001foreign are you guys able to get in to join yeah he's in but i i yeah i'm i'm in but it it does not bring up the voting on top i get an error i can't get in i mean i'm in but it's not where yes but it takes me to the screen and i i can't get in is this what we should be seeing so great thank you okay you'll you'll want to yeah looks like huge uh board member ridiculous did you join the meeting electronic board everyone did great thank you okay we'll go ahead and get started welcome asusa families welcome to our open session today is february 16 2021 and we're going to go ahead and get started with 4.1 our flag salute do we have jonathan negrete from sierra high school
002with us jonathan are you with us i do not see that he has entered yet i'm sorry let me go ahead and uh back up a little bit uh say the time 702 that we've started this open session okay great and um we'll go ahead and just i'll go ahead and lead it we can all please stand up for our black salute ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all great we'll go ahead and move to 4.2 roll call we'll start off with board member rodriguez pena president board member cruz gonzalez here the board member beau here board member career here and board member arianas i am here all five
003of us are here thank you we move on to a 4.3 approval of the agenda can i please get a motion to move 4.3 we have a first by board member career can i please get a second second we have their second by board member bo any uh discussion great let's go ahead and vote yours is not mine's not coming up either oh yes okay yes board member rodriguez pena yes board member beau yes yes and i say yes so we have five zero it passes or point three to approval of the agenda moving on moving on to 5.1 we have student matter settlement for student number 20 21 one through two i need uh can i please get a motion to move 5.1 so moved first uh first motion by uh board member cruz
004gonzalez can i please get a second second second by board member bo let's go ahead and see if we can do this through our electronic vote i still can't okay we'll go ahead and start with board member yolanda rodriguez pena yes yes yes yes and yes it passes 5-0 moving on to 6.1 this is a public comment on agenda or non-agenda items i do want to remind our audience that there's translation um at this moment happening and if do we have uh lika do we have any public comment at our board meeting tonight we do uh we have a couple that are are raising their hands uh first is uh cecilia yes i'm here good evening am i free to start speaking yes you may good evening ausd superintendent dr ortega ausd board members colleagues
005and friends my name is cecilia deletori and i am a current teacher and parent of two students presently enrolled in azusa unified school district at this time i would like to voice my concerns in regarding the recent parent survey returning to school i acknowledge that the survey does not inform parents the possibility that students will possibly be put into cohorts start and end time of class sessions could possibly be within a four-hour class period students possibly carrying all their textbooks and chromebooks to school and to home no recess breaks and including all students to follow all the county guidelines including wearing masks at all times no no small group instruction by the teachers the reason for me sharing those concerns is because a few parents have addressed me in regards to the return to school
006process and schedule i acknowledge that in the parent survey it never informed or referenced students returning to school maybe a four hour session for example it could possibly be 8 to 11 am not a full regular day for a current fifth grader being 8 10 am to 2 35 pm there in lies issues if parents are working and are unable to provide daycare services for a child or in this sense chilled red i hope you the superintendent and board members consider these concerns and planning to share with parents and the community in the weeks to come following their return to school again i thank you for your time and your listening ear and i hope that you all stay safe and stay healthy thank you so much thank you cecilia we move on to our
007next one miss lawson good evening board president members of the board superintendent guest and cabinet my name is tavia lawson i'm the chair to the east san gabriel valley special education local plan area community advisory committee myself marina harper azuza parent representative and vice chair to the cac and leslie castiano's azusa parent alternate and publications chair to the cac are extending an invitation to professionals educators families and students to our next parent in service which will take place on thursday february 25th from 6 pm to 7 30 pm english and spanish translation will be provided the topic is understanding active iep participation and understanding student rights and effective communication our topic will be presented by mr jason harper who is an alternative dispute resolution mediator lastly we are currently providing a monthly newsletter to learn
008more please email us at cac selfa that gmail.com c a c s e l p a at gmail.com or you can visit our social media pages on facebook instagram and twitter thank you for your time thank you miss lawson we'll move on to amber f hi thank you for your time this evening um i am a parent of a student in the azusa unified school district and i just wanted to voice a couple concerns i have about schools reopening as well the survey was a very nice way to get for you guys to get some parent feedback um i have some concerns about parents not being able to access the survey um as a member of the reorganization team i we reached out to some parents to see if they knew about the reorganization of
009the schools and we found that a large chunk of our our community didn't know that this was even being talked about despite the numerous emails phone calls from the schools things from the district we found that a lot of parents would actually like if it's possible for a flyer to be mailed home before the children used to get them in their backpacks and that was a good way for to make sure that parents saw information and since the students aren't currently in school they're not seeing these papers and with something as important as reopening the schools i feel that it's important for every parent to have a voice in this situation and if something as simple as mailing out a flyer that says you know please go to this website to fill out this survey
010might be helpful for those that don't have access for whatever reason it may be to the emails or even the school notices that are being sent out um also as a parent of a younger student i'm concerned about my child going back to school full-time for a couple reasons they're not very good at social distancing at young ages and having my child be stuck in a little in a room at a desk not being able to mix with his cohorts is really disheartening to me he needs to socialize and i feel like this would be more of a punishment for them that they won't be able to interact with their students as they would normally also i'm concerned for teachers parents or family members living with with these students that if somebody comes to school
011sick teachers haven't had an opportunity to be vaccinated neither has any of the staff at the school nor some of the parents uh my family has been super safe this whole entire time we see nobody we go nowhere and somehow our family still got coveted and my our first interaction with it was an urgent care visit where the doctor assured us that it was not coveted he would not test because they had a limited amount of tests so for two weeks if we were in school my son would have gone to school and possibly exposed others because we were told that this was not covid and it wasn't until two weeks later where other members in the family got sick that we noticed you know no we need to get tested and yes this was
012covid and i worry that this situation could happen with others and getting children sick in the schools closing down or even the classrooms closing down would disrupt the children being in class thank you for your time thank you amber we move on to miss diana ochoa good evening board members superintendent and cabinet my name is diana ochoa i am a parent and a classified employee with the zeus unified school district and i'm here today regarding our fields i first want to say thank you so much for these beautiful fields that have been placed at gladstone and azusa our kids have waited so long for this and i know when they're going to be able to get on those fields and play that their you know self-esteem and their spirit is just gonna be lifted so
013much um but it does concern me because in the past we've had people come on our fields that are not students that are adults and um how they get on our fields i don't know i don't know if it's somebody has a key gets on it and and there it goes um but i've seen it in the past and now i'm starting to see it now again especially at azusa high school um so it really concerns me that you know our kids haven't even been able to access these fields but yet we have these adults coming on the field of playing soccer um i've already seen people walking the tracks with their dogs which kind of concerns me about the sanitation of the fields for our students and then also our custodians you know the
014messes that they have to pick up out there these fields were built for our students and they need to maintain for our students you know you go to others drive by other districts schools and you don't see all this you know um people playing you know their activities as it's a park and recreation and i really hope that that doesn't happen at our schools because these kids really deserve these fields to stay clean sanitary for them and to be feel safe and make it their own field where you know these are high schools this is not parks and recs um so please please look into this um and i hope that you know before um it gets worse because i've even seen you know vehicles in the past you know that have been on our
015fields and um you know now that we have these beautiful fields i'd hate for those get to be ruined and then we have to go out as a district and spend more money to repair things and fix things um so i ask you to please look into this for our students and again thank you for these wonderful fields and i know i can't wait to see these kids playing on them because their smiles are going to be from ear to ear so thank you for that have a good evening you can hear me because i can't see anything other than the screen can you hear me i think i muted myself hello yes angel okay all right sorry thanks this is now i know what it's like from the kids point of view um i
016just wanted to take a minute or two just to say you know i agree with everything everybody has said about coming back to school i know there's a lot of concern about the safety and about the vaccination um i just kind of want to put it out there as far as my concern about how much less time when we if we go if and when we go back to hybrid which i know people want a cell to go back but i feel like it's going to be a disruption because it'll be like students having to start school all over again like the first day and as it is we're already having to cut our curriculum to a certain degree to fit in the in the virtual learning window and now we're going to go back
017to a hybrid and we're going to have even less time with the kids um and to have them stay focused and with asynchronous learning whether you admit to it or not the kids are not very effective during asynchronous learning they do not do the work as much as they should and um as much as they want to see each other i don't think they realize that they may not be seeing who they think they're going to see they're not going to see their friends uh necessarily and if they are it'll be from a distance so that's my concern is that we are going to lose some quality education time that we're already losing and that will also you know that kids are not going to stay apart not just little kids but the big kids
018too they're not going to keep distance and so there is all those concerns and i do hope you do take them into consideration and i just wanted to voice my opinion on that and put it out there thank you thank you miss angel we'll go ahead and move to miss meg savella can you hear me yes awesome um board uh cabinet um i appreciate you taking the time to listen to all of those who came before me and and me as well i also appreciate you leading by example and doing an in-person meeting i i think that takes a lot of courage and so i i appreciate that i want to express my concern for the surveys that are going out i think it's really important that we do them and i'm very thankful that
019our district is surveying parents about return to school and school reopening and things like that however i really feel that parents need to understand what it is that they're coming back to before they take the survey and are educated as as to what that means in order for the district to plan and i say that because upon return we're going to have cohorts of kids and actually cohorts are related to special education more i should call them groups we're going to have groups of kids maybe group a group b but in order to plan effectively and be good stewards of the money that we're receiving um and to delegate where those monies are going to go we need to know how many kids are coming back how many will stay in distance learning how to
020separate those kids out into groups to best serve their needs and i don't think that parents have been given enough information to understand that their children will be sitting four to six feet apart that they're going to be behind a cubicle style plexiglass barrier that the kids will have to stay in their seats the majority of the time that they're actually there and that the group that's not there will be doing asynchronous work without their teacher and knowing what the differences in approach are are we going to wind up going back yes do we need to have a good transition plan for re-entry yes but i believe that in order for the district to plan it's best for the parents to know that recess means going outside only with those 12 kids that are in
021your group and only playing with them and no one else with their own ball six feet apart and not interacting in the same way that they would in a regular brick and mortar also knowing that one of their kids could be on a group day and another on b group day and what that means for planning for their daycare for drop off and pick up for parents who need to work and i i just think we need to educate them so that they can best make the decision that's right for their family and the district can make the best decisions to to disseminate funds to organize kids for their education and to readjust with the least amount of disruption possible so thank you for taking time to listen to me i appreciate it stay safe
022and healthy have a good evening thank you miss maxa villa is that um all of the hands that have been raised lika from this yes great we'll go ahead and now move on to 7.1 commons reports and requests by the board of education we can go ahead and get started with board member rodriguez pena okay good evening everyone [Music] yes just after that [Music] that was really beautiful and i really appreciate that that really made my day and i want to thank director carlos ruiz rodriguez and students um uh also gladstone high school their filmmaking class uh they were celebrating black history month they had it on on youtube and they did a great job and then i'm very very happy that these kids are continuing to use social media and on youtube and and
023whatever makes it work for them to continue their education uh mr coburn studio 26 lawson middle school journal 26 regarding the pandemic uh great information and i want to thank mr cohort and um coburn and his students for sharing that um i also i always look forward to um i was gonna say mr foothill but mr um podomo for his weekly uh youtube videos um and i wanted to i'm noticing that they're hosting um the programs that are are issued in those in those school sites and also students that have uh principals on a row i've been seeing that and i think they're they're looking really nice nika good job and um i want to announce that uh we're calling i'm calling for seniors azusa leadership learning educational foundation are now taking applications for the
024thousand dollar scholarships and also for azusa city scholarship award um the deadline date is march 26th um the contact person for azusa high school is mr hernandez at the career center her email is k hernandez at azusa.org and we have gladstone high school miss madden college and career center i madden at azusa.org sierra high school miss shirley d avis she's a teacher and it's d abyss at azusa.org there's also a flower posted on facebook and instagram if you want to visit this is a leadership learning educational foundation thank you thank you board member rodriguez pena we can go ahead and move with board member bo yes good evening everyone and thank you my comment tonight i just want to say how much i appreciated representing azusa unified participate in the pace study um i had
025an interview with some of the principal investigators a couple of weeks ago and the study is around how districts are responding to the covert 19 pandemic and i'm really looking forward to reading the published study and some of the briefings that are expected to come out this fall so it was a great experience thank you your board member chris gonzalez i have nothing thank you thank you board member i have no comments tonight thank you um i would like to at a at the end of our meeting um first of all i would like to extend my condolences to the contreras family for our former employee paul contreras and i would like to go ahead and end our meeting in remembrance of our former employee um so our deepest condolences and we're very very sorry
026for your loss i know that so um he was related to a lot of people here in asusa and therefore um were deeply saddened by his loss i also was interviewed by peace and i'm looking forward to their results to see what that looks like it's really exciting exciting times uh right for them to be able to survey each district each board member um to see how the districts are you know what they experienced similar what different things that they experienced um and being able to to take a look at the results and that is all for today for me next we move on to 8.1 comments and reports by the student board members superintendent cabinet we'll go ahead and get started with student board members our destiny contreras miss destiny contours destiny you're on
027mute good evening ghs would like to first congratulate mario valenzuela cathy cortez matthew tellez and isaiah piseno who are advancing to state level competition in skills usa for their work in the graphic arts pathway with their teacher jim hague secondly we would like to recognize daisy rodriguez who was accepted into zusa pacific's nursing program for next year she is a prime example of our ecp and medical academy success with students even in this pandemic we are proud of all the teachers and classified at ghs who are making miracles happen for our kids this year and we are especially proud of daisy and the 25 other students who have been accepted into apu for next year ghs had 71 families of 10th graders attend the ecp informational workshop last thursday we would like to credit the
028hard work of miss deleon and the guidance team in keeping the program strong ghs would like to congratulate juliette roberts who wrote and was awarded a 1 500 equitable innovation grant from the greater la education foundation for materials to improve student engagement in her math classroom the virtual ghs 8th grade expo will occur on february 25th at 6 pm online in addition ghs students will create short videos on different social media platforms so that students can share their gladiator experiences with younger students our asb class kicked off with kindness week with a spirit week and an informational post on instagram we have also uploaded a google form where students can create kindness cards for their friends and classmates thank you thank you destiny we can go ahead and move on to jacob good vasquez everyone
029the following aspects will compete in the district auditory contest on february 18th good luck to our aztecs emily ruiz alyssa wench and lisa inc our aztecs are looking forward to the new paper tutoring program which provides students with unlimited access to 24 7 chat based academic tutoring for all subjects and all grades delivered by a lab live chat educator through paper online platform on tuesday february 23rd we will host our virtual aztec expo all income creators and their families are invited to learn about azusa high school's unique how unique and wonderful school programs we hope to see you all there our counselor and admin team are virtually visiting 8th grade 8th graders during the next two weeks to discuss our school's programs classes and preparing them for the next level of school sports conditioning will
030continue today with fall sports and spring sports conditioning will begin on march 1st last february i mean last friday over 300 aztecs receive an academic award for having a gpa of 3.25 or higher congrats to all our assets dollars on friday february 26 we will host our monthly virtual student of the month presentation staffs are given the opportunity to select students each month that are showing progress and engaged in classes thank you thank you jacob let's go ahead and move to with uh alex arkenberg good evening board members cabinet and superintendent ortega sierra high school students are working hard to bring up the grades before finals next week the second trimester will end on february 26th students staff and community members are encouraged to celebrate the end of the trimester by going to lunch or
031dinner at chick-fil-a the proceeds from sales will go to our school if customers stay there there to support sarah high school the students in our yearbook class are diligently working to gather pictures for the yearbook they are creating special page pages for juniors and seniors even though this has been a year of distant learning the yearbook team is going is doing a great job putting together an exceptional yearbook thank you thank you i'll go ahead and turn it over to um superintendent cabinet thank you um i just want to say that we are extremely proud to report that azusa high school has been granted a six-year accreditation status with a one midday mid-cycle visit from wasc this is the best this is the second best rating possible in a wasp visit uh we commend the
032azusa high school staff the wasp team the students the parents uh for this validation of the work and the outcomes that are being produced at azusa high school um we just again a shout out to to to everyone that was involved uh on getting this accreditation thank you good evening i'm excited to announce that we have just wrapped up our first counting collections and choral accounting book club and we had over 30 pk through second grade teachers participate in five after school sessions this is part of the work that we're doing with california education partners in our collaborative is called preschool through third grade coherence and collaboration um something really exciting that came out of that work is that from the book club we had teachers that volunteered their classrooms as they implemented the accounting
033collections and they opened up their classrooms for other teachers to come in and observe and so it was a really awesome awesome learning opportunity um super grateful for all the teachers who opened up their classrooms so we could come in and observe student learning and and watch the process and learn ourselves um i want to thank the team uh that has been leading this work and we're also very excited because we have um more teachers that have asked for another opportunity for this so we're going to be launching a second county collections book club so we're excited about that and then finally um this afternoon was our second diversity equity and inclusion committee meeting and i really i want to shout out to the 11 students from diversify our narrative who came and led the
034conversation um advocating for racial and educational equity and i want to thank caitlin arianis elena jaramillo hector hernandez althea ito carolina dominguez emily ruiz yara chavez sydney ramon priscilla ortiz zamora natalie de la cruz and andrea mendes for their tremendous presentation and really leading the conversation with the committee today um we also had our azusa city library partners um laila hansen and ginger atunas come and talk about the work that they've been doing um with respect to disrupting institutional racism as they look at their library programs and their collections as well so this has been a great opportunity for us to be able to partner um with the city library as well and bring them into the conversation as we do our work together thank you and good evening board of education and the sousa
035community i just want to thank the board of education for taking the steps um to have our meetings in person thank you um good evening ford and my fellow members of cabinet and superintendent ortega i wanted to take the opportunity to um formally uh thank all the departments that fall under my direction starting with brian allen and his team who have been working tirelessly to pivot we keep getting new regulation and guidelines daily and literally text message at 4 30 in the morning to the entire team like hey i need the best six feet apart nope now i need a three feet apart i just appreciate the entire team's willingness i haven't heard any complaints and i think the fact that i haven't heard anything from cca saying hey you're doing too much um i
036also want to thank maria um and nutrition services and her team who continues to work tirelessly to provide nutritious meals and i don't know if everyone has noticed that we've been providing fresh fruits and vegetables and last week we had strawberries and this week we're going to have more grapefruits and maria and her team are finding innovative ways that we could continue to provide that to our community as well as see how we can all have more offerings like open up more sites and more offering time so we can better serve our community and lastly i want to thank meghna and her team and we've had vacancies in our fiscal department and all the csa staff without a question have stepped up feel the need until we're able to feel that vacancy so just overall
037just appreciate the quality camaraderie the teamwork and dedication that they continue to provide so we can serve our students thank you we'll go ahead and move to to 9.1 east san gabriel valley regional occupational program presentation mr frank i don't know if you're talking but you are on mute yes um good evening i'm just giving me a minute to set up okay um good evening um board president arianes members of the board superintendent ortega cabinet members and the azusa unified community thank you board of education for the opportunity to present and i thank you again for your ongoing and tremendous support of our career pathways program this evening we have the pleasure of welcoming the team from east san gabriel valley regional occupational program dr maura morabito superintendent bridget hernandez director of educational services and
038stacey arietta cte program manager i just wanted to say that i truly appreciate the collaborative way dr morabito and her team have worked with us this year from their responsiveness and support to their willingness to accommodate our needs dr moravida and our team will now provide a brief overview of the rop program offerings at azusa unified dr murabino thank you so much mr chang i really appreciate it and welcome everybody um thank you for having us governing board members superintendent ortega uh cabinet and guests a very brief introduction before i turn it over to our stacey arietta for program manager presentation um my name is mauro mirabito and i've been the superintendent here at the rop since july i also want to recognize bridget hernandez and stacy arietta who are here with me tonight also
039we could not do this work without them they definitely leave the charge and i just want to let the board know and that we are refocused on our purpose and that is to provide high quality cte pathways with measurable student outcomes to our partner district so we want to accomplish this by working hand in hand with you and providing concierge level service to all of our schools and i want you to know that we are committed to your students and their success so with that i will turn it over to miss stacy arietta our cte program manager for a short presentation thank you dr maurabito and good evening everyone i want to take just a couple minutes to present all the wonderful and exciting things going on with rop and azusa unified as it relates
040to cte pathways next slide please uh before i get started i'd like to mention that all of the rop pathway programs that you'll see here are uc a2g approved at azusa high school we have three pathway offerings engineering and architecture which consists of design project technology and principles of engineering principles of engineering which is emulates project lead the way we have information and communication technologies which includes principles of information technology and ap computer science and transportation which includes automotive technology and automotive technology advanced total district sections offered at azusa high or 11 and total district teachers it is a high or three next slide please at gladstone high school we offer the following four pathways health and science and medical technology within that pathway we have health careers medical pathology medical pathology advanced and medical
041assistant in the public services pathway we offer fire technology emergency medical services and forensic science in arts media and entertainment offering graphic arts multimedia advanced and then we offer the transportation pathway which includes automotive technology advanced this is a teach-out pathway which is why you only see the advanced program being offered here this year total rop sections offered at gladstone high school this year 24 and rop teachers are six we are planning for the upcoming 2021 and 2022 school year to incorporate capstone classes in the fire technology emergency medical services and forensic science for the following year next slide please at sierra high school we offer the following three pathways educational child family i'm sorry education child development and family which includes early childhood education early childhood education advanced public services which offers medical emergency
042medical services and forensic science and then the arts media and entertainment pathway which includes video production again we're looking towards incorporating our capstone courses in the emergency medical services forensic science and video production for the upcoming 2021 and 2022 school year total rop sections at sierra high school are 10 and total rop teachers are four next slide please some of the accomplishments that we just kind of wanted to um you know point out and go over is that we have been looking and working with um frank chang very closely and thank you frank for that and revamping and correcting the administration of jesuit pathway justice pathway of both our sierra high school and gladstone high school which you saw in previous slides this year we're offering the concentrator which is forensic science and for the
0432021 we'll be incorporating the two capstones which work and tie with your tie with the data dashboard for the college and career indicators to ensure that they're being met within the district it's been very exciting with the implementation of new programs emergency medical services and the fire technology courses and we're definitely looking forward to growing those pathways as well to incorporate those concentrator and capstone classes both next year and we're looking forward to the recruitment strategies we have a new marketing multimedia specialist here we have flyers and videos that we'll be putting out to help grow your pathways and grow your cte programs and you know industry specific and pathway driven marketing materials and then we're very uh excited to be offering that improved customer service and more of a team approach where you have
044a team of individuals at rop that are going to be working directly with the azusa unified district as it relates specifically to cte and then increasing overall the number of pathway offerings over the last two years has been exciting two years has been exciting and we're definitely looking forward to continuing to grow those next slide please some things that we're looking forward to in the 2021-2022 school year is pathway audits again to review all the pathways that are currently being offered at the three schools mentioned this evening to ensure that those college and career indicators are being met for azusa unified and adding those completer courses to ensure that the fire technology students emergency medical service students and forensic students as well as video production at both the gladstone and sierra have those complete pathways
045and one exciting thing that miss bridget hernandez and i have been working on this year is we've been working very closely with citrus college so that we can in fall work towards offering dual enrollment within azusa unified cte programs thank you so much frank any questions board of education not at this time we can go ahead and move forward okay well thank you tomorrow and our team we really appreciate you coming this evening thank you everybody our pleasure thank you thank you thank you for the presentation frank we can go ahead and move to 9.2 covet 19 update thank you board president arianes like we have in the past uh all cabinet members will provide some updates around cobia 19 and i will begin this week the los angeles county department of public health announced
046this weekend that we had reached our threshold for tk schools uh to be able to reopen um latasha and her shera will share a little bit in terms of the particulars of of how and what that means but based on what we know today we are planning to submit uh our covet safety plan next week on wednesday um we plan to share those uh plans with our kobe 19 team on friday and also with our superintendent and parent roundtable next week as well it's important to note that submitting the plan is an important step in getting ready to open schools because once we submit the plan an approval from the state and or the the los angeles department of public health would signal that azusa unified school district is is ready a non-approval or some
047issues would signal to us that there are corrective measures that we need to take place and doing that sooner than later uh and getting that critical feedback uh only helps us uh in the district as a district um as this evolves uh more details are going to to come will be shared with the community and with parents and we are going to ensure that we're going to keep you informed and up to date as those become available at the same time we are looking to provide the opportunity for our staff to receive vaccinations here at our district of course there's a lot of things that hinge on being able to do that number one the county moving into uh 1b the phase of 1b which would encompass educators and of course availability of vaccines but
048when those two things do happen we're very excited to be able to move forward to offer all of our staff the opportunity to be vaccinated here at one of our campuses as you heard today in public input regarding a survey we did launch a return to school survey for both parents and staff to get first impressions about returning to school that survey closes on friday but i can share just some some some data that we have uh as of right now in terms of the parents we have over 200 or 2 200 respondents um of those respondents 27 are indicating that they want to return to in to in person 17 are saying they want to return but only if it's in a hybrid fashion um and 46 percent 46 are saying that they'd rather
049stay um in the current situation in distance learning in terms of our staff we have over 700 respondents uh in our staff so far 15 wanting to return to in-person instruction 16 wanting to return if it's in a hybrid fashion 59 stating that they prefer to continue with our current distance learning um this is only uh again a first run in terms of the survey but as we are getting closer and and indicators are pointing to uh to a reopening i want to assure you that we're going to be reaching out to our our parents in a more granular and detailed fashion that will explain some of the things that were brought up today during public comment so that when parents are saying yes i want to come back that they actually understand what it
050is that they're saying yes to we want to get a real accurate understanding of who those parents are that are wishing to come back who those parents are that are wishing to stay in a distance learning manner and that will again happen um in a more personalized uh way we're envisioning not a survey but a google form and we're envisioning that our school sites would be offering plenty of support in terms of meetings and um support documents so that when when our parents are filling out these forms that they're making informed uh that they're they're they're stating an accurate uh perception of where they where they stand good evening this thursday february 18th from 3 to 4 p.m our foothill family partners will be presenting another workshop to support our staff and it's called teaching
051during difficult times coping as an educator all certificated staff and all classified instructional staff are invited to attend this optional opportunity we've had many positive responses from our staff regarding this workshop series that we've had and the support that they have provided during this time thank you and the human resources department continues to work with employees as we transition to a back to work setting either at school sites in the district office hr recently communicated to all employees the expectation that employees wear a mask throughout their work day with very few exceptions these exceptions include when an employee is in a room or office alone by themselves or when the employee is at their desk or workspace eating or drinking also this weekend i recently sent out a message to employees who are 65 years
052of age or older to receive the covid19 vaccine this opportunity was made available through a partnership that was struck between the doherty unified school district and the city of hope so as superintendent ortega mentioned um we will be submitting our pelvic safety reopening plan um to the two entities that are required on february 24th the first entity is to the state safe for all team where we'll be submitting our cal osha prevention plan and our covet 19 school checklist the cal osha plan requires the district to outline specifically all of their safety protocols whereas the kova 19 checklist is a checklist that's provided by the state that identifies key things that we have to in place and we have to check and sign off on that additionally we will be submitting um to the la
053department of health the k-12 school reopening plan which also is a checklist of items that we have to have in place and we will check off all those things that we certify as well as submit the cal osha plan and the covet 19 plan now it's important to note that after we submit these we have seven days for the la department of health to give us thumbs up thumbs down um and from there we'll submit those uh checklist and then we will present all three forms to our kova 19 safety plan this friday great thank you for covered 19 update we'll go ahead and move to 9.3 i'm sorry does any of the board have any questions then we'll go ahead and move to 9.3 school reorganization update okay thank you let me see all
054right um so uh board of education uh as you know we have been uh participating and going through a uh school reorganization uh process with a team uh we have been keeping you up to date where we where we have been and so today is an update of where we are with uh with with that um so we met um on the third of february and this was our first meeting where we were actually starting to get input from the team members prior to this latasha had dinner had done an amazing job of guiding the team in understanding the four models and what they were we engaged the team in saying okay these are the pieces that we're thinking we want to look at the team added some additional pieces that we wanted to look
055at and so we went back to the drawing board to look at those pieces and so each model was then presented with all of these pieces to get a really good understanding so our objective on the third was to begin to get input from this actual team on what they had seen uh so far so on that night we participated in an lb lb protocol which focused the attention on what it was that the team members were liking about a particular model or particular models and so when they when they gave feedback on the model the reason it's called lblb is because their sentence frames were i like this model because or the sentence frame was i like this model but and so over the course of that night we were able to hear from
056all of our team members that were present we did it in a randomized kind of fashion by group that's represented on this team and they were able to share everything in terms of what they were feeling in terms of what they liked because or what they liked but subsequently we did have a meeting on february 10th as well at that meeting we were able to share some data they had some homework that they had to do in terms of filling out a form a google form and we presented that data to the group we are very excited and very confident that our march 3rd meeting we can begin the input at the board level and we can begin having discussion here at the board level when you hear the recommendations coming from the school reorganization
057team um and so we're very excited that we're going to be able to do that on march on march 3rd but that is the update uh up to now do any of the board members have any questions concerns anything that they would like to share ask i'll just just really look forward to to the the update and interfacing with the the team great thank you we'll go ahead and move to 10.1 approval of consent calendar can i please get a motion to approve 10.1 make a motion to approve we have board member 10.1 calendar thank you we have board member rodriguez pena uh first motion we have a second by board member cruz gonzalez let's go ahead do we have any discussion any questions concerns okay we'll move to vote i am not currently online
058uh so can we please get a vote uh board member rodriguez pena yes yes board member cruz gonzalez board member yes board member career yes and i myself board member arianis say yes it passes 5-0 we move straight to 12.1 2020 college and career readiness levels and graduation rate report we have jen miss gen edict brian give me just a second to move her over i'm getting this spinning wheel again good evening board give me just a moment and i'll start my screen sharing okay well good evening board president ariana's board members mr ortega cabinet i'm excited to be here with you tonight especially following the presentation earlier on from the rop group because the work that they are doing is directly related to what i will be sharing with you this evening and i'm
059really happy to share our 2020 college and career readiness outcomes and graduation rates these are the rates and and the the data that is often used on our california school dashboard this is california's new accountability system and it measures various aspects of a school's district and use multi uses multiple measures to really show the progress and of school districts and schools and each december the california dashboard is released by the california department of education and normally i bring a full report to you on all of the state and local indicators that are reflected on it but due to the coba 19 pandemic and suspension of some of the metrics such as s back scores and chronic absenteeism following our shutdown last spring a full dashboard with all of the indicators was not released by the
060california department of ed but there are data that are still available and can be shared with you and with our public and that's really the purpose of what i will be doing this evening so our topic really is to look at our 2020 college and career readiness levels and graduation report um before i dive into the college and career readiness data i'd like to share what what measures are used to determine college and career readiness in uh california there are actually many options for students to demonstrate college and career readiness you can see by this slide what those are students must first graduate from from high school earn a diploma and then they can use any of the measures here as evidence that they are college and career ready the measures include completing a career
061technical education pathway completing rigorous courses including a through g or dual enrollment with a community college program passing challenging exams such as the spac ap tests ib tests they can receive the state seal of by literacy and also participate in courses that develop leadership so for example a student at azusa high school could complete our engineering pathway and use that in conjunction with their academic achievement uh on sbac to show that they are college and career ready and to kind of be counted as prepared so that gives you a little bit of background and explanation about how the state and how we look at college and career readiness and so i want to dive into some of the data with you right now so this slide gives you an overall preparedness level for our entire
062district um you can see in the upper left section uh gives us the the prepared approaching and not prepared uh levels for 2020 students who are prepared met all of the requirements students who are approaching readiness met some of the requirements but not all of them and then students who are considered not prepared did not meet any of the requirements in addition to earning their high school diploma and then if you look over in the upper right corner you can see that despite the onset of the pandemic last spring our class of 2020 showed great improvements in being college and career ready when compared to 2019 our district preparedness increased seven percent and we reduced the number of not prepared students by 10 percent the circle graphs at the bottom of this page reflect the
063breakdown for the class of 2020 by school and i'd like to take a moment to address some of the differences you might see between some of the school sites first you'll recall that students who attend sierra high school are most often there due to a lack of progress in meeting their high school graduation requirements they're there to to catch up on their credits and those that stay and graduate from sierra high school have caught up on their credits but they haven't always had the space in their schedules to take additional coursework or be part of specialized programs so even even so please note that you know we had 10 percent of graduates either approach or be prepared we had two percent that did meet all requirements to be prepared college and career prepared and that's
064because sierra high school is one of very few alternative high schools in california that offer programs such as ap courses college credit courses and then as you heard earlier now looking at some career tech pathways i'd like to take some time to show you some of the disaggregated data for our district and so the following two slides will provide an analysis of the data on college and career readiness by different school groups every student groups excuse me so the first uh of these two slides shows uh preparedness levels based on language ability income and foster youth status these bar graphs also show you change from 2019 to 2020. you can see by looking at these we can identify any gaps between groups that we're working to address and you can also see the growth that
065we've made with these four groups all four groups reflect the increases in the number of prepared students between 2019 and 2020. the second slide of disaggregated data shows our homeless population and significant ethnic groups as with the data in the previous slide this slide indicates the differences between the groups and then change from year to year for each of those groups and again as with the first four groups that we were looking at previous in the previous slide you can see also with with these groups uh the growth that has been made as we begin to target and ensure that our students are college and career ready when they leave us next i just want to share a little bit about the graduation rate before i show you the data the california school dashboard measures
066graduation rates slightly differently than the data that is found in some other state data websites such as data quest if you've heard of that the graduation rate reflected on the dashboard and the ones that i will be sharing with you this evening are students who have graduated in four years from the class of 2020 along with students from the class of 2019 who graduated in five years there are students particular students such as a foster youth who have an opportunity to to take a little more time to meet high school graduation requirements and so the california school dashboard envelops our four-year cohort graduation rate along with this this five-year cohort group and then also just to note that um alternative schools like sierra high school are calculated differently because they are not four-year schools so
067the sierra high school rates are one-year rates the table on this slide shares shows you the 2020 graduation rates then for our district and our high schools along with some student group breakdown you can see that azusa unified continues to have very high graduation rates um azusa high school in particular as you see and look at some of the differences it's important to note that they azusa high school houses our certificate bound program for students with disabilities these students uh who earn certificates of completion and they are counted in the total number of students although they are not counted as students who graduate the certificates of completion are considered a different certificate than a diploma and then furthermore we know that azusa high school has had the larger population of our newcomer students who are
068emerging bilinguals and many of them come to asausd with greater barriers to overcome earning credits meeting graduation requirements and so more of that group is in azusa high school although we have now begun to create two different programs one at gladstone high school and at azusa high school as well for those students and so the differences that you often see for example between gladstone high school and azusa high school can in part be attributed to some of those program differences between the two schools and this table also then again while it shares our successes and our growth it also helps us identify some of the gaps that we continue to look at address and um and deal with as we continue to want to ensure that all of our students leave us ready for the
069next chapter in their lives and to be successful in their careers or in in or furthering their education so at this time i'm happy to respond to any questions you might have and i thank you for the opportunity to share this evening thank you so much jennifer for this uh great presentation um board members do you guys have any questions at this time we have board members yeah just just you know looking at this last slide it definitely highlights you know you know many many areas and especially the previous slides looking at uh growth points but also as you pointed out that this also helps us to to kind of zero in on on areas where we can continue to grow and so i do you know specifically looking at um english learners and you
070explain i think you you explained um some of the reasoning behind that uh and and i love from a continuous improvement perspective you know we will continue to ask ourselves how can we come along support and even prepare those students and and i wanted the same thing for for our you know our the homeless uh category of students that we have here as well what you know what what what more can we do um to see that number there's there's tremendous room for growth there and um would love to see um uh that that grow and as this would be a place where you know regardless of of what those circumstances might be for them that that they can still come and be prepared to be college and career ready absolutely thank you very much
071thank you we have no more questions from the board thank you for your presentation you're welcome thank you we'll go ahead and move to 12.2 ratification approval of cohort 2 improvement collaboration participation agreement with california education partners can athletes get a motion to move 12.2 we have a first by board member cruz gonzalez wasn't on i make a motion to approve thank you we have a first by board member cruz gonzalez can i please get a second second we have a second by board member greer let's go ahead and take a hand vote board member rodriguez pena i'm sorry do uh discussions you're cutting out board member i i like an explanation by dr mitchell or mr certainly i'd be more than happy to um we are very excited about this uh collaboration this is
072another opportunity that we have with california education partners this is called the on track collaborative and there are nine we are one of nine districts um who get the opportunity to come together um and participate in um this collaborative that is aimed at increasing the level of on-track college readiness for latinx african-american and socio-economically disadvantaged students this collaboration has been going on for a couple of years and we've had an opportunity now to join mid-stream and so we jumped at the chance this is going to be a very exciting collaborative um so we asked the the uh comprehensive high school principals at zeus and gladstone uh to put together a team so we have we have teachers counselors administrators from both azusa and gladstone high school and so this has formed our um improvement team
073and so we are going to be engaging in cycles of continuous improvement we're going to look at data we're going to identify a problem we're going to engage in improvement cycles and take a look at that uh the data that we get from that to really um come up with some solutions to um to helping our ninth graders in terms of their college readiness so we're very excited we have started the work and we were very very excited to be able to have this opportunity to participate um in this collaborative i mean i'd like to just add a little bit to that this would be our third collaborative with california ed partners our first one being what we refer to as cali our second one being a preschool through third grade collaborative that's focusing on
074on math and articulation between the preschools and the k-12 uh but but the the presentation that we just had uh from um jennifer edict bryant um i'm super excited to see the outcomes of this group because this is going to address those kinds of data points that you saw that you saw there so when when you focus on ninth graders and you focus on them being on track um and and and really looking at uh uh dr mitchell talked about uh like really zoning in like on on the problem of practice or getting down to that root cause analysis i'm excited about the results that come out of a a collaborative like this great thank you thank you does anyone else have any questions yeah i have a couple questions um well really excited about
075this i was really sad when we didn't get selected in the first cohort so that's exciting that we're part of it um um in terms of um which is it gonna be all three schools participate it's gonna be a district-wide or is it gonna be pacific high school or focus or so yeah so the focus is a zeus time gladstone because we're focusing on ninth grade students and so it's both of the comprehensive high schools um and then uh the collaborative is focusing specifically on english language arts and mathematics and so this since the collaborative has been already doing that work we decided we're going to just we're jumping on with them and doing that as well so that means you're going to be doing the college ready on track not the eighth grade on
076track that is correct okay um and then my so my so my other i guess more of a comment than a question is i hope that i think this is great this is really exciting i think it's um research this is really that um a really critical pivot place to focus on and and um the work that they've done previously is i mean i think i think it'll be really good for our district the thing that i would just um request is maybe that we can think about um as we're developing our lcap goals that we think about how do we align instead of having different things in our lcap versus this so if we know we're going to do this kind of focused work around college readiness maybe we need to think about how
077how how do these become our goals that we embed in our and our over in our district-wide planning that's the only recommendation that i would have to think about so that we're creating more alignment and less more like we have this over here and this over here and thinking about it's all one cohesive system that we're focusing on seeing that there is no more discussion questions if we can go ahead and vote electronically mine was able to go up we're waiting for one more okay and it passes 5-0 great we'll go ahead and move to 13.1 approval of memorandum of understanding mou between pacific oaks college and asusa unified school district can i please get a motion to move 13.1 so moved we have a first by board member grier can i please get a
078second thank you a second by board member rodriguez pena do we have any discussion welcome for discussion seeing that there's none let's go ahead and vote great and it passes 5-0 we'll go ahead and move to 14.1 and this is our adjournment can i please get a motion to i'm sorry that is correct at this point right now that is correct thanks for reminding we do have some unfinished business in closed session we will be returning to closed session at this time i do want to go ahead and um at the end when i adjourn i will go ahead and do in the memory of paul contreras at this time we will transition to closed session thank you very much everyone um