Board Meeting - January 18th, 2022

001i would like to call the el money city school district's board of education meeting to order at 5 02 pm uh before i proceed i hope that everyone our parents our teachers our staff our colleagues our team here on the board and our cabinet had a safe healthy and happy holiday season and company of your loved ones these are definitely difficult times for all of us as we continue to follow uh safety guidelines to keep ourselves safe but most of all our loved ones safe during this pandemic and now as uh 2022 is here now let's remain hopeful that this year will be better than last and that it can and it will bring us much happiness and joy and now i will move on to roll call beginning with mrs kobian present ms mendez

002present mrs rivas present mr siegrist president andreas present and now if i can pla and if i can have everyone joining me for the flag salute please stand put 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 and now we'll continue with our agenda beginning with our items of interest number one presentation senator rubio's office and uh before we present um i i really want to acknowledge and uh and and just let you know that we are honored this evening to welcome senator susan rubio to our el monte city school district this evening senator rubio has been working tirelessly for our communities and as a

003long-time teacher senator rubio understands the needs of our students and our families and how to best help and assist them in the path to success with this said i want to please uh i want to please encourage you in helping me to welcome our state senator susan rubio senator rubio the floor is yours good evening everyone first of all thank you so much for this opportunity to say hello to each and every one of you i know it's a little late but i congratulate the armani southamani emergency resource association i know that they're being recognized but also our school board members and our superintendent and all our school community as the president board president stated i was a teacher and also vice principal so i recognized all the work that you have to do during

004these difficult times and navigating covet and so again my thank you to all the teachers and everyone in the school community that makes it work because i know um i could only thank you i don't know how you are doing it it's a lot of work so to all the parents out there let's always make sure that we thank our teachers that work so hard and administrators and everyone that that helps in these efforts but going back to a wonderful organization that i have the honor to to work with and see firsthand what they do for our community um i want to thank the aomani south amani emergency resource association for doing everything that we know is needed especially during these difficult times i have seen them put together emergency food packages give out clothing

005i know that they offer transportation in particular as a teacher i can be i can tell you how thankful i am that they also provide uniforms for school uh children and school supplies and we know that's also a challenge sometimes in our inner city community so so thank you again i have the privilege of recognizing them as my non-profit of the year in 2020 once again because i know that they're instrumental in what they do for our children and our families and i understand that they've been doing this for almost 66 years so that takes a lot of commitment and dedication in particular i want to thank the leadership of the board and that is uh the executive director lilian reyes and all of her staff volunteers and again all the the members that that

006really make this organization what it is it's truly a testament of the love they have for their community and the compassion that they have for others and once again i have seen them in action myself i've had the privilege to join them and participate and we collaborated with with food and toys and other items and and it's really wonderful to to feel welcomed and included in something so wonderful as taking care of our communities so today uh once again with uh with the honor of representing not only as a state senator but also as a community member and as a teacher i want to read a certificate i did provide a certificate of recognition that they should have in person but if i may this certificate is on behalf of the california state senate it

007is my privilege to present the certificate in recognition of your outstanding work and dedication to helping our families in need throughout the san diego valley your commitment and invaluable contributions for most vulnerable residents is an inspiration to all of us so lillian ray if you are listening thank you so much for your friendship and thank you so much for what you do but i also want to take a moment to recognize the entire community that came out to to support those efforts um and it starts with dr maribel garcia all the way down to everyone that helped pack the food and and really pass out the food and there's a long list so in order to be respectful and mindful of your time and your agenda i won't read all the names of the volunteers

008but please know that if i could i would but i just will read one on behalf of the california state senate it is my privilege to present you with this certificate in recognition of your outstanding volunteerism and helping out with the el monte salamani emergency resource association i applaud your dedication generous contributions and commitment to serving others i want to express my deep admiration for your compassion and your hard work and supporting our san diego valley residents and that's to all of you again i wish i could be there in person to to really highlight each one of you but please know that all of you are appreciated and hopefully we continue to do this year after year thank you to the school board i just wanted to also share with our school board members

009that i have several pieces of legislation right now that will help our our schools and so when the time comes i hope to continue to to work with you collaboratively to make sure that we make education better for our students and circumstances better for our teachers and in our school community so thank you very much and i hope that everyone has a wonderful evening [Applause] is all right he's so far away do you want to hold yourself [Applause] my switch the buttons what a beautiful facility i love it you guys are lucky look at this all of you look so beautiful up there yeah and you know these certificates that were given by the senator of course it's not just one person that does all of this because every one of you in this room

010has helped era at one time or another you've given me names of families that need assistance and we've helped we never say we never say no and i just can't thank you enough and the senator also for uh recognizing us but you know it does take a village and look at you guys right now thank you so much and have a blessed new year and we'll get over there we're looking over all of this stuff that's happened last year but we're moving on we'll be okay god says so okay thank you good night thank you miss ray thank you to the el moni south armani emergency resources association for doing so much not just for our el monte families but for our entire san gabriel valley so thank you so much for all you do

011and also and once again thank you to senator susan rubio for recognizing all of the amazing work that the entire village does for our communities thank you so much and with that we will continue on to our second item on our items of interest our el money city school district academic diagnostic number two with miss virginia castro thank you president so it's my honor tonight to present our second diagnostic it feels like just yesterday i was here presenting our diagnostic one this year just flying by but here i am tonight we're going to be talking a little bit about our diagnostic to academic baseline data so first starting off with our overall performance what what we've compared here is um starting with if you see the very first column it says 1920 d2 and this

012is our second diagnostic data from the last normal school year that we had and that was 1920 before we entered into the pandemic and then the following two columns are the diagnostic one data which i shared with you previously and then the recent diagnostic 2 20 20 21 22 school data and right in the middle of the screen you see california in school reading and at the very end of your screen you see california in school math so what those two numbers represent is how california is doing as a whole and we inserted this graph in here so that you can see how we are comparing to um statewide data and that's important to note so why didn't we include 2021 data because it was so sporadic because that was when we were closed for

013the majority of the school year we can't really rely on that data because there are so many extenuating factors so if you remember dr garcia saying over and over again we were so excited about the 1920 school year because we had made such great gains that year we really thought that the dashboard was going to reflect it that the students um scoring on grade level and above grade level on the s back we're going to show so i have really good news today because if you see how we are 1920 diagnostic two data compared to how we are currently in our 2122 diagnostic two data the difference is not that great so the media tells us and we hear all the time these dramatic losses that the kids have experienced students of color um which

014are the students that we serve in el monte um they're the ones that are pairing out the the worst during the pandemic and i've said it before now we have proof we're not seeing that because of the hard work of our principals and our teachers and and this morning when we met with our administrators i i gave them accolades and i hope that those accolades trickle down to the to the classroom teachers because this shows the tenacity and this shows the rigor of what we did even during the school closures um and that our kids are where they're at so let's just talk a little bit about about the data i can ramble on and on about how great our people are but um so in we had um 18 of our students that were

015above grade level or mid grade level and in in in this diagnostic two we see the same amount the only one that's a little bit lower is the early on grade level and if we look down we always want to see big numbers of green right our two green marks we want to see big our our middle is the ones that are one grade level or below and then our pink and our red are the ones that that we focus on and those are the students that are scoring two grade levels or three or more but compared to where we were in diagnostic one you see that as a district in reading we we've demonstrated great gains our students that were three or more level grade levels below we had a huge decrease from 23

016to 17 percent our students that were two grade levels below we had a five percent decrease from 20 to 15 percent and there was an increase in in the green in math we we didn't see that great of the gains that we did in d1 um i'm sorry in 1920 uh d2 but we're not that far off so 11 of students that were two or grade levels uh below compared to 15 3 or more grid levels below compared to and if we look at the top i want to draw your attention to d1 and d2 so we started the school year 22 of our students were three or more grade levels below we reduced that number to 14 uh 23 of the students were two grade levels below we reduced that number to 15 percent

017and we started with only 15 percent of our students at or above grade level and those numbers increased to 27 percent so if you look at the state average we are right on track with the state 27 percent of the students in california are are where we are currently not quite where we were in 1920 but we'll get there so overall district-wide this is very good news for us when we look at our grade levels so this again is is the second diagnostic from 1920 with grade starting with grade one how we did in diagnostic one how we did in diagnostic two so it's first grade second grade third grade fourth grade and then the district average so i just want to give you guys a moment to look at this data again we want

018to see the increase of the green from d1 to d2 you can compare it to 1920 to see how we're pairing overall if you look at second grade we started our diagnostic one uh 45 of our students were true grade levels below that decreased to 31 um third grade also had major gains um fourth grade you can't see it on this slide but one of the slides that i already presented to our staff today was how our students had a year's growth or more in grades four five and no sixth seventh and eighth grade in ten week in a ten week window so our teachers were um were able to increase in ten weeks a whole year's worth of growth for their kids and they were very impressed they shared that their data team said

019what is el monte doing because we're not seeing this type of growth anywhere but again this is the reading grade comparison for fifth grade again if you compare d2 and 1920 to d2 in 2122 uh what is it 30 i should have added these before i presented 31 compared to 30. so we're actually in a better place than we were in 1920. and i won't embarrass myself by trying to do the math because there are teachers in the room and they're going to say virginia you go back to the classroom um but but i just want you to take a quick look at that are there any comments about the reading date or any questions i can answer for the board at this time you have a question about that has it been desegregated for

020girls and boys is it i'll show you the subgroups that's the next slide that's coming up okay thank you i think that was my cue to move on okay so math do we do math i don't think we did math okay so this is math first grade again my biggest focus is when i look at the d1 and the d2 so diagnostic one data we want to see those increases in the green this is dramatic in first grade those kids had we had a nine percent on grade level or above grade level and they increased to from 23 that were two grade levels below to only nine percent so we're seeing a reduction in the kids that are um really struggling are limited learners and then those increases in the growth look at third grade

021third grade eight percent of the students started the school year in diagnostic one at or above grade level and now 25 are there so when we look at this data we would like to see 100 of all of our kids in the green but that's not our reality and like i showed you with the california it's not the state's reality either but it does indicate that we're on the right track so by the third diagnostic what we want to see is a lot more green a lot less red a lot less pink um so and we're hoping that if we continue on this trajectory that's exactly what we're going to see so here's 5 seventh and eighth compared to district wide and again compared to where we were in that year that was very celebratory

022for us we're right on track okay subgroup data here it is mr segrest so these numbers um sometimes i've shared this in the past they're a little bit deceiving because our groups are not as big and i can tell you that our asian students our latino students make up the biggest our biggest subgroups but in american indian or alaskan you can see from diagnostic window one to diagnostic window two we had a lot of students 12 percent move into at or or or above grade level our asian students continue to do well from d1 to d2 we saw a lot a lot more uh gains in the green and a lot of decrease in the three or more grade levels below and the two grade levels below black and african american students and our filipino

023students what we always want to see is upward growth and that's exactly what we're seeing in every subgroup here's our hispanic or latino students that's very dramatic gains so 18 to 29 um and again those articles that we get sent by edsource and and west ed and how our students of color are are the ones most impacted this makes me very um proud of our district and the work that we're doing because we see that our subgroups are still continuously growing and that the gaps are decreasing so here is the english language acquisition so our els are always an area of focus for us we've done a lot of work with our els in the past year and again we see very dramatic growth our english only and our ifips and our rfip so our

024ifips are those students that are initially fluent in english so when they take the the alpac upon red upon enrollment they have a language a native language at home and they're already bilingual fluent in english the rfepeps are the ones that we reclassify as being fluent in english and these two groups historically have done very well but you can see how well they continue to do in our district they exceed our eos um so our plan is that all of our els become our faps and that we continue to see this upward growth so in reading programs i'm sorry in school district programs in the area of reading we have the students with 504s our foster students our homeless our migrant ed are so are socially economically disadvantaged in our special lab so you know

025that these are our most vulnerable students and when we look at this data um it gives us a lot of great joy to see that the students that the resources that we've put into these students to making sure that um their their lack their losses of academic growth is minimal and we can see that the programs that we put in place we had a homeless summer summer camp for homeless students this year we have our migrant ed program we have a counselor dedicated to foster youth we have a counselor dedicated to 504s so all of these things we we can see the gains and we can see also the areas and i do want to point out special ed i think that this is the biggest growth that we've seen in special ed so four

026percent of our students with disabilities started at or at grade level or above and that increased to eight so again not where we want to be but they doubled so if we continue on this trajectory you know we're going to continue to see great growth in math these are subgroups asian huge growth um filipino also had great growth from to 38 are hispanic and latinos 9 to 19 but i want to point out our three grade levels below went from 25 percent to 17 language acquisition so our els again in math this is this continues to be a focus area district-wide because if you looked at the state data statewide california doesn't perform as well in the area of math um so it's a constant a constant area of focus for us but our eos

027our ifeps and our rfeps programs 504 foster homeless migrant ed um socially economically disadvantaged and special ed again lots of growth and decrease in the the years that they're um working below grade level any questions comments concerns yes mr seacrest did you factor in attendance of the students uh and relate that to their progress or lack thereof it was for attendance that could be brought in couldn't it it could be we could see the sporadic attendance in the um 2021 school year is why we didn't include that data because we didn't think it was valid data but this year all the students that were present in school and even the kids in independent studies they took the diagnostic exam so um if we performed very low in an area grade level that's been hit hard

028with attendance um we we could factor that in but right now what we're seeing is the opposite so given the the attendance concerns that we've been facing um our students continue to learn and i do want to point out that we're not seeing the type of learning loss that we're hearing about when we're reading about and and and to us that's a huge reason to celebrate because um i'm sure you've read articles and we get articles about um school districts that their students are coming to them not to say that we don't see it but we're addressing it and we're not so far off the last normal school year we had and another question about special ed is there any way to to deal with autistic children as a group to see how they do

029as compared to the other special ed children we could pull that data we could disaggregate by disability normally the way the state looks at the special ed data is just if a child has an iep but we could we could look at the type of disability they have if it's a speech and language or a processing disorder or a spectrum disorder we could look at all of those things thank you i have a few questions when we disaggregate special ed data with the special ed department now that especially mr juan munoz is the director i'm sure that the level of desegregation that goes on in that department is to that um specificity but for our purposes we look at special ed as a whole thank you yes ms mendez no worries so just some clarifying

030questions so the ninth the 2019 2020 d2 what month was that taken in that was before like the march closure that would have been the same time so it would have been in january so the last we were still in school full time when that happened okay so that condition was in person okay yes and then for obviously d1 that's in person just normal conditions yes okay that was this year okay and obviously we do know i ready i always like to say you know it's always we have to take into account students are taking it's an individual assessment it's computer-based it can be affected by motivation so i kind of know those factors what conditions do you think contributed then obviously we see how you know during d1 you see a lot of students

031who were below gravel and obviously now we see a decrease which means progress so what conditions do you think was it more of the testing of them okay we're back in the swing of things or what other conditions do you think played in that i think the learning that's happening in the classroom is why we're seeing the growth so to say that 2021 d1 was a normal year i think is is is not quite accurate i think they they came back with death shields they came back with masks they came back with all of these extenuating circumstances that that are causing them a lot of stress they came back with a lot of trauma i think that the growth that we've seen in d2 is a result of the hard work that our teachers are

032doing to look at the data to align their lessons to address the data that they're seeing the work that our principals are doing to address that data and the learning gaps the types of reports that we've been analyzing and i also think that our counselors and the work they've been doing to address the drug the trauma the fact that i know ms jenny lee is going to be presenting but the fact that our kids are fed even if they go home quarantined or an independent study i think all of those factors how we just embrace our kids as a community and we make sure that they're succeeding if kids don't show up our outreach consultants are knocking on their door i think that i can speak for the entire district as a whole when i

033say that we will not let our kids fail so all of the conditions that even we can't control we're gonna find a way to address them what's happening in the classroom i say is data driven instruction and i think that that's what you're seeing in these raw numbers is is the focus on the data the focus on the small group instruction that the fact that our principals and our teachers were so creative on how they set up their classrooms despite the shields i mean we have kidney tables with you know little little desks all around the kidney tables we have teachers that are themselves moving from groups to groups in their classrooms because we ask them not to have their kids move around so that creativity and that commitment and that desire to see our

034kids succeed is why we're seeing the gains that we're seeing okay thank you know that you're right because we always expect after summer break right sure see a little bit of regression that's normal and then that's why i already so great or any type of assessment to see okay what skills do i need to review that maybe some students lost during the summer so you're right it gave some great information to teachers to know okay these are the areas that students are struggling in now let's provide that support and yeah across the board you're seeing that pattern so it really does huge growth and the one one of the reasons why we purchased already as a district is because it's so aligned to the sbac exam right and it's so aligned to the blueprints and

035what the kids need to look to learn in order to be successful at the next grade level so when we look at these reports and there's a new one that we just rolled out to our principles um the common core state standards right it tells you every single child every single standard that they still need every single standard that they've mastered and the ones that are partially met so if our teachers just look at that report they can plan out the rest of the school year and they're going to teach the kids exactly what they need to learn not only for the s back because that's really not our final goal it's it's a nice perk right to get all green on the dashboard but our main goal is to prepare students for the following

036school year thank you and i just had a technical question um i know parents usually get their reports when would parents expect to see their individual student reports from this round i'm assuming it's going to happen in parent conference time so you'll get the report card and the eye ready but i can follow up okay just and then another kind of question is does i already project like do they say based off of this we would expect you know the next one the students yes so we have a projected proficiency report and our and our principals have been looking at that as well so they can kind of uh get an estimate on how many kids are going to be proficient what grade levels are going to do well um we get a report specifically

037if the kids just learn what we expect them to learn and then the stretch growth so we told our principals sorry teachers every single child must master their stretch goals because we wanted to make sure that we were going to defy the odds and we're seeing that so i'm i'm i'm just extremely thrilled oh thank you and and i think it just speaks to the high expectations we have for all the kids yes thank you thank you miss castro do we have any other questions perfect well thank you miss castro and that definitely speaks about as you mentioned the commitment of our district of our teachers the creativity right and how they're uh really particular about analyzing the data for that continued growth in in all of our students so thank you for that thank

038you and we will continue now with our nutrition services with miss jenny lee president rodriguez members of the governing board um miss jenny lee is our director of nutrition services she joined our district in the summer of 2020. 2020 and she's gonna update the board and the community today on some of the the great things and the fun things that we've been doing in our nutrition services program um in her time here she joined us a couple months into the pandemic and she continued doing a lot of the great work and elevated some of the work that we started at the start of pandemics i'll turn over to mrs lee so she can update the board on on all the happenings nutrition services thank you for the introduction uh good evening board and steam cabinet

039members families are tuning in this evening my name is jenny lee i am the director of nutrition services and i'm proud to be up here today providing an update on what we've been doing in our department so i wanted to just quickly introduce myself and my family um i am a registered dietitian and a mom of two as you can see in the photo um arthur was just born a couple months ago um but i also wanted to take this opportunity just to share some gratitude for welcoming me graciously to the el monte city school district family i have had the past 18 months that were just wonderful serving alongside our staff here in nutrition services and i'm so incredibly blessed to be working with them as you move on so i'd like to start

040with the end in mind and that's our mission so the almighty city school district nutrition services department will provide free and healthy meals and offer high quality nutrition programs to promote healthy lifestyles and achieve academic success while supporting elmonti city goals and standards now i want to mention that this is a evolving mission statement so as we continue to look at our schools and serving our students with an equity lens that we continue to revisit our mission statement so that we ensure that we are meeting the needs of our students moving on i wanted to brief you on the three objectives that we hold true in our department um the first being to increase meal quality and expand access to school meals simply put we want to just prepare meals and serve our students food

041that they want to eat and that requires a lot of surveying our students looking at our meal quality secondly we want to seek out opportunities to act as a food and nutrition hub for our community as we were able to do so last year through the pandemic our second objective is to support sustaining nutrition education programs we know that serving our students healthy meals can also be a teaching moment and so we want to continue these nutrition education programs by strengthening existing partnerships and finding opportunities to meet our students where they are aside from our students our most important stakeholder in our department are our staff and so we want to continue to support them by providing professional development and find ways to support their well-being their wellness because we know that we can accomplish

042our goals with a healthy and well-fed team all right so i just wanted to take a quick look back at our pandemic feeding model starting in march 2020 until june 2021 we were able to serve over 5.5 million meals curbside to our families and that's a huge accomplishment knowing that our schools were closed and it's totally a different tradition from our traditional model of serving our students we were also able to serve our students safely that came on campus with our learning pods and our spring reopening and as we continue to work on minimizing as much food waste as possible and through our partnership with our savior center we were able to donate over three truckloads of food that we weren't able to serve during our curbside distributions i also wanted to mention that we

043ended the year last year with a fund balance of four million dollars um bringing us out of the red um and now that we're on a cde spending plan we are able to do a lot more in our department and something that's really important to me is that last year we had 100 staff retention within our department and i know it was a huge challenge for many other districts to staff their kitchens and we had our staff coming in 4 30 a.m until and staying till 7 pm no matter what day it was so how did we start this year we wanted to return to pre-pandemic operations as much as possible with a few modifications to ensure covet safety so we were happy to return breakfast in the classroom to our schools serving our students

044through the lunch line which enabled us to provide hot meals we're happy to continue serving our programs that were on campus as well including head start preschool now her early head start and supper and snack for our aspire after school program and the modifications that we made this year are just a few but it started with the packaging of our meal components so that we can minimize as much touch of our food we remove the salad bars and share tables just temporarily until things are safe to at times are safe for us to bring those back schools extended their lunch schedules and removed their lunch keypads to speed up the lunch line as quickly as possible and maintain our stable cohorts as they were picking up lunch and going to their lunch tables this year

045we also updated our website so parents can easily access all menus online both in english and in spanish as well as all of our nutrition labels and allergy information now this took a lot of work but we were able to put everything that we serve in our cafeterias online we're 100 transparent about what we serve our students and so at any moment a parent can go online and look at a label of what we've been serving we also added a page with a nutrition education resources for our families our staff and families to view so how are we doing this year compared to two years ago pre-pandemic um as you can see with our breakfast participation we are averaging only about 63 um in meal participation now i want to know we did not adjust

046the data for attendance which can certainly play a factor in what the numbers are showing today um but we also want you to know that we're very motivated by this um as well as our lunch numbers as well so for lunch we are just shy of what we were doing pre-pandemic we're about 81 average lunch participation and i can assure you that we will be looking into ways to improve our menu and reach our students more um so that they are coming through our lunch lines like they were in the past now i can't talk about this year without just briefing you on the global supply chain crisis and how it has impacted our program locally first we are seeing challenges with purchasing the items that we were able to in the past at the

047height of the pandemic many manufacturers decided to streamline and reduce the number of items that they were offering because demand just wasn't there i mean as you can remember um the meal boxes that we were distributing had mostly grocery items and there are items that were different from what we normally serve in our cafeterias and that's how it was at many other districts so the move for manufacturers to change the number of offerings has certainly impacted us moving forward um secondly we're experiencing delays and cancellation of orders manufacturers have been struggling to keep up with demand now that schools have reopened so districts are being asked to change their menus substitute items use different supplies i was just at cortada a few weeks ago and the students made it a point to bring up to

048me that we were missing the straws and their spork sets just little nuances like that but it means a lot to the students so it has been a challenge for us but in the next slide i'll show you what we've been doing to overcome these challenges and then lastly the third challenge and i know that we're experiencing this now even in our district are staff shortages this impacts all sectors of the supply chain from manufacturing to shipping to production and serving so it has been a huge challenge globally and i we are getting letters and emails from our distributors almost weekly letting us know that something isn't going to show up on our delivery truck or we're not going to be able to get grapes in this month so we are trying to overcome these

049by offering different items to our students so our strategy is just like it was last year in the years past is we just do whatever it takes to serve our students um we started off with procurement and cde has issued several flexibilities for districts to enter into emergency contracts and increase the micro purchase threshold from ten thousand to fifty thousand dollars and what that means is we don't have to go out to bid or find formal quotes to find food and the supplies that we need to feed our students we have issued several pos and i am meeting with other vendors to make sure that we have uh backup plans and backup plans for those backup plans in place um an example of some of the things that we're doing strategically with procurement is we

050are placing our orders well in advance i'm talking four to six weeks at least of the menu date i'm already starting to order things that we will see on the menu in march and that's with the hope that we can get eighty percent of those items in and whenever we can we stock up on emergency goods and any supplies that we can get our hands on so maybe the sparks are missing the straws to the set but at least we have sporks menu changes now this is our least a favorite option we don't like to change our menu it interrupts production it you know we don't like to see our kids disappointed but there are times that we have to make those changes and to avoid as many food substitutions as possible we have limited

051our menu choices to a four week lunch cycle and a two week cycle for breakfast separate and snack what that means is for lunch you'll see 20 different items versus 25 and we had a five-week cycle when we are desperately short on staff in our central kitchen we pivot to a less labor-intensive menu item in order for us to catch up so last week for example we had to change um one of our items so that we could serve burritos but then two days we were able to catch up and serve the orange chicken and chow mein um and then lastly when it comes to staffing we are so fortunate to have staff willing to work we have asked all of our part-time staff to work extra hours and they're all willing to do so

052we have deployed our central kitchen staff to cover our school kitchen so that none are left uncovered and then we've had to rely on maintenance and operations as well as our central warehouse for driver coverage because it's so important that we don't skip a beat in our department now before i move on to our goals and our future i want just to revisit our objectives because this will set the framework for the next couple slides that i will be going over so at the heart of our program we want to increase meal quality and access for our students um and like i mentioned that just means putting things on the menu that the kids want to eat now that we're on a spending plan i know mr herrera has asked us to put filet mignon

053on the menu one of these days i'm still working towards it but the supply chain crisis has made it a challenge but we will be purchasing higher quality foods as we move forward we also have just recently hired our nutrition services operations coordinator who happens to be a chef so double bonus she has a lot of ideas on making vegetables taste good and the different things that we can do with the usda commodities that we get so we're excited to have her on board as well we also will be investing in new equipment we have 20 30 year old ovens out there that need an upgrade so we'll be working our way through all of our skills to update our equipment purchasing a new refrigerated truck which will enable us to increase our meal distributions

054as well and once safe to do so we certainly want to bring back our salad bars our share tables and offer more entrees and variety to our menus and now that all of our students are virtual or have access to um computers we want to find creative ways to solicit their feedback if we can't do a taste test we could do a instagram story survey or something like along the signs but we definitely want to hear back from our students and to increase our access to meals we want to make every best effort to provide meals during breaks because we know that our students rely on our school meals even when school's out next nutrition education so i'm going to go on a little tangent but i i wanted to share a little bit as

055to why i as a registered dietitian decided to go into school food from a clinical setting we often recommend to patients a special diet like eating a healthier protein incorporating more whole grains but then we send them home and they may or may not have access to those things but in the school food service setting we have a very unique and rare opportunity to do both we get to educate our students about healthy eating from like babies and toddlers now that we have early head start and we also get to provide them the access to those meals breakfast lunch and supper and snack for our students so i love that i love that we can make this bigger impact for our community by providing them the nutrition education and the meals to go with it

056and so i think it's very important that we not only focus on the new the food aspect of our program but the opportunity to educate our students as they do go hand in hand and we can do this by certainly strengthening school parent and community partnerships to provide nutrition education in the classroom virtually at home now and for the community at large we have access to dairy council and laco nutrition education resources that we'll be sharing with our schools i've tried to find as many opportunities to partner with our jeff seymour family resource center and our aspire after school program to provide nutrition education and cooking demos and we'll soon be reconvening our wellness committee i know it went on a little hiatus but it will be coming back and it will serve as a

057forum for our students our parents and our school administrators and staff as well as community members to discuss the priorities for our wellness in our in our district and then we also have several dietetic interns that will help to support nutrition education goals through our district okay and then lastly but certainly um just as important is that we want to support our greatest resource in our team and that's our staff um we will be we have applied for kitchen infrastructure and training funds that the cde will release soon that will help us provide professional development programs such as culinary techniques customer service food safety computer skills food service management and nutrition as well as upgrading all of our kitchens so that our staff have the tools they need to succeed we know that we can

058accomplish our two objectives with our team because they have shown time and time again that they will step up to the challenge as long as we continue to support them um and so i wanted just to end with a huge thank you to our school lunch heroes i know we did that back in may but i i can't speak enough about our team here um just 67 men and women who are completely and wholeheartedly dedicated to serving our students in our community that's it [Applause] thank you very much miss lee for your amazing presentation this really highlights all the amazing work and the effort everything that happens so i know that it takes a a great leadership such as you but now i want to open the floor and see if my fellow board members

059have any questions for mrs lin um just a quick one one um uh get good reviews from my kids um the other is that there was a question about some of the other partners that we had had before like subway and some of the other ones are those going to be um and coming back in the future or is that still um are we doing that again i guess that's the question yeah as we convene the wellness committee and look at that i know in the past we had a lot of grants right and we're really going to look at developing nutrition education program that is sustainable going forward um so if there is a grant or the funding is not there right because we know there's a lot of one-time funding right now right

060and that will come and go that the systems remain in place right and that's something that we're really looking at um as as we look to to partner right with all of our partners right so we've identified a lot of good partners right we have a lot of partners from the past that we're looking to bring in um and just right now with some of the health restrictions and there's a lot of things on the plates of our of our school employees right bringing kids back into the classroom right nutrition education is very important um and uh we hope to as soon as things you know calm down a little bit with the surge we can start introducing more and more resources to to our schools because the best nutrition education program is one that's

061organic right one that is embedded within the curriculum so that our teachers our our schools right empower students and our parents to to support their kids so we have we have all those resources from uh from years past and we're going to be you know make sure that we re-engage those partners and we've also created a lot of new partners um in the in the past year or two right during the pandemic right so um uh we're we're looking at ways to also eliminate food waste right not that we have much food waste that goes on um but uh jenny has some bright ideas of how we can really partner with um with some partners in the community uh so we can make sure that there's there's virtually zero food waste and if there is

062any excess food that we make sure that we get in the hands of those individuals that would be most in need of that thank you and thank you for all that you've been doing it's been wonderful to see for the last two years basically all the work that's gone into feeding everyone thank you i know we still have a lot of work to do but we're excited yeah i have a question so about exploring other ways programs and so i know and tell me and correct me if i'm wrong right what is because i know there's a lot of health regulations when it comes to like food right so say a student takes that that milk right or and and then they want to give it back right so what's what's the regulations now when

063it comes to food that isn't used and it's still packaged right right so um i actually prepared a slide just in case you asked about food waste so let me go to that um we of course always want to reduce food waste in our schools it can't be completely eliminated because part of our cda cd requirements is that we always have a meal ready for a student that comes through our door but here are some of the things that we've been doing in this in our department and that's first we try to put items on the menu that students want to eat and not throw in the trash can and so that's an ongoing mission of ours secondly we continue to strengthen communications with our school staff a lot of times teachers might have a

064classroom party or they go on a field trip i know that's not happening right now but that could contribute to some of the food waste that we're seeing we've implemented strategies such as batch cooking and that's heating up food as students come and just checking to make sure that we're not heating all 400 servings at once serving items not served or heated the next day to avoid waste and that's something that we've been practicing with our breakfast in the classroom model for example because we have packaged the components together and we're not having the students reach in and touch every single milk carton or apple and muffin that we are able to utilize those meals that we have not served the next day so that we can try to avoid throwing those in the trash

065um when safe again we want to reintroduce our share tables i know that was a huge thing that we had at all of our schools because there are students that might want to have two or three servings of fruit or vegetables or milk um when others don't and then again working towards donations to community partners there is a good samaritan law that we can certainly exercise where if meals are heated and we donate it we are released of any liability of that food item now we don't really have that much that we toss in the trash at the end of the day we try to avoid it as much as possible um but we are looking into some new partners such as an app where we can connect like ubereats and let them know hey

066we have 30 burritos at cortada and two cases of apple slices that we won't be able to serve today who can we connect with and they'll be able to pick it up and take it to somewhere else so those are the new technologies that we're seeing but first and foremost we want to prevent food waste at the start of our chain and then we have definitely utilized our partnership with our savior center anytime that our central kitchen has something you know pallets of food that we can't serve that we donate to them as well and do other waste programs are we looking at you know i didn't know the state's going in that direction i'm having like a composting um option now yes so that's with uh you know looking at green waste and that's

067what that would be like a district-wide effort uh starting with educating our students and our staff having three different color bins that we would see at costco for example um and i know that a lot of the waste management companies offer programs that we can engage in as a district thank you you're welcome do we have any other questions no questions but just a comment to say thank you yes i would salute you and thank you for what you're doing i could not believe you're feeding millions of meals out there that in the first place also i saw an abbreviation that i was curious what is m and o there was an m oh maintenance and operations maintenance and operations okay and another a question do the children bring lunches to school anymore they do

068uh but we often see them still getting a milk or so you know a couple of the fruit and vegetable going through our lunch line okay thank you you're welcome yeah i was just saying thank you for feeding our kids and that um i really loved the way you laid out your presentation with the mission and the and the goals just uh so clearly stated and enthusiastically shared so thank you for that um i'm very excited about the wellness committee reconvening and um and bringing bringing some of the nutrition education back to the classrooms um way back when i was first on the board and my kids were really little that was a big part of what was happening in the day and i can remember them coming home pretty enthusiastically sharing about a new

069fruit or vegetable that they got to try in the classroom yes so i know that those programs are really effective so thank you as certainly as we you know get away from the pandemic hopefully soon that we can bring back our salad bars and incorporate harvest of the month i think that was the program that you're mentioning back in our classrooms and providing our teachers with the resources that they need to educate our kids thank you um miss lee uh so i have a question uh please know that i i really commend you i mean the the objectives right of what's going on in our nutrition services i do have a question in regard to or to your first objective uh increased meal quality so it says here served meals that students want to eat

070what method are we using to know this information so the simplest one is called the plate waste method and that's when we go to school site and we look at the trash cans right we asked the custodians hey how much of this item did the kids throw away and they right off the bat they'll be able to tell us the second method that we've been soliciting feedback is from our staff our frontline staff that are serving our students they will have tons to say about the different items that we've been offering we've been getting a lot of positive feedback about our lunches but we've also been getting some comments on ways that we can improve the quality for example we got a comment recently about our bread being hard by the way that we've been

071packaging it and heating it up at the school site so we were able to pivot and change the way that we repackaged our bread that's wonderful if we have any other comments questions we thank you so much for this wonderful presentation thank you [Applause] great and now we'll move on to our communications section we'll begin with public comments we do have two public comments today and we'll begin with uh miss uh boon my apologies sorry hi good evening everyone um i see you i am here to represent um all of new lexington teachers you know as you've said we live in we never thought we'd be in this pandemic right but here we are so with that comes new topics of conversation amongst the entire staff and um this weekend we as teachers at new

072lex we got together and one of our colleagues wrote a letter that really just spoke to how we felt um last week we literally had a notification every week like there was a joke we're finally number one number one covet cases but we don't want that but you know it's like sometimes you gotta find humor in this so i'm just gonna start with this letter that pretty much speaks to the sentiment of you know k through six uh some of the teachers couldn't be here the ones that are here we don't have children no just kidding some of us do have children but you know we're able to come um so i'm just gonna start with this since returning school after winter break i have felt less and less comfortable with our district's decision on

073how to deal with ongoing covet crisis before break we took proactive measures to help mitigate covet spread by distributing tests however by only giving proact uh to those who wanted one and not requiring proof of a negative test prior to returning to school left huge chinks in the armor my site is the smallest in the district yet has the most cases we can see what happens when you ask instead of tell people to do the right thing our collective health and well-being is reliant upon other people's decisions caring about people getting infected and or dying should not be an option i also have concerns regarding the notification process of infected people on campus for example last week a student of mine entered our classroom and sat down like every other day shortly after school began

074i looked over and realized that the student was not feeling well when i asked the student mentioned being really tired and had a really big headache so i sent the student to the nurse at recess went to go check on this student and had been told to they had been sent to the isolation room because their siblings had tested positive the day before and mom was told not to bring the student to school unfortunately mom needed that babysitter to watch the sibling while she dealt with a sick child because our procedures only notified teachers of positive students i was not made aware that my students should be on campus had i known i would have not allowed my student to enter the classroom putting others at risk several of whom who had quarantined themselves i

075understand there are guidelines we must follow to protect and infected individuals but at what cost i know principles are doing what they can but they are also overwhelmed with cases it just seems like we are exposing the majority to the protect the minority i wish we could be treated like other professionals we are we are trusted with confidential information i want to know what proactive measures our district is considering to take at this time according to cnbc across the country school districts are reassessing their plan to mitigate the spread some are switching back to remote or hybrid learning for a short period of time others are using a modified schedule similar to what we did at the end of the school year last where students would go home before lunch and continue to learn online

076until the end of the day new york city will double their testing efforts of vaccinated unvaccinated students even if they are not showing symptoms or have a record of being in contact with someone who is positive of covin the los angeles times says that culver city unified will have students stay home the entire week of january 17th in hopes to stop the spread between students and allow those who are infected a chance to recover without missing more instruction what is our plan for spring break what is our district looking to do differently to avoid a second explosion of cases then and so that really just spoke to pretty much all of us at new lux um teachers certified staff certificated classified i mean and then these were other concerns similar to this one letter and

077i just wanted to share because these people took the time i mean my colleagues took the time to write even though they couldn't be here but i just wanted to express on their behalf um they also shared the same concerns but also again we had this person had two students who tested positive then she had to isolate herself from her family this prior weekend wear a mask at home in fear that if she caught the virus she would even give it to her husband or her seven-month-old vaccines only seem to make symptoms not feel bad but it doesn't keep us from catching the virus what is the district doing to make sure our safety and our family is safe we have been seeing parents who are sending their kids again to school after they've been

078positive and we are the last to know and we're the front ones you know in the classroom and also another teacher wanted to just express the frustration of you know um everyone's not on the same level in terms of when you can return back to work her principal tells her ten days the nurse says five days but then it's different for maybe someone who's in the cafeteria or so it's really frustrating when the messages are mixed and we're just kind of like we don't know what to do and then last week for my partner myself we had a really interesting case where someone dropped the ball somewhere in a spire there was a miscommunication and contact tracing so we had two students we had students in both our classes my partner and i where we

079weren't supposed to have them in class but we didn't get notified of this until tuesday night and these kids have been in contact with us so for some reason something happened with aspire where they only pull certain students but those other students so it was on a friday evening i guess and on monday the students that weren't supposed to be there showed up anyways but we had no knowledge of this so of course you know we let them in and now we're we were nests i want to say unnecessarily exposed to the virus when it could have been foreign so it's really been frustrating for us just to try to be healthy be there for students and that's all i wanted to say thank you thank you and we will continue on with our second

080public comment and that is from mr john slaton i have a simple question with regarding the agenda item g7 looking down the list of obsolete equipment to be recycled i find 28 hewlett park hewlett-packard laptops from potrero and my simple question is would it be possible to hold back about 10 of those and repurpose them for work that we're doing at durfee you may want to discuss that when the agenda item comes up thank you do we have any written communications no written communication has come forward thank you okay and now we'll move on to uh board members starting with mrs kobien thank you um i i first want to acknowledge our speaker and and all that you said and just really um appreciate you and everyone who's definitely on the front lines and trying

081to help keep everybody safe and in school and learning as much as we possibly can um one of the things i was going to ask about is actually getting some more direct communication to parents um maybe regular reminders that and and you know and i know i mean i watch the news a lot i try to read as much as i can and i get confused about you know how many days is it supposed to be what is you know what qualifies as the close contact and that sort of thing um and i think maybe if we regularly kind of provide that update or even just i know last year when school was open temporarily or we kind of reopened there were the daily check-ins um i don't know if we necessarily go to that

082but something where we're regularly having to acknowledge i am not you know i'm not sick my child's not sick i'm to to sort of um do that self attestation in a more active way so something to kind of um you know help to trigger for parents um just that conscientiousness right because we know that a lot of people definitely care and definitely want to make sure that their kids are safe other people may have you know needs at home where they feel like they have to send their child no matter what and we really want to make sure that that doesn't happen or that there's maybe alternatives provided or connecting with families in that sense related to that just some comments i've been hearing emails i've gotten from teachers just wanting to make sure that

083our dashboard is very clear in terms of what it does show what it doesn't show in terms of who's on campus who's or the numbers that are off possibly increase adding to it um a a factor of how many pos you know new cases daily or weekly so that we can see because it right now the numbers show just a total as opposed to because so some will drop off some might be added so we have a sense of um you know if it's representative of one new case or five new cases because it does make a difference um in kind of looking at the situation at the school um and then i think i really just wanted to say i appreciate all that the district is doing in terms of providing resources for vaccinations

084for testing hopefully everybody has knows that the the dashboard the federal resources open so you can you can log on through the postal service and request four tests per household and i think just to publicly remind everyone to get vaccinated get boostered it's it's probably the best thing we can do to get out of this so thank you all and i appreciate your time thank you mr scorpion thank you and once again thank you so much teachers for being here i know after work we always want to go home right and change our two pajamas so thank you so much for being here and we always love to hear from teachers and hear what's going on as a public school employee i can attend to some of the things that i'm also here on the

085news and what the teacher shared where you know you have to shift with um for one example right like we were saying um the teacher's name was colbian just being really clear um making sure the communication with five days and ten days i know it's not even just our our own sector it's everyone's sector right like some are still doing the 10-day model some are doing the five-day model and i know for some of my colleagues it was confusing because they didn't realize that it had been updated that before you had to do like you know a pcr test from a doctor and now the home test is being accepted to show that you're negative so a lot of them were staying home because they were waiting for their test results and they didn't realize

086it's in the details of the email that said like oh no now you the rapid test also was accepted to show that you're negative and they were staying out extra days because they were waiting for that test so i think in general it's always good to like look examine like okay how's our communication plan is everyone on the same page because then people are using their extra sick days when they don't need to and i'm texting them like no girl like you could use you know the the rapid test you don't have to continue using your sick days so i definitely recognize that i also recognize the staffing shortages that we've been experiencing and thank you so much for district staff for for being there to help subbing classes i know personally i also was

087subbing these last two weeks um some special education classes i was able to also see firsthand you know the challenges as it's presenting with our staffing shortages and now we're seeing um at least where i work now that the teachers are back the aides are now out in our special education classroom because of the quarantine that is they're having to experience so it's been yes it has been challenging but thank you so much for teachers for still showing up for being here thank you for our district staff for always being um for always being collaborative and being very responsive like not all districts provided a cova test right to their students before winter break but now we have feedback okay we have spring break how can we be better prepared for spring break knowing that

088it's um a few months away right that we continue this pandemic so that's just a few comments i have um on that um some other announcements i just want to share you know one of our roles as a board member is always to be aware of the different senate bills that are being passed or in or in the pipeline right that are going through the senate or the assembly so that we can advocate and so i just kind of wanted to highlight i was online the other night kind of doing some research because i had seen that something pop up on my social media but there is a senate bill that was signed by the governor i got really excited by it and it was authored by assemblywoman louis rivas that we're going to be

089the first in the nation to create a process to identify and support dual language learners in preschool so that was huge because typically right we don't know we don't identify children who are english learners to kindergarten right in kindergarten that's when they're identified we start assessing them with the elpac and then we're able to provide interventions for them and knowing what type of instruction is really exciting that i always knew there was that gap so i'm so happy to see that at the state level they're recognizing that we're now going to start identifying our dual language dual language learners earlier so that we can start helping guide instruction and the needs of our dual language learners and another one that it was actually our senator susan rubio actually helped pass was regarding sb14 regarding pupil

090health school school employee and people training what it specifically is that you know when the child's absent it's usually just marked illness but it doesn't differentiate between is like a physical illness or um or with mental health or behavior so now we're going to be able to code like its illness due to um mental health which is so important right as we now have so parents are able to now call in to say actually my child's out because of you know whether it's because of depression and to know that they have that option where before it's like well you can only be absent if you're physically ill right if you have a fever but now that parents know that there is an option like no if your child is experiencing some type of behavior or

091mental health that can be an excused absence and so that was and so thank you senator rubio for that authoring that bill because i do see that as needed especially as we're becoming more aware and again fighting that stigma for mental health that parents will feel more comfortable to have their child stay home if it's due to a mental health reason and then lastly i was just saying the other day that um our mayor jessica angona is hosting a winter warmth drive at progress on maine starting january 27th through the 30th and is to support our emergency research association so they are collecting clean new or gently used blankets jackets or socks okay and that is between january 27th through the 30th and the drop-off location is progress on main which is in the valley

092mall on main street thank you and next mrs rivas thank you wow what a meeting already right you know um jenny lee showed us a picture of march 2020 and the you know the food distribution where you we would just drive through and say how many kids um were either in the car or in the home and and collect our food and it really brought me back to that that time right uh there's the heaviness there and then at the same time this gratitude for our food service workers and our district uh that was feeding the community so well in those days um yeah and here we are now in 2022 uh we didn't expect uh to be dealing with all of the things um that we're dealing with now and and thank you to

093our teachers for coming and and you paula for speaking uh to us and sharing the concerns and the the worries the errors you know the the things that can go wrong and that have gone wrong um so thank you for for sharing about that those concerns i forgot to add like i told steve earlier i saw him at our school helping our office coordinator and it made my heart feel like really good like to see that we're all helping each other and today dr garcia when we sent out that um email about our pd days yeah thank you thank you for sharing that and yes i can't imagine my heart was warmed when i saw that notification about the pd days i can't imagine how that was received so thank you for sharing that too

094and um and then ms castro you shared beautifully about the work that the students are doing um and the progress that the students are making because of the hard work of our teachers and and all of the staff people working together so it's a lot to take in and process i think i'll be processing this this first part of our meeting for a long time but i really do appreciate your presentation and you sharing and you as well mr slayton thank you for being here perfect thank you mr c i have a number of items too and i have to begin by talking about mask etiquette if you wear glasses which many of you don't you don't know if you do wear glasses that you suddenly fog up and it looks like you're in london

095or in san francisco so it's hard to read through with the fog number one i'd like to say that i'm very happy to noted that at um durfee school that there's no longer double parking there there's a staff person out there telling parents do not double park that's wonderful and also i'm getting many positives about our our district's covet dashboard people are looking into that and they're saying this is unique because in many other districts they don't do that so we're keeping the public informed the young ladies here would be really happy to know that for the first time in many many years the girl state girls that elegance will be going to sacramento so they will have equal access to the officials the sacramento at the capitol building so it's going to be a

096major change i mentioned that because so many of our girls end up in the high schools and they become delegates to girl state and also i've been asked by a number of marines that we could look into starting a program with the young marines in our district and i'd like to report that we were successful at the last minute my wife and i were asked by the rose parade people to furnish translation for univision so they could narrate the rose parade my wife is still upset about that because i said it was a simple job it took 20 hours to do it so she's going to forgive me someday also there are many people in our community that are vietnamese and they're interested in starting a vietnamese dual immersion program in our community another one

097that is on the everybody who lives in the 49th assembly district we're having an election in february for a new assemblyman our assignment ed chow was termed out he's now a judge i'd like to thank the staff at the jeff seymour center for preparing for the garden club to come back and have the meetings there they were really wonderful in the way they received us there also a number of retired teachers are asking me if they're allowed to come back and volunteer in the classrooms because they are a special group by the way they're just not parents or people coming off to help these are credentialed teachers who if they're vaccinated and have proof that they're okay they would like to come and volunteer in the classrooms and i think by us not doing that

098we're really missing a great opportunity for our children to be tutored by credentialed teachers a special group let's see one more thing here i just i forgot to say happy new year to everybody thank you thank you mr segrest and i just wanted to share same santa mementos with each and every one of my colleagues here on the board has said really these are definitely challenging times but we we know that and this is a proof that we have such a collaboration with our cabinet our administrators everyone working together as a team and collaboration our teachers so another thing thank you to those that provided public comment today so with that said um oh no i am forgetting something my apologies i did attend the el monte-satomani emergency resources association event where we distributed christmas

099baskets and let me tell you that day it was that day the weather was really bad raining pouring but i was just so amazed on the commitment we talk about commitment in the alimony city school district and that is definitely what each and every one of the people that were involved from volunteers i saw our community liaisons um of course our board president and indra arellano i saw president of the uh organization lillian ray the coordination of of mr ricardo padilla everyone everyone involved i even got to see people that came from other communities volunteering for such a great cause it was a well put together and coordinated and of course thanking them thanking our senators susan rubio and assemblywoman blanca rubio for also being part and donating our administrators our staff that also were

100involved in this process so thank you thank you all everyone that was involved also i do want to mention uh and thank the wellness center they came through with those over 500 ppe kids personal protection equipment for all of those that attended that day of the event so uh onto another thing that i want to mention is as you know the national association of latino elected officials will be having and hosting the naleo charla for education policy makers student learning assassin covet 19 impacts on looking ahead and i think this is a wonderful opportunity for us to also participate and be engaged in that conversation and uh thank you dr garcia for making a few copies so that way each and every one of you can take one home and consider participating and also attending

101so with that mo we'll move on to our approval of minutes do we have a motion i'll move to approve thank you mrs kobian do we have a second oh second thank you mrs rivas all those in favor please say aye bye any comments questions with that said motion carries and moving on to reports um the 2021 2022 williams uniform complained policy quarter two summary report and with that mr solomon thank you president lorettas um once again before you just to share um is the quarter to williams uniform complaint report that we are required to submit to los angeles county office of education which looks at our teacher credentialing during that time it looks at our facilities and then obviously our textbooks and curriculum availability to our students i'm pleased to share that for a

102quarter two we had zero complaints filed thank you mr saunders okay moving on to our action consent items uh do we have any board members that have any items that would like to pull at this time it's number seven number seven perfect thank you mr siegrist is there a motion to approve the action consent agenda minus item number seven iso move thank you miss rivas do we have a second i'll send thank you uh mrs kobian all those in favor please aye aye aye any comments questions okay motion carries going back to item number seven mr siegrist i will speak in spite of my fogged up glasses yes i am very concerned about disposing of in quote obsolete anything i'm just curious as to what that means because i'll share with you years ago a

103district i worked in disposed of its obsolete in quotes the computers they were all apple 2e's apple 2cs they moved up to macintosh well we found out that all of those in quote obsolete computers worked i bought one instead of paying 1400 for it when it was new i paid 35 dollars my children because of that were able to go on and become computer wizards there are three entities in our community that are interested actually two that are interested in this surplus so-called obsolete materials one is a computer company called compu clinic this gentleman is an engineer from guadalajara who has a business here and he's very interested in going to see those in quote obsolete computers printers and so on another is a company that buys e-waste they're based here a third is a

104company it's a non-profit in long beach they will accept obsolete and quote computers refurbish them and give them out to local people in the communities and i'm concerned when i hear obsolete my computer is nine years old i'm sure it's obsolete but it works beautifully so i would consider i wish we would consider either offering these to people in the local community even as an auction now let me explain to you when i worked in the harupa unified they took their obsolete materials they auctioned them off to the public under sealed bids when i was at rio hondo on the board the first time they had disposal of surplus property they had pallets with 50 computers on them students were not allowed to buy them a businessman came up from san diego bought all of

105them so i'm and then the next time we had an auction and the college actually made money off of the materials because if you're selling obsolete materials by the pound you're not making any money at all by it i have had experience on the east coast meeting people who are buying used and quote computers from our communities here in california so i would entertain that either we say i would like us to table this item bring it back in the future and really discuss what obsolete are i would like to go see them myself because i have a very good background in computers fixing them getting them to work so i would like to actually see these obsolete computers and printers and i'll add something else a number of teachers anonymously have told me that

106when can when printers in this district are out of ink or toner they're disposed of and they buy new computers now here's an example of what it costs to buy toners i went to a local company bought a toner for my canon computer for eighty five dollars i went online i found a wonderful source for twelve dollars the toners work so i'm just saying on this item itself i don't want to belabor it but i really think we're not doing a good service to our community when we're selling these out to a company called tycoon that's not even connected to our community so i would like us to look at this and seriously bring it back and offer people in the community the chance to check these and quote obsolete computers and printers and so

107on thank you i'd like to respond to um your comments mr siegrist and i'm sure i'll turn it over to mister in just a second as well because he can add some expertise um i appreciate the comments and i i do know that you feel very passionate about you know making sure that we're utilizing district resources appropriately you know these any of these products are purchased with public funds right so they don't belong to any of us they belong to the community and so in order for us to even do anything with them the board has to deem them as obsolete before we can even auction or you know do follow any type of course and so so this would be you know a board action we say these are no longer items that we're

108going to use in the school district now i want to speak to the culture of how we get to items to you know to become obsolete so first and foremost um you know being a classroom teacher i know that we hang on to things until the very very end right and so we um you know sometimes there are good years like we've had recently but uh we know that there are years where we just don't have the resources in the classrooms and we save everything we possibly can to make sure that our kids have access and so i can assure you that when a teacher reaches out a school district excuse me a school reaches out and says you know these items are obsolete it's because they have been used to the very limit and

109then they go through a process that mr rada can explain where we look at them here internally and we are able to repurpose parts um but but you know for us to say that they're becoming obsolete i can assure you that there's a process that we've engaged in and we're doing our due diligence once again because these are public funds that we want to do you know the right thing by recently we've had the opportunity to purchase a lot of technology right the pandemic really i think pushed us into our one-to-one um campaign which we're happily we're there and it's gonna just be part of the district you know um our our budget and and the way we do the way you know it's good technologies can be part of instruction and so with more

110technology in classrooms and with students i can assure you that you're going to see more obsolete items as well as more purchases you know unfortunately or fortunately you know we have the ability to replace chromebooks but they do get damaged and they do break um and then we're able to again repurpose minute parts but turn around enhance students a new device and so you're gonna see some more obsolete items that we're going to bring to the board in the near future and i think there's an opportunity to have a further discussion on you know how is it that we want to approach it uh from that perspective but in order for us to do anything to move any merchandise this board has to say these items are obsolete and that gives the district the authority

111to then dispose of items in different ways and happy to engage in a conversation with any local vendor that would like to you know i mean i don't even know the process i'll turn it over to mr i don't know if they you know if they bid on obsolete items but but again happy to engage in that process when we get to that place yeah so regarding the process as dr garcia mentioned right you know the schools maybe i shouldn't call them hoarders but uh they hold on to things as long as they can right so by the time they call up the district and say hey you know there's no use for it um they're looking at it from one of two ways either it has broken down hardware wise or there's no use

112programmatically uh doesn't fit into the type of curriculum or the programs that they're teaching now our our our district team here will assess right can we break it down scrap it for any parts do are there other schools that can maybe utilize that same technology uh elsewhere right to give you an example we have a lot of chromebooks that we've recently upgraded in the past i would say a year or so and we collected a lot of those and we decided you know we're going to keep some of them at the school sites in the event a child shows up to school one day and forgets their chromebook at home they have a device that it's perhaps not the uh the latest and greatest device but they're able to power it up affects the internet

113access their their curriculum for the day right so it is a process that we go through a lot of our technology has the logo embedded on it right so that's something the board can consider right when you think about um you know the action of declaring property surplus right whether we go the route of e-wasting it and you have to do business with a certified business that is registered with cal recycle up at the state of california level to make sure that they properly dispose of it and pro follow the proper e-waste process where they give us a certification once they um condense that down to a refinable mill type commodity um so that's the process that we follow in the past i've bought i want to say in the summer of 2020 we brought

114a an extensive um item to the board for disposal we ended up e-wasting a lot of that technology right um and there's a vendor that we utilize tycoon materials the same vendor that the high school district utilizes uh with their um when they go through the e-waste process they're local here i want to say their headquarters are somewhere here in norwalk i want to say and so that's the process that we follow give us all certifications proof of destruction and all that good stuff right to make sure that we're in compliance with those laws because there is laws regarding e-waste now the board can always entertain going through a process of surplusing it um and selling it to the community and things like that things to consider are going to be you know a lot

115of these devices have the district emblem on them right and so um are those devices that you necessarily want in the hands of community members out there right if it's still um representing the district right to some extent if you have the emcld logo on there um so you know i can assure you that the process is being followed right the first action that the board needs to take is to make sure that they declare it surplus and then from there we can determine how we want to go about disposing of it um if we are going to e-waste it right um then there is a process that we do need to follow if it's technology to make sure that we're in compliance with all the the laws and regulations and we always do business

116with a certified um vendor e-waste vendor with the state of california through cal recycle because we don't want the vendor coming back and um you know selling um this technology right like i said if there's an expectation that we're going to e-waste this right um we want that process followed we don't want the vendor turning around and then selling the devices right and then we see devices popping up in the community in the hands of individuals that perhaps the board did not authorize because many of the devices that we hold have the logo on them you also see some servers on there and things like that so there is a process that we do follow where to make sure that we have the latest and greatest cyber security systems in place right there is a

117point in time where we go through certain district hardware right that needs to go through that process but for the most part it's school hardware that is sent our way and on this report the first couple items are actually food services central kitchen related items so a lot of the focus i know the discussion is technology related but this action of declaring property surplus applies to any property that that the board or the district owns right so it then authorizes uh the districts to then proceed in that next step and we're happy to entertain future conversations uh seeing how we can engage the community if that's the direction the board wants to go on i still feel it would be better to offer this to local people than some company that's based in azusa or

118los angeles or outside or pico rivera these people are paying taxes to support our schools also it's a good policy to do that and i'll share some history with you when i worked in mall hall school and i had my own third grade classroom i found some obsolete computers before they were going to be sold every one of them worked and my kids had access to those computers when other people didn't and i'm really bothered by the term obsolete obsolete meaning what it's one year old 10 years old 15 i can see non-working but i don't see obsolete if you're a person out there in this public that has nothing at home and someone gives you a six-year-old computer and a printer and you've got something for your kids that's a lot better than having

119nothing and that's what i'm thinking about again and the district i worked in before they auctioned off everything to the public and it made money for the district and people bought quote in quote obsolete computers like the one i bought the 2c for my children worked beautifully and they called obsolete i have problems with obsolete and i'll stop with that thank you you know again thank you mr siegrist i do want to say that um lillian ray was here with us tonight and and i remember one time visiting her and and i had some items at home that i was thinking about you know how do i donate these so that others can use them and she was very clear about the types of donations that she accepted she said you know people that live

120in poverty and that don't have resources deserve you know quality items and so i'm very particular about what gets donated to me because i don't want people of poverty to feel like they get you know hand-me-downs that have been used and worn and so you know if it's the direction of the board to to provide more technology to families we can definitely do that and we can do that with much integrity um i can assure you and i can attest to you know the word obsolete means that the board is now saying that they're no longer going to be used on school campuses and that we're able to you know move on again come up with a different plan for disposing of them i don't think we have the capacity at this time to do

121auctions and to engage in that process which you know i i appreciate the suggestion but i'm going to be very realistic about this moment in time and i think it's an opportunity for us to discuss how you know if we want to entertain other ideas in the future but i will say that because we are a one-to-one district i think our kids deserve new computers that are you know state-of-the-art uh we've been able to support families so that they can log on for elac and d-lag and school site meetings school site council meetings and we're happy to do so and again just following that philosophy of let's give our parents and our community the very best and in this moment in time we're able to do that and so um again happy to to have

122a discussion about you know what to do in the future we do have quite a list here of items that we'd like to move forward with but it's at the discretion of the board um and i would just like to say kind of to that point too and i i i appreciate that students feel like they have access to the best technology that we can give them it it gives good confidence in terms of what you know what they feel they're capable of and that you know we trust them um and and the reverse side of that too is that if we have this future discussion about items um you know i'd want to make sure that the items we provide you know the the the sort of lemon law idea right we we don't

123want to sell something to someone and then have it not work when we know that it doesn't work and and understand you know that sort of um that sort of risk that we we or liability that we may incur for something um going wrong there but i do appreciate the comment about making sure that we are using these taxpayer paid resources as extensively as we can and i think that's that's a very good discussion for us to have and maybe some more detail about what it really looks like in the future but i'll move to approve item seven at this point i'll i'll i'll second but with a comment that we did have a speaker in the audience today expressing interest in some of the items and so um i am understanding this as this

124is the the step of just saying the district no longer um needs these items and and perhaps though there could be future conversations about about that interest yeah and before we vote i'll make a comment too even the other day i think what's what i learned as well it's not necessarily the the computer itself it's all the processing it's the software updates that is what is happening right and so even the other day i had a situation where my phone and my laptop weren't communicating i spoke to apple and they're like well again it's not that it's not necessarily devices aren't working it's just that as the software system gets updated on your phone right there's quite a few updates where you'll get that apple notification and then when the software on your laptop is

125obviously older that's the situation that we run into that every time we do a software update it's not necessarily that the computer but again with apple they're constantly updating their software so then where before there weren't so many now there weren't so many updates with computers right with the software but now with yearly or even sometimes twice a year you're getting software updates that's what then slows down where if you have a laptop like mine from 2015 the reason even the other day i asked it can i put the new software um processing system on my laptop like your laptop can't handle it anymore because it's such as fast technology that even though mechanically your laptop's fine it's just that it's not going to be able to process just how quickly um apple's updating their

126software so i kind of want to make that comment that was something i learned the other day okay with that said uh we have a motion by mrs kobiand uh a second by mrs rivas all those in favor please say aye aye aye any comments questions further questions okay with that said motion carries moving on to our actions items item number one consideration of approval of purchase orders president as the members of the governing board before you is the december 2021 purchase order report there's 172 purchase orders listed on there totaling 1.65 million dollars some of the major purchases we have 649 thousand dollars going to houston mifflin for some math curriculum and we have 180 000 to sit on there for some kova 19 testing kits that the district purchased you also heard ms

127jenny lee talk about the refrigerated food truck that the department of food services is looking to purchase on this report it's listed on there for 129 000 a new refrigerated food truck for food services that should arrive before the end of the school year and also of note on there is sixty four thousand dollars two data impressions for some additional document cameras for various schools some additional digital clocks that we're going to be providing over to our schools and a 28 thousand dollar hvac replacement for the goodly music room it's a little bit more expensive than uh the apac units at at our homes but that is quite a big facility i think it's a 10-ton unit so our facilities team will be working on that change out in the coming weeks whenever that equipment

128comes in thank you mr herrera do we have a motion to approve item number one i'll move to a providing one motion by mrs uh kobian is there a second i'll second second by ms mendes all those in favor please say aye aye aye comments questions okay one of stained by uh mrs rivas okay with that said motion carries item number two consideration of approval to adopt resolution 21-22-11 celebration of african-american history month february 2022 president radas and members of the governing board our school communities are predominantly people of color who historically have been overlooked and we want to make sure that we take the time and effort to spotlight their histories so the theme for black history month for this year's february 2022 is black health and wellness and we want to join other

129organizations such as the library of congress national archives records administrations national park services the l.a county office of ed united states holocaust memorial museum and paying tribute to the generations of african americans who struggled to um who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in this country commemorations around the nation will chronicle the important contributions made by african americans to art literature sports and pop culture so our job as a school district is to provide opportunities for our students to learn about various cultures but we also serve a very specific demographic and we want to make sure that they know their history we know how important representation is especially for students here in armani thank you miss castro i moved to provided two motion by uh missus rivas do we have a second well second

130second five minutes scorpion all those in favor say is there a discussion on the item after a second motion you're supposed to have a discussion and i'd like to discuss this matter in itself i really agree it's important to recognize african americans but also i'm very just discouraged that we tend to ignore others we don't recognize the italian americans german americans french americans i have a lady here who lives in our community he has to be jewish he said our district will never recognize the jewish american people and to me that's terrible another person is italian-american he says well apparently your district our district doesn't care about other people's and i own he counted and said we recognize four ethnicities a year i think our country's made up of a lot more than four ethnicities

131i think we're part of the united states and if you look at your e pluribus unum one of many i think we really need to recognize everybody and not just be exclusionary because i have to defend that a lot of older people that i know they're not happy with that they say what about other people irish americans our kids know that you have to wear green on st patrick's day you have no idea about the irish culture we need to celebrate everybody so i'll rest with that and then and i'm happy to say that i celebrated dr martin luther king's birthday because mine also is in january and i'm honored to be in the same month as that gentleman thank you um i'll just say also that i i do appreciate that the board um

132that we have brought um i believe it's world cultures um and i remind me which month that we do that or which month we do that in oh you're putting me on the spot i think it's in may multi multi-cultures yeah multicultural awareness month yeah and so i i think we do and i i do want to just speak to i think the ones that we are selecting for specific recognition is is also because historically these these particular groups have not been represented and i think um even still there's there's a lot of controversy about whether or not there should be um specific recognition of the the culture not to say that others aren't and i think we we have added that to our calendar to celebrate all cultures um but i don't think that

133erases the fact that that these particular groups and cultures need to have um additional recognition to to to sort of represent that idea of equity that we are we are working towards in our district and as a board um and so i'll leave it at that thank you you teach all of it did you know that italian americans and german americans were incarcerated in world war ii i think a lot of people needed to know that too and i think again it's exclusionary policy we say we say we believe in diversity well apparently we don't reflect that when we celebrate only certain peoples every month and only four ethnicities i think our country's made up a lot more than just four thank you and i'll just chime in i i think we i'm going back

134to the students right the needs of the students and i know we talked about after csba about how we could include more student voice in the decisions that we make as a board and their input and this is one of those great opportunities that when we um i know we do want to move forward with establishing like a student kind of advisory group especially like at the upper grades so they can provide input and that's one of the questions that we can ask for them you know are you fully included what are some things that the district can do um to help to make sure that you're feeling included so that's just something that kind of popped into my mind when we're looking at at the end of the day we want to make sure

135we're what do the students need specifically and ask them what they need so we do have the opportunity we do collect uh you know responses like that with the california healthy kids survey and we could disaggregate it you know based on on grade level possibly gender some ethnicities um so there are some opportunities to look at data from that perspective thank you do we have a motion for this item we actually do president with us we have a motion from uh mrs rivas and a second from mrs kobian perfect thank you thank you very much okay all those in favor say aye aye hi motion carries okay item number three consideration of approval to adopt resolution 21 22 12. celebration of college awareness month in california february 2022 president radisson members of the governing board

136our college education and awareness is very important to our district we have collaborated at great length with our promise foundation partners in creating our cradle to college pathways to make sure that our community is very well aware of all the traits and skills that children need to know and have in order to be successful and choose to go to college if that's their choice to do so the data that we share today is one of the examples how we are aware that children need to start thinking about college in elementary and middle school and also be prepared with the foundational skills that they need in order to be successful we know that a college education can provide a child with many opportunities in life so our job is to make sure that before children leave

137us that they are prepared to excel in high school and therefore in college if they choose that route thank you do we have a motion i'll move to provide him three a second thank you is there any comments i'll just make a quick comment just to say i really appreciate all that the district does to to make um you know a college-going culture a reality in this community and and even i mean as you said preparing them for high school and things but but even beyond that the academic side of things the the support for families um the the support bringing together the community because you know we can we can get a kid qualified to go but they may not be able to afford it or their family may not know how to apply

138and so i think just all of the different pieces that this district does are tremendous assistance to families and and the results show in terms of the number of students who are going to college or thinking about going to college now compared with even just 10 years ago so it's it's wonderful to see thank you thank you all those in favor please say hi hi wishing carries item number four consideration of approval of first reading of revised board policy 1312.3 administrative regulation one two point three and exhibit one three one two point three unit four complaint procedures i'll make the motion a second perfect all those in favor no i'm sorry any discussion here and then all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries consideration of approval of first reading of revised administrative regulation

1393515.6 criminal background check for contractors i move to approve this item is there a second a second second by mrs kobian any discussion all those in favor say aye aye motion carries item number six consideration of approval of first reading of revised administrative regulation ar 4217.3 layoff rehire i move to approve this item is there a second i will second second by miss mendes any discussion all those in favor say hi motion carries item number seven consideration of approval of first reading of revised administrative regulation five one two five student records i move to approve this item is there a second i'll second that second by mr secrets to any discussion all those in favor say aye aye aye motion carries item number eight consideration of approval of first reading of revised administrative regulation 5145.3

140non-discrimination harassment i move to approve this item is there a second i'll second that second by mr sugren a sugarist is there a second my apologies any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye hi i'm motion carries item number nine consideration of approval of first reading of revised board policy 5148 and administrative regulation 5148 child care and development i move to approve this item is there a second a second second by mrs kobian any discussion all those in favor say aye aye aye motion carries item number ten consideration of approval a first reading of revised board policy five one eight 5148.2 and administrative regulation 5148.2 before after school programs i move to approve this item is there a second i will second second by miss mendes any discussion all those in favor say

141aye aye aye motion carries item number eleven consideration of approval of first reading of revised board policy five one four eight point three and administrative regulation five one four eight point three preschool early childhood education i move to approve this item is there a second all second second by mrs cobian any discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye aye aye motion carries item number 12 consideration of approval of first reading of revised board policy six one one two and administrative regulation six one one two school day i move to approve this item is there a second oh second second by mrs rivas any discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye i'm ocean carries item number 13 consideration of approval of first reading of revised board policy 6143

142and administrative regulations 6143 courses of study i moved to approve this item is there a second well second second by mrs colbian any discussion all those in favor please say aye hi motion carries item number 14 consideration of approval of first reading of revised board policy 6158 and administrative regulation 6158 independent study i move to approve this item is there a second i'll second that second by mr seacrest discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye aye aye motion carries item number 15. consideration of approval of first reading of revised board policy 6170.1 transitional kindergarten i moved to approve this item is there a second a second second by mrs kobian discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye aye motion carries and item number 16 consideration of approval of

143uh first reading of revised board bylaw nine three two zero meetings and notices i move to approve this item is there a second i'll second that second by mr sugress discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye aye motion carries and now we'll move on to our section of discussion uh session with item number one annual review of governance handbook president bredesen governing board members as a commitment to keep our governance handbook updated we have agreed to bring this item every january as a routine item to take a look at the governance handbook if there's any additions questions edits that the board would like to make we can proceed with accepting those and adding them or if there seems to be more work to be done we can also reconvene the governance

144subcommittee to work on that so this is an opportunity for the board to take a look at the governance handbook and make some recommendations for how we can improve it any questions suggestions i'll just ask if we pause for one minute miss mendes stepped out only i will add something if i can if i'm not speaking out of turn that i've shared the fact that this exists with a lot of other board members from other districts and they're really jealous they say they've never even heard of this i go yes you got to have something like this to really know who you are and what you need to do and how to do it so they're they want to some people are asking for copies of this thank you you're very welcome it's actually so

145if anybody ever points to it we actually can email it or they can anybody can log on to board docs and we always attach it as part of this item and it's there for anybody to view any other additional comments just that i think that we were pretty thorough in this last calendar year so i don't have any recommendations for changes anything that our governance handbook committee would like to add no i think and i think i noticed i mean i noticed things were updated for this calendar year so i think we're perfect no i think i think it looks great good job so committee no i know we had just updated and did a lot of work on it and so but i'm so glad that we're still reviewing it thank you uh president

146uh brothers for putting this on the agenda so that we have time to again review because even um i took the time to kind of be like okay let me review some information so again it looks great everything's up to date and yes thank you and i also had the opportunity to review it and so yes please know that it i know that we had suggestions previously but those have been addressed so thank you very much for working on it you're welcome and so there will be a hard copy at uh that on the diocese so when you come in and and for any meeting uh you'll have a hard copy of the governance handbook at all times and of course it's uploaded on board docs it's going to be it's uploaded as well as

147part of the board member portal or page on our website um and this is if there's ever an opportunity or if there's some suggestions that the board would like to make to update it you know we can definitely bring it forward in a future agenda item perfect thank you for that the only thing i would just since we just approved the new uh update on meeting and notices maybe after the second reading we can definitely yes that board policy so that goes for all board policies after they are after the second reading those are uploaded uh and those are approved and so we'll just replace that particular board policy um to reflect the changes of the law perfect thank you very much for that update and now we'll move on to uh number two csba

148coast to coast federal advocacy trip and i know that um there were some you know suggestions that uh to do this as a that would this this is actually the first uh coast to coast event from a csba in washington dc so a wonderful opportunity right that uh that we can definitely have to uh with that that we can go ahead and and have to form or engage with educational policy makers and administrators right and find those possible solutions right to end the educational achievement gap for all of our students uh with this i would like to see how everybody feels about that well and if i can just provide a little bit of background it's actually part of the governance handbook uh one of the things that the board had previously agreed on was

149to itemize uh conferences and professional development opportunities that uh were good experiences for the board to engage in and that they could freely participate and then there was a commitment that if there were any other conferences or opportunities for professional development that were not listed that a board member could bring it to the attention of the board and then the board can deliberate on that and then two of the you know we can add it to um my recommendation would be that if the board approves a new conference that we wait for the board member to attend or board members to attend they come back they share their experience and then based on that recommendation we can add it to the governance handbook for future um opportunities to participate um and and and so before

150anything else we have to the board would need to make a decision whether this is something that you would like for our board to participate in and so we have provided the documentation that csba shared as part of the documents for this item for you to deliberate and consider so something i actually i think this is a neat new idea so i know it's the first time they're doing it but um what i i think i would advocate for among our board is to maybe prior to if one or more people are going to have a discussion about what our like the goal is for our board um the csb lobby day in sacramento is always a good experience but what i've found the times that i've gone is that it tends to be much

151more about csba's agenda as opposed to necessarily what we might be needing locally and so i think i would just i'm okay um approving this to add to our list but i just want to make sure that it goes with that caveat that we have that discussion beforehand and maybe maybe we have a briefing you know for those who are going that sort of like these are the key points for our district these are the things we can you know celebrate and share and i mean our our you know our i ready test scores are you know the things that we're doing really well because that could then in turn put some really positive attention on what we're doing here nationally um so it's it's a good opportunity i just would want that to be

152a part of it um as well so i can go next um i really thought about this last night and i do have some invitations on my end and i'll just you know these are my personal opinions and i'll share them with the board um you know this is the first time csba does something like this right and i'm thinking about no matter what this is money that we're spending right so being conscientious that you know when we go to a conference you know at the end of the day these are public funds that you know we have the um there's the payment for the conference itself right and then there's transportation and then the lodging and there's our food and obviously you know a lot of our conferences are based in california so we're

153very aware of that that you know san francisco san diego i know we have only one naleo that is typically out of state so i was just thinking about that like the financial impact um again if we do do this then that's um then that's great but i just want to make sure that we consider that it's the first time csba does it so part of me is just like i want to see them kind of do it for the first time and then maybe join after and i was also thinking about covid right take into account that if we're not allowing our students to you know to go off to like how does it look as a board where you know we are going to dc thinking about covid the rise in covert numbers

154right now and you know again how does that reflect as a board if we we do that we have suspended all field trips um for indefinitely until the number the surge actually decreases and most likely through the end of the year exactly so we're always wanting to be aligned the same way that we have our board meetings in present or in person because we know our students are in person and our staff are in person so i thought about that and then also going back to back to state advocacy i do want to revisit i think we missed uh miss willis you mentioned this i really this made me think about how can we really strengthen our state advocacy first right we i think we all like that was my i know i i've only

155participated in csba's state legislative week one time online um hopefully you know if it's gonna be i don't know i looked online i don't think they're gonna do it this year i think they're doing federal i haven't seen anything either but i can follow up i looked on their website it looks like they're doing federal so it kind of prompted me to say okay before we commit to a federal advocacy trip and again that's a financial investment maybe first re-looking at hey before we start advocating at the federal level what are we first doing at the state level to advocate and in reaching out to our senators our assembly members and and being more aware about the senate bills that are right now in the process so then if we know they're going out for

156a vote that we're making a commitment to say hey everyone you know email make a phone call to you know susan rubio or to a you know a child to then advocate for something that's going on right now that's going through whether it's to the center of the thea or the um assembly or the senate or the governor so those are those are my personal thoughts on this so i had to i would have hesitation for this this year anyone else and i think those two are great points to to just really focus on we need that that information aspect coming from csba perhaps reaching out to them right because they announced it back in december but how does that look like right now and just coming back and say where are we now with

157the search of cases uh what's happening is this even uh something that is in the plan right but definitely going back and to piggyback with on what uh mrs kobian mentioned definitely going there with specific objectives and goals right if we are going to do this and if we do do this i think this would be a great opportunity to to engage with uh with others but uh obviously going back to doing our research as mentioned by ms mendez and mrs kobian really focusing into that and and seeing how right how we're gonna go there it's just not it's not a trap right it's just it's really where we're going to work right so knowing exactly what bills have happened what bills are in that in that process to to really uh uh keep going

158with that mindset where we have these goals and this is what we're here to do so maybe we can find more information right on uh and reach out to csba to see i'm wondering too it might be a good opportunity for us to you know we've talked about it and kind of got in the way but engaging um more locally too with our our congressional representatives in this area because i mean i know i know california tends to to lead the way a lot in terms of education and things like that and so you know so maybe that's a part of it too or an alternative of of you know doing that work here at home um so to help better inform them you know when they're in dc and doing that sort of thing

159i i like what you're saying what all of you are saying um right because i hear what you said miss kobian that um that csba has a specific agenda right that they would like um the the board members to speak on when they are at at a csba event which which would make sense um but it would make sense for us as a board to think about well what are the messages that we care about that are that are particular to our community and what would be the appropriate places to advocate to those for those things and i do remember that conversation earlier that it actually may be just the local offices that we could just drive to um and and show up and just just do the work right um so yeah so i

160it sounds to me like really probably a next step like you're saying miss radas is to find out from csba what what's your agenda what's our identity as part of csba right but then do the the bigger work as as a board to figure out what what are the key things that our district really needs to ask for so i just idea from all these wonderful ideas you know i know we are our community engagement representative kim and i know she frequently sends out emails i wonder if we can maybe reach out to her and maybe you know in a future study session she could come and i would love to know okay what are the current senate bills that are going on the floor what are some ones that are high interest to us

161and maybe consult with her like what would be the best way for us to advocate whether it's setting up you know um individual kind of zoo meetings with our different representatives or you know email or phone call so i think that would be a great way if she's able you know i know she's always reaching out to us if we need anything so i would love to know at the state level you know and then i'm sure she has information at the federal level as well so i think utilizing that resource i definitely agree and this is what we've done in the past as uh you i think we've all had the opportunity to experience uh csba legislative action day right and previously to that we get on a zoom and and they pretty much

162provide everything that's happening in sacramento and i think that that'll be a great opportunity also to to um maybe uh ask her right for some information in regard to that yeah and if if you guys would like i i can reach out to her i'm finishing up my term on delegate assembly and she's the pacer for the delegates so if that's something you guys would like i could send the first email and then maybe get her in touch with the superintendent that would be great okay so then we come back to this as soon as we have more information to keep the board updated perfect okay moving on to number three equities subcommittee update uh president rivas governing board members um as you know we've embarked on this journey to define equity for our school

163district and and create a policy uh create statements that we believe in as a board we've been working with nicole anderson to to start this conversation we're halfway through the conversation we decided to pause a little bit on that work because we wanted to do some more in-depth introspective work here as a board so that we can in turn really visualize what these actions will look like once we have defined equity for our school district and so i'm happy to report that mrs rivas and miss redless and i have been have met twice since our last board meeting to discuss this next step and i'll give them opportunity to share some of their comments regarding the subcommittee work ideally we have been reading several books and so we'd like to bring these books into our

164conversation to help inform you know what your vision is individually as a board and collectively uh transform that into not just again a policy or a statement but actionable items that we can say this is what we're ultimately working towards we'd like to call for a special board meeting on january 31st it's a monday at five o'clock to have a conversation amongst board members and the subcommittee has looked at has developed some questions and some statements for you to consider as you're reading the book shattering inequities and also the board was asked to read previous another book by mr feldman on grading the idea is that you use the guiding questions and statements that we'll share with the board uh very soon to bring in some of your thoughts and ideas to this sub to

165this excuse me special study session again to have a conversation as a board to really help inform you know that polishing uh equity statement uh and policy that'll ultimately be um the work that we do as a district thank you dr garcia just to um also add to that the readings and so grateful for for that uh those have been instrumental right resources as we've had the opportunities to engage in these conversations they have definitely opened up the dialogue and um and as dr garcia mentioned definitely please keep those into um as as you're reading i'm not sure if you're if you're uh completely done with with the with the books but um please i know that in my case and i'm pretty sure uh mrs rivas can uh also agree with me definitely brings

166forward many questions right as we're reading along and definitely that that's that's the conversation that we want to open up for uh on on january 31st so i know that it has definitely opened up many questions and and uh in different categories so um yeah we'll we'll come back on january 31st with that conversation so yeah thank you all right so please read the book and um and be taking notes as you do and um dr garcia will share some of those you know when you start talking about these things right your mind just goes everywhere because it's really it's big and it's important and you care and um so i think that the comments or the statements and the questions will be really helpful for reflecting on um and i think it was helpful

167for me to to remember that you know right now in the world that we're living in we're really thinking about the big three diversity equity and inclusion right and equity is one piece of that bigger that bigger movement right or the bigger effort but it's a really important one that we have to actually think really deliberately about and act really deliberately on um and so yeah so we can really be thinking about what does it mean to her to um what does success look like and what does it mean to ensure success and what does it mean to provide kids with what they need and i think some of those questions that have been prepared will be really really helpful for reflection while you read but then also will guide us as we come together

168in our study session thank you mrs rivas so i'm hearing uh consent on uh study session for january 31st what would the time frame be maybe five to seven p.m does that work for the board yes yes what an earlier time no work for the board nope i barely get here five to seven it is january 31st 5-7 so we'll post that on our um board calendar and um we will be following up so that we can prepare for that study session thank you so read books okay yes thank you okay perfect number four cabinet reports thank you board president right that's the member of the board so just a quick update from business services um mr solembach will share a little bit more regarding the updated health officer order um that came out um

169over the winter break so our team uh proactively purchased some ppe right um today you got word that we got five thousand k95 that just arrived right uh we got another 25 000 that we're picking up tomorrow from laco on behalf of the state and uh we got another 50 000 or so that should be arriving by the end of the week uh if all goes well and we're prepared with all the surgical masks and everything to to maintain um in compliance our facilities team did a wonderful job over the winter break and the first couple days when kids and staff came back replaced all the hvac filters across the district and changed out all the hepa or air filters and the purifier machines that was good we did that proactively to make sure that

170we just have additional safety mitigation efforts are in place um and then another quick update um regarding our attendance so we recently submitted our p188 attendance report as you recall we submit three attendance reports each year p1 p2 and annual report our attendance is a little bit down this year compared to prior years obviously due to the pandemic and as you may all know about a week ago governor newsome came out with the state proposal for the budget for next fiscal year and there is some language in there that would change the way school districts get funded so instead of looking at the greater of the current year or the prior year as far as ada which really helps the declining enrollment school districts uh they would take a three-year average going back three years

171so that would that would help us if that um if that goes through um more information is coming out we have a lot of trainings this week and next week to learn more about the governor's budget and some of the information and programs that are included in there but overall it's a good strong budget for school districts uh we hope that that continues to hold as we get into the may revise and the official budget gets signed in june of 2022 and thank you to the board for accepting the audit report pleased to report that there was no audit findings so it was the first time uh in a couple years that um actually more than a couple years that we had no findings so thank you to our fiscal services team for eliminating our

172fixed asset finding that was there for many many years so we're pleased to present that clean audit report to the board with zero audit findings thank you mr herrera and now uh any any future discussion items coming from the board mr this we're going to go ahead and continue i'm going to um apologies mrs castro thank you this is to announce that next week our district will be engaging in the great kindness challenge week along with the department of education so the week of january 24th and 28th our counselors and our community liaisons will be spearheading um activities in our school communities to focus on anti-bullying on kindness uh self-awareness self-control social emotional activities processes um in order to um promote the great kindness initiative and i also wanted to share that we will be

173posting this soon so i'd like to invite the board to join us in our celebration of lunar new year um the wednesday january 26th uh we will be celebrating uh via google meets origami making a chinese new year presentation and a tiger drawing because it is the year of the tiger and on friday january 28th we will be having a vietnamese new year presentation a cherry blossom craft and creating a dumpling meal so those flyers and english spanish vietnamese and chinese will be posted by our robert dosmani to our parent square so i'd like to invite you all to attend and join us thank you mrs castro mr solomon thank you president readers um i wanted to take this opportunity just to update the board on some of the um recent uh county health department

174updates but also kind of go through some of the um processes that we use here in terms of covet and covet safety i think some of it may um address some of the uh the questions or concerns that were shared today um just to kind of give that overview of really what goes into place in terms of of the the entire process and so um as mr herrera alluded to that over winter break uh the los angeles county department of public health updated their k-12 protocols um and so when we came back we immediately had to to take a look at those and actually look at implementing them uh they gave us two weeks they gave districts two weeks to implement these these new protocols um mainly the protocols talked about uh requiring masking outside

175uh which we already had in place that was one of our initiatives from the beginning that we would wear our masks outside and then we'd have those mask-free zones for students and staff that wanted that ability to kind of take a a breath of fresh air the other aspect of it was required masking of all employees at a medical grade level or higher um and that you know we're pleased as mr herrera shared we actually were very proactive prior to winter break and we were securing a lot of can 95s and a lot of medical grade masks just to have for our staff um but what we did was we actually wanted to try to push out the kn-95s which is a little higher level than your medical grade mask and so on and so

176we were able to push that out to all of our staff members and then along with the medical grade mask if they would like to do that as well um and so we continue to try to secure those types of items so we can continually provide the higher level of face mask for for all that would like to have it um the other piece was that um there was a change to the quarantine protocols and so there's a difference between isolation and pro and quarantine isolation is when someone tests positive or has is exhibiting symptoms they actually go into isolation quarantine is for someone that is exposed to someone who has tested positive so what we call a close contact uh they use the term exposure and so um los angeles county department of public

177health updated the quarantine specifically for adults where we have the definition of fully vaccinated which means you've received both doses and so as a fully vaccinated person prior to spring break if you were a close contact you could remain at work as long as you were um asymptomatic and so what they did was they added the the aspect of having a booster um so if if an employee was fully uh vaccinated but did not have a booster we were required to quarantine that person for five days if they were in close contact um and so that was even in their private life too if they were close contact with anyone at home they were required to notify them that they needed to be quarantined for the five days um and so once we were able

178to go through that we actually sent out that that uh information to all staff on one five basically kind of highlighting the major changes letting them know that masks were coming the key that we had two weeks to put this in place but we were actually going to be putting it in place in about a day or two because we had everything ready to go on 112 the county health department decided that they wanted to upgrade the quarantine um requirements again because they were hearing uh districts talking about our inability to staff um just due to the the aspect that more people were testing positive and then more people were being required to quarantine because either they were a unvaccinated or b they maybe just didn't have that booster yet and so they updated the

179um the adjustments to their quarantine requirements and they basically took off that booster requirement um by just saying okay so if you're fully vaccinated without a booster you can remain on campus so long as you're asymptomatic but then you need to take a a cova test on day five from exposure and specifically they're referencing the rapid covet tests or the rapid antigen cova test just because rapid antigen cova tests actually look at whether a person's infectious at that moment a pcr test looks at your antibodies kind of more deeply and so anyone who's ever tested positive will probably test positive with a pcr test for about 90 days a rapid antigen test looks at that moment in time and tells you whether or not someone is infectious or potentially infectious and we see that even

180in the isolation orders that were that were changed by the department of public health that basically now say that after five days of being in isolation you can actually come out of isolation the difference for us in a workplace is you can come out of isolation but you also have to have that negative rapid test because then that's telling us that that you are no longer infectious you'll experience symptoms probably for a couple weeks but as long as you're fever-free for 24 your symptoms have gone down you can come out with a negative rapid test and so uh that came out in about 111 112 we you know we were on conference calls discussing it many districts involved um and then so we uh immediately started to change our protocols and how we notify um

181individuals informing them some of them that we had told that they had to go home because they didn't have a booster and saying oh by the way you can come back now because now you're clear per the new protocols um and so we updated our our information and then on friday evening we sent out notification to all staff members of these new changes um since friday we've heard that there may be another change because originally what they listed was unvaccinated could come back under the modified quarantine and now they're saying oh no that's not really the case so we're going to wait and see the actual document so we may be making another change to our quarantine process hence why you see people sometimes sit there and say was it ten day is it five

182days well it's both um you know and it depends on what you want to do because it's five days from when your symptoms develop with a negative test but if you test positive then it could be stay six or day seven or you just stay out the entire 10 days and we know that after day 10 on day 11 you can return without a negative test and so a lot of information a lot of changes a lot of updates all the time and so so we try to keep our our employees and and everyone abreast of all the changes that uh that come up some of these are are things that have been in place for a while just minor tweaks and so on um but we try to do things a little differently here

183in el monte city school district as well where a lot of times when we're doing our contact tracing and our notification of employees we're actually not sending them an email saying or sending them a document saying oh you know this is what you can do and live it we actually make the phone call or send an email directly and explain it in detail and then ask them to contact us or we contact them to go over it with them because we know there's always questions along the lines of upcoming changes you know the state has changed the the school uh contact tracing policies in regards to where now they're kind of looking at it as uh we have a classroom um one person let's just say i test positive in our classroom here where um

184currently what we do is we contact trace to determine who the close contacts are and we notify those individuals we provide them testing if required and then nothing else well because of the extensive amount of time that that takes the state has gone to an approach of i test positive we just assume everyone in the room is a potential exposure we're going to send you all notices and testing is not necessarily required and so the local county health is looking at that option as a viable option for districts if they so choose to do it um some districts shared their their um desire to do that just because of the amount of time and their the lack of resources and so on um and other districts shared you know what while that's a great option

185for those that can for those districts that are currently operating under the the current tracing model we'd like the flexibility to continue that and we were one of those districts that actually advocated for that um so we'll watch and see what in this coming week if uh county department of public health issues those changes with some flexibility um you know in regards to specific contact tracing our concern is um you know that approach of you know someone you know tested positive now everyone else in the room is potential exposures our concern is that that that lack of communication with those individuals and providing them information that they need um so that way they're uh fully aware of of what they need to do to to ensure that they're keeping themselves and their families safe and

186you know at home and that's not just our employees but that's our students as well and their families so that leads me to you know the contact tracing process um the contact tracing process for us hasn't changed since day one that we've been here we still use the cdc definition which means that you know within six feet of a positive case for 15 minutes or more cumulative for us contact tracing is triggered based on when we're notified of a positive case and so i'll give you an example over the weekend um we had quite a few positive cases that we were notified on immediately the admin began contact tracing um i was involved in contact tracing my uh personnel in my office were involved in contact tracing or communicating as well um and so then

187what we're doing is identifying who those potential close contacts could be and then we're taking the next step and we're actually reaching out making phone calls and that's where we're different than than many other districts out there because currently the minimal requirement is that if i if we identify a a close contact we just have to provide them documented notification so you'll get an email through either parent square i for one had received one for my daughter in high school basically informing me that she was a close contact and then you can you know she should do this monitor for symptoms so on she should probably get her tested those types of things we we believe in we're going to make that phone call we're going to say you know what you know mr songbike

188your child was a close contact you know they they're fully vaccinated therefore here's the options for you this is what you need test on day five by the way we have rapid tests come to the school office pick one up and we'll give you one provide you with it but that takes time and takes a lot of staffing as well but we're still committed to doing that because we think it's the right thing to do and we do that not only for our students but we also do that for our employees as well where we actually try to reach out them we may be emailing them gathering information and then we're making contact over the phone to answer any questions they have so that leads to the the period of contact tracing and so any

189time that we have someone that is tested positive we look at when their symptoms began or when they actually um took the test that led to a positive result if they're asymptomatic and then we look at the 48 hours prior to for example you know on monday we didn't have school so if we had anyone that that notified us that they tested positive and we asked them when your symptoms began and if they say okay if my symptoms began sunday night or later we know that 48 hours previous to that was not friday when they were in school therefore we do not have an obligation to contact trace that because they were not on campus during an infection during their potential infectious period but if that 48 hours happens to fall when they were in

190school then we have a legal obligation to contact trace which then we look at our seating charts we contact the teacher and we say okay you know you know mr solomok was in your class here's a seating chart did you move around that day and so on because we also want to notify the teacher or our various certified or classified staff as well we go through that process identify other close context and then make a determination for each person based on their vaccination status and based on their ace of whether they're symptomatic or asymptomatic or what they need to do and again reach out and communicate with them and so on um you know as i shared that that um that's not necessarily the process any longer um in regards to that personal communication but

191it's still what we do because we feel it's the best thing to do as well um you know miss boone who who who i've known for a long time shared kind of the the communication aspect of it where there may be a student that uh whose sibling was identified as a as a positive case but the sibling came to school well we have to keep in mind that that sibling is vaccinated there they technically are are a close contact but as long as they're asymptomatic at that moment they are allowed to come to school and so there's a lot of factors that come into play in in situations that play into it so while we have this sort of overarching guidance in terms of what we need to do it's not a one-size-fits-all because um

192what may be happening with me and my symptoms is much different than dr garcia and so on so i might have to to do something a little different than she um so that's where it kind of varies and that's where that personal communication makes a big difference because you can ask them you know specifically about what's going on with them and provide them at least the feedback or the guidance we hope that would be appropriate for their situation the other thing i just kind of wanted to update was in terms of the dashboard you know and um you know um dashboard is something we've had for a while we've always used it um to reflect what we say as our current active cases and we define active as a case that um is within that

19310-day window and so going back to isolation traditionally has been 10 days even though now we say it can be five days if you have a negative test we still view it for 10 days and so anytime we're made aware of a positive case and we do our contact tracing and then i'm doing what i'm doing is i'm updating that dashboard and so i'm in the process every day of adding cases and then at one point i take off cases that are outside that window you know for example you know today's uh would say the 18th huh so if we had a positive case that was identified and and they were on campus today then this is the start of that 10 day window and then on the 28th is their 10th day the 29th

194we would take that case off um we feel that's the best way um to kind of represent really what's going on at all times i know that there's been been questions about the number of cases in a day and so on and while i have that information i could easily provide that information i think what it doesn't do is it doesn't provide accurate information about that situation because just today um you know i haven't checked my emails but we've been getting updated emails through this evening we probably have about 20 um notable cases that were we were informed of but they weren't cases that were on campuses today there are cases that maybe a couple were today somewhere last friday they were on campus i had one from um the seventh of the month and

195so while we had 20 cases identified today not all of them truly reflect today's on-campus you know situation and so um we can easily look at sharing you know how that might be you know we had 20 cases a day my concern would be making sure that we identify the fact that that those 20 cases identified today don't reflect that those students or those employees were on campuses today um because i think that's what everyone is really concerned about um understandably is you know who was who who was i potentially exposed to today you know and so finding that way of doing it you know there's also the cumulative approach um you know how many cases have we had on our campuses over the course of this year um which i have that information because

196i track every single case you know on a spreadsheet and i can easily tell you that the hard part with that too is um a few different things in terms of one we we've actually been taking the rapid test as as a positive test where the um the local county has not necessarily identified that yet um but we just use that as a precautionary measure and so we're going to respond and act on that and number two um we're seeing individuals and i use the term individuals because i don't identify as a staff or a a student when i put out information i say we identified an individual because it could be either we have individuals that have tested positive for the second time because they could have had the initial variant you know of

197coming in or even delta and now with the new variant you know so um sometimes our numbers for a cumulative isn't necessarily um 100 accurate or reflective uh in in the fact that we have multiple individuals who have tested positive more than one time you know um and and while i identify my information for the dashboard by student or employee so i have an understanding i don't identify that information by like person so to go back and track whether that same person has had it the second a few times we'd have to go through our county records as well so so i share that just because um you know there's a lot of thought in the process that goes into our dashboard i think our dashboard even in the last week i've updated some of

198the language on our dashboard because i always used to use this phrase just because it makes sense in my crazy mind does it means it makes sense right so i view it through the lens of covid that i understand pretty decently but someone who doesn't you know i need to then reword it so we've updated that language as well to clarify you know active and what that means um we've asked a few you know individuals you know what can we do differently or what are you looking for and so on um gotten some feedback on that aspect of it um but always open to to suggestions from the board as well in terms of directions they want us to take on that but i just wanted to kind of give some background on the dashboard

199and and why we reflect it the way we do um because right now if you look at it you'll see the active cases that were reported minus the ones that we've reported since we've been sitting sitting here because i updated it prior to coming over um and tomorrow what you'll see is more updated cases and then probably not till the 20th you'll see cases drop off so um and then finally just you know as mr herrera shared you know you know we've been proactive in our ppe purchases and so on we're pleased that we're able to provide this as many kn 95s or other safety measures for our staff um that's been you know at the forefront of what we do since day one is is in terms of trying to ensure the safety of

200all of our staff and our students as well but what i'm really pleased at is is is our proactive you know um approach in terms of testing and purchasing of our rapid tests we started purchasing rapid tests um november just to have them on hand and then we started you know we found a supplier in florida through our lego grant you know um and we were able to get them in and and so then we started utilizing them for our modified quarantine because the original modified quarantine for families was that you had to test on day one and day five and many of our families were having trouble finding access so we actually got approval um through laco to or through county department of health to use our rapid tests because they're fda approved we

201have nurses so we could use those as valid um tests prior to them becoming sort of the the the common thing that's being used like now um so we started purchasing those like crazy and then and then cabinet made the decision to um purchase all of the rapid tests to send home with all of our students and all of our staff prior to winter break just something we felt would be nice for our families to have just sort of as a precautionary measure with no expectation that that they utilize it because again we also didn't want to go down that route for those families that just didn't want to test right because we know that we have um some that that feel that way in regards to it and then what happens over winter break

202the governor announces we should have testing for everyone right we're sitting there going we're good and so we've been we've been fortunate because we've now received all those tests and now we're able to utilize those tests to um to offer every single close contact um you know probably the the 60 that were identified today a rapid test that they can use on day five because that's a requirement um any of our employees as well if they're a close contact or if they're or if they notify their close contact at home i'm going to hand them a test because i want them to be safe and and i want them back on day five any uh employees or students who have tested positive the new isolation order you know day five negative test next day you

203can come back so i've been able to bring back employees and students have been able to come back on day six or seven where they would have then had to stay out all 10 to 11 days had we not had all those tests and i think the big thing that that i'm proud of with our district is um some of the the pushback that many of the districts are giving the county health in regards to these changes and orders is that their inability to provide the rapid test they don't have them um but we do because we actually were proactive prior to break and so on um so i just wanted to share all those i know i threw a lot of information at you i think i took everyone else's a lot of time

204for their cabinet updates but that's okay um but i just wanted to make sure that you all had this information i'm always open uh if there's questions or anything i can clarify um because there's a lot of information there um which is understandable why many people in the search they're nervous you know and so our job is to try to make them feel comfortable um but i also know that we're going way above and beyond you know what is required and i'm proud of that in our district um i just wanted to say thank you for all that i mean definitely appreciate all the proactive efforts the forethought all of it is really great um something while you were talking i was wondering um in terms of the dashboard um would it be possible to

205maybe note the number of in-school transmissions that have been identified or not identified in terms of i saw it i looked at several different dashboards i think it might be lausd does it but i think maybe as a parent you know looking at it thinking okay this is it's probably i'm assuming much more reflective of um you know what's going on in the community rather than what's going on in the school so when you look at it and you see these cases and you think you know oh my gosh there's 15 at my school but it's kids who are doing something outside of school so i can feel very safe and comfortable with my child being at school knowing that it's not you know that's not where they're getting it so anyway i think that's

206a great i'd like to i'll take a look at some of the dashboards i've looked at other districts dashboards and that that's sort of why you know i kind of sit back and i'm like oh i really like our dashboard because it i think is really a true reflection of what's going on not necessarily just cumulative right um but yeah i'll take a look and see what's out there what comes to mind sometimes on those situations is especially right now you know i would say back in november it was pretty easy right now you have individuals who are identified as a close contact [Music] they test available county health will automatically probably consider that as a school exposure because they're not aware of the home situation they're only aware of what we report um because

207our reporting requirements are um if i test positive my information is shared with them and then every other close contact is shared with them because there's notification requirements and so on so um so but i definitely will take a look and and so on and i and i think if that's a viable option if it helps i think our community feel a little more at ease i think it's a great idea and if i can just jump in you know when we the dashboard is not required of us it's something that we wanted to do when we first came back to the new school year in august as a way of being transparent and sharing with our school community and so i think that that just that stays true we want you know people to

208know what's happening in schools so happy to look at different models and happy to i guess you know really represent this moment in time as well quite frankly i'm not sure that the dashboard had any traction prior to the surge but clearly people are logging on now to see what's on that dashboard and so that's an opportunity for us to say okay how can we how can we communicate via these numbers so we'll take a look at that yeah yeah definitely i also just want to add my thanks you know you're like basically now public health worker [Laughter] and and yet you're sitting here i mean this wasn't really what your job was supposed to be right but you're sitting here with all sorts of like knowledge really in-depth knowledge and kind of you know

209like nerdy enthusiasm about the details you know um but i really appreciate it you know just the how how in depth you really truly understand and follow all the changes and i know i know at this point that's you got to do it um but you know i can see that you're you're doing it with just a wholehearted effort to to have things go well in our district so i really really appreciate that and the tone with which you do it and the way you address questions and answer questions with all sorts of patients i i think it's uh really wonderful so thank you i appreciate it you know and i couldn't i couldn't do it without our staff um our principals our support staff they've now become contact tracers you know um you know

210and then the the staff i have in my personal office um you know uh right now i'll probably get off and and they'll be we'll be communicating about what's going on saturday sunday and monday um we're all communicating we're all you know basically jumping in and doing what we need to do along with our admin and our site so i appreciate i think thank you for that but i couldn't do it without the support staff that i have um that that help out in this process as well so mr secretary yeah i truly appreciate all your hard work i was going to ask you something have you noticed the little testing facilities along peck road in northgate and there's one on busy and pack i was tested this morning this is my fifth time i've

211been tested by the way and i had something very strange they offered me a really 15-minute result in a hunt for a hundred dollars is that common you know that that's your rapid antigen that's the test that we buy a hundred dollars for them the hundred dollars is because they're they're not out there right now you know and and that's that's what we're seeing i think if you the only okay the only time i've ever had anybody say that because at kaisers it's like three days or two days but these people say in 15 minutes for a hundred dollars to give the results yeah so so there's the difference in the two tests the the the you know and when i'm describing when i'm emailing people i'll describe by saying a rapid engine rapid antigen

212test and i'll put in parentheses you know one that you get results in 10 to 15 minutes that's that's the type of test that basically measures if you're infectious right now at this moment okay and then your pcr test is the one that takes one to three days well now it's probably seven days because you know depending on where you go um that's your your test that basically looks at your antibodies um you know for lack of a better term and what you'll test positive for that for the next 60 to 90 days is what they say so that's where we've seen a shift recently and that's where this big push for the rapid antigen tests have come in before everyone looked at them and they weren't you know considered a viable option but now

213because of the change in isolation to five days and then the quarantine aspects for us in terms of that um you know that tells us if a person is infectious at that moment and if they're no longer infectious then they actually are safe to go about business as long as you know they just need to continue to monitor themselves um symptoms will probably continue but but that's that's the that's the test right now that everyone's looking for and they're not out there and so that's that's why unfortunately people are taking advantage of it and charging that kind of money and one more sharing two weeks ago i was tested over at kaiser hospital with an appointment it took three hours to get it the cars were everywhere so beware of where you're being tested thank

214you mr sunderland i will be brief because i know that you have heard from quite a bit and mr sullenbach did take up my time now all of that to say that um this you know i think it's a testament uh he's definitely transformed himself into a public health officer for emcsd and that goes uh for all employees right i think you know there's work that we started off doing that we were very passionate about and this pandemic has definitely added more to our plates and the testament to that is you know the teachers right the teachers that are here to speak on behalf of the staff and the questions and the concerns that they have i want to acknowledge that because i think there's lots of questions we're doing our best to trying to

215answer some of those questions to clear up the confusion because there have been some recent changes um we're waiting for one more update from the department of public health and then our plan is to put out you know something like a flow or an infographic so that people can have a very clear understanding and understand that you know it's all it's nuanced based on a lot of different conditions so our end goal is to communicate to support and uh definitely to get to the root of issues so we can quickly try to problem-solve and and then move forward uh so we'll be looking at the dashboard we'll be examining some of the concerns that came forward at new lexington to make sure that we can get to what those issues are and how we can

216support the teachers and the staff there i know mrs kobian shared earlier i do want to acknowledge that the website is live from the federal government in order to access the household tests that will be mailed out to families and so robert did a wonderful job of pushing that out today we'll continue to remind families so that they can have access to those tests while testing is important we know that uh you know it's going to be information that we're going to encourage them to share and then think about ways to really um get families to connect with us so that we can have this information as they're testing there's more tests at home that are accessible i want to acknowledge the the board thank you for adding another meeting to uh the docket uh

217so we'll be meeting on january 31st at 5 pm for our study session and then just lastly i just want to celebrate you know i know that there's just a lot of things that are happening but you know as a district we continue to do really good just hearing jenny lee's presentation right that just summarized all the wonderful work that's happening the vaccines we are close to 4 000 vaccines that el monte city school district has provided to the school community i mean those are just really wonderful things amongst many many others and there's a lot of small little moments that are really living their footprint and everyone's hearts that are happening in classrooms in schools and cafeterias in in playgrounds and so i just want to acknowledge the work of everybody we're going to

218give people our staff an opportunity next week to take a deep breath and we're going to work with just our staff so that they can enjoy some personal time next week so thank you for uh for the patience uh for for i know we went extra long this evening but there's still there's lots of information to share lots to celebrate and lots to do thank you for that dr garcia and with that uh we'll go on to um number five future discussion items any uh one of our board members like to um mention at this time i'd like to have one item so we're just talking about advocacy right at the state level federal level and that's something we've talked about in the past i'd like to propose if anyone's interested i know i'm interested

219if we want to do a subcommittee on advocacy then that way the subcommittee we could meet and we could look at you know the current bills that are right now um on the floor and then create a plan on like what would be the best action whether it's submitting a letter on behalf of the board or setting up a zoom call so if anyone would be interested we can always talk about in future but i would definitely be interested in that it would also be interesting i like that idea thank you any others it sounds like a great idea i do i'd like us to agendize discussing volunteers in the classroom because i still feel that a lot of retired teachers have so much to offer and they're willing to come in and unpaid and

220i'm sure that our children can take advantage of that and they'll benefit from that and they'll all be you know tested for covet and everything else and the argument is their credentials so if somebody in the public says oh how come they're going in there we can always say well we have substitute teachers coming in why not have retired teachers i think that might be something we could really consider doing to help our kids and and the teachers too by the way thank you mr segrest any others just want to thank miss reddis for leading us today congratulations on your first meeting leading as board president thank you first full meeting thank you thank you mrs friva so uh just to go back to the suggestions made today by uh a board member mendez and

221uh board member seekers so these are definitely wonderful ideas so we'll definitely come back uh to these okay so before we adjourn i just uh would really like to uh extend and thank our entire school community for uh please know that we definitely value that that great work that you're doing your commitment your dedication for students for excellence in education and i mean these definitely are challenging and challenging times but and we're going throughout all this information right and all these changes and some of them can definitely be drastic but nevertheless uh our el monte city school district stays committed and continuing to prioritize the health and well-being of all of our students so thank you very very much for that we definitely value that and with with that i would like to adjourn our

222meeting at 8 01 pm thank you