BUSD Board Meeting 9/2/2021

001okay i'd like to welcome everybody to tonight's board meeting of venetian unified school district um the governing board it's um september 2nd if you can believe that and it is now 7 08 p.m um i'm bringing us back from closed session into open session and at this point we have nothing to report out um from closed session i just wanted to share a reminder with everybody that anybody that's in attendance in-house has to have their masks on completely covering their nose and their mouth at all times um because this is something that is not just a benicia all of benicia when you're indoors but also a state mandate that we're kind of dealing with right now so we're going to request that you keep your masks on above your nose and covering your mouth at

002all times thank you for that so the next item on the agenda is going to be um the meeting is recorded for live streaming and archiving on the district youtube channel for your convenience so welcome to everybody out there streaming us live we're going to move on to the pledge of allegiance and at this time i'm going to have you all stand i pledge 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 thank you can be seated item number seven approval of the agenda do i have a motion for approving the agenda as written i'll make a motion that we approve the agendas thank you do i have a second thank you hearing no negatives there we're moving on

003to the next oh roll call call sorry president seda yes christie moss yes trustee um for richie yes and trustee groves thank you um next is our reports and i'm really happy to see two of our students from venetia high school here um who are going to give us the first updates in person at the the meeting so um we haven't seen students for a long time in real life so it's really nice um i will let's see ali balon is it ballinger okay um what what position do you hold at the high school president you can pull this closer to you asb president okay i'm going to introduce you then ali ballinger first if you'd like to share some of the fun stuff going on i'll go over our old business and then i'll

004have marie go over what is going to happen in the upcoming month on august 11th we had a new student orientation where we welcomed a bunch of students into our school gave them tours and kind of what every new student needed to know about our campus as well as that day we followed it with a back to school bash which allowed students to tour their classes and just kind of get to go back on campus and see what it was like and the previous week we had our first welcome back spirit week it was the 23rd through the 27th we had monday being pajama day tuesday we had picture day wednesday we had a western wednesday thursday was beach day and friday was blue and gold and we had our student section and it was

005really cool awesome that sounds like a lot of fun so i'm glad you guys are back at at school on campus and i'm sure you all missed it so all the excitement's ahead so go ahead and share with us your marie marcus yes i'm marie marcus the asb vice president thank you for being here thank you for having me okay so today is we're having our what would be our back-to-school night but all the videos are online all the teachers made videos but tomorrow is our minimum day which we will also have senior sunrise in the morning so oh yeah for all the seniors that might be watching this at home be at the high school at the field at 6 20. um and then september 10th is the club fair where all the clubs

006are gonna try to get more sign ups and really get the student body involved in clubs and then september 14th we have our blood drive so we are currently taking sign ups for that right now that's that's wonderful um yeah students getting up to be at school at what 6 20 tomorrow oh boy oh wish you guys all luck i won't be there but have a really good time thanks for both being here i really appreciate it it's nice to meet you and you're welcome to leave um always after your reports we say it's okay to leave if you would like if you want to stay you can but in case you have homework and other stuff that you want to do you can scoot out okay thanks okay um next i am going to

007introduce dr young for the superintendent's report thanks so good evening board um team and uh folks that have joined us tonight just a few comments from your superintendent so we're finishing the third week of school uh and you know continuing to live in this different environment with uh kobet uh but um i believe strongly and i've watched it happen that we continue to respond and to adapt and to support one another and the kids and staff and parents and hopefully communicate clearly around all of this as we move forward and try really hard to keep our kids safe and in school we continue to enhance and adapt our practices a few of them include we've added a weekly testing availability for students and staff we're very happy to be able to do that we added

008a coded dashboard so folks can have an opportunity that's on the website i sent out a communication to the public on that to get a sense of what those numbers are looking like um we another thing is interesting to note we modified the lunch it's kind of a detailed point but i think it's important one at the elementary school um just to sort of lessen the amount of groups that kids are out moving in any period period during the day so we group k one two three four five and we flip their play time and their eating time why do i say that just as a modification and adaptation that we're engaged in to keep making sure that we're providing a safe environment for everybody another thing that we did is i want to thank

009mr romero and um his department uh facilities where we purchased i think they bought every single picnic table at the hardware stores in the greater area for the elementary schools because we bought them and brought them in and painted them and we have them outside so the kids are able to sit under these tents outside so it's just you know more air blowing around for the kids so we're happy to have done that and um we've had an opportunity i have certainly and the staff you know visit school sites and it's great seeing kids back in school it's great seeing teachers teaching and you and it feels like you know obvious school's in session and kids are listening to staff and they're wearing their masks and they're doing the things that they need to do

010so i just wanted to point that out that it feels in many many ways very good like we're getting you know some degree of normalcy back for all of us one of the things that we're noticing in our work with our own cases in the data and it reflects that data nationally i believe is that it doesn't appear that coveted is spreading in our schools that the cases that are coming up individuals are getting it outside of school so that's something we'll we'll continue to monitor um we want to give a big thank you to all staff in the district man i am so proud of everybody that works in this district there's so and i guess every superintendent would say that i don't mean to sound good but i mean it sincerely i mean

011it's so dedicated to our students and really getting after and being present to them so thank you to all staff genuinely and um thank you to all of our families for participating with us as we come together we have to keep thinking about that as one big benicia community on behalf of our kids right because that's the only reason we're here as a school district to serve our students so thank you as a reminder by october 15th as per the i guess we'll see the governor's office that all staff that work in public education will need to be vaccinated and show proof of that or be tested i think it's once once a week so we'll be monitoring that and give you guys an update as we go forward last thing i'd like to point

012out is i want to thank first five solano this is a wonderful group that supports students and um from zero to five years old around literacy and they gave us these beautiful books a nice little collection i think it's for tk tk and kindergarten every tk and kindergarten student in the district and first five is wonderful if you don't know about if you get a chance to google them just to focus on literacy it's wonderful and uh you know obviously we have that goal and the district that we have on lost sight of which is all kids are reading at or above grade level at least by the third grade so we're very thankful for that and um that's it looking forward to tonight's agenda so thank you thank you all thanks dr young you're

013welcome um that's going to move us into board reports and i'm going to start that one off i haven't shared this at any meeting but i want to let you all know that there was an attempt to recall two board members myself and mark macelli and fortunately it only got 177 votes or 179 signatures out of the necessary near 4 000 and it did not um pass so it can't go forward to the um to that and so i just i'm pleased to tell everybody that we're still here and we're still gonna do the job that we've been doing and um that's that's it um secondly i was going to um tell you dr beatson not tell you to share with you that i am just so amazed and proud of how much work you

014are putting in in contacting with the contact tracing and and terry dean as well but the contact um tracing letting parents know when there's been a case um you've been really good about that and i so appreciate it because we're getting notified as well and while it's unfortunate that we have these things pop up um we're hoping that by doing what we're doing and how we're doing it that we're giving everybody a opportunity to handle it the best way they can for their own families so i want to thank you yeah it is a team everybody everybody so um next um nothing do you have anything to share okay well that's easy then you have a moment oh diane diane i thought you were there and we'll see if this works if not i'll just

015stay quiet i just wanted to take the opportunity to thank everybody um for the amazing work on our sites i had the privilege of walking the schools on the first day of school um to see staff there excited and happy to be there and especially to see our children laughing and filling the hallways it was it was an amazing feeling to see our schools which have sat empty for so long to be brimming with children this time it was really a wonderful wonderful day and i really appreciated being able to share on behalf of the board so thank you thank you diane yeah i'm hoping to set up time next week to go with you dr young all right um next item on the agenda is um let me see comments from members of the

016public usd has moved to in-person board meetings we ask that members of the public who wish to attend including those who wish to address the board wear a mask at all times for those who do not wish to attend the meeting but would like to submit a public comment we have opened the public comment voicemail line again comments can be submitted between five o'clock and seven o'clock pm by calling 707-748-2787 one comment per person per item is limited to three minutes per person um on the day of the meeting those in person are asked to fill out a speaker card available at the back table noting the item they wish to speak to please submit speaker cards to the board's secretary then the board president will call open session public comments not on the agenda

017during the public comment item the comments for the the comments for items on the agenda will be called during the specific item comments are limited to no more than three minutes per speaker or the board may the board may limit the total time to 20 minutes per item by law no action may be taken on any item raised during the public comment periods and matters that may be referred to to staff for placement on a future agenda of the governing board please be reminded to keep your comments respectful as students may be watching the board meeting thank you so i have two public comments are we gonna do the the recorded ones first are we gonna do the in-person ones first okay we can do that so the first person i'm gonna call up is

018kenneth bowman hi oh hi i know who you are so um i'm kenneth bowman just want to make a comment um contrary to what you actually said dr young there's uh schools closed in 19 states right now so you can take a look at school closing tracker and that will give you all of the schools closed in all of those states and it's not just one per state in our own school my son is very good with math so he was coming home the first week hey we have a couple out then it went to five out well now today he has eight out in his class and i've got notification for not only his class but my daughter's class so i was very disappointed that the virtual learning didn't take place as an option

019this year um the independent study really wasn't anything close to what the virtual was the teachers did a fabulous job last year it was very difficult to just take that on and do what they did and i was very pleased with what they did and i wish it was an option this year i actually am high risk for catching covid and it wouldn't be good for my health for some health issues that i have so let me see anything else there so i think that pretty much states it all but i hope that you guys come up with a plan that we can get to virtual because if you think there are no schools closed please take a look at that site that i mentioned and they are and even in california in antelope the

020school district is closed because of cases in their district as well i think it's very critical our kids like mine can't get a vaccine right now so if there was a virtual option i wish they were at home with me because i love them and i don't want to see anything bad to happen to any of our kids so thank you thank you so much um our next person is heather graves my name is heather graves actually it was for one of the agenda items but i'm happy to go right now thank you i have lived in benicia for 40 years my children are graduates of benicia high and my grandchildren currently attend benicia schools i am concerned about the direction of my grandchildren's epoch curriculum whatever the current incarnation is critical race theory crt

021or diversity equity and inclusion it is a vengeance-based rebranding of marxism equity and inclusion martin luther king jr urged us not to judge others by the color of their skin but by the content of their character america is about equal opportunity and justice under the law not group equity equal opportunity is not the same as equal outcome critical race theory or diversity equity inclusion curriculum is in itself racist and divisive the principle of merit-based achievement is rejected in favor of group outcomes crt and dei give rise to hate and blame instead of respect and support crt and dei denies upward mobility the idea that hard work and equal protection result in success is rejected if you believe in critical race theory you believe your skin color defines your ability to succeed or causes you to

022fail crt or at box diversity equity inclusion immorally pushes intergenerational guilt it intentionally makes children responsible for their ancestors actions is a newly born german baby expected to pay for hitler's atrocities crt or dei empowers elites to persecute when an elite group picks a scapegoat and blames him for their social ills mass persecutions ensue that is not america but that is where critical race theory leads critical race theory and epoch's diversity equity inclusion curriculum are marxist racism they push resentment blame guilt fear silence and compliance americans unite because of their values not because of their skin color whatever its current incarnation critical race theory being taught in our schools will only bring divisiveness and hostility to our wonderful city your job is to protect our children when they are out of our care and to

023provide an education which prepares them for life to that end what you as a school board need to do is provide our children with exceptional teachers in math reading writing science history and critical thinking stop indoctrinating our children they go to school for an education not indoctrination teach them critical thinking not critical race theory stop wasting their few hours in school teaching them marxism disguised as equity finding ways to slip it into every subject teach them to think independently and critically stop telling them how to think and feel please don't force us to take our children and our grandchildren out of the benicia schools thank you miss graves um and at this time um i'm going to ask that we play our calls that we've received and are recorded hello my name is nasa christian

024um i am the mother of a tk student within the venetian school district i'm the donation resident as well and i'm calling tonight to speak very briefly on the topic of the equity-based curriculum which is agenda but i'm also going to speak on masking and so i think it's probably best that this comment is played during the general comment section if that's okay with you but first on the topic of the curriculum i just want to be sure that tonight you hear my call as well as the calls of others for an equity audit task force to be created and that that task force be composed of diverse people including educators parents and more i would argue that the creation of such a task force is absolutely essential to the success of any program you

025move forward on and i really do urge you tonight to focus on that as a key aspect of your discussion later on onto the topic of masks i'd like to first think the majority of the usd board here tonight for their continued compliance and support of the state requirements mandating the use of masks indoors here indonesia and in our schools as well it's pretty clear the preponderance of evidence is in many studies have proven that math wearing does effectively reduce the transmission of covid but i kind of think that's not really what we want to focus on people are focusing more on the mental and emotional effects on kids wearing masks at school and i want to share something that really helped me and i hope it kind of relieves some others as well from

026the cdc quote historically epidemics are a time of fear confusion and helplessness math squaring and even mass making or distribution can provide feelings of empowerment and self-efficacy such as the form of public good and not everyone else's health behaviors improve the whole laws of everyone else this can make masks symbols of altruism and solidarity and quote letting that sink in for a second so not only does masculine reduce the transmission of coca to disease that is definitively killed more than 61 000 americans masculine can also instill in us and in our kids too the values of altruism solidarity and even empower them during this time of fear confusion and helplessness i do believe that the majority of the community does support masking in schools i would say that the city council mandate enacted last week

027supports that conclusion i would also say that they failed attempted a recall targeting two board members here tonight who you know tried to keep kids safe i would say that the failed attempts also suggest that the majority of the community is in support of these band-aids and i really hope that you listen to the majority of the community when we ask you to protect the health of our students and community our kids as well as um for instilling in our kids the values of altruism solidarity and empowerment during what has definitely been a tumultuous time i hope you've helped some people here tonight it certainly helped me thank you all hi um my name is joy lerner i'm a benicia resident and i have two grandchildren in the venetian unified school district this is in

028response to having advocating for a full-time mental health support staff in middle and upper school i do not feel we need any police presence but we do need people to help our children who are having a difficult year and have problems that need to be solved but not by the police thank you this is nimac shakur grantham i'm a resident of benicia and i'm speaking in the public comment section i guess that's item nine i am in support of a of a mandatory uh rule for all students and teachers all staff anybody and everybody in the venetian unified school district to wear masks i do not understand or know why any logical adult would protest against having masked their child wearing masks in the schools in that the delta variant is most prominent and most

029contagious with children and lately two teachers have even passed away from it so i urge you the board of the school board to make it mandatory that all students staff and anybody uh working for or attending uh benicio unified school district to wear math make it mandatory this is namat shakur grantham and i am calling on i'm a president of benicia and i'm calling on item 11.3 which is the equity update i strongly urge the school board to allow for and make it mandatory that the true history not crt but the true history is taught to all students of benicia unified school district from k-12 that the true history of people of color are taught is taught and that um you know if if if white history is good enough to be taught in the

030school district for uh children of color and they didn't fall apart and get all damaged by it then the true history of people of color is it's good enough for a white students in all students to learn about without them being damaged thank you hi my name is andrew miller and i'm the parent of two students in the venetian unified school district i'm sorry i couldn't be there with you in person tonight one of my kids has a covet and i'm stuck on the quarantine with her helping her out but anyway i was glad to hear at the last meeting that no one who spoke or called in is in favor of critical race theory being taught in our school but i think that it may be necessary for me to clarify what i mean

031by critical waster when i mentioned crt i am not referring to what students were taught in law school in response to the idea that the united states had become a colorblind society where racial inequality and discrimination was no longer in effect i'm talking about what it has morphed into currently i'm talking about diversity equity and inclusion anti-racism training culturally responsive teaching and a host of other names that it goes by now i believe that you are blind to the fact that you are creating more problems that you are solving with these socialist marxist views for teaching and i would implore you again to end your relationship with epoch nicole anderson consulting and any other dei group and turn your focus to treating all of the kids as individual human beings regardless of their race or

032any other immutable characteristics and focus on teaching them math science english and history thank you for your time my name is jesse mueller and i'm a resident of venetia i'm interested in following up on important priorities for equity in our school district including a curriculum historically accurate and full of diverse perspectives the racial gap between educators and students in busc and providing required staff anti-racist training it is important that the board is accountable by providing equity updates and pursuing a truly representative equity audit task force however the current situation with regards to covet in our schools requires that to be my main focus tonight my two children were home for almost all of last year and are now able to attend school which is a blessing beyond word we send our kids to school so

033they can experience their incredible teachers in person and interact with their peers to engage socially since school started some of my children's friends have contracted covis my children are concerned for their friends and curious about how masks keep them safe and when they might be able to get a vaccine to protect themselves they wear masks all day at school and it doesn't even phase them because they get it they understand that this is the price we pay in order to participate in the group activities that are so important and that that is a small price indeed i'm now hearing that we have a local movement against masculinity and it boggles my mind and makes me angry wearing a mask is such a small effort to keep others safe and making not wearing one into an

034issue of freedom in an act of selfish ignorance are you concerned about someone not being able to see your smile then go out of your way to say a kind word from behind your mask but don't try to endanger my children at school to satisfy your misguided notions of liberty my children are at school right now because of the heroic efforts of our educators working tirelessly in an insane situation and environment they deserve our school board and city administrators supporting them with sound science-based policies like mass mandate and eventually requirement of fda-approved vaccination for covid like we have for historical illnesses thank you for your time my name is james lukens my comment does not pertain to any items on the agenda i am the father of two students attending matthew turner elementary and its

035preschool during the public comment period at the last school board meeting i was troubled to learn that employees such as those with the child development unit food services and janitorial services were exempted from salary incentives for the 2021 summer session these groups were the first responders for our children and your students in the summer of 2020 after the initial coven 19 lockdowns the cdu put together a child care program that showed children could successfully attend school with appropriate social distancing measures and masking requirements the custodians were on board with extra sanitation service food services prepared and handed out free breakfast and lunches to all students that requested one all of these actions occurred with no reasonable treatments for covet 19 and at great personal risk to those involved when in-person learning commenced in the latter

036portion of 2021 each of these groups were given even more responsibilities and roles to fulfill these groups deserve to be recognized while my comments are not actionable i encourage the board members to compensate these group members in some way for their actions and dedication to the students thank you hi my name is sean henderson i'm speaking to agenda item 11.3 the equity update i'm the parent of a middle schooler and a venetian graduate and i believe in busd's organizational tenants and the lcap goals the desired characteristics of the phoenician graduate align with my hopes for my children and every child to be educated in our schools i am with you but i'd like to know more about how we are going to get there from my position as a parent to relying on data like

037frankly the abysmal test score gaps my own experiences and hearing about things ranging from cultural insensitivity to outright racism in our schools i feel like we have a long way to go and as much as i like a lot of what i read in equity update presentation i believe we are moving way too slowly first we need a more inclusive culture every single day district policies administrative decisions curriculum choices and relationships with teachers significantly impact my son's future the level of trust i give to busd educators is enormous i believe this needs to be matched by much more transparency and outreach to parents i want to see parent engagement invited in a way in which more parents feel comfortable sharing frankly board meetings and even african-american parent advisory group meetings do not accomplish this how

038about regular open forums at each school inviting parents to ask questions and share feedback how about online portals for suggestions especially from students who need a safe space to share i'm sure you'd actually hear a lot of encouraging words about what's working but you also need to be open to hearing honest feelings of frustration and disappointment without defensiveness information about things like the diversity of staff disciplinary data and specific efforts to meet district equity goals should be displayed proudly on the school website along with facts like homework policies teachers should be sharing their philosophies of education how are they specifically meeting the challenges of busd's tenants what are their proactive efforts to achieve equity in their classrooms i know that the role of teacher is one of the most important and most challenging positions in

039the world they need support and if we really want graduates to be prepared for the 21st century and teachers must be trained themselves epic program is a great start but for it to produce any real steps forward it needs to be mandatory and it needs to be in person looking for instance at the history's framework frameworks call to adopt an additive stance teachers need training i can't just see filling gaps with little black history scattered here and there they need to be able to evaluate the euro-centric perspective of the curriculum teach the truth and be able to feel facilitate honest and sensitive discussions with students anti-racist teaching has proven to benefit all students not just black and brown and potential no student can afford for us to not take this opportunity to move ahead now

040with decisiveness intention and speed now is our time thank you hello my name is amy lerner i'm a benicia resident and my children are attending the benicia unified school district and i'm calling to do a public comment on the agenda topic related to equity which is 11.3 in particular i would like to bring up four focus areas number one truth and curriculum i'd like to know when the equity audit will take place on a curriculum and if there will be a task force for that consists of diverse people from the community that will be doing the audit on our curriculum for all of our students in the benicio unified school district and what that timeline is for that to happen and also number two like to understand what is progress being done to hire diverse

041staff especially teachers of color black teachers and what is the timeline to hire and what is our goal since so many have left our our school system and the third thing i'd like to talk about is anti-racist professional development training that should be required for all the usd staff administrators admin staff teachers one will be completed by all and also what type of other development besides training will be available to have conversations about diversity and race so our teachers and staff are comfortable talking to children and know how to talk about it and lastly i think there needs to be more communication about what is being done from the equity perspective in our school systems so that parents and the community are aware of everything that's going on and that it's very transparent thank you

042hi my name is krista horadia i have two elementary age students within busd my comma is in two parts the first is general the last for agenda item number 11.3 it is likely you will hear from people tonight who are participating in a rally organized by the group called let them breathe this group intends to advocate against mass mandates in schools i would like to remind this board that the city of phoenicia passed an indoor mass mandate requiring those aged four years and older to wear masks in all indoor and in closed places this mandate was effective on august 25th and was passed by unanimous vote from all city council members with this city-wide mass mandate in place it seems futile to spend any time debating this for our public schools i voice my support

043of this board upholding the city's mass mandate for all busb locations i urge board members to swiftly dismiss this request for quote mask choice which is what the group let them breathe is calling being non-compliant with math mandates i won't waste any of our time citing the many credible medical and scientific sources that have proven the effectiveness of mask wearing and reducing the spread of coca-19 it is also very easy to find on our own factual scientific reports proving that wearing a mask does not raise carbon dioxide levels in the air we breathe and therefore should not be considered unhealthy i understand that there are very rare instances when a student or staff member may have a professionally diagnosed medical or mental health condition that make mask wearing more difficult but there are already exemptions

044and procedures in place for these very rare instances we as the school community can make the choice today not to engage in this ridiculous attempt to politicize mask wearing let's just let's shut this down quickly and move on in closing on this matter i would like to say to the families who are opposed to their children wearing masses in schools i encourage you to school your children at home or find a private or charter school that does not require mask wearing our public schools will continue to follow the scientific guidance of the cdc and should remain in compliance with our city mass mandate next regarding agenda item 11.3 the equity update your presentation reports on some recruitment and hiring strategies you've implemented regarding gaining more diversity among staff do you have any successes to report

045or anything you've learned about existing hiring and retention practices that were limiting diversity of our current staff population next in regard to professional development there are a number of epic facilitated learning days and online modules mentioned in your presentation it is unclear though whether or not these are required of all staff or if they are optional i would like to know that they are required and if not required what barriers are keeping this from being a requirement for all staff next in accountability your presentation mentions the district-wide equity team does this team encompass participation from stakeholders if not i will continue to request an equity audit task force be created and should be composed of diverse educators caregivers and students to ensure that our curriculum is culturally accurate and reflective of the truth through their

046life lenses and life experiences i would also like to know the timeline for recruitment of members for this equity team lastly when is the next time our school community will be kept abreast of this work towards more equitable hi my name is nancy rockstein i'm a venetia resident and a parent of a junior at venetia high school i'm calling with regards to item 11.3 the equity update as you continue your important work around equity i want you to know that serious progress around equity is a top priority for us as a family and as such i support the following historically accurate and representative curriculum racial diversity among the usd teachers and staff anti-racist professional development resources and training for all staff full-time mental health support staff at each school and support and accommodations for children

047who've experienced learning loss on another note but on one that is related to equity as clovit has disproportionately affected black and brown communities i want to passionately vehemently and desperately ask you to continue the mass mandate in schools to keep our children and our households as safe as possible thank you for your hard work on these crucial issues that's the end of the recordings um and so i guess that's the end of our public comment so thank you for um sharing with us the information that you shared and because we do really appreciate it um next up is going to be item let's see consent calendar item 10. all matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the board to be routine and be approved by the board in one motion there will be

048no discussion on these items unless members of the board staff or public request specific items to be pulled and discussed can i get a roll call to accept the consent calendar or consent agenda as written reading motions first and i also want to let you know that we lost trustee farrucci we're trying to get her to come back in so we're going to be taking this vote without her without her so you said what did you call can i get a motion to accept the consent calendar as written do i have a a second thank you um there are a couple of resolutions listed on here that we need to pull out and um do a separate roll call vote on uh the first one is item number 10.3 consideration and approval of resolution number

04921-20-07 it's the declaration that i don't even need to go into that so um we need to do a separate roll call vote on that so we'll do the first roll call for the consent for all of it oh my apologies okay okay so we'll do um president seda yes thank you trustee moss and trustee grubs okay now we can pull out correct yes now we're going to go to the um resolution 20. it's not a it's not a public hearing it's just a a roll call vote item 10.3 10.3 resolution number 21-20-07 can i get a roll call vote or can i get a motion we don't need them we don't need to can i get a roll call vote please yes president seda yes trustee moss yeah and trustee grubs thank you great

050thank you and then i'm going to pull out resolution number 21-22-07 we need to do a separate role call vote for that okay so president seda yes christie moss yeah and trustee grips yes i think okay so we're moving on to item number 11. um communication informa informational items um the first item up is enrollment it's an enrollment update and tim rahil our cbo is going to be talking to us about that yeah good evening we have uh this information item for you tonight um to update you on our enrollment after a couple weeks in school originally we were projected uh projecting less students in our in our schools we've been experiencing less students each year over the past few years as have many or most school districts throughout california the state of california is

051experiencing lower student enrollments in its schools statewide there's an overall decline throughout the state and it's been going on for some time our declining enrollment in in our benicio schools has has been a little bit more on the stable side um until this year um and so we are projecting already um a decline in our student population and then what we do every year is we we wait and we see how many kids show up uh each august and um this year at this point in time you know after a couple weeks of school we are down another 88 students throughout all of our schools and so we we're monitoring that closely we're going to start outreach efforts with our principals and school staffs and and families to kind of pick a way at um

052where that might be happening in the board in the board packet um tonight you can go down and see um the the detail by grade level and one of the one of the things that stands out is at our kindergarten level we are down we thought we were going to have over 300 kindergarteners in our projections were actually under 300 and so that might indicate after we do some digging that some families have have chosen to keep their their students in kindergarten home for another year you you might remember that kindergarten is not a mandate but it is a required offering and so it's possible that some some families are just choosing to keep that grade level at home but we'll find out we'll do some digging and so that's kind of the that's the

053biggest grade level that we saw um an unexpected decline um the others uh we do have uh reductions at each grade level most of those can be attributed to signing up for our long-term independent study program which you will hear about in the next information item um at the secondary levels you know middle schools down another 20 from projection and um the secondary level banisha high school and liberty they're down another 18. um so those are a little bit more reasonable reductions from the projection and again we're going to monitor that very cl closely but at this point in time based on what the district was projecting um originally at 4 455 students were actually our enrolled students in our system right now is four thousand three hundred and sixty seven so that's a that's

054a loss of 88 on our projection so that's a pretty big number so more to come uh we're continuing to monitor that we're going to continue usually by now we've uh we've stopped our um like our daily monitoring and now we're into our weekly monitoring through september um and so we'll be able to come back and report to see if if this reduction in enrollment really sticks or if we get a few more enrollments back in the system thank you mr rahil appreciate that information anybody have any questions nope okay um yeah keep us posted and let us know if we get a jump back up it would be great um all right the next item is our independent study update and that's uh 11.2 and mrs lewis i have you on the schedule oh

055wait yes right i'm actually going to start it oh you confused me it's on my paper okay we're doctor thank you thank you we're going to have a team approach to this uh presentation on independent study we wanted to give you an update since the last time we talked on how things were going so what i want to really go through this evening is just to quickly review the requirements the process the intake meetings and so forth uh surrounding long-term independent study last board meeting ms corona went into those in depth so i won't go too far in depth unless you have further questions i want to give you an update on our enrollment numbers and how that all is going and then i'm going to turn it over to um both ms lewis and

056who is the principal of our independent study program and to ms corona who oversees the whole program to really talk about the instructional program and the monitoring and kind of a day in the life of what it's like so just to remind you right before school started somewhere over the summer assembly bill 130 came out and that talked about the requirement to offer independent study to be made available for students whose health would be put at risk to come back to school in person because the charge for all schools is to be back in person i do want to um remind everyone that it is inside the independent study um ed code and policy not virtual learning that ed code sunshine at the end of june that was um 98 or ab98 so that really

057isn't an option for us at this time um so just a quick reminder of the requirements the next couple of slides we had some options which we did not do as a district which was to uh contract with a county office to send our students to a different district we could have done some inner district transfers or apply for a waiver we didn't do any of those instead we put together an independent study program with that we were required to notify parents and guardians they could request conferences and information give them the information on how to enroll and disenroll talk about what the learning plan would look like at our last board meeting you updated the board policy on independent study that was also a requirement and then another piece is to have a plan

058to transition students back into the in-person learning program within five days of that request additionally there were for the long-term independent study which is 15 or more days in a school year there were some synchronous and asynchronous requirements so students in kindergarten through third grade needed to get daily synchronous instruction with a teacher fourth through eighth get weekly synchronous instruction but they also have some daily check-ins and then 9 through 12 have weekly synchronous instruction because again remember this is in the independent study policy we also have to have written agreements and contracts with family we document in instruction daily what is happening in the classroom so that we can prove that we are instructing students and then we have to also have evidence of student engagement and then when students are not showing up

059or turning in work because that's how we collect ada for uh independent study it's not about how many students you have but how much work they're completing when students are not attending either to their setup meetings or turning in work there is a whole plan to do re-engagement and that might include actually returning them to the school in person learning so um our there we go it's kind of hard to see i apologize for that so our current enrollment we are at 119 students in that was as of yesterday um we don't know if it changed uh today and you can see the breakdown for our um grade spans of how many students that we have there and um what we're offering um in is in that middle column so k3 get 90 minutes of

060uh synchronous instruction every single day and so we have a one independent study teacher who's teaching k5 and so she's doing all different grade levels throughout the day and checking in and then four or five get sixty minutes and six eight also get sixty minutes and then nine twelve get sixty minutes once a week four through eight get those daily check-ins phone calls zoom meetings all kinds of things we'll hear more about that later um and then this slide just shows the breakdown by school site and by grade so you have if you look at the high school you have 9th grade has 8 students 10th grade 11th and so on any questions on those numbers at this time so at this time i really want you to hear what the program is we're using

061an online program called ingenuity and i'm going to invite miss corona up to talk about the k5 program and then the high school program i'll just you want me to click for you there you go and then after that you'll hear from miss lewis about a day in the life you're welcome good evening president zeta trustees thank you for having me once again this is not even with heels i can do this but it's okay so the way that ingenuity works is we have um established in obviously it is common core aligned and we are providing all of the courses that are required for uh all grade levels um same as what is happening in the school sites and like dr beatson said it is independent study they do provide different activities they do have

062um the text to speech they have the audio and translation um some of the courses like the ela for the elementary they have activities where it does require for them to conduct an activity and then they have to wait for the teacher to reach out to them and provide some guidance on that and and give them feedback before they can move to another activity so that's uh part of that independent study at genuity it also provides um monitoring and the assessments they cannot move from one lesson to the next until they have um conducted those those assessments for the um secondary we um one of the things that we were looking at is making sure that when the student is able to transition back to in-person instruction we wanted to make sure that there was

063a seamless transition so all of the courses that they are um are getting right now during independent study they're able to easily transition back to in-person instruction if they're receiving ap literature and comp then that would be something that they would be transitioning back to in person we tried to accommodate to schedules that they originally had selected there are some courses that we were not able to do but um the majority of the course courses i would say 99.9 of the courses it is um they are the same as what we're offering within in-person instruction so some of these um they do have the listening and speaking activities some courses these are new additions that happened last summer and it also provides sel um courses that are available for students so these are all the

064courses that are also part of our in-person instruction i didn't even click so um the secondary um it is 400 uh standards aligned everything all of the courses all of the courses are uh common core they're they're aligned to state standards and like i said it is a flexible uh alignment everything is digital everything has to be at their own pace the the beauty about this is that students one of the things is that they do have to learn how to time manage the activities have to be done and based on the legislation and and the law we cannot be having students get behind you know they have a week to complete assignments teachers are reaching out so that's one of the things that it is a challenge for some of the students the time

065management because if they are getting behind then trying to catch up with the courses it would be um difficult to do so um the other things for for the secondary we have the cte electives and those would be like ap u.s history open source we have ap language and composition there are different um the m at the middle school they did uh open a middle health quest course and also uh another piece was the world language courses which offer spanish one two and three it have first french in addition to um other languages so we are um this is a very good um online platform which is highly recommended and it is um the most important is is aligned with uh common core i think that is it any questions thank you good evening um

066president zeta fellow trustees superintendent and dr young um my name is kimberly lewis and i um proudly was tapped to be oversee as an administrator for this program which i appreciate because i get to be involved with k through 12. so i get to i get and once sometime i'm having a meeting with kindergarteners and then i get to have a really great conversation with seniors and what their plans are for the future so um one of the things like dr biebsen talked about is um k through three at f3k35 that each student has an opportunity each day to check in with their teacher k through three with their respective cohorts they meet every day um 90 minutes with their teacher ms schuster by the way she's amazing um these times ms schuster based on

067monitoring student achievement and student progress will pinpoint certain standards that some of the kids may be having a challenge with and she deconstructs and goes over the lessons with the kids and watching her in action is um it's phenomenal the kids are engaged they're asking questions even in the online platform they're asking like can you go over that math problem again i wasn't quite sure about the vocabulary so she has done a really good job about really understanding what our kids need and taking that time to break it down even though they can be in different places in edge annuity she wants to make sure that the important standards the target standards are being addressed um our fourth and fifth graders meet 60 minutes per week with the daily check-ins and again ms schuster uses

068that time to focus on the targeted lessons and this is a very talkative group so it's actually really important that they have that peer community online so they're talking about their lessons but they're also talking about are you going to skateboard today and all these great things that you know the upper elementaries love to talk about so i think some of the quotes from ms schuster they're up on the board up on the screen but i think one of the ones that i truly like is when it talks about the confidence that the kids are gaining in this platform so this program is a true partnership is another thing that sticks out too is this idea that ms schuster is really dedicated to the families and reaching out to them every day here's a couple

069quotes from the students and i swear it is absolutely a kick in the pants to be with third graders they're so much fun um however one of from the one of the third graders we were talking was like i like how i'm able to ask mrs schuster questions she helps me understand the vocabulary words so she's taking that time with each of the kids so i really appreciate that oh and the second grader you can see the progress of how they're so proud to talk about what they've achieved in one week i want to introduce you to our other independent study teacher this is miss halsey she is phenomenal as well she has a strong background on in this platform of online learning and so she's really great at navigating the kids through this um

070during this time for all her kiddos um i would have to say this is probably one of the most challenging things because she's reaching out to the the middle schoolers especially during middle school when kids have a lot of questions and so she really does want to make a comment that she's going well for her sixth to eighth graders she's checking in with them every day she alt also during her time of synchronous learning is deconstruct deconstructing lessons but she also recognizes that she needs to continue to have them explore that peer community that kids don't feel like an online and then they're separated from fellow peers so she's really working hard and connecting not only the curriculum but the social emotional aspects of being kind of feeling maybe isolated in this program um i

071would say for her one of the things i want to point out on one of the quotes from what she has said is the kids are showing enthusiasm and a spark for learning in this program now we were talking no i come from more of a secondary background so i kind of speak their language a little bit better but it's i would have to say one of the coolest things of one of the quotes from the kids and if you've ever been on a high school campus and have talked to a 9th grader this is pretty cool i like i'm liking it so far when we meet we meet and miss halsey you're a really you are a cool teacher and if you ever heard talk with a ninth grader that is a huge compliment

072so um so just moving forward it is we are talking one-on-one with families the kids seem to be really excited once they understand how the program works and we're working with them with the tech issues or just questions they may have but i think overall the kids are having they're starting to settle in they're starting to understand and most importantly they're keep asking questions so does anybody have any questions for myself thank you very much i'll turn my mic on we're going to move on to 11.3 which is our equity update and dr beatson you're on thank you thanks for having me back again i'm i'm excited to give you this equity update and i'd like you to think about this as sort of the foundation we'll do you know a series uh every every

073you know periodically give updates and so i wanted to kind of lay the foundation of where this work is coming from and this will also be a joint presentation between myself mrs rice and dr gill okay so the the real foundation our charge is to teach the common core state standards and frameworks the standards are the what that we teach and the frameworks describe the how uh that we are to teach that that leads us to look at curriculum and we want to share with you what our current curriculum uh are that we're using and the supplementary materials and examples i want to talk you through what the curriculum adoption process is as we continue to look to the future and go in depth with what our professional development work that we've been doing with

074epic is and so that's where we will turn some of that over to my colleagues here and then we will end with the work that dr gill has done with staffing and recruitment so as everything that we do here in busd we ground it in our vision and beliefs and desired characteristics and know that this is our driving force this is who we want to uh to raise if you will through our system as benicia graduates and these are the the tenants that help us attain that last may or june i guess i should say you adopted a strategic plan l cap that had four goals in it equity is embedded in each of these four goals but we also have one specifically focused on equity and so i want to just remind everyone of

075that that all the work that we do starts with the mission and the vision heads into our lcap into our standards all of that work if you think about it as sort of a through line and and for equity it's really about providing opportunities for all students to achieve at their highest levels and get what they need when they need it most and so i want to take you on a little journey tonight through our common core standards and frameworks because that is the foundation that is our charge from the state as educators what we are held accountable to um i focused this evening primarily on english language arts and history while we can find some of this language across all content um i wanted to give you examples if you've ever looked at the

076the um frameworks and the standards they are hundreds and hundreds of pages long so i just pulled out a few things that help give us direction as we engage in this work so um on the left and i'm just going to pull out a few phrases that help us know the direction that we need to go so the ela standards really charge us with providing a 21st century classroom and workspace that represents diverse experiences and perspectives we need to have students actively seeking to understand other perspectives and cultures and they need to be able to evaluate other points of view some examples so that's from the framework that's the how some examples that you can find in our ela standards in fifth grade really looking at relationships and interactions in eighth grade look uh calling

077out this around informational text looking at two or more texts to provide conflicting information so that our students can evaluate that information and use critical thinking to make informed decisions in our writing standards we need to write arguments to support claims and be able to distinguish the claims from alternate alternate and opposing claims and so in order to do any of this work we have to be able to have students look at events look at situations look at cultures look at literature from multiple perspectives and then a writing standard in grade 11 charges us with to develop claims and counter claims fairly and thoroughly supplying the most relevant evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both in a manner that anticipates the audience's knowledge level concerns values and possible biases so

078we can't do that if we're only looking at one set of curricula we have to look at multiple things we also find this charge in california ed code this ed code charges us that social sciences shall include the early history of california and the study and the role of contributions and it lists many different groups of people and how they contributed to the economic political and social development of california and the united states with particular emphasis on portraying the role of these groups in contemporary society and so that's acknowledging that things change over time we're going to sign similar language in the history frameworks again the the frameworks on the left all california students deserve a world-class 21st century education that accomplishes this goal and it's important to acknowledge that inequities exist in our current

079educational system analyses of the data have revealed persistent and academic achievement gaps i've presented that to you in previous board meetings when we look at our data and really trying to peel apart what are the barriers for students and why do some students excel and others are not and what do we need to do to provide the supports that they need to achieve at high levels on the right hand side just some excerpts again i'm not going to read through all of them but opportunities to integrate culturally and linguistically responsive teaching into classroom instruction in order to deepen content understanding and develop literacy and promote engagement students may possess more and i think this is really important in this day and age that students may possess multiple cultural identities and our teachers culturally competent teachers

080respect differences they're aware of their own identity and unconscious bias and adapt their instruction accordingly and we do need to have our teachers have an additive stance so constantly bringing in other perspectives and other pieces of information so that we can fill gaps around curriculum by adding relevant examples of diversity behind beyond those in the standards and having that last part of that framework is really having again multiple perspectives around issues just a few more grappling with multiple and offering competing pieces of information form interpretations based on evidence learn how to about how to place information in its appropriate context um being this middle piece that history is uh as constructed narrative is continually being reshaped and retold and we should look at the history of the past as lively and accurate as well as

081rich with controversies and dynamic personalities and so we have to allow space in our classrooms and the materials that we use for those conversations and that last one that i'm going to uh just go through it talks about the rights all the rights that we would expect of uh people in america and how those rights have either been encouraged or discouraged throughout history and so again i bring you this as the beginning of our conversation or the continuing conversation to set the foundation of the why of the work that we're doing around equity we've looked at data we've dug back into the standards and frameworks and yes it's giving us this charge that this is the work that we are engaging in and with that i would like to turn this next piece over to

082mrs rice to talk about what is our current curriculum and then 11th grade it's also tci and that's us history 12th grade tci government alive power politics and you and then we also have as you know in high school several ap courses that also have different curriculum that follow the ap guidelines in science for k-5 we have scott forsman and we also have mystery science for that bridge to the next generation science standards we also in fifth grade have those are sprinklers [Laughter] also in fifth grade we have um march media which is also known as family life for our fifth graders sixth through eighth grade are using amplify science and then our seventh graders also have the whole life science uh for health and then our ninth through tenth grade are currently using um

083busd teacher created materials that also were vetted with um representatives from the ngss actually was someone that was part of the ngss writing team that we had worked with when we were developing um the transition over to next-gen science standards and they're still using their teacher created materials as well as vetting other materials currently and then our 10th graders are also our 10th grade teachers excuse me are also piloting the 3rs right respect and responsibility for sexual health and then we have several different supplementary curriculum and materials these are just a few but as dr pete beetson pointed out it in 6th through 12th grade in our standards it's looking at multiple perspectives and bringing in primary and secondary sources so they have supplemental materials for that they also have supplementary text to focus on

084those standards imagine math is one of the things that it that is utilized um in tk through five um literacy footprint prints is a support for our guided reading and also interventions we have scholastic news handwriting without tears mini supplemental supports to support the other pieces of the standards and then we have second step currently in our k-8 for our social emotional learning and then there's a variety of online curriculum that we use to also accelerate student learning pinpoint where some of the needs are and support teachers and how they're going to support the students and to advance and stretch the learning i've shared with you prior our curriculum adoption process but i just wanted to revisit that um tonight with you um when we adopt curriculum we create a team for secondary it's been

085departments participating some class uh some classes are taught um by one teacher you know a singleton we have one teacher teaching that course they out they work alongside myself in educational services and with their department and then in elementary because we have four different sites we get representation across the sites to bring to the table to look at the curriculum and then we present the different curriculums we do what we would call a gallery walk or really dig into what the different curriculums offer we look at different ratings in different areas and then we narrow down our scope to two to three curriculums typically to pilot um then we pilot the materials um we go through a rigorous process of completing our pilot review review form which entails standard alignment program overviews assessment universal access

086in inclusivity and each member fills it out we come together and we discuss and if we need a deeper dive we decide there then when we come to agreement we make it visible to the public to the board and then make a recommendation to the board as you've experienced before and then lastly for my part tonight i want to just give an update on the professional learning that we have done and will be participating in this year and for our administrators prior to the year starting we had a full day of professional learning um focused on equity and inclusion and epic led us through that one of the topics that we were really working on was compassionate dialogue and working through that as an administrative team and then also as an administrative team we will

087have two hour trainings each month to continue that work with epic um as well as um our cabinet group will do quarterly check-ins with epic to continue that work um in equity for our district district-wide we are also working with epic education and they're going to support us in a launch for um a district-wide equity team and that is in the works now and then also as you know you've participated in a board study session with equity as a focus and you have some of those that will be coming up as well this year and then um as a whole our staff as a whole we had our district-wide professional learning day both for certificated classified and management on august 13th prior to the start of school and epic education let us in that work

088and they'll be coming back for our february professional development day as well and then we are going to be putting out some epic online modules different from last year is that we are narrowing down the focus so we will get we will offer up to seven online modules this year but we're going to chunk it into two sections where we'll offer a choice of two to three and then we will have a um a virtual um but facilitated learning lab um with epic to discuss um the equity work that we're doing we've had the question of will that be required and the professional learning day um august 13th and february 15th is required so that full day epic the online modules are not required um because that isn't another professional learning day that we have

089built in but we definitely want to you know our charges that everybody's participating in the work and then those that want to participate further we want to offer that for them and we are paying our our staff on a time card to participate in those modules as well we also have uh parent and community forums planned um epic is going to con facilitate two community forums um october 14th and march 1st from 6 to 7 30. we'll get more information out to you on that and then we're also working on a parent speaker series that we are putting together um to have for for families as well on different topics such as equity such as college and career etc so many things in the work um exciting and thank you for having me any questions

090i guess um i do want to say first thank you i'm dr beatson and thank you mrs rice for grounding the work in the guidelines as directed by the california department of education and the standards and reminding us that the work that we do in public education is driven and highly regulated and so there are guidelines and things that we're supposed to be teaching in the education system so i wanted to say thank you for that first um i also wanted to know in terms of the textbooks do you have a place here at the district office where parents can come and kind of like review materials if they wanted to like is there like a little library because a lot of times parents may only see the textbooks that their kids have or if

091they're online you know they might see some of the um some of the work but is there a place where it's housed here um because i know for example at the at the county office i know they used to have the textbooks just on site but at the district office do you have anything here for parents so that they can actually see you know what's in the in the books we keep i'm sorry um when we're piloting materials we house materials here and it's open to the public to to view we don't have every material housed here so we do put that if somebody wants to see the materials is to contact their sites is the best way we have some but not all because we have several um courses okay yeah that makes sense

092at the school sites might be a good idea too and then the other part of my question was did you have any um anything that you could share um of course that's not confidential in terms of the the professional development that the staff took place and was there anything um you know anything that you can share about the experiences um yes definitely um so compassionate dialogue was um a large focus of the day um our our staff members mixed administrators um certificate in unclassified uh participated also um across grade spans together um they went through um different um sharing out different ways of communication um what's positive communication um they had dialogue um about you know their personal experience and kind of digging into that and then epic started the working with us on the

093protocol which they call the rir protocol which is recognize interrupt and repair and it's one of their strategies of of supporting really strong solid communication and what they consider compassionate dialogue we just have been getting back feedback from staff we want to put it back out again to get a bigger pool but overall the feedback's been very positive um people felt like it was applicable to their role in the district um and they were excited to see that administrators were continuing to participate in the work and that it was going to be coming back so that's the feedback that i've dug through so far um yes absolutely thank you mrs rice and i guess we're turning it over to dr kill thank you good evening um president zeta trustees dr young community members and staff

094so it's my pleasure to share this information regarding hiring processes and what we have been doing i do want to say i have been doing this job this is my second district doing assistant superintendent off i did head services and student services and hr in my former district and doing this here uh hiring high highly qualified staff and hiring um diverse staff as naturally has been a focus of mine just unintentionally so it's i don't want to me to just say i have to purposely now start doing this this is actually part of a natural process for me as a person when we're doing this i also want to say that and i thank all the members of our staff who actually participate in this process of hiring uh staff hiring employees because in hr

095we actually do more of processing or paperwork but we have on our interview panels we have administrators classified staff teachers all different positions depending on the type of positions we have participants from different angles school sites who like for teaching position any teaching position we always have a bta unit member which is teachers or any classified physicians we have a classified staff also participates so there are many uh different staff members who play a key role in making sure we're hiring not only highly qualified great employees which we're very proud of but also um they are from diverse backgrounds so before i start sharing uh what we have been doing uh so to speak this year let me let me just share some numbers with you some data as to who our students are and

096who our staff are so uh from students perspective i'll just share key key numbers so for example our white population about 43 percent and certificated staff again that is uh uh you know about 75 percent of our staff 76 percent of herself is white which we have known that is one thing that we have known and and it's important to know recognize and then think about what we are going to do to to work on it and and continue working on that and then classified staff and management staff is um you know more comparable with the student data uh and let me just point out a couple other numbers uh hispanic students now that is again an area where uh our certificated staff which is mainly teachers counselors uh and so on uh that is

097an area where we are you know consciously working on um and classified staff and management staff is about 15 16 and so on um filipino is another area where six percent students are filipino and only two percent are solidified as staff um uh african-american uh is another area so so uh the pattern here as i we were working on the data was that our classified staff and management staff is is more comparable with the student population as compared to our teaching staff against an observation to make and then for us to continue working on that data here's some additional uh subgroups um asian students uh pretty comparable and then a very small population of others ethnicities but you know those numbers we also want to recognize it and point out so since january specifically uh

098we have done some uh intentional work on on making sure that we are hiring hiring actually let me actually step back it's not about only hiring it's also recruiting and making sure people are applying because that's where it starts um the work starts so we have approximately we have been working with about 26 historically black universities more in the east coast and so on um and i'll share more this is just a summary of what we have been doing and universities within california about uh 30 of them and so on that actually have diverse population in their uh special education program accessed is stands for administrators organization in california and then casa is the california association of african-american superintendents and administrators so those are the organizations mainly we have been working with um to uh

099focus really on the actual like what else can we do other than just looking at join and advertising other places but so these are the this we have been working on so what we did first was we actually created a flyer and uh in this flyer we we specifically said we are seeking diverse equity focused highly qualified employees and then this is how we even though we have advertised all these positions and that joint but this is a flyer then we publish size many many different places and sent it to a lot of different people even when we advertise our positions for example access one of the uh places they have a magazine where we advertise our positions and uh um when we advertise our physician the first sentence is miniature unified is seeking diverse

100employees so people actually couple of the actual applicants actually even said to me personally saying the reason i applied in your district because your job said the first sentence while you're looking at equity focus diverse employees so people pay attention to you know those keywords and then uh so this flyer this is just some of the platforms where we actually posted way back in march february march type of window is on our website facebook twitter instagram linkedin casa a website actually sent it to casa and they posted on theirs and sent it to many different universities then um i just want to show you an example when i am sharing with you that we contacted a research university that some of the work that actually my i'm very thankful to my hr team who actually

101helped me with this because uh talk calling this many people reaching out to them emailing them constantly communicating them i just want um sorry about that yeah i'm going to show you the actual page okay if you click on it now you should okay so this is the this is the actual google sheet that you bet that we work through and then um uh ms martinez if you can just scroll down you'll see each line is a university and this is how all of the universities we have been reaching out to personally i have been personally talking to people my um teammates in hr departments have been talking to people so what we are talking to them about is several different things one advertising our flyers on their websites advertising our jobs on their websites

102they have actually jobs boards or job searches and those kind of places where their current students see jobs and that's how they apply so we're reaching out all the way to east coast midwest wherever we can whoever gives us access then um looking for job fairs which was difficult this year because of covet because but we are going to continue working on that next in the future and then thirdly is uh reaching out to specific advisors specific people who are working with students on placing students then that's actually how we hired some of them um and by asking them and saying do you have a student or do you have students who are looking for a job who who could be an intern but we are also going to focus on along with highly qualified

103a diverse student from diverse background so that's how we we just hired a teacher a couple of weeks ago that's how we hired a teacher from a diverse background that's just one example and so the other other uh communications and conversations we have been having is uh just uh appearance um i am very thankful to all the parents personally who actually have been reaching out through either the board meetings through through uh making uh statements in the board meeting uh through their comments or uh when we attended uh meetings through the african-american parent group it was very clear very specific they were asking for us to continue working on and i i want to say that's where originally the idea came to my mind because somebody actually settled in that group and saying school district

104how about if you guys reach out to historical black universities and other diverse universities and so i want to thank the parents for that idea um for doing that meeting so that's how we start the whole process we also have been reaching out to our uh union leaders and staff in fact i sent this flier this flight to the staff many staff members actually responded some saying great idea you guys are doing great thank you for doing this a couple of the staff members ever also said could we also make make sure we work on retaining the diverse staff members not only hiring but also retaining and then some of them actually then she said i have sent it to my you know my niece or my uh friend or so the people sent the

105flyers to other people because and uh and some even shared some names and so on and then finally having conversations with administrators that when they're screening applications they're doing interviews um what to look for what what to see and keeping a hiring diverse employees in our minds is the key very important so uh so these were mainly what we have done with the universities and what we have done uh internally with our staff and and within banisha and so on so then we told ourselves is that enough and the answer was no so what we then reached out to was uh specific organizations who actually work with other organizations on hiring advertised positions and so on um one of the organizations we worked on is again i want to thank dr moss for pointing out

106this person's name to me mr mack um he's the equity uh the director of equity services and axa um so i had to reach out to him he was very very responsive and this was his quote then the one of the communications he sent to um when he connected me with one of the directors from casa which was he said i want to wanted to connect you uh the assistant superintendent of human resources at national unified school district dr khashoggi is working intentionally to recruit african-american teachers that administrated in her tour district and there were other other things he he had shared with him and said what can we do to support venetian unified school district to to make this happen and then i actually did have conversations not only one like several with casa

107and they were again very very responsive we did not we focused not only at african american administrators and teachers but also from other diverse groups because we we had more meetings with other people as well so um i am proud to say that the movement has started even at the state level they have actually called a couple of meetings since then and they said we're going to continue working on it and the one of the first meetings they said was they said you know what we're actually starting this because vanessa unified reached out to us and they actually invited me to that meeting so in that meeting the director of axa wesley smith attended that meeting president of kassad uh dr campson attended that meeting and other state key level people from the state level

108they said manisha you have started the moment and we're going to continue working on it so one of the things i personally have been asking them is uh and my next goal also will be to reach out to the there is another group is a latino administrators group as well hispanic administrators group as well in california reach out to them as well do the same kind of thing but continue working on it so what i have been asking them is that on their website can they have a list of applicants like an applicant pool so that if there are teachers administrators from different diverse groups who are looking for a job certain jobs they can put their information on there so people like us can just go to their applicant pool and and you know

109recruit from there and they said that's a great idea can you help us put that together so i have volunteered myself in our district to help them put that together we will work on that to figure out a way to have a a some type of applicant pool on their websites because so that you know when people say i'm looking for a job uh where can i put my name out there so so we could make sure that that happens and uh again this was a um the uh when i talked with dr kemp from he is the president of casa and then he actually uh it was introducing me to somebody else from casa at that moment because who is working on on this type of stuff in casa so um and he basically

110said to him i about a week ago i was able to speak with kush which is me uh regarding militia unified participation casablanca is interested in district level membership that will allow them to advertise positions on casa website so that will be our next goal they even told me that if they have let's see keep our fingers crossed if they happen to have a um in-person conference casa conference next year we can actually have a table a booth uh at that so we can advertise and report people from there so so we're going to go all in uh not only from just one side but trying for everything every single angle so um some of the next steps are this is actually the on the right hand side you're seeing one of the meetings that

111happened in june the agenda for the meetings um and uh we're basically they're saying now at the state level uh what intentionally can be done um to figure out a way to recruit and i even asked them i said how can we recruit from outside california because when i was contacting historically black universities and a couple of the several of the directors said to me california is very expensive i have talked to my students but they don't want to move right so so those are the things we heard that that people don't want to move that far and so on that we do not have a uh a specific explicit organization i am working with another organization is called alder university which actually their focus is to connect uh students [Music] to actually groom students

112to work in certain organizations so for example the the way it works is if we have in bid indonesia or around ubunisha any people who want to work in indonesia we will say these five people who want to work in benicia we want you them to be students in your university we will develop a partnership with them then they will do their student teaching or internship and then they will work in indonesia but our commitment and challenge will be to recruit those uh five people first they most probably won't be teachers they could be somebody with a bachelor's degree somebody like a an instructional assistant or somebody but they do require them to have a bachelor's degree but after that the credentialing program then we can you know partner with them and help them go

113through that process san lorenzo unified actually program has that so i'm working with dr camp is the superintendent so i'm working with that district now to see if we can do something like that in solano county uh that we can have a cohort here throughout the university so those are just few examples again this is a beginning we have long ways to go but we are committed to this work and we're going to continue working on it thank you so much dr gill and mrs rice and whoever else was talking leslie i'm sorry any questions for me um any questions okay all right we're um before i i move out of this area i have a speaker that would like to speak on this point tony foster hi so i'm tony foster i've been living

114here since 1987 my children went to school through venetia unified start to finish and i have to tell you that while they were in school i was very very proud to be a part of seeing their lack of racism how the students loved each other in a way that i hadn't really grown up with i grew up in a military base we didn't have racial issues we had rank issues so um what was really lovely is that i watched my children grow up from kindergarten to graduation without any regard for their friends color at all who they loved who they fought with didn't matter and i think that a lot of people have talked about just how terrible terrible of a situation we have today it's just terrible how we've treated our children and i

115i disagree i think we have wonderful children i think our children are amazingly loving and incredibly inclusive and i don't know what you're talking about it's so upsetting to me i have a question for dr kush since i dr gill but i like kush do you ask for people's color on their applications just wanted to know um i would like the school board on behalf of all of the people who live in our town who are thinking about coming to our town and all of the students here i'd like for you to define equity for every one of our children despite their color and i would like a copy of your curriculum presentation made public and i'd like to invite everybody who's thinking about putting their children in our school any school in the state

116of california to visit the very very deep curriculum on the department of education's website and please dig deep because it's frightening what we are teaching our second graders in history thank you for your comment um i'm going to move us on to um the item number 12 or non-consent action items 12.1 is the consideration and approval of the certificated substitute teachers paid during the 2021-2022 school year um dr gill thank you so um as many of us or most of us are aware that um we do have a teacher shortage this year um many of our subs who were teachers sorry many of us subs from previous years actually have been hired either in our district in other districts as teachers so hiring and recruiting subs also is very challenging right now and and even

117uh where we're making an effort but the candidates are just still not out there and if there are some then sometimes they don't want to sob and for other reasons and so on um so what we are requesting is to incentivize uh for recruiting and hiring subs and also having them actually come and work in our schools that for one year only we increase their pay we have attached the document with specifics um and for long term subs and for daily subs as well and uh starting july 1 2022 their pay will go back to but it is right now we're just asking that we increase it from uh september 6 until the end of the school year thank you um board do we have any comments or questions or yeah i have a question

118so you're talking about increasing the substitute teacher rate for only one year this one because it seems that for the last few years um benicio's rate of pay for substitute teachers it has been so low that it's so difficult to get um subs to comment substitute teachers to come in i'm that i think it's um pastime that we raise the substitute teacher rate here in benicia to be comparable to other school districts around us i i would like to i i did not understand when i read this that it would only be for a year i would like to see it be permanent okay um so is did you have anything you wanted to say i mean i i tend to agree with um miss scrubs um on i mean i don't know if there's

119a way we can adapt or change this at all to um and bring it back next time um to have the pay increase temporarily but then as a permanent hold not just for the first or for this calendar year school calendar year is there a way to do that still staff has made a recommendation uh for one year but i don't see why you you could you could change that recommendation and recommend it for as much as suggested for um if you wanted to okay and i say that because um as most of you know that we have benicia has a terrible time we've had a terrible time getting subs for many years now and um principles are pulled the ee teachers are pulled to go into classrooms so and that's why mike i i'm

120concerned i think it's it's far time that we can can i add this so that's a very valid point we thought a lot about that too and i think it was been a couple years since we raised it because we did how about how about this um let me throw this out as your consideration how about you approve it for the year and then we revisit it at the end of the year because it is a budgetary item that you would have to forecast going forward and then thinking about all of the variables with as mr rahul was saying enrollment declining enrollment etc so we definitely it's a great idea i think we would agree with you but bring it back at the end of the year when we're budget planning for next year and

121then put it up for a vote for permanent and then maybe the numbers would even be different that would be my thought and i just wanted to confirm too so if it if it is approved this evening it will go into effect immediately right so um september 6th tuesday um miss scrubs um we can do one of two things we can either leave it as is and go by what dr young was suggesting and then revisit it before the end of the school year for upcoming school year but to go in for perpetuity i guess if for a longer period of time um and or we can update this now and we can and i don't know how that will affect our budget given that we are losing some student population to various degrees um

122yeah you know the thing is that staff has recommended it for this year so i just i don't and i don't understand why it couldn't be permanent i understand what you're saying to bring it back which i think is fine i think it's needed but i also want to acknowledge the difficulty that having a lack of substitutes in the classrooms in all the classrooms that we have experienced over the last few years and i understand of course that it is a budgetary issue but our job is to educate our children that is our job that is our love that's our heart so if we are pulling pe teachers out from pe so that i just i i just think it's a consideration i understand but i'd like i understand your point but it's already budgeted

123for this year so we haven't done the budget for next year so i mean i'm okay with that um with bringing it back but i want to make sure it comes back and it should come back um before the end of the year before the end of the year i'd like to see it come back in at least in march so that mr ray hill can can get it in the budget um and work around that but i do want to make sure it comes back okay okay so that that i have a suggestion and i have a question as well i thought she was here my question is first of all i'm assuming that we're covering the um i haven't heard anybody talk about we're covering this increase right now and the substitute pay

124from all of the special monies that we're getting just like we're doing with the other additional job the temporary jobs is that correct and my assumption i didn't understand what you said could you restate the question a little bit more we can have mr ray will take a stab at it yeah let me try again what i would like to know because i heard nothing about um what's covering the cost of the increase is this is the sub increase being covered by all the additional um support monies that we have received from the state and the federal government yes okay so then possibly a motion would be that we accept it as it's written for this year and before the end of the year staff does a cost analysis and lets us know what we

125can do to better support the increase of salary for substitutes for the coming year sounds good that sounds good okay then thank thank you is that your motion you want me to repeat it yeah that was good dad yeah yeah it was excellent can i get most yes that was my motion that was my suggestion i'll take it i'll second it okay all right and all those in favor or roll call vote please the motion will be as follows that this the pay for the substitute teachers will increase this year and we will revisit it in march of next year to consider making it a permanent um permanent regular how we're going to pay ourselves it'll be a permanent situation well i was asking for a cost analysis so that it could become a permanent

126increase of some type okay you all got that okay all right so okay okay all right so we had a we we had a motion and we have a second and let's just bring it back again and we so accept it as is um and bring it back in march so that um tim ray hill can um work some magic with the numbers and hopefully we can continue on with this this pay amount this level and um we'll call though president seda yes justin moss trustee farucci yes and trustee groves thank you nice okay thank you thank you um next item up is the consideration and approval of temporary department office tech position for health department during the 2021-2022 school year and i'm going to ask dr gill again to share with us the information

127regarding this specific position thank you so as we know that um the covert cases continue we are watching you know on a daily basis um every time there's a covert case comes lots of paperwork contact tracing all of that comes along with it so what we are requesting is that we provide extra support to our health services department terry dean who is wonderful is the coordinator of health services department but she can definitely use a lot more help with that so we are requesting to give her department a uh of temporary office technician position for this year to just deal with the extra work they're dealing with and make sure they do a really good job with that okay um does anybody have any questions because i i do i um i think we know

128how good terry jean terry dean is at her job she's amazing but i feel that i mean yes we do need some additional a position to help with the office work and such but i still think at the same time we need to con consider continuing to look into hiring another person similar to terry that can handle some of the backload because this is a huge huge job and i've already seen how it's impacted her position and so i would like to see that because i don't know if it says that in here that um that we're going to continue to to look for a a nurse an rn um to have as a secondary person on staff at all times full-time definitely so governing board had already approved that position we will continue keeping

129that position open and seeking out and and uh make every effort to hire and fill that position as well okay and which is a also a temporary position it's a temporary that is a temporary position as a freighter that's how it was approved through lcap in uh was it lcap or covert funding i think well all of the the coveted funding is in the lcap and we did it as a temporary position because that was one-time money as we evaluate all of those new positions and determine which ones we need to carry on okay so is there a way to approve this depending on how we vote but also have tim um rahil come back to us at some point with after he looks at the budget and the numbers and stuff and and let's

130see if we can make this a real thing and have more than one nurse in our district uh work with all seven of our schools um which i think is really important so thank you for continuing to do that work and i guess any other questions i just wanted to give a historical perspective here and just say that we used to have two nurses on staff in venetian unified it's it's always been a big job and now it's an even bigger job and we only have one fantastic terry dean um but she but really our district needs at least two to cover all these schools and high school is huge so i support you there i think we just gotta we gotta do what we need to do now but we need to continue the

131work to get another nurse in here and keep them i i would hope that we could make it a permanent um position and not just a temporary one and that may be why we're having trouble finding somebody because it's a temporary position yes that's good right so um so at this point um i know everybody's eager to go so i wanna is her do i have a motion to accept and approve the temporary department office tech position for health service department during the 2021-2022 school year i'll move okay thank you and do i have a second second okay thanks um uh we don't need to do all those in favor but we do need to do an individual roll call vote yes president yes christie moss trustee ferrucci yes and trustee grubs yes thank you

132very much we really appreciate that thank you our it's our pleasure really um and at this time i want to wish um everyone well uh continue to mask up to slow the spread and we will see you at our next board meeting on september 16th thank you and have a really good night 9 12. you