001We are going to, I'm looking for a motion to approve tonight's agenda. I'll move to approve. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. And tonight's norm and inspiration will be presented by Trustee Winders. Thank you. Okay. So. October is LGBTQ History Month, and it seems fitting to use this moment and reflect and honor a critical moment in our country's history as part of our inspiration for the work that we do serving our youth. 25 years ago today, the life of Matthew Shepard, a young gay student, was lost due to the attack on him by bigots. He was attacked for simply existing. His legacy lives on in the federal Shepard Byrd Act and state hate crime legislation that's used today to hold accountability to bigots who believe that they get to decide who gets to exist. In
002public education, it's our role to ensure that each and every student fully accesses their education. That means to be able to fully access and learn, students have the right and the need to be free of discrimination and harassment. It's deeper than bullying and bullying policies. It's upholding our students' civil rights. I'm proud of our students and the work that they do and their courageous conversations that they have every day with one another and with the adults. Their willingness to support one another and the fact that so often our students and our children are so much more compassionate and so much more brave than often we are as adults. So the norm that I selected today is the norm I always select because it's my favorite, which is that we model meeting behavior as if the
003children were watching. And I have two quotes, both from James Baldwin. And the first one is really that norm. The children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. And that's why that's my favorite norm, because they really are watching. When we say it's as if they're watching, I think that we need to know that they are watching. They are definitely paying attention. And then my last quote is also from James Baldwin. By the way, shout out to Sonoma Valley High School Library and their Instagram. They did an awesome job with Banned Books Week, and I was glad to see Baldwin in the stack of books being highlighted as important literature. James Baldwin from The Fire next time. For nothing is fixed forever and forever.
004It is not fixed. The earth is always shifting. The light is always changing. The sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. Thank you, Tressie Winders. We are going to now move to student presentations tonight. So I will hand that over. Who am I handing that over to? I guess to the slate? Okay. Thank you. Welcome tonight. Hello. All right. It works. Anyways. Hi. So I'm Victoria Hernandez Padilla, a.k.a. the student voice for this
005year for the high school. And I decided today to combine, you know, because I was we were very gladly. Hold on let me rephrase but yeah, so for tonight. I'm not gonna be doing a report Just on my own as student voice I decided to combine with slate because you were so you know you're very happy to be asked by all of you guys to do a presentation of what SLATE is and what we have been doing in the leadership class. And you know, I'm here to report what the high school, you know, what it's doing, what it feels like, et cetera, et cetera. But at the end of the day, we're a team and we work together and they're like the people that support me the most when it comes to the student voice,
006et cetera. So we're going to do the report together tonight. So yeah. So yeah, I'm Vicky. I'm the student voice. I am a senior at Sonoma Valley High School. I went to Alvarado. I went to Altamira and now I'm at the high school. So I'll let them introduce themselves. Hi, my name is Connor Cheeseman. I'm a senior at Sonoma Valley High School. I am the financial advisor and I went to Flowery and Adele. Hello, my name is Dayanira Hernandez. I am in 12th grade at Sonoma Valley High School. I attended Sessorini and Altamira as well. I am the student activities director, so I am in charge of all the sports and activities. From last month and this month, we focused on kind of three things mostly, and then we have one little item that we're
007going to touch on that we're trying to do for the future. So for starters, the day... that I had my last or my first student report was the day before the Hispanic Heritage Month celebration at lunch. So I just wanted to follow up on that because that was a really big event on campus and something that we worked a lot, you know, we put a lot of energy and time into. So just kind of like going back to what I previously said, but it's a month ago. So like, you know, we all need a refresher. So we partner with clubs on campus that elevate Hispanic culture and Hispanic students, such as Sociedad Honoraria Hispanica, Dragones Latinx, and Mecha, and they sold food. mostly responsible for the food aspect. So there was like cookies, gancitos, agua
008fresca, and fruta picada for sale. And they raised hundreds of dollars. Like I'm not exactly sure, but I heard that one club raised nearly like $1,000 for some reason. I don't know if that's completely true, but like there was a lot of money and like everything pretty much sold out immediately, which is really cool because... I'm kind of going off script a little bit, but in all my four years there, I've never seen such a packed house at any event during campus. And to see that a lot of these students were also Hispanic students that aren't really involved in any other thing was incredibly heartwarming. And I can say that we were all very, very happy with the outcome. So going back on topic. Leadership also brought, bought two pinatas, which were a highlight of
009many students, you know, to be able to break a pinata at school is pretty cool. And students were able to break the pinatas and get Mexican candy. Leadership was responsible for having a face painting station, which was also a huge hit for people that aren't really, you know, don't want to hit a pinata, you know, kind of want to stay more towards the back. We had a face painting station by leadership. And then... Yes, and then it was such a huge hit that we brought it back for mental health awareness week Which is last week that we'll be touching on later But the main star of the show was gets a Lynn so of the ballet for critical dance group in Sonoma So we partnered with them will realistically it was one of the clubs
010that had connections So for this event the reason why it was so successful my opinion is because we use our connections and we all work together So one of the clubs has connections to get a lens. So we were We were able to bring around six to ten students from Adele Girls to come on campus for like a little break and also dance for our students. And it was super exciting to see like again the full courtyard of people just like watching dance, you know, smiling and taking pictures and videos was really cool. And we also want to say thank you to the businesses because we also, we all kind of like spread out. We're like, okay, you reach out to this business, you reach out to this business. So we want to say thank
011you to all the businesses that, you know, helped us and donated their. products and stuff like that, but specifically thank you to El Coyote for their generous donation. They supported us a lot through gift cards and through other stuff. So thank you so much. And it was such a hit that the leadership class and, you know, the slate has been talking about doing a cultural fair earlier, like later on in the school year, because now we have, we have like three Hispanic clubs, but we also have an Asian youth rising club and now we have a French club. So what our idea was is to make like a little cultural food fair during lunch. Also, freshmen and sophomores can't really go off campus during lunch, so that would be kind of like a good way
012to like increase like more cultural awareness, increase like, you know, support clubs and students in different cultures financially. And also, you know, it's fun. So hopefully that will be in the works soon. So I'll take it. I'll give it over to Connor to do this, his mental health awareness week wrap up. And thank you. All right, the next topic we got is our mental health awareness week last week. And so basically the way it's set up is each week, each day has a specific event, and it kind of brings the school together, increases school spirit, and kind of spreads awareness for mental health and demonstrates the options we have at our school to provide mental health support. So on Monday, we spread awareness by handing out kind of mental health merchandise in the center of
013the quad. We got a great turnout. We got most of the school to at least stop by and say hi. Those who didn't know this week found out about Mental Health Awareness Week and got involved. So that was very exciting. And then Tuesday, we had each of the advisory classes at our school, each student fill out a pamphlet saying what they're struggling with or some words of advice or encouragement for their fellow students. And we hung them up throughout the day. throughout the school and so it was great to see kind of a lot of people taking it seriously and people actually being honest within their reactions and to have the be able to hang up those honest reactions throughout the school On Wednesday, we were planning on doing a yoga ceremony, but unfortunately, due
014to scheduling errors, we weren't able to find time for that. So we're going to try to find another time for it, just working with everyone's schedules. On Thursday, we're going to have therapy dogs, and despite not being able to have our providers drop out in the last minute, we were able to find dogs, bring them to campus, and get a lot of people to come out to check out the puppies. And so everyone that's always their highlight of the mental health week was to come see the dogs and so it was great to see everyone show up and get involved. And then on Friday we had our entire school support our school colors and brought their green to school. And then we were planning on doing a broadcast about mental health but we were unable
015to broadcast it so we're going to try to find another time when we can submit the full result for everybody. That was our Mental Health Awareness Week and next we have Homecoming. A couple things that I was kind of in charge of behind the scenes with Mental Health Week. You know, Connor, he was, his committee, because we have different committees in leadership, his committee was like really focused on like the organization and stuff. Of course, just a couple extra things like the broadcast that we were supposed to have last week. It did not happen, but the week before that, Friday, we put together a very, I mean, when I say very quick, it was like made in 30 minutes, short broadcast to show to the school where I went over, like I was on the
016broadcast and I shared to students what the wellness center at school was in English. and in Spanish, which is really nice. Aside from that, we also had a mental health campaign that I was kind of in charge of with my committee and where we posted local and national resources for Sonoma Valley High School students in English and in Spanish, and that's on our high school social media account and in our Slate social media account. And then today, actually, me and a couple other people in the leadership class went to the Wellness Center and we did a tour. basically like a couple minutes we went in here's what you can do when you come in here's how you can get help here's how you sign up etc we did a video in English and in Spanish
017and those videos are up still and a couple other things I think that was it so we also did like a lot of social media stuff on the back but we also really want to focus on just like community building and on Tuesday when we did like we have like Dragon Time sent out a bunch of cards to teachers and we were like ask your students to share to be vulnerable and share about something that you're struggling with or something that you know a word of advice a lot of people even ourselves you were kind of scared that people wouldn't take it seriously but surprisingly everyone did like when i say everyone i only recall one card being like that I saw that was like somewhat, you know, but like everyone else took it really
018seriously and what was like really what really made us happy was also to see that some people were writing words of advice and their struggles in Spanish as well and some teachers, some Spanish teachers have come up to me and I'm pretty sure have come up to us and said like, oh can you like when you do an answer of the loudspeaker can you like please say it in Spanish because there's a lot of new students here that only speak Spanish. So I guess like for us we did like a bunch of things. It was kind of put together in the last minute, you know, but for putting it together in a week. The week before that, I think we did a really good job and we're really going to focus on just trying to
019make mental health a priority every other week, you know, every day. So, yeah, I'll let the day I take over for homecoming. So our last topic is homecoming. We had some issues with finding a venue, but we were able to secure Golden Hall. The theme for homecoming week is movies of 2023. So freshmen are Super Mario, sophomores are Little Mermaid, juniors are Spider-Man, and the senior class is Barbie. The overall theme for the dance is Hollywood. so grammys and that will be very fun we are still on the look for two convertibles with their owners to accompany them for the parade from sonoma valley high to the plaza for the candidates the football game will be on october 27th at 7 pm on the vinchley field against justin sienna and that's all we have to
020report thank you thank you very much slate for coming today to speak to the board so appreciate it all right so now we're um We're at public comment for items not on the agenda, but before we do that, I wanted to make a statement tonight. before proceeding so our district is committed to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment to all and does not tolerate hate speech in any form we actually have a board policy 0415 that talks about sort of how we're committed to diversity and equity in our district we recognize that the law requires the board of trustees to provide a forum for expression during board meetings but in order to ensure the board can proceed with its business the board expects that no person and shall delay, interrupt, or make threats of violence
021during the meeting. Disruptive behavior, including comments on topics outside the board's jurisdiction by any individual during a board meeting could result in removal from that meeting. Such removal may occur if an individual makes threats of violence or fails to adhere to the rules or laws governing conduct of the meeting. If an individual engages in inappropriate conduct as described above and is participating remotely, they will not be allowed to continue to comment. i would also like the audience to know that if we experience a disruption on zoom tonight the board reserves the right to limit further public comment via this communication channel and may require that all comments be made in person so with that i will um for anyone the board recognizes the value of public comment and anyone in the audience both in person
022and in zoom may address the board on any school related matter not on tonight's agenda we reserve public comment on the agenda items as we're discussing them so the board cannot take action at this time and each speaker is required to identify themselves prior to addressing the board and to limit their comment to three minutes and I noticed there are a lot of newcomers tonight so if you make your comment and the board does not respond we are not being rude that is how that is the the way we proceed in these meetings um so i just want you to know that we're not being rude because we're not responding to you so with that if anyone would like to head to the podium i encourage you to line up and take your turn i'm
023noel barbalesco I lived in Sonoma Valley since 1977. Both our kids went to Flowery School, Altamira, and graduated from Sonoma High. And I'm here to talk about the locking of the tennis courts at the high school. And I sent out some information to everybody, so I think you know what this is about. But anyway, I'm going to read my statement so everybody understands what's going on here. Let me get my glasses on here. The four courts of the high school were constructed in 1986 after an agreement was made between the city of Sonoma and the school district. The city would provide all of the funding for the project, and the school district would provide the land. Actually, this information is fully documented on the monument at the tennis courts. My wife Carolyn was an elected
024member of the school board from the Flowery district at the time. She served two terms, and so she knows all about this. Marilyn Kelly was a superintendent at the time and she still lives in town so if anybody wants to check with her she can supply information about this same agreement. At the time there were no public tennis courts in the city of Sonoma so the city was motivated to put up the money to build the facility. for use by Sonoma residents. I remember all of this because I was the president of the tennis association during the late 80s and we began scheduling league and tournament events at the courts. We provided the city and the school district with a schedule of planned activities and insurance information. SVTA volunteers installed all the original lighting including
025the poles and the wiring. and did a lot of the maintenance including building a drinking fountain, windscreens, landscaping, a lot of which was demolished when they added the extra fencing to lock the courts. Originally there was no fencing or any kind of a gate at the courts. They were always open. which was really great. So we're just, there's a bunch of us here, we're just here to ask that the courts be unlocked. And actually I want to mention that this is actually the third time I've been here to talk about this, not to the board but to the administrators here. Over the years, ever since they put the gate to where the courts could be locked, every now and then they decide to just keep them locked. And that's completely contrary to the agreement between
026the city and the school. which said that they would be available to the public when not in use by the high school. And when I came before, we always got a result. We would talk to them, give the same story, and then the school would have their custodial staff come at 10 o'clock at night, lock the courts, and them open up in the morning. And the only other thing, and I sent you guys some stuff about the lighting in 2018, the high school. the school district got grant money to put in better lighting, and people started playing in the evening, and it was a really nice thing, and now the lighting is completely useless that you guys paid for because nobody can use it. Mr. Barbalesco, I'm sorry, but your time is up, and I
027thank you for your comments. All right. You're welcome. Hi, good evening everybody. Thank you for the public comment time. My name is Judith Alex and I've been a resident of Sonoma for about four years and it is a slice of heaven to live here. There's just tremendous community and freedom and the feeling of small town and one of my pleasures is to go over to the high school on the weekends and play tennis. There are only nine public courts here in Sonoma, five at Maxwell and four at the high school. So it's very troubling for me to now have to go through this whole reservation system. I tried to reserve a court. I registered with whatever it is. It was two weeks out. I reserved a court for two hours, and it was $82.50. I
028did not complete the reservation because I was just shocked. And to springboard from your comments about inclusion, this is such a barrier to families in Sonoma and kids. I just don't know how children in Sonoma are going to have the ability to play tennis. And for a family on Saturday mornings to just get up, pick up their rackets. and go play tennis. Meanwhile, hats off to the high school for making all those pickleball court lines on the basketball courts. That is so wonderful. And so I would ask all of you to reconsider the restriction of the reservation system. I just think it's a horrible idea. I'm also a member of SVTA, and if... Maybe we can collaborate to fundraise for new nets, new windscreens, stuff like that. So that's it. Thank you very much. Thank
029you very much. Next person. Hello. My name is Mike Parr, and I've been a resident of Sonoma for the last 15 years, and I just wanted to chime in as well about the recent policy about the tennis courts. I grew up playing tennis in San Jose, California. I had access to public courts that were open and free to use. And I've been playing tennis here in Sonoma the last 15 years, two to three times a week. And, you know, I agree with the previous comments in that. I just don't feel that it's an appropriate policy when you're limiting access to athletic facilities when we look at the issues of obesity and kids on their phones and not having access themselves and with their families to what I believe should be a public sporting facility. And
030I also chime in with... What has been stated I looked at facility Ron the system that you need to use now to reserve a court in the earliest I could reserve a court right now is October 24th so You know we also look at I've heard there's a system with the track at the high school where you can pay I believe it's $20 you get a key fob and that gives you access to the track at the high school So I don't know if it could be considered if necessary to have a similar type system where perhaps resident can pay $20 they get a key fob and that gives you access to the tennis courts and for an example I played tennis at Maxwell Park last night and we had to quit early because it
031got dark and it's gonna get darker earlier even now and there are lights at the high school and so this policy is limiting access even more to being able to play tennis because there's no lights at Maxwell Park so would recommend I also contacted the athletic director I emailed him he met emailed me back from the high school and he didn't really have an explanation what was the rationale and the reasoning why this change of policy for access to the Sonoma Valley High School tennis courts so I just think it's very unfortunate and I hope the board here and the athletic director and those involved would reconsider the locking of the tennis courts at Sonoma High School Thank you. Hi, David Bell. Ten years and I'm a resident. And two kids through the high school,
032both miraculously graduated. And I'm here to talk about the tennis as well. I'm just trying to figure out why there needed to be a change implemented to the system that was in place before. You know, for the last ten years that I've been playing tennis there, it seems to be working. Not perfectly, but just fine. And so that's what I can't figure out is what prompted this change. to then make it so difficult for anybody to play tennis outside of school hours. And I think that the school board should be also asking that same question, saying, well, what was necessary, why was it, is it a funding issue, is it a vandalism issue, whatever it is, but potentially just explaining the rationale behind it, and then the community can, as a group, collectively come together
033and say, okay, let's try to figure out this problem. the nets get vandalized? Is it the la-la trash? Is it the whatever it is? And there's a whole lot of tennis players in the Valley that would love to get together who all pay a lot of taxes and who have financial resources to come together to try to solve the problem, right? Or was there a problem? Because I'm not sure there was, right? And is this an invented problem? And someone's trying to just say, this is my territory and my domain and I'm going to control it and everybody else needs to do what I say and what I want. So, you know, that's my sort of take on it, and it just beggars belief as to why we've added a layer of bureaucracy to the
034game of tennis, right? So what if one of my kids wants to go play, you know, a graduate of the high school on a Sunday to go play tennis with their friends? I see it all the time, but now they can't because the gate's locked and they've got to make a two-week reservation to go play. It's asinine, to be honest. So I've got a minute left. And publicly, I just want to say I'm a much better tennis player than Mike Pye. And we say his reputation is when in doubt, he calls it out, which is not the right way to go. So kids, if you're watching, when in doubt, call it in and be a great sportsman. Anyway, thanks a lot and look forward to getting back out there and playing tennis. Thank you, Mr.
035Bell. Good evening. Brandon Cutting, I'm the police chief for the city of Sonoma. And I just wanted to give a quick law enforcement update on specifically the high schools and the facilities. And last time I was here, about a month ago, obviously there were some fights going on at the school. I had placed a deputy president around and about the school. I'm very happy to say that we are not there on a full-time basis right now. And even happier to say that I don't think we've had a... fight on campus in a month at least a month if not even maybe a little bit longer of significance I guess I should say so with that We are going to have I am gonna have a deputy rotating through and just going across campus from time
036to time What I don't want is for people to see law enforcement and wonder what's going on when we're near or around the campus So from time to time you'll see a deputy there. It's not because there's a problem It's because we're just going through to make sure people are seeing us and that we're having a representation with a student body On top of that, last time I also talked a lot about we had four deputies in the area, one for the campus and three for traffic. I'm happy to say traffic has calmed a lot. The student driving in and about the campus has really mellowed out. We are not getting violations like we were. First Street West was a racetrack for a while. That has calmed, thankfully. Now what we're seeing is parents and
037non-students driving faster. We're dealing with that. So you're not going to see as large of a presence. Tomorrow, to take it from the high of everybody's doing well, and I'm bringing it back down now, so everybody's aware of what happened this last weekend in Israel. Tomorrow is the 13th, and Hamas has declared tomorrow the day of rage. From a law enforcement perspective, we're very nervous. We're very... observant into what's going to happen in our local area and the nation in California. I sit in on briefings, intelligence briefings across the state every day, right now especially, and this morning we talked a lot about what could happen tomorrow. We're very concerned about our Jewish community centers and any location where there is a potential of something happening. First Amendment. gatherings are taking place across the country
038on both sides and I think everybody's very concerned about it so as far as the schools go I'm very positively thinking that we're not going to have any issues at all on campuses but in the community we are very concerned two weeks ago a lot of community members woke up to flyers of anti-semitism and driveways we tried to collect a lot of them a lot of them were received we were very familiar with the group it was a first amendment legal pamphlet and this group is well known to us. The last thing I'm going to say is we're working a lot with the middle schools and high school on mental health issues and we're trying to bridge the county mental health services with the schools. Your school staffs are doing a fantastic job with mental
039health crisis. Law enforcement, we are not good at dealing with that. We're doing the best we can, but legally we have to get involved at a certain point. And we're trying to really pull ourselves out of it as much as we can and bridge that community caretaking gap a little bit better. And so we're working on that. Hopefully next time I come in, I can give you another update as to how the county's addressing that. And that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Chief Cutting. My name is Terry Hernandez, and I am a voter in Area 3. John Kelly, you need to resign from the school board. During the last two school board meetings, I have highlighted your failures in the area, three voters, and the students and the families of Sonoma Valley. My
040voice is being heard. Your abuse of public funds is astounding. This district has had to shell out money for superintendent searches multiple times, replacing district office employees multiple times, and countless investigations. All of that to the tune of close to half a million dollars. Did you hear that? Half a million dollars of taxpayer money was wasted because of you. Let's remind the voters and families of this district how we got to this. You took it upon yourself to sell the voters and families of this valley that then-Superintendent Luann Carlamagno was not doing a good job. Really? Well, here it is six years later, and you have nothing to show for it. Let me repeat that. Six years later, and you have nothing to show for it except for failure. This has got to stop. The
041only thing we have seen since you've been on the school board is dysfunction and loss of taxpayer dollars. John Kelly, you need to resign from this school board tonight. Next. Well, I'm going back to the tennis issue since I'm here. And my name is Linda Zellerbach, and I've been a member of the community in Sonoma for about seven years. And I have been a big user of the courts. I've been there with my children, my adult children, and friends and community. And it's a great place to let off steam and have some fun. And as everybody already said, what was broke about it and why did it need to be fixed. It seemed like everything was working just fine. And it's sort of a sad day that we no longer can just grab our rackets
042on a Saturday morning and go play tennis with our friends and family. So since I came, I just wanted to say, join in with the other voices that have spoken because there are a number of us here that... and there if you wanted us we could have a lot more people here to speak to this issue we just kind of came in small numbers tonight but we would really hope that the school will school board and the whoever is in charge of this will look at it a little bit more carefully and see if there's a better solution than this felicity program that is not really user friendly or community friendly in any way thank you and i don't think it's felicity whatever it's called Facilitron. Yeah. The robots. Yeah. Thank you so much. Any
043other, any, anyone else? Okay. Go ahead. Come up to the mic. Sorry. Nervous. Oh, sorry. Is that better? Okay. My name is Amy Kelly Lobsinger and I'm the head of recall John Kelly campaign. This is my first time speaking here because I have been afraid and nervous, but I'm done with that. I am done being bullied. I want to tell you a little bit about myself before I tell you why I went through the process. Here's a bit of my background. My husband and I were born and raised in Sonoma. My mother worked for this school district for 25 years. My kids are fifth-generation Sonomans on my husband's side, and they attend Sasserini, and they love it. I taught special education at Adele Harrison for 10 years and resigned to caretake from my infant daughter,
044my one-year-old daughter, and my mother, who has since passed from Alzheimer's. I just renewed my teaching credentials and I thought about joining the district again. Since my time teaching, I've watched John continually disrupt the board and drive away literally scores of amazing educators and staff members, which leads me to the main reason why I led the recall. Our kids deserve more. Our kids deserve someone who does not lie and manipulate. Our kids deserve someone who does not harass and intimidate employees. Our kids deserve someone who does not try to sneak costly labor agreements by his fellow trustees and taxpayers for his benefit. Our kids deserve someone who will not attempt to close four beloved public schools without public input. Our kids deserve more than you, Trustee Kelly. We have since switched our focus from the
045recall to defeating John in the next election. We are pouring our efforts into supporting a new candidate. you will not run unopposed and you will not continue to disrupt our beloved school district thank you is there any other public comment tonight all right hold on i'm just going to check the uh yes okay so i have uh is everyone done here in person because i want to call on people who are in zoom for public comment all right with that we're going to recognize george fraser yep go ahead george my name is uh george fraser uh sonoma and i come up used to be in playing on tennis courts. And the courts used to get used a lot, as you can see by some of the weekends in the afternoons, which is not the most
046popular time. There were typically one to two other groups. Now there's no one. I checked the website today, and the next few weekends, days that you can see on the website, have zero reservations. And for those who are not tennis players, perhaps, who are on the board, I just want to provide a little information. Tennis is often played on short notice. especially families. My brothers or my parents or my boyfriend, like we generally don't pick a specific time in advance and this is very common. Lots of people do this so requiring advanced reservations excludes a lot. I'm a big tennis player. I've played at probably 50 different in the last 10 years through USTA League tennis and when they do take reservations every other court that I've seen uses one of two systems. The most
047common is that reservations are available for a fee and that unreserved courts are available first come, first serve with no fee. And the less common system, but which I have seen, is that all, but there's a staff member who's present to a reservation. It's less common, but I've seen this in two places at the San Francisco Goldman Center and at the San Diego. So that's just some information. My opinion is. the school should adopt the most common system it's great to have a reservation system but the courts should be left open thank you george okay with that i do not see any more public comment so we will proceed uh with uh reports and we'll start out with dmta thank you all for coming out about tennis it was appreciated guys uh ladies and gentlemen
048of the school board superintendent chen and the people of sonoma valley And I'm going to go off the script a little bit. In regards to the tennis courts, I will also say we used to have actually six more tennis courts where the pavilion is currently. And the deal was, I was told as the department chair of the health and wellness department at the high school, that when we built the pavilion, we were going to build four more tennis courts on the other side of the tennis courts where there's solar is currently. So if we could get those back, that would be even amazing. And back to the script here. We appreciate the opportunity to address you today as the co-presidents of the teachers union. We are Laura Hoban, a math teacher at Adele Middle School,
049and Dennis Hausman, a physical education teacher at Seminole Valley High School. As we come close to the ninth week of school, we would like to share some highlights as well as some concerns. Some highlights. The Sasserini Color Run was a huge success last Friday. Lots of parent participation and the fire department showed up to spray the kids down since it was 95 degrees. The new multi-purpose room and playgrounds are awesome and our students are enjoying the outdoor stage as well. They would like to thank the Sonoma community for providing that. Presswood had a fall carnival put on by the PTO to help raise funds for the outdoor ed and SV is also supporting us through grant money. They have a Gage Ball area, and for those of you who don't know what that is, maybe
050stop by Presswood and check it out. I will be, because I don't know what Gage Ball is either. It's Gaga Ball. Oh, Gaga Ball. Gaga Ball. Also, there's some foam building blocks with the PTO, and the kids are loving it, and added to their recess options. Fall field trips are happening to the Garden Park and Community Garden. Fifth graders at Presswood will be pen pals with Sasserini fifth graders. So both are at the outdoor ed in February and will have made new friends before they get there. At the high school, the ninth graders are currently using the swing pool and appreciate the pool not being used by the general public during that time. Having the public there makes some of the students feel uncomfortable. As we approach November, college application season, we'd like to encourage
051everyone to wear college, trade school, higher learning swag on Thursdays and their school spirit wear on Fridays. Altamira is pleased that the students in their strategic, thanks for using that word, classes last year are finding success in grade level classes this year and teachers are offering math homework help during lunch and taking turns running it. Both Altamira and Adele students are enjoying time in the farm to table classes, which leads us to the area of concerns. The grant that was the major source of funding will rent out this year. We are concerned about how to sustain these wonderful elective classes in the future. Another issue we hope to work is collaboration with the district on supporting our students that are struggling academically and behaviorally. We are looking forward to our district providing adequate instructional aids
052and support at all levels. Additionally, we are continuing to work with district in order to create protocol for providing teacher access to student information. This past Monday, we had a district-wide professional learning day. District teachers met at the high school gym, my classroom, to be inspired to make connections with students and create relationships. We need to keep in mind that class size has a direct impact on making meaningful connections with our students. While the session was enjoyable, it brings to mind what we used to evaluate how our money is spent for outside consultants, speakers, firms, etc., and whether this is the best place to spend our limited funds. We want to strongly encourage the school district to sunshine their negotiations by the November 9th board meeting so we can begin the process of negotiations this
053year. As you know, the whole contract is open, and we have a great deal of pressing issues. In conclusion, the teachers union remains committed to fostering a positive working environment for our educators, advocating for the needs, and ultimately ensuring the best possible education for our students. We look forward to continuing our collaborative efforts with the school board to achieve these goals and put our students first. Thank you very much. CSEA, Ms. Smith, welcome. Hello, good evening. Today, surprisingly, was not a spirit day at Altamira. So disappointing. All right. Good evening, Sonoma Valley Board of Trustees, Superintendent Dr. Chen, and the district directors. I am Kimberly Smith, your CSEA chapter president, Area B, Region 24, Chapter 376. The chapter membership ratified four MOUs in September, continuing to work with the school district to make sure there's
054equity across the sites for all classified staff. Classified staff are vital to make sure the daily business occurs for students. Imagine a day that there was no one to drive a bus, making sure the students arrived to school safely. Imagine if the kitchen was closed and locked up and the students would go hungry. Technology isn't working, a bathroom is broken, doors are locked, phones are ringing. School would have to close if there were no classified employees. It would look like a dark cloud hovering over. As essential classified employees, we show up every day and make sure the schools are open. We are welcoming to all. We greet students, parents, and our coworkers with a warm smile. I say we because schools couldn't run smoothly single-handedly. The purpose of unions, including the Teachers Union, VMTA, and
055all the district staff, We stand together as one school district. Recently, I attended a Cal MI workshop with district staff, and San Lorenzo presented their district experiences, so that was really interesting. We came away with recognizing and understanding trust, equity, and communication. And of course, we had a professional development day on Monday where all employees had the opportunity to improve their skills. The district worked many hours to put this day together for all staff, and we are thankful. The road is always being paved for improvements, and I appreciate that. That's all I have for tonight. Thank you for your time. Better together, stronger united. Thank you very much. President Chang, just real quick, can I make a request? Can we as a board get emailed to us or included in our board packet the union
056reports, our VMTA and CSCA reports? Because I try to take notes as fast as I can, but sometimes I think it helps if I had their full report just to keep things on my radar. Post? Post meeting? Yeah, after the meeting. Post meeting? I don't need it before. If it's possible. Or if you guys want to email them. Yeah, I just want to keep things on my radar and make sure that I'm doing my job and listening to you. You don't have to. It's not a requirement. But if you'd like to, it would be really helpful. Thank you. Yeah, some reps have just even sent it to us in advance. So, you know, we're really prepared. Love it. I understand. We're not asking you for the 72 hours in advance. Okay, so I will hand
057it over to the superintendent. I'm actually going to make my report really brief because I'm going to be presenting later on. a much lengthier presentation. I just want to share, we did have a PD day and I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on that, but it was just really great to see all of the staff that showed up, both certificated and classified, and we really tried to differentiate the training for them, but we also know that professional development doesn't happen on one day, and so we're looking forward to collaborating with VMTA and with CSEA in terms of developing a professional development plan. that really makes sense that's meaningful for all of them I also held my first coffee chat at sasserini on September 19th which seems such a long time ago
058but not not even a month ago to really get a sense of what our community and our parents are wanting they shared a lot of strengths that are happening in our schools but also shared a lot of challenges and issues that they'd like for us to be aware of so that we can like Kimberly said address and improve on and so I'm going to be having additional coffee chats throughout the year and other parts of the district so other schools will be hosting me and I'll be having the opportunity to authentically talk to our parents and get some more information from them I've also had the pleasure of going to many of our schools but specifically to Alvarado and flowery these past a couple of weeks where I've had the opportunity to spend some time
059with our first graders I did a read aloud with the first graders and just had the opportunity to see great smiles and just beautiful faces and it really just reminded me of why we're here and really the purpose of of my job and making sure that I spend time in classrooms and in schools because that's the only way that I really get to see what's happening and just to also see what the wonderful things that are going on with the way that the teachers are planning instruction and then also having conversations with them about what they need. And then finally, I think the slate did a wonderful job of reminding us of homecoming activities that are happening on October 27th. Again, we're going to have a parade and our homecoming. So if any of you
060in the public want to come out and cheer on our dragons, we're more than happy to host you. All right. Thank you. Okay. Now we've come to, we're on number 14, the consent agenda. And so before I call for a motion. Before I call for a motion, I just want to point out that there are two resolutions on the consent agenda that I just want to acknowledge to the public. It's the week of the school administrator and also another resolution for National School Bus Safety Week. So I just want to give a little shout out before anyone jumps to the motion. And with that, I'll open it up. So moved. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. So I'm actually going to suggest a little recess before. You know, I was thinking the same thing. We
061have a couple of business items that are quick. Quick business items? Okay. And if we just go and get those action items done, then we can, you know, eat our vegetables and we can have our break. Okay. So let's proceed to Agenda Item 15.1, which is an action item for an MOU for classified employees. And we have Kristen Ugren who is going to present. Hello good evening trustees and superintendent chin we actually have four MOUs that we worked with partnership with CSEA in the month of September and the first one is an MOU kitchen manager and custodians assigned to Woodland Star Charter School on the former Dunbar campus and this ensures that we do have three of our association members and they are still part of our school district they're part of Sonoma Valley the
062CBA collective bargaining agreement and it just spells out all of the specifics it is for one year and we are really pleased that our employees are able to be there and also feel having the protections of our current union. So that is the first MOU. Is there any questions from the board? First of all, thank you for getting this very important work done. It's very appreciative of staff. The only question I had on this one was I was actually surprised to see them on the regular agenda and that some of these weren't, especially the reclassification of the campus supervisors on the consent. And was it, did you want to, is there a reason procedurally we did it that way or was it you thought we'd want to see it? Each one. Yes, I am new
063and learned a few things. And also some of these MOUs are on here because there is a financial impact. Yeah. All right. That was just my only question on that one. But otherwise, I think we should take comment. I'm ready to move on these guys. Anyone? Yes. Trustee Wenders? Yeah, thank you. I just want to make a note that... Because there's been questions from the community and I've received questions multiple and have had sorted to explain over and over and over again So I just want to like throw it all over the table So at one point the MOU did include a library media specialist and it no longer includes that And I want to clarify that that was not a thing that we as a district took away It's not on there because that
064was at the directive of Woodland Star Charter School's director who decided they wanted to move forward with. their own library and their own library staff and so there's been a lot of questions from the community and assumptions that we as a district were taking that away from woodland star and that is absolutely factually incorrect and not the case and i want to be really really clear about that i took the time to go out to woodland star i met with the director i had a conversation about this i have had a conversation with dr chin about this and i have read and reread all the documents a million times myself and so i just want to be really clear to the community it was something that we offered as part of a transition support and
065the the school director has decided to go in a different direction which is totally fine and okay and we support that but i want to be clear that it isn't a thing that we have taken away from woodland star it just was something they determined that they no longer needed moving forward so i just because this is the mou and where it's everybody's agreed to it and Thank you to our union labor partners for their hard work on it because when we are working with our charter schools through our district, it's important that the way that this is laid out is really nice and really clear. So thank you for explaining all the pieces in it and that these employees do maintain all the rights afforded to them as members of our union and that
066we... will continue to support that and have that collaboration to best serve all of our students here in the Valley. So thank you. Trustee Knox, did you? Trustee Landry? I just had one basic question and then we'll come to public comment on this, which is it's an unusual arrangement where we're lending out employees to a school that we don't really, we have financial oversight but not really operating oversight. So I'm just trying to understand, are the employees that are part of this agreement, whom do they actually report to if they have issues? Go ahead. So that is spelled out in the MOU, and it is our Sonoma Valley program managers that they do report to, that they do the evaluation, they do the supervision. Always they have the rights to also reach out if they've
067got a complaint or a concern to the HR department. but they do report to their managers. I see that they have the same rights as any other employee, but presumably during the day they're actually working for this other entity, which is the confusing part. So I guess if there ever is an issue where maybe there are disagreements between the two parties, does Woodland Star come to our district to discuss it, or do they go directly to the employee? That's the thing that's a little confusing. Did you want to answer that question? So I'm still trying to understand the question in terms of if Will and Star has an issue with the employee. Yeah. So if Will and Star has an issue with the employee, Will and Star would have to come to the district and
068have a conversation with us in regards to the employee's performance. But in terms of employee having a concern, they go to their district manager. That's clear. Thank you. So we're going to go through these. We have to vote on them one by one. We can't vote all. Okay. So at this point, if the trustees don't have any further questions, I would like to open it up to public comment. And could we take public comment on all four MOUs at once? Sure. I'm happy to do that. If anybody wants to talk about the noon duty supervisors, the campus supervisors, or the bus drivers, this would be a great time to chime in. So I don't see anyone in the audience and I don't see anyone on Zoom that has their hands raised. So then I'm going
069to bring it back to the board and if there's a motion that somebody would like to propose. Moved as presented. Second. All in favor? Aye. And then since we've taken public comment on the next three, I think it's just trustee questions on any of the three. So we can just probably take them all at once. So the the next one is the reclassification of the noon supervisor and what we are trying to do is make this fair for all of our employees and our campus supervisor ones will be at our elementary schools and our campus supervisor two will be at our secondary schools it's a reclassification because we had a couple employees at secondary school as noon supervisors and or campus supervisor one so that's a different pay rate, different classification, so we really wanted
070to make sure that it was clear and clean. And then on the bus drivers? Yes. So some of you may have heard about a national crisis, and it's definitely a crisis in the Bay Area and Sonoma where we have not been able to hire or retain bus drivers. We've been interviewing, and we do have five new hires on board, so we're happy to announce that. But we worked to reclassify them to be able to raise their starting salary. We think that this will really, really help with being competitive. They have that choice to work in a private or within the public school district, and we really feel like we have a lot more to offer with being part of our community. So that's the bus driver reclass. There are two other reclass. You'll see that
071one of them is a trainer and one of them is a dispatcher. So we just wanted to make sure that they weren't all at the same level, and that's the reason to bump those other employees. Questions from the? Move to approve 15-2 as presented. Second. I will second and add that I'm very excited to hear this news. I know how difficult it is to acquire drivers. Congratulations. Well done. Yes, definitely. I just want to, I have a question before we go to the vote. The $33,000, the fiscal impact of that, is that per driver or, no, it's for how many drivers? Oh never mind. It's for everybody that we have employed currently. So they're moving up. Up. Everybody's moving up. Okay. Yeah. All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. And then I'll move that we
072approve 15-3. That's the noon duty supervisors one. The second one. Is there a second? I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. And then I'll move to approve 15-4 which is the bus driver, driver dispatcher, and school bus driver trainer. Is there a second? I'll second. All in favor? Aye. So Williams Act. Thank you. Kristen, is Williams yours as well, isn't it? Come tell us about the school books. And this is changing too, right? Like I saw a state law about this. So 15.5, yes. Thank you. So at this time, we do not have any Williams complaints to report. Happy to say we do that quarterly. Is there questions from the board? Is there, okay, so then I will take public comment for anyone who wants to ask a question or make a public, make a
073statement. Okay, no public comment. Is there a motion? Move to approve 15-5. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Move we take a 10-minute break. Yes, we can take a 10-minute break. Thank you. Okay, so we are back from recess. We are on item 15.6, informational presentation by our superintendent. She's going to give us her report for the first 100 days. Thank you. Thank you for putting that up, Michelle. So I just wanted to give a little bit of context around the entry plan report. So typically when a superintendent comes into a district, they take some time to do what they call a listening and learning tour. And typically they gather data in having conversations with people, looking at data reports, looking at documents, and then... I don't know if this has been done in the
074past, but this is something that I thought was important that I would be able to present today my findings from having those conversations and looking at documents and data. So that's what this entry plan report is about, is just sharing with the board and sharing with the public what I found. and kind of my thinking around what some priorities will be moving forward in the work that we do at the district. So if you want to move forward, Michelle. This explains this a little bit. My entry plan process began. Back in June, actually even before I technically got to Sonoma Valley, I had the opportunity to meet with our administrators, principals, district office folks back in June. I finished my listening and learning tour at the end of September, but it doesn't mean I have
075stopped listening. I'm going to continue to have conversations with folks and learn about what our challenges are and how we need to continue to address those challenges. The entry plan has four phases, the research phase, the planning phase, the implementation phase, and the evaluation phase. Right now, I'm... again technically done with the research phase i'm going to be moving into the planning phase with my team based on these findings that i'm going to be sharing with the public today and then hopefully we'll be able to do some implementation especially around the things that are most crucial and things that need to be immediately addressed so those those items that have a sense of urgency and then also implementation until next year And the evaluation phase comes throughout. So it's that progress monitoring. How are we
076doing with the way that we're implementing our action plans? I want to go to the next. The purpose again is to gather information about the organization from a variety of different stakeholders. It's also to assess the school district and the individual school building cultures. Had lots of conversations about what's working well. We had a lot of conversations and people just... were very forthcoming about challenges that were happening in the schools in the district and then also they gave me lots of ideas about areas of growth. Another reason why we, as again you superintendents, do this work is to assess, again, the school district, not just the culture but also the programs, the operational pieces of the district, business, finances, everything that's related to the school district. So not just looking at academics but looking at
077operations of the district. And it's also to help me identify and prioritize those critical issues that I know that I'm going to need to address. And then the other part of this is aligning resources. So you heard earlier Kristen talk a little bit about the noon and Campus 8 situation. So we're finding those kinds of things where we're off a little bit in terms of our resources and how we allocate that. That's part of this learning and implementation. planning and implementation phase and it's also obviously to create networks and resources and be able to leverage those resources when when i need to as we move through our work in improving our district so these are just a list of people i'm not going to run through every every everybody that i spoke to but it's
078a list of folks that i had the opportunity to meet with These were not a 10-minute conversation. These were, and a lot of you in the audience are part of these conversations, so you know that I spent hours meeting with folks to really get a good sense about what was happening in the past, what people value. When I think about this, I don't want to come in and... you know, what we call is take away something that people really value. And I think a lot of leaders walk into a system and they try to implement change right away and they don't take into consideration what are those historical things that are in place that people value. And so for me, that was really important to hear. What are those things that we want to maintain
079because they're working well for us? And then what are those things that we want to improve upon? So everybody was very forthcoming and I'm so glad that I did. invest a lot of time and energy meeting with all of these different stakeholders because everyone had a different perspective and then they also were able to share with me a lot of data where I found some patterns and trends and it really helped me determine some priorities. I also was able to look at data and so looked obviously at student performance data. I had the opportunity when possible to disaggregate the data, not just look at all students, but really look at some of our most vulnerable students. For me, one of the things that's important is around providing equitable access and opportunities for all our students.
080And so whenever I had the data, I was... able to disaggregate the data and look at patterns and trends again for all students and then for our most vulnerable students and then those are just again examples of some of the data that I looked at document review this took a lot of time and energy as well this is my night reading many nights um just taking home some studies that were already conducted in the district and had a lot of people share with me some previous studies and obviously some documents that we had in place quite frankly there was a lot of things that we didn't have in place in terms of documentation and i think that's where the conversations were really critical for me because we don't have a lot of things in writing
081and again understanding the historical context of the district was really important and so So it was really important for me to look at that comprehensive look at not just the documents but having the conversations because there wasn't a lot of documents to review. And this is what I found. Here are some overarching strengths. I think this is pretty apparent when we look at the... the meetings that we have and again just going out and speaking to people people in the community are very supportive of our district they want to see this district succeed they want our children to thrive and i know that this isn't this isn't happening across every school district in the state we have very strong community support and that's a huge asset Another thing that came across is the willingness to
082improve. People are very open, and I think you've heard in people's comments, when we hear our labor union partners, there's always this dynamic about, like, how do we improve, and we're all about students. And so that willingness is super important to me because it makes my job easier when people are willing and motivated to do something different. Another thing is that we have engaging classroom learning environments. I've had the opportunity to go to the majority of classrooms now across our district, and you see some really engaging environments for kids. There's library books. Things are colorful. Kids are happy. So we have some really great learning environments for our students. Our teachers are prepared. I've shared this with many people. Again, I've had the opportunity to visit thousands, literally thousands of classrooms throughout the state and
083actually throughout the country. And in some cases, not that often, but in some cases, I see teachers sitting behind their desk grading papers or trying to figure out what they're going to do next during the day. are not doing that our teachers are engaged with our students they're talking to them they're walking around they're really in the classroom prepared and they their lesson plans are there and so it's it's a again another asset of our district and then also having people have again the willingness to share ideas there is i can throw out a problem or a challenge and people have lots of suggestions and different ways of thinking about doing things differently. And I think the other piece of this, and I think we all value this, is that Sonoma is small and everybody
084knows everybody. And sometimes I heard, wow, that's a really bad thing because everybody knows everybody. And I don't see it that way. I think it's... great that everyone is connected and interconnected because that's a way for us to leverage bringing people together to really make a difference for our kids. So I love the fact that Sonoma is small. Here are some emerging issues and I think this is not a surprise probably to any of our trustees or probably anybody in the public but I think it's just an affirmation of the things that you probably have heard in the past that we do have some things to look at in terms of our special education program. We do have to improve in that area. We do have declining student enrollment, and we are going to have
085to address school consolidation. I know that we had school closure, and we're probably going to have to look at how we move forward with that. Communication was another piece. I think that we have to do a better job of highlighting those positive things that are happening in our district. I shared with people in the past that coming into and applying for this position, I read a lot of things in the newspaper about our district, and it hasn't always been completely positive. And so it's like, how do we share those really great things that are happening? Because there are good things happening in our school district. I think the other piece of this is coming back and reviewing our vision, mission, and goals so that we have some clear priorities. I think in having conversations with
086folks, they're like, what are we trying to accomplish? And I think there's a little bit of ambiguity around that. So coming back together and being very clear about what we're about as a school district and what we're aiming for is going to be important. the budget we had a budget study session so we know that that's something that we're going to have to be continuously looking at Our academic performance, you're going to hear later on a presentation around our SBAC data, and our academic performance is not where it really should be, and so how are we going to continue to address that, especially for our students with disabilities and our English learners? They're not performing at the level that they should be, and so how do we continue to look at that? The other piece
087that I've encountered has been our instructional minutes and master schedule. I know that this was something that had been brought up, I think, in years past, and there's been some movement to address that, and we're going to continue to plan to address that. School climate, you've heard a lot of conversations, I know, in your previous board meetings, the fact that Chief Cutting is coming in and having... conversations with me often about how do they support us, how do our wellness centers support us, how do our staff support us around school climate is important. I put their behavior and belonging. Behavior, I think... we've addressed and we continue to address in terms of discipline. But when I talk about belonging, I'm talking about how do we make our environments inclusive so that all students feel comfortable,
088safe, and that they have a voice. The English Learner Master Plan is another issue. I think we've heard many constituents talk about we have a lot of newcomers to our community and how do we address their learning needs. And then also resource management. So again, a lot of the conversations around staffing and finances. And so there's a lot there on that list. And they're all complex. And so again, I just want to highlight that those are the things that we're working on that we're going to have to come up with some pretty clear action plans around and then chip away at them over time. Recommendations. So again, they're just recommendations and I look forward to working with our... board of trustees and with our staff and with the community around possibly implementing some of these
089recommendations one of them is engaging in the strategic planning process and again i know that you've all talked about this in the past part of this conversation has also been around our development of our portrait of a graduate as part of this strategic planning process I think the other thing that we have to be looking towards is developing a really clear theory of action. So if we say we want certain outcomes for our students, what do we have to do in order to make those outcomes a reality? We need to focus on recruiting the most highly qualified staff and retaining them. Again, this is not a surprise. A lot of the conversation has been around the inconsistency of staff, the turnover of staff, and the instability of staff, and then also the difficulty of hiring
090staff. And so we're really going to have to be conscientious and put together a really concerted effort to have qualified staff and teachers and classified staff in front of our students, focusing on academic improvement, obviously. addressing again not just the academic but the social emotional and the behavior aspects of the of the whole child and then creating that, again, that culture of belongingness and inclusiveness. And I think that the biggest recommendation and something that I think all of us can do is maintaining a focus on students. When I look at the emerging issues, all of those issues also pertain, obviously, to adults. And I think the more that we center our conversations, our planning, our decisions on students, it's going to take us... much further than if we focus on adults. Some immediate next steps,
091again, engaging and developing portrait of a graduate educator and system. That's something that we're going to be engaging in this coming, well, actually next month, we'll be launching our portrait of a graduate work. creating structures to gather student voice again focusing on those students the students will tell you everything they tell you what's wrong they tell you what's going well they'll tell you what they want and giving them that voice and agency I think is really important so that we can include their voice and the planning that we're we're going to be engaging in I'd like to also build awareness around some innovative instructional programs. Again, looking at some academic improvement, but also looking at how... How do we prepare our kids to go into the future if we're not bringing in some innovative programs?
092We know that the kids are going to go into fields of work that we don't even know exist currently, and I don't necessarily see a lot of, you know, the... the kind of what we used to call extracurricular activities that now should be in the regular day, which is STEM and VAPA and some of the other foreign languages and those kinds of things, those should be integrated into our school day. Also thinking about building the capacity of our staff around the first best instruction. Right now we have a lot of supports for kids in Tier 2. Many of our students are... they have IEPs or 504s, but it's also thinking about how are we building interventions within that Tier 1, so that first best instruction and really focusing there. One of the other things that
093I'm really looking at is completing a return on investment of programs. I know that we have conversations about there's so many things happening in our schools, and that's true. There's a lot of programs. There has been investment of money and time and energy, and we can't do it all. And it's not giving us return on our investment as we look at the data. So we're really looking at what do we keep. knowing that we have the data to support it, what do we maybe modify, and then maybe what do we get rid of because we can't do it all, and again, some of it is costing us money. improving again on budget allocations and methodologies identifying some possibilities for school consolidation and really supporting our executive leadership and taking a systems approach what I what
094I found also is that not just looking at our schools but looking at the structure in our district that we've been working in silos to a certain degree there isn't really a level of coherence that's ideal and not really looking at a systems approach. We're taking care of things because we're being reactive because a lot of things are coming at us. And so we're trying to figure out how are we more proactive and how do we build coherence and alignment so that there's systems in place that are sustainable over time. And then going back to the recruitment strategies for staffing. Oh my gosh, there's just a whole list of things. I'm not going to go over everything, but again, just let's see if there's something there I haven't talked about. No, it looks like parent
095engagement programs. That's something I haven't addressed, but really how do we engage our parents by establishing more programs and some really... authentic strategies for engagement. I think a lot of times when we talk about parents, we bring them in to do more of these kind of compliance type of agendas and not authentically, genuinely engaging them to hear what they have to say in terms of what they want for their students in the classrooms. I think everything else I've talked about, MTSS. and data. So really looking at how are we making decisions based on data and not individual perspectives or not what people are thinking or feeling but really thinking about what is the data telling us. And that's the end of my recommendations, but this is really true that it does take a valley in
096our case to ensure that all of these things happen so that our students succeed. You know, I've fallen in love with the kiddos every time I go into classrooms, and that's why I think I'm going more often is they make my day when it's a difficult day here in the office, spending time with them and talking to them and just. seeing that they're so willing to learn gives I think us the motivation to continue to do the hard work but we need your support so that's the report for my first 100 days on the job. Thank you Dr. Chen for that report that very comprehensive view. I'd like to see if the trustees would like to follow up with comments or questions for our superintendent. Trustee Knox? Sure. I would love to just kind of
097share my thoughts on my initial impressions. What really resonates for me, Dr. Chin, is the... big picture recommendations. As I look at these bullet points, I can just see where we can really just take off on each of these bullet points. Engage in strategic planning, revisiting our mission and goals, develop a clear theory of action for student outcomes, retaining staff, academic improvement, culture of belongingness, focus on students. Those are things that, this is why we're here, and we see examples of that in all of our meetings. So I'm very heartened by having our student leaders here presenting this evening because I think that just is a snapshot of what the potential is for our students. And we want all of our students to engage in that same fashion. And so I'm very hopeful with your
098leadership and your outstanding staff and working with our labor partners. that we can really transform our district. So thank you. Trustee Winders? Just want to piggyback on it with Troy on the... Shared vision, mission, and goals. I'm really looking forward to us doing that work. I think that that's been a piece that's been sitting in a lot of vague ambiguity and sort of some old ideas that have just kind of carried over. And it's really time for us to really look at that and develop something meaningful for where we're at right now. And then I really love that you continue to really highlight the importance of belonging. I think that that's really key, especially when we look at behavior, you know, behavior as communication. We know that. That's scientific fact and research. But having that
099belonging, when students feel like they belong, when they feel like they have trusted adults, when they have a friend group, when they feel like they know the answers in class and can lead some instruction and lead their peer groups. that increases our attendance, that increases our students' performance. And I just love that you keep centering on that belonging. And I think that word just really encompasses a lot of the work that we need to do and keeping that focus on students. I appreciate the fact that... you have created spaces for people to have really courageous and honest conversations and to say hard things and be able to feel that they can say those things and be heard and that it's okay to say those things. I think that that is something really huge that you
100have created that shift here in our valley because I don't, I don't, I haven't experienced that. We've always had that. and so I want to thank you for that. And then lastly, the focus on students. I'm the nerd that sits there and looks at the agenda and I literally calculate the percentage of the agenda that is student-centered. I do it every month. Total geek, but it's very interesting to me. And I've watched that percentage increase because I'm always shooting for 65% because that's what CSBA teaches that you should have them have. and we since since you have stepped into this role we have exceeded that 65 every single month on our agenda we have hit into the mid to high 70s every single month so i just want to point that data point out because
101it excites me and i continue to calculate it every month so thank you jesse landry i just want to say thank you for the work that you put into doing this and it's very admirable, but it's also for me personally as a trustee very encouraging. We sit in study sessions and we sit in these meetings and we have these conversations and we get information and we're learners and we're excited and then we walk away and I personally have a feeling of how do we put this to action and this to me feels like something that I'm excited to support. I feel like this will affect our students. It will have an effect on our students and you know in years to come we will see these positive effects and I'm really excited to support you
102in this work. So thank you. I really appreciate it. Trustee Kelly, would you like to make a comment? No, it's okay. Go ahead. I'm very supportive of the work you're doing. I think it's a fantastic report. I was particularly, I think about three slides back, you listed the items you thought we needed to pay attention to. I was sort of, I was writing them down as we were, as you were going over them, and I was like, yeah, that's the order I would have put them in too. And that's, I just, I kind of appreciate that because I think all of us in the governance team over time, as we view this sort of set of issues that we face as a district, we all independently sort of arrive at a... at an internal prioritization
103of what we need to focus on. And I think you put the kids at the top of that, which is, of course, right where they belong. But in general, I wanted to draw attention to that ability to identify what it is that we need to get at to get this district where I think we all believe it can be. It's got the resources, it's got the people, and we just need to bring them all together now to give just an amazing experience to all the kids. So keep going. I will just echo what my colleagues have said. I have seen Dr. Chen behind the scenes. She is everywhere. at all times of day at every every opportunity interact with kids and our administrators and our community and i know she's like working around the clock
104so we really appreciate you we're so glad that you're here and i have a lot of optimism about the direction our district is heading so thank you so much but eight hours of sleep okay not all 24. And with that, I will open it up to public comment if anyone wants to make a comment. Dennis Hausman, a teacher at Seminole High School, Health and Wellness Department Chair, and VMTA Co-President. First, I just want to say thank you to the administrators in the room. It's Administration Week, and thank you all. A little round of applause for that. So I'm going on probably my 13th principal. Again, we get to the snorty list a little bit later. I'm probably top 10, so I've been here for a little bit. So in that being said, we have a
105dynamic principal at our high school who is going above and beyond. I just want to acknowledge that, so shout out to you. And Dr. Chen, this is your first. year a few months in and i just want to acknowledge the good work that you're doing and i really appreciate the report thank you thank you all right um i don't see anyone raising your hand uh on zoom so we will proceed to the next item which uh let me just make sure it is the um it's an informational presentation on uh some preliminary um sbac student performance data Good evening Superintendent Dr. Chen, President Ching, Board of Trustees, and the Sonoma Valley community. On behalf of the Ed Services Department, I am presenting to you all the preliminary data results from the 2023 performance of the
106Smarter Balanced Assessment in ELA, Math, CAS, which is a science test, as well as the ELPAC assessment as an informational item this evening. Before I share with you the results, I want to provide some context and some background. Typically this time of the year we have access to the public data from the state. However, the state has not yet released the results and we don't have the aggregate results from the state. Parents have received the individual student score reports and that was made available to all parents mid-September. And I also want to point out, as I mentioned, that the results will be publicly released next week, so the timing might be off. We anticipate that the public will have access to the data on October 18th, with the embargo data available the day before, which
107is October 17th. And also, the state will be releasing the dashboard in about two months with an anticipated release date of December 15th of this year. Again, I want to emphasize that this is raw data. And based on our internal calculations, by looking and analyzing TOMS, which is the state's Test Operations Management System, T-O-M-S, we were able to calculate the results that I'm sharing with you tonight. The team also had the opportunity to review a sneak peek of the data that was released last week. And for the most part, we're fairly on point with our analysis. So tonight I'm going to provide you with a quick overview of the score levels, a total summary of student performance, as well as a slide on some students' group performance. So let's take a look at the performance
108levels for the SBAC, ELA, Math, and CAST. So based on the results, there are four levels in which a student can earn. Level one is not met. Level two is standard nearly met, with level three being standard met, and level four is exceeding standards. And our target is for each and every student to perform at level three or level four. Next slide. Based on the 2023 ELA SPAC assessment, We calculate about 35% of our students meeting or exceeding standards, with 13% performing at level four and 22% performing at level three. As a reference, 36.79% of our students met or exceeded standards on the ELA SBAC in 2022. We further analyze the performance based on student groups, which is on the next slide, specifically for our multilingual learners. who are still learning English and our students
109who are receiving IEP services with 5% and 8% of our students meeting standards respectively. In math, while 19.9% of our students met or exceeded standards in 2022, we anticipate approximately 21% meeting or exceeding standards with 14% performing at level three and 7% performing at level four. Specific to our student groups, 6% of our multilingual learners perform at standards, and 4% of our students receiving special education services receive the three or four. My colleague, Director Mawini, will share with you additional information regarding math in her presentation coming up next. The next data is the CAS data. The CAS stands for California Science Test. this is only administered in three grade levels grades 5 grades 8 and 11 or some 12th graders take the test all students need to take the test at least once in high
110school in this data we have 24% of our students meeting or exceeding standards for science So this slide, and I apologize for the colors being off. And it's, the colors not only are off as it's being displayed, but it's off in terms of the color printout as well. Multilingual learners are not yet proficient in science standards. And for students receiving services, 7% did meet standards, while the majority of our students are performing below standards. This data shows across ELA, math and science that we have a lot of work to do across the board in terms of quality tier one first instruction as well as providing support for all of our students across grade level in terms of access to grade level standards and ongoing monitoring and differentiated support. So shifting now to ELPAC. In ELPAC,
111there are also four levels of performance. For students who are considered multilingual learners, otherwise known as English learners, they take a summative assessment in the spring measuring their English language proficiency. As I mentioned, there are four levels on the SBAC in which a student could earn, and their descriptors are specific to language. With level one is beginning stages of development. Level two is somewhat developed. Level three, moderately developed. And level four is well developed in terms of oral, which is listening and speaking, and written in terms of reading and writing skills. In order for students who are multilingual learners to be eligible or considered for reclassification, they must achieve a level four on their ELPAC. So this graph here shows that while 54 of our students earning a three or four, 19% are at a
112level four, meaning that 157 of our multilingual learners across Sonoma Valley Unified can be considered for reclassification. In the next slide, we organize the data by grade level spans. So what you see here is how our students are performing at elementary, middle, and high. And I want to lift up the middle schools as more than a third of their multilingual learners earn a level four at 34% compared to elementary at 15% and high at 18%. And I want to emphasize that because at the middle and high school. We know that students who are not yet reclassified are considered long-term English learners and may not have access to the enrichment and opportunities for other classes as they are in an English language development course. So moving forward, as we look forward over the next couple of
113months, actually weeks when you think about December, the official test scores will be launched. In mid-December, the state will release the California dashboard, and we will be returning to the five distinct colors of the dashboard, just like your odometer, with red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. And right after break, we will also be providing you with a mid-year report of our LCAP. With our available data which will include this the dashboard data that's coming up and any district formative assessments that we have administered today In order to meet the state deadline of February 28th And I know this was a quick high level overview of data. We plan on sharing with you the results once it's officially released next week. And maybe we could share that in a board communication packet as a follow up.
114Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Dr. Casillas. So I will turn it to the board if you'd like to address any of the Any of the information that was presented? You're looking at me, so you'd like to go first. Go ahead, Trustee Wenders. If I may, just before, thank you for the very informative presentation. I appreciate it. I'm glad I was able to be here for that one of all the remaining presentations we have. I have a business matter that I have to leave the meeting for now tonight, guys. I'm sorry. I apologize for that. But thank you all for continuing on, and good night. Go ahead, Trustee Wenders. Thank you. Thank you for this report. Okay. So I'm not going to lie. When I got my board packet and I got
115this report, I had to go sit outside for a little bit and take a deep breath. We've got a lot of work to do. I know that we can do this work because I know everybody's very, very invested in this work and is very invested in working collaboratively to do it. But it also means that we have some really... honest conversations. So I have a few questions and I just want to say my questions are not a judgment on anyone. They're just trying to really just dig into this so that we can serve students. So I don't need this information now because I don't expect you to have it, but if we could get, I'd like to know how many. like the actual, not percentage, but the number of students we have who are not
116reclassified in our middle schools and broken down by each middle school, and then our high school and Creekside students, just to get an idea of what that number looks like for that group of students. Then on the section on the caste science, What we're seeing is 100% of our English learners have not met the standard, and 93% of our students with disabilities have not met the standard. And so I'm wondering a couple of things. Question one, are our middle school students with disabilities who have IEPs, are they still having to forego science or social studies, or did that change? I know at one time that was happening. Has that changed? My understanding is that all students have access to the core of science. I don't know if there's an individual student or two that's... has
117opted out but my understanding that all students should have access to core science. Okay because at one time and I only know this because I'm a parent of a child with an IEP and and I was presented with that in the middle school IEP so and then the reason I ask that is because when I look at these scores I'm wondering is it because they weren't accessing the class at all and then took the assessment and didn't know the answers so thank you and then regarding elementary school science I know that we recently, we approved some new curriculum, but I have had some feedback from teachers who are saying they've basically been asked to sort of pick some units and that that was really hard for them. They'd like to teach more science, but the
118way the schedule works out, it's not allowing necessarily the minutes that they need to be able to really do the level of work that they would like to do. And so when I look, especially at our fifth grade, these fifth grade cast scores, I think we're seeing some of that. And then the S-back math. I just want to say, I think we had a little typo, the level one. It said standard exceeded, just so people know that's the not met. I think it was just a copy and paste. But Excel spreadsheet, I'm sure. But I'm really concerned about this because when we look at the math, we're looking at scores for 11th graders. And some of it for the high school, right? Or no? In math, they take it at 11th grade. Yeah. And so
119I just want us to have a conversation and keep at the forefront that a year later we graduate these students because we have a very high graduation rate. And what that's telling us is that we are graduating students who are significantly below standard in math and we're handing them a diploma and we're sending them off into the world. And that really is not fair to them and it does them a huge disservice. I just think it's important that we have that conversation and compare our graduation rate to these scores when we're looking at our 11th graders. So same with science. We've got 11th graders in that one, too. And then, of course, our students who are English language learners, going back to Dr. Chen's. first 100 days report when we're talking about how we're serving
120them and in particular also our newcomers it's clear they're not accessing I think that is probably one of the biggest takeaways from this is that our students with disabilities and our students who are English language learners are not accessing their general education curriculum and as a parent of child with disabilities and as an advocate I can tell you what that looks like on the ground in real life for an individual student. And it contributes greatly to mental health, decline in mental health. It's students who are trying to get through their day and hope they don't get called on. And they're not learning, they're surviving. Sorry. So I am looking forward to doing this work. And we are going to need to roll up our sleeves and get in the mud. and do some really, really
121hard work together and stay really student-focused and put our adult needs and feelings to the side and really focus on them. And it means really hard work on our part and putting egos on a shelf and being willing and able to admit when we have not done the best that we can do so that we can do better. I just I look at our wellness centers and I look at our mental health data as well and I see a huge alignment with what we're seeing here especially when we look at the demographics so I look forward to us rectifying this thank you trustee winders for sharing that um would trustee Landry or trustee Knox okay thank you for this information um trustee winders you said it very well, so I'm not going to add too
122much more to this, but I will say that it was extremely surprising and alarming to get this information, and I think that one of the hardest parts of this to digest is our graduation rates and looking at these juniors who are taking these tests, keeping in mind that these are tests, right? So I keep that in mind, but these numbers are just, in my opinion, unacceptable. And, you know, yes, we're talking about, you know, mental health. We're talking about so many things and best first instruction. you know, these kids need to learn math. And we've asked for a few board study sessions, during a few board study sessions and now during our regular meeting to have a conversation about our math program and, you know, best first instruction and what we're doing for our students.
123And this is why it's so important to not just talk about it, but to get the work done. Thank you for this information. It hurts my heart for our kids. That being said, I don't want to discredit our teachers out there who are doing good work. I don't think that this reflects what's happening necessarily in the classroom. So I think that there's just work to be done, and I'm looking forward to doing it. So thank you for this information. Trustee Knox. So thank you both for speaking your truth. And as you can see, Trustee Winders, my sleeves are rolled up. Because, yeah, I think we all had the same reaction probably when we saw these results. And it's hard because I know how hard everyone in this organization works. We really are committed to our
124students. put in hours and hours into supporting our students and giving them the very best education possible. I know that it's really hard to see that when you look at these initial results, and I know they're preliminary, but when you actually regress in language arts on the CASP test by the tune of about 2%, and you... make about a 5% growth or so on the math, I think we all can see that we can do better than that. And I want to go back to your presentation, Dr. Chen, in terms of the big picture recommendations. And I feel like we can all, if we all kind of look inward in terms of what are some small shifts that each of us can do? What can I do as a trustee a little bit better to
125improve outcomes for students? I'm going to take that to heart. And, you know, and I take responsibility for my actions being a third year. trustee. There are things that I reflect on and I wonder if things had gone different, maybe we would see better outcomes. But I can't worry about that. All I can focus on is tonight. tomorrow and the next day and so I am ready to do that hard work thank you so much for just kind of putting it all out there and I'm ready to join you guys dr. Chen I'm ready to join you and I know that we can really improve our district thank you Thanks, Trustee Knox. I had one question. I echo what my fellow trustees have said. This is a crisis. We're in a crisis. This is a
126wake-up call, and we need an action plan immediately. And we've been—this isn't something that happened overnight. This has been building up for years and years. Anyway, with that said, one of the things that does not make any sense to me is the, so we have very, you know, obviously very low proficiency with English language arts. And I know it's aggregated for the whole district, so there could be huge distortions that one particular grade, one particular school is contributing it to. But when you look at English language learners with the ELPAC, I get those two mixed up, with the ELPAC, you see... It seems to suggest that more than half of our students have reached proficiency in the second language in English. So what is the disconnect? I mean, I don't understand. Is the ELPAC measuring
127something else? Why is it that if our English language learners are reaching more, 54% of them are meeting or exceeding standards, but then you measure their performance in English language arts on the SBAC? It doesn't make any sense to me. So I don't know what's going on. I don't expect you to answer that tonight. But this is something that we have to get a handle on because we use... I believe we use the ELPAC for reclassification and a number of other indicators, right, as part of the whole picture of the child. But this is giving, like, this is a different narrative. And so I think we need to really think about it. I don't know if this is mandated by the state or, but however, it doesn't make any sense to me, at least currently.
128So anyway, I don't know, Dr. Chen, if you'd like to chime in for a second. So I think we have to look at how the ELPAC is aligned to SBAC ELA results. But I can tell you the ELPAC measures language proficiency, language development, and it does have the four domains, listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and so does ELA. The ELA, so the SBAC English Language Arts Test, measures content and it measures standards. And sometimes when you see that misalignment, it has to do with... students not necessarily having access to academic vocabulary and academic language. The language proficiency usually measures more social basic language skills. It does include some academic, but it's a different measurement. Usually the level of rigor for the SBAC ELA test is much higher than the ELPAC. Thank you. All right, I'm
129going to open it up to public comment. Just so I want to get clarity. So what you're saying is, so the ELPAC is measuring the actual language acquisition, but what we're looking at in our EL standards is, are you referring to like the comprehension piece, the understanding of what they're reading and then communicating what they've learned? Yeah, so in the SBAC, when you look at the assessments, you're looking at critical thinking skills, you're looking at higher order thinking skills, the content that's found in the curriculum. With the ALPAC, it's more how are they developing their language development skills and the way that they're assessed. The items in the assessment are much different in terms of the level of complexity. Okay, and just to follow up on that, and I don't need the answer now. In
130fact, I'd love to have us delve a little deeper into this question, maybe as a future agenda item. But how the reclassification, how are we assessing language acquisition for students with disabilities? I know that in my experience at IEP, it's a team decision, but it often has sort of just been, okay, you're reclassified now versus an actual language acquisition assessment that meets those students where they're at. developmentally, academically, or intellectually. And so I would love to learn more about that or what our plan is moving forward to address that. So that is one of my next, Christina's not even here. That is one of my next. things to do is a reclassification because i've dug into that as well and it looks like our criteria is a little bit off compared to some of the
131other districts across the state and how we're reclassifying our kids and then i also have to dig into a policy around how we're reclassifying students with disabilities typically districts have an additional set of criteria for students who have ieps Okay, I'm going to open this up to public comment. So if you have a comment, you can head to the podium. Dennis Hausman, Health and Wellness Department Chair, PE teacher, co-president of the Teachers Union. Again, I do not disagree whatsoever with the need for hard work, and I am fully on board. The first thing we need to address, though, is the culture. These tests... Again, in the minds of our students, I can't speak for the third, fifth, and seventh graders, but for the high school, they don't matter to them. There's no buy-in in their
132minds. And again, telling them, I'm going to give them a cookie when they're done, because of their efforts, isn't changing their minds. And the first thing we can address is the culture of our students, the culture of our community. we have a tremendous amount of opt-outs. And usually the opt-outs are some of our higher achieving students. So that's going to lower your percentage numbers. And again, and it includes our students with special needs and students with disabilities. So again, if we can get all of our people taking the test, it's going to raise our percentages. So that's something else as well. Again, ELPAC is an example of something that matters to them. That's why the test is a little bit different and the scores don't correlate. Having been in this district for a while and
133having one of the classes that's a graduation requirement, I'm going to tell you, you know, this is not great. The pressure the teachers get. for students not graduating is tremendous. I will say, again, somebody who can stand up to people and say, like, no, this student didn't do this work, again... I have that, I guess, I don't want to say background or ego or whatever it is, but we have brand new teachers teaching seniors who, like, you know, they want to keep their job. And there's a tremendous pressure put on from people in this room to the parents to the community that our students graduate. So that, again, is another factor. Thank you, Mr. Hausman. I don't see anyone else in the audience. Just let me do a quick check here. Okay, I have a
134couple of hands raised. I'd like to recognize Lindsay Bennett. Hi, can you hear me? You have the mic. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay great hi Lindsay Bennett parent of two students at Adele Middle School I also received the test results and was extremely alarmed and concerned a parent that typically had kids that were exceeding standards in many areas and dropped to standard nearly met in mathematics and was shocked So in the attempt to double click on that information and understand what's going on there, there's not a lot of information. So is that my question is, is that what you guys were talking about, that the state has not released that information yet? And so we don't have the data for the double click down to understand where they're struggling to
135help them. Are you still there? Yeah, I was just asking about if that's what you were talking about earlier when you were saying that the state hasn't released the information that we need in order to double click on this information. Like, for example, when I get something that, you know, my kid isn't meeting the standard of math in what areas? How do I find that out? How do I know? in what areas they need help. Is there a way to get that data? So Ms. Bennett, I will have staff follow up with you, or in fact, maybe staff can just generally explain whether that data is still embargoed. Do we know if the areas are embargoed? Okay. I don't know if you heard that, Ms. Bennett, that for individual students, it doesn't seem like that
136is going to be made available to individual students. But I'm happy to have you follow up with staff on that issue. But do you see how that can be frustrating? It's like... I mean, you get this data and it's like, well, what do you do with it? You can't take action on it. You can't do anything. It's super frustrating to see these results. And as a parent, it's like you want to dig in and help. And then, well, how? What do they need help with? So I guess I'll just follow up in a different channel. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I have somebody with the initials LM. Hello. It's Laura Montaroso. Hi, Laura. Hi. Laura Montroso, teacher, community member, alumni. I wanted to thank Dr. Chen for describing the two different tests, the ELPAC test
137and the SBAC test. Very different tests. and i'd like to encourage the board to go on to the california uh cast and lpac websites they do release example questions you can see the difference there every year they release questions for the public for parents to help support their children at home and for those of us at school to help support our kids with practice tests so um that's just something i think you guys should take a look at so you're kind of familiar with the two different tests Second, I do want to reiterate what Dennis said. There is a lot more buy-in for the kids to really focus and jump in and try and score a level four on the ELPAC test, especially in our elementary schools. because some of them don't want to have
138to take a zero period. They'd like to have an elective. So they're very much eager to get a level four on that test and keep their reading score up because they have to also be reading at their proficiency level to be reclassified. And lastly, for parents also, this is one snapshot of your child that I do want to remind the community. we spend a lot of time looking at this data and teachers feel badly and disappointed and we hear board members express how sad this is and the state of urgency and emergency and it is one day in one life of one child And there are many other things that we report out on on our kids that are wonderful and amazing. And so we have to remember to look at the whole child. Thank
139you. Thank you. Okay, with that, we will proceed to the next item, which is also an information on the California Mathematical Framework. Good evening, trustees and Dr. Chen. It's nice to be here with you tonight. And I am actually really excited about the revised framework and the work that we are entering into doing. So I'm really happy to be able to report this out tonight to you. So the math framework was recently approved. It's a revision, it's not a rewrite. There were some expectations in it that didn't come out such as the data science being its own entity. It's not going to be its own pathway, but it is embedded in all of the other areas of mathematics. So that was one of the things people expected and may think is there, but it is
140embedded, not its own. The purpose of the framework is to support the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. So to think about a framework this way, the standards are what you are supposed to know and what you are supposed to teach. The framework is how you are supposed to teach it and allows then the students to gain the information. I have these, oh sorry, next slide please. I clicked mine and didn't know why it didn't change. These are the stats that you did just look at for 21-22. Sorry, this is 21-22, you just looked at 22-23. And we were at 19.9% met or exceeded. In that year, Sonoma County was 31, and all of California was 33. So you can see we're about, you know, a little over 10 points from California below, 14
141points. And we know that the work that we have to do. Next slide, please. This is the preliminary CAASPP data that was provided with you for the 23-24, which is 21% met or exceeded. So you can see we increased, but not really significantly. Next slide, please. And you can see the grade levels here, the higher grade levels in third grade, 35% at or above, and then it goes to middle school, 14%, and then high school, 17%, and it is fairly consistent through those grade levels. Next slide, please. This is the guidance including in the strategies to teach math. We want to structure the teaching of the state's big math standards around the big ideas. Again, that data science that was the big talk will be one of the big ideas embedded in how we want
142to teach the kids. Increase focus on developing student mathematical expertise. Connecting it to areas and being able to apply it to real world scenarios. and see themselves in the curriculum. One of the big parts of this is making the math teaching a more equitable experience for all students, and so more students can then access the curriculum. Stimulating deep learning and ensuring students develop both appreciation of math and its fluency. Again, all high school math pathways are open to all students. There's that equitable focus once again. Support multiple ways to get more students to higher level mathematics. Expand high school math course options. Being proficient at understanding and using data. And that growth mindset about mathematics. And instill confidence in learners. And make sure that instruction and curriculum is both multidimensional. Next slide, please. We have
143been in contact and in partnership with the math framework with Sonoma County Office of Education, and they have a five-year rollout plan with this new math framework because it's not something that can be done right overnight. So this is their implementation timeline. It was just recently approved, and so for the 23-24 school year, it's really focused around understanding the new framework and what's in it, so kind of unpacking the framework. 24-25, really focusing on teacher professional development to address the new framework. 25-26, that then gives the publishers time to address their curriculum to the framework and make sure that it matches, is when you'll start your curriculum adoption and looking at the new curriculum that's out there and the new options. 26-27, implementation and continuing teacher professional development as you can see throughout. And 27-28,
144continued support for teaching and learning and assessment. Next slide, please. So again, here is anticipating needs 23-24, 24-25, building teacher capacity starting in 24-25, and curricular support in 25-26. Next slide, please. I would like to report that we have not been waiting for that and waiting a full year. And I want to thank some of our math folks that may even be in this room tonight, Ms. Laura. And we have, again, we've partnered with SCO around the new framework. And many of our secondary teachers are participating in lesson study. And I think they're really looking at it as communities of practice. And they're going to be partnering with one another. and with SCO, with coaching, with learning throughout this entire year. And my understanding from the folks I've talked to since their first meeting is
145they're pretty excited about it. And it really is focused on the new framework and equitability throughout. So that was kind of exciting to have at least this in place as we move forward. In elementary, we're focusing on that Tier 1 and Tier 2 instruction. I did hear the speaker talk about the domains were not available. There's two ways that students and parents can access where their student needs support, and one is through the classroom, right? Contacting the teacher, the teacher will know where they need support and how they can help. And number two, we do a STAR e-assessment four times per year this year. And when the star comes out, there is a report that the teachers can access for both instructional planning for the student and instructional planning for the class that focuses on
146domains of strength and domains of need. And so that's another area where we can access some of that information for the students. Next slide, please. Oh, it's not very big up there, is it? Okay. I'm going to do my best. This is our math progression within the district. And you can see in sixth grade, we have math six for secondary, not for TK through five. In seventh grade, for those that want to accelerate, we do offer compact math. And we offer it for both middle schools. Both middle schools have that as an offering. In eighth grade, they either have math eight or algebra one for the most part. And then in ninth grade, Algebra 1 is the trajectory for the majority of students. A student can, that needs more support, have Algebra 1 in Algebra
147Lab, which is another period of math support for them. Some students that have had Algebra 1 in middle school are going on to geometry. And those kiddos that really want to accelerate past that can double up with geometry and algebra two that year in two periods. Tenth grade, you can see the options start to emerge. There's geometry. There's bridge to geometry for students that need additional support. Algebra two. which is the majority of the trajectory and Geometry and Algebra two once again for those kids that want to accelerate at that point and then those students that have already Accelerated have a pretty large option of advanced math. There's pre calculus AP pre calculus AP stats and AP Computer science which is considered from UCCSU a math and a high level math at that. And in
14812th grade there are even more options, applications of advanced math or pre-cal or AP pre-cal, AP stats, AP computer science or algebra two. So there's a wide variety of ways kids can get their math throughout their secondary years. Next slide please. From the State Board President Linda Darling-Hammond, this framework provides strategies to challenge, engage, and support all students in deep and relevant math learning by building on successful approaches used in nations that produce high and equitable achievement in math. And we want to participate in that, absolutely. Next slide, please. And thank you and questions. Okay, trustees, I'm going to open it up to anyone who would like to. Make a comment or have a question trusty Knox. Okay. Thank you very much for the report I was I learned a few things in your presentation
149in terms of the training that's happening right now Perfect and is that? open to all levels of it is open to all teachers 6th through 12th grade and currently we have about 50% of the middle school teachers that want to participate in it and about 70% of the high school teachers participating in it that's outstanding and so in terms of the timeline I see where it says 25-26 curriculum adoption is that something that we're looking at for ourselves or is that just the state recommended That's the county recommendation. I imagine we will be when the curriculum adoption opportunities happen. We are going to want to look at those and see what our options are. Okay. Is that concurrent elementary through high school secondary? I would imagine we would want to open that all to all
150grades and really take a good hard look at what we have now, what is offered, how it aligns with both the standards and the framework and the belief in equitable teaching across the board with our students. Yes. Wonderful. Thank you. You're welcome. Go ahead, Tracy Landry. Thank you. Thank you for this. Just to clarify, and I may have missed this, so I apologize. So this framework is primary. It's K through 12. It's TK through 12. TK through 12. Okay. And then just out of curiosity, the framework, like, does it have a name? Can we look at it? What is, you know? You can. Yeah. It's the California math framework. Okay. It's really that exciting. Okay. It's really that exciting. Okay. Fantastic. And then just out of curiosity, I'd be curious to know, like, have our
151teachers that are participating in the training, how they're feeling about it? Is there some hope and positivity around this new framework? Are we feeling good about it? I have the preliminary data from the professional development day, the folks that participated in that math training. And it was all very positive. Okay, fantastic. And just out of curiosity, and I don't necessarily need this information right now, but is there an opportunity for pen to paper and books, or is this primarily computer-based online programs? For the teachers or for the students? For the students. The framework, it doesn't matter how it's delivered, whether it's electronic or in person. It's how it's supposed to be taught. and how the concepts are offered up delivered presented and how the students have to struggle through the problems and learn the concepts
152okay i i don't see us i i think we'll always have technology in the classroom at this point but it doesn't replace tactile learning fantastic yeah that's great i appreciate that thank you you're welcome trustee lenders um so when i look at the data it I mean, I see there are struggles in elementary, but I see there's a significant struggle once our students get to secondary. And I'm imagining just through my own experience working with students is they're not having the foundational math skills, and then they're getting to middle school, and now we're looking at the order of operations and going into algebra and pre-algebra, and that they're missing sort of those foundational skills in my understanding. I don't want to make assumptions, but... Talking to many teachers across TK through 12, and I think
153that's changing now that students are completely back. Right now we have students in school that have never been gone for two years, but many of them are saying there are gaps in their learning all the way through. Yeah, that's what you're totally following that we have as students now in secondary when those foundational pieces were really critical were in distance learning and were... in the pandemic. And so I think we're seeing that. So which leads to my next question in, I don't expect to know the answer, but sort of the question I'd like all of us to, you know, as we get into the mud pit, right, and get ready to get dirty and get to work. How do we provide those math foundational skills to our secondary students while also ensuring that they're accessing
154grade level content and building grade level skills how do we do those two things at the same time and and developing a plan around doing those two things because i don't want our secondary students to get shuffled along till they graduate i want them to get both of those things at the same time um and so that's a concern and then The other piece I'm seeing here is the need to, the urgency to develop universal design for learning in our tier one education. in all areas but urgently in math because if our multilingual learners and our students with disabilities are coming in at 99, 98 and 100% not proficient in math, that means there's a massive sense of urgency for UDL. And we've talked, I've sat and listened in a million school board meetings where
155we've talked about UDL and had UDL workshops and UDL presentations. But I think it's time for us to just really delve in there. And then the last thing is I'm hearing. these assessments, getting the buy-in from the students and this is one day in their life except I really want to beg to differ in that I read assessments all day long in my job. I spend all day in assessments and assessments, they're measuring skill areas, they're measuring our students' strengths and our students' needs and really looking at what areas do we need to provide them more support. And if we don't believe that our methodology is sound and that there's an issue in how we deliver our state testing and that it's impacting us this greatly to skew our tests this much, then let's have
156a conversation about methodology. But I really don't think that our methodology would skew the data this significantly. I think what we're looking at in this data is just the cold, hard truth. But if we have an issue in methodology, I'm totally open to having that conversation and let's correct course. Trustee Winders, can you define the way you're using methodology? I want to make sure I'm on the same page. Sure. I'm hearing that the students are that there's no buy-in and that they're perhaps not putting the full effort, which then means we have to look at how do we deliver our state testing if we believe that it is skewing the scores this significantly. If that is the case, then let's have that conversation. Or do we believe that this data is in fact, the accurate
157data that we have in front of us to move forward with. Got it. I have a couple of follow-up questions. I thank you for presenting the new math framework. I've been following it really closely for a number of years when it was first introduced. And my question is, I feel like, please correct me if my understanding is not sort of up to date, but there was a debate in the original adoption of the math framework in that there is this whole concept of algebra for all and everyone was going to we were going to delay algebra from eighth grade to ninth grade And I'm just wondering if there's still that push. I see that there's an option as an eighth grader to take a compact class, but I'm wondering if that's still sort of the
158thrust of the math framework. And the reason I bring this up is because I had kids on both sides of that decision back in whatever it was, 2014. I had a kid who took algebra in eighth grade and then a kid who took algebra in ninth grade. And during that time, I've noticed since 2014 with the introduction of the Common Core standards that this district's math scores have declined and declined and declined and declined. And I feel like it's related to that decision of when to take algebra. This is my own sort of my own hypothesis. Ever since that happened in this district, and of course I would defer to math teachers, that's what I've seen. And I also saw a very different understanding between the math competency of both of my children, who had
159a very different experience. So I'm just curious, is the math framework still pushing this algebra for all concept in ninth grade? Can I answer that? Yeah. Dawn? I don't think the framework historically have pushed for any of those things. The math framework says here are the elements of how to teach mathematics. It doesn't say here's where we're going to emphasize eighth grade algebra or not. That historically has been a... policy decision that's been left to boards to decide in terms of when eighth grade should be considered. not necessarily mandatory, but offered. And so if there was a policy decision that was made, it's not necessarily stemming or shouldn't have stemmed from a framework. So I don't think there's any conversation in the current framework that says eighth grade should be, I'm sorry, algebra should be
160in eighth grade or ninth grade. That's really a policy decision. In terms of if... The data has shown that there's been a decrease in math scores over time. There's probably a lot of other complexities there in terms of the reason why. It's not necessarily because there's an option for a pathway for algebra in eighth grade or ninth grade. There's probably lack of basic skills at the elementary. There's definitely the COVID learning loss that happened. So there's a lot of other things that could possibly have played into why the data has decreased. Thank you for that. I just wanted to mention that even if you're not looking at COVID, we've had a steep decline, you know, ignoring the COVID years. So with that, I'm going to turn it over for public comment. Are you making public
161comment? Okay. Dennis Houseman, teacher, department chair, health and wellness department, also faculty senate facilitator. Our math department and our teachers have been saying for several years now, not every student walks in high school algebra ready. And let me tell you, when you're not algebra ready and then you're forced to do algebra, you kind of turn math off and it's no longer something that you want to be doing. So it would be great if we considered classes in pre-algebra or some other class that our students could be successful at and then find success in math and want to continue to take math. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. I don't see any public comment from our Zoom audience. Thank you very much. So we'll move on to the next item, which is special education. President
162Ching, Board President Ching, Dr. Chen, Board of Trustees, Community of Sonoma. This is your special education update. I'm going to start first with a quote from Benjamin Franklin, tell me and I'll forget, teach me and I'll remember, involve me and I'll learn. So in the spirit of inclusion, just wanted to read that to you all. Today I have a colleague, teammate principal on special assignment overseeing our district preschool programs Elizabeth Stevenson is it on I'm just not close enough so Elizabeth Stevenson and so she's gonna help me present some of this preschool information that we have next slide please So last month I talked about our collaboration with North Bay Regional Center. We're strengthening early identification and early intervention services. Regional Center serves ages 0 to 3. So some of the things that we do
163with Regional Center is we have monthly LEA meetings across the county. And so Regional Center has babies that go to all different. districts but so we have our own la a meeting with the regional center we discuss with the district representative current services provided with recommendations for referral so we have a preschool assessment team and somebody from that team will attend that meeting and meet a representative from regional center and talk about the students that are coming in and are having a possible referral depending on on what the outcome is for that particular child The regional center also holds family meetings in the home. And so someone from our preschool assessment team goes into the home and meets with that family and does kind of an observation while the case manager from the regional center
164goes over goals and objectives and the progress that the student is making and the discussion with the family about transitioning their IFSP. which is their infant family service plan into an IEP, an individual education plan. Once a referral is made to the district, a member of the preschool assessment team will reach out to the family to develop an assessment plan and begin the process for assessment and then possible services. Next slide, please. Oh, that doesn't look very good, huh? That's hard to read. It looks great on paper. So this is our referral flowchart. So the folks that can make a referral are parents, the regional center, and sometimes the preschool teacher will make a referral. The next step, and in the block that you can't see, is it will start with a screening from somebody
165or members of the preschool assessment team, and that may lead to an assessment and then may lead to the initial IEP. The services that, the programs actually, that they can be referred to are speech only, our stretch program, which is a three-day speech program, and it also has OT services pushed into the stretch program. General education preschools, our extensive support needs classroom, and those are our students that require just more intensive early intervention. and also have all the other services, speech and OT and other services that we would provide. Or they did not qualify, and that happens too sometimes during the assessment. Next slide, please. Okay. take it away so in sonoma we have oh okay is that good testing okay in sonoma we have several preschool programs um starting with the extensive support needs
166preschool that's at presswood those are for students that need more support and then we have general education preschools in our district we have two that are that we oversee and that's one is at el verano and one at sasarini and each of those preschools holds full inclusion spots for our students that doesn't mean we do have other students in the class with ieps but we do hold spots for full inclusion access we also have north bay children's center North Bay Children's Center preschool at Presswood and we also have four C's preschools on our campuses at flowery and sasserini and then the other option in Sonoma is are the private preschools In our district, we currently serve 65 preschool students with disabilities with a variety of eligibilities, and they receive services such as OT, occupational therapy,
167speech and language. Depending on their need, we provide services. And those are the breakdown of numbers of students that we serve in our district at the different preschools. So I want to leave you with a quote. Every child is a different kind of flower, and all together make this world a beautiful garden. So if you haven't hung out with those little preschoolers, you should do it one time because it is a beautiful day. It is. Dance and sing. Thank you very much for your presentation. I'd like to turn it over to trustees. Go ahead, Trustee Knox. Okay. Thank you very much for the presentation this evening. I do have a question as it relates to TK. And I know that each year the age threshold lowers. So in other words, I guess parents can have
168a choice, or do they if their student has an IEP? What is the approach there? Go ahead. It doesn't change. What I know about TK is they are. constantly reviewing the birthday that they can enter into TK and it has been being pushed you know earlier I can't remember the date offhand but regardless if they have an IEP it doesn't you know it's about availability birthday there are students yeah and we are looking we're starting to have conversations about expanding our you know UPK program so just we'll see Trustee Wenders. Thank you. Just a couple questions. Do we collaborate with the Sonoma Valley Health Center for children, our littles, because they do the developmental milestone questionarity to pediatric appointment, and I know that not all families make it through the North Bay Regional Center channel.
169Are we collaborating with them? We do, yes. Okay, wonderful. Yeah, because I know that they're... spot where you catch it. And then also some staff had shared with me that they think it would be helpful to be able to provide those developmental milestone questionnaires to our preschool and even our TKers during sort of that first couple weeks of school for families to fill out just to sort of get an idea of are our children hitting their milestones and should we be concerned. right out the gate when they come in is that something we could do i think we can look into that we also do the drdp which does look at those developmental milestones for preschool and that's that's mandated so we do have to do that okay yeah that what they had shared with
170me they would love to do it at the beginning of the school year when the kids first come because it would really help them be able to understand each of the children a little bit better Yeah, exactly and show that growth from maybe even do it again at the end of the year. I think that's a fabulous idea. And then I have a question. So I happen to know that our extensive support needs preschool classroom has a pretty amazing teacher in there. I might be a little biased. I think she's spectacular. But I'm wondering, so do we have a specific curriculum, programs that we're using in that class? And could you tell us a little bit more about that class and what it looks like? And then also, do they get push-in from like SLP
171and OT into that room with those little ones? So all of our students in preschool get push-in. Even in our general education programs, they get push-in from speech and OT. and depending, sometimes PT, physical therapy. Not at preschool. And then they are doing the, what? No, pyramid, pyramid program. And so our team, our preschool in the ESN classroom have actually gone as a team. to go get that education so that they have that program to provide to their students. And that's a program, not a curriculum, right? It's a curriculum. It is a curriculum. It is a curriculum. Okay. Later, could you email us? I'd just like to learn a little bit more about it just so I have a better understanding. It's provided through SCO. Okay. And then about how many of our students do
172we have in that class, and what is the staff-to-student ratio on that one? So we have ten students in that class, and I believe we have four adults in that classroom. Okay. And then something that was brought, they would love some collaboration time with the aides, especially with those little tinies, because once they arrive, it's like all hands on deck, no pauses, no breaks, no breaths. And so as we build that, I would love to see us sort of be able to build that for them. But I love that we have this class, and I love that we have Ms. Sherman in there, and I know she's doing fabulous work. She really is. And I love also that we're doing the full inclusion in our other classes, in our other preschools. And, I mean, the
173littler we get them, the better. So thank you for doing this work. And I think the commitment to really include all of them is really strong. So I think we're doing a good job on that front. Thank you. CHRISTIE WOOD. Trustee Landrieu. CHRISTIE WOOD. Thank you. All my questions were answered prior to the meeting, except for one. And I just wanted to find out. So of the 65 preschoolers being served with services needed, is our staff and those providing services, are they going to all of the schools? I mean, do we have school-specific speech or? CHRISTIE WOOD. We have speech in All the schools. And all the schools. So all preschools have a, if it's on the site, every site has a speech pathologist. Okay, fantastic. And I forget what you said, what some of
174the other services, the list came out. Occupational therapy. The OT, okay. And then physical therapy. And are those site-specific, or do we have... Physical therapy is because we don't use it as often. We contract with the physical therapist, and so he actually provides services across the county. But, yes, we do have two OTs, occupational therapists, and they provide service to our students throughout the district. And is that, like, on a weekly basis? Mm-hmm, depending on the IEP. Okay. So it's delineated by the services of... that the team has decided is okay the student what the student needs okay fantastic thank you thank you very much for that presentation i don't have any questions and so i'm going to open it up to public comment in the audience and also public comment via zoom so we
175have one person in the audience nameplate. Dennis Houseman, Health and Wellness Department Chair, PE teacher at the high school, faculty senate facilitator. I also want to point out that the CTA recommends that if you have a class of no more than six students with autism in your class, and currently we have nine students with autism in a class of 13. So we want to make sure that we are addressing all of our students' needs and they get the attention that they need. Thank you, Mr. Hausman. I don't see anybody on Zoom. All right. So do you guys want to take a quick two-minute break or should we keep going? Okay. We're going to just take a quick two-minute recess and we'll be right back. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank
176you. Thank you. Thank you. So cut into people's socializing time, but we're getting we gotta get back to the agenda Okay, we are on Item number 10 our monthly budget report so we have assistant superintendent Rena safes Will present the district overall district budget I want to preface this by saying this This presentation is somewhat challenging because I've been doing a great deal of cleanup, especially in the restricted funds, and I would have preferred to put it off a month because I'm trying to get everything cleaned up for first interim. So there is a lot of work still to be done, and so don't hold this as concrete right now. So next slide. So this slide that you can't see, it reflects both the general fund and the unrestricted and the restricted funds. And I'll
177give you a breakdown of the separate restricted and unrestricted on the next slide. Go ahead. Go ahead, Michelle. Okay, so this is our unrestricted fund and for the most part it has remained pretty consistent with the adopted budget there was one increase which was an increase in EPA funds in revenue and then we received $25,000 for Can you go up a little Michelle? Tech grant that we received the increases in salaries had to do with the EPA funds and We had reclassed on the second slide, I mean the second classified salaries. We'd move $45,000 from salary savings for the bus drivers in positions that weren't filled for the contracted services. Services and other operating expenses increased because of the grants and moving some of the... salary savings in different areas that we needed to reallocate.
178$164,000 from capital outlay was moved to contracted services. And then, yeah, so it's a total difference of $74,244. So it's remained pretty consistent with the original adopted budget. Okay, Michelle? This is the restricted budget is the one that has had the most change and will continue to change as of the first interim, but hopefully we'll get everything realigned. I'd really hate to spend much time breaking this down, but the biggest change was in salary savings for special ed positions. When the budget was originally adopted, a great deal of the budget was in salaries, and those positions weren't filled, and we've been using them for contracted services and nonpublic schools. So we reclassed. That salary savings down to contracted services and then the rest is largely because of setting the roll for the rollover budgets from
179COVID money. So that's why a lot of the expenditures have changed. Okay, Michelle. This is the I was asked to present the restricted budget without the COVID funds. So this is what the budget looks like once we take out all the COVID and one-time money. And there's a, I really need to make these slides bigger. Like I said, there's an increase of 393,000 it looks like from here. Again, this will still be doing some cleanup for first interim. Michelle, go ahead. Questions? Okay, I'd like to open it up for questions from the board. I can start with you. Do you have any? Okay. Trustee Winders? No, I'm good. You actually answered my question in your explanation, so thank you. Okay. Trustee Knox? No, all right. I I appreciate thank you for Getting this to us.
180You've you've been here for a very short time. I know you're trying to clean up the books right now, so I appreciate the breakdown between the restricted unrestricted and also the restricted taking out the one-time funds I I wanted just to point out something to my fellow trustees because I pay attention to this number a lot which is When you look at the restricted side of the budget and you look at the change in the services and other operating expenditures between the original budget and the most current budget, you see this big differential. That happens a lot, right? Because we basically, what happens is we are not able to hire for open positions. And so those positions. get transferred and rolled over into that line item so that's why you get a lot of volatility
181i just want to point that out because i think sometimes people misinterpret that number and think that oh we're just suddenly like spending a ton of money in that category so i just wanted to point that out The other question I have is this is kind of a request and hopefully my colleagues will agree with giving direction to our assistant superintendent. If we could have a follow-up in terms of how all the ESSER money and the one-time COVID funds were spent. We were presented with a report back in 2021, like May, with kind of initial allocations, but we never really got a final accounting. And I know... We're about to spend most of that like I think 2025 might be the end end of the some of the 24 was the end of most of
182it. There's I think one that goes to 28 But that was a recent one that we received but the kovat pretty much ends on 24 That would be really that would be helpful if I hope the rest of the board would like to see that What it's convenient. I know you're in the midst of trying to get all that straightened out. So And with that, is there public comment? Is that a yes? Okay. Thank you. I'm going to see if there's public comment online. And the audience is dwindling. Okay. Thank you very much for that presentation. We appreciate it. And now we are moving to... The next item item 11, which is the approval of the splash MOU so staff will provide an update on discussions with splash and an overview of the MOU terms
183and So I will hand it over to our superintendent Thank you, President Ching. So this MOU is to bring to your attention for action our MOU with Sonoma Splash. I'll give you a little bit of context and then I know that you've read the actual documents. Back in the summer of this school year, we met with representatives of Sonoma Splash to talk about the MOU that was up due on June 30th, 2023. Since then, we had a conversation about what the needs of Sonoma Splash are and some of their... proposal for new language for an MOU. In that conversation, I had had some issues brought up to me by the staff at the high school. And so I went out and met with a variety of different stakeholders at the high school that addressed several
184issues. Some of the issues related to safety, some of them related to... the level of comfort of our students. I think you heard earlier from a public comment statement around that. And then there were issues around the parking. And so, um, in order to address those issues, we had a, another meeting with Sonoma splash to talk about. Um, we, at that point we were already past the June 30th. deadline of the MOU and so we met to talk about how do we continue to have an existing MOU and then how do we also incorporate new language and at the same time address the issues that were brought forth by the staff. So the proposal at that time was that we would continue to have an existing MOU with the same language that we've had in
185the past and then also have both the high school staff come together in collaboration with the Sonoma SPLASH staff to address the issues and then at the same time talk about negotiating new language for a new MOU. So that's kind of where we're at right now is the MOU that you have in front of you is to approve the current language of the MOU. So that would be the action that would be taking place today. But then also knowing that the Sonoma Splash staff would be working with our high school staff to address the issues that were raised by the staff. And then at the same time, we would be negotiating language to put into a new MOU. I know that it was a desire of Sonoma Splash not to wait. a whole new year
186to do that and so we talked about doing that in a shorter term and so we talked about landing um putting this mou together and have all of those kind of kinks worked out and have a new mou looked at to be fully executed again in january 2024 so we wouldn't have to wait a whole other year to have new language in a new mou So that's the context and that's what you have sitting in front of you is the MOU with the same language and then have the opportunity for us to work out those issues and have a new MOU in front of you for... again approval in january well right before january 2024 so we would probably be looking at bringing a new mou in front of you in december of this school
187year so that it gets implemented in january 2024. trustees Where would you like to start? Just a question. So I know when I remember when we approved the original MOU, it did stipulate that there would be a couple committees to encourage conversation and address issues when they came up. And I learned that that group either disbanded or never really fully formed. And so I want to really impress upon. the district and SPLASH to make sure that that is in place moving forward. You're right. I saw that also in the language in the documents, and I don't know exactly if it got established and it fell apart or it just never got established, but know that now I think as of, I'm looking at, where is Rena? I think as of this week, we have a...
188identified committee members for both of those committees. Okay. Okay. Yeah, and I'm now remembering it's a steering committee and an operating committee. And so that's the plan moving forward. Yeah, so the operating committee will report to the steering committee. And like I said, we'll have our first meeting next month and looking forward to getting all these issues ironed out. Thank you. Other trustees? Thank you. I was not familiar with this MOU before seeing it in this board packet. So my first reaction was to just gather information, and I am sitting on a school board, so my first reaction was to respond. in terms of how I thought about this for our students. And the first thing I thought of was safety, and I went through all the concerns, and then I had some really great
189conversations with constituents on both sides. I've talked to some of our teachers. I've talked to some of the Sonoma Splash staff and really come to this understanding that as a community member. and someone who was born and raised here who has children here, it's really important to me that we not just create things, but we learn how to sustain them. And I feel like we haven't done the best job of figuring that out. And so I want to support a plan that would allow our community to continue to use this pool. It's a beautiful facility. It costs a lot of money. But also... you know keeps our students at the forefront and i think that that can happen um you know i i appreciate everyone who um who reached out who emailed and called it's
190clearly very important to you all in the sonoma splash community to have access i don't think you're asking for too much but i do think it's going to take a collaboration i'm a little disappointed in the timeline i do hear that there is some concern on the side of Sonoma Splash in terms of getting people to commit and sustainability. So I'm not sure if this process can be sped up. I do like hearing December. That's not January. That's great. So having a plan before the first of the year. So yeah, that's all I have to say. I really would like to support everybody coming together and figuring out something that works for everyone, but really, really keeping our students at the forefront. Trustee Winders? So I, too, gathered information, kind of wanted to learn more
191and get a better understanding. And I did have a really great meeting with Paul from Sonoma Splash and just sort of talk about what are the needs, what are the concerns. And part of that conversation. for me at the very beginning was just being really clear that that student safety is is a priority and community member access to our students during their student hours and that includes not just the school hours but when our teams are practicing in the pool is is just kind of that line in the sand for me as a trustee unfortunately I wish the world were a better place in which we didn't have people who looked for access to children to harm them but that isn't the world we live in and the truth is is we have to ensure
192that our our students are are safe and and that we limit access to them um during those times in which we are responsible for them um and so we did we were no disagreement there we had a really great conversation about that What was shared with me was the desire to have this worked out before we go on winter break. And so I think that that December meeting will take care of that need for both SPLASH and for the district so that SPLASH can do the work that they need to do with their members and have the information that they need to be able to do that work. But then the bigger conversation around this that I want to share that we had when we met was the fact that this is new right and
193this is we this pool is new sonoma splashes and the relationship with the district this is all new this this was kind of like a first stab at an mou and and everybody did their very best with sort of creating it you know something very new and kind of reinventing the wheel a little bit there um and inventing a whole new wheel and so here we are on sort of the second round and this is a relationship that's always going to be adjusted right we're always going to be adjusting the MOU. It's why we redo it. Because we learn more as we go. And as we implement this fine dance that we do, every once in a while we're going to tap on each other's toes or we're going to step the wrong direction and
194I'm going to go right and you're going to go left, right? And so we're going to come back together and readjust. So I'm glad to hear that we have the operation committee and the steering committees beginning because I think that's going to be where a lot of that choreography. happens so that we can get better and better in our partnership together. And then the other thing that we talked about, which I loved, is what are all the different ways that we can build and grow and collaborate to serve our students and serve our community simultaneously. And there's so much potential out there to do that and so much willingness to do that. And so I think that this is a relationship that's going to continue to grow. We're going to continue to get better and
195serve the community and serve our students while also keeping our students safe. So I look forward to that and I'm excited for these two committees to be able to create some great choreography for us. Thank you. So I have a question for staff. If you could just repeat what the challenges are. I think you said three challenges. And if you could explain them in more detail to all of us and also to the public. So I know we talked about parking and student comfort. But if you could just go through them again, just so I have them down. So I can send you the actual list in writing as well, but in general safety in terms of parking, the staff pointed out, so there's a parking space area where the Sonoma Splash and community folks
196come in and park. It's not an ideal parking situation, and so that's, I think, another. part of the conversation that needs to happen in the committees is possibly when we finish our science wing that maybe that might be a better way of having parking for them but the concerns were that community folks were coming down into the parking space and um and there was i don't know i guess safety concerns about possibly hitting staff members and students and so there was signs that were put up to kind of address that and mitigate that a little bit. But that was a big concern in terms of like the speed and the way that that parking is set up. It's a really not safe kind of way of coming in. It's a one lane and so people
197literally have to kind of get out of the way when they're coming and going. So that was a big concern. Safety, one of the things that people were talking about, well there's two main things that were brought up. One was that when the community came onto the campus and they didn't know how to access the facility they were asking students like how do i get to the swimming pool area and so again the the campus isn't open as you know an open campus and so the community had access to our students and so people were concerned about that they were also concerned about having the community members in the swimming pool at the same time as our students there were issues brought up about the attire of some of our community folks, some of the
198girls on our teams, and also the girls in PE classes. And, you know, again, being an adolescent with their swimsuits in the pool, that was an issue that was brought up. There was another issue around. our coaches having to reserve the lanes and having to do that and plan ahead and have conversations with the Sonoma Splash folks where other coaches for other sports didn't necessarily have to do that. So that was... work, a change in working conditions to a certain degree that was brought up as another issue. So there were several issues that were brought up. And again, I don't think there's anything that can't be mitigated or addressed or figured out in collaboration with one another. So that's really the gist of the issues that were brought up. Thank you very much. So I
199just I think it's important that the board that we're all on the same page because we've all entered into this process at different junctures from when the pool was designed and when it was in the planning stages and then there was construction and then there was the joint use agreement and the MOU and we've all come in at sort of different points in time. And so I came in basically to approve the sort of construction part of the pool. So the planning of that had already been decided. And then also I was involved in approving the JUA, the joint use agreement, as well as the MOU. And so I just want the rest of the board to know kind of my position when I was part of that decision making, which is that I approved
200the construction of the pool under the condition that there was going to be community use. That's the way the multiple complex was actually sold to me as a board member. And part of the rationale behind developing a complex versus a single competition pool for students. was that we didn't want to find ourselves in the same position that we were back in 2004 where we couldn't pay for the operating expenses, which led to the demise of that pool. So my understanding was that there was this There was this initial planning so that we could have a community recreation program side by side with our high school so that eventually this community recreation program could help offset or contribute to the ongoing operating expenses of the pool. So that's how it was sold to me. And at
201least that was my understanding, that we would eventually be able to offset those high costs. Otherwise, we wouldn't have built such a large complex that had such a high overhead expense. And I do think that in order for both the district and for Sonoma Splash to fulfill the JUA, which is a 25-year agreement, it needs to be able to figure out how to sell annual passes. I mean, that's why I approved the JUA. And if they can't provide... If they can't do that, then it's not going to be a viable program. Essentially, I don't want to see us to end up in the same situation. I just wanted to, so that we're on the same page, you know where I was coming from and why I supported the project that we ultimately decided upon. Anyway,
202I just wanted to say that. If anyone has other comments, then I will open it up to the... to the public can i yes president ching i just i was with you i've come on board with you this and i remember the vote i remember these discussions i do recall vividly that we were hopeful that we would have a lot of use at that pool that the community would would embrace it and this would be a wonderful partnership between the school district and the community um it's it's a crown jewel for the school district and it's our in our best interests to work together to ensure that, one, that our children learn how to swim. That's critical. I know I've heard success stories of students at the high school who have learned how to swim,
203and that's beautiful. And I think that the issues that have been presented, although, albeit I'm not on the ground at the high school every day, but I am a little disappointed that for whatever reason our committees were not in place to have these conversations because we are going to have growing pains. These are all things that we would have to address that we did not foresee at that time. And so, again, I just feel like this has been a net positive for all of us, for all of our community. And, you know, I think this is an opportunity for us to identify our shared interests in terms of what do we want for... families for our students and how can and how can we problem-solve to make it work so I'm very confident that we
204can make this you know work out and like I said we were hoping for this reality at the time when we approved it we were wanting community to really embrace the pool we wanted to build this joint use agreement and so I'm confident we can make this work Okay thank you with that I will open it to public comment I see a lot of people here so you can start you can line up at the podium please recognize yourself Hi Bruce Abbott and I'm on the board of SPLASH and I was a former associate superintendent of business for the school district nice to see all of you that I remember from before and nice to meet the people I'm just now meeting I'm gonna be a little repetitious with what Trustee Chang was saying but
205The pool project was an active project in the district around 2017. At the time, the idea of the fact that this community lost a pool was still very much in this community's mindset. I got regular calls about when we were going to get that pool back. Splash was also in existence, and I met with Splash at the time. They had a project to build a community pool, and we agreed to keep meeting over time as our projects went forward to see how they went. In my position, of course, I researched pool construction operations, and I discovered pools are very expensive, and most importantly, very expensive to operate on an ongoing basis. Also, I discovered that in today's world, joint use agreements were very common. Cities, schools, counties, cities, whatever, usually more than one person or
206one organization was involved in creating aquatic facilities. So that became very, very clear to me. So in further discussions with SPLASH over time, we came to the conclusion that we thought... joint project made sense they had some capital and we had to look at how you know how we were going to support our community use and they could provide assistance with that so we work together we work together on that and we did that ended up coming into the design so design now had additional lanes we separated it was originally an L shape we separated into tool pools to have a training pool we put in special fencing to to we had controlled access to the area separate locker room and separate facilities all in the mindset of that this is going to be, you
207know, we're going to have community people, we're going to have school people there, and we need to figure out how to manage that situation. A joint use agreement was established. It was very long-term because Splash needed to know that this was going to be around so they could build their organization and establish themselves long-term in the community. But then we established this idea of an MOU because, you know, on an annual basis, you'd want to rethink and revisit, you know, the kind of the day-to-day operations. So that mechanism was put in place. The first MOU, which was last year's MOU, did start out with restricted access quite a bit during the day. And actually, there's language in that MOU that said we were going to get together last year and kind of work through these
208issues and trying to come to a resolution. I do understand last year was a tough year. year for the district in terms of leadership and everything else but we we never were able to get together and this year we were starting basically at the same point so we're hoping we can get together we've been trying to get together and so we can move this forward because we really think we can come up with some resolution that would work and i just want to close with a comment on community schooling i i it's it's a model i think is a very important model i think it's a great model i think it fits sonoma valley in in a lot of ways and to me but back in my day when i was here i always saw
209this as part of how you build community and how you bring the community and the school together, because I think that's a very strong model. And again, I think it's a model that would work great without. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Jane Hansen, and I'm the aquatics director at Sonoma Splash. I'd like to share with you the scope of programming at Sonoma Splash and some of the highlights from year one. We created a strong, successful swim lesson program. We taught over 2,500 lessons in one year from babies to adults. We created a free teen learn-to-swim program over the summer. We offered 10 spring and summer swim camps with an educational component and a learn-to-swim component. We've given out almost $20,000 in scholarships and financial assistance for our youth programming. We've hired 75
210employees, many of whom are Sonoma Valley High School students or alumni. And we've created a variety of robust aquatic programming that supports our community. Such programs like aqua aerobics, water yoga, aqua therapy, master swimming, youth water polo, the Sonoma Sea Dragons youth swim team, and community certification classes like CPR, first aid, lifeguard training, and babysitter training. We're proud to be the first community pool in Sonoma in almost 20 years, and we're passionate about aquatics, and the feedback from the community is phenomenal. Our mission going forward at Sonoma Splash is to be a vibrant community hub. We look forward to growing the scope of our programs and aquatic opportunities for the Sonoma community members. But without any daytime access to the competition pool, we are limited in the number of people who we are able to
211attract as pass holders. I ran the Sonoma Aquatic Club for over 13 years and built the membership to more than 800 memberships. We're currently at less than half of that, and I believe that is due to our limited daytime access in the competition pool. Our large senior population in Sonoma and parents with school-age children are not able to come early in the morning or later in the afternoons. I hear the frustration from the community members in regards to their restricted access to this community resource. And I fear that without stability and certainty around community access, we will not gain more pass holders in order to provide year-round support for our facility. We need to get this issue resolved as soon as possible so we can have more certainty around our financial outlook, staffing, and programming.
212Running a business... nonprofit business with such uncertainty leaves us in a constant state of nervousness about the future several other high schools in California operate their pools in partnership with their communities and provide community access during the school day I have provided a detailed list of these schools to our superintendent and can share the list with anybody who requests it thank you Hi, Mary Favaro, Sonoma Splash board member, former executive director of the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation, former teacher, and a recreational swimmer, most importantly. Last October 16th, on our opening day, we stood on the new shiny pole deck and welcomed the... the community to this amazing new facility. And that was really a joyful day as community members celebrated the many years of collaboration and hard work that got us to that day. A
213year later, as you have heard, SPLASH and our community members, as well as the district, have benefited from a very successful and safe first year at the Aquatic Center. This has been a big win for both our high school students and our community members. Now most, if not all, nonprofits, including Splash, operate in uncertain environments with minimal financial reserves. That's why this thoughtful partnership between the school district and Splash was such an important accomplishment. But as we sit here today, future community programming at the Aquatic Center feels even more uncertain and potentially not sustainable because we've not yet agreed workable access to the Aquatic Center during the school day. On a positive note, and as many of you have already said, this also seems like a very solvable and hopefully not time consuming issue that
214can be addressed through open discussions between the district and SPLASH. Every week that goes by without resolution adds to our operating uncertainty. And as we stated and apparently has already been agreed, we are asking that a near-term process be put in place to expand access and address any of the related issues before the district goes on winter break this December. That timing will allow SPLASH to plan and staff aquatic programs and to communicate that information to the community by year end. So, as we work through all these details, let's not forget at a high level what a positive opportunity this has been for everyone involved. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Hi, good evening. I'm Madeline Agramonte. I'm also on the SPLASH board. I hope this is the way I introduce myself. Do I
215give you my address or anything? Okay, I'm rolling then. All right, thank you. I joined Sonoma SPLASH for one reason only, because I had a friend who lost a child in a swimming pool. My commitment is to have every child in the valley, not Sonoma. the valley swim by the third grade. That to me is more important than a lot of the things that we discuss. A couple of things I've heard about parking, you're absolutely right, it's bad out there. I don't know how that happened. Perhaps it's the science facility. But you know, and there's no signage. So I got lost. I come to a meeting every month on your campus. I got lost because there was a different road they opened up by the tennis court, so I drove straight. So that's an issue.
216You're absolutely right for whomever brought that up. The other thing that is so important is that, you know what, we are all very committed. I mean, I used to do patrol on the fences at Verano when we thought we would put a pool there. I would patrol people because they would go into the campus, you know, where we wanted to put a pool. So I'm very serious about the role that I play. I believe that the money is going to be there. It's an operating issue. I have worked through many MOUs in some of the positions I've held here in Sonoma and also the Valley and other cities. So I suggest, as I have done recently in a club that had two parts to it, that you possibly hire a facilitator. Because when we come
217into an MOU, there's a lot of things that you bring with you. And we both have our priorities. We both have what we feel is the truth. So I just suggest that because it takes some of that onus, some of the things that you come to. My last remark is I did an event with the Sonoma Splash about five years ago with the class of 1960. They had probably 200 people attending. I had pictures of the pool, and everyone said how angry they were about the pool being filled in. We know that. We understand it and we think it's very important because I work very hard to get a commitment from the city $25,000 a year Yes a year to be able to commit to scholarships for kids and we're working on transportation and everything
218So those things are very important to me personally, but I don't want children to drown in this valley. Thank you Thank you Good evening. My name is Marco Alaria, and I'm a local chef, semi-retired now. I'm also the president of the Valley to Moon Baton Club. We have, between Bocce and Baton, we have over 600 members that play in Depot Park. Many of these folks are retired, like myself, and many of us swim. And recreational swimmer, member of Sonoma Splash, was with Jane at the Aquatic Center for many years. I think I want to thank you for the incredible opportunity that you have given us to have this pool. Now, the thing is that we all know about now is that the hours that the community has access to the pool is extremely limited. The
219morning and the afternoon. So I would suggest is taking a look at perhaps opening up the hours for community between 8 and noon. Because at 3 o'clock, when I've been coming to swim, the water polo, the swim lesson, there's all these kids that occupy a great majority of the pool. Several days this week there were events going on at that time and I couldn't swim at all. And, you know, I think my doctor would tell you that... My blood work looks good because I swim. And, you know, it's both mental, physical, and very social because of the activity that we have as camaraderie in the pool. So by looking at the schedule that the school has for their activities, it might be a good thing to take a look at those earlier hours because, personally,
220my favorite time to swim is in the morning. Go out after that and do your thing. Generally speaking, from what I can see, there's no activity from the students during that period of time. So I would strongly recommend that you take a look at those hours and see how, if we want Sonoma Splash to be successful, to be able to pay for the maintenance of that pool, we have to make an adjustment in the hours that the community can come. And I think that, you know, I can speak for the people that I swim with and have for years. We're very good people. You know, the safety in our group. I mean, we could have everybody in this room and you would all go, wow, these are beautiful people, professional people, people that love the
221activity of getting in the water. So thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. My name is Alicia Berberich and I lead the 7 a.m. water aerobics class. Let me tell you about Marcy. Since COVID, she has been isolated, going out only for necessities and doctor's appointments. More and more doctors appointments because Marcy isn't doing well or wasn't doing well. She was heading into a full-blown depression. The doctors wanted to put her on antidepressants. At the same time, she heard about the Sonoma Splash Water Aerobics Program. After coming for three months, Marcy feels great and is full of buoyant energy. At 70, Elsie and David, graduates of Sonoma Valley High School, were finding it challenging to move without getting injured, and they couldn't keep up with their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Now, after coming regularly to the pool
222for three months, they bounce in full of enthusiasm. They recently just purchased two annual passes to the pool. Alice was in a dark place. Her daughter recently died of breast cancer and part of her died with her daughter. Her neighbors, Leslie and Diane, were worried about her. They encouraged her to come to the Sonoma Splash Water Aerobics Program. She came and there she found community and people willing to help her. She's been back four times. She's slowly coming out of her shell. It sounds like so little, a water aerobics class, but for the 60 plus population, water aerobics can be a lifesaver. Water aerobics addresses many of the major problems that senior members of our town face. Isolation, health issues, and a needing and caring community. I don't need to convince you that this older
223population needs exercise desperately and how important exercise is. And I'm sure you're all aware of the negative impact of ageism in our society, of people not being seen, heard, and witnessed. And I'm sure you know the devastating impact of isolation and how it leads to suicide. Water aerobics is a simple solution for many of our complex problems. Sonoma Splash Water Aerobics Program is more than just an exercise class for the over 60 population of Sonoma. Sonoma Splash Water Aerobics is a community. And it has the potential to be a life-saving community for more adults than just Marcy, Elsie, David, and Alice. Not everyone can make it out of the house and drive in the dark to the pool at 7 a.m. for a water aerobics class. Most of the 15 to 20 people who come
224started with taking water aerobics in the summer when the class was offered at 10 o'clock, a good time for senior citizens. I'm asking you for the sake of the senior members of our town to allow a daily weekday class at 9 or 10 a.m. in the pool so more people in this ignored segment can try water aerobics and experience the health and social benefits that we offer. By allowing this underserved population to use the pool for water aerobics classes, you can help alleviate their social isolation, many of their health issues, and continue to build a positive community. I understand that campus safety is an issue that you have to contend with. If there is a will, surely there is a way to address this problem and resolve it. Several of the participants are already mentors
225in the community. It is possible to find a solution since we are all motivated to do so. Excuse me? I'm sorry, but your time is up. Thank you very much for your comments. You're welcome. Good evening. Richard Hodges, regular recreational swimmer. And I just wanted to make two points today, starting with the idea that because of the wisdom and hard work of some people in this community and of the school board, we have a fabulous aquatic facility in Sonoma. It's a remarkable facility for a small town. And that gives this organization, the school district, two great opportunities. One, to have every student in the valley learn how to swim. This is a lifetime skill that is very hard to acquire as an adult. And it's a remarkably... important part you can. I was looking today,
226military service, Navy, Marines, you have to be able to swim. When I was in college, I couldn't graduate without having to be able to swim. That was a fundamental test of what you had to do to earn your degree. So it's a fundamental life skill that we have the opportunity to offer to every child in the valley, and we shouldn't miss that opportunity. The second thing is, as you all know, the demographics of this valley have been changing. and we have more and more people who don't have children involved in the school district. We have more and more people who come to the Valley, who live here, first or second home, who have no connection to the school environment at all. This facility offers that opportunity. It brings people in. It connects them to the
227community. And so that means for the school district the possibility for more volunteers, for more donors, for more engagement from the community of a part, as we just heard, particularly seniors, people who wouldn't otherwise have a reason to be attached to the school and the school district. So we have a great opportunity here. Please ask you, don't let this opportunity slip away from us. Figure out how to make it work. Thank you. Any other speakers? go Nick Monroe a resident of Sonoma and I had two children that attended the high school sad that they weren't able to have such wonderful recreation facilities and like our kids weren't able to have that. I like what everyone said. Celeste, I like what you were saying about the dance. I like that metaphor. I like the way Troy
228that you and Anne characterized this coming together of the community. I would just say one thing. I don't know how the operating committees are going to form. It sounds like that's what some of the substantive issues are going to be worked through that we've been kind of talking about tonight. As a master swimmer and water polo player and open water swimmer, I've been doing that my whole life, I do think that having more access will allow for greater prosperity for the community pool. There has to be a way, I'm sure there are ways, to be able to open up access, to have improved utilization. That will get people to subscribe more, to be able to commit to the annual PASS program, because that's really the... the big revenue generator that a nonprofit needs to be
229able to build off of. Right now I just have a monthly pass and I think if I knew and had greater certainty about both the future and also had more opportunity to swim perhaps during the middle of the day. It wasn't at some conflict or cost with the high school programs or safety or anything. I think they're very compatible. But that's enough of an inducement that I would be an annual pass holder. But I think it's not just me. representative of a decent cohort of people that would also make that same move. So anyway, thank you again for the school district having the pool. It's been a great place to swim, provided great enjoyment for myself and others. Thanks again for your time and consideration. Thank you. Anyone else want to get up? Dennis Hausman,
230Health and Wellness Department Chair, Faculty Senate Facilitator, Co-President of the Local Teachers Union. couple different issues first let me say as probably the only person in the room who taught at the previous pool and the only person in the room who teaches at this pool are high school students I'll bring go back to a couple years ago when I had this young lady Katarina Tomasi in my class and a skimpy bathing suit and walking out on the pool deck and taking swimming. And I would have felt uncomfortable as the teacher with other community people in the pool area. Katerina later came on to Ms. Landry and now serves on our school board. So as a teacher at the site, I will say I want the recreation. use of the pool. I want people to use
231the pool. I don't think I'm comfortable having people use the pool while my teachers are out there teaching at the same time. It's an uncomfortable situation. As a personal aside, again, I've been the department chair for... 22 years now. I consider the facilities my facilities. I'm the gym, the weight room, the fields. I take ownership over that. The pool previously. I will say I go to my current pool and I feel like an outsider. I feel like I'm... like almost like even kind of a less than a guest and a facility that I Somewhat helped bring on getting not and small small small part But I've been advocating for four years and sitting at the school board meetings saying yes. We need a pool the fact that I walk into a situation where Like my
232teachers aren't comfortable leaving equipment at the pool because they feel like outsiders We've left swimming as a ninth grade teaching element and I don't teach ninth graders so but I do oversee the people who do teach the ninth grade classes and they feel a little uncomfortable when they go to the pool. So if we can remedy that situation, I also will say our students walk through the parking lot again Students take the path of least resistance which is also the shortest path and the path to the field our facilities to the field is through the pool parking lot and There again, I'm not going to say once twice three times more I've had to avoid cars parked in the fire lane and turning around and again this is all stuff that can be remedied but
233it needs to be remedied before we can i can say like we need to have these people in the pool during the school hours thank you I'm Molly Kiss, principal of Sonoma Valley High School. I just wanted to say I really appreciate getting to hear from everyone tonight. I think that we can all come together and work on these issues, and I think that's really all the high school is asking for. I feel like the opportunities for the operating and steering committee to meet throughout last year, there were times where we met, but it wasn't consistent, and it didn't happen all the way throughout the year, and so I think there are issues that came up that I think can be worked through. it's to everyone's benefit to have those worked through before we expand
234what we have so that we have a solid plan in place that's supportive of our teachers and staff that administrators know how to implement especially when we're talking about issues of safety with the campus and things that may affect our campus supervisors and their role we really want to make sure that we have a secure plan in place for everybody so we really do look forward to coming together and working together on those pieces with you and appreciate hearing from everyone tonight thank you anyone else I'd like to make public comment. I'm going to turn it over to people on Zoom. And I don't see anyone raising their hands. So I'm going to bring it back to the board for discussion. Trustee Winders, you'd like to be recognized? OK. Thank you. You're so good at
235reading my nonverbal cues. Thank you, Ann. So a couple of things I just want to touch on that have come to mind. Before I was a trustee, while I'm new to sitting in this chair, I spent over 10 years sitting in one of those chairs. I missed exactly two school board meetings in person in over a decade, and I did watch them online, so I didn't technically miss them. And so that being said is I was present for every single meeting and every single aspect about the poll and its development and the partnership with Splash and all the presentations, including the presentations of things. that were like way before what we actually got, right? So I've seen all the incarnations. So I'm not a total newbie to this. And so that being said, because I
236was a member of the community who advocated for the poll. I was always very, very clear that while this was a community partnership between a community entity and a school district, that it was a school district pool first because it's unique from other community pools in that it exists on a school, public school campus. So I grew up here in Sonoma, but I had the privilege. of being able to exist in an urban environment and a rural environment because my father lived in Los Angeles and he lived four houses from a community pool and I spent my whole summer in a community pool. But it was in a public park. It wasn't in a school facility. And so that made it a little different in terms of how we accessed a community pool. We could
237access it all the time because we weren't navigating a school. facility um and so i want to be really clear that this is a partnership where we can work out the details and we can figure out something that works works for everybody it means a little give and a little take um from from both parties but there are some areas that the district can't give on and that's on school safety that's just one of those areas we can't give on and and as a trustee The fact of the matter is that the school safety climate has changed, and it continues to change over the years, and I wish that it didn't. I wish the world was a very different place than it just currently is. And so we have to be hyper-vigilant about the protection
238of our students during their school days. It doesn't mean we can't work it out. We are. looking at revising our master schedule. We are looking at making changes and I think all of these things are going to be really conducive to coming up with a system that works for the splash community and also works for our student body community. That being said, I also want to share the reason why I was such a big supporter of the swimming pool. I am the parent of an autistic child, and the number one cause of death for autistic children is drowning. 90% of autistic children who die, die from drowning. That is an alarming statistic. I'm also the parent of black children, and the statistics for drowning for black children are... phenomenally higher than they are for white
239children and that is a fact. So as a parent of a black autistic child I take swimming very seriously. Unlike other sports which are wonderful and great for kids, swimming saves lives and when kids don't learn how to swim they die. It's that simple. They fall into water, they can't get themselves to the edge, and they die. That's different than other sports. And so I am a big supporter of the pool and access of the pool, and I do believe that this partnership is important. But one of the things I really want to encourage Sonoma Splash to do is to, I know that there was a... break in some of the relationship with Arden Kramer. And I really want to encourage you to maybe go through the restorative practice, bring in a restorative process person
240to help and repair that relationship because she is an unbelievable resource for providing adaptive swim and providing universal design. building that into for students with disabilities and children with disabilities in helping them learn how to swim because they have to be instructed in a different way than our typical kids. They struggle, our autistic kids struggle with crossing midline, those kinds of things that are really important to swimming. And she's an incredible resource. I have an autistic child who can swim laps because of her. And so I know this firsthand and I'd really like you and encourage you to tap into that resource because we do. need to make sure all of our children in this valley learn how to swim and that all means all and especially our students with disabilities who have that statistic
241that drastic statistical higher rate of death in water and i know that that's really important to you paul because you and i had a great conversation about building that and i'm happy to help build that as well because i know that we all share that that desire so i just want to sort of put that out there and that us as a district if we can collaborate with our ot our pt um providers and maybe we can collaborate with some Splash and developing an adaptive swim program that would be accessible to our students and accessible to the community at large as well. Thank you. Other trustees? Trustee Knox. Yes, two comments. So I think it was brought up by a speaker just during this conversation about maybe having a mediator of some sort as we
242form these committees, someone who's a third party, someone who's objective, instead of two sides coming together and trying to muscle each other, you know, to get the other to their side. There's been something called interest-based problem solving. And I'm going to take this opportunity to bring it up again because I feel like this would be an excellent case study. in trying this out and to allow our district to present this as an opportunity not only for this case but in other situations that are going to be coming up in the months and years to come. So we are going to be having, if we want to be a transformational school district, we're going to be making some tough decisions that's going to require a process that we can all agree to. And it's going to
243be difficult, it's going to be challenging, but I really would impress upon us to use this opportunity to get that process started. The other thing I wanted to point out is that we're being asked to approve an MOU tonight. And the copy that I'm looking at only shows one signature. Is this going to be signed, presumably, by SPLASH? Because the one that I have is just by the district. So I did send that MOU over, I think it was two weeks ago, Paul, something like that, and I haven't received a signature back. So, I mean, typically what happens is, as you know, in many other MOUs, we don't necessarily have to have both signatures on the MOU if there's an agreement, and I haven't heard that there is a disagreement. So I'm not sure. Okay.
244I just wanted to clarify that because I've never approved an MOU where both parties haven't signed off already. So this is a first for me. Thank you. I just want to say thank you to everyone who came and spoke. I appreciate you, and I appreciate having the perspective of others, especially those who are out there utilizing the facilities, our educators and our community. I just want to say something that... this makes me think about is in terms of safety and our campus is that we have a very beautiful campus but it is very open and we now are dealing with a pool situation where we have community use and earlier this evening we had our community members coming and asking us to open the tennis courts and so I think We need to have a
245bigger conversation as we're moving forward, and I think it needs to align with how we move forward in our campus. I'm not here to say that I want to put a bunch of bars around our campus. I think it's beautiful. I think there's a better solution. But if student safety and community access are going to go hand in hand, that might be something we need to start considering. So I just wanted to put that out there. And again, just thank everyone for coming tonight. So I had a couple of questions for staff to clarify. One is could staff provide the composition of the committees that are being formed, the steering and operating committee at some point via The second thing is, this is a question for our legal. So currently we are not operating under
246an MOU or at least our MOU actually expired. Is there, what are the legal ramifications for that if we don't approve the MOU tonight? I'm just curious because currently we're operating without one. Okay, and then my follow-on question is I'm looking at the the MOU currently under consideration and I'm looking at the I guess the schedule of use. So we would be agreeing to the schedule of use till the end of January which me which let me know if I understand this correctly that the high school would have exclusive use from 8 in the morning to 3 30 on most days except for minimum days. Is that correct? Do I understand that correctly? So we're not changing the language. We're actually keeping the same language with the same stipulations while the teams are coming together
247to come up with a new schedule. So yes, if the question is, are they going to follow the same schedule until the new MOU, the answer is yes. Okay, and just so that I understand, does that mean that Splash will have access to the pool before 8 and then after the... the end of school? Is that, I mean, it doesn't explicitly say that in the MOU, so I'm just trying to understand what the actual schedule is. Molly, can you answer that? I think it's six to eight and then after three, right? Yeah, correct. Sorry. Correct. Splash has access to the pool before and after school hours. During the school day, the small instructional pool is also available. They have swim lessons and different things there as well. Wait, say that one more time about the
248instructional pool. Yeah, so during the school day, the instructional pool is able to have swim lessons, and that was part of, like, the arrangement originally as well was because there is that separating. fence that that kind of does give our students some space. So but currently are you saying that actually pass holders are coming onto campus and swimming in the warm pool during the middle of the school day? Is that what I did I hear that incorrectly? We have we have community members coming onto the campus looking for the pool, whether they're bringing like young kids to go swim in the instructional pool, whether they're coming themselves to swim in the instructional pool. we have community members walking through the campus no but that's not my question my question is are our splash annual pass
249holders or allowed to swim in that instructional pool during the school day yes but that's counter to what the MOU says so I'm I'm I think that MOU specifies if I'm remembering right but anybody can jump in if they know better than me that the the instructional pool and the competition pool are talked about as different spaces and so it's the competition pool that the during the school day use isn't allowed of currently Okay, got it. But we still, because we allow members to use the instructional pool during the school hours. it still presents the challenges that were raised earlier by the superintendent. We haven't addressed those issues. Correct, and that's part of why we want to be able to come together to try to iron those things out before we increase, potentially, the amount
250of people that might be coming to the campus during the school day. We feel like if we can work together and create systems that will help ensure safety and help staff feel like we know what the plan is and we're all working together, that we'll be better set up for that to be successful. Got it. Thank you. So, trustees, My suggestion, so I'm kind of torn with this situation. I want us to come to an agreement that it's a win-win situation for everyone. My feeling is that I feel like there's a bit of urgency to work out these, whatever the challenges are. And I feel like if we leave it until January, I feel like... What I'm hearing at least from SPLASH is there's a sense of urgency around the viability of their program. And
251I don't know how the rest of you feel, but my leaning is to ask staff to actually accelerate the negotiation process so that we can have some kind of clarity by our December 14th board meeting, as opposed to extending the MOU until the end of January. I don't know how you guys feel about this. My understanding is we are doing that. That the MOU will be brought to us in December, which is before the winter break, for us to approve. And when I met with Sonoma Splash, that seemed agreeable to them. The request from them was that we just get it worked out before winter break so that they can do the work that they need to do. And so my understanding is that is what we're doing. I see different dates. of the actual
252term of the MOU so that's that's why I asked that question the only reason why it ends on January 2024 is because you need to approve in December so that then it gets the new one gets implemented in January okay So that's a little confusing. Sorry. So we would vote in December, and then could Sonoma Splash then sell annual passes for the 2024 year in December, even though the MOU, okay. So what was the January date then? I'm confused. So the January 2024 date is just to have an existing MOU. So let's say we bring it to you in December and there's language change or there's something that you want addressed or something that you want to go back, then we still have an existing MOU. If we don't have that, then we still have
253to then bring back the current MOU until we have a new language with a new MOU. So if we have the negotiations, the language is taken into account, we bring it for approval in December, then as soon as that is approved, then that MOU supersedes any other existing. The January 2024 date is only so that we have an existing MOU until the end of the year. Okay, so I can support the MOU under the spirit that we're going to make a good faith effort in coming to agreement by our December 14th board meeting so that we can actually approve a longer term MOU. So if anyone wants to entertain a motion or wants to comment. I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second. Any more discussion? No. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye. So we
254have an informational item. Our lawyers over there. This should be pretty short and sweet. Every year, as per the collective bargaining agreement and also education code, we have our certificated seniority list, and it is there listed for this coming year. Any questions from trustees? One kind of fun little factoid is one fun little thing if you look at our number one senior certificated staff member 1972 so pretty amazing shows a lot of commitment on behalf of our certificated staff Okay, so no no questions from trustees No comments from the the audience here. I don't see anybody online so we will We'll go to the next item, which is an informational report on enrollment data. And there's no presentation with that. It's just the data as presented. Yeah, so if there's, I'll hand it over to
255trustees for questions. Trustee Knox, no questions? Okay. Thank you for preparing this and for continuing to do this update for us because it's very helpful for us to kind of keep our fingers on the pulse of where we stand with our enrollment. So, okay. I will open that to public comment. I don't see any public comment. So we will move on to the next item, which I seem to not have on my, oh, it's just reports. Okay, so we have reports from the board. Any trust, would trustees like to give a report? Sure, I'd like to give a report. So I wanted, we agreed at our study session that we would give kind of our input in regards to our last study session, which I thought was phenomenal. I really appreciated it. I want to
256thank you, Trustee Winders, for bringing that topic to the forefront. And I'm just really excited about, you know, we've scratched the surface and I feel like There's a lot more to kind of discuss and figure out how we can improve upon our current services for our students. I appreciated our presenter. I felt like she is someone who we can really rely on to give us some really cogent, you know. legal advice and just kind of her experience in terms of how to best serve students with IEPs. The other thing I wanted to mention is that there was a lot of recommendations on that list. And so I feel like we should revisit those recommendations and figure out how to best attack that. And so the other thing I wanted to mention is that when we
257have future conversations, I really appreciated having our teacher here who... was able to speak to her experience. I would love to hear more teacher experience. But it was just a very impactful, powerful day. Really enjoyed it. Oh, and I have one more other comment on the side. I want to give a shout out to Jeanette Tominey, who is the president of the Republic of Thrift. Her organization just donated $3,000 to each Sonoma Valley Unified School site, and she's been doing this for years and to the tune of over $400,000. I had an opportunity to say hello, visited her store last Saturday. bought a new shirt which I really like and I encourage everyone to take advantage because she's a great partner and just appreciate what she does for our students trustee winders Thank you. I
258want to second that shout out. I have an amazing set of Fiesta ware in my cupboard. Thank you, Republic of Thrift. And they're also my neighbor. We practically share a backyard. And she's phenomenal. So I just, I kind of wanted to just add on about the special education study session. incredibly informative and and i really appreciate um maureen burness and her willingness to to come back and and to do this again i think we had a really unique opportunity as a district that a lot of districts don't get to have in that we not only get to compare apples to apples we literally get to compare like a fuji apple to a fuji apple um she did this same work in 2019 and here we are in 2023 and to be able to have that
259same set of eyes um come in and do do that work and I think we're going to get garner even more information than what we got in that study session because she's still doing the work and compiling a final report which I'm really looking forward to and I think it's going to lay for us a really great foundation to build on I often say that I for years I felt like our district needs to give itself an IEP and follow the IEP process because I think it's a sound process and you know i really viewed that study session is and and the work that that she did in in her presentation and in the report that she's still finalizing those are our present levels that's letting us know where are we at right now and
260from those present levels we as a district can identify what are our needs and then we can build goals and progress monitoring and i look forward to us coming back together and doing it again a year from now and seeing you know what goals did we meet and setting some new goals and then any areas we need to change course we can change course and shift and adjust um and then doing the progress monitoring in between and so that's the next part that i'm looking forward to is is the progress monitoring piece and doing those check-ins and our work as a board to ensure that We're really doing the work. As a special education parent who sat in school board meetings for over a decade, I saw a lot of reports, really good ones, with
261really important information that spoke some pretty hard truths, and then I watched those reports get put on a shelf, and no one ever did anything with them. And our district paid a lot of money for a lot of reports that we didn't take the recommendations from. I remember sitting out in that seat and having a school board in 2019, actually it was the beginning of 2019, yeah, apologize to me as a parent for failing my child. for not serving my child and it was really validating as a parent to get that apology because for a long time I'd sort of felt like I was crazy and there was this sort of weird gaslighting thing that like this thing I was experiencing as a special education parent that I knew I was experiencing wasn't really happening.
262So to have that was very validating. However, it was also extremely frustrating because then nothing else ever happened. That 2019 report went on a shelf and nobody did anything with it. And I think that that's unfortunate and I think that was a missed opportunity. However, we don't have time machines and we can't go back in time and we can only work with what we have now. And what we have now is a willingness to do the hard work. And so I loved our present levels session. That's what I'm going to call it. I'm really looking forward to taking that information and placing that into actual action that serves our students and supports our staff in their ability to serve our students so that we can make measurable progress and we can provide an education for
263our students that is meaningful and isn't just checking some boxes but actually provides the meaning. So thank you and that was it for my report. So we did say that we would give our analysis of Saturday in our board report. So I'll just make it quick for that. Because I actually left the study session, like I leave most study sessions, feeling excited. And I feel educated. I feel like I've learned a lot about things that I'm not an expert in, but that matter in this district. So I appreciate them. One thing that always resides with me when I leave is how do we put this into action? And I think that's the most frustrating part as a trustee and someone who came here to do work for children as we all did is, you know,
264we can sit up here and we can talk about it and we can look at data and we can have these conversations, but then we all walk away and it's the work that has to be done and the time that it takes to actually implement these things. So I just want to say as we're going through this process and we're looking at data, you know, Our teachers, our educators, our staff, they're still out there. They're still doing the work. And our students are still pushing and doing the work as well. So I just want to acknowledge everybody who continues to push forward, do the work, do great things. We analyze a lot of things that need a lot of work, but that doesn't mean that there isn't great work being done. And I would really...
265I would really like to call on the community that reports about what's going on in our school district to really start looking at the wonderful things that our students and our staff do do, even outside of the classroom. In our athletics programs, in our different clubs, there's a lot of really great things to talk about. So as we are doing hard work and having conversations that can be somewhat uncomfortable, I just encourage everyone to keep in mind that the feet on the ground and our our students, everybody is out there still doing the work and pushing through and doing amazing things. So just my positive spin on the hard things as I sit here feeling frustrated knowing that it takes time, there's still really good things out there happening. And it's a lot to be
266proud of. Thank you, Trustee. So a couple of comments, and I don't want to go into too much about the study session because I really think it really deserves like a deeper conversation, and I would suggest that we agendize talking about sort of follow-up discussion on all the ideas that were presented, specifically the recommendations. There were... too many recommendations that you couldn't possibly implement all of that. And I think as a board, what we can do to help move the dial is to prioritize the most important ones and some of the low-hanging fruit, because we need to have some immediate actions coming out of those recommendations. So anyway, I'm going to leave that at there, because I really want to have a more meaningful conversation around... those recommendations. In terms of other things, I was
267able to participate in the Labor Management Institute training that Kimberly Smith mentioned. It was really interest-based problem solving. We learned a lot, and I really encourage and hope that... the entire board can get that training and we get more people in our district trained. I think that it's an important framework and I also think starting with something, you know, small to demonstrate as a proof of concept is very important. So I think Maybe the pool is the perfect place to start with that framework. I've been attending a lot of high school sporting events, and I want to give a shout-out to our girls volleyball team who had senior night tonight. I'm sorry I missed it, but it was great watching them play American Canyon last week, and it was great going to the football games.
268And so that's it for my trustee report. And so I don't have anything for future agenda items because I rattled off a list at the last time. So if anyone wants to add something to that list. Yeah, I have a couple. So I'm wondering if because we do a monthly special education report under ed services we could focus on Maureen Burness and the recommendations piece and maybe just take a piece from it each month and make that a focus of the report. And then I would love to do it get an informational item regarding the universal dyslexia screening that is now part of the California mandate and how we are rolling that out in our district and what that looks like. And then I would also like as an informational item the reclassification of students
269with disabilities who are English language learners so that we can get a good sense of what to expect moving forward. I was just writing down the third one. Universal dyslexia mandate, reclassification of ELLs. What was the third one? Incorporating Maureen Burness' recommendations as part of our monthly SPED report. Just sort of take one chunk at a time. That's already an item on there. Okay. All right. So this meeting is now adjourned at 931. Thank you very much.