VUSD Board Meeting 2/11/2021

001okay can we on you are sir okay so i want to welcome everybody to the uh vacaville unified school board meeting february 11th and uh i'd like to take a moment of reflection first and i just want to say there's been just a lot of intensity going on we have an impeachment trial we have kids that should be at school parents who can't be at work and we have a pandemic the worst in 100 years so let's just take a moment and ground and kind of come back okay um daniel would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance huh said sure okay he's going to put up the flag there he is there we go i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic am i doing

002that all right i haven't done this in a while we're all doing it for which it stands one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice for all sorry daniel it's unusual we're usually all doing it together at the big meeting so sorry about that okay um jane uh are there any additions or changes to the agenda sir there are not okay thank you so can we get a motion to approve the agenda i'll move forward daniel second cecil okay we have a roll call vote and everything's a roll call vote because we're on zoom that's the rules okay um uh mr connor your vote please yes mrs dally yes mr jansen yes mr santian yes mr serrano yes miss walsh yes and mr kitsis yes thank you okay next we have a report

003from closed session during closed session the board discussed site facility safety personnel issues and bargaining unit negotiations the following actions were taken during the closed session first one was approved we approved the vusd site safety plans for 2020-21 is presented by unanimous roll call vote of 7-0 and second we approved the appointment of ali eads as director of secondary education by unanimous roll call vote of 7-0 okay next we have comments from the floor and i just want to on items not on the agenda and i'd like to just explain something first normally we only have 21 minutes per topic and in this case uh there are a lot of people that would like to speak on the school reopening so rather than close people down and not allow them to speak because such a

004very important topic we're going to do is go to two minutes per person but allow the people that want to speak to speak so just know that you have two minutes and know that if somebody's already said the same thing you can kind of skip over it and just say what you need to say finally if there's anybody that has not signed up to speak for this topic for it for not on the agenda please raise your hand now through the raise hand feature and we will take your name down teresa are you taking care of that yes i i've got a list already going so are you ready to start right now i'm ready and i just want to say that the way we're doing it on zoom is that if you haven't raised

005your hand by now we're not going to be able to speak so i'm just going to give one more minute if you want to speak raise your hand now otherwise we're cutting off the speaking after that or the ability to speak after that um okay then our first speaker is christina holden christine are you there i don't see that name in the list of attendees hold okay i have a delaney holden oh here's christina was okay got it sorry founder there we go i couldn't unmute for some reason good evening i'm the parent of a fourth grader at sierra vista and a junior at vaca high i speak to you tonight to urge you to do the right thing for our children remember why you chose to run for school board in the first place

006i would hope it was to be in the position to help children access a sound education however over the past several months it is absolutely felt that the board is in a place to continue to push the bta's agenda of keeping schools closed months ago your constituents were surveyed and the vast majority of us spoke saying we want schools to reopen and this was even before all of the science and the cdc came came out saying school should be open the board chose to ignore the survey results and side with the vta teachers are essential yard duties and other support staff are in person providing assistance to some children yet teachers are not required to even show up to their classrooms daily the union has said numerous times and even has photos of signs on

007their websites saying vacaville students deserve the best teachers and staff is this only true for them when their wages and benefits are in jeopardy the union expects parents to show up for them during those negotiations where are they when we need them to show up for our children the teachers union is the only essential profession refusing to return to work teachers shape our children who are our future and because of the selfishness and greed our entire entire future is at risk this has now become a mental health crisis my autistic child has regressed so much that he has begun to self-harm he is only 10 years old is he and all of the children of vacaville more less important to you than a union that you rely on for endorsements and contributions parents are not

008asking for anything unreasonable we're asking for something our children are entitled to an education i plead with you to stand for them we parents will not stop science does not support what you are doing cdc and dr fauci do not support what you're doing and obviously the majority of parents do not support your time has expired christina thank you so much for being here and of course the kids stand up for the kids and not bts it's time thank you okay who's next okay our next uh speaker is marlena edmunds okay can you hear me hi marlena okay uh good evening i asked many kids in our school district how distance learning has affected their lives here are their answers i want to do school all day at school and see my teacher age five

009it is hard to focus i try to concentrate on my teacher but it is hard it makes me mad age eight it has made my life horrible it sucks to be in school because i can't get anything right no matter how hard i try age 14 not being able to be around friends teammates and teachers has taken a toll on me age 14. my mental health motivation and physical health are suffering you adults are failing us remember we are essential age 16. my eyes hurt from watching a computer screen all day age nine being on a computer drains me i often feel down and worry about my future age 15. i feel depressed not being at school with friends all day age 15. i have struggled more than i ever have age 15. distance learning

010has made students like myself not want to reach not not want to reach out for help we rather get a bad score on a test age 16. i used to be so happy every second of my day but that is now gone age 17. my mind is slow and tired some days looking at it the computer screen makes me feel sick so i shut it off i stress constantly about competing with other students that are in person to get into my dream college age 17 it is much easier to not pay attention and get lost in the subject age 12 and lastly online school has taken a serious toll on my mental health i have not i have been going through depressive episodes frequently age 15. recently a teacher from palmdale california said i want

011my kids to be back in but i don't want them to be a heartbreaking statistic i'm here to tell you tonight that our kids are already a heartbreaking statistic on behalf of these children i'm asking you to do what is right stand up for them and open our schools thank you marlena okay uh our next speaker is jennifer longoria hi can you hear me hi my name is jen longoria and i've worked for a local healthcare system for more than 20 years and both my daughters have been students at busd since kindergarten i'm here tonight to advocate for our kids and their right to an equal education this is not happening in our community as you know there are private and charter schools that are open here in solano as well as neighboring communities and

012across the u.s successfully following the safety protocols put in place if you consider distance learning equivalent in person you are mistaken a year of distance learning has brought many struggles to our children i understand that last march through june the virus was new the fear was high and everyone was doing the best they could now that we understand the science and have safety protocols to follow we including vusd you the board and the teachers union are responsible to do the right thing and get these kids back in school where they can thrive my daughters are struggling academically socially and emotionally sitting in front of a screen all day through the motion and going through the motion is not an education i demand more for my kids i'm not debating the validity of the copied it's

013a terrible virus the science shows that kids are not super spreaders and should return in person because the mental and emotional damage is overwhelming one of my daughters has had a tough year dealing with severe anxiety and depression my daughter is not alone these issues are now becoming the norm and it's unacceptable citing an article written and published by ucsf will kids be safe when they return to school well everyone else the science says yes but proper planning and protocols are key how has the usd used the copa dollars to reopen our school safely the money received was not an incentive to remain closed every teacher student is vaccinated or unrealistic demands like a new ventilation system is installed it was to follow the cdc recommendations and here we are a year into this knowing

014you have the power to open the schools in the fall and din is infuriating we think of children as germ spreaders and they typically are when a kid comes home with a runny nose cough the family usually gets sick but with cova the science shows that kids aren't as imp as infectious as adults are one reason is that the virus causes covet enters the body via structures on our cell receptors which children produce fewer than adults do jennifer that's your time jennifer thank you do the right thing thank you and i just want to tell everybody i don't want to be a heavy but when the two minutes are over i need to say it's time because we have a lot of people to talk so thank you okay um our next speaker is angela

015higdon good evening as the parent of two vacaville students a class of 2020 graduate and a member of the class of 2021 i'm here to speak to you and to address the vta about opening our schools as an educator and someone with underlying health conditions i was all for the move to distance learning last spring and even in the early fall i feel it's only fair to acknowledge the effort so many of the districts educators have put into distance learning my kids teachers last year and this year have done an amazing job and i thank them for that however after hearing more from the cdc and local physicians and watching schools in our region reopen and successfully navigate through the spikes we saw i implore you to open as soon as possible districts in napa

016county opened on october 26th and will be moving to phase three of their plan on march first marine county schools open september 8th and here in vacaville private and public charters opened and all have done so while maintaining the safety and of our staff and students i encourage you to look at napa valley unified's website as they report covet cases on a weekly basis since reopening nvusd reports 117 of 1700 or 6.9 of staff members have tested positive and out of almost 17 000 students 467 students or 2.75 percent have tested positive what really stands out to me is napa's numbers is that 283 of these students were virtual learners while only 183 were in person on the other hand chief john carly spoke to a group regarding the alarming trend in crime statistics here

017in vacaville child abuse up 300 percent juveniles disturbing the peace of 219 and suicide attempts up 1366 this is alarming i believe covet is real and one positive case to is too many but alarming statistics scream to me that not allowing our students to return to the classroom is potentially subjecting them to things far more dangerous than this virus covid is not going to disappear anytime soon and we have to learn to manage life with it i understand your hands are tied as long as we're in the purple tear but please do the right thing come back and renegotiate for our kids and let's get these kids back to school thank you okay uh the next person is theresa neff hi can you hear me we can thank you hi my name is theresa neff

018our children need to be back to in-person learning as soon as we meet the government criteria for reopening our children deserve better than to be subject to having their right to education stamped out due to fear and politics i understand that for the last year schools and teachers operated in triage mode and did the best they could with what we are dealing with a year later we know more about how to prevent covid and how covet spreads and how we can safely operate in schools in person than we did before we can't continue to make decisions around our children's education and emotional health based in fear and not science charter schools and private schools in our community and public schools in our neighboring northern california communities are open and functioning schools that have been operating

019are sharing best practices with the vacable unified school district with that being said the school board parents community and teachers need to work together to start implementing a return to school plan immediately the cdc has laid out clear guidelines to be able to make this happen our district has spent money getting every vacaville school coveted ready and we are compliant with the cdc and health department recommendations last fall it was agreed upon with the vta that even after meeting public guidelines set forth by our governor our children would not be able to return to in-person learning this is not acceptable we are asking and we are demanding that changes be made immediately so we can start phasing in in-person learning we are asking that the mou be amended as quickly as possible to allow for

020this nothing will be perfect if we wait until the world is perfectly dealing with cove and then children will not be back in the 2021 school year in person we cannot continue to have our children's education and well-being controlled by unions that are demanding things not recommended by the state or cdc in regards to reopening our schools we are parents and we will not relent thank you very much okay uh next is elizabeth grindell not sure i said that right sorry can you hear me okay we can thank you okay thank you so much and theresa you did say that right thank you a spokesperson for the walnut creek hospital said that doctors typically see 20 to 25 25 suicide attempts a year and six deaths from suicide annually so far in january there have

021been 21 suicides and five deaths they're seeing in one month what they typically see in one year according to the same report the doctors at john muir have seen more deaths by suicide during this quarantine period than deaths from covet 19. suicide is the third leading cause of death every year for those between 15 and 34. you guys were at the school on wednesday when our students were in the parking lot for their zoom classes you saw how much pep that put in their step and that was only getting them into the school parking lot can you even imagine how energized they would feel getting back into their classrooms we could have opened for in-person school in october but you failed us on our kids now that we are approaching moving back to the red

022tier we are begging you do not fail us again and delay getting our kids back into the classroom many schools have paved the way showing that we can safely return to school schools within our city county state and across the nation have proved this the cdc has stated that schools can safely reopen without vaccinating teachers everyone felt comfortable using the cdc as a safe source to cite before so why are we ignoring their statements now today we should be having a different conversation we should be opening schools and talking about that but instead we're still here begging you to open begging you to listen to our voices and those of our kids and that of science myself and many other parents welcome future conversations in person socially distanced and maxed up to speak with you

023further about this to see how we can help we want to be an asset we want to help you guys please utilize us thank you so much for your time thank you elizabeth okay our next speaker is tyler nicoletti i don't find that name in the attendee list um okay let me let's uh one second you spell the last name for me please n-i-c-k-o-l-e-t-t-e i have a karen nick no i don't have that sorry that's um okay let's go on to the another person i'll look up the email and see where um if there's another name uh the next speaker then will be kyle fine unfortunately that user has a version of zoom that will not allow me to turn on their microphone um sorry is randy fine on there i believe that's the parent

024perhaps he can yes can maybe you promote her and ask her okay yes hello yes all right hi my name is kyle fina i'm a ninth grader at vacaville high school when i was a little my neighbors nicknamed me the ambassador because i was my own one kid welcome to welcoming committee my mom jokes that i live i've never met a stranger and that all the employees at costco would say hi kyle whenever we would go shopping i'm a people person like making people smile maybe it's just like the youngest of three feeding brothers and always get being around people or needing to have a personality that wouldn't get lost in the shuffle i don't know but i i don't know why but i love seeing people and being a part of something that i

025love i love the energy and the vibe of hanging helping people and talking to friends and teachers i miss school because there's a place i could see people in interaction i miss feeling of being a part of something i'm just feeling like saying what's up in the halls or during passing period having having a teacher look across the room and call me or come over to check my work okay or being able to read out in the fraud [Music] yeah it's teresa neff's microphone going hello hold on one second okay can you meet that ken [Music] it um where was i able to read out in the quad because it it's a nice day and my teachers trust me enough to let me do my work outside there's so much more learning in school than

026what's taught from the textbooks all these and so many daily moments in school made it me feel like i mattered these moments motivated me to try hard so they would be proud of me this year as a freshman if i get high i've never i have very few moments that i've made feel like i matter mr badassie leaving a post-it note on my door over winter break and yesterday him and miss elliot coming out to the parking lot to meet me in person and help me with my math years from now i probably won't remember the math problem is you help me or but help me on but i will remember being out in the parking lot logged into class and struggling to understand my math and that i'm not enough to her to come

027out and help me to teach yesterday was the best day of my life you're gonna have to wrap it up and soon because you're you're expired just you know i know you got interrupted so once you take about 15 more seconds and finish it up i just want to ask you guys to please open up k through 12. let us learn show us how much we matter thank you very much okay um mr johnson the tyler person his last name is collins tyler collins is next i'm sorry but that's another version of a zoom that's out of date and i can't promote them i'm i can't when you try christina collins that's the parent i believe yes i have that okay christina collins is now outrageous [Music] all right my name is tyler collins and

028i'm a freshman at vaca high yesterday i sat in front of the high school several students to show that we want to be in school to learn academics are important to us and we are not learning well with distance learning i typically can finish a day's work of assignments in 10 minutes and then i have to sit on zoom waiting for the class to end if this is supposed to be two days of work clearly i should be learning more i need to be in school to learn and be challenged to be prepared for college i respect my teachers for the effort they put in trying to teach us we are not learning as much as we would if we would in school i'm the oldest of four children and my parents both have to

029work and i frequently have to go downstairs to help my younger siblings with their schoolwork my little sisters often break down in tears they are frustrated and stressed out and need to be in a classroom i'm aware and grateful that i have a lot of support at home and i'm able to help my siblings but there are students out there that don't have as much support so if i'm struggling think of everyone else who's struggling even more my friends and i were excited when we were told that we would be able to go back to school in the fall but that date keeps being pushed back and at this point we have nothing to look forward to if our county's numbers don't allow us to return to school can the school board please consider filing

030for a waiver so we can go back other schools in our town have been in session full-time and if they can do it safely why aren't we even given the same chance to attend even part-time i spent the last year waiting for something to happen so i can go back to school and nothing has changed now i'm stepping forward and asking for something to change thank you thank you tyler okay next we have alyssa mandel i do not see that name in the list there is an alyssa ken what the hand raise oh with with no last name but i don't know if that's her i'm hoping yes okay i'll turn it on can you guys hear me you can alyssa hello my name's alyssa mandel and i'm currently a ninth grader at vaca high

031i'm here today to share some reasons why we need to be back in the classroom i like to begin by addressing the way our schedules are formatted it is making it hard to retain the information in august we went periods one three and five for six weeks then we switched to periods two four and six for another six weeks without daily repetition of all subjects we struggle to maintain what we have learned some students are taking languages and not having daily repetition of that class for the whole school year makes it very difficult to learn also without adequate supervision it makes it very easy for kids to not pay attention in class and we are easily distracted if we were in the classroom we would be held accountable for our actions social interaction is essential

032for child development it is not healthy for us to be locked up in our rooms looking at a computer screen for hours on end we are concerned about what our future looks like nobody knows what the ultimate outcome will be from all of this i get that we are in a pandemic but that does not mean we can't be in school while following the needed precautions based on our age we know how to follow the cdc guidelines we can do whatever is being asked of us for example wearing masks and being six feet apart if someone is not comfortable with going back to school due to our world's conditions they can continue virtual learning private schools are open safely giving kids a quality education so why can't we thank you for my our time thank

033you very much alyssa okay our next speaker is emily haskell good evening board president kitsits fellow board members and dr shamia my name is emily haskell i'm the parent of four vacaville students a first grader fourth grader in eighth grade eighth grader and eleventh grader i'm here tonight with all my fellow parents asking you to please reopen schools for in-person learning we talk about safety and opening schools we need to we need to have things in place and to be safe i was an educator for 12 years before i took away to adopt my four foster kids which happened a year ago i was an assistant principal at a neighboring school on fridays the walking never stopped because kids who were living in in um dangerous environments and their homes weren't safe acted up their

034anxiety affected them and their bodies flooded with toxic stress and they couldn't handle it and so they behaved because they were going to be out of their safe place for two days two days and they reacted so aggressively forget christmas break the week before christmas break i walked thirty thousand like thirty thousand steps every day before when they would leave for summer those kids would break every relationship because they were so sad because they were going to be out of their safe place so as we talked about safety for adults please please consider that so many of our kids in vacaville have not been safe for the past year they've been in dangerous situations and they've been away from the people that care about them the most i hope that what happened in the fall

035with this delay of not negotiating until we're in the red tier and then a long negotiation and then an assignment you and then we start school even later it it seemed very apparent from the outside that no one on the board or the union actually wanted to reopen schools so i hope that we are at that place now that when we're ready to be to reopen we are ready to go that things are negotiated and signed and that is not delayed even longer thank you so much for your time thank you mr sasco okay our next speaker is ariana haskell i don't see that name teresa um i believe emily haskell is the parent maybe we could try her okay sure let's go back i'm sorry she's not available tonight okay thank you okay then

036our next speaker will be nadia barlow i have a jacob barlow let's try that one all right hi hello good evening my name is nadia barrow and i attend willis jefferson middle school i'm in the 8th grade i'm here on behalf of the students of the vusc i would like to say that this year has been rough and keeping people home hasn't improved anything but the spread of cover 19 and not my peers mental health being well-being it has been difficult to focus and always made me feel overwhelmed and tired from staring at a screen all day i believe that would be best and the best decision to let's go back to attending in person school thank you for your time thank you very much appreciate that uh the next speaker is jason fortunati can

037you hear me okay okay jason thank you all right thank you board members i'd like to start by expressing my sincere appreciation and admiration for our teachers my family and i are deeply indebted to the leadership and wisdom you impart on our children i've lived in this community for nearly 30 years and have had children in the school district for nearly a decade i've gotten to know many many local teachers past and present and consider several to be my friends all of whom are ready willing and able to get back into the classroom immediately however fear of isolation and retribution prevent many of them from expressing this desire just yesterday i watched the novato school board meeting which took place on february 8th in marin county what i learned is that in marin county seventeen

038thousand students grades k through eight have been attending in classroom school two to five days a week since september according to marine county public health and the office of education as of february 5th after five months of in-classroom instruction there have been only ten cases of suspected in-school transmission of these ten cases five were student student three were adult to adult and two were adult of student transmission similarly in north carolina a sample of 90 000 students attending in-classroom instruction over a nine-week period resulted in just 32 infections none of which were student-to-teacher transmission our children are not a threat marin county has led the way at least locally anyhow marine county has led the way in showing that schools can reopen safely so my question to you is why is vacaville unified seemingly so

039far behind the director of the cdc announced recently that schools could safely reopen if the proper precautions were taken additionally a journal was published stating that there's evident there's no evidence that schools have contributed to an increased community transmission evidence is however mounting daily of the social emotional and academic toll distance learning is taking on our kids we've all made sacrifices most of all our kids the time is now it's time to get our kids back in the classroom thank you thank you okay our next speaker is valerie brown hello my name is valerie brown and i have four children in our wonderful school district i am here today because i am concerned about their emotional well-being as well as the quality of education the cdc has said and i quote beyond getting sick many

040adolescents social emotional and mental well-being has been impacted by the pandemic trauma faced and at this developmental stage may have long-term consequences across their lifespan some adolescents may have been increasingly exposed to abuse and neglect violence and home and sexual violence their increase online activity also puts them at increased risk for online harm such as online sexual exploitation cyber bullying online risk taking behavior and exposure to potentially harmful content close quote suicide is the second leading cause of death for children ages and 19 and during the pandemic it seems to be getting worse i will skip all the statistics about that since they have been brought up already during this meeting cdc director rochelle valensky said during a briefing last week that and i quote there is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely

041reopen and the vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safe reopening of schools again that was the cdc director at the same time the white house press secretary announced today that tomorrow morning the cdc will be coming out with new guidelines for the safely reopening schools i am just hoping that our district is ready for when this announcement comes and that we don't have to wait another week for the classroom to be prepared or three more weeks after we get back into our red tier actually why don't we have the teachers already teaching from school it will probably facilitate an expedited transition to in-person teaching i understand the fear of guiding guiding some of the teachers and board members what i don't understand is how so many places so many schools around here lincoln

042el dorado and even schools here in the area are already open i just asked the board that to please feel the children like they matter and to please make a difference for them thank you miss brown okay our next speaker is haley edmunds i have a marlena and a danielle admins try marlena please oh right that's the parent can you guys hear me yes we can all right so my name's haley edmonds and i'm a junior at vacaville high school and i'm 16 and i have a lot of built up emotions and feelings about reopening schools for the past year and i would like to say that not a day has gone by where i don't miss waking up at 8 a.m i know it's silly waking up early but i miss driving to school

043seeing my friends and walking to class going to cheer practice putting on my uniform and going to football games i remember walking in and now afterwards and seeing a c back of high lerman jackets and now looking back on it it seems like such a dis memory um the past year school not being open has affected me in so many ways saying that has made students sad bored unproductive and unmotivated would be an understatement i don't think there truly is a way to describe to you how frustrating this past year of not being a school for students has been i think i speak for most students when i say that i haven't truly felt like i've learned anything in a year distance learning is not the same when you're in class it's so much easier

044to raise your hand and ask for help than being on zoom and unmuting yourself i feel as though i'm being deprived of my teenage years and a true education and i would just like to ask you guys to consider reopening schools again thank you okay okay our next speaker is christina meek hello i'd like to encourage the board and the vta to quickly negotiate to get our kids back in school solano county has reached the number of cases necessary to allow our k-6 kids on campus they should be on campus tomorrow i'd like to see the school board put a deadline on teachers union and the negotiations that need to take place to revise the current mou in effect you and the vta are wasting time yet again also i'd like to strongly encourage you

045to begin talking about the 7th through 12th grade kids now that way when we're in the red tier which we are fast approaching can get they can get back to school immediately in addition i'd also like to ask you to please consider more than 25 percent for those kids that is not enough our kids have missed out on so much and i urge you to at least consider at 50 or more if a deal is not met and a date is not set for our kids to return to campus the parents and kids together will be organizing district-wide protests such as no zoom wednesdays again or sit-ins at their appropriate schools by month's end thank you for your time tonight thank you miss meek okay next speaker is julie ross hi can you hear me

046yes we can thank you thank you for the past 11 months essential workers have continued to go to their jobs many parents like my husband an engineer for procter gamble and me a registered nurse leave our house and go to work we don't work alone or in a bubble suit or anything like that but we wear masks and that has protected us we were fortunate to get a spot at bethany lutheran for our eight-year-old child five days a week she goes 8 am to 2 30 there have been no viral outbreaks before this she struggled significantly with online school and our older high school age daughter had to quote unquote watch her sister during the day while trying to do her own online classes you can imagine how well that worked this is the terrible

047situation that so many families find themselves in sometimes it is not a safe situation most people cannot find or afford an alternative regarding the union's demands zero risk seems to be the criteria this has been the problem all along instead of managing reducing mitigating risk the all-powerful union and even some board members are clinging to the belief that somehow they should be guaranteed a world of zero risk that is a fantasy every institutional decision-making process is about trade-offs and weighing the pros and cons here we have a risk to school staff on one side weight against damage to students lives education and the mental health and well-being of families and the institution has come to 100 percent on the side of eliminating risk to staff there's no balance no weight is given to the other

048side our precious children the staff are all that seem to matter teachers want zero risk and 100 salary meanwhile the children are suffering school employees do not get to decide that their health concerns are more important than the welfare of our students thank you thank you ms ross okay uh next uh speaker is micah navarro hello can you guys hear me we can alright great hello my name is mike navarro i'm a ninth grade student at beckfield high school and i was at the peaceful protest yesterday it felt great to be on campus and see all my friends again it was the first time since last march that school felt somewhat normal and that's what we all need sun normality we're all so happy to be out there and it was a great day one

049of the coolest parts for me about yesterday was that i got to meet my math teacher miss elliott who's awesome i love all my all my teachers and we get so used to seeing and hearing them on screen that we don't even know who they really are or what they're actually like i really do hope to meet all my teachers in class before the school year ends and to be honest with you the school year has been pretty useless i know a lot of kids who have not learned pretty much anything i hope that we have proven you that we can wear masks be responsible and do our work at school no matter what our grades say this has not been a successful school year at all it's been 11 months so please start prioritizing

050us thank you thank you okay uh next speaker i have uh gregory louie could you spell that last name for me i don't see that l-o-u-i-e he had he had his hand up initially but now i'm not seeing it so maybe he's uh i i don't have him i don't see him okay uh then the next person would be kristin navarro hey there you guys here yeah we can hear you all right good evening everybody um at this time i just want to point out that i think i would bet most kids in the district would be okay having substitute teachers the rest of the year if it meant being back on campus and to the teachers who still think the vta is looking out for you the opposite is actually happening by not returning

051to the classroom you are making yourselves replaceable biden fountain newsome want the kids back in school and never at any point in time did they say part-time they want the kids back we want the kids back the students want to be back and most importantly they deserve to be back in an environment they thrive in and it is possible right now we have local schools that are proving it is possible that is all i have to say thank you thank you mr navarro okay next uh speaker is tracy stacy good evening board good evening jane um i want to just bring a different perspective tonight and i've stayed away a bit but today is a really cool day because as of today as you've heard we have met the threshold governor newsome threshold for for

052k-6 to return to in-person learning and in speaking to dr matthias uh he did confirm that the newsome's order does not actually limit us to part-time but i want to say to the community and to this board that the administration worked incredibly hard to solve incredibly difficult problems and the mou that was in place the safety plan that was in place that that's just been tweaked for now that work deserves to be honored and that mou needs to be implemented and i think it's important for the community to understand that we don't know when red is even feasible people keep talking about red and i don't want this board to use that as a marker because we are a hundred cases today was day five of 100 new cases a day which makes us eligible

053to move forward we can't move forward in red as a county until we have met 30 or less new cases per day we have no idea when that will happen and the current mou on file states that we can't put new students on campus until we're in the red tier so i believe it is you are beholden to immediately even if you're negotiating anything and everything else that you find it a way to negotiate that cog because that is the only thing standing in the way of getting k-6 back on campus at 50 and i think it's important that people understand that you as a board have the opportunity legal authority to impose on the union based on contract and things when you need to tell people transparently when you can and can't but there

054are circumstances when you can impose because you've done the work to meet the safety requirements there's a contract on file there's an mou on file and so you do have the responsibility as a board to not let the union hold you hostage because you're the seven individuals that are representing twelve thousand students and their parents and we missed the boat we should have imposed in january because we would have met beat the surge and had to be on campus right now and i do need the community to understand that the district's hands have been tied because we weren't on campus and so we weren't classified as open so they couldn't have had kids on to this point but moving forward you can and i think that the most important you know more importantly too is

055that i've had dozens of teachers reach out to me they're scared to tell you how they feel because of retribution from the union because they're ready to go and i would be curious to see what the survey that the university to the teachers what that looks like i hope that you put pressure or we can put pressure on the uni as a community to be transparent about the results of that survey what your time or if your time has expired i didn't even i just finished my thoughts since i didn't couldn't see the time yes finish your thought i would just i hope that all of you are on the calls i know um mr kittis is on the calls but the facts matter um and it's time so please be transparent with what your

056legal capabilities are because we can make this happen thank you tracy okay our next speaker is stacy gob good evening uh thank you guys for uh having me speak tonight originally my uh my speech that i wrote out was completely different um but after hearing um several callers um i am very emotional i don't even know if i'm going to be able to get through this without crying um i want to share with you my mother worked for the school district for 15 years and i saw it all what teachers go through as well as staff and her biggest issue ever the whole 15 years working for the school district was the children who were happy every day to be at school to see her to see my mom just a regular person working in

057the school because some actually told her she was like a mom to them she made them feel safe she was there when they cried she was there when my when their mom and dad couldn't be or their family she was there when she they several i'm choked up several times had to call cps because of mental and physical abuse at home my mother would see bruises fat lips broken bones she would hear of kids being torn out of homes i'm going to speak about my personal kids i have a fourth grader and i have a freshman at vaca high i want to talk mostly about my fourth grader my fourth grader is very happy kid play sports that's all been taken from him school's been taken from him he is petrified of this pandemic he

058has not left the house since cove had started to go to a store because he cries he thinks everyone walking around in mass looks like zombies and our world is going to end he is uh now completely failing he was offered a hub position at cooper school and because they require a mask with six students he cried his brains out i watched my kids sob for the about a millionth time this year stop i'm sorry stacy you're gonna have to finish up your time is expired so take another you know few seconds and and and finish please thank you i just want to say that to me it's not even about education anymore that's they're not the one to know my kids aren't learning it's about their mental health and when i see other kids

059in our town in school because they are able to afford it but yet we can't put our kids in private school because we can't afford it we're not going to have any kids left you guys their mental health is gone thank you stacy okay our next speaker is amy polling [Music] could you spell that for me theresa it's p-o-l-i-n-g she had her hand raised but now i don't see her so i'll keep an eye out if she puts her hand back up it looks like she's gone um let's try sarah neller i think she's also not on she is here she is okay uh she hasn't unmuted yet there it is okay i see her hi it's me um i think everything i've wanted to say as ben said i just want to reiterate how

060important it is for our kiddos to get back to school mental health is really been affected in my family as well working full-time um i appreciate what you guys are trying to do for us today and i really just hope that we're able to get back to school not in august but in the weeks to come so i appreciate you guys today thanks so much thank you sarah you're welcome okay our next uh speaker is danielle shay [Music] do you ever on your list ken i don't see her hand up anymore it was up earlier i've got her she's up okay danielle are you there please unmute she's not unmuting mr kittses okay um maybe we'll come back to her at the end okay uh let's go to nicole neff hi everyone my daughter is

061in seventh grade at jepson middle school she has special needs and because of the pandemic she has not been able to receive her therapy services as well as her in-person learning in her iep it states that she's had she's supposed to have a non-public agency one-to-one in person all throughout the school day and now that we're at home she cannot um learn via this modality she has broken my laptop not once but twice costing over 500 the chromebook that was given to us um is not staying connected to the internet with her disability she has moderate to severe autism as well as intellectual disability and she cannot uh attend um this way her iep has been violated she's not receiving her uh her education and we're at the point now where we have to do

062what we need to do to to help her my husband also wants to say a word since he's right here because he's talking over me come here she and all the rest of the special needs children especially need to have more than two hours a day two days a week that's what we're getting it's certainly not enough uh we need to have our kids resume especially with her class size it's a class size of eight there is no reason why that they cannot resume in person to receive their therapies and their teachers instruction uh she cannot learn over the over the computer as well as many other students so i speak on their behalf my daughter does not have a voice she has limited communication so we are here to speak out for all of

063the special needs children so please get them back to school not in august but by march 1st i mean that should happen you guys had a whole year to figure it out yeah vaccines are happening now the numbers are coming down obviously since we had the holiday spikes um private schools are working with the proper ppe in social distancing it can be done in public schools if it's done in private it can be done it's yes it's going to take some effort on everybody's parts families and the school districts and the teachers everybody's gonna have to to participate so let's just get this done it's gonna be a group effort time's up neff family thank you very much thank you okay our next speaker is majella cullinan hello i'm angela hi so some of you

064already know that i too i'm a parent of special needs my daughter is much sphere autistic with complex medical needs and learning disabilities and part of being on an iep they are intensely tested every three years and for a triannual psych educational ot speech it's hours of testing so my daughter just had hers and she has regressed two years in comprehension two years in less than a year one year in instructional and this is data that was taken from your your district your people your experts this is heartbreaking i put her into a private reading program because for nine years my child read at the second grade level i put her into a private reading program because i knew she was dyslexic and i finally found the program and we got her up to eighth

065grade level with 90 comprehension she is now at sixth grade this is really sad this is not just my kid and my kid has not been able to access the zoo so i'm assuming you're not getting paid for her because she's not in school every day she's just getting her services over the zoo and not even all her services and most of the services aren't even reaching out to me for our special needs children i mean for all the children it's heartbreaking to hear those kids tonight i mean they were so brave thank you kids if you're listening it's heartbreaking to watch our kids regress i don't know if we can ever get them back for parents with special needs when our kids achieve something it takes a long time and and it's amazing for

066us as something as simple as as tiny shoelace but when they lose theirs it takes an awful long time to get it back again and our kids on special needs of the parents that i know that are mod to severe and whatever none of the kids can access none of them are learning now mine's a high school level and we're going to hope eventually we're going to put them in like that they have some kind of independence it's not happening it's not going to happen your time's expired thank you so much for sharing okay okay ken this person had their hand up earlier but i don't see her now diane chalk i don't either okay uh then uh the next person will be natalia serado natalia there good evening school board do the right thing

067please continue to keep our schools closed if school opens at this time more students and more teachers will die this is a life or death matter currently only individuals 65 and older and health care workers are being vaccinated herd immunity takes time getting back in campus in the name of getting back into normalcy is not responsible rationable excuse me rational or reasonable at this time i'm a lifelong student and learner my family's health and survival depend on access to health care and education our health is in jeopardy if our schools reopen my babies brothers lives are not worth playing with my niece deserves to enjoy middle school to the fullest extent but we are in a global pandemic in order for her and all vacaville unified school district students to get to and through high

068school alive and well let's keep the schools close please thank you thank you mr otto okay uh mr kitsis that's all we have with the exception of the folks that had their hands up so one last call for either amy poling daniel shea and diane choc i don't see them okay so uh what's that that should be everybody then okay i'd like to really thank everyone that's taking the time to speak to us today we listen and we're listening um theresa and ken thank you very much for skillfully moving us through uh all those people on zoom and what i want to do is take a five minute break before we resume the meeting so it is now 7 34 let's start at 7 40. okay thank you huh [Music] okay hey teresa theresa do

069you know what that beeping sound is that we're kind of hearing is that it's it i think it's one of the board members there's something beeping in the background i've heard it before okay i'll ask michael periodically i hear it yes i just said somebody said your mic's on i said i know um okay we are back note to self five minutes isn't enough for a break um okay what we're going to do now is we're going to start we're going to switch number 12 and 13. james superintendents comments and correspondence very short and and some kids are waiting on it so we're just going to do that first jane thank you michael i appreciate good evening everybody thanks for being here i know some students were waiting to hear who won the kindness essay

070contest as you know we had a kindness essay contest for all grades and the winners were split into k 3 4 5 8 and 9 12. we had 124 essay submissions with some amazing and heartwarming stories from our students across the district we narrowed down the submissions to five for each category and our board of education voted for the top three winners the prize for these winners in each grade area is an invitation to cook with the vusd child nutrition chef richie willem this group of winners will learn how to make a gourmet meal and eat it too and the event for this we haven't decided to date for it yet the time for this event because we have to wait until covet guidelines allow so we had three in each grade category except for

071nine through twelve so i'm going to start with the nine two through twelve one winner her name is caitlin gonzalez from vacaville high school congratulations and if you're watching okay let's go to k through three k through three the essay was what do you want in a good friend and there were three winners there dominic rodriguez from cooper elementary school audrey i hope i say this name echidvaria cooper elementary school and jaden kelly cooper elementary school wow all three cooper good job students and cooper grades four and five the question was who is the kindest person you know three winners there liliana or lilly parker from sierra vista k.a aiden snook from browns valley elementary school and hayden swain from cooper elementary school looks like cooper's the winners tonight good job students and last but

072not least grades six through eight how do you show kindness the three winners are caitlin dice dystroph from jefferson middle school aria meda from sierra vista k8 and kendra kendra brown from jepson middle school great job those are the winners um our director of communications elaine khan will be in touch with you as we get out of covid and we we get to a place where we can have you come and cook with our amazing new chef and the only other update i have is um at the last board meeting i introduced lauren krohn our new child nutrition supervisor and she was one unable to speak something happen with her mike and i think she has her voice tonight so i'm going to very quickly give you a little background on lauren in case you

073forgot from the last board meeting she's coming back home to vacaville where she was raised lauren left her hometown to pursue her bachelor's degree degree in nutrition and food science from california state university chico right lauren yes twice the writing fell off on my document so she earned she also in addition to her vouchers earned a master's in nutrition education and didac didactic program dietetics in addition to the degree she's earned she's also licensed as a registered dietitian nutritionist and during the interview process i think one of the things that really impressed the group was her excitement and passion for working in public education she's worked for other organizations but she really realized how much she wanted to be in the child nutrition field for public education so we're so happy to have you and

074welcome and now the board would love to hear a few words from you yes thank you so much for having me yes it truly is a blessing to be returning back home so to speak uh to be working in the community i grew up in and everything um and child nutrition was a pursuit that i've had for over a decade now so it really is a dream come true it feels i feel like i'm finally home and um just finishing up my third week so i have been blessed with a wonderful team and i'm really happy to be on board thank you lauren welcome thank you thank you for having me thank you and thank you president kitchis for allowing me to go ahead of our amazing school report that concludes my report thank you

075yes it was very difficult so i appreciate that thank you everyone lauren okay next we have school reports and presentations fairmont elementary school report and student volunteer recognition greg moffitt the principal will share his own screen greg thank you uh president kittens and members of the board and superintendent samia and members of the community i am sharing my screen and hope that it works we love it when technology cooperates so here we go it is an honor to present our uh bi-annual uh school presentation to the vacaville unified school district board of trustees so uh take a look and listen and afterwards i will be happy to answer any questions that you have mr president members of the board superintendent chemia and cabinet and members of the community thank you for the opportunity to talk

076about fairmont charter elementary school here in the vacaville unified school district my name is greg moffat and it is an honor to serve the students staff and families as the principal at fairmont charter we are so proud of our students and our programs and we are so appreciative of the partnerships we have with our families and the community because at fairmont we really do believe that together we soar each morning we remind ourselves what it means to be a fairmont falcon by saying the falcon pledge together and promising to work hard show respect and take pride in what we do and who we are so instead of telling you what i think it means to be a fairmont falcon here are some of our fairmont staff talking about why they work at fairmont this is

077mrs king she is our school counselor at fairmont and fairmont is so lucky to have her we are one of the few elementary schools in the area with a full-time counselor and mrs king helps any student or family that needs support she teaches classroom lessons and here is what she has to say about working at fairmont everyone my name is yadi and i am the school counselor at fairmont the reason that i love working for fairmont is because we're guided by the same hope and that is to encourage empower and genuinely care for each other so that our kids and our grown-ups feel they can accomplish anything they set out to accomplish um i love our family atmosphere and i love that we can work together to promote education in a way that kids find

078helpful and fun and engaging and i so very much appreciate every single person that i work with because i know that we're all heading in the right direction and that we want the very best for all of our families so this is mrs hall she's our school secretary and she's one of the first people you'll see at fairmont and she's pretty awesome hi my name is constance gonzalez hall and i'm one of the administrative support staff in the office at fairmont charter elementary school in vacaville i'm a fairmont falcon because in a world where you might not always feel welcomed encouraged and safe i know at fairmont i always do this is lisa holdener one of our first grade teachers and our teacher of the year at fairmont this year she utilizes technology to help

079students learn and is determined to help her students create a community of kindness hi my name is lisa holdener and i am a first grade teacher at fairmont charter i love working at fairmont because we not only teach students to take pride in their work and always try their best but we also focus on the importance of having the character and most importantly we teach them to love themselves and appreciate all of the wonderful things that they have to offer our work michelle jimenez is one of our fourth grade teachers at fairmont she also uses lots of technology and helps her students learn really important critical thinking skills hi i'm michelle jimenez i am a fourth grade teacher here at fairmont and i am a fairmont falcon because i love learning every day i get

080to participate in the joy and wonder of learning new things with my students i love those aha moments that they have when a student learns a new concept and i especially love what my fairmont family and my fairmont students teach me about perseverance empathy hard work and kindness each and every day this is shannon nielsen and she's one of our intervention teachers we have a team of teachers and staff members at fairmont that help students and give them the support they need in fact each day we have what i need time built into our schedule if students need extra help they get it if students need an extra challenge they get that too hi my name is shannon nielsen i'm an intervention teacher at fairmont and i am a fairmont falcon because fairmont is a

081great place to be and i love working at fairmont because we have so much support at our school and everybody works together to help kids be successful we are also fortunate to have an assistant principal at fairmont mrs adams goes above and beyond to support students their families and our staff she's been a teacher and intervention coordinator in vacaville for over 20 years let's hear why she decided to come work at fairmont hi there my name is joanna adams and i'm the assistant principal here at fairmont why i'm a fairmont falcon is because we are family we encourage and support one another fairmont is a place where teamwork makes the dream work thank you mrs adams we are a team and a family at fairmont we are a community committed to learning together and we

082want our students to see themselves as readers and writers mathematical problem solvers and as scientists too but don't take our word for it let's hear why some of our students enjoy being fairmont falcons i am a famous falcon because i'm kind smart respectful and responsible thanks ross he is one of our sixth grade students let's hear from sophia hi my name is sophia i'm a sixth grader at fairmont charter school i have been going to fairmont since fourth grade i really like going to school because all the teachers and students are very kind and it's just fun to go to the school and because i can i don't have to be scared to be myself at all i can just be who i am and i have to be like worried that people think rude

083things of me thanks sophia that's awesome we want students to be who they are and to believe in themselves our mission at fairmont is to partner with families and community members to prepare our students to be compassionate thoughtful creative and responsible citizens of a global society in the 21st century we want our students to be future ready we do that at fairmont by focusing on steam education that means we're focused on science technology engineering art and mathematics and making sure students see the connections in each lesson we want our students to explore science and to be engaged in their learning so let's talk about what science looks like at fairmont there is time each week in our schedule for science where students get to experiment and learn about the world around them there's also a

084monthly science switch where we switch things up and focus on science for the entire day students in the upper grades switch classrooms to experience different lessons and experiments and our primary grade students switch activities there are science challenges and engineering challenges for our littlest learners to our biggest learners and they often require teamwork and collaboration each month we sponsor super steam saturdays and invite students to spend the morning with us getting more opportunities to experience and explore science we have a steam fair where students showcase their learning and families come visit and we have a steam day where students work with students in other grades to solve problems and experience more science it's one of sophia's favorite days of the year let's hear why my favorite things that we do at fairmont are steam days

085it's like a day where instead of doing class work we do activities like science activities like there's regular ones where you do it with other classes that are in the same grade and then there's the one at the end of the year or the whole school does it and that one at the end of the school year is my favorite one because we were able to make oobleck we were able to do like um challenges and then some people would dissect squids and and we could make cookies it was just really really fun and that's why i really like fairmont and there's a bunch of other things that you can do and it's just school's wonderful thanks sophia we agree and as sophia said there's so much to do at fairmont we even have after-school

086science and technology clubs like our robotics team and we've figured out ways to make science a focus during virtual learning too using lots of online programs like brainpop and mystery science to show videos and demonstrations and ask students to think about the world around them we've taken students on virtual field trips and even sponsored a virtual steam day by showing student science experiments that they can do at home virtual learning has given us a chance to do a lot of different things to engage students students performed in a virtual musical and participated in a virtual drama club we have a virtual robotics and coding club and a virtual girls on the run fitness club we've sponsored a virtual talent show and family game nights we've hosted a family readathon with authors singers and community members

087reading we've had virtual spirit weeks and a bunch of drive-through events to see and celebrate our students right now all 585 students and our 70-plus staff members are participating in a one-school one-book read-aloud of the one and only ivan we're recording videos and sharing them with families and holding virtual events to discuss and celebrate the book our students their families and their teachers are working hard during virtual learning and we're keeping close track of student progress because data informs what we do before covid state test data showed that we had work to do the majority of our students were not meeting or exceeding standards on these state tests we were making progress last fall as measured by our district benchmark scores especially in the primary and intermediate grades and then while covet happened our benchmark

088scores from this fall show that we're doing better than where we were in the spring of 2019 on state tests but there is still work to be done and that work involves looking at every student's scores and understanding their story and figuring out how to help them grow this is a screenshot of the scores of one of our fourth grade english learners he was below benchmark at the start of the year and is now meeting it and that's in large part to our team at fairmont and of course his hard work and the hard work of his family fairmont has always had a team of intervention teachers and para educators and during covet they've continued to provide interventions because of the staffing that we have we've been able to provide double the targeted support in

089our kindergarten first and second grade classes and also to provide additional math intervention in sixth grade in addition our school counselor provides weekly social emotional learning lessons in classrooms and supports families in whatever way she can this is a photo of her delivering food to families in need over the weekend we also have a family check-in form so that families can let us know how things are going and how we can help most importantly we continue to celebrate our students and their success before covid we'd give out falcon feathers when students were demonstrating safety respect or responsibility we'd hold weekly raffles school spirit days monthly assemblies where students would get recognized for their hard work and get a chance to win prizes like pieing the principal in the face or getting to ride to school

090with a police officer and bringing donuts for their class we'd make positive phone calls home to students and to staff and we still do we have found ways to recognize students on our virtual morning announcements we remind our students every morning that we want them to use their wings to make the world a better place we are falcons after all and wings is an acronym that reminds us to work hard include others never give up go make a difference and show kindness you can watch our morning announcements on our youtube channel or stay connected with us on facebook twitter or instagram or read about what we're doing in the thoppin flash our weekly family newsletter when we gather as a group at fairmont we often turn to this quote by rita pearson because it sums

091up what we believe in so perfectly rita was a teacher and this is what she said every child deserves a champion an adult who will never give up on them who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be we think every child deserves a champion in fact we think they deserve a school full of champions and we hope to be a champion for each of our students because as our motto reminds us together we soar thank you mr moffatt do you want to see if anybody has any questions before we go into the um student of the year presentation i would be happy to answer any questions president kitsis sounds like a good plan okay uh do any of the school board members have any questions

092or comments for mr moffatt hi this is kelly welsh how are you thank you very much for your presentation mr moffat i'm sorry i'm putting some kids to bed right now so if you hear some background chaos going on i apologize for that but um i just want to say thank you for the presentation um it's great to get to know your staff and i love that fairmont has a full-time counselor there and i really appreciate the the presentation being in spanish as well that's that's great um and to learn about your steam days and the science activities that students are doing is um wonderful i just have two questions and i'm looking forward to visiting the school and meeting you in person two questions were one why do you think some of the students

093are doing better on state tests right now than they were the previous year and the other question is my students are in elementary school and they attend browns valley elementary and my son also attended markham for a while but i just want to get an understanding of how fairmont's charter is different and how it differs from the other elementary schools thanks trustee welsh i appreciate the comments and the questions so first why are some of our students uh doing better on our our tests than they did last year um i think one of the things that we realized pretty quickly um during the pandemic that everyone was experiencing this pandemic differently they were going through this experience in a different way and so some students have really soared during virtual learning they are at home

094with family members where they feel safe and supported and they have been able to to make it work for them in addition a lot of our students are are coming to our what i need time sessions during the day and in the afternoon and they're taking advantage of the help that the teachers are are offering um and so um i think they're doing uh better because they're working really hard and so are their families um and so are our teachers um and then there are some students that that are struggling and and so we're really looking at each and what we can do for them as well um in terms of the second question uh what what makes fairmont charter different than the other schools in vacaville well um we are a district school and

095we are very proud to be part of the vacaville unified school district um the charter that we have um sets us apart in terms of our focus really on steam um and then also social emotional learning in reality all the schools in the vacaville unified school district have site-based leadership where site councils come together and they get to make decisions about how they focus and what they do we are able to serve as a charter so that um students from surrounding neighborhoods and surrounding communities can come and be a part of the vacaville unified school district and that our staff and parents have um a voice really in in what the focus of our charter is and this is actually the year that our charter is up for renewal so um you'll you'll get to

096hear a little bit more from me uh later in the year as we go through that process thank you i very much appreciate your [Music] time thank you anybody else uh okay greg thank you very much for that wonderful presentation and we will wait with baited breath for your fairmont students of the year presentation fantastic now this is the best part of the evening when we get to celebrate students um so i am excited to hit the play button and uh and show you uh these incredible fairmont falcons uh greg would you please re-share your screen i will re-share my screen thank you we've only been doing this for 10 months you think i would know how to share my screen by now okay so i'm sharing my screen and i'm going to go back

097to the beginning thanks for the technical difficulties it is with great excitement that we announce our students of the year at fairmont charter elementary school in the vacaville unified school district in the fall we got an email from david rogers with starbound theater asking if we wanted to partner with them and put together a virtual musical to celebrate national arts in education week and so began a wonderful online adventure in staging a musical all over zoom i am joined by the awesome cast of super happy awesome news you all are amazing that musical was so much fun to watch raise your hand if that was your first musical you were awesome okay raise your hand if you were a little nervous performing yeah i don't think i could have sung in a zoom room and

098be recorded like that that that took a lot of bravery raise your hand if you had a lot of fun it was so much fun to watch and i wanted to stand up and give you like a standing ovation when it was done it was so cool i'd love to hear from you um your name and your grade and what you liked most about doing the musical so i'm gonna i'm gonna call on folks so um marcel let's start with you what um can you say your name and your grade and what you liked about the musical hey my name is marcel i am in sixth grade and i just love the whole music part about the musical on guadalupe hey nice to see you will you introduce yourself my name is fourth grade my

099favorite part the whole music part too the music was so good freya i see you next hey will you introduce yourself my name is fred i'm in second grade and my favorite part about music was the whole thing it was pretty cool how it all came together mariana hi will you introduce yourself hi i'm ariana i'm in fifth grade and i loved that i got to spend time with some of my classmates and i got to learn more some more about um some of my um and i loved hanging out it was so much fun to hang out and get to see folks even though we can't be in person you can still hang out over zoom it's so cool hi zmark can you introduce yourself my name is sam and i'm in second grade

100what did you like about the musical it was lots of fun it certainly was hey landon you're up next will you introduce yourself okay my name is landon and i'm in fifth grade and i like um that my favorite thing about the musical was the acting about how you had to act it out you definitely had to take on some interesting roles um and play the part you did an awesome job hey hanada will you introduce yourself hello my name is inata i'm in a fourth grade and my favorite part about the musical was the fact that my friends and family was able to watch it was so cool i mean sometimes you can't always see the musical in person right but we could show everyone on youtube that was so cool um hey michaela

101will you introduce yourself hi my name is michaela i'm in fourth grade what i liked about this is that [Music] i love that is that that i loved it because i just love music and i love seeing everyone that i know on zoom those are good things to love thank you for being part of it and hey mr aiden how are you will you introduce yourself i think i caught some of that it went in and out but aidan i am so glad that you were part of the cast someone that brought us all together and helped us was uh director david hey mr david he's from starbound theater and without him we wouldn't have had a musical so uh mr david why why is doing something like this so important well um i think

102that we were able to demonstrate that we could still make a connection with each other and others even in a virtual format um the students got to learn a different aspect of teamwork because they had to work together to create this beautiful story right and some of them had to cover for each other and do you know multiple roles and you know and just kind of help where we needed um so it was good and then to discover your maybe hidden creative talents like landon singing voice and marcel's like multiple different characters he had to create so we got to see all of these talents just come to bloom into this this performance and you know i got to see a lot of confidence building um especially from students like michaela who was a little

103nervous and anxious to be on screen but she overcome she overcame her fears and i could see i still see even more and more she's building the confidence and and other students as well and it was fun it was a lot of fun so it was it was great um it was a great opportunity to to connect with students and to you know create a story because that's i mean it's that's the beauty of a theater is we're telling stories sometimes folks think of fairmont as the science school right we do lots of science and technology but we're also an engineering art and math school right and the arts are so important to what we do they're so important to science right because you can do the science and you can figure it out and

104you can understand it but if you can't communicate it and share it with the world if you can't present it if you can't talk about it well then it's just a bunch of facts right so getting up on stage acting it out performing that can give you the confidence to go and communicate and talk about the world around you and help people understand so bravo to all of you you are awesome so here's the surprise are you ready for it okay yes so every other year elementary schools get to go to the board of education that's the group of old people in town who get elected to make decisions about our school and we get to go to them and talk about our awesome students and give those students an award and so we are

105recognizing the entire cast of super happy awesome news with an award at the school board congratulations you are all our students of the year at fairmont we are so amazed by you and how hard you are working and how brave you are you really showed what it is to be a fairmont falcon congratulations we are proud of you and uh we will send you your award in the mail or have you come on by and pick it up um we are so proud of you it truly was an incredible production and you can still watch it on youtube by going to the starbound theater youtube channel so on behalf of all of us at fairmont charter elementary school we want to congratulate the cast of super happy awesome news for being named our students of

106the year congratulations to landon mariana hinata freyja guadalupe ziamar marcel aiden and michaela you make us falcon proud yay all right thank you very much mr muffet that was really interesting and uh i think we'll have to uh look up the youtube channel from the starbound theater and check it out i can send it your way president kitsis thanks so much thank you thank you okay um if there are no other comments then we will go to board member comments and correspondence now there any board members that have anything to say i do but doesn't anybody there we go ac seoul hey i just wanted to real quick and i hope they got the names correct i want to thank alyssa kyle tyler nadia haley and my uh micah for speaking tonight at the board

107meeting yesterday at back of a high school when i went out to their event talking to the students a couple of them asked me what i could do for them and i kind of turned the tables on them and said you know we've heard from your parents but your parents had their high school experiences this is about your education this is about your sports and extracurricular activities and this is about your future we need to hear from you and i don't know if that's what happened tonight but i'm so glad those young people took the time to let us know how they're feeling and how they're doing through this difficult time thank you thank you cecil kelly hi um i just wanted to update uh you all on some of the activities um that i've

108been doing since our last board meeting i've been on three school site visits um to ernest kimmey academy kimmy and the adult education center and i just want to thank jane and the principals lois chancellor amy blackstone and tiffany donohue for showing me around and answering questions i think you're all doing a fabulous job i also attended the vaca high peaceful protest yesterday and i talked to parents and students and that was really helpful for me to get out there and see and talk to the parents and students um i have received mass correspondence and emails from concerned parents and i just want to say that i am one of you i understand your frustrations and concerns my seven-year-old in first grade he you know he's just he's missing out on so much he's just

109so excited to be able to go to the cafeteria when we open and he's been missing out on the little moments in his life just to be with his pals and this is the socialization factor that i know i really do know that kids are missing out on you know he just wants to order a sandwich and be a cool kid in the cafeteria and i empathize with all of you and especially our seniors looking forward to sports and the fun season of prom and graduation i totally get the agony you know i myself and the full-time working single mother with two kids and it's impossible to work and help them with school at the same time but i'm i'm grateful to the teachers we have and their dedication to our students during this struggle

110but i just want to let parents know that we have a plan that will be outlined to you later in tonight's agenda and thankfully today we hit the less than 25 per 100 000 cases in the county so we can start on our plans to open up but it's important to continue to exercise as many safety precautions as we can there are many people who will not return to our schools without full vaccination coverage because they have vulnerable families at home but our district has worked very very hard on the school reopening plans and there will still be options for distance learning if needed and so i just want you all to know that we are listening and understand your anger and frustration completely um just another two quick things i serve on the solano

111county school boards association and i attended that meeting we are planning a great event called promoting student achievement through local policy with an equity lens the solano county elected officials and community partners will have a series of engaging interactive workshops that will focus on how our policies influence student achievement and i'm excited to be a part of that um and just finally i signed on to a letter to call on congress to take immediate action on comprehensive chronovirus relief legislation including desperately needed funding for schools so um yeah i just wanted to give that quick update and thank you very much thank you kelly anyone else daniel i want to say um first of all thank you to all the families that called in and told us how they feel thank you cecil for thanking

112the students i had a tally of how many we had there i was really impressed with them i want to say i am a parent too and i get it i feel it too i have one kid who is doing okay with distance learning one who was a horrible horrible failure with the distance learning and it's difficult it's hard because we want to keep them safe but we want to keep them educated the hardest part for me is the fact that we've had to be reactionary the entire time because new information kept changing we'd make a plan based on current information then they change the rules first we're ready to come under red then since purple schools that were open already can stay open but for some reason we couldn't bring new schools in then

113in january now it's okay to open in purple again they change the rules on this again it makes it so difficult for us to make and implement plans and i am i've been pushing and i want us all to be very proactive we want to be proactive in making sure that we are ready when we do open to hit the ground running want to make sure that we are ready to address the learning gap that has developed and i've seen it in my own kids along with the other people who have seen it and uh i think that you know working together we are going to be able to get kids back in school get everybody learning the way they're supposed to and we're gonna be able to do it safe for all students and

114staff so thank you all for your time for coming in and talking to us anybody else so i i would uh like to take you you know hopefully on a reasonably short journey here um as mr moffatt said uh i'm one of the old people uh on the school board and um you know i i wanted i want people to understand that it is very very difficult to be on the school board right now not to feel sorry for me or anybody else it's just true you know every i likes other people i'm a parent i have an 11th grade son uh it is incredibly depressing to be out of school um he's suffering um and his friends are suffering and we see it every day and you know i i and what i want

115to say is that in the fall i said and and i'm just speaking for myself here and and i know there were others but i'm speaking for myself that i was going to follow the science the best i could because i'm not a scientist i have a reasonably uh uh you know good way of looking at things when they're given to me but i'm not a scientist and at the time that we made the mou with vta and seiu i believe that we followed the science and we took a stand to make sure because there was so little information to protect um our employees and it was a very painful decision and we've suffered really through it and now there's different science i mean and i think it's just as incumbent to me i was

116running for re-election then i knew i was taking a big gamble in a way by saying no we're not going to go back right now but i didn't care and i don't care now it's like we all have to do what we can to do what we think is the right thing and cdph which is the the california department of public health who are the public health experts and and cdc um but cdph has been very clear that we can bring kids back tk through six when it goes down to twenty five per hundred thousand and we're at that point now and i think we just have to take a deep breath just for a short time i know it's hard parents wanna get kids back yesterday and we are going back to talk to

117the teachers and have a discussion with them and you know they also said at the time that they wanted to follow the science so we have to find out where they're at and so i know people say let's impose everything right now let's do everything right now we have to talk to them this week and go from there and just know though that we understand that the sign i understand that the science is saying 25 per hundred thousand you can bring back tk through six and there's been very little transmission at schools that the schools have been safer than actually the communities and i i think we owe it to our kids to really pay attention to that because they are suffering at least a lot of them are really suffering a lot so i

118just wanted to say that and thank you and anybody feel free to contact any one of us we're your school board representatives and we're here okay next we have student board member representatives and francis are you there from buckingham candace francis there he's coming in now okay hello everyone thank you for having me here to share my report with you all this evening during the past couple of weeks our leadership students at buckingham have been working hard and staying busy to continue doing our best to continue to connect with our student body and community as a whole when i shared my last report we were in the middle of observing kindness week leadership's four committees and advisors put together short videos to post throughout the week videos that aim to encourage students to be kind

119to others as well as themselves some students give us feedback on the videos and shared that they were personally impacted by them a lot of students have felt so dis disconnected from everything this year so it was very encouraging to hear from a few of them that using technology and social media to spread positivity we were able to reach them and show them our support one more thing i mentioned previously was our upcoming virtual club brush the event was a success and many new students made an appearance to find out a little more about the clubs buckingham has to offer to connect students and give them a place to come together clubs have already begun meeting on zoom this week and it's great to see people excited to join them and meet some new students

120that share the same passions and interests as them sir optimist club has had their had their first meeting today and its members are looking forward to an exciting project that is looking into community outreach meanwhile our academic decathlon recently finished an online objective test of all the subjects math social studies science music art literature and economics students essentially assigned assigned themselves their own homework and they had been working hard to study since october the test was on saturday the 6th and 5 of our brilliant aka deca members went on campus to take the test on chromebooks wearing masks and staying spread apart they also finished interviews and speeches last week and were presented and judged on an online platform with no more events taking place they are now waiting on an award ceremony virtually where

121they will receive medals based on who did the best in each category after competing against students from schools all over the district in more recent news this week has been spirit week at buckingham and with valentine's day coming up naturally our themes were about are about sharing love on monday students showed love for their showed them for their favorite teams and award jerseys to post on social media tuesday's theme was to show love for friends aka twin day on wednesday students showed love for their pets and posted their favorite photos of their animals today the theme was to share something you love so students showed posted pictures of something that brings them joy things that they're passionate about and hobbies things like that and finally tomorrow's theme is of course to share love for buckingham

122and post our night pride during the last few weeks leadership has been hosting night social hour events to give students an opportunity to hang out with their friends and other peers via zoom ending this week we will be hosting another event tomorrow and it will primarily be to give students a place to socialize and have some time together before the take we take the next week off and for my last update leadership's outreach committee has been super excited this week at the launch of valentine graham sales students are looking forward to purchasing cute packages for friends and other loved ones that contain baby succulents and several other valentine's day themed goodies they are already looking forward to getting back to school after break to start distributing the packages and sending everyone these precious little boxes

123of love thank you thank you francis next we have a rookie from vacaville high school josh metcalf filling in josh you there he's coming in now hi josh all right thank you um so uh back to high school um has a functional academics class which is a class of ten to fifteen akahai's most significant special ed students they will be returned to campus full-time after president's week break on february 22nd of course practicing social distancing guidelines on friday february 12th uh student council will be decorating the high school with balloons posters and confetti to give the students a warm welcome the welcome that they deserve and in regards to black history month on february 1st we posted a social media ad highlighting the meaning of black history month on all the social um all of

124actual high schools social media platforms um on that guy's homepage uh the picture on it and the slides um that rolled through have been changed to uh black history month related banners at our pastor i've been on february 5th and the 6th we showed black panther in relation to black history month hoping that it would honor bhm on february 20th students can contribute their original writing performances art etc to the naacp in the city of backville this event is called amplifier voices and students that submit their black history related pieces can be highlighted and recognized that's all thank you josh appreciate it thank you um next we have diana lou from will see wood high school hi everyone can you hear me we can diana okay awesome so good evening school board members i hope

125you're having a phenomenal evening so far we'll see what is moving at a fast rate to provide the best for our students in the community as you may have heard whilst you would face some controversy concerning the tarps of the portraits of historical black figures i would like to say that we'll see what is standing strong and we are leaving up these tarps to not just honor these black historical figures but to demonstrate to our students that we will continue to fight for their representation that our love and support for them is ever flowing in these times of difficulty and division we'll see what students are continuing to make more and more tariffs to use for the many years to come we have yet to have any winners for our black history month bingo but

126is it but it is speculated that it that we will have a winner this week around this week although the main focus at the moment is black history month we've also been fundraising for our junior and senior class we just completed our milk tea lab fundraiser for the junior class that was held on february 1st to february 8th the senior class is having a popcorn fundraiser that ends this friday where people can purchase any flavored popcorn of their choice the link is on at will see woodlive instagram account on the link tree for easy access so far both fundraisers have been successful and it looks as though our juniors and seniors will be able to showcase events when time can come at an amazing capacity as we as we have multiple events and things going

127on throughout this month we are also having our baking competition on the 29th at 6 pm of resume where students are attempting to replicate a cookie monster design although it's a simple design baking and decorating is no easy task to take on they will the winner will be to be determined by the creativity of what the replicated of what the design is replicated on and how it looks in comparison to the design alongside all these events we'll see what asb is working on creating children's books from long books that taught important lessons on leadership these these books will simplify and teach youth about the importance of leadership and how to develop strong skills as a leader these books will be read to young students in their classes and passed around schools that is all i

128have for you this evening thank you for for taking the time to listen to my report and i hope you all have a great evening thank you diana and and i would be remiss diana if i didn't say that your teachers and administration and your superintendent and your board are glad that you stand strong and we uh understand that you have a right to your expression and we support you thank you okay um we will now move are there is there anyone from vta or sciu here to say uh an update give an update okay i don't think so so we will move on to uh the covid safety plan and i will ask you teresa is there anybody that has uh uh said they wanted to speak on this uh no not so far

129okay so i'm gonna give uh i'm gonna give a moment to see if anybody wants to speak about this after uh mrs forrest gives her report okay no hands no no hands mrs forrest you're up okay let me get this started just a minute please can you see my screen we can great so good evening board president kittses and trustees and superintendent shamia for those who don't know me i am kim forrest and i hope to meet you soon and i am pleased to be able to speak tonight about the kobe 19 safety plan so i have an agenda for this presentation because the route i'm taking to get down to number four the coven 19 safety plan is not a straight path so i'm going to begin by talking about some of the rules

130set forth by the state of california from schools to reopen i'm then going to touch on governor newsom safe school plan for all and then talk about the seo bsud busd health and wellness plan and then finally get to the cobit safety plan and then end it with progressions our next step so as you probably know on december 30th governor newsom announced a safe school for all plan and in that plan he added regulations before schools were allowed to reopen for in-person instruction and i'm going to review three factors of those regulations that are relevant to vacaville unified so as the new directives came out from the state on december 30th the rules for reopening again changed for california schools i believe trustee santellin mentioned this and that is very true previously under the state

131rules the usd was considered open because our schools were providing in-person instruction to small groups of students and those students are receiving in-person instruction for special ed services and so through those previous rules since we had students already on our campuses receiving in-person instruction we could continue to bring students in a phased-in approach for in-person instruction but that new directive put a stop to that so when we look at the question was school previously reopened that the answer to that has a big impact on how we now can reopen for in-person instruction if you are already opened by their new definition it's a much easier route than opening by the new definition which we're in so the new definition for previously opened as you see in the middle is at least one grade level at

132the school for general instruction for at least part of the school week i'm going to give an example for this for the previous and the new definitions let's take for instance bronze valley browns valley has a few classes of students receiving in-person instruction on campus before the new proposal came in place the usd and browns valley was considered to be opened and they could progress in adding more students at any grade level to their school with this change no longer is brown valley considered to be an open school because they don't have a complete grade level attending school but the district is also not considered to be previously opened so this question really does have a big impact and was the school previously opened under the definition the new definition by the governor's plan the

133answer is no so then we have to go to the next question and this deals with current rules for school reopening for all of our grades for tk through grade 12. and the question here is has solano county been in the red tier for five days again you can see in the blue the word tony must be in the red tier for five consecutive days before grades tk through 12 can reopen for instruction so have we met that criteria the answer is now this next slide shows a different caveat that the state has and this is school reopening for tk through six and this applies to vacaville even though we're a comprehensive tk through 12 school district this gives us a way to open just in grades tk through 6 when we're still in the

134purple tier the question associated with this is two prong has the linocony been in the purple tier with the covid with a county covid 19 rate at less than 25 per 100 000 for five days and does the district have an approved covered 19 safety plan and you can see the wording down there and i think a couple of board members mentioned this um trustee welch and board president kisses mentioned that saloni that our rate now is at 21.6 so as of yesterday we have met that threshold of 20 of less than 25 per 100 000 which is a really good thing because before that in all of january and up until yesterday we did not meet that threshold so that's great news that we have met that and we have to continue to monitor

135that because it has to be for five consecutive days but it's very very likely that we will stay under that rate but there's also the second component and that is does the district have an approved cobit 19 safety plan so the assumption would be that having an approved safety plan would be a pretty straightforward and easy process but it's not that straightforward and easy so in response to the governor's plan that i mentioned previously on december 30th after that the california department of public health released their updated school reopening guidance and those new guidelines that were released by the california department of public health identified seven mitigation strategies face coverings stable groups physical distancing adequate ventilation hand hygiene symptom and close contact exposure responses and screening testing now i know most of you have already

136read our health and safety plan and most of those components or parts of those mandates were already included in our existing health and wellness plan but there were some areas that we needed to update and just on a side note the negotiations continue around these the governor's proposals and the cdph mandates so they are not a set in stone um certain criteria moving forward yet the governor has said he should have um final approval by the legislation he hopes by the end of this week perhaps by tomorrow so the assumption is we might have some changes um and just only time will tell we'll see what those are so another part of the safe school for all plan was an oversight component and that oversight component is the kobit 19 safety plan so i'm going

137to start out with on these slides to show you the components of the the cps plan the csp plan i'm going to start out first with our health and wellness plan this was first completed in mid-october of 2020. we continue to update it as further guidance would come out and then on january 2021 that's when we received the school guidance from the cdph so from that we reviewed our health and wellness plan and updated the plan after the updates were made we had consultation with the following stakeholders with parent groups and those were parents from all of our elementary schools with our bargaining units and our community groups so they were provided the parent group was provided the the complete plan they read it through we had a meeting together and then they provided feedback

138the feedback from the parent group was pretty consistent with what you heard tonight our hr personnel provided the plan with our bargaining units and they provided feedback as well and finally the community group it was suggested that the community community group be organizations or groups that have an association with the school and its students so the community group was composed of the boys representatives from the boys and girls club from tgif and from imagine that and they um reviewed the plan and also gave us input okay now we get to the safety plan so we have a very comprehensive health and wellness plan that has been updated and meets all the guidelines for the cdph if you look over on the right side of the screen we have the kovid 19 safety plan the covid

13919 safety plan is not this health health and wellness plan the coven 19 safety plans are just these two documents there are verification documents called the guidance checklist and the covid19 prevention program so i'm going to give you a little more information about those two documents the guidance checklist satisfies the requirements for safe reopening of school based on the cdph guidance so they're new guidelines for reopening schools it's a simple checklist short answer and fill in the blank the coven 19 prevention program is satisfies the requirements to provide a safe and healthy workplace for employees so it's based on guidelines from caliosha i know these both of these documents are attached to the agenda and you may note that there are some red areas so the wording in red is the extra wording the extra

140precautions the extra requirements that the district is taking in order to provide a safe and healthy workplace the other part of the template was provided by the state and it's the model form in which they use so these two documents are the documents that make up the safety plan both of these documents were submitted for approval to slano public health and the state school safety team both of these entities have to approve these two documents so we're finally to next steps so those documents were submitted to solano public health and the safe school team these entities cannot approve the plan until after the rate falls below that 25 percent for five consecutive days so hopefully by mid next week or the beginning of next week they'll be able to approve those plans we got them

141in early hoping that as soon as we have all the criteria met for approval that we will be approved right away they do have a seven day window to approve and during that time they can send you notification of approval they can send you notification that it wasn't approved they can send notification with suggestions for approval or they can do nothing if they do nothing after the seven day window expires it is assumed to be approved so after we received that in seven days following that um the district can finalize decisions for in-person instruction for grades tk through six so that's all i have right now um i'd be happy to answer any questions okay uh do we have some questions for kim okay michael if you don't mind yes john go ahead so so

142kim just to confirm when did we turn in our plans to both the county and and to the state school site safety plan we turned in the plan to the county um it was last friday the fourth last friday and then to the state we turned them in this morning so after we found out that we met that threshold fantastic so basically a week from today if the state's team has no issues with our plan and the county has one more day to let us know if they have an issue then they default we we meet the requirements it could be more than a week because we have to meet that five day five consecutive days so after the five consecutive days of being below the 25 rate then they can look at it then

143they have seven days from that date perfect so the variable is seven days after we meet the five day so in rough numbers two weeks or so potentially if we we can stay within those numbers yes um dr m has said in previous meetings that he will approve it as soon as possible so hopefully as soon as we meet that five-day criteria he will approve it and then we'll just have to wait for the state so perfect and thank you for your presentation it's just uh straightforward and easy to follow and i appreciate it questions yes i just wanted to ask real quick kim um you're next daniel tk to six is that because there are classes that stay together all day long because i know we're gonna get hit with questions about middle and

144high school it is um because stable groups are easier to maintain in k-6 and just because of the rate of infection is much lower well i agree with john too very nice presentation thank you daniel so um thank you yeah for the presentation that was um good uh for the uh requirement of five consecutive days so we've reached that effective today so um county is going to start reviewing it if no knock on wood it doesn't happen but if we go above the threshold does that time frame start over again do we have to wait till we're down for another five consecutive days yes yes i i think um superintendent shamia can probably give you more information on that or maybe mr santa padre but i think they're pretty confident that we will stay under

145that threshold for five days me too anybody else so i just want to say it should come as no surprise to anybody that kim was a kindergarten teacher by trade very clear very you know basically you know i feel like a kindergartner but great presentation kim really it's really good very informative and i will tell you that i was in a meeting with dr machas today and he said we have met the threshold it is done and he said that he has already approved fairfield's plan and he was reviewing ours um and he answered in a uh he said when some i think it was daniel actually that asked him that same question that he asked you about what if it goes back over oh and actually and he said that is unclear is that

146right daniel that's what i got for you yeah he said he wasn't to he hadn't gotten any clear um answers or directions from the state on if it goes up but his hope is that it wouldn't have to restart again we should be able to go forward from that i apologize i think i misunderstood your question i thought you met within the five days it's my understanding that if it goes back up we can still continue to provide in-house in-person instruction well i think the question is what if we haven't started it and it goes and it goes above that well the main question is if we waited the five days now while the state's reviewing it the numbers go back up do we have to start over again because they took too long to

147review it and our numbers didn't last interesting so we have to ask dr manches about that it sounds like yeah i just wrote it down when we had when we uh we'll forward a question we'll forward it to him but i expect from what he said today that we will very quickly get the nod from him and he said the same thing that you did that seven days after if he hasn't done anything then it's all automatically done accepted okay thank you so much kim thank you okay next we have uh school sports activities update with uh adam rich adam white and ed santa padre who's gonna take the lead there i will get us started and then i will pass it on to our two principles i believe mr johnson's going to pull up

148our our powerpoint as as uh i introduced this so president kitsis board member superintendent shamia thank you so much for having us here tonight and we are going to give you the update on on athletics for at the secondary level a little just a real quick background on this uh high school sports are governed by the california interscholastic federation and um and so that's the big big group and then under that each area or section has a governing board and we're part of the sack joaquin section and and that's the the group that we we work with and then even below that we have a league which is much smaller which is really the schools from fairfield and vanden and um our schools and so we have a league and and uh and that so

149that's sort of the structure and we have been doing some small group cohorts since last summer and we have been following all of the guidance as we get it and really this was done as part of our board's uh recommendation to us to try and do as many things as we can safely and legally with to just help kids get out of the house so that's that's been our goal and and we're really excited to to be able to do this next part of it so i'm going to turn it over to principal rich and principal white and they will walk you through this all right thanks ed um good evening everyone superintendent shamia board of trustees thank you for having us tonight um if you could go ahead and move to the first slide

150ken um we we've been uh we've been thinking a lot about sports um as as as it fits into the bigger framework of um how it helps our students but going back to this um it's a it's obviously a year like no other um and that goes with sports too so our our goal as a as a high school as a league um really as a whole section is just to try to um have have students have every opportunity to participate in high school sports um and and really the section motto has been um you know a a season of sport for every student and that that still holds true to what we're doing our our hope with this presentation is to kind of show you how that's going to look um in the different

151color tiers but really um we've been we've been working this year on providing uh a district framework sort of coming up with with some guidelines for safe return to play um we've been using the california department of public health guidelines we've been using our feedback from our own county and from the cif um and it's it's been it's been an evolving process it seems like you know just like with school reopening the this is not to make a bad pun but they move the goal post every week on us i'm in terms of what we can do and what we can't but why are we focused on this you know we don't have students in person right now at school except for a few different things but why are we focusing on school sports right

152now um you know for for those of us who have worked in high schools we know how big of a motivator sports are for kids it gets them as it said out of the house on campus they have to maintain a certain gpa so it keeps them motivated academically it's a good carrot for many of our kids it keeps kids engaged and involved with with with their school it gives them that sense of school pride and identity it's also a big player in terms of their mental health and mental health and physical health are connected um it gives them social opportunities even though our students are are are not just standing around talking they're usually working out but those those those small social interactions are very meaningful too so we have been focused on this

153we've been focused on how to how to set it up right and how to do it safe moving forward to the next slide ken if you could what have we been doing so far so this isn't uh this hasn't been an overnight process we've been working with our teams at the high schools on conditioning since the summer and we've been we've been doing this safely in small cohorts we've been using common practices so we're working within small cohorts right now the cohorts are defined as a team but earlier it was it was the 14 students or less we screened students in here you see coach coach wright screening a student in with a quick uh temperature check um we've been only practicing outdoors you know we have masking in place um any surfaces are sanitized

154no sharing water bottles i mean think of all the things that happen in a typical sports conditioning session and our our coaches have done an excellent job really adjusting we've also you know worked with our with our school district in terms of contact tracing when we when we do have situations come out because you know to be honest especially when we got into november and december there were students who were exposed um we we learned that they were exposed out in the community though and our coaches have done an amazing job staying in contact with kids we've had absolutely no spread of the virus within these these groups which which really is a testament to um the the work that was done by by the athletic directors uh working with our coaches training everyone to

155keep everyone safe so we've been up to a lot um and it's and it's been working really well for kids and for coaches and we're excited to move to the next next phase in this as adam's going to talk to you about in a minute but next slide please can all right so um we have been working on a a plan a document um and we've been we've been putting all these things sort of together in one place and and uh you will all be able to review this um we've been we've been updating it as the as the guidance change as i said before um it it maintains a lot of our normal operating procedures within athletics but it also um modifies you know for for all the safety things that we're talking about

156we've been actively consulting with with our district's insurance company to make sure that they're kind of in an agreement with what we're doing and how we're how we're putting some of these changes in place and again this this address is um site-specific safety protocols this addresses um as i said before eligibility and grades and all those things that students need to be able to participate it addresses transportation it also addresses safe toasting of athletic contests so whoops just happened here in my computer um sorry about that can you hear me there i just had a weird weird glitch on my computer all right thank you we will uh make this document available on the district website but it really lays out kind of top to bottom our entire approach uh with with with all of

157these changes and and how we're going to handle all the different sorts of things that come up within athletics from how to hold a meet all the way over to um you know sort of transportation and all those types of things so it really lays it out so if you go ahead and move to the next slide kin some of the state level guidance that we've been working with um we follow this closely and adam can attest it's like our kind of friday night texting back and forth like what came out this week because it seems like there's something new every week some new update um we waited a really long time though we did a lot of this work in the summer our coaches conditioned through the fall um and and to be honest

158a lot of principals in our in our section and athletic directors and coaches were getting very impatient with the lack of guidance from the state and then on december 14th a big document was released that really laid it out very clearly it assigned each sport to a color tier based on the risk profile for that sport some of you have probably seen this document if you have kids who play club sports or little league because it applies to all these different all these different areas so um with with when that document came out the section the cif became very active there were many meetings in place to to to sort of try to figure out how to work within these new guidelines how are we going to change schedules and seasons and are we going

159to move from the from the two seasons set up that we had at the beginning of the year to some different setups so it was a lot of activity and then in the in the midst of that the the cif and the sac joaquin section determined that it was um probably in the best interest of everyone to cancel playoffs in postseason because that requires inter-county travel lots of different mixing of groups and also if they're not going to be able to have fans at those events it doesn't make a lot of sense financially for the sections to do that they really operate on the income from those so they went ahead and they they canceled all post season championships as far as the section playoffs and the section championships and those state level things are

160concerned but within that document it was very clear and very specific at each level in each sport what needed to be done as far as safety protocols so our our coaches and our ads were really hungry for that document and when we finally got it we were able to really get to work um on sort of putting our plan together so the next slide um really lays out for you in pretty pretty plain detail which sports currently are allowed in each color tier so once we got this information we were able to go back to our league and and work out sort of new schedules because in in consultation with our league um you know it's it's everybody's desire just to get kids playing as quickly as we possibly can right so we had to

161move some sports around we created some some sort of new mini seasons we sort of have these these three uh shorter mini seasons in in place now so that every student uh you know who plays every sport will have the opportunity to to do so depending on what color tier that we're in um you know we're hopeful that we can get to those orange and yellow sports this year but we have a plan laid out that is going to allow us to let's say you know if in if in two weeks some there's there's some kind of a miracle and we're in the yellow we will still be able to have those sports in place based upon how the seasons are now set up even though the seasons will be shorter there won't be a

162playoffs uh schedule we'll just play within our league um we've still figured out a way to make it work um i'm going to go ahead and pass this over to mr white he's going to take us through the rest of the presentation so thank you very much mr white next slide ken so like mr rich mentioned once the sacko king central section canceled playoffs and set one season of sport it was really up to each league then to sit down and redraft what those schedules would look like based on the calendar we have done that i want to kind of echo what mr rich said commending our athletic directors um in the last two weeks they've been dealing with update after update and really been hustling to get this collaboration done with our local partners

163to make sure that our kids can get on the field of play as fast as possible so we want to give you what a what this is going to look like in the spring through the lens of the mel which as mr santa padre mentioned is this the league that our two big comprehensive uh public schools compete in buckingham charter is actually a member of the sacramento metro athletic league um and that league has not yet um produced new schedules so we're going to kind of focus on the meo at this time one comment here football presents unique challenges for two reasons one is that the sport was assigned to the orange color tier which we know we may be still a little ways away from but the second was that the cif sports medicine

164advisory committee had determined that the the sport needed to be finished this school year by april 17th there are bylaws for football which specified numbers of practice days in pads for accommodation purposes so their league had to set a start date of no later than march 1st for that sport which may not give it the best shot here but we were under other restrictions there can next slide so here's a look at what the athletic directors came up with as mr rich said that the mel created three mini seasons we're calling these blocks a b and c instead of our traditional fall winter and spring and you can see on this calendar block a is actually going to begin next week and we're super excited about this to to have kids have an opportunity to

165get out and play this block includes three purple sports cross country boys golf and girls tennis and as you can see we had to put football in there because of those other restrictions in terms of the dates that it's under block b then would begin in mid-march and that block will include baseball and softball which can both be played red uh track and field and swim and dive will then begin at that time as well and we've placed black badminton and volleyball there okay one more slide and then here's block c so this is later in the spring and you can see it has many sports here but this is where we put those yellow tier sports again hoping to give them the best shot to play so we have girls golf and boys tennis

166which were separated from their counterparts even though they were purple to help with some facility issues that we would run into there if they were together and we also have boys and girls soccer boys and girls water polo and then wrestling and boys and girls basketball and next slide there are some specific challenges um you know with moving forward with this that we just wanted to highlight for you here tonight uh the first is the idea of the inner team competition so unlike normal school years we will not be doing any out of state or overnight events this year cdph has specified that all interteen competition has to reside within your county or your adjacent county and it has to be between two teams only if we have events like a larger cross-country meet or

167a track and field championship at the end of the season those are going to need to be approved by solano county public health and as you can imagine transportation poses some issues here too because we are used to being able to bust large groups of students to away matches so in lieu of this this year we will be working with our families to transport athletes utilizing our current parent driver policy which is something many of our teams have already done and have done for many years but we will have to be working with our families to do that for all of our away matches this year next slide um specifically here too about spectators in venues and and those capacities our league partners did express concern over hosting spectators while in the purple tier so

168in collaborating with them we've agreed as a league to not have spectators or other school groups while in purple but then when we do progress to the red tier we will be following the cdph guidelines which allow two immediate household members per student to attend in-person base coverings of course will be required in physical distancing the question of other school groups has come up and really we're going to have to look at those on a sport by sport facility by facility case we would love to have our cheerleaders and bands at our athletic events this year but it's gonna have to be a slow go and and we'll see how this this rolls out and some of our capacity limits and some of our venues are not as large as others so again that'll have

169to be a sport by sport and facility by facility uh look and last slide ken and i didn't want us to forget our middle school so i have some experience here and it's an important population in our district so vaca pina sierra vista willis jepson they all have athletic programs as well they compete in the northern solano athletic league along with a partner in travis and kairos and bcs golden west unfortunately shared with us that they will not be offering a sports program this year for their students but our middle schools are going to move forward with the sports program it is reduced in capacity from what they normally do on a school year and it falls within those purple tier sports so we can give kids a chance to play in our middle school

170so they will be having cross country again starting right now and then once cross country wraps up at the end of march they'll transition and have track and field through april of now and with that we would love to take some questions from you if you have any all right uh let me get my screen here um see uh okay cecil do you have your hand up yeah i do and then john um a lot of questions i'll try to go through them as fast as i can with the parent transportation do we have a limit of how many students per car we have a we have a ride share document that we've developed for that purpose um which um it really does kind of put this back on families to see what their comfort

171level is in terms of that um but we have a document that they'll use um similar to our parent driver form that we'll have them fill out in order to do the rideshare carpool given the passion for football in this city are we being honest or realistic that orange tier by march 1st is i think at this point pretty impossible because you know what's going to happen if we get to that point and call it off it's going to be it's going to be hard difficult so are we being parents in our communication that we're fingers crossed but not like i mean that's that's a that's a really good question cecil and um i i it you know for for these students who have been conditioning this whole year in hopes that a season would

172come off it's gonna it's gonna be very tough our our athletic directors um you know really worked with our head football coaches about what would really be the minimum number of games that would make the amount of preparation that goes into a football season uh worth doing and their their universal consensus um and with with our league was five games um usually the students are playing a a a five game pre-season and then a five-game league season and then a three or four game postseason if they're doing well um and and so our our our coaches and our ads universally agreed um and our league voted that a five-game season was that was the bare minimum so we we worked backwards from that we felt it was important to schedule it because our students have

173have worked and we wanted to have a plan we also know that as adam said earlier there's a lot of pressure on governor newsom to possibly change some of these things and so we are operating on the information that we have in place and we wanted to have a schedule that would have that would be nimble enough to be able to switch if he all of a sudden said hey you know all bets are off and everything can be played in the red we have a schedule that works for that even if all the sports are in the red and students can still play their their sport now they can play the next sport that they usually play and they can play their last sport if they want to play that so those multi-sport athletes

174would still get a shot so but as as things stand today it's it's tough yeah no that's a good point that if something were to change as far as this thing to at least have them the wheels turning that if we can play football we'd be basically and i know that i haven't really had a chance to meet you but adam and ed can attest that there's no place i want to be on a friday night then on the side so that's true and then the other question i have is um was it two people per athlete's household for spectators yeah that that is what is in the california department of public health uh youth sport guidance to us so it's two members of the immediate household um per athlete and we're gonna we're gonna

175allow that to happen once we get to the red tier and beyond um but like i said also once we get beyond that there may be other opportunities for some of our other student groups to attend as well like cheerleaders or bands and things like that because i was thinking with baseball and softball we're gonna have to have kids sitting outside the dugout to maintain social distance so it's gonna be hard or something along that line um my concern is as we all know from graduation ceremonies once upon a time a kid was given a senior was given four tickets or six tenants tickets tickets for their family and all sudden it just blew up that we got rid of the ticket system because uncle and aunt and grandma and grandpa and you know my

176friend and everybody wanted to come to graduation how do we plan on enforcing two people per household if you've got mom dad and a sibling i mean i know it's i know what what you're doing is you're following the guidelines but i'm also would not want to be the person working that gate that day when i get a family that rolls up on me and they're going to start i just your thoughts on how that will be handled let me jump in with that one just to start it off and then if you guys have other thoughts i have to tell you our administrators are um very experienced at all of the issues that that you're talking about in our community they want their kids to play and i know they want to watch them

177we're going to live stream as many events as we can so people can watch from home and then we're just going to have conversations with people and we're going to make sure everybody stays safe and understands why we're doing things and we've just had really good luck in this community being able to to work it that way yeah well i think that's good ed and i think the thing is the more communication we do now long before that first game is played i think we'll allow those people to get everything out of their system ask their questions clarify where we're at instead of waiting to that first game and somebody rolls up with two kids and grandma and you know you've been to ed and adam and adam rich and the people have been around

178high school sports you roll up with seven people from one family and you're going to turn five of them away so communication is key but thank you this is a very thorough plan thank you ron what's up gentlemen thumbs up it's unfortunate that you are uh under the same issues that the educational side is the plans change from this minute to this minute to this minute um i i applaud you uh please uh thank the uh ads the athletic directors for all their work that they're doing um you know we heard from a lot of parents earlier tonight on uh mental health issues and physical issues and although sports only captures a percentage of that a very probably a very small percentage compared to the rest of the campus uh you guys are making positive

179effects on the kids by doing that um i can't imagine being a kid and going through practice and then at the end of the year not even being able to play you know let's put it at the senior year from there uh but what you're doing and what your coaches are going through and your athletic directors are truly affecting those kids in a very positive way that we may not be able to be effective with all the other kids so um thank you for the presentation and uh thank you and your the rest of your entire team for what they're doing for the kids so i appreciate it thank you thank you questions i could ask just one more in regards to football um if we can't make this march first work because of the

180contact and that's what it is they've got to have the contact practice for a week if they're going to have the five games i don't know exactly how these seven on seven passing tournaments work i don't know how much contact there is or whatever but is there any chance we can do something like that to give the folk you know a skills competition or something where we can you know i know vacaville high is dying to get that football field in business and adam richard wood you've got a beautiful stadium i just don't know if there's anything we could do like that like a seven on seven tournament or something like that but i'll stop there thank you well i uh trust the economy i will say that um you know there adam talked about

181the goalpost moving and there there's a good chance that we may see more updates come along um if you've been following governor nixon's press conferences there's been a lot of talk about youth sports in our state in the last week so there's a chance we may see some some updated guidelines coming again and at that point we will pivot again um but the most recent one did allow um student athletes to compete in club sports and high school sports at the same time so i was really grateful to see that so that they can pursue those opportunities outside our school system as well thank you okay um so i have known uh the three of you for a long time so i get to ask you a little bit of a challenging question um i

182i really really appreciate this and and you know i think that the kids are really lucky you know because you have their heart in mind and you know a lot of work's done by you guys by the cif um so my question is what about band and orchestra and choir is the same amount of i mean there are hundreds of kids that are in that and you know i wasn't really thinking about it but i was thinking as you gave your presentation is there any reason why violinists or drummers or whatever couldn't be six feet apart using their own equipment outside i mean it doesn't seem different to me so i guess i'd like your thoughts on that i mean i can i can start off michael by saying that um our our music teachers

183um have been conducting some after school activities um you know uh you know just just just sort of in terms of getting students there to have a rehearsal to have a practice um and if if we do get into that red tier i think bringing cheer bringing bringing band bringing drum line there's no air coming out of a drum right i mean like you would a horn or something that's gonna need to be covered um but no i i think that we are we are looking for every opportunity we can to engage kids um you know in that sort of after school time um and and i don't i don't see a reason why if there if there's space and the and there was an instructor um whether it was a coach or whether it

184was the teacher who who who who um wanted to do that um that they that they couldn't do that the the the piece with our with our coaches specifically is that when the coaches are coaching um they're they're not in the role of a teacher per se they're in the role of a coach and so it's really a a different role as far as being an employee is um so it's sort of a different classification of those duties i guess if that sort of makes sense um and and what what we can have those folks do so um it's it's a little bit tricky but um you know we have had some of our activities teachers and some of our other you know music folks choose to do those things after school certainly not as

185much as a as a daily practice but a little bit so they would have to choose to do that um if it was part of a class i mean for if it was part of the the the teacher's job versus a coaches job which is a different type of employee um then then yes they would at this point so i guess i would just you know take it more time but i i would i would ask that you know you could you give as much attention to that as you do to the athletics because it means the same to the kids that play and can't play you know it's the same so i i just would like to see the same amount of attention and uh you know given to that absolutely thank you okay

186um thank you very much for a very good presentation good job adams thank you gentlemen adams and ed ed change your name to adam please okay next we have 17c which is a mental health update kate sasha kiara and that's it those three hello good evening president kitsis governing board members and superintendent shamia thank you for inviting us here tonight to provide a mental health update i will be sharing the presentation myself so hopefully everyone can see this as i'm sure you can imagine youth are struggling more now than uh now than ever before um according to mental health america surveys 11 to 17 year olds about 83 percent are struggling with moderate to severe anxiety and about 90 are struggling with moderate to severe depression at this point um what our clinicians are doing

187so there are nine um nine clinicians and myself providing outreach to students these are our weekly averages so as you can see there are about half of students responding and getting individual services every week from us as the mental health clinicians they're also group services and student meetings we've been working in conjunction with the youth services section of the police department as well as a better way who have also been contacting hundreds of families and providing services in addition to individual and group services we've been doing a lot of crisis support check-ins student check-ins suicide risk assessments between yss and the mental health clinicians we've done over 50 suicide risk assessments this school year none of which resulted in hospitalization we've also been doing a lot of resource linkage and referral allocation parent consultations assessments

188and working with school psychologists staff presentations class presentations um earlier this year when we did our presentation joanna latel discussed her mindful mondays so that the staff have been receiving weekly emails about self-care activities that they can try earlier this school year the mental health clinician team reviewed with all site administrators school counselor school psychologists as well as the engagement specialists a mental health for school sites shared google drive that contains the referral process so there's a referral form for yss mental health and a better way it's the same form for all agencies as well as the solano county access referral form and guides with how to how to make referrals there's another folder that covers all of our suicide prevention information so that's like a float contains a flowchart with who to contact and

189when as well as a suicide risk assessment safety plan and other documentation that would be helpful i've also been doing a lot of work on our mental health clinician website so that contains i'm just going to open it up real quick so you all can see some of what's on here so on the right hand side we have our emergency resources including a new training that's available to middle and high school staff and students it's a 90-minute training that can teach those folks about life-saving skills there are also other crisis lines um an online resource community agencies are all listed all of our contact information is listed on this page um and and then there are sub pages that contain information about different things such as a coven 19 page that helps you know there

190are there are videos articles and activities for people to access and utilize to kind of try to help them through some of the difficulties that covert 19 has brought brought us um and yeah and so next up i have kyra davis to talk a little bit about what she's been doing at her sites hi good evening thank you for um allowing me to speak tonight um so my name is kira davis and i am a mental health clinician with the district i've been here for about five years and my sites this year are kimi rap uh kimmy charter as well as i help serve students at golden hills who have ieps and i am lucky to be start part of the sarb panel um so tonight what i wanted to talk about is what the

191things that we are doing at my sites um to address the needs of students i am happy to hear that the needs of students are being talked about parents are aware faculty is aware and i just would definitely piggyback on that that we are having to find new ways to support our students so the first thing i want to touch on is crisis supports now more than ever there's more mental health crisis more students experiencing mental health problems for the first time as well as huge losses in grief huge losses so the students are dealing with grief so the good thing about this is that we have some really strong teams here at our district so and at my site specifically i'm going to talk about the roles that we work together as administrators working

192with counselors working with school psychologists and identifying those students who need help another great support we have is our teachers i am constantly getting kind of updates and emails about students that teachers are concerned about teachers are watching out and looking for students that need help on zoom or maybe they're turning in assignments that are concerning another great resource that we have in identifying our students that need help is our go guardian program so that's almost weekly i'd say that we're following up with students that are um showing some concerns or and that need mental health supports so the other thing i want to talk about is crisis supports is how those needs have gone up so um i'm thinking like before covid and when we were in um school um you know of course

193there were still issues coming up with students in crisis and grief um but what that would often look like is follow up for um a couple times and traumas they're just compounding so their students are dealing with more and more things and it's not just a few quick follow-up follow-ups excuse me so we are um seeing students for months now um so and as i've heard tonight there is a huge need um thank goodness it's not something that nine well not thank goodness but you know nine clinicians could not handle that but what's amazing to me is how our community has come together so more than ever i'm hearing about students who are getting services from kaiser getting services from solano county mental health and then we are able to support um through our district

194and our resources that we have those students so that's a little bit about the crisis support and the other big thing i wanted to talk about is our outreach um and specifically at my sites um the kimmy sites um and definitely the students at golden hills that have ieps we have to think outside of the box so um when distance learning first started probably march april it was all about like phone calls emails scheduling rescheduling and what we found is that just doesn't work for our kids especially like our high-risk kids they're a little tougher to reach so the first kind of line of defense was doing stuff like delivering books to them um doing home visits outside the home of course with masks so just so they can see that that human have that

195human contact other things that we're doing at the kimmies is delivering um food boxes so and i know that we are not the only ones doing that i see teachers i see our student support specialists um picking up and delivering our vusd food boxes and it's a great way to engage with our students most recently we just started feeding the kids at our hub at kimi so that's exciting and hopefully an incentive for some kids to come another form of outreach that we're doing is following up after crisis and that involves a lot i remember it started with the fires then we kind of moved to the racially related events that were happening in our community most recently we had violence in our community um that really touched me because i have students who live

196at the veterans apartments and hearing their stories are in and around the veterans apartments um hearing their stories and their experiences so what we were able to do with the help of like raeanne and kate was very supportive and allison lorea the counselor at um kimi rap is we were able to go to the complex and provide information to working with the manager at the complex provide information about how to support students who have been through traumatic events or students and families as well as mental health resources we are able to get great information from the county um and then ways to cope so we were able to include like crayons coloring sheets just letting them know that we're here and we care the last thing i wanted to really touch on is coping so

197what has amazed me and i'm so thankful for my job is that our students are so resilient our families are resilient and then even though times are really hard right now our students are getting through it and i think um we're really coming together as teachers as staff um and and students like everybody there's so much more kindness um more patience more understanding so that's a huge part of this and getting through this um i know a big part that clinicians are focusing on now is like looking into the future looking what how you've gotten through this and what you're gonna do from here so this isn't gonna last forever we're almost there just hang in there and keep doing what you're doing because we are getting through it and then another part of coping

198that i wanted to touch on briefly is a lot of our students did know how to access services and they did have coping mechanisms but this has really brought about a whole new group of students who um as mentioned can't play sports the way they used to can't hang out with their friends the way they used to and these are a lot of the students that we're seeing right now um but the good news is i will tell you is that all the students that are being brought to our attention even if we're not um serving them directly through our school district we're not just passing them by students are getting help and are getting support and it is out there so that's something that we we are doing um and we're teaching our kids

199that it's okay to not be okay sometimes and it's okay to need support and also maybe this week you don't want support maybe this week you just need some time to yourself so kind of finding the balance in between all that but again our students are great and i've seen so many families being supportive staff and we're almost there thank you thank you kyra i'm very honored to work with you you've done a wonderful job and thanks to everyone for tuning in please let us know if you have any questions okay any questions god i should just leave my raised hand up all night i think um do you see any common denominators in these students who are needing this type of um help is it social economic anything you can see that would be

200maybe an underlying factor it's it's really hard to answer that question um because i think the common denominators is being human and alive right now um i think that a lot of people are struggling in one way or another i think um you know some of the students that kira was mentioning so students who have experienced recent trauma um you know and who've experienced like maybe some of the more heavy traumas throughout the year so like the fires are losing their homes and things like that um those things are heavier and they might require more of that like one-on-one therapy support where others others where it's just you know we're all struggling with loss this year like we've lost our our normal way of life and so i think all students are struggling with that

201in one way or another um and so there are different responses for different things and i think community and kindness and empathy are the some of the most significant and you know things that we can do to help each other through this given the students that we have reported at each board meeting i mean we've had some exceptional student leaders on our campuses have we been able to tap into that at all to have them help as well maybe reach out to a student or so let me give you an example of in dixon there was a dixon high school junior who one night stepped in front of a train and he had a twin brother and you can imagine what the trend brother has been going through since then the twin brother is a

202baseball player the family obviously is not financially well off and with this expense of the child's death his baseball teammates raised the money to get him the bat he wanted the new bad he wanted that was the you know talking about something to perk him up all the things they have done and all the counseling and all that which was great and i'm not questioning what you do but his teammates coming to have his back and getting him that bat meant everything to him you know and he's starting to come out of it so i think if we can use that component as well as what you do because ultimately they're with their friends they're with their age groups so but i happen to be bipolar so i am all about mental health so thank

203you yeah thank you and and you're right you know coming together and supporting each other kids supporting their peers you know adults and parents supporting each other is is a huge healing factor i know the one thing we started at one school that my wife worked at is any time we spotted a child having lunch by themselves we would tap our student leadership and go somebody go over there or even some of the adults we'd go sit by him and make sure that every kid had company for lunch because you know you've seen those and it's the same thing now when a child's home alone and mom and dad are off to work and they start staring at the walls and the clock goes slower and slower you know being able to identify them and

204maybe a student calls them or hits them up on instagram or whatever they do all that new stuff i think it'd be incredible i think it'd be incredible with the addition obviously of what you folks are doing which is obviously way more than i think has ever been done in the past when i was in school i was called energetic or enthusiastic when i was basically bouncing off the walls so thank you for what you're doing for these children i appreciate it thank you very much thank you um anybody else yeah real quick like um uh sasha are you there yes i'm here fantastic um sounds like your team's overwhelmed or just have increased number of cases to deal with were we able to use any of that coveted money to address that and support

205them in any way of outside assistance or anything just just checking in on that aspect yeah so that's actually something we looked at but to be honest we still have a vacancy in our mental health clinician team and you know we did increase our grant with yss and the police department for the interns that they provide a little bit this year but similar to us they had difficulty finding additional interns so they've gotten everybody that they could get um and we're continuing to look for additional clinicians to fill our our you know our last spot on our team because we have a temporary vacancy um and so i think it's more a supply and demand issue than anything where there's no there's no supply but you know they've i think divvied up the cases and

206are making it work and they're an amazing and supportive team of one another um and so i think that they are really you know pitching in and being collaborative one of the things that they did do was um a better way is also providing services to us and so by streamlining and making our referral processes you know be available to all of the different entities that are helping with mental health in the district that has helped as well so we're although we can't find additional personnel we're just trying to make our systems as efficient as possible so we can reach as many kids as possible excellent well thank you to you and the rest of the team that presented tonight and uh grab one of those top interns from the police department you know and

207maybe snaggle them into a full-time position but thank you thank you i think sasha i i don't want to hold on hold on hi i just wanted to say thank you for your presentation tonight and for everything that you do i'm just so grateful for you um i i would like to see us get more coveted from funds from the state and the fed and i'd like to see more of that money given to mental health um so i'm hoping that we do get more um relief funds and you know personally speaking for myself i would like to see some of those funds go towards mental health issues because i know that's an area that our students are really struggling with and um the emotional effects and the tools that it's taken on our our

208students and families has just been you know um it has just been you know terrible and i and i and i just um hope that the students who need help can get help and so my question is how many students are out there that are that need help that can't get help or you know is there like a waiting list of students or are you guys just i understand you're totally overwhelmed with um the amount of you know outreach and things that you're doing but are there students that aren't getting help that need it right now um i think most students are getting help pretty quickly so um the way things have been working is let's say you know a teacher identifies a student or you know a student identifies themselves their school counselor or

209administrator will submit a referral to the mental health clinician at that site or to to myself to me and we'll review the referral and either keep it pass it along to yss or a better way and they'll review it and reach out to the family within like a day or two um i think the the main trouble we're running into is people not responding when the phone call when they receive the phone call okay all right thank you cecile do you want to say so just real quick sasha um whatever we can do on the board to support you and you and your and your crew in this i mean i i'm not speaking on behalf of everybody and then also the other thing is that maybe it's just a dutch brother card maybe it's

210a sports lanyard anything like that that makes that kid put a smile on their face maybe ease their troubles for one day whatever we need whatever you need let's do it and that means for the rest of them too so thank you thank you and i will say and i know that we have new board members um but you've probably already learned pretty quickly that this this board in this district has been exceptionally supportive of mental health and i'm just so grateful that we are where we are because of the board's vision around mental health um and we were i think so prepared to be able to support our students through this crisis if we can't manage to hire additional staff for our mental health team at this point i don't know what other districts

211are doing right now that didn't have the foresight to build this type of mental health system prior to this so i just want to thank the board for that vision and for being supportive of this team okay so um so obviously you know we have many more mental health clinicians per student than anybody around here we have really done that and that was really great thing i want to ask a couple questions um kate you gave some figures in the beginning right when you started about i think you said 83 percent were experiencing at least moderate anxiety and 90 at least moderate depression do you know what those numbers are in in years that aren't pandemic i don't know i think what i've read previously was they're they're more in the like the 30 range

212so i guess one thing that i want to say and again i have you know i'm i'm a mental health professional and you know for solano county and i i think it's really important to say you guys are amazing you guys are great and you're not touching beyond the surface you know 90 of kids are moderately depressed that's a horror show i mean that is and that has nothing to do with you right but that's a horror show so i think that's really at the end of the day what we have to put our arms around and that's why we're all so dedicated we gotta get back to school because you can touch so many kids when they're at school you can't touch them when they're not at school you don't get any kind of

213the number of referrals from teachers teachers don't hit their their their hands and their eyes on the kids you know so it's it's it's kind of like you're doing so much and this the slope is like is straight up and you're climbing to try to get that and i just think it's really important to note that because it's the same in the mental health clinics in the county there's so much that we're not doing there's so much that we're missing we're not doing so much face to face because of kovit and because we're doing telehealth it's it's a it's a crap show so thanks for dealing with all that but i think it's really important to acknowledge that as well you know with all your good work um do you do you know the number

214and again if you don't it's okay the the referrals that you're getting from teachers now versus again like last year when there's no covid um i'm i don't know because so referrals being filtered through the mental health clinicians is new this year so i don't i'm not totally sure but we are getting referrals daily [Music] does does the does the um district have any kind i i know they have like a tip line but do we have a hotline a warm line a text line that says hey if you're having a hard time text this line and we'll check it do we have anything like that i don't know if we have that that goes specifically to someone with vacaville but on the website there are um text lines for for a different you know

215a variety of different no yeah but i mean back of it i think this may be something we could think about at some time you know we're talking about covid funds or something because kids are attached to their teachers kids are attached to people they know and kids are texting all the time all the time so they would be more likely i think to write to send something into a district line than they would a national hotline you know so maybe that's something that we could we could think about um the last thing i wanted to ask was um are we making a lot of referrals to beacon beacon is the um mild to moderate mental health service through medi-cal and it's free for anybody that has medi-cal to get counseling services those referrals would

216go we would send to access and we do we do send referrals to access and um that referral form is also in the folder for okay so just just to say you know if they're if they're really if they're mild and they just need a little something you don't have to go through access you could go straight to beacon because you know it's kind of an easy referral okay and we could talk about that another time but that that's um one of the so over the summer we have some projects that we're already talking about and one of them will be to collaborate more so kind of reach out beyond you know so we have yss a better way we want to be more collaborative with kaiser we'll add beacon to the list as well

217as the county um just so that we have a better you know more communication with all of our communities resources thank you and thank you kate and kara and sasha for your you know dedication to our students thank you very much thank you everyone great job thanks kara okay good to see you again okay we're finally made it to the action items okay uh the first action item is uh adoption of the resolution for black history month um in in february and i know theresa we had one person at least that wanted to speak about it and so are there any others at this point um yes there are a few so uh we'll start with uh uh danette mitchell please i don't see that name teresa and the attendees she was there earlier yeah

218i see her there um how do you spell last name mitchell m-i-t-c-h-e-l-l okay i'll get it first name spell is dinette d-a-n-e-t-t-e got it okay danette are you there yes can you hear me we can you're up okay thank you good evening i appreciate the opportunity to speak to the vacaville unified school district board members i applaud the board for being open to adopting a resolution recognizing the contributions of black americans in this country and understanding that the recognition is long overdue i know the resolution is a beginning step i hope it leads to some substantive policies that will address specifically when it comes to african-american students namely black males rather than becoming an annual symbolic gesture i understand the importance of embracing our commonality as americans however in understanding the world through commonality i

219believe we must recognize that with intent equality has not been available for african americans therefore viewing many situations through the lenses of this narrative may risk being distorted i hope the school board will also be open to considering implementing the 16-19 project into the school's curriculum to address the false and censored american history that has been in our public schools perpetuating explicit biases and disparities again i thank you for your support of our students and for your efforts in preparing a resolution in recognition of black history month this is another step to implementing transformative change again thank you for your time thank you jeanette much appreciated okay mr kitsis our next next speaker is johnny kong george okay mr george can you hear us please unmute yourself okay i'm sorry i thought you were going

220to unmute me i got it there you go you're up thank you thank you um president kisses and thank you board for having me and allow me to speak um i'll just be really brief um sister bened mitchell said it all but i just want to thank school board kelly walsh for her courage despite the pushback for recognizing february as black history month by authoring this black history proclamation a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step this proclamation is that step the inaugural black history celebration on the 20th in vacaville is that step bold courageous individuals such as school board welch and president adam rich who use their power influence and their voice in that is that step i encourage the vacaville unified school board members to take that step by using

221their power influence and voice and accept um and adopt this proclamation this is 2021. take that step on this journey it's been way too long um for us to recognize black history month in um in vacaville thank you again for allowing me to speak and i appreciate the opportunity thank you mr george i appreciate it i just need to let you know that uh you know kelly asked for this to be on the agenda and that we put it on so no no pushback for that so thank you for your for your speech thank you brother next okay our next speaker is danielle shay good evening can you hear me yes we can danielle hi um i just want to thank everyone for being here this evening and for presenting um even though i know

222it's really late um i really appreciate um the consideration of adopting this resolution even though i i'm not alone we do have to point out that it is unfortunate that we are in 2021 and this is just being proposed um but i'm happy that it is now i urge the board to adopt this resolution um i've been appreciative of efforts lately um by the board and the school district to further education and be proactive about racial and justice issues but i do think we just have a really really really long way to go i hope that this is just the first step um in many um toward fostering a really inclusive and diverse um community for the school district i know we've all seen all the things happening lately with students um and within our

223community um i i would really like to see a lot more forward progress but i am very very appreciative of the progress that we've made particularly since we've had the new board members um i really just want to give you um a shout out for that thank you and have a good evening thank you daniel okay uh next speaker is rovante robinson hi rovante you're up hi um good evening everyone um yeah i just wanted to start by saying uh thank you to kelly welch for uh bringing this uh resolution forward um you know i also just want to point out that this being the first one it illustrates how far we still have to go but it's a great first step and i'm actually really happy to hear this i wish this happened when

224i was still in school and uh i just hope that everyone is on board and passes it uh have a good night thank you thank you okay our next speaker is christian cisneros hi good evening uh i i just wanted to actually call to um thank kelly welsh for um putting this resolution on the agenda um i think it's a great step towards restart of justice uh even though it is 2021 as i just pointed out um but it is commendable and i'm very glad that it you know we're doing this now so thank you thank you mr cisneros okay uh next speaker is sarah palmisano hi sarah hi guys can you hear me okay okay um i just wanted to echo everyone's sentiments so far and commend kelly for this resolution also echo what

225danette said and support the school district adopting the curriculum and the 1619 project i think that would go a long way um in a lot of the education that has ultimately been lacking in most school districts not to you know particularly pinpoint vosd but this is a long way coming and good job guys thanks for the work thank you sarah okay next up is giselle cisneros gizelle are you there please unmute your microphone uh miss cisneros but not just that there's two ken there's giselle and christian hello it's giselle cisneros i would just like to start off and uh congratulate kelly welsh on this historic resolution um it is unfortunate that this is a historic moment in 2021 that we're celebrating black history month in this way i hope this leads to real systemic change

226but this is a commendable moment so congratulations and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this evening thank you very much okay and the last speaker i have is jennifer piazza hey can you hear me yes we can okay um first i'd like to thank kelly for bringing this resolution um and uh for it to being considered by the board um i i just wanted to echo what everybody else has said um about the 1619 project um and about how important this is um you know i think a really good example of how important it is is the the um the tarps that will see wood um which are fantastic by the way i it just demonstrates how important this resolution is to our community in general and yeah thank you thank you

227very much and i have never seen a meme like that on uh on zoom so that's interesting i have no idea what my picture is dancing with the part over its head hello kitty oh that's my daughter's okay thank you very much okay um kel i guess kelly would you like to read the resolution sure i can read it um i just need to pull it up in front of me here hold on sorry it's the attachment's not up on my computer but i'll pull it up right now hold on it's 10 o'clock all right um vacaville unified school district resolution recognition of february as black history month whereas black history month was set forth to recognize the heritage and achievements of black people in the united states frozen yes miss wells appears to be

228frozen does anybody else have it up yes i do i can could you read it certainly i'm here sorry i'm trying i don't know what's going on with my internet um i left i don't know which paragraph i left off at but first after the first paragraph then start with the second one all right whereas the vacaville unified school district endeavors to provide each student the opportunity to understand the commonality of all people and to have the opportunity to understand the world through this commonality as well as each student's individual heritage and whereas the contribution of african-americans from all walks of life throughout the history of the united states have benefited all of us and whereas black history month encourages arguments of african americans and whereas corresponding school activities held during this month encourage students

229to continue to strive for the best education as a means to fulfill their potential and whereas not only during the month of february 2021 but throughout the school year it is important to recognize the contributions of african americans in society and also to recognize disparities in student achievement in order to move towards greater equity in our education system and the greater community therefore be it resolved by the governing board of the vacaville united unified school district that february 2021 be designated black history month thank you kelly um are there any uh well actually why don't we get a motion and a second and then anybody could speak about it if they want to i'd like to ask kelly to make the motion please second okay second by daniel any comment i have a comment i

230just want to let you know there's a lot of comments tonight that this is kind of the first and maybe the first for the resolution but we've celebrated black history month for many years and in including the art that is shared at will c wood this year happened to be outside on the uh on the stadium only due to the fact that no students on campus but this is nothing new to our campus we've been celebrating this and teaching this for many years and i i i don't want that to go and and get kind of passed over thinking this is something new the resolution is new but we've been doing this for many years and and supporting this month uh as long as i can remember here in vacaville and i've been here uh

231for a long time so i just don't want to make sure that this is just not a first for us maybe the resolution isn't and uh thank you to kelly for bringing that up but other than that we've been we've been celebrating this and recognizing black history month for for many years thank you john kelly yeah i just want to say thanks john for your comments um i think that in general the board hasn't done resolutions in the past and i recognize that the usd has celebrated black history month in other ways and i haven't been on the board for as long as you have in michael and so i don't have the history that you you all have but um i think that in general our board just hasn't done resolutions and what i

232think is that resolutions they're done by many many school districts and what i think is good about the resolution process in general is that we have something concrete that we can put out to the public and say the we passed we voted on and we passed a resolution for you know x or y or z um and so it can go on our website it can go on our social media for whatever that resolution is so you know if it's you know red ribbon week or suicide prevention week or i think those resolutions are important to get out to the public so um just that's just my thoughts thank you kelly anybody else i would just like to say kelly that maybe it's not breaking ground but your heart is certainly in the right place

233and bringing this to us so thank you you see so anybody else jelly i just i just want to say having been in the district for many many years we have recognized um black history month and other other important uh different groups et cetera but i think we have a lot of work to do and i think that these are the times that we're really stopping and thinking about what are we actually saying when we say these things and so i appreciate the resolution for that and bringing it forward to to where we are today in 2021 and going forward i think that there is a lot a lot left to do so thank you comment so i i will oh it's good santiago so so we passed this which i'm hoping we will um

234how would you give these very solutions um out to to other men to the administrators into our schools and what does it mean to them so um well or our will jane uh put this up to administrators all staff get board updates board meeting updates after the board meeting teresa right yes it will go out but i'm just specific to the resolution though i i think what's important to know what we're doing is on campuses we're celebrating this you heard that from our student representatives tonight they're celebrating already on their campuses so i think our a resolution is a written piece of paper i think it's more important to see what our actions are and that's what you heard from our students tonight is they're celebrating that throughout their campuses and they're they're educating all

235the students on uh uh black history and and uh all the attributes that were were given to us um that's that's to me is more than any piece of paper is what are we doing action-wise and i think our students and our staff are doing that and we're seeing that on every campus that is being celebrated uh to me a piece of paper that's that's good we have a resolution but more importantly what are we doing to back that resolution and what we're backing is what our our students and staff are are doing for each other at the student level and our staff is doing to educate uh everyone i can send it to principals as well so they share with their staff can i just ask santiago is there something that you're wanting or

236suggesting well no i was just wondering how how that okay this is our first version there hasn't been any resolutions to blackboard unified so once we pass this relationship like i said i'm sure we will um i'm confident we will i should say um we heard from three high schools i just wonder if some kids they can go to all the other schools uh in the district to the principals to to the teachers to uh to let's recognize uh this month and let's uh you know what are we gonna do about it other than just like uh john said it's a piece of paper so i i will send it to principals um you know our principals especially elementary send out newsletters every week and um those have a lot in there around the activities

237they're doing around black history month so there's a lot going on but i'll send it to principals tomorrow and they'll make sure it gets distributed out to staff yeah i just wanted to say i do realize that it could be considered just a piece of paper and that um what what our actions are and what we're actually doing is truly more important than just a piece of paper but i think that this piece of paper this resolution can be not only distributed to staff um and to let our our school community know what our board you know passed but it can also be put on social media there can be a press release it could there could be on our website we can have a resolutions tab on our website i mean there i've seen

238other districts websites and all the resolutions they do and it's not just a piece of paper but it's it's us it's us taking action to show the school community that we support our black students that we support black history month that we support the teaching of black history in our curriculum like many many of the speakers we're talking about the 1619 project in our curriculum like this is is this is just the first resolution i think that i just think that resolutions generally haven't been done but they can be a catalyst um or a tool to get to let people know that you know we care about things like this and and i might bring another resolution in the future i don't i i about a different issue or a different month or a different

239cause this is just just happens to be black history month and i wanted to recognize that and i want to let our school community know our board cares and our board is paying attention to um the struggles of black folks in our community so i i think you know it can be seen as just a piece of paper but and our actions are important but um resolutions are uh something that that that can be distributed wide and far to let our community know that you know we are paying attention so thank you so i i my my suggestion would be this and i'm just making a suggestion that maybe at one of the meetings that we have we have a couple board workshops coming up we could talk about resolutions because we really haven't you

240know done them that much and we could talk about what the process is of of distributing or however we do that and we could all do that together this is a hard place to do that um but we can do that and that's what we do with those board workshops when we try to figure out you know how to handle things so does that sound okay sounds good to me okay so the so my only my comment about this is that uh you know john i really appreciate that you brought up the fact that you know we try to do those things and we do them at schools and we do that and i think that's super important and i also think it's important that globally the board who makes policy for the district you

241know says as we're doing here that this is important and i think i think both things are really important and you know i was thinking about it like what why is it important you know and people have different thoughts and feelings about it but to me it's important because as a as a white person it doesn't matter to me whether you have a white history month because history is kind of written by white people and that's not bad or good it just is so there are many many many black people who feel like they've gotten written out of history or that the history has not been written from their point of view so that's the reason to me why it's so important that's really that's really it and that's why i think it means something

242to black people whereas it wouldn't matter to me as much as all as a white person so i just wanted to give my two cents there and uh let's end this discussion and let's vote theresa all right uh so i have the motion by ms welsh and the second by mr santian mr khan on your vote please yes mrs dally yes mr jansen yes mr santian yes ms welsh yes mr serrado yes and mr kitsis yes thank you thank you okay next we have 18b approval of 2021-22 student calendars is there anything we need to know about that jane particularly or just what it is um i don't think there is they're the same calendars uh the we didn't change the schedule okay no way with i'll make a motion to improve thanks second time

243second sorry jane it's all right i'll just step on you that's all yeah just a little bit okay so mr jensen you made the motion was it you mr conley that second it yes okay thank you okay your vote mr connolly yes mrs dally yes uh mr jansen yes mr yes mr serrado yes uh miss uh ms walsh yes mr pizzas yes okay we have 18c approval a payment to schools excess liability fund um it seems fairly self-evident to me but so do we need anything jane or just um you know kelly burks hi kelly this is a little bit of an odd item so it is odd go ahead kelly burks so there's a new law assembly bill 218 for childhood victims of sexual assault they have until the age of 40 now and

244within five years of discovery of the abuse to file a civil lawsuit so it provides this three-year window of revival claims that would have otherwise been expired because of the previous statute of limitations so we're in that revival window we have until um or victims i'm sorry the victims have until january of 2023 to file those claims and then our district was with north bay school insurance authority we were a member of that group and they were a sub-member of the school excess liability fund known as itself from 1986 to 2005 and so we're receiving this invoice now because their board is loving additional contributions from former members like ourselves and to provide the additional contributions that are specifically for the possibility of future claims so we're working with our current insurance vendor uh north

245bay schools insurance authority to let self know that we don't agree with this payment we'll send the letter with the payment letting them know that we're making the payment um under protest we don't agree with it and or any future or potential assessments so this invoice was a surprise which we didn't have included in the budget but we will add it at second interim and we are going to make the payment just so we're not assessed any late fees um but we will follow up um with our our current vendor now to see if there is anything that we can do and we're being assessed for two of the four years that they audited but currently there are no actual claims at this time are there any questions i have a question if there are

246no claims that happen do we get the money back i'm sorry i can't hear you very well what was that there are no claims that happen do we get the money back well that's what we're hoping um because right now they're just saying that they're assessing the claims or the contributions for possible claims um but that there aren't any so that's why we're going to follow up but they do have until january of 2023 to make any claims so we might not be able to file for that refund or possibility of receiving those funds back until this window has closed okay any other questions okay if there's no other questions i'll i'll move to approve second thank you kelly i just want to say that you are incredibly clear of uh at explaining things that

247was really and she looks very comfortable in that corner right there doesn't she yeah on the couch with the dog it's after 10 o'clock he's waiting a long time okay we got emotions okay mr connor your vote yes mrs dally yes jansen yes mr santiane yes mr serrata yes ms walsh yes mr kittens yes okay next we have approval of agreement with rainforest grou architects for the vacaville high school improvement project not to exceed two hundred seventy six thousand dollars i'll move it second it okay we have motion a second any comments okay theresa mrs dally yes mr conway yes mr jansen yes mr santianne yes mr serrato yes ms walsh yes and mr kitsis yes okay the last action item is approval of an agreement with structure groups for the 100 mcclellan street improvement

248project an amount not to exceed 314 eighty dollars and again it's a measure a item i'll move it second okay motion a second any comment okay teresa okay mr conley yes mrs dally yes mr jansen yes mr santianne yes mr serrano yes ms welsh yes mr kitsis yes okay now we have the consent calendar uh normally done in one motion um is there anybody that needs to pull anything from there okay so can we get a motion so moved second okay okay uh mr conley yes mrs dally yes mr jansen yes mr santiago yes mrs serato yes ms welsh yes mr campus yes okay um future business am i missing anything i lost my last page future business right uh yeah you're good yeah future february 20th and 27th we have special governing board workshops

249over zoom uh and then we have a regular governing board meeting march 4th 2021 tentatively at this point on zoom but we'll see okay we have to go back to closed session so thank you everybody thank you see you in close thanks you