I got to experience with loving people beside me. So that's it. Thank you. Is there anyone else wishing to speak? okay we'll close the public comment portion and moving on to communications Redondo Beach Teachers Association Good evening Madam Board President board members. Dr. Wesleyan cabinet. My name is Janice Byers I teach third grade at Barrel Elementary School and I am the vice president of our BTA and Our president couldn't be here tonight So I'm just coming to give you guys a couple of little little updates on what's going on with the teachers first of all the

086wanted me to tell you guys that we've been doing, the career days have been happening at our schools. Today was the high school. Both of my kids go to high school, so. go to Union and they both enjoyed it very much and we had ours at Borough. I know that not every school's done theirs yet, but it's been, the kids have been learning a lot about professions that they never would have heard about and they've really been enjoying it. The next thing was that the teachers are looking forward to the Special Education Advisory Council starting. They're having their first meeting this Thursday and they're looking forward to being able to give feedback from a teacher's point of view and hoping to see how to make the special education department as effective as possible. And then

087the last one was just to give you guys an update on the report card committee for elementary school report cards. This is the end of our trimester is next week in elementary school. And one of the elementary teachers had sent out a couple of numbers to me. She said that on average, on our report cards that we have right now, there are about 40 grades that we give per student. And if you have roughly 25 to 30 kids, that's upward of 1,200 grades that we do in these two weeks right here. to put the report cards together, including detailed comments. So all of the teachers are very excited about the new report card coming out, that we can get something more succinct, more meaningful, that parents will understand, and that teachers can put forth with

088much more clarity, and it'll be specific information for parents and for kids. And that's it for teachers. Thank you. Thank you. California School Employees Association. Hello, Madam Board President, board members, Dr. Wesley, Dr. Stephanie. I'm Mark Lewis. I'm president of CSCA and instructional assistant at Madison CDC. I'd just like to let everyone know we're happy to start working on our committees that we agreed upon in our last... agreement that we did are that went through and we've had very productive talk so far with Dr. Stephanie about properly compensating our members for our hard work that we do and we're happy to continue that into our committee member our committee meetings that we will start hosting starting I believe next week and thank you all. Thank you. American Federation of Teachers. All right. Good evening, board,

089Dr. Wesley and Dr. Stephanie. My name is Patty Moreno, and I am the AFT vice chair. Though there are no AFT updates to report, it would be very remiss of me not to acknowledge the voices of our young RBUSD CDC students that are here past and present. I just so happen to be the third through fifth grade CDC teacher, and I have been feeling the brunt of the decision to remove fourth and fifth grade from CDC. My students are sad, confused, and frustrated. I am proud, though, of the commitment to advocate for what they feel is right. At CDC, we teach art. We did claymation videos like film this past summer. We music. We teach social skills, emotional skills. And at CDC, we also teach about speaking up for what is right. And regardless of

090the outcome, I have to recognize the power of speech and the power of... coming together and speaking up because it's hard to speak up especially during this month of Black History Month I we teach everything honestly and it's hard to speak up right now as I am in a leadership position I would just like to end by saying that it is a privilege serving my third through fifth graders and their dedicated families I will continue to hope for the best thank you Redondo Beach Council PTA yes I thought I saw something it's our birthday it's PTA's birthday February 17th is Founders Day for PTA and we are 127 years old I know I know I look very young for 127 years but PTA's birthday was just celebrated this month and one of the things that's

091so exciting about going on with the legacy of Alice and Phoebe and Selena, the founders of PTA, is that we continue with our advocacy. And so 33rd District was just awarded by National PTA the Local Outstanding Advocacy Award, largely based on resolutions that were written by Redondo's very own Karen Cull and Melissa Deschant. Those ladies are going to be flown to Washington, D.C. to receive the award from National PTA on our behalf. So way to go, Redondo. Way to go, 33rd. And happy birthday, PTA. Thank you. Redondo Beach Educational Foundation. Are you good from your presentation earlier? All right. All right, Dr. Wesley. Yeah, I do have a few comments. Thank you. One, I just want to say that in this school district, we do not in any way condone any kind of hate speech

092or the use of the N-word. And any time there is a complaint, it will be investigated thoroughly. And anyone can go on our website under families and students and... Complete a general complaint form or a uniform complaint form and there are legal requirements for resolving those and responding to those within a timely manner And so in terms of the CDC, I know I made some comments at the last board meeting But for those folks who may not have been there There's nobody that does not disagree with the comments that were made. I think we all agree that CDC has been quite impactful to our students and the issue is staffing. And if we were able to hire enough CDC staff to fulfill the amount of students who want to be in CDC, we wouldn't be

093having this conversation. And it isn't without trying and we will continue to try. I do want to clarify because some of the questions are about why fourth and fifth and not TK. And part of the issue when it comes to trying to hire is that, as you can imagine, employees want to work a full shift, an eight-hour shift. TK is half day. So when you have CDC for TK and kinder, especially TK, that employee can work an eight-hour shift because TK is half day. their morning they're working and then when this the switch is made then this teachers are continue to work and support the other TK class. And so that's why we we made the decision that we would not be able to support the fourth and fifth. When you if we were to.

094support fourth and fifth then we would have to hire employees who would work in the morning and then they would have no hours during the day and then they would come back after school and that's that's very hard to recruit it's hard to recruit someone who's going to work a couple hours in the morning and then they get a split shift stipend and then a couple hours in the afternoon and that's part of the the problem we are able to recruit better when it's an eight hour shift and so just wanted to clarify how we got to that decision although it is a very difficult one. And no way do we want people to feel as though we don't support CDC and our students. And we do believe that we have viable programs that can

095support the needs of families who aren't able to pick their students up. And so we are glad to be able to offer those programs, such as Right at School. And so I think it was important to share that. Thank you. Thank you. Does anyone have any items they want to pull for discussion from general consent? I'd like to pull 10.2 and 10.6 just for a separate vote, please. Can I have a motion and second to approve 10.1, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, and 10.7? So moved. Student advisory vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. I need a motion and second to begin discussion on item 10.2. Second. Any questions, comments? Student advisory vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Do you want to explain your no? I've covered it

096with staff. Do you want to tell your fellow board members why you're voting no? Yeah, as I read through this, there were quite a few things that were concerning that it didn't feel like we were really doing those things, even though they're listed as requirements. So I'm just not in a... position to be approving something if I don't think we're I'm not seeing that we're actually following it okay that's really it I'm just reminding you and everyone that according to our board protocols you are to we ask that you please let Dr. Wesley and the board president know ahead of time before pulling something from the agenda so moving forward if you could do that moving on can I have a motion and second to begin discussion on 10.6 Second. Any questions, comments, discussion? Student

097advisory vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. All right. Motion passes 4-1. And I don't think I said that, but 10.2 was 4-1 as well. Moving on to action items. I think we just have one. So a motion and second to begin discussion on item 12.1. So moved. Second. And this is to vote for no more than six candidates for the CSBA Delegate Assembly. Hopefully everybody had a chance to review. There's six positions and only six people running. So does anybody have an opposition to voting for any one of the six? Why don't we start with that? Okay. If not, then we will. Inez and I will submit our ballot. We get one ballot for the board and we'll submit a ballot in favor of all six candidates. So can I

098have student advisory vote on that? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 5-0. We have no information items tonight. For discussion items I have let me check. 14.1 is the first reading of the board policies on administrative regulations and exhibits that we read it was over 400 pages so can I have a motion and second we don't need it because it's discussion items How do we want to start this? So usually if there's anyone who has any questions about a board policy, they can ask those questions, and then any policies that are not pulled for any reason would move forward to second reading for action at the next board meeting. Okay. Is there anyone who had questions or wanted to point out a specific bylaw? One question in general this seems

099like a really large tranche of them is this a double up or is it did we really get this many hit with at this I think they do it quarterly I don't know if yet So this is not necessarily as a double up but we have a lot more to bring so we are trying to bring them in digestible bunches and because we're also having to bring the bylaws to the board again it's gonna take some time to get caught up so we're trying to read them and get them to you so there's another pack that we're reviewing right now that we're ready to bring I think it might be about the same. I don't remember how large. But the next thing we'll bring to you is a first set of bylaws. We're going to

100try to bring them in three chunks or two chunks. And then we have another set of board policies coming. So they do come quarterly, to answer your question. yeah just curious about that did seem like more than usual yeah usually it's about one page listed this was about two pages it feels like there's also just more updates I mean just from my personal experience there's a lot of law changes and there's a lot of legislation that's driving some of this change so kind of with that to make these able to help us go through them Would ask that in the comments which are greatly appreciated at the beginning especially where it says who was reviewed by when it's done if if we could get a consistent call out there because some of them say sees

101changes to the CSBA update policy and or no changes to the CSBA policy and Then there are some that will say just no changes and when I look at it. It's actually It is a complete rewrite of what we have, so it is a no changes to a new CSBA policy. That would help if we could get a consistent message in that upper part that shows that this is no changes. If it's no changes to this. News or CSB a possible. We know that it's basically all the new CSBA In the past it had been expected that if it said no changes It would seem like it was no changes to the current policy But that's not what I saw in some of these I was reading through them But just ask that if that

102messaging that you put in there, which is really appreciated could be consistent to help us see what it is that's being looked at. Is it truly no changes to current or is it no changes to the new CSBA? Okay, we can do that. I only, I had one question, Dr. Wilds, on 1312.2, and I'm bringing this up because it came up today about complaints. The policy? Yes. 13 12.2 it's page 17 okay and you can your answer can be that we can talk about this later but my thought was I just wanted to put it out there is this is asking a lot of our teachers when a parent complains about content because if if this is recommended language from CSBA that we've added was this is the green completely new 13 12.2 yeah complaints

103concerning instructional materials mm-hmm so everything in that policy comes directly from yes CSP okay we didn't change anything we took their wording directly okay this is policy or regulation policy policy I think you're looking at the regulation yeah yes the AR yeah oh got it sorry yeah I don't think there is a there BP 13 12.2 in here is there it's after they're just out of order there was a spelling error on this one too one of the paragraphs ends with reach instead of reached but I didn't think that substantially changed I had that but I wasn't yeah but my concern was just that do we have to and I know we need to teach every student and take care of every student but it seems like that would be a long time to have

104a teacher providing alternate you know, books, information, lesson plans, and it just struck me as, is that really something we need to do? Are you in step one, step two? Sorry, just because it's a long. I was in step two. Okay. Where it says that the teacher will then assign the student alternate materials of equal merit. We're seeing these kinds of complaints more and more and to the extent that we can make it a little easier I would just ask that we we can do that we consider that because so let me go back and check the CSBA policy to see if that's able to be struck and I'll be I'll be able to give you an answer in a Friday update. Okay. I just need to go check the Yeah, we'd be mindful as

105to whether or not it's linked to the Ed code. Yeah. Yeah. It was just a lot of green. Generally the case that I'm finding. It was a lot of green. And so I read it. And it just seems like that could go on forever. It said up to, I think it was 12 months, where we're having a teacher provide equal. Yeah. Let me check the Ed code. OK. And then on this one, the green is, is there new CSBA? boilerplate for this or not it's there's it new see new there there is and I can outline it all for in the Friday update but there is new legislation around instructional material complaints and that would have triggered triggered this so the This one because it's an AR. It's a little bit different slightly different than

106policy and so When we were reviewing this you pull in the new CSBA and if there's language previously But let me check on that. Thank you course complying with that code. Yeah, there is there is I do know there is new legislation around protecting Book banning Yeah that was a little confusing in how it all comes together. Anybody else on the first read. OK so now are these put on for the next agenda. Yes they'll move to the next agenda as an action item. And at that point you would vote on. OK and then. 14.2 is the Redondo Beach general obligation bond exploration that we as a board have been doing. So I was going to provide an update and then let each of the board members have a few comments as to where we

107stand on this. But we have been having... special meetings to discuss exploring a bond, a school bond. It's been quite some time, and as everybody knows, Measure Q has now run out, and we need to look forward to be able to provide what we need for our kids. So back in 2022, we employed an architectural consultant firm to provide us with a facilities master plan. And we have since then also employed a bond. We hired a different consultant to help us understand the general obligation bond and do a feasibility study. So over the past two months, we've already had three workshops. I believe we have two more scheduled where we have spent. three and plus hours at a time discussing this. No decisions have been reached. We've not voted on anything yet. It's all been

108open discussions to what we think we need to recommend doing. We have reviewed the data from the July 19, 2023 board workshop, which included a summary of improvement and modernization costs for each school site. and we have looked at some projections. And a kind of fun exercise we all did was with Dr. Wesley, each board member ranked. the projects on the master plan as to what we felt between a one, a two, and a three, how important they were, should they happen. And we went through and compared all of our rankings. And Dr. Alpern helped us come up with averages so that we could look at what we felt were the most important projects and the least important and where we would fall in terms of how much money we needed. That news was not

109good because we have about $450 million of money that we would like to have. And what we've come to realize is that $39 per $100,000 of assessed value would get us $299 million. for these projects, which would include safety. And I think we're coming to the understanding that that's about what we're looking at. We've discussed communication strategy and how to work with stakeholders, which all of you are as well, to get out there and promote the bond. and we're also looking at individuals and people in the community who we can reach out to who can help us with the bond. We're meeting with stakeholders over the next few months to identify and see things that we might have missed. But other than that, I'm going to let every board member go ahead and make some

110comments and say what they need to on this. Mr. Cho. As many of you know, the way I was, I had grown up and educated, you know, we look at my culture, education is 100-year plan. So although it is an enormous amount of money, the way I look at it is a huge investment to our future. Now, however... We all need to be responsible for how we do this. And I'm glad that we have gone through the exercise, a rigorous exercise, of identifying the areas that we love to have something done, that we must do. Maybe we can wait a little. And I'm glad that we have done it. I'm glad we'll continue to do so in a respectful and responsible manner. And I'm actually excited about talking to our stakeholders about, hey, look what

111we have come up with. Hey, can you share with us what's important to you? Make sure those are addressed. And we reprioritize and reprioritize again. And I'm also excited about talking to the rest of the community. with the realization that about two-thirds of our Redonda Beach voters do not have a direct contact or direct link to our school district, but they are also the voice of the city. I recognize that, and I think we all do. I'm also excited to share those findings and excitement that I share with them. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Nguyen? Yeah, I too am excited about this. Having been in this district for a while, I can remember walking for Measure Q, which was the technology bond that brought us one-to-one Chromebooks and solar panels that actually alleviated money off

112of our general operating fund. And with a lot of good stewardship on that bond, it lasted many years longer than we ever expected. But unfortunately, all good things have come to an end. So we have exhausted that money, which leaves us with a gap for continued funding for technology. And one of the things we're going to be wrestling with too is we've heard loud and clear, and we all believe that safety is the number one priority right now. We need to make our campuses safe, and that is going to also involve infrastructure and technology. So that is something that will be part of this as well. I did want to clarify what a general obligation bond can and cannot fund because I've had a lot of questions about that. A general obligation bond, again, nothing

113has been decided, and when it is decided, it will be in an open session in a board meeting and a resolution will be passed that identifies the areas that this bond will actually fund over the next. what are we talking about five to ten years so long after everybody on this board has gone but that's not to say that if this bond were to pass kids what do we think seventh grade and below will actually see the construction portions of what's included in this bond and the Facilities master plan that we created has been on the educational services website if anybody is curious to look at it It's our sort of wish list. It's divided by new construction and modernization and the reason for that is in November there will be a bond for the

114state of California. State of California usually matches some portion of school districts who pass their own general obligation bond. They will match that if there is a state, if there's state funds available. Those funds have run out. You can expect to see, we actually met with Almir Suchi on Saturday who said he's introduced a bond. There's two of our legislatures that would actually fund new construction at 50% and modernization at 40%. So all of that is to say that we can, there are lots of ways we could spend that $299 million and expand those funds. And each, if the bond were to pass, it would not be able to be used to say fund the general budget. Is that the right way to put it, Dr. Alpern? Meaning we couldn't use it to reduce classroom

115sizes or increase salaries, and that's a law that we can't. workaround but this would make sure that we are able to offset deferred maintenance modernize our buildings build fencing put cameras in put buzzins at all of our elementary schools lots of the things that we've talked about so I'm looking forward to to getting a lot more feedback on that and you know coming to a conclusion and come passing a resolution hopefully Yes, I just want to thank Dr. Wesley and Dr. Alpern. It's been a lot of work that's gone into this. Again, just to emphasize these special meetings, these are open sessions. These are just board workshops that are open to the public where we're having these discussions and doing this research. And it's a lot of work. And I appreciate all your efforts supporting

116us because this is the first time many of us have done it, both collectively and individually. So it is really appreciated. But one of the things I have heard loud and clear from the community, it's something I feel myself, is the need for safety, safety, safety. Our schools were, you know, the average age is over 70 years old. They were not designed for the world we live in today. So that's why this facility master plan looks at so many things like taller fences and secure entryways that we need to add. better camera systems and all these other things we need to do that 70 years ago no one even thought of. There weren't fences back then even. So it's a very different world. And when you've got facilities that are seven years old, you have

117to continue to maintain them. And the sobering thing for me is looking at the state of finances where we have declining enrollment. The state budget is facing massive shortfalls. And then the bond previously that paid for all of our technology needs has been exhausted. So the needs are increasing and the funding is decreasing. And that's where... the need for something like this comes out of because we want to give our students the very best of everything. And obviously, we want to do that reasonably and do it financially prudently. They don't need to have everything, but we want to give them the best that we can reasonably. And so looking at this as a potential option for that is really important to me. And again, highlighting that if the state does pass a bond and they

118don't have one yet, they're still figuring that out. But if they pass one in November, the only way you get matching dollars from the state is if you yourself pass a bond. So that's another impetus for discussing this at the time is because we could you know if we didn't have a local bond we could still be paying for the state bond and not get any of that funding right here in our own schools when we desperately need it so it's really looking at how do we you know plan for the next 10 20 30 40 50 years of our schools to keep them running smoothly fix you know things like leaky roofs and infrastructure but also kind of future proof them as well because you know again we don't want our students in some

119of these temporary classrooms that are falling apart we don't want cracked sidewalks we don't want leaky roofs and we want to give our students access to edge technology, we want to prepare them for the future, and we don't have a funding source for that because as fortunate as we are to live in a wealthy district, when it comes to state funding, that counts heavily against us. We get some of the lowest per pupil funding in the state because we do have fewer needs, which is great, but that means we are on our own when it comes to a lot of these types of investments. So I do appreciate everyone's collaborative approach to this. It's not easy paring down that list of all the things that... would benefit our students, but it is important because we

120can't ask the community for unlimited funding. That's not fair to the community. It's not prudent. So making sure that we look at this and holistically approach it from, for every dollar spent, how do we make the most benefit for our students, not just today, but for the next 10, 20, 30 years? So it is a significant amount of effort that goes into this, and just want to thank everyone for their time and helping look at this together. Mr. Strassenberg? No, thank you. All right, do you have a board report? Okay, Ms. Flynn. Just another congratulation to Archer Leberties. I think that's just the greatest thing I've heard in a long time. I love that we have national champions and go boys basketball because I'd love to see them here to be recognized. I was fortunate

121enough to attend the CSBA event I mentioned with Dr. Wesley and Mr. Elder. Nemeth on Saturday where Ben Allen and Almir Suchi and the Director of Legislation for the CSBA which is the California School Board Association and representatives from all the local area school boards, elected school boards, gave a presentation on the state of the budget in California. So we've already talked a lot about the shortfall that they had already anticipated. The worst news is that the shortfall is Was it $30 billion more than what they had originally projected? The governor has proposed an unprecedented move to secure the Prop 98 guarantee for education. And the thing I was struck the most about... in talking with Mr. Allen and Mr. Marasucci, they were very collaborative and willing and looking for advice from our business executives

122at our public schools on whether or not this is a wise move. It talks a little bit about borrowing against future revenues to ensure he is committed to ensuring the Prop 98 guarantee. I just think we're very, we should know we're very fortunate that we have two former school board members who are currently representing us in both the state and house. and they are looking at this very carefully. And it was a really informative, if not sobering, meeting. But we do have a lot of collaboration, a lot of people committed to making sure that our budgets are fully informed. And I look forward to the May revise, which, when is that coming up? May 21st? I don't know if I look forward is the right word, but stay tuned, let's say. I'll echo all the

123same things, of course. It's great having cheerleberties here and seeing our students succeed. That's the happiest part of every meeting is seeing and hearing from our students too. So I do love that. One other event to make the community aware of is on March 8th and 9th at Redondo Union, we have the Nike Track Invitational. That is going to be a huge, incredible competition for track athletes. And this is, again, there's so many events like this we have at the high school, but it's great for our community to kind of see that if they're ever interested because we talk about kids being on screens all the time. or whatever else they're doing. But when you see them coming together and going to these events and seeing what they're pushing themselves to do and how hard

124they work for this, it kind of reminds us why we're here. So I just wanted to share that. Also, going back to career day, I was at both Adams and RUHS for career day. That was a lot of fun. The students are asking great questions, and they are very eager. So I'm glad we can kind of give them some of those real-world things. And while I don't think many of them want to follow in my footsteps necessarily, good for them for asking questions and being engaged. One thing I did want to highlight is RBPD has been going around the past couple days. The Police Officers Association was kind enough to find a grant for 200 gift cards to be given out by our community services officers. And so Officer Lofstrom's out there along with others.

125And for our students who are on e-bikes or bikes, who are following safety practices like wearing helmets, stopping at stop signs, they're giving them these gift cards along with the Drive Slow Redondo, which was designed by one of our students. And it has a QR code for additional e-bikes. bike safety and other informational pieces so really appreciate our BPD and all the work they're doing to help keep our kids safe on campus off campus along with the rest of our community it's another example those great partnerships we have and then those are so important to keeping everyone you know safe and working together so that's it thank you thank you as I've learned in this new role now it's going in ten months is that our school I'm going to milk that thing another two

126months. But the point here is I'm learning. That's a lot to learn, and I'm very excited that I'm learning something new. And one of the things that I've learned is that our school district does not exist on its own or island or bubble. There are many partners we work with. And one of the components that I've learned, and integral members of our community and for some, decades there are crescent guards one of the things that we've done with help with the city council is the resurrecting school district city subcommittee i know they like to call it backwards but i think that's how it's supposed to work school district city subcommittee we recognize that that's one of our strong connections that we have been recognized and we see these volunteers, these workers, these important members of

127our community every day and yet I don't know any of their names. But Dr. Wesley and Chief Hoffman put this together. We had all 23 crossing guards here with us that morning, had a great brunch. We celebrated their service to the community. I got to learn my crossing guards names, all six of them. As you know, I have kids in three different schools, many crossing guards. That was an excellent event. I also wanted to mention many of our board members are present along with our district leadership, council member Paige Kalijerovic, again with Chief Hoffman. I was also able to participate in BC's Health District, speaking of our partnership, their strategic development meeting recently along with Dr. Wilds. Many stakeholders were present about 80 participants It was a very engaged discussion and development of their strategy.

128I look forward to continue to participate I developed the participating its development of his plan and how we can work together as a community not just little silos that we sometimes we see ourselves in one of the things that I looked at and talked to the participants were you know the crisis that we talked about, that we learned about recently, fentanyl crisis, the bike issues, the e-bikes, they don't stop at city borders. It's a regional issue, and it's our job as grown-ups to look into ways to help our students and our community members. So I was very glad we're active members and, again, reminded how fortunate we are to have our own health district amongst us. Thank you. Thank you. I'm not going to repeat what... Ms. Flynn and Mr. Elder said, but we had

129a great time on Saturday despite the news hanging out with Ben Allen and Al Marasucci. I did want to ask Chloe, if you know, isn't Beauty and the Beast coming up? Oh, yes. I'm pretty sure it starts on March 21st. The 15th, okay? It's March 15th. It's March 15th. Yeah, and I'm pretty sure tickets are on sale. You can buy it with any Beauty and the Beast member or I think on the ASB online web store. I know that was it for their last play, so I'm assuming that is it for this play. Okay. But yeah. I thought it was earlier in March, but I remembered that was coming up. So after we saw the little preview at back, what was that, RUHS night? Yeah, yeah. I don't want to miss that. All right, calendar

130of events. March 8th is trimester break non-student day. For middle school and high school, it's professional development day. March 12th is the regular Board of Education meeting at 5.30. March 18th is our next bond board workshop at 5 o'clock. And on March 26th, we have a regular Board of Education meeting at 5.30. Can I have a motion and second to adjourn? So moved. Second. Student advisory vote. Aye. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 5-0. We are adjourned.