001Good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the board of education. The meeting is called to order at 400 pm in open session. Roll call, please. Student board member SNET, Miss Armstrong, present. Miss Cron, Mr. Critchfield, present. Mrs. Garza, Miss Stewart, present. Tonight, we do not have requests addressing close session agenda items. At this time, the board will recess to close session. Open session will resume at approximately 6 pm. Welcome back everyone. Tonight's meeting of the board of education was called to order at 4:01 p.m. in open session. The board then adjourned to close session at 4:02 p.m. and we will now reconvene the meeting into open session at 6:05 p.m. Board clerk Chrisville, will you update us on close session topics? Thank you, Madam President. The topics discussed in close session were student matters
002anticipated litigation, pending litigation, labor negotiations, and public employee discipline dismissal and release. The board took no action in close session. Thank you. All right. So, for our pledge of allegiance tonight, we have our Belfare High School counselor, Miss Anna Fujimito Fujimoto, who was my own daughter's counselor. So, I'm so excited to see you here, and she would love that you're here as well. She's going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Oh, will you push the button? Place your right hand over your heart. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. You may be seated. All right. Tonight we do not have replacement pages. Do we have any amendments
003to the agenda? No amendments this evening. Okay. So tonight we are going to be recognizing um from Belar High School and uh Michelle uh Pettis is going to do the recognition for Miss Ra. I didn't know your last name. Can you will you come up and tell me how you say it? I was going to take a stab at it, but I'd rather you just say it and then I won't mess it up. Uh it's pronounced Rana Ecladdios. Ecladdios. Okay, awesome. Thank you. So she is our student um spotlight tonight. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Good evening board members and all other guests. I'm honored to stand here tonight and give the inspirational message. When I started high school, I wasn't very involved. My grades are okay and I didn't really push myself.
004As a first generation immigrant, I didn't have guidance to fully understand what it took to get into a 4-year university. I was shy and lack confidence in myself. But by the end of my freshman year, I realized that if I wanted to reach my goals, I had to step up. After talking with my counselor and joining AVID, I started to focus more on my academics and extracurricular involvement. It eventually developed two passion projects, the wellness garden and buck bargains. From that point on, I gave everything I had. While I cared about my grades, my clubs especially became very important to me. My friends joke that I have a club monopoly with all of my president positions. The truth is, I love being involved. I poured my energy into everything I did because I believed in
005my work. Like many students with big dreams, I hoped my hard work would open the doors to my top colleges. I realized I had been seeking validation through college decisions. But I've come to understand that my success isn't measured by where I got in, but by how much I've grown along the way. Success isn't about being perfect. It's about not giving up. It's about getting back up when things don't go your way. It's about being the person who tries after failure, after frustration, and after disappointment. And if you put your mind to something, work hard, and ignore all the doubts, you can do anything. Freshman year, I was too scared to even speak in front of a group of people, let alone give a speech. Yet, here I am now standing before you all speaking
006about an award award I earned through countless hours of public speaking. Fall of senior year, I applied to 32 universities. I am proud to say I have been accepted to multiple prestigious universities including NYU and Boston College, but I have decided to commit to the University of California, Riverside on a full ride scholarship, majoring in neuroscience. I'd like to thank my family and friends for the Congratulations. I'd like to thank my family and friends for their unwavering support and my adviserss for challenging me and giving me these opportunities. Your belief in me has made all the difference. To anyone who has ever doubted themselves, keep pushing. Keep believing. You are capable of more than you know. Thank you. Thank you so much. So, good evening board members and guests. My name is Michelle Pedes and
007I am a counselor at Belfflower High School and it is my pleasure to introduce our spotlight student, Ra Ecladio. Those who know Ra, whether it's administration, teachers, or clerical staff, would agree that she truly embodies what Buck pride stands for, positivity, respect, integrity, dedication, and excellence. RA is always seen greeting others with a warm, genuine smile, and she approaches her future with incredible optimism and excitement. She applied to over 32 universities. Um, her dream is to one day become a neurosurgeon and there's no doubt in my mind that she has the drive to make it happen. So, it's an it's been an absolute pleasure being your counselor and I'm so so proud of you. Okay. and a short presentation on RA. Um, next slide. Oh, sorry. So, RA first traveled here from Egypt when she
008was 6 months old and um, her family came straight to Bellflower. She attended Washington Elementary since preschool. And again, she plans to go to UC Riverside and major in neuroscience. She likes to read, garden, and eat Korean barbecue. uh her long list of accomplishments. She is the NHS president for the 24-25 school year, state level two years in a row for Skills USA nursing assistant. She won first place for the girls summit political science competition and won a $700 prize. Um she was the founder of our butterfly effect club, which is our mental health club on campus. and she's also the founder and CEO of Buck Bargains, which is our thrift store on campus. Um, she's the creator of the wellness garden on campus, presented, she presented the garden at state level competition and received
009first place in regionals and third place in state. Um, also a Fright Farm student representative, uh, Skills USA vice president and the lead medic of the football team. uh Key Club, she's been a member four years as event coordinator. World Language Club is also the event coordinator. Red Cross volunteer uh Coptric Coptic Diosis uh volunteer. Um Atlas UCLA premed internship avid member three years CSF member for four years. Calap student of the year award in health occupations and a two-year intern at Child Mind Institute. So, she has a lot of accomplishments. Um, and lastly, these are I know it's small, but these are just um when we reached out to some of her teachers and staff members if they wanted to um have any words about her quotes, um they all wrote in and she
010was able to read those. So, that was just nice. And there's pictures of her garden. Um, and that's it. That's our spotlight student for the 2425 school year. Is there anything else you would like to say to us tonight? I know you're shy, but if there's anything else, anyone you want to thank, anybody want to anything? Um, well, I obviously want to thank my family and my best friend Nathalie and my friend Ser for coming here today for me. Um, but I also want to thank Dr. Cypio and Miss Terry Lee for always being like my supporters and they've been my mentors for the past well Dr. for four years and then Mr. Lee for past years. They've been like a crutch for me. So, thank you. Thank you so much for coming. I think
011that's so awesome. It's really exciting to see such great things that you're doing. All right, go ahead. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. Can we take Will Are you shy or will you take a picture with us? Yes. Can we take a picture? Yes, please. If the board will join us. Okay, moving along to our student representative reports tonight. Our first report will be from Belellor High School, Mr. Steven Martinez. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, board president Stewart, members of the board, interim superintendent, Miss Asvito, guest, and fellow students. I'm S Martinez and this is Belair High School's April board report. So, starting off with our staffers of student basketball game. Our varsity basketball team went up against some of our favorite staff members at the school and it was overall a great environment. Sadly, the
012staff lost 39 and 42 in the last minute. At last minute, it was pretty sad, but they had a great time. So, next is state testing. Currently state testing started this week. On Tuesday and for the first week of testing, it ended this morning. Students who met or exceeded the standard last year uh got TK burgers which included um fries, drink, and a burger. Uh this was 564 students who met that standard. Next was the job tank. So yesterday uh we had the job tank at Belfflar High School. Over 27 companies came out to interview kids and help them uh learn interview skills or even get a job. Um companies like AT&T, Boeing, Belfflar Unified, and JP Morgan came out to interview students. So some of our notable um there was different uh jobs that
013were offered such as RA um the student she was offered a lab position with Kaiser Perente. Three students were offered a job at Wells Fargo. Lazy Acres had two job offers. Norms 5, City of Belfflower Parks and Recreation 2. In addition, as one of our Belffl High School alumni was interviewing students on behalf of the Childmind Institute. Um overall, a good amount of jobs are offered. Students were able to look into new careers that they wouldn't have originally thought of beforehand. Um yeah, and honestly, these are a lot of like hands-on jobs that are able to look into that won't be affected by like the rise of AI because a lot of these students want to go into fields and don't want to have that worry. So, this was more and it helped them just
014um feel confident going into the workforce. So, next is our SOA senior event. Our SOA senior event was a fundraiser for the class of 2025 where students could pay to wet some of their favorite students or some of their favorite staff members. You see different pictures of the four groups that we had this week and um Alyssa SNA will be able to talk about that later on. Next we have our prom spirit week. Our prom spirit week is next week as prom is next Saturday. Um so this is going to be a different spirit week compared to our last one. So this is going to be more of a versus spirit week. So like soccer moms versus barbecue dads or country versus country club. Students will able to choose in between those two. edition prom.
015This year's prom theme is Casablanca. It's going to be held at the Ovation in Long Beach um next Saturday, May 3rd at 7 p.m. And on the right side, you can see some pictures of the venue. Next is Jamie Oliver. Um Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food was came out came out to the um Wness Garden and was able to make pizza with students and teach them how to make homemade pizza. Um, I want to congratulate our Belfflower Mill High School teacher of the year, Mrs. Shusler for all the hard work that she does around school. In addition to Mr. Ellis for receiving the Spanetta Pride of Belfflower Service Award, um, they're really great teachers and we want to thank them for everything that they've done, especially this year. Some other events that be coming up
016that I'll be talked about more in the talk about more in the next board meeting is the Los Angeles County Superintendent meeting is be held at the nutrition center where they'll come on a campus and meet Jamie Oliver and his team and be able to see students um that cooking with Jamie Oliver as well with his camera crew. Um our middle school foamicious spring dance is going to be our first foam dance. So it'll be interesting to see how that turns out. In addition, teacher appreciation week and national school principal day is coming up where we'll be able to thank uh our teacher and our and Mr. Lungren for everything that they do for us. This is Belfflower's April board report. Thank you. Thank you so much. And now for Mayfair. And I'm glad to
017see your mom here. His mom was an alumni of ours. I both are. Um we have Gil Freeman. Uh thank you. Good evening, President Stewart, board members, inter room superintendent, Miss Oavdo, district colleagues and guests. Uh this is the Mayfair board report for the month of April. I want to start off by congratulating Miss Adriatico who was named the Skills USA regional adviser of the year this past spring break along with the six contestants that will be moving on to the nationals level. Congratulations. We uh the district held their first Star Awards at on Mayfair campus in the Steam building this past Monday. Here's a video of some of the winners. Congratulations to Mr. Phillips who was named Mayfair's teacher of the year. He's a great guy and we're sad to see him go, but
018it's a great way to go out. He's had a great year. Uh around the spring break time, we had many trips. Maritime took a California tour up and down the coast. The world language classes took a trip to Taiwan. Band took a trip to Hawaii. And Skills USA had their contest in Ontario. So there are some pictures from those things. I think that's a video of them speaking Taiwanese. I believe it's muted though. Here's some more pictures. Uh we are currently on the testing schedule which I cannot thank you guys enough for that. It has been truly amazing waking up at 10 every single day and for the next week too. I'm not looking forward to next year but it's been great. All right, coming up uh we're going to continue testing which concludes next
019next week. The end of the year activities, awards and recognitions are coming up. AP testing begins next month. Future college announcements will drop next week. Prom is coming up on May 10th. And 8th grade is taking their trip to DC and New York City. So fun. Thank you. Thank you so much. And then from Somerset, we have Island Roy. Welcome. Hi. Good evening, President Stewart, member of the board, superintendent as guests. My name is Isa Roy. I am a junior at Somerset High School and thank you for the opportunity to share the latest activities at Somerset with you tonight. Somerset is excited to welcome Jazelle Nandez as our new career techni technologist. Um, Miss Hernandez will be helping students discover what they want to do after high school by connecting them with colleges and career
020pathway opportunities. We are excited to have her start with us on Monday. The students at Somerset enjoyed the recent college and career fair. They had opportunities to vish colleges and military reps as well as hear about some unique jobs by um hear about unique jobs by the board by members of the local community. two local community members, Jennifer Cox and from Mama Osa and California State Advocate Ariel P. We are return are returning next week to engage students into interacting workshops. Three staff three staff members were recognized at the first annual BUD Star Awards. We are grateful that Woody Grayson, our fabulous, our fantastic campus security leader, Mark Johnson, our wonderful science teacher, and our and BTA representative, and Elizabeth Eeken, our caring and kind English and gardening teacher. We honor we honored for their
021dedication to students success in both in and out the classrooms. The California Continuation Education Society Conference is this weekend and Somerset has a lot of exciting news to share. In addition to Somerset being named a model continuation high school, Mr. Ramada's Hunted House was selected as an excellent program as Miss Egan was chosen as teacher of the year or second region which covers um counties from LA to Santa Barbara. Um the school and these two um educators are being recognized this weekend at the conference in San Diego. The enrich LA garden performs performs teachers and students about the sustaining living nutrient food production and culture. Um, Ranger Danielle works collaboratively live with Miss Egan to help students understand the connection between the food we eat and our wellness as individuals as a collective society. Two
022summer students were recently um recently recognized with a scholarship related to competitions they won. Liz Nunes participate in the participated in the Lions Club speech contest and won a $400 scholarship money for her speech about artificial intelligence. Liz was supported by her teacher, Mr. Armada and Miss Egan. I bet G Gudado part participated in the state competition for Skills USA in the area of telecommunication cabling and was rewarded 2000 a $2,000 scholarship from the LA County Individual and Technical Education Association for her outstanding accomplishments in the injurial art. Evette was encouraged by her supported encouraged and supported by her teacher, Mr. Guzman. We are proud of their accomplishments. Um, and another big press moment for Somerset High School, we are selected to be a highlighted school in the March/Appril edition of the CCA Spotlight online
023newsletter called The Spotlight. You can read all about us at the cceet.org. Finally, we have some upcoming events. Block 8 starts on May 5th and we have our spring awards night planned for May 14th at the Belflower Auditorium. Um, pretty soon we will be celebrating gra celebrating graduation on Tuesday, June 3rd at BFlower School, Ron Yuri Stadium. Thank you and have a great evening. [Applause] Thank you so much. I know you guys are excellent students and I know you guys do a lot of things. So we understand that that you if you have other obligations with your family, academics, so you're free to leave as always. Thank you so much for your reports. Okay. So, next we have our employee representative reports. And first, can we please have from BTA, Miss Carrie McDaniels, our president.
024Good evening, interimm superintendent aso, board president Stewart, members of the cabinet, members of the board, and members of the audience. Feel really loud. Um, BTA is pleased to announce that our tenative agreement for the 24-25 school year has been officially ratified by our teachers. Um, before spring break, I met with Alma to reveal review concerns. I always appreciate her explanations and the way she responds to my emails. Um, I attended the alliance uh the last alliance meeting of the year as we talked about what has been accomplished. We have um had some great conversations about processes and protocol protocols and I look forward to seeing the continued progress. Um, I had a wonderfully restful spring break and was not ready for the alarm o'clock Monday morning even though I knew it was going to happen.
025It was nice to relax and spend time with my parents and my husband and at the river in Park, Arizona. I met with Mrs. Aivdo on Monday for our monthly meeting and I attended the Star Awards on Monday night and they were really great. I think the teachers and the CSCA staff felt really appreciated and I love seeing the cheese bread making a comeback. Congratulations to Tom Phillips, Mayfair Teacher of the Year and District Teacher of the Year, and Selena Lopez Padilla, the district classified employee of the year. I look forward to this new tradition continuing into the future and bringing us all together together to celebrate the wonderful people who work in BUSD. BTA has finished its elections for the year and we have a new president, uh, Mr. John Young from Ramona. Our
026new vice president is Amy Mustafa and returning members, elementary director Unju Ta and secondary director Robin Blog. The new me board members will start July 1 and we are looking for another elementary director to fill John spot. Um and declaration of candidacy forms are due May 2nd if anybody's listening. Um next Friday is May 2nd. How did that happen? Testing is underway and I am looking forward to seeing the data and if having no combo classes paid off this year. I sure hope it did. The high schools have special testing schedules that allow for students to focus on testing in the morning and attend classes after snack. Every year, this process gets a little better, and I'm so glad that we had the opportunity to do something different. Finally, of you who attended the WHO
027Awards last night, I'm not one to celebrate myself, but it was nice. It was a nice evening, and I appreciate all of you who have supported me over the last couple of years. Being union president is not an easy job. I can never make everyone happy. Having hard conversations is hard and not fun, but being true to who I am and my conversations with all of you has gotten me through. And as I wrap up my term, sorry, I just wanted to say a few things. Some of you knew me before I was BTA president. I was the ELD teacher at Mayfair, always asking and wanting more for our ELD students. Some of you I've met over my term as president because we were bound together through the fate and journey of this job. And
028if there's anything I have learned is that relationships matter and how we treat people matter. It's many of you and your relationships that have gotten me through this job. So, thank you. Have a wonderful evening. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much and congratulations again. And we will definitely miss you, but you'll still be around to talk with us. All right. So from CSA, can we have the CSA communications officer, Mr. Anthony Ramirez, please join us? Thank you. All right, board president Stewart, board members, superintendent as cabinet, uh, BTA and PTA leadership back here somewhere, and members of the public. Good evening. I'm here to give you a brief update on CSEA classified activities. On Monday, CSEA was happy to attend the inaugural USD Star Awards. Classified employees were selected from every department
029and recognized at as a respective employee of the year. Um, it was it was wonderful to see the district come together and celebrate the hard efforts of both teachers and classified staff. But we want to especially congratulate the following department employees of the year. Prayer professional Stacy Abrego, clerical services worker Glattis Aalea, skilled tradesman Dennis Coleman, transportation mechanic Gary Gapandon, campus security worker Woody Grayson, technology services worker Luis Lopez, custodial services worker Selena Lopez Padilla, and nutritious nutrition services worker Martha Orme. In addition, CSEA would like to congratulate custodian Selena Lopez Padilla for being selected as a 2025 BSD classified employee of the year. CSEA also had negotiation sessions yesterday with the district on April 23rd, and we are grateful to Dr. Smith and his team for all the good faith bargaining culture. It's very
030much appreciated. We successfully reached agreement on all current outstanding contract articles. Yay. Chapter President Michelle Quayar uh I think she stepped out for a minute and labor repo hospitalist hospitalis have met with uh with you board president Stewart and separately with superintendent Azabedo. Thank you both for the open dialogue. We we welcome that that culture and environment. They also met with Dr. back here classified HR executive director and he described his vision for bringing all of the HR processes into the digital age. So that's a that's a welcome welcome uh advancement of our technology services here. Unfortunately, CSEA was unable to attend the B USD OKAP district advisory group and the parent advisory committee yesterday. Perhaps in the future the scheduling of the DAC pad pack meetings can be can accommodate CSEA's own regularly scheduled
031meeting calendar. That's all I have. Thank you for the opportunity to update you on what CSCA has been doing for the month of April. Thank you. Thank you so much. And congratulations to your employees. That was awesome. All right, PTA Communications. Can we have President Linda Morgan? Good evening, President Stewart, board members, interim superintendent of cabinet, U staff, and those in attendance or watching. Um, I'll just be sharing a little bit about what our PJs have been up to. Um, and share some fun photos for them. Um, first of course, our membership update. Um, just a recap of what how our units have been doing as far as their individual membership drive this year. um and the nine out of the 10 elementary schools that reached 100% teachers um this year, which was an interesting
032competition to to listen in on. Um and so as a whole, council um has 2482 total PTA members. Um so we did um surpass last year's numbers by at least 70 members. um a little bit of the breakdown and then that includes our um 181 supporters including our community members. So thanks to uh Miss Armstrong, Asavdo, Bonnie Carter, Brad Critfield, Ryan Smith, Amy Stewart, and BTA for their support this year. Um as far as April, a lot of our PTAs held their uh spring events and their uh volunteer recognitions. A couple of PTA shared some of their own photos with me. Um, starting with Washington Elementary PTA and their um, Easter Bunny classroom visit and photo ops. Um, Woodrip Elementary PTA and their Easter Bunny um, visit and Easter egg hunt. Minster Elementary and their
033uh family glow party dance, their um volunteer recognitions or honorary service awards, and then a photo of their current board. Um trying to finish up those last minute photos for their yearbook. And then council earlier this month held our reflections celebration. I wanted to thank Amy Stewart, Brad Critfield, and Myra Garca for attending and helping us recognize our very creative students. Um, real quick, for those that don't know, I'm pretty sure by now everybody knows, but uh, Reflections is our, uh, national PTA art program, and all students um, can participate at their, uh, PTA site, at their school site. Um so then what council did is we collected all their first place winners um from each of the six categories and then great division and we collected those for judging and recognition and so we
034did that earlier this month. Um and I know it's a little early but next year's theme is I belong. So for those that you know use um reflections art program as a fun summer activity um there you go you can get started. Upcoming events um are our historian mixer or that's what we call it. It's our showcase night. Um so it's evening where we celebrate um and share the uh achievements that our PTAs have done. Um and that's on May 6th. our honorary service awards. Um our annual event where we honor special individuals and amazing organizations that uh you know have made an impact on our school community. Um we recognize those on Friday, May 9th and that is mostly by invitation. Um so but we look forward to celebrating. It's very much like the
035um Star Awards and I it was it's always fun um you know a lot of the people that were recognized at the Star Awards have either already received or might be receiving um an HSA award from our PTA. Um so we always enjoy recognizing and celebrating um all that go above and beyond for our students. And then we are preparing for next school year as well. Um to the left is our incoming board for 2526 and they start on July 1st as well. Um we're already in transition and then we have our California state PTA convention coming up on May 2nd through the 4th and we have about 12 people from seven of our PTAs that will be attending um attending meetings, workshops, um networking, collecting resources and um having a lot of fun. And
036then just wanted to thank you guys. I realize that this may also be my last board report. So, thank you um for your support this year. And um for those that want to see some awesome presentations and learn more about PTA, um again, our story mixer is Tuesday night, May 6, right here in the boardroom at 6 PM. So, um anyone is free to join us that evening as well. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. and thank you for everything that you've done, too. We really appreciate you. All right, moving on to superintendent report. Mrs. Oavdo, thank you. Good evening. I'd like to welcome everybody back from spring break. I'm hoping that that break provided everyone time to uh relax and reset. We're heading into a very busy season. As we know, the month
037of May and June brings lots of celebrations. our annual assessment as was mentioned earlier, recognitions, promotions, graduation. So, it's a very busy month. So, hang on. Um I would also like to thank um Dr. Almos, Dr. Knox, and Dr. Smith for the star awards and their support staff. Um as you've heard from multiple individuals tonight, that really was a success. It's our first time doing this in Belfare Unified. So, thank you so much for staff and your teams for doing that. and I think it was an outstanding way to shine and highlight um those members that really are super dedicated to Belfflair Unified. So, thank you so much for doing that. It's also that time of year that I need to share with you that the district has recently completed the quarterly uniform complaint report
038summary for January through March of 2025 as required by the county. As a result of the Williams settlement legislation, there were no complaints received during this quarter in the areas of instructional materials, facilities, or teacher assignments. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so moving along to our committee updates. Um we're going to start with our alliance committee. Again, this is basically to strengthen and collaborate um communication with all of our stakeholders as far as our unions. Um Miss Garza, do you want to add anything on that? I know we did talk about transportation. We talked about climate and culture. Um just a lot about, you know, different things that we can do in the following year. It was kind of our wrap up, our end of the year uh meeting. So those were some of
039the things. Um systems, procedures, things, protocols we talked about. Um so yeah, the alliance meetings are really awesome and we always have our president and vice president. So no matter who that person is, those do attend that meeting with our unions. Um did we have a sped meeting, sped committee meeting? Yes. Um then no. No. Okay. Um foundation Mr. Kitchville, would you like to add on that one? should the foundation committee met on April 2nd to go over board applications and that recommendation will be before the board this evening. Okay. And then either of you guys want to talk at all about your um declining enrollment facilities subcommittee. So that that committee hasn't met since the San Diego uh trip. So I think we're just waiting to put the next one on the books. Okay.
040And then we had our safety standing committee with board member Centron and board member Kushwood. Yep. That next meeting is coming up and I believe we're going to be speaking on the uh the evolve uh technologies and there's also some really cool uh vape detection uh technology. So the next meeting we're going to be digging into some really cool things and getting information on that. Uh but do we have the next date for that committee on the books yet? We do. So, I believe that date's been set out, but I can look I can look it up and make sure we send out another email about that. Okay, cool. But that's it. Okay. We also had our athletic committee. Um, what we did in our first committee meeting was we analyzed the athletic code of
041conduct. We made some changes. Really, what we were looking to do is put in some not just tier um levels of consequences, but also tier levels of intervention as well. So, we tried to piece together, you know, if this offense takes place, what would be the consequence? but not just a consequence, adding in an intervention as well so that we can help our student athletes um get back on the field, get back to practice and things like that. We're looking at the parent code of conduct um as well as some other things. Mr. Kitchell, do you want to add anything clerk? No, I just want to say thank you for having that committee because I think one thing in committee that was very obvious is the student focused nature of the whether it's code of
042conduct, but everything including discipline very student focused. So, uh, no, I'm just happy to be a part of that one. Awesome. Our climate and culture meeting, we're going to be meeting next, um, in May, the first, what is it? When we change it, May, we're going to be meeting this the second week in May. So, we do have, um, a plan for that coming up. Um, legislative action committee. Um, that would be Miss Garza, Mrs. Garza, Mr. Chris. Anyone want to add on that one? Yes. We just discussed um you know what were going to be the focus of the conversations when our group goes to Washington DC to advocate at coast to coast. Um we give some recommendations and um there will be some follow-up uh conversations when the group gets there. Anything to
043add? No. Um Cal Apps Kurt Crystal, do you want to talk about We had a meeting last week. Cal apps uh just our our regular uh meeting on the that was what the 2nd or uh yeah just our regular meeting uh we sent a group of students to Skills USA. Um and then we'll have our next uh regular meeting uh coming up. I'm afraid to look at my schedule these days but it's coming up May 8th. And do you have anything from Laxa? Go ahead. Board member Armstrong on um um Laxa is LA County School Trustes Association. We met on the 21st and again we have a lot of uh uh Senate bills, assembly bills coming uh coming through. Um, our president of Locka will be providing a witness testimony in support of Senator Lena
044Gonzalez on SB uh Senate Bill 48 and 49. That's the advocacy for immigration. Um, uh, Assembly uh, member uh, Moratuchi uh, has the Assembly Bill 49. That's for the safe heaven uh, haven for for students. They're going to have a follow-up meeting for that one. Excuse me. There are other education bills and considerations um that we do need letters of support like one of them is from uh Assembly Member Isaac Brian. He's in support of dual enrollment for universal access to dual enrollment. Uh and I have a template letter if you're interested and just put it in one of those letters also because that's how we do it. We just try to flood them with letters. Um, we also had a person, his name was Jeff. I didn't write his name down. He ca he
045came out and gave um as a lot of gave us information on education, work housing in California. and he um he shared with us some of the schools that have already done it and already have buildings to where they are, you know, placing people in these affordable homes to be able to teach in their district. Um, so I I I got the handbook of the dos and don'ts and and uh and the update of who's already participating in that and how what I don't know whether we will ever need that but they are using the school properties uh to build housing and um it's just a whole it was it was really interesting to see what they're doing to to make you know to bring teachers qualified teachers into the area to teach the children.
046Um, and I think I'm not going to say any names. I'd have to look at it, but we have districts right here in our area that are participating uh in that. Um, we have our next meeting on May 19th in which we will have election for officers uh for the next school year. And so um and I also want to just make sure that um like like we have these different committees so that you know everybody doesn't have to do everything but I want want you guys to know that our you know our board members really do work hard while they are invited to these meetings also. You guys can actually come to these these meetings too. we're all members and so um if you just happen to want to you know um I don't
047know how but if you know you have time you know pop in because a lot of our meetings are in uh online but the next one will be in person and um and that's it for locka. Thank you. Thank you so much board member Armstrong. All right. Tonight we do have requests addressing open session agenda items. While the meetings of the governing board are not public meetings, they are open to the public. Individual speakers will be allowed three minutes to address the board on each agenda or non-aggenda item. The board will limit the total time for public input to to on each item to 21 minutes as per board bylaw 9322.2. Um, may I have Miss Julia Ransen? Thank you so much. And we all did receive the packet that you gave us. So, thank
048you for that in advance. Yeah, you pushed the little There you go. All right. Um, good evening board president, board members, interm superintendent Lisa Asdo, cabinet, and guests. On behalf of the teachers and students and the staff at the adult transition center, I'm here, my name is Julia Ransen, to express strong support for Mr. James Watwood to remain in his position as principal as as the adult transition center and the Bay Center. The last few years we at the ATC have been in constant state of chaos. Um thanks to all of you that has calmed down and uh struggle. We've had struggle and confusion for many changes of administrators, support staff, and lack of clear communication from our district. Out of the chaos though comes hope. And I would say I would label this year
049as creating hope for us. Finally, Mr. Watwood and his background in counseling and coaching has been able to create an environment of harmony for the teachers and staff. He's been able to create a cohesive and defined procedure manual for us, the first first one we've ever had. Uh we have a procedure manual for our CBIS so that we all follow the same rules and regulations. Um he's been able to uh follow all four domains leveled for students abilities, their success, and their safety. His expectations are fair and compassionate and he's able to bring out the best in us. He's able to make the teachers want to work harder and together because he truly believes in our program and in us. Students consistently express that no one listens to them the way Mr. Watwood does. His
050empathy, attentiveness, and unwavering commitment to their growth have created a safe and supportive environment where individuals feel seen, heard, and valued. Under his guidance, students have found not only structure and consistency, but genuine hope for their futures. Since news of a possible leadership change, there has been an overwhelming response of disappointment, sadness, and frustration among all of us. Many feel disrespected, undervalued, and worried about what lies ahead. Mr. Watwood has helped us believe in our potential as a program and as individuals. To lose him would be to strip away a vital source of encouragement and belief in our capabilities. What sets Mr. Watwood apart is his ability to recognize and nurture the potential in every student and staff member. He's created a culture of inclusion, respect, and growth that cannot easily be replicated. He has
051been a steady and trusted advocate for those who are too often underestimated. For these reasons and so many more, we urge you to reconsider any decision that would remove Mr. Watwood from his role. His continued presence is not only important, it's essential to the well-being and the progress of the students and the mission of the adult transition center. Once again, we appreciate your time and consideration regarding this important matter. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. All right, moving on to discussion items tonight. We have one discussion item. Uh we have a presentation from School Services of California. Mrs. Oavo, that is correct. and I will turn it over to Dr. Smith. Thank you, Mrs. Evedo. Good evening, President Stewart, board members, and community members. Tonight, we welcome representatives from School Services of California
052who conducted an organizational review of our personnel services division. This study comes at a key moment as this is the first year that personnel services and business services are operating as separate divisions. We appreciate the board's support in commissioning this important work. The focus of the review is on structure, staffing, and operations with the goal of strengthening our systems and improving how we support employees across the district. We're grateful to school services for their partnership, and I'd like to thank Danielle Connelly and Dr. Sarah Neman for leading this effort. Please join me in welcoming them as they present their findings and recommendations. I think it turned on itself. Thank you. Good evening, board president Stewart, board of education, interim superintendent Oavdo, cabinet, community. Um, it is such a pleasure to come on a night where
053you're recognizing students, the transitions from leadership in your labor partners. Uh, such a positive night. My name is Sarah Neman. I'm from school services. I'm here with my partner Danielle Connelly. Um, and we are uh we do this work a lot with school boards and school districts, but we also come from school districts. We we held positions uh in K12 districts up and down the state. Uh we come with a lot of experience in HR. And I will say it's a lot of fun to be in Belfower. We really enjoyed we were here visiting uh when the Dodgers won the World Series. So, you can imagine uh we were here one day and then they won the the final game and then the next day we walked into HR and they were all wearing Dodger
054gear. It was like Halloween weekend or Halloween week. It was a real fun time to be uh to be here in Belfflower. And just prior to this board meeting, we spent a few hours with them in training uh training talking about best practices in human resources. And I know I can speak for Danielle when I say it really was a pleasure to work with with the department. So I want to thank you for inviting us in. Uh as as Dr. Smith mentioned, we are from um we were invited to come in and do an organizational review uh and staffing review of the personnel services department. In order to do that, we took a look at the documents, the procedures that the department had in place, um anything that was on the website. We spent two
055days interviewing every single staff person uh customers of the department and labor partners um to determine you know what are some of the things that we're seeing in in the department u what are some areas of growth um we're really focused on the function of the department and and how they're working to be productive. We don't audit the department. We're not evaluating the effectiveness of personnel. We're just looking at structures that are in place in the overall staffing uh within uh within your human resources department. We had some key observations and I'll tell you that uh a number of these observations are not unique to Bellflower. Uh when I say that in HR there's a heavy reliance on historical practices. This is a very common thing we see in school districts, right? We we hire
056an employee to come into our school district and they learn by doing the job. They learn because somebody internally has trained them. And so there is this reliance on historical practices rather than um formal training that takes place through an association or some sort of human resources organization. There's a lot of uh inward training but that results in some uh some practices being outdated. Our practices in HR COVID are very different than they were pre-COVID, right? When we could post a job and everyone would come flooding and it was so easy. It's a little bit harder now. And so our our practices need to evolve our organizational structure. We took a look at the workload and the job duties uh along with the job descriptions to see if there was alignment within the job descriptions
057and the the duties and the titles um to see really if uh there was a way for us to reassign the work, retitle those positions. Um and as we note in the report, the job descriptions are severely outdated. Again, not uncommon. It takes a lot of work to redo job descriptions. It's not always at the forefront of our mind. Um but as our work has changed. Um, so do our job descriptions to be more relevant and to be more competitive in this market. I know we'll talk a little bit about this later, but um, kudos to the the new leadership that you have in in HR because they are working really hard to uh, update some of those job descriptions as they as they can. Um, we noted so if you think back to October
058when we were here, I think it was Dr. Dr. Nox's first second it was her second day uh second day in the job and Dr. almost had been selected but not uh had not gone through the appointment process yet. So there was a period of transition. Um so kudos to to the district. You have some exemplary leaders here and um they are really bringing some stability and vision uh to to the department and uh we talk about professional training uh in the report. the lack of, you know, uh per um formal training. Um and you know, when when we think about all of the legalities that go into HR, whether it's leaves, um pay, um uh onboarding and discriminatory practices, all of the things that that could be a liability, we really see a need
059for formal training for employees. Again, this is not unique to Belfflower. This is just some a system of being in a school district. And so we talk about that and make some recommendations there. When we look at the comparative school districts, we compared Belfflower to seven other school districts. Uh you see the ADA there and the UP. Uh we looked for likesized districts. Uh we have uh three districts on here that also have a merit system. So San Lorenzo, Klexico, and LMPoke. And the reason that's important is because merit systems, merit districts usually have more staff. They just they have more staff to support the functions because in essence in an HR department with a merit system, they're kind of running a little mini department. Uh there's a separate recruitment that takes place on the
060classified side than on the certificated and we tend to see higher staffing there. But I wanted to put up the districts there so you can see who we are comparing to as we go through the ranking. When we look at the uh staff, we break them up into three categories. We get management staff. So that would be your your high level management or middle management or low-level management. In this case, we only really have um the two executive directors that are directly overseeing HR. And so that's uh the positions there. The technical staff are your operational staff. These are the staff that are really managing the day-to-day operations that are doing all of the hiring and the recruiting and the onboarding and the processing of the paperwork and all the things that HR does that
061nobody really understands that they do, right? Because it's so much more than just posting a job and and hiring somebody. But that technical stuff is really that operational stuff. And then the administrative support staff is the clerical staff. So, as you can see here, if you look at the bottom of this chart, Belfower ranks seven out of eight in terms of staff, which means uh they're pretty low in terms of staffing in when you look at the comparatives. We take a look at the number you see on the charts, the second to bottom line. It says enrollment to FTE. So, it's how many staff do you have compared to how many students you have? And that's where we that's the indicator we use to come up with the rank. In addition, in the report, you'll
062see there is some data that talks about number of vacancies or turnover, number of employees that are served on each side of the house. So, we look at that as well. Um because for classified and certificated, you want to take a look at the balance of employees, the number of vacancies or positions that have to be recruited for and filled. We take a look at that as well. But for this specific chart, this is uh based on enrollment to FTE. And as you can see overall as a department uh it ranks seven out of eight. This is a breakdown. Uh I'm going to break it down now by category. So starting with our leadership. Uh again we're seven out of eight here with the management staffing uh on the lower end of the comp group.
063What is different here is that Belfflower is the only district that does not have an assistant superintendent specifically over HR. Again kudos to you. you have designated HR as a as a department. Uh you have hired executive leaders. Um and I think that that is a real uh step in the right direction. But to note this is the only department only district that does not have that assistant superintendent directly overseeing HR. And then it's important to acknowledge that the impacts of the PC oversight. Um it's very common that there's a a director that oversees the PC. Um and that's that's specific. And a lot of times when you see if you take a look at that FTE total FTE chart on districts that are non um non-mmerit system you see more management. The reason being
064is because there's typically some sort of high level manager and some sort of middle or lower level manager in an HR department of a district this size. So we we're typically seeing layers of of management uh in a in a district this size in HR. So whether that's a supervisory or HR manager position, it could be something like that. Could be an assistant soup, director, supervisor, something along those lines. The technical staff, again, this is where we see um a lot of the impacts of this very lean staff in HR. Um I want to say that uh while the staff is um is lean, right, we they're ranked low in comparison. Um, it just means that the staff has been working really, really hard. Um, they have put in a lot of effort and time
065into supporting the district and supporting the employees and students of the district. Um, and they do so with a smile. I was telling them in the staff training earlier that they genuinely like each other. And I can't always say that about every district. I would also say that our training ended and they sat around and stayed and wanted to talk more about HR. Um, and so just a really lovely dedicated hard hardworking group. Um, but you can see based on that staffing that they are lean especially in the operational side. Uh, again these are the people who are doing the dayto-day tasks of HR. So, if you were to think about everything that we might um have an employee go through, whether it's leaves, extra hours, changing a name, um anything, all of those steps,
066all of those tasks have multiple steps, multiple screens, take probably multiple interactions with employees. Um onboarding employees takes a number of steps. I think we looked at the form and there was like 30 steps in onboarding. All of that takes a lot of time and you have a very lean staff to do that. Uh we do think that some of the operational difficulties or challenges are really coming from this uh need for more technical staff both on the classified side and on the certificated side. And in terms of the administrative support, the district is higher. It ranks two uh out of the eight. Um these positions are tech uh technically classified as administrative support but they should be coordinating and supporting the technical positions. Um and so there is a recommendation in the report to
067maybe reallocate some of that FTE to support uh as more of a technical staff. And so you'll you'll see that in there. That I'm going to hand it to Daniel. Thank you, Sarah. I'm gonna account for the height difference here with this microphone. Good evening. It's my pleasure to present to the board um some highlights of the organizational structure component of this report. There was a lot of information in the report and numerous recommendations, but what we've done tonight is we've extracted some of the priority recommendations that we wanted to share with the board. Um, as Sarah highlighted earlier, there's three position types in any HR department, and that's management, technical, and administrative. And these positions should be assigned in three functional areas. That's certificated employment support, classified employment support, and then operations. And there
068are some gaps in support within the current structure that we observe during our fieldwork. And that's the context in which I'm going to share with you some of the key recommendations on this slide. Knowing that just naturally because you operate under the merit system for classified employees that you essentially have two departments within the personnel services function. Um and so there's opportunity now with two leadership positions to integrate some of the operational areas that do overlap between those two departments. So that is where I want to start with the management recommendations um already highlighted bullet one. There is a key recommendation in the report to address some of the needs that we observed in the department by staffing um a personnel services supervisory position. This would be a lower level um personnel supervisor, personnel manager.
069This is a utility functioning management position that is involved in the day-to-day transactions. some of the work that is um either a legal compliance issue or just a service issue that we really don't have staffing as it is right now to support. Um was the high level credential monitoring, credential reporting. Um there's also employee leave which is a form of compensation. We don't have a clear assignment of employee leave management. And then position control which is the system that that the district uses to manage your personnel expenditures and document your staffing. Um it's the lion share of your budget and it's critically important that we have a key position that is in charge of managing that information and it's under that context in which we make that a priority recommendation and I'll share what that
070may look like in the proposed organizational chart momentarily. In addition, there are position require um needs in the technical ranks on the certificated side. As Sarah shared earlier, we did look at number of employees supported. And when you consider the number of employees that are supported on certificated, it's really pushing into um an overload that is difficult to manage. We make recommendations within the report, suggestions for a configuration of assignment. It might be by alphabet, by school site or department. But there's truly a need for some role clarity as well in that area. If you think about Sarah and my visit, we were here for about 16 hours really sitting in a room trying to map out who takes care of what, right? And if you think about us just dedicated in that room figuring
071that out, it's certainly difficult um in terms of determining roles for some of your internal employees and then also respected candidates as well. On the classified side, um there's also some need for consideration of um some personnel in the technical ranks. Um, and that would require some analysis from our executive directors as you think about that assignment of work. Um, the job titles are severely outdated. I think some of the job descriptions were last updated um, in the 80s. So, it's safe to say that our work environment does not reflect what we experienced in the 80s. Um, and so we do make some recommendations for some updates to those job titles that will help clearly defe and reflect the work performed, but then also establish roles and responsibilities so everyone can tell from a job
072title what that position does. In addition, it's always um it's also good for your employees to build that professional capacity and have a job title um that means something. on the in the administrative clerical support category, there is um a clerk position that toggles a bit between receptionist coverage and partial FTE in terms of the um personnel services support and the PC department and review of those job duties aren't clearly aligned with HR operations and HR support. We don't make any specific recommendations about that position other than we believe that that should be examined further as the departments are thinking about the overall structure to determine if that's truly serving in an HR capacity. So in terms of the key recommendations um there are opportunities to integrate operational support for certificated and classified employees. We
073don't always have that opportunity under the merit system, but in this district, we have a lot of collaboration between the two departments. And so that helps optimize your staffing resources to truly serve all employees in a comprehensive um structure. There is also opportunity for our executive directors to create procedures, communication, department standards for both certificated and classified employees. um in the areas of leave, position control, mandated trainings, all those requirements that all employees regardless of their classific class classification are required to meet. And then making those um modifications in the job descriptions, bringing them up to date, and that happens in concert with looking at the job duties and maybe realigning some of the tasks and responsibilities to create some more role clarity. Should the district move forward with some of these recommendations? Um, this
074is a sample organizational chart and you see here that is organized in those three functional areas that I spoke about earlier in terms of our certificated employee services, classified employee services, and then we've got the operational band um going down the middle there um signaling also in this illustration that this this band of operations is sitting certificated and classified serving and supporting both areas. Again, this is just a proposal and a recommendation of what that may look like. However, the district moves forward um and addressing these needs may deviate from this. So, now I'm going to talk about another component of this particular report which was recruitment and hiring practices. Um I was responsible for reviewing certificated and then Sarah will join me m momentarily to talk about her observations in the classified ranks. Um
075so similar to what Sarah shared earlier um unfortunately there wasn't some of the challenges that we observed in recruitment are not unique to blefflower in California school districts. We are very talented at thinking of all the ways to screen candidates out versus creating pathways to employment within our district. I also want to note that there's some things that the district has no control over such as the staffing shortages um and comparability in terms of neighboring districts. That's beyond the control of this report. What is in the control of the district are your operational practices. And that's what we really looked at in terms of what practices and procedures do you have that are creating obstacles for employment within the district. In terms of the overarching recruitment profile, the market is kind of pulled away from
076the district in terms of your current practices. And so there's some catching up we need to do to help align and modernize um your recruitment efforts, your selection processes, and then also um the onboarding. In terms of recruitment, I would say that it's a passive recruitment approach where you essentially post a vacancy announcement and then hope for um candidates to apply. U recruitment is actively seeking targeting candidates that you want to invite to employ. And I'm going to say this, we have a slide at the end recognizing that recruitment activities have already started taking place um under the new leadership within the department. In terms of the selection process, I would call that a decentralized process where school sites were handling a lot of the interviews. um which is which is good in terms of
077um letting candidates see what it's like in terms of the school site environment. However, from the HR standpoint, there's some significant compliance concerns with that and maintaining some control in terms of consistency with interview questions, making sure that um panel members have received training on non-discriminatory hiring PR practices and then also maintaining confidential confidentiality within all areas of the recruitment process. So, pulling some of that back and then working in collaboration with our school sites is the goal here in terms of on boarding, getting that onboarding process electronic um is key. And that was um one of the areas that we met with the team about right before we came in here and we have lots of ideas and everyone's excited um to set forth with that work as well. I won't go over every
078row here, but just picked out some of the um identified hiring barriers that we found in the process and then recommendations um that we make for improvement. Some of these recommendations don't cost anything. They're just a change in practice. Um, so in terms of the job announcements, there are strategies to that for certificated. Um, getting more specific about your grade levels and school sites of where your opportunities are and then creating timelines to create a sense of urgency with your candidates so they have an idea of when you plan on um, hiring. Um, in terms of the interview panels, right now the hiring managers are selecting um, the interview panels and if you have consistency on your interview panel, then you're probably going to have consistent results, right? So, creating more diversity on your interview
079panels, um, changing that up in terms of who is selecting your candidates or making recommendations um, would be helpful. uh reference check processes are rather inconsistent and so doing some work there to have a manager level position doing those reference checks um and getting some training on that as well because that can be um a high litigation area should that not be completed correctly. Sarah, I think it's time for you to join me. Put it back up. I even wore my shorter shoes. Um so uh I had the opportunity to review and meet with the uh the classified side and as you know in the merit district there are rules and so um trying to would try to work within those rules. So one of the things that we talked about was really uh taking
080a look at the minimum qual. So what kind of qualifications are you asking for requiring for entry level positions? Uh are they too high? Um do you need to take a look at reducing them? Do do your qualss make a logical do they increase logically as you move up the job family? Uh those types of things. So uh a lot of times when we review job descriptions, we're seeing things like a requiring of five years or five years uh respectively increasing experience as a clerical person in order to be an office manager. And so we pose the question, do you need five years? Do you really need five years to be an effective office manager? These are questions that um Dr. almost would be having with his team and with PC to say, okay, are
081we being um uh thoughtful or mindful when we're putting these qualifications together in the job description? Do the tests reflect um what uh what is needing to be uh what skills utilized? We heard a lot about the paraprofessional test and so that's the example I used in this in this chart and in the report. But um you know taking a look at again um are we creating tools that are screening people out. Um is the pair professional test relevant to the skills needed to be a pair professional? Is the math appropriate the math level appropriate to be a pair professional? Uh so just asking u the district to evaluate that. Um we make recommendations to modernize uh testing. You guys have already done that. You've already started to utilize the third party testing electronic testing.
082And what that does is it allows people, it opens that um availability of testing to more people. Um creates an easier process. So we give you kudos for that. Uh interviews and rating, we we talk about how the interview questions may not align with the skills and that sometimes scheduling raiders can be a challenge and this is the case in merit districts. This is one of the frustrations we hear often. Um I would say that um the district has made strides by using a video process to allow raiders to evaluate um on a on a flexible schedule. Um so we just recommend like holding them to a finite timeline, right? So when is that candidate going to be selected by so that uh you can kind of re in that raider screening period. Eligibility lists
083uh when we visited in October um there was already some flexibility with eligibility lists in terms of not eliminating to three. Uh we would encourage you to do that especially in peak hiring seasons and in times where or in positions that are really hard to fill. Um and then we talk about uh how to how to communicate with employees that don't get selected. Um we want to make sure that every employee that is not selected for a position in Belfflower receives a communication from Belfflower. but two that um good candidates that aren't selected for that position are approached or you know kind of followed back up with to say hey sorry you didn't get that position but we would really love to love for you to apply here or we think you'd be great here
084or we're going to have a position coming up and that's part of that proactive recruitment and so we encourage that all right so Sarah and I have been in touch with Dr. Smith Dr. Knox Dr. and um just catching up and finding out what's been happening since they received the report. And they jumped into action actually they were jumping into action as we were developing the report. And we just wanted to share um this slide a progress report of the some of the recommendations that were included in the report and already the activities that have taken place as a result. um updating the website, starting to work on the certificated job descriptions, um recruitment and staffing practices, actually engaging in active recruitment activities with the job expo, um participating in local job fairs, partnering um
085with business services on the staffing ratios, which is really, really important. Um already there's been a lot of training attendance in terms of professional development, a new substitute hiring process where 25 substitutes have already been hired. Um and then Assembly Bill 2534 is a new law that came into effect in January um and has created havoc really in hiring processes throughout the state, but the department is already compliant with process and procedures, which is very good. Um And then also adding to the certificated website the BTA um teachers and COCA classified union contracts is on the on the web page. So again communication organization and a lot of activity happening um in the personnel services department. And with that were you closing up? I'm here. I'm just going to do it. Um so just wanted
086just wanted to reiterate that this is not an audit and certainly not a performance evaluation. Um and it is not a directive. So these are just recommendations best based on um best practices, industry standards um and it's a framework for change and the department has taken this resource and done just that. that they've used it as a plan and a framework for change. And um all of these recommendations are not independent or isolated. When you start adjusting one staff member's duties, it's going to have implications elsewhere. So looking at it as a comprehensive whole plan is really important. And with that, I'll close out and we have the report in front of us. I see the board was taking lots of notes. Um so we're here for questions if you have them. All right, colleagues,
087anybody want to start with questions? Um, Vice President GarcA, thank you. Um, President Stewart, um, this is a really long recommendation list. Um, and you do say that our st our directors have already started working on some of these things. Thank you so much, um, Dr. Amos, Dr. Knox, for doing that and jumping right in. So, we really appreciate that. Um, where else do you say we should kind of focus for the remainder of the school year? Well, that's a hard question that you asked me. Survival. Yes. Um, so there's things have to happen in a particular order and it starts with establishing roles and responsibilities and making sure that you have the staffing resources in place for implementation. So that's that's the first place that I would start is really contemplate and think about
088that staffing some of the staffing recommendations that we make and getting those job descriptions updated. That's the first thing. The second thing since we are starting to enter the hiring season, we're there. We're doing it. um those process and procedure recommendations that we made about using technology for the onboarding process, just changing practice with timelines, um creating standards for timelines, really looking at your job postings for employment, being very specific. Um and we shared some of that advice with the teams and they were furiously taking notes earlier. So, I would really just focus there, recognizing that if duties change, it takes time to learn how to um be proficient in those new duties. So, I'm going to say in concert with that, we've got to start tackling some training so that um we can build
089capacity and staff to step to um this moment. Orman Bstrom. Thank you, uh President Stewart. Um, will our staff need you? Will our staff need your services as they continue going through this process because it it this just cannot happen just like that. And it seems like it things have to happen in a particular order. Will will we need your services to um to get this going? I mean it's already going but to continue a lot need to be done. They might I would defer to Dr. Smith. I mean what is your Yes, thank you for that question. Uh Miss Armstrong I think it's the right one and as you can see school services has done a really thorough job of kind of pointing out you know strengths but also some serious areas for for
090growth. I think that their expertise would be most welcome as we go through this journey. We have a very good blueprint. Um but we could always use the additional expertise to be with us along on the side as we go through this process. We've also asked school services of California to do similar uh work with our business services department. So they'll be conducting a similar organizational review I believe in the next few weeks. And the reason that we wanted school services to also do that one was because the work of business and HR is interlin in a way. And so we really think that having a firm set of recommendations will be important and it would be our intention at some point in the near future to bring an additional agreement with school services to
091continue their coaching support along the way. Okay. Thank you so much. And um I had another question, but it seems like you you you got things um outlined already. I was going to ask what areas or or what's void right now that you know like what needs to be filled right now, but it's not that something that needs to be filled. It's things that needs to be um reestablished or established exactly on our part. So in the back of the report, I believe There is do we do implementation plan? Yes. So beginning on page 65 there's an implementation plan where we gathered all of the recommendations and we put them in phase one, two and three. Um bas you know phase three is like ongoing phase two is after you get these things in place
092then we can start start here. So these are just ideas um that we have shared with the district teams um but we shared it in an Excel format so that they could move those priorities around as they assess and continue to do this work. So so in terms of where the priorities are if we shared it on these slides in terms of recommendations that means we feel that those things need to be prioritized as phase one. Um but we also have others here in the report you and and that I'm sorry that that report so so the document is how many pages about how because you said page 65 and I'm like I don't have 65. Well well there's some charts in there too. Well you know what mine is double double. Okay. Okay. Okay.
093So we're trying to save a little paper on this one. I understand. I understand. Thank you. Thank you. Um, just for staff, can we please get that full report sent to the board on the Friday memo, please? I kind of feel like we should have received it, but can we please get it on the next board report or next Friday memo? Yes, that to you. Other questions, comments? I have quite a few. Do you guys have any? Uh, Clerk Crutchfield. Thank you, Madam President. I do apologize. I had to step away for a second. Uh, so if you already answered this, uh, I apologize. Um, one of the things that comes up a lot is uh the evaluation process uh with our employees. Is that something that you uh saw or do you have recommendations
094specifically uh regarding the evaluation process? Yeah. So, it's hard uh to interview an personnel department and not hear about evaluations. So, it wasn't a a focus of this scope of this work. Um so, I didn't spend a lot of time on evaluations. We did talk about it with the staff today. There needs to be um systems put in place uh for monitoring uh communicating out evaluation timelines and then monitoring. Uh we recommend that the system be put in place um that mirror that certificate and classified follow the same process for collection and um for monitoring uh which we know is not the case currently. Uh so while the report doesn't focus a lot on evaluations because it was outside the scope again you can't talk to an HR department and not about and so um
095we we uh have again have had conversations with Dr. and Dr. Knox um since the report uh they understand that that's a priority and so they'll work to create some systems to do that. Great. Thank you. And I I do have one more question. uh when it in regards to uh the 1980s uh job descriptions, um when you do update job descriptions, if people are already currently in that job, is that problematic or how does that work? If you're updating a job description, which people are already sitting in that position, does it just go into effect for new people that come in or do you have to like Could you explain that to me a little bit? Yeah. So, I will tell you that um your PC bylaws probably dictate what that looks like in
096terms of a reclassification um when a job description is redone uh while an employee is in it. Uh and so there is a process by which Frank can work with Dr. I'm sorry. I know him from another life. We worked at LA County together uh years ago. So, it's nice to see him here again uh today. But there is a process uh in which he can work with his um commission to rework the job description. But it does involve conversations around uh whether or not that position warrants extra compensation usually when we do it and an employee is involved. Am I did I misspe? Dr. Almost come on up to the Yeah, please. He is the PC expert, so I'll defer to him. And if I could give like an example from from what I'm
097asking, say like uh one of the things we talk a lot about is security. And when looking at the job descriptions for security, um you know, I could see some updates there, but then I think about the people that already in those positions, you know, so that's kind of where I'm headed. Okay. Um good evening. It really depends on on the It really depends. It depends on what they're doing and how close it resembles to the initial nature and purpose of the job description. Sometimes I can easily just update it. Yes, like with new technologies as long that the level of complexity and the scope does not significantly change I can easily update and revise the classics and that's so far I've been doing that. Now if I come across a situation where the the
098person is performing higher level duties then it requires what we call a position study and may require a reclassification of that position. So it really depends on that. So if like there was like a uh say something like CPR training or some type of training that should go along with an entry level position. Is that something that would be difficult uh to do to to add a requirement for a position? It it for something like that I would say no. It wouldn't be a a big a big lift or hard a a key or a a hard requirement to add to the job description. Um let's say the incumbent did not have that. Uh and we can make arrangements or some kind of transition plan for that person to obtain it within reasonable time frame.
099Got it. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Poor Marissa and Sean, did you have anything? Uh, no. I uh Well, first of all, thank you so much. This I mean, we don't have the full report yet, but this was great. So, thank you so much. And, you know, I just want to say again, kudos to our cabinet for working as hard as they do. It's not unrecognized at all. Um, but also it just highlights a lot of the things that the board is already talking about. And then we have excellent people in place to make sure that these things are coming, you know, forward, moving forward and knowing what to do. My question kind of leads from um a previous question and I think my mine is more of an understanding of
100the testing piece of when hiring. Um, so heard it's outdated, but does it change when it comes to different positions or is it just a blanket test or how does can you I'm sorry, can you just walk me through a little bit to understand it a little bit better? The tests are um positionally based. So uh a par educator would take a different test than a custodian would take a different test than a accounts payable person. Yeah. So it is based on the position and to follow up excuse me um so the test and then um then the training comes on top of that or a particular training comes on top of that. Is that how I understand that? I think if you're talking about a training like a like yes like member clerk yeah
101I was trying to read your last um I have I have I have old eyes and it's got a lot of consonants in it. Um, so if you're talking about a training like that, uh, that's different than, uh, the test, right? Because usually it's a prerequisite. Got it. Um, sometimes, again, I'm not the expert in the PC here, so these are questions that I would direct towards Dr. Smith or Dr. Almost, but uh, typically, uh, we do see we can see positions that have that requirement that they may they earn it within six month probation period if that's a case. Right? if you're finding it to be a recruitment barrier that nobody has first aid or nobody has the safe serve um uh credential to to be a food service worker sometimes there is some
102flexibility there but again that's those are those really specific questions are really questions for Dr. Smith and Dr. M uh Miss Cron, one of the things that I think would also be important is the kind of understanding the full scope of the merit system and how the process works. Um it can be a little complicated and it can be a little unwieldy. And one of the things that I would make a recommendation to the board is if there's a time in a future meeting to maybe have a merit system 101 just to review some of those practices and processes. And I know our executive director and I have already spoken about maybe doing something like that. Just to kind of walk through what that process looks like, what the steps are, those kinds of things
103to be able to address um you know, when do you take the test, for example, what happens after you take the assessment, what are the eligibility lists, all of those things just because I think it's good things even for those of us that um have some knowledge, deep knowledge, a refresher is always helpful and we like to share that information with the board. um duly noted and appreciated. I think also just kind of reflecting on almost every time I'm on the dis that I say we need to make sure that we're moving the district forward. And I loved hearing time and time again to update our titles, our job descriptions, and our capacity building amongst our district as a whole. So, this is very exciting news to me. Like, I'm I'm amped, guys. So, um
104forgive me if I'm stepping on a, you know, toes or what have you, but I I definitely think this was it came at a really great time. So, thank you. Thank you. I have a few questions. Um, and if you don't have the answers, it's okay if you want to just guesstimate. It's just I'm I have my thinking. Um, about how many job descriptions are there in total? Or does anybody on staff know that? Yeah, 200 in classified. 200 in classified. Yeah, maybe around 70 75 and certificated. Okay, that's great. Thank you. Um, my next question is when did our staff receive this report? About how long ago did you guys finish this report and give it to our staff? So, there's a process to that where um we deliver a draft report and then
105it takes some time to closely review and then our teams meet. our team met with the district team and then we also met with each executive director um separately. So there was weeks and and months before we got the final draft but I think we delivered the final draft um recently um as we were planning to to deliver this presentation. Okay. recently like maybe in like the last month or so. Would you say I don't know the answer to that. It's okay. That one's I'm just asking. Um my next question is is an organizational review I've heard that brought up. Is that the same as a forensic audit? No. Absolutely not. Right. Absolutely not. Okay. Sorry. I'm going to go through my notes, so it's going to take me one second. Um how often do
106you recommend that we do this again or we talk to you guys? like, you know, as a board member, we want to make sure that we're making these changes. So, if we need to bring you back to do this again, how often would you recommend to our board that we should do this again? I don't know that I would not recommend that the board invest its resources in a full organizational study and position analysis that you did for this study. But I do want to tie back to Dr. Smith's um suggestion that we provide ongoing support and maybe as part of that support the change and the implementation is best made with your internal team and your staff. Okay, not us, right? So, us supporting that work and then encouraging our executive directors to share
107with the board progress or a cabinet member to um address these these progress reports I think would would best serve the district. Okay. So, then my next question is for staff. How are we going to communicate our progress on all of this with our board or can we discuss how we can do that so that we can make sure that the these updates are taking place? We of course we'd be happy to have a discussion with the board on that front. Uh one thing that I would recommend is and that I've seen in having worked with school service or school services in the past is doing an annual update. And so I think it would be helpful for example you know in about a year around this time we come and bring an additional update
108to you to re indicate um how much progress we've made what areas we focused in on that type of thing. So this way you can see the road map and the progress down the map that we've done. I would recommend at least on an annual basis. The board obviously could ask for more uh potentially a bianual basis but at minimum every year um whether that be annually by annually can we add that to our governance calendar or to our chart so that we remind ourselves that we need to make sure that we do this again in six months or a year. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Um my next question is I know you hear from teachers a lot. I'm a teacher as well that you know you get that criticism of districts that they're top
109down that they're heavy topheavy when it comes to that. So just a general idea of why would we be able to justify I know we have a lot of this but just a general what would we say to our community members to justify that we need to hire more admin and district people or district employees if you understand what I'm asking. I understand exactly what you're asking. Yeah. Um so the position that we are recommending the personnel supervisory position um it would fall below a director and more of like I would I would put it on the level of a custodial supervisor. Um this is a hands-on manager but some of this work that needs to be addressed employee leaves position control this has true fiscal implications attached to it. And so we need a
110level of responsibility to hands-on oversee and manage that because of the fiscal implications of that. And I would say that it is the liability and the risk that the district assumes by not having this staff member to oversee this work would far exceed um any concerns about being topheavy. This isn't, you know, executive level leadership that we're recommending. This is a this is a roll your sleeves up and and supervise, manage, support the work. Absolutely. So, it really affects our dayto-day. I wrote down in our notes. It absolutely does. Yes. Okay. I'm so sorry. I have one more last question. Um, I know we talked about having an assistant superintendent over HR and that we are the only one that does not have that. Um, why would it be important to have one? If you
111could explain that to our community and to our board. I know we don't have one, but why would it be important to have one? And why does everybody else have one and we don't? Well, I don't know the answer to that question, but um as far as the one of the things that we do when we just provide this data for comparative purposes. Uh we gather the job titles of the department heads just to look at how that work is organized. Now in terms of can you exist without an assistant superintendent? Sure you can. But there are some operational transactional duties that an assistant superintendent handles at the executive level. Um engagement with the board, engagement with collective bargaining. Um and it's really just what are your needs within the district? And I want to
112back out of this conversation because I should have said this first. the the way that you organize the department and the job titles are based on the district needs, not on people and performance. It's truly based on your organizational needs within your personnel services function. Now, um we were simply pointing out that the district is an outlier and that you are the only district in similarly sized districts that do not staff an assistant superintendent. Does that data mean that you should go out and just take action to get level and the same as everyone else? Absolutely not. It is just a data point, a piece of reference information that should be used in ongoing discussions in terms of what is the best way to staff this department. Okay. So, to rephrase my question, what do
113you think we should look at to determine if we need one or not? Well, if you elevate that position, you don't you will not have a director level position. And so when you have your staffing configuration of management, there's three categories within that. Supervisory, director, executive level leadership. And as far as the oversight areas uh within the department, it's going to require certain responsibilities with each position to provide that comprehensive support within that area. So when if you were to elevate one position and not backfill that, then you would have an assistant superintendent position with no other layers of support if you were just sitting at the organization that you are. So, you can't really make that decision just in isolation without considering the other layers of support that you need because if you're only
114staffing an assistant superintendent and you don't have any other management positions taking care of some of these other areas, then you're going to have something called leadership creep. And what that means is when you have higher level positions getting pulled into transactional work um and they're not able to lead in some of the important areas that they have. So I really can't answer that question as black and white because it really depends on the overarching organization of personnel services. I just want to add to that um to Danielle's point, the the idea of the assistant superintendent would not be in addition to the two executive directors that are currently there, right? Because as she presented it, it's an elevation of one to create that that high level of position in HR, the person that's dealing
115with the attorneys, that's doing the labor negotiations, that's doing a lot of the complicated disciplinary uh actions with employ that person is going to be busy, right? And so that's why that lower level operational manager uh would come into play. But if you don't have that lower level manager management position, you would have a huge gap uh in addition if you had that assistant superintendent. So that's why there's it's not a black and white answer. I understand that. But I'm looking at this page and understand that I'm just asking because I don't fully understand and we as a board have to make important decisions. So I'm trying to understand. It says on this page that we have two. Our total FTE was two and that we ranked seventh. So why wouldn't we add one on
116top of that to be at three to be level? Why does it have to be moving a lower level up? Why wouldn't we just additionally add one on to catch up where we would be more competitive in this chart? You could, but I would still prioritize the supervisory position over the assistant suit. That would be my recommendation and that would bring you to three. Okay. So you'll make a recommendation on that. Why would you recommend that? Based on what? Because you just said we couldn't make a recommendation based on the other things, but we were recommending a supervisor. Why would you recommend a supervisor, not assistant superintendent? Because of the work, the needs in the department and the work that needs to be addressed in terms of employee leave management, position control, and some of
117the other recruitment needs that you typically don't have an assistant superintendent involved in. Okay. Thank you. Um, anybody else have other questions? No. Okay. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. Thank you. All right. Moving along to major action tonight. We have one major action 12 point. Is it 12? Yes. 12.1. And that's the Belf Unified School District Foundation. Mrs. Oavdo. Yes. If I can direct the attention of the board to item 12.1. What you have in front of you is a recommendation from the committee um for the uh names of the individuals to create that very first foundation board. And I don't know if one of our members would like to share a little bit more about that. Clerk Critzfield. Thank you, Madam President. Um I just want to say I'm I'm excited that
118we got to this point with the foundation. It's uh you know, Amy and I were talking about this like way back in the day and just like it's been a process. So, first of all, I just want to say thank you for all the work that went in uh to getting us to this point. It's very exciting. Uh especially uh Mr. Jerum who did a lot of the work and you know, it's just a bunch of paperwork and a bunch of administrative stuff, but to get to the this point is really awesome. And I want to say thank you to everybody that uh applied uh to be a part of the board um in committee. We went through the applications uh and I I feel very good about the recommendations before the board this evening.
119Uh we have uh a very uh diverse group that's going to bring a lot of different experiences. Uh people that have a lot of experience with foundations within an inaugural board. It's very important to have a strong board that understands the importance of fundraising and community outreach so we can make the biggest impact for our students. So, this is just great uh and I'm just really excited and very uh grateful uh and also to our president's leadership in uh getting uh to the point that it's at today. Uh so, I'm just excited. Yeah. Yeah. And as far as like the names on here, I know you guys can look up and see the names, but we have a lot of community members, alumni, people that have a lot of background and um connections to our
120community. And so I'm I'm really excited about this list and I hope that we approve this. Um Mr. Sura, please. Uh thank you. Uh, President Stewart, one thing I would like to mention, if we can get two separate motions, uh, one motion to approve the appointment of four individuals to a four-year term and one motion to approve three individuals to a two-year term because they're staggered. So, I know it kind of puts the board in a little bit of a spot, but we need to pick three and four. A little bit of a spot. Okay, say it one more time. one to approve a four-year term for or I mean a four-year term for four of them and then three of them a two-year term. Yes. Okay. It's a four and four and three and
121two. Well, does anyone before we I mean you guys these are just names. They might not mean much to you guys, but is there any questions that you guys have? Any comments on this um not you the others first? So um you guys who Who helped get these names? So Brad and who else? There was an application process. It was posted on the website. We received eight and we had to pick seven. Okay. So you guys know how you how they ranked. So just go with you guys. Just just pick some names because I know a few people on here, but I didn't go through the process. You guys interviewed them and everything. So just do it. It's okay. I I don't really have a problem with that. I'll be honest. I have a problem
122with making this decision on the day is right the second when you could have told us ahead of time. That was my problem. But we can do this. We're flexible. We'll do it. Madam President, Linda Linda is throwing up two. No, Linda will be a four-year one because we know she's going to be here. So, the the thing is it's it's not really of any real consequence because because they can be reappointed again after two years. So it's just to delineate in the beginning because they are staggered appointments. Um so it doesn't necessarily affect any one individual or place any um like or dislike toward them. It's just a function of how this board has to operate in its initial years. Those three board members could then be reappointed to four-year terms following their two-year
123terms. Okay. I have one other question. Okay. Sorry. One other question. Clarifa clarifying question. Were any of these members asked if they would like to do a two or four-year term? Are they all being elected? Well, because now they're not being elected. What were they told the applicants? So, from my understanding, they were made aware that um three would be serving two-year terms and four would be serving four-year terms. Um I don't think there was a question on the application as to preference. Okay. Um but again, it's just they can always be reappointed. It's just how we have to stagger it at the beginning. So, that was my question, Amy. I was going to say if we could just vote these people in and when they meet as a board I can can they determine
124amongst I'm just asking I think that's where the re the recommendation to get this started off appropriate if it makes it easier I'd make a motion you said it's you said three year and two year two and four two and four so I'd make a motion to approve uh for a four-year term Allison Mark uh Janet and Chris to a four-year term And it's to your turn for Brianna, Linda, and Tanisha. Second. Second. I second it already, but thank you for participating. I love that. So, we have a motion. Do you have those names? Do you guys need him? They're on the record. It's okay. Uh, any questions or comments? Roll call, please. Student board member Suknnet. I. Miss Armstrong, I. Miss Cron, I. Mr. Crutchfield, I. Mrs. Garza, I. Miss Stewart, I. And now
125we need a motion for the three or did he say both of those? I messed it up, didn't I? I put them all together. Exactly. We said not to do. We're okay. Okay. All right. Moving along to the consent agenda. Does anybody have any items to pull tonight for the consent agenda? Um, I would like to pull our purchase orders 13.12. Any others? I'd like to pull 13.15. Any others? All right. So, can we get or I make a motion to approve the consent agenda and withhold items 13.12 and items 131.15. Can I get a second? Second. Roll call, please. Student board member SNET. I, Miss Armstrong, I. Miss Cron, I. Mr. Critzfield, I. Mrs. Garza, I. Miss Stewart, I. All right. So, our first pulled item is 13.12, purchase orders for approval. Um, clerk.
126Um, I just want to first of all I want to say thank you to uh Renee for the work on just uh fixing a lot of things that in the past again the purchase orders have been very complicated uh and problematic. So I I appreciate all the work being done. uh my the reason I pulled is just I've I've noticed a lot of uh purchases and I think it's really important uh when we are making larger purchases specifically vehicle purchases I I see a lot of 2025 you know Ford and I think that's great I'm sure people appreciate that the new shiny vehicles but you know at at the college we you know I I just got a a van for our department and they were like a very aligned with the you know board
127policy of not you know buying things that are too expensive uh as opposed to something that can do the job uh that's less expensive and I've just noticed a lot of brand new vehicle purchases. Um so I I wants to be just conscious of that. Uh and I'm sure that there is oversight but even our our own board policy uh 3,300 it's uh false economy to save money by purchasing an item which cannot do the job required of it and it's wasteful to spend money uh more money than necessary to purchase a quality item when a less costly item would do the job just as well. So, I think with vehicles, you know, sometimes it it's actually a cost benefit to get something new because you you the maintenance and things that can go wrong.
128But I, you know, getting a a vehicle that's just a couple years older that's still in warranty that does the job and save a lot of money without the hassle of getting something super old. I just find like as we go forward, we need to start looking at ways to save money. I think that's a that's an easy one. Um, and and there's plenty of other examples I I could go down, but again, I just want to make sure that that stays on our radar as a value that we have from being financially uh responsible and making sure we're saving as much money as we can so we could spend it when we need it on the things that we uh want to invest in. So, that's the only reason I pulled that. Um, thank
129you, Madam President. Um, anybody else have any questions or comments? All right. Can I get a motion to approve 13.12? So moved. Can I get a second? Second. Uh, roll call, please. Student board member Sugnet. I. Miss Armstrong. I. Miss Cron. I. Mr. Critchfield. I. Mrs. Garza. I. Miss Stewart. I. All right. So, the next withheld Oh. Um, the next item withheld from the consent agenda was 13.15. And that's award recommend recommendations for bid transportation board member Centron. Thank you. Um so the reason why I wanted to pull that is um well one I know it's a one year so I'm not I'm not saying anything about that. Um but I just want to go back to the conversation that we had on in our January 9th uh meeting of when we requested a timeline
130of what that's going to look like. transportation wise internally in the district. We haven't received any followup with that. So, I was hoping to get um an update as to now, but also what what that timeline is going to look like to make sure even though we have this one year additional one year of outside bidding for transportation. Um what we're doing internally to make sure that that the full idea of having um our district take over. Thank you, Miss Catron, for that question. Um, the update to uh that is we have been moving the entire time since that January board meeting and we um are now currently working through the process of bringing on board a transportation manager. Um we completed that process recently. We also have a transportation specialist that is running through
131the merit system process right now and we hope to have that job on um board in the next month or so as well. Um we have also worked with our uh consultant to pro provide details regarding um support in creating a plan so that both that new manager and actually the team the entire team in transportation because it includes the mechanic shops and all of those different pieces will have kind of a um guideline for um moving through this process. And so um the I've reached out uh recently to the consultant provided more details about our hiring processes and where we landed and we hope to bring back u something to the board um shortly from our consultant to kind of walk you guys through the process. So thank you so much for answering that
132asking that question. I appreciate you so much. Um that's the only question I had and thank you so much for that. Um, I look forward to seeing all the great things that we're going to do and just wanted to make sure that our community knows, especially those that had concern about our transportation knows that the district is moving forward. Yes. And since I have the mic on, I'll give um another plug that um the the bid award process went really nicely. We did receive even for a district our size um quite a number of bids um for this process and I think we um at least through this next year. Uh got a a great company that came with great recommendations and that prices were uh reasonable and so I was really happy with the
133results of the process as well. Thought I'd share that too. Thank you. Thank you, Vice President GarcA. Thank you. Um President Stewart, Miss um Arcus, thank you. Um, can I know that you discussed with us I believe a previous meeting u recently that you were going to present the contracts to the board so that way we can see them as well. So I don't see it attached to this one. Is there a way that the board can get this contract? This is award recommendation. So now that we have an award recommendation, we will go back to the contractor based on their rates and we will work through the negotiations of the contract. So there's no contract for transportation at this time. The award recommendation will work for that process, but we need to go back
134and get the contract in place and get going. And we're going to move um quite quickly to make sure that we have the process in place for our students in the next coming school year. So that's our next step. Yes. Okay. And just you don't have to give me an exact date but ballpark figure like when would you be able to bring back that timeline to the board? Uh I reached out I don't want to give an exact date for that purpose. I reached out to the um contractor recently and I will provide in the Friday memo maybe when the or memo to the board when the uh contractor can get back to me. We've been working back and forth for about a month and a half. So it is coming near to a close.
135Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you. So just to clarify, the next step will be you'll go out, you'll get the contract and then you'll bring the contract back to the board to approve or is this already approving it? This is approving the bid award and so the contractor rates we will bring back to the board. Okay. Um Chris, thank you, Madam President. Um is this the is was this the first one we did through Planet Bids? No. No, they we used our um old method with this one. Our first one was the Mayfair Fields. Okay. Um I I am I'm glad that we got uh all these responses and it seemed to go pretty well. But I I do remember when we were talking about this, we were kind of like the general
136vibe was like no one's going to want to do it for a year and we're not going to, you know, we're kind of stuck with this because there's nobody. What What was uh what was different about like this experience? Was it just surprising um the the reception of I think it was surprising. I think that one of the things that we have that maybe we didn't express enough value to is the buses. So having our fleet of buses um is a in such good shape um is was a draw to many of the contractors. I mean some contractors uh would even be probably interested in using our buses even if it wasn't to transport our students. we do have a mighty good fleet and we you know we've maintained them well and so I think
137that was something that was kind of underestimated because I too thought that it would um you know be harder and the span of the pricing was very different. So right you did see that you know while I think that we've got good recommendations and a good vendor there's definitely some prices that might have been a little higher based on the year-long um you know you know offering and so I don't want to count anything. I think both parts played into it and we ended up with someone that is um that I'm hopeful will be a great partner for this year and then even in the future with maybe additional needs as we see fit. So I want to build that relationship. Okay. But really just for the year. Uh the uh that was actually my
138that's actually my next question. Uh we did have discussions on like the the status of our fleet and how the buses were um you know as it pertains to them using our buses. Uh what did we discover uh since then? Because there was a little bit of confusion at one point someone was saying like we have five buses that are you know not up to code and can't and then somebody said it was one like where where are we at with that? We we did we brought um several buses back into code and to the you know because we have so many buses we do have the ability to move through different buses because we don't have as many routes as we have buses. So there was, you know, a possibility of some buses being
139out of service for a particular amount of time, although we weren't really happy about the amount of time. But, um, we have moved forward with many of our buses being brought back into service. And, um, there's been a lot of, uh, polishing, a lot of, um, you know, taking care of the buses, looking at them from a different light. And again, um, we're looking forward to getting the staff on hand that will really start to like finalize some of those processes. Got it. Thank you so much. I do just one last question if I can. Um, the the pricing that we got for this year, uh, how does that compare to our old pricing? It's, uh, similar to, uh, what we had experienced with, um, our old pricing. So the the bid that we were
140able to take is in the ballpark of our old pricing. Ballpark more or less. I'd say it's really really close. Now remember, when we have to bring you a bid document, we have to use certain criteria to determine that pricing. And so we used averages. So they would give us a price on a home to school route. And then we'd say on average we do nine of those times this many days of school times this. we do summer school. So even these prices and that's why you'll get the contract back when we come back to it are you know estimates based on that. So the pricing was pretty good but it was very different than the pricing that we were receiving from a different vendor which was more um overarching. So there was a uh
141you know kind of a a big price for the services we were being offered before. Now this will be a little more distinctive to the number of routes, the number of buses, the number of field trips and and and those kind of things. Got it. And given uh like Cal Calabs like they they use Hemmet as well and it's a big cost uh for them. Um is that something that's kind of uh discussed as far as making sure that they're how does that work with purchasing? Like if is there like a piggyback thing going on? They're included in the pricing. So, their trips are treated like um I'd say precursory like a field trip in for lack of a better word because they're priced um individually and then we can use the CALOPS funding for
142those. Got it. So, they're all inclusive and they were actually one of the criteria that we used when we were trying to ban the pricing together. Got it. I appreciate that. Thank you. You're welcome. Um if Calops is included in the pricing, does Cal Apps give back to us then money for that or No, they pay for their buses. Okay. we just have to include when we were looking at a field trip cost rate based on what the uh vendors gave us, we knew that Calops utilized those and so we priced those as such. And then I just have one more question. Um with this bid, how many drivers did we ask for in the bid? I think we used um we I know we used four for the summer school route and I believe
143we had uh it might be 10 to 12 on the um home to school route. So in total it was about 16. Well the four well because the four will drop off when the other yes in there for that. I understand that's the number of routes that we told them that we would have. Um but again when the pricing model comes up we'll um hopefully have more information on the routes. Okay. Um Cler Cridgefield, sorry me again. Um so with the contract because I know we uh we've hired a couple positions as we move towards uh the ultimate goal of bringing it in house. Um with those positions that we've already hired and the one that we're in the process of hiring because we've vendored out for this year. um do they have other duties
144assigned to them this year or how does that work if we've hired the positions but we're vendoring out at the same time? Remember we've had similar positions already established that we're kind of monitoring those activities. So this is nothing different. The benefit here is that the new people coming on board will be able to um spend some time kind of navigating our district, figuring out how we do things um or you know getting more information while they'll still have to do a lot of conversations with the bus company that will not go away. Um regardless it just changes when they become our internal bus drivers. there's a conversation between employees versus you still have a lot of conversations and activities with um external agencies. So that doesn't change. Okay, good. Thank you. Um board member
145Armstrong. Yes. Um and how many of those buses will be wheelchair? I'm speaking on special education special education transportation. I don't know how many buses we have right now that are wheelchair buses. I know that we have enough to complete the routes as necessary. So we don't have any shortage in regards to but all of that includes special education transportation. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Can I get a motion to approve 13.15? You have that motion. Can I get a second? Second. Third. Second by board member Centron. Roll call, please. Student board member. I. Miss Armstrong. I. Miss Centron I Mr. Critchfield I Mrs. Garza I Miss Stewart I All right, moving along we are going to go to board communications and we are going to start with our amazing student board
146member um Alyssa Subnet. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Um there has been a lot going on at Bellflower so the dates might be a little crazy so I apologize in advance. Um before spring break hit, um the our ASB got to attend a conference in the Bay Area for Castle. Um they got to stay there for three days and were awarded the outstanding leadership program award that has been consecutively earned. Um they got to present one of our big events which is Buck Blastoff where our where the sixth graders get to come and get just a little clip of like what's going to go on when they attend. Um it is testing week and um it was very nice to have um the TK burgers for the current 12th and eighth graders. It was very
147good. Um to kind of cool off testing and give like our students a bit of fun, we did have our senior fundraiser of SOA senior. Um this is our first year doing it. It was actually such a fun time. And even though it was cold today and yesterday, um I got lucky and got to do um a day where it was hot. Um there was a total of three sizes to choose from. Um and we were even had an added option to add ice to our water to make it extra cold. Um our uh our class um ended up getting a little bit over $1,000 for the senior class for our grad week activities. Um we got some of our organizations of link crew um sports captains ASB and our favorite teachers. Um the brigade
148also gets got to go on a Hawaii trip. They got to perform and I just think that was so cool that they get to go over there as well as ensemble got to go to Utah and Vegas for their ensemble trip where they got to perform at a total of six schools. Um coming up we do have a middle school dance. Um it's our little foam malicious dance where they it's they get to play with bubbles which I think is very cool. Um and then for our juniors and seniors, prom is coming up next sat Saturday and yeah um next Thursday is decision day for our seniors. Um glad that it's over getting over with. Um we get to have a little breakfast and as well as we also get to have our medical assistant
149exam. So wish me luck. [Music] Um as was said in the beginning, it's more of just cramming of um graduation and promotion. It's a lot of celebrating. We do get to celebrate our teachers soon and ASB has decided to create posters and share some nice adject adjectives to des like to show our teachers that we appreciate them. Um, senior finals are coming up as well as senior awards night, senior celebration, um, our cap and gowns, grad night, and just grad week in general, as well as the eighth graders get to go on their universal trip. Um, but yeah, it's coming close to an end, which is very relieving. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, board member Armstrong, excuse me, y'all. So good evening to everyone all in attendance and and I as well as
150my uh board members we do appreciate your attendance and participating participation in this process. So uh I've just been busy being a parent um to my senior and yeah getting ready for prom and graduation and finalizing what college she wants to go to. Oh my goodness, she's my last one. So yay me. Um, so that's what I've been doing. Um, um, I I hope everyone had a I I don't know if you celebrate Easter or not, but if you celebrated Easter, let's celebrate new beginnings and all that it means to to those who practice that. Um, also, um, this is Jewish Heritage Month. So, um if you guys are doing anything in the classrooms, that would be that would be great. And also, um the um Armenian uh genocide, the awareness of of that happening,
151that's another thing that's going on this month. So, um I'm just really just trying to stay healthy. Thanks so much for the hot water. This is what I have to drink to be able to stay here without coughing so much. So anyway, that's it. Um, finalizing uh trying to figure out what college my baby wants to go to and prom. Oh my goodness. Are you ready? Well, I am. I I'm excited. This is really a very exciting time for me. So, um, I'm just, like I say, enjoy being being a parent at this moment. Thank you. Thank you, Baron. Board member Cong. Uh, thank you. Um, so I hope everybody enjoyed their spring break. Um, I did want to uh let everybody know that I did attend NSBA with a board member. Do you remember?
152It feels so long ago at this point. No, we haven't. Do you wanna Do you want to chime in? Okay. Okay. And um I really really enjoyed it. Um it had so many different workshops um like um different like variety of topics. Um I did a lot of the safety workshops when I attended. So I have a lot to bring back to the safety committee. Um some knowledge some you know some training that I can share as well. Um, also I got to participate um at the capturing kids hearts workshop uh right after I came back. Um, and I have to say, um, for those that haven't attended a workshop, and I believe this workshop was, it's usually really, really long, uh, and we got a snapshot in two days, and it was the most
153delightful and also positive training that I think our teachers would benefit, our uh, some of our cabinet members benefited. Um, and I would say our board uh could possibly attend as well. I think they would. It's it really reflects on how we can help and support the students on campus, mental health, creating positive culture on campus, continue that positive culture. It was amazing. Um, and if anybody has questions, please reach out to me. I'd be more than happy to share the information with you. Um, I also wanted to uh I attended the BTA who awards. Shout out to Carrie again. Um, congratulations. Also, I will be attending the coast to coast with um a lot of my colleagues here and um some of our cabinet members next week in Washington DC. So, I look forward
154to that. It will be my first time um talking about things that are directly affecting our schools in our school district, seeing what the plan is on federal levels um as much as we can and what we can do to advocate uh for our districts but also in company of the surrounding districts as well. So, I I'm really looking forward to that. Um, but on a personal note or a request, I didn't know where to stick this one. So, um, sorry guys. Uh, if we could, and I have I've had a few people reach out to me, so this is why I'm bringing it up. If we can add a post on social media about the days we're go or on the days that we're going to have our meetings. Um, and the link at
155least just a shout out or a reminder to our parents and um, and our community members that if they can't attend, they want to watch on the link. I realize for those that don't know, our link never changes. And I'm looking at one of these cameras. Our link does not change. It's the same link for every meeting. For those that don't know that, it took me a while to understand that as well. Um, but also on our website. I know it's on our website, but apparently there's too many clicks to get to the link. So, if we could somehow bring that link forward, make it an easy one to, especially for those parents that are driving, they just want to listen. Um, so they can just click in and and not be on their phones
156while they're in the car. So, uh, yeah, that's all for me, I think. Um, may I just add on to some of this stuff just really quickly? Can you maybe put in our Friday memo what you do? Maybe it's a popup on our our website or whatever you decide to do. Can you send that to us on our Friday memo so that at least we can let the community know? Yes. On the board meetings. Yes. And then just one other thing I know I think I don't know if you said it board member Centron, but she was talking about capturing kids hearts which we use in my district and it's absolutely amazing. And then one more thing I know you're going to talk about NSBA. I know talk about MSBA because we've talked a lot
157about how to get the information that we take at these conferences back to each other. I know we have that Dropbox, but if we if it would be okay too if we have any just publication forms or things that we can ask to make copies and then give them to the rest of the board, maybe that's an idea because I know we've been struggling with how do we take the great information that you guys got back to us. Maybe if you have any cool worksheets or anything, um maybe we can just make copies. I don't know. That's just an idea. Um, go ahead, board member Armstrong. So, yes, so I did I did obtain information um about uh creating conditions uh on a budget for special education uh the blueprint to to IDA IDA budget.
158Uh I also did um a workshop about air. Oh my goodness. It's something about the air quality and and I need to bring that to you guys so that we can we can apply for a grant. They're like trying to give money out and I you know air quality you guys is important here in Southern California. And uh and I did something on about the the future of schools. Again, like I said, I have all this information and and I and I can definitely share it and especially if I can uh Oh. Oh. And then another one was called supporting individuals with disabilities and uh hope for the wounded the trauma in uh informed uh practices and wellness strategies and uh it was a lot of work making our voices heard. We I have a
159lot of stuff to share. Okay. So both we we'll get that stuff to you but that drop down box you guys uh I can't do that but can definitely print it. I feel like it works if you get slides, but like there's some conferences I go to where you don't get slides, but sometimes you get folders that are kind of cool. So, I'm not sure, but I haven't been to that conference. I know Claw does. I don't know if you have, but if we could I don't know. Or maybe staff, if you could try to think of a unique way that we could share the information that we get from conferences with each other because there's a lot of good stuff, but we don't all get to experience it. I would suggest if the items
160can just be dropped off, we can scan them and place them in the electronic folder and then make copies if you want hard copies and distrib. Thank you. We can do it both ways. Okay, that would be great. So, we can utilize that if we would like to. All right, Clerk Crutchfield. Thank you, Madam President. Uh, thank you all for being here tonight. Uh, caught Dan falling asleep twice, but it's okay. It's all right. Appreciate you being here. Um, just a quick recap what uh what I've been up to. uh PTA reflections. Uh that's always a a great event to see all the students work. Um foundation meeting, athletic committee meeting both on the April 2nd. Went to the inter mural wrestling uh event at Mayfair. Um went attended David Ariano uh councilman uh for
161Lakewood. He had a one-y year anniversary dinner. So I attended that. uh also did a uh trip to Vegas uh for the National Association of Broadcasters. So, it's all about communication and uh marketing. Always love going there. I was is with my other hat. But the great thing about working at the college is sometimes I'm doing uh personal development there that also helps inform uh decisions uh and initiatives here. So, really good stuff. Calabs board meeting, legislative committee, Good Friday YMCA breakfast. Um, that's always a huge event. Uh, always hard to get out of the parking there, though. Uh, the Star Awards, uh, was awesome. Uh, and Carrie, I apologize. I I couldn't make it to the event, but I I just want to say thank you, uh, for, uh, everything you've put up with
162and all of the the work you've done. I've always appreciated the conversations and collaboration. Um, I know it's not easy, uh, but I appreciate your your sacrifice and your willingness to be in that role. So, thank you very much. Um, I also did a stopped by the YMCA Bellflower. I I kept saying I was going to go over there and tour the facility, but I couldn't get around to it until this week. Um, so that was great to actually see our our students over there enjoying the facility. It really puts things in perspective. Um, and one thing I I do want to bring up is with the the Mayfair Fields. Uh I know that the topic came up in a uh city council meeting. Um and you know one of the things I think that
163we've worked really hard to do is be a collaborative partner as a district. I mean we've you know we came in I know my my colleagues uh you know would agree to a to a large extent is one of the things we've really focused on is communication, transparency and collaboration. And you know the the Mayfair Fields project is a great uh it's a great example of of how you know even though we have uh it's our project and it's not the city's project being a good neighbor and being a good partner is really important. And so the more we inform them uh the better and you know it's reciprocal uh in the relationship in the long run uh because you know we might communicate to to our parents but there's a lot of residents who
164live in that area and maybe they're not on that that mailing list, maybe they're not on the top of mind all the time, but you know the stadium is a huge benefit and asset uh to the community when it finally goes. Um and they should be brought in that conversation. So I would uh highly encourage uh the collaboration with us and I know there has been some meetings with staff and uh speaking with the the city council over there. I know that there is uh very positive conversations there. But I think the piece that we're missing is the actual communication to the the uh residents in that area because they're the ones you know calling in with uh you know complaints or a slight anxiety about what's happening and we might know uh that it's
165a the process is unfolding and I think we've done a a pretty good job of of keeping uh uh bringing updates as fast as we can because of some uncertainty there But uh the fact that it was brought up over there tells me that we need to maybe reach out a little bit more and make sure that we're being good neighbors uh in this uh in this process. Um also bittersweet, but I do want to say congratulations to coach Eie as he's taken a role as head coach of Servite. Um I I I think it's a it is a loss for our students, but I I I don't want it to, you know, it's not lost on me the uh the time and uh investments he's made in that program, uh the school site and
166those wrestlers and students in general. I think he's done amazing work for that that program. Brought a level of prestige uh to the the program in our district. And uh I just want to say uh thank you to Coach Eie for everything he's done uh for that program. I know he's leaving it in a much better position than he found it. And I think he's going to have good coaches coming in uh you know right behind him. So I'm I'm optimistic there. But I think it's really important that we do everything we can as a district to uh retain our highlevel coaches. And sometimes uh I had a long conversation with him. Um, but sometimes when you when you work at a district so long, some of the issues that keep coming up, you know,
167sometimes it's, you know, the straw that breaks the camel's back. But I think it's really important to uh talk uh to people that are leaving the district and find out, you know, their real raw experience like a do we have like an exit uh interview for employees? No, at this time we do not and that's something that is on our uh roadmap. I think it would be great. I think that, you know, sometimes when people are on their way out, they they can be pretty honest, you know, when they're on their way out and finding those things that, you know, they might have uh encountered. I think it'd be a great practice. Uh, you know, I'm no expert in it, but I if we did that, I I think we'd get some really good information
168and, you know, in the future it might help us retain uh coaches longer, retain teachers longer. I think it's a great thing to do. But I do want to say congratulations to him. Uh, and I'm uh I'm optimistic about the future, but he's going to be very missed uh in this district. Um, coming up next, uh, the Washington DC trip. Uh, I'm excited about that. Rene told me not to party too hard, so I won't. I'll be a good I'll be good. Um, and also when I when we get back, um, I shout out the Long Beach Toronto McDonald House uh, walk for kids. Every year my family goes out there for uh my daughter's team, Victory for Victoria. So if you want to register for that, it's uh May 3rd um at the uh
169the Pike, the Rainbow Lagoon. Uh it's a great event. Supports the house, supports the kids. And then I do want to say I I will miss the May 8th uh meeting uh for I know I'll be out for a couple weeks, but I know I know the DAS is in good hands. Um, but yeah, that's it. Thank you. Thank you, Clerk Critzfield. I hate saying Clerk Crit. That's why I've been saying Mr. Critzfield because Clerk Critzfield just doesn't go smoothly for me. Vice President Garza. Thank you, President Stewart. Um, so I was able to meet um with uh with our staff members regarding uh bond matters and Kirk Clerk Critfield. I spoke into existence. Sorry, you did. Um we also had uh our alliance meeting with our representatives of the district, our staff, and also
170our board president. Um I also attended the legislative committee with our pre our um superintendent Isao and again clerk critfield and I was able to attend the PTA reflections awards um the star awards event as well and I had signed up for um the PTA who awards. I am so sorry I was not feeling well but a much welldeserved honor for um Carrie. Thank you so much for everything you do for our students and also the parents of those students because a lot of times we find ourselves giving them guidance as well. So it's much appreciated. Thank you. Um and then I also was able to attend um Las Flores open house and I want to make a very important um comment on this open house that I attended because I know that our committee
171for Okay, it's a mouthful. Can you remind me the the declining enrollment and facilities committee? We are looking we went to San Diego to look at some of these schools over there and had a great time. Saw a lot of great programs there. Um, one of the things that I'm hoping that we can continue as well as her Critfield and I think most of our members on that team, um, we're really looking forward to going to our own schools and seeing what programs we have ourselves that we already can make gems. They are gems. So maybe we can duplicate those things that are positively going on in our campuses right now. And Las Flores is one of them. Um when I went in there, I saw a lot of uh intent in the way that
172teachers actually were working with students and they guided them through these projects and they really looked like project-based learning um you know um at the end of this whole time that they were taught and it did marry the standards with that project based um curriculum that they had. So, don't know exactly how or what the program is, how it's really set up. Um, so I'd love to learn a little bit more about it, but I can tell you that the kids were really happy. They were presenting to us and a lot of them used many of the of the, you know, standards that they were learning. So, that's something that we can kind of maybe look at pretty soon. Um, also I wanted to I just was able to uh get this uh what's it
173called? Um, sorry, a little brain dead right now after such a long day. This um announcement to high schools, the uh Robert Garcia's Congressional Art Competition. So, high school students, if you are, you know, art inclined and would love to participate in this program, uh, their due date is April 28th at midnight. So, not a lot of time, but definitely if you are looking to do something like that, then there is an opportunity to showcase your art. Thank you so much. Have a nice evening. Thank you, Vice President Garza. Good evening. I met with our esports teacher, Mr. Palasios. We discussed the curriculum being used in his class and in the after school enrichment classes. Um, how students are using AI in the classroom and in the future. And I definitely would like to get
174some of our students to present. I've talked to Mrs. Oavo at a board meeting or in one of our committees because it's really cool to see the the students, they know so much about it to have them actually be presenters in the future. I attended our PTA reflection awards. Congratulations to all of our winners. Thank you again to PTA for everything that you do for our students. I met with CSA President Michelle Quay and Representative Do. We discussed training for our employees. We discussed special education changes that are coming up and we discussed how we contract out for specific jobs. So that was always nice to meet with them and hear their thoughts on things. I attended teacher appreciation night at Dodger Stadium. It was so historic, literally Mr. Fong. It was the worst home
175loss in Dodger history. But it was a great night to be with family and friends and uh celebrating educators. We just didn't celebrate by clapping, right? Um last Sunday I went to support our labor unions uh Luna at the Grand Prix. This was my first time at the Grand Prix. It was really awesome seeing that. Um but I did get to actually talk a lot with uh Congressman Garcia about just the state of education right now. I know Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson and Sheriff Luna were in tenants. So it was just a really nice event. And I'm thankful to Nick Santos for the invitation and just look forward to collaborating more with our labor partners in the future. I attended the Star Awards, an honor to celebrate our classified and certificated employees and teachers
176of the year, our employees of the year. Congratulations to all of you guys. You are so fabulous. You are truly the stars of our district and we appreciate you all for the work that you do for our students and families. And again, thank you to you guys for putting our staff for putting that together. That was awesome. I attended the WHO awards with our BTA partners on Wednesday. Um, congratulations again to Carrie McDaniel, our BTA president, for winning the award and representing representing B USD so well. Um, you just work really hard for our teachers and I think you were the perfect person to win this award and I can 100% relate. Being president is not the most fun thing sometimes. So, I appreciate everything that you've done and we will truly miss you. Um,
177I attended the Bravo Awards earlier today. That was an excellent event. Congrats to our own Cindy Weekes from Woodruff on her award. She was instrumental in helping found and establish our wellness rooms. And I appreciate the focus that she gives to our students and especially that social emotional need. So, we really appreciate her. We also had two of our BUSD students a win awards for their essays on how they can improve life in our city and that was really cool to see those um two get their awards. And then the ensemble, I joke with Mr. Diaz because obviously I went to both are biased but they are so amazing. Um thank you to um their teacher uh Mr. Shu. They just did such a great job with the national anthem. They're just they're so good.
178So I love seeing them um anytime we can. After that I had a great talk with and a tour of our fire museum. It's under the main center. I had never been there. I spoke with Ernie Ramirez and one thing that's really cool about that museum is all the workers there are retired firefighters. So, he and I spoke about partnering with schools to come and visit, like field trips to come visit the museum. They do um tours for students in classes, and there's a grass area like behind the museum, like by the railroad tracks where students can bring lunches and eat. Um and so, that will be a cool idea, I think, to partner and take some of our classes over there, especially our Cal App students. So, I know Miss Sasho already sent that
179over to Mrs. um Whitney over at our Cal Apps. on May 10th from 10:00 a.m. to 2 pm they are closing down Belfar and they're having a celebration to celebrate fire service day. So he said that was going to be a really cool event. There will be some special guests, some special vehicles. So if anyone wants to come out again, it's Saturday, May 10th from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. I also had a great talk with Janna from the women's club here in Bellflower. Um we talked about something that I didn't know about and it's called um pinw wheels for prevention. And I don't know if you guys know about it, but we talked about it's a little late for this year, but I told her whoever becomes president or board members next year, we
180could maybe collaborate with her. But basically, the significance of the blue pin wheels are, and you may see them around town coming up soon, is they are to recognize and to shed light on the problem in every community um with regards to child abuse. So it just when you see the pin wheels, it's kind of like the red ribbon when you talk about cancer and things like or not sorry red ribbon with the drugs or the cancer little bows. It's a new symbol. It started in about 2008. I just read an article on it. And so it just brings awareness and spreads prevention. Um so we maybe we'll be able to partner in the future for those. Uh next week I am Oh no, sorry. I received a lot of calls regarding staffing. So I
181wanted to just add that I know we're going to discuss the LCAP on May 22nd. I think it's really important to talk to your site administrators and when we do do surveys and we send them out to the community, please take them because you're you're using your voice to let us know. We are still going to talk about that when we discuss LCAP on May 22nd. So, if anybody else has anything that they would like to add, please come out and advocate and talk here and talk about the things that you would like to see. Um, another thing I do want to remind our board members just we need to really all please do a good job of getting our questions in by Tuesday. I know it's hard sometimes. We're all busy. It's in our
182governance handbook, but if we can try to get our questions in and give our staff time to answer those, that would be amazing. And then lastly, next week, I am excited to attend the CSBA Coast to Coast Conference in Washington. We are going to be discussing education policies, protocols that affect our districts and our students. We are scheduled to meet with Robert Garcia's team as well as Nanette Baragons and we have some training and we have some trips. So, I'm really excited to attend this conference with my colleagues. So, thank you so much. All right, moving on toformational items. Does anybody have any questions regarding information items? All right, hearing none. At this time, the board is going to recess back into close session. There will be no further action taken in open session. Thank
183you. Welcome back, everyone. Tonight's meeting of the board of education was called to order at 6:05 p.m. in open session. The board then adjourned to close session at I didn't write that time down. 8 um and will now reconvene the meeting into open session at 9:20 p.m. Um board member Critzfield, will you please report out close session items? The board discussed labor negotiation. No action was taken. All right. If there is no objection, the meeting is adjourned at 9:21 p.m. until the regular board meeting or the special board meeting on May 7th.