001you want to hear me there you go so we didn't have anything to report out from closed session to you folks and so we're going to move on to our next item which is 5.2 and i'm just saying that this meeting is recorded for live streaming and archiving on the district youtube channel at youtube.com backslash c backslash benicia unified school district for your convenience thank you to those that are tuning in that way as well um the next item would be our pledge of allegiance and since diane at least breathing better now maybe you could do our pledge i'm here in person please stand i pledge allegiance to the five of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with jesus thank you um our
002first item up is our highlight and we're going to be um hearing some information about robert simple elementary and i did you believe yeah so we'd like to welcome principal sorry excuse me we have to approve the agenda first where is it oh number eight no i understand highlight was above it so that's right okay so um can i get an approval of the agenda as written i'll go ahead i'll move to approve the agenda as written i'll second that thank you roll call please yes okay so now i'm gonna turn it over to dr young to introduce our folks at robertsonville so yes i'd like to welcome principal moore to the podium and what we're doing this year and we did it last year i believe would give principals an opportunity and leaders of
003departments to come and share the good news uh the things that are taking on in their at their school sites in their department so welcome principal moore thank you thank you very much um thank you uh trustees president uh cabinet and uh usd community members i'm so honored to be here for those of you who don't know i'm christina moore the principal at robert simple elementary school and i have the privilege of talking about two things today um the first thing that i'm going to talk about is um a change we did to the start of our day in response to what we are hearing around our students needs both from teachers and from parents and then the second thing i'm going to talk about is what we are seeing in reflecting on the data
004around some initial benchmark testing that we're going to do and i wanted to kind of talk a little bit about that can you not hear me okay so i have a presentation is that okay and i'm gonna oh i get to click myself so if i have links within that is that going to be an issue and with links within that presentation then i just guide you okay apologize thank you just trying to figure out the procedure here no problem while that's getting set up i just want you to know that it has been a whirlwind start to the school year and i mean that in the most positive way we are reaching and stretching and learning what we are capable of in ways we never knew possible our kids are so excited to be
005at school our teachers are equally matching that everyone's working so hard and it's just so glorious to be back it's glorious okay so i put this presentation together and i titled it embracing change and um if you would i can forward this right it's just a click right did i turn it on sorry thanks georgina take four there we go okay so we heard and we responded um hybrid teaching staff that's when we came back in the hybrid inquired to me one of the first things they said is could we mimic the arrival procedures now for the 21 22 school year and um i thought long and hard that's pretty big change tim has to approve of it first of all and what we what they were asking for was because we part of the
006agreement in coming back in person was that we had to be masked we had to watch our social distancing we could no longer cross over all of these restrictions and how do we do school like that well in the hybrid there was no more before before school recess you know you arrived to school parents and everybody come on to campus and students went out to the blacktop through their backpack packs and they were playing and having a ball and what it did was it brought the energy level up so high well in the hybrid we open the gates we welcome kids from the cars and they go directly to the classroom and we didn't really think much about that other than that's what was safe at the time so um then we heard after being
007back in person and so much time and distance learning from teachers and from parents they inquired if we can have a focus on the social emotional needs of our students and really our staff as well for the 22 21 22 school year so heard then i surveyed my entire teaching staff because i felt if i was going to put myself in front of such a big change like changing the start of our school day i had to have everyone behind me i could not leave one person behind i had to have this change be 100 and 100 of my teaching staff was in favor of what's called a warm welcome and a protected sel time so what is that um so we're piloting this now and um what we do is our school day starts
008at eight o'clock generally what we do is we open our gates at like 7 45 and like i said kids are running in pack packs everywhere they're having a blast it's this energy so high at 7 50 now we open our doors our gates teachers are in the classroom and they welcome kids for that 7 50 to 8 o'clock time their job at that time is to check in with every single kid make eye contact how are you doing how's it going how's your day to kind of bring that temperature down they go get themselves settled eight o'clock the school bell rings and kids are in what's called protected sel time so we say there is an emergency there's blood or bone showing otherwise i'm not going to call you and the expectation is that
009they are doing second step curriculum which is adopted by our school district which is phenomenal i'm going to show you a little bit of that in a minute some sort of yoga mindfulness checking in with students circle time or family time they call it we are bringing that temperature down in the classroom and it is just such a calm cool start so georgina if you wouldn't mind the rsc warm welcome survey so i surveyed my staff um and you're gonna take the survey because so you're gonna take my word for it how about that which is if you want to go through maybe i could just read the questions that i asked my staff um so um has having students come directly to class the warm welcome rather than having a whole school recess change
010the classroom environment and how so what are the expectations during warm welcome time in your classroom the intent was to provide a calmer softer start to the school are you finding this to be true the first 20 30 minutes of school protected what are you doing during that time what benefits are you seeing to this change for your students and for you as a teacher and what supports do you need to ensure this time has the intended outcome and you can pause there because the rest doesn't apply um sort of doesn't apply every single one and i wanted to show you this every single one of the responses 18 of 19 of my classroom teachers said calmer quieter uh peaceful it's no static ready to learn because what happens is for those of you who
011are not classroom teachers they are coming in they're sweaty they're mad because this person cutted him in line he took my backpack i had a pink mask now it's black i don't i mean it's just this crate my mom said i can't have this and i forgot my you've done that all in that 10 minutes and so when school starts they're ready to learn and so every single one of my teachers said whatever we have to do to make this happen please keep this so they are even feeling calmer themselves so um okay next slide like so now the protected sel time that's the 8 to 8 30. what are they doing in a classroom this is kelly brown's classroom i did get permission uh we put it out there and not one parent said
012i could not show this um so on the left you have skills for learning um and then on the right georgina if you wouldn't mind clicking this is a situation where mrs brown is going through the skills of learning with the class you left the class ball outside after recess dia come on up yes would you like some help all right let's go look for it show but there was some like role playing before that to get her to that point because if you've ever worked at elementary school they come flying my ball i love my ball he's got my ball it's blue you know and this is just like teaching them how to interact in a calm way to get what you need and to keep that static down okay if you wouldn't mind
013doing this one same class and this is them learning a tentation tell me that you are ready to learn all right friends remember our friend impulsive puppy say good morning puppy puppy sometimes needs help remembering how to be a learner let's remind him repeat after me focus attention listen be assertive [Music] use self-talk [Music] you tell puppy you can do this all right puppy's going to be watching today to see if you can put those attention scopes on to help you ignore distractions nice job so these kids are six they're in first grade this is their first real year of school they have to learn how to interact they have to learn how to assert themselves and get what they want in a calm respectful manner so this is just one of the first lessons
014so okay now we're going to switch gears that's how we start our day and this is what we do during our day so robert simple taking your temperature what does the data say so we administered like everyone else the nwa map which we are now calling our benchmark test both in reading and math um all of our elementary principles staff meetings are aligned i wanted i knew that we were starting benchmark testing we were not all the way through it yet but i wanted to know what were we seeing already what are the what are we looking at and if you're and if you're not i'm asking you so now go look at it so um i decided to focus on math only so i could because i only had one staff meeting to talk
015to my staff about this so i thought what are some guiding questions that could really get us starting to think about data talk about data and my guiding questions are and we're going to use these throughout the year what are you seeing how do you know this what are you doing to mitigate it what else do you need from me so actually georgina i'm gonna have you go back yes i decided to do it easier and i didn't tell you so i took four of those those four questions and i took the first one what are you seeing and so in tk this is directly from what they they they wrote on these data sheets and breakout rooms tk said surprise that some no more than expected now i want you to know parents you're
016going to see real transparency here in kindergarten fine motor skills are low grip and pencil holding large number of students recognize numbers one through ten and five through five to six two dimensional shapes that's a great thing first grade number identification is stronger than number formation non-readers struggle with one-to-one correspondence second grade second significant number of students need to learn their math facts it is the foundation for everything third grade lacking number sense self-confidence and perseverance that was big that was really big and the conversation we had around that is those students behind a computer for so long and they don't understand it just close your computer right exactly right exactly fourth grade approximately 30 significantly below grade level fifth grade need to learn problem solving techniques when they don't know the answer the first
017time so heavy yes but the beautiful thing is you have some experts in the classroom so what are we going to do to mitigate this this is the hand we have been dealt it can only go up right tk time lots of hand on hands on practice kindergarten time and grace they're learning how school works right now first grade small groups working on routines repetition second grade diving into imagine math and a little competition so you might see us bringing back some competition in math because it works third grade increase small group time math stations fourth grade intervention block track data with pre and post tests coi circle of inquiry fifth grade reteaching and pulling from previous grade standards slow lessons scaffold build stamina bring in the hands-on small class sizes so this is initial
018we aren't even we weren't even finished we weren't even doesn't even close till tomorrow but they're already thinking about what i can do in my classroom to address this need and um tony johnson i'd like to give a shout out to him he you know apologized i got my data to you late today late today he said but i really wanted you to know that i started early and i wanted to see my own tracking my own growth and we're already seeing change just in the short five weeks that we've been in school so anyway it's exciting what can we glean from this we did not get here overnight we will need time and grace to let the experts do their jobs that includes parents our teachers and our staff see our students and recognize
019there are critical needs to be taught before we can get to the essential our teachers care they have rolled their sleeves up and are digging in meeting the kids where they are we are building a culture of collaborative conversations around student performance we got this we can do hard things so thank you very much for your time appreciate it [Applause] thank you miss moore excellent thank you very much welcome thank you thank you thank you thank you awesome at liberty so good evening president zeta superintendent dr young and fellow trustees and cabinet members my name is alice wells and i am from liberty high school first of all we are off to a great start and we would like to welcome all the new students that have joined our liberty high school community last friday
020the school commemorated the 20th anniversary of 9 11 with the ribbon ceremony in a moment of silence we made a american flag on the fence out of riven our art class has been working with the resident artist mr larney fox from arts benicia we started working on self portraits which i'm involved with and i like him so far so and several students have signed up for the annual coastal cleanup a couple of my friends but sadly i cannot go and it will be taking place this saturday on 9th street beach we have our leadership class working on fun new new monthly events this week we will be having our advisory door competition our doors are all about who we are and what we are interested in my class for some reason did alice in wonderland
021so there's that and at the end of the month we will be having our first battle for the talon we will be competing in a series of academic athletic and artistic events whichever advisory wins the most points will get to keep liberty the eagle for the month so thank you and have a good evening thank you so much mr mr fox is actually a wonderful art teacher so i'm sure you'll get a lot out of his his class all right thank you and did you have to leave at this time okay you're welcome to go um our next up is um ali ballinger our asb president for benicia high school hi i'm i'm actually marie marcus and i am the vice president of i've got your engagement here too so yes great so i'm actually
022going to be speaking first so recently we had our blood drive on monday and it was successful we had the maximum amount of sign ups so there's a lot of blood um and then we had our football game on the 10th of september where we commemorated 9 11 with a speech in a moment of silence and our student section was red white and blue and then tomorrow we are we were supposed to have a football game but um the other team i believe came down with kovid so i believe they were looking for another team to scrimmage or to play but i think it fell through so our tailgate and our game for tomorrow are cancelled as far as i know [Music] oh and tomorrow we are having our club fair at lunch thank you
023so much hello i'm melissa ballinger and i am the asb president at benisha high school i am going to fill you guys in on our new and upcoming business on monday we open homecoming bids which is for our homecoming dance and a bid is for somebody that does not go to benicia high school but is a high school student or has graduated from the high school and is under the age of i believe it's or 20 my apologies we also are opening homecoming tickets it was supposed to open yesterday we are currently struggling with our website which is quite new for us we used to do in-person sales in the finance office that's unavailable at the moment so we're trying to work out the details with miss sapp and try and get our tickets up
024correctly because if you have an asb card you get in for five dollars cheaper for each ticket so we're working on that and our homecoming week is currently planned for october 11th through october 16th on wednesday of homecoming week we're planning to possibly do a movie night instead of carnival because we can no longer have jumpies which was a big um like advertisement for our carnival which got a lot of families from the community to come but we're unable to use those anymore so we had to come up with an alternative on friday we will be having an outside rally which will be the first for us but it'll be up on the football field and we'll have a game and we are no longer have hope like at the traditional homecoming court so we're
025planning a class competition and hopefully it'll be successful and then on saturday we also have an outside dance which again is new everything is new you know have to be outside but that is going to take place in the quad that is all i have excellent thank you hopefully you'll get that computer up and running with your ticket sales and we hope so wish you lots of luck thanks girls if you'd like to leave you're welcome to do so thank you you too thank you all right um we're going to move on to our superintendent's report so dr young you're up evening board everybody who's able to join us tonight a few items for you i had an opportunity to speak at rotary this week they asked me to present give an update to things
026going on in the school district and uh one of the things i talked about and i wanted to mention it tonight is that the thing that came to my mind is milestones that what i was thinking it wasn't that long ago that we were wondering why are we gonna will we come back to full-time instruction what is that going to look like and you know we made that commitment and we had that opportunity to do it so just you remind us and the staff that you know um the huge milestones we're back school is in session and you go out and visit school sites over and over again and they're so delighted to be back and the staff is so delighted to be back so just want us to keep reminding ourselves that that's our
027the big deal is we're back and keeping and keeping that going um we're finishing our six week of school so we're getting into it um we're continuing to manage our case or cobit cases well you know the knock on wood with that very diligent we have a dashboard it's on the website so we have updated data there and so far we have a total of 42 cases since the beginning of the year active right now i think it's 15 active cases so we we update that dashboard regularly a little bit of quick math on that um is we have about 4 300 kids in the district and so the 43 is a less than one percent so thank goodness for that so we're the mitigation strategies that the staff are diligently putting in place we
028think are working so we're happy with that uh also we started the testing service with spectrum testing every friday for staff and students who want to come and get a test i believe we've tested upward of individuals a combination of students and staff over three fridays and so far we've had one one positive case so that's that's also looking uh very very favorable for us we're gonna keep being very diligent with that so with all of that the big milestone school is in session you know life goes on in our school system we've implemented a new student information system called aries it has a very sophisticated um it's been quite an implementation effort part of it is the parent square the new communication tool i think you've seen some things from dr b beatson recently
029so we're continuing with that ms moore talked about the nwa assessment that we have in place that we'll be giving three times a year and all kinds of data we can get out of that and also we talk a lot about the um implement support systems that we've implemented that we put together last year to ameliorate or address any gaps in learning or social emotional development in that time where kids are away so we're on our way and these are all important milestones because you know life just sort of starts rolling by us we've got to remind ourselves of those a couple of other points we're excited about uh it's a parent speaker series that we'll be putting together and dr beatson has provided some really excellent leadership around this and so she sent out
030some information about it today i think those topics are centered on social emotional learning equity and opportunity and college admissions information so these are parent speakers series that you'll be able to participate in also you should have received some information today that eighth grade students and students at both of our high schools received information about a program that we approved last year in the lcap the willie b atkins program and they'll have an information night for parents on uh 29th of this month uh and then the last item i think it was march of last year there was an executive order from the governor brown's office giving more flexibility for school districts regarding how they round uh run their board meetings and that you know you're supposed to follow the brown act which we do
031but because a lot of the meetings they were virtual uh we were given more flexibility so part of that executive order is that school districts transition back and we're already there back to in-person uh board meetings and so with that as we come back to the setting um the one additional change we'll be making uh is that public comment uh will now be in person so folks want to make public comment uh we ask that you come and attend the boarding board meeting and share your thoughts with us so and we'll remind folks about that as well when we get closer to the october seventh right mr messenger because i said seven because i got the wrong closed session so we'll remind folks of that that little minor change okay thank you all right thank
032you we appreciate the input that you just shared um we're going to move on to board reports um john and my colleagues have anything that they would like to share of course um i'd actually just like to say thank you i um i was really struggling at the last board meeting i tend to be an asthmatic and the smoke was really getting to me so i want to say thank you to mike and mike our mikey in the back our amazing tech person he had me on zoom and on youtube it was pretty amazing but i also want to say thank you to my my trusty colleagues and to dr young and your team i mean they had a do a little maneuvering and support so that i could take part in the board meeting
033and i know it was a technological feat and it definitely was nothing to do with my talent but um i truly appreciated that because it allowed me to engage and take part so i just wanted to say thank you to everyone for that um and the only thing i wanted to share was um i the last 10 days or so i've had an opportunity to visit several of our school sites while they're in action and i'm amazed at this the perseverance of these kids and i was brought to different classrooms and talked to different teachers into different students actually and they were so happy i asked them are you happy to be back at school oh my gosh yes we're so happy to be back at school i said even you know we're wearing masks
034right now it doesn't matter we're just really happy to be back at school so i just you know compliment them and their perseverance and and they were so engaged every class i walked into they didn't know i was coming but everyone i walked into the kids were engaged with the teacher or working on a project or and it was quiet it's like you could go in there and not realize there's 30 kids in that classroom it was nice and it was quiet and it was it felt relaxed and it and they're learning and it was it was a great experience so i just want to commend all our teachers our staff or everybody our kids it's parents it's been um a long time and it just overwhelmed my emotions to see it happen so that's
035all i would like to say then we're going to move on to comments from members of the public um okay busd has moved to in-person board meetings we asked the members of the public who wish to attend including those who wish to address the board wear mask at all times for those who do not wish to attend the meeting but would like to submit a comment we have opened the public comment voice line again comments can be submitted between 5 and 7 pm by calling 707-748-2787 one comment per person per item limited to three minutes on the day of the meeting i have two comments that are general comments and then the rest of them are going to be we're going to hear them during 12 another item so the first is andrew miller thank
036you hello everyone i'm andrew miller i'm the parent of two children in benicia school district i'm here today again to urge you to end any diversity equity and inclusion training with epoch and any other group you may be using for these purposes and spend that money on figuring out better ways to teach all of the kids no matter what they look like math science english and history it has come to my attention that the benicia unified school district students have not received better than a 60 in english 54 in math 43 in science over the course of the last six years of testing in these subjects according to the california assessment of student performance in progress website that keeps track of such things there are no such statistics kept for history i would like to
037know specifically what the board is doing to address these poor academic performances by our kids i would like the board to stop any anti-racist training i would like the board to advance a truthful account of history not some anti-american 1619 howard zen nonsense that does nothing more than try to push a political agenda on the kids let's get back to using new schools to teach our kids math science english and history let's educate them not indoctrinate them with failed socialist ideologies i thank you for your time thank you mr miller and our next speaker is rick small board members uh rick small um i am a business owner in town i'm a police chaplain in town and i may help out with the mentor coordinating for the middle school high school and liberty high i've
038been doing it for this my 20th year and i just wanted to come by and make sure everybody knew what was going on with us we're just starting up here at liberty this week it is it is made where every student has a um has a mentor the high school the benicia high in middle school are on a referral basis so if a counselor teacher or parent want their student to be involved they ask for it and then we set them up with a um a mentor perhaps you've seen a commercial on tv lately for our facebook group it it starts off with this young person typing into on their phone it says um feeling lost help and it's um the first time i saw it it was jaw-dropping because and i'm gonna be the
039last person to say that every student in the district is that way but we can't ignore that there's a large group that that are like that they're feeling lost and um not that parents don't do a great job but there are many times when a student needs someone else to talk to you so i just want to make sure that and the mentors are not meant to replace um psychologists or counselors where do they pick up the loan you have you know 1200 students at the middle school in the high school and 60 here you know a handful of counselors and psychs can't help everybody so that's what we're here to do we're here to pick up the load to be um adults who who care whenever i meet with my um my boys first
040thing i say is um i believe your generation has a lot to say i'm just sorry my generation doesn't want to listen but i'm here to listen so um i give all my mentors three pages of kind of some crazy questions to ask icebreakers and then after they get to know the kids for three or four months the last question on there is what do you believe your purpose is in life something to lead them outside the box maybe help them open up to not be afraid to tell them what's going on in their hearts and their minds so i just hope that we continue connect can continue to have the support of the district and uh to make sure that you know we're also involved in the wellness center when they open up both
041the middle school and high school so thank you for your time thank you mr small thank you for um did you say 20 or 25 years did you say you were involved in 20th year so thank you for that appreciate it okay we're going to move on to our next item we do but it's going to be under 12.1 yes you're right we do have several phone calls that came in and again as dr young alluded to earlier this is this is going to be the last time that we accept calls for um public comment uh on the telephone to record so um if you could please play these public comments i would appreciate it are these i'm sorry these are related to what uh these are related these are just general call-ins just general
042oh for ten that's public i have two small children who attend robert temple elementary school i currently hold a co-chair board position titled equity and inclusion in our ptg and i have been an active member in our lcap committee for the past three years i have also served on our rsc site council for two years and i am also an active member of our local venetia black size matter education team as an active parent in this community who has strongly advocated alongside many other passionate community voices for greater equity and opportunity to be an imperative focus and priority within our banisha unified school district i would like to take a moment to acknowledge the work that has been started here within our district to create actual change i especially want to express gratitude to those
043district leaders who are taking initiative to become more transparent in outlining specific actionable steps towards achieving greater equity in our schools so that all of our children can have a safe space to learn and grow in to feel a sense of belonging in to have access to a learning environment and educational materials that are representative of all of the diverse lenses and historical life experiences we carry with us as human beings i want to recognize the intentional work that the district has put in place surrounding equity and opportunity for all of our students and their families such as providing periodic equity updates hiring epic for ongoing equity consultation and support providing ongoing equity professional development training and education for administrators staff members and teachers scheduling facilitated parent community forums prioritizing transparency and communication with the
044school community you serve prioritizing the hiring of more highly qualified staff members from diverse backgrounds adapting new and supplemental curriculum materials and obtaining support from epic with developing a district-wide equity team in order to create real systems change many of us understand that it requires all of us to actively create these safe spaces to keep pushing forward and pushing forward through dialogue and communication pushing forward through learning how to listen to one another as we speak our truth pushing forward in learning how to respect the different lenses we all carry based on our backgrounds cultures and our unique experiences as human beings in this life pushing forward and embracing the different perspectives and historical life experiences we all uniquely hold it also requires elevating voices from our community members who have not been represented and
045who have been consistently underserved and undervalued it is about creating a space a safe and equitable space for all of our children to feel that their voices matter and that their voices will not only be heard but that they will be equally supported and valued in this community i want to express gratitude for the intentional work that dr beason ms brice dr kush dr moss mrs grub and those of you leaders district leaders who have demonstrated that you are dedicated and committed to doing this work and pushing our district forward in creating an equitable learning environment for all of our children to belong in and to succeed in as human beings thank you for beginning this imperative work and thank you for making transparency a priority and how you are communicating the work you are
046doing around equity hello my name is heather graves i am a resident of venetia my grandchildren at indonesia schools and my children graduated from venetia high i wanted to address the ranking of benitia high statewide and nationwide the venetia unified website says venetia schools are top rated in california and that's true venetia is number one in solano county and it's number 360 out of 1500 statewide school districts we do rank in the top 30 percent of california schools the only catch is california education system ranks 41 out of 51 nationally we are in the bottom 20 percent nationwide our reading and math scores are 58 and 5 respectively these are scores for california not nationally and this is unacceptable the epic curriculum along with common core are failing our students venetia students don't need equity
047diversity and inclusion training they need and deserve a solid education in math reading writing and science they need to be taught critical thinking skills not critical race theory if the nishi unified school district spent more hours teaching and less time indoctrinating these test scores could go up 30 points our children the students of venetia deserve the best teachers and an education based on curriculum which will serve them as they become adults making their way through life plea please give them that not a biased watered-down curriculum thank you very much my name is annette balter and i'm calling with an item that is not on the agenda as a public health professional and a parent of a bhs student i'm urging all of you to require covert for students age 12 plus as well as the
048staff in the district i know you've all received my email but i was encouraged to leave a comment there are coded cases in every school in the district right now and we know that a surge is coming this fall and winter just like it did last year except the delta variant is eight times more likely to get an unvaccinated person sick there is precedent in requiring vaccinations to attend public school and i would argue that covet is a higher priority issue than any of the other vaccinations that are required to attend public school right now you don't have to wait for the state to recommend that you take this action the state vaccination rate is doing pretty well we're at 74 percent in california but solano county is only at 64 fully vaccinated and our
049icu capacity right now in the county is at 23 um our positivity rate is also at least double um there's different numbers but it is higher than the state average the pres there's precedent in requiring vaccinations to attend public school in addition our university of california and our california state university systems as well as the largest school district la school district has have taken action to require vaccinations so this is not a radical action we do the right thing to protect the children in our district the staff in our district and the many undocumented unvaccinated members of our community because there are people out there including my neighbors who have covered and who won't be vaccinated until they're forced to so please take action and help to stem the spread of this potentially deadly disease
050and one that will certainly um make our children sick and i urge you to put the community in our kids health first and take action to protect the health and safety of everyone in the district and indonesia thanks so much hello my name is andrew barrett i am the father of two wonderful boys who attend venice unified elementary school and and i also am a teacher at robert temple i am calling tonight to make you aware and hopefully advocate for the vacant steam position over the summer because of uh promotion the uh the music teacher for fourth and fifth graders for elementary science was promoted to middle school and we changed from having a middle sc from having a music teacher to a steam position so somebody was going to be hired to teach all
051five of the steam subjects across four elementary school sites unfortunately that position has not been filled and instead our fourth and fifth graders are either getting a substitute or no teacher at all about half of the lessons so far the 62 teacher at my side was unavailable so teachers filled in and also lost their prep time which of course then adversely affects teachers planning for next week and then when we did have a substitute teacher even though everyone's trying their best the lessons uh sometimes aren't um as good as they possibly could be they often are watching youtube videos or in one instance kids built paper airplanes so i am just strongly hoping and advocating on behalf of all of my students as well as my own children that we can address with absolute urgency
052and proactive approach to either reframe the c position to perhaps create just a standalone pe or music teacher position and also evaluate who do we have in the district right now who could offer these lessons until we hire somebody because i would love to see starting on monday we have a guaranteed hourly place somebody can be in front of these kids who can provide high quality steam inscription because coming off of a pandemic these kids deserve the absolute best i want them to get steam i want them to get tech i want them to get art i want them to get music i just want that to be guaranteed for all of our youth in the fourth fifth grade thank you so much hi my name is christa herrera i am a parent of two
053current busd students and an adult child who attended venetian middle and benicia high i'm coming calling tonight with just a general comment it's not regarding any specific item number i'm calling actually to voice my support and gratitude for our district leadership and our board trustees i know often when people call in these comments it's we're complaining about something we're asking you tough questions or we're telling you something we don't like and we want you to change so i just really feel like we are at a point where i need to call in and express gratitude to um dr beetson and stephanie rice and the team who's been in charge of a lot of the equity work that's happening right now within the districts with doctor to dr gill i want to say thank you to
054her too for your work in that matter and i just want to say how happy i am and encouraged i am to have heard the last presentation on equity at the previous board meeting specifically what you're doing your future plans for curriculum audit your staff professional development trainings through epic for your administrators and all your staff the district-wide equity team that epic will be helping you form the study sessions that your busd trustee board members will be taking part in i know there's already been one but i've heard there's future one i'm excited to hear about the epic facilitated community forums in your speaker series and then i want to give a special thanks to dr gill for everything she updated us on last time about hiring a more diverse staff the recruitment efforts advertising
055efforts with universities and job fairs and advisor networks and her collaboration with organizations such as axa and casa and it sounds like really because of her efforts um benicia is going to be a leader in the state of california in this matter of being intentionable about hiring a diverse staff so i just want to say thank you and express my god my gratitude equity is a really challenging subject to talk about it can be very uncomfortable i know there's been other parents who've called in and said what are we talking about oh my children have attended school here for years and there's never been a problem and we just in kumbaya everything's wonderful but you know i really appreciate that the staff has looked at stats and data and we know that there are certain
056populations who are being underserved and that we've listened to stories from students and parents and not everybody is having that same good experience so i just thank you so much for doing something about it you know equity is an issue or inequity is an issue that we all inherited from prior generations and i give you all my sincere thanks for being the generation of the usd staff who may actually be in a position to do something about it so you have my full support and i just wanted to call and tell you thank you and i hope that you keep keep going and we're behind you thanks so much bye-bye hello my name is natalie marie i'm calling as a parent grandparent alumni of the venetian school district i attended mary farmer venetian middle school
057indonesia high school i am here to affirm as an alumni of three education institutions in the city and as a person of color with my unique perspective in this matter several weeks ago i attended a meeting and in that meeting i heard things that i know to be untrue during my time as a student i was fully educated on all aspects of history both the good and the bad if there were not if it were not for the benicio school system i would not have learned about the trail of tears i would not have learned about harriet tubman in middle school and high school i had several teachers play the well-known movie series roots about slavery in the u.s nor at any point in my education did i feel that if the truth was being
058hidden from me nor was any ugliness hidden from any other student despite the melanin in their skin i'd like to add that this was more than two decades ago so unless things have gone backwards and the school district has changed the way history is being taught then i do not see any truth any statements made about our schools not teaching the quote ugly side of history to any to have any truth to them what i witnessed at that meeting was a very well organized attempt to rebrand critical race theory this is a bad attempt to pull the wool of our eyes to tell us okay wish to teach a watered-down version of crt if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck we all know what it is so let's be real here
059no matter the version this is still crt as others have stated in the past as well as i'm sure this evening there is an issue with our how our children are ranking on other subjects such as math english and science why are we focused on teaching children social issues when that is the job of parents and grandparents as educators your focus must be a matter of educating our children on academics as an alumni parent a grandparent of children who attend and have attended the venetian school system this is great greatly concerns me that there is a focus and unnecessary and potentially dangerous crt program or whatever your new watered-down version name is going to be and not that it's actually educating our children so that we can keep up with the rest of the world
060where are your priorities you would rather children be shamed for the color of their skin and move forward and success in their life and as far as hiring teachers of color by all means that's wonderful thing so long as they're highly qualified to do so and that you are not hiring someone solely based on the color of their skin but on the merit of their qualifications will you now hire teachers simply based on color and not based on how well they can teach our children how is this going to work exactly when you pass someone up if they are more qualified simply because of their skin tone why does that sound familiar there these are very important questions because the quality of education for our children should be top priority not virtual signaling so let's
061keep the focus on what we're here for and that is to educate our children on math science and english and yes history is very important as well the only thing i agree with is i do believe there should be accomplishments mentioned from people of color taught in schools and i'm glad to see that there is more of that happening and i think that should continue that can be done without crt thank you for your time okay thank you for those that called in and for those that got up to speak this evening we definitely appreciate hearing from you moving on to our next item it's our consent calendar all matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the board to be routine and will be approved by the board in one motion there will
062be no discussion on these items unless members of the board staff or public request specific items to be pulled and discussed so at this time i'd like to see if we have a motion to accept the connect consent calendar as written i'll move to approve the consent calendar as presented and i'll second that thank you um roll call vote please yes and then at this time i'm gonna pull out item 11.3 we're um wanting to see if there's anybody here that wanted to talk on that topic 11.3 and it doesn't look like we have anybody that is going to talk um right no so i'm going to bring us back into open session and um we'll go ahead and the resolution number so this is just a roll call a separate roll call this isn't
063the public public hearing one yet it's okay so we don't we don't need to read that separately the numbers we we just need to do the rook on a little point roll call on 11.3 please it's president seda yes trustee varucci yeah and trustee masali yes thank you we're going to move on to item 12 communication and informa informational items 12.1 is a proclamation and re proclamation recognizing national suicide prevention month um we do have some speakers that want to speak sorry i'm losing my voice that want to speak on this item so do we normally have them speak first or after prevents absolutely so um whoever thank you for that so i'd like to welcome miss corona and her one of our newest team members mr gomez to the podium and they'll share some
064information around our work in this area thank you welcome welcome good evening president zeta of fellow trustees dr young and cabinet members thank you for having me once again and um i will be reading today proclamation in recognition of national suicide prevention month and then um mr john michael gomez our new mental health coordinator will give us a list of active activities that are happening that will be happening this month we have on suicide prevention so whereas the benicia unified school district and other local organizations in conjunction with the american association of suicidal suicidology recognized that since 1975 national suicide prevention month awareness events have been held corresponding with world suicide prevention day and whereas suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the united states with a person dying by suicide every 12.8
065minutes and whereas suicide is the second leading cause of death among young ages 15 to 24 and whereas for every reported death by suicide there are approximately 12 documented attempts of self-harm and whereas suicide is preventable and prevention starts with recognizing the warning signs and taking them seriously and whereas the school district city community and grassroots efforts are essential to continue the fight against suicide and the loss of young lives and whereas reducing stigma by discussing suicide and raising the awareness of the warning signs and the resources available for those with suicidal thoughts are essential to continue lowering the rates of suicide of benicia youth now therefore be it resolved that we at venetia unified school district on behalf of the school board do hereby proclaim the month of september 2021 as suicide prevention month
066thank you so much good evening trustees board members community members um like ms corona said my name is john michael gomez i'm the newest of the administrative team here uh the new mental health coordinator and i'm excited to be here part of the school district and part of the community so um like ms corona mentioned these are our upcoming events i'm going to kind of show you two different slides here our short-term events that are talking about suicide awareness and then our long-term events our long-term plans so first up on monday september 20th we are partnering with the kyle highland foundation and teen center who's here today and doing the what we call the chalk for life event along with that we are also having a community resource fair where we have several of our
067community resources available for students we have invited solana pride salon onami the teen center will definitely be part of that solano behavioral health and then our county office of education will also be present at our resource fair we hope to provide students with resources of different mental health services for themselves as well as their families and then our chalk for life event is really a way for students to write messages of hope and so we want to be able to advocate for students but also they got to advocate for themselves and their peers and so that's what our chalk for life is going to focus on so if you look on there we're also doing the same event at venetian middle school and that's going to be on friday on monday we've also been working
068with our middle school counselors very closely and providing different other types of events so at the middle school we have what we call they're doing a self-care day so they will be passing out ribbons of suicide awareness they're going to be doing some madolas and a discussion with miss mahias which is one of our school counselors to talk about coping skills on tuesday at the middle school there is what we are calling healthy activities day and that is again going to be a lunch and so there's going to be some mindfulness activities as well as some different sporting events such as frisbee and basketball on wednesday one of our school counselors is also going to be leading another coping skills activity which is called what helps me when and so this activity is really going
069to focus on providing students encouraging students to use healthy coping skills we're also very excited to start i know this was mentioned tonight but our first parent speaker event which is our parent speaker going to be focusing on um helping parents um understand anxiety symptoms of anxiety symptoms of depression how to help their students transition back to school given our cobid pandemic and what to look for what are some symptoms or what are some signs that we need to watch out for and so with that here's a little bit more information i'll pass up to the board so definitely spread the word register um this is a virtual event so we it's also district wide so we definitely want to encourage parents and community members to attend this then on thursday at the middle school
070we're also having what we call a day of gratitude where we're encouraging parents uh i'm sorry students and staff members to write thank you cards to um different people this is going to tie along to our sources of strength program and as mentioned on friday we're also doing a similar event the chalk for life and the carton partnering with the kylin highland foundation and our providing community resources for at the middle school and so our next slide is kind of talking more about our long term plan and so we actually thank you rex small for talking a little bit about the mentoring program and so that's going to be that has started at liberty high school we also want to do very similar events at liberty high school i know they weren't part of this
071last week but this is kind of a trial run for them too as we move along um i did mention sources of strength we are excited to bring that back in person this year we are partnering with the sources of strength training coordinator and bringing it back believe in late november early december when we will be training our middle school and both of our high school students and staff members and then along with that we're also excited to bring what we call the signs of suicide program so it's also called sos but this is an evidence-based program that gives students more opportunity to talk about suicide and that's something we want to break the stigma if we want to break the stigma mental health and so we hope to do this at the middle school
072in both of the high schools so thank you thank you um could i ask a question um why i'm just curious i know you're new and welcome i'm so pleased to meet you um the sources of strength why are we so delayed in starting that that was their earliest training um that they can do was believe mid-november okay yeah okay thank you i would love to have done it sooner but that was when um that was a soonest date that they had available okay yeah thank you anybody else have any questions no okay thank you very much thank you um so at this time i'm gonna move on to what this is for twelve point one these are for 12.1 12.1 okay [Music] okay so um at this time i'm gonna invite some speakers to
073speak at the podium they have um reached out and filled out a little blue card and so the first step if i could get barbara gervasi to come up thank you good evening dr young and trustees my name is barbara dravazzi and i'm the president of the kyle highland foundation for teen support i lost my 16 year old son kyle to suicide in 2014. kyle was a junior at vhs at the time of his death and i'm sure that you can all imagine just how passionate i am about suicide prevention did you know that in 2019 the suicide death rate in solano county was higher than that of the state and even the nation did you also know that the rate is trending upward this year and is 33 higher than that same period last
074year and for youth in benicia there is a similar concern as many continue to struggle with depression suic and suicidal ideation as indicated by the results of the last california healthy kids survey in 2017 and 18 and that data really does clearly speak to the need for additional mental health services for youth in the district the khf is doing its part to help address suicide prevention by hosting suicide prevention week september 20th to 25th the week includes some on-campus events that john michael gomez spoke to in which we're partnering with the district and we have several virtual presentations of our own where we're partnering with scoe and solano pride and i have distributed that information to you so if you're interested we would really like to get a lot of people to call into those
075we'll also be hosting the khf memorial walk for suicide prevention and a community resource fair on september 25th at 10 a.m at the venetia teen center where we'll walk to the 9th street park for a brief ceremony at 11 am and then return to the teen center for refreshments we will be walking in memory of gabe tromboli the 13 year old eighth grader who was at the benicia middle school prior to his death from suicide in december of 2020 donations will be accepted and will be benefiting sources of strength at the middle school and i invite you all to attend in the six and a half years since i lost kyle the district has made improvements in the level of mental health services but still has a long way to go this is evidenced by
076the fact that the district is somewhat selective about the event that it chooses to help promote specifically the suicide prevention walk which will not be promoted to either students or parents i won't speak to the reasons for for this refusal to collaborate with the khf on this particular event but i will say that there appears to be a sensitivity regarding the fact that this walk is in memory of gabe even now the summary flyer which does not mention gabe will not be promoted as the district has now yet found another reason not to promote that event you also have that summary flyer losing a child to suicide is tragic but this is made worse when organizations attempt to sweep it under the rug it is a well proven fact that talking about suicide does not
077trigger suicide if we as adults cannot be open to talking about suicide how is it that we can expect our youth to feel comfortable and empowered to reach out and act ask for help and not promoting this event with parents also has far-reaching implications as there will be important resources at the walk suicide is a huge problem and it takes a comprehensive and collaborative effort and approach to tackle it not promoting this event with with parents is a missed opportunity to share important information and resources about suicide prevention both of which could save the life of a child i urge the district to reconsider this decision thank you barbara um next is nancy ferguson for your passing okay um aaron is it um carlson you're up next we're all due we're all new at some
078point so hi thank you so much for uh allowing me to speak tonight and um i just wanted to let you know that my son gabriel trumbully was um a student i was gonna hold it together all day he was a student here at finish middle school i can't read it i can't even see it um we've been trying to put together this wall and it's all really her she's been doing everything i'm just grateful that she's even thought about remembering my son who's lost his life to suicide and i'm being told that my son's photograph and his name will trigger other kids and that's why he can't have his name you mentioned when it's promoted to children in the school district why my son mattered he mattered to me and my family you leslie
079beats and you knew him personally we were in your office every week dealing with his behavior and working with him he was part of second step we were doing so many things to try to help him but it wasn't enough and we're trying to help people in this district kids parents i don't want to see a parent do bury their son our daughter this is a post i made this was on january 3rd this was four days after i lost my son i had learned that there was a school there was a kid posting memes and they created a chat in um on instagram i'm not gonna read it but i'm sure you guys can see it and if you don't i'm happy to pass it but he was bullied in his life and in
080his death bring awareness to the situation here she lost her son six and a half years ago and i lost mine six and a half months ago just do something about it help out you have this you're welcome to keep it you're welcome to bring it back it's fun thank you um aaron very sorry for your loss um that's hard to okay um i have see andrew miller hi i'm andrew miller i'm not up here to complain this time um i just wanted to thank you guys for what you started to do and you guys the way you're doing this stuff i've been through a lot of uh problems with this myself and i'm glad to see that there's more being done about it and i just wanted to mainly say that um miss mahes
081has been a godsend and i wanted to give her a shout out uh she's been really great and getting me the help my family the help that we've needed uh through the school and i really appreciate it and i just wanted to let you guys know that thanks thank you um and i we have a final comment uh the jamie l's broth booth i'm sorry prof good evening dr young and trustees my name is jamie olds booth i'm the youth services coordinator at solano pride center i'm also a member of the solano county suicide prevention committee the sue the suicide prevention committee is where i met barb and we started partnering probably right around kobit hit and during that partnership we became involved with several other organizations that were trying to do something for youth
082that were struggling i've been the youth services coordinator at solano pride for seven years and every week i facilitate lgbt youth peer support groups i have kids from all over from dixon benicia oakland and one thing that i can tell you that we were really excited as a group as a community as advocates for youth is that these wellness centers were popping up in our communities and walking angel dr nikki parr had a fantastic idea brought it back began with the help of communities to put these wellness centers into the school that do more than just give safe spaces they do that and that's enough but they triage for multiple multiple things commercially sexual exploitation of children suicide this is in no way a worse to last but food insecurity homelessness these wellness centers if
083opened and running are places where kids can come in like gabe and talk to people without fear knowing they can be themselves and sometimes that's really hard to do especially if you're an lgbt person and especially if you're a person of any other color than white there are cultural differences in this community that are just so great but the problem is the things that aren't unique to our community our suicide and i think if our communities knew what these wellness centers were capable of doing if they knew they would want to help out and i understand this district has some issues opening theirs through covid through staffing i would just urge you please to make that a priority as quickly as possible not just for our youth but for our parents too because we can't
084do it alone i have to stop you oh no you do have a couple seconds left sorry no i'm fine are you sure i'm fine i can go all night okay thank you thank you thank you for those of you that stood up to um share with us about the item suicide um we're going to go ahead and move on to item 12.2 transitional kindergarten new legislation dr beeson would you like to share yes thank you um good evening everyone uh board cabinet members community members i'm excited to share with you uh a new senate bill that's out that hopefully will be new legislation soon um and that is universal transitional kindergarten so this is just some beginning information and we will continue to bring this back as we get more and more information on
085that so what we wanted to do tonight is just to talk about what the senate bill is what does it mean for banishing unified school district and where are we in the planning of that so why universal transitional kindergarten research is showing that 90 of brain growth happens before kindergarten age we know that at certain periods in children's lives they have exponential growth in that period right before kindergarten is one of them currently california has almost three million children under the age of five and only 37 percent are enrolled in transitional kindergarten and the state subsidized preschool programs and so a transitional kindergarten is sort of a bridge between preschool and kindergarten and in california they talk about it as a two-year kindergarten program and so we have and we know the benefit of that
086and we don't have tons of kids in the program now i have to turn to my slide here because i can't read that so what is the new legislation just or the new senate bill what do we know about it now well currently um transitional kindergarten is for children who turn five between september 2nd and december 2nd and that went into effect uh several years ago and so it's only students who turn five in those three months universal pre-can uh pre-k via tk so that's what they're calling it universal preschool but it's going to be done through transitional kindergarten will be for all four-year-olds and that will be phased in with a rolling i think they're talking about two months each year starting next year through the 25-26 school year and so we needed to
087really get our our brains around what does that mean for us it's an excellent opportunity for our youth but it does have some major impacts one of the things that the senate bill does say is that parents can continue to choose to come to tk as that month opens for their four-year-old or they can continue to choose a different preschool or child care program it's not mandatory like first grade is what kind of curriculum will we use um well it is really a two-year kindergarten program it will have standards based but there's also a really big component that is child-centered developmentally appropriate and uh really about play-based learning a lot of that social emotional learning social skills social interaction and there's a combination of resources that will be the underpinnings of the program so there's
088california preschool learning foundations preschool curriculum and frameworks and then there's kindergarten common core standards and so the tk program pulls from all of them um there will be some grant opportunities to help uh launch these because there there may be some new facility needs and other kinds of things across the state that need to happen and then staffing has really changed what they're talking about for staffing for tk will be for the 22 23 school year one adult for every 12 children so it might look like a teacher and an aide in the classroom perhaps and then growing to one adult for every 10 children by the 23 24 school year that's what's in the the senate bill right now and what the staffing needs is not only a credential but they also need 24
089units of early childhood so it's not just a multiple subjects credential but there are extra certifications that these staff need and then i did link the senate bill there for you if you're interested in learning more information um i really liked this quote as i was doing some research is this there's no such thing as just play in the tk classroom play is where the learning happens and so it's really thinking about how do we use those opportunities to teach kids how to interact and we heard miss moore talk a little bit about some of that this morning too but thinking back down to four-year-olds and what does that look like another really interesting piece of information i found as i was researching this is that research shows that children who attend preschool are more
090likely to take honors classes and less likely to repeat a grade and so if one of the great things about a universal tk in a school system is that we can really work on vertical alignment right if we get the students early we can really build in a lot of language activities we've talked about that with the benicia reads program and reading by grade three so it is a great opportunity to do some some vertical alignment and so then what does this mean for busd so um currently in the la in the middle column we have three transitional kindergartens in our school district uh we have because remember transitional kindergarten is only for students who turn five in those couple of months so we have those are our current numbers or as of when i
091put this slide together we have 18 students at matthew turner and 23 at robert semple and joe henderson um the right hand column is a projected enrollment so once we're fully uh universal and so that all four-year-olds um come to us it's really another grade level and currently we have about 75 to 80 students per grade level and so that would be the difference and you can see that's going to have some major impact on our schools on our teaching staff and all of that so i just wanted to kind of you know think at the end of the 25 26 school years we're rolling out a full tk program for all four-year-olds we will have many more students in our district so then what is our plan uh mr rahel and i met with
092uh roxanne egan our bond director to just have starting the conversation so what will be just the physical plant impact and next week we're going to do some walk-throughs at our sites to say what do we have thinking all the way out to the 25-26 school year and then backing that up um so we're looking at facilities what is the impact on playgrounds furniture um curriculum well i've got curriculum on there curriculum and instruction and staffing so we're starting to have those conversations now so that we're ready when this goes into full um implementation in a couple of years and that's what i have for you today thank you dr beats and i look forward to hearing um hearing reports in the future like are we going to be impacted with the facilities and to
093see what roxanne egan you know what her options are for us because those are all pertinent um pertinent points so but thank you for that anybody else yeah yeah so i assume the funding will be standard ada when when the kids get in more more information to come on that because of uh the the lower class size and the adult-to-student ratio there was a comment that uh those type of rules would would go along with the program if the state has funding to provide for that so in mo and yeah because that's yeah that would probably be like a a certificated teacher plus a classified instructional assistant i mean there's funding backing this they're not just implementing and expecting us to find the funding ourselves that is that is the proposal at the moment yes
094and a lot of details to be worked out but okay because you can't just come up you know say hey do all this and we're not going to give you any money for it that's crazy oh yeah unfunded mandates yeah i have one more question too is um looking at the numbers currently benicia also runs a very robust preschool program so clearly some of those children that are now in the preschool and projected to be coming up in the preschool are going to be moved over to this universal transitional kindergarten yes which means so yes we are also in conversation with miss regis who is the director of our early childhood preschool and adult ed program and talking about what is going to be the impact there because currently we do have a preschool program
095that serves three and four-year-olds um looking at will we go to two and three-year-olds as we scoop up the four-year-olds into the um tk program and so we are absolutely having those conversations and there's a lot of conversation just about making sure that we are communicating with um our preschools in the district because it is a partnership and we know that preschool and pre-k tk is so important and so that we want to make sure that parents have all that so to dovetail on that then will parents have a choice i can go with stay with preschool or do they have to go universal tk do you mean a busd preschool yes we have not gotten to that level of detail at this moment but and then the reality is as we reduce our preschool
096enrollment there are going to be those instructors that are schooled in child development so there will be there will be an overlap with employment as well as i see there could be and i mean one of the conversations that we're having with ms regis is would she take on two-year-olds so would she still have the same hopefully number of students just scoop lower and i'm not sure um about credentialing they would have the early childhood but i think for tk because it becomes part of the tk12 program they might need to have a multiple subject certificated credential as well and so those are some details that we're still waiting to hear about details to follow [Laughter] okay thank you yeah i just i was reading this and i'm like okay we have this very solid
097program now what's going to be the implication thank you dr pizza and good questions um we look forward to hearing more more and more and more information about this um we're going to now move on to item number 13 and we move on to 13.1 which is a public hearing for resolution number 21-22-04 regarding sufficiency or insufficiency of instructional materials at this point i need to close the board meeting for a moment and we are going to see if there's any public comment on this particular item i have not received anything you get open and public hearing this is the first time i've done this okay okay um open public hearing are there any people that would like to discuss on this okay so then i can close the public oh i'm sorry that's quite
098of course dr beatson um so this is a yearly um uh standing item that we need to do every year which is to declare that we have provided the necessary textbooks and instructional materials to support this course of instruction that includes several steps reaching out to our sites to find out what materials they need ordering them receiving them distributing them back out in addition to that is posting the williams act in the classrooms and verifying that they are posted in every classroom all that has been done the one exception this year is because of covid lots of things are on backorder so we start our ordering in july when the pos open we have a few uh sets of um math books because we expanded our classroom uh teachers at the elementary school this year
099and so we have some math books that we're still waiting on they're supposed to be here tomorrow or monday but the orders did go in we had almost everything here but we are waiting on a few things that were back order okay thank you any questions anyway i'm gonna um close the public and then open the board open the board meeting i'm sorry okay so um at this time at this time um we'd like to um do i have a motion on the floor to accept there's public hearing resolution 20 to approve the resolution number 21 2204 and i will show you that thank you president trustee yes you trust me yes okay now we're staying in this we're not moving okay all right um the next item is 13.2 consideration and approval of the
1002020-2021 unaudited actuals financial report with the 2021-2022 budget for the venetian unified school district and mr ray hill yes good evening we have this item uh for your action tonight to approve the 2020-21 unaudited actual financial report along with the updated uh 2122 budget uh this comes to you um every year after we close the books and it does include the information from the state adopted budget and our current information on enrollment which unfortunately when we opened school in august we did have another uh downturn a decrease in our projection for the the enrollments at our schools and so we'll go through a couple numbers and just a couple couple slides here um at the end of the day after we use that information um our are unaudited actuals and our budget report does provide
101for the state's three percent reserve for economic uncertainties as well as the additional board policy reserve which is about uh a four percent addition so it uh this this report comes with a positive certification for our 2021 unaudited actuals and our 2122 budget and so um i'll go through uh some of the slides included in the board packet tonight which you see each time we do our financial reporting uh this first slide attempts to provide all of the key fiscal factors that you look at um when you put a school budget together there's columns uh there's five columns uh which represent uh the unaudited actual the prior year 2000 2021 the current budget year 2020 1 22 and then a few years out in the future just to kind of see how our project projections
102look out there up at the top we start with our known salary related costs including our salary schedules our step and column uh and our retirement systems those systems continue to charge us a little bit more each year um as well as in the current budget year our unemployment rate went up somewhat related to the covid pandemic and all of the unemployment that occurred along with that we did see a positive change for our workers compensation in the 2122 school year so we take those into account into our current budget and into the outer years uh in the middle section there number two we look at other revenues and the big thing right now are the one-time federal and state coveted related funds so the feds and the state has stepped up to provide us
103some one-time funds which uh dr beatson has partnered with all of our school groups parent groups to put our el cap together which includes um not only the lcff funds but those covid funds as well for the 2122 year dr beatson will be um has already started the process about uh putting plans together for those um one-time funds for in that are listed there in the 22-23 year so those will be coming back to you probably uh sooner rather than later the next big thing is we get most of our money based on our students attending school and so not just not just by enrolling in school but by attending and due to the covet pandemic this year uh they held us harmless so they're not going to take money away from us for our
104decline in enrollment and related attendance uh but that kicks back into gear in 22-23 so we're watching that really closely in that third section um you can kind of uh scan your eyes across the columns and you can see a bunch of negatives there on that first line how student is enrollment is declining and this 2122 year it's it's it's a big one at 156 students less and that's what we have on the books right now so there was a a significant uh lower than expected number at the kindergarten level and so now that we have about a month of school uh we're going to be diving into some more detail with the principles and and figuring out um you know you know exactly what might have happened or if uh benicio like the rest
105of the state of california we are declining and this was one of those years where it really hit us so we're monitoring that close closely um and um using those those projections for now and as the months go on and and you know we open up in the future we obviously update the enrollment for each financial report um a quick note is that we do get a little bit of a bump for our student population in that unduplicated count for english learners and foster youth and those enrolled in our brain reduced meal program so that's about 25 as our enrollment changes we take a look at our uh staffing um this this is really more of the ongoing staffing in the 2122 year uh it's important to take note that we've used uh some of
106those coveted one-time funds to ad staff um we decided we made a decision to not have combination classes because of the coven pandemic so that was about the addition of about five teachers there's additional sections at the middle in high school um probably you know about between three and four teachers there um and some additional um support staff throughout the district so and to lower class sizes at yes so uh we you know this is september we just started so we are going to be continuing to talk to you about how those programs are working out how uh you know the future one-time funds might continue some of those programs and if we need to adjust any existing ones that we're doing right now we'll we won't wait um until uh until the later part
107of the school year we'll be keeping you guys updated throughout the whole year so and then in down in number five um the state of california when they give this the school districts in california their funds they they uh look and to apply a cost of living adjustment to those funds and um unlike uh 10 10 years ago or when we had the great recession um we were all afraid when covid came that we would have another type of great recession in california but it really didn't happen uh financially at least at a at the state level and the fundings provided to the agencies and so um those cost of living adjustments um after um the prior year 2020-21 um that uh the funding cola was zero percent uh but then the state adjusted its
108number in the current 2122 year and outer uh to give us just over five percent this year and then it's floats between two and three percent after that again those outer years will change um as the months go on and the very last line shows you the change in funding uh that is being provided to us uh based on those enrollment changes up above from the state of california and uh of note in the 2223 year it's a 1.5 negative right now because of that big uh enrollment decrim decline that's going to hit us next year so we'll continue to monitor that closely um i'll just go through a couple uh pie charts or the the next one is just um a a reminder of our retirement pension costs for for our employees based and
109how those programs are requiring us to deposit some additional amounts into them so we're tracking that closely and we go to um the next chart which is a pie chart for our revenues uh at 52.9 million dollars and that biggest blue section there is our local control funding formula that's the funds that uh the state of california gives to school districts based on student attendance uh so that is uh 77 and then the supplemental bump is about another four percent of our revenues along with some for us some other state and other federal revenues as we then compare those revenues to our expenditures um our expenditures are budgeted at 54.1 million dollars and the reason that they are more than our revenues is because uh we have some carryovers from the prior year that get
110uh spent in the current year and so when we actually spend them that's how we report those out and so as we look at those total expenditures with carryovers the majority of our of our expenditures is spent on our salaries and benefits for the folks that we hired to provide the the services um at the end of the day on the last pie chart here which kind of summarizes it up it shows that our district has a projected fund balance of the 13.9 which provides for the required reserves as well as carryovers and for our one-time funds and our restricted restricted programs i think with that um the rest of the um information we can go through it but it's in your packet it talks about um basically you know the monitoring the enrollment into
111the future uh reasons why districts can maintain the reserve and then the last piece in this in this one does have the historical um operations and uh fund balance back to um so i can go ahead to the powerpoint and just talk through a couple highlights uh and some next steps and we basically i mentioned earlier the first one if it can get blown up there it just lets us know that we do have a positive financial certification based on our state adopted budget using that local control funding formula and on the next page there also uh maintaining that three percent reserve uh in the in the board packet on the next slide uh we are just reminded that uh we get most of our money from the local control funding formula uh it's it's
112about nine thousand or it is nine thousand six hundred and seventeen dollars per kid per student including uh that base grant plus a twenty percent increase or the a supplemental piece and in in conclusion um our next steps are once uh the school board approves this uh tonight we file this with our solano county office of education in the california department of ed um and then we hand it on over to our external financial auditors who are already scheduled to come out and complete their financial audit of these records uh in october they put their audit report together and present that audit report to you in december thank you mr ray hill you will hear all those lovely numbers colorful numbers um does anybody have any questions i just want to say thank you for
113explaining the staffing i um i actually sent that question to to tim today because i thought it doesn't match what we're saying with the enrollment and i thought it's just really important when we keep educating and explaining to people what's going what's going on so so thanks for throwing that in i appreciate that so and thanks for the dance you do to keep us let's get overwhelming all right so um at this time do i have a motion for 13.2 i like to move to approve our budget um the unaudited actual financial report as presented tonight i'd like to second that thank you i can get a roll call vote please presidency that yes trustee ferrucci yes trustee masali yes thank you next item is 13.3 consideration and approval of a new job description for
114assistant director of health dr gill good evening board president trustees dr young and cabinet community members so as we know that since march 2020 we have been dealing with covet and lots of other things um all the duties and everything that has come our wonderful only nurse in the district which is pretty amazing how she does this job by herself being the only nurse for for 4 300 plus students and she has been actually doing this amazing job i mean without complaining ever without is this amazing but we do know that uh we have been asking that how to do a lot more work than she is typically uh is in her job description uh not only for covert only and for other things as well we also have noticed that she is only scheduled
115to work 205 days but we typically contact her over the summer so she ends up working more days anyway so our quest is to change her job and job description to an assistant director from coordinator b and obviously that will also impact the number of days and her salary as well which is attached to this board agenda to allow her to continue doing the work she is doing and also doing the additional duties that needs to be fulfilled thank you long overdue um she's been an amazing asset to our district thank you um thank you and so i'm i am happy this came up and that we're able to vote on this um does anybody have any questions no i didn't think so i did not think so okay so then do i have a
116motion on the floor please okay i moved to approve the new job description for assistant director of health services as presented i will second that motion and if we could get a roll call vote please yes yes and trustee yes yay oh my gosh thank you so much you are very welcome thank you our pleasure um and at this time we have reached the end of our um agenda and i want to thank everybody for being here or being out there watching um we do appreciate your input and take everything to heart and what you do share with us and just stay well and have a great next few weeks till we see you bye now and i'm calling you