3/15/22 Azusa Unified School District Board Meeting

001okay we are now live on youtube thank you sam well good evening everyone and welcome to this regularly scheduled board meeting for the azusa unified school district board of education on march 15 2022 we are going to move to the open session portion of our meeting i'm here at 701 pm and we will begin with our flag salute i do believe that we have miranda here with us from foothill middle school miranda are you there yes hi hello please take it away lead us okay um please stand now please join me for the flag salute i pledge allegiance to the flag 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 thank you you may be seated thank you miranda

002moving on to item 4.2 roll call board member beau here board member cruz gonzalez here board member arianis president and i board member greer i'm also here board member rodriguez pena is not here tonight as she is home recovering from a shoulder surgery we will move to item [Music] 4.3 which is approval of the agenda uh before before we i i entertain a motion on this particular item i do want to bring up something something for the board to consider we do have a very important item on our agenda tonight and i can see that there are many people joining us here in person i i imagine and also online um to to speak into this particular item board member rodriguez pena is not here with us again as i said earlier she is not

003here because she had a shoulder surgery um and i have her permission to share this a shoulder surgery and the the operation uh the recovery is is taking longer than expected and so though she is okay she is home recovering she wanted it to be noted and and i would agree that she has not missed a school board meeting in the 11 years that she has been on the on the school board but was uh is unable to attend this meeting also understands the importance of this particular item and the number of folks who are here one wanting to speak into this item and and looking for for a decision and so i felt that it would be important for us to weigh that as a board and to recognize that there has been past

004practice when there are significant items that we table a particular agenda item to ensure that all five board members are able to speak into the item again recognizing that this is a is an important item um that also requires some attention and some action so with that said i do want to entertain a motion and see if the the will of the board is to proceed with this item um with board member rodriguez pena being absent or to table this item to allow for board member rodriguez pena to be present and able to speak into this uh conversation i would like to motion to go ahead and table it as it is an important video when would we be able to go ahead and bring this back if we were to table this uh we

005would it would be extremely important that we bring this back as soon as possible and so if we were to table it would come back on the april 19th uh agenda is there any way that we can go ahead and schedule it for the 12th i was actually going to suggest can we schedule it for next week i mean will you want to be recovered by next week i i was going to suggest that we consider having a special meeting i i you know i know that staff has to have to do a lot of this to have to do a lot of work so this dinner you know this is subtle next week would be good i mean i don't i think that's a different thing to discuss right but for right now do

006you want a motion to approve the agenda so that would be yeah so so tabling item i suppose well we could also not table the item and during this during that portion of the meeting discuss what next steps to take but um as we're as we're clearly communicating and sounding maybe board member beau would you would you mind speaking into your your thoughts as well as tabling uh for tonight and holding a special meeting holding it till the next regularly scheduled meeting do you have a sense of of your preference sir i think it's really important that all five board members are present for for any discussion and deliberation and also having the meeting as soon as possible pending yolanda's availability okay so that means that we would look to the 22nd or the 29th

007miss camacho i think you're unmuted i think you joined our meeting there we go thank you um so that means we would look to the 22nd or the 29th to hold this meeting uh pending uh word back from board member rodriguez pena and and her recovery from her operation please do um did we have the superintendent at this point you know be able to reach out to her that i would like to also consider her you know her time frame of recovery um so either the 22nd 29 and be able to go ahead and get back by today could you reach out and you by today do you mean so that we're able to communicate before before the meetings end when the date would be is that something that you could look into read okay

008perfect okay so with that said we will and so i i'm hoping the those who are here in attendance here and understand that means that we will not be looking therefore to take action on this particular item so when we when we get to that it is an item that we will not be discussing today but we will discuss when uh board member rodriguez pena is able to be present um and in attendance sure so uh just for for the for the sake of clarity the the item that we are that we're referring to uh would be item 10.1 discussion and decision of school reorganization elementary school so that would be the item that we are saying is a significant enough uh matter that it would warrant all five school board members being present to

009have that discussion i'm sorry you can you can put in a card for public comment uh but but uh the the the format of our meeting doesn't allow for or back and forth in that regard but please uh there's still time right now if you would like to put in a blue card and make a comment okay with that said we will look uh i will then look to entertain a motion for that for this particular item do you mean to adopt the agenda with the tabling of item number with with the tabling of item number 10.1 discussion and decision of school reorganization elementary school motion to move forward with the agenda and to remove 10.1 the table it when all four five board members can be present is there a second oh second the

010move by board member adianas second by board member cruz gonzalez and as far as discussion again i'll we will we will look to hear back from superintendent ortega before the end of the meeting you have a response oh you have a response back um cannot do the 22nd uh says that the 29th to be for sure we do have a coc meeting on the 29th at 6 00 p.m um i'm not sure if we can move that a little bit earlier uh oh actually i see tentative on there so no clc that night the 29th so so this is an item that we are tabling until the uh the 29th it will come back for uh for our discussion on the the 29th of march to be specific can i suggest that uh we have

011the meeting at 5 30. i think it's we we can have the meeting at 5 30. something i'd want to be sensitive to is that our because our normal meeting start time is at seven um that that is a that may be a time that many folks expect to attend a meeting and to provide a comment so i i would hate to see a scenario where people hear that there's a board meeting on that particular night show up at seven to find out that the meeting has been mostly um just want to make sure that that will be the only item on the agenda for that day [Music] okay so uh then i'll call for vote here in a second but do want to just again uh thank you for patience uh i hear that

012for us as a board this is something that we are eager to also look at and and address and and uh even as we're looking at taking what net steps need to be taken to be able to give direction to staff this is something that is extremely that we see as extremely important and wanting to address and at the same time it's so important that it would warrant all five board members being here to speak into all all sides and angles of this and again recognizing that she is home recovering from a surgery and was unable to uh to attend uh in person or even for the purposes of joining in on zoom or over a phone call and so again uh thank you for your grace towards board member rodriguez pena and uh we

013do pray for a uh just a speedy recovery and and look ahead to the 29th at 7pm for a board meeting on this particular item uh that with that we'll i'll go and call for the vote and the motion passes for yes to one absent which brings us to 5.0 report and action of closed session matters um and we will first look at item 5.1 uh consideration and approval of amended employment agreement or superintendent so now as we have come to item 5.1 on the agenda prior to taking final action on an employment agreement the brown act requires the governing board to orally report a summary of a recommendation for salaries salary schedules or compensation paid in the form of fringe benefits for local agency executives assistant superintendent our local agency executives and excuse me

014the superintendent is a local agency executive and proposed amendment contract is before us this evening the superintendent's current contract runs from july 9 2021 through july uh june 30th 2024 the amended committed contract increases the superintendent's annual base salary by 4.5 salary identical to the salary increases for the district's certificated management and represented certificated employees on tonight's agenda for approval effective july 1 2021 the superintendent's annual base salary will be 242 440 dollars and he is eligible to receive long longevity increments as established by the board all other compensation and french benefits in the superintendent's contract shall remain the same including twelve six days per year the superintendent will continue to receive 30 days of paid vacation each year the same health and welfare benefits provided to other certificated management employees a 50 000 term

015life insurance policy during his employment payment for membership dues in the association of california school administrators and to other organizations an annual medical examination not to exceed 500 and reimbursement for actual and necessary expenses while performing day-to-day duties of uh for the district is there a motion so just to clarify adrian this is this is to give the superintendent can you clarify what the change is here so this would be to give the super the the change would be a 4.5 percent increase which is identical to the um to the same salary increase as given to teachers and other uh certificated employees and managers throughout the district this year i motioned to move 5.1 there's a motion to approve 5.1 is there a second i'll second so moved by board member adianas and second by

016board member um bo um any additional discussion hearing none we'll move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent we now come to item 5.2 on the agenda um prior to taking final action on an employment agreement the brown act requires the governing board to orally report a summary of a recommendation for the salaries salary schedules or compensation paid in the form of fringe benefits or local agency executives assistant superintendent our local agency executives and proposed amendment contracts are before us this evening the first amended contract before us increases the assistant superintendent of human resources jorge ranchio annual base salary an increase of the annual base salary by 4.5 salary identical to the salary increase for the district's certificated management and represented certificated employees on tonight's agenda for approval effective july

0171 2021 the assistant superintendent's annual base salary will be 183 681.8 cents and they are eligible to receive longer longevity increments as established by the board the assistant superintendent's current contract runs from july 9th 2021 through june 30th 2024 all other compensation and fringe benefits shall remain the same including 12 sick days per year the assistant superintendent will continue to receive 30 days of paid vacation each year the same health and welfare benefits provided to other certificated management employees a 50 000 term life insurance policy during employment payments for membership dues in the association of california school administrators and two other organizations an annual medical examination not to exceed 500 and reimbursement for actual and necessary expenses while performing day-to-day duties for the district is there a motion for president uh that is item 5.4

018the one that you just read right now excuse me thank you so carlos would you would you recommend re-reading of this of this document for clarity can we just vote on the 5.4 and move back okay so um rewind would you recommend rereading this resetting this contra this language so seeing as how we have just read uh the contract for 5.4 we will look to the vote for 5.4 at this time so this is for uh assistant superintendent of human resources jorge ranchio motion to approve 5.4 second the move by board member audianus seconded by board member cruz gonzalez any discussion then we will move to a vote it was moved by board member adianas and second by board member cruz gonzalez and this is for item 5.4 oh i'm not seeing it okay and

019the motion passes four yes to one absent which brings us to 5.2 proper which is uh super consideration and approval of amended employment agreement for assistant superintendent of business services so we now come to 5.2 on the agenda prior to taking final action on an employment agreement the brown act requires the governing board to orally report a summary of the recommendation for the salaries salary schedules or compensation paid in the form of french benefits for local agency executives assistant superintendent our local agency executives and proposed amended contracts are before us this evening the second amended contract before us increases the assistant superintendent of business services latasha jamal's annual base salary by 4.5 salary identical to the salary increase for the district's certificated management and represented certificated employees on tonight's agenda for approval effective july 1

0202021 the assistant superintendent's annual base salary will be one uh one hundred eighty three thousand six hundred eighty one dollars and eight cents and they are eligible to receive longevity increments as established by the board the assistant superintendent's current contract runs from july 9 2021 through june 30th 2024 all other compensation and french benefits shall remain the same including 12 sick days per year the assistant superintendent will continue to receive 30 days of paid vacation each year the same health and welfare benefits provided to other certificated management employees a 50 000 term life insurance policy during employment payment for membership dues and the association of california school administrators and two other organizations an annual medical examination not to exceed 500 and reimbursement for actual unnecessary expenses while performing day-to-day duties for the district is there

021a motion motion to approve 5.2 moved by board member audianus second seconded by board member cruz gonzalez any additional discussion then we will vote on 5.2 and the motion passes four yes to one absent which brings us to item 5.3 consideration and approval of the amended employment agreement for assistant superintendent of educational services so as we are now on item 5.3 prior to taking final action of an employment agreement the brown act requires the governing board to orally report a summary of a recommendation for the salaries salary schedules or compensation paid in the form of fringe benefits for local agency executives assistant superintendent our local agency executives and proposed admitted contracts are before us this evening the third and final admitted contract before us increases the assistant superintendent of educational services dana mitchell and her

022annual base salary by 4.5 salary identical to the salary increase for the district's certificated management and represented certificated employees on tonight's agenda for approval effective july 1 2021 the assistant superintendent's annual base salary will be 183 681 dollars and eight cents and they are eligible to receive longevity increments as established by the board the assistant superintendent's current contract runs from july 9th 2021 through june 30th 2024 all other compensation and french benefits shall remain the same including 12 days sick days per year the assistant superintendent will continue to receive 30 days of paid vacation each year the same health and welfare benefits provided to other certificated management employees a 50 000 term life insurance policy during employment payment for membership dues and the association of california school administrators and two other organizations an annual medical

023examination not to exceed 500 and reimbursement for actual and necessary expenses while performing day-to-day duties for the district is there a motion motion to approve 5.3 moved by board member adianas second and seconded by board member cruz gonzalez any additional discussion i just want to um just reiterate what what you just said president and that is that um all of our teachers in csca have received this this increase and therefore just want to clarify that this goes across the board and this is exactly what we're doing we're being transparent and making sure that everyone you know can see what we're voting and uh just making sure that you guys are just aware of what we're doing we're being transparent so thank you any additional comments questions discussion okay then we will move to a vote

024and the motion passes for yes to one absent which brings us to item 6.0 recognition and awards and specifically 6.1 recognition of ellington student vincent lucero i do believe we have mr acosta joining us there you are good evening the board president grier um honorable board um superintendent ortega and cabinet good evening um and good to meet you to everyone at home i s uh i'm adrian acosta and i'm the very proud principal of ellington k-8 school i've said time and time again that there's always been something special about ellington as you all know recently we had our pto treasurer crowned as the district parent of the year for the cesino high school district and today we have another great announcement student vincent lucero a seventh grader in mrs garino's class received two awards today

025this morning at the morning assembly from the alex lodge club in duarte california sponsored by john and donna mcintyre and this award was for the drug awareness poster essay and video contest i received this email on february 15th that stated we are so honored to inform you that vincent lucero not only won the dwarty lodge award first place but he also went on to win the san gabriel valley award for his drug awareness essay this is a great achievement not only for this unified school district but for everyone at ellington art the ellington eagles and i could not be more prouder than anyone at this time and um he did a great job and he got some money which i think he's kind of keeping to himself he doesn't want to share that wealth and

026that's okay it's a lot of money for a young man like him so at this time i would like to present to you with great honors our 7th grade student mr vincent lucero well thank you very much mr acosta hector lucero vincent's father and his mom uh andrea we're very proud of vincent for this accomplishment and the encouragement from miss garina guerino his seventh grade teacher uh if we have the time and the board is is amenable to it we'd like vincent to read the uh essay if that's possible sure so with that vincent thank you the best me is drug free i choose not to do drugs for two reasons one being because i know it is the right thing to do but also because of a personal experience i witnessed growing up in

027this essay i will explain the effects of abusing cigarettes growing up i always saw my grandfather with a cigarette in his hand as i got older i realized that it was more than just a single cigarette it was three packs a day it never concerned me how much he had smoked until we received news that he would develop throat cancer he had to get surgery to move to remove his voice box droids and receive and he received light radiation he is now permanently unable to use his voice and he needs a breathing device breathing tube on a daily basis this situation is unfortunate because i am unable to communicate with them as lost as often as i used to although people may think cigarettes aren't a hardcore drug they do contain nicotine nicotine is a

028stimulant stimulant drug which makes cigarettes highly addictive nicotine has withdrawal symptoms just like any other drug withdrawal symptoms include increased tiredness headaches and possibly constipation in conclusion drugs are unhealthy they lead to a serious health issues or death my future and health are very important to me and i choose to be the best version of myself by not doing drugs including anything containing nicotine thank you so once again thank you very much uh we appreciate what the outsludge is doing uh so personally we've felt the effects of drugs in our family and uh the drug awareness program that the alks lodge is promoting and encouraging students to participate you know i think it's a great thing and we're very proud of vincent that he was uh able to participate this year and again miss carino

029for encouraging students to to really participate so thanks again uh appreciate it all board members and the school district thank you and and vincent can i ask him thank you for for reading your essay uh any thoughts or that you that you'd like to share just from from this this experience um mostly it's just that you know he was he was great to some extent yeah your grandfather yeah yeah personally yeah how about you personally how do you feel about the experience how do i feel about experience yeah the essay and the award um i feel good it's something that you know it goes out there yeah it's able to be put out there and people can like have a feeling based upon it okay well congrats to you we are we're proud of you

030and uh we're grateful for just the model that you are not only for our community here um but throughout the the san giova valley and so um we we celebrate you um any of my colleagues have anything they'd like to add i would like to to congratulate you vincent for being brave and just going for it not knowing if you were going to win not knowing what was but truly expressing your authentic self and to the parents good job because any award he gets you know it's double for you so keep it up thank you thank you well then vincent i'll last thing i'll share with you we do have this we'll make sure that you get it it's a certificate from us uh it says the azusa unified school district certificate of recognition is

031proudly presented to vincent lucero for winning first place in the local and regional san gabriel valley duarte elks lodge drug awareness essay contest and it is dated for today march 15 2022. so again congratulations um we'll make sure that you get this thank you thank you have a good night thank you thank you so as we proceed and look ahead to uh 7.0 i i do need to back up on just one quick thing though uh we have this report of closed session matters 5.1 through 5.4 there was another matter 3.1 uh that we discussed in closed session which was a real property transaction um the old school house at slosa middle school 340 west 5th street azusa california 91702 and so i do want to report out uh some action that was that was

032taken so the board met in closed session on the agenda on this agenda item 3.1 to review a memorandum of understanding regarding the old-school house building provided to the district from the city of azusa the memorandum of understanding provides for the transfer of the old school house to the city and relocation to the city's freedom park the board authorizes the district superintendent to finalize a memorandum of understanding with the city and to bring back the mou to the board for ratification with that we now move to item 7.0 and specifically 7.1 which is public comment on agenda or non-agenda items this is an opportunity for the public to address the board of education on agenda or non-agenda items individual speakers may be allowed up to three minutes to address the board of education on any

033agenda or non-agenda items when the public wishes to address the board on an agenda item they may fill out a blue card stand at the podium or raise their hand while in zoom attendance the board will take blue card requests first followed in order by speakers at the podium and then those and zoom attendants a couple things that i do want to point out for everyone's attention again one there is a three minute limit that we have for each person each speaker that's here and so i i'm going to ask that you please keep an eye on the timer because if you if the timer gets down to zero i will interrupt you to stop uh commenting to make room for other speakers and so i would ask that you please keep an eye on

034that so that i don't have to stop you and i apologize in advance if you cross that threshold but i will interrupt you to stop you to move on to the next speaker the second thing that i want to point out to everyone's uh attention is that there are our board policy allows us to to have a discussion and comment for 20 minutes after which point the board will take action to continue and allow additional comment so far i've only experienced times when the board has voted to allow for additional comments beyond the 20 minutes one thing that i want to point out is if you are interested in leaving a comment ask that you fill out a blue card or raise your hand in attendance prior to that vote prior to that 20 minute

035mark that we have uh because after that 20 minute mark we will not uh we will not invite additional comments to come in um additional new people to communicate their intention to leave a comment so as long as you have indicated put in a blue card or raised your hand prior to that 20 minutes if we vote the vote will allow you to to make that comment as long as you you communicated your intention to make that comment prior to the 20-minute threshold so i'll ask anyone who is interested in leaving a comment to do that as soon as possible and i will make a reminder of this um uh about 10 minutes into our comments this evening wordpress i just want to quiero recorders another thing too that i wanted to ask a board

036president is uh who's who's our timekeeper um or on the board i you're saying for the 20 minutes right right tonight yeah just clarification but but i'll take back up if if somebody else wants to keep an eye on that with me your vice president okay we'll all keep an eye okay then we'll we'll look to our first item which uh excuse me first uh speaker this evening which is sylvia gonzalez and and if uh speakers if you wouldn't mind speaking directly into the microphone so that we can be sure everyone here okay great hello my name is silva gonzalez i'm here to talk about ellington elementary my son is currently in third grade and what can i say what i can say today is he loves this school teachers and staff are always welcoming

037our teachers love and care for our students if our school closes we would go to value so people can say it's a great school i want you to know that i would have to cross with my child um i was with my cello in a busy street and recently in the beginning of this month at around 2 30 when kids are out there was an accident in lar cannon and arrow highway i also want to add we would have to cross where homeless people are at is this safe no i want my child to be safe and that is at ellington thank you ms gonzalez moving on we have melissa fajardo i the mic may not be on just push the button there and if you would speak directly into the mic that'd be most

038helpful can you hear me perfect thank you good evening i am apparently at least pta president i'm here to advocate for my children on behalf of many of our least spanish-speaking parents i'm here today since on the last board meeting it was not specified if today's meeting would be a conversation specifically on magnolia or revisiting the whole reorganization plan and if so that is very unfortunate because not only were most of our parents not aware of us being back on the agenda but to have to put our lead parents our teachers and our staff especially our children through this again is disappointing when our school was voted by you the board to remain open lee is in the middle of azusa we are surrounded by many apartment complexes our community needs an elementary school there

039we have no traffic jam or have trouble finding parking because why because our most of our parents are walkers that area has many of our low-income families whose only option is to walk those are the community members you should keep in mind and those are the ones you should be helping i have heard statements be made that keeping lee open was due to preference and i disagree if lee has preference why doesn't lee have programs to offer our kids like others both why hasn't we been modernized like others both yet that has not stopped our teachers and our staff from doing the amazing job that they do and giving our children the best education because the district has neglected our school for years without explanation yes it will cost money to modernize our school but

040it's a big campus that has available space that has empty classrooms that are not being used our school can accommodate more students than other schools if you closely that would also cost money to accommodate all of our students on smaller school campuses if the district was willing to spend millions to rebrand azusa high school then clearly the money is there to put our school especially because at lee we make things happen we work hard we fundraise for our school so that our hard-working teachers can continue to give our children the best learning experience we just had another successful fundraiser to purchase all-new outdoor equipment for our whole school because we do take pride in our school it was mentioned that buses would be provided but as many parents feel there is no way i feel

041comfortable sending my kindergartner and my first grader on a bus that has minimum supervision not being able to see what goes on inside those buses and not being able to physically see if my child made it inside the school it makes no sense on why there are two elementary schools being kept open on the north side of azusa our azusa community has been united community but because of these back and forth decisions that the board is making i feel that has cost the rift between our schools and community and that is unfortunate board members you cannot vote on something this big and then take it back keep your word and keep keeply open thank you melissa moving on we have linda the ellia please correct me if i pronounce that in quick good evening board

042members my name is linda delia and i've been an azusa resident for over 45 years when we settled here one of the reasons one of the things that attracted us to the neighborhood was the school as a taxpayer i'm very confused about what direction the school district is going how can you justify closing magnolia and powell knowing that the east side of town has no school my tax dollars were used to modernize magnolia and the technology grant was just completed in december you plan to throw all this away and send our students to murray which has not been modernized i walk the long dangerous trip from magnolia to murray our students must walk along busy street and the school is not easily accessed the crossing near sutter school is especially dangerous morning traffic with buses

043and cars will be a nightmare what happens in an emergency if students have to be picked up many people don't have cars and would have to walk there and back do we have enough manpower and buses to transport these 671 students as well as the junior high and high school students that are also being relocated buses are expensive and with rising fuel costs getting more expensive every day let's also not forget that many of these students were relocated when gladstone street was closed i'm asking the board to look at the big picture again and re-vote let's be sensible and not throw away the taxpayers money let's not bust all the east side students to the west side of town i worked at magnolia for over 30 years and my children went there magnolia is my

044school it was modernized with my tax dollars lee has a lower enrollment and still has dalton on that side of town the east side of azusa has the right to have a school don't chase our student neighboring school district and put them in schools that will be filled to capacity with no room for growth please reconsider what you're doing and leave magnolia open what you're proposing does not have our students best interest in mind thank you linda next we have nancy saving hello i'm going to read an email that i sent to mr ortega yesterday and it has to do with ellington elementary and what i said was i said um i am a homeowner in covina i live across the street from ellington elementary i was very distressed to hear that a decision has

045been made to close the school i don't know if the final decision has been made i'm just guessing and i go on to say why would we keep tearing down the very history that made our neighborhoods the special well-planned communities they have been for so long what could possibly be the reason that a beautiful safe serene well-deserving well-serving middle school would be eliminated from relevancy after so many years of service and dedication to our city we are not a rich neighborhood we do not have luxurious homes cars in a state we do however have our diamond in the rough that is our neighborhood school the school is literally inside our neighborhood surrounded by a large residential population of families who count on the fact that the school is and always has been there to make

046sure kids have a good solid education as they grow up within a safe and caring community many adults attended ellington went on to hire i'm sorry i'm nervous went on to a higher education and have become very successful as a result of it people are not just numbers people are not just statistics people are not just scores people are not just objects to be moved around like chess parts i am asking that another solution be considered if at all possible please let me know if there is any way i can help in this matter thank you before our next speaker goes up i do want to remind everyone we're just about to the halfway point so i do want to remind everyone that if you do intend on uh making a public comment tonight ask

047that you fill out a blue card um because you have about another 10 minutes where we'll still be accepting blue cards fill out a blue card or raise your hand in the zoom attendance and as long as you have submitted a blue card or raised your hand in zoom attendance prior to the 20-minute mark in about 10 minutes when we take a vote you'll um if if the board votes then you'll you'll be able to speak along with the others can we also offer our uh our parents and um our community here today that if they would like to just not speak today and speak at the at the 29th meeting um you guys are absolutely you know pull their uh their card if they would like to yeah you have either either choice thank

048you okay then we'll move on sorry for the for the delay we'll move on to fran carruthers thank you um i'm frank brothers and i have lived across the street from ellington school for 53 years i'm also a recipient of pta's honorary life award so that means that i feel strongly about education i'm also a practical person and when you have demographics that change you have to change along with it but what i'm here also to speak about not closing ellington or to please find another purpose for it i would like to mention to the board that those of us in the ellington tract had no idea this was going on why because we don't have access to the azusa library we live way on the west side of the district so in the future

049please make it through the tribune or do something that people can access to let us know that you've had this discussion for two years because you must be thinking what are we doing here after we've guys have put it out for open comments it's because our community did not know about it so please be more transparent in letting us know when big decisions like this need to be made now my argument for keeping ellington open is that the children going to valley dale will have to go down lark ellen and cross arrow highway which at the times that they're going to be crossing is extremely dangerous if you have ever commuted down arrow highway it's not 6 to 7 30 that the traffic is heavy it seems to be between 8 and nine thirty heavy

050traffic and not polite drivers [Music] so we're putting the children at risk also there's sidewalk on the west side of lark ellen but there's only a asphalted median on the right on the west side which means the children will be walking in the street or on this median which you know with children playing and pushing and carrying on there is a real danger there now if we could train all the children to use the signal and the crossing guard on tudor street we may be a little safer but that's part of childhood is you know doing what you think you want to do so please consider the safety of the children that live in the ellington school district because it can be a big issue for us also um we could think about i mean

051i understand like i said i'm a practical person i understand that you have to think about the demographics thank you moving on we have daisy cervantes hello good evening ausd board my name is daisy cervantes barron and i was here at the last meeting also speaking on behalf of magnolia asking for you to reconsider your decision on closing it down i'm very glad that you guys decided to bring it up again and revoke i hope your decision on closing down magnolia is enough there have been a lot of people that have been coming to all the meetings and working together to help keep our school open this shows that magnolia has dedicated parents and students that are willing to do anything we can to help keep our school open since it's like a second home

052to all of us this should be a reason that you should reconsider your original decision i also came here to talk about your decision on closing down foothill middle school you should reconsider your decision on closing down foothill too because some parents think it would be too hard to drive their kids all the way down to the gladstone high school campus even though you have said you will provide buses some parents don't trust their kids going on buses without supervision from another adult it would be too hard for their parents who would have to drive to more than one school like my mom who has me my brother and my sister you would have to drive to three different schools and it would be even harder if this one is farther from our house for

053these reasons i think you should reconsider your decision on closing down magnolia elementary and foothill middle school thank you thank you daisy next we have rebecca lopez good evening i just want to say um i'm going to table some of the things i was going to say for later but i want to say thank you board members and staff for your feedback and conversations with our community i know we've appreciated it and i'm just being able to know we have a voice and giving us time now to speak to so just wanted to say thank you and unfortunately i know we have to table this and you guys are all very anxious to make a decision and all of us are anxious to just make plans for the future um and i think you know

054sorry ms pena but it was like a secret blessing of time to help us gather more back more data um i encourage the board to see what pieces of the puzzle you're missing and ask the district to find those things for us i think there's other data points other calculations we haven't looked at and maybe the community has some great ideas too because i know it's a really tricky decision to make um so i encourage you guys to everybody too and we're all rooting for our schools and we don't want anyone to lose and it's an awkward thing pinning against each other so you know let us all look at these pieces and the more information you guys can provide us maybe with our heads together we could find something that is more agreeable to

055people i know it's hard so i know we are all one of the best things so that's just what i was going to say so thank you again i know we all want the best for everybody and it's a really tricky thing and i brought my girls tonight and i don't want to bring them next time so they're going to share tonight hi my name is claire and i currently attend magnolia elementary school i am a fourth grader and in a fourth and fifth grade combo class i love being in a higher academic class every morning my mom or dad walk with me and my sisters to school i am working on controlling my anxiety so knowing that my school is right across the street from my house makes me feel safe learning in a

056familiar and safe environment helps me feel more comfortable to learn and enjoy school better sometimes me and my family go for a walk or bike ride around the school and for me magnolia is like an extension of my home magnolia has a special place in my heart please keep magnolia open thank you he wrote a poem he's a little nervous am i allowed to read it or do we miss that chance i i think you had you still had another minute left in your time so yeah that's very cute i'm just going to read what you wrote here on her paper okay she said this is brooklyn she's in first grade and her twin sister is over there hello my name is brooklyn i just wanted to come here for two reasons one because my

057mom is here two i wanted to show how much i want to keep my school open i would never resist not seeing my friends so there i'm just trying to say save magnolia i want to keep my school open so much that i wrote a poem about it i'm a very good poem writer [Music] oh please don't vote to close my school you know for me that's not so cool still seeing my friends is everything to me and that's the way i want it to be thank you [Applause] thank you to rebecca claire and brooklyn great job brooklyn um so at at this point i i will i will say because we are before we proceed we are going to take a vote uh before we proceed with any additional comments and so if you

058have not gotten a blue card in i'll i'll let you know that the time has expired to be able to do that same thing with those who are in zoom attendance the time is expired to be able to put in to raise your hand if you have already raised your hand or submitted a blue card we have already collected that and so uh the vote that we're going to take now is to uh receive the rest of the comments that have already been or or the commenters who have already submitted their name to leave a comment tonight so is is there a motion to allow those commenters to speak this evening second so moved by board member audianus and seconded by board member cruz gonzalez um board member bo vote yes uh board member cruz

059gonzalez yes board member adianas and i am also a yes um and so we will again move forward with the rest of the comments but i do want to let you all know we are not we will not be accepting new uh folks who would like to submit their names to leave a comment um so we'll proceed with our next commenter which is please correct me if i pronounce that incorrectly my english is not really good my name is my kids and [Music] charles my son to school in the morning they'll give me this tape my son is very mad very much the reason he's been angry are meant next we have cecilia garcia foreign [Music] yes we have anna veldes is anna here with us maybe she's online sam do you see anna i

060do not see anna online okay we'll check back and and see if anna is still here in a little bit then we'll move on to the next commenter which is richard covington hello all right hello thank you for your time um i'm going to save most of my comments for the the meeting i just uh i just felt like for a minute a lot of us uh we were sleeping on the job we didn't realize how serious this whole school closing thing's going and uh it feel it feels like we're just closing way too many schools and now i see a lot of us parents are waking up and uh we'll be back and uh thanks for your time thank you richard next we have yvonne barcelona sam do you see yvonne acelio no i

061believe yvonne is someone that's in person okay so that's a blue card okay next we have alex robles hello good evening to all board members um i'm here to persuade you guys to vote no on closing ellington uh my daughter attends ellington she's in kindergarten uh we just moved to the vincent area in covina we enrolled her and she loves her school it's uh such a great um community there as it was mentioned earlier it's in the middle of a residential area we go for walks when she's out of school on the weekends her cousins come over and we go and she she she loves her school with such a prize she shows it off to her cousins when you have kids students that love their school that much just to take it away it

062takes something away from them they grow up there they love it they grow up and could potentially be tutors in that school participate and and be involved in the community that's what we need when you move students from one school to another you consolidate uh classrooms and overcrowded uh classes the the resources in those schools they there's not enough when you when you make all those movements i know you guys have a big agenda to move schools around change them around closing schools is not the not the solution we need school when you have kids that love their school it's they they they give it 110 percent instead of the 80 because it's overcrowded or other problems that that come when the resources are not there i know you guys maybe look at budgets and

063and and these numbers and spreadsheets but look at the investment we're giving to our our kids our students of having that community there that that school community where they can participate we just moved there two years ago and she's been excited she was a she was excited to attend she's excited to be attending she he looks forward to going to school every day not once that she has to be complaining about going we walk through the school when you see other students walking to school you get that that sense that it's a big community you you don't just get dropped off and you know then get picked up everyone walks there principal knows the kids by name it's beautiful maybe you guys see the school that is there's not many students enrolled the pandemic probably

064has to do something with that but students will be attending with the pandemic getting getting better with these vaccinations being available don't close early um will be something that's priceless to my kids because it could help them in their future for you guys to vote no thank you alex next we have jesus garcia questions it looks great as long as it's green perfect perfect okay thank you board members i appreciate you having us here i really wasn't going to come in and talk the last second of course i have to and thank you all the parents that are here for all the arlington members and the other school members that are here to support and try to get their schools looked at as being viable in this community i think something that's happening i'm in

065education just so you know i've been in education for over 20 something years i can't remember now and i've been at high schools middle schools i've been in a college level each at the college level as well and i see this uh ongoing situation of changing communities changing properties that are part of these schools that are within these communities i've seen west covina do a very interesting you know shifts in terms of getting uh schools off their off their docket and it's interesting that that's kind of resonating here in this community in our community communities at this time and that's my concern kind of really looking deeper into the numbers i haven't done so like a gentleman said earlier we kind of got sidetracked and some of the young ladies also we got sidetracked and

066not knowing what was actually taking place i'm a community member vincent hart i've been there for over 20 something years my kids have gone there we've been nurtured by that community ellington is and has been our school and my kids pursued college degrees and right now my daughter is uh in medical school and so what i want to say is uh she'll be coming to a meeting possibly i hear there's another meeting of course and if she can is it possible but i want to share that the nurturing that that school has done and some of these schools have provided is very rewarding enriching for many members the young ladies that have come here the students that are here i see their face i've seen students also succumb to the traffic issues that have come

067about for being on lark island with a very uh fast rate of vehicle movement there on aero highway which is basically a freeway and i ride it i've ridden with my kids and i'm dead scared of riding the bicycle when they were little and this is a factor these are factors when you're moving from a community space as nurturing protective like ellington is and i think you all have to understand that there's more to it there's more to the residents and the community that's there and also to the school and i think the resources that are coming into that school and maybe the imagination of what the school can be and you know and remodifying it re re re thinking exactly what education should be i think cobit has killed a lot of these plans

068i think it marginalized a lot of students and marginalized a lot of communities and i don't want to see this happen in my community this hit home and it really i i'm really kind of bothered right now i'm feeling a little bit kind of emotional about it but i know that it's something that we all have to do i see here the other schools also that are parents that are pushing for their schools and i feel for them as well and being an educator being someone in education having my kids really nurtured by programs that that were there and also the after-school programs thank you for your time go ellington i hope you guys really think what you're doing next next we have alejandro gotta alejandro hi goodnight everyone um we are here to talk

069about the magnolia school my children and i arrived two years ago here to this country and it was difficult for them to change to the country and learn a new language it's a very good school and my son is that third person and he he really liked like the school and it's very much and finding out that it was closest it's difficult for him and i when he say something or because he tell me many many things but i think he gets nervous now he don't want to talk yes please don't close my school i i really like to be in it and and i don't want to stop cleaning it because i'm i i like the work that they make me do the homework please don't close my school [Music] next we have alicia

070rodriguez and she would be online sam do you see her yes she's joining can you hear me yes welcome uh good evening a ausd board members parents students and community members my name is alicia rodriguez a parent of two students enrolled at lee elementary k in first grade today i'm here to speak to you the board and express my disappointment and frustration at the way that the district has handled the school reorganization i am also here as a parent of lee because we don't want to be blindsided like the way you did with magnolia instead of uniting our schools and community you are causing a great divide and rivalry between parents schools and students the board keeps ping-ponging with the emotions of our community teachers and more importantly our children our children now face the

071idea again that their school will possibly close down parents are now dealing with the additional stress of thinking how they will get their children to school or where they will have to commute to if our school is put on the chopping block both lee and magnolia have a large number of family families that walk their children to school and unfortunately the board hasn't taken that into consideration or set a feasible plan of transport instead of causing more divide the board and district should be focusing on how we can enrich our children's lives by offering programs and activities at our elementary school levels lee has received the short end of the stick in every sense of the word you have spent countless of dollars helping other schools thrive and leaving lee out of out to fend

072for itself with help of our amazing teachers staff and parents also as an asus homeowner it hurts to see that our tax dollars are being thrown out the window and that our beautiful communities are being destroyed schools are being closed down for what to be left desolate and unoccupied with no future in sight in addition the fact that you want to consolidate all children to one middle school is absurd asusa should have two middle schools one below and one above the 210. the only reasons you are making gladstone's the main middle school is to avoid additional money being thrown out the window the more we hear about the the board members speak the more we see that your decisions are selfish the board is not listening and not representing our communities like you promised to

073i'm not going to go into details but i wish for you to reconsider keeping magnolia and lee open and having two middle schools sit down and touch your hearts and make the best decision for our children and not yourselves lastly stop dividing our community and help our schools thrive we're a unified school district with two prominent colleges citrus and apu our school should be some of the top schools in the area with excellent programs and facilities where our children can thrive the way you have gone about this reorganization plan is a joke lastly my children would like to say something keep me open thank you for your time thank you alicia next we have michelle i didn't see michelle in the meeting any longer so it's possible that she is left okay we will check

074back on the on the tail end so we'll move on to dr irene sanchez good evening can you hear me yes we can all right first i want to say i'm really moved by the parents speaking tonight even though i commute my son has been at powell for three years my name is dr irene sanchez for over 20 years i've dedicated myself to learning and teaching in the field of ethnic studies i've taught ethnic studies at the college university levels and continued to teach college and i'm often an invited speaker presenter on issues of equity at policy access to higher ed teaching teachers of color and ethnic studies i've taught latino studies and aud at all three high schools for the past five years since day one in ausd i was met with hostility by

075some for being hired to do the job i was simply hired to do i've also experienced exclusion for example i've been excluded from meetings of social studies teachers and other teachers meeting by administrators who say i don't belong with this group or that one by the few who didn't consider me part of their school during distance learning i learned from a community member that a group focused on ethnic studies was started within the district i was questioned by two principals about my involvement and had to tell them i wasn't included i met some of the teachers in the group this year who also asked why i wasn't involved i saw answers by speaking with dr mitchell in the fall and i was told i wasn't needed in the group because i was already an expert

076i was told when these other teachers were fully trained maybe in about two years then i could meet with them i relate some of this to the superintendent i know a few of you on the board work really hard with community members to fight for latino studies i know the struggle for a class like this started in 1968 when chicano latino students walked out of east l.a schools and later that year 1968 students walked out of azusa high school it is in remembering this history in a time where ethnic studies will now be a graduation requirement i want to know why i wouldn't be included in any conversation about ethnic studies future here in ausd recently i heard there are people saying latino studies is different from ethnic studies but that is wrong there are

077survey courses and specialized ones in the field of ethnic studies and i have taught both types at the college and university levels i understand why some districts may want to implement ethnic studies to meet the new graduation requirement by simply inserting it into existing required classes but that can have pros and cons depending on how it's approached ultimately latino studies here should be expanded and should count towards this upcoming requirement our student population in is 92 chicano latino and i know latino studies classes has have an impact on the students at ausd despite the class being unsupported and treated with disregard at times today i hope though i hope someone can find an answer as to why the exclusion and marginalization of me and my role in the class i teach continues to this day

078i also hope latino studies will count towards ethnic studies graduation requirement and that seven years after its implementation here at ausd the latino studies course will finally be expanded thank you dr sanchez next we have katie ibarra yes go ahead actually i'm eduardo my husband um can you hear me yes we can hear you okay yeah well sorry about that yeah well i mean you know chanel and bruce are our children and they attend this school and um ever since they started attending school we realized you know their progress and like miss ramos and silverado mr square you know they're they've been their teachers and they've been you know we they've been very attentive to you know teaching our kids and i'm i don't understand how you guys want to close down or you are

079even thinking about closing down the foundation of the city you know the city of azusa you know it's like that's the foundation these kids need to go to school in order to you know co-exist you know to see each other you know to socialize you know that's where they learn i mean this is where all this is taught at the schools and especially if we have them you know like we have lee and magnolia i hear all these people worried about their schools so i mean i asked myself and my wife we were asking ourselves like well what's like what are we you know what what's your job to open them to leave them open and find ways to keep them open or just to close them down it doesn't make sense to close down

080the foundation of the city these kids are the ones that are going to go to elementary right and then from elementary they're going to go to junior high and then from junior high they go to high school and then from there to apu and cause i mean that's the dream that we have you know for them to continue their education and the teachers at least school i mean are guiding them are helping them to progress and they're very attentive to their needs my wife and i are very happy with this school it would be i mean if you could consider finding a way to keep all the schools open not just me but all of them because never in my life have i ever heard of you know okay let's close down the foundation of

081what of the future you know our kids future let's just close down these coasters go pile them up in one school like we don't understand we don't understand or keep them at home which honestly didn't work the whole laptop stuff i seen their progress and it was it was like okay maybe 40 minutes of progress and boom they forgot about the 40 minutes of you know studying and doing just their their work at school at least they have the teachers behind them you know like miss ramos all she's amazing miss alvarado with my son bruce mr esker you know with my daughter chanel they're good teachers we need to keep these schools open and i'm pretty sure there's good teachers at magnolia and all those other schools that they mentioned so if you guys could

082please you know just keep the schools open i think that's part of your job to keep these schools open not to close closing down i don't understand i mean never in you know i've been here what 20 30 years in the zeus i graduated from azusa high and you know 1990 you know 1993 and never ever heard oh we're gonna close down we're gonna close down so i mean if you could please keep these school open that way you know we would really appreciate it my wife and i kabara for bruce and chanel and you know just keep all the schools so please find it in your heart to do so and um don't get rid of the foundation you know it's always been for the city thank you so much thank you and all

083right could i ask uh just for the record that you that you state your name uh because it said katie ibada what was your name sir yes i'm her husband my name is edward and this is my wife eduardo eduardo edward thank you yes yes so next we have christian pedroza uh good evening everybody my name is christian pedroza um i would like to take the the time to thank everybody here at the opportunity to voice my opinion on such a critical and important organization that's affecting parents teachers and school staff and entire neighborhoods and communities and most importantly our children given the time is limited for this meeting i i will like if possible to submit this letter for review to the board which outlines pragmatic drawbacks of closing lay elementary letter which has

084been read inside by dozens of parents like myself that have children currently enrolled in the school that by doing this will just destabilize you know socially academically financially um if if the board can reconsider closing closings um lee the easy thing would just be to read this letter to you but you know it's just i i just want to speak from my heart um i speak to you as a father that has a six-year-old little girl enrolled in the elementary which she's been excelled excelling and thriving despite the this pandemic you know finally making friends bonding with teachers and staff which makes me very happy and it's sad to hear you know this there could be enough possibility to break this link that's forming which is very formative in these formative years for these little

085kids um i also speak to you as a byproduct of susan unified district i attended elementary in high school in azusa and went on to graduate from university and and i'm currently i'm working in the investment industry so i've been asked you know by many colleagues and friends you know why go through this headache you know a time and effort and you know put her in private school and the reason i tell him is i believe in the public school system i went through it my brothers went through it and we all have successful careers and large bed was due to the strong foundation that we were provided at usda usd at the time so it's it's you know it's every single parent on this call basically or in this meeting you know they want

086that stability you know strong educational formation for their children not just be thinking about what school's going to be closing what district should we move them um what you know it's it's really tough and i'm emotional for it because it's i never thought like many parents here was going to be in place in this position but um you know in closing remarks again i'm a concerned parent that did not want to be in this situation i'd want to put my child in this type of situation as well but again i like to say to the board if they can reconsider and do the right thing which is not too closely elementary and many of these other schools that i'm hearing thank you for your time thank you christian next we have george eagle good evening

087can you hear me yes we can my name is george jingle and i'm here with my wife leonor ingle and my six-year-old son jayden ingle who attends lee elementary i just want to say that lee is conveniently located in the middle of asusa um i'm sure one of the factors to keep asusa high school was the location lee is only one block away from the high school right in the middle of azusa based on census data and to be specific all groups in blocks 40 4201 and 4043.01 where lee is located it has a high density of population in many and many apartment buildings in the uh uh lee area where families walk their kids to school um if you closely parents who currently walk their students including myself and my wife will have to

088walk across a major dangerous intersection with my six-year-old six-year-old the prolonged pandemic created uncertainty and stress to many students and parents relocation will break vital bonds with their teachers and classmates just as they are beginning to regain feeling of normalcy and security which could adversely affect scholar scholastic achievement my son has a very special bonds with the teachers um mrs scare uh even uh mrs fonte who was the uh uh uh the kindergarten gordon teacher last year uh this rojas he's he's very happy at lee and we are um we just want to make sure that lee remains open as it was stated on the last uh meeting uh so please please keep your word and keep our school open you want to go to school no yes you like lee okay i'm gonna go

089see mrs scara okay okay mrs ponte [Music] thank you george next we have jennifer sam do we see jennifer yes she's been given i've been given permission to speak but has yet to unmute her microphone so jennifer if you want to unmute your microphone speak okay so there could be some technical difficulties we'll move on to the next uh can you hear me now yes we can hear you all right i'm from east lake and they came here azuza and my kids have been to me i have a kid in foothill i have a kid and this is the high school and i love this community you know this community is good and i can't how how how is lee gonna be taken away for what reason you're welcome to continue speaking um but we

090don't take we don't have dialogue questions and answers during this portion but you're welcome to continue it looks like she has left the meeting okay um sam could you keep an eye on that and uh there's there's two more minutes that she has if uh there was an error and she needed to come back of course um we'll move on to the next person do we have more hope yes okay so next we have a french hi there can you hear me okay yes we can hear you hi there good evening everyone my name is alan french and i just have a couple things i want to talk about tonight first i want to thank the board for reconsidering its decision about the aztec and the colors of azusa high school from a couple weeks

091ago this matter has been a topic among several alumni in previous meetings and you all are aware of the petition in support of keeping the aztec it's been well documented if you remember i spoke a few weeks ago about how the aztec was honored in azusa high's first year and how it's continued in the decades since more than one person is called for reaching a common ground with this and i'm optimistic that a resolution can be reached so again i want to give my appreciation to the board for revisiting this and second and i do understand that action on reorganization will not take place tonight uh but i wanted to ask the board to reconsider its position on closing powell elementary and before i go on let it be known i'm not advocating for any

092school to be closed down i completely support everyone that's spoken for ellington magnolia lee all of the schools tonight and in the past it's really sad we've reached this point especially considering that gladstone street in mountain view closed a couple of years ago but as the reorganization team and board have disclosed in the past proximity is a significant component in this matter and powell is located in a surrounding neighborhood on mauna loa and its art program is of great benefit to students teaching creativity is important and given how important the arts are as well as the location of powell near several homes i ask the board to please consider keeping powell elementary open i don't feel that it should close and third and i don't know if anything's changed with this so if i've missed

093any updates on it i do apologize but i do recall hearing within the last few months that azusa high's drama program was to be moved to foothill after foothill becomes part of what is going to be the expanded azusa high if this is indeed true i ask that the board keep the drama program at azusa high because the theater at the high school it came to be after dave lewis discovered it was an unused metal shop that had been dormant for years i actually heard dave say this dave turned it into a room where he touched the lives of countless students and shy kids opened up and you know made a lot of great memories i should know i'm one of them and just under one year ago the board voted to rename the theater

094in dave's honor unanimously i might add if the theater needs to be brought up to code then by all means bring it up to code because in my opinion that should be done out of respect for dave lewis for his decades of loyalty and service to azusa unified and for all the lives he touched again i don't know if anything's changed with that but i asked the board to consider it if it hasn't thank you thank you alan next we have violet gonzalez hello can you hear me yes we can hear you okay i'm sorry about my voice i kind of lost my voice this weekend so um yeah i'm sorry so um good evening this is the board members and this is a community i come here this evening on the matter of revisit

095of school closures once again to keep lee's school open my two boys go to lee one is in kindergarten and the other is in first grade lee's school is a great serene elementary school to the community of azusa residents that live north of 1st street baseline south of foothill boulevard west of citrus and east of azusa avenue lee is right in the center of our city surrounded by a large density of apartment complex condos and multi-general housing which means it has a large community of walkers lee has such a great amazing teachers and staff i come to the board this evening to ask to put back the agenda they had before board member miss bo motioned it which was keeping victor hodge paramount valleydale murray magnolia and lee open dalton is the closest school to

096lee but is a much smaller campus and has less room than lee lee has a more than enough room to receive dalton students and others it would make more sense to modernize lee that already has a bigger campus but let's be real we know why dalton keeps being being put back i'm sorry beam i'm so sorry i lost me please but let's be real we know why dalton keeps me being put back on the table it is because what a um board member miss ariana said on the board meeting of december 21st 2021 at 2 hours and 37 36 minutes into the meeting and i quote look let's be real rosedale's right there we want to go ahead and invite those kids into our district some of the students that live in rosedale don't come

097to our district dalton's right there end quote rosedale has been a community for more than 10 years let's stop thinking about what could happen and focus more on what makes sense for our community that attends a ausd now thank you all for your time and good evening thank you violet next we have destiny martinez it doesn't look like destiny's no uh in our meeting any longer okay we'll keep an eye on and see if she uh returns uh then looks like we have lisa wiesa let me know if i pronounce that incorrectly sam do you see lisa in the meeting yes she has yet to unmute her microphone alisa if you want to go ahead and unmute you're welcome to speak okay we will we'll check back so we'll move on for now then to

098cecilia ford hello can you hear me yes we can hear you hi good evening everybody um i did raise my hand on accident and i put it down but that's okay um i'm here kind of to touch on magnolia closing i have a great niece and great nephew that go to magnolia and they enjoy going to school now um they love their teachers they love what they do they're very being very successful at magnolia they've been switched from one school to another and now they're at magnolia there's a lot going on at magnolia though um we have the magnolia adult transition program i'm not sure if anything has been decided as to where that program is going to go but that program is hosted on that campus um it's a great school i would not

099like to see magnolia go anywhere um let's just keep it there thank you have a good night thank you cecilia so i'm gonna circle back around uh there there were a few names that that put their their names in to to leave comment that were not present when we came around to them so um anna valdez who was here in person is she back and then yvonne masilio okay then we'll move on to the we have three online names who we had to uh move uh for actually that we had to move beyond so the first one is michelle sam do you see michelle having returned i do not see michelle and then um jennifer carrillo she cut out and had a couple minutes left do you see her back i do not see jennifer

100we had destiny martinez i don't see destiny as well and then we also had a final one which was lisa do you see lisa back in on the meeting i don't see lisa okay then at this point we will move on from 7.1 public comment and we will move on to 8.0 which is comments reports and requests by the board and we will begin with board member bo good evening i'd just like to thank all parents and family members and community members who have come out um tonight and all the other meetings to make your voices heard and to provide your perspective very welcome and appreciated and i encourage you to continue participating thank you uh board member cruz gonzalez no comment tonight board member arianes good evening everyone first of all i would like

101to extend our well wishes to our board member rodriguez pena like president garris said she just got out of surgery and we did have the table this this item that we were going to discuss and vote and it is very important that we're all here i want to thank every single one of you guys that showed up in person today online you keep showing up you stay until the end i want to remind all of you guys you know that that have spoken that keep speaking you know what listen you may call my name i'm listening and i'm so glad you guys are listening too let me tell you why when i worked for this district for 20 years when i came to this school district as a student the only times that we would

102fill this room up would be when hard decisions were being made i encourage all of you guys that are here that are out there watching us not just on our board city council your assembly your senators we're making decisions for you and if we don't hear from you we don't know i i do i do want to share that it's been a long process that we've had this discussion the reconfiguration team me you know the meetings and i know that some of you guys you know feel like you guys just heard about it and i encourage you to please keep coming back you know it it makes me sad to hear that school communities are getting upset at each other guys come on we are the adults what are we teaching our children how to

103respond we are one community we are a souza azusa flash covina because we have ellington and gladstone over there but come on guys this is our community unfortunately when we talk about money budget being fiscal responsible please educate yourself i i wish that we could sit here and tell you what we've done in the last two years you have questions please reach out to our super superintendent to our assistant superintendent if you have any questions research yourself we the videos are online please take the time i appreciate you know at 2 36 or 2 30 i said yes i did thank you i you know what you're right but what i don't know and what you don't know is a conversation that we should have so again i'm putting myself out there please call me

104email me email us if you want email me i will get back to you eventually maybe not right away because i work 40 plus hours but i will get back back to you i don't feel like we're ignoring you i am listening i can't i feel like we're all listening and this is a very very tough decision and you're right someone said why so many schools [Music] well i'm going to tell you one thing school should have been closed over 15 not available [Music] i'm a product of this district i went to center i went to gladstone yeah they're all closing my whole childhood today for your children for my children all that i ask is let's have a conversation call me email me no i'll give you guys my number 626 five three three

105eight call me i'm here and i've listened to every single one of you guys and don't feel that you're not heard because you are heard i just wish most people would have stayed because guess what the decisions we're gonna make on other agenda items affect you please stay watch or watch remove our movies they're like movies huh netflix series um but please watch watch our meetings yes watch us hold us accountable because if you don't hold us accountable who is right yeah so i'm glad you guys are here thank you thank you for being here and thank you you guys that are online i appreciate each one of you every one of you thank you and i will uh conclude our comments with just a handful of things one yes uh yolanda um just from

106from all of us on the board and and and uh the community just wishing you well and um there's there's definitely a lot of work for us to do so so we look forward to you healing up and uh we'll we'll see you here on the 29th and again just want to say thank you to all of the community members who came out here in person uh to the community members who joined us online and sharing their their their perspectives their their opinions their thoughts their feelings emotions um all of all of their data all of that is is is greatly appreciated and we're grateful to receive that from you all and again um ask that that continues um not just up until the 29th but even beyond that uh we we we rely uh

107as part member ariana said we rely on on you all to to speak and share your perspectives uh because we have an incredible task of representing not one school but but all of the schools and all of the the neighborhoods and all the communities here and so um thank you for that so as it's been stated uh march 29th is when we will hold a a meeting to discuss this particular item it will be a special meeting meaning that it is not though it's not regularly scheduled we'll be talking about that item that item only and so we will look ahead to that particular meeting um with that said i do want to say that there i have still not gotten back to every single parent i've met with some have not gotten back to

108every parent and every member of the community who has reached out rebecca i want to thank you for for your your persistence um that i that i'm grateful for and and uh and now we have a little bit of some time and so i'm looking forward to scheduling a time to sit down and discuss and and same for uh some of the others who have reached out um with that being said and in addition to that um as i stated at the last meeting on march 24th um at 6 pm i will be hosting an online coffee and so i have gotten emails from some please feel feel free to what through whatever channel if you want to call text social media if you want to send me an email anything at all if you

109if you let me know i'll make sure that you get all of the information uh to be able to sign up for that it will be a a conversation that we'll be having online called an online coffee and so we'll meet and discuss the the matters that are important to you and and so um that that will be uh happening on the 24th so if you've attended one of the past you'll already get the invite if you're interested in getting an invitation please just reach out and i'll make sure that you get that information so you can join in um on that particular conversation and with that we will move on then to item 9.0 comments and reports by superintendent cabinet and student board members and i do believe we have a couple of our

110stu at least a couple of our student board members here tonight and sam are you able to confirm that yes i'm i'm looking through the people right now for brevity could i get the names of the student board members i know we have hannah hamilton annette campos i want to say crystal i'm i'm forgetting crystal's last name you see any of those three there sam there is one annette but i'm not sure if it is the correct annette or not as there is no last name we can give it a try all right one moment cross my finger that annette has now left the meeting so i'm guessing it was the incorrect annette it's a lot of pressure sorry man so then we'll move on to a superintendent cabinet thank you i just want to

111congratulate once again vincent lucero for not only winning the the local but also the region san gabriel valley essay contest way to represent not only ellington but our district as well congratulations to vincent i want to show my gratitude to the superintendent and parent roundtable parent representatives who went on a a ride with me we opened up our superintendent roundtable this last time and we opened it up to the entire para community um and so that went really well and was really successful so i'm looking forward to continue uh to do that and then just finally want to give our district a shout out pace which is the policy analysis for california education out of stanford university did a write-up did a case study on early indicators of systemic improvement and highlighted our district as

112one of two districts in that write-up so just wanted to congratulate everyone who day in and day out participates and adds value to what we do in our district good evening a couple of items from the grant forefront um congratulations to alice huelskamp who is one of our life skills teachers at foothill middle school and she has been awarded a grant from the lettuce bro farm project and her classroom is going to receive a 24 plant hydroponic farm band and 24 seedlings which are going to enable her students to learn how to um about nutrients and feeding plants and ph balances and measurements and they'll be able to harvest what they grow and so we're excited about that um also we are going to we are applying for a community schools implementation grant which is

113going to be used to sustain and expand our community schools in our district and community schools provide health and mental health services and supports for our students and our families as well so we're excited about applying for that grant and then finally we're also applying for a full day full year preschool programming for our district so thank you i'm happy to report that in today's general functions the board of education has before it two resolutions one declaring may 2nd through the 6th as certificated school employee week at our may 3rd board of education meeting we will be recognizing our site and department teachers of the year further the board of education also has before it today the classified school employee week resolutions for approval classified employee week is may 16th through the 20th we recognize

114and thank our teachers for their contributions to our students and the associated community i think it was clear to see just how impactful our teachers are and have been similarly we recognize and thank our classified employees for their ongoing contributions to our schools student learning and the isuzu community i also want to thank our labor partners for their work in developing two years of school attendance calendars that are before the board of education for approval thank you do you know i want to give kudos to our awesome nutrition services department and team members in the prior month the team decided to survey our high school students to see what they would like to see as meal options going forward receiving the feedback from the survey we have incorporated the glowing global food stations our most

115popular station continues to be the pizza station but coming in a strong second is our new food station i knew i was gonna mess it up but the teeth has incorporated the new items at our high school as well as now we have adopted um fresh cooking at some of our days in our meal options so we are super excited thank you all right and uh sam did you happen to see if any of the student board members see any of them online i did not see any of them no then we will move on to 10.0 general functions and again 10.1 has been tabled uh the discussion and decision on school reorganization has been tabled to a special meeting to take place on 3 29 at 7 p.m so we'll move on to 10.2

116approval of resolution 21 22-24 declaring may 2nd through the 6th 2022 certificated school employee week is there a motion on the floor i make a motion to approve moved by board member cruz gonzalez i second seconded by board member beau um any discussion hearing none we'll go ahead and vote i imagine we may need to do a hand vote at this at this time why i have a board member who's not let us proceed so we'll go ahead and do a hand vote board member both yes board member chris gonzalez yeah and i am also a yes um and so the motion passed is three two absent okay moving on then to item 10.3 resolution of 21 22 25 declaring may 16th through the 20th uh 2022 classified school employee week is there a motion

117on the floor i make a motion to approve a second move by board member cruz gonzalez seconded by board member beau and we will again take a hand vote uh any discussion then we'll go ahead and take a hand vote board member beau yes board member cruz gonzalez yes and i am also a yes and so the motion passes three yes uh to two absent moving on to 10.4 approval of school attendance calendars for the 2022 2023 and 2023-2024 school year is there a motion on the floor i make a motion to approve moved by board member cruz gonzalez by second and seconded by board member beau any discussion yes i just very briefly um i just want to echo what assistant superintendent rocchio said and it's really expressed by appreciate appreciation to the to

118our district staff and all of our bargaining units to agree to have two years of calendars approved because i think for us those of us who are parents it helps us plan our lives so we will now know for this next year and the year after um when when when vacations or time off are going to be so i really want to express our appreciation that we've moved in that direction thank you all right any other discussion either comment then we will move to a hand vote again uh board member beau yes board member cruz gonzalez yes and i am also a yes and so the motion passes three yes to two absent which brings us to our consent calendar um and specifically 11.1 all matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the

119board of education to be routine and will be enacted in one motion there will be no discussion of these items unless requested by a board member if a board member requests discussion that item will be removed from consent calendar and considered separately is there a motion on the floor i move to approve the consent calendar i'll second consent calendar moved for approval by board member beau seconded by board member cruz gonzalez and there will be no discussion um and we will move to a online vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent which takes us down to business and finance and specifically 13.1 approval of second interim financial report 2021 to 2022 and i do believe we have a presentation yes okay good evening board and members and members of cabinet and the

120community members i am now here to present the second interim financial report for the 2021-2022 fiscal year so the second item is required by the financial reporting which requires the school district to file their financial reports um two reports one as of october 31st and the second by january 31st which is our second interim this is in accordance to ed code four two one three zero and four two one three one there are three certifications um that our interim course can have one is the positive certification which outlines the district meets its financial obligation second is a qualified certification which outlines the district may not meet one of the financial obligations in one of the three years noted in the nyp and a negative certification means the district cannot meet its financial obligation in two

121or more of the fiscal year here is a picture of our budget cycle we are here now in march where we are presenting our second interim the next we will be in front of the board in june when we're presenting the estimated actuals and the adopted budget as we outline our enrollment as we'll see is our 2021-2022 enrollment is no longer a projection as our enrollment has certified um at adopted we projected a decline of 168 students but we've only had to realize a decline of 153 students this is just a picture of the enrollment from the previous slide and this continues to show our decline but it's slowing and starting to taper off and again our decline is being realized due to our graduating senior class is greater than our incoming tk underground and

122this is our general fund revenue and what we're doing is we're doing we are evaluating from the change from first interim to second interval so our first interim our revenue was projected at 131 million and at second interim our revenue is now projected at 127 million and this does not equate to a drop in actual revenue received this is due to a change in how the state and federal government is identifying how we are to account for our velvet funds previously we received the funds and state dollars and all state dollars once it's received we realize the income at the time that we receive it now they have changed to have the money classified as federal income which means you only can count their revenue though you have it in the bank you only can

123account the revenue at the time that you actually have expenditures to offset it any questions here so just to clarify but for that shift that number would be identical that number would be 131 424 67 yes so we actually if you look at the state revenue line on the 7.9 is the amount of profit dollars that are being transferred to federal but only 3.2 of the 7.9 do we have planned expenditures for this year for the remaining will just be at the any fund balance on the carryover for next year here's just giving us a graph of our revenue so the 127 million 72 percent of that is accounted through lcf dollars 13 is federal income nine percent is state and six percent is local revenue here looking at our actual expenditures again we're comparing

124first interim to second interim at first interim our projected expenditures with 125 million dollars now a second interim we are projecting an increase to 127 million and this is increases attributed to the approved phrases that's on the sport agenda tonight has given us a graphic of our um expenditures so 70 of our dollars go to our employees to cover um salary and benefits then we have eleven percent for books implies 15 for service and other operating expenditures and three percent is for transfers and other out any questions on expenditures yes ma'am i have a question can you talk about the um the variance for books and supplies um what do you mean the variant meaning the drop yes yes so that is off of 1.1 million yes and so that is um those were uh

125l-cap expenditures that were planned that we do not feel we're going to realize that this year only because we have other dollars have been attributing to those expenditures so that money has been assigned to any fund balance under l-cap expenditures and what other funds did we use to meet those needs we have other one-time dollars that we receive from covet and other elo and i have a second question um did we accelerate the expenditure of any ester funds to the current year versus um any planned expenditures in the future years you'll be accelerated um can i say it a different way or you ask me are there any signatures nutrition that we are planning to do this year that are worn out here um i mean um as compared to the first interim were there

126any additional s or expenditures that we are projecting between now and june 30th that we hadn't contemplated at the first interim oh man thank you any other questions on expenditures okay so here we're going to go to our multi-year rejection um the one thing to note is we meet our financial obligation in the current year in the two session year and we are still showing deficit spending for 20 21 22 as well as 20 22 23. again our debt spending is just a testament of us spending our 20 over dollars um you're always going to show the spending if you're spending funds that you've received in the prior year additionally i'm we have added the line to identify what are available any fund balances so we show we're projecting there are available any fund balance

127will be 12 and this is just to go to the trigger language that if it's adopted a district can only have an even balance of 10 or less but we are now starting to capture that so we can see what we're looking at in any event that trigger language is adopted additionally this nyp does not incorporate any of our school reorganization plan any questions on our mop are you sure well here knowing that it does not so we have we have a meeting on the 29th what what kind of as we make those shifts assuming that we are able to make some of these decisions on the 29th um what is the process and when would we be able to see this updated with that information upon the decisions they made we can give you

128one within two weeks okay thank you all right and here's just a graphic or any fun balance um so this goes to some of the changes that we've seen um like dr bull stated for the books is implies so we have our 22 percent of our indie fun balance is our concentrating add-on so we know we received uh 3.3.08 million dollars um additionally we have 32 of our projected lcf carryover again this does not mean we're not going to spend it but right now i'm based on as of january 31st we had not spent it but we have through june 30th to actually spend all the dollars and this is our breakdown of our restricted any fund balance and we have one percent is allocated to routine restricted maintenance i'm nine percent is our site

129donation this is funds that they have raised that we hold for them and 63 percent is our elo brand as well as eight percent is the elo grant by the peer professional and with that it is recommended that the board of education approve the district's second interim with a positive certification i can take any additional questions you just good question about just backing up on the elo grant so do we anticipate what is that going to be spent this summer have the elop money um is for uh one the first expenditure is our spring break camp and that's four days we have thing together we also have summer expenditures as well so we have our summer program and we also have some additional opportunities that we're working on right now for additional summer opportunities for

130our students so we should have some information for you on that piece thank you any other questions on the board okay thank you mr mall with that we will move to our action a portion of this of this item is there a motion on the floor i make a motion to approve the second interim financial report second i forgot what number we run uh so that's a motion to approve 13.1 by uh board member cruz gonzalez seconded by board member adianas um any additional discussion okay then we'll move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent which brings us to 13.2 approval of consultant agreement between azusa unified school district and joe dixon of dixon smart schoolhouse is there a motion on the floor to move 13.2 uh so motion to

131approve 13.2 is there a second second second by board member po so uh moved moved by board member audience second by board member beau uh any discussion hearing none we'll move to a vote no no yes i was just was taking a breath um um so how did we select nixon smart school house [Music] so we reached out um to four other school districts as well as the cash who actually handles all the school facilities infrastructure to get recommendations and this was based off cost and highly recommendation did you so did you look at other consultants as well or this is just the only one that you considered no we looked at the ones that are being used by local school districts as well as the ones that are listed by that and what was

132the process to determine that this was ended up being the one that you're recommending um based on the work that they've done at local schools um primarily the one that we saw at mountain view as well as the cost of this currently hourly rate any other questions or discussion and we'll move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent moving on then to 14.0 curriculum and instruction and specifically 14.1 presentation of the management information systems mis technology update welcome manual please bear with me while you set up get this [Music] good evening uh please feel free to stop me at any time and ask me any questions do you have any um the purpose of this presentation is to provide a road map of improvements to reach our goals uh what

133are our goals uh to our goals are to make learning equitable uh make it student-centered and create a 21st century classroom environment to promote our district's mission statement where are we today currently we have a mix of modernized and non-modernized campuses upgrades and improvements are required at all sites and most of these are behind the scene meaning you don't see them so as an example that access point that's up here that we're all connected to wirelessly has a cable that runs to a communications room that is connected to network equipment that then runs to another communication room that is connected to more network equipment that then goes out to the internet and provides you that internet access right let's just do what we're doing now so i'm going to provide a timeline of of the

134technology through phases right so there's six phases some of these projects are belonging to these phases are projects that can be run concurrently such as cloud-based services content management and malware protection and some of these are dependent on other projects to be completed such as the phone system now the phone system is a major project that will require infrastructure to be upgraded we'll start with phase one infrastructure which is a critical piece uh really the foundation of the following phases then we have phase two which is system which are programs used in daily operation phase three is cyber security which are programs and services that work to secure our environment and mitigate risk phase four are devices in hardware which are end user devices sorry anything my glasses update camera that would be used uh

135for instruction phase five is support and communication which are software and services to decrease respond time for support improve communication and end user knowledge to minimize need for support and then you have phasic which is really what i think most people want to know about is the classroom that's the final phase that will benefit from services above from the services above to provide an equitable environment for students improve so the first thing we're going to have to do is upgrade our infrastructure the goal is to increase the one gigabit and 10 gigabit connections that we currently have to 10 gigabit on the lan site we hope to accomplish this by the 2023 calendar year currently our wan is set to 10 gigabit now what our wan environment is it's the connection between school sites in

136the district okay what we're hoping to do is on the 2023 school year is upgraded to which will allow for more bandwidth to do this we need to um do a physical network right we need to upgrade our equipment one of the things that we've done recently is upgraded our firewall i don't know if you noticed that previously our internet was so much sluggish our firewall just can't handle that load so what we did is we purchased a firewall that accommodated the need of the district but also supports a 20 gig throughput meaning that when 40 gig i'm sorry meaning that when we upgraded to 20 the firewall will continue to operate perfectly fine you can ask do you want us to interrupt with questions or at the end no go ahead okay so with

137the with with upgrading to 20 to 20 gigabytes right um so what's your anticipation for how long that will that move will last and i only asked because i mean it was very recent that we came we got from one from one gig to 10 gigabytes right and so just i mean understanding that technology is going to continue evolving right um um moving to 20 gigabytes how long do you think that like that investment will last before we're going to have to then probably circle back and then probably up the speed again so i will be talking about uh timelines in in in later flights but regarding this particular project of went from 10 to 20 right um we currently renewed our when our wind project right which meaning that we've had 10 gig the

138last five years right uh and so up for renewal what we did is we continued with the 10 gig but we allowed the option to increase 20 and the reason we did that is because uh as more devices get included into the district and they need increases that 20 gig pipe will not be that thinking pipe will not be sufficient right and so there's things that we want to do to make this future proof and providing that 20 gig connection will allow us to continue off i guess my question is so how future proof is that like so you think that's gonna last us another five years ten years i know it's estimates and then you know but that's what i'm asking okay so so the best way to answer it again as we get

139to more explanation of the infrastructure uh what will the equipment that we're purchasing um is currently will be allocated to run support 20 gig but it can support 40 to 100 gigs yeah yeah yeah so we can we can grow it out okay this is this is really just that physical pathway from sites to school districts where the need isn't there to increase it to 200 gigs right now but you're investing in hardware that's that that can that can be expanded correct [Music] uh so the firewall is one example um core switching is what we were talking about right now uh which is again a work in process and the four switches are uh the aggregation points of all sites so what that means is that again that access point is going into a communications

140room and that communication room is going to our core um all all of these communication was going to work for at a school site you're doing the same thing you have uh uh you have switches that are at the edge that support the classroom that goes to the core and then the court comes back to our court and so we have the equipment in place or we're looking at purchasing the equipment to again support that increased bandwidth uh the next thing we want to do is actually upgrade the physical cabling so speaking to see what you were talking about um right now some of our idfs are running copper which only provide one gigabit so while our wan is 10 gigabit by the time it gets to the school site and potentially into a cabinet

141that supports the classroom it's it's that it's downgrading to one gigabit uh so obviously we need to make sure that we upgrade that gamble also the current fiber that we have in the classrooms modernized and non-modernized only supports 10 gigabit throughput right and so the idea would be our proposed idea would be to upgrade the fiber uh to support speeds up to 100 gigabit which again which future proves us for the future the next thing would be the copper to the classroom manual with that and to remember cruise control at this point so with this with the cabling as we're as we are replacing internal cabling as you pointed out uh the cabling here to this this uh uh access point what is the bandwidth of the cable that we're replacing it to so so

142on the fiber side we're going to jump from something that supports 10 gigabit to a fiber that will support 100 that's internal cabling yeah fiber really fiber really only goes from the idea of cabinets to our core right it distributes it then to the classroom on the classroom side that's a great segue the copper to the classroom currently we're writing cat5 which is old right and therefore prone to packet loss and not shielded right and so one of the things we're going to want to do is upgrade that cable into cat7 which is shielded and provide 10 gigabit speeds to the classroom that means to the part where you plug in the computer right which is amazingly fast um currently devices really don't support it and devices don't support it but that will eventually come

143about and access points will at some point support it which will we which most devices are connecting wireless okay which leads us to wireless our goal is to provide a more robust wireless experience we want to move to the wi-fi 16 wi-fi 6 standard that's a new wireless spectrum that was introduced a couple years ago that allows more channels of communication and less interference among devices we also want to expand those access points to x com to come to common and external areas currently we really only have access points in classrooms and in some offices uh and so through modernization we're actually putting a cabling to the outside of our buildings that will allow us to put radios out there to allow uh events to have happen where people will be able to use the

144blacktop area students will be able to congregate and launch areas that are open and have internet access provided by the district any questions okay the next one we want to talk about is yes um do you have a price tag for this do we have a price tag for that um so currently the hardware so we we have budgetary numbers um we don't have an exact price tag because what we're looking to do is currently upgrade systems uh uh in phase and so we have projects that are leading that infrastructure to get upgraded we do have a current price tag for us to upgrade um the core switch in the core switching and the top of rack switches at every site and that's if i can give the total is about 2.3 million that does

145not include the remaining the remainder of the idf cabinet but it will provide us that 20 gig uh transport to from the core to the classroom or sorry to the idf it is part of that expenditure current year or is is it all for next this current year we're hoping to purchase the equipment currently sooner than later because of the time delays of shipping that product and so we need to make sure that we order it in time uh so that we're able to submit that deadline of 2023 upgrading to 2018. thank you yeah uh going on to the systems um the i'm going to provide a workflow to better understand how systems should be working um at the moment um there is no automation um there's no automation and account provisioning can take a

146little a little bit longer uh assigning content to users can take a it could take a day or two and so the things fall through the cracks unfortunately because of that lack of automation but in an ideal environment systems would work like uh the sis aries or hrs or human resource systems are what drive all of these chains so you have a student that gets enrolled in one of our campuses right or a new staff member that is entered and hired for a position uh through an automated process through a nightly sync or daily sync the system will detect the user pull it from either the sis or the hrs system and then provision their account as needed based on a rule right students will not have the same permissions as teachers uh and staff

147members will not have the same permission to say the administrator right okay from that automation the next step would be to provide the digital curriculum these are textbooks right uh and it should be site-based meaning that a student in high school will not be getting the same content as an elementary student right and it's programming that same student in the high school um would not be getting a math uh a spanish content if they were learning french right and so those things would be something that's automated through the provision next you'd go into your cloud service cloud services are uh are things like google classroom right uh things that we use in the cloud to provide us access to other things our last link or one roster uh which will provide us access to our

148single sign-on or other applications is cloud service right and what that means is when you provide or provision the account for that student they'll have access to google classroom but they'll have access to join the google classroom whereas a teacher or staff member will have the option to create a google classroom and add that student onto them to that class then lastly you go on to your mdm a new student provision they need a chromebook sign or staff members provision they need a a laptop or a device assigned to them the mdm solution will allow us to manage it remotely uh push out applications uh or remove applications as needed and more importantly if the student and or employee was to leave the district we'd be able to uh provide device accountability which will allow

149us to reclaim that loss or stolen device if it wasn't turned in any questions um yeah um are you know this is the end of this slide yes it is so in terms of um these systems um are you will you just be looking to automate them or are you gonna be also just evaluating whether or not we can keep the certain certain systems like for example the student information system right are you going to we're just going with what we have are you going to evaluate um what what other what you know what's the best tool for us to be using no so yeah so a great question so our aries and our hrs systems are our systems that we currently are not looking to replace at all right currently we are using a

150uh uh hello id uh to provide and provision accounts um but it's not a very it's a it's somewhat of a plot system that it does not pull data as well as it would like we would like it to and the if the rule-based provisioning doesn't always work right and so we are moving to a system called one roster uh well which will do essentially the same thing but we'll tie into the hrs system and the sis system and allow us to do that role-based provisioning in a much better fashion so we do have a solution in place to do that um but we have to create those workflows uh and those rule based uh those accesses that we haven't quite done yet that we have to standardize and okay staff member gets access to

151uh to digital curriculum or a teacher does but a staff member may not a blackboard will be given to an administrator but not necessarily a staff member things like that so will there be a time at at any time where you will evaluate the system that we have and and and see whether or not they're there yeah we have we go i mean so so as the sis and hr system is that or like you just mentioned blackboard right like we've um you know there's a student i mean systems we've been using now for many years maybe decades right and obviously technology changes and so just you know just making sure that we're going through a cycle where we're evaluating on a regular basis whether or not this is the best tool for us to

152be using yeah i will be i will be speaking about uh supporting communications and so like blackboard will be part of that that feature but yeah we really are assessing just about every solution that we have to find a possible alternative if one is required okay but for right now sis and hrs we're we're good with those yeah air is our is our is our assistant choice in hrs unfortunately i don't want to stand for benefit because we're going through liko is what we have to use okay uh next is related to cyber security uh so i have five categories of focus for cyber security the first one being disaster recovery uh currently we are backing up our data uh and it is being saved off campus uh through a service uh but it's limited

153and and restore restoration is complicated uh so the goal for us would be to be either purchase equipment in-house or off-campus or an online service called disaster recovery as a service that would allow us to off-site this data and more importantly bring up critical services if our data center was to go down right and and so what that does is it helps us in case of a catastrophic event at the at the moment if there was a catastrophic event in our data center it would take off a backup and so we wouldn't have equipment to operate if the district goes down uh the rest of the sites right so the solution would be something in place that would allow us to continue to operate whether the district was up and running or the next thing

154would be url filtering and url filtering is something that we recently deployed we had it in the past but now with our new firewall we are able to apply it through policy based access so a student at a high school level would have different access than a student elementary school right a staff member or a teacher would have different permissions as those students and administrators would have different permissions as them the other thing that a url filtering allows us to do or firewall will allow us to do is decrypt data ssl traffic so secure socket layer is a is a a standard that will encrypt data so that as it passes through the network or through servers you are unable to see it but as a district because we manage the data we will be

155able to decrypt the data uh figure out what is actually being asked of the request and uh and then say whether we want to allow it or not and this is big for google search because google and just about everything else encrypts their data um and so you want to make sure that you're able to see that search that student is looking for in case it's something malicious or with bad intent the next thing would be uh just to clarify so currently right now we do not have a url filtering where there are layers of permissions given to different we do we do have that yes we do our new firewall yeah it's policy so yes we one of the first things we did when we came in when i came in was replace our

156firewall which allowed us to do that url filter right yeah so that is something that we currently are doing um next thing is really the next uh category is content management and this really complements the url filtering because we are able to see the data and filter the content that is inside our network but when the device goes home what what are we what are we filtering what can we filter what are we seeing that our students are doing or or or can we limit access to certain sites from home at the moment we can't and what we're looking for is a solution that it's an added layer of filtering uh it will it's device centered meaning that now the device is going home with the student and because it it doesn't matter whether you're

157at home uh at a neighbors or here it will it will monitor the content and prevent it it's another layer of filtering right any questions uh the next category would be male or protection uh this reduces the risk of device infection right exploits unfortunately are discovered every day but we don't have the manpower or the capacity to patch our systems to make to meet those those exploits to patch those exploits uh so an exploited system can be used uh to provide access to uh to encrypt data uh and then require us to pay a ransom to get our data back right and so a student device or a teacher devices goes home uh because there's no filtering it clicks on something they get a hacker or something that somebody the device gets infected it gets

158brought back into this district uh and because of it uh they're able to then you know be able to get to our data center encrypt the data and then send us a ransom note saying hey you pay us x number of dollars or you're unable to get your data back that has happened to neighboring school districts obviously having malware protection that is enforced and works well will prevent that from happening because it's loss of revenue and loss of instruction one school district that is locally i think went down for an entire month where they were not able to use the internet and the devices had to be collected and wiped and the loss of revenue to the district was in the seven figures it was a lot of money it's something that you have to

159be aware of uh the next um the final piece of the category of cyber security is network threat protected right and so again this works along with everything else that we're implementing the difference is it's at the it's at the network level that network equipment that we're purchasing has the ability to monitor that traffic and if it sees that device that comes into the network and sees that traffic and and notices something's funny going on it will it will it will stop that port or essentially prevent that student from being able to use the network and again again mitigates the risk of us being infected and potentially put in a situation where we have to pay around any questions we want to talk about computers uh laptops and tablets right uh currently there is no

160standardization across the district uh but standard standardization across the district will decrease our time to deploy we have a finite number of staff members right they're great people um but unfortunately one device uh can be imaged in just about the same amount of time as 10 devices or 20 and so having non-standardization means that they have to spend a day to compare this device a day to prepare that type of device and a data preferred that type of device right which will lead to delay uh standardizing the equipment means you can make what we call an image or a clone of that device and it makes it easy for us to implement and deploy multiple devices at a time right um that re also reduces the training needed to support the device a new device

161means the end user needs to be trained how to use it right and so if you have given a different device every single time that means more training is required and will potentially increase the time before the user feels comfortable using that device uh we also want to talk about phones uh now this is a big source spot i think for the district because our system is somewhat paid and it has issues with sometimes the phone lines going down right uh and unfortunately that's uh that's something that we need to focus on uh and what we need to do would be to upgrade our our traditional phone lines which are standard upper lines phone lines uh to what we call sip so an assess session initiative profile right that's an iep based solution that's a

162network-based solution and what that does is allows us to buy those ip based phones which adds a lot of um cost savings and improved performance right uh we no longer have to run phone lines for that phone because that phone could be plugged into the same jack that any computer is plugged into and so if teacher wants to move from there to there we don't have to run a line from one point to the other we simply plug it into a data drop and it hasn't connect connectivity other features that these new phone systems can include are caller id which we should have voice mail to email meaning that if somebody leaves a message you're notified on your phone on your email via email so you don't actually have to sign into that phone to

163get your message you'll have an email saying it was sent by this number and you're able to listen to your message through email right and more importantly extension mobility now extension mobility what that is is a feature that provides uh the user to have an id kind of like an email account meaning that with the right system i could log into that phone uh and and somebody dials my extension it will ring but if i go to another campus and i log into that phone if somebody calls my extension it'll ring over there right that kind of functionality is common and is provided with upgraded phone systems that we hope to get at some point moving on to specialized any questions i'm sorry any questions i just want to make a comment just you know

164kind of like what you said uh the phones whenever it rains you can't access certain fools right and so my question is when for the phone at the school when is this all going to transfer over so the first phase one or step one in that solution would be transition our old phone lines into uh zip lines uh which we are already currently talking to vendors regarding networks so we're looking at we're looking at multiple vendors to find the right pricing for that conversion what i can tell you is it'll be a lot less money than what we're paying now for traditional for phone lines uh but that's a phased approach we also need the network equipment to allow us to do that so transitioning over isn't enough but you have to transition over but

165you also need to have that network equipment that'll provide power to that phone and the bandwidth capacity to to make it work right so so there are delays and unfortunately we would love to be able to jump into everything right away but these are projects that will take time you have to create a dialing plan because now you'll have a extension for the phone but also extension to the for the person when they move around for extension mobility so there's a lot of work that will have to be planned out before we can implement so um when do you think you could have a timeline a time frame on those phases so we're looking to transition to sip uh early next year after that we can look at phone systems i just wouldn't feel where

166we could get phone systems because we're also waiting on the infrastructure and the equipment to show up and that is infrastructure is an 18 to 24 month project just because of getting the hardware installing the hardware configuring it and we talked about network equipments but i did not bring up the idf cabinet that have to be replaced as well to fit that newer equipment because it tends to be larger they are they need bigger power supplies so they tend to be a little bit bigger and so most of our idf cabinets where the equipment resides or fits into doesn't have the capacity it doesn't have the space isn't it like up in a cafeteria somewhere they're kind of scattered all over the place but yeah they're they're either in the classroom usually in a cabinet

167you want to make sure it's climate controlled on so yeah they're they're they're out they're different locations when you say early next year you mean early next school year or early next calendar year calendar year yeah they were thinking like january early early of 2023 yes and that's really dependent also um i you know i the question of how to pay for it has really come up so i was expecting to get that uh and so if we have to go to an rfp right or we have to wait for e-rate um that obviously will delay a lot of things right and so one of the one of the action items that you're going to be bid that you're going to be voting on is to add a contract that will allow us to get

168uh some of the solutions in place sooner uh so that we don't have to go to an rfe allow us to to go through standard contracts and it really exited i'm sorry okay so are we not opening up for bids you're saying we're not doing an rfp so so the solutions yeah so traditionally we can go to an rfp to request for a solution to be provided but but for sip conversion right what we're gonna want is really we have three bids that we're gonna get we're gonna get the best of the three bids and convert that over on the hardware there are contracts in place that have been have been used by other school districts uh that we use which is very common for us to procure hardware and and and and services and

169so i'll give an example the chromebooks right they're not expensive but by the amount of chromebooks that we purchase we need to purchase them off a contract if we if not we would have to go to rfp to have providers provide us a bid for that amount and so this is a way for us to be able to procure those services and devices without having to go to our and the common term there that typically we use is a piggyback so somebody else another district another entity has already done all the work they've done through they've gone through an rfp they've gone through all this process and they have found like the the really good deal and then we just get to piggyback on that and take advantage of the fact that they've already done

170all that work and just go straight to the to the to the purchase okay so moving on to specialized program mr hagee's here so i talked about specialized programs uh so cte courses stem courses right will usually require devices that are a little bit more expensive than your standard chromebook uh those aren't standardized which means they take a little longer to deploy uh they're harder to support because of renewal or refresh rates um but typically a class set is not enough right and so when we went to distance learning mr hague might have had 40 devices that he was able to use but he may have 100 200 students how do you give these devices to these students right um and so there are solutions in place that will allow us to do that um

171and also repair it reduce the cost of repair and management because as the devices go home theater cracks the screen a student breaks a keyboard student just damages the device overall the request to replace is much higher than a standard chromebook right and so it ends up costing the district more money so there's solutions in place such as vdi which is a virtual district infrastructure and what that does is it centralizes hardware either at our data center or through a cloud service uh and that provides access to these applications virtually with with any stable internet connection and they're accessible from any device whether it be a phone a tablet an ipad a chromebook a pc or a mac or whatever to be able to do these higher end applications uh without having to provide the

172student with a higher end device next we have sustainability right we have to forecast uh we have to create a plan that will meet that device the device refresh cycle of typically four to five years a good example would be our google chromebook uh google sets the end of lifecycle for those devices not set by the manufacturer and it's not set by the school district now the end-of-life devices will get no will no longer get uh security updates or patches which makes them vulnerable but more importantly and that does not allow the task or the secure browser to be updated which makes them ineligible for testing right and so we want to make sure we plan that out uh because it allows us to plan ahead for big purchases as an example again this year

173we're going to be losing about 5 000 chromebook devices um at the end of june per google not something the district wants is something that again it's going to go end of life um currently there's no impact because somebody planned ahead and purchased devices to allow us to to continue to operate right and so right now there's the device at home the device in the classroom uh so we are okay with these devices because a lot of these devices are at home and they they don't really impact us because they're not used right uh in two years however um we are set to lose more devices approximately 2 000 devices uh and so we are making arrangements again with vendors to find the latest and greatest device that we're going to be using to implement

174and then making plans to be able to procure the devices in two years why can't we buy them now with the money we have because that just eats up two years of google google lifespan right which means that they'll work we'll buy them now but they're only going to be good for three years in two years right so it's not something you typically want to do um this also requires for software right a lot of it requires licensing that renews every three years or four years and we have to uh we have to plan it out accordingly to make sure we make it part of an operating expense as opposed to a capital expense uh it's great that we have money now we're able to pay for things but we have to plan it out

175so that it becomes part of our operational budget so as the year progresses or new year comes in we have the monies to refresh right so to clarify then um that means it's a it's a five-year life cycle for for chromebooks four to five yeah it depends on it depends on when you buy them uh google does have a web page that will show you the devices uh chromebooks and their life and so uh this is what we used to determine that these devices were going to go end of life i'm crazy if i feel like i've seen 10 years as a as a life cycle on a google chromebook i i would love to see that device very happy you let me know which one again this is not something that we typically yeah

176and then what do we do with so if we have 5000 devices what is it that we're going to be doing with those 5000 devices that will be retired that's a great question so there's a couple of things that we can do right but one thing that we can do is we can reclaim those devices and there are companies that will take those devices from us and provide us the credit although not very much um and then we can use that credit to purchase more devices um the issue with that is again the cost that it takes to take those devices back uh uh get them all kind of uh through the reason through um asset management reclaim them take them off you know get them white and then present them back to the it

177just costs so much money that it's not necessarily the best idea the other thing is that we can plan out our assignments so that we can donate or give the device to the student after its lifespan and so one great example would be in a good plan ninth grade students will get a new device and when they graduate in in four years that device they can keep because at that point it would be somewhat at the end of its life and there's no reason for the district to continue manual just for clarity end of life doesn't mean that the device stops working right at all end of life just means that in our network it's not a safe it becomes a security vulnerability yesterday so it just means it no longer we will no longer

178receive vulnerable uh patches or upgrade and so there's a new feature that is being provided by google the chrome browser right the chrome os uh that device will not get it and so therefore it's something that we wouldn't be able to manage the device with um it also would now allow the security patches to get implemented which would prevent things like the secure browser which we use for the headphone testing to be installed yes i have a question with our device and um hardware do we recycle any of this uh no we so i think in the past we may have i i apologize i may not have an answer for you because um as i've only been here four months the devices that we currently have are the devices that we currently have that'll

179be end of life this june so i i would not i'm so there's this program that um other districts and high schools and there are some clubs here have have um that i know from back to asuza high and gladstone high school have done and that is the uh goodness what is it called thank you yes and then they they like have it right here on glass they have the sign and so forth and so this brings money to these clubs and so i'm thinking well if there's just some that are just laying around and people are bringing you bringing it back even if it's broken the screen's broken this company will take it back and we'll and i'm thinking getting money for it yeah that is i mean now of course that is an

180option again collecting the devices and then provide them to a company for credit um the solution that you're that you're suggesting would work because now we're it's dependent on the user just so we as a district would release these devices and then give the end user the option to bring them in to be wasted yeah we definitely i think that's a program so can we do something like that yeah i i don't i don't see an issue with potentially doing that we have some devices again that would be end of life and so that's the conversation i think we'd have to have and just for clarification there are our schools already do those right and it's it's a community um endeavor for people that want to get rid of their devices or their electronics in

181a proper manner and it becomes a fundraising uh event but like mr sanchez said there's lots of different ways that we can go with this in terms of our devices but we are liking uh or again we have to we have a little bit more work to do but it seems right that issuing a device to a student that they they then get to keep because again i want to reiterate that just because it's end of life doesn't mean it's not functioning they still can use it and still operate like it's all it's still good it's just in our environment it becomes a a liability and so that's why for us it's no longer a device that should be able to browse our network or operate and search on our network so i'm just gonna

182say this um there's a lot of computers which i know that this is why you're giving the presentation and so forth like you're getting but there's a lot of computers at a lot of the schools that are like dinosaurs right and i'm talking about those like the students can't take them home like they're like you know you can't even use them it's so hard to upload you know to even turn on i mean at gladstone high school i i know there was a lot of computers out there those are the computers that i'm asking that i would like to see you know go through a recycle phase um not the not the chromebooks that still have life you know that the students can use can take home they can use their own network you know

183i'm talking about those dinosaur ones that are been there for 20 something years and are just taking up room yeah i know we so we definitely could do something related to that the only concern would be licensing again uh we would have to wipe those devices so that before we hand them out to a student because of the licensing that might be on that hard drive related to software um can we do it yeah and also related to potentially operating system right where we would be giving them a legacy operating system that like for example windows 7 went end of support uh 2020 january 14 2020 uh and windows 10 will be end of support i believe in a complete year and so we have to plan ahead and so as long as we make

184them aware that we're getting a system that's with a legacy operating system that is not supported um i i'm sure we can find this okay support and communication uh so there's five steps related to support and communication the first step is related to incident reporting we do have something in place to allow us to do incident reporting but it needs to be the primary method of reporting the phone call the text the email the ask for support in passing uh our our work but they don't work as well as making a ticket right uh it's important to make that ticket because it'll allow us to document that request that documentation will eventually help out those future steps one of the things that it should do is integrate with resource management so that if mr ortega

185requested support for his device that resource management that ticket that he made would talk to the resource management so we knew which device he had and so we knew what kind of support he was going to need that was one less thing that he was going to have to provide it it also provides us insight on user issues meaning when you when you get uh when you're just getting a text or a call or email it doesn't really give you a full picture but if multiple user at a multiple at a campus are providing this a ticket with the same related issue then we know it's something that's more site-wide yeah bigger and we get to see that picture right and so that we can take better action because then we're just troubleshooting something that

186we think may be related to the device when it really isn't it's something related to something else like url filtering um it'll help us uh determine if there's an issue with the device right so a specific model device just tends to have problems with wireless a printer that has uh the same can the same issue where across the district is is having a street going through right and so that helps us address that issue of determining hey this device needs to get replaced we need to make sure we replace it with a different device not that device and we need to reach out to the vendor to see if there's a way for us to rectify that solution across the board right and those are the things that could happen with it or that will

187benefit from incident reporting so with that with that reporting um are you i mean are you thinking about scaling so that in case we face another something where we have to send kids home again that that the student and families will have access to that kind of reporting is just going to be staff level incident reporting so typically it's it's been related by staff so the way it normally is licensed it's by technician or or user that supports the the ticket incident it's not so much by whom's asking who's asking for it if we were going to uh allow students to create tickets um it would it would it would somehow it would it would be a little bit complicated because uh we the expectation of what the student would know or how they would

188fill out that ticket would be uh would potentially cause issues with trying to sort it to the right to the right user um and maybe making sure they had access right so i would say uh for the for the for the sake of making sure that we're able to tackle or get to a solution faster we would recommend that it be still on the teacher side uh because they would be make it easier for us to route based on location and so i'm not thinking about like the current system but i'm just thinking like though if something would happen in the future i mean hopefully never again right but but like i just remember like families had to call call a phone line and wait to get called back if they wanted help right and

189that to me was not i mean that was not a usable solution for most of our families so yeah that's that's what i'm thinking about when i say like are we thinking about is the system scalable if necessary so what we could do is there are again there's different incident sensors out there where we currently have this case um there are incident systems that will allow you to troubleshoot that will troubleshoot for you so uh students having issues with the wireless access point or internet connectivity the the reporting system is smart enough to go to that switch or that ap and restart it or check traffic and try to resolve the issue for you now when we talk about remote right having the student be at home it becomes more complicated because our systems wouldn't

190have that ability to see their home network um and so it would become a little bit more complicated so i mean i'm sure something we can look into i just don't know if it's feasible with the staffing that we have to open it up to all 7 300. and i'm not suggesting that i'm just saying like we should have this stuff in the back of our minds right because who knows what can happen in the future yeah no and i agree with you so that would take us into step number two which is remote assistance right we talked that was kind of it right a good remote assistance program will allow access to end user devices to be supported remotely so while the student may not make the ticket we should be able to access

191that device for the student remotely whether they be on campus or off uh and it it improves uh time to repair because the technician doesn't have to travel from site to site currently we have technicians stationed at a site per day and so if the request is needed at another campus they have to drop what they're doing grab grab a vehicle head over to the other campus and support it and then that travel time is loss of support right so remote assistance will allow us to fix those devices remotely from wherever they are that that reminds me when um when are we going to have a the technicians be at the school site are they already there yes they are yes they currently are right now what they what they based on the enrollment now

192our high schools have technicians about three times a week and then that same technician is at two other campuses one day a week uh a typical a typical deployment for one of our technicians is to do uh minimum one day a week per site that they're assigned and then have a floating date where they're able to support other campuses or the campus that needs more support and some of the larger campuses get a technician yeah but having this remote assistance will really help out because now they don't have to travel to that campus they can uh step three would be mass notification now mass notification uh is it should be event driven right so speaking about blackboard right but right now a blackboard message has to be generated and sent out as needed um um

193but it it can but it should be but and which works right uh but you also want it to be device and platform agnostic and adapt to emerging technology right and and blackboard currently works but we want to assess it to see if there's other solutions in place um um because going to the history back into the way things typically were uh way back when you'd get a mailer or a phone call right letting you know something was coming up or a mail saying register for new classes right um step two was posting it on the website right people pulled this or started getting websites and started they started posting comments or or content on the website so so if you went to the website you would see a notification there um then it moved

194on to email and text right and so uh you you you get an email because most people might have an email account or a text to your phone because you register your your your phone with the district and they're able to send you uh stuff uh now we have push notification meaning that you add an app to your phone and and and it will send you notifications uh uh as needed or as intended through that application right um and that's what the mass notification will provide step four uh is knowledge based now keeping in mind the previous three steps what you would what we would do then is is based on the data collected from instant reporting and remote assistance uh you can build a repository of frequently asked questions uh self-help tutorials and how

195to's which can be provided to the end user to allow them to see uh potential ways of repairing their device before submitting a ticket right that will induce it reduces the need to create the ticket and expedite a resolution because the end user can fix it before they have to make the ticket right um then lastly you have training right the last final step that we want our goal would be to provide our end users with these tools to keep them informed regarding technology and change it to our environment so this reduces the anxiety of learning new technology right putting new technology out there is great but if the end user doesn't really know how to use it they get that anxiety and they still refuse to use it uh they like their whiteboard they're

196used to that whiteboard right uh it provides a sense of empowerment that is user driven meaning that they have the option to look at that training video and learn about it and their time as often as they want and the purpose or the way we would implement this is with many videos like one to three minutes that's subject-based so that they have the ability to learn something as as they would like [Music] any questions okay and i think this is the slide everybody wants to get because this is the meat and potatoes that everybody gets to see when you walk into a classroom right uh so what's going to change in the classroom uh what we're hoping to do is uh introduce interactive panels um right now we have a lot of projector systems but

197interactive panels have a longer lifespan they don't have bulbs and there's no dimming meaning that in 10 years that screen is going to look pretty bright whereas a projector may lose its luster may not be as bright and replacing the bulb wouldn't be enough uh they al they also provide better picture quality meaning that projectors sometimes have you have to darken the room so you can see it clearly uh these devices as you can see right here with the lights on are pretty clear and and you can see them very very well right uh they also have the new panels will have integrated services like a web browser and other applications that will allow you to work with them without having to connect the device so you don't actually have to plug something in to

198use the whiteboard or to browse the web and present your content to your students because the panel itself will be able to do that next we talk about wireless streaming uh wireless streaming allows students and teachers to present from their desktop why have the students walk to the front of the classroom when they present from where they're sitting in their desk uh from their chromebook to that screen uh the new interactive panels will have this natively uh there it would support microsoft mirrorcast google chromecast and apple airplay uh which are the common ways of of streaming content to your screens uh and they can be added to existing projector systems as well right so it's not only to the new panel we can still add that to our panel the projectors that we currently have

199after that we would want to talk about collaboration tools um which will also be available in the new panels natively um they they will allow you to share multiple screens for a group presentation so rather than have the group walk up the front to give their presentation they could all sit from their up from their desk and present it but more importantly it allows the teacher to share their content from the class from their classroom to home and what that means is that the panel will have a code that code can be given to the student and so it's being presented in the class can also be presented at home next thing yes at the teacher that's teaching inside the classroom right what you're saying is that they can go ahead and project this to

200the kids um you know present this to the kids inside the classroom and also the student who is homesick can also get the same content and be in the classroom but just not busy that is that is and the second thing i i mean you're kind of describing mr hague's class that's why i looked i'm like that's your class because i've been there i've i've seen the things that your students do and i've always asked wow this is like amazing so when are we gonna get all this this right here yeah sure mr if you'd here come we use a software called splashtop which uh the district bought for us the thanks to frank chang because i was really disturbed the fact that we had students at home with chromebooks and i'm not a big

201fan of chromebooks but that's what we had and they could not get the lesson at home in other words we use the software so they can access from their chromebooks onto the computers in the classroom in other words they were still using the mac lab using splashtop five thousand dollars that's it okay i mean it's very nominal but it was a huge hit to this very day we still use splashtop so the question is do they get the same lesson if they're in front of the computer while they're sick yes they can because i stream my lessons uh from my classroom to anywhere on the planet okay so if they have splashtop they can go ahead and access that lesson anywhere simultaneously anywhere in the world and that's the technology only live what's that is

202it only live or do you record no i record it you record yourself i is both live and recorded you can go to classroom and what i normally do is after i i'm done talking i uploaded the classroom so they have no excuse so uh yeah that's what we do and it really helps me because in my class it's very much a hindrance for me to if a student is absent and believe me during the first few months of this year it was a there was a lot of action so i would just basically have them watch the videos that way i don't have to teach them again so when they return to class i tell them just sit there and watch the videos catch up when you can so it's just it's like it's

203if all the teachers do this it would be a big plus a huge plus so um i'm kind of i'm surprised i'm here for this thank you thank you he said you're surprised to be here you didn't get called to come speak to oh we we just deputized mr hague to come in here so these some of the solutions that i'm providing you right perfect use case right it's it's possible it can't be done right that's really what we're going for uh the goal for us would be to make it district-wide right and these types of solutions uh while mr hague is paying for software right we we don't necessarily have to pay that stuff for the panels themselves have that that solution embedded in free and so there are ways to making that kind

204of lesson happen uh and so again a great use case it's possible we know it can happen the goal for us would be to implement that this point ah okay any questions on that i think you didn't do paging or voice yes we're moving on to paging thank you thank you okay regarding paging okay uh paging is really just a speaker uh and an lcd clock that is uh that's going to replace our older legacy system our old clocks and our old speakers uh and the reason we want to do that is because again a lot of campuses are currently in need of upgrade but to re re-run those lines to get those speakers set up and re introduce system old legacy systems to make them work is really not something that i think the

205direction we'd like to go we want to be able to integrate with our security systems for emergency notifications meaning that if something was an alarm was a set or a code was entered on the phone system it would allow the students to be notified via the the clock or the paging system to say we're on lockdown earthquake please move move to your home room those kind of messages right uh and so that paging system would allow us to do that uh it also would be network based uh which would add the reliability and ease of management kind of like the phone system right we moved the phone from there to there on a new system we just plug it into another data drop if we wanted to do the same thing with paging it would

206be the same thing because it would just connect it to another right and so that it allows us to do that uh finally you have voice or voice amplification that allows teachers to communicate with the class using a wireless microphone and speaker and these speakers would be installed overhead uh to allow them to reach the back of the classroom right and so those are things that we would like to integrate into our classrooms to make sure that they're more uh tech ready student centered make it available for students to learn would that mean that um speakers would be also added at the back of the classroom yeah so so it's part of it's kind of already part of the modernization process that we're going to be working on uh and some campuses already have that

207voiceless voiceless system installed and so really what it is is just a some equipment that gets mounted and speakers kind of laid out through the classroom and it's really dependent on the size of the class and where you put them but the point would be is that instead of the teacher having a projector voice to reach the back of the class they can speak freely into that microphone and the speaker towards the back or wherever it is but allows so i just have a comment so i've loved everything you've said so far but i hate these pictures and i hate these pictures because this is not the paradigm right that we want to see in our classrooms right and so i just um you know where does the and we didn't talk about collaboration right

208but so i'm hoping like are you this is what you think i mean is this what our classrooms are going to look like with our new technology uh not so much these are unfortunately so we we don't currently have any interactive panels in our district uh we do have currently some campuses that are going to be purchasing some i'm talking about the straight lines of of seat for where you're you're imagining the teacher lecturing ticket no as places where we have different types of sitting and you know right that's that's that's the look that we go for this was just i think an example to show the interactive panels but not this not the seating correct i mean realistically uh the vision of the district would be for the everything i've said is the student

209doesn't have to get up or move around right but you can move the layout of the classroom uh the panel would be available for them to stream wirelessly collaboration would happen whether they're in campus or outside right they happen to be wanting to teach the instruction outside the teacher would still be able to present to them through wireless needs right i will picture-wise i will work thank you okay uh regarding uh looking ahead so we talked about the timeline related to these these uh projects right and so again the the big one is the infrastructure right it's gonna be 18 to 24 months uh really it's really related to um just the size of the district the modernization projects that are going on and then the time it takes to acquire those services and hardware

210and to plan it out to make it properly deployed um security is something that would take about 12 to 8 months but this is our ongoing project right so we talked about the firewall that's already taken care of um the email filtering is something that we're looking into to set up soon um content management we're currently testing solutions to find the right one for this district uh we are whiteboarding something called network network access control which limits access to certain users depending on your role and we are waiting on um uh the hardware for the network that protection to be implemented again those switches that we would then deploy would allow us to monitor traffic and prevent the bad actors from doing anything because we would stop them at the port then we go into

211standardization which would typically take eight to twelve months um so currently setting up the district standards is a conversation that we have to have with vendors not just for hardware for but for software and for licensing we have to create guidelines for device type deployments so that would require imaging asset management and device management right all of these things are projects that we have to plan out before we can deploy um you also would have uh we are in the discovery phase uh to find solutions for vdi so mr hague is providing a solution that will allow you to remote into the mac but that solution only allows one student to remote into the mac our solution will allow three to four hundred students to log into a solution to be able to do their

212homework right and so those that's the difference between something nothing wrong with that but something that we would we would implement this required um then you go into future ready assessments right one quick question about the third third step uh standardization so you say eight to twelve months but that will be eight to twelve months to standardize purchases from that point forward because we we still would not have the standardization or previous devices is that correct so uh so standardization is really what what we're really what i'm really talking about here is really just creating those standards and coming and having those agreements in place so that when our school sites look for a printer or a computer or that kind of device we have system into place systems in place that will allow them

213to get the right product that we can support uh better right now they're just there's a lot of different devices out there and it makes it harder for us to support and so really it's just having conversations with our vendors creating a possible storefront where secretaries or somebody can go in and look for a device and you have certain standards of a desktop laptop that kind of thing and so once that gets stood up uh we we should be able to standalize much uh okay which leads into our future ready assessment or a similar tool right um so the technology the landscape is constantly changing so what we were doing four years ago is not what we're going to be doing now right 10 gigabit wan connection being more inadequate now but now we got

214to jump it up 20. um so should we as a department move in a different direction um and so uh with tools we can provide tools uh that allow us to basically uh move in the direction as needed to continually assess the technology department that we have and make changes to provide student-centered personalized learning initiatives to make sure that our students are getting the best possible education and that is it thank you any questions [Music] um i just want to thank you for being so thorough and um for supporting our teachers and just this is this is long long coming this is like i know we're kind of behind and i'm so glad that you're here like in four months what you've done and you know this presentation so i i look forward to this

215uh implementation and i would love to sit down with you and have a more deeper conversation on you know on devices and stuff but um yeah thank you so much for you and your team you know all of you guys and and uh the department um thank you guys for all that you do thank you and thank you mr hay remember cruz gonzalez so i have a lot of questions and it's very late so i don't know if and they're not really like direct like connected i mean they're they're connected to the topic but i mean i can if we want to do this at a different meeting i can hold my question or i can start asking my question um how about we how about we um just for the sake of time because

216in 20 minutes we'll have to we'll have to vote to to extend our meeting um can can we can we bring uh manuel back for some additional questions at a future meeting can i just say some big picture pieces that i feel like are missing so one and you referenced it was around budgeting and dollars and putting putting estimates to these pieces um so not only just the hardware investments right there maybe one time but you talked about operationalizing our technology needs right and so having us understand what those what that looks like and whether it's not built into our budget now or whether it needs to be built in um that's number one number two you also sort of referenced it and gavriela talked about it too in terms of like the you know

217the site-based tech supports understanding if the staffing we have right now in terms of technology support is it sufficient right is it adequate um i will say is it too much is it is it too many but i don't think that's really that the fact right so but really understanding what is our true staffing needs and so how do so that we can identify like really where we need to get to and have a plan to do that i think those are the two biggest pieces really so really like budget and and staffing um and my other the other ones they cannot wait thank you any anything else to add for now and thank you manuel very very thorough um and so look forward to having you you back to uh answer answer some uh

218additional questions thank you thank you then that brings us to 14.2 which is approval of fast open contract utilization services for the 2021-2022 school year my motion to approve 14.2 moved by board member audianus second second by board member cruz gonzalez any additional discussion hearing none we will move to a vote it's frozen i'm out okay so we'll do it we'll do a vote we may need to relog in here board member bo yes remember cruising yes whenever i honest yes and i'm also yes so that is uh four yeses to one app i'm sorry can you please check that i'm online again uh does that mean hope are we all in okay thank you uh so moving on to 14.3 approval of the contract between azusa unified school district and assessment consult consultation and

219treatment question to approve 14.3 is there a second second moved by board member ariana second by board member cruz gonzalez is there any uh discussion hearing none we'll move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent moving on to item 14.4 approval of student attendance at the university of california san diego society of hispanic professional engineer event motion to approve 14.4 moved by board member adianas second second by a second by board member cruz gonzalez any discussion and we'll move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent moving on to 14.5 approval of consultant agreement between azusa unified school district and academic solutions group llc motion to approve 14.5 moved by board member audianus second second by board member beau any discussion then we'll move to a

220vote and the motion [Music] passes for yes to one absent and uh my colleagues feel free to jump right in there with these motions and seconds jump right in uh moving on to 15.0 human resources and specifically 15.1 approval of tentative agreement between zeus unified school district and azusa educators association sarah motion motion to approve 15.1 second moved by board member adianas and seconded by board member cruz gonzalez any discussion then we will move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent moving on to 15.2 approval of tentative agreement between azusa unified school district and california school employees association tear a motion ocean to approve 15.2 seconds moved by board member arianes and second by board member cruz gonzalez any discussion then we'll move to a vote and the motion passes

221four yes to one absent moving on to 15.3 approval of tentative agreement between azusa unified school district and azusa federation of adult educators is there a motion question to approve 15.4 seconds moved by board member adianas and second by board member cruz gonzalez any discussion then we will move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent moving on to 15.4 approval of compensation increase for management supervisory confidential and unrepresented employees is there a motion for this item some move uh some motion to approve by board member cruz gonzalez second second by board member adianas any discussion and we'll move to a vote wait and the motion passes 4 yes to 1 absent moving on to 16.0 policies and bylaws as we look at 16.1 through 16.6 for the first reading are

222there any uh questions or any of these policies or board policies or administrative regulations that any board member would like to discuss then hearing none for each of those info items will move to 17.0 which is adjournment um 17.1 is there a motion to adjourn move to adjourn one second five four number bow and second hit five board member adianas any discussion then we will move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent and on that uh note we are adjourned