Azusa Unified School District Board Meeting - September 21, 2021

001live now thank you for that good evening asusa today is september 21st and it is 701. we will go ahead and continue with our open session with our item number 4.1 our flag salute let's go ahead and get started we have axel mejia from murray axel are you on okay you can go ahead and get a start hi my name is axel and today i'll be leading you in the flexor loop please stand for the flexor loop please place the flag put your right hand over your heart ready begin i pleasurely of the just states of america and to the republic for which israel one nation under god indivisible with university and jesus christ thank you you axel thank you so much for joining us tonight and uh are you how are you dealing with

002the heat right now i see the fan going on very hot outside make sure you stay hydrated and thank you to your parents for allowing you to come into our boardroom resume and leaving us in this flagship today thank you you're welcome have a great one one thing that i forgot to do that i would like to do at our school board meeting is to review our mission and our mission is the associate unified school district equips every student with knowledge and skills for college career readiness to fulfill their purpose and possibly impact society we'll go ahead and continue with our agenda and we have 4.2 roll call we're going to start with board number three board member who's in sellers president board member vote here and board member here and myself for a number

003of very honest i am here that's five of us moving on to the approval of the agenda if i could please get a motion to approve 4.3 the first by board member second by board member rodriguez kenya and we can go ahead get a hand to vote just start with board member career yes and for remember ariana's yes that is 5-0 it passes can our board approval of the event that is passed we'll move on to 5.1 student matter final sentiment for office of administration and hearing can i please get a motion to move 5.1 5.1 12 seconds we have a first by board member rodriguez kenya we have a second by force member cruz gonzalez recently so can you try and log in again there it is okay now she go as we're waiting

004let's go ahead and do a hand vote we have board member grier yes board member for gonzalez yeah remember yes and myself board member arianes is the yes and it passes five to zero we'll go ahead and move on to our our item number 6.1 public comment or agenda on agenda for non-agenda items do we have anybody from the floor for the next holy blue card any blue console no blue parts so yes so far we have three hands raised uh first is jenny lee you mean i meet your mic your mic she may be having technical difficulties let's try our next one amber fish you may emulate your mic hello so thank you board members for hearing me out today um i wanted to bring up a couple notes uh regarding our dual immersion

005program uh i emailed you all last week or the week before regarding the changes that happened at hodge and i really want to commend the board and the superintendent and his cabinet for coming together and bringing up a meeting for our for our parents at hodge to let us know what was going on however i wanted to echo a couple of the points that were made um to you in front of the board as well uh we're requesting that the teachers that were most impacted by these changes because some of the class sizes ended up being larger if we can look into getting those teachers and aid some kind of support to help them out in the classroom because instead of having that 26 minimum teacher to 1-26 teacher-to-student ratio our first grade class is

006looking at a class of 30 students also more students packed into a classroom was a little discouraging to us um because of covid we're still worrying with some of our children in social distancing we don't know if getting a air purifiers in the classroom is something that is possible uh also i wanted to read from my note what i had emailed you guys um i was really excited about the smaller class sizes for our dual immersion program dual immersion takes a lot of work for our students especially students who are not spanish as first language learners their my son in particular has no spanish whatsoever at home and i was excited to see him go back in person after a year of online learning because it was a we're able to give him um the

007smaller class sizes i was hoping would make up for some of the learning loss that was given over the course of the online learning uh with a class of 30 instead of a class of roughly 15 i'm not sure that that learning loss will be addressed for students that may need it um so those overcrowded classrooms were just really concerning to me this is something that should have been addressed we knew that we were going to be adding a fifth grade class um i know that you had said that there might not be um there weren't qualified candidates i'm hoping that this call goes out quicker and sooner so that we can hopefully find qualified candidates for next year for our sixth graders and additional classes that may be needed um for support uh also

008i wanted to transition into oh i also want to say our just our our teachers are amazing for the dual immersion programs i truly do love the couple that my son has been in and i look forward to interacting with more as the time goes on i also wanted to switch over to reorganization really quick i wanted to really thank the board for asking such great questions during the study session and asking for more information and clarity because i really felt as a member of the committee that that last parent staff and student survey that those numbers did not fully show what the parents were really wanting and having that information asking for what those surveys uh comments were was a big relief because you'll get to actually see what the community was saying and

009not just look at numbers so thank you board for asking for additional clarification thank you your mind hi good evening superintendent ortega cabinet and members of the board of education my name is cecilia ford i am the second vp chief engineering steward of csea as is at chapter 299 and i represent the largest essential group of people within our district the classified employees i am here tonight to speak about the classified staff that pay for health insurance offered through ausd we here all the time thank you for all you do we appreciate you you're valuable to our district how truly valuable are we and how truly appreciated are we really wow so valuable and appreciated that most classified employees who have health insurance through ausd can barely afford it the cost of health insurance keeps

010going up and yet the district contribution does not folks are having to choose whether to put food on the table keep a roof over their heads or pay for health insurance that the state of california says we must have individuals must work two to three jobs to supplement their income because what they earn within you with you ausd isn't enough most of the earnings go to health insurance now ask yourself when does that individual have time for their family if they are constantly working when does that child who needs their parents see them there isn't enough time in the day for their precious gms in their life because they must make up for their lack of earnings they receive from ausd we lose great employees because they can't afford to pay for their health insurance

011and must seek to find other jobs that will help them cover the cost we have potential employees not want to join our district because of this because of the disclaimer that they are told to read on all job postings they would rather go elsewhere and feel more appreciated by receiving better benefits ausd's contribution to health care is one of the lowest in the surrounding area the district is well aware of this and there is still no change we will continue to stand up here and repeat over and over when our requests are and we will not stop until until there is a significant change thank you for your time and hearing what i have to say come on azusa unified let's make a change have a great evening next louise week can you please meet

012your mind yes thank you um so i hello good evening superintendent cabinet and board i am one of the families that was affected by last week's or the previous week's changes in the dual immersion program and i want to thank the superintendent and cabinet for giving us a presentation and a space to speak i'm going to be saying similarly what i said then um i see the positive what could be for our program if we effectively meet minimum needs of needed teachers in the classroom now and i understand that the district is hopeful about the sustainability of the program however as a parent and a previous elementary educator my trust has been lost in the leadership and sustainability of the program for a lack of planning and not noticing lower enrollment my trust has been

013broken and that if unexpected vacancies are to happen again our children are at risk of changes in the future my child my first grade son cried about losing his teacher who he loved he found out in one day and lost her the next day my student and my son had another student added just last week after these changes were made making his first grade class from 29 to 30 when district expectations should be 26 to 1 and i understand that there's contractual changes and everything but our students are losing critical attention needed and in an overcrowded class of copen secondly the issue not just becomes about hiring but retaining teachers although teachers may have agreed to these changes did they really have the option to say no i remember when i was a teacher i

014would not have had the option to say no to my to my district or those above me this concerns me about the mental health of teachers teachers are expected to set up new classrooms say goodbye to students create and learn new curriculum aside from shouting them out on social media and extra certification how are we planning on not just hiring but retaining our teachers for the long term so my request i mentioned last week is a tea trade in all classes that go above the class sizes for a minimum of four hours a day number two moving classes to wider rooms if the teachers wanted three purchasing a minimum of two air purifiers per class and if the board is unable to do it i will gather parents who will be prepared who are already

015prepared to contribute to our classes and it's i would prefer not to a plan to retain teachers in the future and if needed consider reducing kinder di program to one class if staff may be an issue finally in regard to last week's reorganization study session i appreciate board members taking the time to ask questions and see true representation of the community it really meant the world model 4 states that the number one reason it is it would not result in loss of students my children are in tk in first grade if model 4 is chosen this does not benefit my children in their entire educational career splitting resources and putting them at a 12 years old with older students does not benefit them model 4 and the current issues with this dual immersion program will

016result in a loss of my students and possibly others similar to mine i will forward this to necessary excuse me board members um and cabinet members and i thank you for your time thank you miss please eliza for your comments is there anyone else and we have we do not have anyone else with their hands raised great thank you next we'll go ahead and move on to agenda item 7.1 comments reports and requests by the board of education we'll go ahead and start with a board member post no promises we'll go ahead and start with the board member at red vegas [Music] good evening everyone i'd like to uh report that um i did go to the open house well i didn't go to the open house but i sell it online at the middle

017schools and um all the administration and staff did a great job either they had a presentation or they had google meets with the parents uh and i was very impressed with the math teacher mr uh from slauson [Music] he was offering his students and talking to parents offering the students a video to show them how to turn in their homework and the parents are worried and trust about that because the parents didn't know that their child had that opportunity to be able to turn in their homework so that's really good because i think it really helps students that are on hand learners and that um you know they'll follow directions more by looking at it than reading about it and i i thank them for that and also um i went into the um class

018for miss clavacia and she's a music teacher and something i learned with also i went with the mariachi director mr rios rodriguez they mentioned the parents regarding them having music masks and i didn't know there was such a thing and the instruments also i mean i i i i have this question everyone asking but i don't know did the music ones have a hole in the middle of them does anybody know any of that no no yeah yeah they do oh thank you yeah i was i was surprised but i know that the um music teacher when they sing she says their beaks are bigger um so they allow them you know to sing that it's not in their face but i wasn't sure about the mariachi and i know because they use trumpets and

019so forth so you know i learned something new i also went to the um this is a high school the invading of the bronze plaque to rename the theater in the name of david h lewis it was beautiful ceremony many kind words were said about him and you know mr lewis was also a concert there and the um they had students staff and parents speaking about him he this gentleman has a heart of gold he just loves the students that this is a unified school district um they say he was always there even in the weekends but they also thank the board of education for working uh you know working on this so quickly and making this happen they were really proud i do have the the platform the talk but i have what it

020read it says david h lewis theater of performing arts teacher mentor counselor 31 years of service 1990 to 2021 all of the world all the world's a stage shakespeare um and i also this is a beautiful we had a project this weekend at memorial park and we had the garden clean up projects were students uh while they painted uh they feed the front gate whole weeds red mulch and plant vegetables and flowers and i want to thank the students in mizzou university district the interact club from the students in mezuzah in glasgow high school a third grade teacher from paramount uh christina dorades and students from christchurch academy brian serrano filled deputy for supervising notice police who couldn't underbeat it without them and they all came out to work together as a team and it

021looks really nice though to the project they were not completed the last time when sanders churchill first starting to continue what was not done also i joined the celebration of azusa 10 to 50 years of service there was a total of 80 participants from 2019 to 2020 from 2020 to 2021 certificated classified adult and management adult school and management i want to congratulate all the employees for the years of service the hard dedications to our students including unified but the big component was 50 years of service believe it or not my friend former mayor joseph rocha congratulations joe thank you next we have board member good evening everyone i just want to have one item to share that on october 7th uh at 6pm i will be holding another uh online copy and so that

022will be taking place uh and again explained like any within the community that is our parents students classified certificate anybody who might want to come in and discuss a number of issues anyone who has been to one of these in the past i will send out an email to you or you can uh sign up for for this meeting to get the information and if you um are interested in in getting the information to be able to attend the meeting then just send me an email you can send me a really anyway anyway you can help me and i'll make sure that you get that information but again that is october 7th at 6 pm great thank you next we have board member cruz gonzalez yes um just a couple requests um i wanted to

023just make a request that um we have i know i know i requested it several weeks ago but that we have this report in terms of how much money we have for photo recovery at the next board meeting um i know our reports that i mean our the report to the stations how we're going to spend the federal money is to do at the end of october right and i'm really uncomfortable to have you bring us something october the second minute october and then we have to see it for the first time and approve it right so so i really i mean i'm making that request that we have at least something on the in the meeting october then it's the first the first meeting it doesn't have to be a whole laid out plan

024but at least principles so that we understand where we're going um and then along those same lines um i did want to just circle back on the request to have an update on our data or what kind of data we're going to be talking in the data dashboard right and so i think understanding when that giving us a date as to when that's going to come to us so we can have a conversation about it um is i think i wanted to get soon i think we made that request several months ago i'm so bad um so there's a bunch of requests and then my last thing is to just welcome my new student board member who is the the granddaughter of my mentor well i see your parents i'm so excited to have you

025here i'm sure you're gonna be just as outspoken as brooklyn thank you very much i do want to share that i um i visited um about six schools and they're just random schools people are asking why are these schools are they the ones that are on uh model three model four yes and no i'm i'm visiting doing research um i did go to the high schools i was business of high school and i went to glasgow high school and i went during lunch that was my first time going during lunch to see what it looks like on both campuses right um about the students right we're looking into the reconfiguration whatever it look like but you know asking questions um and be able to do that research as a school board member to to be

026able not only with the data that we um got from our survey but also being able to to to do some more qualitative right to get to get more qualitative data and i was speaking with teachers with employees with students um and so it was really nice to actually go to um blackstone high school i went to both snooze and glasgow and at boston we got four um on uh with mr uh to mr hague's classroom and for those of you guys that have not been to blackstone high school mr hague has [Music] and let me tell you we have a really good program it's there's a quiet room where we went in and there's like i don't know you can't hear anything like from outside and they went outside and i was in there

027by myself and i was like oh you know and then they could hear me that was pretty cool um he developed a um an area where the students do their announcements so that's you um he has a green screen i mean come on we are like on fire over here i i just i like about two years ago or about a year ago i went to another district to go visit their media room and i think um you were there with me mister barbuda was there um i think was was polina we've uh caught up or have passed um what they have and i would love for us to keep on supporting the media um classroom and however we can regardless of whichever model that comes through and um continue developing that and so um

028i did talk to the students as i was walking around the classroom and kind of missing in the classroom so it was really nice for me to talk to students and um ask them what they were doing and so i got a chance to um you know they got the chance to share um and so for those of you guys you know um asking what we have here at our district we have great programs out of both of our high schools so i would love to market more of what we have to let others know because i'm sure people that as soon as the high or people that live within our community that don't have students that come to our schools don't know about these programs so i would like to see more of the

029marketing um over programs um on our websites and what they offer what they've done right the media i think they um they won an award a film award i think a year or two ago um and that would you know so let's market our programs to get these uh to get our community excited about what's really happening here in susan because this is a unified we're doing great things with the high schools we just need to share with others so just wanted to report on that and at the elementary what was really interesting i do want to share right so we are asking indoors for masks students were out in the playground you know little first graders second graders oh wearing their masks no one's telling them they're like i mean i'm saying hello and

030they're saying hello and um even at the high school we were walking around a couple students recognized me even but the mouse they came up with hey you know and um so this it's really nice to know that each student is taking their safety into their own hands and not only the foster but but outside as well um i gotta talk to a few teachers um it was a great visit and i hope to continue visiting all of the schools and not just once but a few more times before we make our decision and since i was not here when um we gave our condolences to um you know for our council member macias uh muriel mastias i would like to publicly give my condolences to to his family um at this point i have

031i have known ireland for 30 plus years and worked with him on many different projects in the past and i am deeply saddened for what was happening i know that the services are this week and i want to extend as part of the board on our condolences and again um our love to the family this week next we'll move on to item number 8.1 comments and reports why we'll start off with the student board members we'll go ahead and start with and i was going to say this right now um i was pretty surprised to actually see our student board member which is miss hannah hamilton she's this is a high school and actually i've known her since she was a little bitty um and so i just want to welcome you um feel comfortable

032please ask questions this is your time to learn with us um to experience everything with us and so welcome ms hannah hamilton you are in the spotlight to share okay our homecoming game uh we have it scheduled on friday october 8th and then after we have our dance on the ninth we'll be crowning our king and queen then and our homecoming game will be beyond the sea a couple weeks ago we had our first successful fall rally we had our new aztec warrior martine corvos and or you're at samantha sparza crown during the rally we are holding our first virtual fall academy awards ceremony tomorrow and it'll be recognizing over 300 students with gpas higher than a 3.25 we are also having our first virtual student of the month this friday of september 24th and

033we are recognizing students for their outstanding efforts in and outside the classroom our first triad ends this friday and our aztecs doing great job great thank you so much next we'll go ahead and move on to we have a neck camacho connector are you on zoom yes good evening board members cabinet and superintendent bartega my name is annette camacho i attended murray elementary school center middle school in gladstone high school i am currently a senior at sierra high school i am excited to be in the ap government class and to be representing sarah as a student board member this year this school year has been off to a great start my classmates and i are excited to be back on campus for in-person instruction the leadership class kicked off the school year with a water

034balloon toss activity and sports jersey day we are looking forward to more spirit days this trimester congratulations to miss science our community liaison for being selected as the california continuation education association 2020 classified employee of the year ms signs was honored at the ccea conference luncheon last saturday on thursday september 30th we have our chick-fil-a fundraiser be sure to mention sierra high school when you make your purchase i look forward to sharing the exciting events that are happening at sierra throughout the year thank you and you said september 30th chick-fil-a fundraiser so if you guys are hungry that day remember to support our sierra high school and we have christopher flamingo from mrsa and she is not in attendance today go ahead and move on to our cabinet and superintendent for their comments and reports

035good evening i would like to provide you all with an update on our classroom technology as you know during distance learning we were able to take all of the chromebooks from our classroom parts and we were able to distribute those to students we started replenishing those from the parts over the summer um one of the things that we realized was we also had chromebooks that were reaching end of life and so over the summer we ordered another 2500 of these chromebooks um it's definitely been a herculean tap very appreciative to the uh all of our um mis and site technology uh team who have been working really hard to uh get those uh get those chromebooks in the cart one of the things that we realized when we needed to order an additional 2500 was

036we decided that we knew it was going to take a little while we know that there are many challenges and we just really appreciate everybody's patience as we've been trying to you know get these and get these orders taken care of but one of the things was that we also paid for something called a white glove um service and even though it takes a little bit longer um to be able to get the chromebook it's actually a little bit quicker because what happens is that this service will put each one of the chromebooks on a google admin on the network and then what they do is they send a team to be able to get these devices into the chromebooks fast and so this is something that we've been waiting on for a bit and

037i'm really happy to announce that the first um first batch came in today and so lee elementary was able to get um all of their all of their cards except for two they're going to go back tomorrow uh the team came in and was able to do that so we're super excited um just again we know that this has just been really tough um but we are we are persevering and so um we're excited for that um also in terms of uh classroom uh teacher technology uh we've been working with the principals to identify any needed uh projectors that need to be replaced document cameras and all of those things as well so we've got that uh going on as well i just wanted to give you an update good evening board of education staff

038and communities i want to thank everyone who attended and helped out with our presentation event that we held yesterday although this event was held virtually our recipients will receive their award over this next week at their site and department i also want to thank our directors and principals for delivering the required annual annual notifications and policies uh thank you to our employees who have completed the mandated reporter and harassment training and as a reminder we have our live option to complete this training uh tomorrow at sierra high school at 3 15. good meeting board and staff hello staff members um on our hvac system um as a great applause we did have all of our hvac system service required for starter school um but for many circumstances such as the age of our universities i'm

039realizing a lot of our users are known to actually for having technical difficulties throughout the day and normally this is not a factor for us to have a quick turnaround to address them that do to hold it on most of the supply and items that i need to address the items are on delay um we are currently realizing a six to 12 week lag time on receiving parts that normally we just go to home people or other companies just to pick up um additionally to have a temporary solution we have started purchasing temporary units um we have recently just ordered 12. previously last week we received eight that we have been deploying to different sites and we've also invested in fans to provide those to the school side as well um today i'm happy to

040announce that we were successfully able to install the new ac units at the uh high school in paramount which has been down for over a year we will do a broader fixing measures to keep them going but we actually finally received the new units today and they were successfully installed thank you good evening i just wanted to share uh does my joy of being on campuses uh visiting classrooms visiting with nutrition services staff the social staff office staff and being on the ground with the buzz with the kids with the parents um is just the highlight of what we get to do um also want to announce that our education foundation the al foundation is going to be holding a fundraiser on saturday october 2nd uh we are very appreciative of the foundation uh they

041support many of our initiatives uh that uh happen in our school district uh not only at the student level but the staff level uh as well so i just wanna show my appreciation to the foundation for this i also want to join in on the congratulations to your years of services of our staff members uh across the district uh yes we have the mayor rocha or joe rocha former mayor 50 years we have so many so many staff members uh 40 35 30 25 just the dedication of our employees uh is it is amazing so just want to say uh congratulations to them thank you yes one of the things that um i did overlook was that i could congratulate all all of our employees who have been here for the amount of years that

042they have um their dedication and just their commitment to assist the unified is this priceless and we thank you thank you for that moving on to [Music] item number 9.1 which is discussion an action of legal counsel at board of education meetings during open session thank you uh so this item uh is on the board of agenda uh tonight uh to open up a conversation the possibility of having uh our legal counsel a present during open session at regular board meetings um the idea behind this was to add a layer uh for for us as a team uh to ensure if we had a question about process or procedure uh they would be there to help us navigate those um those particular uh situations and so tonight uh we just welcome the board to have

043a conversation about that and hopefully uh land on some kind of motion um to moving forward so okay so i'll reverse them um i was just my question regarding that is um from what i know we'll pay 250 per hour and he's here three hours and i'm not i'm not sure he's alive i can't see him i'm not putting anybody down but the last two meetings he was here and in three hours which is 750 he said one word one thing i mean i i i know the purpose of it and i know it's important but i think we should have him when we're going to discuss things that we know we're going to need him i i personally don't feel that we need to spend that kind of money every single meeting when he's

044on tv and then that's it i mean i i understand i'm just thinking i shouldn't say it's like a waste of money that's my opinion that's how i feel about it um good evening everyone i think for transparency state since we were we considered an agenda item um i think we should be on a person 30 around um when leading council started attending our board meetings because mr superintendent i believe the way we introduced the items if it seemed like a proposal when in fact we're currently in that state so being clarified for the public and our stakeholders where we are and when it started uh yes i believe uh the legal council began i believe it was two meetings ago so that would have been maybe i'm wrong maybe that would maybe no i

045think that would have been august 17th i believe i believe this is his third board meeting with us that's correct superintendent ortega [Music] and i brought this to the superintendent um we in previous school board meetings and it has come to my attention that we've been violating certain brown acts within the board meeting and therefore and with this is full transfer this is my first time being president on this board and i'm grateful for those but a lot of the times um there there's times where um you know we we turn to a board member and it it's important that we have um what is it uh um [Music] process and sometimes we're not doing that as a board and so to me that's a concern because within the next several months we're going to

046be we're talking about closing schools now we're talking about you know um the crva which is the redistricting we're talking about this so it's really really important that we don't look when we have a question we don't look to a cabinet member to the superintendent to a board member for support answers to a question where we can potentially be violating the prone act so it is really important how valuable it is for us to be able to have somebody outside of the board and outside of cabinet to be able to go ahead and if we have a question turn around point of order right these are the things that um i'm not experienced i'm learning but i'm passionate about what i'm doing and so we need a little help and that's how i feel that

047we can proceed and be able to learn at the same time and for us to be able to learn in my case you know it might take a few you know six months to a year this is not something that is set in stone but definitely that um a usb ausd needs at this point and so moving forward um right i think it's very important um like i said we've already in previous meetings it has come to my attention by another lawyer that we have violated and i don't want to be put in that position um as a board member that we are slightly violating the law and or certain things like that and so therefore full transparency that is the reason why um asked for this to be to be here um and so

048therefore anything and i think you know that that's that's a great reason but i wish we would have input or we would have known what he was going to come and be here and we have input on that on the discussion i hear you and i felt because we were going to start this crba we're going to start this whole um uh talking about the reconfiguration and therefore that's why it's on the table right now and we are having fun you know we're all twenty percent we get a vote we get a twenty percent of us and therefore right now it's right here out in the table and it is our time to be uh to have this discussion to be transparent right now i just shared why i thought it was important and as

049president yes i did make that decision to bring this course fourth grade meetings which we said august right because it was repeatedly and so you know like we would turn to one board member and then we turn to the super can you please ask the lawyers this and then okay let me go ahead you know so at this point right now it is here now and we here are the board that can make the decision we can have a say we can express how we feel about this and thank you mr rodriguez kenya board member um that is why i have friends of the board just to have a discussion about this yes may i ask a terrifying question only just for clarifying um so when uh when we are talking about possibly violating something

050um are we talking about robert's rules of orders of parliamentary that's one thing the brown act is something completely different um so i believe that it's it's the first bucket robert's rules of waters and parliamentary i just want to ask that question and make that make that clarity yes thank you and i stand correctly it is it is that the promising and the robertson rules of order and things that we have questions about for example you know something on the agenda items that we previously perhaps did not have them did not have a chance to ask it before and we are going to be making a decision and we are literally against the wall and so so to me i you know it is important to be proactive and i see it as being proactive

051and being proactive and having that is is something that we we can go ahead and move forward if the board decides or here we go and so that's why it's here on the table so i had a couple thoughts actually the first thing i was going to look to clarify was this the same sense that i have that mr ortega that you shared which is us complaining that our potentially completing uh parliamentary procedure with the with the um and as we i i would agree that there are definitely some a number of high you know substantive and highly consequential conversations and decisions that we're going to be making in these coming coming weeks and months and at some of those meetings i i would i do see wisdom in having legal counsel present when we

052are anticipating those conversations i i can see the value there to board member rodriguez point though as as we look at some of the let me let me tell the public none of these none of these meetings are boring but as we look at some of the meetings that we're where we are where we are um handling more of a mundane business that isn't that it's necessary and needed for us as a district i do question or wonder if if while i'm grateful for our legal counsel who is here and standing ready to respond to any questions that we have i also um recognize that there the the urgency with to which we need a response to those questions as we're as we are addressing some of the more mundane business uh that we have

053as a an organization i'm not i'm not sure that it warrants uh board member rodriguez you said 750 based off of you know 250 an hour but there are times when our meetings are longer than that right and so and so i i'm and then when we the urgency of having a response in real time um with our legal counsel if it wants to be that that amount of money and and and it does it does at least at least make me pause but before i feel comfortable moving forward with that i wonder if a better um use of resources would be for for us as board members to to recognize that that we would meet and agree to as a standard practice to uh be better trained in parliamentary procedures and so if we

054were to look at robert schools of orders if there were if there were trainings that we needed to engage in you know once a year or at once every two years or something along with however whatever the frequency that we determine so that we're better positioned to build that capacity within ourselves as a board and not needing to to literally spend tens of thousands of dollars a year um so so that so that we are we're following parliamentary procedures parliamentary procedures are important i i think that there may be more efficient means of getting there and more efficient use of our resources um i think throw this out there um we can also do you know one of the things that we can also do is why i think it's important that we're having this

055you know this conversation um [Music] you could rsp for a paralegal right um for this paralegal to be present if you did not want the actual lawyer to be here and i'm going for that on the table but that's a possibility that we as a board can decide we can do that do we know how how much the cost or how um and i think that um i i i think that we do inconsistently apply our procedure so i think if we all have the same training and have come to agreement about how we're gonna operate i think that can help a lot of situations i would also just say um i would prefer not to take action on this item because i just maybe give direction because then that will just that will give

056our president the flexibility to be able to call the attorney and if we start making actions and it might put her in a box where she can't you know she doesn't have that flexibility to decide when the person could come in but i think i'm hoping that you hear all of us saying that we think that maybe when there's a like a hot topic coming on then it would be appropriate to bring an attorney but maybe the better solution is what adrian reports let's look at a paralegal and what the potential cost for that would be can we also uh get a sense of what types of parliamentary procedural training exist if there's whether there's things that we can do through lego or or or csc um california school board association there's things that we

057can we can do for them can we get a sense of what some of those costs might be as well just so we can compare those um so on that front a couple of things uh we are set for our next governance meeting to get training on parliamentary procedures and i believe that is october 12th that's number one uh just a quick peek at our current attorney uh legal firm not saying that this is the industry standard i don't know but just looking at their the contract that we find with them their paralegals range from 150 to 230 an hour can you clarify what the cost is for um so or carlos you can speak to that what the cost currently per hour that we have our attorney on ortega if i can just raise

058a point i think we talked potentially about having a reduced amount for my services for the board meetings so when we're talking about this amount 250 is less than my my current rate and i think we also talked about the idea potentially of having a flat rate understanding that sometimes you're going to have short shorter meetings and sometimes you're going to have longer meetings and i think board member rodriguez pena is exactly right i didn't say much the last two meetings in which i sat in because typically the role as i understand it as i've been asked to to be here as by the board president is solely to provide parliamentary procedure to be the parliamentarian and if the board is efficiently running their own meeting there's no need absolute for me to interject or

059kind of jump into the conversation and the last couple meetings i've watched have been very efficiently run to just add a full context on that so uh typically uh it's 350 an hour and so 250 is a reduce rate again carlos would be able to speak into this more just could be looking at the contact that we signed with them paralegal services run from 150 to 230 phenomena so one thing i also want to bring up and i hear you guys what you guys are saying um as i've attended other school board meetings in other cities i i see their their attorneys actually present studying with them you know and one of the things that i've noticed um within our meetings is um for example i had motioned for for something and you know someone

060questioned wait can the president motion and everyone's looking at each other so for me i feel that there is a need um so then my next question is could we have a an attorney you know how they have doctors on call or or the um what is it that uh paralegal is that something that for example um you know if we have a big item yes we can bring the attorney in but if we can have a paralegal and this is the question i think for our lawyer um mr carlos um like when they have those yeah and in madam board president i don't see any problem with having somebody on call in particular when you have meetings they're going to be a little bit more complex you're going to tackle heavy issues so i

061don't think that's an issue um i do think that when you have an attorney especially um i'm helping the district with a lot of different legal issues it really is a two-fer here because sometimes i'm actually read into some of the issues that are happening and so i can kind of provide some background i think a paralegal is great to support other things that the district is doing but currently there's no paralegals working with azusa and so i would have to find a paralegal within the firm that could potentially be on call and make sure that that paralegal has have to have the expertise in robert's rules so i don't know initially if it'll be a great fit um but something i'm gonna have to look a little deeper into and just for clarity i

062just want to make sure that i understand and carlos that you understand so are you saying like for instance if we went with a recommendation that's kind of going right now like hey heavy items let's have carlos here for open session more mundane to use uh board member careers uh term we're fine without him because i'm just i'm not saying that's what we meant but on those means are you saying then like hey cardinals you're on call so something a hiccup happened it's like okay let's pause and let's call the attorney is that what you mean is that because i just want clarity on what that means yeah when we have a um pretty much to what board member recruits and fellows was saying that when we have a uh an agenda item where we

063know it's going to be heavy and bring them in but all the other board meetings like for example if we know it's going to be a light agenda um [Music] um and he really is not going to you know be uh needed if he could be a call for example there's sometimes i myself may ask a question like hey can this be done i'm looking at you we're looking at here we're looking here for answers and that is why i've asked for the attorney to be here because we're looking at each other like hey can we do this and we're looking at the audience and the audience is going like this or we're looking at board members you know we are board members and yes we are going to have that um that training in

064october but this isn't ever you know every two weeks we're having a meeting we're making decisions and like i said when i've been at other school board meetings at city council meetings the lawyers are right there ready any questions and sometimes they do just sit there and just kind of what you know um carlos just shared sometimes what he's working on with um human resources or uh with our cpo like latasha fall right with mot or something that we may have a question on he is already aware of what is happening and therefore we have a legal question about it he's already here and that was my point and that's why i asked him to come because if they had seen that there was a lot of meetings where you know board members were asked

065well can that be done or can we do this wait no can we do that and and honestly i mean we're human and i you know i've only been here about three years um and it's different being in the classroom and being you know in this center being out in the audience than being here and so i just want to be able as a board member all of us to be able to to handle um our differences meaning that like okay i don't think you could do that or this you know it's like no no let's not waste time on i'm doing all that let's let's just turn it over real quick if they're can we you know fade point of order can we do this because we know how can we proceed with this

066and then moving on and so what i can recall this thing is that um the majority of them what they're saying is that they are not comfortable with with them being here every single meeting but then what i am proposing is that we can have him on call for example such as if he is not attending but we do call him and since we do have a say we have a question right we call him and we utilize him for you know i don't know two three four questions for the meeting and that can be like for about an hour is there something that we can work out that at every meeting he can be like on call and that's what i'm putting out in the tape so does that mean if he is answering

067questions for one hour he gets to 250 dollars not for them right i think we would go ahead i was just going to suggest that i think we probably need to get a sense of what the what all the services are and then we can work something out but i think that to board member rodriguez pena's point um i wouldn't want to really bill for time that i'm not working so i'm not looking at any kind of minimum one hour and maybe what we can do is work something out where certain issues as they come up if they're problematic for parliamentary procedure you table the issue um and then you postpone any action on the issue somebody there in the room could text me hey we're gonna have an issue this is what's going on

068and then i can make myself available towards the later part of the meeting um also i i think to the madam board president's point i have seen uh legal counsel present um for quite a few different school boards and and city councils as well and i think it does help sometimes having the legal counsel in the room as opposed to by zoom um and so i i think everybody was gracious enough to allow me to participate via zoom but i think it might be better for the board if i was actually there in person for for these particular meetings that we're talking about that are going to be heavy with issues but but board member rodriguez pena i think we we can work something out where it's really only the time i'm working will be

069what's built to the district so i'm yeah one of the questions i had is how would that play out and so that that's helpful to hear you describe that for us or the potential of that i think there's more to be fleshed out to think through logistically how would that work out um i have found that at times when we have gotten caught up parliamentarily or parliamentarily speaking it has it has disrupted our meetings and and but this has the potential of being even more disruptive for toward our meetings if we're asking a question we're saying we're going to pause table this matter put a conversation out bring that bring the item back and discuss it later in the in the meeting we might be in an attempt to solve one problem we could be

070creating two or three other other problems so that's that's why i do want us to be be careful but i would say it's worth exploring and kind of looking through what what that model could look like something i'd also be interested to know is as we look at our legal what we pay towards legal expenses uh let's say annually if we were to add this in i'm also curious to know not right now on the spot but maybe we can be updated in a weekly update what is the what would the percentage increase be that we would be looking at with with these added services compared to um because it's one thing for us to look at it on its own but when we're looking at um comparing to what we what we might pay

071without it that would be that might be helpful for us to know and and understand as well as we're making a decision um but yeah i i even even the concept just be clear even the concept of having a paralegal which i'm grateful that we're gonna look into to see what that could be i'm i i would at this juncture without without the additional information i probably feel the same way about having a paralegal president as i would about having um a legal counsel presence just consistently and constantly in real time um but but there's definitely the opportunity for more information together another thing that i wanted to mention um that i feel that um that is being said and and i i hear you you know uh which is the cost but in reality

072if you look back in time the rostel project that school cost us close to eight to ten million dollars in legal fees and we still don't have a school um you know things like that where where we can learn from our past that if we be more proactive yes we do spend a little money and that was you know an example uh there's other examples where um things can come um again we're going through the reconfiguration i think that i've already said that but it is important that we be proactive and yes being proactive may cost a little bit of money but in the long run it will save us so that's that's all i have to say um i think it's important that we do explore and and i agree let's explore um you

073know something where what would it look like if um if we had him on call and i i don't think that that that was very clear um so we would if we were to call him since if we would have a parliamentarian question and that's what he would he feel like point you know what is it 0.25 so it'd be like 15 minutes or about two or three questions or whatnot and so um it'd be interesting to find out and again this is an investment i think um and i believe that um [Music] and i'm glad we're having this conversation um anybody have any more comments yeah which i'll make a request can we can we put this conversation on the at the governance study session on october 12th so that we can have um

074we can have a process question at a governance retreat where it really should be um and and maybe just hold off this finish this conversation there i just felt like we're going like i don't feel like we have a resolution right now and i'd rather move on to the rest of it [Music] actually um can i just ask why would you would like it for a governance meeting and not a regular meeting where we have more attendees because i think that this kind of question is a process question in terms of how we're in meetings and generally the best place that that conversation is that i've governed that's really the purpose of this in my life for the purpose of those of those meetings so it makes sense to have that conversation there i mean

075our televised i think we'll have as much audience at that meeting in any other meeting so that's really what because i think we've how much time we spent right now talking about this um and i'd rather talk about things that impact our students i think that this doesn't affect our students the way that we run our meetings and the way that we proceed during our meeting so it is important that we talk about it at a regular meeting so we can go the superintendent and i can go ahead and discuss that and then get back to our board we can go ahead and see here i have a question um for holy council since we the majority would like this not to be an action item so what do i do i think at this

076point you've had the informational discussion about the issue and what i what i hear is that it requires further study to answer several questions that the board members posed at this point and and not to put superintendent ortega on the hook but often a board president would refer to superintendent superintendent ortega and say can you please further discuss that and come up with some options and some potential pricing options um with legal counsel and then i'll have a conversation offline with superintendent ortega and then we can bring it back at the board president's direction we can bring it back to a subsequent meeting no action is necessarily required this is an information and or action item so we're moving on to the next item thank you for that and just just before we move on

077um it begs the question should i be staying for the rest of the meeting or should i sign off now and it sounds like i haven't yet been formally asked since you were asked to be here today i think it's only fair that you stay here until the end of our meeting thank you understood mr carlos um i i i don't mean to i'm not saying that you're not doing anything so you know i apologize that's how you took it i'm just i'm concerned about the money the money being spent you know not not that you're not doing anything or you're not doing your job so don't get me wrong and board member rodriguez pena while i appreciate they i appreciate that clarification i work at the pleasure of the board and i think you

078are absolutely 100 right and that's often what a parliamentarian does the parliamentarian's on call if there's a question so um i i work for you uh madam board president or madame uh rodriguez ford pena thank you sir yeah does anybody have anything else great then we'll go ahead and move on to consent calendar and it is from 11.1 to 11.5 thank you getting motion to move the consent calendar so really first by board member greer we have a second by board member rodriguez do we have any discussion and seeing that there's none let's go ahead and count our vote we have our student here and we have can we get the student preferential vote and it passes by zero since there are no items pulled from consent calendar we'll go ahead and move on to

079business and finance we have 12.1 approval of resolution number 21 322 annual delegation of an administrative authority to process routine budget revision adjustments and transfer that is so we'll go ahead and can i get in motion to approve 12.1 and please get a second we have any discussion on this item 4.1 please the transportation yes so apparently um is going through their way before they're upgrading their financial system and we are on our we are waiting for or we will be um transitioning to their um more robust financial system currently um the district operation if we want to make a budget transfer for example at azusa high school they wanted to purchase bleachers they had five thousand dollars in their supply budget but this is going to be uh something that's over their allocation they

080would have to put in the budget transfers make that purchase right now we cannot make that budget transfer until we brought the item to the board to approve it then they completely requisitions to make the purchase what this is given is the authority for the business office to do routine transfers between um objects and funds and then we will report all of our transfers that will come in has to be reflective in our first and second and number 40. so then the board of education would see the transition after the fact that after it's done already yes apparently if i'm being honest currently that's already happening but what's happening is we will do the transfer but the sites will never see their transfer put in place and so we're actually having approved requisitions for negative

081lines and then that's more of a cleanup process to make sure we truly didn't overspend and then i'm also reading here where it says it's not to exceed 20 million dollars is that is that like the cut off that you can for the year without approval over the board of education yes one year but there isn't let me say it differently uh there's not one transfer that a district could do that would equate to 20 million dollars this would just be up to essentially we can have the authority that growth here will be making transfers and the cumulative amount cannot exceed them [Music] so we could make it greater we can make it smaller it's just with the authority to uh uncomfortable with the figure not the process i understand the process but i am

082i truly understand have any more comments so how yes how would this process be any different than our current process that you think so right now if using the same example this is a high school want to put a transfer from their personal account to purchase and supplies for the students they can put in the request we can actually process the uh transfer and that day they will be able to make that purchase for those supplies right now they have to wait until we get board approval then they make the first look their allocation that they were already awarded so our all of our sites received um funding per student so that they could have a discretionary account and then they tell us we're going to hear hey natasha put it in the supply account

083hey i'm going to buy technology but then things change and they can't make that change happen until we bring it to board even though this is already their funding that they were allocated and then and then that was like the next question was and so then all of these all of these changes will come to the board right yes ma'am and they happen next to zero so it's not like all of a sudden azusa high school and they have four thousand have been here they could purchase from ten is this for all of the schools yes all schools all funds so even the employees and what would um so what would happen if the board did not occur then we would go to the we will remain in our current practice where scientists are putting

084a request for budget transfers and they would have to wait to realize those transferring to the next four agenda and how would that affect how would that affect our students well i don't want to say that it will affect the students but if you get delayed members using their items because we'll have negative funding lines so what did you say that we um at that point did that's the purpose of a special meeting with this 24-hour reading if necessary that something had to get done before the next one reading are those that think about natural constitutive emergency meetings or especially the differences special or emergency meeting i think it's just not probably more especially just 24 hours notice i think it's also important to know i like what tasha was saying um including myself we

085all set up our budgets based on what we think is going to happen this year and then oh man like this i i didn't anticipate this but i don't have enough money in that line item so now i have to have to move it um and so it's about um this happens um i wouldn't say frequently like every day but it happens with with some uh occurrence and so just that that purchase or that um delivery or that service that just has to be put on hold until we have our board meeting to do that um sometimes we're talking about hundreds of dollars sometimes thousands of dollars depending on what specifically uh it is and so this is just to expedite uh those services and those and those materials uh not only for our sites

086but our departments as well you said you said sometimes it's hundreds sometimes it's thousands just to be clear so it's never been tens of millions never and if i can do a perfect example um our code funds we did not have those funds at the time the budget was about it when we received those funds we were starting to spend those plans but they were never put in our financial systems until we brought that together so that means in order to find our standards we have to allow negative funding transactions we are producing purchase orders with no funding allocated we knew we had the money but that's not best practice because ultimately if you forget you're going to spend the money twice and so this is putting parameters in place to ensure we're not free

087that's a perfect example of maybe what a high high end could look like can you speak to maybe what at that point what was the height of those negative transactions we've never since i've been here and i've only been here a year we've never had anything beyond 1.5 million as far as making the purchase and that was literally providing chromebooks or something like that so because i wonder to sort of remember our biggest famous point here here one thing you said before maybe as the conversation has evolved you you've shifted on this but you said you're comfortable with the process but some of the numbers become comfortable yeah um instead of pushing this back i wonder if that is giving anyone else any degrees of pause um can we look to approve this with the

088caveat that we adjust those numbers and discuss what those what those more appropriate numbers would be yes sir sure program mr malda i heard you say that the 20 million dollar shoulder is at the discretion of the district so can you provide insight as to how you propose that number in particular is that based on overall budget size um a percentage so we operate over 120 million dollar budget um and so we just figured 20 million which is just that um depending on like we know for a fact right now our esr allocation is 20 million um once we receive those allocations we want to be able to budget and spend that right now you would not have that little reason to do that so that's where we started with that number thank you and

089my full question is um i'm i'm glad that we're having this discussion um but i think for me knowing that the checks and balance is already in place with budgeting and allocation and allocation of sites um i haven't seen anything that would give me cause to think that we're overextending um and i'm trusting the process here among cabinet and what's appropriate board approvals i i would be in favor of um enabling our systems to be more efficient to be able to get supplies and equipment into the hands of students and teachers and really relinquishing that local control to the sites knowing that we have a strong process in place thank you and i agree with sabrina i think for me the key pieces is the fact that it's safe that non-routine budget revisions still must

090come to the board so that makes it very clear that these are just routine items okay so when i'm hearing i'm hearing both um i feel that ford is comfortable with this but i do hear um two board members or with board members saying that they're not comfortable with the amount um but when you clarify it and when you share that it's 120 million and being saved um so um do you think moving forward right so it's only been 1.5 but now we're having all this money for our provide i [Music] do you think that they will reach 20 million i don't think that one time but then he was because not at one time and there's always a record checks and balances and documentation correct yes ma'am and i can also we can also

091incorporate on board updates of budget transfers and importantly that that also helps with the movement of the items i just want to clarify because the the resolution doesn't it says it says an individual budget revision could be up to 20 million and the total is 59. okay because i thought you guys were all saying that 20 million would be the total over the year well i'm just going to suggest just to move this along so i mean if you want to work with a different level you may demotion so you have to you have to remember motion otherwise let's just focus on the table okay i think we'll go ahead and move forward i'm thank you sorry about that we have a student our student preferentials yes great and it passes four one we'll go

092ahead and move to item 12.2 gratification approval of compulsion agreement between the susan universal district and deborah hammers sorry 12.2 we have a first fight board member rodriguez canyon we have a second five board member prayer any discussion but yeah i have a question in terms of the consultant um so when it says that she will be evaluating recommending changes um what [Music] okay great and so when you say no options are we looking at maybe [Music] this is all we offer just this one would you need more what exactly is this consultant going to be doing for our district and for our students so she will be assessing our in total our total nutrition services operation um she started on monday where she did a staff training for all our nutrition service staff will

093be incorporating safety training as well and we'll do proper food handling um we will be assessing our meal distribution our meal options our meal options and we will find ways to be more efficient with our operations as far as the presentation of our food and the selection of our foods who selects our foods for our students right so we're hiring this this consultant and you're saying you know so she's gonna come to to help us you know the selection of the food so who is responsible for for selecting the students meals currently right now i'm directing nutrition services prepare their meals and so the consulting will work in collaboration with our directors that we can have other ideas to see what other options are out there other options so when you say other options what

094do you mean better so right now we provide most of almost all of our military package um so there's other options where we can actually prepare meals on site versus having pre-packaged meals um we can incorporate safe ways of having on top of our options um exploring more options on our meetings such as vegan options as well um we just want to evolve and there's a several options and i think in both collaboration of their brains we can take our practicum to the next level and um i remember there was one year that um [Music] when we had our previous uh director there was taste tests [Music] that will be incorporated yes and we have the students choosing and so i i don't know what the high school is but sometimes they they don't eat

095because they don't like the food and so i would would really like their their input and if you think that's going to happen sorry [Music] yes we have a comment by our school um [Music] uh our schoolwork our student representative ms canna um i know that someone did in fact visit us and asked what we would like as like um students they asked what kind of meals we would like it for preparation for the school year um so i think we also have our comments on that i think it's great that when we're considering bringing on a consultant as an outside resource to evaluate our program i think the piece that might be missing in this document which is spurring my colleagues questions is what are the specific goals or intentions around around the contractor

096consultant so um i as being as one voice i would like to see a little more detail in the scope um going beyond you know imagine advice on the official service program i'd like to see some goals and examples of activities of what this consultant is proposing to do the verification is the this is something that you would like moving forward i would like to see that um incorporated as an addendum to this this agreement that the spoken service be include more detail in terms of functional areas if it's menu planning if it's fresh food options those types of broad yet defined categories okay and dr bo i just wanted to clarify is that a motion to amend the original motion to approve this this uh action before the board yes mr vegas um how

097should i voice that and i wanted to clarify if you're making a motion to amend at this point then you would need a second on the motion to amend and then if the board approved the motion to amend if there was a majority of board members then that would be the the motion that would be standing in the original motion to approve um the the action that had been recommended no longer be there so i just want to clarify for for your motion to amend i just want to make sure it's it's clear what would be added to the current recommendation thank you give me a moment to collect my thoughts so i can write it down and be able to save that for the record give me one question should you get in a

098moment yes [Music] what is her background or she especially is she specializes in menus or nutrition the yeah of arcadia unified school district uh she actually hired and trained stella our own director she actually actually all the directors here with the exception of maria she actually trained them over the course of her career so she is well over she does all the nutrition services oh okay i'm just going to say i'm a really big fan of our canadians they're known for so now my challenge is to make sure we say that [Music] i would like to thank carlos thank you for for um [Music] for interjecting um on this and this is i'm just going to give that example right now we just had this happen i i didn't know how to proceed this is

099something that i just learned today so thank you um board member bo for uh for speaking on this behalf i actually um one of the things that well she's so collecting with us um with the previous uh cabinet that we worked with at the beginning of our of my turn was just that that all of the contracts that come to the board with independent contractors should have these things we need to know you know what is the goal but what is the end goal what are they going to do and at the end did they accomplish what they said they were going to do we're going to pay them but did it happen and so this is one thing that i would like to bring back um i know miss blatant while you were not

100here when he has board directed our cabinet to do this and so i i would like to bring this back um so that way we we are transparent we are holding our consultants accountable um and making sure that they follow through and what they said they were going to but then i also think they would be helpful that we knew you know where they came from or what other districts they served in a little bit about their background you know who's rushing out behind they're hiring this person that would be good for us to know also and on top of that um one of the things that we have said before as well is you know did we hire her could we have an rfp go out and do we have other contractors and this

101is just in general not just this one if we have other contractors or you know what were their qualifications right or did we just call her up or all this consultant up and say hey we have this going on do you want to come and you know i want to be able to have equity and transparency here in our district and i think it would be really really important for us um and it just so happens that um you know this is a good example that we have these rfps for our consultants to be able to go ahead and bid for for these um jobs that we are giving these individuals that are going to come service our district specifically for consulting services you wouldn't go well which you know you would you typically it's

102um just for the service of the need of the district you reach out to the entity or the organization um if there's other companies you could with two proposals or posts if that's the desire but that is not a requirement so that's something that um i know that we in our previous uh meetings we as the board had asked cabinet to do um for consultants and so i think foreign there are conversations that we had a couple of years ago where we discussed some of this i i think what's most important from this is yeah when we have a consultant just clearly communicating what the expectations are what the desired outcomes are and ensure that there is one of those success indicators so we can determine that those that came and and were here to

103do a job that they were successful in the job that they did so so adding great levels of very generally i think is a good idea we did discuss that in the past and we haven't come away from that so if we can re-evaluate how to bring that back into the mix would be helpful um i do think that it is it is a good idea for us to bid for or um or some of our our vendors but i don't i don't know that it's always appropriate across the board um that's there are when we were having some of those some of the conversations i want to say we were talking about like something i'm mistaken because it was a while ago but it might have been some of the construction projects that we

104were looking at with uh measure some of our bond money so so because of this i wonder if this is different than i would imagine this is different than that um so maybe we just make sure we add a layer of i'm i'm not suggesting that we don't already but that we ensure that there are layers of thoughtfulness that are that are there when we determine if we need to uh put out a bid and we have multiple kind of bidders for different things that we're working on or if it's more most appropriate to just contact a particular agency exactly just speaking right but no i'm not i'm i'm i don't think i don't think that that wasn't i it appears that that was following this instance so in this instance i would not make

105i i don't feel any less comfortable because i don't have proof that there wasn't a page for this there could be other things if there were other items that we were discussing i i might not say the same thing but in this particular item i'm not concerned that we don't have multiple uh bids for this it just tastes bad for president i'd like to propose an emerging motion to approve the contract of 12.2 to for the agreement to include a an addendum that states a more detailed scope of work including but not limited to management advice around fresh food options and menu planning can we get an emotion to approve the addendum well i'll check it i will second remove [Music] okay so to repeat my motion to propose amended motion to approve the contract

106with deborah including for the agreement to include an addendum to the agreement to include but not limited to a detailed scope of work or fresh food options and many planning and it's accepted by the chair we have a sending by chris gonzalez did you go ahead and cast our vote so i reckon is this is this do you want more discussion no no no no this is an amendment to and i'll just jump in there what i understand too this is an amendment to the original motion the original main motion was to approve the consultant agreement as it is currently written um i understand dr beau's amendment to add a provision in that consultant agreement that requires for the examination of healthy food options so it would be effectively approving the consultant agreement but adding

107that language in i just want to recommend that we take the voice foot on this motion so that when we take a motion on the actual motion the main motion we can record it in the system and i have a question for her carlos um what would [Music] uh the the first the first first there's going to be a vote on the amended motion whether or not that's going to become the main motion before the board and it seems a little anticlimactic but then the bush if that amendment passes then you now have an amended motion before you the main motion which was consideration of the consultant agreement that goes away and then dr bowe's motion would be the motion before the board and the board could take a second vote and whether or not

108that motion would pass in in theory dr bo's motion could fail and then everything reverts back to the original motion right so the motion that that the vote that we're taking now um if we take it by hand then whether it passes or it doesn't and then what i would do is then bring it back during this meeting right now that's correct then you would vote on the amended motion [Music] thank you we're going to do a hand coat for this one and then i'm going to go ahead and um bring it back well i've already carlos i've already amended the motion with with um dr beau's amendment in there so that it could be one vote that's the way the system works we amend the motion which is the consultant agreement to the vote

109so we just need to recall dr beau's motion for member bruce gonzalez's second and vote okay and then then at that point for my read is that the amended motion would now become the main motion and i don't know if the system allows you to have a second vote i i agree it seems redundant but first they will not okay so is there yeah i would be creating a second vote after the fact in minutes this system will not let me do that it's either we vote on the first one or we amend it with dr foe's suggestions and we vote on that so basically the addendum added now what we're going to do is we'll we'll do a handful not a computer vote and then i will bring it back right with her her

110added amendment and that's what we'll vote on [Music] yes and that's okay for me to add those two minutes after the fact because it won't be a record of this at this meeting right now i think that might be the only solution because we're having uh trouble with the system allowing us to track exactly what we're doing so we're going to have to write that one in later and i appreciate your patience so we have um a first by partner of the foe and we have a second five cruz gonzales um it is recommended at the board of education right by a per consultant agreement between ausd and david thomas with the amended motions including addendum and we're going to go ahead and get a handbook board member freezing dollars yes for number three part

111number review yes i say yes so it passes 5-0 and now i'm bringing it back correct correct now you're calling the question on the main motion which now is uh dr bill's amended motion yes which was your calling the matter to vote so how would i say there would need to be a a motion to start that process is there a motion is already on the floor so now we just i i call for the vote i call her i call the question okay well no i don't do that but you can just call for a vote now because the motion is on the floor so now i'm calling the matter to vote okay so now we vote electronically correct thank you and it passes by zero moving on to 13.1 we have 2020-2021 academic

112achievement results this is a simple item we have mr good evening president ariana's board members uh mr ortega and then uh what a pleasure to be here in person uh after a year and a half of presenting through zoom so it's nice to really see you all this evening i'm going to be reporting on the results of our 2021 state assessment i'm going to start to take you back in time a little bit back to 2019 covid pandemic hit us and uh we are all in the stay-at-home order and this california state board of education waived the state assessments which are the s back and the past and the tests that we use annually for accountability purposes and then in 2021 we found ourselves continuing to be in the pandemic and the state board was

113uh able to provide flexibilities to districts last spring because many districts were across the state many different places uh many still in distance learning some slowly entering hybrid formats other small rural areas were able to go back in person and so the state really determined that districts would need to decide what was most feasible for their communities and their students and so they developed some options from which all districts could select and um it included using district developed assessments that were aligned to the common core state standards that were available to students in grades three through eight and eleven and they could be individually reported to parents and families so here in ausd we have a very strong system of district-wide common formative assessments for all of our students in language arts and in math

114so the most feasible option for us was to use these results for the accountability purposes for the 2021 state assessments and so while the data i present tonight from our local assessments really supports us in in understanding where our students are it is very important to note that this is just one small snapshot that helps us determine where our students are as we begin to make decisions and drive instruction it gives us data for the accountability purposes but our teachers our schools are using multiple measures to really precisely determine where our students are and how to meet those needs we will continue to have common formative assessments uh teachers can look back on all of the assessments last year and as students returned to school this this fall we immediately began to do diagnostic assessments

115in language arts and now with our students so that we again have multiple points of data to drive instruction so tonight the focus is just sharing one quick snapshot that will be used to report in our school accountability report cards that will be presented and to the public in february so um i'd like to go ahead and share some of the results of the formative assessments tonight that we are using for 2021 accountability purposes these are language arts results for students in grades 3 through 8 and 11. you can see 32 of the students at this assessment we're meeting or exceeding the standard and this graph also shows you the full range of performance levels the next slide uh shows you a different view uh disaggregating by grade level and if dr mitchell could roll

116it up just a little bit more you'll be able to see at the bottom of that thank you documental the the grade levels uh by grade the next slide shows the view by our student groups and a little bit higher and then the bottom can show you the groups that you're able to disagree and then the following slide gives you yet another view of the data by our school sites next let's look at the mathematics results overall we have had 18 percent of students meeting or exceeding standards on the assessment and then again reflecting all of the performance levels on this circle graph on this slide the following page again as we did with the language arts we were able to look by grade level and the next slide can provide us a snapshot by

117our student group and the final graph again provides our our school level results as a quick reminder these results are for students um not all students in the district while all students do take our common formative assessments uh for the purposes of this reporting this is just students in grades three through six for elementary schools our seventh and eighth graders that are in middle school and then our only our 11th graders for high school and again i can't emphasize more how important it is for our own uses not the accountability purposes but our own purposes to use this as only one snapshot and indeed we have multiple points of data that we use to drive instruction understand our students and develop plans for accelerating learning this year so in the final slide you'll see an

118image check we'll go can we ask questions through each slide if possible please this is my last slide yeah i mean i'm happy to stop now okay so parent and family uh information letters accompanied individual reports that were uh printed from illuminate which is our our district data and assessment system and did this letter describe the assessments uh provided descriptions of the performance levels and percentages of the scores and additionally outlined the standards that were assessed and this was mailed home in early early june of 2021. um this data along with many other measures was used also to develop and and look at what we needed to do in the way of meeting student needs in our 2122 lcap and as i stand before you today and i'm going to say that again as i

119stand before you today the state board of education has said that we will be returning to the traditional s back a little slightly shortened version in ela and math but we will be using the regular state assessments this spring um and that again includes usbac and ela and match the cast which is the california science test and then also our caa which is the california alternative assessment which is for our students who have that identified as an assessment method in their idp so uh district wide will continue to use multiple data as we make instructional instructional decisions this year for our students so thank you very much and i can take some questions thank you for your presentation here board member career yeah i thank you i hear how you know as we look at

120this we continue to say that this is this is but one data point there are multiple things for us to look at um i i do want to be careful though to not move too quickly past this and what and and what we are able to gather from this data because there there are there are pieces as i look at some of these some of this data and some of the graph their pieces that are concerning and so i so i think let me be careful not to this is not a question i'm posing to you individually maybe i'm posing to us all collectively as as as we look at this what what does what what does this what is what does this communicate for us as about what you know we need to do

121how how do we look at some of these numbers um and some of the numbers are low looking at these numbers how do we it's instead of instead of us saying that uh that there are other data pieces which i understand that there are what do we do with this with these this piece of information specifically these assessments are what we call common formative and these are assessments that we use to be able to engage our instruction um the scores are not typical of what our district assessments normally are in you know in-person circumstances so these were assessments that were taken um could have been online could have been at home right um and so we were definitely in an investigative transition um i think what it tells us is that we can use that

122in conjunction um with you know our diagnostic assessments to see you know teachers can take a look to see where students were before um last year and they can also take a look at where they are with their diagnostic assessments to get a bigger picture um so again these are really assessments that we don't use in a summative way we use them to kind of gauge exactly where students are and where we need to go in many cases with these assessments there's a rubric right and so when the teachers are scoring these assessments there are multiple measures within that as well and so um that's that's just it's a way for teachers to be able to look at those you know for example mathematics problems for for example writing and then determine what are some

123of the trends that they see overall that students need to work on as well as what they would need to do individually for students we have any more questions yeah i have a couple um so can you explain to me um one why we chose our local assessment i know we also administer i ready so um at the time we had not purchased i ready for all students we did that just for this year and i ready only is for grades pay through eight as well so those are the factors that led us to part the decisions we made and discuss the options that are most feasible connections i thank you for having us having this presented publicly as required by the state waiver that we thought that we've done so i appreciate that um

124so that's another first question and then my next question is really around um so you say that these are these are formative assessments right they're not benchmark tests so can you explain to us um in what way do we use them differently that makes them a formative assessment versus what i think on its surface would look like you know a common sub accommodated benchmark common benchmark that we give across the district right either one i i can start and then you can have it so one of the things that make these formative assessments is that teachers can turn around and use this data immediately within their classrooms to adjust instruction when we look at some of the assessments like the s back the students just take it once and when we get the spores back

125the students are out of that teacher's classroom so it's summative in that they don't have a way to then adjust for those particular students that they were working with before and so that's one of the big differences with um with these formative assessments that we use in our district compared to some of the summative assessments the other thing i like to add is that these assessments are are written to be um of a similar quality rigor task that students would see on the smarter balance assessment we want to be able to give students that practice they'll see what kind of tasks those would look like as well and so there may be where um that maybe it maybe a student isn't quite ready and hasn't mastered those uh those standards quite yet but it's a

126it's a great way for teachers to be able to um you know take a look to see what are some of those areas in terms of again writing performance tasks problem solving so for clarity are you saying that if i'm if i'm a fourth grade student i am taking this assessment and this this is an assessment for what i am to to have learned by the end of my fourth grade here and so so i have more learning to do throughout the course of the year um so then we would see these numbers increase or or is this based off of what a student should current where students should certainly be at that point in their school it's based on what the students should be at that point um this is what we would expect

127them to know and so this you know an assessment is able to tell us you know to what extent are they able to you know show proficiency or mastery on those standards so then going back to my question um so i appreciate you differentiating although i think what you just described to me could also be used to describe a benchmark test that you give throughout the year so um thank you for clarifying how it's used so can you just give me a sense in terms of like let's say the kids take the steps right they take a common format of assessment what what happens with that and what's the turnaround time and who ends up looking at it and what time frame great question um so we have our professional learning communities that are are

128set up at our school sites i typically the student the teachers will look at the data um can be twice a month or once a month it just depends on how they set it up if they're looking at language arts for example sometimes they're looking at the mathematics um when they have assessments and so um we do uh we do data protocols with our principals we model different ways to be able to do protocols we'll look at some of that data um teachers would work together and um kind of a plan do study act model so they would look at the assessments um they would disaggregate the results and really talk about what are some of the trends and maybe i'm looking at my class and i'm seeing uh that students have some success on

129a specific standard and maybe um mr ortega think oh gosh my students you know um maybe didn't do as well in that standard what were some of the strategies that you used when you were teaching that so it's an opportunity for in the professional learning community to really talk about what are some of the strategies that we can use to be able to you know assist our students to meet those standards so we do this in a professional learning community the teachers have opportunities to be able to take a look at assessment results have discussions around um best practice and then be able to do any um you know again any additional re-teaching so how often do we give do we do formative assessments let's say with language arts yes so we have three assessments

130in language arts and math that we do as a district however teachers also do their own common form of assessments that they're doing as well this is just a way for us as a district to be able to say this is something that we do with uh with all of our grades and our classes but certainly teachers are also doing this on a regular basis as well and not only just common form of assessments but really taking a look at student work as well okay and then my final um i guess request would be because i don't think i was here i i really like to understand and i understand that it could be i mean if you're looking at it like great great degree comparison and maybe different cohorts or if you know from

131another book i'd like to understand how this um how these these results compared to previous years right just trying to understand the effect of the pandemic that that is had on our students and so along those same lines i would really i really think it's really important for us the board level to understand what are the if we're administering diagnostic tests right to bring back a summary of that data so we can understand really where we see and aggregate our students are in terms of having been in business learning for a year plus and then you know this modified proposed at the end of last year so again that's the request for i guess in the future not you know in the near future and just to understand and really publicly have a conversation about

132where we are continuing yep certainly and the other thing too is that we continually take a look at the assessments and we're currently doing that work actually right now with our the work that we're doing with our preschool um the third grade collaboration um something that we have been doing for example is doing an analysis of the standards for example algebra algebra and operations um what are some of those uh standards that we see um to help us with not only um coherence among the grade levels but really taking a look at an analysis of our of our assessments and to determine um can we make them stronger and clearer right so sometimes our assessments um they will change on year after year because we're just trying to improve we're trying to you know trying

133to really um create a system of assessments that's really going to give us the data that we need but i don't disagree yeah being able to give you some you know some information on you know what those assessment results are you know okay uh just just one question you you talked about um how plc's play are are utilized with this information where you can have um different instructors who are comparing some of the hows and whats and commonalities does that happen across site as well because as i look at some of the numbers um that are displayed here it shows differences at various sites does that happen across the site or are you talking about the sap local does it happen across the district or customers or school yes one school to another typically with

134our our plc's they do happen at the school sites by grade level by content area but it's not uncommon that we've had professional learning opportunities where for example we'll have high school uh integrating one teachers get together and do some protocols around student work or analyzing some of the assessment results but typically it really is done at those individual sites and we have board member both hi dr brian i have a couple of structural questions and then a strategic question um in looking at this year's the common form of assessment data that you've presented can you share with us the assessment window the may 1 to may 20th yeah but did everyone take it during the same three week period yeah we do create windows for our district assessments and have deadlines but this was

135in the springs for spring assessments yes and um being sure if that's the participation rate i do not have that data right off hand i can get that for you and report it back thank you and then my kind of strategic question around the data is um if we're assuming then that the assessments were administered earlier in the spring um were these results incorporated or did they inform that fellow heartbroken yes actually they all of these assessments were completed uh by the end of may and and you know the last week of school there in the first week of june we were able to then get the data ready to report and so um yes we were able to look at these as one of one of the pieces that is in our lcap as

136a measure of our students achievement we combine this with our s course that we get uh from this coming spring if that plan goes ahead as the state board intends thank you board member just for clarity he said uh you originally said that one of the differences with this data is that the students are currently in their classrooms and so there's the opportunity to to make adjustments in real time so is that the case but then you said that these assessments took place in may so these this assessment took place last spring and so some of our students may have taken this in the hybrid mode or happened to be in their site some were perhaps in a living room with three other siblings around them doing class another was in their room by themselves

137logging in um so there were multiple factors that went into these results which is one of the big reasons we were not alone in the challenges and thus the boards did the state board's decision to just create some flexibility and and just give to give districts an ability to get a snapshot of achievement that make sense can you clarify what you meant when you were saying how this data is used in real time for our instructors i think i heard you say that uh adjustments yeah and i think what i was referencing was just all of our common formative assessments that dr mitchell mentioned that we use ongoing throughout the year our teachers can the students take this assessment and illuminate our system and the results are there and can be disaggregated within that and

138then the teachers can use this right away after they get the results for example that when we use a diagnostic as an example they've got these results and now they're meeting and saying okay here's here's where this student is and here's where this student is and when i create small groups i'm going to this way so i can address the needs of this and they can use them in ongoing instructions right now thank you yes anybody else have any other comments question um as you just said right now i was gonna ask that question um how the teachers use this you know this data in real time you know for example i'm thank you for for presenting and sharing this one thing that um um what interventions um the teachers use do principles put you

139know when they have i'm looking at the scores here and and we're really low and so what interventions are we doing right that they're using in real time what are we doing to be able to go ahead and put in place to assist with you know with these students to go ahead and they're like nearly met how can we push them over the threshold right to to meet those standards right i think if we if we look at this from a teacher and a site perspective if i'm a teacher i'm going to take these previous years results and i'm going to look at them and then i'm going to want to see where are my students right now and i'm going to pull that diagnostic assessment that i just gave and then i'm going to

140begin to develop ways to support those students and sometimes those interventions will be within the class for example if i see a student has a struggle in reading i'm going to scaffold and create ways to help that student access the text but also then maybe create some opportunities for that student to improve in their reading skills so that they're not losing the content we don't want to go backwards and teach the past we don't want to we don't want to remediate our students and say oh they're not at grade level let's just reteach the past we don't want to do that what we do know is we want to support them in accessing current grade level standards supporting them and accessing things for example like i said reading but i'm also providing opportunities to accelerate

141and to touch up on the specific things that they're struggling with and our diagnostics are one of the one of the powerful ways you can do that because it breaks down the real details as to why a student maybe isn't quite uh reading for example at the level we hope they were at this point in time one percent of the teachers are are using this this data that you this data or all of our formative assessments and follow this formula um a hundred percent uh we give us diagnostics this is just third through eighth and eleventh but we give formative assessments and diagnostics to kindergarten through fourth graders so every teacher has access to that data one of the things one little question i guess board member opinion no i have a question so um

142when these students took this test last year we'll say they're third graders now they're fourth graders i'm not sure the process here but okay so the test scores go into their q final or how do the teachers they didn't have these kids last year get these you know uh results so they can have the intervention or work extra with the child math reading or what whatever how do they get these in their hands these are fun kids good good question one of the great things about illuminate is a teacher when he or she gets a student in his class can go back and look at previous results for that student they all have that illuminati yes okay so the second question so how how are we guaranteed that the teacher is doing just that well

143one of the things dr mitchell just mentioned is through our plc process through the leadership of our principals and our district uh instructional leaders that use that data as part of their their school process partners i totally understand the timing you know that they may be at home and i i totally understand um because of scores yeah when i first saw them they're horrible i was not really happy about it but i understand the situation but that doesn't mean we cannot continue to intervention them and to make up hopefully next year we're going to see these signals should [Music] didn't you bring in somebody to help train the teachers on how to do accelerated learning we did we brought in thank you for that we brought in um two uh just powerhouse experts on monday

144we brought in dr nancy akavon um her specialty is actually a lot of specialties but one is around literacy and small group instruction and um for president arianes you ask well how do we do that whatever we do that is one of the uh the best strategies is to use that small group instruction when you're in the professional learning community process you you look at the data and you're like well first you ask yourself what is it we want you to don't be able to do you identify that right and then you you teach it and you do it and then you determine to what extent the students are actually learning and mastering the standards but the most important question in response to that is what do we do when they do and what do

145they do when they don't and so this whole idea of learning acceleration is not about this you know this constantly going back and and this idea of remediation as a matter of fact on both dr nancy akavon and dr douglas fisher who was our secondary uh uh presenter on monday uh really advised against this idea and this notion of remediation it is about learning acceleration so um making certain that we are providing our students with the grade level material and then what we need to do is be able to help you know the kids that will access that if we live in this this notion of remediation um the gap is going to be wider and so that's why it is very very important to be able to um to structure a small group instruction

146and really using those assessments to determine exactly what those students need so i would say that that's that's that's a big focus for us this year um and uh at another board meeting we uh we'll be bringing back another um a contract with uh dr akuman um because we would like her to be able to come in and actually do some um in-person coaching with the small group instructional repository i just want to say i really appreciate that because i think i see a lot of distribution faulty to bring in like packaged programs like let's test the kids and the reading and let's get them really and so i really appreciate that you're having an approach where you're focusing on strengthening the people power that we have the teachers around the business thank you [Music]

147but i'm like there's no more questions i want to thank you for this presentation [Music] again we're going to go ahead and move on to 13.2 now our agenda is dual immersion program update good evening board tonight we would like to provide you with an update on our dual immersion program i would like to provide you an update on our enrollment our investment in the program our plans to build capacity and next steps to continually improve the way in which we serve students and the community so our current enrollment we serve students in dual enrollment um uh for our zoo immersion for pk through fifth grade at longfellow odds and valley dale and we currently have 439 students we have an lcap budget that supports our di program with a budget of over 2.2 million

148dollars and our lcap actions and services denote the long-term advantages of bilingualism and dual language immersion programs on the achievement and reclassification of emerging bilingual students we know that by increasing dual immersion program on our schools our students will have the opportunity to develop balance bilingualism and increase academic achievement we've had a very successful and growing bi program that has resulted in increased academic achievement of our students particularly our emerging bilingual students as well we have local assessment data that show that our di students are excelling as a matter of fact they are outperforming other student groups at the school reorganization meeting that we're meeting at the last one we talked about a possible idea um to have a dual immersion school as you know as a possibility in the uh school reorganization um we

149have plans again to continue our program our very strong program [Music] as we as we have the students continue on through sixth grade and middle school and high school as well um i want to talk a little bit about some of the changes that i've heard and so i'd like to turn it over to um mr monkey uh to tell us a little bit about some of those class changes that we went through yes thank you dr mitchell and in hopefully in the um course of what i present here i will be able to speak to some of the comments that were uh brought forth during some of the comments um i see that the second bullet is 10 day challenging class changes it's a reward permission i would like to go a little further

150back and provide some context to how we got to where we are with this point right now uh so in the spring of 2021 we offered our temporary contract dual emerging features of both uh valley dale and hodge a probationary contract facilities traditions at valley dale elementary both uh temporary contract uh bi a teacher and an english only via temporary contract teacher took the probationary contract uh positions and uh in effect the staffing for d.i at vallejo was uh was satisfied uh we implemented the same approach at uh hodge elementary where we uh we went first to our temporary contract ci teachers um and offered them a stationary contract a little promising to begin with uh and then um during the summer one of the future that we didn't offer to you i decided not

151to return to this upcoming year uh we also looked at our temporary uh teachers in the english only program to build the uh growing fifth grade class and um we did not find a teacher within our ranks of teachers for for that position uh we did do that during the spring um and then we um we went into the summer we needed to build these fishes so we did fly the positions on edge as we normally do um and he did not find a quality candidate uh we um there were there were some uh issues with uh we tried to work with the candidates on um some of those some of those issues were insurmountable um and so we did make a difficult decision to um wait until the beginning of the school year to

152evaluate our uh and look at our enrollment uh we are the finance enrollment district and uh we do uh want to see whether or not um in the course of the beginning of the year and looking at our 10-day count um there would be a decline in enrollment at a school site that would yield a administrative transfer to build this week however our enrollment projections or the elementary science were pretty close to the actual enrollment at the elementary science and so we did not find a teacher that possessed a d5 uh credentials that we could transfer to the option that did emerge as we did our analysis uh which is essentially our 10-day count uh was to combine two first-grade classes um at five and two secondary classes of select five uh to fill the

153vacancies um that we had in the fourth and fifth grade level uh so by doing so uh we saw that the uh two first grade classes could be combined the class size would uh it exceeds the contractual maximum um and it's the same scenario played out in both first grade and second grade um and so we um we then uh interacted with the teachers uh in accordance to the contract so there's a provision in the contract that is 9.1.1 that states that there could be situations um wherein the class size could exceed the contractual class size maximum and so there are a set of steps that we need to take in order to determine whether or not this would be a suitable option we i met along with the principal with the teachers teachers also

154had our ada association president and savella in the meeting and we discussed the issues the option and ultimately we landed on a solution that we have um we did with it wherein the two first grade classes were combined and the two secondary classes were combined the teachers that were um that were part of the first and second grade team then went up to support for those um and then we were able to stop i i know that there are concerns and there's an ask for additional staff which we've heard um in our meetings with uh with parents last week uh and those have not fallen on deaf years we are in thank you mr rpo i'd like to turn it over now to uh north carolina norma is our director of multilingual programs and categorical

155services to talk a little bit about um our plans in terms of building staff capacity and enrollment okay so we continue to support and build capacity among our di staff by offering professional learning opportunities we are also looking to this year expand the sobrato early academic language program which is otherwise known as steel you will often hear our preschool staff refer to it in that way um from our preschool and tk's to three of our elementary sites which include valley dale and hodge where our di programs are housed so cl is an instructional model that emphasizes bilingualism by literacy and multiculturalism along with academic language and inquiry-based learning it's a program that's highlighted in the california english learner roadmap as an effective model for english learners we continue to support our di teachers in earning

156a dual language certificate through loyola marymount we have seven teachers currently who have earned their certificates by completing rigorous courses in spanish linguistics as well as academic spanish and all of the different content areas we continue our efforts to increase interest and enrollment in our program by promoting our program all year round highlighting students and teachers on social media your videos um also um through the posting of banners and sending out mailers and um of the new year we also are going to be partnering with our california state preschool program to capture some of our youngest learners um to invite them and their families into our dual immersion program as dr mitchell shared earlier our data for english learners who are participating in the di program for about four to five years indicate that the

157els and our di program are actually outperforming our el students who are in a structured english immersion program even through the pandemics and distance learning so we do continue to support our and want to increase our students who are earning the seal of high literacy and also recognizing our younger students who have a second language a home language and we want to celebrate that students bring that asset into our schools by recognizing them with our own district bilingual service awards and can i um something to them completely unscripted but today i was uh at hodge um visiting and uh happened to bump into a teacher uh who's in the dual emerging program uh and again i'm prompted with this normal conversation uh she mentioned how excited she was about the skill training um and the

158comment that really stuck to me was that um that she sees how beautifully it fits to what we've been working on and it's not contrary or against and so she was very very excited about this i just wanna just happen to um and just to kind of summarize here um we met with hodge parents uh last week for families who were affected by the classroom changes and the parents had an opportunity to share their concerns and as a result we are working on improving our communication providing additional classrooms of work and improved parent involvement and services and hr have a meeting next week to begin staffing planning and as we solidify our plans we will be happy to share that with our di community and the board do you have any comments um i have

159several questions [Music] to start off with so i know you talked about waiting for somebody counts but so and so what was the impact and so what did what did those classrooms look like on the first year so what did the fourth so i get you you talked about we already heard first and second chat about those two classes with the two kids what important [Music] a similar number uh for the good great class but i'm not trying to know i'm not thinking about it what do those classrooms look like yeah so the kids went to school what what happened okay uh so they started off the school year with uh our intention was to start off the school year with a substitute teacher um we um have experienced a shortage and substitute um and

160so my understanding that one of those classes uh did have a substitute start off the year uh and then the fourth grade class i believe third grade teachers um had divided the class by the fourth grade class and were essentially splitting the fourth graders um amongst the teachers who had those students in the third grade so we had two three four combos and then a fifth grade is that what it looked like when [Music] to start off the year because there were there wasn't a subs uh took place in in the fourth grade class so so my question is what what are we going to do to ensure that we are fully staffed for next year and i mean i guess i'm including the first grade second grade and then the upper the question number

161one so like dr mitchell stated i mean we um we've already started the conversation as far as the what having the conversation having the the plan starting a campaign earlier um then we did last year um i think the other thing aside from taking a look at um teachers that we have in our district who might be interested in our program um is also [Music] reaching out to other networks um there are other universities that uh have you know programs um and so how might we be able to establish some networks um to recruit uh all by candidates so do we so i know i heard you say that you're recruiting you are contemporary teachers was there any effort to recruit any of our b-class teachers who are not temporary teachers so i i did

162give that some thought um and so but we do have some being high features that are not uh further teaching in the um measurement program uh we uh there was a point in the summer where we uh try to make a difficult decision um because the teachers who we had um who have because are already in scientific sites throughout the district that would have been impacted by pulling those teachers out to place them in a program that um they during the summer may not be prepared to start the school year off um so we have in the past have experienced declining enrollment um and in some cases we've had some large numbers of teachers who have moved from one class from one school to another uh so but we were we that may were a

163less disruptive less disruptive option for us to pursue so i guess what i'm asking is not i i appreciate you saying not want to do this in the summer right but thinking about long-term right thinking about we don't need a staff we know we have many people teachers in our district who may or may not be interested but have we thought about recruiting early on some of these teachers if they have the skill set and the desire to be to be in that group of course we're looking to begin the recruitment process to see if there are teachers interested in um the program who are raising that's a d5 correct and then i i know i'm sorry and then my last question just around teacher recruitment then is around the middle school so these kids

164are going from fifth grade to sixth grade right so what kind of plan are we putting into place to make sure that that we have now singles of differential teachers who can teach in these primary in spanish and that process does have to start early as well um and so it will be the same process right so what we need to do and i think what we will have in middle school it would be two classes um that they the students would take in spanish and so it's a matter of taking a look to see um you know who who are the available staff that would want to do this than that um and starting that conversation now we have a question by board member bow i'm just a kind of a truly love the

165box out of the box idea to think about in terms of teacher recruitment um perhaps you could look into the feasibility of recruiting out-of-state teachers especially in states with high spanish speaking populations and successful dual language programs like arizona and texas i've been really thinking creatively about identifying perspective teachers early and determining what kind of credential support they would need to become certified in california as well as relocation and incentive support yes i like the so this this question may be rephrasing i may be rephrasing some of what we were chris gonzalez's questions um as as we i we got to a point in the summer or not even this summer we got to the point as the school year started where we realized we found ourselves in a pickle and so we pivoted and

166we made it we made adjustments to to um to ensure that the the the program you know if we stand a stacking shortage that that we encounter um [Music] so i'm i'm grateful for that i'm great i'm grateful for the fact that we saw them and we made the adjustments and then to take it even further parents communicated concerns we had meetings with parents and now we're even still saying like we're making those adjustments we're making those pivots in real time to address the concern that's all great i love that as we reflect back as we reflect back on this past year do we look back and do we see things that we didn't do that we should have done the reason and i and i asked that question not to kind of you know

167just spend time and dwell on that but to use that to reflect on how we respond to this in the future one but also because if we have parents who are communicating a lack of trust or or or that they're saying that confidence has been diminished as a result of how things played out i think it's important for us to acknowledge and and acknowledge if that's the case if there are things that we didn't do that we should have done or should have done that we acknowledge that as a step toward saying hey all we though we didn't we see this and we acknowledge and we recognize that we didn't and as we move forward these are the things that we're wanting to put in to benefit yes of course and um i'm glad you

168you phrased it the way you did on board remember and i apologize for not saying this uh earlier i do acknowledge that there are definite areas for for improvement and i'd like to think of myself as a reflective practitioner and um and i have i have identified areas and missteps that could have been done um differently to to not have maybe to prevent this from from from from happening um there are um and i only say these other statement to provide some context in a larger sense that we have been experiencing extreme shortages and um in in positions at all levels and it was there was a um and maybe i didn't read the tv as as good as i could have um but what i what i see now being 2020 is that um

169some of these some of the the pool size of folks who have applied that was an indicator that we were we were in dangerous waters every day we should have started a week today we should have started uh a lot earlier so i do recognize that and so that's why we are starting this process for this next year for 22-23 um in the next couple weeks for that so that we're not putting ourselves in this position and what i'd like to say is i want to thank you cabinet and superintendent for meeting with parents because they were very gracious that you met with them and just explained to them the situation because as we know your transparency is so important in our district and with our community and our parents and once they knew what

170was happening and you know we're going to work on making it better or fixing the problem they have more trust in our just and i think that was really great and i really appreciate that i have one one last question i i hear the conversation first of all yes thank you for meeting with the parents dual immersion is there's a great asset that we have in our district and i truly believe in dual emergency immersion and learning from these you know hiccups that are happening and putting into motion um what uh being proactive and putting into motion what can um make this program you know better for our students is really important one of the things that i heard tonight was um [Music] additional staff so does that mean that that are dual immersion processes

171that will they be receiving will they will they be having an aid um is that what it means clarification on that board of education that um our secondary results in the area of our substitutes and then when we had to quarantine um to create some professors so we actually had passed a pretty wide map part of the school year even starting for for a set of teaching positions um that would work uh and so we um in the process of identifying and going through that a lot of the folks that applied um have either been picked up or uh didn't are no longer interested but there were a couple of folks who i've interviewed um last week uh who um are showing promise that i may be able to offer them a position um and

172have them start at home as a teacher's aide but as a as an actual teacher to provide uh pull out intervention support um for for the site um so so that's that's something that we are um were in our final stages in the hr onboarding process that they materialized as early as next week crazy so that that would be for the entire school site are you saying that's for the dual immersion program the position would be for the entire school site to provide for over support but they um they the intervention could be targeted at uh for the for the intervention i'm trying to do murder program so let me ask another question um you know i asked i asked as a request for the board member to step forward about how many of our

173classrooms are overstacked right now and you let me know where how many do we have just a boy are overstaffed or are we over over capacity over the class size yes i believe they have the answers that person was spotted right and so two we know two of them are dual inversion and then the other three are not and so can you just let me explain to me what what we're doing with those other three classes that are over capacity and again just just like this previous point where we're final talked with a candidate to um position as well to bring them on board um to to create an additional class for that for those classes that will essentially create a um or reduce those oversized classes so then at the end we'll only have

174two over for us and it will be the two billion correct so i just i mean i just i point that out because i just want us to understand you know what what we're doing right in terms of whatever what i think actions speak louder than words right and so that that that i think that sends a message to our community about about regardless of how much money we're spending on the program way of creating things but i do think you need to reflect on what we do i i did want to just shift and talk about the um the recruitment piece right right so one of the issues that i'm hearing right is that maybe that these courses are are not fully they're not under in terms of student enrollment they're under capacity right

175we don't have two classrooms with 24 students at kindergarten so my my next area of questioning is around recruitment and how recruiting families especially the language learner families english learner families where you are you are telling us they're outperforming all the other english learners here so how are we making families aware about this option and encouraging them to to choose the dual immersion program so our efforts are going to be to target those schools that have high populations of english learners and especially working with our csvp program to identify those students early so that they can come into the program as early as tk or kinder so that's going to be something that we're kind of sure yes i am working on that this year okay and i'd like to add something to that um

176[Music] i know that we do put up a a flyer in the summer one time we learn our dual emerging program for the community right because actually my hairdressing you know we're talking about about all of them uh programs and she's telling her kids go to um community valley her grandkids because she said well they have the program that they speak to languages so this summer um i was surprised because she i got a call from her daughter looks good and she goes you know my mom's telling me that you guys have to do immersion program just like they did at covina yes we do where belly dale she went there and she registered that two other grandchildren they were coming to mexico because their mom had to stay there but anyways they brought these

177two of their little cousins and they were at camino valley and guess what they're valuable like ausd we're the mom so my concern really is the bill behind it they do and they had no clue that we were going to do a murder program it was just out of a conversation so i'm really concerned about that and i know we did once a year i mean i don't know i mean we can do it in the fall and in the stream just to remind and to the community and i understand in the school sites yes to recruit but what about the community that the kids don't come here that they have no children and it's a university how do we reach them we do send a mailer a postcard kind of mailer to believe it

178goes to everybody in the community um and we usually send that about january um to promote the videos in spanish so one of the ideas that came up in one of the ideas that came up in that in that parent meeting was around something about the idea of a family council and i just i think i mean i look at that those parents are so um you know they really believe in the program they're they're our best advocates there are best messengers and i think about right and really who listens to the same right and so i'm just wondering if we can think about how do we really engage these parents to immersive parents for some of the most engaged parents that i've seen in the district how do we capitalize on that and give

179them the agency to feel like they they are our messengers and they are the ones that can help us strengthen the program and also recruit other parents so i'm wondering how we can maybe formalize that piece in terms of how are those parents going to be engaged to help grow the program we have already had a conversation about putting together a dual immersion steering committee which would consist of staff parents community members and then to really look deeply at the program promote the program talk about how we can make some improvements um and have a stakeholder group um that continues to support this program if if i heard you correctly earlier someone's right maybe a while ago someone said that uh if we compare the numbers of our version students um and maybe think of

180the academic achievement results looked at that those those numbers are are higher than we're doing emergencies is there is there a way for us to see those i can share that data with you so what i was speaking to is when we look at english learners who are participating in dual immersion versus english learners who are participating in a structured english immersion class which is where they receive integrated eld throughout their day and then a designated time are english learners who are in a dual immersion program which obviously is high target language which is a strength for them when you look at their data over five years which is where we are at in the program we see that those english learners outperform english learners in the internet program so i can put together some

181graphs for you to look at in terms of how they perform on the lpac the english language performance test and also on our internal assessments reading assessments those kinds of things can we can we include um kind of a general yes so do you want to see a comparison between english learners and an sbi versus english learners and correct along with and then my last question is just a tiny thing so i appreciate you saying that you're going back and you're looking at the staffing to figure out um you know how you're going to build situations so when can we expect to have an we actually have our meeting next week i believe um to begin to plan out our process uh create a timeline um and then we will update you uh in uh

182weekly board packets but the other goal too is to be able to communicate with that to our parents as well um that was a commitment that we made at the meeting that we would be communicating that out to them all right thank you so much um um jorge for uh hope for um shared and thank you for board members and the parents and i really like i said before i really believe in this program and it can only get better it's each year my daughter's a junior and she started with the bill emerging program and she wants to take that skill so i i look forward to the improvements um and hearing with the parents and the input that has been brought forth and i trust that it will become an even stronger program thank

183you moving on to human resources 14.1 california school employees association csva sunshine proposal for the 2021 2022 fiscal year negotiation yes board of education this is a government requirement this is a an information item announcing the beginning of negotiation um and this is csca's proposal for the articles that they want to open and negotiate during the negotiations year there are um there is three components to this uh the first 14.1 is the information item 14.2 is a hearing and um i like to say that this is the uh one opportunity that the public and community have speak to the articles that will be negotiated during the um during the negotiations and then the last piece is before to action great thank you move on to 14.2 and i get emotion to open public hearing second

184and this is the time where we receive public input on csa's sunshine proposal yeah i'm just i forgot to read it and then i was gonna [Music] um to receive public input on csc sunshine proposal for the 2022 fiscal year negotiation between the california school employees association csva and exclusive unified school district okay can i get a motion to [Music] do we have any uh comments at this point the motion is to open the public hearing correct yes okay did okay let's go ahead and vote now this time it is open to the public do we have anybody online okay actually do not have any handles great thank you and from now moving on to it passes by zero moving on to 14.3 and technically we probably should close that public hearing before we move

185on to 14.3 at this point um i'll go ahead and close the public hearing 14.2 that'll have to the board of education is required to officially approve the california school employees association csva sunshine proposal for the 2021-22 fiscal year negotiations with the smoothie unified school district ausd a negative motion to approve 14.3 seconds they have a first by board member second by board member virginia kenyan vote i'm so sorry i forgot the student conference so sorry yes yes okay we have a casper vote and it passes 5-0 food now to our german 15.1 the german mechanically get a motion to adjourn first by jordan first opinion and can we please thank you and it can we please our vote process 5-0 it is 9 54 and our meeting is during fifth night everyone have a

186great rest every night and we hope to see you guys soon