001calling the meeting to order roll call Maria opara I'm present Gary RC president Amanda Buchanan president Rick Rawley here and absent today is Dennis Bender the president of the board um Amanda can you lead us in Pledge of Allegiance for sure of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all right Kylie do we have any public comments pertaining to closed session we do not thank you um closed session agenda items people Personnel expulsion cases stipulated expulsion number six 2223 and expulsion number 20 22 23 through expulsion number 22 22 to 23. number two conference on litigation government code section 54956.9 subsection a current litigation nine cases civds 1907172 civds201183 civds2022956 civds2023366 civsb211303 civsb 2220303 civsb 2218676 civsb2304-865 civil 2304865
002government code section 54954.5 subsection C and 54956.9 subsection D and subsection 2 and subsection e and subsection one anticipated litigation one case 2020 2021-15 public employees discipline dismissal release reassignment transfer leave title certificated and classified employees public employees appointment resignation retirement reduction title certificated and classified employees conference with labor negotiator agency negotiator Dustin Conrad employee organization Apple Valley Unified Teachers Association conference with labor negotiator agency negotiator Dustin Conrad employee organization California School Employees Association conference with labor negotiator agency negotiator Trane Nelson employee organization unrepresented conference with real property negotiator government code 5495 6.8 negotiating parties Matthew schulenberg Apple Valley Unified School District I need a motion to go into closed session I'll second all in favor aye any opposed thank you now we go to close we'll be back at before three or at three
003thank you period foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you very much thank you foreign thank you Google thank you foreign thank you very much thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you period thank you very much thank you very much foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you calling the meeting back to order um there's no report for California School Employees Association and Apple Valley Unified School District Teachers Association is it no superintendent's comments I'll wait until the next time but I did want to acknowledge that
004Mr Bender is not here we're wishing him well for a knee replacement that he's having done tomorrow so he's doing all the prep and we do miss him today so Mr Raleigh oh nothing today thank you Amanda we can uh nothing yeah for me nothing yet uh closer session reports not yet okay so we'll hold off on that adoption of the agenda the board May approve the agenda as is or ADD and or pool items from the consent agenda for the discussion and or action any immersion I'll move the item one second all in favor aye aye any opposed discussion information Mr Patrick Schlosser that that's better okay thank you um this is our annual presentation of uh local indicators which must coincide by Statute with the adoption of the lcap so the public hearing
005for the lcap uh happened last week this week it's a proposed then to you for adoption but along with that adoption there's a couple of steps and one of those is this local indicators so just a reminder of our lcap process we are never not doing the lcap we're always involved in either monitoring proposing new ideas Gathering input read drafting language and then presenting that for approval and so we're at the last step of approval and uh Next Step actually once we complete today will be to submit it to the county officially for them to then give their feedback and then we work towards final County approval which must happen by September which then is right about the time we start Gathering data again and Reporting back to you the big idea today is this
006the local indicators require us to monitor survey measure and report but there isn't a single Benchmark that says unless you meet this Mark you cannot say you met the measure meeting the measure means conducting the progress or the process of monitoring it's a requirement to monitor things within our system that simply are not on the state dashboard here are the indicators we must measure and monitor something called basic conditions having to do with our facilities and teaching staff academic standards making sure that what happens in the classroom is aligned with state standards parent engagement is a priority that we get to measure how that's done School climate which is in addition to the school climate factors in the uh dashboard which are things like attendance rate and suspension rate and then something sort of vague
007called broad course of study which I will explain and again remember that met means we have a process by which we monitor these items so for Priority One a couple of things first misassignment misassignment to be quite honest early in the No Child Left Behind and highly qualified era was an easy yes or no and quite often we had zero or one truly what we believe to be misassignments Miss assignments now in this new regime are quite strict and so we technically have as of the date of census remember look at the slide it's the 2122 school year I'm reporting to you why so far back well because this school year um the 22-23 school year the the complete audit of that has not yet occurred we've just ended it so for 2122 we had
00882 misassignments but let me give you a sample of what a misassignment might be a misassignment might be something like a high school moderate moderate to severe classroom taught by a completely fully credentialed and quite veteran teacher who has on their schedule for some of their students a class called reading for special needs students since that title has reading in it which is appropriate for the student's IEP but that teacher doesn't have an English language arts single subject credential they have what on the appropriate credential for moderate to severe students the county sees that as a misassignment it's not a misassignment and to be honest there's ways over time that we're going to be working toward those but remember in 2122 when this happened we did not yet know those rules and so this number
009will continue to decline but there's great numbers of these where the misassignment is misassignment and technical name but nowhere do we have a place where a teacher did not have the appropriate credential but it might have been the way the class was coded in Aries or something that the state simply uh a misassignment rule they apply that no person here would would think of as a misassignment there were at the moment of uh this audit in 2122 there were three vacancies on that time at that time this data will be in thus the current School accountability report cards and it'll be um again further previously completed year the other thing we have to report is percentage of students without access to textbooks in our district every student has the appropriate textbook for every subject we
010work really hard to make that the case we have um as you know this year finalized a few adoptions that have that were really tough uh biology was getting to where we had to um beg borrow and steal to get enough copies of a biology textbook that was out of print and so we went through an adoption process and have updated biology chemistry and physics this year we're very thankful for that and so that is a zero students who did not have a textbook and then also facilities Apple Valley Unified School District as you probably know from Mr schulenburg's reports has a very rigorous facilities inspection tool process done by a third party so not our opinion of our facilities this is a professional organization's opinion of our facilities this year for the facility inspection
011tool only one site was rated as Fair which is the second ranking down the overall rankings continue to climb the overall scores continue to climb it's just incredible to watch these over time Mr Hopper shared with me the data overall and it's something that will come to you in in different times a year but what we have to report is the number that are considered fair and for this year it was only one so again that standards met by virtue of our tracking system again far more onerous than is required but we believe it's better for us to have this information from that third party State Standards implementation we do a self-assessment of the standard implementation across the district using our principals and have them kind of go grade by grade standard by standard and
012just kind of give us a report where are we on that this is apropos as well to last week's presentation about key standards so not only are we implementing the standards but we're now focusing in on what are the most important standards what's going to get us the most growth in acceleration for students upcoming um movement in the uh making sure that we keep standards aligned textbooks with our students will be the following we can we know we need a high school mathematics text but the state is slowly developing publisher requirements for a new high school mathematics text the framework was just approved there was some controversy in the framework it was delayed it's now been approved and we're waiting for to be honest textbooks to fill the criteria and so once that occurs we'll
013be engaging teachers in that process also the AP psychology textbook will be updated once the College Board does that update so that we know what the target is and then finally the world languages departments are in in uh this timeline for updating their textbooks so those will all happen next year and again focusing on key standards training parent input um as you know our parents are part of our district advisory committee they're involved in our d-lac and of course at every School site the main way they're involved with us officially is really two ways that District advisory committee group and our parent survey just a quick update on the numbers you can see our parent survey and just General survey information continues to climb our student participation continues to go up after a dip during
014the year we were closed family community participation in the survey reaching almost 2 000 and staff participation climbing again as well that's all through the youth truth survey General categories for this survey include things like engagement relationship culture belonging and uh this is for all segments all stakeholders all Community partners partners the other thing we did is we made sure and asked some specific questions of our district advisory committee parents we asked them to rate US on several things a couple of highlights from that I won't give you I won't uh bore you with all of those details but we asked them to rate our progress in creating a welcome environment we know that was important for us and for for the community to do and so you can see that the great majority feel
015as though we are either initially implementing fully implementing or implementing with sustainability um a welcoming environment for parents this is an area for continued growth and we're you know it's a wonderful to have an initial Baseline this is the first year we've done this particular uh survey of our district advisory committee parents but very useful feedback also about communication we want to make sure parents feel like they're hearing from us getting information and able to give their thoughts back to us and so also very encouraged to see over half the parents feel like that we are fully implementing that concept and 16 said not only fully implementing but sustaining and three or four of them pulled me aside and said stop sending me things I get it thank you for snickering and so yes we've
016met that criteria by continuing to engage our parents in that information finally School climate School climate actually comes also from that youth through survey where students have told us and I reported to you in um earlier this year and had the um quite humbling experience of working with students alongside Mrs Nelson to hear from students about school climate and and they told us uh a harsh truth about their feelings about school and it caused us to do some deep soul searching and measurement asking and ultimately we asked them to give us guidance and they did um and so that was the student advisory process that came out through the dvac it's why we now have some of the things in our um lcap that we have for students and so School climate must be measured
017we do more than just measure we really get a chance to meet with kids and I'll tell you the place that that really became apparent to I think Mrs Nelson and I both was at graduation when those students who were part of that process came across the stage and and just thanked us for being part of their their education it was a real gift so we have met that standard by virtue of that process broad course of study this is a general category about making sure it comes to be honest from school districts where students are not allowed to take courses for some reason or another there's a gatekeeper who keeps them from a broad course of study where certain types of students maybe students of poverty aren't allowed into AP courses where certain types
018of students aren't allowed to take a College and Career pathway and so we monitor that information but you know in Apple Valley many of you in the system know that students who want to take an AP class they're they're allowed to take the course they may have to sign a note that says this is not what we recommend for you and we will support you but no one is denied an access to a broad course of study however we have continued to monitor our transcripts with using that transcript service the Riverside County Office of Education taking a deep look at who is making a through G progress we know that's an area of great need who is in the AP courses who's in the career Pathways and taking advantage of those do we have are
019we making sure that we're reaching a broad variety of students we do watch these things both by student demographic ethnicity and program and so we have met the five indicators if there's ever a time when we haven't met those you need to fire me because this is an important part of this job these are the things to watch along with the dashboard but the dashboard's public this making and monitoring it doesn't mean everything's perfect and I'm not here saying that but I am here to say we should be paying attention to these things and so that's the sort of the um General survey of those indicators and I'll pause there for questions anybody have questions I have one oh good I was hoping so you had the original update on the lcap um and I
020know you didn't present it this afternoon but it is a new package this is very timely yeah the the packet did state that you know when you were dealing with the lcff budget overview and the total budgeted expenditure that you had was 40 million plus 40 million 437 [Music] 000 plus dollars but the actual expenditure that you had was 40 million 949 which was in excess of what you stated and I know that's not a lot of money for big uh organization as a school district but the question I have is when this increase occurs um do you dip into another budget to be able to cover this cost that keeps growing right thank you for that so the the budgeted expenditures in the lcap on that on that budget overview slide that's the supplemental
021and concentration Grant dollars that we have budgeted to um to pay for items marked as contributing to that supplemental and concentration Grant required increased percentage of quality and quantity of service for students and when we do that a year ago for for the year just passed we anticipate the cost as best we can and you're right it did come in um just about a half a million dollars higher than we anticipated on 40 just over 40 million dollars worth of expenses so um one uh that does not it it is those are all general fund dollars and those so there's no we are not really encroaching into another area it's still a general fund expense that must be paid um it's it's an excess because in some cases those negotiated settlements changed or increased salaries
022increased slightly so expenses increase slightly here's what I'll say about that that targeted amount our supplemental and concentration Grant expenditures are focused on the students in greatest need it's not there were years when it was difficult to expend those dollars that way we're very thankful actually that we were able to not only hit that budget but exceed it a little bit because we know that for meeting the lcap goals and the goals of our community that's exactly the student group that these dollars should be targeted towards so it's not an encroachment in that exact sense because these are not restricted funds this is a restricted program so it's uh but it is an increase in cost overall overall and as you'll see with the budget presentations uh we are we are seeing increased costs any
023other question thank you thank you Human Resources professional development presentation by Mr Jeremiah Harrison and Mrs Christine Dupree all right I I thought I would jump up here because these two always find a way to uh shine and look good and I figure if I hang out next to him long enough I'll start looking good too so um I just want to introduce both directors of human resources and uh complement them and and also encourage them you know what what what they're going to share today really is I think one of the most exciting things that we have got to experience in our system in quite a while um you know we all know the stereotype that uh human resource departments carry and it's nice to have people that lead that team um and when
024I'm not including myself there I'm talking about Kristen and Jeremiah here uh that do it with with heart and with passion and um put hang up the Grim Reaper robe uh and you know we still deal with the complaints we still deal with the ugly stuff you know that does emerge in our system but it's all done with dignity uh with service and and I just um I'm happy to introduce both Jeremiah and Kristen to give the presentation all their hard work this year and I'll stand by them to try to look better in your eyes as well thank you Dustin Human Resources is an awesome place to work we get to bring people into our district from the very very beginning we support them all along their careers and at the end we get
025to celebrate with them as they reach retirement and it's it's hard to quantify our work we just want to take a couple minutes though and share some numbers share some of the big big things that have been going on in the department so if you take a look this is these are numbers that reflect the current school year that just ended so this is a hiring that happened to be ready for and throughout the 22-23 school year you'll notice under certificated we added 59 new positions this year all designed to support students some of those were growth because enrollment has gone up we needed more teachers need more staff and then others were just designed to support students and support staff things like extra counselors and increase in instructional coach positions some intervention positions and
026then some special ed teachers 69 transfers throughout the year and we mentioned that because it is work in our office to identify somebody who's somewhere who wants to be in a different position and most of those transfers were filling in those new positions we have an existing teacher and now there's a new opportunity to be an instructional coach and so they transfer into that spot and use their skill set to support teachers and then in the certificated side we hired 110 brand new staff to come into our system for this school year really to backfill all those open positions and then to backfill retirements that took place ified side of the house has absolutely grown over this past year uh we've established 103 new positions a great majority of those positions being para Educators to
027support our special education students and Proctors that support our transportation department by enhancing the bus safety for students throughout the district transfers on the classified side of the house is our wonderful task of growing our own and so most of those transfers are folks from our nutrition service worker department and our Proctors who've been able to get more hours and grow within their own positions outside hires uh 248 new employees have joined our family this year it is a high number I don't anticipate that much uh that much hiring in the next year or so this was still backfilling vacancies from our retirement enhancement that we offered a couple years ago in addition to resignations that came in during the pandemic so lots of hiring on that side we hear it all the time that
028Apple Valley Unified as a family we hear it at staff meetings we hear it from the community we hear it during the interviews when people are I want to be part of this family so our Apple Valley Unified family now has almost 1800 employees across the system but that's not all of our family members we also have 141 student workers that we employed this year that they're being paid to offer tutoring services to students during our elop programs after school and they're acting as classroom helpers for those students walk-on coaches are there to support our High School athletic programs as well and after a pandemic pause we were grateful to be able to bring back some of our volunteers so 240 new 41 new volunteers this year in addition to the hundreds that we already
029had approved and it wouldn't be fair if we didn't celebrate our substitute staff as well our campuses our departments would not operate if there weren't substitutes to fill in the gaps on the days where regular staff is gone for training gone for illness uh for some reason out of their position we have incredible Subs that work across all areas of our district 108 new substitute teachers came in and joined us this year 39 of those were resident Subs that's a new program we started last year incredibly helpful those 39 Subs are assigned to specific sites they go to the same site every day regardless they know every morning I'm going to get up and go to that school site which allows the site to plan ahead to know that they're going to have some extra
030support and sometimes to fill in um in different areas where they're able to do some extra training extra work with staff they might not be able to otherwise 184 substitute teachers then are are actively working in our school system or did this year on the classified side again just as you can see some numbers 121 brand new classified staff joined and out of our existing classified sub pool we have 137 that are actively working right now and I say pool and bring that up it's so important to recognize our sub pools right now are fairly deep and it's fantastic for us because that's the first place we go to typically for hiring we love the idea of bringing people in that we know that know our sights that know our people that we have worked
031with before and so often that's the first place we look and want to thank you while we have you right here at the start of this year you approved a raise for our substitute teachers that really did have a great impact on our ability to bring Subs in not only to honor the work they do but also just to be competitive across the desert one of the most exciting Endeavors that Jeremiah and I uh were tasked with this year was building our leadership development program we've got uh four distinct groups of managers throughout the system that we wanted to make sure we hit the same topics for but they all have differentiated needs in how those topics would be implemented among their sites in their departments so we made sure that all of our topics
032were in line with the district's core values and our goals and we developed those meetings to be to follow our stoic model so that we are modeling the expectations of our teachers in the classroom and giving our managers a format that they could take back to their sites and departments and deliver the content as well as we said avusd is a family and when families gather they gather around food I know in our house when grandma's Jello recipe comes out we know something Good's about to happen and so we wanted to give our managers that Vision that something good is about to happen so the topics that we had for our leadership development centered around food so that you had a visual reminder of something to bring it back to so topics such as nacho
033average employee when we're discussing evaluations let's talk about it when we were discussing having hard conversations and we need some more great people like you in discussing interviews and hiring processes um at the heart of it though all of these topics were really about um improving Communications and building positive relationships especially around our core values we've established established acknowledged maybe it's a better word four core values for the district and so as we looked at working with managers and building up at those levels that they were going to take back to their sites and Department we focused on Dignity this idea that I'm going to treat everyone I interact with with the value they deserve I'm going to treat them the way I would want to be treated with a level of respect and so
034we worked as a group on active listening skills and having positive positive conversations and then making sure that the environments where we're working are places where our employees feel engaged and feel valued and want to be a part of because we're a community we're a community we we want to make sure everyone feels that there's a place where they belong we talk about that a lot with our students we want the same for our staff and so one powerful way we were able to do that this year as a management team was related to goal setting teachers in our system based on the stole Bill set goals at the start of every year they always have they always will and and they use those goals to drive professional growth things they're doing in the classroom
035throughout the year this year for the first time that was offered and encouraged in all of our staff so our classified staff also had the opportunity to sit down and set goals personal goals goals within their area of work tied to the department goals where they were working and then work with a manager throughout the year towards completion of those goals so that was pretty powerful for us and just working hard finding ways like I said to build connections there authenticity we're working as managers to be transparent to be clear that when you said have a conversation with someone they should know what you think in relation to dignity right we're going to be authentic while we're treating one another with dignity but really related to practice around providing clear expectations and then feedback that's
036meaningful and direct And Timely and then lastly service we want to celebrate the service that all of our employees do and so a fun thing we were able to do together was even talk through some rhythms some strategies that we could use at sites and Department to honor the service that our employees are providing across our system we spend a lot of time going to job fairs and competing against other districts to get the best qualified candidate and so we had the thought couldn't we host our own where we knew that everybody showed up wanted a job with us uh and the idea just it kind of grew and sure we could do it we didn't know what to expect it was our goal was can we increase our substitute pools we've got some open
037positions that maybe folks don't know to go to Ed joint to apply for and maybe we can beef up our eligibility list so that our hiring process is a little smoother and so we put some very intentional advertising behind it hopefully you heard about it and uh just kind of still didn't really know what to expect the event started at noon on the 19th and by nine o'clock in the morning we already had people coming in to the NPR trying to get a look at what was going on and um it's like okay well maybe some people heard about it hopefully people show up by 11 o'clock the line was wrapped around the building when we opened the doors at noon we were entering the front of the NPR the line double back through the
038courtyard in here went out the fence and was out into the parking lot so people heard about it they showed up we ended up with over 400 visitors that came through that day we were able to offer four uh certificated contracts on the spot that day over 200 classified applications came in for positions our office is still working through the after effects of that because now that people know that there's jobs within our district those applications keep coming in and it is a continuous uh screening process and bringing in substitutes foreign lastly next steps it is 2023 and we're trying to catch up in our office if you walk through their files all over the place stacks of filing cabinets Helios is is helping we're partnering with Helios and they're helping us move to a
039digital filing system with the idea that in the next couple weeks every employee that we on board from that point forward will receive a digital packet they'll sign everything online it'll be kept in digital files where eventually employees will have access through an employee portal to things like their file their evaluations they can go directly in there to to sign papers to change withholding information in Business Services should be really helpful to our people and to streamline things in the office and then lastly Kristen talked about kind of those four areas of management we worked with this last year's leadership development we're looking to do the same with a fifth group those aspiring administrators our staff that are currently working that are interested down the road in becoming an administrator and so bringing them alongside
040supporting learning together growing them up so that that pipeline is ready that is vacancies come up we have a group that's prepared to step into some of those roles we appreciate you guys thank you for listening to us thank you for the support that you provide to our department are there any questions that we could answer today I just want to thank you guys uh if I may um I like your um presentation about dignity you know we have 1800 employees and uh it's not always easy and but um you guys set the tone for for the for the district and it goes it doesn't go unnoticed Marty so thank you thank you I do have a question though yes ma'am my question has to do with the new um uh roadway that has just
041been created um has just been completed on Navajo on yakaloma going to increase going west in light of the heavy traffic that is heading that way now uh do you foresee hiring additional cross work crosswalk Proctors to make sure that our children can cross the road safely especially for that early morning Crossing to go to school they're going to actually defer to me so I apologize for that um I'm probably releasing something a little early I spoke to miss pop yesterday um we will be sending out some information to families to gather them early before the school year starts to talk about the Dilemma of that crosswalk I am not positive that adding another body in the crosswalk or two or three bodies will keep those children or those staff members safe and so I
042would like to propose that we are investigating some other solutions to that to support families to get their kids safely to school and keep our staff safe in that process as well so more to come on that and we will start a bit of a campaign of letting those families know that we will be meeting and we do know obviously the last week of school a little bit of the impact that was um exasperated because of the bridge opening versus what we were dealing with prior so it is on our radar but we want everyone safe not not just put more people out because I'm not sure that people will stop just because there's more people in the crosswalk the next my next question had to do with your residence I think that is a
043great idea to have residentials because I know that there are times when think things happen at school site and if you don't have somebody to cover the class then the principal and the staff they're all running all over the place trying to find ways to um to handle the situation but residents at staff sub seems to be a good idea but the question that I have is how do you determine how many Resident Subs should go at a different at a different sites absolutely um it depends on absences our subs pick up absences at a different rate depending on the different School sites and so we'll end up doing is analyzing looking at the 14 Schools which schools have the greatest need and those schools have more resident Subs than those schools that do not
044kind of on that same question that's I was really glad to hear about the resident Subs as well 39 is it seems like that's a substantial increase from past years is that true I don't have the exact number from last year but I think it was in the low 30s or high 20s so yeah we've increased by at least 10. I would guess that's great and for the the student workers um that are that are working in the district I imagine maybe most of them are 12th graders uh any other grade levels represented in our student workers uh Juniors and Senior Junior that's that's a great experience for them wonderful it's nice for them a lot of them it's looks great on a college application and it's great to go home with a paycheck that's
045true and I'm hopeful a very early pipeline for teachers and congratulations on a very successful uh job fair thanks for all your hard work on that thank you any other questions thank you so much thank you all Kelly do we have any public comments we have three today as provided on our public comment card speakers are requested to limit comments to a maximum of three minutes if more than one person wishes to speak on the same topic subsequent speakers should limit their remarks to new information only public comments shall be limited to a maximum of 20 minutes per item uh the first person I have is Mackenzie Ewing Owings um I'll fix it I wonderful [Music] there we go yeah good afternoon members of the board my name is Mackenzie Owings and I'm a student
046at Apple Valley High School for the 2026 graduating class and on this year's officer team for the Future Farmers of America program as some of you may know our position of an agriculture teacher is currently vacant leaving me and my fellow members left to wonder the stability and future of the program that was led by Mr penfold for more than four decades therefore I stand here before you today to ensure that this has to ensure sense of urgency and filling this position with a qualified and committed employee this program means a lot to myself and my fellow members personally it is a passion of mine to become an agriculture teacher myself and be the inspiration to my future students that past instructors have been to me this program has been respected for many years as
047a top program in the high desert and has brought many outside students and funding to the school it is an important outlet and teaches core values that prepare students for the rest of their lives teaching respect and discipline while also being a joyful experience so I come before you all today in hopes that you understand the importance of this program and all its current members and alumni I represent all members of the FFA Community when I say how much I respect and have admiration and Adam Meyer and admiration we have for the People for People in your position and want you to know that we do see the impact you have for our community and hope that our voices are heard and our needs are taken into consideration when choosing the future leader of this
048program the position requires experience and an instructor committed to seeing the freshmen through the to their senior year without a lapse in their lesson plans and training someone who truly cares to inspire those who may follow one of the most important career paths in this country our hope is that the board sees the importance and impact the Staffing choices for avhs can have on members in the community in the future economy as well as a whole I appreciate your time and look forward to the future of the program as it continues to grow and Inspire future students abhs thank you thank you Shelly Zellner sorry I'm little good afternoon members of the board my name is Shelly zillner and I'm an avhs parent my older son graduated in 2022 and my younger son will be
049starting his junior year and sits on the superintendent's Council I am concerned about the decline of our animal Sciences pathway also known as the FFA program this pathway offers students Hands-On real-world experiences with livestock they rise livestock care for sick and injured animals and even help process the poultry sold at auction there are also opportunities throughout the year for students to demonstrate leadership skills public speaking record keeping and teamwork as FFA is a National Organization students have guidelines to adhere to and requirements to meet this includes accurate record keeping students learn to set and stick to a budget they need to track how much money they spend on animal feed and supplies they also must keep track of the hours they spend on different activities throughout the year students also run for office and FFA
050these student leaders run all of the official FFA meetings in a manner set by the national guidelines they continue to grow and develop As Leaders during their time during their term in office FFA students have opportunities throughout the year to meet and compete with other students from FFA organizations these competitions offer students the chance to Showcase their public speaking abilities they compete in OCC which is the official opening and closing ceremonies of all FFA meetings and speeches both impromptu and prepared the students work together to practice for these OCC competitions the public speaking competitions also help prepare our students for job and college interviews during the week of fair students put all of their skills and knowledge into practical use they write letters to potential buyers explaining about their project they also become ambassadors for
051FFA animal sciences and related fields when they speak to the public about their SAE projects our amazing teenagers build bonds as strong as family and not just within our own organization they work together getting animals ready for the shows participating in activities throughout the week hosted by the junior fair board cleaning Barns and even consoling each other when the animals are trucked out after the auction to quote my son quote I don't have friends in FFA I have a family although fair is the culminating activity each year animal Sciences is not just about showing the animals I know some of you were able to experience showing an animal last week during administrators week and I hope that you gained some insights as to what it takes for our kids to show livestock we again find
052ourselves without a program advisor our students needed advisor that will give them the stability and guidance that they deserve an FFA advisor AG teacher is much more than just a classroom teacher these AG teachers spend hours outside of the classroom with students and animals both on campus and off I trust that every effort is being made to find the right advisor and fill the void our students deserve the best high school education thank you [Applause] Casey Johnson [Music] dear members of the board my name is Casey Johnson I've been doing agriculture since I was about three years old so probably pretty much since I could walk acculture has played a large role in my life and I feel as a senior who's graduated that students who are going into High School need to have the
053FFA program Apple Valley was founded as an agricultural area and has now grown more as an agricultural Valley as an agriculture Community if you will many people don't actually see the value of FFA but if you think about it where does your meat come from the market Farmers where do your vegetables come from Farmers without FFA students will not actually know how to be self-sufficient in life how to be able to teach their own children how to raise an animal how to grow plants how did you just about anything it takes to do nowadays because who fixes your vehicles farmers because they can fix tractors to do anything you need I personally know how to fix a vehicle because my father is a farmer and a mechanic who also works on Mechanic mechanical what's the
054word farm equipment there we go sorry about that I feel as if we need an FFA teacher to help guide these young Generations into becoming more successful than we are as ourselves thank you [Applause] superintendent's comments um I can't comment on the teacher but it is a priority in this District to backfill that position and I am have to sit here in front of Troy who walked me through showing a calf and man all I wanted to do was get that calf a little bit of a ribbon because I felt so bad that I couldn't even pull it off but he did a great job training me that's a very small portion of what you guys all do um we hope we have some great information for the community very soon and as soon as
055we know we will share with you um there are two positions we had committed to that and we will continue to fly for a backfill if we can get a second person as well so just hold tight um we appreciate the advocacy it's an important program to us and we will continue to find work really hard to find somebody that is appropriate for that program so um Mackenzie Shelley and Keisha thank you so much thank you um this is the end of the comments for this year for me so I'm going to take a little bit of an opportunity and say earlier in the school year um this is just a request for me from the board um we we had requested that Kylie coordinate uh um California school boards the self-evaluation process for the
056board members we realized that the window closed yesterday um there was a glitch in the system we've they have not told me who didn't get there it didn't it didn't record but there are going to they are going to reopen the window we're going to wait so that um Mr Bender is recovered before we reopen it so I'm hopeful that we can reopen it right before school starts next year notify those that didn't get it done um or were affected by the glitch to be able to get back in so that we complete the process and then the person that's assigned through csba will provide the back background information for that so that's one thing I wanted you to be aware of um also last board meeting which was just last week Mrs clima the
057clima the teacher from she's actually a transitional kindergarten teacher over at Phoenix had gotten up at the podium to talk about um student behaviors at school and some safety concerns that she had I was able to she had already scheduled with her site administration because Stephanie who's in the audience was more than ready to talk about whatever the issue was and so since they're on the lower campus Stephanie and Mrs popix Sabrina popik who's the AP on that side also had scheduled so I asked can I just join as opposed to make um Diana spend all day talking about this topic and so we spent a couple hours what we realized is there's some communication issues um an understanding of what our board-certified Behavior analysts do what their role is what their background is likewise
058some communication having to do with the behavior intervention technicians who are called the bits who go on campus and work directly with those students with a plan and so um Mrs White is committed to some training at the beginning of the year actually it was already scheduled one of our bcbas will be there we know this is a school district-wide issue not just a Phoenix Academy discussion and so we're going to pull some data and we're going to work on some ways to communicate and ask for feedback directly to principals in areas where there are some concerns I know in in Mrs klima's issue part of it is as a transitional kindergarten teacher she has a para that's in the room and can actually support when there's a need for her to step aside with
059a student unfortunately this year that para educator became a mom so she was out for an extended period of time and then the backfill was ill and so some of the systems that had been in place weren't in place and so no nobody's fault but then you get brand new students with trauma or incidents that they're dealing with and so we have a lot of work to do ahead of us and we will continue to use our mtss process to support those kiddos and communicate back with staff on what other measures we can do um I also have a meeting with the County Office of Education tomorrow afternoon to um they've set up a virtual meeting with me to talk about workshop dates for ethnic studies and the process with the um toolkit and possibly
060leading the process and getting us some information so I'll get back to you with some dates that they have available I did mention that Christina Pierce the one that leads that department is transitioning to assistant superintendent of ed services in another District but she has there is a backfill there are people that can support so we will continue to move forward in that way um tomorrow is our final graduation of the school year a lot of people aren't aware but adult education students do graduate from Apple Valley Adult Ed Consortium it's part of a multi-district Consortium always it's one of the most wonderful events of the school year to see those who didn't complete their um high school diploma with their peers they've overcome challenges and obstacles to achieve this moment get their diploma and
061additionally while we hear from each district has a student speaker each group and so we get to hear a story we get to hear a few stories but the reality is is that every single one of them not unlike our students that are in K-12 they have a story and knowing that they finally did it really does matter and so I think that it's valuable for them to represent that when a student in our district says I can't do something we have the motto not yet because our expectation is they can um the recent breakfast I was at a recent breakfast honoring retiree Cheryl Culbertson she's a teacher over at Desert Knolls was a teacher there when it was Victor Elementary School District has been here a long time they're struck by a sweet statement
062of a student that had been recorded he was a third grader he said he could read now because of her and um that he thought he could read better than her now or at least as good as she could I I had that moment when that was said because it reminded me of the Incredible Gift that we take for granted we're a public education system we serve all and that means that every student has the opportunity to learn to read um I don't like to cry at board meetings but here's the deal I'm wearing a charm bracelet today that's making a lot of noise for a lot of people out there I don't wear it because it drives me nuts but I decided to wear it today um it's a reminder that every employee in
063this system every person that comes in contact with a child a parent volunteer anybody that spends time in this system we have an opportunity here in the summer that most places Employments don't have um it's my hope that as we sit back and think about that child that couldn't read and can now as a third grader that our employees that are here this week for training that are doing summer school that at some point this summer takes some time for themselves and that they sit back and even if this charm bracelet that was a representation of my grandparents they traveled um all over the world and I didn't understand it too when I played with a charm that has a movable part that she was a child that came to this country as an English
064learner um and she was able to read and she could dream and be something and so I expect our staffs even if they can't travel to pick up a book and I hope our kids do the same and that they travel someplace and do something that we have taught them to do which is read and so even if it's a kindergartner who can just look at a picture I hope that we value that one thing that is an outcome in this system so thank you thank you very much thanks for letting me do this job too Mr Raleigh well well since you mentioned it trenet on Cheryl culverson I spoke to my son who's now 32 and he had her in the third grade at Desert Knowles and I recognized when she we gave the
065retirement Awards out she mentioned she remembered you know who I was in my son and so I I talked to my son who lives quite a ways away from here and he said yeah I remember she was one of my favorite teachers and you know he's 32 so that was a long time ago so she did make her she did leave her Mark so if you do see her again you could convey that over she'll remember so uh just one way to the quick thing on the FFA um you know it is very important when I went to high school at Apple Valley in the 70s FFA was part of the program back then I had several uh siblings sisters that were in FFA in the 70s and early 80s and it's a priority for
066the district to keep it running and we had some hiccups over the last couple of the last year but we were working diligently to get the get it back up and running and get the positions filled so we let you know that we we do recognize the importance of the FFA program I mean not very many schools that do it in the state so it's especially in Southern California so it's good to see so we're on it that's all I have um thank you Mr um Amanda Buchanan uh I just wanted to thank the students first of all for taking time out from your summer to come here and to us because I'm sure there's other places that you could be right now but that shows your passion for what it is that you're speaking
067for and I was trying to do the math in my head did you just finish eighth grade no I think ninth okay then I can't do math fair enough um I was gonna say you were so well spoken you're still well spoken for a ninth grader um and then I was admiring your belt which I'm sure was earned for something fantastic um I do hope everybody this is our last meeting before we go on to summer break and I hope everybody has at least some plan even if it's just like relaxing um some type of a enjoyable plan plans um for me I have a feeling I tend to overdo things and I think I've overbooked my summer my family's probably gonna need like a vacation from our vacation but one of the highlights that
068I'm really looking forward to is that we are going to spend a couple days in Washington DC and I had applied a while back that when we were going to be at Arlington National Cemetery that we would be able to participate during The Changing of the Guard ceremony in a wreath Lane ceremony and it was selected so on behalf of the Apple Valley Unified School District and then one other organization that I represent my family and I will be laying a wreath um at the the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier so I'm really looking forward to doing that and I will bring back pictures so enjoy your summer thank you yes Mr RC I just want to Echo some of the previous comments about the FFA program we also know the importance of it and
069the significance and the uniqueness of it like Mr Raleigh said you know we're we're blessed we're fortunate here to to be one of the very few schools in Southern California not just with an FFA program but an extremely robust and successful program so we share that passion and I also just want to come compliment uh McKenzie and Casey for just being outstanding speakers it was very impressive to listen to both of you both of you are very well spoken and communicate your point very well so just want to compliment you on that and keep on going we look forward and I think you've expressed an interest on and maybe pursuing FFA maybe as a teaching career and uh boy I know a good school where you can plug into later on so so keep us
070in mind as you go through the rest of your training thanks thanks to both of you and of course uh Shelly as well for sharing that's all sure okay um I have to start out by thanking the students for coming out during your vacation so you actually talked to us about the FFA um is very interesting for me just to observe um especially when we walk by there during graduation and the Animals remind us that they're here they make enough noise for us to know that they are still there and for somebody who's really not an animal lover I actually went to your last event at the um at the fairgrounds and for the first time in my in my young life I was able to touch um a cow it was like do I
071have to touch it she says yeah I'll make I'll bring it close um so I'm not I don't take what you do lightly because I like the garden and so when the last speaker spoke about gardening that's very very important near and dear to my heart um but I'm hoping that um by The End by the beginning of this new Academic Year which is July 1st and I know you don't come back till August that we will have some positive news for you regarding the FFA so don't give up because we are not giving up and then I am going to go on um to thank all the staff who've made this school year such a blessing during this school year um to deal with all of the children to deal with the families and
072to communicate effectively to the families that we serve um I always say to people that culture does not make people people make culture so you all are creating the culture that you want us to see want us to live in and so I'm really looking forward to a new Academic Year coming in where we are going to embrace the exact same thing the superintendent just mentioned about valuing the child um every child matters every child should be able to know how to read but don't force the child to read your kind of reading let the child guide you in knowing what they want to read and then encourage them from that point so I'm hoping that when we start out the next year we'll get to a point which the superintendent started this year where
073she had the superintendent's Council and students were able to share in their own words what they would like to see because this is their future not my future mine's done but your future is what you need to be able to have a voice and let us know what you want to see in the schools so that we can make it happen thank you so much for a great school year now we go to the discussion action session it is recommended that the Board of Trustees discuss and take action on the following approve the recommendation of the creation of an ethnic studies task force to report back to the board in one year to address California Assembly Bill 101 on ethnic studies the task force will follow the steps of collective impact strategies contained in the
074San Bernardino County ethnic studies toolkit Additionally the task force will utilize the Apple Valley Unified School District School Board policies and administrative regulations for course and curriculum adoption I need a motion so moved I'll second it any discussion I just wanted to say thank you for um last week when we had the unanimous support of bringing this motion forward so that we can follow the the County's guideline and do this with integrity and following the strategies that they they suggested so I need a vote all in favor aye a new opposed approved the certificated and classified Personnel actions that's listed I need a motion any discussion uh vote I need a vote all in favor aye in your post adopt the local control accountability plan for 2023-2024 I need a motion I'll second it any
075discussion need a vote all in favor aye any opposed approved a recommendation of the administrative hearing chairperson effective immediately I would like the the the clerk sure so we did have a minor um change in the recommendation that read as follows and this is on explosion case number six 2022-23. stipulates the stap number six 2023 placed on suspended enforcement of expulsion to High Desert Premier Academy Middle School program for one calendar year from the date of the board action student is to complete the terms and conditions of The Rehabilitation plan prior to the end of the 2023-24 spring semester that's the recommendation I need a motion I'll move it I'll second it all in favor aye any opposed expulsion case number 20. I need a motion so moved I seconded all in favor aye aye
076any opposed expulsion case number 21 I need a motion I'll second it I need a vote all in favor aye aye any opposed expulsion case um number 22 I need the clerk to read it out sure we had a minor um change the recommendation an explosion case exp 22 22 23 be placed on suspended enforcement of expulsion to High Desert Premier Academy for the remainder of the 2022-23 spring semester for 23 24 fall semester student is to complete the terms and conditions of The Rehabilitation plan prior to the end of the 2023-24 fall semester and I'll make a motion to approve I'll second all in favor I in my opposed adopt the proposed budget for 2023 2024 I need a motion I seconded any discussion all in favor aye any opposed okay consent agenda it
077is recommended that the board of trustee is considered approving a number of agenda items as a consent list consent items are routine in nature and can be enacted in one motion without further discussion this procedure conserves meeting time for a full discussion of significant issues consent items to be approved in one motion one through 16. I'll move it one through fourteen sorry it says 16 here I'll make a motion we approve one through fourteen all in favor aye in your post foreign we need to go we don't need to go to another closed session uh so um I am going to uh ask for a motion to adjourn so moved I second that in um all in favor aye mushroom carrots poor Dennis he missed like the shortest day thank you