OUSD Board Meeting 3/6/2019

001[Music] pretty much we'd like to welcome everyone tonight all right it's great to have everyone here tonight I it's nice to have but the seats full is exciting so what as far as I'm aware there are not any changes by emergency additions or modifications I'd like to why do we have a motion to approve the agenda all in favor aye aye that's unanimous and the minutes from my our last meeting are there any comments this is for both February 13 for the February 28 second all in favor aye aye that's unanimous student representatives yeah anything to say before the other items yes okay so our committee we were focusing mostly on the biggest problem on campus right now which is being among students and so we're gonna kind of preface that with the assembly that

002we had last week which was about this day some see something say something campaign which mr. Munsen he was the one giving his speech and everything and that was a targeting towards the program season they say something which was funded by a mother whose child had died during the Sandy Hook shooting so we focused mostly on if you see something suspicious act upon it to prevent these incidents in the future but then the assembly kinda got tagged into vaping as well now there's a problem on campus and students did not take that very well either they weren't taking it seriously or they thought that comparing something like school shootings to something they do on their everyday life like vaping was aggressive and was not gonna get the message out in the right way because I

003agree that it is a big problem campus there are people leaving in the middle of math class and you go to the bathroom three times during a certain period and you know exactly what they're gonna do cuz you go in the bathroom and you smell what it smells like in there and it's it is a problem and it's really it's really sensitive topic to tackle because faculty we know are trying their best but then again students are feeling victimized and then they're the further villainizing the faculty because they feel like they're attacking on their personal lives as opposed to actually just eliminating a problem on campus so what we talked about I'm just gonna talk again is that students who are probably not vaping and engaged really connected with mr. Munsen and what he was

004saying and also the students who have gone to the the administration and said we think this is a problem need help so what the group was trying to do was talk to students and and then be able to go to administration and say we think this is a way to further what you started so that's what we're talking about that it was great that the administration brought this to the for the students brought it to them and that they kicked it off at this campaign but one that when they are its students hearing that the message isn't getting through they want to figure out how can we help the administration get the message that the administration wants to get through so that's yeah exactly and we just generally all thought the best approach for this

005was to start with more intimate discussions towards a topic because it's something that near everyone on campus can have an opinion about because everybody's affected by three percussions of vaping whether it's faculty trust students less bathrooms are getting locked up so that there's not as many outlets for students to go during periods and so our idea was that if we had these more intimate discussions students could give direct feedback as a postage the quote-unquote told what to do or what they what to feel about this and then they could it's just more because what's the assembly you could tell how people weren't taking it seriously because they could because they were in the shadows of the bleachers and it was hard drink so I wanted pay attention because I care deeply about the one the

006impacts of school shootings but then also the impacts of nicotine running through our campuses but then when I have students chuckling in the back it's like it doesn't it it's not the best environment so these intimate settings whether it's just classroom with teachers involved or if it's assembly periods that are more intermittent it I just feel like that would be the better we all feel like it would be the best approach for something like this but on the batter side we recently had a a Holocaust survivor come and talk and it was um it was optional for students to attend that and listen to his story in his suffering and like what the impact was on his life but I went once and then I saw a bunch of students go afterwards and it was

007packed both times there were repeat students but it was very well attended and I thought it was a great opportunity for students to learn about the Holocaust and its impacts on human beings outside of what they just get textbooks and I know the problem isn't as bad as Nordhoff as it was focus at that woman till aha problem but the fact that it's even happening the first place was really great so and that's sort of what you're talking about is the more intimate setting cuz it was a big assembly it was in like history classes or small groups issues and he was talking directly from experience and not from some bullet point lecture and not it was it was so personal I you couldn't really argue against it in its certain way which is why

008I think we also in discussed as a group in the school shootings how powerful those actual students all right those parkland jumps or when parents come in so powerful and how does the district you know help get that powerful feeling out there and one the Holocaust physically they did a great job with that fantastic thank you great on so most of our public comments are on the next two agenda items so we'll move forward to item 6.1 I think what would be most helpful eyes to benefit those who are I offering comments would be for maybe I've me to go quickly through what we've done in terms of superintendent search and I and how that process is going and then I think your comments might be a little more meaningful rather than how do you

009say you should do this and we've already done it although that would be great too so I I was really saddened when I got the call from I and II can't well saying that I he would be moving bytes I life goes on and we need we needed to focus on I having a great superintendent in place before his departure day and so I one of the first things the board members did was have Asians by independently with professionals who are in the superintendent search industry who know that very well we've also had board members talk with past board members who have gone through this election process with previous superintendents I think all of those have been instructive i we we work together so one of the questions I think that has come up I

010I've heard it a little bit but I think it's been on a lot of people's minds what is this board doing having so many close sessions meetings about this and let me tell you some of the things that we've been doing and why it's taken so long and for that matter why it's going to take a little bit longer but we wanted to do a survey of teachers all right so we could get an input from my teachers as to what they would be looking for in a new superintendent so we work together to draft questions to approve questions we've been reviewing the results the feedback from teachers and there was a lot of feedback which is great really appreciate it all we work together - why - I've work on the draft and approve

011the job description that would be publicly disseminated I to find potential candidates I postings were done I now I superintendents only go a couple of places when they're looking for a new job so it's not hard - why it's not hard to get the word out to everybody who's looking for a job because I you know they go to the same place so we were able to do those postings we also reached out I to potential candidates I who are close to us or in the county I who we know thank you just one before we put the ads out we also had a discussion about whether we would hire a firm to because there's a lot of school districts that pay actually that's what happened with dr. banker was hired I think they paid

012a firm about $38,000 and what the firm does is receive the applications that suits the applications brakes makes recommendations on what they think would be good fits for the district and then the board looks through those applications and decides who they want to interview and we vote there's a body not to do that not to spend that money that we would rather just place the ads well I to characterize a died I appreciate everything you've said has been great time I I don't recall there being an actual vote I think it was just that we you know there wasn't enough consensus to go ahead with it because we look down the list of all the things that they were going to do for us and we said why don't we just do this stuff because

013it's not rocket science and we can night we can save the district you know four thousand dollars by by doing that and then and the likelihood of them finding somebody that we wouldn't find just by putting the word out is pretty remote so great good input hmm we did receive resumes I I I tried to count just to let you know I know it was over a dozen I I'm not sure exactly what the number was because we kept cycling through some resumes but I background and research was done on I many of the candidates we reviewed the resumes that's taken a lot of our closed session time and talking about who we wanted to talk to who we didn't want to talk to and to be clear on that all the board member review

014all resumes no resume came to district which was not reviewed by all the board members so we didn't go through a filter we did it ourselves right all right good point I and then we have conducted interviews some of the top candidates we have five we've talked to we'd spent time with and then we've also spent time debriefing amongst ourselves about you know what's the best fit for the district it's I the next thing is tonight's agenda item I wish is great I'm glad that there are people here who who want to contribute to that discussion I we plan for recruitment to officially stay open until a decision has been made however the likelihood of somebody else coming in at this point is also kind of remote but what will keep that posting open until

015until the decision is made I we plan to hold the community forum only on this topic on March 13 so that's next week this was psy again we want to move fast but we want to move judiciously so we wanted to get this on an agenda and we wanted to start talking publicly about it but this is a very important decision it's going to impact the district for years to come and for those who couldn't make it tonight I will have a meeting specifically focused on this topic next week so March 13th at 5:30 I will have a community forum on that topic in this room yeah I we also have been working on a survey for the community so not only will we get a teacher input we hope to get input from the

016community and how is that saying you know tomorrow morning so it's going out to one how is that going out that'll be on the website be on the website it's also gonna be going through our communications director through our channel that if you're currently receiving our bimonthly email communication that will be going out in that format so parents will get a vehicle over 1,800 recipients 1800 feet but if you would like to participate in that and you're not on the list you can go to the website that's right and access it there so yes I almost everything we do yeah is English and Spanish so we had to work on making sure that we were getting that done correctly and then we'll be reviewing the results from those surveys so if all 1800 people respond

017we will we will undoubtedly have five more closed sessions but we're going to have to do it quickly because I our intention is to have final interviews of the top candidates on the 23rd of March that's a Saturday and I we are also going to incorporate in that interview process a panel by community members non board members I to be able to listen to the candidates and provide some feedback so I we have different opinions but it will give other people an opportunity to give us some paint we you can't open that up to everybody but we're gonna we're trying to be as transparent as open as we possibly can so we haven't just been sitting idly by but there's more to do and we do plan to do it fairly soon I by the

018end of this month we're hoping that we'll have some news and some great news for our district let's I turned some time over for I comments and at the top of this pile is Kim hi welcome Kim it's a pleasure to be here I have a few notes that I wrote knowing that I've got three minutes so I'll try to be as concise as possible so if I think everyone here knows who I am but I come to you very much as a parent I am the parent of two rising seniors but also as someone who worked in the district for 21 years and is now working in a larger school district and having all of those like aha moments that one might have if you could envision that I walk around with my Ojai

019filter on sometimes I take my Ojai felter off but hearing about the potential opening here for the superintendency I really felt it was kind of a compelling place to be to come and just share some thoughts with you as a governing board about priorities to consider I'm sure in your discussions you've been thinking about many things the chances are I'm saying things too you've heard amongst each other so I don't want to assume that you're not already talking about these things the first kind of key thing for me is you know we've had a really wonderful person in Andy because Andy brings that combination of business acumen legal expertise but also a love for the holistic belief in children and I feel like that's a key principle to keep in mind that we're looking at

020trying to replace these amazing skills that Andy's brought to the table and so thinking about who can do that but still have a heart for children I think that's a critical piece of it and that might come from for example someone who has been a classroom educator but then has moved into a business role or maybe not but I definitely would love to see that kind of continued emphasis I realized that we're also in a unique time politically so in terms of when you're looking at hiring someone some of my Santa Barbara experienced has taken me into places in Sacramento where I've really become more aware of how important it is for district leadership to have that clarity about funding streams and to be really thoughtful I mean as you all know with lcff meaning

021local control funding formula there's a lot more local ability to make those decisions but then there are all these special things that are kind of happening from a grant perspective and I would encourage that I would love it if it was someone who got that sort of cradle-to-career and that perspective about leveraging new funding streams whether it's through donor donor cultivation I think that's a huge piece of the pie that could really illuminate new opportunities here in Ojai Unified or whether it's through some kind of grant writing and leadership in that space my time is almost up so I want to be really sensitive to that I certainly have more thoughts that I could write down another time thank you thank you all right and then and I'm reassured that the website we're using is

022absolutely used by the same people okay I'm Muriel lavender it's been a long time since I've been in this boardroom I was first elected in 1977 and retired in 1995 1998 so I spent a lot of time in this room and I think that choosing one superintendent this is the most important job that you board members will have and I have come to urge you and I'm afraid I'm a little late with this but to urge you to hire a professional search party because vapor and expertise that you don't have access to unless you're an educator for instance and II perhaps would have access to some of the information that these superintendents have but they they have a wonderful Network and they work very hard to provide the very best superintendents a district could ask

023for and we've been very fortunate here in Ojai the year I was elected 77 bud Marley was selected from Riverside County and and he bud was a marine and he brought that orderliness and determination to have order to the district and it was something we needed very badly at that time because the high school had implemented a flexible program where were the high sea the students of the high school the academic classes were offered three days a week on the opposite two days a week the students were free to study wherever they wished whether it was going to be on the lawn or in the library or at home or perhaps in a coffee shop downtown and it was a huge issue and we had I think five or six people running for school board

024at that time but that was one of the things we resolved when bud came to the school district and and he stayed with us for the bud stayed with us for seven years and that's one of the things that I think is very important in hiring a superintendent is to know that they will stay my bias is at least five years so that the policies they are able to implement with the help of the board can can make a real long-term change in a school district or improvement in the school district I mean after after bud retired he went to a town down to south south of Thousand Oaks as a superintendent and we hired Andrew Schmitt who came to us from San Diego County and Andy stayed for 12 years I think that so

025part Golf Course had something to do with his longevity but he was a wonderful superintendent and what he brought to the district whereas a bud brought order and discipline to the district which is badly needed I like to tell people that my favorite question when we did our conversations with our candidates my favorite question was please describe your management style and when I asked Andy that question his response was one word collaborative and we at that time had a very difficult situation with the classified the certificated the board and the administration being at loggerheads over a number of different issues and and so Andy brought his collaborative management style into the district and made an enormous difference in bringing all of these groups together but that aside the reason these two superintendents were so success

026phone instrumental and in shaping the school district is because we had very very good professional search people and most of these people as Andy may know come from education themselves and they've had a lot of experience in working with school boards looking for superintendents and so they know the ins and outs they know how to get information with you and I probably couldn't get so that's why I came to you this evening to tell you that that would be my bias I realized that that money to to pay someone to do that search is is an issue but I don't know I came on the board just after proposition 13 is masked and there has not been a day since then but if the school districts have not suffered for lack of funding and just

027as an aside I'll say I visited my son and his wife and my only grandson in Dallas Texas recently and I'm not familiar with how Dallas funds their schools but they live in a community about 20 miles west east of Dallas and the school buildings are in such good repair the classrooms are so well organized and supplied and I would love to know how Dallas funds their schools because it's quite different I think than California we shouldn't have to struggle so hard when we're trying to provide our children with good education so thank you for hearing me and appreciate thank you very much you're welcome great and Angie - Nancy hi I'm Angie janeski I'm the president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers and you answered most of what I was going to address which

028I was sort of hoping that you would I am here to speak for oft the board of oft and our council members really urged me to come and speak tonight because we were concerned that that the board has not followed past practice has not followed and not has not included the unions in the process of searching for a superintendent and vetting the superintendent candidates and we were also just concerned because one of the things that our school district is really really working on as Sherrill knows is collaboration and we are as teachers where we are having collaborative team meetings we're working on collaborating with one another we have a new clause in our contract that is about collaborating as at school sites with the administration and so it it was very discouraging to us to

029feel like you as the leaders of our district were not really collaborating with the Union and modeling that for all of us and so they wanted me to come and express that to you it sounds like you've made some changes in the process and we really appreciate that and I hope that we are included in the coming week or weeks Thanks I think you can plan on it all right before we move to the next topic any comments from the board okay item 6.2 and we do have a few speaker phones absolutely I have a couple right here yeah as long as you're up why didn't you go ahead thank you very much my name is Mike crumpet I'm a current employee of the district and I'm also a retired teacher of the district I've

030been employed by the district for the past 42 years and I'm excited about a change but not because I want to see mr. can tell go away it's just change I think it's often good for an institution and it allows it to renew itself and to move on in a way that it might not have otherwise so it's the silver lining I think to the cloud that Andy's departure gives us in my 42 years I've seen quite a few superintendents and Miss lavendar's spoke well of a couple of the really good ones that we've had but Marly and Andrew Schmitt were exemplary superintendents I've also seen however some shortcomings in superintendents during my tenure here and they were situational shortcomings the district has before it various challenges and depending on what those are and who

031we have as a superintendent it doesn't always work out for the best for instance in the past there were some capital improvements and still are that need to be made in the district and we haven't necessarily had superintendents that were well versed in construction they were great administrators they were good educators but they were thin on their experience in the in the world of construction and actually I was involved with some of that because I in the turn of the century wrote a grant that involved quite a bit of construction work and I saw how challenged we were and it became clear to me that we do need a superintendent that as some chops about the construction world and I would urge you to see that the people that you're considering have that kind of

032a skill set because I know that we still have ongoing construction challenges particularly as they pertain to this campus but all of the other ones as well then there are challenges that relate to curriculum and back during Andy Smith's tenure we had some unfortunate circumstances that happened that were somewhat mirrored with what happened not so far back with the swastika issue at Patil aha we had a similar situation at Mattel AHA in the late 90s and Andy Schmitt came to me because I was the department chair of social science at the time and he asked me what the curriculum could do to address that situation and that actually wound up in a complete address at the idea of tolerance and Prejudice and at a study of comparative religions and they will put side-by-side and it

033was delivered on the junior high level at of course their learning modality and found to be pretty effective because the problems that we experienced at the time abated oh and with that and things went pretty well forward I think we should have a superintendent that you're looking at that has the ability to look at the curriculum and the need of the community because the framework doesn't always address the need of the community the state framework that the curriculum is based on so you want someone well-versed in two opposite areas good luck you haven't made it any easier but that's a good transition to item 6.2 and I I think we'll do this one in Reverse because we haven't really I as a board publicly spoken about this issue or bar had the time to do

034it and so I think it would be great to get the public comment first and then I will be able to discuss it better so why don't we start with Blanca Ramirez I'm here cuz I am a parent of a sixth grade student and she will be going to Mattila hammocks here and there's other parents here there they have their kids also going to Metallica and we're just worried about all the hateful acts that have been going on and we're worried because obviously they're going next year and we want to be part of the decisions that are taking being taken to address these issues not just being told what's what the decisions have been and we are happy to be involved in all this to help our children have a safe environment thank you very

035much I now it's it starts with doctor and so you can guess that I can't fully read the rest of it but dr. Greg Kimura is that right great sorry about that I did my best that's all right we have a number of people from the same group we're gonna be speaking maybe it would make sense to have everyone come up who is part of the Ojai Alliance for education equity what would be the point of that usually people speak one at a time well we're gonna all be talking about the same piece of the thing that's what I mean yeah but we could have everyone if I couldn't invite everyone from that group to stand up at this point - but no no problem although I'll defer to you as the chair I mean

036feel free I just I I think we we know most of the people in this room so we know who's tired of which group like go ahead okay oh hi Alliance for education equity feel free to stand yeah great again my name is dr. Greg Kimura father Greg Kimura I'm director of st. Andrew Episcopal Church I'm the immediate past president and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum which is a civil rights museum in downtown Los Angeles but probably most importantly for for this I am the father of two children in the school district I have a a 4th grader at Miramonte last year was at Topa and a junior at Nordhoff high school two years ago after the incident at the high school I met with many people of the people go around the

037table here because I was concerned that if there wasn't a unified comprehensive and systematic response to anti hate that this was going to continue to happen and so I'm not surprised when two years later we had this incident at at Mattel aha back then we we gathered a group of people together and included people like Yolanda from Coppa Rory Rodriguez career employee of the school district and a number of other folks and that group went through some ups and downs and then summer happened we all went to the four winds as sometimes happens but it was reactivated with this recent event and I wanted to read we've had several meetings so far and we have a draft of a mission statement that this group has put together it's largely written by brandy Roth who has

038presented at in the till aha on the Holocaust before so the mission statement for the Ojai Alliance for education equity is to help the Ojai Unified School District improve the lives of its students by reducing prejudice elevating intergroup relations and supporting equitable school experiences and that's my piece of what the group wants to save tonight okay thanks is there a particular order I was I have AC Murphy here okay we can wait for you then Saburo Laura looks like you're part of the group so yes I am part of the group thank you school board members thank you I don't know what your official title is but it's it's it's encouraging and I really take to heart what you said at the very beginning of the meeting visit does they talk about the whole diversity

039inclusion and this is what this group has basically we've come together because we are concerned also about the issues that come and I actually was a student mr. crunch me and I want to say that in the late 90s I wasn't part of that group but unfortunately I do have some experience with that this isn't in the new issue in our school district and just around their Valley and I'm not putting any blame on this school district and now I'm not putting any blame right now I see it more as an opportunity to work together and we also come together as a group as concerned parents concerned individual individuals in the community that see this as needing a change and needing the positive change and a father of Greg Kimura has read our mission statement

040that we put together I was going to read it again that's why I had my laptop but he already said it but we do have we do want to speed the process up and we do want to offer some some some requests as we start moving and we not obviously I'm in I'm in support for creating this Diversity Committee which I feel like we already have a name but in the process of speeding things up we're gonna be pretty direct and Frank and I now request about being the part of particular programs especially the second second step that you'll hear more of our members talking about also with the L cap getting more involved with having to generate some of that data to help out and also with the requirement the high school level to

041have a ethnical study and and racial justice in order to graduate from from the high school I think it's really important that we start developing these great curriculum to help so didn't know how to deal with these these prejudice and reducing some of these issues and again I'm not putting this solely on the district because it's beyond this but I think that we all have a part in making that change happen and the school has such a huge influence on happening I have stories about my peers and my brothers age was a couple years older than me not having that opportunity to succeed in life because instead of learning how to deal with their prejudice and they were kicked out of school they got into drugs they're in and out of prison right now a

042few of them have passed away in their young 30s because of not knowing how to deal with these issues and this happens in Ojai Valley it's just not it's not voice so right now we do come with the not with a pitch to you guys and I hope that we could work in collaborate we heard about the true Union wanting to collaborate and and I want to be frank also that you know the process of maybe getting the superintendent would include one of us at the table I mean make it easier because we know how important it is to to hire a superintendent so we we definitely want to create that culture of working together collaborating and also honoring your time as a school official here I really do applaud your service to this community

043so thank you who would like to go next rather than me guessing and I have the forum for her well I'm a part of the Ohio Lions for education equity and my daughter attends mayor money and I've seen some changes start there or the principal is implementing restorative justice practices with the teachers and they're starting that conversation there as far as discipline and changing the narrative and they're also starting yearly trips to the Museum of Tolerance and with curriculum about the Holocaust but these changes I would like to see all the schools and actually have them be systemic changes I grew up in miners Oaks and I attended public school and I always seen all these different levels of inequity and school experience and accessibility to opportunities especially between the white students and the Latino

044students with there are two major groups in the area but also other students of color and facing continuous so bullying acts of hate and racism and lack of inclusion and as a parent and also as a teacher I want permanent changes in how our schools address these issues and also kind of including the families more and making it more accessible to be a part of different things especially with the second step curriculum that I have looked over all the different areas that they cover and I feel like there's a lot of room to include more material and anti hate on diversity equity and inclusion even though it does address bullying conflicts conflict resolution and also sexual harassment which is great so these are just first steps and I think that our alliance could really help

045in furthering and expanding those things to include changes that will be across the board thank you my name is Tim Knapp sticker and you have a speaker card Thanks um thank you so much for putting those loans on the agenda I just want to firm that that's a really important start in this conversation as I've shared I'm part of the Ohio education equity and as I've shared when I've been up here in the past I'm part of the experience I bring to this as having worked with showing up for racial justice Ventura County through a similar process with a venture Unified School District and there was a slightly different set of s there but the one of the commonalities is the ethnic studies and our social justice graduation requirement and part of what I want

046to bring from that experience is just the positive experience of after grass roots work and you know showing up at the venture Unified School District Board meetings as we are here being able to have a see the table led by dr. Veronica Valadez and others as well as with surge being one of the folks at the table with high-level staff of V USD and the superintendent at the time and I really hope that we can get to the point in this process as well I think we're at a critical juncture as a community with the transition with the new superintendent coming on and seeing the role that that that kind of leadership played in the USD I really hope I want to emphasize the importance of if I could use the word screening I mean

047other people have talked about it attributes but that the person who's chosen has competency called cultural competency as one way to talk about it a racial equity lens would be another way but understands the value of taking this seriously at a systemic level and leading from the top and obviously ensure Unified School District is going through its own transitions now but I do think and I would ask you talked about the panel on March 23rd and maybe there could be someone from the Alliance on that panel so thank you for the consideration and I look forward to I haven't seen any advertiser many of us were at the community meeting that was held and we connected after that I think that father Greg Camaro talked about how this group actually existed in 2017 and was

048not able to make much progress so some of us reached out to each other to find out more about that group and and father Greg hosted us in his office for some of our meetings is that helpful yeah come and talk to any of us who stood up thank you so much for asking that appreciate welcome um my peoples way is storytelling and I'm going to share with you a story about my son's experience right annette Mendoza McCoy I'm gonna share with you my son's experience in MS Colburn's kindergarten class at San Antonio school February 15th when I picked him up from school as usual he was very eager saying mama guess what happened mama we saw pictures of these signs and they said no blacks allowed and mama that was unfair because they wouldn't

049even let black people use the bathrooms and they couldn't eat at certain restaurants inside and he was incensed I mean you look at his cheeks and he's flushed and I could see before my eyes my little guy experiencing and processing racial injustice he continued then there was a man named Martin Luther King and he was black and he spoke up and he said that was not acade that's not fair and he marched it til the president that's not fair and mama guess what happened some bad people shot him and killed him but they didn't want him to be fair and he died mama did that really happen is out true story I said yeah that's a true story might this teaching my son received was not watered down it was truthful it was factual it

050was developmentally appropriate and just because it made him month upset didn't mean it was developmentally inappropriate miss Colburn isn't natural she's a master level teacher with over 25 years experience I know that there are many more teachers like her in this district teachers are what make our education system breathe its purpose I had a conversation recently with mister dr. Knox and we spoke about this and we both noted that there wasn't any one thing in our district that we can point to to ensure that all our students in every grade systematically K through 12 would get this kind of integrated anti-bias inclusion focus equitable and racially sensitive teaching I think it's possible yeah I am a member of the Ohio Lions for equity education equity and our groups intention is to partner and assist and

051the Ampligen of curriculum all curriculum but we're looking forward to the second step curriculum the social-emotional one we have really eager we have eager energy to augment of minute with an tobias anti-hate social justice curriculum my friend Nicolette here does anti-bias curricula with preschoolers we have lots of resources here um we would like it to be relevant to our Curtin student body and current events and we want to influence the upcoming changes as well for the fourth-grade California history curriculum of native peoples you know that's I'm gonna be there for that I thank you for your time but I want us to look at this mission statement on the bottom partnership with parents and community parents and community are here I have two children in your district and I really want just to defined our

052partnership a little bit better and get to work thank you I went sustainable changes like I want seven generations later my grandchildren's grandchildren go oh yeah that's what happened back then we're still doing that we don't stop doing it thank you thank you Steve for you little bird buddy thanks for having to this topic on the agenda before we jump into that I just want to thank our Li for your observations about how the process was working so this is two board meetings RL where I seen amazing insights by our student representatives the second thing that I want to address is on this topic and one just about the superintendent selection process you may already know this so as you choose someone to replace enemy you need to look at the existing skill sets that

053will remain and I know that Cheryl has a certain set of competencies that doesn't overlap a lot with Andy so you need to consider what she has know the people who like changes bankers so consider that as you look at the person you select the second thing that I would ask you to consider again is that you know about six or eight blocks from here we have this clause called City Hall and you already know how important collaboration is with that body I would hope that somehow you can draw that out of your candidates to see none of your experience with their philosophy about dealing with the city so let's change hats a bit and talk about the Diversity Committee it's on the agenda and we're talking about it and we've been talking about it

054for some months now so I don't really know what's envisioned for this committee and I think it's important that you define how they fit into this whole process curriculum development all the other things that are involved that's just my two cents worth but as you from your experience with me it's an issue that I care very deeply about and I'll remind you that when I ran for the board and had a chance to present there was a question about that general topic and I have stories much like this and I forgot your name ma'am I've you know I have stories much like Anita because Jeremy said very similar thing in fourth grade but again diversity is not just about the Jewish heritage it's not just about black life matter it's a framework at which people

055look at the world you know younger kids hey they're gonna say why that's not fair because that's how they see the world but when you get into junior high and high school you have social pressures you have a lot of other things that factor into that so you need to have a framework to look at that and I for one be very honored to be involved in this work whatever shape it takes thank you thanks Casey Murphy sorry it took a while okay I was actually invited by a member from that so I just didn't know as a formal formal group I know some of you from different programs here and you know I the one I wanted to speak mostly about is I work for the girls empowerment workshop we run programs in every

056single school in the Ojai Valley and just to echo what everybody else said and also to stress the importance of a formal committee on this specific specific topic in running these programs for the past eight years there's probably been between 12 and 15 young men who have identified as white supremacist or racist to me in these intimate groups that mr sztyc i was chatting about her so important that has and so by not i think that that comes up is because we offered a space where people could talk about what their values are and one of the values that we are open to thinking about was diversity even if there were some people in that group that thought this was something they did not respect now if we don't give offer up the spaces for

057the sort of conversations that happen we're gonna have these outbursts like this that we're very surprised about because we're not aware of what's going on in the undercurrent or underneath the surface when we do have conversations with folks so I just really stressed that this community is extremely important to develop and our community greatly needs some formal education in something like this and I think we have a room full of very well trained to see well it's a blood when I saw no you name it no I said esta bien pero um well they again tried to see it gracias okay mean hombres could be glad I know this would be love it's muy emocionado lo que oh you don't all have been here enough today no puedo hablar be in English for a so

058prefiero me me Hawaii tomatillo huh pero yo oh you be me but porque York area with Geonosis table present and oh I love latina pienso que somos una comunidad Co numero number okay in este mundo esto no matter pero quiero estar más a good have on the white meat wanna be more secure okay let's : no sir self Sen were from Wenzhou unreal like the nkm be intact and seguro podemos nosotros también participant and we're ambient would be secured for us to participate in okay si que cuando le NPD algo that went something else for some tenemos que Dargo we have to give something que demo self acted esta comunidad for the most part is the community solamente the Sierra we're on representante I wish somebody be represented but I drop female candidate over the

059next candidate son de menos I gonna see Yama's where there could be a one more chair cuando nosotros mangamma so that when we come and necessary Messiah and we chose it's a cell where they just click at my heart no sir maybe this person get explained better your sudden SSA dolly or nice I yo SE ki tango me who is the pill mass more than a KO I know my have my son who is a little taller than I am yeah girls hang on I came to the classroom he let the Gila monster I came for me quick you my son for less sweet home and she has who is your son in Lansing yeah that's me I can write you were my son was yeah yeah rien de sibour Landis heavy cops you click

060it on the line India and she laughed and kind of made a comment that she thought she thought he was from India what I Colo she came to a color in Mississippi man and I saw Pam yeah yeah 40 no random and she continued to laugh it's just total good answers that would be that's fine you can my dad so people don't have it together sorry so I'm Kate Wilson I'm born and raised in Ojai I've went through the school district and now my kids are starting out their journey my son's a kindergartner at truces school minors Oaks and I'm very pleased with the way that I see her running that school but I do see just problems in the district with regard to diversity that are so embedded that there has to be a

061complete systemic change with the way that we address diversity and not just how we address it but the part of our conversations that it's playing like I come back also early to your opening comments yeah kids don't take assembly seriously I it's surprising to me that we're still doing instruction in that manner we need to have more intimate conversations every day with our kids about what differences are not to be colorblind we need to appreciate each other's colors we need to know where we come from and why we feel the ways that we do about cultural differences and it's something that needs to happen from the top down so dipping back into the other part I really hope that when you are looking at candidates for the future superintendent you're seeing what type of experience

062they have in their previous districts with race relations and race equity it's no secret that Ojai has always had an enormous divide not just between the Latino community and the white community but I mean I used to work in law enforcement now they have kids I don't but this is a well-known area for legitimate crime hate crime specifically and for us to pretend like each one of these incidences every ten years is isolated is really dissing genuine we know that it's under the surface these people that are proudly displaying their colors of hate groups are also raising children here and sending those children to school and you know my dad had a phenomenal curriculum that was a part of every child's upbringing through Mattila ha and all the social science classes and it was scrapped

063because it didn't fit into the state standards which I understand we want to look good and get good test scores and get good money but at the end of the day if we're raising kids that we can't be proud of then we failed so I think it's super important that we look at the fact that more than once in this district's existence children have been stabbed and killed over race relations and we keep circling back to swastikas like how is it 2019 I just don't understand why we're not taking this more seriously on an everyday basis thank you yes well we week to be completely open about it we just finally decided we were going to have the panel so the next step is to sort out who's going to be on the panel so

064we should have some information about that very soon that's a good question we will be discussing it in closed session how to figure out the panel next week so I would believe that at our forum next Wednesday we'd have more information on that yeah our community forum next week will be on the same topic and we will have had a chance to meet before that so we'll have more information next week we honestly just run out of time in our closed session with so many things to discuss we didn't get to figure out we decided we want the panel we want the input but not how exactly to form it or who will be on that panel it wouldn't hurt I mean I I don't want to prejudge how we're going to pick the panel

065so I mean it can't hurt to do that right exactly so I mean we're we're open to why we're open to everything at this point that decision hasn't been made my assumption would be if a decision is made in closed session of how how the panel is chosen or applied for whatever then that would be put in it we would let the paper know immediately so that it could be on Friday day for two days later and then the deadline for information Thanks all right any more comments on six point two okay are there any comments from the board sound interesting to you I know they do to me so I just would you rather us talk a little bit first no no I um one thing I didn't mention just because I didn't know

066what my time frame should be um when Sophia Sophia who's this year no Soph uses some freshman representative and then Stella more she is a senior representative we had a meeting today talking about like things to gloss over before I talked and one thing that we were all because there's a bunch of issues going on right now but I mean that's just how it will be but we are agreeing that all this the curriculum has to start engaging students from such an early standpoint because if we tackle things at the age low where they are happening it's like that's just gonna keep being phased and by students who aren't being educated early on and so we start early and continue to go early they're gonna cycle in these students that are well-rounded and are considerate

067and know diversity and that all the standpoints from the beginning and I think that for me that a lot of that came up at that forum where Angie and Sheryl were you know leaving leaving the crew and I've been seeing a lot of information about ethical Studies as graduation requirements and I think I'm very excited also about the community being here and being interested in in helping us move forward and being part of our ELL camp which is I think this is like the social-emotional stuff is key it's one of our goals and I think it's like yay you know people here and there's ideas and then there's nothing that that's how the best way to move things forward is to have lots of people with ideas and with passions and with abilities and you

068know it's hard for us or even for you know a superintendent to sort of say well this is what I want to do is somebody sort of had to comment well you know it's a driven by an individual it might not go very far but if it's driven by a system and by a group that cares about it it's gonna last longer and go further so I think something like that's exciting I think there's been a lot of good suggestions you know it's this is it's sort of standard fare right and it's like the training that we do for all of our folks on the community college district it's the same thing I'm inclusionary hiring cultural competency all that kind of stuff and it is valuable and I agree that the earlier you start the

069better and it's possible to have age-appropriate conversations [Music] yeah that whole idea of the common courageous conversations right they're really hard they're really uncomfortable but that's the world right that's the world and and so we have to we have to talk reality compassionately but but reality where I'm struggling is the interface between oae and curriculum development and all of that and and that's something that I would probably look to Andy into Cheryl to help us understand where those interface points are I would point out make a little picture you know every school has its parent organization and and sometimes those are kind of light and so you know a little bit more involvement in some of the existing structures is a good start while we start trying to figure out what else could be done

070but I have to echo what Jane said the involvement of the community this is a community school district and if you're not a part of this then that we got a problem so to see everybody stepping up in such an enthusiastic way it is really heartening to me yeah so I like the idea I'm just a little struggling with exactly I keep thinking the same thing what does it what does it tangibly look like and I in my head keep equating it with the Ohio Jason foundation that saw a need in the district and wanted to fill it and created their own framework and interface with the district and I imagine a similar type of you know we don't decide who's on Oh F we don't have involvement they are their own entity but greatly

071benefit and we rely on their cooperation with us and I kind of see it in the same vein and they have conversations right I mean they talk to the district right in terms of what do we need what should their financing and I don't know enough about how that conversation happens so that would be something that I would want to know yeah because you guys sort of established yourself but you're separate from the districts so and food for thought my question you know how formal what does that look like because we're looking at two different groups that are their own 501c3 they are their own nonprofit organization does it have to be that formalized or is there more my feeling along those lines as I I see if being kind of distinct from OEF because

072their primary function is to raise money and and provide funding for things food for thought is organized around providing a service I we have we're struggling with our L cap organization participation which is supposed to be exactly this and then we have this group that we don't really know how to interface with it seems like if this group were part of the out cap process that everyone would benefit because then we would have a vibrant functioning out cap process they had a mechanism for impacting change in the district rather than trying to create something new I mean education foundations exist in almost every school district in the country food for thought is growing like that I'm not everywhere but a lot of places and it just seems like that's the perfect way to tie all

073of this together right it doesn't I mean it doesn't have to be that way I mean any group can organize to do anything I'm just suggesting that because it's a it's an easy way to interface and interact with the with the board and the school district yeah but they that they would participant I mean that there could be specific a specific I mean we have these lists of goals that they could specifically focus on you know what do those what does that set of goals look like in all of our schools and how do we best address them Cheryl I'm curious from you what it would look like particularly you know I'm hearing suggestions from this group that they want to augment second step or help flesh out so two things curricularly so first of

074all we are planning on adding anti-hate curriculum into the Advisory period where we're doing second step so in fact on Monday we have a teacher professional development day it's a non student day hour Mattila teachers will be looking at lessons from tolerance org the ADL Museum of Tolerance and looking to pull lessons what we'd like to do right now is add ten lessons per year in sixth seventh and eighth grade in that Advisory period so you could imagine you're going through the units of second step but maybe when you finish a unit you plug in one of the anti-hate lessons into the into the class period so we're already looking at adding it there additionally for our elementary teachers we are gonna do a similar activity where we're asking them to at least pull three

075lessons for the year so in K through fifth grade we'll have lessons that will be we will commit to teaching throughout the year and then we can add more as we go on lots of lessons that highlight social injustice --is of the past are in our history program so it would be good though for our teachers to outline which ones we sort of like what we're doing with PLC work with math and English language arts we're pulling out what we call essential standards and we're making sure that we all hit those and we all make sure students master those the same could be true of history when it comes to some of these issues historically we could say you know we make sure that we teach this lesson this month kind of have a pacing

076guide of what we make sure that we can hit that way you know I we did have a nice conversation Annette and that's what I said at the forum and certainly Mike um cheated with you right now we don't have anything we can point to to say this is what we guarantee that every kid gets you're in kindergarten or if you're in first grade and that's what we're looking to put into place as we pull lessons from these different resources and as we go back into our curriculum and look what what we have right in front of us right now so as you do that mm-hmm is there a place for community feedback there's certainly a place for community input absolutely in fact I've met with a few people that have hand personally handed me

077different lessons to consider so I certainly see a place where we could partner with any group your group to ask what kind of lessons they would like for us to see I had a conversation with or to use I had a conversation with jeaneen Murphy and we had talked about maybe using a community committee also to talk about creating little vignettes or little stories that highlight kind of the the most pertinent issues that our students face right here in our valley because it can be so different from location to location and using those as a catalyst for discussion in these different classroom settings so we definitely see a place for committees to help us you know to help be their reflective piece of what do our students need right now for our community because like

078I said it can be different and when you look on the ADL website for example there are hundreds of lessons so you do have to sort of scrutinize what do our kids need what's the right thing for our community so that would be helpful to have a bigger lens as we choose those lessons well say for instance I was a to two minutes ago we had the greater good came to us from right so this some people had an idea about a program that they thought was important and they came to the high school with suggestions for that and made proposals and then the principal brought it to administration and it was further discussions and then administration brought it to the board and we decided to add it as an elective and Nordoff right so

079that's a process that grew out of community desires so that could happen with any any of these suggestions absolutely so is there a way to do that in certain noticed way as opposed to just because I think anybody can send an email anybody can send an email to any of us at any time saying what they think mm-hmm they do and they do and not enough but they do and but that's kind of haphazard right it depends on people knowing what we're talking about knowing who to talk to knowing that we're talking about it is there when is there a way to be a little more structured in getting that feedback in quick I think potentially it could sort of run through the El Cap process I do see a way for him back to

080happen there in in one aspect Marilyn hat did Marilyn she knew this important part she has a Parent Advisory Committee where community members can also participate but right now she brings them together a few times per year but also mostly what she does is email out to them so for example we've had the focus tell cap meetings on vaping and also on math and after those meetings she sends a sort of a summary or synopsis out to the Parent Advisory Committee and asks for feedback or more input so it becomes a filtering spot for for feedback and so certainly a person from this committee could be the contact that is added to that list we also could be invited Marilyn and I could be invited on occasion to some of your meetings where then you

081could provide us with suggestions that then we can bring back to our teachers or our staff for either programming or curricular ideas that would be an easy way to do that it makes it a little bit more straight or and easier for what instances come up that the community knows where to go to where if we try to create something collaborative collaboratively and which is I think extremely important but then we rely on somebody else to kind of be that face of this is what happens when that versity issues comes you don't come to the school district you come to somebody else that we work with it's it doesn't give the potency that I think is necessary we need issues like this are kind of commanded throughout the school district so speaking on 6.2 it

082says the level of interest to the board to create a Diversity Committee I think that's a fairly important place to start at is how would a Diversity Committee be created by the school district that then that committee could reach out indeed and work with the community I just don't think it's not nearly as potent to have an outside source be the face for diversity for school districts like you spoke up because I had the complete opposite understanding and I'm watching you know from up here we get to see everybody's heads not or scowl or you know all the reactions from the audience my hesitation in the district putting together a diverse Diversity Committee or whatever we call it was that we would be stepping on toes but this committee is already forming and okay now

083that you guys have done that work we're gonna take over and we'll tell you how to do it now so that was that was my reticence that was where I was coming from and not wanting to to step on those toes but I appreciate your point your view I guess I have my my concern is how do you choose who's on that committee right I can see having a you know sort of like Marilyn is our Director of LA and you're the assistant superintendent of curriculum and we have the director of business office I can see adding a hat to someone saying this is our director of diversity and so when there's communities or when there's issues people know where to go versus like going on the website and saying who do I talk to

084about this or or if you if you've never been to our you don't know that you guys exist that it's there you know that there's a person but I don't know how a committee I don't know that we have any we have school site committees but I don't know that we have how do you if we create a committee which I do like I do agree with the idea that there needs to be and I'm just quoting what was written on face it needs to be something that's part of the district so I actually lead a Diversity Committee for the community college district and one of our challenges by creating the committee is that the entire district now thinks that diversity is the job of the committee and nobody else it's not working and we're

085having a huge challenge pushing that out so to say our committee is not the only people we need to be talking about this and thinking about how to fix it my other concern about the committee it goes back to what you were saying so I'm not sure who's on it hey you know we're elected these people are hired based on their expertise if we pull a committee together if it's an internal committee I'm not sure that it's necessary right because we have administrators who deal with this if it's an external committee that means to have some sort of broad representational membership and I'm not sure how we would figure that out it seems a bit overly structured so that disappointing and so I'm not so sure that an internal committee I think this is your

086job in your job to be blunt and and internal committees to to make sure consistency right so we have our we have our teams to talk about what you just discussed right internal consistency in terms of what topics to cover what grades to cover it in if there are resources that people want to offer us then I think they're free to do that an administration has to look at whether or not we can actually incorporate those because there are certain requirements to teaching kids and and we have to meet those requirements so that's where I am I mean the committee idea I'm not exactly clear what that purpose would be I think in terms of a centralized focus for issues we have school principals we have assistant superintendent and the superintendent it's pretty clear to

087me where you go and seeing the complaints escalating I think it's pretty clear to other people too so yeah I mean I I'm just I'm not sure what a committee would do as opposed to some of the separate dr. the Committee issue briefly sure we're we're here to talk yeah yeah can can we get your information later can you just absolute then like great TV we don't want the people at home two minutes out there they're sitting in home services recording they can't wait to hear what you're going to say yeah my name is Skip demouth I live around the corner I've been in town about eight or nine years I've served on a school board before and I think that that what were what the group is addressing goes almost to the realm of

088like a you know a moral imperative a responsibility of leadership a requirement not just of like somebody who shows up to the meeting but a personal requirement of what can we do to to push forward social justice in our community I have been completely struck in Ohio in eight years by the division between the Latino community community and the white community to make a gross generalization and I think I taught that Andrew in his office once about a camera or it's just you that was oh it was about the closing of the school right and I consider people who are elected to office to be leaders to be forward-thinking to come up with solutions before crises happen to and to get hung up on whether it's a committee and how it's gonna work structurally really

089might be a good question at some point but what's wrong with an advisory committee surely the board and its vast power would have the ability to say maybe we could use an advisory committee on Latino inclusion and understand in you know American ethnology and over the culture cultural things like has been addressed before and you could say if anybody's interested in serving on this committee I mean on this advisory group or whatever they could just send our name in and then you could pick her you want and I would pick the people that showed up and have the passion and the knowledge unless some ringers came in late and they were good then put them on to whatever it's not that complicated you know you get people are all like highly intelligent and accomplished it's

090not that complicated so that's my two bits thank you the Student Advisory Council I'd like to speak to it today so so one thing about this whole conversation is I think there are a number of things being talked about the same time one of them is the curricular piece the other piece and you know I'm not here to you know as you said we're leaders and we should lead and and I think we all really do try and I will tell you I'll tell you all that this subject that we're talking about right now the broad subject particularly as Katie brought up that this you know Latino and white and and how our demographics and in the in the test results reflect this great disparity that we're not as a school district doing a fabulous

091job by any stretch of teaching our particular our Latino community and what we do about it what do we do about it you know so overall I guarantee you because I know everybody's sitting on this side of the table we're all in so you know things we have to worry about there are people believe it or not in our community that spend endless hours completely as volunteers for our schools who look at some of these issues and and and there is a bit of a presumption going on it's just like you know we're just a bunch of you know in my case white a guy in his 50s who just thinks everything's great and show up before means that's not how it is believe me and it's not how it is so what I'd like

092to do is I'm love the energy of this group I think all of us do but you know that maybe you're right it's angels dancing on heads of a pan is that our committee is enough but but broadly I will tell you I think the much I think the curricular piece is important you know when you're running a school district it it is easy to believe and want to believe that when when someone does something outrageous then it's a result of a lack of education it's not always sometimes it's actually a result of education someone wants to be outrageous do something really crazy show their friends and I you know sometimes what do you do with that but the broad picture of how do we as a school district become a true village how do

093we really educate everyone as well as we can I'll tell you this much one of the things that when we talked about the superintendent we want empathy we want someone who is constructive when you have somebody who's not showing up for school we don't want that person put in handcuffs we don't want that person threatened we want them find out what's going on what's wrong and so engagement is huge we talk about the El Cap two years ago we were doing the El Cap and we finally as a board said you know what we got to bite the bullet from now on when we get our El Cap report we want to know how many people showed up unfortunately we actually want a record of that because we've been kind of kidding kidding ourselves that

094we've been doing this El Cap stuff and then we find out while at that meeting there are three people and at that meeting there were four so how much of a community input results from that that said we have great we have a great website where we try we send out in every conceivable form we send out notices about when we do stuff but mostly people don't show up when we have parent-teacher conferences oftentimes parents don't show up you would like to go to their house and say this is important please come so all I can say is I'm all-in with all of you who want to address these issues and the conversation about how we do it I think is because because we as a board also recognize that we have committees and they

095can sometimes go nowhere and they you know so whatever we do let's do something and I don't think you have whatever resistance is perceived I don't think exists I think we really are all on the same page and that's my two cents I would I would kind of have to agree I mean it's it's kind of ironic because I I think I'm hearing we want institutional change but we don't want to use the institution to do it and I don't know how that works well collaboration is fine but how does that work you know I'm happy to get I mean if you want to send us a report every month and tell us what you think we ought to be doing I think that's great but wouldn't it be better if we did more and

096had it structured in a way that really worked long term we would like to see the district make an example of themselves to stand up spend $40,000 pick the candidate who's gonna make this the model school district for what public school can be providing to our communities we have so much money coming into the valley of all these people from Los Angeles they came at their vision question be fulfilled in Ojai because it's the place where you know you can love and be loved and most of those people are sending their kids to private institutions we're not getting their attendance we're not getting their money and we're not getting their buy-in so why are they choosing the schools because the private schools in the valley focus so much on social-emotional on justice on not having

097no offense one period a day where you Jam something down the students throats but making it completely in every conversation being real about these issues and not saying like toc-toc diversity just like always talking about diversity and we're hoping that your candidate that you choose is going to be like a mover and shaker and change the framework and I've been to the PTA meetings they're the worst they're talking about segregating PTA meetings at our school so yeah we're all sitting around wondering how do we include the Latino community because we know it's important but the way to do it is to completely change the framework connects but what do you mean there s talking about segregating meetings because it's too difficult to ask somebody to translate supposedly I stopped going okay so it would just

098be easier to hold a whole meeting in Spanish and this is my nurse [Music] to embrace as it is it looks like we are bringing in very nervous but willing on the spanish-speaking families that I think are going to grow our base in the PTA with some technician on the horizon but she's correct in that there was a suggestion about that and I think but I think trying to think where mommy does not write it miramanee I don't enjoy and just stopped and they're finding like food for thought it's an organization that provides service then kind of helps define that it's relationship and again I guess what I think the potential of a committee I don't think anybody oh hi Alliance we care if you appointed it or then we just defined ourselves and we're

099open and to anyone interested but that you would assume that we wouldn't be providing a service team we are we are an accumulation of trained professionals in various forms week there's retired teachers there's all of that we have tremendous amount to offer I'm sorry I misspoke I I was talking about food and money versus yeah I guess we don't want to be limited to the El Cap I do think the way that that is organized and I understand that it's digital dated down for this department education in California it is very unfriendly to cultures outside of English or your pain I mean even myself dissecting and Marilyn sent me the whole thing it's like I need a translator and a high educated master's level English speaking first language English speaking person and I'm I'm struggling

100with this whole thing so so I agree that there are structures that there are parts of us talking about partnering and being offense meetings I get it but we don't believe it and we plan to but we really want to be seen as a resourceful group of people maybe it changes every two years the nature it flexed in the in its members just to accommodate the changes and flux and flow of the needs of the district and the school but I think it's possible and and in particular to be that place where where where people's marginalized communities not just Latinos but people friend you know who have transgender engage or really struggling in your district and other folks that really have a safe place and they feel this trusting partnership that there is not just

101one ways that I love but both ways you know let us let us show you what curriculum has look like you know and has been used in Oxnard successfully or other places I know there's a DL freeze you know we have some we have some relevant stuff here and there's thing I could just appreciate where you're saying yeah I think in the spirit of the two-way conversation maybe at this point you know we've discussed it a lot at robust conversation I'm hearing there's certainly great enthusiasm from every one of you that you want to continue this participation this involvement and so maybe the next step we do have our regular scheduled meeting in April is mid April so we're about five weeks between now and then maybe we can actually sit down the entire group

102I know that Geralyn and net you guys set now I'm not sure if anyone else has sat down as a as a group with administration as well as Cheryl and I can work on looking at Oxnard and similar districts that maybe already have some leaves things in place and so we can bring back to you guys in April both the results of a meeting as well as looking at how similar districts is doing are doing this well yeah because this isn't an action item right so we can you know I think of the question was asked and I can't remember who I'm pointing in all directions who do we talk to who is the person that you go to and I feel that way as a board member who do I reach out to in

103the community to hear from on certain issues I would love an advice committee that when there is a topic that comes up that I would like more input on that we know they're having a conversation about these things they're aware of what's going on in the district and we can bounce ideas off of and get information from that sounds like a good way to move forward well I would just say I would have no problem saying you know I personally think it's I would love to start an advisory committee committee and I would use everyone on the AIA liance to start with and if anyone else wanted to join it it probably would be welcoming start imagining how we would utilize that committee start advising yeah we'll bring back to you April all right thank

104you all right moving forward yeah thank you very much i 7.1.1 i Andy do you want to give us some background sure so the next two agenda items are two resolutions for certificated layoffs this is always one of the most challenging agenda items that will have them go wait just for a moment we'll just give a moment they when those need to step out we understand so I was just saying this is certainly one of the most challenging agenda items that we have in any particular year state California requires us that if there is the possibility of reducing our certificate workforce that we must bring those resolutions to you in March as a reminder though this is only the first step in a multi-step process this is the worst case scenario you know what may

105happen I assure you that Cheryl and I in conjunction with Angie and our leadership team are trying to find ways and obviously we're closely analyzing enrollment patterns to see if we're able to return you know bring back at least one or more of the teachers listed here but again in March we have to go with the the process of identifying the greatest number you need to lay off so the first one is for our temporary and hourly staff so these are four positions that might be funded certificated hourly often intervention support this is positions that are funded by limited duration funds whether that's title one or lcff or other funds like that so again many of these PTAs many of these positions will be brought back but by hedge code we must provide this notes

106in March so that's the the first resolution and the second one is the elimination of particular kinds of certificates service what we're looking at for that agenda item for that resolution is a reduction of up to four elementary teaching assignments again we're hoping that we'll be able to bring back at least one of those but we've been looking at since last year at minimum a reduction of three so that's the two items before you can take them individually or collectively again the first is a reduction of teaching staff or at least noticing them noticing them that they're at risk of being the position being eliminated at the end of this year first one's the release of temporary now early the second one is the actual reduction based on enrollment at the Kellum entry level this

107is connected to but separate from so we actually are losing nine teaching assignments at the elementary level five of those are moving over to Mottola ha so when we say four it's a net four accounting for those five moving over here so we actually I'm sorry you're right we did actually change this resolution this year and we are doing as a roll call thank you on reelection or release of temporarily second I'll second all in favor aye we're gonna I ever rough i paper Shanahan i remember while i remember i and do we do we need a motion in a second to go to the right but so do we have that for 7.1.2 member griffin i limber up i and this is these items are the most difficult we do every year and it's

108i it's it's always really frustrating because the budget process requires that we do this even if we don't end up with layoffs and so it puts everybody in an awkward position and it's difficult but we don't have a choice so that's right and just a reminder actually one thing I left out again I mentioned for the hourly and temporary employees nearly all of them are brought back every year typically the actual individuals who are laid off into that second resolution often are without a job in our district or they might begin doing the hourly you know transitioning into a hourly work we are fortunate this year that with your approval at our last meeting of the three Tosa positions that we will likely be able to hire some of these individuals into either the Tosa

109assignment or to backfill the the teachers who are selected in to the Tosa assignment that they can actually go remain on our campuses teaching at the elementary level so we are hopeful that despite again a reduction potentially of up to four FTE for those in the audience at home FTE full-time equivalent so for actual teaching positions that we will be able to hold onto them for it one year thank you for the clarification that's good but wouldn't it be great if the state allowed us to just lay off people if we were actually going to lay them off rather than laying off people who were not going to lay off so we'll have an update for you the next resolutions come to you may 15 so we have 60 days to continue to analyze this

110graph thank you seven point three point one district dress code Cheryl you've been working on this I have been so as you know we had a discussion around this table here - you brought forth concerns that you had with some of our current dress code policies at the sites as well as at the district level so you know there were concerns about making sure that we were using gender-neutral language we wanted to make sure that we were reducing the possibility of shaming students and then there were things in here that were certainly not relevant across all sites so I met with the site administrators and we looked at both school and board policy but we decided that we should first bring to you board policy have a discussion here potentially adopt the recommendation the recommended

111changes and then the next step would be then for the sites to use this as they have discussions with their school site councils and their committees on their campuses to look at specific policies at each site so through those different lenses we bring to you recommended changes you can see in yellow changed language or added language and things that were striked out as you know things that we would want to omit so does anybody have any other questions or things that you would like to discuss as far as these recommendations probably you know have you talked about how what's the new phraseology or they're the least disruptive way what is that what would that mean um least restrictive least disruptive I mean what is so for example we don't want to pull kids out of

112class if we don't have to we don't want to you know give them detentions you know that sort of thing we want to be very careful that if there's an issue with the violation if we can handle it in such you know situation where we pull them aside quietly and have a private conversation and say something like you know tomorrow can you be sure to think about how you know you're violating the dress code policy and more something different so as much as possible we can have those just individual confidential conversations that's what we're talking about in that that clause and not to you know we're not looking to penalize kids we're not looking to cause them to stay 15 minutes after school every day I mean really this is just truly about conversations with

113them subtly to help them just understand the dress code and to try to comply with it I assume we have we deal with this directly with the student it seems like kind of one of the unusual semi disciplinary things where the parents not necessarily involved we might just never have an engagement with the parent just exclusively talk to the kid are you saying that we could just call home to the parent and not talk to the kid the other way around sounds like you would just talk to the kid and the parents wouldn't necessarily oh no I would in almost all cases we would talk to the parent yeah all right so along with that conversation then someone's calling the parent right and indicate in this case potentially to the least disruption to the kid

114would be not to talk to the kid perhaps it's just a straight phone call home you know your child wore this today that way you're not embarrassing the kid you're not pulling them out of class but you're just having that collaborative conversation with the parents that might be actually the only step you take to help reduce the disruption to the child sounds good good my question is when one of the students I think we had all four of them here at that particular night and they were talking about the issue they felt the issue was a lack of clarity so like you might be not getting somebody talking about your inappropriate essential period for mm-hmm well didn't bother my other teachers why does it bother new and it goes back Kevin said that well we'll

115know when we see it but it's different for everybody mhm so this doesn't really address that I do like that the language that was took about that was very you know sexist like the way the language so I do I do like what all this does um but I I think it makes it harder on the administration of each school you know the specifics yeah um I think in many cases we're gonna try to be as lenient as we possibly can but certainly when the school site counsels me that's where the hard work will be I mean what-what can we be more specific about so that things are clear but I suspect that you know we tried to be very clear and that you know we want it to be least disruptive and unless it's

116you know truly something that is exaggerated right that we really have to handle that we're gonna be very careful about not interrupting our students school day to deal with things that are not that severe on page four of the school I think you really can be too often quite frankly I don't think it needs to be addressed that often I don't think there's that many changes that come up from year to year but if you feel more comfortable certainly that can be added before you talk about school site examples of sufficient covering right time to question yeah one is will there be some effort to make inconsistent I'm some insight and what form would that take such that it would be available to students to sort of mitigate some of that uncertainty well like so

117for example I do though we will certainly talk as our at levels I can for each level it'll be consistent I think that it would be hard to have the same dress code policy at elementary that you have at high school but certainly we will lay out some examples of what would not be sufficient and you know an easy example would be for you know an elementary school for example you probably wouldn't allow students to wear strapless shirts because the level of activity on campus is such that running around a campus that probably wouldn't be sufficient you would know students play very hard at elementary schools however at the high school level that might be sufficient because you're just walking around a campus you know you you might be able to carry a strapless shirt

118easier at a high school campus than you would in an elementary campus so those are the kind of examples that might be given more specifically in a site dress code to help outline and be clear with what the expectations are you know another example you know we took up some of the specifics for shoes we have a simple umbrella item here if shoes must be worn at all times but many of us do still feel that close toed shoes are more appropriate for elementary campuses not necessarily at all for junior high in high school it's not necessary but when you're running around playing you have PE built into your school day you don't change for PE you have wood chips that you're running on you know it makes sense why that's an appropriate specific item

119to have on an elementary dress code I totally agree with that but it doesn't have like my children were at topa and there you know sandals and flip-flops and thing to me even with some platform shoes and I just thought no but no one says to them you know what did you can you call your mom and get different shoes or your dad and get your your grandma you know it's it can cuz you're not gonna be able to play today and no sir we have I don't see that happening um I don't think it's happening consistently and I think I mean again in an effort not to shame students I don't know that we would ask them to call home and change we might say those aren't good shoes to wear and you might

120want to wear different shoes tomorrow and certainly we could call home and remind the families I did look at a lot of other districts policies and one of the things that I did like was a district that broke down what was recommended and then what was allowed and then what was not allowed so for example you might allow sandals if the parents feel like I don't know if this was you Shelly that said this at the last meeting when we talked about this but if a parent wants their child to run around in flip-flops that might be the parents you know discretion to say that we the school might recommend closed toed shoes because we think it's safest but we might not punish or penalize or shame or you know embarrass a kid because they're

121in flip-flops you know so potentially yeah so I'm gonna as I work with the sites I'm gonna consider I'm gonna ask them to consider using that sort of language I think that that might help you know sort of scaffold what what we recommend but what we also don't have to police what I was gonna speak to was so what is we're trying to do this without shaming which is what I'm so desiring mmm-hmm but I think that there are times when if a student has a shirt on that is threatening to other students on campus will that be addressed at the moment or is that just please don't do that again oh I mean no I think that there are things that might be addressed in the moment and I think that what we would

122ask of our teachers and our administrators is to do that in the least disruptive way possible so it's possible that you see the shirt and instead of embarrassing the kid in front of the class unless you feel the need to do so unless you feel it's so extreme that you need to do so that's different but maybe you call administration and say can you catch this kid during passing period and have a conversation with them about turning their shirt inside out so you know again we don't want to be overly embarrassing students who you know we're just weren't thinking about what they put on you know that day so but there might be extreme cases where we do have to handle it in the moment right I mean there might be you know outfits that

123are too far past what we allow and that we have to pull the student aside and send them to the office if that's the case seems like what you're describing is a sea change anyway I mean it really does seem like it's very different than how it's been done before I'm sure positive consequences the change yeah yeah you see what I think so I think we were moving in that direction anyway and so and that's why things haven't gotten police you know all the time and it gets missed the first three teachers and now we just need to make it more clear to everybody that we're not going to be overly penalizing or addressing issues if we just if we don't vote there's a dire need in the moment I think interestingly you're tying in

124with our you know having conversations and smaller groups yeah with having diversity and social justice it's all tied in so if someone is wearing something offensive it's easier to bring it up perhaps or if someone's wearing something that someone else finds too revealing that that can be you know so those might be all this might old actually be kind of all right any other comments do we want to take action all in favor all right Jared work on it yeah well it's just the beginning now the site work is next I the chaparral graduation requirements I think yeah oh there you run to you for effective thanks it's been interesting so chaparral has the same had the same graduation requirements as Nordhoff had a few years ago and then Nordhoff has had some changes that

125we have not adopted and we have considered all of them so for example chaparral still has a two-year math requirement rather than a three-year math requirement and we did think about bringing that change to you we do fairly frequently get juniors and sometimes seniors who have not yet earned any math credits so that would be a challenge Nordhoff switched their health and and geography requirements from five credits each to two-and-a-half credits each when they brought in the college and career foundations course and we did not make a similar change and one of the reasons we didn't was because we don't have the college and career foundations course but what we have found happening and we have have a few examples currently is will get students who are close to graduation and have more than enough

126credits more than 225 credits but they're missing two and a half credits of Health or they're missing two and half credits of geography even though they maybe have 15 elective credits beyond what they needed and so what we're proposing at this time and we're still looking at our requirements and what we need to do what we would like to do is match Nordhoff with the health and geography but add in 10 credits required career technical education there's ten credits under five fine arts that can come from either wine a performing arts foreign language or career technical with the alternative dashboard that's that's still being developed the college and career readiness markers for alternative schools is different from what it what it would be for a comprehensive high school for example students aren't at our school

127long enough to complete a career tech pathway so they they can take career technical classes but one thing that the state will be looking for is some course that all students would take that is a career readiness class that would be a five credit career readiness class I also represent the district in the adult education consortium for the county and adult schools are also looking at having that requirement for for their students so I'm part of a committee that includes adult schools representatives from Community College and representatives from k-12 districts around the county to to identify common curriculum that that employers countywide would be able to to recognize you know basically have our certificate with the seals but in thinking about requiring that of our students and knowing that Nordhoff offers the career foundations class

128with those two classes by themselves the students would have met those ten called career tech requirement units but we also have for career tech classes offered on our campus and there are career tech classes offered at Nordhoff and at the Career Education Center in Camarillo and community colleges so there's there's plenty of opportunity for students to take those classes and the majority of our students after graduation go to Community College into the workforce or both so making sure that they're adequately prepared for that is valuable and I think one way that we indicate to the students that it's valuable is we don't just provide it but but we ensure that all students are training so that's what we're asking for so taking it at the Community College was also filled uh yes so one of

129your WASC that they were so impressed with was that how often you recommend students to take a class at the Community College while they're here in chaparral and they have to support here and they get the idea that hey I can do that and I could be successful woman so we would keep the total number of credits 225 the same but take away two and a half of the health credits two and a half of the geography credits and add in ten career technical separate from the fine art so we'll pull the other five from the elective requirements so lowering no we would keep the the fine art which can still be fine a performing arts foreign language career technique but also have ten credits that are expressly career-tech Nordic currently hot requires that the

130college and careers foundations class which is five we're just we're adding another five because we know that we're gonna be requiring our students to take that class because they don't come to their junior or sixteen they already have well most of them will have had it we we do get students who haven't been in or and off or we get students that didn't take that class or who didn't pass that class but there are other other ways for them to get those five credits and they'll have five that will be requiring on our campus anyway the other yeah the other five is coming from the elective requirement so currently chaparral requires seventy-five elective credits so that would be dropped to seventy elective credits and we'll pull five into the career tech requirement and you talked

131about some students having to what's not that they have too many credits but you know if we have a student who has completed all of their poor works at yep say geography is part of the core but completed other didn't mean to imply that they've completed all of their English they've completed all of their math their science they've taken they have taken some geography and health they have two-and-a-half credits of each and instead of seventy-five elective credits maybe they have ninety they've been doing things that they really enjoy and now they're they're scrambling to make sure that they're gonna be ready for graduation by picking up two and a half health credits in two and a half geography credits when the first two and a half credits maybe they took two or three years ago

132so now we're saying we're going to put you in the middle of this class or we're going to design what we've been trying to do is design a two and a half credit geography class that doesn't overlap with what they would have done at Nordhoff and the same thing with the health but it feels artificial I think that that we can do better than that yes Sarah motion to approve all in favor aye that's unanimous thank you thank you very much thank you alright seven point three point three once they shall we talk about the next three together the MOU for one at a time well the first ones Becky although we'll just have you here for questions this is a as you saw my notes he saw on the MOU another example of Becky's

133excellent work and trying to build out our programs both the chef Ralph also can Adult Ed and so this is an opportunity for us to enter into an MoU to be able to offer programming at the library I'm curious as to why what's the lie behind offering it at the library there there are some reasons and actually I have to say that right now we would offer the class here because there is an issue with an odour in the classroom in the library that until that has been adequately addressed we will not hold classes there but I still would like to move forward with the MOU so that we're able to do it when the room is in the right condition one reason is more perceived access than actual access there are some people where

134this particular class encore class was initially designed for re-entry workforce people so older adults people age and coming in and who may not feel comfortable coming on to an adult school campus or especially when it's also a high school campus they may feel awkward coming in there so we want to make sure that that we are offering the class in a place where people will feel comfortable will feel welcome and will draw in students that we have not yet drawn in who may then come to some of our other classes or may take classes from some of the other consortium members people who haven't considered Adult School and don't really know what that's all about but the library doesn't feel threatening and you know people who may not see the information that I put out

135about classes but they walk into the library they see a flyer there in the classes right there maybe they'll go give it a try so we saw it as a combination of expanding our options in terms of timing and location but also finding way to bring in students that we haven't yet reached that's great yeah I don't know if you know this but I left the Friends of the library board to sit on this board and my husband actually designed that room so I am thrilled to see it getting used but it brings me to my next question is in the MOU it says that the school district is responsible for bringing a large-screen teacher monitor project but is the screen in there right that was in there before I realize that was in there

136so yeah we the there is a projector there is a screen it's a beautiful space it's a beautiful room the equipment that we would be providing you know and I I was in there earlier in the year and didn't notice it but it would have been warm in the door had been open all day but I I wouldn't feel comfortable having a classroom in there until that's till that's addressed he was aware of it the Ventura County Library System oppai library right but it's I'm not sure is it an entity in itself or is it part of the county is it it's part of the county so it's a county service I was not expecting to see the truth to be on behalf of the county but because this is with Ventura County Libraries if

137at some point we wanted to expand then we could look at minor sex library hope you library it wouldn't be that wouldn't be too hard to do that so the equipment that we would be providing would be laptop computers for the charging court as well as the teacher and I've already hired the teacher and she's yes yes and the charging cart also locks yes did depending on interest in enrollment yes it's ongoing and it's rolling enrollment so we we have a start date of March 18th but students can join in at any time because the class is actually designed in modules not everybody will need every module and then assuming this goes well then then the next step would be to have a class in Microsoft Office with industry certification Google Academy and start start

138to branch out from there we were kind of 5 waiting so no no problem there was exciting conversations throughout know anybody who might be interested it's free so is there a motion all in favor all right 7k Matt 3.4 thank you so this is a seven point three point four and seven point three point five aren't that strange to you you guys are familiar with these kinds of mo use as we partner with D Co e in a consortium for our career in technical technical education they're coming to you early for 2019-20 and the reason is because there's a new funding source for the program the k-12 strong workforce program and under the lead of Tiffany Morse we're applying together as a consortium with other districts and so she'd like to use these agreements for

139evidence as she applies for the funding that which the application is do I believe this month so she asked the districts to bring the mo use early to the to our board so that we could have them in place and again she can use them as evidence as she applies for the k-12 strong work force program for all of us let me have the consortium great do we have a motion to approve seven point three point four and seven point three point five all in favor all right that's unanimous on both all right and Andy it looks like you're up there yes you've got a lot of paperwork here for seven point three point six recognition of Women's History Month resolution and you know what I'm actually gonna hand this over to Shelley because after

140the materials went out through email Shelley and I discussed making some potential changes and so you'll see a red line version from its red line relative to what you received on Friday and what was in the public packet and then the final page is just the clean final copy it looks like or at least the extras Kathy for the backward we already have the update version in the sure I know ping doesn't like our resolution nowhere but I think vision and I kind of looked at our old resolution and what do you guys wear as women of every race class and ethnic background have made significant and historic contributions to the growth and strength of our society in countless recorded and unrecorded ways fighting not only against sexism but also against many intersecting forms of

141discrimination including discrimination based on race ethnicity class disability sexual orientation veteran status and many other categories and whereas women have played and continue to play critical roles in the economic cultural and social spheres of our nation's life by constituting a significant portion of the labor force working in and outside of the home as well as providing the majority of the nation's volunteer labor force and have been particularly in the establishment of early philanthropic and cultural institutions in the country and whereas women of diverse backgrounds have served as leaders in the forefront of progressive social change not only to secure their own right of suffrage and equal opportunity but also to abolish slavery promote fairness equality and safety in the workplace and advance the modern civil rights movement which create a more equitable and just society

142and whereas despite these contributions the role of women in history has been overlooked and undervalued in the past though its significance is now emerging and assuming its rightful place is an important part of the body of American and world history and whereas the leadership of women in elected office including our own school board Ventura County Office of Education school board our representatives serving in the California State Senate in assembly as well as our representatives in both houses of Congress serves as an example of community and civic engagement for girls and women in our district therefore it is fitting and proper that the Ojai Unified School District Board of Education proclaims the month of March 2019 Women's History Month and encourages all district schools to commemorate this occasion with appropriate instructional activities and we have and

143for your sake we do have the instructional activities that we received back from our principals we have a few copies for the public as well are there comments or a motion to approve all in favor aye that's unanimous and and I think this is the topic this month that we're going to focus instructional activities around oh that reminds me the national organization of women is showing a movie I think as you look for things to maybe bring friends to that might be something good okay I believe we have some flowers yeah I put some flyers in the back you're interested I'm sure they'll put stuff in the paper as well and in addition it doesn't just a comment in addition to what trying to focus around one of our monthly resolutions on things it seems

144to me that it would make sense for us to why both these rival resolutions in the month before the month rather than midway through the month they were recognizing resolution that came up because I kind of felt that way about the next two resolutions I'm like you know what every month it's music month in our schools I mean we don't separate that out and celebrate it in a special way in a month so I kind of feel like it's oh everyone in the state is doing this let's just do what we've been doing it for years it's like I kind of like to say we don't even have to do because we recognize the importance of music every day this is the year I mean I arts education we recognize as important but not really

145because we don't spend money but you know that's the hard thing about these resolutions is it's really hard to vote no you know and appreciating arts and music on the other hand we do do a lot in the schools for arts and music and so that's why it's suggested in the past that maybe we focus on one but then when arts and music came up I mean I'm not the guy who's gonna say we're not gonna have an arts and music month in the future we'll have a performance by somebody let's Jim up to tonight he's doing music and arts of course Christian can convince alright alright so we we don't have to do it but is there a motion to approve these two resolutions [Applause] [Music] all right Paul in favor all right first

146let me just point out on the music that we do recognize the Ojai Music Festival incredible contribution to our district by bringing in instruments and the third great traveling I also would like to recognize our PTAs in terms of our education provide the arts that are great thank you all right we're on seven point four point one the item we've all been waiting for what's that okay why don't we skip that for a second and go to measure J I saw what was actually I want you know coming up as well at the same time I'm very open next very happy to introduce Allen white he is our second bond manager the long awaited second bond manager he we had Thane and Shelley right no no James sorry sorry on the interview panel it became

147very clear to us during the process of recruitment and interviewing Allen had the exact skills that we're looking for he comes to us with more than 30 years in construction both actually I've found very fascinating during your interview talking about the role that you played in bringing pistachios to California yeah building multiple pistachio factories and then also has been a local general contractor for multiple decades as well as a local building material supply vendor so lots of experience in both on the contractor site as well as on the vendor side and so it brings a great wealth of knowledge and experience working directly with contractors which remember this role as we kind of talked about adam is the the 75% desk project manager 25% cave in the field Allen's gonna be serving have an inverse

148type of a ratio of I'm in a field - time of the desk so Allen's background is excellent in all respects but especially as we're looking to have someone who really knows how to hold a contractors accountable make sure that if something's gonna be done Monday that's actually completed on Monday so or at least that week so so yes Allen Lord he he started with us two weeks ago and Adam and he have hit the ground running they had a very busy February break and so I know that Adams gonna give us a little overview about latest on on these projects we did as any alluded to Allen started over presidents week and that was the week we started the blinds installation and we also painted many monitor over that break so Topa Topa San

149Antonio and chef Ralph have all had their blinds installed and as you guys have noticed probably as you drive by there Monty has a fresh coat of paint all over so we are just finishing up the punch list for mere money but everybody seems to be very happy and the crew out there was fantastic so it was a definitely you know baptism by fire but it was it was perfect to kind of jump in and the howling was great jump be right in holding the painters accountable and everything exactly what we did envisioned so moving forward we've obviously picked it up a notch we have five roofing bids open right now we have the Nordhoff library has been posted and the bids are open for that now that is closing bid closes for that May

1501st so that's been that's ongoing and we also have an Tobit OPA painting scheduled to be posted next week all of these are slated for the summer obviously shows the colors it was for four with all I mean our site using its own cultural yes it's a collaborative discussions [Laughter] yeah so those are dropping some of them like I said already posted as well and we've got a couple that are gonna hit hit the website next week so on top of that we are also still working on the Mattila hog gym the pool and developing some other scopes for some HVAC and paving that will either be a or during the summer or be throughout the school year so clearly we have our work cut out for us and we haven't slowed down yet which

151is nice some so scopes on the pool would be just to identify the job basically so that we'd be in a position to get bids correct we actually have a bid walk or a meeting with the contract I should say later this week and another one next week so for the pool issues they're allowing us the summer cool directly that's something that you guys can answer but maybe Andy so what two of the projects you mentioned the blinds and the library made me realize so I was at the Nordhoff library and the librarian obviously has to start packing up books and she needs time and help and so I was wondering well can our measure J funds pay for extra hours for her to be pack and not burn top because zooming she just when

152she's on duty she's doing the jobs that she's supposed to be doing and how do we get this library prepared for June 20th you know wreckage so we are increasing our hours I approved that last week she's normally a six hour a day employee so it's gonna be going up to eight four days a week six the fifth day just for the remainder of this year to prep for the summer so technically we could make an argument for it and we are we be there we'd be right but the value of the total amount were to be paying in additional salary is sufficiently low that it's not worth the potential audit headache because we are not allowed up any current salaries of individuals who are not directly working on the bond being charged there and

153so again we we'd be appropriate according to our bond language to do it but it just is something that the auditors wouldn't like and so we're going to just pay for it out of our general operating okay so the second question is blinds I know the two of the classrooms at sopa sopa we're not refunded supposedly because they're gonna be torn down which David talked to us I think a couple years ago and I thought the last thing I heard was that they weren't gonna be torn down I think it's 20 and 21 portables not the farthest ones they're gonna be transitioning as storage so then what happens like same thing like who helps moves all who helps those teachers move all their stuff how when who pays so so again it's gonna vary depending

154on the circumstance so if we're talking specifically about transitioning those classrooms of storage that's not a measure J project that's an operating decision that we're making based on the best use of those classrooms so that would be just our general offering finally pay some amount to assist those teachers and moving so they're not coming down the current plan is to no longer do it yep okay no they they look I mean the reason the plan shifted is that we actually had a test I John says the buildings are in safe condition they just don't look good and so what we're looking at right now is that as much as we'd like to take him down for a aesthetics that they are absolutely safe and appropriate to maintain as storage but we're not going to contain

155them as classrooms long term I thought topa was paint in a couple summers ago but it looks like when it rains you know was that area not painted and is that not paint on the ground when you walk past those like from done with geez it's been a long time since is painted it's been quite some time something happened with the roofing over the summer they're moving in this summer white paint that dripped on the it's like it is it white it could be flaking paint you don't have kids going up got our advantage issues thinner there's a severe drainage in that area is awful that's exactly so that's on our list as well so and you have some change orders we do so these are our two small change orders they're both at Miramonte

156related to the painting recall that our bid came in far below budget and so we'd still remain below budget but because this is not me did not built in a contingency on this project we need to bring these both back to you frankly we should never been left out of the initial plan but it was an oversight it was taken care of the lunch pavilion area as well as the interior door and door jamb and both of the both of these have been added to the minors oaks in toka toka scopes construction Yahoo yes that's their objective right okay that's happy right there's some companies that I mean for instance when we were not saying the ones that were using but right when we walked it with the painters from Vermont they were very upfront

157once and we're very good about doing extra stuff above and beyond the scope that wasn't in the plans so but there are those contractors that let you know they see that on the job walk and that's exactly their game plan what I mean but you like to Romani but these are the guys who said oh you didn't tell us to paint the door jambs whatever it is and the door jambs and right there he hasn't sorry right well that's it's a larger issue obviously that it could it should have been added to the scope originally so yeah we defined that the project you know and it gave them the scope and they performed that and so when it came time to do the inside of the doors and the jams that was you know kind

158of became became obvious when you looked at the whole school and then you see the door open and the schools one color the doors green yeah whoa so that became obvious and of course the pavilion though much pavilion was really obvious because you got this whole nicely painted school on one sort of eyesore there's a like I said there was a lot of little things that this contractor did at Mara money that we send to noted on minors Doakes until the Toba to alleviate those issues well this painter did do some extras that he didn't even charge for and painted some areas that weren't part of this go from the upper flashings and he painted the backpack racks without you know without charging his hole some things and katherine white did have nothing but positive

159things to say about this company and how amazing and how much they've bent over backwards to accommodate some of her color schemes as well so it was a nice for them as well we like to keep Katherine happy to change order seven point four point three and seven point four point four there a second second all in favor aye all right that's unanimous did you thank you thank you thank you very much and Patti on Saturday excuse me we playing sorry clock opening ceremonies at 10:00 I can't believe when March already seems like this fiscal year has gone by flies by I'm here again presenting our interim report and budget projections for this year in the next two years just a little orderly us to our budget cycle is we know it's continuous and right

160now where it seems like we're right in the middle of it March we still have a couple of other things to do for to complete this fiscal year and start the whole year all over again so why do we do interim reports because it is a law and it is important for the board to know where we stand fiscally in certain periods throughout the year so that's why I'm here I'm just gonna go straight to the bottom line and based on the projections that we had for second interim we're still gonna end the year the 1819 school year with a surplus in our projected ending fund balance or undesignated fund balance at 7:15 to 46 2019 2020 and 2020 2021 we are projected to be spending deficit spending and based on my projections now we

161will need to do a 5.4 to FTE in order to have a balanced budget for those 12 years for both years for both years yes right here we get rid of those positions and we're still deficit spending right so I'm sorry are you saying we need to de tu stretchers that's right yes so major yes just to be clear when you say balance the budget you don't mean in the year with a surplus you mean actually ballast into the surplus right so in the next couple of years we're gonna be deficit spending spending down our fund balance at the end of year 3 or 2020 2021 we will have enough just to have our mandatory reserves and have a balanced budget meaning we have no more unappropriate of balance okay so that to be clear

162even with the reductions you're suggesting which are give or take 11 FTE over two school years we would still need to be using ups that's right surplus to get to just want to make sure that we all yes Kevin you're in stands correct but we put that 5.4 to FTE forward as a legal requirement to show our balanced budget as we've done each year we've never had to realize the number of reductions that we actually have there we always finish the fiscal year with some remaining balance we'd never fully spent 100 percent of the budget so there's gonna be some carry for that comes as it does every year we we know that you know the past eight years of budget years we have received more income in the out years than has been previously

163projected by the governor so and also we already know as you saw we have four FTEs just on a teacher workforce before we look at anywhere else and so we're not actually talking about as draconian as it may sound we're not back in the oh seven to 12 years by any means but we also are by no means suggesting that we have a you know strong budget strong fiscal position we still are need to make some challenging considerations going forward so yeah it's not as bad as it's been but certainly we would like to see a much stronger fiscal position any other questions I couldn't what was our first what was the budget what were you anticipating before us before the first you know as far as in reductions sir was the surplus was I

164don't have that in front of me I was a little no I mean the difference between between the first interim in the second it changed by 103 130 sorry I got the number 130 when you include restricted if you're only looking at unrestricted it's 100 so you were right you just combine the other restricted as well over eight hundred and forty thousand so what has happened since I presented for first interim governor Newsom is actually increasing the lcff Cola for the 1920 school year I did put some calculations here as to what that would mean for Ojai unified would be roughly a hundred and eighty five thousand and new revenue 200 USD based on this this point eight nine percent lcff Cola also a good news that the CalSTRS employer rate did decrease by a

165little bit over a percentage and that's about a hundred and four thousand and savings for Ojai Unified so is that CalPERS adjusting their razor additional planning to defer so what governor Newsom did was he infused money into the liability or the portion into the pension liability for they for the school districts reducing that percentage a little bit so just a few reminders when we're talking stirs here not pers and so unfortunately it's only helping one side of the house right now but we're hopeful that we might see something comparable on the per side these are also suggest it's January we know that there's a lot of politics taking place right now there'll be changes in May we also I want to emphasize even though we're really happy this I mean I'm actually really encouraged to

166see Newsom concerned about our stirs in pers increases our pension liabilities as patty said what he's doing is he's actually just going straight to the actual principle of the fund and helping bridge the unfunded liability so right now we only are funded about 70 cents on the dollar of what our commitments are and so he's trying to draw that down so the annuity map is just different exactly that's exactly right but we still are looking at increase in stores between this year next year so all it is that they reduced the increase from what was gonna be what 1.85 to now to be just about 0.85 but we still are seeing increase in our stores contribution just not as significant and these numbers are not included for sure they are and so because this is

167her 1920 and I already have projected rates for the out years it is included in them my multi years we've already yeah that so as you mentioned earlier Kevin the difference in the ending fund balance a hundred and thirty six so for this is this is what I want right and that it does include restricted balances but I mean you have your revenues what I presented revenues expenditures and everything that affects the fund balance first dinner and versus second mmm and the changes the biggest thing is we could have some changes in expenditures and I'm going to go throughout in the next couple of slides but the most important from this slide is to see at the ending fund balance we are projecting to have 130,000 left less than what we did in the first

168intern that's only this one year because of the FEMA funds for the fire so we'll be back down at 26 to 27 26 moving forward yeah it does look really big it's the biggest number he hasn't seen changes in revenue um we did I did change the enrollment or the enrollment projections changed the ad a for this for this year we dropped or we're projecting to drop about ten point six and a TA so this is where the lcff revenues changed it decreased rep federal revenues combination of title title one allocation increase in that and lottery revenue projections just because we are going to have a little bit of a lower ad a than what we had originally budgeted in first interim state revenues it's a combination we got the classified School Employees Professional Development

169Block Grant that was about 20 $20,000 I'll give you the exact amount and then it got offset it with a couple of other state revenues which actually it was a decrease in the lottery mmm local revenues we are projection to get about sixty five thousand dollars more in donations which is really good our schools are getting donation donations for a lot of things that are happening other sites any questions and the revenues just a little pie chart to show you how much we do get them lcff revenue sources it's about seventy five percent of our total revenue and this is it's actually a little more but because as Andy mentioned we do have that two million under federal revenues so that kind of skewed the percentages but I mean lcff is a major source of

170revenue for Ojai so if you can just stay there just only here for a few more months I'm gonna hit this note again two things one whenever we talk about people's concern about what might be happening at the federal level and how that impacts our state education know you know that even with that two million dollars of FEMA funding for the clean up after the Thomas fire the federal revenues only makes up 11% that budget if you pull out that two million and they're actually well below I mean they're in single digits you know it's seven percent or so of that it's the two most heavily restricted funding sources we get its title one and special ed dollars so just again for your own sake and for those watching at home in the audience that

171what happens in DC really has very little impact on k12 public ed funding in California going to the former board members comments earlier tonight low what does Texas do I'm actually as you guys know currently in that the housing market and I'm looking at property tax rates between two point three and three percent depending on the areas I'm looking so of that about two percent goes to public ed and the others go to other locally funded priorities so we can thank prop 13 so when we talk about all the various initiatives of trying to increase funding to California education that while we have prop 13 in place you'll continue to be among the lowest funded states in the country with among the highest needs based on demographics so there is conversation in 2020 of having

172a ballot measure that would change prop for those of the yeah exactly we're very much inside baseball right now prop 13 I think everyone in the audience here knows but is the proposition 1970 I was thinking 78 but she said she came on 77 so it was the year before so 76 that again it was called great right exactly prop 13 limits the amount of property taxes that can be assessed on a property to 1% and then it limits also the increased assessment each year to only a 2% increase compared to again other states like Texas that's 2% where Hank came from in Chicago was at 3% and so when you're able to on let's just keep math simple on $100,000 home you have 1% is the max that can be assessed that goes into

173the state general fund it obviously significantly is lower than a 2 or 3% getting two or three thousand again why some districts pay $25,000 person and we get about 10 well yeah sure so prop 13 again it applies equally to everyone but there is conversation 2020 that they would maintain prop 13 for all residences but they would [ __ ] or they'd make a change to commercial properties I believe the latest language has been saying it would be to reassess the value of the property every three years so again right now if you looked at in Ojai but property values in Ojai says the average residential home is worth somewhere around 180 thousand dollars obviously that's a legacy that's a legacy the fact of how people purchased their homes back in the 70s haven't moved out in

174that the assessment assessed value is at that rate so again the change that they're proposing in 2020 wouldn't impact residences it only impact commercial but you can imagine how many creative ways business men and women have for making appeared not to be an actual transaction of the property to keep a tax basis from 20 30 50 80 years ago fact I believe actually they said that the LA Clippers when that whole organization changed hands and the properties connect to it that they did it over multiple years with less than a 50 percent transition in a given year and so they're able to actually use prop 13 to save a billionaire multiple tens of millions of dollars so yes there's conversation about prop 13 so the year before I thought just a conversation recently about basic

175aid again it's my understanding it's not a discretionary thing right it's just solely based on that it's just purely based on the property taxes yet right so once again if we actually had you know a higher percentage of housing turnover inventory turnover then we might be competitive for it but given the fact that there's so little turnover our property taxes just don't don't Meredith it still is all based on 1% of assessed value it just is about what your sis values yeah sorry penny that's a good pie chart [Laughter] changes in expenditures from first interim the biggest change we look at this slide is under services and other we had a whole bunch of changes in that category 22,000 of that can be attributed to new money from the classified School Employees professional Development Block

176Grant and I budgeted that in the 5200 which is conferences because it is supposed to be for professional development and I'm thinking that we are going to be using it for conferences or something of that sort so real quickly I just I want to take this as a it was illustrative opportunity this is an example of where in order for us to show that we're actually realizing revenue we're putting in an off saying Spencer but we have no plan currently for the expense or those funds we're gonna be working with CSEA on developing that plan so when you sometimes when you see these changes you know mid year into a year it's really a matter of you know we find out from the governor they're giving us a you know so much for local control

177are giving us a categorical or a block grant and that block grant we have to just simply place somewhere in here so we can realize it but we're going to still work on actually developing the plan which is what kind of happened in a lot of the other categories for example well in in the 5300 the 5300 realignment of title 1 expenditures we had these expenditures budgeted in the 4,000 which is the books and supplies but once the year goes on and the principals or staff wants to use it in other categories it's when these changes are made we did have an increase of projected increase of 33,000 and in utilities of that $25,000 on electricity and this is just based on I'm looking at what we have been spending from July 1st until now

178and Patti start interrupting but Shelley did just remind me of something that we were also reminded of over earlier this week that there were a couple typos and your package the ones that if anyone has a packet from the back those are corrected but but we appreciate each of our board members fine review of the materials and helping bring to our attention when we do have an occasional typo so again if you're looking at materials in the back it's the current one but the ones that you guys have from Friday would have had a few few issues so the increase in utilities was mostly due to I project about twenty five thousand dollar increase in electricity cost and that's just just taking what we have spent as of July first and I understand that we

179did have the climate tick and coming in to do some of the energy saving initiative that we had but so far based on what I what I projected we are gonna have to increase that budget by about thirty thirty thousand dollars so what Patti's are doing at second arum is updating based on our actual usage for this year remember we have a contract with climate act that they guaranteed the savings and they actually once the fiscal year closes come in and do an assessment to actually review our final usage at the end of the fiscal year and if we didn't realize that savings that they guaranteed then they'll cut us a check so for now for a second interim and for this fiscal year we actually have to update a face on current usage right

180now we are tracking a little bit higher than we were anticipating but still well below where we were last year so we are still looking at savings we're not you know we're not copying the budget over where we were last year but we aren't seeing the we were anticipating eighty two thousand dollars or something like that for this year and eighty two thousand savings off of a base of about 370 from last year but we were not tracking for quite that much right now how long do we have I actually just emailed Patty Allen and Adam earlier this week saying please someone remember this it stays in effect as long as we maintain contract we're paying eighty five hundred dollars a year for them to monitor and so what typically what districts do is after

181three or four years of realizing the the true savings were supposed to get then they'll in the contract because there's no reason to assume anything would change near five if we aren't getting it though then obviously we'll we'll just keep it going so and it gives them an incentive to tweet maybe a little bit and do some more work exactly absolutely yep that's exactly right yeah another big increase in the five thousands was an increase in fifty eight hundred which is a professional services we had a mental health clinician that was previously a salaried employee that became a professional consultant we had maintenance and Miramonte for an AC installation and ninety one hundred and a Winton that we did have an increase in seventy to seventy two thousand due to some of that donation revenue

182we were receiving that is to be spent in professional services now capital outlay we had a little increase and that's due to the chakra shed over at North High School there is just it's coated at a different level so part of it so the classified salaries you see dropping by fifteen thousand fourteen seven ninety eight it would have actually been going up by forty or fifty were it not for this change so there was a reduction on the personnel salaries the the two thousand three thousand object code oh yeah absolutely so it looks like we increased twenty three thousand and classified support salaries do to increase projected cost and transportation so we have you know we have the new buses this year we also have had an increase in number of sped students are being

183transported by band and so it looks like a $40,000 reduction from moving the mental health clinician and twenty four thousand new charge for transportation that's out for the most part so I like high school so this is a pie of our expenditures have certificated classified employee benefits add up to some over 75% of total expenditures and again this is a little skewed because of that big fema payment we paid out under services and other so actually it is closer to about 80% so just reduce based on based on that other outgo but it's still a big chunk of our south of our budget it's just a summary of our general fund again went through the revenues went through the expenditures and the very bottom our undesignated unappropriate unappropriated balance of 715 to 46 so it's

184just a summary of all the previous lights multi-year projections this is so tiny because we don't want to see what I did update the enrollment projections for the out years and it was about ten ten less projected in the out years based on what we had this year of course that does drop our projected ad a I'm just worried for you he's saying like because we had X percent drop this year you're assuming we'll have a similar drop in the future are you just carrying that drop across so Andy the cohort method is we look at I'm looking at enrollment projections for about from 1516 I want to say is when the first column that we have and so we look at the percentage of students the cohort that moves from first grade and second

185grade and that percentage is applied then to all the other out years with assuming that we're getting cohort about 44t carriers and kindergarteners every year yeah so guess what it comes at the TK level exactly TK everything else is Louisa okay also although again now that we've had our six straight years of 160 or so stood at that level it's pretty consistent so I think the as far as said accurately we use the cohort survival method meaning that we actually if we had a big drop this year for instance because of summits closure we don't just assume that that's all Matthew and carry forward from next year we weighed it with the three prior years as well so we use a four year weighted average to look at the average trend of how you know

186if you have a hundred first graders well you typically net a loss of one going to second-grade believing that a gain of two or three as Monica Ross gets come in in third and fourth that sort of thing so the change though of the change of about ten students is in part a product of the fact that we were a little bit lower this year relative to where we were projecting and so that just kind of carries forward so the the gap between the years is only a couple students different but then there's also the being lower this year so now we're actually getting the benefit of the weighted average right now if this trend continues it's even worse right yes but if we know that this was an exceptional year I mean we don't

187think that this was cohorts I think that sounds like it's very reality yeah I mean the good thing of this is the unduplicated people count percentage has been steadily increasing I mean if we look at we're projecting in the third year out to be close to fifty fifty three and a half let's see on this I updated the CalSTRS employer rate the CalPERS did have a slight decrease and I say was like a point something of a percentage for that year and again these are these are just projections for next year they're still not set in stone the most important thing of this slide is the personnel reductions at the very bottom we're looking at four hundred sixty nine thousand for both the 1920 2021 school years and that equates to a total of five

188point four two FTE taking all teacher classified and management to consideration this is a multi-year projection where if you see at the middle of the of the slide where it says net increase decrease in fund balance this year we are going to increase by eighty six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars but next year we're gonna be spending down our fund balance by three hundred and sixty four thousand and then in the last year the four hundred and thirty thousand 118 will end with a zero balance and that's our balanced budget that's right that's the third line from the very bottom the second line above the is it orange three percent economic uncertainty so even though we're showing a zero in that bottom line you'll see we still have eight hundred thousand dollars as a

189reserve but right we must get permission in order to access it and I don't know how easily that permission would be granted again I think only if if it's a statewide problem I agree I doubt that we'd get permission if it's just balance agree right yeah like it just keeps raving like this forever so looking forward we're gonna continue to monitor our environment our 88 as of now else lcff has it is fully funded so all will see our Cola increases on the lcff we're still gonna continue to see CalSTRS and CalPERS increases and the next thing is the governor's made a revised where we'll get a little better ideas to what 19:20 looks like just put a little chart there just shore enrollment from 1314 to what I project them 2020 2021 that's a

190lot of students yeah and then the last one is increases in kelvins CalSTRS and CalPERS the bottom one is the increase of an in dollar amount from year to year what I project this year and out to out years so I know it's sad news but we do project that we are going to have a balanced budget given you know but personnel reductions we will still balance our budget so we we are able to have a positive certification so I recommend that the board gives me a positive certification I just want to say these presentations get better every time thank you and I have to tell you from 10 years ago to today it's night and day [Laughter] public speaking is a little hard but I'm getting better fantastic thank you with Andy's help so

191I don't know what I'm gonna do after the light all right do we have a motion to approve I'll second all in favor all right mandemus and thank you thank you very much ID are there any comments on the comprehensive safe schools plan I think these are essentially the same as they were last night oh I'm sorry I know what I know but I have a suggestion we've been at this for five hours if there's no objection could we just move this to our next meeting and also the discussion of the Town Hall style meetings can we discuss that at the next meeting now I'm prepared you see all those paper clips I'm ready to talk about but I would rather all right I don't think we've done that before but I like to do

192new things so all right I saw that let's do this school plans if there's two things for me I I don't waste time reading something that hasn't changed but I also do read things that you know I don't want just go I read that last year I want to read it if there's a change so she's an extra fantastic Hey all right is there a motion to approve there a second second all in favor aye by unanimous superintendents report I'll make it brief but I do a second interim as we just had penny present lawn reflect a little bit on the past four years as the business superintendent about the experiences we've had in this district remember I came May of 15 May of 15 we still were in furlough days that was our last

193year six weeks after my arrival we had the the discovery of the impropriety in the business office I'm extremely proud of the leader or the team that we had in the department at that time that we worked very closely together with our forensic auditors to identify the full scope of that issue and then to really rebound in rally when we had such a big deficit within that department as as we were trying to to move forward I appreciate the your commentary on nan patty and the quality lease presentations we've worked very hard with this business office complete turnover and staff over the past four years from the director level Laura my retiring and patty promoting up from an accountant to to director and then everyone in her office as new as well in fact new

194within the past two years so we have a big shift over there but what I personally see and as you guys know I'm very involved in that department as well as what I hear from our stakeholders across the district really positive improvements that we're seeing just from the quality of customer service to trying to find teacher and student focused solutions rather than necessarily always being just so focused on you know the perhaps best guidance but missing the mark as far as how we actually support school operations and then I will just say from a budget perspective again I I know that the numbers are scary and I'm not trying to suggest that they shouldn't be cause for at least pause but I really am proud of where this district has come the past four years

195again going from being furlough days and having when I came the budget projection was that we end with a hundred and eighty eight dollars let that year that fortunately improved and then where we've come you know by allocating resources to our people we've been able to significantly reduce class sizes increase offerings across the district Creek early and yes we are going to make some reductions in the coming years I think really through some strong collaboration with oft we really reached a strong salary settlement to make sure we prioritized our teachers while also trying to give ourselves some time to work the budget challenges and we're doing the same thing right now it's ESEA of course we hate the the resolutions that we have to do this time of year when it comes to a reduction

196of staff we had some really painful ones last year with CSEA but they certainly have been doing all they can as well to to try to come up with most equitable solutions to these budget challenges so very happy with Patty and the quality of her work the quality of the department as we've had these changes and I am very confident in in the leadership structure we have here for ongoing attention to our budget challenges so those are my reflections at 8:45 on superintend report thank you very much all right anything from the board on our report or an item for future agenda all right consent County play yeah go see the musical I consent calendar yeah all in favor aye alright that's unanimous and we adjourn until next time