001uh evening everyone welcome to our school reorganization uh team meeting it's been a long time i missed you guys uh it's been a long time since i've seen some of you so welcome back and uh thank you for uh being here with us if i could just do a quick summary of where we have been thus far and what lies ahead of us uh tonight um at our last meeting it was decided that this team wanted uh to wait until they saw data from the staff survey and from the community parent survey as well we also per request also shared with you student survey data as well [Music] and so that was sent to you via email to your inboxes again to help fulfill that request that we had at our last meeting the consensus
002was that after looking at that we would be prepared and ready as a team to move the process over to the board of education a lot of you spoke about your your thoughts around that uh about you know moving it forward and um you know doing doing the work that you had done uh because we are literally months away from uh celebrating our one year anniversary almost uh so we've been together for uh for quite a bit um again i always say and i'm gonna say it again one more time this is your process and and i'm we're just facilitating you along the way uh but i want to start off by uh just asking a couple of questions just to get your mindset uh here um and so that we know we know how
003we're going to do today and so just trying to to wrap wrap my head around that to make sure and ensure that that we're being transparent that we're being open and that all of us in the room understand what happens next so as you know today at least in my head based on what has been happening in this team uh there will be a vote today uh for model three or for model four is my understanding of what what's gonna happen tonight but before we get to that uh there are there are some some things that i would like to put up for consideration and if these are not things that we that are not if they're not necessary then awesome just tell me they're not necessary and we'll move on but here here's the
004things that are swirling in my head and as your facilitator i'm just thinking about them now prior to voting so that we can kind of be in the same mind set so for example my first question would be or am i wondering maybe that's a better way of putting it is the is the desire from the people on this team to send one recommendation to the board or is the desire we have gone as far as we can go we're going to send them two models and you are going to just give them the data from tonight so we're going to take two mod like we're going to say here's a two models board the school reorganization team 45 70 30 and so it's not really a recommendation it's just we've narrowed it down to
005two this is the best that we can do and here is our data as a team very different than the first question right which is no this team's desire is to have one recommendation right so i'm wondering if there is a preference or a desire or a strong opinion about that piece right there and the reason i ask is because if it's if it's option two like hey we we've been together for a long time we've we've gone back and forth and at this point in time let's just send the two models send it with the data and again celebrate what we have been able to accomplish if that's if that's the opinion then again all right let's let's move on but if there's someone in the room that has or you know if if
006i don't know if the team's temperature is more like no based on based on this this this vote today i still want to see one recommendation go to the board then i would have i would have further questions so i'm gonna stop talking and turn it over to you to see if anybody has any opinions about that yes ms amberfish i think we have gone as far as we can go and it's going to be best to recommend both models um i won't talk about it currently but i have some notes and some concerns regarding the surveys that i would like to share when you let me know it's the appropriate time to do that so yeah and i see meg said her um microphone is not working but she is agreeing with miss amber
007fish uh miss kimberly c well the um information that was emailed to us with the the outcomes from the surveys be also be given to the board is my understanding correctly yes absolutely okay okay um actually i'm going to pause right here just really quickly just again just to add transparency because there's you know maybe there's more than us in the room listening right now right so um right now the plan is to go to the board of education for a study session so that means that there would be uh no vote no motions nothing like that it's just to study um school reorganization and so what does that mean well that means study what this what this team has done study the data um study the numbers that you have been seeing all along
008right so it's just about studying and getting their mindset into that and right now we are scheduled to do that on september 14th so roughly a little bit less than two weeks from now but yes to answer your question that yes they will i think miss melissa wilson perkins has her hand up thank you i also think we should send both having read um so many of the comments i think it's not really clear people are voting for one model but absolutely stating they would like something that's not included in that model which to me says we give them what we have so far all right so we have quite a bit of people um [Music] championing this we've we've gone as far as we could let's send the two models with the data tonight
009to the board and then they they pick it up from there okay i see another uh another person another person so quite a people backing up all right another person let me ask a different question is there anybody in the room that thinks the opposite like no today we want to get one school reorganization okay all right it looks overwhelming uh that we're gonna go to uh to both thank you for uh for uh for that for entertaining me for that um this makes it clear for me as we're facilitating uh the process um all right so what i would what i what i will propose is that um that we open it up just for some some final um questions or or or clarifications and um we are we have we have um prepared
010the um the google form and then once once we're ready for that i'll ask vika to put it into the chat and then we'll we'll we'll move forward with that uh but miss fish did you say you had some questions uh yes please i had i made some notes regarding all the surveys so uh so i had a couple big takeaway notes from everybody um i was really sad to see that even though all the information was provided on the district website a lot of the people taking the survey didn't take the time to look at it so a lot of um a lot of things were confusing in some of the comments um model four is not going to be a close campus you had mentioned that to us on the june 16th meeting
011that it's not feasible for it to be a closed campus and a lot of people suggested that it needed to be closed keeping the two the middle school area kids separate that that's not going to happen i think we need to be transparent and let them hear that also we put new high school in new middle school and i'm i kind of feel like that might be our fault as we did the survey with you we should have put azusa could be rebranded because a lot of people seem to question that why were we going to close down both high schools and rebuild a new one so they specifically voted for model 4 because they felt that it was a waste of money for us to do that and had they known that that's not
012what was happening it may have swayed their vote a little bit um sorry and it was also important to note that students if we closed if we were to choose model three um the students from gladstone would still graduate from gladstone because it would phase them out so no new students would go into gladstone and not graduate and it was a big thing that moving their kid over to a new school and not letting them graduate from where they started was a was a big point there was some comments about sierra high school we're not talking about sierra high school so i thought it was important to note that as well um i saw this on the staff survey the parents survey and the student survey that well a majority of those surveys preferred model
013for they preferred model 4 but specifically noted that the middle schoolers should not be on campus with the high schoolers that we need to keep a middle school or a tk8 option open as well so i felt like maybe they could have voted for model 3 but said we'd prefer two model um two high schools to stay open it it makes that's why the numbers don't seem completely fair um when i was going over this because they were i think it would have been best if we would have like shown the models without the schools attached because the schools can change and i think that's important for the public to know this was like our suggestion our ideas but the board will have final say so people were voting for ellington uh model 4 because
014it kept ellington or model 3 because it kept valley dale that's not true that we need to be very transparent that those two schools could change depending on the board recommendations or what the board actually puts forth um so picking one over the old over for a school was not good um uh there's a lot of concern about lee being a walking community and we we had suggested to closely in one of the models um i don't know if this is true and maybe mr fernandez can answer this for me um one of the parents on i'm sorry no one of the teachers uh commented that her she has a son at gladstone high school and he's playing freshman football and at the time that she took the survey only four students were signed up
015on the freshman football team um again that number may have changed but i've also heard from other parents that the jv and varsity football teams don't have full teams that they're playing the jv and varsity students are playing for both teams and i don't feel keeping two high schools isn't going to help us have those full teams to be competitive within the district and within the cif standards um keeping model four all schools walking [Music] sorry i i have a lot of notes um because it's a new high school uh there are a lot of concerns from the secondary students about overcrowding um they feel that their current high schools are already overcrowded uh so if they move to one high school um that they would be there would be extra crowding especially with adding
016the middle schoolers in as well um there's there's a big push to want to keep two high schools from the from the secondary students as well uh there was a comment that really concerned me from the secondary students that said that they had concerns over the maturity levels of the seventh and eighth graders that someone they said that they can tell the difference between the students that come in from the middle school and the students that come in from ellington because those students don't seem to be as mature and they can maintain their child like innocence this is this is what we're asking to do we're asking to send our sixth graders straight into high school in that four model four um and then i and i just had some concerns over the survey itself
017we didn't ask for a way to verify the people who were um taking the surveys and i know that it's it's a um oh i don't know what to say um like a blind survey that like we you don't know that i'm the one who filled this out or x's that but it also gave the option for me to fill out the survey more than once and i noticed that some of the comments were very similar and then especially on the parent page um just between pages 19 and page 20 there were 109 blank answers where anybody could have just gone in and hit submit model or model this model nothing model this submit and i just feel that the numbers are not very accurate because we didn't at least say you have to put
018in an email address to make sure that only we were only filling it out one time or if you filled it out more than once you know you at least put in a second email to to semi be tracked so thank you all for listening to my my notes thank you amber i mean i think you you hit on a couple things right and so um the advantage that we have in this room again we're we're close to celebrating our one year anniversary and so you know you have been in the in the in the thick of it you have you have seen and so um i think we we broached this topic um last time right that um you're gonna see the survey data and at the end of the day you're gonna have
019to decide right um what you know and what you feel even if it is contradictory to the survey even if it aligns with the survey um right this is your time and your voice to do that uh yes uh miss fish i think is the one that no yes um yes uh when we get to when we get to the actual uh board agenda item where where there's going to be actual discussion and consideration um that is always open to public comment and public and public input so but not the study session study sessions typically don't have um i don't i don't believe they have they have that because again there's not going to be any any motions no one should be saying you know i want this or i want that it's really just
020an opportunity for the board to try and get immersed in the school reorganization as they prepare to begin to have the roll up your sleeve real conversation about um what we are going to go uh from there um so okay well thank you thank you for that uh anymore anymore anybody else wants anything before we put the uh google form in the chat is that your hand up miss wilson perkins yeah okay um just echoing what amber said i also noticed i i really read all the model 4 um preference comments really closely because i really wanted to understand that perspective um and it seemed like 30 something percent always mentioned that they would like at least one um junior high middle school or to have tk8s which to me says it's more about the
021two campuses the buildings the the history and less about our district having a seven through twelve we're operating two seven through twelves and i know we've talked about this before but um i just wanna put this out there that the the percentage from model 4 is like what 76 something percent is what our capacity is that keeping um gladstone high school as a middle school for our entire district puts us at the same capacity i know we've retained our sixth graders i feel like if we could you know not um continue um the um the amount of money needing to be spent on retaining them that i saw in our budgets for the for the different models and make that a middle school that it would be a sort of middle path um forward and
022it would give our district the most amazing middle school in the valley uh maybe in miles and miles around and um it could also maybe slightly ease some of that um tension some of that continuing legacy and making sure that the people know will be fiscally our district was fiscally responsible with taxpayer dollars with uh measure um measure k money and stuff like that so anyway that was um i know we talked about it before and the numbers didn't really work but with the sixth graders they are it's a very similar um low capacity thank you thank you all right anything else or anyone else uh before i asked lita to go ahead and put the google form in the chat well she has two hands up oh i'm so sorry uh i don't see
023them uh mr anthony and then mr gabriel i'm not sure who was first let's go anthony alphabetical order thank you i would let gabriel go first but that's okay uh first uh first and foremost i just want to say thank you to everybody who's been here the for the last year i didn't know we had an anniversary i was looking for a card is it paper is it money i'm not sure what our anniversary is here but uh i was looking for something but time goes by quick so thank you to everybody all the all the staff all the parents uh mr ortega just kind of spending the time and really uh really digging into this uh a really a difficult issue because no one really wants to close schools and it's not an easy
024decision to make but it is one we need to make um so i did appreciate everybody's time in being here um i still i still run with the same sentiment is that i hope the overall ones and i only say this because i know it goes to the notes is you know creating the best school system that azusa can offer i want the best school system i i do want the one that everybody is trying to clamor into and trying to get into i want people changing their address to come to an as usual you know i want them so that's kind of my overall premise let's create the best school system we can with the best opportunities for kids and and that that'll guide it i think that'll shine i want to create that
025winning travel all-star team that everybody kind of wants to join and try to get into so that's that that's my overall premise that i wanted to have in the notes um i do have a few things that i collected from colleagues as just as a administrative and a middle school representative and i i promise to share and i do want to share a few things out first was on the phasing out part uh one thing that we collaborated is that phasing out doesn't have to be out of five year or three year i think that's debatable as we talked about it in middle school right now for everybody's reference we're only seven eight and we're really running out of skeleton crew right now um sections wise staffing wise et cetera um we're we were collaborating
026that you know what if we needed to stay this way one more year so things could settle and the planning could be done however just moving all the students all at once to whatever setting it happens to be doing it all at once in one year is fine a one-year move was okay it might be easier on staff and it also might be easier for us if we try to just keep we were just talking about it if i just try to keep eighth graders on campus right now for one whole year we were already running thin on resources right now as is and we're only uh we're only a third weekend day this is day 10 so this has been a challenge so the phasing out part can be debatable you know that that
027shouldn't be in stone uh we were amenable to to looking at a shorter time frame depending on situation um just enough time for also for receiving sites to be able to receive let's say it's all done and settled and we know certain sites are going to be receiving do those sites have time to prepare um classroom needs that whole bit so that they're all coming in we're all ready for the party as they say you know we don't want to be setting up tables and chairs and your guests are already arriving so we really want to see that that if we need that extra a little bit of time frame so we can drop three portables or another wing or something somewhere um that that's there we hold on our kids boom and the next
028fall we all start off just go we don't need a phase apart from a middle school perspective um i i need to i need to reiterate something that was brought up a little bit before on those little charts where it said you know counselors aps and 0.5 0.3 0.27.67 people it looks really cute on paper and as a mathematician it looks great i love numbers but in the practicality of having half people right now honestly i'm a few weeks in right now and we're out of middle school city we're really struggling with those those human resources um we to staffing and support has been really difficult um so keeping those half positions uh if we can sign up and find a different way that we're having people be able to stay and make a home
029somewhere i'm speaking for this wasn't asked of me right now but i'm speaking for the people that are working at split sites right now they haven't necessarily said it but i read people and i could read their faces i can read their language you know you get a little lost of where you're at talk about my my people that go from one side on a friday and they don't even know what spirit to wear because they're they're at a couple of sites and or they say the other school's name when they're at that site because it happens you know when you're moving around so much so if we can find a way to eliminate that i think that's the model or the approach we want to take so if the board can take that which
030is why i say to hear in the notes that we really want the man power and the resources um to be able to match that so that we're limiting those 0.5 supportive you know 0.5 counselors 0.5 assistant principals uh that's been difficult both on the school site right now and those and those people i'm just trying to think about the people and stretching them out as well so i'd really like to take them into considerations um one other part i kind of wanted to just mention real quick and this has never been said out loud and it still hasn't and this really is year 32 here in azusa for me and and at center uh a good majority of that and uh we had we still had five sites that never got modernized and no
031one ever said oh sorry about knocking into your site ish you know i here at center at lee uh at slauson i was here from here i was here in 9293 when they said oh next year you're on the next wave you're on the next oh we're just about to and honestly it's like 25 28 years later and nothing necessarily other than our we had the fencing and we had an air conditioning unit and twice but nobody ever actually touched the physical classrooms and that that's kind of a shame that's a shame for the city i know i i know some of the community members are um take that into point about how not all the sites all the promises kind of went in there and it was never kind of addressed i'm happy to
032be like one of the sites that literally heard this um for many for two decades about uh the addressing of needs so um i don't know i don't want to feel i'm sorry sorry to some of the city members that are out there watching right now because we made some promises and they didn't come to fruition and now we're at a point where we're we're going to close some sites and i'm i'm very hopeful that going forward when we do this reconfiguration that we make the site's remaining the the envy as as um i don't know what miss fish said that envy the jewel of the of the valley now people are looking i want i i do want that good-looking schools up and down um all our all our city and they go wow
033that's an asus expo you can tell so i'm hopeful that moving forward that gets done as well and i will reiterate my my statement that i made uh one of the other meetings if we're closing this many sites i really do hope we take one of our properties and make it uh make it to a benefit of the whole community something such as a stadium or performing arts center some kind of combination if we want one big aquatic or we're just going to redo the one at the high school however however that might be but i think using one of those properties for the benefit of the school district and the community in general something to be proud of would be a great a great addition going forward and with that i am done thank
034you thank you mr fernandez i just wanted to kind of speak to what miss fish was saying regarding high school sports right now um kind of hard to make a judgment call based on kobe going on at the same time a lot of schools in the area have smaller teams every team that we're playing only has one level or two levels max so it's i don't know if it's necessarily a figment of a gladstone resource it's it's everywhere right now with just kids and parents not wanting to have their kids out there given the circumstances uh but going back to just thinking through the process kind of like what dr contreras is saying we've heard a lot of deliberation regarding our ability to deliver programs for kids and i go to like facilities constraints because
035when we talk about consolidating onto one site for middle school and one site for high school we are going to run into besides the perception of being overcrowded from the students we are going to feel overcrowded in terms of facilities in terms of world our ability to have science labs like i heard some of our colleagues here say our ability to deliver other things that are particular and be able to have available space for high quality learning and i think that to me is is my biggest uh uh vantage point right now in terms of what i see in highly effective seven through twelves uh edgewood high school in west covina uh my two children are enrolled in a 712 another unified they are high class learning environments and i think like what dr contreras
036said we're trying to develop high class learning environments so our kids are college and career ready and give them the opportunity to play sports and a sports team with two levels of football can still be a pretty good football team a sports team with two levels or three levels of soccer is still going to be effective soccer teams again what is it develops players is playing time when you have a squad of 100 kids you're not every kid is going to get that chance to play so i think that's i know it's different some we want powerhouses and but i've seen small schools do quite a bit with players so and then that comes from playing time but again we need to think about facilities overcrowding and being able to really hone in on the
037cultures that we have on some of our sites that are outstanding and i know i'm not going to brag too much but my staff is outstanding and they are why i'm here and say what i'm saying right now so thank you thank you sir all right anyone else before we uh move to the chat i'd like to echo a little bit about what anthony was discussing pretty much everything you touched on anthony was on my list of things to talk about tonight is the idea of the phase in at middle school or phase out at middle school you know we see these same issues at the elementary sites that have 12 teachers it is not acceptable to have 12 staff members cover every single yard duty extra events there is at middle school right now
038there is not enough people to cover classes if somebody has to be out or when a substitute doesn't show up we are you know had a lot of problems with that in the past and i'm not expecting it to get better because it's been a problem you know for over 20 years that i've been in the district but um trying to have a small staff and then the contraction of that schedule you'll be overstaffed at three schools but it won't seem like it's overstaffed because we won't have enough staff to run what we need to we won't be able to have the band and choir like we would now because we can't expand those classes you know right now slauson has i want to say we only have one class of choir i actually haven't
039seen a master schedule this year so um but you know we used to have five and then we you know lost sixth grade so it's just that contraction of not being able to offer a number of different electives so the kids have very little choice now and coming up from an elective and that's needs to be considered before we do a phase out of um at middle school especially thank you anyone else before we put the link in the chat i have something to say good evening everyone um you almost thought i wasn't going to say something huh i'm just kidding uh so um what i was going to bring up listening to everybody is there's one common uh element in this and i think a lot of it is what we're currently going through
040and what anthony has said you know it we're currently we are short staff across the board everywhere uh there's currently more demand of a lot of us because of the current events that that are happening it's changing constantly as we're reminded um and uh there's a lot more on our plate there's a lot more when it comes to the students the parents and the staff and administrators there's a lot more and every day we're trying to figure out hey we're live i was telling somebody today we live we work in a live environment and it is like anything live there's there's hiccups there's this and that and um we're trying we're trying to stay above we're trying to stay afloat with it all as much as it's coming at us and with this occurring um
041i know we're looking strictly at numbers i know we have departments that are looking strictly at numbers and numbers is money i know that you know it's we've discussed that but with everything currently going on and what we're doing and what's happening that when we do eventually get to this that we have to consider to look outside the number you know i hate to use this analogy but it's like going to a potluck and somebody brings 10 tacos to a party and there's 50 people how are you going to feed all 50 people with 10 tacos i you know i and but we got to make it work we have to kind of not think that way with this because with the way we work in this live environment we need to have that support
042we need to kind of have that cushion we need to have the leftovers you know what i mean and i'm looking at it is now and what we eventually decide that to please consider that the board considers that we don't just say we have only room for 12 teachers because of the numbers because that parents come and go students come and go and sometimes we may be drop low but then all of a sudden we have a surge of kids i'm still enrolling kids as of right now but tomorrow i might lose to but then i might gain five or six and if we're totally tight now we're failing our community and saying i'm sorry there's no more room or we can't help you and and so when it comes even to staffing yes it
043might hurt the bank but in all the ones that will be will succeed and what we all agree and what anthony says is our students will succeed because we're there and there's enough of us that we can provide their needs we you know like i put on my survey is that we need to bring back what we had in the past of we need to bring back more in the arts department we need to bring back more in the uh trade department because not all students are meant for college bound we wanted them to succeed of course every parent everyone in education wants them to succeed and go to college but there's so many in history that's place that they are successful without college but with the gift they have with their two hands and
044that's what we need is to support them in that we need to have every dynamic available and not say unfortunately we cannot afford i get it but right now with funding going on and and being able to provide instruments also that's wonderful but we don't have the the manpower to handle all the instruments we don't have the manpower to handle all the textbooks we don't have the manpower right now to handle all of this wonderful things that are coming our way and and we're and we're setting ourselves up for fail and we should be setting ourselves up for success because these kids our success are them it's them and we need to be prepared and ready for them not about always the numbers so i know this is going to happen and that's you know
045i know everybody here has accepted it we want to move forward with it but we have to be able to be realistic and say the only way we succeed is by having the means for our kids and not saying i'm sorry but our numbers show we can't give you what you need because that's the only way this is it will succeed that's the only way we can compete big or small you know that's the only way is to say i gotcha you know we're here for you kid we're we're we're gonna be there we're gonna you know whatever it is oh we've got you know and instead we're gonna you know i just i'm like totally feeling it right now with everything going on right now like they said we have we don't have enough
046and how are we gonna have enough that we just shrink everything it's gonna happen but we really need to consider the staffing thank you okay uh anyone else before we put the link in the chat room all right lika can you go ahead and please put the link in the chat everyone in the room if you can please click on that link and cast your vote we're at 11 responses right now i'm if i'm doing the correct count i think we need 19. we are at 16. eighteen one more one more before you put it up like let me know when you're 19 and before you put it up i want to say just one more thing okay okay we're at 19. okay perfect um so again just in the most genuine way in the
047most authentic way uh on behalf of our district on behalf of the board um i just i can't say enough how uh grateful uh i am uh for every voice obviously we have different voices and obviously we have different opinions but that's what makes us uh stronger this is not an easy topic uh obviously it has a lot of ramifications uh but i think anthony said it and if i misquote you anthony somebody else said it um as as uncomfortable and as tough a decision uh we know that it's a decision that we have to make um you know no matter which way no matter which we which way we go um so in a second i'm gonna ask lika to show our our results again uh per our conversation in the uh at the
048beginning on the onset of this uh of this meeting uh when we go to the board of education um and we talk about the school reorganization team it'll be about this journey about how you rolled up your sleeves you put in the work you came up with these two uh models and at the end of the day we will share the data that lika is going to display right now and and let them know that this is how the the team landed on these two models okay so as you see there uh 50 57.9 percent uh for model 4 and 42.1 percent uh for model 3. uh so again we will take that we will take that with them um again thank you thank you so much for taking this journey with us i so
049appreciate uh everything that you've done along the way you have brought up extremely well uh thought out points uh and um and opinions and so um again i'm just i'm very very grateful for you so so thank you um you are always welcome to tune in and participate as we as we begin this process with the board again this this process begins on tuesday september 14th uh at 5 30 pm uh that is our board study session uh again uh this is not about recommendations this is not about thoughts this is not about opinions it's literally just gonna be a study session um and so that happens uh tuesday uh september 14th um if you don't know uh at our next board meeting september 7th uh we begin uh our opening uh of our board
050meetings to the public uh the board of education i applaud them they have taken the stance that moving forward uh they're going to continue to oh to to offer a hybrid opportunity for our community our parents and our staff and so that is awesome so you don't physically need to come to the board meeting to participate in board meetings they took it one step further and have also uh decided that not only will you be able to watch the board meeting live from wherever you want to be but we are going to offer public input and public comment via zoom as well so a big applause for the board for allowing that for our parents our staff and our community to be able to still connect and participate without having to come physically to the
051board meeting so thank you very much everyone i wish you a very good evening and if i don't see you a very good three day well-deserved weekend thank you everyone