081822 Regular Board of Education Meeting

001[Music] [Applause] [Music] that was a little fancy welcome to the burbank unified school district board of education regular meeting of thursday august 18 2022 if i could please invite dawn barnes up to the podium to lead us in the flag salute oh and her special guest with her is going to help i'm sorry addie lafredo [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you for the invite please stand place your right hand over your heart ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much to both of you dr weisberg yes we acknowledge the traditional ancestral unseated territory of the chumash tongva fernandinho tatabayim and first nations on which we are learning

002educating and living thank you very much reporting on closed session it was for informational purposes only no action items were taken uh items for future agendas oh excuse me number six adjustments to the agenda president tabit mr ferguson i will move uh due to the number of cards that we have i'm just going to move that we consolidate uh public comment periods and move it up so i will move that we consolidate items 10a and 14a into one period of public comment for a period of five minutes i will move that items 10 b and 14 b can be combined into one staff response period and i'll move that items 10c and 14c be combined into one board response period and that these be placed after item number seven on the agenda second thank you

003if for some reason can i just uh do some clarification someone shows up and does want to speak at the end are we okay to let that happen okay great that would be typical under one period of public comment yep okay just wanted to say it thanks uh items for future agenda number seven do we have to vote first okay to adjust the uh agenda all in favor please say aye aye opposed agenda adjustment motion carries thank you uh items for future legends sorry president i just have one clarification of are you still going to have item 9a the la valley presentation before public comment no okay i just want to clear the motion was after item seven okay i just i'm over here can i make ariane yeah yeah okay my name's no please

004my thought with that is is that these are teachers they've had a long day in the classroom i want to be able to get them home they are clearly here spending their time with us after a long day teachers and other support staff so sorry if i didn't was inclusive with that language so all right we're going to move you down a little bit thank you okay go ahead uh for items for future agenda yes okay uh so it's been quite a week for it who are our superhero rock stars um i know that rick is gonna be putting together some sort of a report about this week and i would love uh for it to come back to the board so we can hear about ways we can support i.t moving forward um places

005for growth in ways that we can again support them um in in myriad ways married ways so that's it thank you everybody else great um number eight reports from the board after item number seven oh is that it oh okay my bad gotcha so we're going to move ahead then to uh public communications uh 10a or 14 no no no we're moving ahead with public communication so the first person with the filled out a blue card so they're all blue cards tonight which for public would normally be at the end of the meeting so what mr ferguson did was flip that so you're now at the beginning of the meeting and anyone else who would show up for clarification so don barnes is our first speaker this evening followed by addison lefreda don barnes and

006company and company thank you very much for generously making that motion we greatly appreciate it good evening to all i am don barnes faculty chair of luther burbank middle school i am here on behalf of our dedicated and hardworking community to communicate the crisis of inequities at luther burbank middle school we have prepared a group statement to respect the time of this evening and allow students and parents to communicate their concerns as well we would like to take this time to thank dr weisberg for attending two on-site meetings last week and dr hill dr promo and bta president dianna basta for attending our staff meeting on tuesday we appreciate your time to discuss our concerns luther has been awarded the california distinguished school award the gold ribbon school award the california pivotal practice school award

007the california title 1 academic award and the california exemplary arts program award we take pride in our core values of respect excellence and community which drives our instructional values and leadership goals luther has felt the support of its students parents staff and community due to the inequity of certain district policies and enrollment decline we feel that the district has not protected the educational institution of luther as a community we have continued to provide an exceptional educational program for our students as we have continued to accept loss of staff positions including teachers support staff and an assistant principal heavier workloads for our special education teachers bigger classes and now a loss of an entire art program luther has two designated feeder schools which means we can only rely on enrollment projections of these schools to plan

008for the new school year along with three choice schools and incoming permits in the last five years we have experienced a continuous decline in enrollment which our district has refused to acknowledge and address proactively our school leadership including dr macias mrs vineyard mr ludwig and mr constantine have worked tirelessly to face the issues with enrollment and staffing while cultivating a safe school environment the problem is not the fault of our school our principal our administration teachers or community it is the district responsibility to protect the schools of busd across the district the middle schools have more than 200 students over projected numbers luther did not benefit from these new students do the inequity of district enrollment policies our students are facing challenges that are out of our community hands our students are no longer receiving

009equitable resources and programs as the other middle schools due to enrollment and equities loser luther lost a female pe teacher this year our one female teacher has been given a point two to cover six periods and solely supervise 90 plus students in the locker room each period this is an unsafe environment this week a pe supervised position has been offered and flown but this is not a sustainable solution due to enrollment in equities luther was not allowed to hire a replacement for a special education teacher for a retiree this year guarantees of an intent of an itinerant to help the classes and caseloads were not fulfilled and now our special education teachers are absorbing the extra duties which affects the resources provided to our special education students due to enrollment inequities luther lost an assistant

010principal of discipline four years ago this action has affected the safety of our students our admin team counselors intervention specialists work hard to fill those gaps this was a very difficult year last year when we transitioned from distance learning to in-person and we saw a rise of discipline issues would put a strain on our staff students and administration due to enrollment in equities luther lawson art teacher this year this has eliminated an entire program a program that many students look forward to a program that for many is the one outlet during the day in particular for our bridges students a program which attracted students to luther is now gone the program included one year-long class two semester classes and two wheel art classes the repeated number of 60 students being enrolled in art is inaccurate

011because it did not include the wheel classes for the incoming sixth graders the decision was made by the district not sorry this decision was made by the district but not communicated to the luther community which is what we asked repeatedly to be done the lack of ownership has created a mistrust within the community the loss of the program was not the decision made by our school but now our school community must endure the consequences the recent offer of 2.2 positions to provide some art instruction by non-art credential teachers is not equitable or sustainable nor is it providing thank you nor is it providing access to art classes for all students who wish to participate due to scheduling issues now having luther teachers teach extra classes regardless of extra pairing is not providing an equitable or

012sustainable solution our students will now again have to go through a scheduling problem when we met with dr hill on tuesday he assured us that luther would not lose another program but why did we lose the program at all we should never have lost a program at our school this is a reactive approach which is irresponsible of the district to have allowed this inequity to have occurred at luther or any school in the burbank unified school district we want a plan of action not just one that will get us through the year a plan which will provide action to eliminate these inequities we need a one-year plan three-year plan five-year plan in order to be proactive and support the educational excellence of luther burbank middle school we look forward to creating a working partnership with

013the district and our community and developing a plan to promote growth at luther it will take time to rebuild the trust and confidence in dr hill the board of education and the district leadership but we hope that it will be restored through dedication and partnership partnership we recognize that the inequities will not be solved quickly we challenge the district to look at the feeder schools and the current permit practices to find possible solutions luther did not get to this place overnight and it might take time to remedy the inequities but it is time for the district to address the issues facing luther's community it is time to protect the values of our luther community support the students of today and the future luther community has done their part dr macias and our administrative team have

014done their part it's time for the district to do their part thank you very much for your time and letting us speak tonight we appreciate it next speaker and thank you very much for tonight our next speaker is addison lafredo followed by shannon lefreda [Applause] hello my name is addison lofredo and i'm a seventh grader at luther burbank middle school i found out today that there will be one art class coming back to school that i could get into but i don't want my schedule to be changed for the fourth time plus it's not with miss rubio or an actual art teacher these are my feelings about the issue and what stress you have caused me when kovic shut everything down and i couldn't play on any of my sports teams i turned to art

015i would do online tutorials and teach myself last year i was lucky enough to get art as an elective i loved the class amis ravio she taught us so many different concepts she was a great teacher i loved her class so much that i chose art for my seventh grade semester elective i was upset back in may when i was told that art was being taken away from luther my mom sent some emails and we heard back it was actually coming back i was happy all summer knowing that i would get to be an art i picked up my seventh grade schedule on august 3rd and there was art even better it was with miss rubio again just a few days before school started my mom told me that art was taken away again now

016i was scrambling trying to find another elective to replace art on my second day on my second and third choices were already full at this point so i was forced to choose something i didn't really want my schedule changed again for the third time on the second day of school i had to i had i had to go to two different classes with two different teachers on tuesday this is all because you took art away from us at luther how is it fair that my friends at hortha and muir still have art it makes us feel like you don't treat all your students in this district fairly and some schools are better than others in your eyes thank you [Applause] uh next is shannon lefredo followed by linda gregorius thank you apologize for that hello

017now from a parent's perspective my name is shannon lafredo and i'm addison's mom yes i received the email today and heard that art is coming back to luther i wouldn't say it's truly coming back it's one class for sixth graders a combo class for seventh and eighth graders neither being taught by an actual art teacher some people might call it baby steps i call it a band-aid just a quick fix to cover up a much larger district issue i wrote this prior to receiving the news today but a lot of it still pertains and i want my voice to be heard shame on me for not paying more attention at the district and board level prior to coven but since then i've quickly learned how reactive this district is and not proactive this art situation

018at luther is a perfect example of this i'm not asking for the elaborate art elective opportunities we were given years ago like metal shop woodshop pottery wheel or calligraphy we're talking about art beginning art art and advanced start we have been told the reason for taking art away is due to enrollment numbers miss tabit you stated on twitter a few days ago that only 12 students requested art the elective wheel alone period in three and four generate two classes then you have periods five and six in talking to employees at luther there was an average of 20 students in each class periods 3 through 6 and 15 in advanced art the irony of this is mind-blowing on multiple levels luther was recently recognized by the state of california as one of the 2021 exemplary art

019education schools forget that as of now they won't even qualify for this anymore what's more ironic is dr hill's welcome back email from last week his district-wide goals were attached completely contradict what has happened to luther item 1.7 states quote maintain access to visual and performing arts education and implement the busd arts for all plan end quote well forget maintaining it it doesn't even exist there is not arts for all there's arts for mere and huerta only i'm quite perplexed on how the district can actually get away with removing art from luther the california arts standard for public schools which is adopted by the california state board of education on january 19 2019 states quote art education boosts school attendance academic achievement college attendance rates improve school climate and promotes higher self esteem and social

020emotional development every child should have equitable access to high quality standard based art education and thrive to thrive and participate in modern society end quote more specifically the california education code quote requires courses in this of study in the arts to be offered to all california students end quote that can be found in education code 551-220 for you to reference maybe now that you have accomplished all you wanted to over the summer with the renewal of contracts that weren't even up yet including raises you can now work on getting art back at luther and i'm talking about the art program they used to have thank you thank you thank you shannon uh linda grigorchek better the second time thank you followed by jackson burroughs good evening president tabit and fellow board members my name is

021linda grigorchek i have been a teacher in busd for over 30 years and i'm also a parent i'm sorry it's very very emotional for me i'm a sixth grader luther burbank middle school he was very very excited about attending luther and having an art class his fifth grade teacher mr kalkhoff sparked an art interest in him over covid it really kept him grounded once he started to be inspired with art it was very difficult for him i was teaching full-time very very many hours in one room he was doing his classes in the sorry take your time last year again he had mr kalkhoff for fifth grade who also inspired him again with art he became a different student at school i am extremely concerned about the inequity amongst the middle schools in burbank i

022question the priorities of a school board that approves an exorbitant raise for an administration such that that one of our district employees is earning more than the governor of california and yet cut the art teacher at luther burbank middle school it seems that if you are committed to busd remaining a reputable and sought after district you would find a way to divide the school populations such that they all remain equitable and excellent we have already lost principles to other districts for at least this summer alone and we do not want to lose dr macias but i fear that is a real risk if he cannot maintain the high standards because he is not being supported by the board of school district it is my hope that you will find a way to correct this mistake

023and bring back an art teacher to luther thank you thank you mrs gregor uh next is jackson burroughs followed by aram markelian hello my name is jackson burroughs and i'm a sixth grader at luther burbank middle school i'm part of the gate program and i'm a dancer i was zoned for dolores where to middle school but i chose to transfer to luther for the excellent programs it offers the recommendations of older friends of mine who have recently graduated and because many of my friends have chosen to come here first i wanted to thank dr hill and dr baramo paramo for finding a temporary solution to save luther's visual arts some of my fellow sixth grade students wanted to come here because of the promise art program and i know they're happy to be able to

024follow their passion another class that was taken away is the pe dance option for 8th graders this like visual arts was also cancelled because of lower enrollment as a person who loves to dance i know that the physical requirements for high level dancing i train and dance multiple times a week physical conditioning stretching flexibility and endurance training all of these things are necessary at a high level of dancing i was excited to know the option of possibly getting to do this in eighth grade i was excited for my fellow students to have the opportunity to learn this form of physical exercise dancing is also art and the arts can be so beneficial to our health and mental state after the lockdown from kovid there's a lot being said about the mental pressures placed upon learners

025art can help us cope when words might fail us this past summer i used dancing to help get through my grand my grandpa dying i was depressed and full of these emotions i had not yet to endure in my life i use dance to go up with what happened i choreographed a dance piece about the events and emotions i was experiencing i was experiencing at the time this is why we both need the pe dance option and the arts program art whether art weather visual or physical are outlets to cope to try ideas to be inspired and express ourselves for some of us it is our voice in fact this year's pta reflections theme is show your voice choreography dance is one of the categories in this art contest i'm proud of the city we

026live in we're in burbank and burbank has so much art we have things like disney studios nickelodeon warner brothers and hasbro we are near many other studios and creative companies that rely on the creative talents of people art is not just inspiring it can be a future career for some burbank should be leading the way with cooperation from these companies we need to offer options that make kids and their parents want to keep their kids enrolled in burbank schools if you want to stop the lower enrollment at luther you you need to show why the school is as good as the choice as any of the others we need to ensure that art is never thought of as an extra which we can cut we need to showcase burbank's talent and make others who work

027here want to send their kids to school here as well that will stop the lower enrollment problem that will increase school funding give us more options not less help us to create help us to inspire help us to dance thank you for your time thank you mr burroughs job well done uh mr aram arakelian is our next speaker followed by rosemary morrison hello everyone thank you for the opportunity to speak today i'm going to shift a little bit gears i hope everybody here gets their art program but i'm going to go i'm going to go a little bit in a different direction recently my child was enrolled in jefferson elementary school and i ran through the policy package you guys had and then also a couple days she's already been going and so i have

028a few concerns i wanted to discuss so um and then kind of i want to start this off with like a foundation and the information that i want to give or i want to express is about the concept that is the meaning of the word truth truth is an absolute standard by which all reality exists and may be measured truth lives outside of me and you meaning if something is true it doesn't matter if you agree with it doesn't matter if you like it it doesn't matter what you feel about it no matter how strongly you feel that you can fly like superman the truth is you'll never will on earth without external help truth remains to be true and we have to accept and adapt to the truth so if you think you can

029fly it's best that you not jump off a building because you will not be disappointed with the results truth is not subjective personal for each individual but applies to everyone and everything our best method for recognizing truth is the word of god but many people today prefer the scientific method for determining truth where we test an idea over and over until it is so constantly reproduced with the same results and we can't find any reason to suggest otherwise that we say it is true it is a good method not perfect but it has allowed us to increase our understanding of the world the world and to advance our goals the reason i am providing this lecture on truth is because it seems to me that this board under the influences of corrupt government agencies has

030thrown out truth and accepted propaganda and lies in the place of truth specifically on two topics first on the topic of transgender theory i call it a theory because it has not been proven to be true in fact all scientific truth that has been discovered show that there is only male and female which is determined at the moment of conception with new dna strand and has been formed during fertilization the fact that every person is a male or female excuse me but this has nothing to do with the school district it's any item that has to do with the board of education that's curriculum i i don't mean to interrupt you thank you the fact that a person is male or female is coated within every cell of everyone's body every cell in your being

031operates on the information in your dna i'm surprised that i even have to explain this given the policy that you guys currently have where you will allow anyone into any bathroom which is a high risk for females especially there's been already a few cases across the country where males have stated that they are female whether they feel it or not doesn't matter the truth the fact is that they are biologically male and they have or across the country in some cases molested women in the bathroom in our schools we're talking underage kids teenagers and up to a few years ago transgender was rightly cons i'm sorry transgender theory was considered a mental disorder called gender dysphoria and you have allowed people that are in need of mental health that need counseling that need help that

032need guidance to influence the school policies instead of giving them the treatment that they need therefore i demand that all policies of the burbank unified school district be returned to be grounded in truth and not promote accommodate nor even consider in any way the transgender ideology that has been propagated in the school system through teaching and bathroom policy second i'm deeply concerned about the district's response to the covet virus again you have abandoned truth and unfortunately becomes servants to tyrants within our government instead of looking at the facts such as recovery rates for children you have treated them as if they are seniors in their 70s with multiple health problems that are truly at risk with this disease instead of promoting methods that work in prevention such as exercise healthy diet and supplement you're covering

033our children's faces and depriving them of the much needed oxygen forcing them to breathe toxic levels of carbon dioxide and turn their masks into petri dishes for fungus and bacteria growth the masks do nothing for preventing an infection especially when it is covered not an airborne virus but can only be contracted to contact it can only survive on surfaces away from sunlight away from oxygen away from sanitizer so instead of putting masks on my kid for 10 days just because someone would covet positive walked into her room you could just desanitize the room it'll take 5-10 minutes and they don't have to wear a mask anymore it therefore i demand again that this board returned to truth and remove all masked protocols for the school and until such story kellyanne um i'm wrapping it up

034i have like 30 seconds left and until such time that you return to this truth i am highly considering removing my child out of your school system because i will be able to provide them with a safer environment at home within a homeschooling program and then you'll have boards of a problem about the declining enrollment that is causing funding problems i'm sure thank you for your time thank you mr arakalian our next speaker is rosemary morrison and that is the last blue card i have oh um good evening board dr harold everyone i feel like i get i always get lucky um first let me address what i originally came up for which is walt disney elementary school um one we'll miss you um as you know uh miss wong is leaving miss cut cut

035kassari is also leaving and our school is not finished there are a couple of things as i've been driving by and as i was on campus not as an employee but as a parent which i'm still one day i'll come back anyway we have a play structure that is not completed um i have asked why it's something about back orders of things and that needs to get rectified no matter what color those stupid shades are it is a hundred degrees out there on that asphalt and it is the desert i walked through it yesterday and today just to put book fair together and it is ridiculous we really need to put the structures up as soon as possible second that grass field it's huge it's amazing but why is it getting brown still um i

036think we should definitely look into that i know i see the sprinklers but we do not want the dead grass already so if somebody could look into that and second or third i don't know what number i'm on because you guys know i'm thinking about other things that i have to respond to now um the shade situation as always i have come up here and talked about that we were promised shade structures we were promised trees i don't know what i do know is we don't want baby trees and planters if we're going to get planters of trees which i understand for the asphalt looking at my time that we need to put them in big concrete planters we want full-grown trees there is money left over in that budget if not i'm sure miss

037cutco would tell me but there is money for shade these children should not have no shade on that horribly hot asphalt okay i think i covered everything for disney i do want to mention the luther students that spoke and the parents i'm going to tell you music and art are everything and i applaud the students who came up to speak because i'm nervous and i didn't even prepare anything so you guys did amazing and i'm glad you had something but as we know music and art actually improves test scores we need to definitely encourage students if we have low enrollment instead of pulling a teacher which my daughter just graduated for dolores so i know it's an amazing school but you you encourage them you say hey why don't you join you bring them into

038the fold not discontinue it so my prayer is that you get the program fully and the dance back in eighth grade now i did mention prayer because as a christian i do believe in the truth of my bible my god in my jesus i do not look at your pamphlet i'm sorry your uh our students handbook as the truth of my christianity what i see my handbook as the truth of our children and our students and who we represent which is why i am grateful that we see all of our students as who they are the truth to them and while there are many people in this district that may not want to see our students whether in elementary middle or high school been practicing my teeth breaths can you tell i strongly encourage us

039to continue to support them in every way we can yes we will always have people who are up to no good but the idea that we use one incident somewhere some place somewhere else to discontinue a process that will include everyone is ridiculous so i would like to stand by our student handbook and the policy that we put mask on our children if there's a positive my third grader cannot catch it because he might be immune compromised and he has asthma so if his class gets positive please do not remove that because a cdc full of scientists tell us that it's true thank you so much um i miss you guys already i will tell you i will say that with my last 17 seconds that i want to come back one day to a

040district that is filled with good people i know we have a lot of people leaving our principal is one miss cut cut and a lot of other people um so i hope we get it you know get together thank you and mrs zabasta last card good evening president tabit members of the board superintendent hill members of the district and the community my name is dianna avasta and i'm a teacher at burbank high school and i'm also the proud president of the burbank teachers association first days no internet across sites large classes for many no ac for some short on staff and elimination or cuts and programs welcome to our world nevertheless our bta members show up ready and prepared to not only educate but to inspire our young people i'm proud to be a public

041school teacher where we educate all children regardless of background ethnicity gender religion sexual identity presentation and i'm glad i live in a state where there is separation of church and state a board of education fulfills a role by performing five major responsibilities number one setting direction number two establishing an effective and efficient structure number three providing support number four ensuring accountability number five providing community leadership as advocates for children the school district and public schools these five responsibilities represent core functions that are so fundamental to how you as a governance team with the superintendent make decisions that best serve the students in busd establishing an effective and efficient structure requires oversight this is not something that is handed off to a superintendent and staff without adequate follow through on your part as good stewards as

042you are aware we have lost a large number of staff across all graded levels what is the plan to work on retention compensation and staff morale has this been a part of a plan to ensure accountability we have also lost some programs pe in the elementary schools and the ramifications are still here today we don't have adequate planning time teachers were moved from elementary to to middle school to high school art we have to look at our schools all of our schools are choice i i find that term to be like it's a school of choice all of our schools are choice you're going to have to look at the boundaries and we're going to have to address that issue that we that has fed into this and this has been going on for for

043years providing community support requires building and increasing capacity in order to develop and nurture strong partnerships with all our parents is the significance of a busd public education apparent to all this has to be a partnership based on trust currently there is not the willingness or trust needed to go forward to work together to find solutions what is the plan or direction to address safety discipline issues in our school and especially what you've heard tonight regarding programs at luther i know elections take place in november but i'm urging you to work together starting today forward to address the issues that you have heard tonight being a school board member requires knowledge of what is needed to run a district this is not an entry level position there must always be attention to detail and oversight

044and so as always as i come to this my frustration is how many times have i come here and asked to be a part of a solution i've written many emails to this body and i've probably heard from two i think emily and steve and and dr hill and the assistant superintendents all i've not heard from the rest of you you are in the position as our school board president to show the leadership that is needed thank you thank you [Applause] all right that was our final speaker so we will now move to staff responses thank you president tabit and thank you to all the speakers tonight and thank you for everyone else that showed up as well since these are not agenda topics i'm going to keep my comments brief but i want to

045make sure we continue the conversation offline in a different setting and but first for mr r kellyanne i respect your first amendment right i strongly disagree with everything you had to say tonight and i'm gonna express my my first amendment right as well i will not go into great details i just want our lgbtq families employees students especially our transgender students to know that we love them we respect them we welcome them we will do everything to make sure every single day they can be their full selves on our campus it's i can only imagine what it's like to hear the words you just said for them and i want them to all know that all of us here at busd support them and second we will continue follow science in the health department follow

046coveted protocols i completely understand that you have a choice as a parent where you want to send your children but i just want to be very clear where i stand on both of those topics miss morrison i wish you all the best in your adventures and we do welcome you back when you're ready i know you have a path that you're you're following and it hopefully leads back here at busd uh i'll follow up with miss cuck mr cross on the concerns you have about disney and we will walk offline if that's okay so the shade structures are going in this saturday and and the maintenance is being handled by marina landscape they're aware of the brown spots it does take a while for the roots to establish but it's under contract they have 90

047days to monitor and they own it so if something were to happen to the grass that they are responsible so they would remedy it as the trees i'll work with mr cross to make sure that we put in mature trees so that's it thank you miss cochta for jackson and addison thank you so much for coming tonight you have such strong and powerful voices just your passion your leadership your intellect was so evident tonight i want to continue having the conversation i had an opportunity with dr paramo and mrs abasta to have a start of one meeting with the staff at luther we want to have more meetings we're going to we schedule them monthly if there's opportunities for you to attend those meetings or have separate meetings with families and students you have great

048ideas you have great vision we want to be able to incorporate that for both of you the staff have heard this to me and i said i'd make a commitment tonight we have hit a place where luther we have to stabilize uh the decline enrollment we've we've had ideas in the past we've had different things we've tried it's clear it hasn't worked and i i hear you loud and clear tonight i heard it this week the trust is broken and we have to regain that the only way to regain that is not words tonight on this podium or a microphone i'm not going to try to do that i know it has to be the actions that we take when we keep meeting monthly and come together with that plan so i just want to

049reiterate what we said is that we are going to work together monthly in partnership we're going to look at all the options that we put on the table we'll analyze that we will agendize it so we can have a dialogue with the full board in the community and we'll make sure that happens before the end of this semester so we we had a commitment tuesday i just want to make sure the committee the community knows that we've made that commitment and we will work together on enrollment as well as arts and programs and the other concerns that you highlighted i just want to highlight one thing and there'll be more details coming out that jackson brought up pe dance we for middle schools we had a robust discussion back in 2017 about options for that

050at that time we looked at those options about having a specific pe dance class for eighth graders the decision was made that we would not do that we were going to invest in professional development for our current pe teacher so they can do a dance segment and so that's when some of the emails people are questioning is that's the miscommunication is pe is offered only at our highest level of our choirs at the high school level not the middle school level and so we will continue to have dialogue on that but right now we cannot offer that pe dance class at eighth grade and i know that that that's not an answer that everybody wants to hear it's just not something we have approved at a district and a board level but i do thank

051all the speakers tonight and again my commitment to continue to work with all you is sincere and we will we will get it done thank you moving on then to board members responses mr frittner thank you [Music] thank you to everyone for coming out tonight i'm glad we had the motion to move this forward because we do appreciate the long day you've already had to put in and we've got students here as well so i think it was the right motion to make so thank you mr arkelian you came up here and gave us a long definition of truth and then you can proceeded to spill anything but truth you started with saying truth should be based on the word of god well which god because there's a lot of them that are worshipped and

052they don't always agree on on things so that's a fault right there you tore into uh the lgbtq community most specifically transgender individuals and i've lost my temper before on this subject so i'm trying not to do it again we will never roll back any support any protections that we have put in for lgbtq students not if i have anything to say about it they need to be supported they need to be protected and we are we are going to continue to do that and if that means we lose you and and some other parents from the district then that's we're gonna have to face but we're this is gonna be a district that welcomes everyone and tries to do everything we can to support everyone and that's been a challenge over time and we

053keep working to try and make it better but we're not going backwards and as far as the covered recommendations again yes we follow science you seem to think everything in the government is some sort of cabal i'm sorry i follow i i believe in the science and that's what i'm i'm hoping our district will continue to follow uh miss morrison uh thank you uh uh the um uh one school i did get a chance to visit this week the first day of school was disney um and while it looks great yes there is a lot left there are punchless items that they we knew weren't going to be completed but we wanted to make sure the classrooms were going to be ready to be inhabitable you know come the first day of school thank you

054miss cochta for the updates on the um on the shade structure for the for the play equipment uh i noticed as you did that some of the grass was uh brown already which it's odd or like but yeah we are going to be following up the trees are going to be a challenge um yes we want to make sure that the brand new asphalt we put in isn't going to be broken up by roots as we've seen consistently but there are ideas about you know using planters and there are some varieties of trees that still can be full size and still sit in those there was someone this week we actually even asked and i was going to bring this up to mr cross if we can put those on rollers that they might be

055able to move them around i don't know if that's practical or a safety issue but that's something we we might also consider um so and and we miss you also and then yes and and we hope you're back with us sometime soon uh the rest of our speakers um ms ambassador you've touched on a lot of subjects but we're mainly supporting i think the rest of our uh speakers who are here to speak about luther um addison and jackson thank you uh students uh it's i i know it's always a challenge coming up to speak in public for adults it is and you both did great and it's great to hear very uh specifically from students about how this affects them you know and how they're feeling uh jackson talked very specifically about the mental

056health issues and we know this has been a challenge so thank you for highlighting that while you were speaking um uh mrs lafredo in your remarks mentioned uh that the point twos we've been able to add is a band-aid i i agree actually i it is something we can do now at least and there were several people who had mentioned that we've been reactive and not proactive and um and i think we have to say maybe maybe that's the case and maybe we need to be better at that and not maybe we need to be better at that the the enrollment issues we've we've seen coming from years the superintendent mentioned there's been some ideas that none of them taken hold yet we will have to be more proactive in trying to solve that i

057agree with you ms ambassador this isn't i'm not you mentioned the elections coming i'm not planning on coasting hey i made the announcement last week that doesn't mean i take the next three months off three and a half months off there's work to still be done and if you're sitting up here on the dice it's your responsibility to to still do it so i agree with you and i and i agree we need to continue to look for partnerships to work together to rebuild trust and i plan on doing that i'm sorry if we haven't connected as much and you're right i haven't always responded you don't email me as much but i probably haven't been as responsive either so i will work to improve that um to the luther staff i know a lot

058of you because there's probably not a school i iden as board members we're supposed to represent every school and we try to but uh we all identify so some of my fellow board members grew up in burbank and attended schools here there's probably not a school in burbank that i identify with more than luther both my children attended there i i was pta president there for two years i was heavily involved during all the six years my students were there [Music] i agree with you that luther is every bit the school that our other middle schools are i think the staff there has been fantastic over the years both those of you i know and those of you who have come since my children left which has been a number of years we've got great

059programs there we've got and i i won't uh i will make it part of my duty to make sure that we are moving forward on this because luther is just as important to our district as the other middle schools and all the rest of the schools and i and i want to see uh i want to see it succeed and not keep fading away and i don't by the way i don't think it's been fading away the the enrollment level's been fading away the school hasn't been fading away you guys been doing fantastic uh so i'm glad we've had the you know there's initial discussions that have been happening i i really want to uh to make sure that continues because we do need to support the school and make sure that it is it

060continues to be the gem that it always has been thank you thank you mr frittner dr agakanyan thank you madam president um i want to start by thanking addison and jackson um you know as we speak right now our son is practicing piano music is something that runs in our house i play instruments i know i'm known to be the famous dj but i grew up around music i danced it's mandatory where i come from in my education system i know the value of art and if you're on my house and you hear drone bagpipes which dogs and really don't like that's me i play ancient instruments i collect them i even do presentation called the silk road which shows how we are connected to music um i hear you and i do also agree

061with my colleague all of our schools are important but i also want to assure you that i'm here and we're going to figure this out and if you need to get a hold of me you can call me and then speaking of our house and our son practicing piano as we speak i do have a sign in front of my front lawn that says hate has no place at this home [Applause] i have been a victim many many times of discrimination even when i ran as a candidate i was discriminated heavily my house got egged three times when i was a candidate but also i'm someone who left my country very early spent time in refugee camps six months alone in one being locked up i know what it means to be discriminated against and

062i've made it my lifelong commitment to make sure this will never happen to anyone again so you have the right to talk about the truth but the truth of the matter is that we live in a very diverse community and everyone is welcome here so if you don't have one of the signs you can get them from the human coalition right here put it in your front lawn i've had it up there for almost eight years now and all my neighbors know that hate has no place in my home to miss morrison good to see you so i do want to share with you that uh my colleague and i have founded the the district environmental action committee we just had our first meeting and part of the conversation is about how we can uh

063miss weisberg by the way dr weisberg sorry um so we have been talking about green spaces you know and how we can really improve some of these concerns you have and i'm looking forward for the committee to start really you know talk about how we can create these shades whether it's through trees or some creative ways but also to get try to get rid of some of that black you know you know there was a great study just came out that shows how how much warmer our cities are getting just because of everything you just talked about it's a big big concern this committee is there we're talking about not only recycling we're talking about community gardens school gardens how we can also create you know environments that i call it at our schools that

064provide natural shade and really to get creative so if anyone is interested you know you can be part of this committee that's already um you know is being enthusiastically supported not only but our parents but also by the district and and by my colleague and myself and my co and all the board here so i hope we can come out also with some creative solutions and last but not least also you know when we talk about art and music also you know i also want us to start really get creative in terms of how we can generate additional funding talking to our studios i know you talked about disney and warner brothers and everyone being here well i think we need to start also looking the opportunities and showcase all the wonderful things we're doing

065i don't think we're getting as much of a fair share to support our programs from some of these businesses as much as we should be and i think there is an opportunity to talk more about this but i think uh you know that's something that again we can talk more about we do have the you know our non-profits out there but at the same time i want to make sure that you understand that you know for me when it comes to music it's also very personal you know music was my ticket out when i was dealing with depression when i was sitting alone by myself not knowing where i'm gonna end up the next day music was my solution when i didn't know if i was gonna be alive in the morning as bombs were

066raining on us at night my grandmother's humming and singing traditional armenian songs was my suiting when i was scared to death because when you ever never experience being bombed but you don't know if you're going to wake up the next morning alive so it's been in my family it runs in my blood and i'm going to make sure that we continue these programs and i want to thank all of our teachers and you know parents and addison and jackson for being here tonight i hear you loud and clear thank you very much thank you dr weisberg thank you so much uh thank you to everybody and work a little bit backwards here if you see me typing during meetings i'm taking notes i'm not doing other things so please don't think that i am um

067hold on please mr uh arikalian am i pronouncing that correctly um you said something in the very beginning that i thought was really important you talked about how truth is truth whether you believe it or not i think in the last five or six years we've learned that truth is supremely subjective uh i feel like most of the time we live in a pro a post-truth world where people get to decide what science they believe and decide what research they believe if you're interested i'd love to send you an article written by the harvard university their graduate school of arts and sciences and they write really powerfully about the science behind transgender identity now you don't have to believe it personally that doesn't make it untrue so our job as board members our doc as

068members of this school district is to lift up support elevate and make sure all of our students see themselves in what we teach that they are honored for who they are every day in the classroom and when that's not happening we adjust the way that we teach in the way that we engage with our students and faculty to make sure that they are and that means different religions that means different ethnicities that means different gender expressions and gender identity all of which are true you don't have to like it but you do have to respect it and if you don't as my colleague mr frittner said maybe it is not the best place for you now i would imagine that your children who are fantastic i'm sure would learn an enormous amount being in such

069a diverse exciting creative environment as burbank unified and i hope that they'll stay and i hope that they'll meet lots of different people and learn lots and have their minds expanded in lots of really important ways but i did want to reiterate because we do have students who watch and students who are here that our unwavering commitment to every single student in busd and our teachers and our families is concrete and unwavering and the work that we do to make sure they feel seen and supported will continue in perpetuity additionally our commitment to science to research to the cdc and to the la county health department remains unwavering it sounds like there might be again i'm happy to send you some links about the airborne transmission of kovid but our job is to keep all

070of our students staff teachers everybody as safe as possible mentally emotionally and physically and that commitment i think i speak for all of us when i say uh will not cease to all my notes um it was really fantastic to spend some time with everybody at luther thank you for not throwing things at me it was very nice of you and for sharing your donuts um i want to talk a little bit about uh something that mr frittner brought up which is about being proactive and not reactive um obviously the issue with enrollment didn't start this year didn't start last year not exactly sure when it started and we know that kovid did contribute to that but what i'm trying to think about and in conversations with you and in conversations with dr hill and

071dr piramo who have graciously given me a bunch of time this week is what could we have done differently and what can we do differently and so for for me the areas that we need to be focusing on are feeder schools and which schools are choice schools so when we talk about our larger elementary schools right when we talk about washington and edison where are they feeding into and also talking about inter-district permits right and and whether or not we say okay well we're going to look at this school in this school these school have the lowest enrollment let's make sure that we get those students there so i think that it the onus is on us to make sure that we are finding solutions and you're not scrambling to make up for losing staff

072and trying to sort of cover all of the bases all at once so so for me i'm really trying to think about as a district as the board what can we do concretely to address this and i feel like those are two things in talking with dr paramo and talking with dr hill that we can do that we can look at so that proactively we can see these schools are struggling with some enrollment what can we put into place right now over the summer this year so that next year enrollment looks different so i mean i i will make that commitment to you again concrete solutions that we do early on so that we we can address these problems is it always is going to fix everything i don't know i don't know yet but

073i definitely think it can make a difference and i and i take full responsibility uh i don't want to speak for anybody else for not being more proactive so i want to i want to say that those are two things that i'm going to be looking into and obviously defer to the experts in the room about how we do that and the best ways to do that i also hear the concern about the art classes and not being taught by art teachers um i think everybody acknowledged especially in in the um in white in your comments that you read this may take a little bit of time to fix but what it sounds like more than anything you need to hear well there's not more than anything but one of the things is that we're

074making a solid commitment to you that we are going to address this i think the good news is it's addressable we just need to we need to figure it out so i hope that you will hold us accountable i know i will always when i'm not what you know i've been happy that i haven't been i'm not back at school yet so i was able to hang out a bunch last week but i'll take a day off we'll do it any let us know we will we will show up we will talk with you you know how to get in touch with us i respond to every email that i get it may take me a few days but i do so hold us accountable let us know if the things that we're trying are

075succeeding or not but but these aren't just words as dr hill said i mean we i'm committed to these actions so i wanted to say that to all of you um i want to talk a little bit about how cool jackson's hair is just for like a quick second i'm done now but that's it it's cool it's so cool um to jackson and addison so you guys coming up here and advocating like you did is unbelievably powerful even if we can't fix everything right away i want you to know that your advocacy still worked and you should keep showing up oftentimes when you really really want something changed it might not happen that first time come back write us an email call us up come back again mr ferguson and i are working on our

076student advisory council that we're going to be rolling out in a couple of months and we hope you'll be involved in that so we can hear from students directly about the things that we should be focused on so i don't if if things aren't fixed right away i don't want you to think nobody listened to us we're just kids we heard you we are hearing you and we are working on it but come back and tell us something else that's going on let us know if you like the direction it's going in but know that you were heard really really important just sometimes takes longer than we all want it to take um oh about dance and pe so um huge thanks to dr piramo today um i sat down and i said please explain

077all the things to me and one of the things that he helped me understand and some of the responses to the to the emails i got today i wrote about this but one of the things that i didn't know about is this federal program monitoring process which is i it's exciting as it sounds guys so get pumped i'm going to go really i'll go fast but they sort of surprise audit school districts and we don't know which classes they're auditing which programs that they just show because that's why auditing is successful right they show up and so two years ago so i wrote dr bromo two years ago they audited our pe classes and what came out of that auditing process is the sort of dance as pe is only is it yeah high school

078so the high school dance choirs so we don't have the freedom as dr hill said we can't do it in middle school like we're literally not allowed now i think that's something we could have done a better job of explaining and i as i said to some of you i don't think we're i don't know where that that miscommunication happened i can't speak to that i know that's not a satisfying response i don't know but what i do know is that there is a reason but we should have done a better job of explaining it um and i'm thankful to dr promo for walking me through that because i i certainly didn't understand that so that's an important piece sometimes we can't do the things we want to do even if we want to do

079them and i imagine jackson and addison and you can correct me if i'm wrong that it feels even more like heavy on top of art so it's like first the art and then pe and your schedule's changed a bunch so it's a good lesson for me again in communication and making sure like it was important for me to sit down with dr paramo today and say can you help me understand this so i appreciate all of you pushing me to ask more questions sometimes i don't know the right questions to ask so that was helpful for me to know um and i wanted to share that with you just because i thought it was useful dr hill sorry yeah please go out a protocol but i just want to just clarify that we would need

080board approval to be able to do it so it you so you can do eighth grade dance we did it before you were on the board we did a study session with the the board at the time about do we have pe do we have teacher residence do well i thought it was so in order you just can't do it without us having a formal process and being very clear about the curriculum and getting approved by the board so i just wanted to and am i right am i right then when it came in front of us last board meeting it just said pe right so there's two parts there's you can do committee on assignment to allow a teacher to teach one section of something but offering a dance class in eighth grade for

081pe credit is a different approval so it's two approval process right so my so so a lot of people wrote oh but the board approved it and i want to be clear that what we saw in the approval it said physical education it didn't say physical education with the dance emphasis and then we turned around so that's important so again it seemed like i wasn't clear helpful information um so but it sounds like it's a conversation that we can continue to have which is better than i thought it was 30 seconds ago um so yeah so i think um uh so i think that that's it i did wanna just very quickly uh i swear the last thing is just a huge thank you this week to everybody i did want to give a special

082shout out to our it team who dealt with an unbelievably insane first week of school um they were there till 2 30 three in the morning came back came back at six in the morning to make sure that they could attack these issues to our teachers to our i think some of us here got to go serve lunch in a couple of different places this week a huge shout out to our food service staff the need was absolutely there and now i cut pizza like a boss um yeah i mean just just consistently amazed by the commitment i mean the fact that everybody here showed up um you gave your time up on a thursday night as a middle school teacher i understand how tired you are so but to me what this shows me

083more than anything is the d how deep the love for luther goes how deep the love for this district goes we're very lucky to have that and i don't want to take advantage of it so thank you to everybody for being here thank you uh thank you president tabit where to begin the kids okay first thing um addison hi there um leadership is hard and um i think a big part of leadership that i've learned is being accountable right so you came and you told me along with everybody else here um how much i've impacted you how much i've let you down i'm sorry i'm sorry it's a stressful world and pile it on top is not it wasn't my intention but i probably should have asked more questions um so i own that um

084i think are you good okay um i'm sorry it impacted your experience um it sounds like the district is paying attention now um because you have backup um but so are we i don't want these conversations to disappear to untelevised rooms where promises can be made and not kept i see the deficit and trust here i see it with our cafeteria workers we weren't serving lunches last year because we had enough people maybe we didn't actually we're the year prior to that our custodial teams have said the same thing and i've been to lutheran it's beautiful campus and you guys are doing amazing things there because i saw the energy the first day with the kiddos but that grass is long and there are cobwebs not for a lack of love on the part of

085the team that's working so hard because let me just tell you as i went to go see the cafeteria workers i ran into one of our custodians there and he was busting his tail to try and get things moved so it's not for a lack of effort this community needs to see the impacts um and it's our job to tell that story as leaders as that bridge between the institution and our community we've tried with parcel taxes we've tried with a number of things but more than anything we should be trying with proactive thinking with thinking outside the box to this community i will say years ago three-ish years ago i was trying to establish an additional pathway at luther and worked very hard it was not the right time potentially for that pathway to

086be developed and i understand that but i was doing something to try and bring additional enrollment to a school that i saw had a ton to offer and wasn't wasn't connecting with the community in that way i tried and i'm committed to still thinking outside the box so that we can do this i think that changing district boundaries those are all good conversations i think those are right but this is only happening to one school right now and why why well so do i and i'll be asking a lot of questions um because i've already let one kid down jackson you did so great i mean i am i was so impressed by both students you know our mission on full display right like you go run the parcel tax campaign let people say no

087[Laughter] um and more than anything what i heard from a lot of your story and and again if there's a pathway to bring dance back let's do it you know and and the other thing is is that we've been doing education one way for quite a long time but it's pretty clear since the pandemic that choose your own adventure is kind of the best way um for for engagement purposes you name it and so maybe not all schools can offer dance maybe we don't have the resources for that but maybe we can talk about transportation to get the kids with dance over to those schools so that they can maybe we can start developing a model that's a little outside the box so we can figure it out and i get told no all the

088time but when i get told yes that's a win and we can deliver for kids like you i'm really happy that the arts in a time that was pretty hard for you losing your grandparent was there for you and i hope it continues to be there not just now but for years to come because it's pretty clear how much passion it brings to you so i'm really proud of you i care a lot sorry um this is me um to our luther community generally um accountability yes a plan yes so i would like a plan before end of semester so i would like a plan in 60 days um that doesn't mean we've had time to necessarily check in with all of you on this but i would like a draft of a plan together

089in 60 days so that if we need to make changes we can do that at the semester so that we're not overburdening our counseling team to try and switch up and change and manage all these schedules in addition to our teachers and our support staff who then have to make adjustments catch kids up and you name it so i would like to get that in place i would like to get that in place so that we can communicate effectively and we can start this next semester on a different foot that's a hard metric i would like to push for it i hope my colleagues will join me in that i will continue to be present on campus in what ways i can and stop by please feel free to engage like many of you have

090and i am committed to that and thanks for giving us a second chance frankly to mr arakalian um first things first full disclosure i'm gay um but um when i hear you i hear fear that you have for your child's safety and well-being i don't agree that you should be fearful of some of these things but i'm not here to change your mind i do want to give you a little context in a little history not to lecture but to inform in 2013 assembly bill 1266 was passed into law by the state of california and that ensured all students based off of the gender that they identify as could participate in sports and could use the restroom of their choice this was passed into law by the legislature it was signed into law by the

091governor and now it is the law of the land in 2014 there was an effort to gather signatures through the public process to remove this as a law in the state of california that effort failed as a result that framework still stands and so here in burbank unified school district that law will continue to carry forward and i agree with that law um i am really sorry that this causes you fear in your life i don't want that and i can tell you as a member of the lgbt community i want a happy future for your kid and i don't want um i don't want them living in fear you know and i don't want anything to happen to them that's why i ran so i know you have some examples that have demonstrated your

092concern those are valid but just like stereotypes don't apply to everybody right not to you they don't apply to me and they don't apply to my community and for a lot of those students just like in moments when you felt maybe alienated or alone this room may have couldn't conveyed a little bit of that those kids are feeling that way too and these laws are designed to make sure that they feel like they belong because what we're finding is is that when they don't feel like they belong the overwhelming statistics show that they kill themselves and god is life and those kids i i want those kids to choose life and i know you're an ally in that so i appreciate your concerns um i don't agree with them uh in all regards but i

093remain an ally to you that you can reach out to if i can ever provide information um or talk i'm here um on coven 19 i'm a little bit more proactive i do do a little bit of the walk in other people's shoes i think about people like rosemary morrison who talked about her child other children um who are immunocompromised and and you you reference like a 70 year old and you know and and i get that and that's not every child and and we've seen that covid does not impact every child but as a leader i find it really hard to pick one which one it should you know and and which which child should be negatively impacted and overly severe and i am very proud of this board because out of kovid we

094didn't lose a single kid and that took work and it took being unpopular at times i get the disagreement i get the inconvenience i get the distraction you're sitting in a room with a bunch of people who i think for over a year were saying pull up your mask pull up your mask pull up the mask [Music] um but i i support this path forward because i think it's how we keep all kids safe um and and i support the measures that we put in place because that's how i think we can keep our campus communities safe so as you're an elected leader i owe you justifications for things and those are mine um [Music] to miss morrison i'm really you know from where you started on public comment about disney construction to now brings

095me great joy and that without a doubt is a testament to miss cochta to mr cross to the countless number of folks uh who were working on this and trust me i i mean i was blowing up miss cochta's phone email you name it to say let's go let's go let's move what's the plan let's communicate let's go and and she was always a partner in that and you were always a partner in giving us frankly see what happens they do give a second chance as we work on it but i'm happy to hear that um we also have like watering restrictions there's a number of things contributing obviously to you know landscaping going sideways um having said that noted on the shade um i'm happy to hear about that coming into place this summer

096um i'm sorry sorry saturday thank you very much dr neiman um yeah almost lost that there um so and then more mature trees i think is is well-founded and fine as long as there's cement in case so that way they don't do the root thing and make that happen so um anyway so thank you for that i'm sorry you are no longer with our with us having said that um you know this is all education is always an adventure and i really hope your path brings you back so with that last statement is just to the lgbtq community you are seeing you are loved you are beautiful and i don't think anybody could you know attempted or intended to commit communicate otherwise but what i will say is that allyship should not be performative we

097should believe in allyship we should believe in belonging whether we're on camera whether there's a million people in this audience or whether there is no one and i am sorry i have seen the performative ally ship take root in a lot of ways including with some of my colleagues we owe it to these kids to create safe spaces and that means talking about them the same way in public as we do behind closed doors and it means really loving people for who they are no matter their views no matter their values this is a public institution and we're taxpayer funded to take care of everyone thank you sometimes it's hard to be the last person to speak because everyone has said such heartfelt and um thoughtful words um and then you get to number five

098and you're like okay what do you what are you what are you going to tell us now i i have to agree with so much that was said and i'm speaking right now to the luther teachers i met with um this past week two teachers who wanted to talk about inclusiveness in the district across the board about how their thoughts and feelings were wouldn't it be an incredible place to be if all groups work together for the common thought of we're making busd no matter what school site you were at uh an amazing place to be and i was like yeah that's great awesome let's let's work on that let's do that so that all groups were working together for the betterment of uh jackson and addison you know that was the bottom line and

099i i was so excited to walk away and and then i realized that um sometimes i make dumb mistakes and i forget that we're dealing with a jackson and an addison and that the number on the page doesn't always matter that jackson and addison matter and so you get caught up in well my role in a board member is to make sure that you know we have a budget to adhere to and to you know get people uh adequate compensation and how do we get to that point and and how do we make sure we provide you know without lawsuits and things and you get in this in this bad habit and you forget that at the end of the day you need to make decisions that are good for addison and jackson and so

100that's what you coming in and not just coming in and saying for and by the way thank you so much for coming in as a group and having a speaker share your thoughts that's an amazing thing because it's it sometimes your thoughts after person 22 you know gets a little lost but your message was loud and clear and what you said is what those two folks came to me to say is we need to work together on this we're not just going to come in and complain to you we're going to come in and say here's our problem here's some ideas on how to fix it now let's work together to make sure that happens and i heard from dr hill that he wants to meet on a regular basis with dr promo and work

101through the things that we need to do all of us together so that addison and jackson don't have to come to a board meeting to say i'm disappointed and so i'm hoping that i can take that original meeting with those two and we can walk forward and have this happen together i like like mr ferguson said owe you an apology mrs lafredo owe you an apology i owe jackson and um addison one two because i need to remember that those numbers are them and they matter and so i'm going to make sure as best i can you can all poke back at me if you're like oh you're a little bit back in the weeds with that budget again make sure you're paying attention to addison and jackson call me out that's perfectly fine you

102have every right to and so i'm glad you all came tonight took time isn't the first week of school rough it is so tiring so thank you so much for coming out tonight and reminding us that we all have a job to do together and working together is a lot stronger and a lot better than working separately we'll never get up that hill by ourselves it it's something we all have to work on so thank you for taking time out to come and remind us and i and i do really really like to see folks and hear folks um your message comes across really well in person so i appreciate that thank you thank you so much and i know dr hill and staff that we're gonna work through this as best we can so

103i even though okay they're right jackson i've been dying to put the oil colors in my hair but you know yeah so yours looks awesome i appreciate it thank you um let's see mrs morrison we've been through a lot with disney uh and on the reconstruction let's you know and i i think we've come a long way i was really excited to see um after a couple of you know weeks away to pop by and there was a whole new school almost so i think uh given given a little bit of time and and our our staff here at the district has been phenomenal our facilities guy picket guys and ladies sorry have been picking up uh the pieces where they can where they're able and putting that project together as best so that on

104opening day there was asphalt for kids to walk across be it hot to get to those new classrooms because boy i showed up one day and there was a mound of dirt in the middle of the of the yard and i thought oh man this needs to get fixed really fast because if teachers see this there's it's not gonna be good and and they did it was gone within a week and the blacktop got in and so i don't know if you've ever done construction at your house right it seems like it goes bam and then the little fix-it stuff the uh what do they call that list the punch list takes a while so we'll we'll make it perfect and i and i agree with you nice mature trees in cement containers works really

105well good shade and better safety for the kids so we don't break up the asphalt and they trip and fall so that's an important thing um um yeah i think uh really it's a it's great and important that you all come out and say what you have to say i love to visit classrooms so i may t i always hear from teachers just come in just come in just come on so i'm coming okay i'm coming and and uh thank you so much for your night tonight thank you to my colleagues to everyone who who spoke up and uh that's it we'll move on with the meeting thank you very much and if you need to leave because you're exhausted thank you have a good night [Music] spirit we're going to go back now no

106i didn't we'll keep moving it's okay you're all right doctor uh weisberg thank you you're welcome uh we're gonna go back to 9a yes which oh eight eight reports from the board did you have more okay we don't have any this night eight we don't have any items number eight but we can start oh presentations and recognitions number nine so nine a is los angeles valley college update um we have dr gribbins the president of l.a valley college who will be giving us an update on l.a valley college lavc and los angeles community college laccd sir welcome thank you what a beautiful rich conversation uh and and i just want to begin by expressing gratitude for not immediately following addison and jackson yeah thank you for that uh but really what a what a beautiful

107job uh and it's really neat to see democracy and action all of you uh taking the public comment um when you see kids like addis i'm sorry to interrupt but when you see kids like addison and jackson come through here doesn't it like the hope for the future just expands and you're like all right my college is going to be okay oh absolutely awesome the next generation is beautiful is going to be amazing and i'm ready to hire them to do our state and federal advocacy right away plus they don't have to wait uh pay for tuition right now if they come as a new student right at valley college that's right it'll be free no it'll be uh no no enrollment fees for them thank you for that that plug i am joined by

108uh dr matt jordan our vice president of academic affairs uh anything i mess up matt's gonna correct for me and then he'll add some additional comments can you see the yeah there we go if you haven't been to campus lately please do uh give me a buzz and come by because it has changed quite a bit in the last couple of years it really is nothing like it was 10 or 15 years ago for sure but i'd welcome to give you a little bit of a tour i'll make a few comments about the campus and about the programs and of course welcome any questions you might have and i promise you i'm hitting the button but let me try this one yep that one works beautifully so as you know as if you've been on

109campus before beautiful park-like setting we're known as the tree campus we're actually recognized as a tree campus one of the first california community college we have a lot of programs to choose from 195 associates and certificate programs and we have the promise program dual enrollment students don't pay any enrollment fees but even after students graduate they get they can come to us free for the first two years through the promise program and there's no cap there's no limitation only the first hundred it's unlimited so it's really neat to be able to offer that the communities that we serve of course uh burbank uh is an important community for us and then we go westward to balboa and uh up to panorama and down to uh essentially mulholland drive uh one other thing that's kind of

110unique about valley we're the only college that has a planetarium and an observatory in la county so it's kind of unique and it's really an amazing facility we do have some public shows and we use the facilities all the time for our instructional program but once a month we also have some public shows which are really neat and we'll make sure we get you information about that too one thing that's unique about valley is our collection of support programs we have an amazing collection of programs that we're incredibly proud of including the dream resource center and moshe black scholars program we're just opening up our rainbow pride center that we're absolutely thrilled about we have a wonderful guardian scholars program for our foster youth former foster youth veteran resource center eops ssd students with disabilities

111and family resource center we're actually one of the only colleges that have a family resource center it's a place for our student parents as many of you know the odds of a teen parent going on and completing college is unfortunately really really really rare and that's why we started the family resource center to support them we have a helping hands center who loves to find any way to help people find any needs that folks have we also just hired a basic needs counselor so that's kind of neat to help our homeless students housing insecure students food insecure students making sure that they have resources which i just saw somebody yesterday that we were able to connect trio puente of course financial aid free tutoring we have a study away program study abroad program we just

112had a group of students off in spain this summer absolutely amazing experience tap honors especially designed to help students who want to transfer to ucla full disclosure i'm a trojan but ucl i but i also worked at ucla too it's a fine college and of course phi theta kappa athletics we are looking to do some expansion in athletics as well we have a history of having amazing athletics programs and we want to bring we want to add a few more uh switching over a little bit to specifically dual enrollment and this is connects in meaningful ways with burbank we really appreciate the partnership with burbank unified you are amazing partners and we're deeply appreciative our shared vision is to make sure that dual enrollment is available to to everybody not just to the honor student

113or select few but everybody has access to dual enrollment so that they know that they can go on to college and then we've taken that vision good vision just shut down for a second we take that as yeah we take that a step forward we are looking intentionally working with you all and intentionally designing specific pathways one is of course for folks who want to transfer to four-year universities so having the dual enrollment focus on csu ge and igetc courses but also looking at other pathways that are more career focused and making sure that our courses are well aligned with yours and perhaps providing a capstone experience you have amazing programs a collection of programs so it's really neat to have those deep conversations and most recently we're in some important conversations about establishing an

114early college high school model early culture middle college high school model with you all i'm excited about that i'm excited about doing it in unique and innovative ways i think it's going to be a great attraction for many parents to want to come to your school district as well and then of course we're thinking about how to make sure that we're connected with uh with your parents and getting information out about the opportunities in dual enrollment and ensuring that students don't only have access to dual enrollment but we help them support them in completing now your kids don't have much of a problem with that i'm going to show you some data on that your success rates are really high 94 overall success rate for dual enrollment classes i wish our native students had a

115success rate of 94 it's not that high but your students are doing really well nonetheless we don't want to take that for granted we want to make sure that monterey and everyone has access to these programs and are supported by them so it's going to be fun work to continue to do dual enrollment has has been doing really well even despite the pandemic we have been looking at growing it and it wasn't necessarily easy to keep the dual enrollment program strong during the pandemic but us working together so well we have been able to make sure that it continues to thrive and we're appreciative of that this gives you a little bit of a sense of some common dual enrollment courses and just a moment to share a little bit about the outreach vision so

116you all already have an incredible college going rate and we want to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to help support you in that our commitment is to help you all with fafsa completion for any students that you might want support with that we're happy to to send our outreach and financial aid team over to help help students with completing the fafsa the ccc apply having senior days we are working with our district to change the enrollment time period so we can start fall enrollment earlier and help students before they leave high school with with enrollment so it starts early perhaps in october looking at fafsa getting the financial aid paperwork squared away and i should say fafsa or california dream act for our dreamers and then making sure they have their

117college application done whichever college they want to go to of course i'd prefer they go to valley and then and then helping them with the enrollment process before they leave high school that's a quick overview uh but i'd love to entertain any questions that you might have and again uh i just want to express gratitude for the partnership that we have with burbank unified and uh hopefully we'll we'll have you over to our campus sometime and give you a bit of a tour okay i just have a clarification question you talk about helping students with fafsa but we also talked about college promise sorry yes so do they need to apply for financial aid in order to get the free first two years uh they we do have them complete the fafsa paperwork with the

118promise program though it's not income qualified everyone is part of promise and everyone who's part of can be part of promise everyone who is part of promise will have the first two years of enrollment fees waived fafsa might make some other resources available to them though so we have them complete the fafsa to see what other resources they can access we also want to make sure they're connected with our financial aid folks because we have hundreds of scholarships through the lavc foundation that we want to make sure that students have access to as well thank you but i'm glad it's being recorded you can blurb that all over the place there you go dr weisberg yeah before but it's kind of related to your comments okay just to be clear also now a new bill

119also passed that returning students are also it's free for them right yes it doesn't have to be recent high school graduates it's for any new student yeah and i should have asked dr jordan to add uh some additional comments to you of anything i might have missed oh sure well i'll just reiterate some of the things that dr gribbins said you know i've worked two miles from here for 10 years and i live a couple of miles here from here for the last 20 years so burbank feels like my community and you know i think everyone at valley we consider burbank our community so this program for us is something that we don't take for granted it's a way that we can achieve our mission by serving your students those success rates that dr griffin's

120mentioned they're astounding and they're a testament to the work that your teachers and staff do for your students so really really impressive i want to thank sharon and matt they've been wonderful partners in imagining the possibilities for this program i expect in the near future that we will have class offerings available so that the student that wants to complete all of their general education requirements will be able to do that before they graduate from busd yeah thank you thanks matt are you ready dr weissman i'm totally ready all the time um i had a question so you talked about like the fafsa workshops um one of the things that we've been talking about in the district is how to better prepare our students for when they do apply especially with the removal of a lot

121of the standardized testing and then the essay becoming more important so do you offer other resources to help students get ready for that transition that's a great question and you know perhaps it's something that we should look at a little bit more closely for us we accept the top hundred percent so there's no essay required to come to valley college that's right um but but we can look at uh different options for students who want to go straight to the four-year universities and how to support them too perhaps there's some additional supports and then of course i glossed over this but we have created a college 101 course to help students with that transition right that one's been wildly popular too so that's going to be another great opportunity that was my next question yeah

122but thank you for that idea thank you mr ferguson thank you very much um so first things first um i i thank you for the partnership uh i i've met you before in my other life i'm the district director for the assembly member who represents your area and let me just say through that experience and through that job i've really gotten to know valley much better uh and it is um truly i mean a gem new facilities um thank you for mentioning family resource center i think that's amazing um but you know one thing i i will say is i i was born and raised in burbank went to burbank schools was a student board member when she was a board member you know been here a bit and culturally this has been a gcc

123pcc kind of town um culturally and uh i don't know if it's lack of awareness lack of connection you name it and and so a part of you know kind of seeking this like middle college or uh dual enrollment pathway is a part of bridging that i but i would like to be a partner in working to elevate that more and more i think that there are so many assets as well as like frankly just mass transit options that can serve more students in our area than the current routes allow for glendale to pass or pasadena both are phenomenal i'm also former student body president of glendale community college so just saying but uh you know valley has a ton to offer burbank uh and i'm not sure it's fully aware so where we can

124collaborate to raise that awareness to either you know obviously there's tabling things like that but really connecting you with parents that i think are driving some of these decisions or gently guiding them i think we can really develop not only our connection academically but really include a greater amount of enrollment long term so um i hope we can work together in that and i will certainly reach out separately so just thank you for your work awesome thank you so much and i'm going to take you up on that offer awesome thank thank you madam chair um so dr griffin's uh you know i don't want my glenda college friends to hear this but i did go to gcc but then i transferred to valley so go monarchs you know uh great um and word of

125mouth uh and that's why i ended up there but the campus um oh my god i mean i went a couple of years ago i didn't recognize it and i went there recently i was like oh my god um but the pool is still there right yeah we are oh i love them uh great memories to go there every summer um i also again want to thank you on on this wonderful partnership and and you know we're very proud of valley college um but um i also want to take this opportunity for to ask you to explain um you know homelessness is an issue and people don't think that burbank students we don't have homeless people here i know that there is a bond that's that was just uh approved to be on the ballot

126i know a lot of our you know we have a lot of people who you know work at burbank but live in the la you can vote on this and i know part of the bond is going to be addressing student housing can you reiterate a little about the what the proposed bond is and you know i know you've done a fantastic good job with your programs with housing but i know this is a conversation that that the district is talking about because it's become a big issue you know so if you can just talk a little about the bond and and some of our supporters who are out there listening they can support it because i know burbank can't vote burbank residents can but la can and a lot of our you know we

127have a lot of people who work in burbank but live in l.a but their students come to burbank yeah thank you for that thank you for that question in since our service area it does include burbank uh the bond will also include wins oh we can vote on that yeah oh okay and of course i can't advocate this is why i'm talking about we need to talk i can't advocate for the for the bond but i can provide some information about it you're 100 correct uh part of the bond the board did vote to put a bond on the ballot for this november the bond does include money earmarked for uh housing to help with help student housing it's a significant amount of resources it will also if passed fund a lot of infrastructure so

128for valley we have some amazing new facilities that were funded by taxpayers and we're deeply appreciative of that we do have some infrastructure work that's uh that needs to be done that's aging of course technology's radically changed so the infrastructure from 70 years ago related a technology needs to be modernized um those are the types of projects that would be funded by the bond if passed and then the other thing i just want to mention real quick is we do have beds available now for our homeless students so as we are able to identify students who are homeless we can immediately connect them with beds so we have beds available for students not just transitional housing though that's really important the housing a lot of the different projects like hope of the valley but we

129have other other beds that we've purchased for our homeless students that's important as i mentioned yesterday we noticed the student who was had some of the telltale signs of being homeless carrying a blanket to backpack so we engaged him and checked what his needs were and were working to connect him with the food we immediately got we were able to get him some food our cow works people are amazing and immediately got him uh set up and then started working in his housing situation so can we agendize an endorsement an endorsement of the bond i'll move that we okay we bring that back on a future agenda to endorse the bond measure great thank you yeah my colleagues have covered any questions i just want to say thank you for the presentation i do agree

130with my colleagues that and especially to mr ferguson's point that for a long time students if they were thinking of the community college route weren't thinking la valley college i'm very happy that uh three students i know returning students including my daughter's boyfriend have enrolled at valley college and i'm very happy because i i've i've seen you i've met you before in a presentation at burbank high i realized you know what incredible programs you have available you've been great partners you know with you know dual enrollment and and i think we do need to find ways to increase that um you know that knowledge that awareness so but uh thank you for being here i know you had to wait a little bit uh but uh i think it was worth it because you saw

131some great speakers and and we really uh appreciate you uh presenting all this information to us yeah thank you so much um i i think too i'm sorry one second i'll let you go but um you weren't born yet so when i graduated high school almost 40 years ago the trend right the trend really was to go to valley college and very few at that time were going to pcc especially or glendale and and you know things there's hills and valleys and everything so uh hopefully that we're back up on the uprise to sending kids to valley college it is much closer it's in our backyard and what a beautiful campus so i think you've moved in the right direction yeah that uh that that will be we'll see that coming and also i want

132to acknowledge a part of the problem was uh was that we uh pulled back on our outreach efforts and our staffing of outreach efforts when i came to valley three years ago my commitment was to reverse that make sure that we were part of the community and staffed up appropriately to help connect with the community and help the kids go to college i'm okay if somebody wants to go to another college but i do want to make sure that somebody is that everybody is able to go to college everyone has access to going to college and it's an easy process so we have that commitment to all the communities that we serve including burbank and anytime you invite me to something i'll i'll be there two things i also i know you have a wonderful

133program when it comes to housing but also food you know people don't know that food scarcity is a big issue and i do want to take this opportunity to also thank assemblymember nazarian who was very instrumental in getting funding and for the program that you have which is wonderful um madam chair i also want to take this opportunity to ask you if we can convey this meeting in a honor and a memory of one of our own constituents from burbank who was the director at valley college for the foundation all the funds that he's talking about mr rael castillo which we lost unfortunately to cancer this year so if it is okay you know not only he was a great friend but he helped a lot of students including a lot of our burbank students

134with their needs with the foundation so if it is okay with you i will ask you that we you know convey the message in his memory as well thank you thank you for that recognition of our dear friend raul thank you again for coming thank you so much thank you again for coming tonight we appreciate it our pleasure have a good evening okay so now we're going to move down to number 11 reports to the board starting with 11a report on burbank unified school district summer school 2022 [Music] john i hide the one that doesn't work okay uh good evening president tabit vice president ferguson members of the board superintendent hill members of cabinet usd staff and community my name is robin anders i'm the coordinator of instructional technology for burbank unified school district and

135i'm going to be starting us off on a discussion about our summer school program that we offered this summer and before i start i just want to recognize a few people that made some outstanding contributions to make summer school happen this year so we did have some transition and leadership over the summer and then at the at the end of the school year so i'd like to recognize our student information system analysts which is terry smith and brittany economo lao they quickly and efficiently turned around some scheduling and also some course requests they're very valuable part of our instructional services team so i really wanted to appreciate them i also wanted to recognize robin hatch and rna barcigar two very capable busd administrators up at burbank high they stepped up to serve as summer school

136principals during the summer session when their leadership was needed so recognize them and lastly john wells who acted as tosa for our summer school to take care of the day to day so all those people stepped up to make sure that our program went successfully which it did so the first slide we're going to look at is is credit recovery for our summer school by common courses that are provided when it comes to special education that that first row i wanted to highlight that we had 109 basic courses or 109 students participate in basic courses but we also had 235 students that were rsp students or recognized a special ed complete other courses or courses in total so a lot of our specialized students really benefited from our summer school not just in those specific

137basic courses pe numbers fluctuated over the last couple of years but we're kind of back up on an increase i see english went down quite a bit there was a spike last year in 2021 in our english numbers but those are starting to come back down as far as the number of credits needed to recover there next slide to begin with algebra one we had a decrease in the number of credits recovered in algebra one i'd like to think that that's part of our algebra project that we had fewer failures and than the need um and because of that we were able to offer some credit recovery in algebra 2 which we had not done previously which was i think a good benefit to our students to finish out their math um or to continue

138on that a3g track geometry uh also consistent and then our non-grad seniors was lower this year but in total uh 675 students initial credit for summer school those numbers were pretty stable but we did see a pretty significant increase in the number of students wanting u.s history for initial credit and we were able to serve those students um with mr or dr paramo myself kind of making some last-minute attempts to make sure we had the teachers we needed to to provide those teachers those students those courses and in total we had a 1031 students participate in an initial credit course this summer during the school year regular school year credit recovery numbers were down just a little bit this year from previous years but we had 68 students from burroughs 113 from burbank high and

13953 from monterey participate in a credit recovery program during the school year and i really wanted to highlight a new program that we offered this summer which was the great improvement portion of summer school this is new because of grant funding that we're able to provide this and this is to help students stay on track with a a through g requirements by improving a grade that was a d uh to a c to be able to be prepared for uc or csu requirements uh last group that we want to report out on is our math acceleration summer school those numbers were down this year from previous years but those we did have a fair amount of students accelerate over the summer so that they can move into an advanced track class the following year or

140when they get to a high school so a quick summary of our total numbers the total number of instances of of credits or recovered credits both during summer school and during the school years a total of 915 students that received or credits total number of students for initial credit was a 1031. new was the the number of great improvements which was 160 total and then our total number of math acceleration students was 81. uh results uh from these efforts we served approximately 1200 students with um to over 2 000 credits or courses both in in excuse me virtual and in-person classes for the first time uh all programs ran concurrently within with the inclusion of great improvement so last year was the first year that we were able to provide all programs concurrently but the

141addition of the great improvement is new this year high demands for initial credit classes including u.s history and world history which i highlighted and then increased credit recovery in science and upper group upper level math classes those were the two um primary courses or subjects that that we were able to serve through that great recovery so yeah and then dr bramo sir i i just wanted to share that first of all while i oversee the summer school program for the secondary dr anders has taken on a much larger role with that and he was very generous in recognizing everybody but i need to recognize him especially the online component and with aries classes i'm sorry apex classes and getting his whole team mobilized to do scheduling um was just amazing and so i'm very grateful

142for that since we're at the summary part what i want to make sure that i say is that we've heard from our social studies teachers and our initial meetings at the beginning of the school year which is just a week ago and they have brought forward a recommendation for our initial credit classes because we have such a high volume now and you can see through the data we're serving uh in the hundreds they want to see that as an initial credit class that's in person so we had turned it into online because during covid it was more important and teachers wanted that flexibility um but they feel like it's really important just given that it's a whole year's course in in six weeks that it go back to an in person so we heard you

143and we will make some accommodations for uh next summer school and then i'd like to introduce dr kinapic to present on elementary and esy programs so just like secondary programs it takes a village it takes a team to go and pull it all together so i want to do a huge shout out to the elementary team our principals our curriculum specialists our office managers all of our teachers who are all played a part because they help them to design the identification they helped in talking to parents they helped in getting kids enrolled enrollments completed ensuring that communication was going out so huge shout out to the entire elementary team and then also for the elementary summer school academy groups too the teaching staff the instructional assistants all of our custodial staff who work day in

144and day out i i'll be remiss by not saying something about our teaching staff i just want a little aside you know they worked how many days during the school year last year 187 days and then they said hey peter sign me up 30 more days no problem and they were there every day huge huge benefit to our kids our yard supervisors our food service staff hr staff hallelujah for them budget staff our site leads and then the office staff at these at the school so once again very very very successful so we started on june 6th went through july 21. it's like running a marathon and we had four locations for various summer academies and i'm including the summer ymca learn growth thrive program in that compilation of programs too here once again you

145can see just a little bit of a breakdown of the various programs at the various school sites we did run programs from 8 30 to 5 30 so in the morning roughly 8 30 to 1 o'clock we had a focus on academics and in the afternoons 1 to 5 30 we had child care offerings and supplemental programs during that time period you'll see our leads there jennifer king laura kubler jennifer goldenberg who led up the summer academies and then samantha cole from the ymca go team tk through five we also had instructional assistants every classrooms we identified kiddos that scored one's twos or who are identified at risk or english learners from uh based on report cards and also on schools reporting that you'll see the bottom line there the numbers of students 468 students

146in our summer academies at mckinley miller and providencia combined and then at emerson we had 32 students and luther we had 21 sixth graders too and by the way all of these programs were funded by e-lap funds or by title 1 funds e-lot the expanded learning opportunities program through the state of california that provided funding for the program and once again title 1 funds we provided reading language arts mathematics social emotional learning throughout all the entire programs and we did a pre and post test too so very very very successful so yay team and with that i'll turn it over to caseo talk about special ed good evening president tabit members of the board dr hill so for special education we have our extended school year so the extended school year is the federal law

147that we are required to offer special education students 20 extra days of instruction in the summer and it's really designed to make sure that students maintain their learning and they don't regress so there's really that's the purpose however there is some criteria so there's really two criteria one is to again prevent that regression of all the learning that they had during the year and then the second criteria is to make sure that it doesn't impact the new year's learning because they have to spend so much time trying to learn some of the concepts that they had learned the prior year so it's really to maintain that flow and to keep them at the same level that they ended the school year with so that's the purpose and not all students qualify for that so in

148in burbank unified we have 698 students who qualify for their ieps for that extra summer school session of extended school year and the ones who actually attended and took advantage of that service was 391 students which is actually an increase of 50 more students than the prior year which we anticipated because as you all know they were the students who were most impacted by the pandemic and so we anticipated a greater need in summer school and we still are you know managing that need so so if you look at the next slide it talks about the programs that we served with extended school year and you can see that we had everything from speech to preschool elementary independent study and our facts program as well with the greatest number at elementary with 196 students okay

149so that's the end of our slides anyway so in our presentation any questions dr weissberg has a question um thank you to all of you so so helpful um one of my questions is why dr koss isn't here to present sharon you did a phenomenal job as always but generally speaking we're not having dr cost present on special ed and i'm not sure why um i think it'd be important for us to hear from her i just don't know the reason for that um we asked her not to come because um there's um some illness in her department oh yeah good choice yeah um thank you for that no problem my other question is for anybody who wants to answer it is this sounds unbelievably successful are there things that we should be thinking about

150now that we can do to better support next summer like what did you find you needed more of support resources it'd just be good to sort of think about now we we had the same struggle this last summer as we've had the last previous years in retaining math teachers that's a big issue for us we did a lot better though we did a lot better because we recruited earlier so we had at least one teacher that we hired from outside of the district to fill in for a class so what we have been relying on is our site administrators working with the math departments to try to get a notice out early enough and also try and accommodate them in terms of sometimes just location where am i going to have to teach from and

151what's my assignment we're trying to accommodate them so that we can get them and hold on to them social studies this year was a problem as well we've never had a problem before but it's because of the volume of kids that wanted to take the course so it's a good it's a good problem but the numbers are i don't know if it's appropriate to say post covet i'm just going to take liberties and say post kobe the numbers for summer school and our summer school programs have gone way up a lot of that had to do with the fact that we have kids that didn't do well in virtual learning and they're still trying to recover so i just want to assure you that it's taken more than one year for them to recover from

152some of those classes that's why we see that summer school is still thriving and there's still large numbers um you know and and and just because i don't want to forget and it's a it's in the forefront of my mind right now one of the biggest support groups that we had for summer school was our health services and our nurses and i don't think that people think about that but with summer school being so large and we had multiple locations we really depended on our school nurses and they were phenomenal and did a great job so i just want to make sure that i give a shout out to lenora and all her group i was going to add one too so the the great and the great improvement program was new and so i

153think we can do a little bit better too of publicizing or getting the word out about what that is i think some some students and maybe even some teachers were a little bit reluctant to go into that program because it was new and they didn't know what it was going to look like but i think it was a really good experience for everyone who did participate where we can see increased participation in that too may i just add one more challenge yeah and that has to do with facilities when we ended on july 21 at four locations in elementary school with 10 to 15 classrooms per building of those four buildings that really put a burden on the system we had to turn when we facilities had to turn them around really quickly that put

154a burden so part of the e-lap program is that we need to do 30 days additional days extended days of the school year and so that just layers just a little bit more of a challenge on to us yeah that's a good one maybe i'm gonna defer to miss kaka maybe yeah you know what i mean we anticipate that we know it cuts it close um and it's just with the short staff i think we could have been better prepared if we had more people to deploy but we know that that happens we just know that happens i would i would just say that we we have done amazing in the past i mean we've had armies of custodial staff go to this high school that did summer school so that in the couple weeks

155right before school starts they're getting it all done and we've always done a great job it's just this year was a little bit more challenging because of staffing so it wasn't that important yes sir i'm gonna get in trouble if i listen to you on that one anyway so uh first things first um thank you this is a lot um and to all the different constituency groups i know i'm a bit of a bomb thrower considering that right now but my banks are very sincere because i see how much work you're doing having said that what i saw last summer frankly getting ready for this and i am taking a little bit of liberty here frankly was dr promo doing handstands backflips and everything he could and others to fill this to the point where

156frankly and a lot of folks uh to fill these gaps wherever they stood uh it is not sustainable uh for that to continue or for us to rely on one personality here here and here um and so what i'm what i wanna see is while one-time money is coming in um that we are thinking again proactively not reactively and that before the beginning of next semester we have hey how can we allocate one-time funding right now to address these problems differently or supplement recruitment staff but i want to see those strategies written down and i want to see those strat and know that they've been thought through and not and again i don't think anybody's forgotten it per se but i think we are relying a little bit too much on frankly how passionate you

157all are about the jobs that you do and i'd like to see stuff more articulated uh in advance so again we're not we're not being as reactive and frankly burning you out thanks thank you yes sir um we just had our college people here i know there's been some changes but i you saw an uptick in some courses like ma advanced math for summer do you think it also kind of you know is connected to the fact that now a lot of colleges are asking for some of these courses to be there because there's been some challenges at community colleges with students you know not taking these courses or having trouble i'm just curious if you see any kind of an increase because of that or is it just because you know that's become a

158topic a subject that a lot of students are now more interested i'm just curious you know what area do you see this increase because i've noticed math was a big increase so so we are i am seeing more requests come to my office to take classes at the community college for advanced math before that used to be a handful and now it is not uncommon for that to happen and to occur some of it is uh due to a student's desire to go into engineering or biological science or one of the sciences for sure because that's what's written on the petition so i do i do see that i have seen that we also are think in my opinion doing a great job in our district of allowing kids to accelerate in the middle school

159so they're getting to the higher levels of math courses that our district offers sooner which means that they're looking for other avenues when they've maxed out and want to continue and and doing linear geometry or whatever at community college because we they've completed what they could here yeah i'm i mean and i'm i'm i love it because i'm also seeing a lot of students now even in college level getting into engineering which is great out of just curiosity since we're talking about summer i know we used to have programs with like woodbury university and i know we cut the ties at one point are we talking is it going to come back we had a really hard time feeling those to be honest oh okay that's what it looked good yeah absolutely we had a

160hard time filling those and um we've been able to the programs that we were offering through woodbury we're still doing it so we're still offering it we're just offering it through our school and we're capitalizing on our own teaching staff thank you dr pramond thank you dr kinnappic and robin and mrs caseyo thank you so much for all your hard work this for summer school 11 b report on addressing gaps in learning academic growth and support this is because oh robin mr anders good evening again uh president tavett vice president ferguson members of the board superintendent hill members of the cabinet uh usd staff and community um again robin anders coordinator of instructional technology this is a follow-up presentation we did one earlier and i believe april or may and so this is kind of

161an interview reporting on where we where we ended up first i want to do a little bit of front loading on how we plan to use our data for this year this is a protocol that l.a county is suggesting as well but what you'll notice throughout the slides is that i'm specifically and intentionally not pointing out trends or data that i want people to focus on i want everyone to be able to draw their own conclusions raise questions identify their own trends and that's a protocol as part of this as far as what we want to do with our sites when we look at data is allow people to look at from their perspective and come and bring their own conclusions or their own theories to the table so we can identify one some of

162the situations or circumstances that led up to some of the results that we've seen but also respond with equity when we do identify and hear from different voices why they think the data says what it does having said that we did have a lot of challenges in 2021 2022 and we responded to those quite well and what you're seeing here is our initial casp data again these are our grades 3 4 5 6 7 8 and grade 11 that participate in the state casp assessments these are the initial scores so this isn't what's specifically not going to be published or this isn't public data yet it's it's initial so this could change or be adjusted slightly once they've finalized and published all scores but these are our scores from the last the end of last

163school year and i wanted to be able to compare those to what we did pre pre-pandemic so we did miss a year without testing on spring of 2020 and in 2021 there was a lot of viability issues and validity issues with state testing so we didn't look at those scores we looked at the pre-pandemic scores and so these this is what comes from the public reporting directly from the website and you can see from the 1819 school year we had 42 or basically 43 percent of our students meet met or exceeded the standards in math and just shy of 60 in english language arts so i'm going to go back and slide one more time so we can see this year and that there isn't we had an increase in our math per um in

164the percentage of students that are meeting the standards in math which i think is a big we need to put our our teachers on the back our math departments and everyone who contributed to that um coming out of the year of distance learning our uh english language r scores remain stable and those are high scores in english language charts so again these are initial state testing scores when it comes to our elementary data i wanted to highlight where we started in the fall and where we ended in the spring and so this highlights these uh those scores using our i ready assessment system of students their scores and where they were at at grade level at the beginning of the year and where they ended that grade level and that grade level at the end

165of the year in the growth that occurred this next slide is our district casp results by grade level for the elementary grades that participate in state testing you can see that fifth grade fifty percent of our students have met the standard and this is again in math fifty percent of our fourth graders and then sixty percent of our third graders are meeting or met or exceeded the standards in math and we're shifting now to english language arts or reading and we can see that there's considerable growth from the beginning of the year and the end of the year in our i ready assessments our ela data from state assessments by grade level in elementary fifth grade was at 66 percent fourth grade at 59. excuse me 50 yeah 59 and then our third grade at

16656 percent met or exceeded standard so we're going to now look at middle school and middle school also uses the i ready program for benchmarking this is by grade level now and so you can see the growth considerable growth in sixth grade not as much in eighth grade as we go through so we do see a little bit more growth in the lower grade levels with the irate assessment from beginning of the year to end the year and then our middle school math data in sixth grade we're at 35 percent met or exceeded 41 percent in seventh grade and then we are at 39 percent in our eighth grade so seventh of the grades are a little bubble there of performing students so how have our reading placements changed from fall to spring so now

167we're shifting to english language arts uh again you can see that growth and it starts to to slow down a little bit in those upper grades as as opposed to the younger grades and then our end of year casp data state assessments for middle school by grade level 6th grade 52 7th grade 57 and then our eighth grade at 52 for english language arts and traditionally in burbank we've performed a little above in english language arts than math so it's nice to see that we are seeing growth in our math scores so now we're going to drill down specifically to students that we identified for intervention or support this is part of the work of the academic growth and support and some of the funds that we received to support students coming out of the

168year of distance learning and pandemic so this is a chart that was presented at the last board presentation and what this does is identifies students that were identified in the different types of supports that we provide them at our sites so this is our our elementary cohort of students receiving interventions or identified as below grade level that we wanted to support to move to be at grade level and you can see that they also had considerable growth students that were two or three below two or three years below grade level decreased considerably by the end of the year but we still have some work to do in those areas you can also see that there were some students that wore just at or just below that are now above or right at grade level and

169sorry that last slide we're starting with ela for this slide and then we're moving on to math and again our elementary grades by grade level so you can see considerable reduction in the upper grade levels in the students that are far below and also an increase again because there's we're seeing growth in our students that need those extra supports so now we're going to move to our secondary intervention students and this is primarily middle school that we focused on so we did just get a report from our high school about credit recovery that's our primary focus for high school students as far as interventions and for middle school we also are incorporating i ready assessments as well as other interventions and this highlights some of those interventions we provide to students the irony results for

170middle school aren't as encouraging so we started the beginning of the year with students that we identified below grade grade level or failing classes and where they ended at the end of the year and what you see is a loss of middle ground so students either moved up or they moved down and so that's something to look at and i think it's also something for us to know that there's still work to be done especially for those students that maybe um were struggling at the end of the year so the last slide was english language arts and then this next slide is math and we see the same phenomenon i would also note that as the not only the instructional technology coordinator also coordinate all the district assessments that there could have been some testing

171fatigue in our middle schools by the end of the year because they just came off of the state assessments and then also the irony assessments having looked at the iready data i did want to highlight though the grade data for our intervention students so these are specifically again this intervention cohort at middle school and it's their first semester and second semester english grades and you can see that they did remain pretty stable and in fact even some improvement in some areas for our students so while the irate results we didn't see the growth that we hoped at some students that were below grade level they are these are encouraging grades that they're they're being able to complete their courses and then again this also is the same type of data with math in our middle

172school specific to our intervention students um within the appendix i just wanted to note for anyone that's listening or or if it would like to look at the board report there we do break down statistically or provide percent percentage um performance for our eld students and our special ed students so that data is in there as well to look at those subgroups and we do provide some information i think there was a request last time about how we compare nationally when it comes to iready and that data is also in the pendings as well so i entertain any questions or considerations i like that you use the word entertain i just had a question in regards to the breakdown to ethnicity and gender in the data that we're looking at um am i what i

173don't i don't it's not right we didn't desegregate by ethnicity or gender i think it could be helpful okay moving forward to have a better understanding of their specific uh groups of students that we need to be figuring out if they need more support or different support so that could be really helpful um that that was my i guess it was a statement that i talked up at the end so it sounded like a question but it was i think for me that would be very helpful to see it is one of the we do disaggregate that when we look at the data sites okay but it's something i could include in this packet yeah even if it is by sight i think just being able to see it and look at it would for

174me would be very helpful in just sort of tracking like areas of growth in areas of success thank you dr anders yeah great point um i concur what my colleague just shared but also um for the armenian students i i don't do we differentiate them because technically they're considered caucasian do we have the ability to was it based on the language they speak at the second yes no so it's difficult to desegregate that because then we are kind of using the home language as a as a way to identify those those students and maybe not be necessarily accurate to to the ethnicity um but as far as the state and the way they were reported there is not a way to desegregate by the armenian population yes um i appreciate this data uh it's kind

175of the meta it's a little bit zoomed out so what my challenge is is that i hear a lot from parents who are very very concerned about learning loss and a lot of that is anecdotal uh some of that is quantitative based off of things they're seeing grades things like that um so i'm almost i and i know this is extra work but i almost want to request that you kind of take your your show on the road uh and do site by site uh where possible um and really break it down for folks so that they can understand what's going on in the educational community that they're sending their child to as opposed to just the meta um so that way if parents i so we give pathways frankly to parents and educators to

176be a part of understanding what the major challenges are on their campuses i think that would help us build confidence back in a new way i think it allows us to demonstrate transparency where we're not seeing growth where we should or that growth is taking longer to achieve i think that's also a possibility too so there's a lot being juggled there but um and and again i i just think that taking this and and making it and breaking it down by sight uh i could really help uh and and i think could engage parents in a way that brings them back so thank you i do want to clarify we we do that we break down all the data for each principles and the principles review with their teams and they share it with their

177community so that is something we already do so i i'm asking for what's so obviously what we do hasn't been enough historically so i'm what i'm asking for is a different more proactive approach on that front can you clarify sure so maybe you partner with ptas directly uh maybe mr dr anders excuse me uh partners directly with the ptas and sets it up with them we're not necessarily relying on necessarily principals who will do a cookie cutter mold uh across the board so what i'm asking for is maybe we engage pta we ask how that data would like to be presented to them uh and and we kind of follow their lead clear thank you maybe possibly dr anders could when the principal um presents it it's dr anders instead of the principal would that

178be helpful i i well can we work a staff because we have 21 school sites and i understand partnerships with school sites that want to empower our principals but we will make sure that we are working together with them my concern is that communication has been routinely escalated as is a problem and so what i'm introducing here is a possibility to where we could tailor it to allow parents to participate in how we are communicating with them i i get that logistically we are short staffed but i i think that at this point after it's been kind of recurringly mentioned or mentioned in a recurring way by our community that i think that parents should be a part of being able to design this this conversation as it relates to their school and their campus

179okay thank you thank you um i'm looking at the last couple of charts kind of specifically um the uh where it's the um intervention courts the the uh semester one and two math and uh so that's 102 ela where there actually seemed to be a significant um decrease in grades on the math there are you know a lot more d's and f's if i'm reading this properly um you know and a decline in the the a's and b's so i i guess my question is do we are we revisiting what we're doing because it doesn't you know we we seem to be not really uh helping able to find you know what we need to help these you know these students uh to you know get to a point of you know bringing the grades

180up and i realized the first year you know uh really you know beckon uh was back in person you know from covet but you know are we looking at other intervention strategies to move beyond what we've been doing because i these two strike me the most that you know it's just you know we the ela isn't quite as bad because the numbers did go slightly down second semester but the math they they clearly the the bad grades went up and the and the good grades went down um so what how we looking at that and how we're approaching it i think one of the pieces that we're going to be evaluating this year's b i ready was was implemented at the middle schools for the first time last year so i think we need to

181keep a close eye on that program and whether it's being successful with our middle school students but also to make sure it's being implemented with fidelity that the components that are there are used being used appropriately and properly with the students to support them none so i already is is a two-pronged approach it does the benchmarking and the assessment but it also has the instructional components that go along with it and pathways for students so that's one um but but also to uh continuing the conversation of tracking and identifying students and making sure it's early intervention um to provide the support they need right away at the beginning of the year i guess what how we what do we what protocols are we do using to try and identify those students so we do have

182a more you know earlier yeah we do have a monitoring system um this year because it's the second year with iready i think we're going to be able to turn around much earlier in the year the the list for sites to compare so sites have already identified a lot of these students already they're they're cross-comparing what we found as a district from our data with what they already have on their site to make sure we're not missing any students i think that process can happen soon earlier this year okay thank you so very much moving on to 11c report on facilities and technology projects mrs kutka although it seems like we've already received the report during public comments good evening everybody shar president tabit board members dr hill and staff community so i'm here tonight

183to present our facilities and technology items that are on the consent agenda that are paid with bond dollar dollars there are eight items so if we can get the powerpoint uh we have a ratification of rental agreement for facilities which was the temporary fencing that went around the grass the sod to protect it from our little kiddos as they're out in the at recess that was the through contractor andy gump and the amount is not to exceed two thousand nine twenty nine twenty nine that's item thirteen q uh item thirteen r is approval of additive change order number two that is for landscaping and irrigation these are all for disney uh on the two-story modular building this is marina landscape this is what we were talking about earlier with uh the twenty four thousand uh

184seven dollars and seventy eight cents was to switch from the hydro seed to the sod that was an upgrade that we were able to do it provides instant grass and gratification although we did note that it is there are some brown spots but they are responsible during the maintenance of the establishment period to take care of it so if there are any issues it's a guarantee the next item is item 13s again walt disney the project is the site structure structural concrete the contractor is santa clarita and the increased amount is seven thousand three forty seven fifty nine which brings the amount not to exceed five hundred and thirty five thousand three hundred and seventy and four cents that was for construction of a cpi gravity wall at the black backflow area on the new

185building we have item 13t the project is the site and structural concrete again santa clarita concrete this is that brings the total not to exceed 586 thousand 402.99 the increased amount of 51 032 95 was to add the concrete flat work uh underneath in the lunch shelter area and to extend it a little bit beyond what was the existing area so that it expanded the lunch area will allow for additional tables to be placed out with some shade again that was an enhancement to the original plans item 13 new which is the geotechnical materials testing and inspection services uh for nino and more as the contractor uh contract amount now is not to exceed 145 000 and this increased amount of 30 000 brings uh the amount for the additional hours to perform the remaining

186items to on the scope to complete the two-story building we have item 13v project is to furnish material for the installation of infrastructure wiring and devices of the bogen system the contractor is a demco doing business as adi contract amount is not to exceed 2006 1058 this was just to account for a small amount due to sales tax being omitted on the original change order we have item 13 w which is the project is the 48 by 12 foot temporary mobile office contractor was william scotsman the contract amount not to exceed sixteen thousand seven sixty eight twelve cents the increased amount of seven eighty three eighty one was to include additional expenses for maintenance and cleaning upon repair return excuse me we have item 13x which was the procurement an installation of playground equipment the

187contractor is play power lt farmington inc doing a national joint power alliance piggyback contract you can see the number there this contract amount is not to exceed two hundred and twenty thousand four thirty four eighty eight the increase of eleven thousand two ninety four was to upgrade this spectopro in place rubber surfacing so it was an upgrade again an additive uh enhancement i would like to add there were some questions about the sod and the watering and the three times a day so we were we were trying to be proactive we put signs out that showed that we are using recycled water that is not subject to the water restrictions we confirmed that with bwp um and so that's the ability that why we're able to do that um um when the uh the two-week

188period we will be able to and he and you know mr cross was very concerned because obviously we don't want to restrict that watering over that period but the recycled water is exempted so we are covered and and quick question that that is all of our campuses or all of our campuses except for miller uh it's there are some areas of the smaller grass areas within the campus that maybe the recycled water isn't taken to it is all our big fields so all i don't but are all schools on reclaimed water or except for horseman horseman okay got it okay that's helpful and the water the city has brought the recycled water up to the front and we've talked about it in some of our facilities meetings it's it would be quite a project because

189we'd have to bring it in and there's the retaining wall right so they'd have to bring the piping they'd either have to dig or remove the wall and put it back and so that's been a challenge and but i think that is something that we need to do because um that's rather an eyesore yeah i have not you know have that area not really be watered uh adequately i understand well that's progress because i remember a few years ago it was miller that didn't have it or and so thank you ron davis and a number of other folks who uh and and a little pressure there a little bit well that yeah anyway i remember him coming to an sfoc meeting and saying you people we we're bringing you the water you need to take

190it in uh and then what just one other additional item i think the current plans on the trees were to put in 24 inch and i kind of looked at what that looked like and they're maybe this tall so i don't know if that's what ms morrison was was thinking that where we could put in i think she's thinking bigger uh they would be crepe myrtles which grow very quickly uh and mr cross said that in order to put the bigger trees in it gets a little bit more costly because you're having to bring a crane in to lift and and drop they will be in cement so that the the roots do not do damage to anything that might be near and ruin the structural basis and cause trip hazards but we'll we will

191look into it and we'll look at the cost because there have been savings throughout okay so we will that is something we will look at even if we could do i'm sorry um even if we did you know frankly pop-up tents in the you know i i don't know what's appropriate but if if there's something that i mean they're playing around solar panels on other school sites so you know like this is where i'm just saying like if it is a relatively smaller footprint to cover and to provide shade and so you know thankfully the trees grow fast uh but how fast you know one two years worth of you know creativity i think you know that's interesting because when we were in the heat of covid we bought a lot of tents because the

192nurses were concerned that there was going to be overflow and we need to expand the areas where we had to quarantine right students so they are sitting in the warehouse so we you know if if that does make sense we can check with the principal and if that makes sense we can just deploy those out there absolutely great that's quick at least you know and temporary yeah it might be kind of cool they could pretend they're camping out right yeah and only until the winter yeah [Music] okay thank you so very much all right moving on to 12 new and or unfinished business uh 12a resolution number one request for separation from service requirement exemption president yes mr ferguson i will move the board of education uh approve resolution where is it right here one

193uh the request for separation from service requirement exemption as present as amended second thank you for the motion and the second i don't know if mr frittner she's just closer and i heard it first so dr weisberg i'll do you and him next time okay sorry uh for the second um any discussion nothing okay all those in favor please say aye aye opposed say no motion carries 5-0 thank you very much 12b amendment to the 2022-2023 instructional calendars for burbank adult school president yes sir i'll move the board of education adopt the amendment to the 22 sorry 2022 2023 instructional calendars for the burbank adult school as presented thank goodness thank you and for the uh second doctor again any discussion just briefly um whoever is doing the social media over at the adult school

194is killing it so um very very informative just it's it's great and a good model for the rest of our institutions as they learn um including the raccoons so oh my god that was amazing everything everything kudos over there that's our new direction it's our new director mr nogueira he's it's fantastic i want to recognize leadership when it happens those raccoons are thank you awesome okay um have you seen a default do we take a vote from the raccoons what does okay how does that anyway [Laughter] all right all those in favor any further discussion no that was fun thank you all those in favor please say aye aye opposed motion carries 5-0 12-3 f-12c excuse me approval of verification of requirements for a provisional internship permit with the state of california commission on teacher

195credentialing president abbott mr ferguson i'll move the board of education approve the verification of requirements for a provisional internship permit between the burbank unified school district and the state of california commission on teacher credentialing to fill an immediate staffing need effective august 19 2022 through august 19 2023 and that the authority to sign the verification of requirements for the provisional internship permit the exercise pursuant to b usdar3314 is presented second thank you for the motion and the second mr frittner any discussion okay all those in favor please say aye aye opposed motion carries 5-0 12-d ratification of chuck glory family foundation grant agreement president mr ferguson i'll move that the board of education ratified the chuck lorre family foundation grant agreement between the burbank unified school district and the czech lori family foundation effective july

1961 2022 through july 30 2024 in the amount of 340 thousand dollars and that the authority to sign the agreement uh the exercise pursuant to busd ar 3314 is presented second thank you for the motion mr ferguson in a second dr weisberg um any discussion uh the chuck lorre foundation continues to be a major partner of this district and so um and so if there is anything that we can do to again reiterate our thanks for the years of partnership i would love to do that thank you for bringing this um i need to apologize i think i messed up take the first 12 a was an amended did you say thank you for that good catch i missed it totally okay uh thank you for that and any further discussion may yes please thank

197you i just think it's really important because they have been a fantastic partner to us for multiple years now and i would say it's probably reached close to a million dollars that they've invested in our district and this is another 340 000 over two years and it's really ten thousand to each of our schools over two years to really advance stem education which is in support of course of their program the young sheldon and we um are thrilled because it's gonna help us with advancing some of our high school naf academy medical you know all the fancy equipment it will help with our textbook adoption that's new in science and getting extra lab equipment and things like that and also at the elementary level they're really doing more of their um osmos and all of

198that kind of coding uh yeah and so we're really thrilled to be working with them again and they have been a fantastic partner to the district yeah are they i i have out of curiosity that do we have any any anything uh have they named after him or any i any thoughts about possible naming down the road or something for their continued support we currently don't have anything okay thank you i suggest you read on the board policy on naming procedures and and there is ways to get it done and rules you got to follow i mean but maybe it's something about like a proclamation or just some public thanks or something because they're i mean absolutely that's where i was going yeah no buildings i know we disagree on that but that you know

199i hear you you can still have a stadium for pepsi or something i don't know but yeah thanks yeah but is it possible for them for us to acknowledge them at one of our meetings give them a plaque that was something that was my suggestion so if there's if there's that we have contact with them that we can well if it's not too burdensome on staff you know so ask for presentation we'll give it that was burdensome get it done thank you thank you uh now can we call for a vote we could your call okay all those in favor please say aye aye opposed fantastic motion carries 5-0 appreciate it 13 consent agenda president tabit yes mr ferguson i will move consent calendar items 13a through 13x except for items which board members wish

200to pull second motion in a second anyone are we good to proceed okay um all those in favor of approving consent agenda 13 a through 13 sorry x x appreciate that please say aye aye opposed please say no great motion carries consent agenda approval carries 5-0 and now we're at a tournament yes we are uh except we have one request um dr hill superintendents comments and responses yes i know we consolidated earlier but i want to give miss cochta an opportunity to talk about some very bittersweet news um as some people alluded to today a couple of the speakers i am my last day with the district will be september 30th uh and i'm looking forward to spending some time some you know family time that's kind of been sacrificed over a little bit i

201have a new grandson that i'm going to enjoy spending time with but just you know when i was reflecting back on my career uh with busd or my experience volunteer time started in 1988 where i served on the parent ed council and there was a parent that was there that happened to teach at jefferson and was in the pta and looped me in so as a kindergarten parent i was the fourth vp for in pta and went on to serve at muir and burbank high and council pta i was president treasurer ledge ledge chair parliamentarian and that somehow got me on to the superintendent's budget committee that's where i served from 2001 to 2004 which led to me being a board member from 2005 to 2012. uh in 2013 when measure s came i served

202on the campaign committee as the assistant treasurer filing all their reports continued for many years because we had funds left over i served on the school facilities oversight committee from 2014 to 2019 and that's when i came into this current position so i'm really proud to culminate my my experience with bust ust having served here there are some amazing people in this district we do great things the kiddos we put first and you know it is bittersweet to be leaving um i feel there's lots left to do you may see my face again volunteering and maybe when my grandchild you know and right now the way it's slated would go to jefferson in five years so um anyway all right thank you for the time to indulge me yep um is that gonna be a

203third generation uh yes yeah jefferson correct i i went to horse man here in burbank high my kids went to jefferson here in burbank high so graham joseph is slated to follow in their footsteps at least for right now if i mean we've had a conversation about your wonderful career here in birmingham with the city and i have so much respect and admiration for you and really thank you and and you're right we'll see your face you're you're just putting on a different hat at the moment so thank you so much for all you've done for us um and and i'm not going to say goodbye but i'll see you around right um you tell your you spit out your resume relatively quickly and and i will say um i remember it uh some of

204that experiencing it a little differently um uh i think i believe i believe i remember i served on the school site council with you at burbank high school right um you also handed me one of your campaign buttons right in the middle of the dice there when you were running for school board for the first time it was green with purple outright outlining i still have that button um you attended my mom's funeral and um you modeled in many ways for me both in times when we have agreed personally and disagreed uh how committed you are to the mission here um when i have thought about being a board member running for board member um you have always been a model for how i've hoped to to serve or at least um to to match

205a commitment level and i still you know i think i learn constantly uh when i'm interacting with you and i've just been so grateful uh for your service to this community for how uh mission oriented you are and how much you continue to give so thank you for being a model for me in leadership um and i will miss you terribly in this district as a as a partner in this way but i certainly hope in the future we can partner in others thank you no no but uh i just this is your last not your last meeting okay so kevin yeah we'll get there a couple more on that bittersweet note we are also going to um oh my gosh thank you for that adjourn in memory of raul castillo