August 20, 2025 - RVSD Board of Trustees Regular Board Meeting

001Instructions for accessing subtitles in a language other than English are included on our board meetings webpage as well as in the description below. Instrucciones para acceder a los subtítulos en un idioma que no sea el inglés se incluyen en nuestra página web de Reuniones de la Junta, así como en la descripción a continuación. Great, good evening and welcome to the Ross Valley School District Board of Trustees regular meeting. Today is August 20th, 2025 and I am calling our board meeting to order at six o'clock. We have four trustees present in person at the Ross Valley School District today, 100 Shaw Drive in San Anselmo, myself, Rachel Litwack, Anna Marsh, Chris Mendelskog, and Daniel Cassidy. Trustees Shelly Hamilton is not able to attend today. We also have cabinet members present. Superintendent Tyler Graf, CBO Chris Carson,

002and the Director of Student Services Lori O'Connor. The meeting is being live streamed via YouTube and the link is on our website and on the agenda. There will be a 60 second delay between the meeting and the YouTube live stream and audio recording of the meeting will be made available to the public on our district website within 72 hours following the meeting. And with that, I will move on to our next item, which is B, closed session. I'm going to identify closed session topics. We have... Conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation significant exposure to litigation pursuant to government code five four nine five six nine subdivision D two or three special education program dispute two cases student SSID four five nine zero one zero three five seven seven and four two four 254-6977 and There

003is no public here for public comments. So moving on to our next item. I will recess us to closed session at 6 o 2 Thank you and welcome back. We reconvened an open session at 629. Report out from closed session is that we boarded 4-0 on both dispute cases that were listed for student SSID 4590103577 and for student SSID 4242546977. And the board approved. the staff recommendations on those. Our next item is procedural items. So the first one is the Pledge of Allegiance. So if you would like to join me in that please stand up. 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. Our next item here is to adopt the agenda

004in time allocations. Did we have any adjustments here? Any questions? Would I pull out that thing? You can pull it when we get to that. We can pull that item from consent and we can discuss it. But changing the overall structure, right? No, that's fine. All right. I'll make a motion to adopt the agenda in time allocations. I'll click it. Wonderful. Chris? Aye. Deanna? Aye. Daniel? Aye. Rachel? Aye. All right. So we have an agenda. Next item is de-communication. The first one here is public comment regarding items not on the open session agenda. Do we have anybody here who would like to make a public comment? So we ask that you keep it to three minutes, and we'll give you a warning at two and a half minutes when your time is up. Or when

005you have 30 seconds left, sorry. So two and a half minute warning. You have three minutes to talk. And then we ask that you identify yourself for people listening, but you're not required to. Well, maybe not. Almost everyone in this room knows me. I'm on a date. I have two boys at Mandarin Elementary School. I... I wanted to make two comments. I'm going to start with positive. I'm learning from our superintendent and being grateful for the good things. I was volunteering at lunch duty yesterday in the first day of school and as you all know, we have this new lunch provider and kids were like, this is million, billion times better. Not everyone of course ate it. The green beans were maybe bland. It didn't really have sauce on it but not, but it came

006in like compostable boxes, not in this like millions of plastic things that we had last year. And I call it a win. I know we worked hard. It's not the best. It's definitely not fantastic, but it's definitely a win. And I want to congratulate us all on that. Now, my second comment would be maybe not as positive. And you know, for after Again, as most of you know, last time I was in this room was July 16 meeting. That was brutal. I was really thinking that I'm gonna stay away for a bit. But from what after what I saw on campus of Manor on Monday, I just couldn't stay silent. I said like, no, I have to go and talk about this. I can't just ignore what I see. I wanna talk about... our facilities

007and our approach on working on them. I'm going to talk about briefly, so we at Manor, we had asphalt work done to the tune of $100,000. And then we also have this little patch where we used to have trees, trees maybe weren't the best, so they were cut down one by one. And now we instead have this. artificial plastic turf on top of the gravel glued there next to this asphalt. The asphalt job, like I managed construction for a couple years, like it won't pass any quality control of any reputable contractor. It's basically from far away looks like new. If you come closer, it's like all the cracks are still there. It was just painted black essentially. And now we have, like we used to have trees with at least some shade, now we have

008this plastic turf that already has loose ends on the sides that are like a chipping hazard. And kids haven't started playing on it yet. And I'm saying all this is because I know I've been on all budget advisory committees for the last two years. I've spent hundreds of hours understanding our budget. So as we all know, we are so short on money, and yet... Then we go and spend a hundred thousand plus dollars. I don't know exactly the number because it was split between white Thomas and us through the paving and we get this like absolute awful result that Does not improve life experience of a child on the campus. One bit. In fact, it probably makes it worse. When we had a chance to maybe let community replant major trees instead of the ones

009that would come down. No, now we put plastic thing that's tripping hazard that's made it even harder. And I invite any of you to come and have lunch at campus tomorrow. We measured. it was 115 degrees and we have metal tables on that block now blocker top that's painted and it's I thought I have another 30 seconds no because it already rained once Anyway, what I'm saying is that with the little money we do have, we have to change how we think about how we spend it and go from the check the box, I paint it, I black docked it, to actually what works for the kids. How can we make it from what little we have, how we can make it so it's actually... useful that it makes positive impacts for our children. We're

010never gonna have lots more money. So we really ought to do much better than that with the money we do have that and really be for the kids. Thank you. Good afternoon, Peter Berg, parent at Wade Thomas Elementary. I like to volunteer, help out, take observations. And I've noticed and did some research that due to a seasonably cooler wintertime and summertime, it's produced a favorable position or environment for wasps to propagate. There are... swarms of them as close as Lagunitas and as far north as Santa Rosa. Within the last week, one of the students at my son's school was stung twice by wasps locally on campus. I myself found a hornet's nest on site, alerted the principal, and gave them resources to mitigation with Sonoma County. removal process, free service. What I'd like to do

011is urge the board to free up or allocate some spend to take a proactive position, strategy towards pest control on sites. You know, due to no fault of anyone's own, you know, there are increased insects. The risk taken with... Wasps in particular is you know anaphylactic shock with our students. You have no idea who has an allergy or who doesn't It is presenting an increased risk. So, you know rather than wait for there to be an issue I'd like to try to push a motion to take a proactive approach. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Any further public comments? All right seeing no further comment I'll move on to our next item, item D2 which is correspondence and communication to the board. When we receive emails they come to us and we post

012them up so people can see when we're being lobbied or when people are advocating for things and so those are up there. I believe there's even one from tonight that we were sent. So thank you for sending us your messages. Our next item is D. three announcements by labor unions we do not have any representatives from cseaa or rvta here tonight um so with that i'll move on to our next item which is e presentation and or action items first one here is superintendent and cabinet update on opening of the 2025-26 school year great and i'll hand this over to julia Oh, excellent. Well, we're going to start off with a little movie showing the beginning of the year, and you're going to see various aspects of it, from some of the work that was

013done over the summer, to massive boxes and boxes of curriculum arriving, to some teacher education, and then students arriving at school and eating our beautiful new lunches. And shout out to my daughter for helping make these. Go for it. What we'll do is we'll do a quick whip around in each member of the cabinet. We'll kind of share a little bit about an update from the first few days. And actually, you know, most of the three of us have been back in action for over a month now. Almost six to eight weeks we've been here. Some of us haven't left this summer. And there's been a ton of facilities work done across the district. Some really great PD that Julie will talk about. And I was just really excited to have kids back. It was

014fun to have teachers back last week, but to have kids back on campus, like that's really, that's why we're here. It's where all the joy is. I started my day out at Hidden Valley, or no, at Manor yesterday and then went to Hidden Valley. I went to all five sites yesterday and it was just great to talk to kids, had lunch with some of the kids. Got to connect with a bunch of parents that seemed really happy and optimistic about the school year. So overall, talking to our principals, kids, teachers, and parents, folks seem really positive and excited. So I'm hoping we can maintain that momentum as long as possible. Also, one thing I want to note that won't be maybe mentioned by other cabinet members is... I'm really optimistic about the quality of our

015new teacher hires and new classified hires. I think we did an excellent job hiring this year. We've got some people that are very organized and on top of it and confident in their skills, but also humble enough to ask for support. So it feels like a really good blend from folks that we have coming under our team. So overall, the first few days has felt really positive. I'm excited to see where the year takes us. Are we 100% staffed across the board? Are there any substitute fills? We have a couple of fills. We have two at White Hill. We have the people essentially hired, but the CTC has a high bar for getting your credential cleared, and both of these people have little snafus in the background that maybe it worked out. Awesome. Yeah. I

016always think of this time of year, it's like, it's gratitude and it's joy. So super grateful for everybody's hard work. So much goes into getting schools ready, starting with M&O and all of the work that they do over the course of the summer. And I think I've mentioned they really helped me out because we had more curriculum and materials arrive than we have ever had arrive in my time here in the district. You know, it was a daunting task. Not only did it all arrive, but then the curriculum that we're no longer using needed to go. So Des literally is loading up his truck multiple times a day from multiple sites and driving it over and so that we can go through our process for. surplus materials. So, so much work happening there. And then

017I love being with our adult learners in our district, starting with our administrative team that had a great day of kind of doing some visioning and thinking about the year and then working with our Principal team who had their own training on EL education our new ELA program and then of course our teacher trainings and I know Lori will talk about the PD that she was Facilitating me as well. So that was really terrific It's just really great to open up the year and again, you know when you're on your sites and you see like the just a little small interactions like I love the teachers that are down on their knees basically greeting their TKers some of whom you know are starting the year as three-year-olds and probably pretty nervous to come to school

018and it's they're coming into such a loving environment and the same goes for I had a lot of fun hanging out at White Hill yesterday. and seeing some of the teachers in action there and like all these different ways you saw one of our teachers at the beginning, Bianca, who was memorizing every student's name in every class. And I was just like, wow, I don't think I could do that anymore. But she was one of many who had just put together ways for kids to feel valued and seen. And then also for, you know, I saw so many teachers who had come up with some kind of a creative, like. catch for the kids so that some at some point over the course of the day they would do something where they're like wow that

019was an amazing story oh my gosh we did a science experiment we have one teacher who gave each kid a textbook and a piece of paper and their goal was to be able to create a stand out of just a piece of paper no tape or anything else for their textbooks so just a little engineering challenge so anyways Very very happy at the start of the year. I think it's really I just want to double down on the adoption of a new English language arts program is like a huge undertaking and Julia and really by proxy of most of the district office has done a ton of work around this over the course of the year so big thanks to you and then I also want to name that like when you roll something out

020like this there's oftentimes a sizable portion of your staff that kind of kicks and screams and doesn't really want to change what they're doing. That's just not the case in this district. All of our elementary schools are like rolling up their sleeves, working together, trying to figure out the kinks that might not work and the like stick-to-itiveness and perseverance and collaboration. Like it's... It's a really, really special place. It's hard for me to articulate just how special it is, but it is unique. I've never seen this in any other district, and the teachers here. really are approaching this. It was something our trainers remarked on. They were so impressed by our teachers and then just seeing it in action. I do want to shout out Melina Olinberger, our instructional coach who like is the person

021that you know, sometimes I thread the needle, but she's putting all those stitches in that are making sure that every teacher has what they need not only in terms of materials, but in terms of instructional support. She really sees teachers where they are. provides that just-in-time support just as I teach you student kids you know I can't wait you talk about three-year-old maybe coming on campus it sounds daunting but at the same time I can't wait from the cheap seats here and the Malcolm Gladwell disciple unit to see the achievement gap these kids that are starting TK now and what our numbers are going to look like and having a team as you mentioned ready and prepared to welcome those kids and start with ground zero I think I'm hopeful that that we will see

022incredible numbers in test scores with this generation coming up through our district because I mean many people With TK kids, I have two TK kids, and it's a difference. You see that extra year before kindergarten. So I'm very excited, very excited about this and that we have a great staff that's really pushing it forward. Can you phrase it as a question now? Can you phrase it as a question now? We have questions, public comment, statements. So my question to you is, do you think that... numbers are going to be true for a variety of reasons but absolutely I actually think we're you know more poised right now to to make some real headway in closing that gap. That's great. Thank you. Lori do you want to make a couple comments about your opening? Yes it's

023been fantastic and I started out with meeting with every one of our SPED departments so I met with our school psychologists, our occupational therapist team, our nursing team, our SDC teachers, our RSVP, and we met in individual groups, a light job, light groups. And so I got a really good understanding of where they're at, where the strengths are, where their areas of need are. We have such a solution-oriented group. Usually somebody new comes in and everybody says, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong. How are you going to solve it? And instead, they come with solutions. So it's amazing. So much great energy. On Monday, we also did have a whole group SPED meeting. So we had all of our SPED. teachers here and all of our service providers and they really enjoyed the time together

024for some team building and some just getting together and preparing for the year. On Monday, I met with all of our classified staff, sped staff. I don't think they said that had never happened before and so like where they all came together and so they were really excited about that. I think they felt pretty valued. I heard their voice. I let them know that we'll be getting a lot more input and feedback from them. They were really excited about that and around training and things like that. Yesterday I was, I started my day at Brookside and I started, and then I went to White Hill. Brookside was fantastic. We, it was so neat to be able to walk on campus and have some of the teachers know who I was already. I felt really, it

025was just wonderful. Such a great vibe, lots of families there. It was, it was just amazing. And then went to White Hill and there was nobody out, which was like a beautiful sight because all the kids were in class. Because at the high school level, we have a hard time with that sometimes. So I was so thrilled to see that. But I did pop around all the sped classrooms and said hello to them. And then one thing I'm really excited about is Chris's department has sent out the first two days of attendance. And our first day was at 98%. Today we were at a 99% attendance rate with only 18 students of 1,716 students in our district. Only 18 students were absent. And amazing. So we got to keep that up, everyone. Just for context,

0261,716 is our current enrollment. Last year, this time, it was like 1,683. So we are seeing an enrollment. I actually was listening to an NPR thing this morning talking about enrollment declines in public school all over the place, going to private school, and here we are pretty lucky that families are moving to this community for these public schools. It's just cool to see the public narrative is public schools are on the decline and here we are. We definitely have things to work on, there's no doubt about it, but we're seeing... Not to move in the right direction. Rain on your parade, but how much of that is TK? A lot of it. Yeah. So without the additional TK, there's still an increase? No, it would be a huge decline. But, yeah, it's an increase. It's

027all the same. I just was curious. We would also, if we didn't have TK, there would be a ton of money we wouldn't have. So there would be a huge funding gap. Well, we've had TK for a while. I was just curious. Yeah, but TK doubled this year. We went from four classrooms to eight. And by the way, we had also a classified aid training that Christy Fish led for our TK aides and our kindergarten aides, which was also, I think, a first in terms of bringing that group together. So that was really neat. Chris, you want to share a few updates? Yes. Our area we support everybody and so the first thing that happens is ensuring that our facilities are in good order and so when walking onto the campuses at throughout the District

028there were numerous projects that were completed at Wade Thomas. We had new fencing in several locations We had the asphalt several locations and we had carpets in five classrooms that were there for the staff and the children today. At Manor, we had a new play structure in the K area. We had the asphalt slurry. We had fencing there. And at Hidden Valley, we had a new multi-purpose room route for everybody. And we had a new shade structure in the K area, TK area. and then at White Hill we had painting of the 100 building so that was all brand new as well and we're trying to go with the theme more in line with the rest of the campus there so the color is going back to that the one campus that you don't see

029anything right now is Brookside but that's because we have another major project we're working on and that's the bridge and that's that's coming and then in terms of the staff Our custodial staff did a remarkable job this year. We're really proud of the amount of work that they did and in the time that they did it. We had new supplies that we were utilizing along with the equipment, making sure that all of our equipment was in good order to start the summer. So we were able to finish our... deep cleaning in record time this year. And so that allowed the staff to get back to the sites and do some other projects. And so we're really happy about that. And then the other thing that we're really excited about that is new for the opening

030is ORDO and our new food service program. So lots of things that have been going on in our area and, you know, kind of going back to the facilities thing, we do that, all of those projects with, for, we have Six locations in the district five schools and we have a staff of four so we do a lot with the little we have in just a major effort from from everybody so Yeah, I would just double down on that with the facility. They you know when I first got here I definitely noticed the state of the facilities and it's you know without much money in the budget to do much. There's a lot to do from roofs to asphalt to playgrounds to shade structures to inside of the classroom and you know what the team

031was able to do. with the capacity we had this year was pretty remarkable. That's not to say it's perfect. That's not to say we don't have a lot of work to do with our facilities, but given the skeleton crew that we have and the minimal budget, I'm pretty impressed with what's happened. And I think, yeah, there's some long-term facilities things, right? What I'll say about facilities right now is that Because we have such a minimal budget, we're basically just putting band-aids on things. We don't have a long-term facilities plan with tons of parent and community input that can drive a vision at this point. But without a master plan and without significant other pots of money, We're going to have to continue to kind of piecemeal what we have. We got lucky with having the

032sale of a property that helped fund some of this, but next summer is going to be a lot thinner than this. So it's just big kudos for the team because they did do a lot with very little staff and very little money. That's it. So any questions from the board? That's great. With the new EL rollout, the teachers had to do a lot just in their classrooms. one of the kindergarten teachers was like, yeah, there's four new, like, alphabets I have to put up. And I was like, what do you mean? Like, we're creating new alphabets? But just, and we walked through, you know, the letters, the, the, um. You know, each letter is lowercase, uppercase, and then the long skinny board. But also the enunciation chart was, I thought was exceptional. Like a puh,

033and so it was a person's lips. So puh, or duh. It's all up to the science of reading it. So that's actually the kind of thing that our speech language pathologists will do with students. That was really cool to see in the classroom. So you could like, hey, look, you know. And each letter has a story, and the story... kind of describes the movement and shape of the letter and so that's kind of fun for the kids too. I just want to compliment on that. It was really cool to see. Yeah. And Anna, you make a good point about the TK being the source of the enrollment increase and it's that is true. So I mean I think that the metric I look for is what is that I mean in the past it was

034what is your K enrollment? Is that big? Because that sets the tone for moving forward. Right now, essentially what we have is in eighth grade is kind of our smallest cohort, meaning that like enrollment nine years ago was a little bit on the low end. So seeing, and this, our demographer talked a little bit about this last year, is seeing that kind of bubble in TK and that expansion in TK. Part of that is just because the age came down, right? but then also a willingness of parents to send their kids to TK. They could still stay in preschool. They could opt for private. So even seeing that. shows me that there's confidence in the community about sending their kids to TK. So it's kind of a yes and that yes, the age has shifted

035and there's confidence in the community to send your kids to TK. The age shifted two months per year. So we didn't see that kind of increase in the number of TK classes the last year when it shifted, you know, another two months. So there is something a little bit different, I think, in terms of enrollment with going from... Because we, like, for the last two years had three to four classes, but now we went from four to eight, which is a two-month change in age. And I would assume... it's not mandatory TK so there are some parents that have still held their kids back in daycare that will eventually be coming into the kindergarten classes right? Yes but I think as we get the word out about how phenomenal our TK programs are because they

036really are and hopefully we'll get more and more TK in home and something to promote is the buddy program like that was like so amazing last year TKers Sorry. Can we save it for after? Sorry. I have one. What's the way, I've had a few parents kind of wonder what the, it's your job. What is changing the dynamic? So, you know, it's like having these younger kids on campus. Like, what is that, you know, is that, how will that, I guess we don't fully know that it's so much bigger now, but they have been there for a few years now. You know, it's, how does that change things? I always think it's good for kids. It's good for older kids to be with younger kids and especially the youngest kids are the ones like it

037kind of keeps everybody in line of like hey you're your role model for these littles here and you need to show up and do the right thing and it brings joy you know onto our campuses and yes it also has there's more adult attention towards all the things that can come up with with very small children. I think with TK that the state's mandate to have an aide in every TK class basically keeps the you know adult to student ratio down which helps mitigate some of that shift that could happen because if it was just a teacher and 20 you know little four-year-olds barely four-year-olds That might demand more of aides in other classrooms or the principal. I mean, I was over at a school yesterday and there were two little TKers having a tough

038time and there was an aide in the classroom and the principal in the classroom, like, helping make sure that they had a good first day. But having that aide in the classroom is really critical. And I agree that I think that more of the little guys you have on campus, the more joy there is on campus. It's great to have them there. Lori, is there any way at that age, TK, to potentially lightly flag or identify kids that may be on the trajectory of needing special services? Yes, absolutely. Okay, and so do we have a process in place that's for teachers and aides to communicate with you? Like, here are some students that we believe may have challenges as they... Great. We do have a lot of screening going on. So like we have our

039speech language pathologists are pushing in and even doing activities with the kids because every student could benefit from that. We have our occupational therapist going in looking and seeing how the kids are doing. So yeah, there's always... There's a lot of screening going on and then we're also trying to do more universal supports of these types of activities and strategies so that we can mitigate having to have a child, you know, have to get into a special education program potentially. You know, like on a speech eligibility and that kind of thing. So yeah, it's definitely happening. counselors are pushing into to see and to help with those social skills because TK is really about you know being in the classroom getting those social skills learning to love school and learning how to work together and

040collaborate that type of thing and so um yeah so all of that is definitely going on right now great thank you yeah Our sites also have a weekly care team meeting that includes the principal, all the support staff that Laurie just mentioned, and often a gen ed teacher. And so if there are any kinds of concerns coming up, there's a whole team effort of thinking about what best next steps there are, including sometimes providing some additional assessments. So Chris had a question for you actually. I'd like to come on site and look at the different campuses and see some of the work. Because I've seen like Brookside, what's going on there with the bridge, but I've also seen Hidden Valley just because I'm nearby there. But I'd like to go and visit some of the

041other sites just to see some of the work that's been done. Because I'm kind of curious to see myself. We'll be planning facilities walkthroughs like we did last year. Can I meet with him this year? Thank you. I would like him to see what I'm saying. Thank you, Trustee. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. I went back to him. It's like Jeopardy. Question mark. What is? Perfect. All right. Any other questions? All right. We have public comment. Anybody would like to come up? I just thought I'd have one more talk. I'm from Banner. Tyler talked about how well yeah, we are just putting whatever we do have so little money. So we're just putting the band-aids what I guess I was hoping is that we can kind of See if we can adjust the system thinking

042because we're not likely being realistic to have a whole lot more money anytime soon Right, so we're gonna be in kind of a very similar Set up probably for at least several years. So how do we adjust our approach? How do we get, let the community to do it? You know, we always hear, oh, like, oh, I need to bid everything out. I need to have this contractor with 18 certifications to do anything and everything. And no, God forbid, I want to plant a native bush somewhere in Kla... No, I can't. You can't do that. No, I have to. And then, I don't know if anybody happened to be next to Lagodita's. You know, they have spanking you, TKK, and... built by dads. Parents paid for some of the materials, they contracted with Bayer Redwood

043Recycling, got some materials, perfectly awesome redwood to make benches from them. And then, you know, one of the dads is a contractor and he got other dads. And you should go and see that. Like, it's amazing, perfectly functional, solid, normal, good for the kids playground. And we have... hundred thousand dollars piece of plastic next to the very black just painted black still has all the cracks like it's this it's this it's not the money the money is a problem for sure right there's no question there but it's also the system thinking and the approach as to what do we do with what resources do we have in the community and expertise of the community and what parents are willing to do and what they what they know is a resource that we are not utilizing

044enough on our campuses. And we really could do better. And I think there are some perfect examples around us how people do do that. And they have results. I think there's something to be learned there. And I'm not criticizing this from a sense, I'm well aware that we don't have enough staff, we don't have enough money. I've been deep on this for two years now. I think we can do better and more efficient with what we do have. And I hope we can start doing that. Thank you. Do we have any other public comments? All right. Can we bring it back to the board? Yeah, I'm bringing it back to the board for comment and discussion. So feel free to discuss. Just on to the facilities. A question I have is, I think, and this

045is my legal mind, liability, we think about safety first. And then beautification. Beautification is wonderful. I know it doesn't. But when we're looking at repairing things for safety, I assume that comes first when we're looking to where we need to put our money in, right? Correct. And so, correct me if I'm wrong, have we really done a great job of utilizing the parents? through Parrot Club to bring their skill sets in to bring the beautification part and helping facilities on that end. For example, the painting of tables, the building of benches and things. It's been a positive for your team, correct? Yes. To help with the beautification. I guess Brookside has a beautification day. So, you know, I just want to make sure that... You know, there's an understanding that you have on your team,

046this is a question, a limited amount of resources. And where you direct that first is to provide a safe environment for the kids. That you don't want things falling on heads. You don't want kids getting stung by bees. But there is the opportunity for everyone to step up and beautify and put their skills in places. And your team is not going to. push them back, right? We work with our parent-teacher organizations and they have garden clubs at different campuses as well and we always work with those groups to get what projects that they're looking to do done. It just has to be within certain parameters. So we want to make sure that materials are appropriate, places that they want to put things are appropriate. Safety. We're looking for safety reasons. But also a little bit

047beyond that is making sure that long term that whatever it is that they put can be maintained. Exactly. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to ask that and make sure that I'm thinking about this in the right way as well. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I've been part of being new I've been meeting meeting with all the directors and I'm learning a lot about this process and we met last week We went through a lot of this Thank you for your comment. I know there's things that I learned Having to do with this. I just wanted to clarify so the process if You know parent wants to do something is to not come to us, but to go to the principal or the parent club. Correct? It would be eventually through the principal, yes. And so

048you always start at that point. And then it works its way back through our director of maintenance. And then we look at it for longevity and materials and things of that nature. I think there definitely are skill sets plentiful. in our district from families. And so, but that communication, I mean, could be improved of you have skillset, contact, and so that's something that I guess the parent clubs in principle, that's where the education should come from. Correct. Like the Brookside Garden, Sensory Garden is a perfect example of a parent who is a landscape designer by trade. who wanted to get something done for the school, worked directly through Ms. Wagner. She and Ms. Wagner met with Des and Chris to get full architectural designs done, and then a huge lift by parents to actually get

049it done. In addition to collaboration with Des and his team to bring in a truck or bring in some materials that we could provide. I think in my 20 years of experience working in schools, there's a fine line between parent support who can finish the job through completion versus like, I've got some energy and excitement. I get something started and I get 30% or 80% done. And then now our team has got to stop what they are doing to go finish that thing. So if we have the time and intention and expertise and willing to finish the job through completion. I'm open to the conversation. And Parent Club, too, played a major role in funding a lot of that as well. And that was done with a plan. There were architectural plans drawn up. There

050were several presentations. A garden curriculum that went through all the parent volunteers to teach kids. So it's like a pretty rigorous thing that's incredibly rigorous right and it's going into year two so we'll see how Again that energy needs to continue. Yeah And one other thing to this point that Chris and I I actually have everything teed up and ready to go I just don't want to send out the first week school Here in the first month of school, I'm probably going to send out a survey that we worked on with Peter Berg to kind of use this approach to facilities management. We send out a survey to all staff and all families at Wade Thomas. And at any point in time, a staff member or a parent can log in to Google form and

051say there's a tripping hazard out in front of room three. There's a dead tree on this thing and we're piling in Wade Thomas. And then Peter on the back end is going to take all that data and basically say, this is like kind of a long-term facilities project thing, right? Like the sewage under the Wade Thomas playground, like that's not something parents can do. Then there's things that our facility team can do, like the field, managing the field and improving that grass lot. That's something our team can do. And then there might be some things that are more like garden workday, campus beautification. And Peter will take all that data and kind of organize it based on his experience to kind of give us a plan to say, okay, some of these things we've got

052to shelve for three, five, six years down the road. Other things we can prioritize the list with the principal and make sure our team gets on it. And others, we've got a working to-do list for parents. So I think... We want to test that out this year because I think the gist of getting the parent expertise and energy is great. Like we want to capture that energy. I think the thing that we worry about on this side of the table is can that energy complete the task? Because if it can complete the task, it makes our staff's job way easier. If they can't, it can make it harder. Does that capture? And this is what we talked about in the last two months. Yes, and there's also another component of that. The reason you want

053to make sure that maintenance... and also myself are involved is because we're going to make sure that if it's too large, it's got to be bid out. But also we're going to be looking at it from other safety components. And I'm going to give you a perfect example. We had a really nice deck that was put in at Wade Thomas by the parents. The problem is that it covered up drains that needed to be... emptied out. We couldn't see those and we didn't know that they were there and over years of tree debris falling in there, the leaves and the pine needles, that drain ended up backing up and we also had a window right there. And when we had those big rains in the wintertime, that flooding that we had in the multipurpose room

054was caused by that, by that area backing up. And so that's part of the reason that you always want to make sure that we're involved because we'll be looking at it, not only from the safety standpoint, but how can we maintain our facilities long term. Yeah. And I think one thing we learned this year with a little bit of additional money on the table from the sale of Jude Park is that For a minimal staff like we have on our team, the bidding process is a high bar. However, Teresa did an awesome job this year helping with the bid process. So we exercise our muscle a little bit. We're willing and able to do bids more often. So if bids come up, I don't want that to be a barrier. It's like, sorry, we have

055to bid that out. We can't do that. But we do have to have a conversation around staff capacity to do a bid and do a bid walk. can we get anyone to come to a bid walk and all the little pieces that go from there just that's an additional step it's not that we won't do it just as yeah is that additional step okay do we have any more discussion on this topic no All right, seeing none, I will move us to, there's something to do on this one. Okay, our next item is E2, Recommended Approval to Utilize California Multiple Award Schedule CMAS number 4-23-06-1037 with language line phone interpreting for interpretation services. So I'm going to talk about this first, and then I'm going to turn it over to... Lori O'Connor. So CMAS is

056the California Multiple Award Schedule is done at the state level and what they do is they put out contracts with multiple agencies for services, but they also do formal bids for larger amounts. And in order to access any of those services or the actual bids, you would have to actually get board approval. So what we're doing this evening is getting your approval to access the CMAS contract for language line phone interpreting. And so I just wanted to lay down that, and then I wanted Lori to talk about what language line is. Yeah, so in my past experience probably for about 10 years throughout my work I actually use language line and language line is actually a system that provides on-demand interpretation and so they have up to 240 languages that you could if we're sitting

057here and somebody You know somebody who speaks a different language walks in and we needed to communicate with them We could literally pick up the phone and have a person off the phone to interpret that language and so It's an amazing program, and it's actually out of the Monterey Bay Language Institute, which is where there's a lot of training for military in the United Nations, and so they have access to all these different languages. I've used them for IEP meetings. I've used them when a family comes into my office and I can't speak the language, and so obviously it doesn't... Obviously the face-to-face, if we can translate face-to-face, that's great, but a lot of times we have languages that... that are not available with the people that work around us. What's really impressive is the

058cost for this is just 97 cents a minute. And with this CMAS contract, we get a highly discounted rate. It's usually about $3 or $4, or it's like $3.95 a minute if you were just a business. However, this contract gives us the 97 cents a minute. And it's great because if we hire an interpreter, like for a meeting, and perhaps... we can't hold the meeting, the interpreter gets their flat rate of two hour minimum of you know $250 but in but this language line we hang up the phone and we pay a dollar seventy or whatever you know however long we were on the line but I had great great great success with it it also supports our racial equity mission statement in that we want to make sure that all of our families feel

059a sense of belonging in the district and feel like they're part of what we're doing and it definitely prioritizes making sure that we can communicate with people and make them feel like part of our community And this would be used in an IEP meeting with a parent who walks in to talk to an executive admin. Teresa's probably had four instances over the last week where she's helping a family enroll and she's using Google Translate or Jorge's stepping in from his IT work to translate. This would allow anyone to just call that number and talk about a report card at a conference or... You know someone coming in for enrollment so really allows flexibility long term I'd love to have someone on staff who's a community liaison that speaks at least Spanish if not another language

060or two who could help do this in person but for the moment this is a cost-effective very flexible way to do it You know, you could have an interpreter for a meeting that speaks Spanish, but then you have someone who comes in and speaks Mandarin. You could use this language line for that one person. And it doesn't replace the systems that we have in place. It's a both and. So we do have people like Jorge who do a beautiful job of interpreting for us, and they can continue to do that. But we do have times when we can't find anybody, especially if it's this kind of in the moment. Yeah. So it really helps. So anytime you pick up the phone and call, there's someone there just blushing. It feels like magic, but yes. Okay.

061Yeah, and it's very user-friendly. It's a 1-800 number. We will be assigned like a six-digit code. We can distribute that out, put in your six-digit code, what language would you like. I would like Korean. Okay, hold for a Korean speaker, and then it happens. consistently I mean having used it over the last 10 years about it's always come through and and there is also the option to set an appointment for people that aren't ready to just leave it out you know leave it to chance but anyway you can't set an appointment so you know meeting time at 1 o'clock on Tuesday we need a man or speaker that they can set up are there many options in service or This is sort of the gold standard, the language line phone. interpreting service is what it's

062called it looks like. Right yeah there are other options however the cost is so much and this is the only option as far as the CMAS contract goes so this is the only one that CDE has contracted with. How long is the contract lock in that price? It's been 97 cents for a very long time and there's no startup fee there's no you know anything we have to pay annually it's just whenever we want to call we pay 97 cents so they're not going to say oh 97 cents next year we're going up to three dollars that's oh that's what i was thinking so let's go back even that happens but the interpretations we have to bring this back annually so if we want to use it again next year This will be before you.

063And there's no minimum if we don't use it, we don't use it, if we use it a lot, we just pay for what we've used. This is a great example of Lori seeing an issue, proactively finding solutions, and following through on exactly the solution she's come up with. So I'm really happy to bring this to the board tonight. Yeah, I mean I've used these systems and they're incredible. I mean it is amazing. And with any interpreting, I mean it takes training because the way that you speak for anyone who hasn't used this system is that you speak as you know if you're talking directly to the person you're in the room with and so that's how the interpreter speaks as well and it's nice to have it over the phone because in the sense that

064when you're with somebody and you tend to, you can't talk to them, right? They're just interpreting, you still need to talk. And so for the phone, you don't, for people that aren't used to it too, you don't have that like knee jerk, like turning and looking at the interpreter, you know, when you should really, you gotta stay focused on the person you're, you know, in the meeting with. Is it like you're on speakerphone with them or is that how does it work? Do you pass it on back and forth? Yeah, I've seen it mostly on speakerphone like in IEP meetings we have a speakerphone or we can also do it virtually so you can have the parent or the person online and then the language line person is on there too. You can set up

065a Zoom call with them as well. And it's nice to have a third party doing the interpretation so it's not There are times where our staff is facilitating the meeting and interpreting and there can just be a little bit of a conflict of interest there sometimes. So having a third party actually kind of protects the parent in a nice way to where the parent can kind of say exactly what's being said and not translate it in any interesting way. And what about confidential information that's being shared with a third party? What type of protections do we have? Or what about that? They say that it's all confidential. There's nothing recorded. There's nothing like that. And I mean, I have used it for IEP meetings, and that has been fine with previous superintendents. And then, of

066course, since CDE does recognize it, too, they vet this as well, so making sure that everything is in place and confidential. I think the liability is on them because it's there. employees they've hired them and trained them and then they also do there's like a agreement process in the first couple of minutes of the conversation starts okay um is so there is there is video offered with this service yeah is there um do you know if there's sign language offered through this oh gosh that's a really good question I wonder if maybe we were having somebody come in to do sign language, but that's a really good question. Because then it could be, yeah, virtual and sign. I'll find that out for you. Any more questions? Do we have public comment on this item? Anyone

067want to make a comment? Seeing none. Any discussion? I'm kind of like, why haven't we seen this before? I'm like really happy it's here, but it's one of those like, oh, we kind of, man. They have sign language. Yeah, it is nice. I think thinking back to my time in Centerfell, there's so many Spanish-speaking staff. at every school and there's a community liaison at every school and there's a family center at half the schools that there's no real need for something like this because there's so many staff unless there's a one-off Vietnamese speaker and at that time we would just bring a translator in but this just provides like ultimate flexibility for the walk-in person who speaks the language no one on staff speaks and to your point though I do feel that there is

068a conflict of interest there I think it is better to have the third party and many, many, many reasons for that. Especially for like a contentious conversation or an IEP or something more official. Yes. Are teachers able to use this with their students? I mean, I imagine there's been situations too where the kids are interpreting for their parents and that certainly is not something we want. We don't want that. But it happens, I mean, all over the place. It happens all the time. In my previous district, we... I created a Google folder that any of our staff members could get into and have access to. And there was some concern by the board, like, well, what if somebody misuses it or overuses it? And that never happened. I mean, it was all done in the

069best interest of kids and families. And then I would get the monthly invoices, and I could sort of see who was using that. And it was also a really interesting way to track and track the data around who had, you know. how many languages we're reaching out to, how we're using it, and that kind of thing. But it was highly successful. Yeah. Fantastic. They used in meetings with parents and parent-teacher conferences. Yeah, apparently. They've been really helpful. Any further discussion about this one? I'll entertain a motion on this one. Yeah, I'll make a motion to approve the recommended language line phone interpreting or interpretation services. Do I have a second? I will second that. All right, Anna? Aye. Chris? Aye. Dana? Aye. Rachel? Aye. Thank you for bringing this forward. Yes, thank you. This is

070exciting. Wow. All right, so next item is F, consent actions. There's something on here I think we wanted to... I'm seven yeah, so I'm gonna pull item seven for discussion Which is recommended approval of the services agreement with Holly Wade consulting for special education services review Great, so I'll talk a little bit about this. I'm really excited about bringing Holly Wade on for a consultation role to do a special ed program review. We spoke with Holly Wade last year and just because of a few things going on she said it'd be better to wait until this year as opposed to doing it kind of towards the tail end of last year. Holly came to me from my coach Kevin Skelly. Kevin worked with her over a handful of years and she was an assistant superintendent

071of special ed down on the peninsula so she's got a lot of experience. special education and student services. Earlier this summer Lori and I met with Holly. Holly's pretty excited about working with us. I mean the intention here is to kind of do a full-scale review of our programs, our services, our budget. You know any any issues that we might have she'll be interviewing staff. She'll be visiting classrooms She'll be talking with Lori and it actually works really nicely with Lori coming on board because it Actually kind of does that remember last year. I did the learning tour This is kind of like consultant helping and doing a full learning tour for Lori and it's a third party So it's not Lori kind of coming in and saying here are the issues I see that

072I want to tackle It's a third party kind of objectively looking at our services and giving recommendations those recommendations will end up going to our special ed advisory council and Lori and I will co-facilitate that meeting and that group will kind of prioritize which which problems we want to tackle first which ones can wait till a little bit later and what professional development we might need so overall I am pretty excited about this and I think the timing with Lori coming on board works well do you want to add anything to that Lori? Well, Holly and I met with Tyler, and then we also have met a couple times. And she's fantastic. I mean, she's got so much experience. She has a wealth of experience from special education teacher all the way through assistant superintendent

073of student services and special education. And she's a great resource for me as well. She also has offered for me to reach out anytime if anything pops up that I want to troubleshoot or brainstorm. And so I've actually started creating my own list since I've been out and about seeing things. And so we're going to come together on that. So I'm really excited about the opportunity to work with her. and get some good solid plans in place for moving forward. That's a good point. Part of this contract is actually Holly doing some coaching with Lori. I mean, I don't think Lori... needs the sport but Steph Curry has 15 coaches so if Steph Curry can have coaches so can Lori. So Lori and Holly will have some coaching calls if it'll be a good opportunity

074for Lori to talk about how to work with her superintendent without having to talk to me about it or how to you know facilitate a closed session with a board that wants to know the details about settlement agreement so Holly will be a good third party for her to kind of sound some of the issues that she's seeing in a confidential way as well. Any questions? And Holly is doing this all for $20,000? And is there a, what time frame are we expecting for her to be able to utilize her services and you can benefit from coaching? Yeah, she's going to start. We have some dates set in mid-September for her to come out for a few days. And we're going to do some walkthroughs together. We're going to go look at non-public schools. And

075then she's also going to conduct some teacher interviews and that sort of thing. And then she anticipates that she will have a report back to us in early January, in which case we'll bring that to our springtime special advisory. advisory committee and bring that forth to determine our next steps. So in the fall, we're going to be running two things concurrently with special ed. One is the special ed advisory committee is going to be defining what inclusive education looks like for us, and Holly is going to be doing the SPED review. Then we come back in January, we have a working definition of what inclusive ed looks like. plus we have this review to analyze and we put those things together to prioritize a list of action items and inform a PD schedule or any

076hiring decisions we need to make for the spring. So that's kind of the overview of what we're trying to attack here in the fall and early winter. And we do have a board presentation scheduled for right around that time, so you'll get all the whole scoop and learn more about all the initiatives. Have you spoken with anybody where she's played a similar role? Like where she's consulted with the district for a similar thing? I mean, it sounds like she has so much experience, but for this sort of her scope here with us that you're proposing? I mean, you know, is that something that we can call and talk to somebody else? I don't mean, check a reference. She, when we had our initial conversations last year, I asked to get some of the reports that

077she's done, like the final summary reports. Oh, great. And she shared those with me. I actually read through those in addition to, is it school services that does them? School services does them for a different price that's a little higher. They also posted all their findings on their website, so it's like a little bit more public forum, which is, it is what it is. But I read their findings from some of their reports for local Marin districts, and it's a really similar product at the end. So I'm not concerned that it's, you know, a subpar. I've had that experience too. I've been in a district where we did do a stud review and a neighboring district also had a stud review at the same time and it was... unfortunately it was very a very similar

078report and that's what I got out of the community and then there was pushback on why we did that and so anyway but so when I talked to Holly she she that she is you know authentic she she has mentioned that she says that I wanted I do not want that to happen I want to make this personalized to Ross Valley so she that's but I have seen it districts were that So it's more of a boutique approach with a good price, where some of these larger organizations have higher prices and kind of more, you know, we do this all the time feel to their findings. Any more questions? Do you have any public comment on this, Aiden? I just have a question about the, so the, in her contract, it says final report. I

079mean, that's pretty, you know, it's not specific here. On your end, is that more specific? Or is that just something that she is up to her on what that report looks like? Or is that something more specific that we are asking for X, Y, and Z? Oh, like what's in the report? Yeah, well, because, yes, exactly. I mean, based on what I know, it is just going to be, you know, as she compiles all the data and all the information, interviews, focus groups, you know, we work together too. So, you know, me providing her my input too, and then she sort of sips through it all, puts it all together so that it's all, you know, in a nice... You know that it's easy for people to look at and digest and I imagine it

080would be sort of in categories maybe staffing and programmatic and you know those types of things. Curriculum. Professional development. Budget. This is great. Have we done anything like this before? Not recently. This is recent. This is last year. We started talking about it. So no public comment. You can identify yourself from people listening if you want, you're not required to. Sure. My name's William Meyer. I'm a local Boy Scout of Troop 50 and I'm here for my communications merit badge. I was just wondering if Holly would be like doing this annually or if this was just a one-time thing. So the interesting thing about public comment is we can't really respond to you. It's public comment. So you're telling us your information and your feedback. We can discuss it up here. But any other further

081public comment? All right. So while we can't answer in public and can't address them directly, I can discuss things. My understanding was that this was a one-time contract, right? Is that correct? That's right. So I can confirm that. And I will say that if Ryan O'Neill were here, he would just be over the moon. That we have a Boy Scout in the room representing, asking amazing questions. Exactly. I'm very happy that... We have an involved community here coming to speak on this. And I'm really happy to see this in front of us. I'm glad that we were able to pull it and talk about it a little bit more because I think it does deserve a little more attention and something that we really desperately need here in our district, something to look at this.

082And we're trying to improve things for kids. Absolutely. This is a good step for that. The nice thing about our view is I'm hoping that the report will give us like an outline of where we need to go to make things better. Give us a working plan to get there. I mean this is above and beyond what we've done and I'm so excited. So excited about this. I think that I just feel like the parents are just really going to be seen and heard and cared for in a way that I've been dreaming about. Thank you. So I will unless we have further comments on this one I'll entertain a motion on this item. I'll make a motion that we approve the services agreement with Holly Wade consulting for special education services review. And are

083we doing a sweeping consent action? Yes. So for the other items, items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, I will entertain a single motion for those. Unless we have any public comment on these items, any of those items anyway? No? No public comment? Okay. So no public comment on those items 1 through 6. So I will entertain a motion on consent actions. Okay. I will make a motion to approve all consent actions 1 through 6 in one motion. I will second. Fantastic. Chris? Aye. Hannah? Aye. Daniel? Aye. Rachel? Aye. All right. So our next item is G, board business. First one there is one committee updates reports from and announces by trustees. So first day of school, anyone else want to talk? Or any second day, but. I've already said this, but having two middle

084schoolers eating dinner at my house, raving about the lunches. I was like, what? They're like, oh yeah, we ate everything. I'm like, you had the great meats. Great. Great, great. Thank you. My middle schooler now wants to have school lunch, which is a miracle. It's a miracle. Good stuff. I want to, so I've been just meeting with all the directors and I've just, I think I said this last meeting, I'm going to say it again. I'm so excited to be on this board, but I also, it's just, it's very exciting to have kids in this district and to also have this perspective and really just, God, I feel lucky to have my kids in our district. And I know a lot of people do. It's exciting. So I just want to share my enthusiasm. Also,

085something I just wanted to mention is I briefly, when I met with Des and we talked about water fountains and drinking fountains, I don't remember, did you mention it or he did about his program? with Marin's municipal water district that they can come on campuses and install free so I've the water fountains like for that what do they call them the water bottle fillers yes water bottle fillers so I've been playing phone tag with somebody at or at the water district but it sounds like it is something I will I will look and make it an agenda item as You know, I actually get more information and such but that would be great Yeah, so maybe something exciting to look forward to Yeah easier access to water for all of our kids So yeah, it

086was sort of exciting my first call in made as a trustee No, it's just good to be back on campuses and yeah to Peter's comment earlier about the wasps, yeah, all over. I mean, we even saw in the photos at White Hill, right? Like every photo had two or three of those yellow containers. You know, the fields at Brookside today, you know, around water and stuff. So it was good to hear that. I'm sure we're doing something, but, you know, is that enough? White Hill, I don't know. But no, good year. The people at Brookside seem really happy. It's a touch wood. It's been a great start to the year, as so many people have said. So it's just good to be back. Shelly and I went to the staff welcome back for RBSD last

087week on Wednesday, which was at Wade Thomas. So all of the certificated and several of the NO staff. Some of the classified staff were all there. So we got to welcome all the new people who have been hired into the district, all across the district. And then just people who had shifted roles. So we kind of got to meet everybody and clap them out. It was great. It was just a nice way to come back and start the new year and see everybody there. It was a nice welcome. So I'm going to say thank you for having us there. And we're not happy to speak. Okay, so moving on, we have approval of regular meeting minutes for August 6, 2025. Questions about this one? Any changes? Any public comment on this item? Any discussion? No?

088All right, I'll entertain a motion then. I'll make a motion to approve the meeting minutes for August 6. Wait, do I have a second? I can second that then. All right, wait, wait. Chris? I was not there. Okay, so you know what? We've only got two of us here. So we will move this to next agenda. So we will skip this one. All right. Next item is discussion of and consideration for approval of the cost for Board of Trustees and staff to attend the CSBA Annual Education Conference. Where is it? Sacramento. Last year it was in Southern California. None of us decided not to go. Yeah, I'm like, sorry, we're going to skip Disneyland. CSBA is the California School Boards Association. Mindful of that abundance of acronyms there. I would like to go. I was

089looking at the trainings offered there, and it certainly seems that it would be an efficient way for me to do things that I need to catch up in. I certainly am more of a... I think it would be great for me and whoever else wanted to go. Is anybody else interested? It was one of the best conferences I attended when I first came on. I think I agree. I think we did really well from it. Did you do it in person? I did it in person in San Francisco. It was here. Shelly was there as well. Yeah. Because I haven't been in person. I've done two years of doing it remote when they did it. I did it remote the first year, then I went in person the second year. She only sent an email

090that she said she'd be willing to go. It's well-run, professional, great sessions. We've got enough people. I don't think we all need to go, but it was very enlightening. How many do we believe we can, are we sponsoring hotel stays for the trustees? So how many of us do you think we should, can accommodate? We took two or three. It would be nice. It's nice to have a team there because you can go to different sessions and pick different things up or attend a session together and kind of debrief what the session was about. We obviously wouldn't cover board business there, but it's a really good learning opportunity and team-building opportunity. And I think if you two are interested in Shelly's interest in it. That might just be the three right there. Unless, Daniel, you

091feel strongly about it. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Yeah, I don't know for a minute. I've got work commitments, unfortunately, that I've got to fulfill at that time. Okay. I'd love to go, but I can't. Yeah, I usually can't do it because of my work as well. This time I was like, I can move some days away and take some vacation time. All right, so we're going to... This is an action edit. Yeah, it is an action edit. Okay, so were we... Looks like we're just approving registration for it. Do we want to discuss paying for it or overnight stays? It's like a Wednesday through Friday, the first part of December. I think it's like that 3rd, 4th, 5th or 3rd, 4th. 3rd through 5th, yeah. be able to be cost-efficient. Oh yeah, yeah. Usually we

092can stay at the whatever the host hotel is or there's a few of them and they're usually reasonably priced. They're not like a, you know. A regular conference. I would hope so considering what this is. I would hope they make it very cost-efficient. Teachers, educators, $800 a night. This is not a four seasons. Right. drink that coke in that room. Don't even pick it up. Chris will get a notification this morning. Okay, so we've got interest from at least three of us. And if Shelly is not interested, I don't know. Okay, so we'll get authorizing three of us to go then tentatively. Based on the schedule. Any other questions up here before we go to public comment? Do we have any public comments? I don't see none. I'll bring it back here for further discussion.

093I do think it's really helpful. The ones I've done, the two years that I did online, it was because of the flexibility of it, I was able to do those. Because it was online I got to see like nine different things. When you go in person you get like four maybe that you can see because there are time slots that can flip sometimes. So I wish they had gone back to doing the remote. They probably record them though and make it available. They don't anymore. They don't. Yeah, because it would cost less. I think they were trying to get more people to come. But yeah, I've checked the last couple years of entries to ask because I can't go to work. Yeah, I was looking on their website a lot and it looks like there's

094a lot of opportunity for learning and just kind of a deeper understanding of what our role is, you know, and I think that that's really valuable. So if there's no further discussion, I'll entertain a motion on this one. It's just a discussion. We have to recommend or we have to vote on approving the cost of the members. to attend. Greg, when we approve the cost for a couple of members of the board and staff who plan to attend the CSBA Annual Education Conference this December. I'll second. Quick question. You mean a couple? Like as in two? Two or three. I don't know if we have to put a specific number on it. It just says approve the cost for members. So I approve the cost for members of the board and staff who plan to

095attend the CSBA Annual Conference. Second. Sorry, my little rule of thumb. No, it's good. All right, Dana? Aye. And Chris? Aye. Anna? Aye. And Rachel, aye. All right. Next one is Board of Trustees Committee Assignments. Yay. I'm waiting for this one. Shelly's not here. Ooh, we can give her everything. Shelly. Shelly did say that she's willing to stick on the committees that she was assigned to last year. but it sounds like she's pretty flexible as well. And I would say, Hannah, as the newest one, is there anything that you really are drawn to that you want to be a part of? We can start that conversation there that you know of. Right. I mean, I want to do them all, but not really. Really? Okay. I mean, I would be actually curious from all of

096you, were you... Think maybe because I don't know all of these committees. Well, I mean some of them I do I suppose but I think here's where you think I think You would benefit From jeep up because you get exposure to San Anselmo Town Council the mayor's and it's about the yellow school bus which since For the first time this year, since 2018, they sold out within 10 minutes. I was one of the victims of that sellout. I did have to call them yesterday morning when the bus was 25 minutes away. I talked to Kyle yesterday, and Kyle said, I will call you back in one hour. He called me back in an hour. Bottom line is it's a great committee because when they meet they're really trying to decide transportation and it's worked its

097kinks out. I mean it was horrific for a while. But I think it's a great exposure to the players in the town. They know nothing about this. They'll get to know you. I mean... You have Brian Colbert, you got all the players, as well as Marine Transit. That's my first thought. I liked it, and I'm willing to step away since I'm saturated, I think, with my knowledge in that area, but that's your choice. Just to let you know, the Joint Legislative Advisory Committee, JLAC, that's all about... I think they do they produce this California School News or not they get another they essentially they are a conduit between the legislator California state legislation and school districts so it's an interesting where they'll talk about state politics bills are coming on and what the lawyers are

098thinking that they that they're trying to promote. So if you're interested in the political side of things and where things are politics-wise, I'm just educating you on what's going on. It's a little bit of a sit and get for the most part. Yeah, you don't participate. Right. But it does give you an opportunity to go like, okay, if I'm going to send an email to a legislator or the governor, now I kind of know what I want to send about. Okay. So which ones of these are you familiar with so that we can just kind of help you sort out what the other ones are? So for county or for... Just start at the top. Just start at the top. Yeah. I mean, the only ones that I have... I haven't been a part of

099any of these actually. But I've... So wait, how many are we? This is fluid. This is fluid. Sometimes I've had like five or six and sometimes I've had four. I mean, I'm interested in the special ed because that just seems like something so exciting happening right now in the advisory committee. If, you know, if any other people are wanting to do. Yeah, I think actually, yeah. The JLOC does sound interesting to me. Can you get a bigger picture? It includes a trip to Sacramento as well, which has been awesome the past two years just to go. MCOE puts it on. And so we've had about 20 to, let's say, 30 superintendents, CBOs, trustees from across the districts in Marin County take a bus up to Sacramento for the day. And that's a cool thing I've

100done the past two years. When they're advocating for like our local school districts here in Marin County when they do those questions so it's like you hear about issues and you go see our representatives up in Sacramento who are Making policy that affects us directly and doing with our input So it doesn't make does it make sense then to have the same person on both that MCSBA and the and the JLAC then since they They're kind of complementary. It's not necessary to have them be the same. Alright, what do you, what do you guys, what do you all? No, no, you are, you get the first scoops of the box. And especially when it's new. So choose wisely. Oh my God, I didn't, no one told me that this, I was getting first pick. Well.

101Um, Tyler, any recommendations from you? I think. If I were a new trustee, one of the things I'd want to do is have the broadest range of experience and get to know as many people as possible. That would be kind of my orientation to the committee, to the committee assignments. So for me, the E2 collaborative is kind of an interesting one. I wouldn't say it's like the most. like efficacious, like you're not getting as much done as you want. Disappointing. Yeah. But it is a great opportunity. You're there with a lot of board members. It's a place to network a little bit. So E2, they meet really early. It's at 730 in the morning before the JLAC meeting. So it's intentionally done that way. And so like school board trustees from all over Marin County

102are on the E2 committee. It's kind of like, like with what we did with Larkspur-Cordova-Madera and our English language arts program, we were picking one and we trialed it together. The other school districts didn't know about that until I talked to somebody. But E2 is supposed to be discussing that. So it's something that we did, and we did it in partnership with them, and it saved us all money. But that's what the whole of E2 is. It's kind of like helping the districts work together here because there's like 17 or something like that. So like if we're all working together, we're saving resources and kind of sharing information. So that's kind of the goal of E2 is kind of what is somebody doing here that's effective? Where are their shared services we can use? So

103that's what their goal is. And I think Jeep is another one, although like yellow school bus doesn't sound as like exciting. It does not. Chris is spot on. It is a really good place to get to know the local players. There's no competition. Alternatively, a slightly more interesting way to do the same thing is the same routes to school because you do get to meet with people who are in San Anselmo and Fairfax and the people who are working on those public works things, but they're directly related to how do kids get to school safely. It's like, how are the walking paths safe? Where are the bike lanes? being strived to wear the crossing guard so you still get exposure to the various players in the county and in our local two towns sure but

104they don't need as often um and it's i don't know what they met more than once last year yeah like sometimes it's usually twice a year like spring Nothing changes. There's so many routes you can have. Yeah, and when sometimes it's like hey, we're doing safe routes to school, demonstration. No, there's construction. Like the biking road, you know stuff like that. So those are those ones are also good ways to meet other and network. Are you trying to dump one of these, Chris? Okay, okay well I think I'm going to take advice of Tyler here. I think that you two probably is a, I like that idea. Let's do that. And what are your, you know, we can do rounds here maybe. Yeah, that's fine. First round picks. First draft. Yeah. It's the draft of

105committee. Chris, you probably get enough of the legal. Would you want to do J-Lock? Because it's a little too, while I love the Sacramento trip, I get lost in the really specific political. Bills that are coming out. It's a little bit too much detail for me. So I'm not Shelly is always asking questions right in there. We're definitely sticking Shelly on that one again. That's a bully Shelly. I can be your A. I can take your A from you. I'll do that. I'll be the alternate. I'm going to choose J-Lag. So here's the tricky one. Parent Equity Guardian Task Force. I know that the representation of board members who are representative of different backgrounds, it's important for us to show up. Do we continue with our roles to board members of color going? Is that

106something that you two would like to see or can I? If you traded with something else, I would be more willing to see you slide out. So there's that. Not looking to see my number of initials on here increase more. I think that's an important question. I think that you're having, first of all, having BIPOC board members. is incredibly important to us and I think it's been really critical to have you there. That said, I think it's also important that we show all board support of our equity work and I think it's perfectly reasonable to take a break. Yeah, I would jump on that if you wanted to. Okay. I mean, I know there's probably a lot of male voices in the room on this task force, so. Especially white males. Real safe. Step one,

107enter the room and listen. Or I can stay on because of the dynamics that are important to continue with the decisions that we've made as well. I mean you have been on it since the inception which is kind of valuable. I was part of the founders, I was the colonizer for the Paranacletic Guardian House. March of 2020. That's right. I mean there is value in the historical knowledge and experience. You know what, I'll stay on. Okay, I'll stay on. I know you, I know you. I see you Julia, you see me. But why don't you take the lead? Do you want me to take Rachel's spot? That's fine. I popped in on that one a couple times. I would do the Facilities Advisory Committee. That's interesting to me. We don't really meet that often, but

108we are going to do facilities walkthroughs. So we'll just include you in on those. We were all included last year as well. Yeah. I'll stay on safe routes to school. And are you going to do JIPA? Yeah, sure. I'll do it. Okay. Do you want me to go with you? If you want to. Okay. I'll stay on JIPA. I'll stay on Safe Routes. I'll stay on Parent Guardian. And you're an alternate for JLAC? Yeah, alternate for JLAC. And, of course, I mean, I don't think wellness needs two. I'll stick on Golden Bell just because it's at Dominican. Yeah. It's easy for me. Home field advantage. Did you say you're going to do U2? Mm-hmm. We can keep me and Shelly on the DLAC ones, and she said she didn't mind staying on there. Okay. We

109set those dates at a meeting today, so I can share those with you. That's a mission, so I'll see if she can't. Shelly is the ultimate? No, Shelly would be the main one because she's the main one now. Great. We've got Roundtable, Supes Council, YES, and MCVSA. These daytime meetings I can't do. Can you do Zoom meetings in the evenings? I can do Zoom meetings. Once a month for the S Board. For the S Board? Okay. Yeah, because that's evenings. That one's been easy for me to get to on Zoom. You want me to take that over for you? Yeah. How many do you have? I can do that one. Yeah, Chris, you've signed up for quite a bit. You're getting a lot. Okay. I'll do it. Oh, I think so. Yeah, you're actually getting

110a lot. All right. I'm going to sit back. Cookies. Cookies. Shelly's not here. We should put Shelly in every one of them. Where are we at? Well, she still has the round table and the soups council and Jay Lack. Should we pause this until the next meeting and finish it up with Shelly? Nope, she told us she'd stay on. Yeah, she's still doing it. What do we still need? So she's on round table and soups council. And JLAC. She has three right now. Roundtable, SOOPS, Council, and JLAC. Okay, so I can do... We don't have anyone for MCSBA right now. I can do that one. Yeah. There wasn't a lot last year for that one. Yeah, it's pretty light. Do you want it to be the alternate? Yeah, I'll sell it. Yeah, if you want

111to do that. Which ones do we still need alternates? And basically alternates like, hey, I'm not available. Can you go this way? How about... I'm just a cheapo. No, I'm primary. Are you primary? Yeah, she's primary. Oh. Are you ready to do that? You're the alternate. I'm looking at the wrong sheet. I'm looking at the wrong year. Hello. I'm getting it down. I'm just saying. I don't really care. Let's see what we have here. Anna, where do we have you right now? Right now, I've got yes, E2, JLAC, and special ed. And SPED. Yeah. Okay. I have you on this one. Did you say yes, too? Yes, I have that. Okay. So yeah, who's parent, guardian? That's Daniel and Chris. I can do soups table and round table, or soups council and round table, I

112guess. Isn't Shelly? You want to do soups council? So I can, because it's the round table and then the soups council. Do you want to? I think Shelly likes being on the round table. Does she? Okay, well then let's leave her on there and I'll come up with her. We'll leave her there then. Do you want to do the superintendent's council? Yeah, I'll go into that one because I haven't been on that one yet. And then Daniel, you'll be roundtable? Yeah, yeah. Do we need anyone else on SPED advisory? Get Damiana as an alternate. Wellness, we have one person. Yes, we have one person. It's probably fine on those. E2 and Golden Bell, one each. It's probably fine. JEPA, one. Safe Routes, one. Okay. So let me go through this one more time to see

113if I've got the right. DLAC, I have Shelly as the primary, Rachel as the alternate. DFAC, Daniel. Parent and Guardian Equity Task Force, I have Chris and Daniel. Roundtable, I have Shelly and Daniel. SPED, Advisory, I have Anna and Rachel as an alternate. Soups Council, I have Shelly and Rachel. Wellness is Rachel. Yes is Anna. B2 is Anna. Golden Bell is Daniel. Jeep is Anna. JLAC is Shelly and Chris. MCSBA is Rachel and Daniel. And Safe Routes is Chris. Good? Okay. Sounds good. Well done. So. Next item is Superintendent Cabinet Report Updates. I'll make this pretty quick. Just got to all sites yesterday and I think I got to Hidden Valley to open car doors this morning, going to Brookside to open car doors tomorrow, and to Wade Thomas to open car doors on Friday.

114It's just kind of a nice way to start my day is chatting with kids and seeing families. So it's been really nice attending all the PDs and the stuff that we've had going on has been really great. Teresa and I have worked on shipping out a newsletter that's going to go out to everybody in Fairfax and San Gisellmo. We did something last January. Our plan is to do one every fall, one every January. So just kind of a fall and winter issue. I'm excited to have that hit mailboxes here in the next week or two. We also have a postcard that's an invitation to the parcel tax town halls. I'll say the dates again here. It's also in the newsletter. So it's September 10th and September 25th. right here in the district office um there's

115sign up sheet on both of those documents we'll send out the newsletter and the postcard um it runs from 5 30 to 7 both of those nights it's the same meeting so if the 10th works for you come to the 10th you don't need to come to the 25th if the 10th doesn't work come to the 25th it's going to be basically the same meeting um hidden valley's open house was tonight i was bummed not to get there glad julie was able to make it and we have the other open houses over the next three weeks and I'll attend all of those. Chris and John and I attended a safety training a couple weeks ago and I spent a good portion of the day kind of adjusting the slide deck so we'll do safety training

116for our principals and they'll do safety training for our staffs based on that training and then I went to the MCOE back to school the admin back to school event last week which was nice just to see. folks from around the county, principals and supes and directors and it's just a good positive energy in that room as well. We have some assessments that are that are going to be beginning soon I sent an email to our k2 parent community this weekend about our reading screener It's the same reading screener that we've been using for the last two years the difference being that now we will be reporting results to parents and so that was the 15 day notice that we will be screening students and then we will be Providing results within 45 days and

117we're going to do that via parent square as an attachment So teachers won't have to be the ones from managing it, which is great And then we're also working on just some kind of talking points for parents as they receive They're also going to receive I ready reports this year. And so, you know when you get data It's really interesting and if you see that there's an area where your student isn't at the standard at grade level standard then you know it brings up questions about how we can communicate with parents about how we support kids and what the data means and I just went to Haven Valley Specter School night I got to see the tape through second grade classrooms and it was just fabulous Beautiful classrooms, super prepared teachers, lots of enthusiasm. Just

118lovely to be there. And then today we had an intervention teacher meeting. Our elementary sites each have an intervention teacher that is also their English language development teacher. And Melina Olinberger, our coach, helps to facilitate those meetings. And that was great, talking a lot about our coordination of the ELPAC. all students who are new in the district, including those who are beginning kindergarten. Our ELPAC, we do not, the state does not have us ELPAC our TK students. We begin in kindergarten. And we planned out our DLACs, including what we think will be early spring, I think it's February, reclassification ceremony. We had that last year and so very excited to bring that back. That was an incredible event. Great. I think I might have covered most of my things already. Yeah, but it's been a

119great start for me. I was happy to have the month of July to sort of start getting into things. And now that everybody's back, it's wonderful. We have very solution-oriented staff who not only identify challenges but also have solutions. So there's a lot of things already happening. We already solved a couple problems. create some protocols and so just it's just getting to know everybody my listening and learning tour like Tyler did last year and so yeah super excited to be here and there's a lot of great forward momentum. Mine is short just has to do with ORDO and the new program that we have for nutritional services and I want to say thank you to the the families that as well as the students for their being able to work with us through the issues

120that we've had just at the beginning with any new program. We have things that we're working through and I just want to say thank you to everybody there as well as say thank you to my staff as well as Sean Mulher who has worked with Jenny Bright and I to make sure that we have the proper lists. of children and the meals. And because with any new project and program, you have things that happen with order. We don't have full lists. And so we've been able to download those lists so we know exactly what the meals are that are going out to the children. And it's just been one of those challenging things and working lots of overtime to get this done for our families and our students. That's the most important thing. Chris do

121we have them do we know what the deadline is for putting in orders? I know that her prior lunch program you had to put them in The year that your child was born in order to get... It's by Wednesday night of the week prior, but you can also go and put in your orders for the future. So you can go out, you know, a month out already. Wait, it's Wednesday night? Yeah, I'm like, what? It's midnight. Midnight. Gotta get on that. I thought it was Thursday. Alright, so with that meeting review we have for future board topics and board direction. Do we have any? Are there any more public comments for bear badges or? We're done that was enough for good job. Thank you for sticking. I thought a lot of say this Rachel. We're

122gonna have to ask a question. Thanks for being here. This is public service. Appreciate it. That's great. When are we putting the timeline for parcel tax? We're going to have to. And so then what meeting will we talk about it? Next meeting. On the 3rd, yeah. I actually have a slide deck that I worked on this week that kind of talks a little bit about the budget and then a little bit about the timeline. for the town halls and the working group and then some kind of reflections from the listing that we've done already. Yeah, I think all of us should spread the word. People did, we need attendance at those. When do the postcards go out? When are they mailed out? You said for the midweek next week. Okay, so they should have them

123in... But does that mean time for a September 10th meeting? The 24th? They go out next week? Yeah. I mean, they'll probably hit somewhere in early September, like the first couple days of September. So people would have... Probably a week notice and then there's a meeting on the 25th which gives them like three and a half weeks notice I also said the dates and times at the last board meeting send them again here We'll post and I'm planning to post it on social media on Monday and post it on next door on Monday I just didn't want to be the first week of school like you kind of want to let the first week breathe a little bit and then we can start talking about the parts of the text right after that. And what's

124the plan around getting businesses on board since that was a perception of mine as a as a no vote last time so whether the chamber of commerce's or big business owners or large property owners um do we have a strategy for incorporating them and their feedback absolutely i think we'll talk about that next time yeah but let's get them let's get them to come to september 10th and 25th yeah yeah so monday my plan is to post on on Instagram. We've got a mock-up of the, like a flyer invite and post on Nextdoor. And then I'm going to send a text to about five people that I know that are kind of the people that you know to say, hey, here are the dates. Please, please come. And that should get the word out. quite

125a bit right there. And then Rachel and I chatted last week. You know, that strategy is going to cover most of the people that we've already engaged that have been kind of skeptical of the parcel tax. We kind of know who those players are. I can reach out directly to them. Nextdoor is a great space for that as well. But we also want to make sure like everybody in Fairfax and San Anselmo gets it. So, you know, we're going above and beyond and sending the postcard out, you know, as fast as we can. Go again. Any other future topics, direction? Meeting debrief. This is where we should say thank you to our Cub Scout for coming. Thank you. I'd love to see kids come and speak for a public comment. It's not easy to come

126and talk in front of a bunch of strangers when you're being recorded and broadcast. I just think that was really amazing that you came here. And kudos to you. If there's anything we can do to make you get multiple badges, let us know. To the continued passion. of parents who come consistently and keep us informed and on our toes. Thank you. Yeah, we can't do our job if we don't get feedback. So it's really helpful. Okay, and with that, we do not need to continue past 1030. So I'm going to adjourn nurse at 827.