Azusa Unified School District Board Meeting - November 9, 2021

001good evening everyone today is november 9th 2021 and it's seven o'clock and i would like to go ahead and call this meeting to order let's go ahead and get started with agenda item 1.2 flags blue so we can all edit stand up moving on to item 1.3 roll call we have board member cruz gonzales president board member rodriguez pena here board member bo here board member greer that is not on yet he sent a message that he is troubleshooting uh the internet and so he's hoping to be on soon okay awesome and i uh board memorianis is here now please get a motion to move 2.1 the approval of our agenda for today i make a motion to approve 2.1 by second we have a first fire board member rodriguez pena a second by board

002member beau we can go ahead and cast our vote i'm not logged in yet so we'll go ahead and we'll do a roll call we have board member cruz gonzalez since we have you online yes board member rodriguez pena yes board member bo yes and i myself yes we have four yeses and one absent at this time go ahead and move forward with our agenda for tonight and at this time since we're moving on to 3.1 public comment on a gender non-agenda items i would like to remind everyone so the translation services are available to the public and they're available through resume do we have anybody on line that would like to speak lika yes we have melissa wilson perkins with her hand raised hi um good evening board superintendent and cabinet i wanted to

003call in tonight to talk about tk8s in our district when the reorg reorganization committee voted by a narrow margin to include a tk and model 3 all model 3 variations proposed were required to select a location for a tka in our district um i i don't believe that the reorganization committee spent enough time on this issue and any nominations for a tk8 locations besides ellington that that we made were were not fully informed as necessary data points like the cost of updating campuses for adding um additional grade levels was not discussed as a parent member on the team i apologize for not asking more um site-specific information regarding this issue um i believe that more information about community desire for a tka in our changing district site engagement and potential costs still need to be

004taken into consideration to determine potential tk locations also please consider that if a tka in our district has value in giving parents choice then a wall-to-wall language school is actually doing the exact opposite it forces parents with their children enrolled in our dual immersion program to choose the tk8 or leave the program and doesn't allow non-di parents to opt in to this tk8 school because their students would be years behind the target language lastly as we can see from some of the hypothetical model 3s presented by the superintendent's team two tk8s in our district which drain our middle school population two tkas starts our district's middle school campus well below um our district's desired capacity goals uh that's it thank you very much for your time thank you miss wilson perkins do we have anybody

005else online that would like to speak we have no other hands raised at this time thank you since there is no more public comment we'll go ahead and move on to the general function of this meeting which is item 4.1 full reorganization go ahead and hand it over to kevin thank you board president i just want to walk i want to walk uh through uh some of the attachments um that are in today's board agenda um and explain uh what they are and why they are uh so for the first attachment is the attachment uh that you had uh at last week's um school reorganization meeting uh there is a uh a small change in the uh pyp myp area uh just to add for transparency and clarification uh we did put there uh that

006um let me see where we put that out um no let me we'll we'll look for that in a quick second um to see where where that landed uh but we were gonna put there that um the cost for an ib coordinator in the myp pyp can be taken over uh duties from possibly existing staff we also put the 10-year capacity enrollment that was a request we did change it the formatting around a little bit just so it's a little bit larger but that does cover obviously more pages again we've seen this before this is just a different format to to allow for a larger font there was also a request to have a map of our schools that denote the enrollment and the capacity or current enrollment capacity of schools and so here you

007see uh a map with the school sites uh red line to the school site e is for enrollment and c is for uh capacity so just a different way of looking at it this is on a map versus on a in a table a question in regards yes ma'am before before we want do we do we have this for our our viewers to also look at it's attached to the board agenda item um we can put it up if you prefer just just so when we talk about it they can they can see what we're talking about sure um do you want to uh put it up hope uh there was a question about the map yeah the question is regarding the enrollment does um that include if it's gonna we're gonna remove the sixth

008graders does this enrollment include the sixth graders or not that's enrollment so this enrollment uh yolanda includes this is current year's projected enrollment so this is not based on the school reorganization or the plan this is the actual projected enrollment for new year so to include the grades that are at the schools currently right now so we have the tk6 um ellington the tk8 the high schools and then when the middle schools are seven and eight okay but i thought that we we wanted to see what um what would it look like if there's not six figures you know you know the um tinder to fifth grade right you know if what would this boost look like then and i apologize i misunderstood enrollment now okay i misunderstood the request i can get that for

009you i just clarify make sure i understand so we're going to do the same thing but you would like to see this with pk5 and then six through eight at the middle school and am i determining i'm utilizing the schools that's on here and then do i leave the schools that are scheduled to close blame yes okay i'm going to the share so i can put that i can put that up if that worked let me start with me a second uh lika do you know if that's a setting it's not letting not allowing me to share oh there you go okay uh the next um attachment uh this was a couple of uh requests in this attachment uh so we had a request to see what it would look like if um arlington tk8

010were to remain open and so on this first one here this is adding uh arlington tk8 as the one tk8 so you will notice that valley dale is no longer a tka as a tk5 the second page if we insert ellington tk8 here ellington is on the southern tip of the district and so we kept valleydale as a tk5 instead of having two neighboring dis schools as a tka and we made hodge the tk8 again that is not a for no other reason that it was the more the most northern school that's that's the only criteria uh there so what is the difference between um hodge and dalton of the distance um not not major but if you look at the at the map here uh hodge is the most northern followed by uh longfellow

011and and dalton so i don't think it's much norther yeah but just just a little bit um the third the third graphic here was the request to see what it would look like if the high schools were flipped so in other words gladstone high school became the one high school and azusa high school became the one 6'8 and so this one is one tk8 with glaston high school being the high school and then the last one is 2 tk8 with gladstone high school being the high school uh again these are just trying to capture some of the thoughts um in no way shape or form is this a um you know what what we are suggesting to do these are just trying to capture the thoughts and the requests just to give different views as

012the conversation begins those were the attachments so i turn it but present i turn it back to the board of education do any of you guys have any questions the conversation i i do yeah i just want to know um so i wanted to know that are we going to be talking about the schools and what order are we talking about the schools the programs the budget i think that you know speaking about the schools is more important because we need to set our foundation to know what are we going to put in this tool you build a house you build a foundation then you work up um i i just think it's important that we just need to you know rip the advantage and let's just do it we just have to decide because

013we only have two more meetings to go and we're supposed to decide on what is the vote about the schools or the programs or you know so if it's about the schools we only have two more meetings special meetings to decide that and then we can go forward i just think that we just keep going in circles just like we're talking about this okay fine we talked about this and then what so i just think that we need to strategize in phases step one two three and then know where we're going from there remember thank you board member regispena i um i share your sentiment around finding us landing starting with a starting point um because we've got to start somewhere however um i'd like to begin our conversation with program so that we can

014and better understand the costs of our current programs the cost of any future programs that we've discussed or any other programs we might want to implement and then really i have a couple of questions around the demand for programs enrollment at our current programs and what our stakeholders what our parents are doing community have said about what they want to see so that maybe we can start with who's in our program now and what have their what has our parent and community said about what they want to see to get a sense of how many seats we need to make available for any particular program no i i understand that but i still say you know you you just hypothetically you know you're you're gonna be talking about 10 programs 15 programs i don't know

015and then maybe we'll end up with five schools so we're gonna waste most of the time speaking about programs and we don't even know what we're gonna put in these schools you know i understand what you're saying but i still feel that we need to know where we're going to put these folks so i have a question maybe you can kind of kick off some of this um mr ortega can you tell us how many students we currently have in dual immersion we talked about dual immersion as a program that's growing a program that we'd like to expand but how many students are currently enrolled and is it accurate that our oldest students are in fourth grade or older students are in fifth grade um so off the top of our heads i'm not sure

016that we have the number uh of enrolled students in dual immersion i'm gonna look to dana to steve clarifying questions clarify board member um did you mean dual immersion at hodge or bo at both schools in um in the whole program uh my my first question is district y total how many students how many elementary students we have in dual immersion okay so i think dana got that number for us yep um i just referencing the presentation that we did a few weeks ago we have 439 students in pk through fifth grade and if nothing changed where would the fifth graders matriculate to continue in dual immersion for middle school if nothing changed so if nothing changed they would remain where they're at right now for sixth grade and then after sixth grade uh the

017original intent was that they would uh matriculate to slauson and there they actually would take spanish for zero period so we actually would look to build out a dual immersion middle school program that would potentially have them taking two other six periods in spanish one of those courses would be spanish language arts and then another course would be a content area for example social studies or science would that follow the 60 40 model for middle school and that would be starting in seventh grade yes it would so back about four years ago i know that you guys had a zero period for these individuals and they actually did take um spanish uh language arts and social sciences the reason i know is my daughter was in it okay so um she took it her sixth

018seventh and sixth graders were still in middle school it was sixth seventh and eighth and uh now she's at the high school and is taking this spanish uh for the last three years and we'll take our final year to get that i think it's really important to also let the parents know when they're coming into dual immersion that you know we have the um seal of biliteracy that these students can actually look forward to right and being able to um kind of pick it back off a board member beau being able to lay it out but i think we you know now coming back to what uh board member rodriguez daniel was saying i think regardless of what school it is at the programs are sustainable and they will be sustainable regardless of what programs

019we decide to keep programs we decide to bring i think it's really more more important as well i would have to agree with board member rodriguez pena we have to be able to we've decided already model three but the community already knows it's model three it's one high school i mean that's you know we're trying to be as transparent as as possible but but i feel like we're kind of dancing around fistful yes no not that school or maybe that's cool you know and and in reality one of the things that we we are voting on i mean this time around i think we learned from the last time right from the last two schools that that that we closed which was gladstone street school and mountain view was that we didn't talk about programs

020we didn't talk about you know these things that we're talking you know in very in detail and so i'm grateful to have this conversation um you know to be able to but i think it is important that we decide what school right that we have that hard conversation you know looking at the school um capacity to what makes sense one in the out you know one in the north one in the south on the sides i mean one of the things that um i mean i don't have it in front of me that i had um was uh i'm the one that brought up the the two tk8s and um you know let let me ask will that have an impact in our one mega middle school if we have the two eight see okay

021yeah so maybe that's not a good idea right okay so i don't know what do my colleagues think we can start there right so so you're saying that the if you do um six seven and eight it it would have an impact on the elementary schools is that what you're saying oh no i'm saying that if we had um two tk through eight oh right um the impact of the impact and eighth graders yeah so that would have an impact and so you know maybe that's one thing we can decide tonight is we do right it we're looking at because there's a lot of information in front of us a lot and i can't i i can i can relate to what you both are saying right like there's just so much information that we

022need to get through that we need to decide that we need to dialogue and we need to have these hard conversations and be able to um dialogue on on these topics and be able to rip off the band-aid and let's talk about schools let's talk about right because the programs they're going to be sustainable right we're going to try to dana looking at you right programs we're going to make sure we bring right if we bring um we're looking at the uh what is that program um the um what's the ym ymp the ib program for battle years and primaries right you know if we're looking to explore we've never had it right um i mean that that's it but if we can talk about the tk through eights right now um board membership uh

023generally cruz gonzalez did he have anything to say i haven't seen your hand raised just want to double check well i i mean i think i think i would ask sabrina i think she you were asking questions for a particular reason i didn't really hear why you were asking about the dual immersion enrollment sure i want to get a sense of the pipeline right and understand that um you know i i'm of the philosophy that we can't offer every choice and do it all well so by narrowing down our choices and i've been calling them bounded choices let's say we offer five things and we do that and we realign our resources do each of those five things really well if arts no let's say right start you'll want to start ripping off the band-aid

024if it's art ib stem and dual immersion right that's poor thing um where are kids now in the district what's the pipeline the what's the pipeline for ib primary years program at an elementary a middle years program at the the super middle school and then continuing on with ib track at our high school similarly for dual immersion where are kids now right so i heard you say mr ortega 439 students tk5 and then at this point we've identified what the middle school program would look like right so and board uh president you talked about you referenced the seal of by literacy right so if that's the goal if the goal is to provide an articulated pathway for our students to be able to earn the seal of by literacy how do we get there right

025so what do we need to change or ensure we have for middle school so those families that make the commitment early to sign up for dual immersion in tk or kindergarten they go to a school they experience the elementary program what are we setting up for middle school and then how will that carry on through high school and so on this um model three with one tk ellington this first page where it says gladstone if um the middle schools are located at gladstone high school 638 di and nyp um dr mitchell can you talk to me about how we can offer dual immersion and myp on one campus i don't have specific information on that i can get that for you i don't see why that's something we could not offer i'm i you can

026do classes in um in you know a a primary language right you can do the course work for um for this uh you know in in spanish um the dual or the myp program does have a language component um so i mean we could definitely look at exploring i haven't seen that i don't know if you have seen that mr ortega no but like you're saying uh the dual immersion students if they opted to remain in the program having experience we do have um students who do fall out at that point in time because other interests um get born right and it peaks they want to try something different and so just like every other in the master schedule there would be a again as an example a science course and that science course would

027just happen to be taught in uh in spanish and then their elective would be sla or a spanish language arts course as an example and i don't think that takes away or strips away from the uh nyp philosophy um that the school would live and breathe and whether you're in the dual immersion classes or not thank you i think because i i was excited to see the double aspect on this with the six through eight super middle school at gladstone high school at our last meeting we talked about the idea of having the middle school our single middle school be the end white the ibm middle years program okay that offers world language it continues a strong humanities program it prepares students um maybe better prepare students for the rigors of high school and so

028beginning um where my recruiting is getting back to your point about what's the pathway for the dual immersion is it still called dual immersion under the nyp umbrella and is it considered a a school within a school or is it is it more integrated right because i think we have to understand that clearly so we can communicate to parent yeah at the at the middle school it's more of a program at a school um right so so i'm taking just like i would take uh you know a different interest or a different course of study it becomes it becomes a program at our school just like high school right so if if they're matriculating to high school students in the dual immersion program should have the option to continue to explore and and grow in

029the area of uh by literacy bilingualism biculturalism and multi really we should be talking about multi uh at the high school level that doesn't necessarily does that does not necessarily necessarily make the high school a dual immersion high school it's a dual immersion program at our high school so with that being said i think i'm i i'm forming an opinion that um i i think i'm in favor of offering one tk8 school and that not being the dual immersion program and continuing to offer to to think about the unified middle school as the nyp knowing that those dual immersion elementary students when they go to the single middle school if when they go to the single middle school because they wouldn't be at the regular day eight that they would have the opportunity to continue

030their language education in the nyp program so so you're kind of what i said earlier now we're talking about making sure that we are moving in the right direction and making sure that we're not um what is it putting our kids right into tk8 so that way we have a strong middle school um i see another head nodding over here um hello uh board member career can you hear us talking to me yes hello yes yes just making sure just want to kind of loop you in we just uh went over the paperwork um the models um the the map that um we were given the 10-year demographic data and we just started dialogue basically on uh it was the t the two tk eights or the one tk8 and then um board member beau

031uh was was asking about the dual immersion uh district wide how many kids we had we have we have 439 students tk through fifth grade and once they get to middle school it becomes a program at the school and so one of the things that we are bringing up and um there's us here um at uh in the boardroom but one of the things i haven't heard from is a bournemouth recruitment seller yourself what do you guys think of us just having one pk through eight instead of two so we can go ahead and have that conversation now so we can start eliminating so i'll go ahead and add my thoughts and i have a bit of an unstable connection i hope you all can hear me as i'm looking at just capacity numbers and

032looking at how capacity is affected by going with one tk8 versus going to uh two tk's uh i'm i'm of the mind that that it would make sense of those two options to to go a tk to have a one tka model um i'll also add it would be it would be also important to note just from from our community i know that we have a tka now but it would be helpful to add up and this is as i've been interfaced with some some parents and and folks within the community is is there a is there a pool if we have a tk8 um that was offered how many how many within our community would truly be interested in desiring to go to and attend the tk8 versus um i know we we made

033ellington uh uh was made as a tka as a means of providing a middle school option in closer proximity so there may be folks who have stayed there because of that i just i just wonder how many how many folks from our community go to ellington because tk8 as a model is a draw um and so are we looking to solve them i'm sorry like they've transferred if they had to go like the center or just lost under foothill like they actually transferred to ellington because it's a t k through eight is that correct correct yeah i wonder how many i wonder how many people in our community look at the options that are in front of them that live on another part of town and say i would prefer that my student go to

034a tk8 and as a result of that relocate their students to a tk8 in order to to take advantage of that program um that's just that's something that i that i i'd be curious about but of the two options if we were looking at one or two i would say one um but i but i even i i wonder if look if if if it would be worthwhile to even look at uh the the draw the tka at all i think that's that's a great question actually i have this i had the same question tonight i would like to know how many students actually live around ellington that actually go there and are not in another district um i know for a fact that a lot of people that live around there don't come to

035our district um you know that they've chosen to go to covina um i know a lot of students that were supposed to go to center or lawson or foothill have transferred to ellington because of that pk3 but they don't live by ellington so um what board member requested and i myself would like to know where um the demographics of our students at ellington where are they coming from and what part of the area and what is their home school but i also know that the purpose of us having the pka at ellington because we were losing students to las valmas and when we made it a ticket then the students were not leaving it seemed like um they were there and then when it came to seventh and eighth grade and of course they had

036to either go to slauson or center i don't know if it was too far for them but um they were sending them to las velmas but then we noticed they came back to glaston high school so they would return so we made a tk8 then they didn't leave well maybe a few but not as many as we had i don't have exact speakers but it did make a difference but i believe those are the kids who are that live in that area i'm not sure it's from the outside but it lives there i do recall that story and that that was several years ago so you have that new data now yes um so a board president uh some time ago dr mitchell i had um asked you to run the numbers on inter district

037transfers the students coming transferring into the district per school so into each of our sites and where they're coming from so without you know i don't have access to any personally identifiable information but the last time you shared this with me um at ellington there were 13 students transferring into ellington from baldwin park movina glendora hacienda and a few other so transfers in and then what was the re the reason was it the reason because the programs was the reason because the tka i i always like to know what is the reason either why they're communities is unified or why they're leaving this is unified it'd be good to know that right and i think you know we've had the conversations about border schools or we've had at least had indirect conversations about border schools

038and so looking at um an enrollment current enrollment at ellington of 410 students let's say it's 13 let's say it's 15 maybe it's 20 you know currently i think that gives us a sense of the scale of who is transferring into ellington and from where right board member bo what your question you made the statement there was 13 students from out of the district at ellington but was there a question with that i was trying to answer your question when you said where are they where are they coming from so i asked dr mitchell before this data some months ago right and so i mean did they choose ellington because like programs was it because of work um if if it was let's just you know let's be real stay we did not keep ellington

039and it would be valleydale that would be the school would the parents still come right is it because of the pk i mean we need to know these reasons why these parents are coming right another another um and since we're in the subject of you know how many students do we have coming to asuza high for the ib program out of the district can you please get that information i think that that's that's another question that we right i i think also would be great you know even the medical platform high school i mean the programs that we have the programs the the important thing is you know we have many wonderful programs um you know are they being effective you know you know how many students do have enrolled in these programs you know

040how many people are coming from the outside just to come to our programs i mean that'd be great to know this information so i'm wondering i'm wondering if we can probably put some of those pieces in the parking lot and focus on the tk8 concept um i think um gabriela you asked for you know for me to weigh in um so i i think what i heard adrian saying and i agree with them is is to understand whether internally in our district we have interest that's transferring in there so i always think i think i would what i think would be valuable to understand do we have what kind of intra so in within our district transfers that we have going to that school right to to really think about and and really that would

041be a proxy for thinking about whether there's interest in our community to attend tka school or if it really is we really i know you know yolanda i agree with you when we put it in it was really trying to serve the need of that community right who really had asked for something close by and not far away so i think that's really i think that's a key piece that we need to think about for me the other questions that i have in terms of tka tk8 and i'll just tell you i'm leaning even maybe against thinking about even having a tk8 or it may be you know re-evaluating the future whether it makes sense to bring it into one of our schools and not be part of this or this current your organization and

042the reason i say that is up for a couple things um so i think when we fir when there was when the when it was brought up by the previous superintendent to try to move our whole district to tk8 some of the issues that arose were around programs right and whether these students would have access to daily physical education what type of um what are those called um the not their core courses i'm dropping the name um help me elected right exactly yeah what kind of electives students have access to right whether that's going to be um organized and comprehensive um you know really does it just default to um falling on the shoulders of the teachers there to figure out what that would be at that k-8 school um so those those kind of

043programmatic concerns i think you know they they they were they they arose several years ago and i'm not sure that we've addressed them even for decades that we have in our district right now right and i think that you know we want to make sure that we're providing a a full education to our middle school students at the tka school so i think those i have questions about that i have so questions about whether or not there's a desire in our district or whether just by default the students because we make it the students in that community are going to go there to what kind of programs would be at this tk8 school would we be able to give full access to similar experiences especially around physical education and and then electives and then number

044three i'm just expressing concern about what happens if they're maybe if there's not desire or if the enrollment in that area drops to subject level that we then start having combination classes which i understand we now do have some we don't have fully enough enough students to to have two full sections like we used to at ellington so what happens at that point with that program if you start having combination classes because or having to mix braids because i feel like that's one thing that as we move to the organization we need to focus on trying to prevent so i think those are the three areas that that i had would express concern around make me feel like the tka piece maybe is something that we can think about after we have really solid programs

045in all of our current schools so that's where i am right now thank you board member career yeah uh board member chris gonzalez i think more accurately summed up what my thoughts were thank you around what are our internal transfers and what what do those look like so so 100 percent what she said that that's what i would like to see because again yes that will communicate what type of interests we have so every chilling and everything you just said is are are i i echo those those those same thoughts so i guess we're asking for two different things we're asking for internal transfers and we're also asking for introduce visit uh outside district transfers which is one of the things that i remembered um for example the ib program was to attract other people

046from other districts um and so one of the things that i also have noticed um that uh and correct me if i'm wrong we we don't assess our um we we don't go back and see how our programs do you know how are they doing for the year how successful they are how many students are we keeping in the program how many have grad you know how many are continuing i i i haven't seen that um and that's something that i would like to go ahead and start with this transition is to assess our programs each year and how they're doing but but i also i do agree with you knowing also regarding the you know the k2a you know i i i do recall that when it first opened people were not our parents

047they were not aware of the curriculum because they didn't realize there was going to be elementary curriculum where the electives in the band and the pe like you mentioned were you know the the minute were a lot less than they would if they were in a middle school are you guys suggesting to test the parents is that what i mean i'm just saying that um so we need to look deeply do i mean really do we really need a caterway it's like i mentioned that that the students from ellington would leave because they had to go to maybe uh center and blossom it was too far for them but they came back in high school so just saying if gradstone high school was was the mega uh 7th and 8th maybe they wouldn't go to

048las palmas because it it's still close to them so i mean do we really want to have a gateway that yeah i agree we should get on it on that one can i just remember yeah thank you um so so gabby i'm not i don't want i'm not trying to go excuse me i'm not i i don't want you to feel like i'm trying to contradict you but i just want to be just really clear at least from my perspective right when we put in programs like international baccalaureate when we put in the tka programs we're putting them in my mind to give the students in our district a high quality education and opportunity i'm a big fan of ib and the reason i am is because when i went off to mit and i

049was in a dorm room with a lot of dorm area with a lot of international students they had all taken ib and they had all had pretty much their first year of credits already going walking into mit as freshmen they came in almost the sophomores because of the international baccalaureate program so that is why i'm a believer and and i would like to see our students have those opportunities i just want to make that clear because i think having attracting people from outside of our district is a bonus always a bonus but to me we our first mission is to serve the community that we live in i'm sorry board member christian solis i i'm not understanding what you're saying here contradict me what i was trying to say is that we should assess every

050program not just the ib program but and i think that's a great idea that's a great idea that's it so getting back to the tk issue i just wanted to be very clear i i think what i'm saying is i feel like it's for i am comfortable having a conversation about school consolidations and closing schools and saying at this point right now we're not going to look to do a tk8 um unless unless it makes sense after we see which schools close in terms of you know the need in that community and then i think that's something that we could build out in that school as it feel as if it seems like that is something that is needed in one of our community one of our areas that would be my that's what i

051am leaning towards remember i would agree with that with one caveat uh i would like to see that information that we uh from ellington so if we were to you know making these numbers up right if if we saw that 50 percent of this of the students at ellington were from outside of the district and other other parts of town that were transferring in specifically because they were looking for a tk8 experience then that would communicate to me that there is interest within our community for for a tk8 so so i i i would i would uh agree with shielding with the one caveat of uh and maybe you're saying the same thing but but of seeing what the data suggests on uh the internal transfers to ellington from outside of their the ellington area

052so just to be clear you would like to see this this data before we continue the conversation about element you know not having a tk through eight is it is that correct yeah so i think that we we could i think we can continue forward with this com with the conversation i think the data will speak for itself um as as we get that that information i'd be comfortable moving forward uh piggybacking shielding's suggestion of moving forward under the the you know you know potential assumption that we would look at tk through five uh only and not have a tk unless the data suggests otherwise at which point then we should look at at uh ensuring that that's part of the model to begin with okay just to be clear we went from two tk

053through eight now to talking to one and now moving forward we want to have a conversation of having no tk through eight pk through five so that way we can have the six through eight mega middle school correct yes okay yeah who would like to go ahead and continue the conversation or have any questions so i'd like to then now shift to i think the conversation that sabrina brought started initiating and talking about programs and i think referencing maybe certain um programs at different school sites um so i i just want to say that i um i think we all got an email from a teacher that i have a lot of respect for him from and she really articulated some of some of the things that i was thinking about in terms of asking

054students to specialize at a very young age and really about whose choice is being made when when we have um these sort of magnet school approach at the elementary level um and instead thinking about how do we how do we put in a really strong base program that every student gets i think we've already made a commitment to bring in still and i think if we as a as a community and a board and just an organization our district as a whole understood sort of the the the depth and richness of that approach right and the ability to pull in some of these areas like art or music um that are really embedded in that that program i'm thinking about is it in my mind i'll just say instead of asking questions i think in

055my mind it's more valuable to say we have decided this is our approach let us make sure that we do a really amazing implementation of it um and try to pull in these other pieces and along those lines i think we could think about how do we how do we strengthen these pieces like we talk about art right how do we find a way to bring in live art instructors right instead of using package curriculum that we use it which has been great right but it's not the same thing of a replacement of having like a true art having an arts instructor right dead that so kids are able to have somebody whose background is art in their classroom so thinking about at the elementary level how do we build in those pieces to give

056all the children across our district or example or the stem program for example how do we build in those pieces so that students are getting getting experiences in all these really critical areas so that as they move on to middle school or high school they already have sort of that base knowledge of all these different really places where you could specialize and and then and then as they get older you know they are drawn to the interest that they're in that they're interested as opposed to arbitrarily saying okay now you're at the art school so this is what you're going to focus on now you're at the stem school um so i think that's that's where i am leaning in terms of specialization i think that we have key programs that it's good to strengthen

057i mean and i'll just say in terms of my mind when i hear us talking about dual immersion and try to equate that to like a stem program or program in my mind dual immersion is the language kids are learning in i've seen plenty examples where you have a dual immersion school that has stem with it right so to me dual immersion is the language of instruction not necessarily it's a program that's in the level of of a stem or a arts or that kind of megaphone i mean obviously you have to opt in right but in my mind we should be thinking about how do they also get those same opportunities in terms of enrichment so that's what just to start this conversation one of the things that um you said that that kind

058of resonated with me as um my son graduated from gladstone high school he only had four years of computer science right and it was very limited when he got to leola maramont one of the things he said is um i wish i would have studied started coding it in kindergarten first grade right and so me being true wanting to stay here in a souza unified not having my kids in another district kept him here and so he missed out so he's a little behind in college now compared to his co you know his his colleagues who've had coding since they were in kindergarten first grade so i i hear you um board member cruz gonzalez that it's one of these things and uh that it's one of the things that we need to start here

059we are going to make this transition right our kids need to start from a very young age and be able to follow that path because it's it when it's sustainable and it's a strong program it does prepare them for their future preparation for greater things where i mean we have next door we we have these programs that are taking our kids right we have uh covina we have dougherty glendora right next to us and i think the vision that i'm that i'm seeing from each you know as you guys are speaking and what i'm what i'm what i'm seeing is that is that we want to make um our programs um one of the things that board member beau said is a pathway like a pipeline like right something that can be sustainable can start

060from a very young age and so i think that the majority of us here yeah all of us feel feel very strongly about that and um one of the things uh like coding with you know coding would be great to have here for our students to start i know you know five families who've left our district in the last four years because of coding they would come back in a heartbeat i remember uh cruz gonzalez just to add some uh context and please if this is incorrect um i'm going to project so this is uh an option that we presented uh to the school reorganization team um and then we presented to the board of education so this is this is the option that we would go to a a base program right so that

061every school would have preschools seal mild mod special education stem visual performing arts right parks and rec and so every school would have this this program as a strong as a strong base so this was one option and then of course we went to option two which was create these magnets or these academies but this this is just to give us context and bring us back right this was one of the options that that we presented as a possibility for uh for our um for our schools and then there's nothing to prevent us also from saying yes all of these schools will have this and then one school will be the school of the art school of the arts right i don't think it has to be either or we don't have to make all

062of them magnets or academies but again just throwing that out there just as a to bring context into it that this was definitely an option that we saw as as viable and strong as well right and just declare so yeah so i guess what i'm saying is i prefer option one and i'm also saying that we should not i'm not talking about taking a weight we've already built out right so we already have capacity where there's built out around arts at the school site or stem at another school site right i'm not suggesting we always say okay no that's going to go away now i'm saying let's not let's let's work on for everybody i guess i'm saying option one with just strengthening continuing to strengthen existing programs that's what i would be saying and

063and i agree i mean mr p if you could could you put that slide back up 100 yes so here i mean nothing on these bullet points is controversial right these are all really good programs and why wouldn't we have them for every one of our pk38 student right i mean i think we're all nodding um i'm i'm thinking back to a couple of meetings ago board member morgan's painting when we talked about middle school and middle school being a very pivotal time in students development unique students i call them it's it's um and so i mean i'm more and more drawn to this idea of the mega middle school right so that we can have you have to have enough students to offer program right and middle schoolers need their own programming it's that

064they're building their identity um it's really it's it's a time to really catch students and inspire them or for the years ahead um so that we're operating off a little bit of numbers dr mitchell can you tell us how many seventh and eighth graders we have at ellington because i think we've alluded to maybe we have some combination classes or we don't have two full sections so how many students are in seventh and eighth grade there yep and perhaps for the next meeting or at a before the next meeting can you tell us uh provide a report about the um [Music] the retention rate meaning the student who is in how many of our eighth graders were there from kindergarten right or were there from first grade or did they come in at sixth grade

065so for the first question how many was it six seventh in eighth grade or just seven seven eight uh seventh and eighth it is uh 66. so is that three sections two seventh and one eighth or that's one seventh grade class and one seven eight class yes first pivot again can you just repeat the number oh yeah sure so there's one grade seven class one seven eight combo class and the total number of students is 66. sorry that's wrong oh one there's one more eighth grade class i didn't scroll up there's another eighth grade class that is 33 student that's on top of the 66. yeah oh sorry about that i think getting getting back to program i mean i keep looking at my notes and the the themes that leap out to me in

066our art stem dual immersion and ib and going back to that slide with the you know those very solid base programs that all of our school all of our students should be experiencing i 100 support that when we get to talking about preschool i think we need to do a little more work about how we roll out preschool at every site if that makes sense you know what what's the pace of that so that we're implementing programs that have enough students again to have the appropriate staffing that have the quality of instruction but the idea of having a preschool at every elementary site the idea is appealing but i don't want to do it just to say we have it i want it i would like to make sure it makes sense to expand our

067preschool sites as our demand grows for preschool and um dr mitchell if i'm not mistaken i think we are only two schools out that do not have a preschool correct every other elementary sites already has a program um one of our one of our programs on site and i believe that two schools yes ma'am i was gonna you're gonna answer my question right now the two sites i believe and again uh dana if i'm incorrect i think the two sites that currently do not have one of our preschools are hodge and ellington but every other elementary school has at least one section some schools more sections of our preschools on campus already so kind of going back to a conversation um a couple meetings ago and us named along talking about preschool um one of

068the things that we had um [Music] spoken about was making sure that and i remember was board member beau having a sustainable right preschool to go ahead and feed into into the schools and so i would like to have the conversation about about that um at this moment what does that look like for us to have the preschools at each of the schools and not have long felt so i heard you say that we do have preschools at all but two sites plus longfellow as its own standalone preschool site correct can i can i um yeah thank you and this is actually for parking lot and because i appreciate sabrina bringing this up um um i do i do think that it would be good to have a conversation about preschools and thinking about how

069expanding and i know i mean i know that there is desire for full day preschool and we you know we used to offer only half day and we don't have other options around early childhood preschool so thinking about that and i just for me personally um you know i i think arthur you know i've always thought that to really build it out we'd also it would be great if we actually were offering head start as well and be able to mix all of these approaches so i just want to put that on a parking lot um but i think i agree with what i heard sabrina would i think i heard the same thing sabrina heard right that is that we we really have enough need for preschool that we are that we're building it

070out at all the school sites plus longfellow and we're still feeling all these programs is that is that what i heard at all oh that is correct and again at some schools uh based on uh demand and and need we have multiple sections open at a particular site so then my question would be if we wanted to go ahead and strengthen our our our our peaceful community could we open up more more preschool classrooms at our school and i'm gonna let dana weigh in on this but my understanding is yes my understanding is as the demand is there uh we continue to build out and open more sections uh at those sites uh as we see the demand continue to grow so let's pretend we have we have one a.m session and now there's a

071waiting list of five six seven eight oh we have enough students let's go ahead and figure out how we open up another section and so that has we have been building as that interest continues to grow we have been building now uh sections that are at our school site and and what does it look like to have a full day baseball for our community for our school district yeah that's something that we keep a close tab on we are looking at that uh all the time we have a strong desire to open up a full year full full day preschool for our community board member cruz gonzalez yes no i i yeah i appreciate that and like i said i i'm not looking to have a conversation about that tonight but i do think it's

072something that at some point we should talk about in terms of what you know our focus in the early childhood especially as the state is looking to expand that you know expanding tk and changing the staffing requirements ratios for tk rights i think there's a lot to talk about that but not not in this meeting but should we talk about this as we we are we're reconfiguring and we're making all these decisions i mean my question would be then do we feel like we have the capacity even with the as you reorganize that we're going to be able to continue to offer preschool at this as needed at the at the sites as well as at longfellow i mean that's the question right but i think you've already answered so right now right with having

073longfellow as an option then that's where uh parents decide to go on in that particular campus what we have seen is as we have been building them people have been coming and showing up and again at some sites more than than we anticipate and so we have been responding to that um i guess we could foresee a a future or scenario where we outgrow the physical space uh then at that point in time it's just again readjusting to ensure that that we're securing you know that additional space and making sure that it's that we get it licensed and ready to ready to go and do you know of those students in long fellow um do they live in our district or are they coming from the outside or do we know that not at the

074top of my head i can look at that you know i can look at the at the um at the report uh that dr ball was referencing i think there might be something there i'll look that up real quick yeah because i was just wondering if um if they're from our district why aren't they going to their their school site you know why are they going to landfall not that this is the the reason uh but in the north side uh those are so we have hodge which currently doesn't have a preschool we have dalton which is a new a one of the newer preschools and we have lee which is also one of the newer preschools so if you just look at the map there was there were very little options until recently for

075families to take their schools i'm sorry to take their students to preschool so they had to they would have to travel to another so again lee and dalton knew her and then there was nothing at hodge and so that made it that made it that made longfellow attractive for those that lived in that area at this point i'm i'm comfortable um [Music] i'm i don't see the need to debate additional preschool i think as we as as we continue to build the the k8 or the k the elementary program at the sites i think preschools will come but i do want to make this comment and i hope it doesn't land the wrong way um up until this moment i thought we only offered preschool at longfellow and when i go to the district website

076and i go to our about us our programs and i go to district highlights and i click on early childhood education i get the school profile pdf it doesn't tell me that preschools are other site and so i hope that we can fold this into the conversation next week in our communication study session about how do we tell families how do we tell community members who are coming into the district who are looking at you know moving here that we do offer preschool and and where we and where it is i mean i say this because i'm one person but i i'm not i can't be the only person that didn't know we had preschool at other sites besides longfellow you know so what is the enrollment at longfellow written on here so moving forward

077so we're we're going to go ahead and start the conversation without the tk8 and start the conversation with pk5 right okay the board yes so let's one of the things that um i noticed here um these models right as we are not looking at the 2k and le let's have a conversation about gladstone high school being the middle school in a souza being the high school and then flipping it and this is a high school being the middle school and gladstone high school being the mega high school [Music] i would like to hear from my colleagues on what any questions that they have or opinions do we know though on budget wise um whichever high school it will be what would the cost be would be more on one school or one and the other

078you know what has more capacity you know what ones are going to need more um modules or um base wise also i like to know that on each of the high schools i think that's how we would determine what would high school would be feasible for for these students to put them together emerging so if we're looking at budget um very purposes only azusa high school would be the one school where based on the current projected enrollment all students could fit without adding any additional modulars um gladstone high school based on its current capacity we would need at least a couple more classrooms because they would already be at 105 capacity okay thank you welcome just to put it out there just to put it out there as a as a bigger context um again

079we have just preliminary preliminarily looked at the at the schools if we were thinking of just the campus again this is a high school classroom high school both schools have a section of their schools on that are portables it's not the whole entire campus is just a section and so if if that was something that we would look at then um the cost could be similar i think i agree with latasha glaston high school would be a little bit more expensive because it's not just replacing it's adding a couple more modulars as well can we also talk about one of the things that um i know you guys are talking about the modules but looking at how deliberated a souza high school is and how much work it needs because as we're going through this

080reconfiguration what i would like to see is for us to be able to if we're going to make a mega high school we have to make it big we have to make it great we have to right there's asbestos um we're going to be taking care of some walls and you know renovating how we want it to happen right what does that look like what does that projection look like so we provided the figures um to update or to modernize azusa high school as far as rebranding and repainting but we have not assessed every building based on upgrades i would need to know what we're envisioning as far as um if we're looking at azusa high school and then i can give you figures on that because also you know the the asphalt was in

081um their quad i guess you want to call it that needs a lot of uplifting and straightening it out it's all bumpy and everything and those are the things that we need to know budget wise you know uh you know what like i brought before regarding the the adult school we didn't know we needed a parking lot there and you know all of a sudden we needed a parking lot and then we needed um a fence because the fire department has to have to get bigger come in we didn't know these things prior when we made this make the last decision on on the um the removal of plasto uh street stool so those are the things we we need to know also what would that kind of cost us the asphalt i mean even

082the parking lot i mean it's yes it doesn't mean they're just gonna go and fit there i'm sure there's other things that are gonna have to be done and what year was um was this a high built what year was glaston high school built i can look into that um but as it relates to asphalt um that is a district-wide need um so no matter what school we select that is one of the projects that we're actually getting a district-wide rfp because there's a need district life for us to update our asphalt for all on campus i think the first graduating class for merzouzo high school was 1958 so at least 1954-53 was when it was built it was the first class of gladstone was 1969. my mother-in-law was the first graduating class so how

083much how much money do we have left in measure k and how do our measure k funds are we planning to use them for facilities upgrade so right now we have approximately 40 million remaining in our bond fund and we've paused all of our construction projects with the hopes of understanding the need of the school reorganization and then we will reallocate those dollars those sites one of the things um that as we're as we're speaking about the middle school and the high school regardless of where we end up because we still haven't really talked about it um what i would like to see is is the pools you know they need to get renovated they need to be working for our students we have swimmers we have a coach at gladstone high school who is

084fully committed during covid you know when it was when they were able to practice you even throughout the years when gladstone has not had a swimming pool they have a tree growing out of it right now she would go you know and try to find these students a place for them to i would like to see for us to have these pools renovated and working so one of the things that i suggested last week um to look for county money that is out there i um i don't know if you got a chance to do that so um that's one of the things that i would like to see included um as we're talking about um you know these this big mega middle school and big makeup high school it's great that we're gonna you

085know we have the fields that the you know middle school and high school can continue to use but let's also talk about the polls and that's something that um right get an estimate of how much it would be for for us to to be able to renovate and to get these pools working um and necessarily this money wouldn't have come from measure k um basically come from l.a county they just need to know a number yes so i will get i'm pulling that up now we did receive a quote on the renovation so give me one second it was as low as 5.4 as high as 7. um mr ma i have a question around our um i know we've we're continuing to look at the capacity by site so seat capacity um do you

086already have a report or can we quickly get together a report of each of the campuses kind of from a master planning perspective how many classrooms how many meeting spaces if there's an auditorium the acreage of each site so as we we look at number of students and we look at our our goal of having these strong base programs so that for example every elementary school would have um a parent room it would have a special ed room it would have each of these kind of specialized rooms um do you have that um handy was that something we can get um before thanksgiving um yes i could work towards that so the capacity that we have in front of us identified as walking each classroom to identify how many classrooms could be utilized for space

087and then we subtracted four classrooms um one for a parent resource room one for a preschool what was it three classrooms i'm sorry there was more at the face i think we did okay i thought doctor rolls just in general i'm sorry i believe she's referring to the high school correct i'm referring to all schools all sites so here this is just number of c right um to make it more tangible right so school campus a has 20 classrooms uh a space you know or it has 25 classroom and in our reorganization 20 of those would be general classroom spaces the 21st would be the parent room the 22nd would be the special education room the 23rd would be the library something like that the 24th would be the vapa room or it's the science

088lab just so it becomes more real so when we say we're talking about every um elementary school having these rich programs where are we going to house these programs so yes then then to latasha's point uh right now the way the capacity was was built was uh counting every room that can house students and then subtracting four rooms to be used for other other things so we have for instance uh the innovation lab we have a parent center we have a library um we didn't quite specifically you know pinpoint but we said okay we let's do additional four and i believe at the high schools that could be wrong with tasha i think we said six yes at a minimum yeah but i mean we can put that on paper and i i'm pushing a

089little bit because i think we've talked about it generally and we agree that we need these auxiliary spaces and when we write it down it's a it's a commitment to say yes we have these are for regular classroom use and these are our auxiliary uses and we're built and we're going to then ensure that each campus has the same type of auxiliary spaces because we think that's important yes 100 so yeah every every capacity that we have put so far subtracts four rooms at the elementary level and six at the heights below so when we look at at adults and 489 capacity that means 489 can fit into classrooms but we still have four empty classrooms that we can use and repurpose for something else will you also include the multi-purpose space so if there

090are indoor cafeteria spaces library spaces i mean i'm thinking of rainy day spaces that are not in the classroom i don't know if all of our campuses have that type of large multi-purpose space do they every single campus has a multi-purpose cafetorium so every every campus does have have one of those um in terms of the other specs i'm not 100 sure again we can we can we can put that on paper for you and i'm also interested in the acreage of the site and just to confirm is this for every school site that we currently have open or are we looking for those that we are planning to remain open so i can understand every site and i think it's whether or not we're going to use it i think we need to have

091we need to know the capacity the size and the types of buildings on that fight just to go back real quick to a question that was asked in regards to our measure k fund dollars um uh mr ma i'm going to ask a question that kind of goes back to your to what was on your predecessor's desk um but maybe we can try to understand what what the what might have been discussed back then so in addition to the measure of k dollars there was also i want to say 19 million in state refunded dollars or reimbursement dollars when you say that there's 40 million left in measure k well one do you know what i'm referring to and and two when you say there's 40 million does that include that number or or does

092that exclude that number that includes that number and yes though what we have done is we use bond projects to submit for other state funding and as those funds come in they are allocated to what is available for uh bond projects going forward so we have a total remaining of all funding sources that could be utilized for bond projects approximately 40 million dollars thank you you're welcome [Music] so i would like to at this time ask my colleagues um what do you guys think about gladstone high school being the middle school or gladstone high school being the high school or vice versa asusa high being the middle school or asuza high being the heist remember remember go ahead i saw your shaker all right i get to go first um from a numbers perspective it

093seems to make it makes sense to me to have azusa high school site remain the high school site and transition to gladstone high school site to be the middle the unified middle school site as i heard we say that if we combined all of our 912 students to gladstone we'd necessarily have to add a couple of portables you know that's exactly what i was going to say thank you and and yeah and we have a lot of work to do at azusa high school anyway i'd rather have that be for actual upgrades rather than classroom additional classrooms or remember yeah i would i would agree with the fact that the the numbers that we've been presented with seem to suggest that azusa high school makes sense to be the centralized high school classroom high school

094as a centralized middle school um but i i similar to board member rodriguez pena it's a question i i i do wonder what are some of those other additional costs um that that go into ensuring that the site is is set up um to best house students um so it would make sense to move forward under the under that assumption in my book but but i i would love to collect some of that information prior to you know full-fledged i remember chris gonzalez so i i would agree um and additionally i would just add i think um it would make sense to think about if we are since we are closing foothill middle school how do we utilize that potentially as an annex for azusa high i mean i so when i go to work

095in long beach every day there's a school an elementary school where the city actually blocks off the street so that kids from an elementary school can go can walk across that street so it's actually closed during the day so so kids can walk across straight to go to their to go to their field so um as an example so think about since we would have a full empty site now right next to the high school how do we then utilize that to think about how do we um make sure there's additional space for zeus so high as as opposed to thinking about now we have to put in additional portables so and and and i'm just putting that as a as a suggestion not saying like that needs to happen but short answers i agree

096yeah i think that's the beauty of azusa high and foothill being so close to each other because i do know also lincoln high school in the canal they you have a school attached not attached but like across the street where we can utilize um a foothill as part of azusa high i know we talked about also the overcrowding you spoke about last time um you know maybe have some classes there and um yeah and and since i number wise i think that one of the best choices and would foothill middle school provide overflow space if we're doing construction we're talking about major upgrades that we you can't limit those only to summer and winter break and i mean they even have pluto even has two parking lots that i didn't even know but they do

097and yeah and all the teachers are mm-hmm yeah i i think that um you know look looking at um the majority has spoken and um and we are looking forward to having gladstone be the middle school sixth through eighth is what i'm hearing and this is a high becoming the ninth through twelve high school and one of the things that um i i would agree if we're gonna you know asusa high has has not been renovated for a very very those classroom right i mean you walk into i mean we can we can talk about elementaries as well like paramount beautiful on the outside ah inside it's just not open these are things that we're gonna have to take in account as as we're you know moving forward with this and i would agree but

098hill would have the you know carry the overflow as we're renovating and upgrading asus high now that we are gonna we are gonna make this that one high school um so commentary a board member i i would like to ask as a request to staff if we were to move forward with that with azusa high school as a centralized high school gladstone high school has a centralized middle school what then is needed at each campus and and based on based on what has already been assessed as those campuses have have been walked now knowing if if we were to to assume that that would be the case what are those additional changes and what are the costs associated with those those facilities upgrades on each of those campuses um that that would be is is

099what is what is the best way to get that from staff we can we can work on on on something uh to assess what facilities wise what might be needed based on this current recommendation so we'll run with the idea azuza high school will be the one high school grassland high school would be the one middle school and then based on that we can do some preliminary audits to say okay based on this here's some things we might want to consider in terms of facilities and maybe there's a considered list and then there's like have to list and what's a what would you say is an appropriate timeline for that turnaround time i'm gonna let natasha weigh in on that one um depending on how um detail we want to be um if we're just

100saying high level painting asphalt upgrading restrooms vice versa i can get that quickly but if we're literally saying walk the campus and assess it from top to bottom i would need to work with our architects to do a full evaluation and yes i would like to see that yeah if we went that route of the more robust kind of assessment do you have a sense of a general timeline of what that would take i would need to reach out to them first and then i can put that in my board update if i can get a response before on thursday but i can start with brian and we can walk the campus and just assess what we see i mean we could write that update and i think we could do that within a couple

101of weeks so maybe before thanksgiving seems feasible that'll be our goal based on our our assessment yes sir can i just have a clarification a question is this also including rebranding are we keeping this is a high school the same and i'm just looking for the aesthetics of our campus that's a that's a conversation we need to have right now okay yes board member career your hands fill up with well just just to share my two cents on that yeah i think yeah since you're already yeah brent branding and whatnot yeah i think that's a conversation that we need to have um i'm i'm really interested again to board member regis paying this point what are those things like the parking lot at gladstone street that we that we were not aware of what are

102those things that would be helpful for us to know that by moving forward in in this direction the additionally associated costs uh that we maybe don't know now so that that's why it would be worthwhile to wait a couple weeks if that was the case to get to get a more robust uh assessment to have a better sense of those additional costs can we have the conversation about rebranding because that that's something we we don't need to wait for a facility yes i'd like to have the conversation about branding of the high school we did have figures on that at one time correct we yes ma'am right or president are you talking about the costs involved or are you talking about whether we would or would not no no not the cost just the conversation

103on on rebranding um since since we now have decided that right we're keeping a souza high what will the campus at isuza high at 9 through 12 and the gladstone high campus eight sorry six through um i think it would be in you know a really good uh time right now for us to talk about right are we gonna keep the name asus high at the high school are we gonna keep blackstone at the middle school or should we rebrand and make it a whole new name whole new mascot for the middle school and the high school and i think i would like to add the um have the community and even the students you know um be able to select or pick names and include them and also if there is going to be

104a name change that we should include the community and include students uh you know their input remember both i'm barely agnostic whether or not to keep the names or go to a new name um i'm more interested in what's going to happen on the campuses rather than what we call it and i don't i'm not meaning to sound crass but i'm i'd like to focus our money and our energy on the program my own personal experience i went to one high school for two years and then they built a new high school and they said okay you live in this side of town you stay with your old high school you live on this side of town you go to the new high school so as a junior i went to our new high school

105and i didn't it didn't have a big impact on me now yes i got to go to new campus but my old campus wasn't old it was you know we went from a 2000 um high school 2000 uh student high school to each high school was then roughly a thousand students and as a part of the junior class we were seniors for two years but was the new school a new name yes because it was a second high school built in my city yeah yes that was the second high school so that's that's some of the only context i have for changing mascots and changing my affiliation during my high school experience it wasn't a major impact for me really um i lost the program but i gained a program right so the sport i

106played was no longer offered at my high school but we had an another academic program that i participated in at my new high school so um just you know experience of one it didn't have a large impact on me as an individual board member chris gonzalez so i just i'll just put on the table i'm not in favor of changing names of either school i think it just makes sense to keep it i think um aside from just the fiscal responsibility of you know the cost it would it would cost to change the names one of the things to consider is the impact of changing a name on 50 50 plus years of alumni at the schools and the connection that they have to the school if we do create change the name and now

107suddenly they may not may or may not feel connected to that school so i i'll just put on the table that i'm i i would i would prefer to just keep the names as is and i'll i'll just i'll just put on the table for just just to kind of for people to stew on um yolanda rodriguez pena middle school um but we'll i'll just put it on the table right on come back i love those kids yeah there you go thanks adrian you know one of the things that i hear what the two board members are saying but one of the things that i want to share with the public right now is that my whole childhood during this whole reconfiguration this is emotional for me i do have some emotional attachment but i'm

108trying to be logical i'm trying to do what is right for this district this is not an easy task and that you know people that you know what you guys you do one high school two high schools you know please watch the videos i cannot share i'm thinking right now right because i wanted to hear from my colleagues i wanted to see the data right i think i think that this question right because we and i'm sharing this right i've been here for a long time i went to the gladstone my my brothers and sisters went to asusa high and i and i and i hear you you know um foreign history right but but i think i i would like to also ask the community what do they think i would like to ask

109the students not just eight students that have come to a superintendent roundtable or just the parent i would like to ask the community this is a big transition right so we have the rivals gladstone we have a souza right there's some people that would say i would never bring my kids to a souza high school or we have the other ones that i would never right but at the same time what it comes down to is we're going into one middle school we're going into one high school that this is the reality of this and as we're moving forward yes cost wise right it would be and it would be great to keep asusa high and gladstone names but i would like to know what our community thinks and i also feel though in in

110fairness to the two high schools you know i mean reorganization this is big yes but in fairness i feel that um we can also start fresh you know i mean i make that backlash by that too but you know we need to start fresh we want to start new schools new names new locations it's going to be this is going to include the whole community of azusa so and we're going to start first we should start fresh that's how i feel board member career so one let me i'll push back on on uh both board member rodriguez pena and president just with this thought if as we look at the resources that we have i think we have to ask ourselves the the cost as we assess the cost associated with rebranding and we look

111at something like uh president obama we talk about a swimming pool if we were if we're looking at we can't have it all like we're gonna have a swimming pool or are we gonna rebrand and maybe that's not a good example because of the cost of the swimming pool but but in essence to to to rebrand it comes at a cost of other things and so i think we just have to ask ourselves um do would we would we forego upgrades and improvements in other areas for the sole purpose of rebranding and that's a that would be difficult for me to fully get behind depending upon what those numbers were you know i i understand what you're saying but i think we have a community to answer to and i i neither did say that

112that i wanted a rebranding or that i didn't want a rebranding what i'm saying is i think it's important that we get that we ask our community that we ask our parents our our our students because we are going to display some students i think it is important that we include them in this moving forward this is how would that be done mr thing well we did do a survey and again in all fairness one of the questions was not could we rebrand it but rebranding did come up in the survey analysis through the open ended and so we do have data that was organized and synthesized for us and if we just do a quick look at that um i think most of most of what you will see is not in favor of

113rebranding now again this was not a question about rebranding right this was and most of if you if you see it um most of it is centered around cost like why would we spend this money uh and then there are some um i think to some about uh if we rename then that's the the whole thing about the alumni and tradition um there's some of that as well mr well do you have the your memo on the rebranding cost i can pull that up right now i have it up um heard on the screen uh yes me create that one over um a little bigger yes ma'am now um if i'm not mistaken this was for the middle school and i think this is the high school here correct starting right there 1.8 million well

114no it's not 1.8 for rebranding that's correct that's everything included yeah so just for for rebranding 110 for the turf overlay right so it's not the whole the whole field but we do need to redo the turf overlay and then possible athletic equipment and or uh you know uniforms uh banned and all that um again these are just um projections but at one high school or were you talking about um this is one high school in them okay so then the middle school would have to double the same correct right right yeah but to be clear this this table new branding is the logos on the sides of buildings the marquee sort of the the the sign right the gym floor it's the taking up the parquet and having a new logo on the hardwood

115floor right because we and we just put in new floors is that correct no the correction the gym floor is including the logo and a new gym floor both gym floors need to be modernized would it be modernized at gladstone high school in it was it bleachers it was bleachers both high schools not the floors okay so so just so to be clear you're talking removing lockers and kitchen those are the only two it's around it's about 1.2 million per high school yesterday okay 2.4 for two sites potentially so i'll just add again um now that we're actually looking at some of those numbers i it makes me uncomfortable to look at spending 2.4 million dollars for the purposes of rebranding because that you know in order to do that we are forgoing substantive upgrades

116to facilities on on across the across the district yeah now that i see the numbers yeah i i do i don't think that financially that we should um spend that on on the two of high schools then we could use it in other um programs or repair because i know i do know like i said we're going to have unforeseen things that need to be done um just like we did the last time we should use that money on on that and just for clarity um i i would i would say that it's 1.8 uh the 2.4 is we're adding the gym floors and the gym floors um we are proposing whether they're with the lean logo or with the old logo that's probably something that we should look at redoing because they need to

117be redone so if we just take the new branding the 235 the the overlay uh which is a 110 so call it uh 350 plus the 500 850 times two so 1.6 1.7 i'm sorry i would also like to throw in the locker room if you've walked into gladstone's locker room where those are ancient like about a thousand persons we would still need you know and then as we're as we're looking forward to um we would like i mean a souza hype would need some lights for friday night lights as well i mean it's we can if we're going to stay with you know if we're not going to go rebranding and you've already said the data speaks for itself there's other possibilities that you know we we can upgrade our our high school and

118make it a state of the art school competing with our surrounding district but even at glaston high school though you will still have to change high school right the word high school the market and some of the meanings but wherever there's just a local g we can keep that but anywhere that has the word high school printed yes that would have been would it be changed to middle school if that was the desire of the board yes so it seems like the majority um would like to go ahead and not go with the rebranding yes right right yes okay and that's what i'm hearing and so superintendent uh cabinet that's what the board has decided is to keep the names of asusa high school and gladstone middle school it would be change the buck middle

119school so the as we're looking for um as we're looking into the mascots ford would you like to go ahead and continue with the same mascot since the i think it makes sense to keep the statement right they they have their the gladiators on there and the aztecs on that is a highway and i i see the majority so that would be the same as we're moving forward with this here um and we're making this as a high the high school and gladstone high school into the middle school and keeping the name and keeping the mask up one of the things that i would like to go ahead and um would like um as we're looking into the programs right some of these programs such as and i'm just throwing this out there i i

120don't know if this like the baseball team right at azusa high or gladstone uh the football team band poor band they they're their outfits are like they're old i mean that's something that we also need to invest in as you know they just got them oh god was it gladstone azusa has a couple of years ago has new uniforms and i'm not sure about gloves but we're going to have a middle school band so that's something also too you know looking at those programs being able to invest in with this reconfiguration being able to invest in these programs that they have adequate equipment that they have added you know uniform our students deserve this any more comments on the middle school and high school remember both i'm looking at our next couple of meetings mr

121mall how quickly can you pull together a five-year projected budget based on just the changes we've talked about so consolidated middle school consolidated one one comprehensive high school um and add in line adding in light items for some of these specialized programs that we have on the cost of considerations adding in transportation um what does that timeline look like to look at a five-year projected budget i think that's that's the next piece okay you know we're getting consensus around big parts of programs and some of the site where does that land uh i'm just making sure i understand so we're saying for me to identify all the plans and costs that we will need and then you want me to divide that over the next five years to obtain it or am i just what

122is what is the five year projected budget the district's operating budget assuming all of these changes happened july 1st okay i think i'm not following i'm sorry if you could say it a different way so um when you present us the budget we look at our three-year budget so we have the current year year is year one year two is the next year year three is the following year when you do the the the first interim and the second interval right so i'm asking for that kind of presentation with a five instead of three year a five year i mean we're we're looking at we're entering into this conversation about school organization one major consideration is fiscal responsibility so as we make these changes to sites and staffing and programs we have to be grounded

123in what's our budget going to look like in five years are we going to be able to sustain these programs that we're talking about but based on our current funding i can give you a five-year budget we have a actually a six-year nyp already drafted so that would you like me to show but that would not account for any planned expenditures because right now we would plan to use that as a bond funding let me try to say it a different way uh so we have a six year nyp that's based on our current situation right now with 17 schools right but now we know that there's going to be only one high school and one middle school how does that affect the sixth year nyp because now we don't have two high schools and

124three middle schools correct yes and you know we've looked at some big line items like whether it's 2.5 or 2.8 for transportation i mean we haven't talked about transportation in detail but that's a number that should be incorporated into this to see what it looks like if that's that the highest most conservative projection for transportation and then adding in some of these other costs for example for continuing with dual immersion for implementing the ib at an elementary and at the middle school these costs are already identified but layering them into the projection so it will be helpful and this is just me speaking um so we're not overstating to truly identify what schools will be closing so i can also count that as a savings otherwise i would just be saying okay these are the

125costs that we need right now for these two schools but everything else will remain whole and i don't think that's what our plan is i don't want to overstate and give inflated numbers but if i knew exactly how many schools would be remaining even if we just say there will be x number elementary we know there's one middle there's one high school then we can look at staff and i would have to work in collaboration with jorge to say okay what will be the savings of staffing will be the savings on programs how much would we have to invest in each program that we're identifying so i can get that but i don't have enough information at this time to produce that i think it's in our best interest then as a board to have

126that conversation right now i mean we're asking you know we're this is what we have two more meetings and that's it so i think it's in our best interest to talk about these so one of the things that um that we're looking into it is the that we decided is not to have any date at least we know that um one of the things one of the um we have uh we have two elementaries um here which is the second uh because i only see one element here we have two which is ellington and lee and just as again this context the reason there's all incidentally there this came from the school reorganization team that's the only reason right that's that's what i was um looking at this right so you guys need to give

127me a minute i would i foreign that this is what came forward um you know from the from the reorganization team but again every person who i've spoken to was a part of the reorganization team though they were complicit in the final result i've heard no one uh expressed that they were you know extremely excited about the about the model entirely with that being said um i really think it's incumbent on us as a as a board to to do what we can to ensure that we're not kicking this can down the road so that five years later 10 years later we're needing to have this conversation again when we have the data that already communicates what's what's coming down um you know the pike here with with that being said with as we currently

128have uh i like two schools that are on the list it puts us at a at a i guess i don't have the final numbers because we have to make make some adjustments but it puts us in the low 70s um if i'm not mistaken the low 70s in regards to capacity and that will just continue to decrease as time goes goes on i think that there that we need to seriously consider at least at least one additional elementary school that we would consolidate um as well um so that we're not we're not needing to revisit this or put it on to the next iteration of the board to revisit this in x number of years [Music] i'd like to revisit my my previous request about the assets at each site but looking at the

129number of classrooms the auxiliary spaces and also the acreage so when i look at a district map i'm looking at schools in the north the south the east the west looking at if we are consolidating to something like a seven to to reach 70 75 80 capacity how do we ensure that we have room to grow in 20 years when enrollment comes back and that's why i wanted to ask about acreage right what would be our capacity to build up or to add portables or to build out on some of the larger site and that's something that i like to have a better understanding of before looking at just seat capacity per campus and maybe mr ortega or anyone here if you have a sense of which are the larger campuses so not just from

130a seat perspective but which are the the camp elementary campuses that have more land are there campuses that are landlocked or we could not expand are the campuses where we could expand board member vote you're also talking about fields correct where we can put portables and so forth right okay i mean just as a quick reaction i think um we are very blessed that our schools uh are large are on large properties i'm trying to think of the top of my head right now um i mean every school that i think of i mean we have i mean they are they're in terms of land um we are very fortunate that we do have uh big uh parcels of land again i'm trying to think of i'm trying to run through the elementary schools right

131now and every elementary school that i can think of has ginormous amounts of land and they do i can testify to that i've been to every school site and do their outside activities and we have plenty i mean if a student goes and plays you might lose them that they're so far at the other end i mean seriously i mean all the schools that they're like they're they're huge so that's one lens and i'd still like to see the the numbers all the land and they're all like and the second lens is what's the status of modernization at our elementary school are there some schools that have been more modernized are there schools that have had zero modernization so as we choose sites to remain open and invest in or sites that we've recently installed

132or upgraded what does that look like so one of the questions was asked if we did modernization at the elementary school i know that for a fact we did magnolia there was some at odds um and so the there's just um foothill had a full-on makeover full a brand new uh pe locker room from strat um so there's a lot of i know that there's um there's documentation where everything you could what which i've seen it before um where there is duck uh daddy's uh what has been done at every school what is what you know what is the potential um uh modernization they're waiting for and so and that is true and then for most of our elementaries um their modernization included underground utilities um hvac so not so much of the aesthetic um

133some could have been roofing um but with that i would i mean i will still provide the report but all of our facilities need to be upgraded all of our facilities need to be modernized so no matter what school we select it would be at the point that they all would have to be touched at this time one of the things that i i wanted to bring up was um you know one of the projections that has led us to where we are now right is the birth rate so people are not having six to ten kids like them right or even four kids nowadays you're not having four kids i have four kids we have four kids right but we're the exception as we look forward to i i think it's um you know

134as we look forward to when we look at this production right one of the things that i heard you say board member beau correct me if i'm wrong is that you would like to keep not go to three elementaries because the possibility of um you know uh birth or or having the extra room for additional for it for something that we may need right growth bro i'd like to consider you know what is our target if if board member agree if 70 is for 70 capacity you feel is too low what is the right number and how many schools you know if we close one more elementary school would that get 75 for capacity i mean what does that look like incrementally and and what is the cost savings we're trying to achieve i remember

135one of my first board meetings we looked at a projection and i think it was at the time looking out for years we were going to go over a 13 million dollar cliff so is that what we're that's what i'm trying to get to so if by making these changes are we also ensuring that we're realizing the cost savings to do it um yes the quick answer is yes um so this will take a collaboration on on all parts um we would need to ensure that based on the school that we're closing how we eliminate that um we're being strategic about the staff that we are keeping is based to fill need or future programs so that will take um that's a comprehensive plan but that is ultimately our goal so one of the questions

136was that what does the projection look like if we were to go ahead and close three elementaries right instead of two right here we're looking at two and if we can identify which tools then i can upgrade the capacity what's been right which one 73.71 capacity for model three yes one tka model three one tka do we have a sense from other districts that have consolidated schools what what capacity they landed on i on a low end the percentage has always been 75 percent um but when you start at 75 percent in your decline enrollment district you're quickly going to drop beyond that so the rule of thumb will be typically to try to get your school size to have a capacity of 85 percentage so that way you can project out what programs you're

137going to implement to attract students versus that decline coming right back to you and you're being below 75 and the projection um we don't have it in front of us but the projection in in what is it four years our enrollment here in our district was gonna be under was it four thousand i would have to get that i don't believe it's that low not four thousand i'm gonna share my screen if if it's helpful uh this is from an um a prior worksheet and so if we wanted to again uh punch in numbers this in a live manner uh would change your capacity right now this is the way it looks like uh from the school reorganization team so you see ellington and lee there at the at the bottom but again in a

138live manner we could change these changes around and i think these are even older older numbers this is this is now that i'm looking at this this was by when we started so if i was to update them um on our 10-year demographic um for president in four years our projected enrollment is six six one nine six six one nine yes ma'am okay thank you that's looking at twenty three twenty four i guess so 24 25 we're looking at six four two one maybe this is not working that's an old one i try sorry mr ortega would you be able to help us prepare that these worksheet with the different scenarios with the current data and looking at how we can get to 85 capacity yes remember career yeah that similar to that that was

139going to be my question if what if 85 capacity was our target then then what would that mean by way of school close consolidations or or you know we have two that are on the list is that three three schools at four schools um that were we're consolidating the others to get us at 85. uh that that would be helpful that would be helpful to know to consider the the entire composition of school sites across the city but if i i heard as latasha jamal say she would like know what's bulls is it that would be helpful or option two is we can provide you um the board options of what schools to remain open and maintaining eighty-five percent of the past yes that could be work within the guidelines of what we've talked about

140one high school one middle school those sites no rebranding yeah and then what are the what puzzle pieces so how do you have the least amount of change you achieve the 85 percent capacity like and then putting putting that name to it but then we look at this map and say okay that means this do we need to close another school or or not or two more i mean we don't right to reach that 85 percent what do we need to do and that would be helpful to us to make that decision i remember career does he have a hand up he has that look like he wants to say something no no that's i i i said it in and uh remember rodriguez you reiterated it so those are my thoughts that's a clarifying

141question and we're solely just options to maximize 85 we're not looking east west just to make sure i'm building the request of the board fulfilling the requested report i'm sorry east-west i just want to make sure that's not a factor we're looking options variable options where we have 85 capacity and what that looks like i think i'm i'll all i'm in i think i think we bring options that do bring so we can bring option one eighty-five percent now we have in all four quadrants of the city uh option two and so i think we can just bring different looks and then we can also have a live sheet that we can manipulate live if we need to manipulate okay what if we just move this one school what would that do i think that

142that that is great having it live so that we can have a discussion and be able to put that up there one of the things that i i would like to ask the board is as as as we're looking right we're looking now now that we have decided the middle school the high score is going to be at one of the questions that we should be asking ourselves is right now we have sixth grade at the elementary's right so we're we're what does that look like to do that transition right of moving the sixth graders to the middle school and phasing out center foothill and boston when you know what does that look like and when can we make that transition like what is the timeline right and how does the time like what does

143that look like transition i mean even the students from one high school to another high school the middle schools do one high school you know it's going to take years or or i would like to just right i would not like to i would like to see it face you know phased out since we have our seventh and eighth grade this year right so for next year what what would happen to those seventh and eighth graders before we jump to that can i can i ask a question i have my hand raised about the previous subject the elementaries yeah thank you um so my my question arturo is so i i appreciate that we're going to do some thinking about this and do some live thinking about it my question is how much how much

144of this thinking has already been done and deliberated by the reorganization committee and really how how can you com and i know you've already presented multiple times what what they've what they sort of landed on so i'm just wondering how can we just be remind remind ourselves of all that effort that they already went through and the conclusion that they drew and why they do those conclusions right um to help guide guide that i guess journey that we're going to have looking at at different different options because it sounds to me like it's something that it sounds like very similar to what they already did yeah and i think we can as we build that we can have that voice in our head obviously there's a couple of things that we have things here that

145that weren't in their plans uh so tk5's one no tk8 uh number two uh but we can definitely keep that keep that voice uh that we heard as these models uh were being constructed um by the members board member career [Music] i have two comments one going back uh to what shielding just referenced and another one going forward so so going going back to just the composition of elementary schools and the potential 85 percent target or 85 as a target um i i would i would really hope that staff would be able to instead of merely looking at schools and moving things around in such a way that that just gets us to the 85 really looking at all of the different pieces and and factors and and in essence bring forward a recommendation with

146rationale so uh so based off of uh the some of the costs and what's known with upgrades that are needed at school campuses or based on where where school sites are located or you know based on some of these different things that we've talked around a little bit so so instead of merely coming forward and just move eliminating a school because it gets us to 85 but but actually doing some of that thinking as a starting point not an ending point but as a starting point for us to continue the conversation um and then the second thing i would i would throw out there as we're talking about implementation so this might be crazy and this this might make this might make stuff go crazy um but i would i would hope that we would

147look at no more than a two-year implementation uh of uh with with all these different changes that we're doing i would hope that it could be done with no more than a two-year and and only reason why i say two-year and not a one-year implementation is because i realize that it's november 9 2021 and and there are just things that that need to get done but um i hope yeah we're not pushing this into three and four years of a roll out our member greer i'm asking a clarifying question when you say two year are you talking about 22 23 23 24 that when we start the 25 year this is completely done i need to do my math here um yeah that's a good question i i suppose what would it look like for

1482016 he's saying 22 23 23 24 that's two years yes correct starting in in the fall of 24 right that that even feels like an upper end i guess i'm i guess i'm wondering what would it look like 20 what is that then 23 24 um for foreign implementation as opposed to 24 23. okay as one voice right and back to my question was you know what does that look like right would two years be you know sufficient um it's one of these things that i i think it's it's important that um you know for example i had a couple parents call me today and say hey so when you guys decided to make the one height you know one middle school yes my daughter's in fourth grade so in two years first you're gonna

149go that that's that's an honest question parents want to know so i think it's important that we are able to to have that timeline ready for our parents to know where their kids are you know how are we going to transition are we going to make this transition um are we going to when do we the elementaries are i think are a little bit easier right but with the high school and the middle school that's going to take some planning are we going to use foothill middle school as a you know as a layover are we going to use another elementary as a layover for the seventh and eighth as we're doing this transition those are you know questions that the community has for president can we ask staff as they look at the capacity

150numbers to also outline an implementation plan and for us to do for them to do the deep thinking around okay when we move this it has impact here what that looks like you know over eight what would happen for example what changes would be in effect july 1 2022 and what changes would be in effect july 1 2023 as we stand what does that look like right i'd like to be able to digest and react with that proposal absolutely i would agree and staffing too what does that look like for our staff because that also will impact our employees well it looks like we had a lot to converse about we had real talk and i appreciate my colleagues here tonight um whether on zoom or here in person about being able to have this

151conversation it's important and it should be a priority at this point and i thank you guys for watching all of you guys that are watching listening as we are processing as as you guys know we don't talk about these things until we come to the dias so i don't know what my colleagues are thinking and therefore it's literally a raw conversation and i appreciate my colleagues for this time that we have allowed ourselves to have a special meaning and i look forward to continuing um our this conversation with the information that we have requested and have provided that you guys will provide for us i i just want to um just want to um just throw it out there that board colleagues if if we feel that we still need more information i i i

152think it's important that we do take our time the process and like you said before we wrote digest because this it's going to have a domino effect and one of the things to consider is how is this going to affect this how is that going to affect that and if we have a conversation here with cabinet ford all together right i it it doesn't create that unexpected oh well we're going to you know do a 1.2 million dollar dollar uh parking lot here at gladstone uh former gladstone um you know um what is it field right at the elementary right so these these are good conversations that we're having and i and i thank you cabinet for writing all your notes down as we're processing and requesting and asking all these questions all at once

153because i know that we're asking a lot of questions and for a lot of things so thank you for that and you know for being on this journey with us because this is a journey and for you guys too at home for all of you guys listening this is our journey we're in this together so before uh moving on to our next item does anyone have anything else they would like to ask for cabinet yeah i would just like to ask cabinet is are there are there any additional clarifying questions that you that you might have um or or do do you feel uh fully prepared and informed enough to take the next steps because because you all got a lot of homework from this meeting i think i think we have enough clarity but

154i also would never [Music] stop myself for ourselves from seeking clarity if we get to a point where the chicken scratches look like wait was this this or this and then just reaching out and say hey just for clarity um you know this is what we were talking about i think that's um we we definitely can do that if we get to a point uh where we feel stuck or or not clear well you have our number superintendent ortega and your addresses oh yeah you know where we live too thank you everyone i want to thank the reorganization committee that really got this all started um that really helped us out and also the cabinet for working so hard and getting the figures um for us and i know a lot of work but and

155we really appreciate because it's a very hard decision i think we really need to ask these questions and have the information in order for us also to make the right decision for this community one more thing i would like to just uh thank all my colleagues today for their questions i i think um we're as we work together in a collaborative way towards this i think we will reach much better results and so i thank you for that seeing that there's no more questions or comments i will go ahead and move on to our next item actually our last item of the night which is item 5.1 our german can i please get a motion to adjourn i move to adjourn go ahead yolanda i make a motion to adjourn 5.1 and i second i

156have a first by board member rodriguez pena i have a second by board member bo and are we all logged in oh and let's go ahead and do our hand vote board member grier yes board member cruz gonzalez yes board member rodriguez pena board member beau yes and myself yes 5-0 we are done have a great night we'll see you guys at our next board meet