2/9/16 Board of Education Meeting

001The testimony speakers are limited to a maximum of three minutes, depending upon the total number of speakers. Each speaker will have a... When you begin speaking, the green light will come on, the yellow light when you have one minute left, and when your time is up, the red light will appear and the bell will ring. Please finish your sentence when your time is up. When taking speakers in order of submission, we have... Yoshush Cohen. Francisca Salado. Bill Navicas. Francine Maxwell. Celeste Babri Ozaki. We have Citizen. Charles Stuck. Late submissions. Daniel Smischkowski. Frank Sambacuk. Simbo Kaki, excuse the pronunciation, please correct it when you come to the speakerphone, and Edith Smith. So we'll start with Yosus, how do you say your name please? My name is Francisca Salcedo. So is Yosus here? And your name is

002what? Francisca Salcedo. Okay, Francisca, thank you. Salcedo. Oh, thank you. Well, hello. I'm here to speak about some issues that have been going on for 18 months at my daughter's school, Rodriguez Elementary. I have been a member of our school's SSC and DLAC for almost two years now. I have witnessed and been a victim of so many actions by our school that have gone on without being addressed by the school board, even though I have sent numerous emails to... Mr.. Barrera to Mary Johnson to missy Marino and others You mr.. McQuarrie were present during the May 2015 D lack meeting when I was told to basically shut up and sit down and no one intervened when I was trying to make a motion so this illustrates pattern of preventing or excluding parents, especially minority parents,

003from participating in our district's DAC and DLAC appropriately. And this puts our children at such a huge disadvantage because as you know our district is also using our DLAC and DAC to advise the school board on the LCAP. To prevent parents from providing input is very detrimental to our students. At our school, especially one teacher in particular, Miss Janelle Small, who is an SSE member, has been slandering me to other parents. The district is aware of this. I have sent many emails, which also have not been addressed. I have received no response from the school district. I have, in fact, An email that was sent to Mr. Nelsmaul, which she provided to the SSE members and to myself during the last meeting. Can I submit it to the board? Yes. Thank you. And it just

004shows she's been trying to get me to not speak during the meeting. They said that my two-year election was not valid, and so I was ousted from the SSC, which made my nomination to a DAC position, prevented me from participating. I really would like the board to address these issues, which really are equality issues, not just for myself, for my children, but for every child and family in the Logan Heights area, which I've recited for 30 years now. And at the DLAC last week, and I also want to submit the last agenda, the February 4th agenda. to the Board of Education, which you will see there is no opportunity for input from the parents. All decisions are made by the officers, so I would like to submit this, please. Thank you for your submissions. Thank

005you for your comments. Thank you very much. Bill Navicas? Bill Navicas? Francine Maxwell? Francine, please. Frenzy Maxwell, resident of District E. While I respect the board's policies and the way that you do things, I would ask that tonight you set aside the board policy and procedures and offer more than 20 minutes per agenda item. We have something very important that needs to be discussed openly before some things occur as far as moving to share the information of filling our seat. prior to an election and we just need more than 20 minutes for the pros and cons. So I would like this board to consider, totally respect that you've held us accountable, President McQuarrie, for those 20 minutes. But prior to you becoming president, there was always chances for us to go above and beyond what

006the board policy was. So I would just like to request tonight that you consider setting that board policy aside and giving us more than 20 minutes when it comes to G4. Thank you for saying yes, I hear you now and I heard you last night and we will consider setting aside enough time And then the board will have that discussion when we come to that that particular item So thank you for making that request and thank you for citizen for reminder and it's not your time yet Celeste and then citizen all right and after citizen Charles Thank you I work these days, so you know, just getting myself together. Good evening, my name is Celeste Babir-Kozaki. I'm the president for the San Diego Unified Council of PTAs. And I would like to bring to your

007attention some recent significant advocacy efforts by the California State and National PTAs. But first let me start off with the question that I often hear. Why start a PTA? Here are some misconceptions about PTA. It's too much work. No more than any other profit. It really is the same amount of work. The rules are the same for both. For all non-profits, PTA is a non-profit. There's always someone looking over your shoulder. We, as in Council, State, and National 9th District PTA, are here to assist our units with any problems they encounter. There is training for every officer position as well. The State and National PTA take your money. dues to any PTA do include dues to a Member at both the state and national level this gives you the voting power at these levels State

008and national PTA get back way more than you may realize PTAs can fundraise. PTAs can raise monies to help support programs that benefit the school site whether it be in the area of campus improvement, enhancing student learning experiences, community engagement, and many others. The main difference of PTAs versus other nonprofits is that PTA is a membership-based organization and it is the members that have the power to approve these activities. So what has PTA done for you lately? As reported by the California State PTA in January 2016, testimonies submitted by both California State and National PTAs help head off a proposed Internal Revenue Service rule that would have chilled donations and membership not only to PTAs but also to all regulated nonprofits across the nation. I will be giving you a copy of what this rule

009is and what I would have done, but the point I want to make is that PTA has the recognized reputation and voice that ultimately benefited all non-profit organizations, which ultimately will allow all of us to continue to concentrate our efforts to help our children, students, and communities. Thank you. Thank you, Citizen. I want to remind the board that it is not forgotten that Superintendent Cindy Martin was hired by this board in a violation of the Brown Act and the transparency that the citizens deserved. A press conference was called and the item was supposed to be setting out the parameters of how a new superintendent search would be done. Instead, that press conference was an announcement that Superintendent Cindy Martin had been hired. And that was the result of several phone calls behind the scenes, not

010on the agenda, not public. She said it herself in the newspaper that I got a call in the middle of the night that should I be superintendent and I said yes. That's not the way a public entity is supposed to run its business. It was a very poor beginning for the superintendent. It behooves this board to follow the laws, to use the Brown Act, and to realize that the public still remembers that you did this in violation of several laws of open government. It's not forgotten. So as you're making decisions about issues, please keep in mind that there is a lot of distrust in this community about the way Superintendent Cindy Martin was selected, and it's still remembered today. That's a very serious charge. Council, could you comment on whether a board member could call

011a potential employee? I think it's a little bit more complicated of a conversation than that, but the short answer is that Superintendent Martin's appointment was voted upon at the following meeting, so that if there was any concern about a Brown Act violation, it was rectified the following meeting. Thank you very much. We have Charles Stock. Hi, good evening. I sent this in an email a few days ago, but I didn't get any response back, so I figured public forum, so I will bring it up here. My daughter's a student at Mount Everest Academy, one of the atypical schools here in San Diego Unified, along with several others. She's a junior. Her freshman and sophomore years, she participated in athletics, and under the CIF rules, she has to participate in athletics at her school of residence.

012That was Kearney High School. Come to find out at the end of last season, Kearney High School sent out a message, said, we're not going to extend our multi-school agreement for the upcoming school year for athletics. So I thought, okay, well what does that mean? So I've researched, talked to CIF. When a student is allowed to go to one of the atypical schools, which San Diego Unified allows, they are still bound by the residential requirement. I talked to CIF, I tried to get a waiver to see, oh, well maybe she can go participate at a different school. That's not the case. The rules are very strict. The only way that she could participate in athletics for this school year are to, we could move residents. I could put her in foster care and she could

013move into a new residence. I could get divorced and, you know, she could live in a new residential area. She could get bullied by somebody at Kearney and that would be an authorized thing. She could get married. But the one thing that she can't do to participate in athletics is actually just participate at her local school of residence because Kearney didn't extend this multi-school agreement and they're the only school within San Diego Unified not to do so. I sat down and I talked to the principal. The reasons that she gave me were that they had problems with parents in the past, and it was too much of an administrative burden for her and her staff. What I would like to point out is that all of the schools get people that get to go to

014them, you know, that aren't part of their residential area because they decide to join a certain cluster along the way. Those kids aren't denied the rights to participate in athletics. CIF, you know, I talked to the executive director of CIF. He was baffled by this whole situation. He said, if Kearney wants to join, you know, for the rest of the school year, they can waive that. They can allow them to come in even though they missed the deadline. I'm asking the board, not only just for this year to correct this, but going forward, the San Diego Unified student shouldn't be treated by like an outcast just because they go to one of the atypical schools. they don't have a choice at where they can participate in athletics. So in the future, it shouldn't be an

015all or none on whether or not students have to participate, whether a school has to be in multi-school. If you're in San Diego Unified, you should have your rights protected. Thank you, Daniel. Could we ask Superintendent Martin to follow up on that? Please. Thank you. Daniel Smakowski. Honorable Board, Superintendent Martin, members of the public, as you can see from behind, I am not politically correct, but it's not a laughing matter. The well has been poisoned and the fox continues to guard the hen house, but we have a solution. The solution is term limits. Two four-year terms, that's it, you're out. We believe my campaign for District A of the San Diego Unified School District, we believe hook, line, and sinker that if an elected official on the school board, if they should remain for two

016four-year terms, we believe it will help alleviate and perhaps improve ethics and quality of education. New blood is always valuable. And as a candidate for the school board, I would limit my term to eight years, two four-year terms. Now, this is the proper, it's the judicious, it's the reasonable, it's the logical way to do this. We understand how people get elected. We understand the nature of the beast. We understand all of this. But as the Trojan horse candidate, when I get in, we all get in. It's simple as that. Because we are going to bring everybody in. And this is the way society and public education ought to be run. Not like the Politburo or the Soviet Union or any other area, Russia. This is America. And as Americans, we need to be fair. We

017need to be honest. We need to play completely fair with people, respect everyone. Every citizen, everyone is credible. Every human being is credible. Every human being ought to be listened to. And thank you from our campaign, Daniel Schmichowski. Just remember, Danny, it's not about Danny. It's about the people of San Diego. Thank you again. Thank you, Daniel. Frank Simba Kaki. Please help me with the pronunciation. Frank Tsimbukakis. District B. You should know my name better than that. I do now. I took the last two weeks. I missed the last meeting. So I took the last two weeks to do something that your staff should have done regarding a particular project that is being leased. I studied what the cost is to set up a science lab, what the cost is to run it. There wasn't

018a lot of publications. I talked to some people at Qualcomm, and I came up with a number somewhere anywhere between one and three. million because of the constant updating of equipment, of staff, the plumbing. I mean, there were so many things. Have you guys thought? twice what the cost will be to set up that science lab in our neighborhood, especially one that's not on a school campus and will require extra transportation. That particular rent that is about to be collected won't be near enough. You guys will need a lot more money to maintain that lab. I suggest you consider your position on that particular issue that's... on a different agenda item before you go ahead with a contract. You're all very sophisticated, you're very experienced negotiators, whether it was as landlords, as union heads, and

019I don't want to beat up the same drum, but this is a real serious issue, and I want you to consider what the expenses are, because your staff forgot on the term sheet to put down what the expenses were. They only put in the income, so thank you. Thank you Frank to go kawaki Tim book house key. I'm working on Let's go with Edith Smith. Thank you Good afternoon. I am here to speak today About the things that are going on in the district Fortunately for us total is gone. Not this chart. They will just go home We need to work very hard at returning this school district back to some level of ethics. What went on on this diocese and behind the scenes was not just one person. We know that there are more

020dirty hands. This is our children. This is their future and the legacy of their families. We need to clean this up. And Richard, we are very concerned. This is not old news. It is current radiating news. So don't disillusion the people and say, oh, we're just going to move on. You gave a one-page resolution compared to 231 pages of a warrant. I would say the bad outweighs the good. We need transparency. We need someone to be in a seat that really, really looks out for our district. Our district has not been looked out for for a very, very long time. The trustee had other issues and concerns. So I pray that you will... really, really put your stuff aside and really look about what is at the neediest and the most vulnerable students of this

021district. It's not about your area, it's about what's best for the students. Let's clean up our hands because we know it's been very dirty and this will be news for quite a long time. The good outweighs the bad for San Diego Unified. make it different. Thank you. Thank you, Edith. So this completes the non-agenda public testimony. Thank you all for your comments and for taking time to address the board and the superintendent today. We appreciate your input and please know that your perspectives help us to better serve our students, parents, and the community. This meeting is called to order. Let's get ready for the flag salute. We have the Navy JROTC color guard from Point Loma High School will now present the colors. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. Ready, begin. I pledge allegiance

022to 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. Again, I want to thank the Point Loma High School Navy JROTC Color Guard for the presentation of the colors. Thank you. I would like to welcome everyone present today and those watching on the broadcast and call the February 9, 2016 regular meeting to order with all board members present. If you wish to address the board today and your name is not on the speaker's list printed on the blue paper located at both entrances to the auditorium, and you have not already submitted a request for public testimony, please complete the form and submit to Cheryl Ward, our board action officer. Speakers on agenda items will be called on

023to speak during the discussion of the agenda item. Once the discussion begins on an item, no additional public speaker requests will be accepted by the board. Per board bylaw 1025, public testimony on agenda items is limited to a maximum of 20 minutes per consent and or action item, allowing for a maximum of 10 minutes per opposing viewpoint. Public testimony speakers are limited to a maximum of three minutes per speaker depending upon the total number of speaker requests received by the board. The time may be reduced to two minutes or one minute each. Non-agenda item testimony was heard at 5 p.m. and will also be heard again at the end of the meeting. In response to the request for additional time and given the president's prerogative to add additional time, we'll consider how many speakers have

024submitted requests and then make the adjustment at that particular time. We'll now have a student presentation. Mr. Evans. Okay, right now we're going to have a string ensemble from Challenger Middle School. We just heard from Mira Mesa High School band recently with their Trip the Rose Parade, but now we have a very diverse student program, and now we're going to hear from some strings today from Challenger Middle School with Principal Diane Ryan and the music teacher who is also here present, Mr. Foster. I think we should mention that's only 20 of the 46 members that are in orchestra at Challenger Middle School. They wouldn't all fit on the stage. Thank you, Ted Potter. Thank you. I request a motion to adopt the agenda with Section I, Superintendent Consent Agenda, to be considered immediately and acted

025on. Are there other considerations? Yeah, I'd like to move the agenda, moving the superintendent's consent agenda item I forward, preceded by item H1, preceded by item E1 to the front of that agenda, as it is in our transcript tonight. And are there any public comments on any agenda item? Yes, President McQuarrie, you have a speaker request for items I-17 and I-18. I-17 and I-18. So then amending the motion to add I-1718 be pulled from the consent and will be then placed at the end of the agenda. Moved and seconded to approve the agenda as amended. All in favor vote? Or let's vote. That's right. Let's cast our vote. And it is unanimous. All four members voting in favor of the agenda. I'll move the superintendent's consent agenda, item I. Is there a second? Discussion? And

026Superintendent Martin, do you have comments? Yes, thank you. On this consent agenda, I just wanted to highlight item I-5, which is the Interdivisional Curriculum Committee recommendations. It's the ICC item. It's part of the consent agenda. I just wanted to feature tonight that this was some action that the board had discussed in one of our previous workshops as we work on our A through G efforts, increasing... our high school graduation requirements and this action that you're taking tonight on this consent agenda does several things that allows us to move forward in terms of awarding weighted credit for successful completion of existing community college courses and two credits for each completed course. And we'll also in this item, yes, thank you, we'll be renaming the courses to match the college course titles. It's a huge move for

027us to be able to make sure that this is aligned. It had to happen procedurally through the ICC. You're also, upon approving this tonight, adding new Mesa College courses, weighting credit for successful completion of courses, awarding two credits for each completed course, and matching the course titles with the course. And we're also awarding weighted credit for students who qualify for college credit by achieving a grade A or B and passing the end of course exam for CCTE courses that articulate with community college, another thing that had been discussed in previous meetings. And we're also terminating any courses that are not compliant with AB1012, which is courses that do not have academic content. So in this one item that's in the consent agenda, major effort, major. action is happening that aligns to our strategic initiatives for

028high school graduation completion and the requirements to be in better alignment. So I wanted to lift that out even though it's part of the consent agenda and highlight what action we were taking tonight. So thank you. Thank you. Moving us. So we have a vote? Yeah, we have public comment. No, that's at the end. You can vote on your revised consent calendar. So we're going to vote on those except for, we're going to vote on the non-pulled, no, we're going to vote on the consent agenda except for the pulled items. And there's been a motion and a second? Yes. Please vote. The consent agenda passes with item I-17 and I-18 being pulled and they will be handled at the end of the agenda. Moving on to item D, report of the closed session. Do we

029have any reportable action items? Thank you, Dr. O'Quarrie. In closed session, the board approved settlement of the case entitled Weiser v. San Diego Unified School District, San Diego Superior Court Case No. 37-2014-0021703 and Terry and Gus Kolachis et al. v. San Diego Unified School District OAH Case No. 2015-00977. by unanimous vote of board members present. Thank you. Thank you. Administrative assignments. Superintendent Martin. Thank you, President McCrory. I have one management appointment to announce tonight. Our new program manager for LGBTQ plus education and advocacy, Sophia Arredondo, who happens to be in the audience. And thank you for standing up, Sophia. Welcome to our team. Congratulations and welcome aboard. There'll be more about that later. At this time, I'd like the ASB student representatives to the board to introduce themselves. Please tell us about yourself and what

030is going on at your school, both academically and socially. We have Kenny Tran, ASB president, Muir Mesa High School, and Owen Lim, ASB council vice president, Sierra High School, and you made it on time. Cool, so let's start with Kenny Tran. So Owen couldn't make it today, but I'll speak on behalf of him. So in the ASU President Council, we are going to have a student congress meeting tomorrow, and we're going to be talking about crisis management, because one of the things that we've noticed during the lockdown, that there was kind of a lack of communication between the district and the students. So we wanted to talk about how to improve district-to-student and parents' communication when a crisis occurs. And another thing was a first aid and emergency respond. training for staff to handle first

031aid situations because at Hoover, I think, there were situations where there were seizures happening in multiple classrooms and the nurse couldn't get to them in time and teachers didn't know what to do. So we wanted to make sure that all teachers go through emergency trainings. And then... Another thing that we are going through are kind of like vendor contracts, and we wanted to see if we can make the process faster than it is right now. And then the last one is environmental initiative. We've noticed that our schools are kind of lacking the initiative to go green and start recycling and doing things to help the planet more. So we wanted to put in effect something on Earth Day that all San Diego schools have to do. And at my school personally, at Mira Mesa High

032School, our cheerleaders actually just came, are coming back today at 8, because they went to nationals for cheerleading, and they came back, and they are world champions. And then on Friday, KUSI and the CIF staff came to our school, because our school is one of the six finalists for the Battle of the Fans competition, which is the... Which is a competition for the best student section in San Diego schools. And we get results back soon, so hopefully we get that. We were supposed to have Nathan Sykes come on Friday as well to help promote school spirit and have him perform at our school, but he kind of canceled on us, unfortunately. But it was cool to have him at least try to come. And then our theater program is running a play coming late February

033and early March. It's Mary Poppins. And our school plays are really good every single year, so this one's going to be a big one. And then currently our ASB is planning a spring formal on March 11th and a Powder Puff rally and game on March 18th. And that is it. Thank you. Thank you. Going to the adjusted agenda, item H1, resolutions authorizing issuance of general obligation bonds, including refunding the Proposition MM bonds and new money Proposition S bonds, approving documents, and delegating completion and execution of documents to district officers. This is an action item. I believe we have a report. Thank you. Ms. Salkalder, CFO, will be coming up with her team. This is our proactive management approach to our debt and to our bond program. And our chief financial officer working with our financial

034advisor is going to present the current opportunities for refunding the Prop MM bonds based on the current interest rate and the related capacity for issuing these proposition bonds so that you'll be able to take action so we're maximizing the work that we're doing in Prop MM. So with that, I'll have a presentation. Thank you, Superintendent Martin, and good evening, President McClary and board members. So let me move here. So as Superintendent Martin mentioned, as we evaluate on an annual basis the overall debt portfolio for the district, which includes our Prop MM, our Prop S, and our Prop C, we'll be highlighting those areas of opportunities in a little bit more detail here in subsequent slides, primarily with Prop MM and Prop S. And so Mark Young and I will be... highlighting, providing some context to

035that, some background, and also really going through the key elements of the financial model and allowing the opportunity to actually maximize some areas with our Prop BEST program of actually introducing, again, as we've done historically, some current interest bonds rather than the longer-term capital appreciation bonds. So again, every time we have this opportunity on an annual basis to reevaluate this, we've been making some positive improvements to that. So we'll be highlighting that this evening. And then going on to this next slide here, again, with that background, we reach out to our underwriting pool, which has seven banking firms there. We reach out to them. We ask them to evaluate our debt, to come back with some recommendations. And what we've noted here specifically, we call it refunding. That's in essence a refinancing of some debt,

036which we've noted here is the 2006 series F-1 and G-1 with Prop MM as an example, where we have an opportunity to go. the market now with lower interest rates and have some savings which ultimately impacts the taxpayer in that opportunity there with debt service. And with that change in the model which Mark will highlight here shortly does give us the opportunity to go out for a new monies transaction for the Prop S. We're estimating between 25 to 45 million dollars. what's included in your item h1 tonight has a resolution up to 45 million of new monies for prop s so again there's opportunity to accelerate what we have in the current plan perhaps in the upcoming months so there's that up that has been evaluated plus at the same time this is the first

037opportunity we've also looked at prop s and to refund some of those issuances. So there's actually a 2009, and now that we can shorten that capital appreciation bond and refund it sooner than later. And again, so through that work with the underwriting team, what we've noted here is all the parties that are going to be involved in this process over the next few months, ranging from our bond council and again to the specific underwriters that will be leading that work with us. In the next few slides, what we're going to highlight, I'm going to transition here at this point to Mark Young, is really going through the key specific assumptions. It's really assumptions become that foundation of the model that as we progress the subsequent slides, you'll see where those opportunities lie and where we

038can maximize them. I'll transition to Mark. Great. Thank you, Jenny. Good evening. It's a pleasure to be here. I always like coming up here and giving you good news. So all you're going to be hearing tonight on this item is good news. We're going to repeat some of the slides that we do every year, just in terms of transparency. There may be some people in the audience who haven't heard this presentation before, so some of it's going to be repetitive, but there's a reason for that. So I really quickly want to lay out some of the assumptions of the program and the model. uh... the assessed valuation growth of the district's experience the last two years has been pretty good north of six percent it's above what we projected in the model going forward which

039has been a five percent growth rate even though we've had that higher growth were still using the flat five percent growth rate The refunding geo bonds, what we target is bonds that have at a minimum 3% present value savings. We take the savings proportionately over the life of the original deal. We match the term of the bonds that are being refunded so we don't extend the maturity or take our 27 year mortgage and turn around and refinance it with a 30 year. We're not allowed to do that under state law. Obviously, we're going to issue them as current interest bonds, and we will have, as we always have, a 10-year call feature. Our Prop S new money bonds, something you always like to hear when we do it in conjunction with the refunding, they will

040be all current interest bonds, and we'll be amortizing them within the savings that are created by the Prop MM. It's new money that will be used for all the authorized purposes of Prop S. And again, we're going to comply with our maximum tax rate of $66.70 as a combined tax rate, and we won't exceed the $60 after Prop MM is matured. Oh, wrong way. Next slide, we just want to show you the historical assessed valuation. Again, we show this every year to show what the historical growth is and the projected. So here we're showing again the last two years you've had north of 6% growth, but going forward we're utilizing that flat 5%. A lot of numbers here, but what we're doing here is proving to you that between the debt service on the Prop

041MM bonds So if you look at the middle column, existing Prop MM debt service, existing Prop S debt service. Then we have a column that's showing the Prop MM refunding savings. So that's the savings associated with what we're doing today. You'll then see the new money, a Prop S debt service. So you can see we're matching it dollar for dollar in terms of the window of savings. And then what we're showing you is based upon that $66.70 tax rate, in each year we are at or below in terms of debt service, the amount that we're raising in terms of our taxes. You can also see that we're building up that tax rate reserve. We're over $54 million that's in the bank to protect the taxpayers in the district in the event that assessed valuations drop

042in the future. We've got that reserve to draw upon to protect that pledge to the voters. Next slide, we've highlighted the refunding opportunity. So we've identified about $154 million of Prop MM bonds that are currently outstanding with respect to the 2006 series. And we've identified about $73 million of original principal from the 2009 Series A bonds. The graphic basically shows you the debt service structure associated with that and the green highlight is the savings that is generated from the refunding. The next slide, again, we're showing you the tax rates necessary to service the debt. So the, I'm colorblind, so the top line shows the tax rate at the 66.70 to the 60. So you can see that our tax rates going forward never exceed those maximums. And in fact... When we now layer in the

043new money associated with the refunding, you'll see again that we never exceed those maximum tax rates that we've promised folks. In terms of our plan of finance, we're laying out here, we're going to have three refunding components. Two of those you'll be approving tonight with your resolution. That's the Prop MM refundings. The Prop S refunding, we're still making the sausage. So we weren't really ready to bring that resolution to you this evening. So when we come back in April to approve the preliminary official statements and the like, we'll come back to you with that resolution approving that refunding. But you can see, and then the Prop S new money, the resolution approving that this evening starts a 60 day clock that in essence we have to self-validate that new money issue. So we're starting the

044clock today, which when we come back in April, we'll then be ready to issue the bonds. So between all of them, we're raising about $325 million of principal, about $46 million of premium generated from that, so our total source is at $370 million. We're going to use about $324 million to actually pay down bonds. Right now we're estimating $41 million of new money. Lee, don't start spending it. I think we're gonna have a much lower threshold in terms of budget purposes, but I'm highly confident that we're gonna come in pretty darn close to that amount. Your resolution this evening has a maximum of 45 million. The balance of the uses are cost of issuance and underwriters discount. The next slide is basically a slide to show you the structure that's in place. So we're confirming

045that they're in both cases, they're fixed rate bonds to the extent that they have the ability to have a 10 year call feature. We incorporate the 10 year call feature. And the most important thing I want to point out in terms of the Prop S refunding, is currently in your debt portfolio, these are convertible capital appreciation bonds. So once we issue these refundings, we're going to be pulling about $130 million of caps, convertible caps, out of your portfolio and replacing them with current interest bonds. The estimated debt service on the next page is for your Prop S new money. So one, we just want to point out that the net debt service is equal to or less than the savings that's being created from the refunding. So that column on the far right, excess, we're

046trying to leverage every single dollar. But I also want to point out their current interest bonds, and they're also callable after 10 years. Estimated cost of issuance, I'm not gonna go through all of these, but we've listed them. And frankly, in a refunding, it's not really a requirement that we provide these estimates, but historically, it's what the district's always done. So out of transparency, we wanna make sure. You all are aware of who's getting paid and why. So we've got bond counsel, disclosure counsel, rating agencies, and Jenny's going to talk a little bit about rating agencies in a second. But this is a list of all the folks who are going to get paid contingent with the successful sale of the bonds. So with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Jenny. So

047on this particular page, as you're aware, with each issuance, we do go out to the rating agencies for their credit analysis and review. And what we did in the fall specifically with Prop Z issuance and our strategy at the time was we went to two additional credit rating agencies that we hadn't gone before. So now we'll actually be going to Moody's. Kroll and Fitch, as what we shared a few months ago too. Fitch actually reviewed the district's credit based on the criteria that we have here. We were able to introduce our Senate Bill 222 that was passed. by the governor in this past year, and then also making it effective in January. We provided them with a bankruptcy opinion, things that they had been looking for over the last few years, as well as highlighting

048AB 1200, and with the continued dialogue that we mentioned about the diverse credit perspectives of the district of being within an economic base that's over $150 billion. So we highlighted a lot of those credit positives. So we're going to go back to them with that same perspective, and again, highlighting, especially with Fitch that was one of the rating agencies that really did review all of these key attributes and issued the district the AAA rating and really focused on away from the general fund and really looking at the collateral aspect and these key elements of the credit and so we're going to go back to those three credit rating agencies in the next few months probably in late March early April And so what we have here, kind of our next steps, what we're outlining as

049key deliverables and milestones along the way. As Mark mentioned earlier, we do have in H1 the resolutions to proceed forward with the Prop MM refunding and also Prop S. And as Mark mentioned, Prop S resolution starts at a 60-day validation, which is built in to that measure. And then what we'll be doing is bringing back to the board in April are all the updated documents, including a preliminary official statement with the board's action at that point will allow us to go to the market so we can start pricing and marketing those bonds and pricing the prop mm and the prop s bonds and what we're anticipating on doing is having these closed in late may so the funds would be available before fiscal year end and so that's where we're at in terms of the

050net the next steps over the next few months are there any questions Second. To move to the second, what I didn't say on your timeline is when can Lee start spending the money? Not yet, after May. After the week of May 16th. All right, with that being said. He can start planning here. He has a few projects lined up. We will be reflecting in the second interim from a conservative standpoint, so we bring that to the board next month. for the bond program will have $25 million included in there as new revenues. However, again, it's a matter of timing and spending, but it'll be in the projections. Could you point out the advantage of the conversion of capital appreciation bonds to the conventional, what that means? The current convertible cabs, so right now they're cabs,

051and they're sitting there growing and accreting, and in 2019 they'll convert and they'll become current interest bonds. So one of the benefits by doing this is in May, those convertible cabs will be considered defeats. They'll be off your balance sheet. There's no legal obligation of the district out of the tax revenues to pay those bonds. And they'll be replaced with current interest bonds that'll have an average interest rate in the high threes. So we're getting and that piece alone is contributing almost 13 million dollars of present value savings Which means 13 million dollars of more prop s new many projects. Thank you I want to see if I understand. The district economic base, is that pretty much the assessed value of all the properties that we own, and that's $150 billion? Oh, it's the county,

052right? Within the school district boundaries. Right. Excuse me, I mean all the properties, not just the school district properties. All the properties that we own. Assessed valuation of all the properties. Commercial, residential, industrial. They don't have schools on every property. A few houses in between. Yeah. And actually that's just the secured. When you add the unsecured on top of that, you're almost at $160 billion. That helped us get a AAA ready? Yes. Yes. That's one of the attributes that... created them, that leveraged them. Any other questions or comments? I just want to thank Jenny and Mark for all your guys' work over the years getting SB 222 passed, which is not only helping our school district save taxpayers millions of dollars, but it's helping every single school district in the entire state of California. And

053that was in large part because of you two and a lot of other staff that have worked very hard, including our legislative advocate in Sacramento. So basically what this is doing is refinancing our loans at a lower fixed interest rate and saving millions of dollars for taxpayers. All right, sounds good. Thank you. Any other comments? Let's cast your vote. Accept the report. It passes. Thank you very much. Moving on to the next E1. This is an informational update and progress report on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender questioning. And we have a report by staff. Yes. Thank you, President Macquarie. As staff is coming up, I want to begin by first recognizing the group of people who have been working long and hard for many years before I even started in this position as superintendent, that there

054had been a Safe Schools Task Force that is now named the LGBTQ Plus Superintendent's Advisory Task Force. And many members of that task force have been... completely dedicated given their time, their treasure, their talent, their commitment. to our LGBTQ plus youth in creating safe and inclusive schools all across this district. And I want to personally thank the team that's been sitting with me, helping to envision and take action on what this district needs to do as the second largest district in the state, the eighth largest district in the nation that we can be a model for how to make sure we have safe and inclusive schools and figure out how to make that happen inside a very large system. So tonight we have 17 staff members on this group. task force and 13 plus community

055members but I just want to say by name the people who have consistently for years been part of the work and what we have tonight is an update. Of course I have to start by thanking Kevin Beiser, he is a member of the task force. constantly present, constantly helping us work to make sure we're clear on our policies, our procedures, and that this district is working to create the safest, most inclusive schools in our country. So Kevin's part of the task force, and I'd like to also talk about our staff members. Lynn Barnes-Wallace from Athletics Health Resource Teacher. Trisha Chung, our Race and Human Relations Resource Counselor. Michelle Krischi, one of our school psychologists. Linda Golke from Visual Performing Arts. You can see it's across the whole spectrum. of our district, Melissa Janik, our Director

056of Counseling and Guidance, Ruben Littlejohn, the Chief of San Diego Unified School Police, Rachel Miller, Sexual Health Education Resource Teacher, Mick Rabin, our Youth Advocacy Resource Teacher, Wendy Rankfur, our Director of Teaching and Learning Support, Gretchen Rhodes, our Youth Advocacy Principal on Special Assignment, Susan Rogers, Race, Human Relations and Advocacy, Pupil Advocate, Ajean Shahid, our Program Manager for Race and Human Relations. Acacia Thede, our Director of Human Resources. Linda Truesdale, our Executive Director of Student Services. Micheline Wagner, she's currently Vice Principal at De Portola. Linda Zintz, our Director of Communications. I list the staff members that are part of this so the public understands the high level of staff engagement across many departments, from teaching and learning to curriculum instruction, our police chief, our counseling, our guidance, across all spectrums. a highly engaged staff as

057part of the task force. And then I want to thank our community members that are here tonight. And I don't have them all listed if I'm missing someone in the community, but members of the task force, Eleanor Evans, one of the SDA board of directors, Rebecca Hook held a director from public affairs at San Diego LGBT Center. Dolores Jacobs, the CEO of the San Diego LGBT Center. Fernando Lopez, the Director of Operations at LGBT Pride. San Diego, I'm trying to find you when I look out, but the lights are bright. Okay, there you are. Derby Patten-Gill from San Diego PTA. Vinny Pompei from the Human Rights Campaign. Dennis Nicely from GLSEN San Diego. Colin Pierce from GLSEN San Diego. Danelle Scarborough, the Executive Director of Human Relations from the Commission of the City of San

058Diego. Irene Segade from GLSEN San Diego. Terry Verano from PFLAG. San Diego President and Karen Hrabowski, one of our retired administrators, and I'm looking at more of you out there. Please thank you to all of you for being part of the task force that's taken us to where we are today. And we have much work yet to do, but tonight is the night where we're gonna talk about what has been done, what we're currently doing, and our plans for the future. So thank you to the task force. So we have task force members in the audience. Please stand up. If you're a part of the LGBTQ CAC Advisory Task Force, could you please stand up in the audience to be recognized? Thank you. Oh, you missed your moment. You're getting like a photo shoot right

059there while you were standing up. So with that, we have staff to present and the work that we're engaged in currently. And with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Vernon Moore, our Executive Director of Youth Advocacy. Thank you, Superintendent Martin. With me to present some of the items that we'll be going over this evening are Dr. Wendy Rank-Burr, our Director of Teaching and Learning, Mick Rabin, our Youth Advocacy Resource Teacher, and Rachel Miller, Resource Teacher in Sexual Health Education. And they have some specific items that they'll be presenting on. We will be reviewing nine topics that you'll... You don't have your new program manager up here because we just appointed her tonight, so we decided to let her be in the audience instead of at the next presentation. I know Sophia will be up

060here as a part of the presentation when we do our next update. So Sophia, we left you off the hook tonight, but next time you'll be up here with the team. What we're reviewing tonight in this update are these nine key areas. We're talking about the areas that we've been working on in terms of our advocacy. We're announcing the dedicated staff members that are solely and completely dedicated to safe and inclusive schools. on our team. We'll be discussing and highlighting featuring our online bullying reporting form that has gone live. We'll let Vernon talk about it when we get to it. We're talking about a simplified bullying complaint process, our LGBTQ plus policies and revisions that we know are not just important for our district, but as a model for other districts as they begin to

061take on this work and implement the laws. We're talking about our mandated staff training, our school climate survey, our inclusive curriculum, supportive cultures that we are creating at each and every one of our schools through our GSAs, and other advocacy efforts that are underway and ongoing. going inside San Diego Unified. And just as a starting point, I would like to just add that I am, as I started this process with the Department of Youth Advocacy, beginning to take formation and shape in April and then formally in July and working directly with the Safe Schools Task Force, now the LGBTQ Plus Advisory Committee, I am humbled and honored by the work. And really, it all... represents an effort to create safe, inclusive environments for all of our students to thrive. One of our first features, as

062Superintendent Martin pointed out, is we have some dedicated staff currently. We just announced Sofia Arredondo, our new program manager for LGBTQ education and advocacy. And I'd like to point out that it was an extensive and thorough process. We had over 66 applicants for this particular position. we held over fourteen interviews and uh... we had you know even a second round of interviews for community members to give input and Sophia did rise to the top of that. She has some extensive work in our communities, specifically at our center doing youth activities. She's advocated for parents and she's also been a lecturer at San Diego State University and she's also a proud parent of a student that's attended our schools. And so Sophia rose as one of the top candidates for us and we're proud to have

063her. board and we look forward to the work we'll be doing with her and of course mick raven is uh has decades 20 over 20 years in our district as a teacher and has been GLSEN trained and certified and part of the gay, lesbian, straight education network and comes with a wealth of experience. So with our two dedicated staff members, we look forward to continuing this important work. One of the things that's important about the dedicated staff members coming on tonight as we do an update on the progress that we've made and plans for how to take it further to scale is the good news is our new staff members, there's a lot of the... bureaucratic red tape you're not going to have to worry about because Vernon and his team has been working on

064making sure the surveys are ready and our reporting forms and some of the things that have been challenging, those are ready to be implemented. So now as we work to take to scale and having the staff members there to do that, Vernon has a team that he needs to speed up the implementation of things that we've all been waiting for for a very long time. Sure, and one of those things has been our online bullying reporting. This has been something that has really been born from the Safe Schools Task Force, now again LGBTQ plus advisory. The group has been very clear that we need to create a mechanism where folks can, not just students, but staff, community members, folks that are witnessing bullying on our campuses can very quickly and efficiently make a report of

065that. And so our online bullying reporting process, I'm going to demonstrate and I get the... While he's pulling that up, I just want to put this into the proper context in which it belongs that let's not forget. that the work that we're committed to as a district was born out of a very significant tragedy. We all know about Seth's Law, AB9, and as we implement and we create safe spaces for our students, this is one action of many that we're taking. Let's not forget about Seth, the young student who tried to take his life by hanging himself. We know that he was taunted and he was bullied relentlessly. This is a school system that is dedicated to our students being able to report and the system being able to act when that happens. And it

066really mirrors our administrative procedure 6381 on bullying, and I'll speak about that in a moment, but I wanted to draw your attention to on our district website, this necessarily isn't the website that schools would use. Schools each have individual websites, but our district website, you'll see there is a link here, report bullying, but also if you go into the search engine and just type in bullying, you'll see that it will come up with our procedures for parents and guardians, the bullying and intimidation facts, and then our online bullying form readily available there. So I just wanted to make sure we knew all the mechanisms to get there. Can we go back to the tab? Yes. Yes. Yeah, and I'm going to do that in just a moment. I just wanted to make sure we also

067knew that it's on our school, each individual school websites. If you look down the left column, there's also a link, report bullying. This happens to be Bell Middle School, but all of our schools have websites. The link here, report bullying, will take you also to this very same form. online bullying and reporting. Can we think about maybe moving that all the way to the top instead of all the way at the bottom? There's been ongoing discussions about that, but yes, the placement of it we can consider. And this form was taken through our LGBTQ plus task force and gave us a lot of feedback, lots of revisions. The task force said make sure that if a student just types in bullying, it will come up. Or if they go to their school website, it will

068come up. Or if you just go to the district website, it will come up. If a student has been bullied or harassed or feels intimidated, they shouldn't have to navigate to figure out how to report. It should be easy. to be front and center and the input that we received from the committee over several courses, iterations of this form are now what you see here today and as we launch it, we already today, it went live, we've already received two reports and as we receive those reports, we make sure that they go to the school site directly and they go to the Office of Youth Advocacy for immediate action and follow up and to, as the first few complaints come in, that allows us to make sure that process is very tight, there's action and

069there's follow up. in a timely manner. Does each bullying report have a unique claim number? And I'll demonstrate that when I click submit. So now we're going to do the live demo. So you can see how it actually works. Again, and just to be clear. You know, this is not a form to fill out regarding immediate danger. That would require police. But this is a form to complete when if a student or anyone is looking for assistance and help and would like to alert school officials. And that's very clear in the opening pieces. And it also indicates that it goes... Once a site is selected, and you'll see here it says school where incident has occurred, I'm going to click ALBA because that's the school I supervise, so I can make sure I follow up

070with the principal on this. Location, where it occurred, we'll say classroom. Let me point out the drop down menu specifically lists all the school sites in the district because this is an online bullying reporting forum that's associated with students being bullied on their school campus. If there's bullying that needs to be reported that didn't happen on a school campus, that's an adult or another situation in one of the departments, we know that everybody's associated to some school campus. Adult to adult bullying, there's a different procedure for reporting that. So when you do the drop-down menu and you see that there are every school site in the district is listed on there for the student who's reporting. This is designed for students to be able to report, and that's where we have every school site in

071the district listed. And so the key is making it user-friendly and making it very clear and simple process. But the drop-down menu is important, and you'll see it's got a star next to it because that's how it gets acted upon so that it can get in the hands of the school administration to follow up. The other pieces you can fill out, there's a section here to name folks if that's okay. You'll notice that the name is optional and the phone is optional because this was specifically designed to give some anonymity to folks if they required that. And then to describe the bullying incident. this is key because isn't the more the more details that we get uh... from these online forms the more follow-up we can do uh... with our with our schools and at

072our school sites and then check any or all that apply including other where we can type in specific bullying i want to point out that though this came you know was was really something that was pushing say schools and lgbtq and uh... advisory committee This is really an item for all of our students regarding safe and inclusive environments. And so once you... Can you list the things that apply this small print there? Oh, down here at the bottom? No, what are the things that... Teasing, threat... Yes, teasing, threat, cyberbullying, social exclusion, intimidation, physical violence, public humiliation, unwanted touching, hazing, and other. And I mean, again, we can, as we roll this out, there's obviously going to be feedback and things, and we'll be continually updating and making changes. So again, you can click multiple, you

073can unclick sections, and then once you click submit, The form will then generate a submission message and Trustee Weiser, to your question, the record number changes. It keeps a record of how many submissions there are. It says 16, that doesn't mean that we've tested this numerous times. So many of those are testing. And then there's also just some more information about who to call and contact. Our work in youth advocacy will be to follow up with these submissions as they are submitted and to ensure that our principals and our school sites are utilizing procedure 6381, following up on this and providing support where needed. Dr. Moore, what I want to know is that when one of these forms is submitted, that I want to be, I don't know, our board members want to be completely

074assured. that the students who submit will not get lost, that there will be immediate action, immediate follow through, and that when that's submitted, something happens. Can you talk to being able to get us that assurance? Yes, absolutely. I think that's what makes this online form, this mechanism... more viable, let's say, than somebody coming to the counter or a random email to a principal or staff member that may not get to us in the central office. I think one of the challenges that we've had and talked about certainly in LGBTQ Advisory Committee is how many bullying claims have come in. how do we know and so when this form is submitted it comes to our office and we will be following up with each site to ensure that they're taking the appropriate action as well as

075documenting and working with our principals to make sure if they need support if they need other resources how we can help and support that. Does our procedure ensure that there's a response within a certain amount of time? The procedure itself ensures that there's an investigation within five to ten days and that there's supposed to be some resolution at that time. What if the claim number goes on for more than ten days? Then that's where we need to follow up and ensure that at the site. Do you get some kind of a red flag alert or something like that from the system? As we run a report? Yeah, as we run the reports, we will get that. Okay, you can see how many days the claim has been open. Absolutely. And then when the principal, now

076it's my understanding that when this is submitted from a student or whoever's being bullied or observing other people being bullied, then this goes to the principal at that site? Correct. Okay. And then also your office gets a copy? Correct. Okay, good. And then... the claim number, let's say the principal looks into it, gets the kids together and has some kind of intervention or something is done, then the claim is closed? Well then we can note it in our records that we've contacted and the principal provided us some information about a resolution. I do encounter that we're going to come up with different kinds of scenarios that will require different types of responses and actions. And so, you know, to It is a simplified way, but I think for us it's also a viable way to

077continue to monitor and be sure that we're deploying resources appropriately. Okay, because normally as a district, we have other complaint department to help make sure parents and community members are getting their needs met. And those claims... are closed with a closed date. Is this the same kind of system? This system, it should work in a similar fashion. We had a lot of talking about other kinds of complaints and we wanted to mostly focus on bullying, specifically student bullying, but also adult to student bullying or whatever bullying that's going to come forward. So we made some very distinct decisions around that. We will be following up and marking cases as having been resolved or been followed through. Okay. So let me be clear that when we look at the data and we know that nine out

078of ten LGBT youth say that they've been bullied. We put this form online. It is my expectation and the expectation of the board that your office not only monitors, but thank goodness you're having more staff to support you, but that follow-up happens and the case is closer. There's the number. It's the beginning. and it's the end because as we make this effort for students to be able to report, when they're four times more likely to take their own lives than heterosexual youth and we create opportunities for them to report, it's incumbent upon you and your division with your support team to be able to take that report and respond. So that's our expectation with creating this mechanism. Now the board members right now, we receive a quarterly update. from other complaints that are filed. Is

079there any way that perhaps the board members could receive a quarterly update also on the bullying reportings that are coming in? And we have a column that we can see, we just can go down and see if they're all closed or not. Yes, and that will be specific to the online bullying form. That was part of the reason why when this form was created that we wanted to make sure the report goes to the school principal who has... The responsibility does remain with the principal in following up, but this office is a support for that. But part of the reason why it's also going to the Office of Youth Advocacy is to monitor and create quarterly reports to come back to the superintendent and the board so that we are aware of this and this

080is a front burner topic for all of us. So, speaking of 6381, again of which the LGBTQ plus advisory committee was instrumental in helping us revise, that revision came in August. Each school site was notified of the updated policy as well as provided with training materials, a PowerPoint, regarding the bullying intimidation procedure. Now at that point, the online bullying forum wasn't up, so it wasn't included, but that will be in an updated version of this training PowerPoint. all of the training PowerPoints, including the one for 6381, as well as our administrative procedure zero. 114 are non-discrimination of transgender students and the accompanying training PowerPoint corresponding to AB 26, School Success and Opportunity Act. All of those are in an online repository for all of our staff to activate and use and ensure and verify that

081they are aware of the policies and have indicated that either they've done a staff presentation at their school or have logged in and viewed all the training PowerPoints individually. So every single one of our staff members, Dr. Moore has done the bullying and intimidation administrative 6381 training through this required portal now? That was the intention and I was checking with human resources and because this was the first time we did it, there have been some rosters that have been turned in for staff who attended. the larger site training if they attended as a staff as well as those folks who have logged in. So we're very close to having all of our staff indicate that they have and verified that they have gone through these protocols. On top of that, now those were mandated notifications,

082but we are also working on really training protocols that follow up on these particular issues, but I think they speak more to the... the call probably about five or six years ago from this board regarding a resolution to ensure that our staff were trained with the latest information about our students' LGBTQ. And these mandated employee trainings, again, we have the staff coming in on board to do this, and I think having our own staff trained and being able to put it into our local context is important. We've done the trainings. And you'll see the topics there. We've done the trainings at two schools, Dave Partola and Logan Elementary. We have done it for our interior staff for placement and appeal in SARB and race-human relations. But we are looking at rolling out this with our

083new staff members that have come on board to make sure that we can cover all of our clusters and our district offices by spring 2017. Dr. Moore, I know I gave you a one minute time limit for each slide, so I know you're going quickly because I told you how much time I would let you have. Go back to the policy page because I think you might have skipped one really important one. This doesn't count. This doesn't count. This is my fault if you go over. The policies and procedures, you know, we talked about policies and procedures and... All of that sounds like a lot of bureaucratic things, but it's actually something that we, as a collective, should be very proud of. Work doesn't get done just with policies and procedures, but these are very

084important. And Administrative Procedure 0114, the non-discrimination of transgender students, was included also in that mandated training for each of our employees. To have that policy be in place was incredibly important in what it means for our transgender students in this district, that every single employee, when they... Sorry, every single, the transgender form is in every single enrollment packet when our students enroll so that we can then have our policies be implemented in a way that when students enroll, they're... Our student information system has the appropriate level of confidentiality and privacy so our students are able to have safe, inclusive spaces. These are policies that back up belief systems by this superintendent and by this board. And all of these policies are available on our website and we expect them to be models for other districts

085that want to tackle these issues. They're complicated, there's legal issues. We've tackled them, we've put them in place. The laws are behind us, now the policies are backing them up. So the transgender one, I think you want to... quickly and it's one that other districts might need to learn how to do and it took some internal work to get that done so you can share award wasn't putting a time limit but now you get it thank you thank you and we also have a number of additional employee trainings that that we have offered not only through our district but through the county healthy relationships for LGBT youth and allies Ground Spark Straight Laced, which is a training we've worked with the GSA network on. And then there's the GLSEN training at the county. Approximately 100

086employees have been attending these trainings over the last couple of years, specifically since we've had the grant from the CDC to work with our sexual health education program to do these trainings. We also are in the implementation phase for our GLSEN. Can I just ask, so approximately how many staff of San Diego Unified have gone through some form of training? I would approximate that at about 200 staff, maybe a little more with our internal staff. And then when we get to our Out for Safe Schools badges, it's a little bit more, but in terms of some of the specific training around how to create and sustain inclusive and safe environments, about 200 staff. And the number of staff upon completion by your 2017 rollout, your estimate about how many would be done by then? We're

087looking at 17,000. 17,000 staff. How many staff we have. I'm sorry. 100%. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So we have a school climate survey that we have implemented in two of our sites and we're getting some pilot data on. Taft Middle School and Hoover High School have worked with this survey. This survey is extraordinarily important to this work so that we can get an indicator of where our students... and others are seeing some needs at our school sites. And so we're proud to really be working on this implementation piece and we look forward to having data very shortly, certainly from our implementation sites, but from the entire, all of our secondary schools this year, 2016, from our secondary schools as we implement the survey across the board. Dr. Morwit, has there been any principal that

088has refused to implement this survey? No, there has not been any principal that has refused. Okay, and the timetable, you have the results from TAFT, and I'm expecting an interim report from TAFT and from Hoover by February 23rd? Yes. Okay, and when can I expect a full report of all of the surveys? We are looking at a full report by June. Of all the surveys? Yes, of all the surveys implemented. We intend to have surveys out and come back by spring break. I'd like to have an interim report to the board by March 22nd. Okay. And then we will have the data analysis, I think, is what I was referring to as opposed to just the implementation. It's the analyzing the data. That's going to just take a bit of work to ensure that what

089we're presenting is not just raw data, but data that's been analyzed. And now I'd like to have Dr. Wendy Rank-Burr speak on her work with our curriculum group in implementing the Fair Education Act. Thank you. And so I'll be turning on my microphone with the help of Dr. Moore. Thank you. I'll be updating everyone on the FAIR Act curriculum meetings that we've been having and the progress to date. And so I want to start with what we aspire to as a group. One way to get this work done in a much faster manner is to buy curriculum out of a box and plop it down and mandate it. But that's not what this group aspires to. We are a collective of district employees and community members, and we want to create a curriculum that is

090using and focused on a transformational approach. And so that very nature of the kind of curriculum that we're trying to build. It's going to take us a little more time. But I do want to let you know we have made some great strides. We read together the Making It Fair framework, and we have agreed that that's going to be our foundational document that was produced by the Committee on LGBT History and actually already marries together the Common Core curriculum. we also agreed to follow those guidelines and focus with our unit development in grades two four five eight and eleven and we hope to have those units in place for the next for the coming school year the unit writing will actually take place during the summer we're tasking that work out at our next meeting

091which is march the 10th And at each meeting we have homework for the group and we're currently collecting additional authors and titles and resources to share and post for our teachers because that is what we have right now is resources posted up online. But we do want to create a curriculum that... does incorporate the requirements of the fair act but also infuses within that our local our local history and also making use of some of the resources within our community i think that was my one minute thank you i wanted to i wanted to bring to light some of the advocacy efforts that have been going on in our schools I think Trustee Breiser mentioned at an earlier board meeting the Athlete Ally event that took place in November at Mira Mesa High School. It

092was a fantastic event coordinated by the Mira Mesa Town Council and the administration of Mira Mesa High School as well as our secondary school's office, health athletics department. And the guest speaker was Taylor Hudson. He addressed the entire school. some prominent folks including County Supervisor Dave Roberts and officials from the Mayor's Office, our Board President Dr. McQuarrie and our Superintendent all signed a pledge that really indicates that we all take an active role and responsibility in ensuring that all of our areas, specifically this was about athletics and our locker rooms and our PE areas, but all of our areas and our campuses have to be safe and inclusive. It was a very, very powerful event and I was also one of the speakers that talked to the athletes about their voice and role in this

093work and it was a very, very great event to see. And I had to cut Dr. Moore off. There was a five minute and 27 second video that he wanted to show but I won't let him show it. That shows this event. But just, I will read the pledge that everybody said. This is one of our largest high schools. full participation of every student and you have student advocates there and all of the community leaders from the mayor's offices, county supervisor's office to our own president and myself signing the pledge. I pledge to lead my athletic community to respect and welcome all persons regardless of their perceived or actual sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Beginning right now, I will do my part to promote the best of athletics by making all players feel

094respected on and off the field. That was a... that we all publicly signed and committed to. Yeah, and I encourage you to watch the video. We're looking for other high schools that we can implement and host this or similar events. I'd like to also add the ally pledge that we took at Mira Mesa. That's the second time we did that. We did it in the spring of the year before at Padre Stadium with the trustee advisor and myself, a number of other people, and 50, 60 students. And the entire team, and I think it was the first time that a large school district with a professional team took the Allied Pledge. Yes. Yeah, that was amazing. The San Diego Padres was the first professional team in the United States of America to take the Athlete

095Allies Pledge. With Bud Black and all the folks there, the teams, everybody in the stands stood up and took the pledge together. Trevor Hoffman was there to support also. Thank you. Again, some other advocacy efforts on October 17th. We had a board resolution celebrating and recognizing LGBTQ History Month. There was a corresponding exhibit that we captured via video as well as some still photographs. We're going to be putting that together to ensure that we have that in posterity. But we also had some really wonderful students, including Michaela Card from Hoover High School, Jamila Berenger from Hoover High School, Alex Garcia from Lincoln High School, and Alexandria Galvan from University City High School address the board and really speak very candidly and honestly. and openly about the work that they're doing at their schools as well

096as the ongoing advocacy efforts. And I know certainly the folks from Hoover High School are here and I also saw Alexandria here as well. So it's very important. We're youth advocacy, so to have that student voice with us is extraordinarily important. I'd like now to turn it to Rachel Miller, again, a project resource teacher from Sexual Health and Education Program, who has really worked very diligently to get one of our efforts, the Out for Safe Schools badges up and going. Rachel? Hello everybody, Rachel Miller from the district sexual health education program which is funded solely by a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Division of Adolescent School Health. We are funded to implement the district-wide comprehensive sex education in the classrooms as well as facilitate student access to sexual health services.

097implement important health surveillance such as the Youth Risk Behavior Survey which gives us very important health information about our students and to foster safe and supportive environments for our LGBTQ youth. So our program has collaborated very closely with the Office of Youth Advocacy. We're very grateful for the creation of this office. GSA Network, who we're partnered with through our grant, and other key district stakeholders and community members to implement and fund many of these supportive programs, such as the Out for Safe Schools badge program, the online bullying reporting forum. GroundSpark Straight Lace Safe and Inclusive Campus Training for teachers and counselors and other staff members. GSA Networks LGBTQ Inclusive Curriculum Training for Teachers. And the LGBTQ Youth and Allies Healthy Relationship Workshops, mainly for teachers and counselors. It's a sexual health education program intended more

098focused on LGBTQ youth. And just letting everyone know we are extremely proud to be able to work with these stakeholders and create these safe and supportive programs for our students and staff. Thank you. And specifically our Out for Safe Schools badges, I mean, I can't, in your board packet is the list of schools, almost every school has participated with these badges where folks can clearly identify themselves as people to come to for resources and support. And each time we've deployed the badges, it was with a brief training protocol about what wearing the badge means. In fact, as I mentioned, as I bring up my next speaker, we're gonna have a chance to hear how one high school, Hoover High School, is using the GSA in its effort to deploy the Out for Safe Schools badges.

099So Mick, if you could come forward. Thank you for the training you did. I attended it. I was trained. I was deputized. I was then also able to pass badges to our sitting board members and to certify that they are also trained and available to assist. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, President McQuarrie, for actually taking the LGBT training for the Out for Safe Schools badge. And congratulations, McRaven. The first... full-time staff person in San Diego Unified history to be solely dedicated for LGBT students. Thank you, sir. So, Dr. Moore is going to cringe when I say this, but the only way I could actually make it okay for me to sit up here was to pretend that this was the deck of the Starship Enterprise. And at first, at first I thought that if

100I sat back there, I was just going to be like the Chekhov, which was sort of a bummer. But do you know that when he moved Rachel Miller up here, I was like, well, wait, that means I get to sit here, and that means I'm in the Sulu position, which was George Takai, right? We just want to know if you're wearing green socks. Yeah, I didn't know. I'm running out of time. Okay, so... I don't think people make the connection. Well, I think the important people make the connection. Okay. Right? Yeah? Comic-Con people, raise your hands. All right. All right. Okay, here we go. So, in seriousness, we talked... We talked about collecting data. The survey is an official means of doing that in a quantitative way, partly qualitative. But in addition to that, in

101my new role as the project resource teacher for youth advocacy, I also wanted to focus on some other data sets that would help inform my work as we move forward. on behalf of the LGBT plus students in San Diego Unified. So part of that entails a personal and routine contact with the GSAs themselves. And to qualify that, it's not just the GSAs that I want to remain in contact, but in many ways they represent a conduit of communication with the LGBT, the larger LGBT student populations. I think a lot of people understand that for every one person that actually attends a meeting, there are a considerable number of LGBT students that do not, that don't feel empowered to do that. I want to maintain contact with them. And in the last couple of weeks, I

102just started a couple weeks ago, but in the last couple weeks I've had a chance to visit a number of the GSAs. And in so doing, I met up with the Hoover GSA. In terms of staying in contact with them, it's not just sort of like making an appearance, but I really do want to know about the needs and the concerns and the interests of LGBT students. It's important for me to be able to inform my work as I go forward. Then there are various reasons for GSAs to exist. One of those reasons though is around advocacy itself. It's around becoming the agitators of the site so they can communicate their ideas. And it's important that the LGBT students have a voice. and that they have visibility on behalf of themselves and so that they

103are, they have a presence at the site for so long they've been ignored. So it's time to boost that visibility. So tonight what I'd like to do is invite some students and the advisor up from Hoover High School and I'd like to have them come to the lectern. The GSA advisor and the students from high school created an out badge training so the out badge that people have been trained around the district is not just going to be something that you wear around your neck but it actually has some meaning And we want to make sure that the urgency of the message around safety and inclusion for LGBT students is a major priority for all stakeholders. And I'm going to have Mr. Hugh, Mr. Michael Hugh is the advisor at Hoover High School, and I'm

104going to have him introduce the students. So with no further ado. Thank you. My name is Michael Yu. I'm the advisor for the GSA at Hoover High School. We came to the Out for Safe Schools presentation. My colleagues and I believe that the GSA, it would be more powerful for the GSA to create and run a workshop for our staff at our school. And it's an interactive presentation with information slides and handouts. With me tonight is the members of the GSA, but the president and the vice president. Hello, my name is Jamila Bellinger and I'm back. And I'm the vice president of GSA at Hoover High. So the entire workshop is student led. And first Mr. Hugh will give a short presentation on what Alpha Safe Schools is. And then I will give a presentation

105that I made with the LGBT terms, the statistics of LGBTQIA plus youth. the definition of what an ally truly is. And lastly, the legal mandate, which basically requires the educators to be supportive of the LGBTQIA community. Secondly, we'll have... Three scenarios set up where the participants, which are the teachers and the staff, will come up and act out the scenarios in each and every one of them, and then answer questions while in the crowd so it's more interactive that way, and we can give feedback so they know how to properly assess the situation if it actually happened. Lastly, when the workshop is coming to a close, those who will commit to wearing a badge will stand to recite the pledge for Out for Safe Schools. So they hear, not only just see and just sign

106it and get a badge, they hear what they're pledging to. They know how much of a commitment it is to be an ally and just not trying to wear the badge as an accessory or try to look cool. It is a real commitment, and they need to realize that. And now to introduce the president. Hello, my name is Fernanda Rodriguez, and I am the president of Hoover's Gay Straight Alliance Club. So Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, which is also known as GLESEN, the Trevor Project, San Diego Pride, the San Diego Center, the Gay Straight Alliance, which is also known as GSA, the... Human Rights Campaign and other organizations are in support of LGBT plus students and the Out for Safe School program. You can find more information about these programs online and find more resources.

107You can also, like I'm seeing right now, these organizations are located on the back of the Out for Safe School badge. At this time, we recognize that a lot of people do not feel comfortable to wear the badge. People do not want to wear the badge we are not forcing them to. We're looking for people who can be an ally, who can be an advocate for LGBTQ plus students and for the Out for Safe School program. And also, if someone is going to be willing to wearing this badge, that means that they're up for the challenge and will be an honor being an ally. Thank you, San Diego Unified School District for giving us the opportunity to give this presentation to everyone today. I hope everybody... has heeded our message and acts accordingly. Thank you

108and good night. I want to thank Michael and the students of Hoover High School and then Mick again for helping us put that together. Again, youth advocacy is really all about creating opportunities for our youth to have voice in the work that we do. It's very important that folks know that the advisory committee, the LGBTQ plus advisory committee will be meeting three times this year, February 17th, next week, April 20th and June 15th. All of our meetings are here in the Ed Center at four o'clock in room 22226. And lastly, on behalf of our staff and youth advocacy and certainly the folks that are dedicated to this work, we are, as I mentioned before, humbled and honored to be part of this work and to give this update. And we look forward to all of

109the important work and to continuing to do these updates so that we can have safe and inclusive environments for all of our students to thrive. Thank you. Dr. Moore, I appreciate what you put together in terms of an update, and I'll be the first to say that there's... work has been accomplished and there's much more left to do. As we commit to our programs, our actions, and our services, the dedicated staff members, looking at what we're doing for our training, taking that to scale so we can have 100% of our staff, all 17,000 employees have the surveys, give us real data so that we can track and monitor. I'm committed, as we did in our last year's LCAP, to continue in the LCAP coming up for 16-17. I know I'm working closely with you and

110now that your team is in place. what will to make sure that when I bring forward a budget to this board for final adoption that we'll continue to see a financial commitment in our LCAP as we have in the past and going forward and hearing from you and your leadership on what you need to actually make sure we're implementing and taking to full scale the efforts that we see in place so far. Thank you. We have... I have 10 submissions for public comment, but one person may not be here. So this is that opportunity for you to speak about this important topic. I'll take them in order of submission. Early submissions for Valerie. We understand she's not here. Going to nine with nine speakers for 20 minutes. We have two minutes apiece. So it'll be

111Celeste, Terry, and... Joshua, Jesse, Cyber, Jeff Lawyer, Cynthia Burton, Raul Rhodes, Patrick Ambrosio, and Beth Kronsberger. So in that order, please, we have Celeste and Terry first, followed by Joshua and Jesse. I just see the Hoover students leaving, and I wanted to say thank you very much. I didn't realize they were walking out. I want to thank you for your advocacy, for your courage, and for your vision and commitment to help us do this work together. You guys are awesome. Thank you. So I should have two minutes. Thank you. Good evening, school board members and Superintendent Cindy Martin. My name is Celeste Papagazaki, president for San Diego Unified Council, PTAs. I'm here to express the council's support on the district's efforts to address the needs of the LGBTQ plus students. As you know, PTA has

112a long history of advocating for the overall health and well-being of all children. PTA also has a long history of inclusivity, respect, and diversity. In May of 2015, the delegates of the California State PTA Convention approved a resolution titled LGBTQ Plus Inclusiveness in Health Education California, of which I can provide a copy of. I would like to point out the specific call to action that PTAs are urged to, PTAs are asked to urge local education agencies to provide LGBTQ plus inclusive age appropriate medically accurate curriculum material and campus resources. I would also like to point out that the California State PTA has always been in favor of the AB 1266 law, which is the pupil's right of sex-suggested school programs and activities. Ultimately, all children have the right to feel safe in their educational environment,

113and PTA does support efforts to such as one presented tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Terry. Good evening, I'm Terry Verano with PFLAG San Diego County. It is a national organization that works to support, educate, and advocate for students and families in the LGBTQ community. PFLAG San Diego County, as well as many members of our community, have been quite frustrated by the district's inability to... determine the needs of LGBTQ students in our district. The things I'm hearing tonight are very gratifying. We're very grateful for that, but I'm also hearing that the school climate survey, which was brought to the Safe Schools Task Force, we were told that that would probably be rolled out at the beginning of the school year, and it sounds like we're not going to have any data in order to support the

114students who are going through the district this year. They're going to be graduating just like the other five classes who... who were students during the organization of the Safe Schools Task Force. So we again want to impress upon the district how important these programs are. The mandatory training for all staff members is critical. We know that the movement comes from the top down and we want to make sure that our students are being protected. And thank you for all the information you shared tonight. Thank you. So going to the late submissions. Joshua? Good evening. I'm here on behalf of the Trevor Project, the leading national organization providing crisis intervention services and suicide prevention resources for queer youth. I speak tonight on behalf of the countless youth sitting home, silent. wondering if or how they will

115come out to their family and friends. As a volunteer crisis counselor, I hear from young people every week all across the country who are thinking about suicide, sharing how unsupportive it feels to be different in their school. The causes of suicide are complicated, but we know that over 41% of trans people have reported attempted suicide, and LGBTQ youth are four times as likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers. This is happening in our country right now, and we must take steps to protect these youth and help save lives. In our recent Youth in Power essay contest, a young San Diego writer shared, quote, I realized my school was lacking its inclusivity of transgender identities, and they didn't know how to respond to issues such as body dysphoria. bullying by staff and students, and abusive

116relationships within the greater queer community. We applaud efforts made here tonight to move the district forward, but we stand knowing that there is so much more work to do, and we cannot continue to be stuck within the bounds of bureaucracy while our youth appear to be aimlessly wandering down our hallways. We must find safe spaces for them. assess the climate of our schools and establish annual goals for safety and inclusivity, continue to implement comprehensive LGBTQ training, educate our students and staff how to report bullying and the resources available, and ensure that every one of our youth find hope for the future. This is our call to action here tonight. Our community is demanding more, and our youth deserve better. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Joshua. Jazzy? Cyber, followed by Jeff, then by Cynthia.

117My name is Jezebel Sieber and I'm 13. The essay I'm about to read was written by a 14-year-old transgender freshman who is currently enrolled in a San Diego Unified School District high school. They wanted to be here today to read it for themselves, but ultimately didn't feel safe to do so. The school feels like a battlefield just before the first shot is fired. Every day I walk past the restrooms in the 100 building. Every day I have to change in the wrong locker room. Every day I feel the stares on my back and often hear whispers. Walking to fourth period PE every day starts a racing in my chest and a sickness in my stomach. The boys' locker room is a right turn. The girls' is to the left. My thoughts, taking up the voices

118of a harsh commander, weigh the options each time I approach. To the left, there are the piercing eyes of the girls. How many would ask about me behind my back? How many would question me up front? To the right, there is no way to expect what could happen. Would they beat me up? Kick me out? Both? We could turn back and go to the counselor. We could turn back and go to the nurse. No, we have to change in the girls' locker room. That's what we do every day, and that's what everyone wants you to do. So I take the left turn, and I walk down the small flight of stairs, and I walk to my locker, and I hate every moment of it. The school offers help, but it feels cold and scripted. The

119nurse has pulled me out of class to ask me about my gender. I should have been grateful, but I was scared and felt pressured. I nodded at everything she said and tried to listen, but I just wanted to go back to class. Go back to the class containing the teacher that, for a while, I believe have ruined my life. At open house, he asked my mother what my gender was. He questioned her and told her things that were none of his business. I want to think positive, but I find it hard to forgive him. Because of him, my mother will never look at me the same way again. I have no support coming from my friends. At least, I once thought they were my friends. I have no support from home. School offers help, but

120I find it hard to reach out. When I look to myself as a last resort, I find no confidence. Thank you. Finished. Thank you very much. Excellent testimony. Jeff. Hi, my name is Jeff Lawyer, and I've recently moved down to San Diego from Olympia, Washington, where you don't sit in shirt sleeves in the middle of February, so it's great to be here. Number one, it's such an amazing thing to be here tonight. I've been active in this issue for many years, and to hear this kind of action taking place within the school board is just amazingly heartening. Thank you for all your work, and please continue it. I'm here tonight mostly to introduce you to a program that we started in Olympia several years ago to address this exact issue. It's called the Pizzaclatch, P-I-Z-Z-A-K-L-A-T-C-H,

121and that's what happens when you form a group with a Jewish friend. Anyway, we're on the web, so you can look us up there. But I wanted to give you a brief overview and offer my help in whatever way I can to help maybe start a similar program here in the San Diego area, if you like. We started many years ago because we had several issues, several instances of suicide among trans and LGBTQ youth. Anyway, the whole idea is that you offer free pizza and facilitated support during the school lunch hour. And the critical thing that this does is allow students who are not out to their parents to have a safe place to get support during the school time. What we found was, unfortunately in our experience, if you offer after school support, it

122often forces students to become out to their parents at the risk of literally physical abuse. And so you offer facilitated support during the school lunch period by trained facilitators, and it's been amazingly successful in the Olympia area. We started at two schools. We're now serving 11 schools in that area, and we get a call about, once a week for another school that wants a pizza clutch within their schools, including middle schools. Anyway, you have my contact information. I'm here to help in any way I can. Thank you. Thank you. Cynthia, followed by Paul. I'm sorry. No. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We have Cynthia, followed by Paul. Hi, Cynthia. Hi. My name's Cynthia Burton. I'm here to give the parents' point of view of a transgender student, my transgender student. They're a senior at Alters

123Charter School right now, and they are non-binary, which means they don't identify as male or female. So when there are restrooms, for instance, that are marked just male or female, single restrooms, they are excluded. So the AB 1266 does not help this category of people. feel included whatsoever the problem is still there and they are not protected by this law i'm proud of my transgender student and i love them i don't believe transgender students ask for very much my my child tried to form an lgbt club in their one charter school that they were in and they were bullied and harassed by the administration. It would have been different had there been training. They were not allowed to have a meeting room, they were not allowed to have posters, and they were continually brought into

124private meetings and harassed. They left the school because they didn't feel safe anymore or supported. And the ACLU had to intervene twice in the school just to get something that is their legal right to have, which is an LGBT club. Now my child is a new charter school altus. And they say to me that they are called by the name, their chosen name, the name they want people to call them. It makes them feel good, like going to school. But they say that there are trans kids that that's not happening to, even when the kids have made the request and are out. And so the problem goes on for a lot of kids. Thank you. Thank you, Cynthia. Followed by Patrick. Paul. Paul Rhodes? Yes. You're next. Thank you. Sorry, I'm short. My name is

125Paul Rhodes. I'm a community member. I am also a trans man who had to deal with a lot of stuff where I went to high school. Unfortunately, I didn't go to high school in California. However, it's important to know how much it affects a trans student. AB 1266 is great, but like someone just before me said, it doesn't help all trans kids. I know that in our community last year we lost a lot of trans teenagers to suicide and... It's something that is in dire need. And I appreciate all the hard work that everyone has done on the council or the board or whatever. Sorry, I'm a little nervous about talking. But it can't be five to ten days. It has to be as immediate as possible. We don't want to see any more teenagers

126commit suicide or die in our community or anywhere. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Patrick. Good evening and thank you, Superintendent, President, Mr. President, and members of the board. My name is Patrick Ambrosio. I have been recently appointed to the school board on behalf of its finance and audit committee, and I thank the members that voted for me to support that decision. But I'm also here to speak on behalf as I also am a representative of the LGBT community here in San Diego as I sit as a member of its Leadership Council Committee, which is also known as its CLC. I'm hoping that in the process of sitting on the Audit Review Board, I will have the opportunity to also be trained to gain my out for the Safe School badge as well. And

127I hope that that's something that is a process that goes to other people that volunteer as a process for the San Diego school boards and also I want to applaud the efforts of Mick Rabin as being a process of also the LGBT community, but also hoping to see the funding that is possible that we do find through our committee to expand that type of program and to support more training for both people that are coming on board and continuing training as for the process that GLSEN offers as a base standard school climate survey. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Beth. So we have Beth and... Josie, we saw Cynthia. Beth? Hi. Very briefly, I'm a lawyer, educator, community member, mom of three, and a lifelong member of the LGBT community. The old

128lady lesbian, if you will. I had the occasion. I'm not here to bang on you. I'm usually in that capacity. So this is a little strange, but I want to... come to you as I had the occasion last week to convene a closed-door roundtable on behalf of the American Bar Association on anti-LGBTQ plus bullying. And we know the connection between LGBTQ bullying and school push-out to homelessness, entry into the juvenile justice system. We also know that young women of color who are gender non-conforming are the quickest largest growing population of the juvenile justice system right now. So I want to also share that after bringing together community activists, Dr. Jacobs, Fernando, Superintendent Martin, advocates, lawyers, etc., the Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, the American Bar Association, was shocked. at all that was being

129done to coordinate and collaborate efforts here in San Diego. I know there is much to be done. And given that you have 200 trained and 17,000 total, I think you got a lot to do by 2017. I want to say thank you for the leadership that you have taken, all the efforts that you've made, and I think the kids' lives are going to be a bit better perhaps than they were last semester, better than they were last year, better than they were 10 years ago. So thank you to all board members and the advocate community as well as Superintendent Martin. Thank you, Beth. So that completes reports from the staff and public comments. Do we have comments from the board? Trustee? Well, first of all, I just want to thank my friends and colleagues, Trustee

130Kevin Beiser for your leadership in getting us to this point. And we know how far we have to go, but we know how long it's taken, much too long to get to this point. And we'd only be here tonight because of your, we're only here because of your leadership. So I want to thank you for that. And I want to thank Superintendent Martin as well for your leadership in jumping in. getting us again to this point. A lot of progress. We're a lot further along than we were the last time we took this issue up in public session. The two things that stand out to me in terms of sense of urgency are, as we talked about, the five to ten days to respond seems unworkable. And whatever we need to do to get to

131that immediate response, that's the work in front of us. And then, of course, getting us from 200 staff to 17,000 staff in a couple years seems daunting. I appreciate the goal, and I hope that we approach this with the seriousness that we need to get there. So those two issues in terms of sense of urgency, I think, get called out. Thank you. I want to just respond to that. The five to 10 days is what's required to be able to close the loop. There's immediate action that's expected when the school principal gets the alert. I've asked Dr. Moore to have an alert put through his office when the email comes in to his office. He has an assistant that can alert him so that within 30 minutes there can be, when there's a 911, first

132of all, the online reporting form does say if you are having an emergency, call 911 because we want to make sure they know there's other options. but we also want an immediate response for students that are saying something that does not. We can't wait five days to get an answer to you. So depending on, you know, one of the reports that came in today, the first one that came in was a student at a school said, I'm in eighth grade. First of all, we wanted this to be anonymous reporting. This was important to the committee that there was a way to do anonymous reporting. So the first one we got today was anonymous report. I'm in eighth grade and I'm being pushed on the lunch court. So the principal knows there's an eighth graders being

133pushed. They didn't say anything related to LGBTQ issues. It was just an eighth grader being pushed. So that's not something that is 911. We're not assuming that there's an attempt for suicide of that student at that moment, but there's still follow-up. The fact that it was anonymous, they chose anonymity and we wanted to make that. present, the five to ten days is to close the loop. So we are taking these reports as they come in this week. I'm monitoring them. I'm being notified this week as they come in so that I can see what types of reports come in, where do they come from, what percent are anonymous. Are we able to follow up so we can tighten up the procedure? But duly noted that five to ten days is absolutely unacceptable for somebody who's

134contemplating suicide or something of that series of a nature. And then in terms of the training, the plan for the training, I think better metrics to be able to record that training. The 200 that Dr. Moore recorded today, I want to see further updates on that. Those need to be reported to me so I can monitor that myself. Any other comments? Yes. Trustee Evans? Yes. This obviously is a very big issue, and I appreciate the fact what the staff is doing. We're getting a lot of things started, but at the same time, as far as we go, we realize there's really still a very long way to go. And I know as a psychologist, talking to individuals, students, and adults who have experienced the effects of bullying, that it's a very deep scar. And I

135just want to express appreciation to the students who spoke here today because we really need to hear more of the student stories. This is really what it's about. We can have policies and procedures, and we need to do all of this. All these things are important for the adults to do, but I think we've even seen in the last few years when we started mounting some anti-bullying efforts and safe schools can be started talking about it. In some schools, the students moved ahead and started doing it, and there's nothing more powerful than the peer-to-peer. interaction. So that's the most important I think, but we as adults really need to be supportive of that. So thanks for all you're doing. And students, some of them that spoke left and I was saying goodbye, but I want

136to look the students straight in the eye wherever you are in the audience. I know the ones that just sat down with you over there. Where did they go? The ones that read the essays. Well, so express to them or maybe they can go back. My message is that we are not, as a system, I as a superintendent, this board, we will not let you go to school and be mistreated. You have our firm commitment from the top of this leadership all the way through this youth advocacy office and each one of our school sites. We will not allow you to go to our schools and be mistreated and you have that firm commitment from us. And I'm sorry the students that had the courage to speak today. When we talk about our four learning

137cycles and student voice and agency and the ability to speak with passion and conviction for yourself and for your community to stand up. and use this microphone and talk for yourself and for all of the students in our district. I want to thank them for their courage and for being models for our community about how to use voice and agency in really powerful ways. And your stories matter to us and they help us become a better system. Thank you for your remarks, Superintendent Cindy Martin, and thank you for your dedicated passion to protect all of our students. I want to thank Vernon Moore and Mick Rabin. I want to thank Wendy for your work and what you've brought to our school district. I'm so thankful we stole you away. You are an incredible addition to

138our Department of Teaching and Learning curriculum, especially LGBT-inclusive curriculum for our children. I want to congratulate Sophia once again for being our program manager for LGBTQ students and advocacy. Look forward to having you up here next time. Thank you to Rachel Miller and your work on preventing the spread of STDs and having sex education be relevant today. and have it be pertinent to all children that are receiving the message in those classrooms. And I look forward to the day when we can bring forward to this board action soon on further efforts to prevent the spread of STDs in our schools because San Diego County Health Department has some alarming statistics on the spread of STDs amongst our teenagers. And I look forward to that coming forward in the next month or two, what we're working

139on. A couple of questions. You know, these programs and things and the staff are phenomenal and very important. But Superintendent Martin, I was just wondering about the budget for Vernon's office. Is there going to be a line item in the budget coming forward for next year so that Vernon and Sophia and Mick have the resources? to then embark upon this, you know, these projects. Absolutely. That's something that I mentioned earlier with our continued commitment in our past LCAPs and when we bring forward the final budget for adoption, we'll continue that financial commitment. Okay. Thank you. And I'm glad that you brought up the LCAPs. For the folks in the audience and those listening at home and my fellow trustees, you probably already heard, there was just a report came out yesterday or this morning that

140There was a survey of all the large urban school districts in the state of California and San Diego Unified is the only school district in the state that actually specifically calls out LGBTQ student services needs, goals in our local control accountability plan or LCAP. And I would like to say thank you to Colin Pierce at GLSEN because he came down and he looked through the LCAP And he said, nowhere in here do we specifically, specifically mention LGBTQ students. And so we looked back at that document, we amended it because it is a living document, and now we have an LCAP which in several areas, several goal targets, includes LGBT students. So the other thing I think I just wanted to mention, we saw, thank you for having a report bullying link on all the school

141websites and the district website. But I would just please implore you to move it into a more prominent location. Because even to see the report bullying link, you had to scroll down to the bottom of the page. And I think that that would be really helpful. Also, I encourage people to push out that link on social media. Tweet it. Facebook it. Make sure all the GSAs push that link out also so students don't have to go to a website. if they're being bullied to try to find the reporting link. I think that there's lots of ways to make sure that's accessible for students that feel the need to help their schools improve. The second thing to kind of piggyback that is we've talked about this and I believe Cindy Martin, you said that there was

142even funding for posters in every classroom in the school district about how to report bullying. Yes, we have a prototype of that poster. And what I'll be asking Vernon and his office to do is to audit. Some schools have posters already, some do not. But we have a template that they can order if they don't already have one. Good. And then, like Trustee Evans had mentioned, let's hear from the students in the schools. Maybe they have some ideas how to make that poster more effective for all children so that in every classroom there is a poster on how to report bullying in their school. And then I think Trustee Breyer mentioned the response time. I have no doubt that when a principal gets that bullying report form, they're going to try to act on it

143right away to get it cleared off of their to-do list or have an assistant principal in charge of making sure that that's followed up depending upon their workload. I think that's important. The other question that I had is about the survey. I know that that survey was originally going to go out to all middle and high school students and staff and then that was pushed back and then that was pushed back and I'm thrilled that it's actually gone out to some pilot schools and I look forward to it going district wide. Who's going to be administering that survey? How's that survey going to go out to staff and students? So it's an online platform that we're using Google Docs to push out. Our IT department was very instrumental in really working with us to get

144it up and available so that we can monitor it. It's on a secure server, so the results and everything will be confidential and secure for us. And so the individual school sites... administrators will select a classroom, most likely an English classroom or a classroom that all the students have access to devices and they'll have a chance to take that survey online through our Google Docs portal that's secure on our district. Okay. So that might be a little bit challenging, right? Do students have the ability to just go on their phone and take the survey? No, they don't have that ability because that was one of the concerns that we had in terms of ensuring that we had fidelity and reliable data coming from the survey is to ensure that it was taken through a district

145server portal. Okay, and then I have other questions about the curriculum and stuff like that. I know that Wendy's been working on it and a lot of folks have been working on it for... couple of several years. You know and I know at this level at the board level it's you know we don't want to really get into the woods but I think maybe in the future when Sophia has her chance to get involved a little bit more I think I would be really interested to kind of see like a little you know overview of what would be a lesson that has been taught in some classes. I would be really curious to see. I think that would be fascinating for the board and to help inform the public in transparency on what kinds of

146L2PT lessons or curriculum are in our classrooms in San Diego Public Schools. So once again, I just want to say thank you. I know that we still have a lot of work to do. But I am thrilled at how much has been done, that the anti-bullying reporting form was turned on yesterday, and that several other things have happened. I know it's a lot of work, but I want to thank you, Vernon, very much. And Mick and everybody on the staff, you guys are doing an amazing job, and I look forward to future updates on how things are continuing to be implemented. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I just want to report a story, an experience that I had just recently visiting one of our schools. And while I was there touring the campus, I had

147an opportunity to participate in a conversation with the school principal and a parent who lived outside of our school district who were looking at schools within our school district. And she had her daughter with her and looking for 11th grade placement. And in the conversation, it was mentioned that we do not... condone bullying in any way in our schools. and that the student spoke up and said, I'm so happy to hear that. That became a very important factor, will become a very important factor of which school they select and it's someone from outside of our school district choosing to attend school in our district where we can have safe campuses for all children at all times. So I want to thank, I want to share that story. The other question was, where do we stand

148in reference to other school districts in approaching this important topic and we did have that. question and answer. So we're the only school district in the state of California that at least acknowledged this issue and have included it in the LCAP. The LCAP is what schools are all about. It's the budget, it's where you put your money, it's where you put your values. Evidently we're the only school district in the state of California that have put money, put our values in our children and in this issue. So commend you for doing that and we're moving down the right path and as we said earlier, we have a long way to go. but we're further along than a whole lot of other people and they'll be looking to us for leadership on this issue thank you

149dr mike that was an information item thank you excellent report moving on to the team and to all of our community advocates thank you for being here tonight president mccurry can we have a quick two minute recess yes let's take a two minute recess thank you Here, right? Yeah. So we will be reconvening the meeting. We've just finished item E1, which is information. We're now moving to D3. superintendent information report to be followed by board information report so superintendent Martin I'm in an interest of time I'm going to skip my information report that last report was a big information report so I'll defer to our board information reports this evening okay d4 board information reports I think I just gave my Just very quickly, I wanted to thank our food services department and Gary Patel.

150I went to a community celebration a little bit ago in City Heights, Mid-City Community Action Network, that's been working with our district to allow for halal food options in the schools. You can't believe how excited the community there was. There was well over 100 people at the celebration, thanking our district, people talking about people who actually, in many cases, are immigrants to our country, feeling empowered by, and students feeling empowered by their ability to advocate and make positive change. So again, great work by our food services department. I also want to acknowledge food services. I was at a fair elementary, attended a food circus where students were learning how to eat healthy, be healthy, and it was a very entertaining event, so thank you for that. I was also with John at the Crown Point

151Elementary School. and had a chance to see the John Lennon Foundation Award presentation there where we had Crown Point Elementary, was one of hundreds of schools who submitted applications. Six in the nation were selected. That one here in California was Crown Point, and so we had our students gathering with the... music students from Pee Bee Middle School and Mission Bay High School. It was a great performance, great opportunity. In addition, I was at Pee Bee Middle School where we... We're capturing rain in rain barrels, and we're harvesting the rain there with a new project to be more sustainable. Terrific project. We're the International Baccalaureate School at PB Middle, allied and linked up with an engineer from Israel, and we worked with the... at San Diego, University of California San Diego to put together this rain

152barrels to harvest the rain incredible program. Moving on, we're at item F. I'll move item F1 and 2, board consent agenda. Moved and seconded, comments? Vote. And it is unanimous, thank you. We have G1. And G1 is an information item. It's our district English learner advisory committee, a DLAC. And we have a presentation. Yes, Lalia and Yasmin. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Okay. Good evening, everyone. As always, I'm nervous, okay? DLAC's commitment to a positive culture. DLAC officers are committed to leading... our meetings with kindness, listen to understand, learning about how to support our children, asking questions of ourselves and others, and follow the agenda. We always trying to do our best. ELSD supports for schools. Then, assigned to an individual school site, responsible to organize and facilitate ELACs, Supporter design ELDs

153instruction. Provide additional push in and pull out instructions for English learners. And now support multiple school sites by clusters. Support principals, clusters, principals to organize and facilitate ELACs. Support areas of school to provide design ELDs instructions. Provide side by side teacher support with integrated ELDs. support areas school by cluster with professional development and these charts show how ELST support schools in the past and how they currently support schools. Under these new models of ELST support, some schools receive an adequate amount of support while others do not. ELSTs must not stretch their service to multiple schools. In addition, the role of the ELSTs has expanded to include building knowledge of English learners for teachers and principals. Topics. Topics discussed at general meeting. School involvement, EL numbers are very high, as you know. Changes in ELST supports,

154common core state standards, data show ELS performance is low. How to resolve a concern at your school, contacting quality assurance office. Seal of biliteracy, high school support graduation requirements, A through G. Language other than English, L-O-T-E, which I don't know how to pronounce that. Lot, thank you. Local control and accountability plan, LCAP. And I just got a comment, if the purpose of DLAC to make a difference. To make a difference is just exist or to be in compliance. This is a concern that parents came to me and asked me and I feel very embarrassed not to answer the way that I wanted. We always try to do our best and we keep doing our best until now. Good evening, Board of Education, Superintendent. My name is Lalia Alali. I am a DLAC paramatarian. We appreciate

155this opportunity to highlight some DLAC issues and recommendations. We still have concerns about the number of school sites that don't have ELACs serving our parents. This year, far fewer schools have ELACs and far fewer schools are represented at DLAC meetings. We recommend that the district hire more ELSTs to support each area. The cluster model of ELST service is better than nothing, but our schools are nowhere near the level of ELST support they once enjoyed. There have been discussions that the district will receive more refugee students. How are we going to support them? What are we doing to prepare for these students and their families? Schools need options for the different languages to prevent miscommunication, address immediate concerns, and use for emergency situations. State law says if you have 15% of a single language group enrolled

156at a school, translation in their language must be provided. This does not help families with second language that are less represented. We believe the district should go above and beyond 15% requirements so that families of all English learners can be supported with translation services. Do schools recognize the need of second language families and students? How can the district raise awareness in our schools? We are not only a Spanish and English speaking district. The California Department of Education, CDE 2010, has defined ELD as instruction that is designed to help English learners learn and acquire English to a level of proficiency that maximizes their capacity to engage successfully in academic studies taught in English. For that, we recommend the Board of Education and our superintendent to maintain this program and ensure that schools are providing daily ELD

157while holding all the English learners students to the same high expectation outline in the Common Core State Standards. We also have some big concerns about the new Common Core state standards and whether English learners receive the academic support they deserve across all subject areas. Here are our deep concerns. Do we have a new Common Core materials for English learners? Do we have a program aligned with the Common Core state standards? Do we have the appropriate academic support for newcomers? Are we providing teacher training to improve instruction for newcomers and English learners to all proficiency levels? These things will be essential for English learners' success. At the end, I would like to close with this. Common Core asks a student to construct a practical argument and critique the reasoning of others, ask and answer questions about

158key details in a text, and participate in collective conversation about topics and texts. Students are expected to explain their thinking and build on others' talk in conversation. But what if the students don't speak English or speak little English? Common Core is a real challenge for our English learners. DLAC strongly believes that our children, as well as all the students in our district, should be held to the same high expectations outlined in the Common Core state standards. However, English learners may require additional time, supplemental funding, appropriate instructional support, and aligned assessment. as they acquire both English language proficiency and content area knowledge. English learners are a diverse group with differences in ethnic background. First language, socioeconomic status, quality of prior schooling, and levels of English language proficiency, who many of them have a first language and

159literacy knowledge and skills that boost their acquisition of language and literacy in a second language. They ultimately bring a set of talents and cultural practices and perspective that enrich our schools and society. Our district must provide the right programs and services to build on this vast reservoir of talent and provide those students who need it with additional time and appropriate instructional support by First, devoting the supplemental funding to support the English learners and higher more the well-prepared and qualified English language support teacher that have always been part of English learners' high achievement. We are asking for that to ensure that all English learners not only gain access to the Common Core but also succeed. Thank you. Thank you. I've invited Sandra Seif as our Director of the Office of Language Acquisition to provide some comments

160and some feedback tonight, specifically on the DLAC recommendations, but I want to thank the DLAC leadership. What you do and your advocacy and the way you've been running your meetings and bringing just the topics alone that you discussed at your meeting helped me to see that you're talking about the real issues that affect the students and that your core mission is to make sure our English learners have everything that they need in your leadership and your voice. passionate speech just now. Thank you for that. Allows us to do our work in the best way possible and Sandra is working in partnership with you and we want to address the specific recommendations where we are and so I know Sandra you're prepared to provide some comment this evening. Sure. Hi, Ms. Laila and Ms. Jasmine. Thank

161you for your comments. So our goal is to establish LELACs at every single site that has 21 or more English learners. Right now we currently have 115 established LELACs, and our compliance team is currently working with an additional 49. And our goal, of course, is to have and establish an active LELAC at every single site, and we will continue to work towards that. towards that goal. Currently our ELSTs, as you know, they continue to work with schools to improve tier one instruction and to help build teacher capacity because we want all teachers to be able to teach like an ELST. And as you have heard this from Superintendent Martin, she constantly says or says that often, where we want every single teacher to be able to support English learners and teach like an ELST. Also,

162we are also looking closely at our new arrival centers. We understand that we're getting an influx of refugee students and students new to the United States. And so we are looking to see how we can expand our resources in very innovative ways. And we're looking at the possibility of partnering with a local community college so that students can acquire a high school diploma and have access to college courses as well. And that's just one way that we're looking at the new arrival centers to be able to expand that support to more students. in our district. And Sandra, you were just speaking about the first three recommendations about our ELEX and where we are with that implementation and our ELST systemic approach and the commitment to increasing new arrival centers and some really innovative partnerships that

163we are just in the beginning stages of looking at. And the other two recommendations that were brought forward tonight is to continue to ensure that translation services are available to all families. So I just wanted to give the board an update on that. In the time that I've started, well, when I first started, our translation department has had four languages or had the following languages for about the past four years. We started with one Vietnamese translator, three Spanish, three full-time Spanish translator interpreters, one part-time, and one part-time Cambodian. Since I've started, we've added one Vietnamese. Well, you have taken the action to do that and it came out of the work of the DLAC advocating for that and some of the design thinking work in Crawford. We added one full-time Vietnamese translator-interpreter, 2.5 Spanish translators-interpreters,

164one full-time. Somali translator and interpreter. So we've increased our translation support from six full-time FTEs to now 8.5 FTEs. And we're continuing to make sure we're having all the languages represented so we couldn't agree more that we continue to ensure translation services are at the highest level. And we're in the middle of staffing some of the positions that were just recently approved and making sure that they're posted by January 20th. We approved one more Vietnamese person. and just at the January 24th meeting. So that position's coming forward. And then the recommendation for providing daily dedicated ELD, the most passionate part of your speech about students having access to Common Core and making sure that we have daily dedicated ELD. Sandra's in the process of looking at where we have the best implementation of that. I

165have great experience with that as a principal at Central, our dedicated ELD, but now are we doing that at every school? So she's gathering the data, looking at the models where we can absolutely say that that is in place, and now how do we make sure that's happening at every single school? Because it's working well in some schools, it's not working well in other schools, and I've asked for Sandra to make that a priority in her work right now as we move, as we transition and make sure that that's happening daily. with dedicated ELD and integrated instruction. And Common Core, you're exactly right, is challenging for our students, but our entire work is around integrating and making sure our English learners have access to the core curriculum. And it's not, as we heard Wendy Rankfurst

166say, about LGBTQ curriculum. If it were as easy as buying the curriculum that would say, now we're in alignment, we would buy it. It's not easy. It's about the approach and the systemic approach with ELSTs showing how to scaffold learning inside the classroom. so that we can make those guarantees to our students to have access to the core curriculum. Even when they're learning English, there are very clear ways to provide access with structured ELD and learning approaches throughout the day. I had a question. We had a... public comment prior to the meeting and had something, it had to do with an English language meeting at a school or was that at the DLAC district? Did you hear the public comment and would you have any reflections on that? I did not hear the public comment.

167Maybe I was... I WAS OUT THERE WITH THE PARENTS. THERE WERE SOME CONCERNS ABOUT THEY DIDN'T FEEL LIKE THEY WERE RECEIVED, THAT THEY HAD A PART THAT THEY COULD GET ON THE AGENDA. AS I LOOK BACK ON THE ITEM, IT HAS TO DO WITH at one of our elementary schools. It was Francisca Salcedo and her appointment to the DLAC Advisory Committee Executive Board. She made comments about things that had happened at Rodriguez Elementary School so we can follow up and it's a situation that we're aware of. I guess the nature of the question would be in terms of training for our school advisory committees and how is that handled? That is handled through our office, through the Office of Language Acquisition and we have a compliance team that supports the school sites. Thank you. And

168with all due respect, as I said, we're going to follow the agenda. As you guys do it, we are trying to do our best. And we are trying to do our best for every single parent or for those few. And here we are. I heard that. Thank you so much. Sandra, just to be clear on the dedicated ELD services, she's actually collecting daily schedules from each of the schools. So they're conducting an audit to make sure that when you asked about accountability, how will we hold the schools accountable, that collecting the daily schedules from each school to see where the dedicated ELD time is. It's not just, well, we'll follow up and see how they're doing. There's actual data that we're collecting and support coming in if they don't have the daily ELD in place.

169Thank you. Thank you. real briefly it would be great if next month we could get an update on where we are on some of the issues that we've been tracking so the number of long-term English learners in our district and what the times have been over the past few years the percentage of students who are reclassifying the number of active ELACs in our schools. And then I know this is a post-graduation number, but we want to pay attention to the number of students who are graduating with a sealed-by-literacy. and what those trends are as well. And actually Sandra debated about bringing that forward tonight because that is exactly what she's planning, what she's tracking for her quarterly updates. And so she was able to talk tonight specifically the number of ELACs. You might want to

170repeat that because I know they were having a side conversation. Okay. Where are we with the ELACs right now? We have 115 established ELACs. And we're working with 49 additional school sites. So that's a total of 164 at this point. What do you mean by we're working with them? We're working with them to launch the ELACs. So it takes a while. They've got to get parents and there's got to be meetings. The point is they know exactly who they are and there's a launch effort. Like what happens, what's step one, what's step two, how do you establish it. of these four data points that you just mentioned, that's exactly what her office is tracking and the quarterly update will include that. We wanted to be able to respond tonight to the recommendations that were coming

171forward without the full quarterly update, but thank you for reminding us of the information that we are tracking and that's front and center in terms of my expectations for her office and the work that they're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Moving forward, we have, that was information item, no action. G2 is an action item, appointment and reapportionment of representatives to Proposition S and Z. Independent Citizens Oversight Committee. I'll move the item. Second. Staff recommendation. Any discussion or report needed? If not, ready to vote. 4-0, unanimous, thank you. Same, action two, G2 is also an action item. No, I'm sorry, G3, direction to continue collaboration with Innovations Academy Charter School to find a new location. I'd like to just explain that basically what this item is calling for is the continued... cooperation with innovations academy to

172make sure that they find a new site. I know there was a lot of confusion at the last board meeting. Some people even in news reports and so forth left with the idea that there might be a charter school that was closing. The fact of the matter is that we had extended the time they could use the facility until the end of... of 2017 initially and one of the things which Lee pointed out was that he had on the terms agreement that for extending an additional year if the school did not find a site by then and that also requires us to make that available to the school because that was an agreement. with Monarch at that point. So it's authorizing the staff to authorize the additional year and certainly authorizing them to continue their

173full cooperation for the school to have a home for the benefit of those students and families. So I would move the recommendation listed here. Is there a second? Second. We're not ready to vote. We do have public comment. We have Miles Kirby. Miles, you're up. I saw him walk out. Time to sign. sorry about that i got caught on another conversation um i just wanted to get up tonight and support this resolution and thank the board for looking at this issue in more detail taking this action tonight you know the students and the innovations and and the potential for them to lose their sight is a big deal and i appreciate that you've recognized that with your motion and i hope that that will help the students at the school of innovations academy So I

174also want to thank the leadership of the board because I know Kevin Beiser has been very visible on this issue and so have you now all joined to do that and I hope that with Mr. McQuarrie's vote that that will happen as well. Thank you. I'd also like to add and thank Miles for his leadership with our charters as well as his recent positions and the... his willingness to sit down and talk through the tough issues and resolve a number of difficult issues through his help and support and advocacy. So thank you. And I just want to point out that since that meeting I've talked with our staff, I've also talked with the principal and visited the School of Innovations Academy and I see there's a great opportunity for collaboration on all sides. I'm very

175positive attitude on everybody's part at this point. So cast your vote. How did we do that? Okay, good. AND FROM HERE IT'S ANNOUNCE. I'LL MOVE ITEM G-4. MOVED AND SECONDED. G-4 IS ALSO ACTION. WE ALSO HAVE PUBLIC COMMENT. SO WE HAVE DANIEL, FRANCINE, AND CITIZEN. IN THAT ORDER. HOLD ON, HOLD ON. I FEEL LIKE I'M AT A POKER GAME HERE. Ready? He's still giving speakers a look. Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Let's see. We've got four. They don't say. So is there a pro and a against? Everybody is definitely no. So it looks like they're all in the same category. So we have, let's say, nine. Yeah, eleven. So we've got roughly, we can go with two minutes each and make that happen. So first person is Daniel. Okay, honorable board, superintendent Martin, members of

176the public. Gosh, I feel like I did a triathlon in France where I finished at two o'clock in the morning and nobody was at the finish line actually. Reality here, but I'll go anyway. Regarding the appointment, the appointee for this position ought not... to be able to run for election. You ought to stipulate that. Again, for the public, for the members of the public in San Diego who so desperately want a change in direction in how things are done with this board, open, transparent, non-binding with any special interest, et cetera, find an independent. Find somebody that is completely open-minded, that will not run for re-election. And also, very importantly here, here's the most important issue I want to bring up. Make sure they can work full-time at this job. Because trust me, this is a

177full-time job. And you've got to devote the time to it, or otherwise you're not going to have an efficient, well-greased machine. So I urge you, find somebody that can work full-time, independent. that will serve all of the people in San Diego, not just a few people. Because I go back to my original point. Every human being is valuable. Everyone is credible. Even I'm credible. Everybody's credible. And we ought to listen. You know, when you get elected, you tend to forget that. You tend to forget what people are really like. Thank you for your time. And I am grateful to be able to run, trust me. Thank you. So we have Francine Maxwell, and Citizen following Francine, and then Ellen Nash, Barry Pollard, I think it's Tony Young, Ramon Estanio, Greg Robinson, and let me finish

178the list here and then we get you started. Phillip Laborde, Bill Freeman, and Edith Smith. So Francine, please. Thank you. Francine Maxwell, when people show you who they really are, we need to believe them. You guys have shown us who you really are, especially when you came into District E last night and you misrepresented what was going to occur tonight. We had already saw one of the trustees on TV, but then today KPBS comes and shares some information. So what was told in District E last night was a blatant lie. everything is on the table everything is open you already worked out who you're going to put to represent us in district e and they will once again be your puppet we have had the puppeteers everybody has on red slippers at this point so

179we like you to click your slippers and go home because you're not representing the interest of district e i think that you wasted forty thousand dollars of my money because i'm a taxpayer and you pretended like you were gonna do an investigation that money could have went to the blueprint your blueprint for the acceleration of african-american children you have yet to put some timelines on that let's get some passion and some heat because we know that when the bottom begins to rise that everybody will succeed so I didn't I don't see no passion no heat no no urgency for your blueprint that you adopted so as I stated It should be really hard for you guys to keep a straight face when you look yourselves in the mirror. Because if you believe what you're saying,

180then something just ain't right. And remember, everything that is done in the dark, it comes to the light. We have a citizen who's next. Ellen Nash. A citizen's next. Okay. We're going in the order in which people submitted their requests. The City of San Diego appointed a council member who could not run for election. It worked very well. It removed the political overtones from the appointment and you should do the same to remove the taint of wrongdoing that is over the head of this board. Mr. McQuarrie said no employees can apply for the part-time board position. That position pays better than some employees earn in a year in this district. I want to know the law that prohibits a public servant from serving as a board member. There was a policy in the Sheriff's Department

181that the court ruled illegal after the Sheriff's captain sued. He went on to run in the election for sheriff against his sheriff and he won. So you need to check that law. Excluding employees seems illegal to me. You have to get it right. And it's easy to get it right if you remove the taint of you guys are going to decide who runs and then that person throws their hat into the ring. and has that advantage over people that are going out there and gathering signatures and working hard for every vote and trying to collect money for an election. And it shouldn't be an advantage that these four, three white men and one union hack over there decide for District E. I'm Ellen. Is it my turn now? Ellen Ash? Yes. Cool. I guess I'll

182be a little nice. Okay, so my name is Ellen Nash and I'm representing BAPAC, an organization that's called BAPAC, Black American Political Association Chapter of San Diego. Many of you know who we are. I'm reading a letter from Dr. Willie Blair who serves as our chair. It was emailed to you, President McCrary, but I just wanted to reiterate some of the points that he made here. You were gracious enough to come to the Lincoln High School cluster meeting. last night and you did show that you did commit to a fair process that would include transparency. and also have community and and I just wanted to to let all the other board members know what what you committed to and down it goes on to be having said that and I yet offer a bit of

183caution as it is hope that your bold leadership and vision be again put on display at tonight's meeting tonight to ensure that any major decision to fill the sub-district E position be made mutually inclusive which both would mean remaining school board district trustees in full concert with many of the community leaders and interested stakeholders who will appear before you in this evening's meeting. We want you to take this as seriously as possible. We do understand that it's important to have at least an interim board member in that particular position to bring stability to District E, also to the San Diego community. We're also providing you a list of community members, some of which are in this room, that we would support to be considered as a part of the interim leadership position. The likes of

184Dr. Marilyn Harvey, college professor at San Diego Community College. College, Dr. Sharon Whitehurst, who is a former retired San Diego Unified School District administrator who's in the room here. Also Dr. Dorothy Smith. a former school board member. These are names that interested people that have reached out to us along with Jackie Young who is a resident of the district as well. So we will provide you that list from BayPAC as highly recommended individuals that have expressed interest. Some, by the way, have expressed interest only in serving interim including Ken Marlboro who is the Encanto Planning Committee Chair. Again, the emphasis on bringing stability and credibility back to that district E seat. Thank you very much. You'll forward us that list. Thank you very much. Barry Pollard, followed by Tony Young, and then Remo. Good evening.

185It's been a long day so far, huh? I wanted to make some comments. My name is Barry Pollard. I live in the district. And so I did get a copy of the press release, Mr. McQuarrie, that I guess was made obvious. We do have some specific suggestions I would like for you to entertain. The overall reaching theme with this is community engagement. that as we walk through your timeframe of February the 16th, it looks like the deadline for the submissions is applicable or appropriate. We sort of want these February 16th, 23rd, and 20, those set of meetings to be held in our district if at all possible. We want community input with this. So having it in our district would, I think, move it towards that feeling like we have some input, which brings to

186me to my second suggestion. Somewhere along this process, and I've got some specifics, is that you have outlined here that, and please bear with me, that there is a short little process of... The board establishes a schedule for submission and review of the applicants, the selection of finalists to be interviewed by the board, and the selection of a candidate for a provisional appointment. The missing word in this is community. I think the community should have input and provide you a list of candidates that we've vetted, and then let you folks make that decision based upon the candidates that we vet. This is our community. These are our kids. And we've been left out of this process other than filling out an application for candidates to be considered. God bless you all. You don't know our

187district more than we know it. You don't know our kids more than we know it. Our kids are our responsibilities. I think everybody agrees with that. So my suggestion is have some of these meetings over in our areas and let us make the decision with the Lincoln Cluster and some of the other residents that are going on there. We're big boys and girls. We're adults. We can select the best interim candidate for our district. Consider that, please. Superintendent Martin. President Dactyl McQuarrie. Member of the Board. Ramon Espinal, second grade, my literacy teacher, Rosa Parks Elementary School. I am here to speak about an issue most important for me, that of appointing a successor to Trustee Marnie Foster. You have already heard, and you heard tonight, from some quarters, calling on you to name a lame

188duck. Well, perhaps other people are asking you to appoint someone that may be working behind the scene to privatize our schools. The board appointment process should not in any manner infringe upon or restrict the rights of any potential appointee to his or her rights. fully participate in our district board education to serve our community in the future. So district E is very important and we need to select now and elect in November someone who represents and is consistent with Marnie's foster core educational value and this board progressive agenda and core values. We need in the South District E community someone who will continue to push for and defend the value of public education and the values and hopes embodied in the notion of restorative justice, cultural competence, early middle college high school, ethnic study. Finally,

189as an educator, I strongly recommend that this board work hard to discover and appoint an educator to that position. Someone with the educational expertise and the commitment to the fundamental principle of public education. I hope that this board selects someone who embodies the core values laid out above and who is supportive of this board's progressive strategies and policies. Thank you for listening. Good evening, President, Board President Dr. McCrory and other board members and Superintendent Martin. Dr. McCrory, thank you for coming to the Lincoln Cluster meeting last night, especially on short notice. I think it was important that you came, represent the board, and address the public about the pending changes. You laid out last night your intention to be transparent and to make sure that this process is done with integrity. And I have full

190confidence, having been able to work with you over the past year or so that you've been on the board, that you're a man of integrity. So we are going to hold you to that. I believe you're going to stick with your promise to be integrity, to use your position, and lead with integrity. One of the things I would recommend is that this board consider having at least a minimum of two public hearing. Not a 20-minute hearing like this that this is today, but a full-blown public hearing. One would be in District E, and one could be here or in any one of the other four districts in San Diego. It's important that all students are properly represented. We know this is a bump in the road. The residents of District E, we've had our challenges

191in the past. We will overcome this. No longer is our children going to be seen as mediocre. Our children are the best and the brightest. Every year, students, they graduate high school. They attend the best universities and colleges in this country. We have teachers, we have parents, we have principals who they get up early, they leave late. They dedicate their time, their resources for our children. That is what, those are the kind of people we have in our district. We are expecting that this board will do nothing but appoint the best person that's going to represent our children. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I want to thank you for inviting me to come to Lincoln to meet with the Lincoln Cluster to do my best to explain the processes I understood at that

192time. And made it as clear as I could at that time that the real discussion was going to happen here on the dais. And so we'll continue to move that forward. So we have... Let's see. You are? Tony Young. Tony. Thank you, Tony. Appreciate it. Well, thank you for allowing us to... allowing us to spend the evening with you tonight. And I appreciate what you do. I was a teacher and I know how difficult education and policy is. But I have been having conversations in the community about this issue. And I would just give you a few recommendations. And when we use the term transparency, it's not just using the term... It's not just synonymous with Robert's Rules of Order and going through your basic rules. I think this is an opportunity for you all

193to go above and beyond your usual transparency. That means that I would recommend that you, like Barry Pollard just said earlier, to have your meeting when you select the replacement for Marnie Foster in District E, to actually have it there. So you're right in front of folks and saying, this is what we're doing for the people of this district. The other thing I would do is... in your rules of order going forward to say that everyone on the board would disclose their ex parte communications. That means who did you actually talk to to make this decision? Did you talk to this community member? Did you talk to this special interest group? Or did you talk to whoever? That would be really appropriate to say if you really want to be transparent to say who you

194spoke to. in regards to this issue, that would be very transparent. That's beyond what you have done. And then finally, I think I heard a motion, which a little surprised me before we actually heard public comment, but I would actually create a... an actual part of your process that includes engagement with the community on this issue. To actually formally come up with a strategy. Maybe Cindy might be able to help guide you all through that to say this is what our public engagement policy will be or strategy will be as we select this new member of the board. So good luck. God bless you and I know it's been difficult but you do have folks here who do care about what you're doing today. Thank you. Thank you, Tony. Mr. Bill Freeman. Good evening, President,

195Superintendent, and Board members. I'm Bill Freeman. I'm a director with the National Education Association. First, I want to say that serving with hundreds of other directors in Washington, you guys are really doing a phenomenal job. There are many many board members that would love to be a board member living in San Diego I can tell you that I Want to talk about the qualifications that I hope you look for when you are looking for the board member and One, I think they should have some community involvement. They should know that community. They should know the weaknesses and strengths of the community and the needs of that community. I think that they should also be or have been involved in public education, elementary, secondary, and maybe even college, because they are all interconnected and they are

196all dealing with the kids. I think that it is ridiculous for you to appoint someone that cannot run. And I also think that it's ridiculous for you to go outside of the knowledge of individuals that have served on this board, know what it entails, knows the intricacies of it. and throw that aside. I don't think you should do that. I think that if you do, you will not select the best member. The other thing that I want to say, and I think this is very, very important because I haven't been back to this board in quite some while. I want to publicly thank Marty Foster. I've witnessed all the things that's been said about her, and I don't know what happened, but she's a good person, and she's done some good things for District E.

197The last thing that I want to say is there have been some individuals inviting the board to come to District E and Hull meetings there. I want to direct this to the community. If you want to invite people to come to the district, treat them like you would want to be treated. They should not be called names. They should not be called names. That is so, we don't want our kids to do that. We don't allow our kids to do that. Please do not do that here. This is a professional meeting. I would love to see it treated as a professional meeting. professional meeting and then the last thing that I want to say is that if you do not if you want a full-time board member You know we're gonna have to do something

198to pay them like they are full-time They have families and lives to support as well. I'm sorry for going over my time. Thank you so much Good afternoon again. I just have a couple things that I'd like to say in reference to having someone sit and represent a district E. We really need someone that can pay attention for our district and for our children. We have been without, and it's a consensus within the community, that we have been without representation for quite some time. We need someone that's not running for political office where they're going to be part-time there and part-time here. We really need someone. Let the people run and let the voters vet that out. But someone that's not running and that can really start to really help our district full-time and represent

199our district. I think that's something that is very much needed. I also think that... document where when you were at make the last night and you were saying about all things on the table everything was going to be transparent and you get you know proceeded to give us the board one-on-one lesson. When you were then relate in the KTBS piece and it said that we were going to do an election because it was an economical it seemed that. the things that you had said to the community weren't actually true because it seemed as if you made a decision or you all talked behind it outside of the meeting and then you made a decision. And so those are the types of things that we're looking for. As a reminder, District E brings the majority of

200the money to the district. We bring more money to this district than any other district, okay? And we need to keep that in mind, and we need to keep the children and the parents at the forefront with the greatest amount of respect. We need to have community vetting. And Richard, they already know you want to appoint Juan, and they're not cool with that. So, thank you. yeah so is there anyone else in the room that didn't have an opportunity and because of the community effort once twice all right uh so with the uh public comment and we want to talk about uh we can go to uh staff recommendations and then we can go to the board president mccoy could we ask uh ms donovan to join us on the diet so we can have

201a eye-to-eye conversation about this information Thank you. Welcome, Mr. Donovan. Yes. Was that an opening for you to start? Well, I just thought, I was thinking that first it would be good for General Counsel Donovan to give us, she made some recommendations to sort of show us what our options are legally and otherwise, and then we can discuss the options. Let me first, I was at Lincoln last night, and while I was at Lincoln, we were still putting together the press. and a report and how this was gonna get handled. And so at the very same time we were doing that, what was important for me about it being at Lincoln at that event was that I heard a number of comments, a number of concerns, and I mailed copies of the concerns and issues

202to the board. So I wanna make sure that we clarify that this is what I heard at that community event. And I'll read the... The six items that came clear to me and I heard them repeated here tonight plus new items. So during the meeting at Lincoln, there was a request for a copy of the process used in 1980 or 81. I believe that was the last time an election like this happened. And so people are very interested in knowing what did we do then and how can we compare that with what we're doing now. There was a strong request for additional time longer than 20 minutes Which we made available and depended upon the numbers of speakers and we were very willing to go forward with as much time as it took to get

203through the speakers and I wanted to make sure even at the end somebody who didn't get an opportunity to speak would have time to do that or more time Because the unique situation and the importance of community input required for making public comment, I didn't want people to feel left out. But we want to take that in consideration in our process as we go forward. Number three, there was frequent mention of the need for and the importance of openness and transparency in our deliberations and the implementation of the process. There was a widespread concern that the board has already decided on a process and a person. So I want to make sure I heard that and I want to make sure that I communicated what I had heard. There was a general sense of the

204importance of community involvement and a widespread lack of trust in our getting it right. So that's what I heard from a number of members. I want to make sure the board has a sense of that. Number six in the last item. There was a general sense that all options should be on the table, including the one persistent request to include the option. for a special election. So I did come out of that meeting and I did respond at that time that for me at that time all options were on the table. I still consider all options on the table. If there's a clear reason as to why not, we want to hear that now and I think that's why we have our council with us. With that, it's open for discussion. I mean, the reason

205I was asking the general counsel was basically, I think the first issue is appointment versus election, if you could address that. I'd be happy to address that. There has been some conversation about special election as opposed to appointment. Under the elections code, it provides that a special election is to be held on the dates designated in the code for a regular election, including the primary and general election in November. So the practical reality is if... a special election would be called, the seat would remain vacant until after the November election. And it might be possible to seat the elected person for a few weeks before the then newly elected person for the next term was seated. But it's not possible to get a provisional appointment. I'm sorry, to get a special election now, that would

206result in anything happening any sooner than that. But you're saying, according to the rules, that the election for the temporary position, the position that would last until December, would have to, there'd have to be a primary for that in June and the general election out for November? Yes. At the same time that we're electing the person for the next four years, in which case, would that mean that the seat would be vacant for those eight months? Correct. That's what's specified by the elections code. And if I could elaborate on the, there are several provisions that speak to a special election. They are all dependent on the dates that are set forth or parallel the dates that are set forth in the election code. So practically speaking, we'd have a special election and a general, a

207regular election that coincided on the same dates. So basically, I guess the other issue here is in terms of... Clarifying the timeline, today we are choosing the process. Obviously, first of all, we're deciding about an election versus an appointment and then how to... to proceed with an appointment. And I mean, I would support having a special meeting for the board to review and consider all the applications on February 16th, so we do not leave this seat vacant too long. It lists here as the deadline for the submission of applications of February 15th, the day before that meeting. Maybe this is a detail, but I would... Maybe we could have two collection points. It would be great if people would submit them by the end of the week, by February 12th. There would be more time

208to review. If people wanted to submit the following Monday, they could do that. But according to this timeline, then the following week we would be able to... to interview the finalists and make a selection. One thing we don't know as we're applying this process is how many people are going to present themselves. And by the way, I'm assuming that, I'm covering a lot of topics here, but in terms of information, there's a very general form in terms of background and some specific requirements by law. for the position. But I'm assuming that the person would be able to submit other documentation, including letters of recommendation, support, endorsements, and that type of thing, along with the information. Would that be correct? The board has discretion to determine what it will accept and consider in the application packet.

209What is provided here, and I'll walk you through what was developed. District elections are governed by the city charter article or section 66, which provides that an appointment has to be made within 30 days. Under the municipal code, the district is given the option of proceeding with the process set out for the appointment of city council appointees or to elect its own process. What is developed in the application itself tracks as closely as possible with what is required to be submitted by a candidate when they want to run for office. And includes a few other things that are asked for by the city. The difference being that the board will then set its own timeline to meet the 30-day deadline. The city has a little bit longer to do it. you can determine that you

210will accept letters of recommendation. Certainly there's nothing to prevent anyone from sending you a letter of recommendation whether it's included in the application or not. Another point to be made is in terms of the eligibility and whether someone can run or not, whether someone can be an employee. The eligibility for a board appointee or board member is set out in the Education Code, Section 35107, which specifies that an employee must resign before he or she joins the board or their appointment or election is void. It also sets out the criteria. It does not include any criteria that state that someone who is appointed cannot then be eligible to run for election and I've not found any authority to impose that restriction. That is in the city municipal code itself but it pertains to the appointment

211of city council members not district trustees. Just to be clear, when we had the public comment there was the statement made that That would be unfair or it would not be illegal for an employee to run for the position. Your opinion is it is not allowed. It's not illegal for that person to run, but the education code requires that they resign before they take their seat. They can run, but they can't serve. Right. So they could run and win, and then they would have to make that choice. Right, and that's specified very clearly in the education code. Okay, thank you. So that's under the, I think when you said disqualifying factors, it's something about a... having a position that's in conflict with the elected position? It's under the required qualifications on the very first page

212of the application. Then we've got the deadline and the instructions. And then the rest of the information is essentially what is required for the city or an application to run for it. for office. So I have a question. So in setting up this special meeting on the 16th, the idea is that, and this is what I remember from the city council too, that the people who are applying for the position would be able to make a presentation. Does it fall under the regular rules of a board meeting of an agenda item where public, Ms. Ward, where public members can... or Ms. Donovan, where public members can speak? It would be a special meeting, so members of the public could speak on any item on the agenda. What's set out there was a first meeting for

213the board to, in a public session with the community involved, screen the applications themselves. You could have interviews at that session. You could determine to have interviews at the next session for finalists. That's within the board's discretion. at what point you want to talk to the candidates and how many candidates you want to talk to, whether it's all of them or only finalists. But what's envisioned here is a two-step process with two public meetings, opportunity at both meetings for public input. Right. Well, I mean, as I'm looking at the timeline, what I would support is having the special meeting on the 16th and then having a meeting the following week on the 23rd to interview the finalists and make selection so that the next regular meeting would be on March 8th, at which point the

214trustee could be sworn in, which would basically be one month after the resignation of that board member. Then here I want to clear the issue on the special election so that we can want to make it clear that the option is possible or not possible. Theoretically, it's possible. You could call for a special election to occur simultaneously with the regular election, but practically speaking, it's going to have very little effect. It would get somebody in the seat for a couple of weeks at several hundred thousand dollars worth of expense to the district, but it would not in any case result in anybody being elected to the vacant seat before November. What would it cost, roughly? The last estimate we had was between $300,000 and $400,000, roughly. But I'm sorry. Go ahead. But it seems that

215the issue more than the cost here is the fact that there would be this whole election process for the temporary appointee in June and November, and then they would wait until after the November election and whatever had to be done to certify that person after the election that they would sit on the board for three or four weeks at the most. I mean, that's so, from what you're saying, it would be a legal, it would be a... legal, not illegal, it would be a legal way to do it. It's just the practicality of having someone spend six months campaigning for a three-week or four-week position. And it depends on which code you go under because the city municipal code does not provide for an election if there's less than a year on the term. The

216education code that says that there will be no special election if the vacancy occurs during a specified period of time. So you'd first have to overcome the hurdle of whether you could go simply under the elections code and move forward in that way. And then you'd have the practical reality that the person would likely not be seated, if at all, a few weeks before the end of the term with sub-district E going unrepresented for the rest of that time. If our effort is to expand community involvement to the maximum in terms of doing an effective, efficient process, one that allows for people to have a say, the special election, as pointed out, would be a significant effort with little gain and doesn't necessarily enhance community involvement? Correct, if possible. But there would also be, from

217what I understand, there would be two elections simultaneously going on, the four-year election and the one-month election. Any other? Yeah. A couple of things. Again, I'm in support of the process as generally laid out in the staff recommendation. That process is for an appointment. I think it's extremely important that District E is represented as soon as possible. And a couple of things that I just maybe want to... add some definition in the process. One is I appreciate the recommendation made here tonight by a few people that we hold a special meeting in District E. And I know that there's overlap with regularly scheduled board meetings on those dates. But I would certainly support the idea of a special meeting. or one or more special meetings to consider the appointment of the District E representative to

218occur in District E. And let's remember, District E is, like all of our sub-districts, a very large and very diverse community that encompasses three and a half high school clusters. Lincoln, Morse, Crawford, and part of Hoover. And so I think as we get out to the community to hold these meetings, I would certainly welcome input from anybody. I appreciate Ellen from BayPAC talking about some of the folks that they've already considered. Part of being open and transparent is just to clarify that we need to take input from whoever and however people want to give us input. Nobody gives special status. The only person who can ultimately legitimately claim to represent District E is the person who was elected to represent District E by the voters. And that process will move forward this year in the

219primary and the general election for 2016. But I think, so one additional suggestion that I would make. is that when we talk about the special meetings, to the extent possible, we hold those meetings in different parts of District E, number one. Number two, I feel strongly that we should not restrict the ability of the person who's appointed to run for that seat. It is not our job as a school board to decide who can and who can't run for that seat. That's the job of the voters, first district D in the primary and then the entire district in the general election. So I would want to clarify that we are not restricting the person who was appointed to fill this seat to not being allowed to run for the seat because We're going to come

220out of here and we're going to, I think the plan is to put on the website, how do you apply, who can apply. So the hope is tomorrow. people who are interested in the seat can go on our website and start applying if they're ready to apply. I think it's important for anybody who's interested to understand that we are not, in fact, restricting their ability to run for the seat. So I want to clarify that as part of the motion. I also was listening to the idea about there being a meeting or meetings in District E. And when I'm looking at it practically, we're having a special meeting where all of the applicants, and I'm assuming it will be a manageable amount of applicants, would be coming. So that would be... seems to me like

221it would be a little bit difficult to divide it up in terms of half the applicants come this week to this location and half the applicants come next week to the other location. But I think, and I think it would also, I mean, it's like all of the sub-districts, like you said, it's a diverse community. So I think in this short notice, it's going to depend on what facility is available and how we could do it. My thinking is that... the vetting, the candidates, them coming and speaking, the opportunity for the public to speak should be held at a location district-y. I do believe that when we're conducting the regular business of the board along with the selection of the board member, if we do that as I would want to do on February 23rd,

222that that should occur here at the district headquarters in terms of it being. being an official meeting and vote on that and other items that come up and then we could proceed from there but it just seems to me it would be hard to divide up into multiple meetings One of the things we're dealing with is we we don't know how many applicants there will be and so we're just guessing and I think we would have to have a provision on February 16th if we follow along with what we have provisionally set up that if there is something very surprising about the number of people that are applying at the beginning of the meeting on the 16th. We could revise our plan. But assuming that it would be a reasonable number, I think we could

223proceed with the plan this year. I'm gonna kind of backtrack a bit so we can come up to, so we can talk about the remaining options. So there is an option which is to do nothing. And I don't think we've had a chance to talk about what if the board choose to do nothing? The vacancy will exist until the end of the term. And then by doing that, then District E loses representation. Correct. Completely. So doing nothing does not meet a standard of involvement of the community in the process of having representation. as i said there's numerous statutory schemes that come into place the city charter says if you do nothing within 30 days there shall be called a special election the elections code says that has to occur in june and november so you

224would be into the situation where you'd have somebody seated perhaps for a few weeks if you took that action if you look at the education code itself it says that there will be no special election so you'd have to opt to go under the education code completely I think, frankly, that the district is bound by the city charter that takes precedence over the education code. So if you do nothing, there will be a special election called, and it will not end until November. So District E would have no representation. What I envisioned here when I put this together was as close of a process of community input. that you would expect in an election season in a condensed period of time because of the 30 days. So there's this meeting to discuss criteria and process

225that what criteria will be used, what the process will be. There will be at least one meeting to screen applicants. Again, the community can come forward and speak to who they think they want, what they want to see in a candidate, those types of things. And there's not any set number of meetings that you have to have or can have. It can be one, it can be four, as long as the appointment is made. you know, later than March 8th. But they are all special open public meetings. In fact, they're called public hearings. In terms of maximizing community input and doing nothing. works in the opposite direction and it leads to a similar process and this is where It leads to potential another special election which is which as trustee Evans has pointed out does

226not does not get us into the end of that area of Maximizing community input and getting the best possible candidates forward for this period of time Which leads us to the the question now that we're into which is staff recommendation for an appointment and I think it's our reaction to staff recommendation as to what's been put before us and how do we want to discuss that, handle that, amend that, and then we eventually arrive at a decision as to what is the best process going forward with an appointment. Well, we have a motion in a second to accept staff's recommendation. I would add two amendments to that motion. One being that we clarify that we are not restricting the applicants interested in being appointed from running for the seat, number one. And number two, that

227we agree that we will hold the first special meeting, I think on February 16th, somewhere in District D. And this is maybe a small housekeeping thing, but if you would add, we have listed as February 15, 2016, the deadline. However, if we could state something about preferred by February 12, so that we don't get all of them right the day before, they will be given equal consideration, but it will just divide up the time better rather than waiting until the 15th to turn it over to us. we might add a statement that applicants are encouraged to submit no later than i don't know say noon on the 12th in order that the applications may be made public absolutely but that applications will be accepted through five o'clock on monday for those folks who can't get

228them five o'clock monday february 12th if they come in by noon on on friday they would be attached to the agenda and we could make them public so that the public would have an opportunity to prepare their reactions But in order to maximize the pool of candidates who could potentially apply, I would encourage you to leave the application period open and the additional applications would be provided to the public at the meeting. I don't know if this has any impact on it, but February 12th and 15th are both non-district holidays, so that's okay. Okay. Interesting. Can we question that? I don't want that to happen. 13th would be Saturday. It's a weekend no matter what. Well, we could do that. We could say Baidu on the 11th. This is it. It's up to you. We're

229talking about two days. Right, right. It's really up to you. One day, two days. But maybe that makes a difference. But I see what you're saying. So the Monday is the 15th. Monday is the 15th. It is a holiday. And the session was on the 15th at 5. And then there's some discussion about whether it should be maybe the... So, and one of the things is that holiday or not, the... The board packets go out on the weekend and the stuff is, the information is published to the public by Friday also, maybe before. So it would be released on Thursday? The Friday business would be conducted on Thursday, is that what you're saying? If that's what you would like to call your deadline, but if you want to have it on the weekend or one

230of those days, we can certainly do that. Okay. What about the 16th? Oh, that's the day of the meeting. The 16th is the day of the meeting. I would suggest that we would stick with the 12th and the 15th. staff to somehow work that out so that we have opportunities for people to make public over the weekend who's applying but that if someone's not able to do it by that time that they could get it out by Monday. I was just looking at my calendar. Do we have to have it on Tuesday the 16th? Could we maybe do it on Thursday the 18th? And then that still would allow time for the February 23rd. special meeting yes because it's a special meeting either way so thursday the 18th well yeah probably uh but when's wednesday

231the 17th Well, first of all, was there a problem with Thursday the 18th? Yeah. There was? Oh, okay. So, was it your problem? Yep. Sorry. There's a big Holocaust litigation going on at UCSD that night. Okay. And I'm helping to organize it. Wednesday the 17th? I don't know that moving it to the 17th helps with the issue of the agenda. At whatever point you have the meeting, the applications could be added to the agenda item. um but if you're trying to avoid having something go out on friday um then it doesn't really make a difference well it is a special meeting it is especially right 24 hour notice oh thank you yeah for my part you know i think giving uh potential applicants uh till the 15th maybe noon on the 15th or something like

232that and then they go they can go public or whatever that would give me you know i could then spend Tuesday reading all the applicants and that way when I come to the meeting Wednesday evening maybe I've already had I mean because as board trustees when we get the material and then we have to meet that day or the very next day it's kind of hard to read through the binders. It's nice to have the weekend to do that. This is a special meeting so it's 24 hours notice so if the meeting is on Tuesday the information would come out on Monday if it's on Wednesday it would be Tuesday. So the suggestion is applications are due by noon on Monday the 15th. We'll hold a special meeting in District E on Wednesday, February 17th.

233Right. plus task force meeting that's that night lgbtq plus task force we'll do it after that at 6 p.m uh-huh yep yeah come on cindy we usually have multiple things uh just making sure that you're not going to override that meeting with this meeting we can do both the same night you're right we we like all children as a practical question is the building going to be open on monday for folks to submit their applications that they hand deliver them no But you could do it online. They could deliver it online. Or by fax. Okay. So that would be one deadline as opposed to the two that I was mentioning. What if we did 15 through 17? Well, I think that that was a good question. Is the building open for people to drop off

234their application? And if it's not open, we don't want to limit people that maybe aren't, that can't apply online. You know, if somebody wants to type it up or handwrite it and deliver it. you know we want to figure out how do we allow those people to apply for the vacancy also i think we'd be back to so i think we could say applications due by noon Monday the 15th. Encourage people to apply online, but supplemental applications could be turned in by noon on the 16th, Tuesday the 16th. Right. I should also point out Wednesday night, but just so you're aware for transparent reasons, that Wednesday night is also the DAC meeting, and the DAC meeting occurs, I believe, at 6 p.m. is when it begins, so just so you're aware of that. I've made

235a list of the issues that have come up in my discussions and tonight from the community in terms of things they would like to see and make sure we deal with. One of them is transparency. I'm wondering, how do we let the public know who has applied? So we talked about our reading the applications. Are we also making the applications available to the public? Absolutely. Yes. All the information we have online, they would see what we see. Correct? There's nothing that we see that they wouldn't see. And if you read the statement of qualifications, certification of qualifications on page 3 of the application, it states, and the person, the applicant is required to sign this under penalty of perjury. I understand that this application is a public document and may be requested under provisions of

236the PRA and will be available to the public on the website. And then what would the process be to make, could they also go online? they could be loaded with the agenda if they're ready Okay. Anything that is provided to the board for consideration has to be made public by the time that the meeting occurs. Cheryl, so just a couple things on the application. I think we would probably redact in the public version of it some personal information. We might. There are things that are required for background checks and the like. Like, for example, Social Security numbers would be redacted. The Social Security number would not be public. Right. the other item i heard was community organizations vetting and making recommendations is there anything on the application that might allow endorsements or something like that

237or who's behind them or who's supporting them there's not there's nothing that would prevent you from saying that you would welcome the letters of support or recommendation i didn't envision a process whereby the candidates would be limited to those who are brought forward from the community because that's not really how an election works This allows a more broad array of people to consider filing their own applications, but you can consider any information you want to when you make your selection. And if you want to add that to the application, you certainly can do that. That might be for making, if you wanted to make an amendment, Mr. Ferreira, I mean to include that, that people are free to submit endorsements, letters of recommendation. Yeah, I don't have any. Okay. So that's the application process. Do

238you want to take it step by step? The other part is how are the interviews conducted and what is the board, what is that going to look like in terms of, I guess it also depends on how many applications there are. Is there going to be a series of interviews? What's the board's pleasure on that? Well, according to what the staff suggestion was, was at the conclusion of that meeting, based on the information that we have written and spoken, that we would select up to three finalists. And so that's where we would deliberate publicly, discuss it, and come up with the three finalists. And then, so then I guess your question is at the following meeting, maybe you're asking how will that interview be conducted? I would recommend, and again, this obviously becomes... depended on

239how many people applied, but I'd recommend at the meeting on the 16th, whoever has applied on the 17th. Okay, I'm still reading here. Meeting on the 17th, whoever has applied can come before the board, address the board. We'll allow all the candidates to come forward and address the board, and then we'll deliberate and make a decision to get it to three finalists at the meeting on the 17th. and then at the meeting on the 23rd again the three finalists can come address the board and obviously in both meetings we you know take public comment and then the board you know deliberates and makes the makes the decision and i would again leave it to the discretion of the board president depending on the number of people that we have applying as to what the time

240allocation is in terms of the amount of time each person has to address the board. And then, as you said, for the interviews, it sounds like it would be basically they would come and make another presentation, and then it would be just open to board questions at that point. Right. So a couple of things. Under the Brown Act, at the first meeting, there would be nothing that even would prevent every candidate from coming and talking to you. So that kind of accords with what would be required to do anyway. The last time that there was an appointment, someone asked a question as to what was done in 1981. Each of the finalists, and there were five at that time, were granted 15-minute interviews. But it is completely at board discretion how long you want to

241give each candidate or how long you want to take to question them. Yeah, serious issue. More time? Weren't there set questions that the board members asked each of those candidates during the 15 minutes? I don't know. I think there was. Okay, we can find them and provide them. So then the 15 minutes would be used to present to the board and answer pre-submitted questions to all candidates that were the same questions? I don't know if it was and or in addition. Okay. What I hear is a sense of trying to, if that process worked well. to incorporate some of those ideas? If you look at page three of the application, it invites a statement of no more than 500 words responding to any or all of the following, and there's a list of questions. I

242would suggest we use that list, or you use that list. It tracks very closely with what is used by other districts, what's recommended by the county office. Right. It's just that we would at least have the freedom to ask follow-up questions. rather than just sticking to a strict. And here again, going down the list of what I heard tonight as well as at Lincoln, the importance of the person having a background in training and education, is there a place on the application to list? Yes, on page... Two of the packet which is actually the first page that needs to be filled out There's an educational background section. Please list all schools attended beginning with high school days of attendance any degree or certificate earned And then ten years of employment history, but my understanding was

243people spoke about the preference that there be a person with a professional education background, but I do not believe that can be a requirement for someone to be on the board. It's just information that people can provide. There's lots of reasons to select. We've noted the request and there's a place for that. So we'll have the opportunity to ask questions about that because we can only question what's on the application. Is there anything I missed? Cheryl, you can clear on the motion now. Yes, I believe so. Do we have, have you determined all of the dates that need to be filled in for the resolution? So there's the applications must be received no later than, I believe we said Tuesday at noon. Right. And then. Yeah, Tuesday the 16th at noon. But we want to

244encourage online applications before that. Okay. And then the second meeting is that to be on February 23rd? Yes. That's what the motion is. Okay. And then we've got the meeting on the 17th will be in the district. How is that determined? The superintendent will have to work with her principals and facilities, I'm assuming, to find a location in the next week. What I heard strongly was it be held at Lincoln, but there's also the other two high schools plus... We got... The motion specified district D. Cool enough, okay. I thought I heard one meeting out in the district. Yes, one meeting. Okay. 17. It is 17. The meeting is, you're looking for a location in District D at a school site on Wednesday the 17th at 6 p.m. So by Thursday, we will have that.

245We'll have to figure it out and identify it. Right. Okay. And just one more little detail. I don't think this is micromanaging because it involves the board, which is we should have some means to videotape that meeting, even though we don't have the facility that we have here and it can't be live. It wouldn't be broadcast? That's okay, but it can be taped and put on the website the next day. Yeah, and if our communications department's not able to do that, then I know we have a lot of high school AV departments and kids can do it and they would love to do it. Maybe there are some facilities in District E that maybe already have a large theater with all the technology to do it. I think Lincoln High School has a new, a

246really nice auditorium. with all of that stuff, just as an option. It's just important that we have that video record of this very important meeting. And then just to bring closure, so the candidate, the decision will be made at the meeting of the 23rd, and then when does that person take their seat? What's the swearing in? I would suggest March 1st, when we have a charter meeting. That's the next meeting date? Yeah, I think March 1st would be the next meeting. Is that okay? Yeah. It doesn't matter. Okay. Yeah, that's all. All right, this is swearing on March 1st. That's complete? That's it. Any comments from folks here? Any issues, concerns? It's opportunity time. I'm sorry. We got to Imani Robinson to San Diegan You're creating the meeting on our district advisory council meeting so

247that's a lot of people that can't participate and It's really unfair that you're you're not vetting the process It's just too YOU'RE NOT CONSIDERING EVERYONE. ONE THING ABOUT THIS DISTRICT, THE HARDEST PROBLEM IT HAS IS COMMUNICATION. AND IF YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE A DISTRICT MEETING AND THEN YOU'RE GOING TO HOLD A DISTRICT MEETING, THAT'S JUST NOT FAIR. SO I REALLY NEED TO, YOU NEED TO, I'M HOPING YOU CAN FIGURE OUT YOUR DATES BETTER. AND THAT'S ALWAYS BEEN AN ISSUE IS THE CALENDAR. AND WE'RE NOT BEING CONSIDERED. AND NOW I'M FEELING AS THOUGH IT'S JUST, GOING WITH THE FLOW. IT'S NOT REAL. AND SO TO MAKE THIS REAL, YOU HAVE TO CONSIDER EVERYONE. AND HOW ARE YOU GOING TO COMMUNICATE THIS TO EVERYONE IN THESE DAYS TO EVEN GET TO THE MEETINGS WHEN WE HAVE SUCH

248A DISTRICT ISSUE ON COMMUNICATION? I'D SUGGEST THAT WE CALL THE QUESTION. WE'VE HAD PUBLIC COMMENT ON THIS ITEM. RIGHT. This is not really part of the agenda. Okay. Oh, okay. So what I'm saying is there's a call to call a question, which takes priority over everything. So that's a parliamentary issue. So I'll second the call to question. So there's a vote to not to call a question. Vote on the call to question. To vote to vote. Vote to vote. Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. So three to one, we vote. So clear the slate. So we're voting on the motion as amended. Yes. Recognition is moved. All right, we have a process, we have a timeline, and the hope is that it engages the community. The hope is that we get excellent candidates. The hope is that

249we move forward and can have a representation in District E that reflects the quality and the issues and the concerns, and we can have a full board. Bye. President McQuarrie, for items G5 and G6, I would move that we table these two appointments, these two appointments, until we have appointed the new board member, so we could consider it with the full board and that the new board member would also possibly be one of the first. The biggest challenge with that is that a lot of times the Audit and Finance Committee is only five members, and sometimes it's hard to get a quorum. When is the next Audit Finance Committee meeting? We just had one, so... End of February, beginning of March, isn't it? Ms. Salco's looking it up right now, I can see. And I'm

250for one for not rushing appointments to these important committees. Yeah, no, I agree, but I know that there were on a few occasions when I was on the Audit Finance Committee that we didn't have a quorum. My sense is on this we would postpone. Did I hear a motion to table the two appointments? The next meeting is March 24th at the Audit and Finance Committee. March 24th? So table to a specific date? So if the next Audit and Finance Committee is March 24th, then there's plenty of time. So we would table it to the March 8th meeting? Yeah. That's items G5 and G6. G5 and 6. Sure. Second. Second. Cast your vote. Got it. So, let's see, we're moving to H2. Monthly financial update. No presentation. Information. Just if someone has questions. Any questions? No.

251No. Moving on. I, we approved except for I-17. I'll move I-17 and 18. And we have public comment. There was a speaker, citizen here. Is there a second? I'll second. No public comment. Okay. She was for full comment. Okay. All in favor? If there's a public comment. I'm sorry? On I-5? We haven't done I-5 yet. I-5 was already approved. I-5 was approved at the beginning as part of the consent agenda. There was no public comment at that time, so it wasn't pulled. So we have a motion to approve. We do not have citizen for comment. So cast your vote. We have 4-0. With that, any... Okay, we have one, two, three for non-agenda public comment. So if the item was on the agenda, you can't talk about it now. So this is for, so we

252have Elizabeth Tate, followed by Amani Robinson, followed by Tamara Hurley. If I said that right. Tamara, thank you. Elizabeth, not here. Oh, you are here, I'm sorry. Thank you. Hello again. Thank you, Elizabeth. Okay. I'm here again. I'm Elizabeth Tate. I am a stakeholder in the community of City Heights. I am the head track coach of Floja International, and we've practiced at Hoover High School for the past 25 years. And since last week, since I talked to you, we have scheduled a meeting with Hoover. However, I feel as though I know you talk about bullying in the schools. with the children, but I felt as though I'm being bullied by the district, by the facility rentals. And I want it to stop. I don't want the harassment. I don't want to feel as though I'm

253being scammed. I don't want to feel as though I'm being extorted. I don't want to feel as though I'm being used. I don't want to feel as though I'm being misled. And all of this is happening. And I'm here to ask you to make it publicly known to please stop it. You know, I've been there, I've been in the community working collaboratively, and what's happening now with the school and the community, I'm sure you're well aware of it, is that it's beginning to work negatively against the programs in the community, youth sports. Our youth pot-warner is not feeding it to the schools, they're going elsewhere. Youth track and field is... You know, the pressure from coming to be there, the mistrust, statements that were said about our organization that's been there for 25 years is

254incorrect. And I don't like it. And I'm asking you to ask whoever's in charge to stop it. And I've done my investigation. And it's all wrong, so please have whoever it is to stop it because I don't want it to go any further than this. We need to work together as a community as I have been doing for the past 25 years. And now it's just snowballing. I don't know what else to say. Please have them stop it. Thank you. Thank you. We've heard that and it's been handed to the superintendent. Excuse me? We heard a report. It's been handed to the superintendent. I can't hear you. Our superintendent will take a look at that. Thank you. Right. Imani. Just for the record, my sons ran on her team and it was the best experience.

255It helped them in football and everything else. I definitely want that worked out. So I'm here, I came here blind to all of what was happening on the agenda. I actually came here as a parent of CPMA students and very interested on finding a resolution for bullying and I'm very happy to hear what you're working on, that you just launched the bullying. SITE, WHICH IS REALLY GOOD. BUT ONE THING THAT'S MISSING, WHICH WE'VE COME A LONG WAY IN THE DISTRICT AS FAR AS WITH CONFLICT RESOLUTION, WE'VE COME A LONG WAY WITH NOT AS MANY CONFLICTS AND DIFFERENT ISSUES, BUT WE STILL HAVE SOME ISSUES. AND ONE OF THE MAIN THINGS IS THERE'S NOTHING FOR THE KIDS TO DO. YOU WANT TO INCLUDE EVERYONE. EVERYONE HAS TO HAVE SOME COMMON COMING TOGETHER, SOME TYPE OF COMMUNITY.

256THERE'S NO CLUBS. THERE'S ONLY INTERVENTION. THERE WAS ENRICHMENT THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. THERE'S ONE LUNCH WITH ALL STUDENTS THERE WITH NOTHING TO DO. I MEAN, WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO BUT BULLY? YOU SIT TWO KIDS TOGETHER WITH NOTHING, SITTING IDLE, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE ISSUES. AND I THINK THAT'S THE MAIN THING THAT WE NEED TO ADDRESS. ALSO, We don't have a clear way of communicating with each other, which we're not utilizing our resources that we already have in the district. Things are set up. We're not making it systemic where all schools are connected in some way. make a lot more sense to utilize the resources we already have. We keep getting experts that are hired to do certain things. They're not having enough time to even complete these issues. And parents and students are

257continuing to suffer because we don't find out about issues. We can't come together. And one of my main concerns being on the District Advisory Council is the fact that We're Title I parents. We have Title I students, and no one is considering the needs of the parents. I'm out of school now where we have so much waste. Everyone's talking about money, and we waste so much. I came here for something, just speaking on the fact of we're throwing away lunches. AND IT WAS SUCH A, YOU'VE GONE ON TO SO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS, BUT I THINK THAT IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO ADDRESS BECAUSE IF KIDS TAKE FOOD HOME, THEY'RE TREATED AS THIEVES, AND IF THEY'RE A TITLE I STUDENT, THAT MEANS THEY HAVE TITLE I PARENTS. AND IF THEY'RE HAVING AN ISSUE EATING AT SCHOOL, THERE'S

258AN ISSUE EATING AT HOME, AND IT'S SUCH A WASTE. I THREW AWAY 22 ORANGES, 30 SANDWICHES. IT IS... I can't even do it. I just leave it on the table. But of course it ends up in the trash. So we have so many resources that we're not using. That's where we need to start. Thank you so much, Monique. So we have Tamara. I guess you voted while I was driving my 25 minutes down here. So I'll address things quickly. I thought I was going to have extra time. I have multiple hats that I wear, so I'll start with the parent hat and say I'm glad she passed the weighted credit for CCTE and for community college classes. I would say that it went over really big. I'll put my cluster congress hat. It went over

259really big at cluster congress when Cheryl spoke to us, what was it, 10 days ago about it. But one thing that did occur to me, put my parent hat back on, as someone with a junior, I'm concerned that she said that she would not go back to the ICC, I think is what it's called, to look for waiting retroactively for all these students until August. That is way too late for those that are doing college apps. For those of you who have college students, you know that stuff starts in August. And so I really would encourage... her to go back to that committee in, say, May, as soon as the acceptance is due, because you didn't want to scramble it with the seniors, but not wait until August, because that puts a lot of pressure

260on the counselors to recalculate GPAs and class ranks when all this stuff is going on. On to the other thing. That was what I was going to say that was related to the... agenda item. And then as far as general public comment, I just came from an SSC meeting at Scripps Ranch High. We lost our graduation coach. I don't know, that was an allocation to school sites. I don't know if every school site did, but I'll be asking other school sites. But it seems like really a bad idea when we're looking to increase our graduation rates and also to make sure students are on track for A to G. The graduation coach at our school site makes sure, does facilitation to make sure that these students are on track. and we do not have the

261funds to cover that. We get $56,000 total in LCFF intervention funds. That doesn't cover half a graduation coach, and it doesn't leave us anything for the extended day and for the ALD and acquired language development, which between those two, those two serve as 100 students. So we're losing huge amounts of things. And we actually have less discretionary money than last year based on the fact that we are projected for slightly lower enrollment. So we have very little funding to cover something that used to be allocated that's now gone. So I would urge you to go back and look to make sure that graduation coaches are allocated to all the school sites because, I mean, it's part of the new API, whatever they end up calling it. Graduation rate is one of the qualifiers for the

262ranking, and this is not. Our whole point here is to graduate students, right? So we don't want to be pulling our graduation coaches. Thanks. Thank you. No other public comments? This meeting is adjourned.