AUSD Board Meeting - April 21, 2021

001under god indivisible with liberty and justice this wording very slightly from the original which yields compassion compulsion magazine in boston columbus day almost fifty years later the plebis received official recognition in congress on june 22 1932 and they were added the phrase under god on june 14 1954 president eisenhower said we are affirming the enchanted trending of religious faith in america's heritage and future this way we shall continuously strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be in our country's most powerful thank you so much cynthia segura for leading us in the flashlight and and uh sharing that with us tonight um the history of the flag salute we'll go ahead and move on to our agenda item 4.2 roll call we have board member uh cruz gonzalez board member uh rodriguez pena president we have

002board member bo here you have a board member greer here and board member arianis i am here and thank you guys all for for being here now we move on to 4.3 approval of the agenda one of the things i would like to go ahead and mention um i'm so sorry let me start over uh approval that can i get please get a first eyemotion second we have a first by uh miss by board member rodriguez pena we have a second by board member one thing that i would like to go ahead and discuss actually just share is we're gonna go ahead and table 10.2 to meeting on may 4th that is the only thing on the agenda that we will go ahead and table any discussion comments that we can go ahead and vote

003and it passes 5-0 and let's move to 5.0 report action of closed session matters at this point there are no report action items of closed session to report at this time we'll move on to 6.1 this is public comment on agenda for non-agenda items from our public miss lika do we have yes we do have uh five hands raised first is nancy sharma nancy you may mute your mic uh uh are we supposed to um is uh is the board closure school closure part of the agenda because um i think i accidentally clicked back you can start your comments now nancy okay i i wrote a writer about the school closure requesting you to please not close my school would it be okay if i read that out yes you may the moment i heard

004my principal announced the school closure i felt terrible i can say this a confidence that dalton is my second home and it'll always remain my in my heart even after 20 or 30 years honestly i've been enrolled in this school ever since i was in kindergarten i can still remember my shy voice greeting the strangers i now can call my friends my older sister have been enrolled in dalton ever since i'd watched her i knew where i would want to start my education dalton had been part of my life ever since i could learn how to walk the school has been with me through those happy fun-filled days and those sorrowful rainy days i'm willing to attend the school until my graduation but it isn't all about me this is about the other students who

005have been attending this exact school and making friends and memories ever since they came i can say that everyone i can't say that everyone feels strongly about school closure that i can say that dalton hasn't given neither the students nor the parents any trouble instead the school has helped whether it was to arrange money or have a celebration the school is more of a family than just a bunch of classrooms my memories are filled with very deep emotions and if we think about just how one person's memories can mean so much of them then dalton is home to hundreds of students each with thousands of families so it is my humble request to reconsider your decision for closing my second home doctor thank you for letting me read this thank you miss nancy sharma for

006for your comments next we have is diane reese hello are you able to hear me yes ma'am oh okay thank you good evening school board members superintendent ortega district officials and viewers my name is diane reese and i'm a 32-year veteran teacher from dalton elementary in our district i recall speaking at a previous school board meeting on february 16th a few months ago offering insights toward the potential to reopen schools this year although many groups were formed to discuss how to approach the final steps my suggestion for our district to offer a parent survey was heard and implemented within a week it is a testimony to witness that our voices are being heard in these meetings such as my own and will be considered for future decisions the lens of how we see our professional

007worlds intertwined throughout a school year whereas they are stretched only as far as our own involvement in the decision-making process a reorganization committee was formed with a diverse group of 30 members addressing the foreseeable need to restructure our school-wide plan based on declining enrollment the discussion to repopulate at key school sites in maximizing capacity is serious a very serious challenge for the committee and the school board as well models three or four will lead the decision to how many schools or whom to close the school board will determine how soon to implement the selection of the school closure tiered process for the upcoming school year whether it is 2021 22 or if it is uh the following year every school in this district is invaluable let's go deeper every employee at a school site administrator

008and district personnel is invaluable but the key to every school is the children who walk onto the campus with a desire to learn and see their own school in their own neighborhood the school provides the catapult for the children families and communities to see their vital role in their home away from home feel so children can learn and make lifetime friendships i can describe the same quality for all of our schools but dalton is small but mighty sometimes the strength of the school isn't in the size but the quality of its programs dedication and the extent to which you become family within the families whether dalton's capacity number fits the model for the committee's proposal or the school board sometimes a quaint hometown feel is what is needed for our students if i could leave

009a message for any of the reorganization committee and the school board members who vote in the near future please consider consider the dynamics of how quality impacts our capacity for lifetime success thank you for this opportunity to speak my views this evening and have a good evening thank you miss diane reese for your comments next we have jennifer yes um good evening can you hear me yes ma'am yes good evening uh president arianes board members superintendent ortega and district officers my name is jennifer varone and i've been a teacher for azusa unified for over 31 years many of those were at slauson and when i was told that i would need to choose an elementary i did my research i asked many community members staff teachers parents and even students which school they thought i

010should move to they all pointed in one direction towards dalton now having been a part of dalton's staff for this coming year this year i have known why they all were pointing that way what laura clark greg cahill and the entire staff has built is extremely unique as uh diane ruiz mentioned all of the schools are valuable no one wants to see their school close however i would ask of the committee and the board members to take a look at dalton there's a small community feel a tight-knit feel where kids are thriving as nancy sharma beautifully spoke about they're happy they're laughing and it is such a unique community parents come on campus with a huge smile to meet laura clark and i always believe that environment is shaped from principle on down everyone feels

011like family at dalton perhaps instead of looking at capacity and numbers we should be looking at the type of school that we offer and perhaps instead of having all large campuses we do offer some variety there are some children that will thrive in a smaller tight-knit community we'd like to keep families in azusa that is our main goal not to lose our families we all want azusa to thrive in numbers but perhaps we should offer diversity please i consider you to take a look at dalton and keeping dalton open because of its small tight-knit family community thank you very much for letting me speak tonight thank you miss jennifer brown for your comments next we have miss kathleen strahanian good evening can you hear me yes ma'am i don't know why my picture's there but

012okay i recently watched the school reorganizing team meeting last week which is why i am speaking with you tonight as a 33-year educator in the azusa unified school district i have the benefit of institutional memory and i want to share it with you tonight when i first began my career at ellington we were a k-6 school then the district decided to move to sixth grade move the sixth grade to the junior high we then became a k-5 school as time went by our sixth graders were leaving the azusa unified school district and going to the neighbors neighboring district which is covina as you know ellington school is located in covina we didn't want our students to leave our district so a plan was created to help our students stay in azusa unified much research parent

013input and extensive meetings were held a decision was made and ellington became a k-8 school then the district decided to put transitional kindergarten students at all sites ellington became a tk8 school during the meeting last week ellington school was mentioned many times however ellington school's location was hardly mentioned i am speaking tonight because i know that if ellington schools elementary students are asked to move to other locations our students will go to covina our parents will not want to drive to another school in azusa when covina is a city in which they live here are some possible solutions to keep ellington students who reside in covina to stay in azusa unified ellington school could become a tk5 school tk6 school or tk8 school i hope it remains a tk8 school it is modernized and already

014a tk8 school why would the district spend money to make another school a tk8 when ellington is ready to go lastly this pandemic has taught us that social emotional well-being is extremely important all azusa unified school district students are anxious to get back to school making a dramatic change in student locations would be traumatic to students now more than ever stability routine and continuity are extremely important i am sure you would agree that students should always come first i will send each of you a copy of this and hope you will be able to take my recommendations into consideration feel free to reach out to me if i can be of help thank you for this opportunity to speak tonight thank you so much for your comments tonight ms kathleen shaheen next we have miss

015vicki davis good evening dear board members i am grateful for the opportunity to speak to you today my name is vicky davis and i'm an english teacher at asusa high school today i would like to talk to you about two things the first is a heartfelt thank you for adding agenda item 9.1 the naming of the asusa high school theater the dave h lewis theatre of the performing arts your vote to make the name change will be appreciated by the entire associate community as i mentioned at the last board meeting we have over a thousand people who would like to see the name change thus your support is important to us mr dave lewis's legacy will live on with every scholar who participates in the theater program at asusa high school regardless of whether that

016individual is an actor performing on his or her first production a stagehand or an attendant the lessons that mr lewis taught our scholars continue to live in those he touched with his kindness joy and enthusiasm his presence is missed by those who knew him the second item i would like to address is my appreciation for denouncing and combating racism xenophobia and intolerance against asian americans and pacific islanders i was moved by the opening words of the approved resolution 20-21-27 denouncing xenophobia due to covet 19. when i heard the board read the resolution in a carousel format stating asusa unified school district believes that we have a special responsibility to understand and intentionally work to eliminate racism it was inspiring to me i was also delighted to see superintendent ortega's april 14th email message where he

017said we are all committed to respect equity and justice and with that thought of respect equity and justice i want to say thank you to the board and the cabinet for everything you are doing for our district and our students i appreciate all your efforts thank you miss vicky davis for your comments next we have mr daniel testing is everything clear on your end yes sir thank you um hello miss arianis um hopefully your children are doing well um my name is daniel alberto aka mr daniel i'm a program leader at dalton elementary school i'd like to first start with the prelude of two school years ago we've had the closure of a few of our schools which is a president president such as gladstone street and i worked at that school i get transferred

018to dalton elementary school very nervous about making a good impression i come to you today speaking because i feel that this school has a lot more to offer than just the size of it i understand that as administrators you have to look at the business side of these things however it it the word i choose to use is an investment i would never speak of dalton if i did not feel it's a school that i very much believed in and two years prior as well there was a re-election and i would like to point to you school board and say that we the city of luza parents faculty members we voted for you to be in your positions and history repeats itself more school closures and i ask how will you explain to these children

019that they need to walk farther distances that the locations of school that they rely on for free lunch or or meals will no longer be there for them the teacher that they've known the friend that they knew will no longer be part of their life change is scary whether it's you're young or you're old the unknown is a scary thing and just think about these changes these drastic changes that parents students faculty will have to go through i would not speak for dalton if i did not believe in this school nord staff to go up to miss laura clark and ask how she is doing while she fights back her tears to say that everything will be fine when i know her eyes she she just can't hold it back thank you so much mr

020daniel for for your comments tonight next our last speaker we have michaela michaela are you there yes hi michaela you can go ahead and start when you're ready i think dalton is a beautiful place and i really want it to stay open because i see my parents laugh when i get home and i see every kid laugh and everybody loves the school i know people want to close the school but it's just a beautiful place when i see everybody smile and i i see the teachers work so hard so many times and i obviously love how they talk and how they take care of us and they have courage to be themselves and yeah that's all thank you michaela did you want to speak anymore or are you done i'm done okay thank you so

021much michaela for for your comments tonight next we have miss esther campos ball hello um i hope that everyone can hear me um board member ariana's thank you and captain members rest of the board um i would like to take this opportunity i wasn't going to speak tonight but listening to nancy and michaela and jennifer diane um and daniel really made me um move to speak and as you know i i very seldom approach the board for any issues um but as i begin i'd like to um first of all thank the board and the cabinet for putting uh mr dave lewis's uh name change for the theater versus a high on the agenda for tonight for vote i know that there are a thousand plus folks that are probably listening to this meeting tonight

022who are very much appreciating the fact that you considered to vote on the issue so thank you very much for that but as a community member i want to speak about um ellington and dalton and the impact that they have in our community but most importantly i want to speak about the loss of students and the loss of students to our district if we should close those two school sites i know and i truly understand the responsibility the fiscal responsibility that is behind the decisions that our district has to make but when we talk about closing two schools that are essentially vital to our district and the loss of students that we could possibly face because of the fact that we're closing schools in this in areas that could very easily feed into covida school

023district or glendora as a community member and a faculty member of this district it brings me great concern um extreme concern not only for you know the fact that our students are going to be having to be shifted but also because of the fact that we have a huge potential potential excuse me to lose students to glendora and covina and i think we've bled enough students already and knowing the community of dalton as well as i do i can i can almost guarantee you that these kids will end up going to other districts and with that said board members when the item does come up for vote i really would like for all of you to consider that thank you thank you miss esther jumpless ball for your comments tonight do we have anyone else

024raising their hand at liga we have no more hands at this time at this time we move on to our next item which is 7.1 comments reports and requests by the board of education we'll go ahead and start with board member uh uh cruz gonzalez thank you um since we met a week ago i have nothing else to add today thank you thank you next we have board member rodriguez pena yes hello on good evening everyone just want to report that i i went to a the walk through through at murray elementary school and i can see why l.a county has given our district an a i give them an a score because everything was so organized so neat the ppe um was set up perfectly the water fountains were very clean i did to

025the whole walk through from the beginning like if i was a student going in what would happen they take my temperature they walk to the cafeteria but i also looked into a classroom and it was quite odd to see i mean it's almost historical you see the teacher sitting at one end and she has her shield in front of her with the mask and then across are her students and they're sitting there with masks and shoes in front of them and and it's it's different look you know and we used to be able to walk into the classroom and you know see the students um in session but we literally had to look in through a window so i just want to thank um superintendent ortega and principal jeanette flores for um giving me that

026great walk through because it's i really see um why our scores are so high every time the alley county comes in and looks at our schools because i know all our others all our other schools are consistently doing the same thing um also um azusa leadership learning educational foundation has partnered with azusa unified school district and purchasing if you have seen banners that say they read you are amazing it's a small token of our appreciation of our appreciation and you know if you don't have it at the school side yet you will be getting some time this week um because i've seen him at several schools and uh we do know that you are amazing gladstone high school one thing i noticed it um i haven't been not much but i was driving down aero

027highway and i noticed they're finally putting a three-way signal right on eden um aero highway going west and aiden crosses and it will take forever to get across and i know the the community and the parents have asked her i don't know how it happened but um i guess they're listening and i noticed they're putting it the signal on and um it's safer i mean i used to go to get my grandkids all the way to the other side just to come to the back way because making that laugh was like either took forever or good luck if you went across um and i noticed that i've also seen the crossing guards out um nice to see them working again and i want to thank the city museum because i know they are being paid

028and put there through the city of azuza thank you board member rodriguez pangafer for your comment next we have board member beau i would like to share that uh in partnership with assemblywoman blanca rubio's office and community-based organizations heart of compassion and city of refuge azuz unified will be hosting a food distribution drive on saturday may 1st at our former adult education site located at 1134 south barranca where we have hosted several food drives in the past and very recently the drive will open at 9 00 a.m and we will be ready to distribute fresh food to 400 families on a first-come first-served basis i look forward to a great turnout from our community volunteers and i hope you can all join thank you next we have board member career good evening everyone just a

029couple reminders i mentioned these last week the first is there is a daca clinic happening this saturday in partnership with the immigration resource center homework house foothill community church and my third place it'll be saturday uh this saturday april 24th from 2 p.m to 5 p.m at foothill community church again the space is going to be open for for anyone who might want to you know walk through the daca process there will be attorneys on hand to review documentation and ensure that that everything is is is up to speed if you are interested again i want to uh encourage you to reach out to me and and i can um work with you and connect you with immigration resource center to make sure that you have the the needed documents if that's something that you're

030you're wanting to do um you can reach out to me again my phone number is 626-629-8061 feel free to call me or text me you can also email me at uh agreer azusa.org and then finally i will be having a coffee online a week from today on tuesday april 27th at 6 p.m if you've attended one in in the past uh you should have by now received an email with with the link to to sign up uh they should also be on on some of the social media channels that i have you can check them out there or again reach out to me if you'd like to be included and i'll make sure that you get the zoom credentials but that will be next week tuesday april 27th on uh at 6pm great thank you

031and thank you for your comments i i would like to go ahead and remind everyone that this saturday april 24th at 5 30 you're all invited to stop asian hate rally that is being sponsored by mayor robert gonzalez and in partnership with our school uh board you guys are all invited to come and participate i would love to see you guys there um i think this is a great opportunity uh april 5th the city passed their resolution um last week we passed our resolution in unison together unified to stop the xenophobia that is happening and this is our first time actually doing this um here in our city you know with um residents that live here so i i would like to invite you guys at home to please come and you know stand together

032with us in solidarity against xenophobia happening towards our fellow asian americans and pacific islanders and um other than that i have nothing else to report we'll go ahead and move on to comments and reports by student board members we have destiny contreras good evening ghs welcomed back students in the classrooms with teachers yesterday for the first time in over a year crystal flamino olivia britt mario valenzuela gianni morales karen mourinho and myself set up balloons and posters around the school as well as repainted our happy rock to welcome everyone back we hope to see more gladiators in the coming weeks as we all try to finish the year strong shout out to miss perdomo miss parmar miss neil and all the other teachers motivating students to finish the year out strong ghs is proud of

033the gladiator football team who played azusa high school last friday coach lopez led his team to a 22-8 victory and his players demonstrated respect and sportsmanship over the course of the game we would like to thank the aztecs for their hospitality and a chance to play on their beautiful new field ghs would like to congratulate members of the gladstone hosa who completed who competed in the hosa state leadership conference on april 9th through 10th and had all the members go to the second round of the competition anthony echeverria was awarded the bronze medal medal in the barbara james scholarship competition this award is given to members that have the highest number of volunteer hours through the year anthony worked tires tyler tired leslie to give his time and dedication to hospice patience the other honor

034was fifth place in cultural diversity and disparities exam competition leticia perez put all her time in studying and learning the material to be able to get to this level ghs would like to congratulate mario valenzuela junior for a gold meda medal in skillsusa state level competition and matthew tell us for a silver medal in skillsusa state level competition their progress in graphic arts facilities management has earned them a place in skillsusa national competition jhs would like to recognize miss wall miss flores mr enfante miss parmar miss casanabe miss alvarez mr shea mr velasquez miss clavicia miss poole and mr hague for their hard work this week in the project-based learning leadership cohort with high-tech high mentors even as we reopen for in-person learning these gladiators remain committed to continuous improvement and developing their crafts as

035teachers ghs athletes would like to thank azusa unified bus drivers for their service to get them to competitions over the last month football boys soccer girls soccer and girls tennis have all had away games against league opponents riding the bus with the windows down in socially distance is the way to go thank you you destiny contreras i i i want to just uh uh congratulate you on how you uh you're from asuza high and you're making uh congratulate uh congratu make it a congratulations to to gladstone um because in reality you know we may be two schools but we're one city one unified city so thank you for that i want to ask you a question destiny are you students going to put the mask on the happy rock yes we put it on them

036i saw that that was that was cute and the tradition continues yeah yes yes thank you jacob vasquez i do not see jacob here this evening he did mention that he had a game and might be running late no worries we'll go ahead and move to alex arkenberg good evening board members cabinet and superintendent ortega just before spring breaks serious students parents and staff participated in our second trimester virtual awards ceremony students were recognized for academic excellence academic achievement honorable and attendance over 60 students received awards and recognized and were recognized for their hard work thank you to all the parents who were able to attend and help make this a special event students and teachers safely returned to campus yesterday the custodian and office staff worked hard to make sure the classroom hallways and

037restrooms were ready for students to return finally we are proud to announce that sierra high school has been recognized as one of the 27 schools in the state of california as a model continuation high school congratulations to the teachers for making sierra high a place where students receive a high quality education thank you yay congratulations sierra high school that's that speaks volume volume of our administration our teachers and you students putting in that effort so congratulations that that's well deserved next we'll go ahead and move to comments and reports by cabinet and superintendent good evening board members staff and community members uh i'll be brief um i just want to share that the highlight of my year has been visiting and supporting sites as we resume in-person instruction seeing students back in the classrooms has

038been the highlight by by far and away so i just want to thank everyone who's been involved this is an effort that has taken many many people and i i don't think we could say thank you enough i also want to recognize and express my appreciation to our human resources team that has been working on a variety of issues especially leaves and feeling vacancies as they've come up and they've been coming up quite a bit so i want to thank my staff for for all the work that they're doing um that is it uh thank you good evening boarding community um in the business department we are continuing knee beat elbows deep and developing the 2122 budget um there's a lot of factors that's going into that and we're working on changing our uh improving

039our budget philosophy as well as how we incorporate uh feedback and input from our like our site administrators our department heads and vice versa i'm additionally we are working hard to improve our meal offerings so we're looking into seeing how we can have more digital signage as well as identifying meals in advance so people have options as well as maybe looking into having some samples if covered the guidelines allow it so we have some food tasting to get some input from our community as well as our parents and students additionally um her mlt department is still working to assess all of our facilities um at times we're looking to see exactly the capacity of all of our units electrical plumbing vice versa so we can make those decisions to come up with a five-year facility

040plan so we can reassess things most districts they go out and contract the company out and we haven't closed doors on that but we are trying to see how we can create this level report internally before we reach out but i want to continue to thank our team for our hard work and our efforts and i do want to give kudos to our transportation department we are one of the few districts that did continue to have transportation and we are we were successful at offering transportation for all our athletics internally versus having a contract out so i want to thank all the ladies and i can say that because we have all female drivers so i want to thank all of our ladies for showing up and being there and just being a smiley face

041for our students when they pick them up for school as well as for athletics so thank you this week we welcome back at our elementary sites our fifth and sixth grade students and i have had the pleasure to be at sites to do uh arrival duty and dismissal duty to help out and to be visible there and to see our kids on campus this week we also welcome back our secondary students 7 to 12. yesterday i was at azusa high school and today i was at foothill middle school i want to share that today i overheard teachers talking and a teacher said that yesterday um she was able to help three students raise their grade uh in one tim session and so um just how awesome that is when you have that one-on-one connection and

042that support uh to see those kinds of outcomes so kudos to uh to that teacher uh this week we continued with our los angeles county department of public health uh visits uh from the inspectors and we continue on the path of impressing uh continuing the path of uh doing well um we are expecting that our secondary schools will begin to get phone calls and um and schedule visits for that and so we welcome that um that opportunity to showcase our secondary schools uh as well and so um i just want to thank all of the staff members uh who have contributed uh to this uh this success in azusa so thank you good evening i am excited to announce that ausd is launching a project-based learning collaborative team so we just started and so far

043we have 24 k-12 teachers who have signed up to participate where we're going to engage in exploration of project-based learning learn how to implement in classrooms and collaboratively plan projects and then share our learning as you heard tonight ghs has been engaged in a project-based learning pilot that has gone very well this year and so um we are excited about that and expanding and we are also excited to share more about project-based learning during our summer learning presentation tonight great thank you for all your comments i really appreciate cabinet you guys always have and great information um to share with us so and congratulations to our uh our transportation team go ladies that that's great to hear thank you uh next we'll move on to general functions 9.1 this is the discussion the approval of

044naming of the asusa high school theater the david h lewis theater of the performing arts thank you board president so bert um per the board policy 7310 um under the memorial upon request of the public comment as we had in our last board meeting as well as um the signatures received from the azusa community members as well as faculty and staff and students we are for having this discussion today to allow us to elaborate further on this opportunity so at this time i'll pass it back to the board president so we can have further collaboration thank you can i please get emotion to move 9.1 you make a motion to move 9.1 great we have a first by board member rodriguez pena can i please get a second second we have a second by board

045member greer do we have any discussion any comments that you i think it's well deserved you know mr lewis gave 31 years of his um education working as a cons not only as a drama teacher but as a counselor and i know that he affected many students also you know by showing them their talents i recall some of the students from um i used to see them do the plays at foothill middle school and then all of a sudden i see them in high school and they were doing fantastic plays and he gave all the kids the opportunity um you know where to be but he would also be in the place too right so i i think it's very well deserved for mr lewis i think it's a beautiful honor to him i just

046ditto i i echo those those thoughts and sentiments as well um i would ask is there is would there be any type of uh ceremonial ribbon cutting or or unveiling is that something that's even feasible um to to do in this this season we would have to see based on the current current copic guidelines what would be allowable and at the same time not make others feel isolated or not included in the process okay and i'm sorry would it be a signage or would be something on the wall or his name will be yeah so as far as exactly how uh the site would like to put it up we have not determined but it's going to be up to them okay thank you i i would like to comment um you know mr dave

047lewis was a teacher that did not look um at his check-in time you know being 7 30 and clock out time at three he went way beyond because he wanted to give back and empower each one of his students and it's evident as we are discussing today and as we are going to vote today how he affected our community as a whole and i'm i'm very excited um i think all of you that have come to the school board meetings have let us know with your emails how he has affected your lives how he empowered your child you as a student um so thank you thank you so much for that and for for the ceremony i i i thank you for sharing that but i i think um i don't know i i would

048like to probably do something virtual as well um maybe just cabinet and board be there and something virtual for our our families at home that that may not be able to be there what do you guys think i i also want to glad and yeah he affects many many students but he also affects many parents especially his favorite drama mamas which is which is patricia sanchez and one of our employees in dalton and ochoa and that's what he called them because he they would be serving the popcorn and i was being making the hot dogs they were there every single event well when i when i went so you know many parents he's also affected because he was had parents volunteering all the time but the drama mamas that's what he called them and they

049were always there for him so i think i think we're all um and agrees that for a ceremony we would you know uh i i as as board members and cabinet we would like to be present but we would also like some type of virtual for our families our parents and our students to to engage in this ceremony i'm sorry do you mean us be there and do it virtual or do you mean do it virtual us us be there and and then uh zoom it to our families at home oh yeah because of covid yeah i didn't know we were going to be there yes yes so i i'm i'm proposing that you know we we'd be there physically for those of us that can um and uh that that would be yeah i

050would i would say latasha if you if you were able to look at just look into what is feasible you know that might be helpful even to just ascertain yes sir what what makes the most sense there may be more options available to us or or less options available to us if we look into that okay and the date too because of right when when that that will take place and and if you could just um i think it would be great to to to be informed um like you said on the signage on on how that that's gonna take you know how that process is gonna unfold um that would be much appreciated as well um are there any members of the lewis family that we've been in contact with that we would invite

051to the ceremony as well yes yes we have okay and then you need to look at the capacity right i mean how many people can attend it's like maybe not all board members could be there maybe two i i don't know i'm just thinking out loud you know depending because i don't know how many family members he has and i'm sure they should probably first be right to families but like uh yeah like you're saying and board members saying but there's other possibilities i mean i'm expecting if we open it up to everybody yeah we'll have all of susa there so yeah that's why i you know i'm also suggesting to creating a link to zoom to be able to um you know have the people at home be part of it as well um

052through zoom and take our stages and like i said maybe only several of us but i guess they'll let us know can can be there or not oh fine and then let's see we can record and then push out the recording like youtube yeah okay so that you know if you can't attend on that day at that time we can push out the recording so the community can watch it whenever they want to access the video i i think that's a great idea yeah yeah um i think that's good we can go ahead and have it on our our youtube channel um so yeah tasha if you could please get back to us on just uh the program and and all those little details that you'll take care of and let us know yes ma'am

053any more comments suggestions great at this time we can go ahead and please we already motioned we had our discussion if you can please cast in your vote for 9.1 and it passes 5-0 thank you guys so much for this thank you community for for joining us in in this effort 9.2 we have school reorganization update good evening uh board president board member staff and community tonight we're going to be updating the board of education on where we are in terms of our school reorganization process i want to stress that tonight it's an update it's just an update to keep the board informed of where we are uh last week we kicked off what we are calling phase two of our school reorganization uh process with the school reorganization team and at that meeting last

054wednesday uh we shared that these are the four objectives these were going to be the four objectives for that evening uh so we were going to recap our process we were going to revisit our purpose we were going to understand model uh four and then understand model three and and try to gain um some clarity on on model three so just really quickly again we took the team uh through the through a recap how we assembled the team how the team came together how we have been meeting since november how we've had had uh six meetings uh so far how the team in phase one came up with some recommendations and some butts and those were presented to the board of education and the board of education agreed uh with the team we showed those

055recommendations to the team again this is just to bring the context back it had been a little while since we had met and so we just want to make sure that we were all in the same place these are the same recommendations that came to the board of education we then revisited our purpose why are we doing this why are we all together spending our wednesday evenings on a volunteer basis and we talked about we're doing this because we're trying to maximize not only our capacity but also maximize our programs at this slide we took a pause uh at this moment during the school reorganization team and we let them know that we were now in phase two and uh that we were now moving into uh getting more detailed into what these models would

056look like and what they would include including that when we scrolled up there were now going to be names attached to models we reminded them that during phase one of our work we were bringing an idea we were bringing a model but that it that did not mean that whatever we were bringing forward uh was the best or the brightest uh but that it was a starting point uh for us as a team um we talked about the fact that we brought four models to this team and that team narrowed it down to two uh we talked about the fact that one of the models that we are currently uh exploring which is model four when we came with that idea our idea was a 612. that team recommended it to be a 712. so

057we wanted to make sure that just like in phase one of this work uh whatever we were presenting in no way shape or form meant that this was the final decision um and we wanted to to to let them know that just like in phase one this team was going to have ample opportunity to speak into the models make recommendations uh bring up ideas uh generate possibilities and that all of that eventually would get to the board of education lastly we reminded them that in case they forgot that they were human and that this was hard work uh we let them know that um when they saw the detailed plans that and that we're gonna have school names on them that as a human right it's understood that there could be a reaction to what

058they were about to see maybe they went to a school that's going to be listed here maybe their kids go to a school that's going to be listed here maybe they work at one of these schools maybe they went to to a school when they were younger um and that that can evoke emotion right whether that's sadness happiness anger frustration whatever those things are um but we applauded them for their efforts to be as objective as possible and as open as possible as we moved into the second phase uh we lastly let them know that on that night which was last wednesday our objective was to try to understand the models we let them know that we were not looking for reactions we were not looking for likes or dislikes we were not even going

059to be discussing the schools that they were going to be seeing that night that the objective of that night was just to understand the models that were presented to them so we started with uh model four and the reason we started with model four is because this model that the team came up with didn't have any butts didn't have any um things to consider um and so therefore it was the least complicated of the two models that we were going to be discussing on that evening we did point out a couple of things to them uh as we showed this uh to them uh number one we pointed out that on the on the right-hand side of this uh of this uh what they were looking at we said look uh this is now a

060three-year implementation plan um and we let them know that again originally if we if we went back to phase one this on the right used to be a five-year implementation plan and so we pointed out that that had been changed per their recommendations and ultimately the board recommendation as well we also pointed out that in these three columns here on the right hand side you will notice that the first year says 2122. we reminded them that that is one of the things that they wanted to consider and discuss further and so we let them know that just because it says 2122 right there that that was still an item of conversation that had to happen in this team because this is something that the team wanted to discuss do we begin in 2122 or do

061we begin in 22 um we also let them know that in this model when they see ahs and ghs here on the bottom left-hand side that they will notice that it now says 712 it no longer is a 612 because again that was recommended by the team and by the board of education and then we let them know that when you see schools on this spreadsheet there is a number attached to these schools and we let them know that that number is the number that we were calling the capacity of that school we let them know that our initial um our initial work at the elementary level uh took the capacity and subtracted six classrooms and we explained to them that our thinking was that we were going to subtract two classrooms uh for preschool

062our preschool program continues to grow uh and if we were going to eventually get to something like this then contracting schools would only mean growth at those particular schools so we want to to reserve two rooms for preschools we want to reserve one room for a library we want to reserve one room for an innovation lab and then we wanted to have two rooms uh that would serve as like flex uh so depending on the site um we have we have had here in our district uh we have had for instance uh parent centers at our rooms uh i'm sorry at our sites so is that a consideration um we have uh special education programs uh that sometimes are uh pull out in nature and so having space for for those kinds of uh services

063uh we have been uh through the work of uh gary and dana and the ed services team had a mckinley children's center and so we have vapa teachers who teach band and we have all these other kind of things that happen and so we kind of just put aside two rooms kind of tbd so we explained that that's kind of what we had what we had thought about um we let them know that um the approach that was taken here was for this model was easy we started with the 712 and we said okay well 712 there's 310 students projected next school year and that would be uh all going to the two schools that left us with 3764 students projected for next school year that is at the top and so we started to

064look at our schools at the at our capacity and decide and deciding which and how many of our schools would be able to house that projected number uh the following uh the following school year again not necessarily knowing at this point in time if we were starting next year or starting the year after so you will see there that at the elementary level based on this initial uh idea initial starter 98 we would 98.87 of our facilities would be would be up to capacity at the elementary level our high schools or our secondary schools in this case are 7 12s even by moving 712s into them would still hover around 82.544 and then based on projections at both the at the elementary and at the secondary of course that still begins to decline over the

065course over the course of the year so again we just explained the model this was not about talking hey are these the right schools are these the wrong schools this this initial on wednesday was do you understand how it works and how how it how it functions then we moved to model three model three was more complicated as you might recall on the recommendations to the board this one had a lot of tentacles uh should it be a k5 should it be a k-6 should it include a tk should it not include a tka should include one middle school or one or two should include one high school or two high schools um and so uh we we said we're gonna start kind of looking at that and kind of thinking about how that how

066that functions so based on on on the data from the from from them um the one area that was probably the most pronounced um although it was only a little bit more than half the team had said that the tk6 was the preferred model and so we decided to start with that because again that seemed just on the initial data that seemed to be something that most members or a little bit more than half of members were were in favor of so we started with this tk5 again just like the model 4 we went over it three years how it works the transition uh how the schools were um were were chosen um and here we noted that um if this was a tk5 model unless we were going to consider construction uh in a

067tk5 model we would have to have two middle schools uh again unless we were going to consider construction and so we just let them know this is how the tk5 works and per the tk5 um we we're gonna have to have two six eights and so we explained to them that based on this um again not saying that this is a final decision or that this is what the way it's going to go down just bringing the initial idea that this would be these would be the two the two middle schools we then moved on to the tk6 again explain the tk6 model how it works how it functions uh the ins and outs again this was not about a conversation about the school sites um this was a conversation about do we understand how

068the model functions and operates and we clarified all of this all along uh we paused to take questions of clarification like hey explain this again to me or how did this function or or what is that number again or how did you come up with this and we responded to the team as those questions came up at the we then moved on to some decision making to kind of get a pulse of where the team where the team was at and what they were thinking and so on that evening the team was able to decide that model 3 would be a tk-6 model um and that it would contain only one middle school um we ran out of time and so we did not uh we did not finish model 3 to clarify model 3

069and so tomorrow at our next school reorganization team meeting we will be discussing and talking about um the tk8 and we will be talking about the high schools um and so the team knows that once we have clarity on what model 3 looks like we will then begin to address the other pieces of these models which include the programs the potential drawbacks the potential benefits the support staff the potential budgetary impacts um with the clear models okay model four here's the additional information model three here's the additional information and then of course we would begin having those robust conversations in terms of schools location you know those kinds of those kinds of things [Music] and so that's where we are at again we have our our meeting tomorrow uh to address the tka and the

070high schools uh and then we move on to the other areas uh that the team had wanted to see uh in terms of the two models uh that we were at um so at this point in time i turn over if there are any questions that we can uh address for for the board yes um do we have any questions comments discussion that not on not on this side um time time right now so on the other side of the the rest of the conversation there will be some questions but i don't have anything i actually have have a question yes just to to to think about i i first want to thank you um thank the the committee for their time and being very thorough all the possibilities um that have come from how

071it has been able to the committee has been able to uh pretty much you know work backwards and and and come to you know to this um as as we look at all these models um you know one thing that uh that i see um that i i would like to just you know uh point out the ponder um i i see all the elementaries um be re just grow substantially right and so um so there there's a few parents that have moved away from from for example um you know let's say hodge they were at 700 at one point you know they moved to a smaller school because perhaps their you know their child needed that type of environment so i i don't see here um you know that that flexibility and so i

072understand you know that we're trying to fill capacity but at the same time i think it's important that we also you know take the needs of consideration of special needs students um that need that smaller space that smaller school um so something to think about um you say tk through eight models so i i only see one that is still a decision to be made tomorrow tomorrow night okay and so we didn't get to that part uh last wednesday okay and so you said um so so once you know um tomorrow you said you're gonna talk about the tk8 programs and drawbacks with each model or did i hear that tomorrow um we are hoping that the team uh further clarifies model three and so there's two pending issues on model three one pending issue

073is should model three include a tk8 or should it not so that's the first thing that the that the team is going to kind of digest and try to speak into and then the second thing that the team has to address is should model three have one high school or two high schools and so those will be our objectives tomorrow as we continue to try to get a real understanding of what the model 3 is going to look like and is it is it possible to put these models side by side so that we can see them in the pros and cons on both sides you know i mean on one page is that a possibility even if it's in half by 14 just side by side sure i think that that's a good idea

074yeah you can compare it any anybody else i have one more thing you mentioned that you're looking at like for one room to be one preschool innovation lab or like a flex parent center uh you know special education i i i know um in each elementary um actually in each school there are it's very important you know and and i bring this up for our special education students um they get pulled out for ot speech rsp um when there are mainstream so um i i think that's a high priority again for our special education students um that that is is needed um parent centers um that is just an amazing we didn't have parent centers 20 years ago you know when i even when i was here as a student i think that's a great

075addition to every single school here because it's inviting to all our parents to come and so i i would like to to see both of these um you know the special education classroom or what not however you want to call it parent center i think those are our are a need because our schools are not are not schools without our parents bringing their their students their children to this school district so i think that's a high high priority well that's kind of a place where they go you know and they have their meetings and the ones that are set up at the schools that i see you know they have like comfortable has couches and they have guest speakers in there and they feel that it's somewhere where they can go they even have computers

076in there where parents can look at areas you know maybe they don't have a computer at home maybe they do now after all this but you know um or they have taught the parents there you know how to look at fairies how to see their child's attendance or how to see their grades middle school high school parents so i i think that's really important that we keep the parent at centers you know i don't know um yeah they're very important and the preschool uh we have a preschool is the preschool going to continue at each site uh each elementary yes that would be the plan okay so then we're gonna it looks like it there's gonna be more than two rooms then that are going to be needed i mean so two rooms right now

077would house four preschool programs um although we are looking into also the possibility of a full year full day and so that would be just one room right but but but a typical preschool program one room houses two programs because you have your am and your p that's right that's right um yeah i just i just want to make sure that we we keep in mind like i said you know uh special education for the art you know for this the the pull out that they do parent centers um the preschool and so just to keep that in mind that we uh don't exhibit and just fill up every room and that we have flexibility you know to to make sure that we have room for these extra extra um things that are taking place

078at the elementaries um other than that thank you so much for your presentation if there is any more questions if there's no more questions or comments we can go ahead and move on well i mean i do i do have questions about this it's about moral process right so um so you're anticipating you're going to continue meeting with the committee right um what what what are you anticipating bringing to the board right because i see certain decisions here that need to be made at some point so uh tomorrow our expectation is that we gain clarity on model 3 which then lines us up for the date is not in my head but whatever that following week next week wednesday that we would begin the conversations of these other items that the team had requested um

079i right now those are the only means we have i i don't i don't know how i don't know the magic or the or the unmagic that that might happen uh obviously this is now we're getting into some some real you know bigger decisions compared to phase one um so i really do not know how to answer that question we are we're we're committed to meeting on a weekly basis um but because they're so i'm anticipating that the conversations about school sites and locations has the potential of being broad and big and deep that could potentially necessitate more more meetings with the team but but i but i'm not 100 sure again it could be the opposite it could be next wednesday we come up with these other ideas and there's an aha moment and

080it's crystal clear and then we're ready to to move and come to the board and say okay this is what the team is saying this is what their recommendation that's what they're recommending um and and we move from there so i think i mean so gabriella i just um i think for myself i really want to be able to understand and make sure that our community understands what kind of process timeline we're looking at because i think we're already starting to get um people coming to the board um questions i'm feeling like decisions are already being made right and having having gone through this now twice right the end of the school year is the worst time of the year to be talking about this and feeling like decisions are being made right i think

081the the process that the four of us i mean sabrina you weren't here at that point the last time where it happened during a school year and it felt like it was paced out i'm talking about terms of like decisions right like that lead to final action by the board so i just i feel like the sooner we can be we can clarify to the community about when decisions are making are is this something board's going to take action on this school year is this something that recommendations are going to come there's going to be some public input action's going to be taken next year the sooner we can clarify that timeline and even if it's not set in stone the better because i don't want to have people feeling like they have to put

082a lot of effort into something when actually decisions are not being made right now right so i think i'm just and i'm not saying i mean i'm deferring to i guess gabriella arturo as our president and superintendent what kind of timeline are we thinking about so so what i'm hearing i is that right now for example there's there's names attached to to um right the the closure of schools um today we heard you know community members from these schools come out and express their concern and so what you're saying is you know what is the process time you know when are we gonna make this decision because here it says 21 22 we're looking at this next school year we're looking at like we're going to make a decision this june before july is that

083correct well yes or no right because this team wants to consider not be getting this i'm sorry mr ortega your mic might be off thank you um so not necessarily uh because one of the items that this team and the board subsequently agreed is that this team needs to have a conversation about is this starting 21-22 or is this starting 22-23 now again this is this is not a decision-making team and they know that from from the get-go uh but what they're bringing or we're bringing recommendations to the board based on on their input um maybe and i don't know if this if this kind of satisfies this maybe we give ourselves an internal deadline and then we can come to the board just again in full transparency once we kind of get a feel

084and say you know per the board the board does not want to make a decision in june just as an example uh which means then that based on how this team is going um we can come with a recommendation and say you know we're not going to meet this deadline or we're going to move forward or the board is saying no we need to have something then i need we need to go back to the team and rethink our weekly meetings uh and the length of our meetings uh to to to to add more ample time to uh to have this this this decision or this recommendation i'm sorry i think just like um shiloh mentioned you know actually this is a conversation so i feel that um it's very premature you know these are

085names these are not a for sure decision but the parents at dalton you know have been told that their names on the list and so when you say your name's on the list of course right are you going to say what you know so this is i'm sure what we have here we do need more clarification you know that it's it's just a recommendation and the names on the list doesn't mean you're the one you know how do we let them know that that you know that's this is not a guarantee this is not for sure you and i think that's why we had so many parents today from dalton because that's what was told to them and you know i totally understand i think i would add there's there's a degree to which there's

086well yes i think that's a fair question how can we be how can we be clear how can we communicate but but also there's a degree to which no matter how clear we are um there there could still exist some confusion because there's an there's a name on a slide um and so i think it's helpful um what shilling is asking and and suggesting around timeline for process so so because it's a con yeah it's a conversation so yeah if if if this is looking like action is not likely to take place until the the next school year that's helpful and and then we can we can encourage our community to you know be involved in the conversation that's going to be taking place over the course of months as opposed to necessarily exerting energy

087towards a potential that isn't decided on i think additionally it's an important distinction and it's hard to kind of hold a container that we can have a decision by x date and at that date we can also say we're going to implement a year out right so for example if we voted i'm not saying we are but if we voted on june 15th to adopt a plan we can also in that with that action say and this plan will be implemented as of the following july july 22 not july 21 so rather than saying we've made a decision we're implementing it in 15 days we're going to be implementing this decision and implementing the plan a year out so so that's that's a good point is it is it helpful or hurtful i mean for

088us to have a conversation now and establish i mean to to establish whether um we as a board already deem it best to not look at 21 22. would that be helpful or or harmful for the process do you believe at this point um in terms of obviously counting know the fact that we're in april right uh can you know the the fact that some other team members have brought up but um i don't know i mean as a team i think some people would welcome that and applaud that and i'm not sure that the entire team would feel would feel that way i i don't know so again that's a tough tough question to to answer because i don't know how how the entire team feels about but would that vote come from the

089board of education and not the team i mean the team i get you know they work very hard they have recommendations i totally understand but i mean the final decision on the schools on the timeline isn't up to the board of education thousand percent so so just to speak on board member rodriguez pena um what i i'm gonna suggest and i would like to hear my uh my team my team's input on this is um since we are not uh it's not set in stone that you know let's say model you know model four you know dalton ellington and powell is set in stone that they're the you know um model three the same thing you know dalton ellington liam powell um can we switch it up a bit so that way it you know

090can we see i mean i i know i'm asking for a lot but if we can so that way we can see other scenarios so so the way the way the process is set right now um yes um i i am expecting uh that as we're going through this process with this with the team just like they changed the models uh i i am expecting that that this also has the potential to change in terms of the schools that will ultimately come to the board of education um as a as a recommendation so i just want to go back to um to what adrian said and it really aligns with what i think where i was leading and that is you know let's just be let's be upfront right so we think that i mean

091to know that you guys are meeting on a weekly basis and saying oh you may have to accelerate that's a lot of meetings for our community members on this committee right um especially when i mean you say we're in april we're almost in may right we're a week away from may right so a week and a half away from me so i mean we have to be realistic about is this really going to be for an implementation for next year and if not let's be clear about it let's set reasonable timeline so that we can make a decision i i mean i mean sabrina in terms of like decisions in advance i'm just going to say just in in from the experience that we had when we first started initiating the conversations to shut down

092schools and it happened around this time right this is when sort of the information came out it felt very rushed community felt like they did not know what's happening realistically just logistically like there was no way that even if we made a decision in that may me in the may when it was first proposed the district staff was not going to have enough time to put everything together to to close schools by that september right or august so i'm just saying like so if that's the case let's be let's let's be upfront about it right let's not have something on there that's misleading when we know it's not really not possible it's not very feasible so what i'm i'm hearing from the majority of the board is that um and correct me if if you

093know if it's not what i'm hearing is that 20 21 you know to start this this next school year 21 22 because that will be the next school year it seems a bit rushed um there is going to be a lot more schools from what you just said um other than just the two schools the movement the you know just the whole hustle and bustle of everything and so realistically um perhaps there needs to be more time is that what i'm hearing yeah just add some nuance and clarification though um i want i do want to applaud the the the process um especially recognizing that we've come to this place because of of what we've learned from from previous processes and and last year one of the things that we talked about when we moved

094to keep sixth grade at uh elementary schools is how how can we um have a more robust plan and how can we project out and have some years where we're not making decisions right now that that's going to be uh eminently you know implemented you know in in x number of days weeks months um and so so that's why i'm personally in favor of that of the the idea of let's have let's have a conversation without the cliff being you know right right in front of us let's have a conversation and and to discuss the different processes i also though want to recognize that there's a there's an impact to the conversation the the the input that comes in while the conversation is happening has an impact on the the product or or what is

095being you know provided to us because originally there was a thought around it being a five-year process and one of the suggestions that came in was five years seems too too quick excuse me five years seems too protracted there's no need for it to be that that long so what if we expedite the process and i see cabinet saying okay then this is what it would look like if we if we expedite the process so so what we're seeing is a true and authentic response to the input that that's coming in and so i i want to be careful to say um to not use language to say that it feels rushed because it's what it feels to me is that that uh cabinet and this team is is being responsive is is listening and

096and is adapting the process based on the the input that that's received and so now i think at this juncture there's additional input that's being provided now from the from the board and so think you know thank you again for for the the process being flexible enough that there are points throughout where where additional input can be made and and the the models can can adapt um as a result so with that yes i i i think i would would agree and and suggest that we um i mean for the lack of better words take take the option of implementing anything in 2122 off the table and so that we we can have a conversation about the the subsequent year i agree i i think that um we're all in in favor of that and

097i i would agree with uh my fellow board member greer i i think you guys have taken this have not slept it just it's amazing you know it's awesome how much you guys have done and um just having the flexibility and us having this conversation of being able to say hey hold on you know let's go ahead and um turn a little bit to you know to this side let's look at this um let's look at the options of you know uh the other schools you know kind of shifting them a little bit looking at um you know giving those those options so so like you said we we are not married to to dalton ellington and pal b you know those schools that like today we had um community members come and and so

098one thing i i do want to share is is this the reality of it we we are we are going to have to make decisions and this is not these are not going to be easy decisions i think they did a very good job you know they've been working very hard and i know i just feel that um it wouldn't be so rush and i think our decision-making it's very important that we really think about what schools you know what funding what programs it's really important that we really think strongly i mean we're going to make this move just make it right and with that being said you know um one of the things that um why we're going on this path i i think it is very important that that we educate our community

099right time and time you know we can say it a hundred million times but then maybe only two people heard but i think it's very important that the community understands that are low enrollment we have people here in asusa that have children that don't bring their kids to a susan unified right so our people are not having kids like they used to as well right the low birth rate i mean all these factors are why we have to do this i think about educating the community and and helping them understand um because again i feel that you know the dalton parents and family you know came today they they had very good points um but i just thought it's very premature for them to already feel that it's my school you know so we need

100we need more time and um think about this and it will happen i will say yes we do need to close some school it's going to happen uh financially we see that already but um you know let's get to parents and let her know you know why or you know how we can help them uh you know when they go to their new school you know how what can you again um someone mentioned about you know they're gonna have a different teacher well that's the same thing happened the last time we made the move but you know we explained your teachers go with you your programs go with you when you go to another school i don't think we've gotten there yet to to speak to these parents at this time but these are the

101things that they need to know so they can't feel comfortable when we're making that change and i'm not saying everything's perfect when flowers but you know um with gladstone street school and mountain view that changed i mean i see they went into valleydale and paramount and i mean they seem to be happy and the programs are there their teachers did go with them these are the things they need to know before you know that you know they're thinking you know um we're not having the same teachers and programs and and that's not a that's not a true statement i just want to add you said uh programs um can we get some some information for example um we we have these models where we have a seven through 12 right and then we have um

102the one the one high school where it's it's nine through 12 right um have you guys uh figured out like what programs can be available so i i think we we you know what programs can be available for our students if this happens um what are the opportunities right with sports or um just the different scenarios yeah so once the team uh clarifies model three those are the next steps the next steps are to go to the team to to imagine right to have some ideas of what programs might be again drawbacks possible drawbacks possible benefits support staff and budgetary impact uh so that that is all part of the process uh that will come so are you saying that they definitely said model three no you're not saying that that's what i'm hearing i'm

103sorry that's what i'm hearing no no i apologize uh model four is crystal clear everybody understands what it is oh okay so you just work in a model okay we're just trying to get clarity on what because there were so many moving parts we're trying to understand okay what is model 3 going to look like not the programs and all that right now but just logistically what is it going to look like um and so that's that's our next objective and then once we get that and we have clarity then we start moving into the these other areas yeah which include programs okay thank you for clarifying that absolutely and also in in staff you know i mean um i'm just starting out there but you know who's to lose their jobs you know it

104happened you know i'd like to know and see how many people are going to lose their jobs through this whole reorganization you know um programs you lose programs you lose people so we need to know those statistics also before we move on to the next uh topic just just so i'm i get 100 clarity on this because i just want to make a little nuance um i i understand completely i think i we heard uh implementation in 2223 but my nuance or my clarity is that we're not suggesting that we're going to pause this work and then start in september again correct okay i just wanted to be super clear about that that we continue the work and if that decision comes in september great it comes in october like whatever that is at that

105time okay thank you more time with your your team you know thank you for your community would be great i just want to be crystal clear thank you again so much for um we actually are seeing you know something concrete and um our our questions are being answered and in a responsive and prompt way and we i i truly appreciate that um you know the transparency and the dialogue and so thank you thank you cabinet for for that in case we're going to go ahead and move on to the next agenda item which is 9.3 increasing diversity through our hiring practices presentation thank you board president bear with me as i bring the presentation board president arianes members of the board of education staff and community it is my pleasure to come before you today

106to discuss this important topic of increasing our diversity through our hiring practices the presentation will review current research on race and ethnicity as it applies to the teaching practice i will also review our own data relative to race and ethnicity and we will review courage hiring practices and i will provide my some reflection and thoughts on next steps before we get started on the presentation i want to thank the board of education for requesting this presentation take place first let me start off with some california data on diversity a case for diversity uh and this data comes from education uh trustwest uh more than 250 000 students are in schools without a teacher of their same rates i'm happy to report that that is not the case in asusa in california 77 percent of students

107are students of color and 35 percent of teachers are teachers of color and again i'll show in subsequent slides how that is not the case in azusa going on more than half of schools don't have a black teacher and one in six schools don't have a latin next teacher and more than one in three schools don't have an asian american teacher again our data in this regard is uh better than the state average uh more than 78 000 black students are in schools with no black teacher more than 109 000 students are in schools with no latinx teachers and over 67 000 asian american or pacific islander students are in schools with no asian american or pacific islander teachers there are some pretty powerful data sets this is an important quote why diversity in our

108schools matter it is clear in the research that having uh black teachers for black students or latinx teachers for latinx students prefers real academic advantages this comes from dr maira lara also from education trust west and i also want to highlight recent legislation that is making its way through the state legislature a recent department of education press release highlighted assembly bill 520 that is currently working its way through the state legislature this bill would establish the california diversifying teacher grant program awarding 15 million dollars in grant for school districts to provide one-time competitive grads that develop and implement new or expand existing programs that address a local need to develop teachers workforce while emphasizing the retention of male teachers of color so i want to dig a little deeper into the research according to a

109report produced by the greater la foundation educators of color can have a range of positive effects on students of all races and ethnicities especially students of color the report cites these academic advantages schools with greater number of black teachers have greater representation of black students in gifted education programs and advanced courses the same holds true for latinx teachers and students exposure to just one black teacher in elementary schools significantly reduces high school dropout rate amongst black boys and more latinx teachers in math and science in middle school and high school increases the likelihood of latinx students taking stem in classes in college i wanted to highlight our own data of um on diversity uh the two pie charts before you are is our data as of a month ago uh and it's uh of art

110from our teachers um the largest block um at 53 percent is hispanic um and then our next i uh percentile of essentially is white at 39 percent and then on the student side our students are at 92.1 percent hispanic moving on to the recommendations from the research i first incentivize on entrance into teaching and this could start as early as high school the research provided examples of programs that started outreach programs for high school students to start thinking and planning for a career in education also support innovative and supportive teacher prep programs like paraprofessionals to teacher programs this requires districts to cultivate partnerships with higher education institutions i'll talk a little bit later how we have been working in this area and how we could continue to deepen our partnerships in this particular area and

111then districts should develop and cultivate uh partnerships with local colleges and universities to increase diversity of teaching applicants again i'll show a little bit later the number of of uh partnerships that we currently have um and then i'll share my reflections as to where we could again continue to to improve where we're currently at and then include job posting and descriptions that contain language that welcome all individuals regardless of background and i will explain what we're doing in this area i also wanted to pay a little attention to um some important attention to the supporting and retaining of new teachers national studies indicate that once educators of color are in classrooms they tend to change schools or leave the profession at higher rates than their white peers this creates a cycle of hiring less experienced

112teachers that can ultimately have an effect on student outcomes and achievement and on the right of this slide it shows again this is national research how district serving more students from low-income families have higher turnover rates among teachers and then increase the cycle that i just described i want to change the focus uh now towards our current partnerships uh the district is currently partnering with 21 teacher preparation programs at colleges and universities these partnerships provide preparation to obtain a student teaching experience these partnerships are valuable for the teacher candidate themselves in the district because it allows prospective teachers to work to gain first-hand experience working in our schools and alongside some alongside our outstanding teachers additionally when it comes to hiring we often see that the candidates that are applying to our positions are coming

113from the pool of teachers that have participated in our student teaching program below is a is data that depicts the number of current teachers that participate in our current laco induction program induction serves two objectives first induction is a systemic approach or support for new teachers this support is provided through trained support providers that meet with new teachers on a regular basis and provide them formative feedback and also provide act as a sounding board for new teachers who are experiencing the profession for the first time and um they get a non-objective voice to be able just to bounce ideas from the second objective is to help our newest teachers clear their credential so that they are they satisfy the ctc's requirement for credentialing we currently have 16 teachers participating in this uh program so it

114shows you that we don't have a lot of new teachers that are entering the profession for the first time um that 16 teacher represents four percent of our entire teaching staff i want to highlight our our current uh practices around hiring for certificated uh the application process starts with the position being posted uh on ed joy and it's usually posted for two weeks my office screens for appropriate credentials to make sure that the person who we're moving on to the sites to start interviewing have at the very minimum the correct credentials and then the sites are asked to identify the candidates that they want to interview the site's interview and then reference calls are made um and that's done in collaboration with me for for teachers and then my office conducts the second interview okay

115where i sit with the uh teacher uh and and and uh start the the interview and have a second interview with with the candidate for classified uh the position is also posted on edjoin uh we also i post it on our ausd website and we post it at sites um as well the hr office grades for appropriate qualifications um and then the hr identifies candidates to interview and then hr in accordance to our collective bargaining agreement with csca holds their first round of interviews uh with sad administrators and other uh members who participate and then the site holds the second round interviews reference calls are made again and then the site recommends the chosen candidate and then it's moved on to the board of education i want to spend some time talking about the reflections

116that this uh developing this presentation has allowed me to think about and start implementing uh the first starts off with uh establishing uh for our even our middle schools and our high schools student groups that promote and encourage students to pursue a career in teaching um really um making that something that is a a tangible um real um experience for for our students uh would it be nice wouldn't it be great for our own students uh to to be our teachers and we're seeing lots and lots of those examples but if we're able to to grow that capacity that'll just be phenomenal like i mentioned earlier deepen our partnerships with local colleges and universities to grow our application pool we're already in the process of of doing a lot of this work we are exploring

117a possible partnership with uh apu uh on a teacher residency program to help us help us with how to fill teaching positions like in special education a teacher residency program integrates coursework with actual classroom practice for a one-year residency program it is something that um we are we are actively uh looking into uh we are in the process of uh do conducting an internal hr audit of our application process um where we're looking to ensure that our process is equitable and we eliminate bias we're doing this by examining our job postings we are looking at our practices around screening we are taking a deep look into the questions that we ask um our our candidates at all phases of the interview process i will share that some of this work has already started and we've

118already taken some steps to make some of these changes and that is reflected in the questions that we ask uh in the second round of teachers and management uh candidates uh and then find the final round we've curated questions that highlight our district's priorities uh questions that focus on collaboration questions that focus on continuous improvement and reflective practices one of our questions and whenever i ask this question i get a very distinct response from the candidates as they hear the question and the question reads we are working on confronting systemic racism in asusa how will you build positive relationships with staff and community also in our new employee orientation presentations we are articulating how we embrace diversity uh recently uh in a message to um all staff our superintendent mr ortega stated the following uh

119we are all committed to respect equity and justice and this is what uh miss davis mentioned in her comics today we believe in teaching and modeling our students the responsibility of the responsibility of every member of our society to treat all people with love and respect for our shared humanity in the deep appreciation for the diversity that enriches us going forward we will be intentional in our communication to our newest employees by clearly stating that we are all committed to respect equity and justice so the continued work is um and in closing i i want to state that we are just beginning this this real uh heavy process of looking at our hr practices through a equity diversity and inclusion lens in preparation for this presentation um i participated in a virtual workshop uh led

120by lako on the topic of equity diversity and inclusion with a specific focus on hiring and retaining employees i in addition to the aforementioned changes uh we will continue to explore partnering with university teacher residency programs and also explore how we could build opportunities for our classified employees to pursue careers in the teaching profession and with that i will close and um welcome your questions uh or discussion would you like to go ahead and start yoga oh okay oh yes i was going to ask regarding the um the teachers okay what colleges are we partnering or excuse me i'm sorry how many college colleges are we partnering with that have teachers come train and i don't think the words are i train here this is unified we have several colleges correct like zach and one

121not mount cycle we have 21 colleges 21 21 colleges um and i'm sorry what do you call not training they're teacher preparation programs oh i i mean i should really say teacher or professional uh programs because we have some for psychologists we have some for speech and language therapists um counselors uh so it's not just but it's not only for being a teacher it's not only for people okay and we have a do we have a shortage of teachers at this time do we have a short a charities of teachers the state is projecting a shortage of teachers um and that we're we're seeing a shortage of teachers in areas like special education math um science uh some of the stems and as i mentioned some research clearly pointed just how beneficial um those it

122could be for students uh students of color to see students that represent them that are that they could relate to teaching those classes you know it's great that that this is the unified school district has hired many of teachers that are born and raised in azusa they know the community the students you know it's they connect and they have gone to the schools here at ausd i don't know how many teachers there are but i know there's so many and i think that's really great and and also they become administrators we have many principals that went to azusa glaston high school centers lost and what have you but i think that's really great that you we're hiring within our community yeah yes i agree can uh thank you for this is i'm grateful that we're

123taking time to review this that that your your team is looking you know looking at the the questions and applications to to consider bias and and just going through with the fine-tooth comb i'm grateful for that um this is this is really interesting to me on on slide seven uh where it says supporting and retaining new teachers um maybe can can you put that spite up there thank you so this this statement here on the left it says uh national studies indicate that once educators of color are in the classroom they tend to change schools or lead the profession at higher rates than their white peers um this to me sounds like like something i'm curious to know you know what's maybe behind this i don't know if the article that this is referencing is

124is readily available and or can be forwarded to us i'd be interested in knowing more about what this is uh describing and then once if we were to look at that and understand what why that happens what are what are things that we can do here within the district since we recognize that this is something that that happens excellent question i will say that california is ahead of the curve when it comes to its induction program and its intentional steps that they take to support new teachers it used to be when i started teaching that a new teacher would clear their credential with additional college coursework uh now in order to clear your credential which when you when you get your teaching credential you receive a preliminary teaching credential and then you have to go

125through induction which is a very intentional support mechanism to do two things provide that support non-evaluative support formative feedback to teachers and then throughout that process or through that process the teacher clears their credential and then they they they're satisfying the commission on teacher credentialing requirements um in addition to that uh we should always be looking to see how we are supporting our new teachers one of one of one of the points that we have here in asusa is we have uh professional learning communities throughout the organization and what you see in situations as is reflected on this slide is where teachers have high levels of isolation uh do not have anybody to go to and we have built-in support system through our professional learning communities wherein a teacher um i'll be how new they

126are can could get that support from their colleagues and then really get that that learning through through practice and and experience educators no thank you yeah i i i wonder if there's more to with this in mind if there's if there's if this can direct our uh our our eyes to investigate and look into some national things within our districts you know specifically and and i would i would just uh look forward to seeing what av because what they're really specifically looking at is not just the hiring but the retain retention of teachers of color um once they enter the let's see into the profession uh mr ankio do we do we already have data around our own teacher retention rate i know that in a lot of the public comment we have teachers of

12720 years 30 years participating um do we keep that kind of data or is it possible to to run that kind of data about our own year year retention rate absolutely yeah i i that that data exists um and i don't have it on a report to to be able to share with the board in our next board update but i could commit to providing that to the board thank you i um i actually have a question uh going back to your slides and you know reading reading the um the quote that's you know it is clear in the research that having black teachers for black students or latinx teachers for latin ex students confers real academic advantages um i agree with that what i don't see here um and this is like sensitive right

128um lgbtq um so how how how do we approach that right um some teachers you know do we have teachers that that that are for those group of students i mean i i don't know you you can present so um and that's a that's an area for further study um and i could um bring it up to the uh group that i am interacting with later on um so we'll see what we're what what the thought is around that and how to best approach that great thank you so much for doing it i i you know please give back to us on um because i would like to have that included here in our district as well you know be accepting of of all um including our lgbtq community and thank you for your presentation

129thank you i think we're moving in the right direction and um having conversations and that that's what it's all about now moving on to our agenda item consent calendar can i please get a motion to move uh 10.1 through 10.9 seconds we have board member greer on first motion we have a second by board member chris gonzalez do we have any questions comments concerns seeing that there's none let's go ahead and uh point point where this is with the exclusion of 10.2 i'm sorry yes sir with the exclusion of 10.2 as stated in at the beginning of our meeting yes sir and we can please cast our vote thank you great thank you it passes 5-0 we will skip 11.0 no items were pulled from consent calendar at this point for this agenda we'll move

130on to business and finance 12.1 ratification approval of the executive environmental consulting services agreement between asusa unified school district ausd for asbestos inspection can i please get a motion to move 12.1 and make a motion to approve 12.1 thank you we have a first by board member rodriguez pena we have a second five board member cruz gonzalez do we have any questions or comments seen that there's none and we can go ahead and please vote we have a 5-0 moving on to 12.2 we have ratification approval of consultant gina r murphy guerrette resolution number 20-21 29 can i please get a motion to move 12.2 move second and so we have a first by board member grier and we have a second by board member rodriguez pena do we have any discussion comments i like

131to i just like to know on the uh hiring process where we're at on this position and how long are we kind of on keeping this person yes so we currently the job was flown on friday um and we were flying it open to field so that way as we're getting qualified candidates we can do the interview process and then the consultant will be here until we have the vacancy field thank you great seeing that there's no no more questions let's please take our vote and we have a 5-0 moving on to 12.3 approval of lease agreement between the asusa unified school district and east and gabriel valley regional occupation program rop can i please get a motion to move 12.3 and make a motion to approve we have a first by board member cruz

132gonzalez second we have a second by board member rodriguez pena do we have discussion comments yes i want enough i'm sorry go ahead i didn't see you um yes i i have several questions about the proposed lease agreement um i'll start with a basic question is there a was there supposed to be a site plan attached to the agreement okay um and in my my reading of of the agreement um i know we're this is uh you know the east san gabriel valley rop is a we consider them a trusted partner we work with them um it would seem that bringing um them to one of our sites that's not currently occupied um you know brings a program that we're already participating in it it boosts the programming programmatic offerings of the district and also

133is a revenue source so i i think it meets all of those um strategic goals so troop proven partner trusted partner revenue stream um is there uh you know especially we're talking about money even among trusted partners i didn't see in the document um a due date for lease payments is that contemplated to be monthly or annually yes so the uh if it's not in there well actually the second paragraph did outline the lease amount and if it'll be paid on the first subsequent month after board approval unless i overlooked that but that's the draft attach a is that when you're talking about in the actual body of the lease agreement but the lease terms identify that the payments will be paid uh monthly um based on the amount of square footage that'll be utilized

134is it possible to bring that up on the screen or tell us what page it is or what article right now oh the attachment draft attachment a is that one you're talking about yes please i think that's true so you would like to see where where it says that is that correct yes okay um yes if you could keep scrolling right here the lead show commenced on may 1st um it does not specify exactly the date the payments are coming but so we we're taking that as the first time it will be due may 1st when they occupy the facility after board approval okay and then if um maybe i haven't had enough coffee or maybe it's late but when i count the number of the lease term account three years and two months if

135it's contemplated that it begins on may 1st is that something that has changed or from what's presented here yes ma'am so this is an oversight on both sides so originally they wanted to occupy the facility in april and then when we had to go back and re-change the terms because they want to decrease the lease that's when we changed it to may first so if it's changed just to kind of um shouldn't it also change as well for it to be concise with with the dates yes and we could change the three to two um this is to get approval of the lease so that they can take it to their board to approve so we can modify the two to um to reflect two months on the actual document so should we um [Music]

136not vote until it's it's changed right now just clarify that it's two months not three months as we as we take action and what i'm hearing as well is um that we would like to go ahead and have on on this lease agreement um a date on when we expect payment is is that what i'm hearing absolutely um i i have a few more substantive questions but i don't want to take up all the air um so i do want to open up to the rest of the board for their own questions so that we can maybe kind of bounce off of each other i have just one question um can can you could you clarify um the the cancellation and term termination i mean the the hypothetical scenarios i it's in it's article seven

137and it's referenced a couple times where it says uh that uh the termination can be terminated you know here in but but i'm not sure that i see reasoning and or just justification or what what are justified um reasons just for understanding and clarity so our our thought process um working collaboratively with them is that it will be a mutually agreed upon uh decision um they wanted a long release um we held fast on the years that we offered um they were looking at a five-year and this was their way of ensuring that we wouldn't just have powers we just say nope we just want to cancel the lease so are you saying um it's mutually agreed upon so so the the district therefore with this lease does not have recourse in the event of

138a desire to uh um and terminate the lease earlier than yes sir and i i have a few questions i have two uh three actually well first um so what what will the district be responsible for for example um you know uh maintaining of of the site um lights water trash what does that look like so we agreed to maintain the grounds um so that we can maintain our curb appeal um but the facility we will maintain our electricity based on our usage so we will be dividing we'll be looking at the meter for both utility and water and they will pair they their fair share for both water and power and they are handling their own technology um but they do have the option to contract out with us utilize our services as well

139as if if there's items that need broken fix it since they don't have their own maintenance team as well but they will have their own facility and what um what projection of revenue are we expecting for for the district with with this lease so right now based on the current square footage i believe was about 78 000 originally we did project out a hundred thousand a little over 113 000 but they have decreased the amount of square footage that they would need to utilize at this time so so we're releasing it on square footage is that what i'm hearing yes ma'am i have a couple of follow-up questions one to board member agree and one to president arianis regarding article 7 cancellation and termination um i i don't see that we have to come together

140and agree on a termination um i'm reading the first sentence district may terminate this lease by giving the rop written notice of termination at least six months prior to the date period i i don't see where it says that we would need to mutually agree to me that reads that we can unilaterally terminate as long as we honor the six months notice and that is true but what i'm saying is we're working in collaboration to agree that since they wanted more time that we will mutually have a mutual discussion with them before we just terminate that so even though we have the six month false so that's not part that's not actually in the lease no no ma'am the only thing we would have that buy buyers is six months okay um tagging on to

141uh board president's question around the revenue um can you can you give us more detail around how we got to 75 cents per square foot um and and my my thinking around that is in looking at um industrial commercial leases in azusa they're more at a dollar a square foot so can you tell us about how the the price per square foot was negotiated yes so we had a previous board meeting where we outlined and i um had a presentation where we showed exactly what the average square foot was going for at the time and we identified what we could um what we would earn as far as revenue based on the square footage they were requesting um identified and shared what their current square footage lease was and at that time the board took

142action and agreed to the 75 cents per square foot and for my edification how long ago was that i want to if i can't guess i want to say october-ish this year but it was this fiscal year okay okay um i want and i just want to ask a question regarding um what we you know um the same questions that president ariana said but also the the custodial i see this is a district was solely responsible for groundskeeping so what about the custodial use where you know you're emptying the trash cans you're vacuuming the floor or well because ppe we need all that who is doing that they have their own custodial teams they have their own dirty rounds oh okay because i don't see it here i'm just seeing the ground keeping because i

143know we need to keep it looking nice you know our our district um bronze men but um it's not on here that they'll they will have their own custodian so the intent was to identify the areas that we're responsible for but um going forward we can make sure we're updating our leases to identify both sides okay and i had the same question to the utility but i understand thank you no problem i i do have a couple of questions that's okay um uh mr something that stands out to me is the um that this lisa proposed lease agreement seems to be very tenant friendly in that we're giving the proposed tenant the ability to make tenant improvements and there's no opportunity for the district to have any approval or oversight of those improvements um it

144seems to me that that could put the district at risk if the tenant were to make improvements that were um not compliant or you know if they knocked out a load-bearing wall and in the instance where we would have maybe multiple tenants because they're occupying a part of the property i i'm wondering about our role as a district to be able to authorize and approve proposed tenant improvements um that is not identified we did not have the discussion but that is something that we can look into going forward when we have lisa they must identify to make sure it's filled out so so when can we see and just to um the these things attitude to the lease that we're speaking of so um with board approval we can um i can take the recommendations

145modify the lease send it back to the rlp uh entity so that they can have a board approved or another option is with the table it i can make the amendment send it back for their first approval and bring it back that would just delay the uh occupancy of starting the may 1st which is so are you comfortable so so sabrina if we if if we take action with the recommendation that you haven't are we comfortable just allowing latasha to to write the language aligned with what the intent that you just laid out in terms of us having approval over any tenant improvements uh frankly speaking no no i i i think that this document um doesn't afford the district enough protections um again i i understand where we want to go with this trusted

146partner programmatically it's a boost it's a revenue stream that's not currently happening i deeply understand that but i'm coming from a perspective of risk management and risk mitigation for the district so that um you know many of these things are not uh huge in and of themselves but i think when there's ambiguity in several of the clauses um down the road you know a year from now or 18 months from now when something happens and it's not clearly defined in the document that's going to put both parties at risk or it could put both parties at risk and it will involve a lot of you know human power and and and uh legal resources so i would prefer to do a little more work on the document and then bring it back to the full

147board bring a new document back to the board um for our for our review and possible approval that's that's what i would be comfortable with so so i have a question actually um you know to that but for latasha um what is um the need for it to be made first just you know so is there you know for them to get their programs ready i mean is there an explanation for it you know has to be makers so they're currently having to move out of their current location and so originally their desire was to move in in april um but then um they had a change in staffing and they wanted to uh decrease the number of square footage which is why we had the table to item last for last board meeting and

148so this is the um last schedule board meeting that we would have before their board would take action to actually make the lease enacted so so i i hear what you're you're saying um but and i hear what you're saying um but but i think it's really important um that that we vote on something that that is clear um but at the same time i mean if we pass it today let's just say with the exception to make amendments if they're okay with it right we we're literally going to be changing certain things on there right just to get you know to to kind of help them out i mean it kind of gets so so why can't we table the item until we right that's something it's constant it's it gets messy so i

149think so i think it just gets real messy so i'm i'm gonna have to yes um we're sorry just so you i'm not sure what you're you're suggesting that they'll be tablet you're suggesting we vote on it to tonight as or with suggested amendments you know so what i'm saying if we were to vote on it tonight right so just just like when you lease an apartment so forth when you enter into agreement right once you enter into the agreement yes it's like so if we were to go ahead so basically if we were to vote i'm giving the example we were to go vote on it tonight and then try to go make changes like how how would that look so so i could could i could i reckon so here i'm i'm hearing

150that that there's we're in a bit of a pickle in that the the the lease is is we're hoping for that to start on may 1st but the document is not quite you know where we would prefer it to be can i can i recommend and suggest if or or would the board be comfortable if there was a subset of a couple of board members here that were willing to hear the sentiment and then be in on the uh on the conversation to ensure that the document is up to apar i would recommend some board member beau being on that that subcommittee if if you're comfortable and would that then allow us to be a bit more nimble in in uh producing a docu document with word approval that that can be in and allow

151for for a may first start can i suggest something different sure so that way we're not trying to do another subcommittee how how about you know how long would it take for you to go ahead and um make these changes us have an emergency meeting for five ten minutes and getting this approved i mean so that way we don't have to you know it it just sounds a lot more clear um i don't know what do you guys think so a special meeting right just especially so we can go ahead and get this approved and be able to how fast can we turn this around for us to be able to vote on it and be comfortable enough for us to be able to move forward so what i i have no problem with committing

152to jumping on this first thing in the morning i just don't know if this will constitute a special for me but i would have to defer so here's another i mean just again as we're talking about um options another option is to because this we do this with other stuff it happens is we we take action and the action is i make a motion to approve item 12.3 with the following with the following changes that can then go to their board for approval and then at may 4th we bring back the contract the amended contract for approval how does that work in terms of the lease being fully executed and the tenant moving in how does it work right if we come back on the fourth to ratify or to approve the contract are we

153are we moving a move-in date or no it would have the may first date uh but again the understanding is that that contract is going to have the things that we are highlighting tonight right but then there's three days of uh right that's what you're saying there's three days of technically them not moving in and that would be it could be prorated and all things are possible right so or it could be may 5th so changing that on i mean that would still be prorated so what i'm hearing so what i'm hearing from everyone is is possible solutions but latasha you just shared right now miss latasha demo that you can get on this tomorrow um go ahead and make those changes uh you know for the suggestions that uh we as a board have

154um brought up and would like to have this included in um this lease agreement so that way in turn they can turn around and take it to their board um by their next meeting and so the majority here said that they would be okay to to to meet to go ahead and and have this you know well we wouldn't be able to meet before the next rop meeting because they're meeting on thursday right so she so we're talking about tomorrow but we kind of have a board meeting we can't have a special we can't have emergency board meeting on this and special meeting requires 24 hour notice so um i didn't know when the rop board meeting was done so so i mean i say i'm gonna just throw out another suggestion right i think

155i think um we should do what arthur said and we can we should be the final executor of the document but i think in order to if we want to facilitate and have rop vote on it at thursday right let's do what adrian suggested and if latasha can update the language and two of us review it tomorrow to make sure the language is it reflects what this board the direction the board's given right then that can go to the rop meeting and then that can come back to us in may and we would be the final like so they wouldn't move in until after they'd have to move in may 5th we wouldn't we wouldn't we wouldn't do i mean i'm okay with ratification like letting them move in may 1st but if the rest

156of you are not then it would have to be may 5th the only concern would be like would they ask for a pro rate or would they be okay just to keep it may first well it's just it's five days we're five days off so it's yeah not huge um does our so thinking about the other in our partner um does the rop have the ability to call a special meeting for next week so that we're not trying to do this revision in 24 hours to satisfy rop's board meeting deadline i don't know their ability to add our renewable rates so so so what i'm hearing is um we we as a board would like these um amendments added um we had a suggestion from uh two of our board members and i i would

157have to agree with with that um having a special ad hoc committee to look over the amendments and for us to go ahead and vote on it tonight and um go ahead tomorrow uh latasha will go ahead and have that um latosh do you have a time frame after two after four um where we can i don't have that level no worries remember but if i can um just get clarity on the amendments as requested yes um let me just real quick and so then we will vote on tonight ad hoc committee tomorrow present it to the rop board on thursday um the only uh clarification that we need is would we prorate or leave it at may 1st i think we can defer that to the staff to figure out okay you guys figure

158so um other than that then uh added the amendments if the board approves it with the amendments being um and so the amendments that i have um are correct me if i if i'm wrong are the the proposed tenant improvements right clarification the district would need to approve any and all attendant improvements and the next one um i i didn't say this yet but article 7 references rop sub tenants in line one two three four five um i don't see any the art the lease is silent on sub tenants and i i would um i would suggest that we prohibit subletting right our our tenant is our proposed tenant is rop not any of their sub tenants challenge um i would encourage that we just identify language to cover that uh because rfc services is

159partnering with others to provide the service in a program as tenants it's not as a tenant but i think that let's say if i was doing a banking class i would have bank of america to come in and occupy that classroom to teach that course so for example they partner with um what's that called pacific oaks college right to come in and provide classes in the past rop has done that so i understand that i understand that in terms of a programmatic partnership but that that's i'm not understanding that that's the same as a sub tenancy yeah and it i don't know i don't think it is no i'm to bank of america or pacifico so can we re-reword that is that what you're asking um i i would like it to be clear that

160we would prohibit some tenancy or subletting yes ma'am and just uh for clarification would be just the partners right so um not include anything just remove the sub tenants is that is that what you're right i mean the the partners that are coming in to offer the programs are they they're not being charged to lease the space right they're just coming in to teach the class is that how it would work or is that how it does work on their current site i could not speak to that that would be a rop question and i don't know so okay but i think i think you're probably right i think you're probably right that it's not yeah they they probably get it they're not listening to grant which they'd be able to go ahead and carry

161out the class yeah right so they wouldn't be a sub tenant yeah so i'm oh i'm um i just want to make sure that we're protected and that it's also clear because it does say subtenant here but it's not addressed anywhere else uh those are two things right so we have one two i also have the three months to two months that's right i also have the uh the payment uh the payment uh due dates payment due duties that's right and kind of taking a step back um i know in article 2 option or 2c it talks about rop option to lease additional spaces um so they have the option is is would the rop have the exclusion exclusive or write a first refusal option on that space so for example if we enter into

162this lease agreement and then another community partner wants to come in and take suite b would they be would we be allowed to do that or do we need to offer it first to rop we would not have the offer okay since the contract only says the square foot is that correct that's what okay well and i mean it just says they they may at least additional identified spaces but they're not required to and we could also lease it out to someone else correct and the main means that they have the ability to say hey you know we're going to add another classroom is this classroom available and we'll go through the exact same process we'll walk over the square footage for marriage measure it and then we'll come back to the board to identify

163then increase the square footage so we have a total of four yes four amendments so as we're moving forward um the majority has decided we can go ahead and um we we will go ahead and vote on this today so can opera just for additional clarity um [Music] if we're going to are we saying just make those changes and not have a not have it reviewed by uh and then oh good good so i i need uh two board members that are available tomorrow um that would like to be part of the subcommittee to read through this and um just as um and i'm so sorry board member had suggestions in sabrina uh would you be okay to be on this ad hoc so can we can you clarify what the motion is on the

164table that we're voting on so yes so what i am proposing at this point right now i i need a motion for 12.3 approval of the lease agreement between the isuzu unified school district in east san gabriel valley regional occupations with the amendment of the proposed tenant improvements the sub-tenant section to go ahead and include that it's a 3.2 that it reflect on the date and the payment due added on review by the way yes upon review by an ad hoc committee tomorrow when latasha reaches out to to the committee um and they would uh have to re return it back to her um so so we just needed a time actually a projected time i will work hard to see if we can get this done by two o'clock because i do have to

165afford them enough time to review it to assure that they agree because it could be that whatever we change they may say never mind as well that's the rsa house to post do they have a brown act yes provision for posting so is it already exceeded then it you didn't they're not required to post the actual lease they have the item posted and they could post their attachments or present presented during the board meeting so again just just for clarification before i move forward with with motioning and being able to carry this forth i i'm gonna ask ask our board um who would like to be in this ad hoc committee for tomorrow um by two o'clock be able to uh read this and be able to i would say um would you say five

166o'clock for them to return it back to you or four thirds give them two and a half hours does that seem feasible ample time okay i can do it i mean okay great are you you're gonna be on the screen yeah i can i can be the other person i have i have a little break number four okay now i can go ahead and motion with all of that we have now i now will go ahead and motion with everything can i please get a motion to move 2.3 approval of lease agreement between the asusa unified school district and east san gabriel valley regional occupation with all the amendments and the ad hoc with the times discussed to move this forward so we have a first by board member career a second and we have

167a second by board member cruz gonzalez if we can please finalize our vote the shared screen is not there but what i can see right now it is a five zero so five um zero is what it is don't know what happened to the screen oh there it is great thank you thank you guys for taking the time um and and pulling this through and working it out now moving on on uh our agenda for today we'll move into curriculum and instruction 13.1 summer programming 2021 frank chang good evening board president arayanes members of the board superintendent ortega members of cabinet staff and the azusa unified community i am pleased to have the opportunity to present regarding our summer of extravaganza programs our partnership with stink together and citrus college will offer a variety of

168learning experiences for our students for the summer of 2021. with me in the presentation if um applicable will be principal of glaston high school gabriel fernandez as well as director of special education aaron kramer i'm going to go ahead and present my screen which will be the slides that were in the attachment with the agenda hopefully you see the screen right now on the title page which is azusa unified think together citrus college and summer extravaganza um so we have a very enriching opportunity uh for students in partnership with think together you see the dates before you we will be running three full sessions 12 days each starting in on june 14th running all the way through august 3rd this was a conscious decision to ensure that our students would be able to have learning

169opportunities throughout the summer we we heard of lost learning we know about the need to get our students back into a classroom so the beauty of the collaboration of think together is the students will be working with teachers and staff in person we have these enhancement opportunities and support opportunities for students who are rising grades 1 through 12 which is essentially current grades kindergarten through 11. we also have an opportunity for credit recovery and advancement for current grades 8 through 12. so tentatively our school sites for this upcoming summer will be for grades current grades k through 6 murray paramount hodge we will be combining dalton and lee but it would be actually at lee we will be combining magnolia and powell but actually at powell combining ellington and valley dale but actually add valley

170dale for current grades 7 through 12 we will be having a larger environment at our two high schools azusa high school in glaston two comprehensive high schools so our middle school offerings will actually be at the high schools i pass this now to um dr dana mitchell thank you so dr linda darlingham and recently wrote um an article that was published in forbes about how districts can accelerate learning as we build back better and she wrote about how districts must aim for reinvention to address equity and opportunity gaps not based on remediation but rather on what we know about how students learn effectively so there was five critical important evidence-based areas that she wrote about that support this notion the first one is about positive relationships and attachments are the essential ingredient that catalyzes healthy

171development and learning and enables resilience from trauma the second one was around learning is social emotional and academic and children learn best when they feel that they're safe affirmed and deeply engaged within a supportive community of learners the third idea was around learning enhance is enhanced by physical activity joy and opportunities about self-expression the fourth is around students perception of their own ability to influence learning all children are motivated to learn the next set of skills for which they are ready few are motivated by labels that rank them against others or communicate stigma and the fifth one children actively construct knowledge by connecting what they know to what they are learning within their cultural context creating those connections is key to learning one of the evidence-based strategies that darling hammond and many others indicate as

172high leverage that supports these evidence-based assertions is through project-based learning has many benefits it promotes students ability to transfer learning it increases the development of critical thinking and reasoning it's associated with improved motivation toward learning and it's also a high leverage strategy for our emergent bilingual and our international students as well supports academic language encourages collaboration and can scaffold the structure and the function of language and gives language relevance and context as well plus it's engaging and it's rigorous so our summer programming is built around project-based learning students in primary grades will be using the sobrato early academic language curriculum also known as seal which not only supports the development of academic language but also project-based in grades two through seven our students are going to engage in literacy-based project uh project-based learning that includes

173something called story design and story design combines stem and english language arts so essentially the students will be reading grade level literature they identify a conflict in the literary text and they identify a problem in the text that could have a practical physical or technological solution then they design and propose a solution incorporating stem topics they construct they test they improve a prototype of their solution and then they communicate that out to the class and present so um just want to give you a couple quick examples um in in the early grades one of the texts is is called after the fall how humpty dumpty got back up again and the students the project they design is an egg protection which if you remember from the last board meeting our engineering students that's exactly what

174they did right with origami math um they were able to design these protections so this is the same concept but it's for for younger learners another one another piece of literature is tale of despero and that project after they read the story the students actually design a lighting system so we've got all kinds of these examples where students are reading literature and then they get to do these really neat stem projects as well so in addition to the elementary grades uh k through uh seven we also have a summer bridge program um and that's going to use a pbl model um as well as high school courses as well and uh mr chang when we turn it back over to him he'll um talk about a little bit about that as well mr chang you

175want to go to the next slide thank you very much so during the summer programming think together is going to be working with us side by side so we'll be rotating groups of our literacy project-based learning and think together programming and think together is going to be providing enrichment courses and modules for all of our students it includes a fitness module it includes a visual performing arts module and it also includes a stem enrichment model as well and so um one of the the elementary stem enrichment model is called invention adventure and that is a very creative interdisciplinary stem course um and then the uh the stem course that the secondary students will get to participate in is called drone blocks and so the students are going to get drone kits and they're going to

176learn about programming and so that sounds like that's going to be super fun and engaging also i think together is going to offer um drivers education to the students yes who and that they work with um state farm and so state farm actually has a curriculum and so students can take that and that would count as their driver's education course before they you know do the behind the wheel thing so i now i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to back to mr chang thank you dr mitchell um so dr mitchell covered some of the high school offerings um but there is a threaded component um and the threaded component includes seo mindfulness avid inspire strategies the social awareness aspect project citizen we as dr mitchell had mentioned the stem aspect which is

177drone backs life skills dr mitchell had mentioned driver's ed so you can see that there are comprehensive offerings for the high school the secondary a critical piece for the high school program or the secondary program are the learning supports there will be credit recovery courses for students in the air in the core content areas and what will be very different and which aligns very well with pbl is that instead of just simply reviewing content we are looking for skills-based learning which will focus focus on overarching skills such as collaboration critical thinking and communication with specific focus on ela and eod standards of mathematical practice and science and engineering practices we'll go into a little more detail in the next slide but i want you to know that it's not just going to be a repeat

178of content we are going to be focused on the skills that are necessary and the standards outline those skills those overarching skills the students need to be successful not just in the content area but in life in general and that means how to justify your arguments with evidence that means how to cite your evidence as support those are some of the skill sets that are across all content areas we are also offering summer bridge programs for incoming ninth grade students these students will get both language arts and math support as well as some way to introduce them into the high school life success success skills necessary to adapt into the high school life they will actually be receiving incoming high school elective credit so the next slide is in relationship to the convergence of what

179i just mentioned the ela standards eod standards the science and engineering practices and the standards of mathematical practices these are the key elements dictated by our educational frameworks for the cde but as you can see there is a convergence of these skills across these disciplines and you might be wondering how the social studies play into this well social studies actually goes hand in hand oftentimes with the anchor standards for ela to further this discussion i'm actually going to bring on mr fernandez principal at glaston high school as he has been working with high tech high regarding project-based learning and so mr fernandez if you can talk a little bit more about how pbl and skills-based learning align all right uh thank you mr chain uh just real briefly we this week we've been doing some

180reflection on what we've done here in the distance learning model with project-based learning so far this year at gladstone and what what the teachers are finding is that the students are more excited more apt to engage in higher level thinking higher level application of their knowledge and skills and something that traditionally we see in summer school often becomes like a drill and kill approach to to work but with this model we're really looking to reignite passion for learning as we start to reimagine our kids coming back to school i think that's critically important for all of our learners and assistant unified to feel that love for learning again when we get to see our teachers in real life and pbl those of you who know the theory and the practice of it um it really

181is about making relevant rigorous authentic learning experiences for kids so that they want to perform at high levels and i think we're on the road to doing that with uh dr mitchell's leadership and mr chang's leadership thank you mr fernandez so um we have one last component it's actually the component that i want to talk about in regards to citrus college which is which will be entirely virtual and online this is another opportunity for our students there's two sessions it's for current grades nine through twelve and it's going to be focused on core academic courses and this will be for credit recovery and great improvement now as i mentioned previously think together will be in person but the six citrus college offerings will be entirely virtual and online in total we hope to service the

182opportunities are available to all of our students but we definitely hope to service as many students who are interested and we can always increase the capacity to ensure that our students are their needs are met so i've quite i've covered quite a bit in a short amount of time um i definitely am open to any kind of questions or any discussions that you might have yeah i have several questions um so the first question is really around um what's the slide slide number um seven right so with the summer bridge program um i see we talk about i really appreciate earlier you talk about accelerated learning right you put lunarlon hammond but then i see embedded in our approach math and reading intervention right so let's let's be true to if we're going to have

183a vision for accelerated learning let's embed that in the actual look for the opportunities that kids have and make sure that those are not only called accelerated learning but also designed to be accelerated learning and not intervention classes because i think and i think that's really important because it's too easy to fall back into just old patterns right so just one thing i want to highlight um i actually should have said this is this is really amazing just overall i think the approach it's exciting kids are going to get can get up to nine weeks of really amazing engagement so i want to say that first before i start i should have said that first apologies um the other piece i have a question about um um for either um dana or frank um or

184even gabriel so we talked about you talk about the high school courses are going to be um skills based right so uh could you talk a little bit more about that is that gonna you're talking about like competency based or is it or are you refer you're referencing the project-based learning approaches what is what is it that you're referencing when you say it's going to be skills based versus content learning which we normally do right with credit recovery all right so i can start and then i can definitely pass on to gabriel in regards to the pbl portion but this chart this diagram right here focuses on the specific skill sets within each of the content areas these are the overarching skills um that are for each framework might it be the math frameworks or

185the science frameworks or the ela stamps frameworks they all align with the overarching skill sets that we mentioned earlier of critical thinking communication and collaboration which also parallel very nicely with pbl and this is when i want to turn this over to gabriel pbl with the overarching skills um is a very very good parallel yeah so right thank you mr chang so one of the things that we're seeing at the high school right now with the the pbl work that our teachers and our students are doing is with that emphasis on skills for example our leadership team leadership students are partnering with our graphic arts teacher and partnering with avid teacher and they're working on the speaking skills they're working on video production skills all that goes into the communication with a lot of collaboration

186and critical thinking involved and again the level of effort that we're seeing out of kids the level uh the depth of of the work quality that we see it's not just the coverage because i know you've seen summer school before and you're just going through chapter after chapter after chapter just to cover standards and you're going at it very minimally without much depth that doesn't require much abstract thinking where our students really are engaged in authentic tasks they're something that would translate to real world applications after high school and i think that is intrinsically motivating to students to raise their achievement level and as uh sheila nina's saying um accelerate their learning because i think that's one of the main areas the focus is to see our students shine getting ready for 21 22. so

187i think i heard you tell me that the skills are going to be demonstrated through project-based learning that align with um with the diagram that you have here that's is that that's that's what's going to be happening okay um my last question is around the citrus college piece right and i understand there are separate entities so i have two questions one are students um getting college level credit for this or this just high school credit and then two is this are these virtual opportunities going to be aligned to that vision you just outlined around around being engaging and project-based or just very much um going to be more like we normally see in summer credit recovery right so these are non-credit classes for high school credit recovery so they will be getting credit recovery for

188graduation purposes of high school um so the curriculum is actually varied um we are going to open it up to both the apex online curriculum as well as the current curriculum that the teachers are using strictly because of the familiarity last year we had strictly apex online for credit recovery but this year with our teachers now much more adept at online virtual learning they will be actually able to embed our current curriculum to these virtual opportunities and so it will be a variety there will be a variety and because it is more virtual um it will be synchronous asynchronous as well as a very specified time for direct instruction thank you and then my last question dana is around special ed right so you know often during the summer we see um we have classes

189because because of for everything with ieps there that we have to give we have to give them instructions throughout the school year so where are those students going to be are they going to be in those separate classrooms um which you know when i walked through them in previous summers right it's sort of disappointing to see that and then see what the stem kids were getting right or where are they going to be integrated into the summer learning where are they going to end up so yes so we have extended school year right and the students who are in extended school year are going to have the same exact program that everyone is having right so they're going to get the project based they're going to have um the think together enrichment all of all

190of it yeah so i just have a question regarding um so in person so the parents are not having um options of doing distant learning at all during summer school the option for distance learning will be only at the high school credit recovery and greater improvement with collaboration at citrus college this is yeah that's just okay well that was my okay so they don't have an option to elementary do not have an option to um distant learning and then my second question was uh think together is that only in the morning and the afternoon or is that during the whole day um what what thing together is offering is this only an after school program no it's actually the entire program will be from eight to three every single day um the only day that

191we will be taking off is july 5th to respect the july 4th holiday yeah oh okay thank you i'll just add that this is um this we've designed this very differently we've worked with think and they've been just tremendous partners to really you know meet our needs but what we're excited about is to be able to offer this concurrently right so one group will be with a credential teacher doing project-based learning another group will be doing the you know the stem activities or the physical education of the vapa and then they switch right so the classes will be a little smaller but then they'll have an opportunity just throughout the day from you know to be able to engage in this and so we're excited about it thank you and so i actually just had

192some some questions um for drivers education i think that's that's a great partnership um for for high school students and what age can these students you know participate in this class you know it's been so long so i don't want to misspeak um ryerson so i can definitely find out and then get back to you on that okay last i remember for me it's been a long time as well but um having an 18 year old i believe it was 15 and a half so so can you please just check on that and and make sure that our students that are around that age get you know the notice the and the um you know the um availability of them to be able to register for for that class and how does that impact um

193ecp students as as well if if um if that if they can go ahead and take that class um uh how looking at how we have um you know group a group b right now um with safety protocol ppe so are we looking to to also i i know that we're opening up um state is opening up june 15th but what does that look like in our classroom right we're inviting students to come what is the ratio you know i didn't i didn't hear any of that so yeah great question and right now it's 20 to one and so that's what the that's we're going with the guidance right now um but that could change right i mean it could change uh depending on if the you know if the protocols uh you know if

194they do change are we gonna um ask them to to still wear the mask oh yes yes thank you so much i'm you know i apologize for not talking about that but absolutely right so we're still we're still practicing you know distancing in the classroom as it relates to the protocol mask you know masks hand sanitizing all of that yes absolutely okay great and um when can parents start deciding if they want to bring their kids today it went out to i know it yeah it went out today so we're excited we're starting to registering uh registering students so um it is in peachjar and i believe it went out in the um parent communication as well so and it'll be on social media and then we'll also be just you know doing this frequently

195to let you know families know um and then also it's going the information goes to the sites and so we have our principals and community liaisons you know it's just encouraging parents um you know all are welcome to fill the application they can choose all three sessions they can choose one session yep sure can it wow i want to go and it sounds like it's going to be great yeah we're super we're super excited and i'm just really thankful to to uh to the ed services team um to uh you know mr chang for um you know for overseeing and just facilitating this um and everybody on the ad services team and also just i'd like to say thank you to to principal fernandez um the work that they've been doing at glaston high school

196with this pilot with project-based learning um has truly been inspirational um we've been able to see you know some of the projects and i'm just very appreciative of the work that the teachers are doing at class on high with us and paving the way um because this is this is very exciting work for us to be able to do district wide and we're looking forward to it and just one one last thing just just to be clear um uh drinking fountains i i and i'm bringing this up because it's gonna be warm right i mean so it's important that you know well we still have that bring your own bottle i know for a fact that some um schools have actually given students right now um water bottles and so they you know and they're

197writing their names on it and they can clip them on there and so i i think that's great and so um you know kind of if they can just let the parents know so just just they're aware it's going to be hot in the summer so it's a great idea [Music] it's not determined on the capacity of the classroom like before like how many um this fit in one not necessarily anymore actually right now with the 20 to one that's the recommendation for with think together that's what they um that's what their protocols when you are working in um like as an after school like a you know a service provider um it's 20 to one so it just recently went up i think maybe a couple weeks ago it might have been 15. so

198but as things change you know we might be able to but the disc will still have to be three feet apart now it's three feet right right that's where we're at right now correct oh yeah just one last question um you know as we just think about partnerships and i really appreciate that we're deepening our partnership with think together um well um have we had any conversations with the city right so they often have summer programming um you know they have like a day camp and do other things so have we initiated those conversations and if not like i think i would i would appreciate it if we could be engaging them because i think this is this could be a time and space to build those strengths and those partnerships with them as well

199got it we i haven't um i do i am aware that they are working on their summer programming but um we'll definitely we can reach out to uh to the city mickey carpenter um and talk about our programming and see how we might you know okay i mean you've been thinking about like swimming like you know it'd be really great to be able to incorporate that into it you know summer swimming as part of summer learning right we have a scheduled ad hoc next next week um so we can bring it up okay that'd be good oh okay thank you great thank you guys for all all your input and um your enthusiasm and thank you um mr uh frank chang um mr fernandez and dana for for this it's really exciting so you know

200seeing our schools open up and being able to provide instruction and the kids are really excited to come back um seeing that so as there's no further discussion or comments i will go ahead and move on to 13.2 2021 asusa unified school district annual survey presentation we have miss gen edict bryant hello hello sorry about that i was still muted i am going to start my presentation for you because this evening i am uh very excited to be able to um bring you actually hold on just a minute let me escape there we go i'm very excited to bring you our uh district annual survey results and so tonight i'm i'm going to borrow a word from baseball and say that i am your closer and i'm going to walk you through some a general

201broad overview of our district annual survey results so this year we partnered with an organization called youth truth to administer our student parent and family and staff surveys and one of the benefits of partnering with them in addition to some additional questions that we were able to ask that they had developed for our use is also to be able to have some comparisons with state and national data so we still get that same solid data for our schools that we can look at our own um schools and levels and then also do some comparison some comparing and some of that i'm going to show you this evening just a quick uh quick note youth troop youth truth is actually a non-profit organization started in 2008 a partnership with bill and melinda gates foundation and as

202the gates foundation was pouring money into um educational plants and projects they um they wanted to find a way to really measure progress and so that was kind of the birth of this this uh organization this arm that begins to survey students and then they expanded that to also create surveys for parents and for staff and so you can see from this slide they that when as we talk about our comparisons we're talking about you know 1.75 million students that have taken the surveys that we're able to to look at and compare with our students across 38 states there are over 300 000 families and staff that we also get to tap into that comparison data so we're really excited to be um to be partnering with them and this is our first year and

203we look forward to ongoing partnership in the coming years so let's look a little bit at azusa's data and our response rates are or what i'm sharing with you here on this slide um our rates especially for students are very very high our principals and teachers do a great job providing opportunities and encouraging students to take the survey there were 1134 more students who participated this year compared to last year and part of that is also that we added third through fifth graders to our survey um pool um our staff participation increased uh that's i'm sorry that's it's 787 and it is um up from 769 in the previous year and our parent and family response numbers increased by 724 from last year's survey so i know you're looking at some percentages in this slide

204and and the reason you see a 28 response rate it's really hard for us to gauge exactly how many parents we have so what we used to calculate that 28 was just the number of students we had and we know that a lot of our families have multiple children um youth truth shoots for about the 28 to 30 percent rate for parents so we're within that uh as well and so um overall we had a an increase in total participation uh we had 707 638 individuals participate and as always this continues to be um exceeded 99 confidence level and 5 margin of error in our our results so so let me share a few of um the survey results and our survey questions were categorized by themes and so it's the theme level data that

205you're seeing on this slide the percentages here reflect the percent of parents responding positively and so you know as if we're asking questions and this is our family survey that i'm going to share with you first they have a you know a five likert scale choice and so the positive responses or the you know agree strongly agree those top two and so um you can see that we have six key themes that the questions fall into that we're looking at just a quick review of those so you understand what what these themes are are talking about is that engagement describes the degree to which our families are engaged in their school and empowered to influence decision making relationships uh describes the degree to which families experience positive relationships in their school based on respect care

206approachability culture really describes the degree to which families believe their schools foster shared goals respect fairness diversity communication and feedback describes the degree to which there are open and effective communication lines between families and schools and resources describes the degree to which families believe their schools deploy necessary resources to support students and then school safety describes the degree to which families believe their school's a safe place for students so the data you can see on this slide shows you in the orange our districts our district's percent of positive responses and then this is a little bit of that comparison i was talking about you can see in yellow the typical youth truth school so that's a national comparison and then a typical california school and that's just looking at schools in california and you can

207see our results and our parents levels of positive responses are are really about the same um as others nationally in the state and you can see they're also very high rates this oh by the way the previous slide was our elementary parents this slide is now our middle school parents and we're able to look at the data in different groups and again you're you're able to see similar results from our you know with our elementary parents middle school parents are on par with the comparisons some of the highlights here include our parent positive responses in the area of relationships and communication and feedback if we look at high school parents who have responded again seeing fairly high rates um we do have some real areas of strong positive rates in the relationship theme and the

208communication and feedback theme and those are even higher than than you see compared to nation and state numbers so transitioning to our student survey results we're going to start with themes for our elementary students let me just do a quick description of these themes very similar to the parents but i don't want there to be any confusion so engagement really is the degree to which students perceive themselves as engaged with their school and their education academic challenge is the degree to which students feel they're challenged by their coursework and their teachers relationships describes the degree to which students feel they receive for support and personal attention from their teachers culture describes the degree to which students believe their schools foster a culture of respect fairness and diversity instructional methods describes strategies and approaches students report

209their teachers using in classes and belonging in peer collaboration describes the degree to which students feel welcome at their school and have collaborative relationships with their classmates so an analysis of data on this slide shows our general areas of strength such as engagement and relationships also points to areas such as academic challenge and culture these are areas of uh interesting to compare also um we we see that uh in culture where our schools are are higher but uh you know we have when we look at all of the themes we also can see some of the lower levels like culture looking at our own internal data between between all of the themes just looking at azusa so this is um our elementary students so middle school students had slightly lower responses which over time has

210not been different we usually see lower positive responses as we move up through the grades you also see that reflected in the comparison with the state and national results that are on this slide academic challenge is higher and comparable to other schools and districts and so that's that's an area of kind of success that we can celebrate so sorry to to interrupt um miss genetic brian i i do want to bring the time up to our board we do have a policy at 10 30. um i do want to honor that but at the same time i see that you're almost halfway through and we're kind of you know um looking at the time as well i i would like to go ahead and put it out on the table a motion to extend 15

211minutes at 10 45 not to you know not to exceed um we don't have to take all the 15 minutes but if it's a minute or two after 10 30 at least we we have decided on that um can i please get in motion to to move to 10 45 or adjournment of our meeting uh actually can i ask first i'm curious i'm curious to know if if uh jen if you feel like we can how are you looking with the rest of the time shop for your presentation maybe we can i'm i'm probably halfway done the slides at the end are a little more uh detailed and complex um so i think i i i will i can commit to definitely ending at 10 30 if you'd like me to do that and then

212if you'd like me to come back or you'd like to reach out individually i'm more than happy to walk through in more detail or answer questions um at a later time so i again i'm going to put it on the table um just she like she said she's halfway through she'll end at 10 30 but if you have a couple questions it might go just you know two to five minutes at the most um so i'm putting out an emotion to motion to be able to move um our german to uh 10 45. can i please get it first um and so i have a first uh board member career second board member uh beau all in favor please raise your hand hi okay five zero thank you so much for and letting me interrupt

213you just wanted to make sure that we are all on on uh on gear here and please continue um and now that we okay yep no problem no problem at all thanks um we were looking at the high school results on this slide and just talking about again that lower level for our high school students but still actually very high and obviously in comparison to other high school students very typical when we look at our staff surveys the themes again very similar engagement the degree to which staff feel engaged in their work and empowered to influence schools relationships are the degree to which staff feel positive relationships in their school based on respect and care and approachability culture is the degree to which staff believe their schools foster a culture of shared vision respect and

214effective communication and professional development and support um addresses meaningful feedback opportunities to grow professionally and feel supported at work and school safety is the degree to which staff feel that the school's a safe learning environment for students and you can see the results there our staff shows higher than average compare when compared to others across all themes so this is our elementary staff when we move to our middle school staff uh same themes you can see the results on this slide uh response positive response rates are still very high when viewed in comparison to schools and districts across the state we have slightly lower positive response rates for professional development and support and school safety in with our middle school staff when we look at our high school staff responses and we see that overall

215these also align similar to others but also um again reflect uh some strengths that even exceed uh for example culture is while it's one of maybe not our highest area it is higher than high schools and high school responses in the state and in the nation those are our overall themes that we surveyed for all of our stakeholders um in addition we remember used the opportunity with our district annual survey and with our partnership with youth truth to gather baseline data for diversity equity and inclusion and so this is really from the ed services perspective as we talk about you know how that is being um kind of materialized in our classrooms we wanted to get the baseline understanding of our of our staff of our our parents and families and then really importantly of

216our students we've heard many of them share with us and so this is some um some some additional data that will help guide us as we plan for our 2124 lcap season and all of the work we're going to be doing with our dei committee just to share a couple of examples with you one of the questions asked all three stakeholder groups um the to respond as to whether or not they feel encouraged to speak out against racism and our students and parents had similar positive response rates at about 58 percent and our staff positive response rate was 66 so that gives us a good baseline that we can grow from we also asked if schools value schools in the district value diverse groups of people and we gave lists of groups and had the

217respondents rate the positively if if our schools and district value those groups and so those groups included people of different religions sexual orientations abilities genders family income levels race and ethnicity and country of origin and um similar levels resulted we had a 49 positive for gender that was kind of the low end and then a 53 positive response rate for race and ethnicity and country of origin and abilities and that's with our um with our families and students that so it's right in that middle range and and staff rated these things a little bit higher while the the student and the parent responses tended to be mid-level around between about 45 and 55 maybe some 60s on some questions our staff was in the mid 70s to 80s so that's really great baseline data for

218us to start with to use to dig into deeply as we're planning the areas which really is all areas of our functioning and our instruction that deals with data equity inclusion so youth truth allows us to really disaggregate and pick out differences and one of the things that the staff at youth truth told me is that as they went through our data and were looking at it they were they were surprised that we had no real trends of of student group gaps for what that means is there wasn't one group in particular that across the board seemed to be lower or higher than any others and so as we looked through them we did have some that had several differences but we kind of picked out a few of the differences that we could pinpoint

219and look at and so when we look at elementary school data this is some of the disaggregated data that we um we were able to observe there was some race and ethnicity data that we kind of took a look at knowing that the the groups that you see on this slide combined make up about less than two percent of our population which mathematically can mean differences uh that go up and down uh more greatly nonetheless it really also gives us pause to dig in and see is what can we do how can we make sure that even those groups with the smallest numbers have their needs addressed and so with race and ethnicity we see those groups kind of at the lower level of the themes and other than that the majority of race and

220ethnicities uh very little trends that are consistent no trends really existed between gender identity identification with students and um elementary although they did not have that question but homeless youth and virtual academy uh wasn't different and we did allow students to indicate whether they were in virtual academy or and that was an interesting way to dig into the data sixth grade level and seventh grade our sixth grade uh level we noticed some differences with the academic challenge theme and i wanna dig in a little bit deeper than that because we noticed that our sixth graders were had some lower uh response positive response rates so this this slide that i am showing you right now i want to kind of walk you through it because as we move into our partnership with youth truth we're

221all going to have to learn a little bit more about how to look at and and really decipher the data that they're able to share with us so i'm going to just pull up a little pen here and what i want to show you this is the academic challenge summary where we saw sixth graders with lower response rates and so this orange bar the orange bar um artistic skills could use some work but the orange bar is the national results and what it shows when you look at this white box this is where azusa elementary students fall it's an average if you if you look at their responses there's three levels a one two and three a low and a positive response and we average 2.6 if you add up those scores and this puts

222azusa at the 78th percentile and what that means is that when we look across the nation all of the students in in elementary schools that took this survey in this theme 78 of them had lower positive responses when compared to azusa's so we get this nice percentile and then the gray the gray bar that you see underneath and that's this one right here this is just california schools and then you can see the midpoint the average for california schools so when you look at these you're comparing and can see azusa when compared nationally and azusa when compared to the average of california schools for elementary so that's the way we read these these bar charts so digging into this academic challenge we see over here with the sixth grade as we disaggregate the data we

223see lower positive response rates and in particular you see that with this relevance question which is does what you learn in class help you outside of school and so you can see this is the biggest difference with 37 percent for sixth graders so one of the benefits of of working with youth truth is this comparison and then what we can do internally is begin to dive into these differences figure out where we can address the needs that are represented by them and then also celebrate the successes you know when we look at differences and changes so this was our elementary data similarly we were able to look at the disaggregated data for um for middle school students and this gives you a little bit of that disaggregated data got some grade level differences some race

224and ethnicity differences we have a difference with other special education students who actually rate higher positive rates in all themes than their general education classes and then we looked at some gender identity differences and if we dug dig into those we can see that our girls in particular when compared to uh to those that identify as male um have lower response rates in the belonging and peer collaboration measure and so when we break that down we can look at those numbers and in particular when we look at the questions here that make up the uh the questions that are in the belonging and peer collaboration summary we can see the the biggest difference is in this question about being myself and when we compare students who identify as female to students who identify as male

225and then also we see students that identify another way also with lower levels and this allows us to dig in and and plan for addressing those needs and just again as following this example we're looking at some high school disaggregated data we can see here with the differences between students who come from families who are who are low income families some gender identity differences and then some race and ethnicity differences one of the things that kind of surfaced was that our black and african american students rated lowest in culture and college and career readiness so again if we dig into the college and career readiness measure as an example we can look at everybody at the top getting some comparisons and then breaking this out by ethnic group we can see and and focus in

226on our our african-american students here and across the board see much lower and and i would say statistically significantly lower rates where despite that being a very small population in azusa is something that you know is that we would want to address and that we can share with schools uh as they're beginning to make plans and look at ways that they're going to be improving for students and and also addressing diversity equity and inclusion so i rushed through some of the more complex uh slides uh but let me tell you a little bit about what is next we have an executive summary that is being prepared by youth truth and and that will be shared with the board and then very excited about uh uh next wednesday now tomorrow next wednesday's uh meeting with our

227principals where youth truth will come in and be doing a virtual principle workshop so that our site leaders can now become oriented to the new data the different ways that we can now look at the data and the ways that we can now compare and so that that session will really help our principals look at the data dig into it and prepare to share it and then most importantly use it and act on it to to build their school plans and to begin to address needs with our with our schools so um thank you so much for extending the time and for allowing me to share kind of this this broad overview with you this evening uh thank you so much miss jen edith bryant for this awesome presentation we'll go ahead and start with

228questions comments i i mean i have questions but i can just follow up um and maybe come back at a future board meeting happy to do something any at this point um i i would have to agree um i just just want to comment that this is great um to let us know where we are in the nation where we are in california um this is amazing and so um i do have some some questions and and comments but i i think it's important we can go ahead and just bring this back just uh this next um board meeting just for us to be able to discuss a little further um because i know that i have a few things and i know other board members do as well and just to respect everyone's time

229at this point um thank you again um for your presentation and we will be coming back if you can please come and join us at the next board meeting um just to to you know to um to keep going um with our comments and comment uh questions that we we have um on this agenda item um at this moment we will go ahead and move to uh 14.1 adjournment can i please get a motion to please move 14.1 second we have a first by board member sabrina beau we have a second by board member greer if we can all please submit our vote okay hand since some of us are okay i said yes sir okay did not hear you thank you so much well it's a 5-0 it passes therefore it is 10 36

230and asusa unified school district board meeting for april 20th 2021 is adjourned thank you for joining us tonight have a great have a great rest of your night we hope to see you guys at our next board meeting take care bye-bye