001we are calling the meeting to order the nvusd board of education is holding a regular virtual board meeting tonight that all can participate in remotely you can join via zoom specific directions on how to participate are located are located on the board of education webpage on the district's website and the usd.org board the open session part of the meeting agenda begins at 7 pm going on to public comment and closed session items uh before going into closed session the board is available for public comment on closed session agenda items uh mr bassinet do i have any public comment on closed session uh agenda items there is no public comment seeing that there are none the napa valley unified school district will now adjourn into closed session see you all back at seven thank you and
002to open session uh good evening my name is edward gonzalez-mares and this is the napa valley unified school district board of education the nbusd board of education is holding a regular board meeting tonight that all can participate remotely you can join via zoom buenas noches my name is interpretation in spanish is available for tonight's virtual board meeting to access interpretation from a computer click on the interpretation icon on the bottom of your screen from within the zoom application on a mobile device click on the more button on the bottom of your screen and choose language interpretation from within the zoom application this is a separate channel that will allow you to hear english to spanish translation concurrently please note interpretation services are not available when you join our meeting by calling in our interpreters for
003tonight's meetings are paul huertas and isidramenkos may we have one of the interpreters please translate these directions on our english channel so our spanish-speaking families can hear the instructions oh but i'm not chasing [Music] gracias specific instructions on how to participate in the median are located on the board of education webpage on the district's website nbusd.org board can we please start with an attendance roll call from vera morales executive assistant trustee gonzalez present trustee jankowicz president trustee gracia president trustee reiser present trustee water president trustee shu present trustee cooley present quorum present thank you thank you vera thank you for joining us tonight for our napa valley unified school district board meeting public participation remains virtual online only due to the covet 19 shelter in place order we continue in uncharted territory as we deal
004with the kova 19 pandemic as trustees we have returned to the boardroom in solidarity with our staff given that our school campuses are now reopened for our students however in order to ensure access to our meetings without any limitations during the persisting pandemic we are continuing with online remote access via zoom for the public and guests i would like to thank our employees our families and the entire nvusd community for how you have supported each other and come together during these unprecedented times this meeting tonight is in accordance with the open meeting rule in the state of california for the governor's order i'm going to start tonight with some basic instructions on how we are going to be using zoom and involve the members of the community all board of trustees and the superintendent are
005in video throughout the entire board meeting from here in the board room other staff members are present by video members of the committee will not be on video and will be muted except during public comment during public comment any member of the community that wishes to speak must raise their hand using the raise hand feature in zoom you will be unmuted and will be provided three minutes to speak there are two ways to make a public comment within the time allotted for public comment on an eligible agenda item to comment by video conference click the raise your hand button to request to speak when public comment is being taken on the eligible agenda item when it is your turn to speed your name will be called out you will then be unmuted during your turn
006and allowed to make public comments after the allotted time you will then be remuted instructions on how to raise your hand are available on the district's website at nbusd.org board to comment by phone you will be prompted to raise your hand by pressing star 9 to request to speak when public comment is being taken on the eligible agenda item when it is returned to speak the last four digits of your phone number will be called out you will then be unmuted during your turn and allowed to make public comment after the allotted time you will then be remuted instructions on how to raise your hand by phone are available on the district's website at nvusd.org board in addition community members were allowed to submit comments via email at publiccomment nvusd.org up until 8 am this
007morning public comment received after 8 am the day of the scheduled meeting will not be read into the record however the public comment will be announced as received after the deadline and will become part of the meeting archive as long as it is received before the meeting is officially called to order for every agenda item i will prompt the meeting participants who have joined us via zoom for public comment please follow the instructions just provided when you would like to comment on an item we have been called to order and conducted our attendance roll call we will go forward with our agenda okay i'm going to now ask trustee gracia to report on closed session items yes we took action as a board in closed session with regard to personnel in closed session the board
008took action to approve the following staff recommendations effective for the 2021-22 school year d2a1 jenna burrows to the position of executive director of fiscal services d2a2 kristin nelson to the position of coordinator of student wellness and support d2a3 peter hartnick to the position of assistant principal at redwood middle school and d2a4 lurtis rosales to the position of assistant principal at vintage high school and lastly president gonzalez morris will be reporting out on the superintendent's performance evaluation for the 2020-2021 school year thank you trustee gracia i have now the honor to report out on the following the board of education has now completed its annual evaluation of the napa valley unified school district superintendent dr rasana musetti this is a comprehensive review process covering many different performance areas i am pleased to report the nvusd board
009of education rated her performance in each area as distinguished with a distinguished rating overall this means the board of education found that she performed above satisfactory and exceeded expectations in all areas according to our employment contract this outstanding evaluation entitles dr masetti to an extension of her contract a contract amendment amendment which provides her with a new four-year term is on tonight's board meeting agenda for action among the many areas of focus the board of education noted in particular the extraordinary challenges she faced this past year those challenges included an unprecedented global pandemic that forced all schools into remote learning and an ongoing and declining enrollment straining the district's fiscal resources dr masetti opened napa schools in october when hundreds of other schools districts throughout the state remained closed and worked courageously and transparently to
010right-size the district's physical health just as she courageously and transparently addressed her own health challenges this year it is evident dr masetti is an exceptional one-of-a-kind ceo and visionary educational leader and we all feel extraordinarily fortunate to have her as our superintendent and that concludes tonight's report from closed session all right our next item is our flag salute kind of looking around whose turn is up next because we just had dr mercedes evaluation i'm going to ask her to lead us on our flag solely it would be my honor and pleasure thank you president gonzalez congratulations to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you our next item is our announcement that this meeting
011is recorded for live streaming and archiving on the district youtube channel for a detailed review of any meeting agenda item the archive video can be referenced located on the district's webpage at nvusd.org the public can join the virtual board meeting remotely via zoom participation instructions and the process for public comment can be found on the district webpage we're now moving forward with uh next item is approval of agenda move to approve second first by trustee gracias sucked in by trustee water all those in favor [Music] anybody oppose rip sting or um this is the agenda so you're good okay so uh all those in favor aye aye aye anybody abstain or pose very good great thank you next item is approval of minutes so approval of minutes of june 10 2021 move to approve second
012first by trustee gracias second by trustee water all those in favor aye aye any abstentions i will abstain thank you uh trustee jankowicz um anybody oppose great motion passes we're now going into recognition of visitors and employee organizations so um i would not take a quick moment i kind of glossed over the opportunity after um uh trustee grasse's report out from closed session so in terms of visitors tonight we do have three of our new um the candidates that were appointed to the positions and so i just want to invite them if i can get some help from our tech team to unmute them i see that um kristen nelson is here this evening jenna burroughs and lourdes rosales we want to welcome them to our management team and if you'd like to take a
013quick moment to just say hello and address the board um i see jenna's hand raised miss burrows his hand raised i see look at this and i see kristen if we can unmute them so um why don't you go ahead first jenna hi can you hear me we can oh great uh good evening i just want to say i'm thrilled to be joining the nub usd fiscal services team i'm also a proud napa high graduate so i really appreciate this opportunity to serve my own community so thank you so much okay welcome miss burroughs thanks for being here and then next um we see lourdes rosales good evening thank you so much for having me this evening i'm excited to be joining the crusher community and working alongside dr o'connor um so i'm very much
014looking forward to working with napa unified and um at vintage high school thank you that's great welcome aboard miss rosales and um a familiar person we all know um who's uh being promoted to the management team in her new role ms kristen nelson hi can you hear me we can hi thank you i just wanted to take a minute to thank both the nvusd um leadership team and the board for this incredible opportunity um i'm just so grateful to be joining the team as the coordinator for student wellness and support and just feel this speaks volumes to our commitment to students wellness and mental health and have immense gratitude for the work we have moving forward thank you great miss nelson we're so happy to have you in the new role and congratulations congratulations to
015all three candidates um yay applause you're getting a pause here on the floor and then um i'd also like to um i see um miss leslie walder from naps is our only um union leader who i see here this evening so if we can unmute with miss walter so she can address the board okay good evening dr musetti can you hear me we can yes okay all right yes thank you i'm pleased to be here good evening president gonzalez mares board of trustees dr musetti it's been quite a year there's a sense of relief and a sense of accomplishment that is hard to express in words as i look at the work that's been done by our unit members by all of the teachers all the staff across the district so on behalf of my
016co-workers and colleagues across the district we just want to say thank you and express our gratitude to have arrived at this point and to be ready to look forward to reopening schools fully in august thank you thank you miss walter um a lot of nodding heads if you were in the room here with us um all right we are now moving into public comments on non-agenda items um this is the time where members of the audience may address the board on any school-related matter that is not on the agenda the board will not take action on any issue raised during this section of the agenda in as much as board action is limited to posted agenda items speakers are requested to limit their comments to a maximum of three minutes before i um check to
017see who's joining us virtually i'm going to ask justin gracia if any public comment was submitted via email yes public comment on non-agenda items was submitted via email at publiccomment nvusd.org the following public comment was received by electronic written format and has been forwarded and reviewed by the nvusd board of education trustees it was submitted by diana dormay substitute teacher pandemic stipend dave received june 23 2021 and that is all for public comment thank you thank you trustee gracia um mr bassinet i'm now going to open to see if there's any public comment on non-agenda items from the public yes we do have public comment uh first person will be suzanne bell okay um am i unmuted um okay um thank you um i just wanted to comment a greeting for equity i find it
018unbelievable that i've got no real answers to the same questions i've been asking since april 15 regarding the possible district-wide adoption of grading for equity this amazes me since i see that board member shoe riser water and water and dooley have participated in video info sessions or live events on this grading system trustee dooley had stated that he'd be sure to get my questions to people who could answer them and two and a half months later i've heard nothing he went on to quote the ample rhetoric of the implicitly implicitly biased joe feldman and completely concluded with a statement about the ever-contentious concept of systemic racism that gave no examples of its existence in napa unified i would thirdly enjoy hearing data and statistics as well as the definition of so called systemic racism as
019it relates to grading for equity in our district trustee water did engage with me a number of times she talked about a myriad of topics but did not answer my questions trustee jankowicz had no answers but sent me to pat jennings the other board members did not answer at all and board president martinez mares had time to attend a la la napa latinx democratic club meeting but then i have time to respond to my questions pat jennings conveyed much the same as mr dooley with cut and paste type answers taken straight from feldman's grading for equity which is as full as implicit bias as he himself is she says it has nothing to do with the crt agenda but this doesn't match up with mr dooley's cut and paste statements about stomach systemic racism and
020what i've read in feldman's book basically the board has chosen either ignoring my questions giving me vague cut and paste answers or selectively being uninformed we've spent about seventy three thousand dollars on this pilot program and i still wonder how many parents know about understand or understand the price tag and its implications trustee waters commented the board is happy when innocent bystanders showed up at board meetings she never explained what she meant and maybe she calls us innocent bystanders because we've been left in the dark on the issues of supposed grading for equity and its foul implications in closing perhaps the school board and district should spend less time contemplating one side's social advocacy like the merits of flying the gay pride flag dei which is basically an affirmative action disguised by the trendy terms
021diversity equity and inclusion instead of wasting time and money on this let's focus on our students lost learning over the years of covet and fires enough with left social advocacy let's get back to properly educating our students thank you for your comment next speaker mr bassinet next speaker will be maria martinez can you hear me now am i unmuted we can hear you go ahead so good evening trustees dr mussetti and the management team at nvusd my name is maria martinez i'm the executive director of stonebridge school and i wanted to take a moment at tonight ms martinez we just lost you mr besson and i can't tell if she's still on oh there am i back yes you are okay so now it says i am muted so i've unmuted myself can you hear
022me we can hear you okay great i'll start over again sorry um i just wanted to um to let me see if i can get her back go ahead miss martinez all right let me start over again um good evening everyone my name is maria martinez i'm the executive director of stone bridge i wanted to um take a moment tonight to do some thank yous so as i am near retirement i wanted to thank dr masetti um since she's come on board she has been very supportive always willing to listen always supporting our students and our school so i wanted to thank you um dr masetti i also want to thank um mike pearson and his move team we've been in the middle of the move to the mount george campus thank you so much
023for all the work we put into the campus to ready it for our students so we can continue to do the best that we can do for them i want to thank the board as well for the last over 20 years of support um i also wanted to take a moment to introduce um our new executive director so dr james brown will be joining us as of july 1. dr brown comes from a reach school in sebastopol he also is returning to nvusd he spent time there at a new tech so i wanted to pass the torch introduce you to dr brown i'm sure he will continue a collaborative relationship that we have all enjoyed and that i have personally enjoyed over the last 20 years so thank you um thank you to all and
024i don't know if um dr brown wanted to say something thank you and martinez um next speaker mr bussinet next speaker is norma ortiz hello as a parent i am very proud of my daughter norma ortiz who is now a 7th grader for all of her hard work perseverance and contributions to her learning we both enjoyed the virtual promotion ceremony hosted by nbla on june 14 2021 where she had the opportunity to share her experience reflection speech in addition to all the great surprises and gifts that were inside the promotion grab-and-go bags on june 16 2021 she was awarded a certificate of sixth grade promotion the president's education awards program for her outstanding academic excellence a certificate of excellence for maintaining a 4.0 in all of her classes a nvla avid student of the year
0252021 certificate a brown belt certificate of completion in piano karate and more this is a combined effort in which i want to thank and acknowledge the great leadership we have at napa valley language academy with miss alejandro ribe and my daughter's amazing sixth grade teachers miss martha college mr david allred and mr franklin hernandez they were always there for both of us in every way at the same time i i also want to thank the music connection department director miss kristen anderson mr um cody elves and mr christopher slaugh i am glad that these programs exist she is having an overall great experience with the valley honor strings and with the id tech summer camps thank you thank you for your comment next speaker mr bassinet next speaker is james brown good evening i'm a
026little bit behind on my introduction but i'll pick it up just for a moment if i can can you hear me okay yes we can go ahead mr ram thank you i just want to pick up on where maria left off and say uh you know thank you dr muzetti and the trustees i want to just introduce myself and say hello really quickly i'm very excited to be leading the stonebridge community and working closely with the unified school district moving forward over these next coming years and i want to especially say thank you to maria martinez who has served the school very well for the last few years and i'm looking forward to stepping into her her shoes and carrying on the traditions there and i wish her the best of luck so thank you
027and i'm looking forward to working with you thank you mr brown next speaker mr bassinet there is no further comment thank you okay we are now entering the reports section of our agenda um item g1 board of education and student board representative but right now our we are in between student board representatives uh our own carla mcgania just graduated and so we will start with our board trustee so over the course of graduation week i attended napa valley independent studies valley oak new tech american canyon high school vintage high school and napa high school graduation ceremonies on the 15th i attended the fnt meeting on the 16th i attended the silverado middle school promotion and appreciated the staff rallying together to change the promotion format to allow large groups of students to attend in person
028and then on the 21st i attended a four school tour of various campuses in the city of napa including napa high school vintage high school phillips and browns valley elementary i only went to four graduations as i moved my daughter back to um back to where she's going to grad school and i attended the finance committee meeting congratulations to all the graduates i completed the iron woman marathon non-athlon of attending all the graduations for the district this year just the graduation version um it felt by the end of wednesday night like an endurance sport so june 14th i had the privilege of attending the napa valley independent studies graduation the valley oak high school graduation the new tech high school graduation and the napa valley adult ed education graduate with spring graduation on june 15th
029i participated in the zoom graduation for the adapt program and then the american canyon high school in person graduation and on june 16th the i attended the american canyon middle school promotion ceremony and the napa high school graduation and the vintage high school graduation um the ceremonies were ceremonies were so moving and so joyful um it felt so good to be together in community in person to celebrate the class of 2021 um and they really so richly deserve to go out in style um after the year and a third that they um that end that capped off their high school career here um i want to thank assistant superintendent mike pearson and his wonderful um staff and the maintenance and operations department for everything that they did to set us up for such a successful
030series of celebrations and i just want to extend my congratulations to all the graduates for your hard work and wish them the best in their next endeavors and extend my gratitude to the teachers and staff who work tirelessly to help those graduates achieve that milestone the next morning bright and early on june 17th i enjoyed a facilities tour of four campuses in the district vintage high school napa high school browns valley elementary school in phillips elementary school led by assistant superintendent mike pearson and it was really helpful to see the facilities in person and and see the needs and issues and concerns with my own eyes and hear from our team of experts what needs to be done and i want to thank assistant superintendent pearson for doing just such a thorough job in evaluating
031all of our sites throughout the district creating a really comprehensive and detailed and prioritized working list of what what we need to do um i really appreciated the focus on equity of um across the district in in his presentation in our discussions um and it became it's very clear to me that we have a lot of um education to do in our community to sort of explain more in depth about how our school maintenance and um construction and modernization is funded and i don't think that people really understand it i know that i have a much deeper understanding of it now as a trustee than i ever did as a parent or as a teacher working in districts and how much it costs to take care of the facilities and we have a lot of
032work to do our students and teachers and staff deserve to work in buildings that are warm safe and dry and that reflect the degree to which we value them and the crucial work of educating the children of our community that concludes my report hi there well i too went to the zoom adapt graduation also napa valley independent studies also valley oak high school also american canyon high school and napa high school and i confess after napaha's graduation i was absolutely overcome by the heat and in fact uh it was hard for me to uh move the next day it was really a hot day but i was happy to go to the graduations because i really thought the speeches were unusually good this year i i just loved them and um you know the students
033were there weren't any cliches um they were speaking from the heart they were recognizing what all of us had been through and they were yet they were so optimistic i mean it was just really really in heartening and i was um i just it was wonderful it was just wonderful and um uh and just yes uh mike pearson um thanks to you and maintenance and operations for making everything run so smoothly i think the parents were really happy to be back for an in-person graduation and um it was it was just so much fun and uh let's see on tuesday i went to visit um vintage high school uh napa high school phillips in browns valley on the facilities tour uh trust trustee dooley witnessed me have a post-traumatic stress incident inside of d7 where
034i worked for 15 years and occasionally felt extremely unrespected was a suburban slum but at the same time at the same time um i was thinking of you know the great possibilities because um i was you know you stand there and you look out at the hills i was over at phillips school which certainly needs a lot of work but my goodness i'm just looking straight out there at um at mount george it's just it's a beautiful setting you know surrounded by trees and of course browns valley you know has all the hillside around it and i was thinking you know what a lovely community we have and i would really like our schools to be worthy of the setting and um it was fun so um i really had a good time and you
035know norma ortiz um spoke up earlier and i would like to congratulate her daughter for having such a wonderful finish uh to sixth grade you know good luck in junior high middle school excuse me so i also attended a lot of graduations actually that was the highlight of my tenure as a trustee so far i went to napa to new tech high school napa valley adult education american canyon high school adapt by zoom and also vintage high school i also attended promotions at american canyon middle school it's great that we can actually be in person on all of these and i wanted to um i also went to napa junction elementary school promotion which was wonderful i i have to give a lot of props to principal noreen montgomery and the pto there for you
036know making a promotion of their last promotion at that campus so memorable and um for for all the students they did this wonderful walk-through of the entire campus they visited teachers from each grade levels and they they got a little a nice set of swag from each teacher and it was a great way to memorialize their experience at the the elementary school and it is the last class that will be promoting from there and you could tell the energy is a little sad but they're very excited to go on to their new campus next year so i'm looking forward to to welcoming them into that campus as well i also attended the facilities tour of the four schools with trustee riser on the 17th and i also had a meeting with the city of american
037canyon city councilman pierre washington and i think we're going to make that more of a regular meeting just so we can touch base more often so i i attended the facilities and technology committee meeting on the 15th and the facilities tour with trustee water and it was you know she she uh told some great stories about her napa high career and and but it was a it was a as as my fellow trustees have said of um enlightening tour uh seeing all of the the the state of facilities it was a wide range of of you know qualities and and lots of improvements that we need to to work to focus on um i also attended graduations i went to the new tech high graduation the american canyon high school and the napa high and
038vintage graduation and i have to say my favorite one was just kidding i i as a parent i know you don't pick favorites um what what i do want to say is i i really appreciate the um the fact that all of the the graduations were live streamed um and they are actually archived on the nvusd youtube channel in between our board meetings so um you can watch the wonderful speeches that trustee water mentioned and and see how excited people were to be in person and celebrating and and watch all of the doves fly over the students for a couple of the graduations so i appreciated that um and then the last thing i wanted to say i have a page a day calendar at my work that is uh quotes from [Music] leaders it's
039about leadership uh about uh and a lot of them really are about kind of a growth mindset that we talk about in avid and at a lot of our schools and the one yesterday uh was from oliver wendell holmes senior who's the father of a former supreme court justice oliver wendell holmes jr he was a doctor of they call them a polymath if you look them up which i call myself a polymath quite often i know a little about a lot but not a lot about much but the the quote the quote was and i i'm going to paraphrase it it was a person's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation and never shrinks back to its former dimensions and it reminded me a lot about both uh our students experience in school
040this is the idea we we we're stretching our minds and hoping that it never goes back um and and you know sometimes over the summer it does but uh the it also reminded me of the the the future uh paths that all of our graduates are going to be on uh it's they will receive or experience new ideas and sensations and we are our goal is to prepare them to be ready for those new ideas we know that not you know nobody is always ever or ever always ready but we hope that their minds will continue to expand very similar reports i attended from new tech um i know there's no favorites but um being able to call my nephew's name out for his graduation was pretty special i guess there's some of the perks
041and what we do very little and um and then attended um what did we have we had vintage we had napa high and so it was it was just i think being in the presence of our youth um and again and seeing them all together and that was something that was repeated over and over that that was the first time they saw each other either at practice for graduation for the ceremony or at the like the second time they'd seen each other all together so it just um you could feel you know the the the energy and just excitement but also the sort of um caution of like what's next what's going to happen uh what does the world hold ahead of us but i agree with trustee water this the speakers were were fantastic
042one in particular just reminded me of um again to continue to listen to our youth and um because i was one of those people that looked at my nephew and i was like oh my god welcome to the real world but no they've been in the real world and it was just such a cliche um that it was just a reminder like that's right so right of course it is and i really appreciated that uh that speech um because our our students have been living in the real world and always have um and um but it was it was really nice to be able to finish the year in that in that way and have us all uh be in a setting where we can all share that space together so yeah congratulations to to
043the graduates to the staff to everybody who made it possible for for those kiddos to cross that stage um all right that being said um we are now moving to item j um g2 which is the board representatives reports um starting with curriculum and student support committee we have not yet met facilities and technology committee yes so we met on june 15th and we had two presentations one from the technology committee where we discussed uh the procedures for device check-in meaning the returns of of people's chromebooks and other devices uh we focused or we we looked at the uniqueness of this year how everyone had their devices uh how um we were also having a more robust summer programs and there was a need for many students to retain their their devices over the summer
044and that technology department will be looking at refreshing and and ensuring that all the devices are ready for uh for the next school year and that it'll be a bigger challenge this year because of the uh higher uh higher frequency of use of all the devices because of the the coveted year we had a report from facilities on the uh the process for the division of state architects legacy closeout which involves projects on district campuses that were not fully uh closed out by uh through the the state division of state architect which uh sometimes it's a paperwork thing sometimes the scope of work was not completed but uh it is essentially like we didn't get the final permit so often when a new project is starting part of the process is looking at past projects
045that involved that space to determine whether existing legacy projects were were still there then there's a process for reopening that that project with the division of state architect paying a fee for it and going through the process of determining whether it's simply a paperwork correction or it's both a paperwork correction and some actual additional work that has to be done to to complete that the project um the it can range from very simple to very complex uh and we heard that about there's about 89 or so outstanding uh legacy projects uh in our district and many of those will be done either we can do it either as as a mass closeout or we can do it on a project by project basis when those projects arise um and usually the funding for it is
046included in our contingencies that we we put on any future projects the let's see and yeah i think that's about it thank you trustee dooley finance committee we have not met thanks lisa policy committee special education community advisory committee we have not met city of american canyon liaison representatives we have not met city of napa liaison representatives and town of janville liaison representatives we have not met right all right so um we're now moving into the superintendent and executive staff report great um thank you president gonzalez mares good evening nvusd trustees and community my report is very brief this evening because i just simply want to focus on wishing everyone a very joyous and happy summer first our students launch their summer break then our teachers after you know doing the the busy taking on
047the busy task of closing up their classrooms and then at the end of this week most of our site administrators will start their summer vacations as well after this grueling grueling year i just want to wish everyone rest relaxation and rejuvenation i know we have our maintenance and operation staff that will be hard at work getting our campuses ready for the 21-22 school year so i want to thank them in advance for the important work that they do in the summer while many others are on the summer break in addition like the trustees have all mentioned i want to give a second shout out to maintenance and operations for the incredible execution of seven large-scale graduation events all in 72 hours in a just coming off a pandemic when we are when we all were
048not that used to gathering in community at a large public scale in the way that we did last week um thank you for your seamless and flawless execution the ceremonies were so beautiful and it was so great to see our community celebrate the class of 2021 outside at our stadiums together and all in person it was an amazing end to a very challenging year for any parents that are listening tonight uh with this theme of a summer break i encourage you to do your best to make sure your kids get some reading in the summer right trusty water yes okay reading is a great way to keep our minds active in the summer and after a year of children being in front of the computer so much because of hybrid learning i really really encourage
049you to get them some books so as a reminder i have some books some physical books potentially to get to wean them off some of the screen time as a reminder nvusd is partnering with napa county library to bring summer reading to our students so please check out the information on our district website about being part of the summer reading program and i just want to take a moment to congratulate the seven trustees to making it to our last regular board business meeting this evening it's been a a tough year of governance during really really tough times we've been seeing that across the state of california and i just want to congratulate you i want to congratulate our new trustees for their last six months they're ending kind of their you know year one first
050part of year one and so thank you for all of your hard work um again congratulations it's it's required a lot of dedication on your part so thank you for your service to the community um so now i just want to um invite my assistant superintendents to report out um for the last time in 21 in for the 2021 school year on the work in their respective divisions but before i do that i do want to take a moment at this last business meeting to express my gratitude to my senior team miss andrew jennings mr pearson mr manguala and miss page have all done an excellent job leading really challenging work and projects in the 2021 school year and so much of what we were able to accomplish with reopening our schools for in-person learning
051ahead of most of the state of california balancing our budget in a declining enrollment environment and building a top-notch summer program would not have been possible without their passion their commitment their work ethic and their strong courageous leadership so to my four assistant superintendents tonight on this last evening i want to just express a huge thank you to my team and recognize them for all of their hard work and all they've done this year so with that i'm going to transition to them and invite ms dana page our assistant superintendent of human resources to give her report good evening president gonzalez morris board of trustees dr missetti and student oh we don't have our student representative tonight well she's probably here in spirit listening today our assistant director of human resources gina de luca shared
052the newest guidance from napa county public health in alignment with state health department and osha rules regarding mask wearing which our trustees superintendent are modeling tonight all employees must mask in the presence of students or the public but in a school building office space and common indoor areas where employees only are sharing the air vaccinated staff may remove their masks and unvaccinated staff are required still to mask and then when working in an outdoor area masks are not required at all whether you're vaccinated or not and one of the responsibilities we have as an employer is to track vaccination status we've sent out a survey to employees and are asking everybody to just share with us um their updated vaccine status over the past two weeks the hr leadership team has dived into the diversity
053and equity inclusion plan which you're going to hear more about later this evening and my team and i reviewed it to plan and identify some of the foundational elements and top priorities to incorporate into goals for the hr department for the coming up school year and again we'll have more on that later and for now this concludes my report thank you great thank you miss page um next if we can hear from mr rob manguala assistant superintendent of business services thank you dr mercedes again thank you for the opportunity to update the board in the community i wanted to start by welcoming miss jenna burroughs as the new executive director of fiscal services jenna is a napa native and has worked in both school and city finance welcome jenna on the enrollment side we continue
054to watch our kinder and tk enrollment closely with this said there's a great deal of uncertainty about enrollment next year uh later tonight uh dr peterbood will present regarding usage and impact review of our blended learning tools implemented during the 2021 school year i look forward to hearing a little bit more about that and on the technology side they are starting up their annual summer projects they they never really get a break they go going from covid and all the projects related that to getting ready to support students in the fall this concludes my report great thank you mr manguala miss pat andrew jennings assistant superintendent of instructional services good evening president gonzalez morris for trustees and dr masetti uh this week after closing out an unprecedented 2020-2021 school year we kicked off several summer
055programs tonight i want to spotlight our elementary program the director director matt manning and his team have worked tirelessly over the last few months to launch a summer program like no other and it's serving almost 2 000 students at 11 school sites this summer students that demonstrated the most need for academic support are taking part in a full day program that includes academic programming in the morning and then edmo who was our partner in enrichment activities in the afternoon the half day edmo program has been made available to all elementary nvusd nvusd students with priority given to students in foster placements or who are homeless to make all of this happen principals and school site staff conducted weeks of intensive outreach to families with the goal of encouraging families of students who had remained virtual
056during the school year to take advantage of the in-person summer programs we loved that we were able to partner with edmo to provide a high quality summer program that addresses the whole child both academic needs and social emotional needs especially after coming out of a year and a half of pandemic learning i want to share a short video that was created by debbie baldwin one of our teachers on special assignment who is supporting the summer program mr bassinet can you key up the video please yes mr bassinet we don't hear any sound on our end yeah we can hear some music very low volume in the background the video just it has music in the background [Music] okay thank you oh there it goes thank you [Music] uh thank you mr bassnet and as you
057can see some of these children this was their first time on our campuses and um in 15 months and if the masks weren't on you would be able to see all their happy smiles um as they participated in our summer program another key project in the instructional division is the launch of the new middle school language academy newly appointed principal alejandra uribe just recently closed out her year at ndla and has begun planning for the work ahead she will share a little bit about her plans for the summer um miss uribe you want to take it away yes um good evening president gonzalez mattis members of the board and dr missetti during the may 27 board meeting i was appointed as the principal for the new language academy middle school and i'm ready to roll
058up my sleeves and do the work leading up to a successful lunch in august 2022 overall i'm excited for the work that lies ahead as we open up the language middle school at the current salvador campus i will begin the initial planning during the month of july and i foresee the work to be completed in phases which includes identifying the mission and vision and solidifying the unique programs for the school this work will be done with a facilitator and key stakeholders who who reflect the diversity of the community and the programs represented this group of people who will be working alongside me will form the new language academy design team and its membership will include current teachers parents and students from the following sites nbla pueblo vista harvest and river i look forward to engaging
059in these tasks and also providing you with updates at future board board of education meetings thank you for your time thank you uh principal uribe um the work of the new language academy it will work alongside the work the redesign work for all of our middle schools in designing a vision of how we want all of our middle schools to be in terms of establishing the floor for programming for uh scheduling and all the components that will make sure that our schools are welcoming and inclusive and that concludes my report thank you all thank you miss andrew jennings and team uh next is mr mike pearson assistant superintendent of operational services so have you heard anything i've said to date no oh let me start over here we go uh good evening president gonzalez mars
060mbud board of education trustees dr masetti and members of the mbc community and thank you for the opportunity to provide each of you with a brief update of operational services maintenance and operation staff along with all the high school and adult school leadership held seven successful commencement ceremonies last week to honor the class of 2021 which was noted earlier i want to acknowledge and think uh the leadership and contribution of several district employees who played a crucial role in planning directing and executing each graduation ceremony specifically director of operations gloria aguirre and director of maintenance and grounds albert de souza for overseeing the operational side of each graduation ceremony and making sure the needs of each site were met maintenance and grounds employees laura haichu and hector gallegos for leading and organizing staff to ensure
061the setup takedown parking lots and all the other details were accomplished at the ceremonies the countless number of maintenance and custodial staff who worked many hours providing guidance and supervision at each staff the district office staff specifically mike mansway peter abboud brian marcus sarah knox matt manning and drew herron and peter hartneck for volunteering to provide extra administrative oversight of the spectators at the larger graduations and then locally we had a business owner jim van winden who owns van wynne and landscaping who donated all the plants at the ceremonies finally i would like to also acknowledge the following school nurses kate scadero lisa ebeling and anne marie primark who all agreed at the very last minute to be present at the nursing station on july 15th at memorial stadium i think we all knew the
062weather on this day could affect some spectators but no one was prepared for the volume of spectators experiencing some kind of issue with the heat on this day as one of the nurses commented later this was the most nursing interaction we had all year hopefully we do not have this type of excitement at future graduations on that note operational leadership leadership composed as several members mentioned earlier have already met to debrief the commitment the commencement ceremonies this year and with the plan to improve and enhance the ceremonies for the class of 2022 and lastly i'd like to thank the trustees for participating in one of the three facility tutors i led earlier this week and last week your willingness to put your boots on the ground at several sites to learn about some of our
063school facilities and the facility needs is commendable this concludes my report tonight and in just a minute a report about facilities specifically summer construction projects will be delivered by kelly jergensen who's the vice president of van pelt construction services thank you okay thank you dr mercedes staff uh president gonzalez mars is okay if kelly jorgensen begins to report absolutely sorry figurine right kelly please start it was incredible but please go ahead sorry about that i was waiting for the nod as well so thank you trustees thank you president gonzalez mars and dr masetti for having us back and giving a brief update on what's planned for summer 2021 so today i will be taking uh the trustees and the public through some of the projects that we have planned for the summer of 2021 which
064includes the following many of which are already underway as you can imagine we have a short amount of time and a lot of work to do um we hope that everybody's having a restful summer students especially but we will be very busy with projects under the measure h bond program as well as those where we partner with maintenance and operations so as many of you are aware from previous presentations we have a section of our measure h bond program devoted to campus modernization projects these include projects that are focused on replacement of roofing replacement of hvac equipment associated site work and in many cases painting as well one moment um mr bassinet could you on on the visual reduce our video so that we could see the slideshow in all the content in its entirety
065yes perfect thank you sorry go ahead kelly all right so the schools that we'll be hitting with the campus modernization projects this summer are alta heights which will be campus wide vintage high school which will be at their gymnasium donaldson way which will be campus wide silverado which will be at their gymnasium and napa high which will be at their gymnasium so a little bit of a breakdown of the different projects were focused a bit on new roof at vintage high school because that was the immediate need but the real um kind of transformative makeovers that you're going to see are happening at alta heights and donaldson way as far as a campus-wide perspective so here's some pictures you know students left on the 16th and our contractor and great business partner right construction is
066already very much underway during work these pictures are just the things that happened in the last few days since students have left we are really making sure that we take um advantage of every single day of summer and get this work going so that we have less chance falling behind so here's some work you can see some demolition at donaldson way and alta heights new old units are already off of the roofs um roofing material is coming off new roofing material is going um over at silverado gym already and some of the site work you can see we're already forming for concrete so very quick turnaround on this work and our business partners with ryder doing a fantastic job of getting started so quick update on the continued construction at the middle school at american
067canyon our student commons project demolition is complete and as you can see we are starting to dig footings the layout of the new building is really coming into fruition and it's pretty exciting one of the goals for this time of year is really to set up for success for the coming school year because construction will continue when students return in august so right now they're focused on things that require utility shutdowns and big disruptions to the campus and really getting those out of the way so we can have a successful school year and be as minimally impactful as possible with such a big project all right so our summer also includes many many to-do list items small projects that we want to get done while students and staff are away from the site this includes
068a replacement of the restroom portable at vichy elementary the one that is currently there is in really poor condition and we have an opportunity to take one from the stone previous stone bridge campus at carneros and replace it which is in far better condition will be a better restroom for students and also reduce work orders we will also be replacing a portable for child care that currently resides at vichy it has been removed from an outside vendor and now we'll be placing an nvusd dsa certified portable in that place to support the new nvusd program for child care care there and at the stone bridge new site at mount george we will be landing one more uh portable classroom which is at at the expense of the stone bridge campus but helps them with capacity
069at that site additionally we'll be partnering with the maintenance team to replace the hvac control systems at shear phillips american canyon middle and mcpherson with the pelican system which is really beneficial two-fold it allows remote control of the hvac system which makes things really easy for maintenance and operations to control the settings of the system and also to troubleshoot when they get a work order and it'll also really um improve energy efficiency by allowing staff to see when things are running that shouldn't be and control them remotely we will also be working with operations staff to replace flooring district-wide several classrooms at each of the sites will be getting new flooring which helps to reduce work orders and kind of gives a clean start to those classrooms the ones and with the worst condition of
070flooring both the pelican system and the flooring replacements are on the board docket tonight so um hopefully the trustees will be pleased with that and approve um additionally this week we are relocating the stone bridge campus from carneros to the new mount george location um as uh prince as maria had mentioned earlier um we are in the midst of that move and things are going really well so we appreciate their partnership there and next week we will launch into the move relocating the napa junction site from their existing site to the new school campus one more item we'll be working on in partnership with the county office of education is to give an update to the current vintage high school culinary classroom and they had received a grant and we are helping them organize that
071work for this summer to freshen up their classroom and get some new equipment so as you can see it'll be a very busy summer for both maintenance operations and school planning and construction and if there are any questions we are available to answer thank you thank you kelly any questions from the board okay thank you so much right we are now moving to the next item of our agenda which is approval of consent agenda background information on these items is provided on the board to the board prior to the meeting a common motion takes action without discussion and roll call vote unless discussion of items is requested by the board members i would like to request the polling of two items h2e and h4l otherwise i would move to approve the rest that's so first
072by trustee gracia second a second by trustee riser mr bassinet do i have any public comment on consent agenda items there is no public comment for this item okay so first and the second vera if you could conduct a roll call please yes trustee gonzalez mares hi trustee jenkowitz aye trustee gracia aye trustee reisser aye trustee shu hi oh sorry trusty water aye trustee dooley hi thank you thank you vera so we are now going to item h2e yeah this is the renewal contract with chavin and associates um i have nothing against chaven and associates in fact i think they do good work but best practices recommend that we periodically swap partners inside the firm and then every few years move to another firm i believe we're approaching the time in which we will need
073to find a new auditor i anticipate that the 22-23 school year might be our last with this firm and that we should be looking in the 23-24 school year to find a new audit partner with that i'll move to a proof second i first by trustee gracias second by trustee water do i have public comment on item h2e there is no public comment for that item okay beer if you could conduct roll call yes trustee gonzalez martens aye trustee jankowitz aye trustee gracia aye trustee reisser aye trustee water aye christy shu hi trustee dooley hi thank you thank you vera right to now item h4l yes this is the annual avid membership um my concern here is with regard to a new school on the avid list this is the browns valley school which is
074being included here they had previously not had the advocate program and are looking to start it i was a little concerned that i wasn't sure browns valley could manage all of the things that they're looking to do as i understood they were going to be moving to implement a steam program and they're talking about moving potentially to a k-8 if they have the students and then adding avid on top of that i was worried that they may not be able to handle all three of those at the same time so it's a capacity issue that i had concerns about and i'm hoping that they don't shortchange their other activities well if i may i don't think they're doing a k-8 right if um the interest was not there uh there wasn't enough interest to um
075implement the pilot in the 21-22 school year it'll it'll potentially be revisited based on interest for 22-23 but i do think that the steam program and the avid program do kind of mesh together i think they i think they complement each other so you know but i understand the uh you know initiative fatigue and getting overextended but i think these two would work miss andrew jennings would you like to comment um in response to trustee gracia's concern okay she may have stepped away so um trustee gracia we will um and mr besson out while we're can you expand again because we can't see the speakers now so great thank you trustee gracia um thank you for your comment i will uh speak to assistant superintendent andrew jennings and mr matt manning who oversees elementary so
076they can be aware of your concern and potentially have a discussion with um principal frank silva all right with that then i'll move to approve second uh first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooley do i have any public comment on this item mr bassinet there is no public comment for this item thank you uh first in a second vera we could take real call trustee gonzalez aye trustee jankowicz aye trustee gracia hi trustee reiser aye trustee water aye christie shu aye trustee dooley aye thank you thank you vram um we are now going to items uh i of the board agenda presentations and discussion items i 1a the napa value unified school district diversity equity and inclusion and talent plan mr bassinet can you bring up the presentation please yes thank you good evening
077president gonzalez mars board trustees and dr macetti i'm excited to present nvusd's diversity equity and inclusion plan to the board of education presenting along um with me tonight is the assistant superintendent of human resources dana page the assistant principal of american canyon middle school bobby ruth and senior department um administrative specialist of special education eliz gomez next slide please we approached the development of our plan slightly differently than most districts we approached it from a system lens as opposed to looking only at our instructional practices courses or school climate our presentation will cover how we develop the plan the current state of our district in terms of dei and an overview of the work of the steering committee and finally the key elements of the plan next slide please oh mr bessette can you go
078back thank you our work started early last school year as we engaged with our partner promise 54 to create a three to five year dei plan our first step was to gather artifacts the artifacts included such items as the district's student and employee handbooks our previous equity plan and our current discipline policies in december two surveys were distributed to all staff members the and then focus groups were held in january with various subgroups of employees and finally our steering committee convened in february and march to develop our plan next slide please three surveys were conducted by promise 54 each with a distinct purpose the talent ready diagnostic provided insight into what is the talent life cycle or sort of how people are on board hired onboarded and in their career and in usd and identifies
079organizational strengths and gaps the organizational profile captures this captures and shares data on demographic diversity as well as the existence of dei policies systems and practices and finally the staff experience survey engaged staff's perspective perspective on the effectiveness of our dei efforts within our organization next slide please focus groups were held to contextualize nvusd's staff experience and talent and culture survey data with specific attention to affinity-based experiences such as people of color lgbt plus and other groups and and we looked at the experiences across classifications such as the difference between our classified employees and our certificated as well as the results as well as those results reflected in our survey data in total promise 54 conducted 10 75-minute focus groups with a total of 61 staff members in february of 2021 assistant superintendent dana page
080will share what the survey and focus groups revealed next slide please hi can you hear me just want to double check okay great um so the the survey illuminated that there was definitely some bright spots uh in nbusd in terms of the clarity of nwsd's strategy goals and expectations and the way that um we are committed we're committed to communicate decisions that impact the organization it was also fairly universal that there was an overall high level of commitment that employees felt to nbusd and less universal but also strongly felt by many staff was the perception that ndusd respects individuals and values differences next sign there were also areas of opportunity that were identified so among those are that uh people feel that we need to increase our commitment to an investment in dei and i
081wanted to share at this point one quote that i've heard with how to explain dei uh diversity is a given inclusion is a choice equity is a goal and belonging is our ultimate end point and so that's what i keep in mind when i think about the work and that's what i think people are referring to when they talk about wanting to have a more equitable and inclusive organization and one where everybody feels that they belong so another area that that respondents felt we could do better at was not just about communicating decisions but involving more just more people in the decision-making process there was a desire for more professional growth and advancement and compensation that was more equitably distributed classified respondents reported feeling that they were undervalued and under-appreciated and overall there were significant
082gaps in the experience when you broke it down by different groups such as staff of color lgbtq plus staff different groups of people reported much different experiences than others that were not in those particular groups and so those gaps are some things that that we need to address next line so the next part of the process after gathering this data was to pull together a steering committee next step as you can see it was a fairly large steering committee it consisted of three classified staff members it was a mixture the rest of certificated staff but we had teachers counselors social workers psychologists and administrators it was a mixture of site and district level employees and it was about half managers and half non-managers you'll notice that the three of us um superintendent dr masetti assistant
083superintendent pat andrew jennings and myself were part of the steering committee but we did very intentionally try to take a back seat in a lot of the meeting to make sure that um the rest of the people on the steering committee really had an opportunity to have their voices heard and um and weren't um you know weren't weren't quieted by by our presence we really worked with our partners at promise 54 to try to create that space for the other steering committee members and i'm really happy and excited to introduce um our next speakers and hand the baton to ms liz gomez and then mr bobby ruth to talk about their their experiences and the work that the steering committee did next slide and i'll invite ms gomez to start her presentation mr bessette can
084we i'm sorry miss gomez mr wesson can we just get the speaker view just one speaker so we can see [Music] yes there you go thank you go ahead hi good evening board president gonzalez mares members of the board and dr mercedes i am here today to speak to you about my participation in the dei steering committee during the three two hour sessions where we met as a committee we worked on reviewing and evaluating the data gathered via employee surveys and focus groups as well as identifying the root causes of the district's dei challenges we also brainstorm and prioritize the strategies we would focus on over the next three years and at our last session we worked on building a plan of action prior to each of our working sessions we were asked to complete
085some pre-work which enabled us to be more productive and prepare for each meeting the sessions were conducted via zoom ortiz and don albert from promise 54 i feel did an amazing job at facilitating our meetings and making the entire process feel effortless at each of our meetings we would start with checking in as a group and we would then be placed into breakout rooms to start the discussion and the work for the day this will promote open communication among the participants and allow for everyone to give their input next slide please step one of our planning process focus on strategy evaluation here we analyze the potential impact of the strategies we had identified we consider how it would move us towards our goals how it would help resolve the root causes and how broad those
086outcomes would be we also evaluated the complexity and identified what was needed to implement each strategy what resources we would have available and the limitations we may face during implementation i would like to add that being part of this steering committee allow me to interact with mvusd staff i do not have the opportunity to work with i appreciated being able to see familiar faces as well but in a different context and having the ability to engage in a conversation we normally would not i am honored for the invitation to participate in the steering committee and for the opportunity to present to you today thank you for your time now bobby ruth assistant principal of american canyon middle school will speak in regard to steps two and three of her planning process next slide please good
087evening everyone here as you can see from the slide we have to establish a system to help us prioritize the various concepts ideas and strategies that were emerging the graph shows the level of complexity versus the importance of impact throughout the district as a system we really tried to focus on the big rocks and quick wins these are the areas that we felt were the biggest need since the quick wins are items that the district can implement right away and the big rocks are the milestones that we would aim for down the road all these strategies are addressed in the district's strategic goal number five next slide please throughout the process we focused on these five main areas while developing and prioritizing the goals and strategies the main idea that i would like to touch
088on is the alignment between the different areas and the long term big rocks many of the commitment committee members displayed an enormous insight in the logistics of these ideas and how they foresee them rolling out because of the various perspectives we believe that we've come up with a comprehensive and achievable plan for diversity equity and inclusion throughout the district no matter the position what really resonated with me throughout the process was the amount of people that were ready and willing to do this work we had various organizational levels of administrators teachers and support staff all elevating ideas discussing discrepancies and disparities within the system while brainstorming and creating ideas to address them we talk about creating a warm environment for our students and families at the site level and this is the district-wide equivalent the
089district is taking an active stand in creating a warm and welcoming environment for all staff the overall goal is to continue to build a work environment where our colleagues friends and families are acknowledged celebrated and supported next dana page will provide an overview of the plan thank you all right thank you next slide please mr bassinet all right so we've shared with you the in the entire um text of the three-year plan and it is quite comprehensive i'd have to say too that i couldn't agree with bobby moore that there there's a lot of interest and will and some great ideas amongst our staff to make this all work and i expect that we will continue to engage our staff on the continuing implementation work that's ahead of us and continue to evolve um and
090refine the plan as we go but i i do feel really fortunate that we're in an organization where so many people are are dedicated to this kind of work um and so i i think that the three-year plan that the steering committee has initially come up with represents a lot of material and a lot of potential tasks ahead of us over the next three years i think that if you were to picture this like a you know a structure that we wanted to build together you have in front of you a lot of building blocks and as we go i think it's going to be important that we continue to select those using those blocks that our steering committee has provided for us but also recognizing that there may be some places as we're building
091that we need to add a few other blocks or that we need to think about what is going to be the glue or the the material that binds everything together so this is a great start and and we have taken some of these elements as i mentioned earlier i've worked with my staff to think about the things that are that lie really within talent and and hr kinds of goals to figure out where we can start with this plan um but we're going to need to continue to refine it and to identify those kinds of things that we can do in year one so next slide please mr bassinet one thing i'd like to point out is that we have nine different areas that the strategies and tasks that the steering committee came up with
092are organized around the first three on this slide you'll see really fit right within this idea that we need to create an environment for our employees that is inclusive and creates a sense of belonging for everyone that if we can't do that for our staff and our employees first that we're not going to be able to achieve that for our students so these three goals are you know around on talent they're around recruiting uh hiring advancements and um and all of these things in year one we have some ideas that we're going to begin to tackle some from the steering committee but but some of the ideas from the steering committee are very specific around particular groups we've actually kind of recognized that there's maybe a step before that where we need to work on
093taking charge of our recruitment and hiring processes so that we are able to really present to potential candidates the kind of work environment that we have here at nvusd that attracts people to our organization so that we're ultimately in a position to actively recruit specific kinds of diversity into our organization if we're not in the driver's seat of recruiting then we will just be able to recruit from the people who happen to come and apply for our positions at ed join but we want to be in a position where we're really messaging and showing out to the people that we're a great organization and we find individuals who want to come be part of that so some examples of strategies that you'll see in the plan that we're going to incorporate in year one for
094instance is creating a um a strong message um through our website around uh what kind what it's like to work in nvusd what are the core competencies that are necessary to come to nvusd and be successful in our organization that is something that will help us to also then do one of the suggestions of this of the steering committee is to refine our hiring practices our interview practices um making sure we have guidelines and criteria for hiring well we need to make sure that we've identified those core competencies that we want to have consistently across the district in order to be able to anchor our our interview and hiring practices around same is true for advancement when we need to think about pipelines that we can create for our employees but we also need to
095think you know what are the what are the qualities that we want to see as employees are advancing through our organization next slide please retention uh was a strategy again that we're not just talking about um you know wanting to retain specific employees but we want again be in the driver's seat of retaining the best employees and so we need to institute some practices that instill success in our in our employees for instance onboarding one of the strategies that the dei steering committee identified was that we need stronger onboarding practices and so that's something in year one that we are going to take on as a goal in hr is to improve our onboarding across the board for people likewise exit interviews were something that the steering committee identified and it's not something we currently
096do for any employees so we need to start at square one which is to begin a process of exit interviews which will allow us to continuously improve and understand why people leave the organization when they do so there's a nine of these categories all together i've mentioned the first four ms andrey jennings is going to continue to talk about some of the strategies that appear in the next four strategies thank you miss page the next piece of the plan is dedicated to building the capacity of our staff in creating an inclusive and welcoming culture for all by providing dei training throughout the school year across staffing groups sites and departments for this work we are starting with our leaders across all divisions specifically in the instructional division we will focus our work on student practices
097by examining and broadening the curriculum to include ethnic studies courses and units that reflect the diversity of the community we serve we will provide comprehensive and cohesive and continuous training and discussion around how to create and foster equitable and inclusive classrooms and schools we have already conducted an english learner support audit to find ways to increase our support for our english learners to ensure that they feel included and supported on our school sites next uh hold on a sec in terms of our communication goal the most important first step is to define and communicate our why for why are we focusing on diversity equity inclusion what is it that we hope to accomplish and ms paige alluded to or stated this earlier the answer is pretty simple we want to create welcoming and inclusive spaces
098where our staff our students and our families have a sense of belonging that is our goal it's it's it's clearly that simple um ms page will conclude our presentation with some initial steps hr is taking to support better communication with our staff and a few more points around our specifically addressing our classified staff mr bassnet could you advance this slide please so um in terms of communication one of the things that we discovered through the pandemic is that um not all of our employees are really responsive with email and we believe that there's some some of the fundamental um disconnects that people reported feeling in terms of being informed or included in decision making may have something to do with a lag in in communication and and people knowing about the opportunities to give input
099and we discovered that that that often went along the lines with our classified employees and particularly positions where people don't you know tend to spend very much time on a computer or or checking email and so we want to make sure when we're thinking about our communication strategies that we keep all of our employees in mind and keep the diversity of their positions in mind and think about some alternative ways to continue to to reach every employee in our organization so that's part of our communication goal and in hr that's one of our specific year one things that we're going to be working on is is trying to figure out you know those best means of communication to include everyone and finally and kind of related to what i was just saying was that was
100the gap of experience that some of our classified employees felt um being part of nvusd and um they reported not feeling as uh recognized and celebrated as as certificated employees at times and um so one of our main goals of the nine is to to improve that to make sure that our classified employees feel recognized and included and that our whole organization understands the tremendous contribution that our classified employees make to our work with students so we're finding ways to better celebrate our classified employees to eliminate their their contributions and and to provide professional development and make sure that when we have opportunities for certificated staff think about um what is the the corresponding opportunity for our classified staff so um that concludes um our brief walk through a very lengthy report we hope that
101you got a good sense of of what the work has been um to get to this point in the plan and we look forward to coming back and reporting on on on progress and specific success indicators that we expect in in year one and beyond in the future and with that we'll we'll take any questions that you have thank you for the presentation we'll take um questions here trustee gracia yeah i wanted to start by saying there's a lot to like in this plan and i appreciate all the effort thoughtfulness and hard work that has been put into its creation so let me just take this moment to say thank you to all those who participated in making this plan happen my concern about this plan is that nothing in this plan does anything to
102recruit male teachers for elementary school a scant 8 percent of our elementary workforce is male and 92 percent is female at the elementary level we have 306 female teachers and 29 male teachers nothing in this report does anything to address this disparity and nothing in this report does anything to bring in male elementary and male elementary teachers of color despite this deficiency i appreciate the scope of this plan and the recommendations that have been made mr p thank you very much trustee gracia miss paige can you address some of the work around the targeted groups um given that trustee gracia is illuminating um the gap that he identified in terms of males and males of color particularly at the elementary level can can you talk a little bit about absolutely um at this point um
103oh okay hold on this page i guess another trustee is identifying that they have a similar question and or concern so maybe you can um couple them all together go ahead um a nod to uh trustee gracia and a a want for an uh to include an increase in male teachers um this is a comprehensive document it addresses the challenges the priorities and the strategies with specifics and clarity some of the challenges that you addressed were expected and they give context to the issues the strategies are driven by the priorities and clearly they're going to have the flexibility to be adaptive to make sure we as the system can um effectively execute i do think the student voice is critical to understanding and addressing these issues and i hope we can incorporate their voice throughout
104this work the most important element of this plan is that we are initiating this work we are turning dialogue and intention into action this is a proactive approach to issues that should not be addressed reactively every priority ultimately impacts student outcomes it has tentacles into the entirety of the system and its benefits are far-reaching and should be far lasting it is not our job to direct approach nor the nine strategies to to be implemented it is however to provide oversight assess value and determine if it has benefit and value to the organization and our role is to ensure that the district is responsive to the values and priorities of our community so that being said is often defined as pertaining to race ethnicity and gender and i really appreciate our broader definition and disabilities and
105socioeconomic status and sexual orientation all the characteristics that make us differ from one another should be acknowledged as we embrace this work and diversity within the classroom as outlined in research frequently results in higher test scores which is an obvious quantifiable benefit but a less tangible benefit but critical benefit is our generous diverse in our generous diversity definition is it lends itself to respect for the dignity of every human so check that box value added equity in the workplace or equity in the classroom both deserve to be just fair and free from existing bias and every student every employee have valuable contributions to make and this plan addresses the need to break down those barriers that might exist and add value to the organization and and i would argue humanity um and uh box checked
106value-added and an inclusive environment for our employees as well as our students will foster a culture that as a whole will address any system inequities which if we do not address can create disadvantages rather than opportunities when we value our differences everyone can reach their full potential and ultimately isn't that our job to provide the best path forward for student success value-added so if this dei and talent plant is the road map to this destination i am on board and thank you for all your hard work thank you trustee gracia and trustee jankowicz um other comments yeah trustee chu so representing the most diverse community in our district i am very much in favor of making sure the di um know plan goes forward because i think it ha it does a lot of good
107um across the board not only for my community but also in mbusd in general because just to raise awareness of these issues is very important our society is moving that way and we need to prepare our students and what better way than to start with our staff and make sure that they are seen and heard and eventually they represent the the makeup of our students um i wanna uh i always share stories of my kids and this is one of those stories where i've disclosed before that my son is neurodivergent his favorite teacher right now is another teacher just like him disclosed to him personally that he is he has a very similar struggles and just that idea of being connected to somebody in what our kids consider in leadership right in their world leadership
108are their teachers and their principles if they can see themselves at that level it makes a huge difference in how they feel comfortable in our schools and how they are motivated to learn so i guess kind of related to that is i did see that there i know that you know diversity comes in many many forms and i think we've done a good job in identifying many of the ones that are important right now but i think we also need to remember that you know not too long ago we talked about you know people with physical needs or people and now also because if we you know think about our last meeting where we talked about the increase in special education a lot of those kids are probably neurodivergent and to be able to incorporate
109those types of diversity into this plan would be great i would like to see that happening just because i think it will increase um the the way that our our kids will respond to how they're learning thank you trustee too christie riser um i i just want to echo the comments of um thanks to the steering committee and all the members for for your commitment and willingness to participate in this work um you know we really couldn't do it without the diverse stakeholders who are um embedded in our organization and um i just couldn't be prouder to be part of an organization that is centering this work you know uh ms page said that that the goal is to create an environment that's uh welcoming and inclusive that that creates a sense of belonging for
110our staff and i i just want to thank her for adding that if we can't do it for our employees then we how will we do it for our students and so um this is a road map and and it's it's an indication i think of our strength as an organization that we're willing to engage in really honest um self-examination and self-reflection and and then act on the results of that examination and reflection to be able to publicly identify areas of weakness in which we you know our employees feel perhaps disenfranchised or that they're not experiencing the equity and inclusivity that we would hope they would i think is a powerful testament to our strength as an organization um and i appreciate trustee chu's comments as well i and i i do think that we
111have a broad understanding of diversity and inclusivity but we can always you know stand to be reminded and and to continue to expand our our minds and our understanding of how to achieve that goal of being inclusive and welcoming so that everybody belongs here and um it makes me think of one of the sessions i attended in the professional development day that was the student-run panel that i was just so impressed and touched by uh by that experience and the title was uh for for teachers how to make your classroom an lgbtq safe space for students and while i so i just i feel we owe a debt of gratitude to those kids for for centering that discussion um and and it was a valuable discussion um but i can't help but think every classroom
112has to be a safe space for our lgbtq kids um and i want to thank assistant principal bobby ruth for his work at acms i've attended several of the african-american coalition meetings and that's another example of our staff and our organization centering this discussion knowing that we can do better and that we have to do better and that it's okay to take honest stock of where we are and and where we need to improve because if you don't do that then you can't move forward and i just really appreciate the hard work of everybody on the committee um the plan is very extensive and i know that it will um evolve and change and i look forward to seeing the details filled in um but i just this is such important work and and trustee
113she was right this is where our society is going and and rightfully so and um i i'm just so grateful that we're centering this conversation and and not just having a conversation but really focusing on on the steps that it's that it's going to take and how we are strategically going to get there so thank you well the proceeding um speakers are more eloquent than i am um while uh you were talking when while uh trustee jankowitz was talking about making sure we get young people's viewpoints and you were talking about you what you've seen at the schools and then you know you chimed in and i was just and i was thinking about my students and some of the class some of the discussions we had in class surrounding the literature we read and
114um all i want to say is the young people are way ahead of us so we definitely need to um you know capture capture their voices as well and uh you know reading reading through the report i was i was happy to see that uh our employees there is there is a certain amount of pride working for the napa valley unified school district this is true and um and if you say you work for the district you know many people in the community they they respect that at the same time you know it's it's wounding when um when uh some of the employees feel less valued and uh gee i certainly valued them um our our uh mno people um this year you know they talk about people who who worked and delivered for the
115district all of our employees did but um i want this to be a place where everybody feels that their work matters that they're important you know that's i think that's a basic human need and we need to recognize that i'd like to echo everything that has been said i think one of the um [Music] it takes intense intentionality to address these issues without focusing on these efforts there's there's a tendency to fall back on on easy and uh and quick and uh on the things that we used to do or that we've always done and that isn't going to to address problems that require uh hard work or uh these big rocks as they're identified in the in the plan uh so this this effort is it clearly has that intentionality um what you know
116i there are efforts in here and in this plan where it's in where it's targeted um efforts to target um recruitment uh and and focus on uh on groups that that are are underrepresented in our staff and that's important that's intentionality um i also like that there's uh intentional efforts to look uh at you know for example auditing our recruitment process looking at our job descriptions looking at our our salary schedules all things that aren't targeting specific groups but allow for inclusion of of any uh any person that is that that is whose identity is is not represented or underrepresented and and so kind of both those efforts of targeting underrepresented groups but also allowing our processes to include and and provide a space for people uh who are underrepresented uh it's a very important
117combination i also like that this is directed and focused you know appropriately on our staffing we we don't control all of the students that come into our classrooms that's uh you know we accept everyone and as we should um so we can't have the same kind of focused effort uh but that means that when we are our staffing our schools both in the office and the classroom in the library on the grounds and all of these areas we need to be intentional about providing or showing the students that come into these spaces that we our staff are are just like they are and they are just like we are uh and that's and this is where we can have the most impact on that um so i this effort is is very commendable and and
118i appreciate that there are really big um big tasks that we are are taking on and and committing to with this plan it's not just simple things it's it's an intentional effort um i'll um echo a lot what's been said um i think as i look at the planned um and just so for those who are um watching uh you know this is the presentation part of it and then under j1a is the action part of it and that includes the 101 page document that's more comprehensive and diving into each of the priorities and the strategies so just to highlight that and um and i'll just start by saying that the last um 20 or so slides were the ones that struck me the most um in ways that it quoted our staff and that
119is the humanity piece of the work when you're talking about dei at the center of it is the human being in particular we're talking about um this plan um is our nbusd within the system of the nbusd um so there's there's um from those focus groups all of that work so that's where i now commend and thank the steering committee members for the tremendous amount of work that that requires because it does require pulling in who you are as an individual um and even tap into your own biases as you construct all the work that you're doing um and constructing uh the priorities in windows because at the center of of of the steering committee are human beings um and um i imagine with with what i heard from this from the speakers um in
120the presentation i heard a lot of insight and appreciation and it felt um authentic and genuine which is very much the goals that this dei work is to accomplish because it does need to be authentic it needs to be raw it needs to create discomfort because we've been navigating in comfortable waters for many and for others it hasn't been comfortable and to be able to navigate through that that's the raw crucial piece that i think this work requires to dive into because if we're still going to touch the surface of things we're never going to get there and and it's not to come to the point where everybody agrees one way that's not that's not it it's about being able to walk into a space and feel um heard uh feel safe um feel accepted
121included and um so it's a journey i'm glad to see it it's a three-year plan for now but the work needs to continue a hundred years from now and so that the work is starting at this level with this um set of strategies that requires with such a big system like ours absolutely so it needs to be really clear so i do appreciate the clarity in the document um i do think that um it may be um that's just coming from my experience of doing dei work in in the napa community for the last couple of years um well more than that but it is you do have to be flexible and nimble when you're doing this because what often happens is that as a system that we are as large as we are we
122also can't keep moving forward thinking we're we're in work in isolation we also have to understand the network outside the network that exists within our youth our youth are coming with a very strong perspective and who are we as adults to tell our youth aside from the classrooms and curriculums and tests and all that but hey we need to hear from you to tell us how we need to construct the work from our little ones to our our future young adults um and um and i think that that's instrumental here so it's complex but at the same time i do want to encourage that as we conduct our dei work that as a school district that we don't work in isolation that in some ways we're going to have to include the other dei components
123that are occurring and other systems around us um which makes it more complicated right but that's the fabric of the complexity of being human beings here and um and what i do appreciate about this too is that diving into di work requires an amount of just skills for one part knowledge experience understanding background of not just your your academic side but life experience at the same time and i think that um carries a lot um of of the reality of of the work so um i'm looking forward to to seeing the outcomes of what a lot of the strategies are here it's not going to be easy and i think from what i'm hearing from my fellow trustees it's we're a group that embraces what is right and what is what we know this is
124a way to change in in a way that is to improve and to keep learning about ourselves um i am looking forward to again not working as a silo right and to continue to engage with uh many stakeholders out there there's a lot of wisdom out there from stakeholders that can also support the work that we're trying to do here with our students and our families um who are also navigating other systems um and my other um and this is more of a question is the steering committee is this a steering committee that's going to continue to stay on for the next three years as a steering committee or is it just for this phase of the work and then my other question is because it could be such a new type of work um
125and i mentioned the steering committee but it almost it's almost like a leadership of di academy within our staff does that continue to flourish and kind of train and bring other almost like cohorts of of di leadership within our staff so that way you know you're talking from peer to peer and able to um you know express thoughts opinions and what's working what's not working and um so that's you know a question i had um i can address that and then i'll also loop back around to some of the um the questions that i think even surfaces surfaced beyond trustee grosse's inquiry around male teachers neurodivergent so to your questions um and uh yes students yes yes thank you trustee jenkins um to your question um president gonzalez modest regarding the steering committee the thought
126was the steering committee served as the committee that was going to produce the deliverable of the plan as being presented tonight for action um and part of um within the priorities we're looking at some advisory structure something like a dei advisory council that would be a more permanent advisory council over the course of the three years of implementation that where we would constantly kind of you know bring the work forward let let them know what we're doing get sort of reactions um you know check for progress check for you know are we retaining the bright spots are we addressing the opportunities how's the implementation going and so we'll make sure just like we did with the steering committee some of those folks might be people that serve on the advisory council but one thing's for
127sure is that the the diversity in terms of employee groups that you saw on the steering committee will similarly be reflected on the advisory council we just see the advisory council to also be more expansive and include maybe you know beyond just employees but maybe some community members maybe some parent representation etc even potentially a board member who might be a representative on that advisory council as well to watch kind of the work unfold so um that's the plan there um with respect to some of the target groups that were mentioned i i would like to toss back to miss page and so she can explain her theory of action um around um you know the uh miss page if you could talk a little bit about the employee profile and some of your ideas
128about first kind of building that out and then and then using those as tools to um attract employees from various target groups as we build that workforce that's more reflective of our students like uh trustee chu had said that adds a lot of value um as it has for her son in particular yes um i i'd be happy to address that and i think you know for many years we had a goal a district level goal around recruiting that was attached to you know bringing in um more diverse um employees and it you know it was a it was a great goal um and i think that it's important to have those types of measurements and those things to aspire to but i feel that the that if we don't have the mechanisms for actually
129being in control of the recruiting process then we're never going to meet those goals so it doesn't so the actual numbers that we choose or or what types of um maybe backgrounds or you know types of employees or types of people that we are looking for will never be able to meet a specific goal if we're not actually proactively in charge of our recruiting and what i mean by that is you know currently we we do a really great job of getting our our our positions out there and putting them making people know and we're looking and we're hiring we have a good reputation um but we're not um more and more it's going to be difficult to attract people to come to the organization we're just because we're running into fewer and fewer employees
130out there potential employees and potential teachers and so we have to take a much more proactive role in our recruiting we have to be able to sell ourselves to potential candidates um and if and then we can decide if we want to have a specific kinds of folks that we're looking for but but until we are actually in the driver's seat of um creating pools of candidates who are high-quality candidates who are going to bring um their talent and then also we'll be able to you know fill some of these these diverse roles that maybe we don't have enough of in our organization already but but if we don't have an active approach to it we're not going to be able to deliver on those kinds of goals at all so i appreciate the the
131various um points of view as far as what we're missing i completely agree and i think that um we will definitely be creating those markers and those measurements that we'll be able to track one of these days and make progress on but if we're not attending to you know the employee experience for all of our employees if we're not defining what it means to be an employee and able to articulate that in a space that's going to attract people to our organization then then we're not going to be able to make any progress um so it's it's part of that i heard trustee dooley say that you know the people sometimes fall on what's easy and quick um and none none thing about this is easy and quick we really have to do a lot
132of work to define um define who we are as an organization to the rest of the world um and attract people to us um yeah and again i really appreciate all the comments of the the trustees and and we'll take all of that that in um i also want to just applaud the steering committee one last time too because again in not looking for easy quick answers the steering committee was charged for looking at root causes for for um the various dissatisfaction or or for you know why we're lacking um a sense of belonging for everybody and they they went deep and looked at those root causes and that's difficult hard work and and that's what we need to address we need to get that um get those things in a better space and then
133i believe that when we create that organization that addresses those root causes then we will be in a position where people will come work for us and and we will be an incredibly um and then naturally diverse organization because that's what we've we've put out to the world that that is what we are that's what we're about and that's what we're welcoming here i just um i do want to just um really again echo dana sentiments around the thank you to the steering committee it was really really deep work it was really some of i have to say some of my favorite professional work in terms of the work sessions i want to thank mr ruth and ms gomez for coming tonight they were incredible participants along all of their other colleagues and i think
134he did an extraordinary job this evening of describing the approach and the development to the plan i do just want to say that how we developed the plan with that diverse group of stakeholders and representatives within the steering committee was really where the value was so it's not it's not only the product but how we went about it um having multiple voices at the table represented across kind of all the layers of our organization uh just is is why i think i found it to be such an enriching professional experience and they all did an incredible job so thank you mr ruth and um miss gomez for for sort of representing um the spirit and the voice of the group tonight and then i i do want to thank miss page and miss andrew jennings
135who've done an extraordinary job of kind of putting this all together and working closely with promise 54 to curate everything that you see in the action item for later tonight can i just jump in with one more uh i you mentioned promise 54 and and i think it's it's very commendable uh for them as consultants that they uh you know they're on the front page but they're they're they facilitated it but they're not front and center it was the work of the steering committee and and staff that did it so thanks to promise 54. and they actually organization to take responsibility for presenting it owning it that's why they're not here tonight so um they really truly were just the facilitators of the process to get us to the deliverable but it's our job to
136own the work thank you um i'm now going to ask mr bassinet um if i have any public comment on this item at this time uh we do have public comment uh first person is norma ortiz well all of this is very interesting um it just makes me want to like know more um i really want to emphasize on what miss um paige was mentioning i'm also like very grateful that all these aspects that she touched upon or like being considered or being in the thought process of her comments especially on the aspect of the recruiting process and the types of employees the active approach and the aspects that is in a way acknowledged that is missing i mean it's it's good to hear all those perspectives um in that sense um and and it
137was also interesting to hear that um it's mentioned um that all the work that's being done to like um the approach and all the work to like root the causes of of the dissatisfaction to create um in napa valley unified school district that better space so um it's very interesting to me to hear all these all these comments and and all the work that's being done behind the scene and all this information i just like and and really really appreciate that aspect that miss page is touching upon and i would i would like to see more of how this is going to be phased when it's going to be or well it's here but when it's it gets implemented or or or in the practice we see what how this is going to unfold pretty
138much so thank you thank you for your comment next speaker there is no further comment for this agenda item okay thank you mr bassinet um at this time we are reaching our break time um so we will return in five minutes thank you all right thank you everybody we are now i'm going to continue with items um on i2a which is the 2021 general obligation refunding bonds uh mr bassinet can you please uh start the very short slide show please thank you good evening thank you thank you for the opportunity to update the board on our opportunity to refund some of our general obligation bonds next slide please so the nav value unified school district has the ability to refi refinance certain general obligation bonds this will have the effect of reducing overall debt service
139for taxpayer savings um conditions in terms of interest rates have been relatively steady and unchanged for most of the year as short-term rates remain anchored near zero tonight's action will provide us with the opportunity to refinance as the opportunity arises the goal is to save approximately five percent of net present value of the particular bond issuances next slide please so this this kind of busy slide here what it does is it shows interest rates you know looking at different measures and so the mmd looks at the tax free market versus the treasury market and some of the changes we've seen and so again interest rates are still at an all-term low the again what the opportunity for tonight is is that we will be able to continue to watch the market we have three issuances
140that we're watching very closely where when the opportunity arises that we are looking at potentially refining refinancing them to save taxpayers money next slide please so there are three issuances as i mentioned earlier there's a 2010 general obligation refunding bond they are currently tax-exempt and then 2012 general obligation refunding bond and a 2013 general obligation refunding bond next slide and so when you look at this slide it's a summary of some potential savings beginning and these are based on estimates in the market when we actually uh choose to move forward on it it'll it'll be based on the actual market that day and so series a we're looking at a net present value savings of about eight point three percent series b four point two percent and then uh the final series series three about
141four point nine percent and so the first series i i think that's pretty much a slam dunk the next two we're just gonna get watched closely we do not have to do them all at once it's one of those things where again we'll continue to watch interest rates so again based on market conditions as of june 8 the current refunding of the 2010 general obligation bonds and advanced refunding of the 2012 and is estimated to generate about 2.7 million dollars in gross savings for the taxpayers and so when you look at this obviously you want to move forward to do anything we can to you know save money for tax taxpayers but to put it in perspective you know it's very it's a very small amount on actual uh statements maybe it's a penny or
142half a penny per person but again the idea is you want you want if anything that you can do to reduce the overall debt you want to be able to move forward with that if you have the opportunity to next site please and so again this is another way to look at the again potential refinancing that we have about 8.6 for again the 4.2 versus 4.9 again it depends on the data you're looking at in the market and the other one with the total average of about five percent excited thank you so much and with that i'll open up to questions is there any questions about this at this time i i think anything that we can do to reduce the burden on our taxpayers is certainly something that we should be looking into so
143i'm glad we're looking into this thank you and with that there will be an action item related to this uh later than in the meeting tonight thank you any other questions or comments at this time no do i have any public comment on this item uh mr bassinet there is no public comment for this agenda item great thank you um now we're moving on to item i 3a this is the blended blended learning tools usage and impact review okay good evening everyone can you hear me we can hear you excellent director knox are you online i'm here with you all right excellent i'll go ahead and share my screen so i'm going to jump right in with this first slide so good evening president gonzalez modest and the usd board of trustees superintendent dr masetti
144and the napa unified community dr bood and i are pleased to be presenting this blended learning tools impact review with you tonight where we will be outlining the usage and impact for a variety of tech tools that were used during virtual hybrid and in-person learning during the 2020 and 2021 school year uh hello everyone and good evening our district work with these blended learning tools falls under our strategic plan goal number one student learning achievement and access and spans across multiple initiatives within that goal as we presented to you back in august our goal this year was to provide educators tools that would ensure high quality teaching and learning in both virtual and in-person learning environments for the 2020-21 school year we also wanted to ensure that they would have high quality teaching and learning
145beyond that beyond the school year with the ultimate goal of one year's growth in one year's time for every child in our organization regardless of a student's starting point so we knew at the start of this school year when we were still virtual for the first for the foreseeable future that these goals would be especially challenging during the covet 19 pandemic we spent considerable time listening to and learning from our educators in order to make collaborative informed decisions around the selection of tech tools that all sites would have equitable access to regardless of their site funding allocations or the level of parent club funding support that they have we set out to create both true coherence across our system and a common set of actionable data points for decision making at both the site and
146district level next slide so moving forward into the 2021 and 22 school year and beyond our revised shared vision is to continue to provide educators and students equitable access to these high quality blended learning tools even beyond the pandemic and to ensure fidelity of implementation measurable student impact and solid return on investment next time as director knox mentioned our ultimate goal is to support students in making one year's growth in one year's time and many of the tools that we talk about tonight will provide have provided adaptive and differentiated learning experiences for students based on their skill level so students who are below grade level are able to access the supports that they need while those who are at or above grade level can can continue to excel at the last board meeting i shared
147data on the percentages of students making low typical and high growth on the star assessments and explained that those making low growth are making less than one year's growth in one year's time digital tools like the ones we use the school year are one resource to help address the needs of students making low growth so blended learning is an approach to education that combines both online educational materials and opportunities for interaction online with traditional place-based classroom classroom methods so prior to the pandemic there were pockets of educators in our system who were innovating and experimenting with blended learning tools such as google classroom cami edpuzzle st math and various others we will be reporting tonight on the impact of the blending learning tools that that the instructional division in collaboration with data and assessment selected
148and funded for the use during the 2020 and 21 school year as well as our plans for each tool moving forward next slide the slides or the tools that you see on this slide were our de facto uh lms or learning management system tools for this year so these tools clever zoom seesaw and google classroom provided increased security and accessibility for teachers and students alike while creating coherence across our system and ease of use for students and parents alike it also allowed us at at the central level um to easily make adjustments and um upgrades and support provide support um across our system because everyone was using the the same platforms next slide the different vendors that we worked with provide a variety of data points on each of the digital tools that we're excited
149to share with you this evening over 800 staff members used clever throughout the school year this includes approximately 725 teachers as well as other staff and we have 16 779 students total and nearly all regularly logged into clever this is not surprising as we build all of our digital learning out of clever and you can see that 16 172 students and teachers regularly logged into zoom through clever throughout the school year seesaw was used primarily by our tk through second grade teachers and students 3 3133 students out of the 3414 tk2 students regularly logged into seesaw and google classroom was the primarily teaching primary teaching and learning organization tool for teachers and students in grades 3 through 12 and there were over 2000 active classes in that platform throughout the school year so on the
150previous slide we were talking about tools that enabled teachers to make you know assign assignments to students and students to receive those assignments and complete them so that was the sort of learning management system the tools that you see on this slide are essential tools that enabled our teachers to keep students learning quote beyond the bell of synchronous time when students were not able to be physically at school all day long so these are really key engagement tools that you see here that facilitated teaching and learning through paradox engagement activities during presentations through ed puzzles interactive videos that ask questions as you're watching the video at various various stopping points during the video cami's interactive pdfs that enable digital text marking and then screencastify screencasting which enables teachers and students to record edit and share
151videos of their computer screens so our hope is that implementation of these blending blended learning tools and and these models will endure beyond the pandemic and allow teachers to maximize that synchronous in person classroom time that they have with rich discussion and collaboration next slide so we hear we have some usage data for for these tools over 14 000 users used cami over 2600 people created videos using screencastify the majority of which were students creating content for their learning and nearly 40 000 videos were created this last school year our middle and high school students were the primary users of edpuzzle 264 secondary teachers out of 436 or approximately 60 percent regularly used edpuzzle and created nearly 12 000 interactive videos peer deck was used by teachers k-12 across the district uh 466 out of
152725 or 64 percent uh were regularly using paradek and created over 36 000 interactive presentations so the applications that you see in front of you on this slide some of which were already in use pre-pandemic like imagine language and literacy and benchmark universe these these applications supported our students academic progress via increased differentiation and individualized adaptive software platforms so while we've used imagine learning with our most at promise english learner students for many years to help them reach english proficiency in order to be redesignated as english proficient this year we expanded access to all elementary students to provide ample independent practice with language and literacy during their asynchronous learning time at home in addition while supplemental math tools like st math or happy numbers have been used sporadically at varying sites in the past and
153previous years this year we in 2021 we funded district-wide access to dreambox math in grades k through 8 which was supported centrally so that all students in all of our schools would have access both ixl and edgenuity were new implementations this year and supported our mild to moderate special education students and middle and high school students respectively with standards aligned video based curriculum for blended learning environments both of those programs allow educators to customize curriculum for their students who monitor their own progress while completing lessons assessments and interactive activities next slide eighty percent of our k-8 students logged into dreambox and completed lessons and we had an astounding 1.4 million total lessons completed this year the target for dreambox is that students complete five lessons per week students who completed between two and five lessons
154made .75 years growth in the year's time and students who completed more than five lessons per week or twice as much and made a year and a half's growth so the average the average dreambox user made .98 years growth that's nearly a full year despite being in a pandemic and without being physically at school first for full school days we would like to celebrate and acknowledge a redwood middle school and canyon oaks elementary school which had the highest usage data some highlights include 78 percent of redwood sixth graders and 83 of canyon oaks third graders consistently logged in and completed lessons throughout the school year with no gaps in usage and 75 percent of fourth graders at canyon oaks are on track to meet end-of-year state requirements according to dreambox's predictive insights data with imagine
155learning we had over 6 500 students use the tool and average 24 minutes per week this tool was available for students k-8 so this is out of 10 751 students or about 60 percent imagine learning espanol was used by our dual immersion elementary schools between nvla and pueblo vista 844 students regularly used the tool out of or about 78 and average 23 minutes per week and finally we had 142 000 logins by students into benchmark throughout the year uh edge annuity was used at our secondary level uh at the secondary level by over 1100 students out of 5988 or about 19 and a total of 270 courses were completed this means the students finished all the activities in the course assigned to them by the teacher and we had 112 active teacher accounts using ixl
156this accounts for all of our k-12 mild moderate special education teachers as well as paraprofessionals and others supporting the student learning and students spent over 9 000 hours over the course of the school year in ixl so next we're going to discuss our usage of technology tools that supported our teaching and learning of the next generation science standards and at the elementary level we continued to support centralized mystery science funding for all grade levels and this program has we've used it in the past um and it has been a helpful temporary solution for teachers as we transition to next generation science standards aligned curriculum through the adoption process we expect that there will be a transition to a more complete elementary science curriculum that includes digital components once the elementary science pilot is completed next
157year and an adoption is approved by the board at the middle and high school levels amplify science and discovery education science were newly approved by the board this year and include interactive digital tools to empower students to think read write and argue like real scientists and engineers so peter will speak about the usage of these digital science tools so here we have the usage data for those tools uh 35 teachers or all the middle school teachers and 2 350 out of the 3816 middle school students or 61 percent utilized amplify science this year and 56 teachers all of the high school science teachers and over 2000 students utilized discovery education and at the elementary level we had 174 k5 teachers out of about 290 or 60 percent uh utilizing mystery science throughout the year so
158next we're going to talk about some next steps um but first i want to acknowledge all of the efforts of our educators and our system um for engaging with these new tools putting them to use innovating with them and engaging students throughout this very challenging year i'm just so thrilled with the progress that our students were able to make and the engagement they were able to have despite um all of the challenges that we face this year so i just want to acknowledge that and thank all of our educators for being amazing um looking ahead to 2021 22 and beyond we have established some agreements within our instructional division in collaboration with data and assessment around the adoption and implementation of blended learning tools and these include what you see in front of you creating
159equitable equitable access to tools and consistency across our system is a as an agreement and a shared understanding that we have moving forward and we want to make sure that if some if something is available at one school we're providing it at all the schools and making sure that it is a research-based and a research-based tool that we can back up with evidence and data that it's actually working for our students and so with that in mind we're committing to three-year implementation cycles where instead of trying something out and then pulling it back we're committing to something for three years and we're going to use an analysis framework which will triangulate usage percentages and performance data on universal screeners and we're also going to provide data that's disaggregated by subgroups like english learner students foster
160homeless youth socioeconomically disadvantaged youth and students receiving strategic and intensive interventions so we'll closely monitor usage data fidelity of implementation and our return on investment using that student achievement data to drive our decision making about whether or not we sunset certain tools and bring on new ones after those three year cycles next slide which is the last one thank you very much for your time and attention to this presentation by myself and dr bood this concludes our presentation for this evening but we'd be happy to take any questions from the trustees at this time thank you any questions yes so i appreciate that we're keeping all of the programs from this past year i would like to see as we move back to in-person instruction how or in what ways these programs continue to be
161used or not depending on how things go with that transition back to in-person learning i would like to know if any of these sort of fall by the way side and whether or not they're then in potentially need of pruning from our suite and what we would be looking to replace those with i think it's going to be really interesting to see what happens to the usage statistics as we go back to the classroom absolutely and we'll be we'll be looking closely at that as well and be reporting reporting that out to you well i have a question um [Music] use student achievement data to drive decision making exactly what is student achievement data what it what is that is that something beyond test scores uh yeah do i like that or you want me
162to answer i i can uh i'll start and then if you want to jump in that sounds good we do a good job with that um so thank you for that question uh trustee waters so we are we're really trying to look at um uh comparing multiple data points for kids across uh um uh different platforms so for example um if we have a group of students who are receiving support from the elementary interventionists being able to look at those students and then look at their star scores and then look at their usage of certain technology tools and be able to to compare the data across all three of those areas or even more to help us make those decisions so we if we see that um that's that the students are there their star
163score is increasing because of the use of a certain tool then that's going to be a very important data point so we'll be trying to connect those dots as the as as we move forward okay of course it's uh it's completely possible that their star scores would improve because they were so engaged with in-person instruction correct absolutely uh and i think we can do we can also do those comparison uh those comparisons to the general population and see if we're if if certain tools or certain approaches are creating um uh uh uh are creating um what's the word sorry um if if we're if we're seeing um especially high increases uh in certain situations then we can we can monitor for that and use that as part of our decision making okay thank you director
164knox um question so how is that you you mentioned consistency you mentioned coherence and how does that apply to faculty how are they supported with consistency in developing strategies to use this as a tool because i imagine that that's not necessarily consistent throughout the system i can speak to that so um with each of these tools we we make sure that we provide layered professional development so starting back before school started last year with our learning lab providing splashes and introductions to different tools for those who were unfamiliar with some of the newer tools and then we provided ongoing usually on wednesdays drop-in professional learning a lot of principals would bring the trainings to their sites virtually of course this year and bring the the virtual trainers to their sites to do site-specific professional learning
165um and then we also have ashley green who is an amazing um in-house support with technology integration and so she was available for coaching and drop-in office hours for our teachers throughout the year so those are just some of the ways that the teachers were supported in ensuring that um that they felt comfortable in deploying these tools and within their classrooms virtual classrooms and and in person or hybrid classrooms and in addition we we realized that this year was a challenging year and so certain tools were not necessarily required usage this year there were some things we were looser looser on and some things we were we were tighter on we had a pretty tight um ask of of teachers in k-8 to be using dream box with their students or having their students use
166dream box for a minimum of five lessons per week in order to hit that sweet spot of one year's growth in one year's time that was something that we were tighter on other things like edpuzzle and cami um were more like we're providing you this tool because we think it'll be a lot easier for you to execute on some of the asynchronous assignments using these these tools like this digital markup tool with cami and that our secondary teachers used a lot so i i hope that that eliminates it a little bit more for you robin doctor and so next year as we matriculate back into the classroom will it be a little more stringent are you going to require as opposed to strongly suggest to um encourage consistency throughout the system i mean how does
167how will that work and then how do you ask for that as a as an instructional division and in collaboration with with peter's team and in data and assessment those are some of the conversations that we're having as we start to regroup over the summer and do some of our planning and agreements around you know what are what are some of the things that we're going to roll out to the principles that are at our management retreat prior to school um starting that we feel like in order to get a true return on investment we're going to have to set some guide some guard rails for for these technology tools or else we're not going to be maximizing the investment that we're making on them um and i think others we would probably decide we
168would feel comfortable with people using in a more casual sense because certain certain tools just aren't as expensive as others like some of the ones where they're very content heavy like imagine language and literacy or dream box and they're using adaptive software that's very high tech that has algorithms involved those are um very expensive per student licenses whereas things like cami and paradox are are more like nice to have tools that are for engagement and aren't as expensive um of an investment so i hope that makes sense thank you and it speaks to um trustee waters observation that it's difficult to measure achievement if we have inconsistency in dissemination of the information and the tools and the structure then you know measurement becomes kind of arbitrary so i just we look forward to hearing feedback
169as we as we go forward thank you you have to look at measurement at in multiple ways like like dr booth said you have to look at measurement on metrics within the software and then also look at does that match what students are performing how students are performing on other metrics as well because just trusting the metrics inside a tool like imagine learning or a dream box that's telling you that a kid is making one year's growth in one year's time you wanna make double check that with some other um some other uh external assessments outside of the of the program itself great thank you director absolutely so we've been in this district for eight years since my eldest was a kindergartner and that was when common core started and i will say that these
170new um software way better than we went what we started with i had lots of struggles with both my kids with i read and st math they just did not like it they were able to do it and maybe because it was not as adaptive as these new platforms are so i really appreciate that maybe it's a little these new ones are a little bit more gamified as well i know the kids really like that um so i really appreciate that we are looking at better ways to engage our our children one of the things that i was thinking about is you know we could not get to this point where we can actually explore more options for programming at this level without having devices for our children and i just want to say kudos
171to dr masetti and the forethought in bringing that technology as to one-to-one even before the pandemic so when we first started in kindergarten i went to a seminar by the district saying you know you can bring your own devices now and i was like well what about people who can't afford it and their response was well we have a contract with these vendors that can give you know discounted internet service or discounted devices but you know what that was not enough that is not enough for a lot of our families and so i i think what is really enabling us to provide these effective tools is that we have devices for our children and this was not the case you know when when the pandemic started and had we not had this in planning we
172would be still waiting for devices because there was a shortage and there's still a shortage now of you know electronic parts and so i i do want to um acknowledge that that fact that the district did put in the effort for planning to to make that you know a reality really for all our children so related to that i know that the and trustee dooley had said that um the id department had collected all the devices from uh tk through five no tk to fourth grade to to get them ready for next year so and and i think next year we're going to keep them in the classroom as much as possible because they you want to make them available in the classroom for learning so i guess my concern is how do we ensure
173that there's still equitable access going forward you know this year they were able to have it at home are we able to lend out devices maybe on a weekend or if they wanted to do a little bit more at home um although i know that it's been i think it's been a few years when we're not supposedly having homework in elementary school anymore we set we still have it in secondary but you know i think it's still useful for kids who might need the extra reinforcement of what they're getting in the classroom is to have you know those devices to be accessible especially since those devices work with the programs that are being selected and that the district provides access to for the kids so is there a plan to to do that for the
174students uh yes thank you for the question trustee chu and i'm going to go ahead and defer to mr mingwala because i believe he he is um one of the great supports of our technology department and can speak to the policies that we have in place to support the equitable access moving forward yes we will you know you touched on that uh perfectly peter so we are looking at equitable access but the first thing that we need to do is we need to un kind of unpack from where we are at the pandemic and so again we have uh because we were taking attendance on the last day the vast majority of students were did keep their device for the summer when they return in the fall there's going to be a need of just
175kind of seeing we're at with devices you know again moving back towards the elementary level um carts at the elementary level and then remember but i think we've spoken also about the idea of replenishing our older devices and so typically what you do with the older devices you don't sell them you make them available to students to check out and take home who don't have access to a device and so upper upper grade level will typically continue to bring the devices to uh to and from school but the lower grade levels typically teachers prefer that they have them in the classroom just because of the chaos they cause to bring them back and forth if that helps i know that's great i like the idea of using the old devices in that way it really
176is great to be able to repurpose that and the district can support the students in in using those devices as well um my other comment was um i know that imagine learning and dreambox both of which i've observed my younger child using um are very adaptive and is is that adaptive nature um enough to accommodate uh the the i guess the diverse um learning styles of all the kids and and i i know that the the uh i think there's another program that you didn't touch on which is the renzuli learning program for the alps students is what is the status on on being able to help teachers differentiate in the classroom using some of these tools so i can speak to that trustee too so um with uh with both imagine learning and dreambox
177they do they are adaptive and what i have appreciated as a former principal that used st math and and then seen dreambox this year is that dreambox doesn't just um adapt down to students who may be working at several grade levels below their own grade level it also allows them to accelerate up so that students who are working multiple grade levels above their own you know maybe they haven't learned algebra yet but they could be you know working with with some algebraic um functions and and and um and math skills even though you know they may be in in fifth grade still and so they they they do adapt both ways right they both differentiate and scaffold um for students who who are working below grade level and they extend and for for those help
178students or students who who need acceleration they can they can do both both of them can go in both directions um and that is why like i said those programs tend to be a little bit more expensive per student and why we monitor those ones and have tighter guidelines around usage for those programs than we do others we want to make sure that that students are getting that differentiation and that individualized support and we worked really hard with teachers this year on making sure that they had access and were able to analyze and interpret the data that was coming out of these programs because they churn out a lot of data that teachers can use to guide their human interventions or human um you know enrichment and and acceleration activities that they do with students
179they provide small group learning supports you know our suggestions for small groups um and what skills the students are working on so they can be really really useful tools for the teachers in addition to providing that independent practice that's adaptive for the students so my last comment is i don't know if the trustees know but dreambox actually allows parents to uh have an account with that's linked to your students so that at each time your student hits a certain benchmark you get an email that says here's what your student has been working on he has mastered this skill and here's how you can support them at home so i really really appreciate that i know that it's an expensive program but you know what that feedback for for parents especially when you don't i mean
180you don't necessarily always have time to keep up with your children's work and i i think that's invaluable and i i really appreciate that connectedness that parents have with um their students work and i hope that next year you know maybe we can i don't know how many parents actually know that this this is available i just happen to be watching my son do homework one day and i say hey what's that parent link so i went through and did it and i was like oh well this is great um so i hope that maybe next year we can broadcast that a little bit more so that our parents get more engaged with what their students are learning at least for the math um i i don't know what they have for imagine learning i
181haven't looked into that anymore than just seeing what my son's doing that's really good feedback for our team and i know that we had um we had lots of great sessions as part of the parent learning series this year and i think that um we want to continue to build on that and make sure that parents are feeling connected to what their their students are doing and feeling like they have um like they have some some insight into being able to help them i know math especially is kind of a pain point for for parents and students at home i can speak from personal personal uh experience with my own son who's in sixth grade and um and so i think the more the more that parents can be aware of the content they're they're
182learning and mastering and and making progress with um certainly the better the last thing i want to say and we do really appreciate your feedback the last thing i want to say about all of these tools is that they really are supplementary tools so they're not meant to supplant teachers or content or instruction and they were particularly useful this year during the pandemic and i agree with with um with what several of the trustees have mentioned it'll be interesting to see how things progress next year as you know we return to full in person and and make that transition and to see how many of these will still will still get traction and and will still be used um but they really are one tool and a two in a teacher's tool belt um and
183we were just happy to be able to provide them and and um support teachers with that this year great other comment or oh yeah trustee riser um i want to thank you both uh for this presentation and also just for your dedication in problem solving the you know climbing the mountain that you climbed over the last 15 months and figuring out how to um get as much meaningful curriculum and instruction enacted in these really difficult circumstances and also just a shout out to the teachers and the parents and the students for conquering a really steep learning curve and you know managing multiple new tools at a time and learning to navigate them um so thank you for that um and i i want to just say i think you're being really strategic and intentional in
184the way you're monitoring and deploying these and and i'm i appreciate that you're i think it's really smart to give it a little bit of time um you know to to see what sticks and i'm excited to think about the kids coming back and and already sort of hitting the ground running and knowing how these platforms work and how they interface and and how to use the tools um and i i think i i and i appreciate uh sarah you saying that these are tools in the teacher's tool belt and that they're not meant to supplant the actual human teaching part which is the you know central but but i can see how um useful they can be i can imagine how useful they will be um in enabling differentiation within the in-person learning you
185know it with teachers if you want to pull a small group especially with younger kids um it was oh it's always a challenge to figure out how to keep the other you know 18 to 20 kids do meaningfully engaged in something productive while you're working with a small group so it's exciting to think about how um you know the high impact of these really great tools uh going on while teachers are having that small group time i did want to ask about just the sort of in the usage reports um you know that i jotted down some of the numbers that we got that weren't in the um the original slide deck but you know like see-saw which i had think of i think i'm correct that it's a pretty sen the central language arts
186tool um there were still 281 k2 kids that weren't using it so i'm wondering um just if you can speak to what the barriers of usage were for the kids i i'm i'm speculating i imagine that it was you know uh reading capacity and and maybe uh you know engage engagement challenges and i i know uh dr abud we had a conversation earlier on in the year talking about um sort of how many words you know one of the platforms maybe it was see-saw it was like oh well as long as they have these 30 words or 35 words then that's all they need to be able to access and so um as someone who's worked with you know young primary students that struggle with reading you know what are we doing to help those
187kids that don't have those words yet um and and and were there other am i correct in thinking that that was a barrier to usage with the younger kids and um what other obstacles were surfaced from your you know feedback from from teachers and and do we have strategies to address that peter i can jump in first and then you can you can dovetail off of me so um seesaw was um benchmark is actually the the core language arts um tool that was being used um for for at the elementary level and seesaw is one of the assignment platforms so it was basically like the primary version of google classroom for lack of a better um analogy so it was something where um the the primary teachers could assign assignments and they were a little
188bit more primary friendly than the google classroom interface and so um the teachers that were not using seesaw were probably using google classroom um and so you would see some overlap there because some teachers were more comfortable maybe in second grade or the kids are a little bit older and a little bit more adept at google classroom they might have been using google classroom instead of seesaw and then also at the tk level there were there it's a big challenge with your tk kids to get them to to do either google classroom or seesaw and so some people were just mostly using um other methods to assign assignments to students and to have them complete them um so that's my my um my sense or my my my interpretation of why you didn't see 100
189of the teachers in k2 using the seesaw platform it was more of a choice point um but peter you can you can add on to that yes no i think you answered that perfectly director knox and and like you're saying there may have been teachers that were running everything out of clever directly out of clever for example or may have been using google classroom so it's not that the students did not have didn't have access to a platform it just may have looked a little bit different for that particular teacher that or that particular group of students so there may have been some variants there for that okay thanks absolutely another question i got another question the numbers on edge annuity indicated that there are not very many people that are using that i think
190it was maybe 19 or something like that do you have an idea of why the usage was already so low uh thank you for that question that's that's a really um great question that was something we noticed as well that the usage was low for edge annuity uh and so that is something that we'll need to keep a closer eye on and something that i'll be working um i'll be collaborating with uh director reddy uh our new director of secondary uh to see what we can do to fine-tune the use of that tool because you are correct and that the usage rate was low um compared to some of the other tools that we were that we were looking at okay um i'm going to ask now mr bassinet if we have any public comment
191on this item there's no public comment for this item great thank you um i was moving things on my screen here up and down okay um we are now moving into our action items so this is item j 1 a the napa valley unified school district diversity equity and inclusion and talent plan so moved so first by trustee gracia second by trustee water do i have any public comment on this item there's no public comment for this item thank you first and the second all those in favor all right anybody oppose or abstain motion passes thank you item j2a adoption of 20 21 22 budget move to approve second first by trustee gracia a second by trustee jankowicz do i have any public comment on this item mr bassnet there's no public comment for this
192item thank you all those in favor aye aye opposed abstain motion passes thank you now resolution 2128 general obligation refunding bonds so moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooley do i have any public comment on this item there is no public comment for this item seen that it's a resolution vera if you could conduct roll call please yes trustee gonzalez hi trustee jenkowitz aye trustee gracia aye trustee reisser aye trustee water aye trustee shu aye trustee dooley aye thank you vera item j2c resolution 21-29 middle school boundary i'll move to approve pause second first by trustee gracia second by trustee jankowicz do i have any public comment on this item there's no public comment for this item i'm just gonna suggest that when we get this up on the website that we
193put together a little bit better map there comments we will okay yeah that's a good comment suggestion that is um saying that there's no public comment we have a first and a second vera if you can conduct roll call trustee gonzalez hi trustee jankowicz aye trustee gracia aye trustee reisser aye christie hi like we lost her vera oh trust issue hi trusty dooley thank you thank you vera now on to item j3a request to hire educator less than fully credentialed so moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee dueling any public comment on this item there is no public comment for this item thank you first and the second all those in favor anybody pose or abstain motion passes thank you amen contract for superintendent this is item j3b so moved all second first
194and a second um prior to um before we continue i need to conduct um part of our process here is to read um the language um so we have a motion first and a second i will start um by saying that on behalf of the board's ad hoc committee reviewing the superintendent contract i am pleased to recommend this contract amendment to the full board because the superintendent has provided outstanding service to the district and has exceeded a satisfactory evaluation in each of her years with the district we recommend that the superintendent's employment agreement dated may 31st 2018 be amended so that as of july 1st 2021 she will have a new four-year term extending from july 1st 2021 through through and and until june 30 2025. in addition the contract amendment we are proposing modifies
195the health benefits provisions in section 3a and 3g of her employment contract to provide the superintendent the option of enrolling in a family plan at the district's cost or be credited cash in lieu in an amount equal to the cost of such plan finally in order to encourage continuity of effective district leadership we are recommending in the proposed contract amendment to provide the superintendent with a four percent longevity salary increase at the completion of her fourth year of service and every third year hereafter so long as she continues to be employed as superintendent it will also mention that the fiscal impact within um the fiscal impact is within the fiscal constraint of the 2021-2022 budget and upcoming fiscal years as shown in the budget documents that we have presented at nvusd board meetings i will
196now ask mr bassinet if we have any public comment on this item we do uh matt clancy can you hear me we can hear you go ahead yeah i was i was wondering in in what way are we trying to bring a new contract for dr mussetti i understand you say it's satisfactory um from what i have seen all of dr masetti's highlights have been pretty negative for the public i understand she's been there and she's tried to get the budget under order but she's stripped the community and district of attractive educational programs she's laid off a record number of teachers a hundred in the last two years um looking to add to that you're closing two middle schools and two elementary schools during this entire tenure i understand that brings in money uh for
197you know doing this but you're also gonna cut more in the future um you're losing kids at a pr unprecedented rate you have 2 400 is an estimate that you're going to lose by 20 20 26 to 2027 we're going to have a 10 million dollar budget downfall in the next few years that is also been stated by this uh committee and yet you want to increase the superintendents and you know give them a raise for this if this were a business and dr masetti was the ceo she would be removed immediately if there were less students in a budget to manage why are we increasing this um this this seems very disrespectful and irresponsible of our money this is a taxpayer money and you're throwing it around as if we're just not noticing that
198this is a an issue in in the future uh to take more money away from our schools to to put it into someone who is still not invested in our community she she's on the board uh sorry she is the superintendent but still does not remain in napa valley you know if you want public opinion i i don't want to renew dr masetti's contract look for someone else in the area to take the reins for the future this is the public opinion we are fed up with a draconian style approach to our district and our beloved napa valley our children schools teachers parents and budget have suffered during this administration reading the highlights of her term is absolutely devastating it's cuts cuts and more cuts yet this budgetary item is to increase her salary it's
199it's just baffling to me that you guys have any idea of what you're thinking i can't wait for the next election the board of trustees are the people selected for our leader i i can't wait for the next election for this next speaker mr bestinet uh yes norma ortiz hi i have been a elac dlac member for the past four academic school years within this time frame i have always attended and actively participated in these meetings based on observation i have noticed that particularly for this academic school year 2020 2021 parents like myself who are part of this these committees have not been formally invited encouraged during our scheduled dlac meetings by the new leadership team and i'm specifically talking about dr masseni like in the past to participate in the forum of collaboration in
200the sense of parents participating with their board in these types of meetings to voice our appreciation where applicable concerns feedback input contributions and needs around our children's learning els special education students and our most impacted students our students as as a whole i feel that if we are so much talking about the topic of embracing a conversation at least that's what i'm hearing uh in the different meetings that i've been uh participant uh the different variables and aspects of inclusivity engagement and equity it continues to be important to support these components so that the board could be further informed on the realities and necessities all across the board that our district is facing taking in consideration the parental perspectives especially under these particular challenge challenging times with the present pandemic a moment where success has
201been absurd but observed but also challenges and regression i just feel that um the the the the component the aspect of equity that um i see a lot in in conversation or in emails from dr massetti needs a lot of attention in different ways and um it would be nice that you could focus on on all the things that we've been hearing and i'm probably sure you have but to pay close attention to all the the the feelings of of our community and really um trying to um it would be nice to have our community more more more engaged and more heard overall and our parents so i would appreciate that thank you next comment mr bassinet there's no further comment for this item thank you mr russenet um i'm now opening to board um
202comments would you like to go trustee grass here rosadomoceti has done an amazing job over the first three years of her tenure she inherited a district in disarray and on the brink of financial collapse she has moved the district to a positive budget surplus and has begun to truly impose order on the district office when she first arrived it often felt like we were in the wild west where anything goes and handshake deals carried the day as the old saying goes if something goes wrong verbal deals are worth the paper they are printed on the district has worked diligently under her tenure to ensure the written existence of these previously very informal relationships in the past there seemed to be no central planning which meant inequity ran rampant and professionalism was lacking records were fairly
203non-existent and institutional knowledge was easily lost records are now commonly kept and it is easier to retain institutional knowledge at the district she has set high expectations and standards for performance thereby changing the culture at the district office through her tenure she has greatly improved the organization of the district and the integration of the school sites with the district office no longer do we have a bunch of independent captains all rowing in their own direction instead for the first time we have everyone rowing together in the same direction she has gotten rid of arcane and laborious paper processes of the 19th century in favor of 21st century digital ones she has automated many tasks that were previously done by hand allowing staff to focus their time on more important work now the work of the
204district is being done and not make work or busy work that previously filled staff time each day rosanna has engaged with the community in a way not done by previous administrations she established regular focus groups to get feedback from staff parents and the community she has brought an important focus to providing much needed translation services so that all of our community members can follow along and understand the proceedings at the district office she has reinvigorated and brought a level of professionalism to the dlac committee that just a year ago was in disarray to accomplish all these things rosanna has had to make some difficult decisions along the way that i know ruffled some of the feathers in our community those were decisions that realistically should have been made before her tenure even began had the
205previous administration been responsible most of those unpopular decisions would have already been accomplished before she took office because the previous administration chose to dether rosanna was forced to expedite some of the decisions due to the need to maintain fiscal solvency it appears that the previous administration was allergic to dealing with hard facts and truths and chose instead not to deal with those sorts of things in contrast rosanna doesn't shy away from tough issues and is very upfront about the difficulties that the district faces she prefers to tackle district problems head on and not sweep unpleasant news under the rug we are lucky to have rosanna as our superintendent and i thank the previous board for having the foresight to hire her the state of california is currently seeing a rash of superintendents leaving their jobs
206as no one wants the job at the top the political turmoil of the past year has been too much for too many and too many see it as too stressful of a job they quit because in a declining enrollment environment it is a thankless task with no way to avoid strife and turmoil the changes to her contract this year are very modest and in my opinion don't adequately reflect the amazing work she has been doing in california the average length of service for a superintendent is only four years despite this tumultuous political climate we desire rosanna to stay with the district the longevity pay was something the board wanted to offer as we believed rosanna was more than deserving and we hope it will incentivize her to stick around for many years to come as
207to the criticism i have heard levied that this was too soon to consider an extension of her term i say to those levying that criticism you are wrong just like in sports where it is not acceptable to have a lame duck head coach with only a single year left on his contract it is not appropriate to have a lame duck superintendent with only a single year left on her contract we would be foolish to allow our superintendent's contract to expire considering the excellent work she has done and continues to do for this district when you find excellence in leadership you must retain and reward that excellence or risk losing that leader collectively as a board we have identified excellence in the performance of dr rosanna mussetti and will act accordingly tonight to retain her services
208i would also like to make a comment a couple if my inbox sir is an indication of public opinion i will tell you that there is great support for renewal of this contract i received two emails of the contrary and i received many many more in support of the decision that is going to be made this evening secondly mr clancy if you would like to have coffee meet to discuss our differences of opinion i would welcome such a meeting we as a board and as an educational community are and i agree with trustee gracia are very fortunate to have dr masetti accept this renewal of her contract since her arrival she has navigated some treacherous waters and with her vision her financial astuteness management and leadership skills we have accomplished the near impossible we are
209solvent we have increased cash reserves and we have weathered a pandemic she is fearless yet she is compassionate leader with a vision that remains student-centric and a strategic plan that supports that vision why did we offer a contract renewal david already listed many of the bullet points but we reopened schools she assembled a strong and effective executive team and has empowered them to lead with the same vision and standard of excellence that she embodies and this team is critical for max maximizing productivity she grounded all decision actions in the strategic plan so the internal and external community understand the basis of her decision-making process she has addressed the fiscal health of the district which it is clear this evening is not embraced by all but it was necessary it was critical and it was the
210right thing to do cash reserves have increased under her financial stewardship long-term sustainability and cash management is a continued priority she's had the courage to make difficult decisions execute on those decisions for the betterment of our students and that does include the closing of schools in order to address declining enrollment financial instability back facility capacity and ultimately to have available resources to address programming needs for enriched learning and improved student outcomes that is her job the decisions that are the most difficult to digest are sometimes the most important to execute this is a fraction of what has been accomplished but in the interest of time i will stop the list and that has been in the last 13 months in a global pandemic but her leadership is so much more than a list of accomplishments
211it is really the how she was able to get us where we are she understands how to manage complexity and problem solve which is essential in managing all aspects of the district she has the ability to adapt to ever-changing circumstances and the intellectual agility to keep the goals of the district intact she understands the importance of vision and how the integrity of clear vision can be transformational she has the capacity to turn that vision into reality rosanna understands how to assess risk in order to achieve success and is willing to make the hard decisions in the short term to assure long-term benefit on behalf of our students she understands the power of communication and to that there is no alternative g stands for the beliefs that are in the best interest of this district and
212she is principled in that work that is the value of dr mussetti i am in support of the renewal i am in support of the terms and her work as our superintendent dr asana masetti is an exceptional leader who clearly and consistently communicates nvusd's current successes challenges and constraints while articulating a clear vision of a positive and productive path forward for our district she contextualizes her leadership team's choices decisions and actions by framing them within our thoughtful and clearly articulated strategic plan so that each step our district takes is grounded in our shared goal of fulfilling our greatest potential and service to each and every one of our students she's highly engaged in all areas of the school district while striking a healthy balance in trusting her cabinet to plan lead and executing their own
213departments she continuously demonstrates that she's highly attuned to the needs challenges and successes of students and staff and has created a positive and collaborative culture within her leadership team students and staff she's assembled a cabinet that's dedicated purposeful and committed to excellence across the board she continues to demonstrate a steadfast commitment to ensuring the district's financial viability without which we cannot effectively or equitably carry out our mission to educate the children of our community she does what needs to be done even when it leads to difficult and unpopular decisions that leave her open to criticism and even derision from the community like the comment that we have just heard her dual certification as both a superintendent and a chief budget officer speaks to her depth of knowledge and underscores my confidence in the integrity and
214strategic soundness of her leadership in maintaining our fiscal health in the midst of ongoing constraints and a declining enrollment environment despite external factors that have created uncertain unstable and ever-shifting conditions in particular the public health emergency that has defined this school year and the final third of the preceding year dr masetti continues to maintain clear communication data-driven decision-making and supportive and positive collaboration among leadership teachers staff students and families she's taken concrete steps to improve engagement with our families including standardizing translation services for district meetings and creating and reinstituting the elac and dlac meetings that ms ortiz has been attending uh she is providing out she oh sorry i lost my place with her leadership and support the district has provided invaluable support services to our families during this pandemic and other supports necessary to
215removing barriers to distance learning increased access to critical mental health supports for students and their families and as trustee two reminded us tonight it was dr macetti's visionary decision and strategic thinking that shifted the allocation of measure h funds and enacted the one-to-one device distribution that positioned us to have a successful school year during this pandemic she consistently conveys her commitment to and respect to our employees and i believe that those who work within this organization feel respected and valued in turn they respect and value her and appreciate her empathy her honesty and her vision her commitment to building and maintaining strong collaborative relationships the leaders of our three unions is also a strong indicator that she truly values teachers and staff and is committed to nurturing mutual respect and trust she's an extraordinarily skilled
216communicator clear straightforward and responsive she offers stakeholders the truth that they deserve an optimistic and clear-eyed vision for the future and concrete and thoughtful steps to make meaningful progress in the face of daunting professional as well as personal health challenges she has continued to lead effectively with compassion transparency honesty and empathy she consistently demonstrates the highest levels of professionalism integrity and responsibility we are lucky to have her at the helm of our district and i support the renewal of this contract so do i um i am uh not as eloquent as my as the uh proceeding speakers or maybe it's because they took a lot of my talking points but one of the um i speaking of uh trustee jankowicz mentioned inboxes and you know i do my best to answer to answer mail and
217i've gotten some you know spectacularly rude emails and i try to answer answer them as mildly as possible but i am you know stunned at some of the disinformation that i get um oh the state of california gavin newsom is flooding the state with billions of dollars well first of all we were able why can't why are we laying off teachers why are we doing that well you know what i'm not getting we're not getting billions of dollars are we there are many school districts california is a very large state i might add that it is one time money it's one time money and you have to be careful and also you know we're supposed to be using it um with for issues relating to pandemic and in fact we've had to lay off teachers
218in the spring before dr masetti came on board when i was working it appeared to be a springtime ritual in fact this year we've hired a we've been able to hire people back so that's good but there there's just some um basic lack of information i think and it's i don't even think it's uh necessarily the public's fault it's not incredibly exciting um reading news about school districts all around the state unless you're on a school board and i will tell you the there i hesitate to criticize other public agencies because you know i don't really know all their circumstances or what they're going through but occasionally it seemed to me that they were doing absolutely nothing to um get ready for reopening schools they seem to be quite stranded and i understand um we
219were in it every day i i for the past 15 months seemed like well until you know the end of january i would get up and be very startled about something and um it was a strange time and people aren't always bet um at their best when they're under stress but dr macetti was at her best no matter what she was going through she showed up she gave it her all and it is true that other superintendents are leaving i just read about one in a neighboring county that appears to have been fired um and frankly it was it appeared to be because he was unable to um execute on a school closure which people here applauded they thought it was wonderful that this person did not close a school because the community [Music] people
220in the community didn't want him to but you know what it ultimately cost him his job because this we do not close schools out of some sadistic pleasure in um you know getting people agitated it is because we have a responsibility to keep the schools going and i am looking forward to um once we get this straightened out you know we have plans for wonderful instruction and the um i just think that so so much of the criticism of dr missetti is is absolutely misplaced um it's all right to be upset about the way of the world and the way systems work that's fine but um i think it's wrong to make personal attacks on a person who is trying to make things right who is making things right and um i i find uh
221i find dr masetti uh an engaging person um she's very approachable unfortunately um since march 13th up until very uh 2020 up until very recently none of us were approachable i mean you know it's i've been i felt as if i were in sometimes in bad outtakes of a zombie movie if anybody showed up on the horizon you know we were supposed to run in the opposite direction um and i think that has been part of the problem and it would have been nice uh if we could have postponed this um decision until things were normal and everyone was feeling fine and we were all happy again but we can't do it that's not how finance works we couldn't do it we had we had to do what we did and um anybody wants to
222run against me that's fine i love political campaigns actually and um we'll have a good time i i've always enjoyed my opponents and i think i think you need to give us time and i think you nee i think you need a previous speaker said that um i liked innocent bystanders well whatever that meant well it means i like people showing up at meetings even if they're mad at me it means they care and i think that's a great starting point so i'm asking you all who are upset with us to you know accept our hand and okay no we are never going to shake hands again i guess that's out of the question but um let's work together you know we can do it i'm asking you work with us thank you so i
223started getting interested in school finance because my kids were going to lose a new middle school in american canyon and before then i had no idea how school funding worked i had no idea how facilities were funded it is definitely not how most people think um but you know it was a big wake-up call for me to to really see what it was that our education's how how we are actually prioritizing our education system and we're really not and that is the crux of the issue is that we do not have sufficient funding to do what we need that our teachers and our our education system knows what is best for our schools and it was it was of course not the most pleasant thing to hear that your students knew well supposedly new school
224is going to be cancelled but it did you know make me think about what is actually happening in california in our school district and declining enrollment is real it is not because of any one particular superintendent it is not because of any one particular school district it is across the state and it is most obvious in the coastal regions where it is very expensive to live american canyon just sold its one million plus dollar home that was probably unheard of for the very since since i moved there in 2008 we thought it was one of the few more affordable places in napa valley that we can actually live and buy a home and we did but that is not going to be the case for long and we just need to accept that reality now
225american canyon actually if we if you and for this is for the public if you looked at our demographic report in the previous meetings american candy actually is holding stable and so imagine our displeasure in not having a new middle school when our current middle school is the largest middle school in napa valley it is very disheartening but we also know that we want to have our great programs at the school we have a great vapa program we have a great robotics program that both of these are award winners for our district they really show what our students are capable of and to push for a second school at that time would have diluted all of that hard work that our teachers did to make that happen for our kids to create those programs for
226our children and so we we had to come to terms with the fact that we weren't going to get acms 2. and you know we we were you know i think most people in american canyon are are understanding why and it's because we're program focused and i think that is how we should think about it for our children we need to be program focused and unfortunately right now in in declining enrollment it mean it might mean closing schools and that is just the reality we need to be also fiscally responsible for our taxpayers because they are the ones who are funding our schools and if we cannot do that and maintain our programs then we have failed our job and i think with the current superintendent dr mussetti has been able to make those tough
227decisions to make that a reality for us despite declining enrollment we are able to keep a lot of our programs despite you know declining enrollment we are able to provide summer program for the very first time for our children at the elementary level and so i i think there's a lot and i've mentioned this in the past that um dr mussetti actually has great skills in planning the idea of rediverting the the measure h funds to have one-to-one device for our children that is tremendous that i i cannot say enough about that because that is what saved a lot of our students from getting more behind than what the pandemic has laid on us and so for all of those reasons i definitely support the amendment to the contract i'd like to take a minute
228to move that we extend our meeting till i'll 2am the motion which one the 2 a.m a first by christie gracia a second a second by trustee uh dooley all those in favor aye aye i have no choice obviously motion passes to extend the meeting at two in the morning i only said two because i'm the next to speak and you know brevity is not my thing um i i actually don't have a whole lot more to add i do want to speak to a couple points i don't want to gloss over the fact that during dr mussetti's tenure uh the reserve uh balance for the the district has gone from three percent to 12 and uh is projected to be higher with the budget we adopted tonight um contextually three percent you know just
229over three percent uh was where we were a few years ago and that is just over the threshold for state receivership um you know we spoke about this in the past it's not something that is you wouldn't have a receiver who has invested in the community or the district they are here to fix a financial problem and it's not favorable for the district in any way 12 still not the the place we we wish to be but it's in the right direction it provides a buffer for unforeseen events uh to allow time for uh the the dr mussetti and her team to execute on policies that can avoid again that state receivership so that nine percent difference is huge and that is is an amazing accomplishment in a time where enrollment is declining and every
230year we get less and less money from the state now that that process to get there involved a lot of pain um a lot you know we've heard some of that pain expressed tonight and we certainly have in the past six months since i joined the board i've experienced it personally with some of the decisions that i've had to make as a board member but that pain is as some of the trustees have mentioned before it's it's deferred from when it should have been experienced um you know we all of that pain built up over years of inaction by a previous administration and you know assistant superintendent pearson can tell us about how deferred maintenance just increases the cost of uh of you know fixing facilities this is you know deferred financial decisions just increases
231the pain that that an organization experiences when you have to make those decisions uh and speaking to uh dr mussetti's investment in this community um i some of my best teachers growing up commuted from counties away uh to to my school um i i know because i would see them driving in when we were pulling and you know but they they showed up to work they stayed late they assisted students well past the the you know the working hours they chaperoned dances they went to sporting events on weekends they all of that was an investment in the community that they that they worked in and they did that while living outside of that community investment in the community has is is not solely based on where you live and i've seen that dedication from dr
232mussetti um you know not least of which was last board meeting when we went you know almost to the two o'clock mark and dr musetti was here up until you know we forced her to leave so she could safely drive home but she she does that with everything she's the last person here she's the first person in the morning she's she's dedicated to this community in ways that that are that i am wholeheartedly supportive of and i i i don't believe that living in this community is the only way to invest in this community and i think one of the other issues is there's kind of a mix up of cause and effect you know there's a lot of causes for for why we are in uh the financial situation we've been in for the
233past few years why we are constantly working toward right-sizing this district and and the cause is declining enrollment the cause is uh you know poor decisions in the past and the effect is that we have to make these uh difficult decisions it's not the other way around the difficult decisions are not causing our financial uh straights and they're not causing declining enrollment and i think that's that's clear from what we've seen in the past three years and you know i i think we it becomes clear when we focus on you know the data and we know that that that you know data is what drives what should be driving our decisions and um anyways i am also wholeheartedly and uh strongly supportive of this amendment um i think when i um think of what's occurring
234this very moment is makes me think of the governance board which is all of us here and then the governance team which includes dr masetti so any type of opinion comment criticism that's fine but just know that it's dr mercedes not alone that there is a team working together in one force to make these decisions it's not one individual member we as a board have a responsibility with um our fiduciary responsibilities as governance with the ed code and so on and so forth and i feel continue to feel honored to serve along amongst all of you and not only have you taken the courses and done like the academic side of being on on this board but also the countless hours spent on understanding from either your own personal experiences as parents of kids in
235the district teachers other skills uh science and law public health finance um and you mix that with our lead our leader our superintendent yes you can say ceo because there is a board who can easily move forward a contract or go through the process and let go and this board is okay with that if that needs to happen that is an option on the table and we tonight are deciding that we are not taking that option we are going forward with a contract that it's going to extend for four years and we are lucky to be in a position um to have someone to want to do that with because it's not for it's with and um i'm looking forward and so yes bring questions comments we've been meeting with people we've been emailing people
236having coffee with people with a community and we want we want to bring along the community with the decision um it's a complex process it's a long journey but we're here for it and until one in the morning or two in the morning so be it so um i'll end with just saying thank you um dr mercedes for not only choosing us but also for your sacrifices because this moment is dedicated also to you for being the leader of the organization and you deserve that and we thank you for that um so that being said we are now ready to um there was a motion thank you for reminding me you know there's a first and a second okay um and we've um looked at public uh listen toilet comment so all those in favor
237aye motion passes congratulations um thank you trustees i i'm um humbled honored and grateful so thank you for um your support and your positive feedback i also welcome scrutiny and constructive feedback from the community so i welcome it i welcome and invited all i appreciate this community i appreciate the school board i appreciate the staff and nvusd and i am very proud and feel very privileged to serve as your superintendent of schools and thank you for opening the path and the opportunity to continue to serve as the napa valley unified school district superintendent of schools this evening so i'm very grateful thank you okay um we are now um [Music] 11 15 so we're going to take a quick a quick break um i do want to encourage us we have to get through everything
238we have to get through but um i'm really hoping that we can be here till one so a quick break okay oh my god okay returning and going on an item j 4a this is a local control and accountability plan i'll move to move to approve thank you trustee gracia second by trustee water i did want to have a little discussion um last time this was before the board i was asking if we could move the numbers higher for student achievement i firmly believe that if we do not shoot for excellence then we will never achieve it i'm disappointed a little bit that we did not see that change but i think that it's important to note that there's no downside to setting our goals very high as it shows our commitment to excellence which
239is what we should all be striving for i'm not going to argue with you about that david yeah yep i i fully believe our students are going to be so thrilled at being back in class with their friends and their teachers that things are going to take off especially because they've read all summer i have a first second a second by trustee jankowicz do i have public comment on this item mr bassinet there's no public comment for this item any other comments from the board okay all those in favor all right repose or abstain motion passes thank you item j4b this is the agreement between billy donegan and napa valley unified school district phillips magnet elementary school so i moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooley do i have public comment on
240this item there is no public comment for this item thank you mr bassinet any questions or comments all those in favor all right you pose or motion passes thank you agreement between success for all in napa valley unified school district phillips magnet elementary school so moved second first by trustee gracia uh second by trustee dooley do i have any public comment mr bassinet there is no public comment for this item thank you all those in favor aye all right pose rob sting thank you item j4d benchmark advanced additional components for elementary core curriculum so moved second first and a second do i have any public comment there is no public comment for this item all those in favor aye opposed abstain motion passes thank you item j4e this is high school supplementary instructional materials adoption
241yes i would like to make a motion to separate one book out which is called internment and have a separate vote on that book and then vote on the rest of the books as a group the first um trustee gracia to clarify the first or the first there's two motions it'd be so the first one is the the first one is to separate the two items okay i'll second that one a second by trustee dooley all those in favor okay now that it's been separated we can now discuss well do we want to do a motion for the balance of the books first let's do that let's do that first all right move to approve the balance of the books second first by trustee gracias second by trustee water all those in favor aye i
242you may oppose or abstain but before i do that you're right um public comment on the supplement um the instructional materials for the majority of it aside for the intermittent book any public comment on that mr best in it there's no public comment for this item thank you okay so um we are now on um the second item okay so i have a problem with internment it because it appears that this book is nothing but political propaganda racist stereotypes and political vilification the book does start out as a young adult love story for the first couple chapters but after those chapters the book moves entirely away from the young adult love story and uses those characters as merely another vector for political attack and racial stereotypes the book doesn't work very well on many levels
243as the main character is supposed to be 17 years old but ends up reflecting on her life in the manner of a 30 plus year old adult in fact the main character doesn't behave like a young adult at all and in the end there is a disconnect between her 30 year old reflections and her interactions with her parents the disconnect is further exacerbated by the occasional attempt to at least mention the romantic subplot the entire book is awkward and lacks authenticity in the way the main character behaves the authenticity of the story is further strained as even though the main villain engages in egregiously grotesque behavior he doesn't behave in a believable fashion the author attempts to depict him as a supremely clever character with while at the same time not even having the tiniest
244thimble full of sense it doesn't really work to make the character believable like i said the book quickly abandons the young adult love story in favor of overt vilification of a single race the author consistently and repeatedly returns to the denigration of one race in favor of another the book appears to say that stereotyping is bad but then goes on to negatively stereotype large groups of people based on the race whom the author apparently finds it acceptable to malign and denigrate it struck me upon reflection that this book is actually sexist as well in contrast to the over racist messaging the sexism is more covert every person who is a villain in this book is male and every betrayal or mistreatment of the main character is done only by men the author takes great care
245to prevent any male character from rising to too much prominence in the story she arranges to have male characters killed off so as not to compete with the main character there are apparently no females who act poorly it is strictly the men who make up the guard population and are the villains in the book the male love interest of the main character even ends up betraying her after said betrayal he ceases to appear further in the book as anything more than an idea and he turns into a mere vehicle for an attack against the race as favored by the author article 1 section 31 of the california constitution states in subpart a that the state shall not discriminate against any individual or group on the basis of race sex color ethnicity or natural origin in
246the operation of public education i want to remind my fellow trustees that they took an oath when they were sworn in stating i do swallowly swear that i will support and defend the constitution of the state of california and that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the constitution of the state of california tonight i am calling on my fellow trustees to uphold their oaths of office and to bar this racially and sexually discriminatory text from being entered into our curriculum if all that were not enough to vote against this book there is one additional reason the book starting in its early pages takes aim squarely at our former president and smears him as an islamophobic fear-monger who has transformed america into a bigoted paradise with muslim internment camps the author portrays the former
247president and by extension the political right as stupid ignorant emotionally fragile and hateful with no redeemable qualities in fact the book goes so far as to even mock the religious practices of those on the right indicating they are not worthy of respect the author seems to suggest the muslim religion is the only one which is to be celebrated and revered the book continues to return to this political theme over and over continually vilifying our former president just when you think the author may have moved past her issues with our former president and the focus on the story might be on moving the plot forward she circles back once again to remind us that the former president is a terribly awful person who is deserving of our hate and derision the nature of the auditor's political
248assertions is not really what's relevant to tonight's decision the problem would be the same if the author had instead made political statements in support of our former president what matters is does the use of this book violate board policy what matters is that there are political assertions of any kind in this book about a candidate for public office the political observations by the author won't be problematic for tonight's decision if our former president were not a candidate for public office i would draw your attention to regulation 4119.25 sub 9 which states and i quote district employees shall not present viewpoints on particular candidates or ballot measures in the classroom without giving equal time to the presentation of all perspectives end quote there is no way to utilize this book without being in violation of this
249regulation our former president has declared his candidacy for president in 2024 thereby making him a candidate and turning this book into a campaign rhetoric against his campaign which is a direct violation of our board regulations i want to be clear that i am not alone in understanding this book to be politically motivated the reviewers of this book who do this for a living correctly identified that this book is a political hit piece against our former president i want to remind folks that it was the district supplied reviews that prompted my reading and deeper examination of this book to see if the reviewers take was in fact correct having read it i can confirm that the reviewers characterization of this book as an anti-trump novel are in fact correct as such there is no way for
250it to be taught in class without a violation of board policy the issue tonight is not whether you approve or disapprove of our former president the issue is by using this book are we setting our teachers up to unknowingly violate board policy it would be bad governance to adopt this book into the curriculum and thereby set our teachers up for board policy violations for all the foregoing reasons i will be voting no on the adoption of this book as part of the curriculum thank you go ahead tristy water well um all right uh i have a friend uh in town who used to be you know he was very powerful um in the business community and his nickname was the prince of darkness and he used to say i don't care what you say about
251me just so long as you spell my name correctly and is donald trump's name mentioned even once in this book um only by the reviewers not the author but let's say it's art imitating life um this novel frequently mentions historical events such as auschwitz you know the holocaust death camp and california's very own japanese internment camps the one at manzanar is mentioned in fact the book is set near manzanar and it has a suggested reading list at the back that includes books about the crimes against humanity you know that i just mentioned okay and anyway donald trump is a public figure he's a public figure which i think he likes a lot you know i think he gets pleasure from that donald trump even before he became president was a pop culture character aside from
252his own television shows he um was alluded to in several movies his ex his first ex-wife even appeared in very funny one the first wives club in which she made fun of him um he appeared in the simpsons he had appeared in a playboy uh channel program he was on friends he was on saturday night live um and i don't know maybe he was in other things and i and i really am expecting to see him in a zombie movie sometime soon and i just if he didn't want to be a peripheral figure in a novel in a novel aimed at just in a dystopian novel aimed at a young adult audience maybe he should have led his life differently um but i don't think he or anyone close to him is going to read
253this book i mean it's just kind of a hunch and um and it's an okay it's an okay novel it's not flawless while um the events in the book are shocking it is true that this country under fdr who was a democrat locked up americans of japanese ancestry i have a couple of friends whose parents met met at the camp at thule lake and so it has happened here even before the present day immigrant camps an internment is not flawless for one thing um i'm always irritated by books in which the heroine is irresistibly attractive um and it's a first-person text and first-person texts are notoriously different difficult to carry off i mean um holden caulfield did it pretty well and um in uh the catcher in the rye um heart of darkness not bad
254you know i'd say that's great um it's it's uh it's difficult uh the story is of course it's about a teenager so it's going to be very self-rep referential i clenched my fist i narrowed my eyes i held my breath you know i did get a little bit impatient with that stylistically and uh but i finished it and it's a real adventure and i think young people will enjoy it yes it does have negative portrayals of men that's for sure because the men are in charge the men are in charge um i didn't think that it particularly i didn't notice it mocking any religion in fact i did sense a little bit of impatience with this teenager with her parents piety her parents religiosity you know it kind of bugged her because you know she
255was an action-oriented person but yeah it i won't deny it has negative portrayals of men and um i taught 10th grade one year and trust me this is nothing to the 10th grade curriculum we have right now in our schools and i'm going to give you this julius caesar treachery and murder to kill a mockingbird atticus finch can't save tom he can't save mayella either as a matter of fact his snobbery and his adherence to the antiquated class system almost gets his ki his children killed by bob ewell he just can't believe bob would dare to lay hands on his kids he's wrong i know why the caged bird sings rape of a child house on mango street rape of a you know young teen lord lord of the flies oh please i hate that
256book but i think some people think it's i think it's an etiquette book that's the only thing that explains what happened on january 6th i mean seriously i thought i was watching and i went these people all read lord of the flies and didn't get it and okay so this is a this is why i was utterly thrilled in 10th grade to teach 12th night and i'm waiting for someone to complain about that because you know it's got cross-dressing in it you know so um i mean but hey that shakespeare for you um by the way if you want to read books about white people and i believe that social class is a serious issue in this country uh we used to talk about it with great sarath we used to talk about it with
257the great gatsby this is a serious issue and if you want to read books about that i recommend the unwinding by david packer i recommend white trash by nancy eisenberg which is the antidote to hillbilly elegy i recommend something that you can read online for free class matters published by the new york times in 2005. it's a little bit dated but it's taught in the colleges my students read it and they're re their newspaper stories about people in different social classes and how life circumstances treat them differently and the book educated the book educated which is on this list by the way the young woman's father is a terrible person is an awful person but i read the book and a couple of years ago when it came out and i actually found myself pitying
258her extremely unpleasant father looking at him working in the junkyard remember that section he's just i mean he's he's he's suffering is what he he's suffering he's he i i mean it's brilliantly done you know he's just a terrible person and yet you know you do feel sorry for him in his circumstances you know life goes on if this book survives um the author can expect it to be reinterpreted um in various ways the way 1984 was um it'll be an all-purpose lens for any sort of political dysfunction um george orwell wrote 1984 he was committed socialist who in his lifetime saw the rise of totalitarian totalitarianism twice twice um in my lifetime i have seen big brother use as a stand-in i had to make a list here for richard nixon ronald reagan george
259w bush barack obama and yes donald trump dick cheney too but you know he wasn't the president it's the nature of being in the public eye and the fact that literature is born of conflict and that's that's what this is coming from look i i you know um i support these books and i hope we continue to read valuable books like love medicine about native americans beloved about um post-civil war in formerly enslaved people uh farewell to manzanar again about the japanese internment camps knight which is about auschwitz and the diary of anne frank which used to be read in middle school and i don't know if it is anymore but boy there is no better work to teach empathy and students like it all these books have found their way to the napa valley
260unified school district bookcases so i'm going to support support the books i i believe these are i believe that these books are going to be used as supplements to the curriculum it's not like um oh this uh you can read this instead of um you can read this instead of say um the grapes of wrath or you know whatever they're reading it's just a supplement uh but you know the the issues that you brought up david uh i think would be outstanding essay questions um they would be um they would be great debate questions i think so but um if you were going to try to find a book written about a camp a ca a prison camp and not seen negative portrayals of of men it's just um it's kind of impossible um it's
261impossible uh i i i don't uh they they do have one character um in there aside from his you know extremely unlikely attraction to heroin um you know he who is a who is a sympathetic person he's also you know i don't want to spoil it for anybody he you know could be a double agent of some type um but i'm i'm going to support the book because uh it it's not my i don't like it as much as um as other books by the way a lot of these books have been reviewed um the one uh the one it's i don't like it as much as i like the girl with a louding voice which got extremely good reviews by that times literary supplement which is you know pretty high end but um but
262i think it would provoke interesting discussions and um and it's it's set in the present day people seem to like that and um you know give it a few years and um give it a few years and uh people will come up with uh all sorts of other ways to um personify the uh evil evil person in the book so i'm going to back it i'm going to support the book thanks justine water jesse dooley thank you um i haven't read it i i confess um i would say as far as the the application of the board policy um thank you i'll bring it on vacation um the application of the board policy um i think you know to trustee waters point there there there's a difference between commenting on a political candidate's campaign uh
263policies uh proposals for for future action which is what they would be campaigning on and uh commenting on historical actions that that person may have engaged in as a public official um you know our board policy does not prevent a history teacher from teaching about the four years of the trump administration it couldn't it would be uh inappropriate to do if if that were the case those four years happened and the history while the context is still being developed uh the history is there so commenting from a literary perspective on those same four years is not a uh the same as commenting on a proposal uh a speech um or a platform um i i don't see i i think you know as trustee water mentioned i think that the the point of these is
264not to have the reader become a a follower or a believer of everything that's that's uh stated in the book um you know you don't read um a book to convert all of your belief systems into the the the systems expressed by the author it's to provoke thought and provoke discussion and um you know it may have issues as far as you know how well it does so or how deep those discussions can go based on the source material and that's something that i having not read it can't speak to but um you know i think that the point of these books are to uh raise themes that people uh that students can can either relate to because they agree with them or relate to because they disagree with them in some way connect with
265and develop an understanding of how to read write and think and uh i i don't um i don't see i don't see the i i think that this has the capability of being a part of that process so i too will be supporting the adoption uh trustee janowitz lost her notes so she's trying to see if um get some help with recovering that um trustee reiser um with all due respect trustee gracia i i disagree with your characterization of the portrayals of the characters in the book um i did read it and i agree with trustee water that it's not a perfect text um it's a little heavy-handed in in some places and has a little sort of some some cliche expressions but um i didn't find it to negatively stereotype the white race i
266found it to really be a negative portrayal of of nationalism taken to its extreme and in this case that nationalism was carried out by a a white dominant power structure um i i don't think that it was uh a sexist book either i i think that there were yes the the men in power characters in this book were negatively presented but there were male characters in the book that were very positively presented as empathetic and brave and compassionate um i didn't find it to be a characterization that of you know the muslim muslim culture and religion being the only acceptable religion that it happened to be grounded in a a fictional plot in which the mos people were rounded up because of their religion and i in fact i actually found that the portrayal um
267of the muslim communities to to really uh one thing that i found powerful in reading it was that it went out of its way the author went out of her way to communicate to the reader that muslim people are not a monolith that they come from many cultures and many countries and speak many languages and follow many traditions and are of many races so in fact i i think that that was a very powerful portrayal of the muslim faith to educate those readers that might not be as familiar i found that to be very educative and nuanced there was a really powerful moment in which the main character talks about seeing a girl across from her wearing the hijab and saying that is a choice hijab is a choice and and making that clear um
268and to your point about you didn't find it realistic that a 17 year old girl would be able to be reflective about her life and her experiences um i have a 17 year old daughter and i don't think that you're giving young women enough credit there um so you know i i think trustee julia i appreciate you commenting on the the you know the the legal aspect of the board policy regarding um you know campaign information and that making that distinction about it would not be a violation of policy to teach about the last four years because they happened and that's part of our job is to educate children about history and what has happened and to me you know as not a lawyer as a more of a lay person in that regard to
269me the spirit of that board policy is that for example a teacher could not be a real um fan of one candidate and then air campaign ads and distribute campaign literature in their classroom in a one-sided uneven way my understanding the spirit of that board policy is to prevent that from happening that's not this as trustee water said president trump is not named in this book he's named by a reviewer because there are parallels there there are some parallels from the you know the the nationalism that the previous president elevated and the fictionalized uh imagined end result of where that nationalism taken to its extreme could end and that that's not hypothetical that happened in our country it happened we interned our own citizens during world war ii that happened so it's um it's a
270work of fiction and it but it's a work of fiction that is maybe it's heavy-handed but it's not implausible because it happened in our country um i think the fact that we're having a meaningful and and sort of you know spirited discussion about this text indicates to me that it's a good choice because our job is to support our educators our professional educators in facilitating critical thinking and spirited discussion and i found the text to be accessible and the story to be quite gripping and i think for our high school students i think that this would be a vehicle to really draw them in to a political discussion about these issues in in ways that would be meaningful and that will be facilitated by professional educators who are prepared to manage the issues that would
271arise [Music] and i think lastly i'll say that you know our job is to let the professionals do their job and we empowered that our teachers to choose texts and this is one of the texts that they've chosen and um i've trust their judgment and i believe that if it creates uh some controversy within a classroom then good i think that we should be able to facilitate and support our students in engaging in respectful meaningful thoughtful dialogue and express differing opinions and walk out of that classroom still respecting each other in the same way that we will walk out of this boardroom still liking and respecting each other i think that that's an opportunity um and so for all those reasons i will support the adoption of this book as a material for our high
272school students thank you trustee riser christie chu so i have a follow-up on what trustee reiser said and it is that and and i think a few other trustees have said as well i think this is a great opportunity to have open dialogue on a lot of the issues in society that's happening right now so i shared with everyone here that um in my first my first uh board meeting in january that my son had and i just happened to walk past his room my son had a discussion about what the insurrection on january 6 meant to him and he made a comment that you know it was all about you know how how the president wasn't good and this and that and the teacher who was a science teacher said hold on let's take
273a step back because this isn't about one person it's about what some people in society are feeling and so it opened up this next level of conversation for my son who thought he knew everything because he's 12 and in middle school so i i feel like there is an opportunity to open up that type of discussion and like trustee reiser said we need to trust that our teachers are going to be able to approach it from that higher level to be able to discuss this in a variety of ways and you know the diversity of books that we can offer our students provides an avenue to do that and so i kind of feel like that that's what why this is might be a supplemental book for the students um my second point was actually
274trustee gracia was asking about why a 17 year old feels like he she's 30. i'm gonna tell you that as an immigrant i felt older than i was when i i came when i was seven i did not feel like i was seven i felt very misplaced i felt i like i had to grow up much faster than everybody else and i can see that that's probably what happened when you are faced with a society that doesn't treat you the same as them when you are in a different completely different environment than what you're used to you have to feel like you need to grow up faster and i think this is probably where that came from because i felt it and there's actually been a lot of generational studies that actually talks about what
275it is why is it that when you talk about let's say the us and the different generations we got the millennials we got the you know gen x surge and you know all of those but those actually those do not apply to people who have had major stresses in their life whether it be immigrant immigration or they were in an internment camp those none of that applies any more to this group and so i i wanted to share that view with trustee gracia and anyone who might feel like you know why is it that 17 year old feels like she's 30 well that's probably why thank you trusty too there's nothing more than i that i can add and i deleted all my comments um but i do think this is author's discourse i mean
276we can get into all of this discussion about content this is a fictional depiction of somebody's interpretation of what is happening in the world there might be what you deem real life parallels but that if i would like to believe that everybody looks at the written page and those words come to life differently for each reader and we have to trust that they can ask questions seek answers challenge themselves have the discussions that we as a community must embrace i do trust as i'm i'm not an educator that this book would not be presented unless they felt it had value i understand your discomfort but i don't look at it as a reflection on someone specific i look i look at it as a reflection on somebody's interpretation of what was happening in the world
277and you guys have all made the points i don't want to um belabor you know the previous discussion and but i will i will support the book um i i hope that with what we previously passed in our agenda with the dei that our staff and our teachers um have the skills to navigate conversations like this as for some examples because it's um part of everyday topics right and so um that our meeting um you know we could we could be it always happens when i'm speaking that doesn't mean but um we might need you know um trustee water to facilitate the discussion as an english teacher but we're we're not you know but we're bored we're here to do a job and a role and um and i too um finish by saying that
278i'll just i'll um be supporting the approval of of the book just um with just the example of here of having that conversation i just again want to complement it with um skilled knowledgeable staff aware of that type of conversation um and what can come of it um you know the discomfort or the opinions or whatnot but have that that dialogue um i don't feel i am anyone in any position to um deny a book especially if it's been recommended by our staff um that with good reason is brought to us um because again these are conversations that are already happening let's just give some context to it in a fictional way sure but that's got some historical references and it just helps with i you know the dialogue um that it's supplemental material that
279i don't know if they'll discuss it or not or maybe a student wants to write a paper on it or what but um i think it um you know i've had my share of reading books of things that never reflected what i was thinking but i still had to criticize it and be a critical thinker and i think that's what this book is asking our students is to be critical thinkers right as they're um uh reviewing the book so yeah how about it teachers you know have our students be critical thinkers about it and um that's what's what more can we ask as a as a educational system you know you know analyze that okay so we had um oh yeah yeah i can have a moment there um so too trusty dooley's point there's
280definitely a difference between teaching history and a fictionalized account that demonizes a single person so that is a very different situation and is not at all like what we have here with this book as to the political part it is very clear that if you have something that talks in a negative way about a certain candidate that you must give equal time then and talk in a positive way about that candidate and i just don't see that as possible with this material that we have in front of us today on top of that i do find that it is a sexist and racist book and so i continue to believe that on those grounds alone we should not be approving this book but with regard to the political piece this book may not be a
281problem six or eight years from now when this previous president is no longer candidate for public office right under the political piece of the my concerns tonight so it doesn't matter whether or not he cares or we care or anyone else cares that he is portrayed negatively in this book the problem is that that's our rules and we're encouraging our teachers to violate those rules by passing this into the record so i think it's bad governance i recommend that you don't pass it but i think i'll rest my case now i move that we approved the adoption of internment second we have a first and a second do i have public comment on this item mr bassinet there's no public comment for this item okay first and a second you have a question trustee water
282no i'm just thinking i was waiting for some of our viewers to weigh in on it but i guess not it's the witching hour first and second all in favor aye aye opposed nay abstain excellent motion passes thank you we will now go to item [Music] okay for f this is a secondary world language basic instructional materials recommendation adoption so moved first by trustee gracias second by trustee water do i have public comment on this item there is no public comment for this item thank you mr bassinet all those in favor or abstain great thank you j4g career technical education basic instructional materials adoptions for high school so moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooley do i have public comment on this item mr bassinet there's no public comment for this item
283thank you all those in favor aye hi anybody pose or abstain ocean passes thank you j4h delightful inc doing business as kingo transportation services contract so moved second first biotracy grasses second by trustee dooley do i have public comment there's no public comment for this item all those in favor all right oppose or abstain great thank you j4i contract between nusd and eric mcginning for nba culinary instruction yep sorry eric if i messed up that last name so moved second a first by trustee gracie's second by trustee dooley it is past midnight do i have public comment on this item there's no public comment for this item thank you mr bestinette all those in favor aye aye oppose or abstain thank you j4j contract between nbsd and karasula malay for nba cna instruction 2122 so
284moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee water public comment on this item there is no public comment for this item thank you all those in favor abstain mou between the meadows of napa valley and nbusd for nbae so moved second first fight to she got trustee gracia second by trustee dooley public comment on this item there's no public comment for this item all those in favor all right oppose abstain motion passes thank you j4 l benchmark education company elementary supplement to our core ela adoption so moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooley do i have public comment there's no public comment for this item thank you mr bassinet all those in favor all right hi oppose we're abstain thank you agreement between mentis and navaval unified school district so moved
285second first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooley do i have public comment on this item there is no public comment for this item thank you mr bassinet all those in favor aye oppose or abstain j4n agreement between mentis and m value unified school district valley oak high school so moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooley do i have public comment there's no public comment for this item all those in favor oppose abstain motion passes thank you item j5a requests for installation of pelican system hvac controls in four campuses first by trustee grass's second enthusiastic second by christine pancakes do i have public comment on this item there's no public comment for this item thank you all those in favor aye aye oppose or abstain motion passes j5b request for design service
286by qka at the district office so moved second first by trustee grass ii by trustee water public comment on this item there is no public comment for this item i just want to say if we can solve the problem of the cord going out of the closet upstairs and going to the plug outside the closet as part of this that would be great you get that mr pearson loud and clear loud and clear all right he's still there he's still with us now i want a picture of the court i don't know what yeah yes um first and second um no public comment correct mr bassinet that's correct thank you all those in favor aye aye aye oppose abstain motion pass says thank you j5c request for inspector of record services for relocate relocatables at
287vichy elementary school and stone bridge so moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooley do i have public comment there's no public comment for this item all those in favor aye aye abstain motion passes item j5d appointment of members of 7-eleven district advisory committee so moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee water do i have public comment there's no public comment for this item all those in favor aye aye aye opposed repstain motion passes j5e request for installation of flooring at multiple campuses so moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooling do i have public comment there's no public comment for this item all those in favor aye aye aye oppose or abstain motion passes thank you j6 a spc number 19.15-20 request for geotechnical observation and testing services
288at the american canyon middle school new student commons project so moved second first by trustee gracie's second by trustee water public comment on this item there's no public comment for this item thank you mr bassinet all those in favor pose or abstain thank you j6b sp num spc number 18.2 44-20 request for inspector of record services at donaldson way elementary school campus modernization project so moved i'll second first by trustee gracias second by trustee chu public comment on this item there's no public comment for this item thank you mr bassinet all those in favor aye or abstain j6c spc number 7.5-21 request to surplus one relocatable restroom at vichy elementary school so moved second first by trusty gracias seconded by trustee dooley do i have public comment there is no public comment for this item
289all those in favor aye aye aye item j60 sp number spc number 18.45-20 request for commissioning services at the campus organization projects so moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooley do i have public comment there's no public comment for this item all those in favor aye aye aye oppose abstain thank you okay item k this is informational uh from business services enrollment report great item k1b plan for safe return to in-person instruction and continuity of services okay and now on to instructional services k2a lcap local performance indicator all good okay now additional suggestions and comments from board members and superintendent one comment um kennedy irvin of new tech high school was in the paper last week with her poem that had won a prize you know her poem you know she's uh
290very environmentally inclined and that was the subject of her poem and she's a wonderful student very talented person that's it thank you for yeah great comment thank you miss mutter uh future agenda items i have one um i know that we're bringing forward next year the three reports on our star assessment updates and i certainly appreciate that but in addition to the board analysis provided during those updates i would like a separate analysis to see if there is any growth in our early star literacy and key phonics assessments i would like this analysis to have an eye toward ascertaining if the items that we pass tonight to improve early phonetic literacy are effective or if they are not moving the needle in instruction i would like to see how this is working for our k-12
291k2 students generally and more specifically how it is working for our students getting targeted intervention thank you trustee degrassi i've noticed i've noted the request and i will work with mr manguala and dr abu okay we're not on the last item move to adjourn second i was gonna third it if someone's else seconded it first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooley all those in favor thank you everybody and have a great night