001good afternoon everyone i called to order the regular board meeting for gcc october the 13th at 3 p.m welcome welcome to our board meeting i will now do roll call mr anderson here mr block mandrake mr mandrake not answering not here mr turner and campbell here please note there are four board members present one not present at this time again thank you all superintendent peterson cabinet members who are here glad to see you and those of you who are online with us this afternoon welcome and we appreciate your being here with us um mrs fly thank you vince thank you for being here with us so with that do we have public comments mr sample or mrs compares a madam president there are no public comments that have came in okay great and so with
002that we will continue on with our board agenda which is relatively short today so we will start off with our superintendent's update and we're very glad you're with us and it's up to you now all right so very pleased to be with you today and to be able to update the board and those listening online i do want to affirm the board and thank you for your willingness to change today's meeting time from the usual 4 45 until 3 p.m as most of you know that is to be able to accommodate for a meeting that was rescheduled by yolo county for our epic annual report that will follow so thank you to everyone for their flexibility in these times so just a few things to update you with we are in 2020 once again a
003nominated best places to work in sacramento and this week we will be digitally virtually attending the best places to work ceremony to see where we may have been awarded or placed we're very excited just being nominated is a real testimony to our employees and their belief in us and their answers on a very um long survey related to being an employee with us and how they are valued and so we definitely want to give a shout out to all of our employees who answer that survey it often comes at a difficult time it comes in summer and so to get the number of responses necessary means a great deal to us so we will be updating the board on our status after we attend that ceremony it is this week is the national week of
004school administrator and you had as a board uh recognized that that was this week and this week we will be celebrating our school administrators we are going to be providing them with a boxed meal at an outdoor event where they are socially distanced and yet in the same general physical proximity but safely with the mask on and receiving their certificate of appreciation in that manner we're all doing the best we can in this unusual world we live in but definitely want to affirm our administrators this week as i know you do for all they're doing more than ever during this pandemic to be leaders of excellence uh and to help us through these kind of rough waters that we are surfing right now we are in the midst of the gis gateway international school renewal
005with san juan unified school district as you're well aware of those discussions have been ongoing regarding what timeline is best for both entities we feel we are on on track for a very excellent in-depth uh collaboration together in regards to our renewal with gis we're very grateful for san juan they've been an excellent partner with us including not only supporting our academic endeavors but they have been very strong partners in facilities as you know with the extensive modernization that we're undergoing right now could not have happened without their partnership a few district board members from san juan um are going to or at least have certainly expressed an interest and we're going to work on getting them a tour so that they can see that modernization and the facilities work and picture what our school
006is like when we are able to be in that space as i've told you in the past time in the midst of what has become a lengthy experience the fall presentations start in fall and and go almost into winter but i have completed cccs mcclellan hla futures saba epic and gateway international school so far i still have cccsk8 coa elementary and coa middle school and then fall superintendent presentations will be complete it has been quite an honor to be doing this in a virtual setting and and uh to date they have been well received uh when we complete those as you know we will try to figure out what does coffee with the superintendent look like virtually not quite sure jason you and i have to put our heads together about how you serve up
007coffee uh digitally but that is usually our january experience to create connection with all of our sites so we'll see what we can do our equity work we're very pleased to say is continuing despite all that faces us with the pandemic and our responses we continue to implement the goals of our diversity equity and inclusion plan that we have shared with you we have gotten more and more input from staff on this we've also been working with hanover research recently we had a session with them where they did a case study with one of our schools and dove into our data with an equity lens we're also working with nicole anderson of anderson associates with at least two different schools if not more on cultural proficiency training and discussions and plans one of those is
008our futures high school camp futures high school campus as well as our coa middle school campuses are both a part of those discussions we are continuing our book study for shattering inequities with our administrators they're doing a great job with their reflections on that on a regular basis our monthly principal meetings and budget meetings have been very lively aaron will attest to the lively discussions about budget at at the moment some of the liveliness with monthly budget meetings is that we of course have some significant funds that have to be expended in certain timelines in very specific ways and i want to really affirm both aaron thornsbury and omar arena for their work and helping the sites to know best how to spend those monies to maximize their impact for our students i continue to
009be a part of the access superintendent's leadership council i had been doing that in an informal manner now i am formerly the region 3 representative to that council really good information comes from those meetings and i continue to be impressed with access leadership in the area of of all that this state is facing on an education basis i do want to inform the board in terms of communications that we have received a communication that was cc'ed to our board president mrs lilly campbell regarding the fact that one of our schools cccs was chosen to be audited for the prop 39 clean energy jobs act it's very standard process they pick a certain number that they audit cccs just happens to be one of the ones they've chosen above that there's not really anything that involves
010the board other than it was cc'd two miss campbell and the board so i know that aaron and his team is already well prepared to respond to the communication and the requests for documentation and no audits are fun audits but you know it's always a good opportunity to show the excellence that we provide in all areas of our organization and that ms campbell is my update thank you very much any comments or questions from the board before i make my comments seeing no hands you said it would the letter was being cc to me i have not received it at this point so i i do not believe that they actually physically sent it to multiple people they on the bottom cc'd about five people you being one me being one aaron being one but
011i really think it's one email um yeah but but it is standard in the face of any kind of audit that they see the board president so it is just um it's just an information item nothing of concern okay no nothing of concern okay and would you please on behalf of the board to all of the school administrators give them our best and thank them for the diligence and all of the hard work so on behalf of the board we really appreciate everything that they are doing for the students and the parents so thank you and we wish them a wonderful week of recognition and make sure the box lunch is good we'll do the best we can all right and how is it going with nicole anderson and the equity piece that she's doing
012working with schools we are very pleased with our yeah we're very pleased with our partnership with nicole anderson and anderson and associates and jason in particular is a point on some of that work but but she has been highly responsive and the work is progressing okay very good all right so with that anything else from board members any questions comments again thank you for your hard work and so glad that you're still working with the superintendents and uh and now region three person okay so with that we shall move into our study session and the very first one is gcc schools reopening update and i know board members are waiting for this to hear where we are and where are we going i believe this is a partnership or tag team if you will with
013uh deputy superintendent sample and assistant superintendent dr mccormick all right okay thank you dr peterson good afternoon board president members of the board myself and dr mccormick are happy just to kind of take some time to share with you and walk through with you kind of what's happening uh up to now in terms of our school reopening and our future plans i think it's very important just to kind of start off by sharing and uh we have kind of made sure that we say this all the time i think dr peterson said this very early on during this process that this is very fluid in other words it's always changing it's always kind of moving as guidance and uh becomes more uh uh uh applicable all right uh where is it at there it is
014okay so the first thing is uh on september the 29th sacramento and yolo county both counties moved to uh the area of red and uh basically what happened is for a number of weeks we were in the purple or the widespread and then once we moved into red sacramento county really begin the detailed and the deep work of saying what would things looking as we reopen businesses as we reopen schools and those conversations really started a little bit deeper around that time as of today sacramento county still remains in the red however we are progressing in the right or in the positive direction as we continue to move towards the orange so we're really uh excited and happy about that so for us it really came down to looking at as we begin to move
015into the red what would be our plans and what would be the components of the plans and so working with sacramento county public health as well as sacramento county office of education 11 key areas were outlined that each plan should have the plans should address cleaning and disinfection cohorting how how will we group our students entrance egress as well as movement within the school face coverings and ppe's healthy hygiene practices as well as overall operations contact tracing uh getting our staff trained uh in contact tracing and what that means physical dis distancing as well as our staff training and then the triggers and our plan for if uh there was an outbreak to be able to switch back to distance learning without problems as well as our communication and food services plan so dr mccormick
016and i are going to walk you through some of these components of our plans as well as some next steps for us so the area that we've been really working deeply on over the course of the last few weeks is kind of what we call those outside areas so our prevention measures ensuring that we have protocols for cleaning our products have been ordered our ppes for uh staff are ordered and they are in our food services erin and myself have been working with the twin rivers team to look at what food services will look like for our students as we uh continue to move towards reopening air quality our facilities department has been uh looking at what it would take to optimize fresh air into all of our classrooms are an attention to air filtration
017for those areas that don't have the windows to let air in cleaning uh aaron and jerry little our facilities coordinator have met with our custodial staff as well as our maintenance crew to let them know what our cleaning protocols are for each of our school facilities and then our staff training even up until this past monday with our professional development day uh our staff have all been trained on covet protocols uh as well as uh healthy and safe uh work environment and workspace and then communications continuing our ongoing uh communications with all of our stakeholders especially our parents and our staff so some of the things that we've been looking at is data from our stakeholder groups or from our stakeholder surveys each of our school sites uh have started a process of doing data
018and so i'm going to share with you some approximates and some preliminary data uh for us this collection at this point is an ongoing in terms of we are still collecting information and uh we're still using this uh and we will be using all of this information to inform the planning that is happening so at our site-based schools approximately 70 percent of our population would like a hybrid uh option as they return uh with about 25 percent uh who remain who would like to remain within a distance learning uh format for our none classroom base approximately 40 percent were like a hybrid with 50 percent remaining in the distance learning and as we've been talking with our uh non-classroom based programs a lot of that 50 percent has to do with just their model already
019and so having that conversation with their parents to let them know uh what that means to uh really look and see what uh uh is happening for us we're also monitoring our local districts as well as our authorizers around us to see uh what their plans are and what uh is happening in terms of their reopening and so at this point the only sacramento county school district that has uh given a public reopening plan i know many of them are still going through their processes the folsom cordova but we still monitor all of our local surrounding districts understanding that for us what's really going to drive our our work is what our parents what our families uh say what their needs are and so we're really relying very heavy on the stakeholder data and surveys
020uh to really help us inform that decision and so dr mccormick is going to share with you a little bit about our individualized school plans so as mr sample shared really looking at that stakeholder feedback and then he and i are meeting with each school as they begin to develop and start to address those areas that he reviewed some of the things they're considering is how do we develop a phasing plan to really support the needs of some of our high need populations our students with disabilities our homeless and foster youth what's our best practices to ensure our english learners are getting the supports that they need and how would we really identify those students first and build in a process to bring them on campus the same with our career technical education what would
021small cohorts look like so these are all questions that we're asking each of the sites based on that feedback how are they going to balance face-to-face content with distance learning what does that look like will teachers be providing live instruction to the students that are face to face but also broadcasting what technology would we need to do that what do our safety and cleaning protocols based on the scheduling the start times where they're serving students meals what student breaks look like how are we getting students on and off campus all those sort of detailed questions that we're asking them to reflect on and build into their plans our schools had a professional development day on monday and a lot of the focus of their time was really about that transition how do we support student
022or teachers with the technology in their classroom whether it's a smart board those pieces to help with this process of finding a new model to deliver instruction and then that meal service piece that um mr sample talked about working with our with twin rivers unified to ensure we're giving access to food to all of our students not just those that are on campus so what's next as well as our ongoing steps as dr mccormick just shared plans are being developed at each school site we're utilizing the state guidance as our framework for what those plans should include dr mccormick and myself are meeting individually with each principal to review the plans to provide support to walk through to answer questions dr peterson is also very actively as well as uh cbo thornsberry are also very
023actively involved in that process of kind of these conversations to shape what each plans are and then after that our plans will be provided to the sacramento county public health department for their review and comment uh in which they will have the opportunity to give us their feedback and input in terms in terms of what our plans uh look like and then obviously we will continue our ongoing monitoring of the local and state guidance uh i think i will tell you it's very fluid it's kind of a moving target but we have been well positioned to continue uh working with it to continue uh being able to to be responsive and then i think something that has been a very strong suit of ours is our ongoing communication with our staff and parents letting them
024know what's happening giving them information even many times before they hear it in the newspaper we are in front of it so that they have confidence in knowing that we are are looking at ways to bring them back safely and with the highest level of health and integrity uh finally uh i think i'll put this up here again just to remind us all that we are trying to turn sacramento orange and i will tell you even though it's just sacramental it's also yolo but we are trying to turn the entire area orange and so we have been again very active in our own community outreach not only to our stakeholders but to our community at large let them know the importance of being healthy and being safe and with that we will take your questions
025okay all right i'm looking for hands i need to take my orange off so i can see my board numbers thank you very much uh board members yes jack i know you had you were interested in the presentation yes i recognize your hand jack jason i have a question for you do you see any conflict if our if an lea remains in a distance learning format and we go to a hybrid model so i really don't see any conflict and i'll share with you why i think you know in our meeting even with the county office of education uh superintendent dave gordon and others it really is been a you need to have these decisions driven by your local stakeholders and by your individuals so we're really letting our plans be driven by what our
026parents say and my assumption is that our lease are likewise doing the same they're taking the feedback from their stakeholders to drive their planning so uh honestly i think we have some 20 odd districts in sacramento county i think you're going to see 20 odd different school district plans just like there's nine different plans for us based off of what our parents are saying they need yes i was just referring to one of the articles i read today about the teachers unions not supporting uh returning to distance to in classroom learning until a later date they're obviously one of the stakeholders so and i assume our staff are also invited to you know put their input on whether we would go to a hybrid model or whether we do uh a continue with distant learning
027by the way thank you very much for the update very very insightful great thank you yes um harry and then mark uh my question is what date are we thinking about this hybrid model coming about i mean i see that we're now in a red tier two i just got an email from the county a little about a half hour ago saying that we are now in red tier two so what so when so as dr mccormick shared in terms of dates again each of our school sites as part of their planning is looking at different phase-in or phase-up populations and so our dates are going to be very different and they're going to be driven by kind of the surveys of parents and others who have kind of given input to drive that so
028i think uh at a later date as we get closer to finalizing those plans we will have the dates for each of our school sites mark and if i could just say something before mark goes in um just reiterating what jason said we don't have specific dates other than excuse me we have um we have encouraged each site to have three or four phases of opening a phase as dr mccormick said for our special education and english learners and maybe a few weeks after that a phase that expands to the next fragile or vulnerable population and then maybe a phase after that that gets more numbers on campus and that those three phases might happen before a true hybrid even goes into place so each of those phases has a smaller number in them which
029allows you to test your safety protocols are we able to clean everything do we have enough time is there enough custodians and so while not being able to tell you the exact day i can tell you that i and i know dr mccormick and mr sample are encouraging that each of those phases has to be at least a couple weeks to allow for that learning to ensure that the safety protocols work for the smaller groups before we expand to more numbers okay mark i believe you had your hand let me take take off commuting yeah so and i concur it was a very good presentation thank you for the update both of you um what's been the general temperament of the uh the parents because you know you see the the news clips and there's
030people on one side and others on other sides how have the parents been regarding the communication that we've been putting out to them well i will tell you in terms of our parents they've been very appreciative of the communication not only from the gcc but also from their school sites uh overall i feel like our parents are appreciative of the fact that we've kept them informed uh all along the process and uh we are seeking their input uh into kind of what's next so i i will say i think that has been an area that each of our principals and their staff our parent liaisons have been working very hard to host uh forums as well as parent workshops around uh these topics and so i will say i think that's been some of the
031areas that have really worked well for us good thank you i would like to note that mr mandrake is with us now our fifth board member so please make sure that mr mandrake is noted thank you bruce for being here with us thank you all right um so we will just continue as you said it's very fluid so we will continue to just wait and you will bring us continued information as it happens and we're all in the same situation all across the states i should say not just california but particularly in california all trying to figure out where we're going and what we're going to do all right any other comments or questions for the school reopening updates seeing and hearing none we will move to our next study session coherence update and thank
032you mr sample and dr mccormick for working with staff and the information you're bringing is very good information thank you okay definitely i definitely want to build on that miss lilly and affirm both jason and christine because as you can tell they have positioned themselves as the expert in this area jason has been attending many different public health meetings county meetings to stay on the fluid edge so to speak of what is known at the moment and christine has been just working tirelessly with each of the principals to try to help give them resources also attending multiple webinars simultaneously to hear every piece of available information and we certainly would not be positioned as well as we are without both of them uh leading their parts and i just definitely want to affirm them both
033as well and then with that lead into our coherence update as you had said madam president so our coherence update as you know we're about six years or more into our coherence work and really made a commitment that despite the pandemic and the distance learning we were not going to lose ground in that significant work and as um dr mccormick shifted into her assistant superintendent role she has taken prime point on continuing that work with our different vendors so i want to definitely affirm christine for continuing that forward momentum and she is going to update you on that work today great thank you dr mccoy good afternoon thank you for the opportunity to give you this update on coherence um it yes it has been a shift in our delivery model as we begin to
034learn how to um do the work in a different way but i think we've been very successful so i wanted to first affirm our partnership with future management systems and lead teach learn 360 to develop and design and deliver this model and give you an update of what we've done so far between august and um actually an hour or so ago when i had just a debrief meeting with our team to talk about where we are and what we've done and how we're moving forward so the plan for this year has barely been divided in several different buckets first of all starting with focusing on our principles and helping them to build their own capacity so that we can continue to sort of do that gradual release of responsibility as we would talk about in
035a classroom to help them lead their coherence teams so we've had 11 sessions with our schools in partnership with lead teach learn and future management systems as one component another key component has been our focus on leading from the middle so what how that initial planning with the principal and the coherence team how that translates into the development of their plans for the year their focus their blueprints for moving forward with their particular data-driven focus area as well as their comprehensive support and improvement plans for those schools that need a particular focus based on their california school dashboard so that work has also been moving forward in a virtual setting and then our most recent meeting is really a new partnership that we entered into as a model this year was now connecting the work
036of our curriculum instructional coaches on our campus with their principal defining that role how do they fit into that coherence plan how do these teams all work together to really focus on developing classrooms that support student learning we're supporting the teachers and what they need we're building on that instructional framework so that's been our our work so far and then we are definitely looking moving forward and looking forward to what's coming next so this partnership expands as we move into the rest of october december and february for some components of very focused professional development with our school sites that again is being built in that partnership really trying to build that internal capacity lesson study hopefully will be in person at some point but we have a virtual plan to support teachers in lesson study
037again what um our our learning partners with future management systems and and ltl 360 is building the capacity of our school site staff to and sort of the guide on the side to help them with the lesson study process we'll continue our principal coaching continue work in our leading from the middle as i mentioned focused not only on the progress monitoring of their individual plans but if they were one of those comprehensive and support schools that were doing that progress monitoring and moving those plans forward some coaching very similar to that first meeting we had with this curriculum coaches we have some to-do list tasks in the ed services department that we're going to continue moving forward and then we'll come back with future management systems and ltl 360 to firm up those next steps
038again constantly working on how we can help and guide and build the capacity of all of our school teams and then our educational services department absolutely benefits from this work as well we're blessed to be able to meet with wendy from ltl 360 and lyle kurtman from future management systems to talk about how we take the work that we're doing collaboratively and continue to keep that moving forward what are our next steps that we can do to support each of our school sites each of our administrators in building their own capacity so that's your your brief update of where we are and would be happy to answer any questions that you might have any questions about board members do i sing again um i have one you referred to the school team who's on the
039school team how is it made up it actually depends on each school site they've really designed their teams to some are um the the standard leadership team that you may see on a setting with your administrators and your curriculum coaches instructional coaches some of our school sites have expanded that they want to build the capacity in a broader sense so they're bringing in teacher leaders maybe a grade level lead or a content level lead so each of the schools has worked closely in finding the system and the plan that works best for them and and it really is i can't affirm enough the the work of our school administrators to take on and own this work for themselves and be able to see how it fits in with all of the interrelated opportunities they have
040on their campus and really leveraging the strength of this work you answer my question i was hoping it would be a broad contingency of thankful you know not just the coaches but you know earmarking people with that leadership ability so that's absolutely something i would see yeah anything else board members dr mccormick i mean dr peterson do you have something yeah i just want to add to what dr mccormick said and affirm her her team and the sites but i just want to keep bringing back the terminology what we use in the gcc is the term connected autonomy which means you know this is how we've defined our work for a long time people were like they'd come into the gcc and they'd say but what makes you gcc because it's really nine different schools
041so i don't i don't see it and so this idea of connected autonomy is i think what makes us excellent it's what makes us reach for excellence is every school has autonomy we don't tell them who's on the team we tell them they will do the coherence work and here's how the process will work they get to choose the team and they choose their focus and they choose their goals and i want to there are a number of people in our organization who don't understand that that's fairly unique that most districts do not allow each site to kind of form their own sense of what's important and focus on it but then work on it together and it does take a lot of leadership and i would say definitely want to affirm christine and her
042team and our vendors because when everybody is doing something just slightly different it takes a little more work but then there's way more buy-in and way more commitment on behalf of each site because they're doing what they know is the most important work so definitely want to affirm that yeah it is not top down you will do it this way it is from the bottom up you know the schools are making that decision which usually has the best benefits more so than top down so thank you dr mccormick thank you for your vision all right any other comments from board members seeing none we shall move on we are now moving into consent agenda items all right adoption of the minutes of the september 29th meeting personnel consent agenda purchases over thirty thousand el dorado
043county chartered south a local plan section b and the charter staff participation agreement i will now entertain a motion to uh for the consent agenda items yes bruce um of approval of the consent agenda okay and jack did i see your hand yes okay a second all right we have a motion and a second do we have any discussion on any of the items listed any discussions any questions seeing and hearing none i will now do roll call for the vote mr anderson harry block yes bruce mandrake yes jack turner yes lily campbell yes so all of the consent agenda items have been approved unanimously and with that we are now moving to board comments we are down to board comments board members any comments from any of the board members all right i will
044be work going with dr peterson on the 20th to gis for their hearing we will be meeting at three o'clock virtual for the gis and that's approval of the baccalaureate program so people will be coming looking at us is that correct dr peterson it is their i believe it is their primary year program authorization visit for international baccalaureate so yes we will we will be affirming their great work uh during that time yes and we will again please give all of our administrative team and staff our sincere appreciation for all of the hard work again just sorry we can't be there in person to see them and be with them but again thank them for everything okay any other board comments no board comments anything the board members can do you will be presenting the
045plan tonight yolo um epic plan anything you need from any of the board members anything no dr kosh dr mccormick mr sample they have this covered it is just our annual update to the board we don't perceive there to be any issues of concern and we're looking for the opportunity to share with the board the great work that epic has been doing fantastic fantastic okay then announcement of the next board meeting tuesday october the 27th 2020 regular time 4 45 any other first we're glad to see you thank you for being here i know thank you any other closing comments from anyone hearing none okay i will entertain a motion for adjournment yes mr block you okay so move the adjournment second mr man it has been moved in second all in favor i