AUSD Board of Education Meeting 08/23/22

001gives it okay good evening everyone I'd like to call to order at seven o'clock the meeting the board meeting of The Arcadian fine School District first order of business is Road call every board member is presence and every member of the executive team is also president and also our student representative first before we begin Let's uh let's just have the Pledge of Allegiance led by Mr Raymond Trump the way Mr President again one nation under God and the invisible liberties foreign I believe you also have inspiration for this evening I do thank you Mr President I just got a way to a sec to get the screens up I always make things a little more complicated start from the beginning Scott all right thanks Scott so since we are starting our new school year with

002the theme forward together I thought it would take some inspiration from president ing actually and do a short Chinese lesson uh so one of the ways to write forward together in Chinese is this in Mandarin it's pronounced in Cantonese yet hey literally it means one group advancing forward or progressing forward one of these words is actually pretty interesting this one Tien or chin which means forward or front and what makes it interesting is that in the Chinese language the concept of time is actually the opposite from how we think typically think about it this is gentian or day before yesterday uh so here are the four the word Ford's actually used to describe something in the past day before yesterday rather than the future which was what we would be used to so next but

003it makes a lot of sense though if you think about time like a stream that's flowing away from you watching it Flow Away and the water that flows past you are the things you've already experienced and behind you what you can't see or all the events to come so as we think about forward together it's important that while we look forward to the future we do so with full acknowledgment and appreciation for all that we've experienced all the Traditions we've celebrated all the lessons we've learned and we do so knowing that as we go forward all the future is unknown and uncertain we will be comforted heartened that we will do so together with common purpose common cause working together as we go yep that is my inspiration today Mr President thank you Mr Sean

004very appropriate for beginning the school year next do I have a motion to approve the agenda I moved to approve the agenda do I have a second question made by Mrs Chavez second by Mrs Yi all those improved say aye Bible XR and agenda are audience comments before we begin I have a script to read is now time for audience comments the boy respects the right of members of the public to speak to the board regarding matters on the agenda and other matters within the boy's jurisdiction in accordance with board bylaws individual speakers will be allowed three minutes to address the board a maximum of 18 minutes total will be allocated for public comments to ensure that everyone who completed the request to speak card has an opportunity to be heard we'll be keeping time

005and we will inform each speaker when they have one minute left and then when their time is up so that the meeting can proceed in orderly manner and efficient manner additionally in accordance with board policies this board is committed to maintaining an environment that Fosters mutual respect amongst everyone in our community this includes having fruitful discussions in a respectful and civil manner even on issues that individuals may feel passionately about therefore disturbances or willful interruptions of the meeting will not be tolerated I would also like to remind the audience that this meeting is being recorded and also live streamed on YouTube and can be accessed at boardmeeting.ausd.net with that said we will now hear from our first speaker our first speaker is Miguel Arambula [Music] ladies and gentlemen thank you for your time hello my

006name is Miguel Arambula tonight I'm here along with a group of parents who are greatly concerned about Kelly Arena who was installed as the Longley weight principal last year throughout the 2021-2022 school year parents Proctor staff and teachers alike have attempted to bring forth and escalate systemic issues regarding the principal's poor performance to no avail the feedback was not being taken seriously or was dismissed the repeated problems that this school Community saw ranged from her ineffectiveness in addressing School violence and bullying to a lack of integrity and conflicting messaging all the way up to her use of intimidation on both parents and students alike furthermore many of us were frustrated by our frequently unresponsive and untimely and ineffective communication skills and her extreme unwillingness to collaborate or take constructive feedback that she herself would ask

007for we at Longley way are proud that our school is exemplary so many ways especially with our dedicated teachers and an active strong community of families however as we stand here before you this evening we are confident that our current principle is absolutely not the right leader for our school as the board that sits in front of me tonight you are the last resort that we have come that we have come to given that all other avenues have failed us Longley way needs a new principle thank you our next speaker is Kelly Chen good evening my name is Kelly Chen I have been a lonely way parent since 2015. throughout the last seven years I have volunteered each year to help my children's teachers served on the PTA executive board and for the last three

008years worked as a lunchtime Proctor I would like to share my very difficult experiences this past school year working as a proctor as Proctors our main objective is to keep students safe and remind them how to play safely with one another and use playground equipment appropriately like most schools Across America we all experience an increase in aggressive behavior among some students mainly due to the effects of the pandemic and shutdown our team of Proctors did the best we could to help defuse student conflict that had escalated to physical violence however it was very clear that these students that exhibited such Behavior needed more than just Proctor intervention throughout the year we have sought Miss Arena's help in how we can handle these situations through both email and in-person discussions she seemed receptive and appreciative of

009our feedback but never provided any solutions I personally would offer ideas and suggestions such as having students that require discipline to pick up trash using a grabbing stick but she quickly shut me down on those ideas I asked what else could we do and was told that we would have a Proctors meeting where she and the school counselor would provide training and tips no meeting was ever mentioned after that as the school year progressed instances of physical violence and bullying perpetuated I was very frustrated that we kept seeing this kind of behavior from the same students with no Solutions or Improvement I sent an email to the principal pleading for some answers and help as to how to handle these situations Miss Arena replied that there would be a meeting scheduled that subsequent Friday but

010it was only after another follow-up and reminder from me that she finally responded and confirmed a meeting date when the meeting was finally had Miss Arena did not use any of the time any of the time to provide helpful information or answers as to how we should handle such student behavior and violence when many of us tried to voice our concerns and questions she would not hear us ignore us and talked over us the meeting became extremely hostile and nothing was accomplished it is it is extremely sad that while on the service Miss Arena talks a lot about appreciating us understanding what a difficult job we have and how we will work together to succeed the reality is that she did not seem to respect us enough to communicate effectively or collaborate to find Solutions

011I could no longer work in such a toxic environment with the leader who I felt continuously put children's safety at risk does not come up with effective Solutions and on top of all this seem to look for reasons to intimidate or fire me since I was not willing to stay quiet about the issues at hand I loved working with the students and the teachers but it was with a heavy heart that I decided to quit well I quit I was still very much a part of lonely way of the Longley Way community only about two weeks after I quit my own son was physical physically hurt by another student but the school did not inform either my husband or myself of the incident a week later the same son was punched by another student same

012lack of communication my son born no responsibility in either case except that he was the unfortunate recipient of the other students anger at losing a game of punch ball and they'll be inquired of the principal and later Dr forces to why we were not even told of these incidences and what was being done to ensure our children's safety at school no satisfactory answer came my accounts here are only a few instances that I have observed and witnessed firsthand and though many more have gone unheard or unspoken of not only have I resigned from my job but I also decided to pull my children out of Longley way this year because we no longer have any confidence that as long as she is the principal of this school that our children will be safe there along

013the way needs a new principle a recipe next Michael Yell good morning my name is Michael Yao I would like to tell you why the entire March elected 2022 2023 PTA bought a lonely way decided to collect collectively step down at the end of last school year many of us have have warranted and served on this PDA for years so this this was not an easy decision for us to make we pride ourselves with the sense of community that our parents teacher students administrators have created for lonely way throughout the years however the challenges that we Face throughout the year with principal Kelly Arena ultimately made these issues unbearable it was difficult to communicate with her and even harder to work together year over year even during pandemic the only way had a very rich

014history of PTA PTA events and programs as these past school year progressed we grew frustrated with each successive successive initiative or activity was made with robots unwillingness to work together or simply the lack of integrity and backtracking even on statement me doing recorded meetings we could not continue to support this type of leader that was demoralizing the community that we have all worked so hard to build and then ultimately our decision was so solidified when several members of the boat seems to be retaliated against and were denied admittance to campus I urge you to further investigate and do your own due diligence to as to whether this is the type of leader you would like to have in the arcade Unified School District long even needs a new principle a next speaker is Nikki Kwan

015hi my name is who has had the privilege of sending my kids too Longley way for the last six years in addition every year I consistently volunteer countless hours to the school and donate thousands of dollars to Longley way and AES for five years prior to principal's Arena leadership my experience has been incredibly positive a dream Elementary School in an ideal School District that all changed last year with Kelly Arena's leadership first she misappropriated my donated funds and outright denied it I donated a thousand dollars towards the school January snowman fundraiser for classroom supplies as was stated in the distributive flyers in the principal's email to the parents and I even verbally confirmed with her before I donated in so I was completely blindsided when she said she used the funds to purchase Library furniture

016she carelessly brushed my concerns aside and said classroom supplies Library Furniture same thing it's not second she likes the interpersonal skills for a long way community parents along the way are highly educated and we understand the nuances of words we like to be spoken to as a positive partner in education and not spoken to as her subordinate nor in a rude and disrespectful manner third inadequate disseminator of information she's supposed to be the subject matter expert here at school but throughout this year I had to go beyond the principle to receive correct information and it was extremely unproductive use of time when we had to keep clarifying with the principle on the things she misrepresented or continued to second guess the accuracy or ability of her information these and many other negative experience have destroyed

017my faith in her leadership I along with other parents here tonight as well as impacted parents who are not here because they fear retaliation cannot stand by and be silent to what is happening our children's future safety and mental Wellness are at stake Longley way needs a new principle that is a better fit for the Longley Way community and Arcadia so that our students can thrive in a positive environment and be first and be the first party on any agenda thank you for your time thank you for your comments appreciate the time you spent and um as I mentioned earlier we cannot comment or respond and uh we do it but we do appreciate you making your comments and you have been heard appreciate it thank you next time we have our student representative report

018my pizza welcome back good evening my name is envita marlapati the 2022-2023 student representative to the Board of Education tonight joining me are members of asb's executive Council to introduce their names and roles but before I ask ASB to come on up here I would like to share a few words relating to my gratitude and vision for the coming year the Arcadia Unified School District is undoubtedly one of the most advanced Innovative and Progressive school districts in the nation with over 7 000 with over seven plus schools and over 3 000 students at the high school itself students are taken care of in Terms of their academic welfare and preparation for the world Beyond High School advancement and Care would not be possible without the backbone of our school district which is our very honorable

019Board of Education on behalf of the Arcadia High School student body I would like to sincerely thank you for your dedication and commitment in doing what's best for students the time you spend planning implementing and creating truly Echoes the love you have for this District it's an honor to work with you let alone sit on the same panel as you and most importantly I look forward to learning from you I hope to use my voice as an anchor to represent Arcadia High School and to bring ausd to Greater Heights with that being said ASB please come on up here good evening I'd like to introduce our 23 20 22 22 to 2023 is the executive Council um we do have 23 members in our executive Council and they're going to introduce by their name position

020and grade so starting off with me hello my name is benjaminell I'm your 2022 to 2023 ASB president and I'm a senior good evening my name is Kaylee Wong I'm a senior and I'm the 22 to 23 ASB vice president hello I'm also the senior my name is Phoebe Wong and I am the 22 to 23 ASB treasurer hello my name is B secretary good evening my name is Ashley love and I'm a senior and this year I'm the 2022 to 2023 ASB historian good evening my name is Felicia Wu and I'm a senior and I'm this year's 2012 to 2023 clubs commissioner hello I'm Joshua Tran I'm a senior as well and I'm your 22 to 23 activities commissioner 2023 publicity commissioner hello my name is Lillian I'm a senior and this year I

021will be the EDI commissioner good evening my name is Catherine Tran I'm a senior and I'm the 2022-2023 link commissioner good evening I'm Brandon Chang and I'll be your 2022 to 2023 academics commissioner and I'm a senior good evening my name is Charlene Ing and I'm a senior and I'm the 2022 to 2023 Performing Arts commissioner hello everyone I'm a senior year and my name is Josh Lang and I'm the 2022-2023 Athletics commissioner hello everyone my name is Jamie Lee and I am the 2022 2023 Spirit commissioner and I'm also a senior good evening my name is Christina Shu and I'm this year's senior president hello I'm Isabella Lowe and I am this year's senior vice president good evening I'm Cameron Cortez and I'm this your senior historian hello everyone I'm Ian Chi and I'm

022this year's seniors public relations good evening my name is Jeremiah John and I'm a junior and I will be this year's Junior president hi my name is Joyce C and I will be the 22 to 23 Junior vice president hello my name is Amber Chung and I'm this year sophomore president and Keeley sun is this year's advice from sophomore vice president who unfortunately couldn't make it today thank you I will now be delivering today's student report in the coming weeks members of asb's executive Council will be joining me start off with the ASB president has planned asb's first all-school event back to scoop which occurred on Thursday August 18th after school at the rally Court students were able to enjoy free sorbet activities and receive a big welcome from the student body the ASB president

023is also has also organized freshman assembly to introduce the variety of opportunities Arcadia High School offers such as joining organizations clubs Sports Academic Teams and ASB as well next slide the main back to scoop poster was created by two talented Juniors at Arcadia High School next slide thank you students are waiting in line to get their refreshing sorbets on this hot school day when it's getting served Fruity Pebbles to top their sorbet seniors smiling together with their sorbets students play the not my hands challenge to try and feed ice cream to their friends mouths laughs and students play the slopping whipped cream game and that concludes the historian's presentation moving on the ASB vice president is currently in the midst of ASB freshman elections the election informational meeting was held on Friday August 19th in

024the candidate mandatory meeting will be held on Tuesday August 30th additionally homecoming royalty elections will begin on Wednesday August 31st recently ASB has supported link crew in their freshman orientation to help incoming students become acclimated to the high school the club re-chuttering process for the upcoming year concluded in July with a total of 34 AHS clubs being chartered during this process asb's executive Council examined all clubs against Arcadia High School's codes and guidelines for chartered clubs the publicity commissioner has been overseeing all of the publicizing for asb's all-school bonding event while also planning and managing all of the physical and digital publicizing for homecoming during Arcadia High School's registration week which took place on August 11th and August 12th the EDI short for Equity diversity and inclusion student committee showcased their Booth to recruit new

025student members for the committee in the 2022-2023 school year currently the committee is in the process of Recruitment and planning with the club's commissioner to host a separate cultural identity Club stay to highlight Arcadia High School's diverse culture link crew successfully hosted freshman orientation where they welcomed the class of 2026 to Arcadia High School on August 16th a total of 86 percent of the Freshman Class attended which allowed them to feel welcome in a new environment and meet their link crew leader who will be for that who will be there for them throughout their entire freshman year over the past two weeks sciencepool has been competing in a summer tournament consisting of 24 teams they are ranked in the top six in the ongoing competition with many individuals highly ranked in their specialty subjects the

026speech and debate team also held a summer workshop on August 2nd for incoming novices to learn more about the variety of events they can compete in during the last two weeks of summer break marching band and color guard completed band camp choir and Orchestra also completed their one week of Music Camp and orcasus participated in the united Spirit Association stance camp on Friday August 19th girls volleyball had their first game against Claremont securing the win with a score of 3-0 Spirit commissioner is currently planning for the upcoming in-person homecoming assembly on September 30th Council held senior sunrise on August 19th seniors enjoyed a sweet and salty croissant bar and did yoga together to commemorate the start of the school year Junior Council has been planning for their junior class bonding event where students can cool

027down from the summer heat create cute crafts and race piers on the field it will be held on September 16th from 4 to 5 30 pm and last but not least sophomore Council has been planning for the 22-23 prom committee application process they had their first meeting on August 18th where they met their new advisors and began planning for their upcoming fundraiser and that concludes the student report foreign [Music] Mr Danielson you're the last one standing hahaha to our action items action items thank you thank you good evening everybody so measure a is our parcel tax and when that was renewed in 2017 one of the requirements was to continue our citizens oversight committee or COC um which has three primary uh purposes or Expectations first one is to review the expenditures uh within the

028parcel tax to inform the public concerning those expenditures and also present to the board annually a report consisting of the committee's review and comments regarding those expenditures so tonight I'd like to start by thanking one of our members who completed her term and will not be returning for another term and that is Jennifer Tom uh and then we have two members that completed their term but are returning for another uh term and I'm sorry I should say each term is two years and they are able to serve up to three years I'm sorry three terms which is six years uh Calvin Lynn and Sharon Van Kirk are returning as members uh and we have one new member who is a parent and that is Matthias guber and our first meeting is actually next Monday looking

029forward to meeting him that's it pretty emotion too Point our new world I moved that that the measure a Citizens oversight committee members as read by Mr elsland be approved second I had to make that motion since I used to sit on that committee foreign yes thank you so measure eyes are facilities Bond and that was passed approved by our voters in 2006. this oversight committee has the same three purposes or expectations um and again we have two members that completed their term and will not be returning so I'd like to thank Tiffany lung and Kathy umani for their service on this oversight committee three members that have completed their term and will be returning for another term and they are Ali guardea Susan lowy and Jennifer Ledesma we have two new members joining us

030for a two-year term and that is uh they are Stanley poon who is a parent and Sonya Martin who's also a parent but will be serving as an at-large Community member we continue to have two positions that are vacant that is the the business representative and a representative of a taxpayer organization and so as as always I am uh continuing the search to try and get those positions filled and if we do we'll bring those back to the board we have motions um but right before we do the motion um I was wondering if uh we could when you guys meet with the Chamber of Commerce maybe let them know at that meeting because we have lots of business owners there that we have position open maybe we can recruit in that manner I appreciate

031that thank you and one caveat the business owner is not a business that the district can be doing business business with okay so an independent outside yeah interesting thank you and with that I'll go ahead and make the motion again I move that we approve the appointment uh of the members read to the measure I citizens Bond oversight committee second all right thank you for next option the budget and Division good evening I think it'll oh awesome I know the screen will come up in a shortly one more time okay don't seem to be cooperating Ascot works on that I can just go ahead and get started and kind of remind remind everyone that back in June when I was up in front of you sharing with you all the adopted budget report that was

032based off of the states May revise and literally the day before that presentation the state released the enacted budget where there were significant changes to revenue so the purpose of this budget revision uh will be to reflect the changes uh that were in the final enacted budget primarily uh the the changes in our Revenue sources you guys are can see that on your screen okay so I have a fancy waterfall chart that sorry okay you can try it I don't think it will it's a laptop rear everywhere that's the same as unplug it and plug it back oh no we have to crank cool gray yeah okay so so what I have is um a waterfall chart that basically helps the bridge the gap in terms of where we were at adopted budget to what

033we're proposing with the budget revision so the adopted the adopted budget had us at a deficit in the general fund of 2.8 million dollars and with these revisions we're proposing that the budget revision be revised it actually improves to a deficit of just uh under 400 000 so overall these all these changes that we're reflecting is actually an improvement to the overall general fund however as I'll get to in a minute uh the unrestricted general fund actually decreases uh it's it's not as favorable as where we were during adopted budget but the restricted general fund more than offsets that the decrease in our unrestricted general fund so I'll touch briefly on each one of these uh items that we're proposing to to change in this budget revision starting on the left hand side with the

034lcff the local control funding formula and this is our primary source of revenue for the school district uh you see there on the waterfall chart basically all the bar charts in Grain are favorable changes to our budget and the red bars represent unfavorable changes the lcff of 2.9 Million dollars that is primarily uh that reflects the increase in the cola add-on if you guys may recall the mandatory Cola for 2223 was 6.56 percent and what the governor uh had proposed and the May revise was an additional add-on of 3.28 effectively taking the cola to just under 10 percent in the final enacted budget he actually increased the add-on uh from that 3.2 percent to 6.2 percent so effectively our Cola for next year is just under 13 that three percent increase uh accounts for that

0352.9 Million Dollar increase in lcff so the next item we have is restricted one-time funding yes because we have a new board member tonight I'm going to ask everyone if we can keep the initials to a minimum um so Cola is yes yes I was trying to be cognizant of that so with the lcff but yes find myself doing it doing it after being on the board for a few years but I remember my first couple years and it was just just hair on fire jotting notes and trying to figure them all out so anyway and I appreciated that you did Define lcff so yes so the the cola is the cost of living adjustment as board member Chavez mentioned uh it's basically the primary factor within our local control funding formula that increases our

036funding so it's a causal living adjustment every year we basically there's a percentage increase hopefully that we that we see and that that increases the revenue for for the district um next we have the restricted one-time funding so it's an increase of 12.3 million dollars and that is a combination of two block grants the first one being the learning recovery emergency block grant and the second one is the Arts music instructional materials discretionary block grant the learning recovery block grant makes up about 55 percent or 6.7 million dollars of the 12.3 so the remaining balance of 5.6 million dollars is the Arts music and instructional materials black Grant we haven't received too much information in regards to the allowable uses is very what the state is released is very uh Broad and just general uh

037terms that they've shared in terms of allowable use so there'll be more to come on this you know what we're reflecting here is just the uh the revenue um Revenue that we'll be receiving next we have the unrestricted one-time funding so unfortunately in the May revise we had a one-time discretionary block grant which was unrestricted funds uh that has since gone away uh and essentially as you can see it seems like we basically they replaced the the one-time discretionary block grant with these two restricted block grants so the one-time unrestricted was 10.8 million dollars so that's a decrease there next we have elop stands for expanded learning opportunity program and that is uh funding for our elementary schools and this is just expanded learning initiatives and unfortunately with a final enacted budget they decreased the

038Ada the funding per Ada for school schools with lower unduplicated pupil counts so unfortunately the elop grant that we were going to receive was decreased by 730 thousand dollars next we have and now we're kind of getting into the expenses uh the expense components of the changes to the to the budget the additional classes I have there for six hundred and eighty thousand dollars although it's an increase in expense it was something that we were happy to add because this is primarily the additional classes that we're adding we're adding four classes at the elementary schools due to higher enrollment and this includes we've got a TK class that we're adding in Highland Oaks a first grade class that we're adding at Camino Grove a second grade class at Holly Ave and a fifth grade class

039at Baldwin stalker we're also adding it's about one full-time teacher FTE across all the middle schools again due to higher enrollment and next we've got what I've referred to as sped that's for special ed and TK the 160 000 there uh is primarily for the additional uh special ed classroom we have an SDC class special day class that we're adding at Highland Oaks and that gets funded through restricted funds and we're also what's in that hundred and sixty thousand dollars is also supplies for our TK classes and the reason why it's under restricted is because we do have that Universal Pre-K Grant that's the restricted fund that we're going to be using for that expense uh next we have 140 000 for rev uh roving Subs so uh the 140 000 covers approximately seven weeks

040uh I think the plan initially was uh to have our roving subs for the first seven weeks of the school year uh just in case uh you know if something were to happen and we had absences with teachers that we would have that coverage and that amounted 140 000. lastly uh the classified positions uh the ninety thousand dollars uh was primarily for the the cost of converting three uh school nurse positions to full time uh and it also has adjustments for two office positions small adjustments for office positions so with all that said that gets us to a deficit of just under 400 000 in the revised budget next on this next slide all I have here is it's basically just the fun form of what I've shared on the left hand side we have

041our adopted budget in the middle section there is what I've proposed what we just went through and on the far right is the revised budget uh what I'll just note here is I know there's a lot of information on here but in the middle section this is where you can kind of see the change in the unrestricted and the restricted uh general fund so you can see there unfortunately uh on the at the bottom in the middle the unrestricted column you see that the unrestricted general fund is decreasing by 8.9 million dollars however it's more than offset by the increase and the restricted general fund of 11.3 and overall it gets us to an improvement in the general fund of 2.4 million dollars better than where we were at the adopted budget and so with

042that said again on the far right you'll see that the change in fund balance with the revised budget is a deficit of just under four hundred thousand dollars and one thing I'll mention is that um with the restricted funds as I mentioned you know there's not a lot of information that we have uh with the restricted one-time funds yet but what we'll do as we always do is we'll ensure that you know once we get more information on that we'll look to exhaust those funds first we always prioritize using restricted funds looking at anything that we currently incur in our unrestricted uh general fund and ensure that we apply those funds to the restricted funds so uh hopefully we get more information and there'll be more clarity in our first Senate report with that I'll

043be happy to take any questions [Laughter] when we are talking about the total general fund now I know it's difficult to see but if you look bottom right of this table in that blue bar going across you'll see the the third from the right is the unrestricted revised budget the second from the right is the restricted those added together are the negative 384 which is a very nice looking number but the number that I focus on is on the unrestricted the negative 9.7 million dollar deficit that will improve like David said this 45-day revision is really just about a change in revenues and and we did add some of the expenditures that we've added it's primarily the revenues by December 15th when David presents first interim will have the revenues updated with our new enrollment

044numbers right these enroll the revenues are driven by our projected enrollment numbers which are lower than what our actual enrollment is right now so the negative 9.7 million I'm not worrying about right now I'm the we'll wait till first interim see that but that's that's the number that I'm focused on and that I worry about but it will improve by first interim to the expense of expenses have been updated like the staff are in here yes or the new enrollment but the new enrollment is not right okay and so that's why I mean the the prior slide showing that change in revenue from unrestricted to restricted that's really the big change that we felt like we needed to bring to you sooner rather than or sooner room that's where they take away the local control

045yeah yeah they do you're right one of them is they don't give us money that we can been wherever and however yeah yeah one of them is more restricted than the other the Arts PE instructional materials block cramp you know they give us very brief descriptions on what we can spend on one of those was operational costs so that is a very broad category but I'm I'm proceeding slowly because I don't want us to go down a path and then by December hear something different from the state they've had this tendency lately to apply restrictions later on I'm kind of we're playing a wait and see right now go back to that other slide Skype with the really high chart um it does seem like looking at the ending balances like we're going from 40

046unrestricted 60 restricted to 20 unrestricted 80 restricted um it's a very very Stark difference yeah going to Europe yeah Mr and I would add as long as I'm being the the Doom and Gloom guy tonight I would add that a fair chunk of our unrestricted ending fund balance is committed for specific purposes that David presented at adoption you know all of you know some of our artosa the teacher on special assignment positions are funded with one-time money some of our our positions at the elementaries and those kinds of things are funded with those one-time dollars that we've earmarked for those purposes now ending fund balance is always one-time money but it's the difference between we have a plan to spend it versus it's there for us as a reserve so that concerns me also not

047tonight and one thing I'll add I don't want to get ahead of myself but um you know I I'm currently working through our year-end results for 2122 actuals uh Karen and I are our accounting supervisor so we're planning to close very soon and that'll be uh shared with the board at the next board meeting um but one thing I just wanted to mention because because uh Raymond had mentioned the the ending fund balance for the unrestricted general fund that will improve because with you know this was based off of our projection for where we thought we were going to end 2122 so the beginning balance here was a projection in terms of where we thought we would end 21 22 and that's going to come in better let's get the bottom left the 20.6 million

048yes it's going to come in a few million dollars better as it typically does so these numbers will improve as Derek mentioned and you know during first interim as we kind of like realign expenses in terms of what we can charge within the restricted one-time funds that will improve the unrestricted yeah and without a uh I think I just asked that the board approve the budget revision I'll move to approve the budget revision for 22-23 second hi hi information pay the new agenda and it's hard to we're all figuring it out three riveting policies I know you're all waiting for um just real quickly uh board policy 61 42.3 civic education we're aligning that as as we mentioned in previous board mem board meetings we're aligning that with the new Board Association number it used

049to be science instruction you'll notice next we'll be talking about the board policy science instruction this particular policy talks about this uh it basically just states that the standards and guidelines for instruction in Civics and government are included in the standards for curriculum actually not in this policy but it's actually in the standards but it does specify that uh the high schools can get Regis voter registration forms from the Secretary of State as requested by the school it also our policy provides examples of how to distribute those forms and then lastly it says that the last two full weeks in April and the last two full weeks in September uh as high school voter education weeks so so we're getting out the output that policy um the next policy is 6142.93 which is science instruction

050this policy um is basically just updated to meet the new education code regarding science instruction and that's basically the California next Generation science standards in GSS and the science framework in public schools and so it spells those out and it says that we have to be fully implemented including updated instructional materials and you I know the board has been present lots of ingest so we're on we're on to do that and then it further clarifies the use of hazardous hazardous chemicals and that we have to have a um a chemical hygiene plan for for staff just to make sure that we're safe and the last policy that we're bringing is a class assignments 6152 that name is being changed I believe from student grouping to class assignment and several laws have changed regarding this most

051of it's around placement in mathematics placement and courses one of the things that AB 1012 did was some districts we don't actually do this in our district but some districts actually Place students in this a course that they've already taken just because they don't have any other place to put them and so this this legislation now prevents schools from doing that uh and then lastly it directs individuals to utilize the uniform uh complaint process for any non-compliance with Ed code regarding the placement of students so what any questions on any of those policies and then if we we'd like to request that you bring this back on consent if thank you thank you Mr President welcome back everyone uh I know we got the theme out as uh forward together and that was after many

052conversations at the end of last year about how people were feeling and what they were looking forward to if I had to do it over I think our theme would just be simply normalcy us on the the week before the lead week leading up to school as we were having the uh open the registration days and parents were back on campus staff coming back uh just truly felt normal and and I've heard many people share how you know last year we were all trying to convince ourselves that we're back and it's normal and then it's like but do we fist bump do we elbow there's a lot of a lot of questions a lot of hybrid things events uh events that we didn't continue to have and it feels really good to say it really

053feels normal this year so many of the ptas at all of our sites have already begun to be on the calendar uh events for the parents and for the students that they so much looked forward to so uh it was a great start there's some people I want to thank and we're going to hear a lot of from 360 of the organization about the startup of school and what's going on uh sometimes behind the scenes but it's hard to get to beginning of school without talking about what goes on over the summer so I really want to thank Tony barrius and his crew Melinda and gave with the custodians and maintenance first while so many of the parents and staff are home and we often say you know have a good summer enjoy the break

054they're going full force and and that's when they kind of Step It Up and you know that's every room every classroom common area in our entire District gets a deep cleaning over the summer and with so many events going on like summer schools and camps that's no easy feat there's a lot of logistics moving around and making sure that every one of those classical every child and teacher comes back to a clean and safe environment there's nothing like a fresh waxed floor I appreciated it when I was in school and I continued to appreciate it and first Avenues new tile floor in the lobby and down the main hall and that Fresh coat of wax is is beautiful and then there's the maintenance you know we really value routine maintenance meaning that we don't wait

055until things break to fix them we have a schedule that's out years and have money that we put away in our budget to ensure that air conditioning units are clean new filters you know ready to go so that when we do hit the heat of August September that we're not all of a sudden running around you know with air conditioning units units break and when all those things work well you just don't think about it and you don't hear about it but it's due to the planning over the summer so just special thank you to all of them and their crew um I had the the luxury of first dropping my kids off at Camino Grove uh as they were excited for their first day and then uh shared my first first day of kids

056back with the elementary with uh president Fenton ning at Longley way and uh spent some time in in the drop-off line first uh welcoming kids in and watching them all take the pictures in front of the school which is that annual tradition with all the creative signs that parents make for them and make them make them whole rightfully um and then uh you know got to walk around as kids were going in for the first day and and then attend the first PTA meeting uh I know I've been hearing the enrollment numbers uh so it wasn't too big of a shock but I couldn't believe it how many new families I was introduced to to mothers that that each were sharing their stories of of having twins and having twins at Longley way so I

057jumped in that conversation it was a therapy session um and uh you know and I I couldn't say it better their first activity with the PTA a great crowd was you know there's nothing just routine about coming back this year it's not like you can say well you know all the activities that we do every year because it's been a couple years since we've done it we've done routine activities so it's a real opportunity for reset you know and I think that's kind of our theme of opportunity through the pandemic was really looking for the uh we're going to be a lot of challenges but where can we be a better organization and so they started after introducing each other introducing everyone in the room was just brainstorming what are all the activities that you

058really miss and you look forward to having this year with your kids maybe you came from another District what are some activities that you did there that were really successful with PTA so it just you know I'm really excited and looking forward to that reconnection as we move forward together so that was a way to also say thank you to all of our parent Army of volunteers because when I was in that room looking at the parents in there and the one standing in front as the PTA leaders those are the folks that stand up you know and and uh you know are willing to stand up and lead and run logistically a lot of our registration days and first day not just for their child but for all kids and so and I'm saying

059that looking at faces of board members that I know were all around at different sites including the high school helping with with the registration day so we could not do what we do starting teaching and learning in Arcadia on the first day of school without our parents and without the ptas and the volunteers that we depend on and they just do an incredible job and they do it with a happy heart and a smile which creates that wonderful experience for a lot of our new families so just thank you to everyone that made our opening a great success and with that we'll start with Business Services dear Gosling I'll start with the Performing Arts Center which is back open for business for rentals um Keith deluke and I were talking the other day and they've

060had interest they're in conversations with up to six events already so far which would be amazing Our Hope and our plan is to get maybe somewhere between eight to ten events rental events into the Performing Arts Center during the school year that's about the maximum that we can fit in with all the student group events so we're looking forward to a good year in the the pack in the area of fiscal Services uh David vong already mentioned on audited actuals coming at the next board meeting you may remember our best project which is the new accounting system in human Capital management system that the the County Office of Education is rolling out we had a meeting with laco officials recently about cost of the implementation being increased you may recall that we signed an agreement

061with the county to pay an added cost over the span of five years to pay a portion of the implementation districts paid about half of the cost County Office of Ed paid about paid the other half with covid with delays with cost increases they are asking I don't know if asking is the right word but they are asking to extend those payments for three additional years so going to a total of eight years it's about a hundred thousand dollars a year that we've been paying uh fortunately we did not take that money out of the budget so it's not going to impact our budget we just won't see the savings that we would have otherwise there was a lot of pushback from some districts on that call so I'm not sure where that's going to

062land but my expectation is that we will absorb those costs how long do we anticipate that system being in place like did those don't change over very often they do not change over very often the systems that we are using now PeopleSoft and the human resource system they have been in place for at least 20 years if not longer now the difference is that when the county implemented those systems they they modified them they specialize them so much that they couldn't be updated as the years went on and as the man the vendor the manufacturer of those systems provided updates so we're stuck in like 1993 or whatever the year is so one of the tensions that we're experiencing right now with the new system is that laco has I think very smartly said we

063are not going to do anything that will prevent us from upgrading the system when the man the vendor comes out with upgrades so we'll stay current but that means a lot of districts have had to modify their practice because the county is just unwilling to to tailor it to their requests which I think ultimately in the big picture is a good thing but hopefully it'll be 20 20 more years before we do this again and just to clarify the hundred thousand is an addition to the ongoing fifty thousand yeah our ongoing costs for the programs are about fifty thousand and they say that that should stay at that level once the implementation is done is that like per capita-ish cost like how does how do they calculate that it's actually there's a few different ways

064they bill us it's it's more about how we utilize the accounting system like for example one of the charges is per account you charged about a dollar to per account that we have in the system uh we get charged for the reports module so it it a portion of it actually you're correct is about our staff like FTE based full-time equivalent when you're looking at the human Capital Management side of things so how many people you have in the system increases the cost but it's a it's a several pages of calculations that they come up with that okay moving on to facilities and operational services I am happy to share that we were awarded the cow shape award a grant that's the California schools healthy air plumbing and efficiency program and I've never heard anybody

065call it that it's cow shape this is a new program there's a an HVAC heating and air conditioning portion of it and then the plumbing portion we received a 1.5 million dollar Grant on the HVAC side of things this is actually the third round of awards we were not eligible the first two rounds those went to schools with higher populations of needy media students the third round was finally open to all districts so with the help of Pacific West who we've worked with in the past they helped us get our application in day it opened just to get our place in line so this funding will be able to use to have an outside vendor come in and do a very in-depth assessment of our heating and air conditioning you we're able to replace filters

066and do some general maintenance and adjustments of the systems it's not about replacing it's about getting your existing systems up to grade and also having that thorough assessment done so that we know what our costs will be in the future in terms of replacement I you know as David mentioned like our our maintenance staff does a great job of having that information on hand already one of the interesting parts of this is that it also includes carbon dioxide monitors and what I learned actually as a result of this grant is that you may recall a couple years ago we installed building controls in our classrooms throughout the district the HVAC controls well the units we installed actually contain carbon dioxide sensors so that if for whatever reason the level of CO2 goes up in the

067classroom the unit act automatically kicks in you know to improve the air quality so what we think we'll be able to do is actually use this portion of that money to get reimbursed for those purchases from two years ago which would be fantastic but again this is all very preliminary not much detail yet uh and like I said Pacific West helped us apply and we're exploring possibly working with them in the future for this this work to be done uh in transportation um our special ed transportation is off to a great start Sometimes some years that's been difficult to get everything figured out but it's gone very smoothly this year thanks to the staff both in special ed and in transportation they are just working really well together doing a great job moving on to

068purchasing and risk management I mentioned the best system already we're going to be hosting a training a virtual training that laco is going to be doing for our staff for the purchase requisition and the budget review portion of the system so this is for our users at the sites and in the Departments that'll be this Friday there'll be it's a refresher you know they got training back in June they went off and had great Summers and forgot everything and now they're back so we're doing a refresher and then also once that's done uh Jaime Morales and Lucille Chu in our purchasing department will be available to schedule you know local on-site trainings as needed do the Lego one first see if that covered it and then we'll provide the support as needed on the safety

069side as part of our annual notification to employees we included an updated personal safety training document that provided the latest information to ours all of our staff on dealing with active threats on our campuses and related to that the week of September 6th our our jpa which is a joint Powers Authority but it's it's our insurance it's an insurance Collective that we're in together with other districts but uh a staff from our Jeep our insurance jpa will be conducting threat and security assessments at all of our campuses uh and we will get a report on went a month or two after that they do that assessment and lastly but still a lot of good information is nutrition services so we have had four full days of school with all of our grades uh last year

070we hit about 5 000 meals a day at the end of the year right now we're averaging about 4 700 so the the demand that we saw last year came back very quickly in Prior years we were at about 3 300 meals a day so the the free lunch free breakfast the free lunch for every student is really being embraced by a lot of our families which is great I know at this time of year a question of how long it takes to get through the lunch line always comes up so Kathleen Ashworth our director has done some work and she's collected some data just from a couple of our schools the two of the middle schools and she gave me a lot of data but I think the best way to describe it is

071that on average our students are waiting seven to ten minutes to get through the line they're serving somewhere between 17 and 18 students per minute as they make their way through it's Dana and foothills that we have the data they're serving between 200 to 250 students a day so I you know that I think leaves the students plenty of time to grab a meal sit down and eat and and you know enjoy the rest of their their lunch break and those times will go down you know once the kids remember their IDs and learn the process you know especially the little ones at the Elementary's the the lines will go much quicker as time goes on regarding the meals and the uh the nutrition guidelines nothing has changed with our federal nutrition guidelines so all

072of our meals apply with these Federal requirements nothing has changed there that includes the calories in the meals the fat content the sodium content that all continues to be defined by the federal government and the state government as well one of the things Kathleen told me is that Tunes are required to take three of five food items you know a meat or meat alternative grain milk fruit or veggie we want them to take three they can take all five you know so if they're looking to have some additional calories in their their lunch it's always there for them students always have the option to purchase a second meal or an A La Carte item at the middle in the high schools though that seldom happens we sell very few second second meals um and also

073I just checked with Kathleen today the share tables are back and available you know they were um taken away during covid because of of that but they're back now for those campuses that want them so there's always that option for students too that are looking for a little bit more food um just a quick Financial rundown of 2122 for nutrition services and then I'm done total revenues last year were three and a half million dollars the revenue comes in uh on a reimbursement for every meal that we serve that was about 733 000 meals last year just an incredible number on three and a half million dollars we had a deficit of ninety five thousand dollars so expenses exceeded just by ninety five thousand that those revenues that comes out to a loss per meal

074of 13 cents so that is not rate but it's much better than when we started the year things really picked up as the year went on the more meals we serve the better we do financially and Kathleen and her team Francisco Diaz included have just done an amazing job and they've picked up right where they've left off they're doing a great job and that's it thank you thanks for for pointing out the deficit like how much the district loses on each meal because I think when people hear food is free they just assume that it's not costing the district anything to do it that we're being provided the funds to make that service available yeah the the state because California said breakfast and lunch is free they've increased the the reimbursement that they provide but

075it's still it's 4.79 per meal which you know so that it takes some doing to get the meals under that amount and before all this it was nutrition services was pretty much self-sufficient Right In terms yes it was yeah thank you for asking prior to covid it was a self-sustaining program during the worst of covet I think it was like a million dollar deficit yeah so um last year you know everyone was back meals were free the state made the meals free not not the federal government but they just did an amazing job every month you know we look at the monthly financials it got better and better every month so it's a great story for them we don't see a change in the revenue before it's gone up this year um so we're at

076a the 479 is a higher reimbursement rate than we were in Prior years um I think if if fingers crossed you know the the economy continues to do well do okay in California you know we're experiencing some some hiccups I suspect the governor would like to add to that reimbursement rate in the budget for next year but that's a a very long way away I think where we are right now is where we're going to be for the for the entire school year but while the rates increase we all know food prices have increased we're all feeling that so I'm not certain we're doing that well on that from that yes and uh I feel like it's been a while since we've gotten a letter from a food vendor but I could just be selectively

077forgetting but yeah it's uh I mean I think the the food cost that Kathleen pays is it's sort of directly linked with the inflation that we're all experiencing in the in the broader economy so I mean gas prices coming down a little bit you know so fingers crossed that it improves and actually I do recall Kathleen said to me that she thought she's heard that maybe by January start to come back down you're going to clarify that uh although the federally funded meals for all program is new this year the actual meals that we're providing are the same meals the same makeup from calorie fat like you said the same type of meals that we were already serving last year that did not change nutrition guidelines have not changed we've always they relax them slightly

078during covid but it's it's back to normal now last year it was as well just uh just last question if she's are you are we still experiencing you know like under shortages and you know the supply chain hasn't gotten better so that again I haven't heard anything from Kathleen lately yeah that may be because they've gotten so good at figuring it out at the last minute but um yeah yeah I don't know that's a good question I can ask Kathleen or she'll let me know yeah I I do feel like things are very slowly starting to get better yeah yeah not food question um going back to the CO2 monitors yeah that's that's really really neat is it possible maybe I don't know Brian Amber maybe DCI could do like a little video on it

079it sounds like it'd be really cool to show off that that whole future I think it would be an excellent idea for them to do that yeah no honestly I I did not know that we had CO2 monitors built into those those controls so that was a nice surprise because I know that the state is starting to require for some new construction certainly where State funds are involved that you have to now include carbon dioxide monitors in classrooms so pleased to hear that yeah and I'd love to get that info out there you know yeah I will talk with Ryan tomorrow morning thank you you're both any other questions all right thank you Derek all right next Dr Forsey with Educational Services all right wonderful start um we're sharing with the team last Wednesday and

080Thursday uh not only besides being exhausted that was uh the most excited I've been as a professional in three years and it was just a completely different feeling then it's been for a few years and you know back to normalcy which also brings the exhaustion and all the things that we we weren't used to doing um and I think I heard more teachers and just you know people at school talking about getting back into school shape um so we're we're getting back there I think this week is a little less tired when we get home so we're getting there I have a lot to to go overnight so I'm gonna read it because there's a lot of details in here I don't want to screw them up uh the theme for this uh update will

081be pilot okay and not the plane type uh from Daniel uh the extensive piloting process that ausd undertakes to choose the best and most engaging curriculum for its students he wants to share the process for our science curriculum Elementary School science uh tk2 is piloting three textbooks Savas National Geographic and Discovery all before spring break grades three through five are piloting two textbooks amplify and Twig all by the end of January Elementary School teachers should make a decision on which curriculum to adopt in May 2023 now we say pilot and that sounds easy but each one of these Pilots involves teachers coming in being a part of it digging into the curriculum planning together how they're going to work and pilot so there's a lot of work that goes into that and a lot of

082this was done again during the summer there was a number of teachers in here at the end of the summer before school started doing a lot of this work and it will continue during the school year but I've been amazed commitment of our teachers to be here during the summer to get some of this work done middle school science is on their second round of Pilots because they were not satisfied with Savas and amplify which were piloted last school year they're piloting TCI and Discovery this semester all by winter break the middle school science teachers hopefully will make a decision uh in January so we can begin to order those materials bring them here and move forward but again that re-establishes our commitment that we're not going to invest in these Core Curriculum texts until

083our teachers say yes this is this is the best we will use this this is what's going to help our students in our classrooms ordering books to sit on a shelf doesn't help anyone and so that really is the lens that we're working with our teachers on is is this going to help you be a better or more efficient teacher is it going to help students in your content area so so you might continue to hear we're not there yet we piloted but we did we chose not to adopt it and that that will continue um in the in the growing years as we hopefully put a little bit of pressure on textbook companies to refine uh what they bring to us high school chemistry and physics update uh the high school chemistry and physics

084teachers are going to Pilot two textbooks hmh and Quarter Two and Savas and quarter three a decision about which curriculum to adopt for those uh two subject areas again will be brought back to this body in May of 2023. for Danae elementary schools are busy with initial assessments of all students teachers began initial benchmark assessments for started Renaissance this week apcs and English language development teachers are working on assessing students for placement in their specific programs Hagerty which uh the previously piloted program has been expanded to all School sites TK through first grade this is a tier one phonemic awareness curriculum that provides daily lessons focusing on eight phonemic awareness skills along with activities to develop letter and sound recognition and language awareness lessons are designed for classroom setting and only take 8 to 12

085minutes so we saw some of the Hagerty and use in our learning walk last year and this is when we talked about mtss this is one of our tier one in classroom interventions that every teacher tk1 will be using to make sure our students have that strong phonemic awareness so they will become more efficient readers uh John tongue are our newly developed elop coordinator he's taking on elop our Extended Learning opportunity program which is the program that the state uh implemented this year uh we heard a little bit from the budget revision that they they shifted the amount of money at the very end last year so there's been quite a few adjustments and we are partnering with right at school to offer that service as they they are a provider for after before and

086after school so we currently have 283 students that were registered on the first day right at school is currently hiring and training staff to accommodate another 354 students who want to join so that will make uh over 600 students in our e-lock program which is uh far larger than any after school program our kidney unified's ever offered so there are a lot of students a lot of families being served as through this program and quite a bit of Interest with our families uh most students for Rancho most students have returned to their comprehensive site site so as a comparison uh currently we have 32 online students tk8 as compared to last year at this time we had 180 students online 2ka so many of them are going back and even more are in that process

087of returning back to their uh their home school uh Andrea initial lpac testing which is our English language uh testing for our students with the start of the school new school year comes new enrollments and new students to assess for English proficiency last year at this point in August we tested approximately 93 students this year as of today we have tested 254 students to determine English proficiency for testing obviously we've seen a great increase in the number of students coming now all of those students may not enter the aimless language development program they make tests and be determined to be initially English proficient um when we talk about the return to normalcy though we are seeing travel we are seeing families again choosing to migrate into Arcadia which has been part of our history for

088several decades and so that is another indicator of things you know getting back to normal I'd like to thank our ELD teachers artosis our lpac testers as they spent a lot of time as students enrolled and even currently getting those tests done so students can get the supports and appropriate placement and uh almost last two more swag our collaboration day swag catalog was sent out this week for educators to participate in their small working Arcadia groups Educators have the option of selecting from the following menu of topics there are 14 traditional courses 26 Java light groups so by traditional courses we mean where there was input one of our staff members put in had like to have this course there was enough enough interest from their colleagues to to validate that being a course so

089there's 14 of those there's 26 Java light groups where you know grade levels are working together and then there are two uh PD groups which is something new we've added the last few years focusing on schoology and mtss that will mean which is more of a directed uh professional development swag group and lastly schoology we're excited to share that we have started our schoology pilot tis and its services are working closely together to learn more about this platform and support teachers that are piling it in their classrooms we have approximately 115 teachers that are piloting schoology this year which is approximately 25 percent of our staff that will be doing that this year again if if teachers want to onboard during the year we will make that available so it's not your inner you're out

090but we have 115 now and we are committed to doing this for this year and next year and then making a decision on are we going to move forward with this or will we stay with Google classroom and that is my updates for tonight every school every level and we have Andre has done a great job meaning that we have uh you know leads at every school so there's people there that have said I not only want to Pilot but I want to get more training and be a lead so there's somebody at each School site that if you have an issue you have a question you can go there instead of you know emailing or you know work timely more effective as we know when you put the resources at the school sites so

091we're really excited about the commitment and engagement from the staff to give this a real shot and and see is this the right fit for us 25 that's a good amount of features to Pilot it so I I think we were surprised at how many people um really and it wasn't you know we need someone please it was it was real genuine interest so and a lot of work again done this summer um so really excited about where it's go and there will be there will be Peaks and there will be valleys and and we'll work through those and that's part of the piloting process and again working with GIS and Scott's team uh really hand in hand has has been a wonderful experience say my daughters she's got a few classes using it she's

092been mentioning it lately yeah so it'll be different for kids that have different classes yeah so that's the only I think yeah so not all the 24th I mean but it is my daughter like she has a few teachers out of her six classes so at the high school well no more in two years than we know now any other questions thank you Dr harishi Human Resource Services great so on behalf of health services from uh nurse Erica Newkirk Health Services is excited to welcome our students back we have been busy reviewing students Health needs and ensuring their needs are being met so they can best access their educational environments we are grateful for parents completing required health forms immunization records and other health documents during this very busy time We are continuing to monitor

093the Department of Public Health guidelines for covid-19 and other infectious diseases the most recent covid-19 guidelines have not significantly changed our practice from the spring of we will continue to provide Mass to students and staff upon request and will work to ensure that covid-19 testing is accessible to all students staff and volunteers we are working with families to make sure they understand how to self-screen for symptoms at home and will continue to notify individuals of possible exposures we continue to adapt our practices and to change to the changing Public Health requirements and will consider additional mitigation strategies like vaccine clinics depending on interest and need moving on to special education from Dr Catherine Mahoney we have had a wonderful start to the school year thank you to the many departments principals School site staff and

094parents for making the start of school so smooth the human resources department worked tirelessly with Tracy Sergi and Cecilia griego in our special education department to fill instructional Aid positions over the summer mot collaborate collaborated daily with us to ensure students had a wonderful Transportation experience to and from school our bus drivers are so integral to helping students have a great start to their school day moving on to some new initiatives we opened an additional Elementary special day class at Highland Oaks this year to support increased enrollment and then we are in the planning stages of a new self at goals class at Hugo Reed this year we have created additional means of Staff connections with staff newsletters and a department resource website for staff and finally our ptosis completed trainings with instructional AIDS just

095before the start of the school year to set them up for success moving on to instructional AIDS our strategy of converting IAS to full-time positions has really helped us from a retention perspective Catherine shared here some data that typically we've seen like a 30 turnover in staff and this year that fell to about a 10 turnover so significant decrease so we were ready to roll day one with instructional AIDS so super happy about that moving on to HR as you know enrollment is coming in strong we're super happy about that as of our enrollment data from 822 our numbers uh we have at the elementary level we are 114 students over projection at the middle school level that 73 students over projection and at the high school 90 students over projections so we're doing really

096well at our next board meeting we'll be doing our enrollment and Staffing Deep dive so I'll let Scott cover you know the uh all the enrollment data to compare apples to apples year over year but we're very excited about this positive trend um and then of course as a result of our strong enrollment all three middle schools added Staffing in the in the last week I can tell you in my 10 years here that has never happened so that's really exciting and I want to thank our principals at all levels just for being incredibly flexible to add Staffing and classes where needed as we've uh you know been moving with our real enrollment data throughout the summer so they've done a fantastic job and then of course as we start the year we have continued

097our practice of hiring roving Subs to help us better respond to absence needs now thankfully we have not needed them to cover a lot of covet absences or anything like that but we uh you know wanted to be prepared and of course it's that time of year when all staff are trained in the mandated reporter training which is annual for all staff and all staff are required to complete this training by September 9th and HR will monitor that and then uh piggybacking on Brent's uh the year of the pilots we are this year piloting a new teacher evaluation system so you may recall that we have been collaborating with ATA over the past three years to design a new uh teacher evaluation system which is called ongoing professional development process and so uh tomorrow we'll

098be meeting with ATA and our partners with E3 which have helped facilitate this this multi-year process to finalize the planning of the pilot and roll that out in the coming weeks so we're very excited about that it will be voluntary for staff and so they can either opt in or not and we'll get lots of great feedback and and refine and iterate as as needed so that concludes my report happy to answer any questions that's big news yeah it's exciting very exciting T in terms of how fast it moved or is that the timeline that we planned well you know we'd never hit pause on that and it's interesting because I actually had a phone call with JL our partner E3 and several districts did and so it was really great that we actually leaned

099into that work over the pandemic to continue that planning so it's worked out really well and I think timing wise this year is a much better year to roll on a pilot than say last year so and really our driving um um I guess uh you know as we've been working with ATA on this is let's let's do this in an organic way we'll know when we're ready to to launch and really it became pretty clear at the end of last year as we were negotiating that we're ready we're ready to move this forward and and try it out so I think we're in a really good place great all right Greg gezanian strategy and innovation good evening everyone all right so I'm going to start off with testing as Dr Richard already mentioned from

100the beginning of our testing program we've been focused on sustainability and scalability as needed and I'm pleased to share that we are able to meet those requirements this year as well so we'll talk about two types of testing real quick one is mandated testing there are certain cases where we need to do response testing when someone has symptoms when someone needs to come back to work when someone under a mandate of when they need to test so we always need to do that so examples of where we do that type of testing are at the school site so if a student suddenly becomes symptomatic during the day we have the capacity to test them on campus when they need to uh if someone used to test um to come back for example uh you can

101also pick up a test because you have to wait three to five days and so we've kept that capacity at the school sites as we've had last year as well another type of testing that we've had over the last few years has been elective uh non-required testing as you may recall we have the testing center here at the aec where anyone could go get a test for any reason and some of the updates you've probably heard we've shifted away from having someone down at a testing table and we've shifted to an automated kiosk system in fact you may have even seen it is it's tucked underneath the stairs over in the corner where anyone can come for the same hours as they have in the past year to pick up those tests and I want

102to talk a little bit about how we came to the conclusion that we wanted to do an automated kiosk last year we saw great fluctuations in the demand of testing in fact I believe in the first few days of school we had a request for 200 tests and then after about a month it went down to 10 23. and obviously we like having someone down there it was very helpful that was someone answering those questions however people know what to expect with testing now they've likely taken the test themselves given it to other people and what we're finding is people value that speed of going in coming out and having the ability to scale capacity based on our machine out there so we're going to continue to utilize that and scale as we need to

103if we need to bring someone back in because demand increases significantly we have the ability to do that and in addition the system that we designed with that vending machine uh automated kiosk out there allows us to add more machines if we ever need to so that's been really a great project and I there are too many people to thank but I just have to thank uh technology and information services for helping us get a lot of this set up maintenance of facilities TriCity for example purchasing certainly my assistant Terry rademaker who's had to order a lot of the supplies to make this happen so it's been a really rewarding experience to get that set up and we'll continue to monitor it but feedback has been very positive we've launched yesterday morning uh or distributed

10440 tests through that so we're going to keep an eye on that overall feedback's been very positive for testing this year Dr hirsche also mentioned enrollment I won't get too deep into it tonight but we are working with Hanover our research Partners to understand when students do request permits to go to other public schools in other districts why they're going so we're going to go through a lot of that data we're working with them on the report and during the Staffing enrollment presentation we'll go the results from that as also been processing that grants you know I've talked a lot about the types of grants that are requested through our strategy and Innovation grant program and I'll touch on that a little bit you know we're getting a lot of requests for apps this year

105we have some school safety requests which is exciting I'll touch on that in some future meetings and even literature and reading apps and supplies so it's been exciting to see people getting used to the grant program and requesting them but one thing I really want to mention that I'm excited about this year is to start deep partnership with Educational Services Department anytime you know Grant request comes in if it's technology I have some background in that I can call Scott a lot of times it is curricular and we want to make sure that it fits with the vision curriculum in education in Arcadia so I've been able to reach out to Danae and many of the other members of that service is just to talk through these things we want to make sure we're always

106on the same page when we do this when we're doing pilots and make sure it fits so I've really enjoyed our partnership with that services this year we're going to continue to work through that and see where we can use this grant money and resources to continue to try things very excited that we submitted a presentation proposal to the California School Board Association for the conference this year and it was accepted very exciting and the title of the session is how a year of listening saved us years of arguing I'm guessing that was a popular topic to explore this year because there's a lot of arguing going on in the world of Education The Proposal was about our year of building our really how through the entire pen back to those values and it really

107carried us through and gave us a common ground for having those conversations so I'm looking forward to that presentation Dr mannostal and board member Chavez will be joining me in that and we're looking forward to doing that presentation this year and finally uh in terms of uh on the topic of listening and exploration many of you probably remember that we're doing exploration around diversity equity and inclusion this year in fact we've already had some really good conversations with our admin Council about what are we already doing what are those programs in place we have a lot of wonderful things happening throughout our district as we did with the purpose statement and the values we're going to do a larger engagement with our community this will likely be at the end of September although we're going

108to work on getting that information out soon but the goal really is to listen and learn about the perspectives and where people are at so we're looking forward to doing that we're going to continue to share information here as we have more information around that so overall it's been a wonderful start to the school year and looking forward to more happy to answer any questions if anyone has any congratulations on getting the cspa presentation accepted very excited congratulations to all of you for carrying out the values so uh diligently I think that was really what sold it we do what we say we're going to do and that's thank you thank you all right Ryan faran Communications all right good evening everyone Amber and I spent a good portion of the summer updating our website

109and specifically the covet information on there so that is been updated and big thanks to Erica and uh thanks to her and Amber we also sent out uh coronavirus update 78 last week and as Kevin mentioned really not much change from the end of last year so we actually did not get one question back on it which is really good considering we sent it to thousands and thousands of people and we've had questions before so that was really good Arcadia first day our annual campaign year nine this year was very exciting thanks to everyone who participated teachers parents students staff board members really appreciate it we do it for obvious reasons picture is worth a thousand words and we got how many pictures this year you think and about 800 pictures so that's a lot

110so it was great um our interns made a couple videos already uh with all the pictures we have a huge album and a huge thanks to Amber too she processes every single one of those that come in on social media or we get emailed which is 800 and responds personally to everyone who sends in a picture and says thank you and the response we get back from them and their appreciation for the parents was great so thank you Amber that's it's a lot a lot of work what do I do I don't know but thank you Amber I appreciate it um speaking of Arcadia first day for a lot of families it's their first day in the district um which is fantastic we're thrilled to have them we know they have choices where they what

111cities families move to and big reason is why they choose where to live is the schools so we're thrilled to have the new families Amber and I will be reaching out to our new families personally as well just to see how they're doing in our district for the first time what support they need if they have any questions just to provide that Personal Touch to them so we're going to do that this year and just make sure everything's going great for our new families because we're thrilled to have them DCI we're already up and running this is our eighth year of DCI uh we're super excited about it we have a informational meeting at the high school on Thursday at lunch for prospective new interns and students who are interested in joining and then applications

112will be due on Sunday um we have some ambitious new projects and exciting things in the works as well that will keep you updated on but that is happening so um we've already got some interest from new students who are anxious and already have their applications submitted so we're excited for another great year new educator academy uh thank you to everyone who participated especially in the draft actually the board members that came and cheered on the new teachers and staff the principals big thanks to them they did an amazing job introducing their new recruits and we asked them to do a lot they have everything they have school about to start and they come and really make it special for their their new staff so we really appreciate what what they do amber again did

113an amazing job with that of course thanks to Andrea for four days of just a great new educator Academy ABC 7 did a nice little short but sweet story on the new educator Academy that was really nice to see we put out the videos we have the whole video out there if anyone's interested in viewing that we put that out today inside our YouTube and thanks to our breaking news reporter Jim Anderson as well for his part we're glad he's still with us and hasn't been poached by ESPN or Fox Sports very appreciative of that uh last year the end of last year we were honored to be recognized by cows for the California School of Public Relations Association for a few Awards and spra the national school public relations Association we just got some

114awards in the mail uh three golden achievement awards one for Nea and DCI and ausd today so that was awesome then Award of Excellence for the excellent coca-19 infographic that amber made so that was nice to get some national recognitions for a lot of the work that our students do and a big Welcome to our new student rep to the Board of Education speaking of DCI ambita she's been in in DCI since her freshman year and has just been amazing uh our new ausd today award-winning segment that we started last year and meet his done a lot of those and just done an incredible job with her storytelling so we are thrilled to have Andrita and DCI again this year and she'll be an amazing asset to the Board of Education she's also just this

115week named our student managing editor which is the highest position in DCI so she has just earned that so if you're looking for videos she oversees the video manager so she's really has more power and pull than me or miss duvali so got to go through envita but she's always the first to raise her hand to help out so welcome and beat that that is my report what I heard him just say is Mr Fran is going to take credit for any of your future success from here forward she knows how it works any questions for uh Mr foreign just a few things going in on in technology over the summer as we roll out new Chromebooks for many of our students so Scott Bramley with the technology um I first would like to share

116that that the last few weeks of Summer and the uh first couple weeks of the school year really are one of the busiest times in in technology it's always busy but there's there's lots of reasons for that um and the boardroom decided to demonstrate some of that tonight with um technology that sits for periods of time sometimes don't function the way they're supposed to so I'm going to start off with a couple of challenges we've had and I wasn't planning to talk about the boardroom but since it inserted itself we discovered yesterday that the projector we thought the bulb was dead we discovered that the projector was dead so we moved the projector from the back of the room to the front of the room with the great help of our maintenance staff um and

117then the screen decided it didn't want to come down and so the maintenance staff helped Chris get the screen to come down we got everything working tested it all at five o'clock this afternoon and the dies monitors decided not to work tonight so that's just kind of um how it goes when when Hardware desert decides to be finicky the great opportunity that we have are to to reimagine what our boardroom technology looks like at this point since we definitely will be replacing some equipment here in the near future um this summer again with the help of the maintenance department I don't know where we'd be without Melinda and her staff this summer they worked with our project manager Chris Kearns to remove the projectors in over 400 classrooms district-wide which was an awesome task we

118tested out some of the removals at the end of last year to to try to make this go as smoothly as possible one of the challenges that arose from that is we had sound that wasn't working after the projector removal in several classrooms at different sites throughout the district so we've been working around that one of the great things about that is the monitors provided flexibility for us to be able to reroute the sound through the monitors and so we had we had a plan in place where we could get sound working in classrooms where we have this issue and we will be working to repair the sound in those classrooms over the next couple weeks and then if that wasn't enough our ibos content filter on Sunday morning decided that it wanted to get

119in on it and a piece of that Hardware failed and so it appeared that we were going to come back to school on Monday without any internet content filtering for our students so we quickly worked Sunday afternoon and Sunday evening to reroute that all of our traffic through our Cloud internet filter which has worked great but staff that are used to not having as strict a content filtering spent the last two days with uh with student content filtering and we got that Hardware replaced this afternoon at about 3 30 or 4 o'clock and so we're back up and running as normal um with our content filtering so Hardware failure at this time of year always seems to occur and we just improvise as quickly as possible and make things work so big shout out to

120Brian Anderson and Amin Chowdhury for for getting that functioning on Sunday afternoon and um several other things that that I would consider accomplishments and successes at the end of the summer in the beginning of the school year number one tis is fully staffed I haven't been able to say that in over three years so for three years I would like to thank Kevin and his staff for helping us get fully staffed but it was just one of those things when the pandemic started we we had turnover in a few areas so it was really nice to start a school year during all this Rush fully staffed and have people in place to take care of the issues that arose so we're really happy about that um one of the things that that most people probably

121never gave a second thought to was July 1st we cut over from from crown castle as our internet service provider to Spectrum and all of it went very smoothly in July but we have no way of load testing that connection prior to the return of staff and students to our site so we're monitoring very closely our Network performance and I'm very happy to say it it went very well our Network performed very well during the first week and plus of school and the internet connection seems to be functioning very well so that's a tough one it's an e-rate project you know we have to go out to bid for that project and accept the lowest bidder and and oftentimes in the past those services are not actually connected till Midway through the school year and

122we were able to cut over on July 1st and have that connection up and running so that was very much a success this has kind of become old hat but it's never a small job we received a configured and delivered 2700 new Chromebooks to all of our schools all of our grades TK and K grade 1 grade 5 and Grade 9 students either have or will very shortly have their new Chromebooks and great one five and nine are an every year um distribution TK and K will get new ones every four years and those are still in the classrooms but um so that distribution has has become just a normal part of our process but it's a big job for Marco to receive 2700 Chromebooks deliver them here to the aec for us to unbox

123configure or enroll and box back up for Marco to deliver to the sites and then the the libraries at the sites distribute them so it's a it's a it's a big team effort to handle that many devices on a regular basis um the theme of the night seems to be Pilot We are in the beginning stages of a pilot with Google for a product called cast moderator it is Chromecast for classrooms it's wireless projection and screen sharing capability for both staff and students that we believe will eventually be in all of our classrooms but Google provided us a hundred devices free of charge and we are starting to install those now it's a code based system so instead of students just being able to cast any device they can see there is a code on

124the screen the minute they enter that code and cast their screen to the to the monitor that code is no longer valid it remains their session remains valid until they're either disconnected by the teacher or they disconnect that way students cannot send the code to somebody in a neighboring classroom to interrupt the connection with something inappropriate and it seems to be working very well it's something we've asked Google for for a long time and just in July when we went to iste was the first time we actually heard and saw the product and we're really excited about it the products that we were looking at as an alternative were 600 to 700 a piece with ongoing licensing fees yearly every year after that that we use them these are forty five dollar uh Google TV

125chromecasts that do more and function better than the other devices we're looking at so we're really really excited about the possibilities of this and our feedback to Google to this point has been make them available so we can buy 300 for the other classrooms so we're excited about that and we'll keep you posted on that um Brett already mentioned Andrea and the schoology pilot I do want to give a quick shout out to Chris Kearns our project manager who's been working very closely with Andrea in coordinating all that a rollout for a student information system or a learning management system are the most difficult implementations a school district can do in my opinion student information systems are worse than Learning Management Systems in terms of the amount of work that it takes but a learning

126management system you it's unbelievable I know Andrea I tried to I tried to tell her how much it was going to be prior to the start and and we keep having this conversation where where we agree that it is a lot of work so thank you to both Chris and Andrea for coordinating that and then finally um some exciting news um because we're fully staffed we've been able to kind of readjust our support for the school sites for the first time in several years and one of the focuses of that I wanted to be to to provide better support for the high school and so for the last five or six years our technicians have each taken a piece of the high school and supported that but with all of the other sites that they're

127supporting sometimes when you have a piece of something you don't have the buy-in that that you do when you have a single person supporting that site and I'm really excited to share that we have put Nancy Sager in charge of support at the high school and in addition to that included in that is the start of a technology internship at the high school and we have I believe eight or nine students in Period spread out between periods two and period six the focus of the internship will be customer service maintenance and update and repair of Chromebook devices and getting those turned around for students when they need to make exchanges in a faster manner than we currently do and possibly even doing it for all Chromebooks in the district at some point but this is

128the start of that so we'll keep you posted on that and share more about it as the year goes by but we're we're very excited about the potential for that they've already started with cleaning and updating and getting devices back in circulation they're they've been helping teachers and um and Nancy with adjusting monitors monitor Heights and and getting a taste of what it is to provide quality customer service to staff and students at the high school so we're very excited about all of that and that's my report expected increase in our enrollment impact how many Chromebooks we were able to get into kids hands um it did not significantly impact it because we always have a cushion where it where it could impact us is needing to turn devices around that get turned back in

129for whatever reason faster than we have had to the Past although it's hard to need to get them turned around faster than it was during the lockdown year because that was something we'd never quite experienced before but but we we do have a cushion and we always have the devices that are outgoing where we can kind of save a few of them so that we have a cushion so so yes and no but not a significant impact all right that concludes our reports Mr President I will move to approve consent items a through m M take it going out to Common support certainly uh thank you Mr President um so many great reports so I want to make a comment on each one but I won't because we'll be here all night but thank you

130everybody for for everything all the reports and all the updates um all the hard work everyone's done over the summer to get us ready for hashtag Arcadia first day uh which is which is really great to like just being out and about uh and I think the theme of It kind of being very normal is is very true like it just seems like very normal first day everyone's really happy to be back and um Just Smiles everywhere I was so happy to go to you know back to school events and just talk to families uh all around um and just people are so excited and even even um drop off like seem to be more calm too you know which is true I don't know okay High School my my high school kid rides his

131bike to to school so I don't I don't get I don't have to do a drop off um definitely welcome to anvita uh I think you come fairly highly recommended and you're gonna do a great job this year so so happy to to welcome you uh to our dice here uh do you want to thank all the folks who worked on the measure a and measure I