001we are we convenient to open session and for report on closed um session items which is 5.1 there are no items to um to report and so 5.2 announcement this meeting is recorded for live streaming and archiving on the district youtube channel at youtube.com forward slash c forward slash venetia unified school district for your convenience at this time i'd like for us to stand for the pledge of allegiance and trustee for richie will you lead us in please stand salute ready begin i pledge allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic republic for which it states where it stands one nation one nation under god under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you please be seated i'll move to approve the agenda as presented
002tonight i'll second that trusty ferrucci yes trusty grubbs yes trusty masali yes trusty moss yes thank you all right next is item eight which is the highlight on mental health services report presented by um care solas and dr yang you are going to share a little information for the interior thank you very much uh dr mazda i think what i'll do is i will turn it over to miss corona and uh she will introduce uh our guest and uh and the topic for the uh with a highlight welcome ms corona thank you good evening um board members and dr young everyone present it is my pleasure to say that today we have this uh special guest speaker uh benicia unified school district has partnered with an outside company to address our community's mental health uh
003needs so today we have mr schwartz he is the director of relations for care solas and he's going to give us a brief overview of what this company does and how it provides services to all of our community to our staff family and students um daniel thank you miss crona for the introduction hello board members uh dr young thank you so much for having me this evening really excited to introduce kerasoles we're going to be working with benicia today i'm going to give a quick introduction of who we are and what we do i'm then going to show you the software that's available to all students family members staff and staff family members in your district this should take about 10 minutes to get through and at the end i'm happy to answer any questions
004that you have about us all right with that i'm going to go ahead and share my screen so kerasalis our motto is from chaos to calm we're a mental healthcare coordination service and we're currently working with over 250 schools across the united states both k-12 and higher ed we're serving a student population of 3 million but when we partner with the district we want to be there for all your students their family members staff and staff so we're really here to be a community some people i'd like you to recognize from our organization myself i'm your director of relations if you ever have any questions about our service i'm here for you all i'm also overseeing our launch and implementation in your school district providing resources to notify families and staff kelly vancleave is our
005licensed clinical social worker and director of our care concierge team i'll explain a little more what our care concierge is but i want you to know that kelly trains and supervises that team and then miriam stevenson is our executive director of community engagement and we also call her our in-house educator she has 17 years of experience as a teacher a counselor a site admin and most recently was the director of student services in palo alto unified so she really brings that educator lens to the carousels team and she's been an awesome resource for us and is available to all of you as well the reason that carosolus exists is because navigating the mental health care system is chaotic and when someone needs help they've got to navigate social stigma their insurance possibly language barriers they
006have to be knowledgeable of resources that are out there and then even after they find a provider there might be other barriers like wait time and availability so we're here to break down these barriers and help bridge the gap from a person in need to a provider that's available to help them the way that we're able to do this is we have over 85 000 providers that are part of our database of care just in the state of california none of these providers pay us to be part of our network that is not our business what we do have is a dedicated research and data team that finds providers across all insurance types including medical and sliding scale and free resources for families with no insurance we make sure that we understand the ages they
007work with the specializations they have and their current location and contact information and we've taken all this data and wrapped it into an easy to use software so we can help families quickly and efficiently get matched to an appropriate provider it is important to understand what we are and what we are not so carosolus does not diagnose assess or provide treatment we're here to be the linkage piece and get families connected to licensed professionals that are accredited to do so also we're here for substance use and mental health care anything that falls outside of that like shelter finding primary care physician job coordination those are things outside of our wheelhouse also important we're not a substitute or replacement for any school staff personnel or process that you have in place we're here to be another
008avenue to get families connected and to be a partner with your school staff and working alongside to get families connected also important we're not a crisis response team so if someone's a threat to themselves or others they should call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room what we have helped families with is transitioning from a hospitalization such as 5150 into aftercare so that as soon as there's a discharge that individual goes directly from hospital right into inpatient care there are two different ways that we can be utilized by your district we've set up a proprietary universal access link caresolus.com forward slash venetia usd this is available as a confidential and anonymous self-serving tool to all families students staff and staff family members the other way that we utilize is by staff referring a student
009and their family directly to our care concierge team our care concierge team is trained and supervised by our licensed clinical social worker they're a multilingual multicultural team that's really here to take care of everything for a family so what they'll do is they'll help a family find providers that are local and then we actually pick up the phone and we call those options on behalf of the family that way they're not the one having to wait on hold verifying that that resource still accepts their insurance and that they have availability we do all of that for them and then we call the family back letting them know the soonest available option having this team in place we've helped increase enrollment across our districts by roughly 150 percent so what i'm going to quickly show you
010now is the two softwares that i just mentioned the two different pathways of care so this here is caresolus.com forward slash benicia usd this is a link that's available to all family members staff and staff family members to use as a completely anonymous and confidential self-serving tool to search for a provider so you can come here and what we've been told is this website is similar to the mental health for airbnb so you answer nine simple questions of what you're struggling with your age gender insurance and zip code and we're going to match you to a list of local options customized to those needs and this website can be translated to any language here in the top right and under book appointment is our 24 7 contact by email phone and video chat video chat
011is available 24 7 and we've seen a lot of families actually contact us between the hours of 6 p.m and 6 a.m about a third of our usage across districts comes in those hours what this is is our care concierge team so anyone that calls us here this will be that assistance to help you find a provider calling those providers figuring out which one has the soonest availability and then helping you book an appointment you can also choose to search on your own by stepping through these nine questions i wanna also show you this software this here is our care loop dashboard and this is available to your school staff to use as a tool to refer student and then track their progress getting connected so this here is an example dashboard that we set
012up for a hypothetical school staff daniel smith and what this school staff can see when they log in is all of the families that they've completed a warm handoff for completing a warm handoff is easy once you have consent from a family you can click this orange button and fill out a simple field of who the student is and who the family is that we're going to contact that family will then receive a phone call from kerasalas and that staff will see that family here and at a quick glance i can see a family status like jim is getting matched to providers michael has been appointed and pam is pending an appointment if i want to know more information about what's happening i can click on the details button below each warm handoff and this
013will take me to a timeline view in here i can see who the care concierge was assigned to the family and i can reach out directly to that concierge if i have any question comment or concern below this i see a timeline of activity and so the most recent activity will be at the top and i can check on this daily to see where the family's at with their assistance in getting connected so as i scroll down i'm scrolling through a history of correspondence between the care concierge and that legal guardian i can see when the care continues match them with providers i can see when we send text messages i can see when we receive text messages i can also see when this family has an appointment so here on july 15th it says
014appointment made for july 20th at 1. further up our protocol is always to follow up with families the day after appointments and then again two weeks later to make sure that they're happy with the provider we link them with so i can track that as well here and the day after that appointment i see a message that says enrollment confirmed what this means is that family went to the appointment they were happy with the provider and they told us that they were going to continue seeing them if they had missed the appointment or were unsatisfied with that option we'd help them rematch and the school counselor or school staff referring them contract all here something that carouse is not a part of and this is important we're never revealing diagnosis or treatment plan information because
015we're actually not receiving that we're classified as a ferpa compliant care coordinator so what we're here to do is take care of all the leg work of figuring out who's available again we do not diagnose assess or provide treatment but we're here to help families with the tedious task of figuring out who's available and getting them linked so that's an overview of our service i'd be happy to spend a little time stepping through this but at this point i want to go ahead and stop my screen share come back in and see if there are any questions or anything i could dive into more detail about trustee carrucci delay of kicking our microphone on i'm sorry thank you daniel for your presentation and i do have a couple of questions because i i it looks
016like an amazing system so for that i i am very impressed and very grateful but i'm just i'm a little bit unclear about where in the process or the system you actually fit in um how do our kids get to you yes so um there's two different ways so that now that we've recently partnered with benicia there are notifications that can go out to students we also hope that that web link caresolus.com forward slash benicia usd is posted on the school websites um and made available to families and staff because that's a 24 7 access line that families can either search on their own or call us directly and they'll get matched up with the concierge that will take care of everything for them and finding a provider if they have private insurance if they
017have medi-cal insurance we're going to work with them to find an option that's available and then help them get linked okay yeah no well i here's what i'm curious about so i have a student that's really struggling um and we know we have a lot of those those children right now so i can either reach out to a counselor or can i reach out to you as a parent yes yeah so if you're uh julie i don't know if you want to know that's that's right and that's what i i was um the counselors and school psychologists have been trained so students uh can reach out to them um counselors also when they have uh their dis um and psychologists when they're providing their gis and they notice that they this uh type of service
018is needed then they make those connections and those referrals and the district keeps track of those referrals and how many people have held appointments uh into care okay so even a parent could access the system with because we're going to share this with our families and thinking about those parents that have been emailing us that they're really struggling with their children and because the sites are closed i don't know those counselors are available so that's why i'm asking for some clarity they they are and principles have been also shared with this information information has been sent jessica garcia has done a an extraordinary job in sending the information and the resources to families so this is also out there and one of the things that we have been discussing is to send out you know
019perhaps like every month just a reminder of these are the resources that are available to the families um because i i understand that sometimes emails get lost in time so the reminder will definitely help i think that would be good a reminder i mean i wanted to um ask because i i wasn't sure if i heard correctly so the families do they they have to have medical coverage to be able to access this service or they no so so families this is available to all families just to yeah emphasize that that families can call us if i'm a parent and i'm struggling with something either personally or if my child is struggling with something i can call kara solace for whatever it is if i want individual therapy psychiatric assessment if i need marital family
020counseling higher levels of care like intensive outpatient even if maybe i'm looking to detox maybe i'm facing a drinking problem and i need to find a residential program regardless of if they have private insurance medical or no insurance at all kerasalis is here to help that family get linked and find an option um so we're here for your whole community staff can use this as well and their family members so if i'm a teacher and my brother is struggling with something my brother could use carosolus or if i have a child that's gone off to university it's also available to them and in addition the school staff can use us as a tool as they interact directly with families as we know they often do supporting them and hearing their needs they can refer families
021directly to kerasolas and then follow up with that family and track whether or not they've been connected all right well thank you all right before we move on to the next item so thank you daniel we appreciate the information all right thank you all so much for having me i appreciate it thank you thank you all right next we're on item nine which is um reports and so we'll start off with our students our student reports i notice that we have alyssa madison and michaela um with this so um you guys go ahead and take it away i don't know um which one of you guys wants to start first but i hear you i can go first all right thank you madison yes so hi again i'm madison and i'm just here to share
022our things that we've done in the previous weeks um at venetia high school so we did have sports start um that was very exciting we had our first football scrimmage last friday and i'm actually a cheerleader so it was so exciting just to see at least parents in the stands and us cheering for our football players and it was very i almost cried because i missed it so much so it was very fun and we actually have our first game on friday which is tomorrow so um hopefully you'll be on that live stream cheering us on two and then we also had leadership elections um the leadership seniors the election committee we held interviews uh two weeks ago and so we're actually um just finalizing all of our decisions for next year's leadership class so
023that's exciting and we also had our panther podcast i was actually featured on panther podcast this week i am going to be starting my own podcast um it's going to be a sports podcast called the aftermath with maddie i am hoping to major in mass communications and be a sports journalist so it was just to tie along with march madness it was a kind of a good time to put my name out there on panther podcast so that will be coming out so you can look for that on our leadership website or youtube and then our last thing was we also had a doctor senior drop off so the parents that have adopted a senior have dropped off their gifts and um those seniors will be receiving their gifts next week and then i'll hand
024it over to michaela hi thanks maddie um yeah i heard the podcast was pretty good so i'm excited to hear it but we do have a lot of events coming up just because school is reopening which i'm pretty sure you all know so i don't need to bring that up but um so tomorrow we have filming for our rally which we hope to put out the friday before we go on spring break and then we have pbis filming we're gonna film like a basically what to do video for when you go back to school with them um we're gonna be like the student features i guess so to say um we're gonna show them like um because i guess there's certain stairways you have to walk up and go down and then like rolls with
025water bottles like what what to do when you're entering so we're gonna help them film that and then we also have our election videos going out like maddie said for the student vote so we'll i believe that wraps up next friday so then we'll finalize like who's actually in our class and then we also have march madness um coming up we're gonna do something on our instagram just to give um yeah just to get them excited for both men's and women's basketball um it's just gonna be something with the brackets super easy just on the instagram and then we had two forms go out one for senior night which is not going as we planned but um we're getting some form of participation and we're supposed to film next saturday so that's exciting i'm excited
026to see some of our seniors and parents and then we had another one go out for panther fan cutouts basically that's for our football game since students can't be there even unless you're you know related to um one of the players um i don't know if you guys saw the super bowl but they did like fan cutouts to fill in the like seats so we're actually planning to do that um we sent out a form and then we're gonna try to get the first hundred we've teamed up with fat heads so um they give us a good deal just because we're you know we're school so we're hoping that goes as planned and yeah as many i mentioned we have a dr senior pickups next week we're working with miss k on uh freshman orientation
027just because um you know we don't know how many are coming back but we do want to make sure they know their way around the school help them as much as we can and for senior scholarships the local scholarships have been sent out pretty like all over they want to make sure we get covered as much as we can and yeah we have a lot going on but we're excited all right thank you all right melissa alyssa are you ready um hi sorry yeah goodness good evening everybody my name is alicia but i go by alice and i'm representing liberty high school and right now liberty is wrapping up the third quarter and we anticipate four more seniors graduating early all seniors including those that graduate early have been working with a counselor and advisors
028to complete scholarship applications and we would like to thank all the committee partners and service groups that provided our liberty students scholarships and merit opportunities while we have some split while we have some seniors moving on liberty high school would like to welcome all the new students that are transferring to us we look forward to seeing you in class due to covered we were not able to have our career week like we had in the past however miss beth a counselor has been coordinating guest speakers from the community to come in our zoom classes and talk about their careers i personally attended one i think this morning i was on cosmetology and they were really insightful and really helpful i was very bad though i didn't have many questions next week we will be conducting
029the asvab testing for those that are interested in a career in the military and liberty high school is proud of all our alumni that have gone on to serve our country and we wish them all the best well thank you all right thank you excellent alicia michaela and madison thank you so much for sharing with us and how you guys are engaging and still building community we really appreciate it and we definitely appreciate your reports okay all right next up superintendent yang thank you very much good evening everybody yeah great job students appreciate that i hope you're excited about uh returning to in-person instruction uh just a quick comment from me you know this is uh for me personally i think for our system and exciting time we made the decision last week and uh
030you're returning to in-person instruction as we all know you know tk through second grade starting on march 29th and then everyone else will be coming back the monday following spring break so during the course of this week school sites are sending out very specific and detailed communications to parents so they know what to do and what to expect um and so they'll be this will be a busy couple weeks as we continue to communicate the details of what school will look and feel like when students join us again and i know we're all very excited to do that so that's our that's our real decided focus at the moment we know this time of year it's always incredibly busy because we're you know focusing on all the things that are happening at this time of
031the year and then we have to turn our eye towards next year and start planning for the fall so we can be ship shape and ready for that so just want to conclude by saying we're very excited to be seeing our students again i personally can't wait to see them and and to see our staff in front of kids again so it's a good time for our district so that's it for me thanks all right thank you um do we have any reports from our trustees trustee ferrucci okay i've had an exciting week with ledge action with csba did anybody get to chime in or listen in this week at all so they did it a little differently we were zooming all week and what they did is they had us um um various times
032within the course of talking to different legislators but we did get the opportunity to do that so some of the points that they were focusing on which i thought i'd share with you tonight real briefly um i'm going to bring up um the broadband and the idea of access for students on the on the computers that digital divide is what they're talking about and really looking at and it was perfectly timed because most of the legislators that i was on zoom with had technical difficulties and they got we were getting kicked off or we lost their sound so they were actually very comfortable getting behind looking at broadband support for kids and and digital um one of the other things that we talked about and we'll probably i'll be getting an email to support or
033respond to is the ab 388 and ab438 tim and kush and charles you probably already are aware of it they're looking to change some of the labor issue laws that are circling around the march 15th and applying a lot of it to also to certificate it and classified more impact on classified they didn't go into a lot of detail but that will be coming to us but i'm sure that our staff will be able to fill us in a little more clearly but watch for those emails the other one that will be coming up is again the discussion and i know you've heard it before is the covet 19 liability there you know legislature's been talking about this for quite a while um they're bringing it up now in a discussion so again we'll probably
034be seeing an email at some point from csba um asking for our input and or vote or support so the idea is to kind of minimize the opportunity for lawsuits against the district should someone get ill so that that's what that is about and then of course is is the state budget and the biggest thing is um the the changing cola which will be coming forward as well as taking care of those mandates that they're not gonna pay us for so um those are a couple of the things that we had so real briefly that was it those are the four areas of topic i think two will impact us and get us get us emails as they have done in the past where they say voice your opinion or put your support so anyways
035that's all i've got for you all right thank you any other updates um i'll just say very quickly we um part of our solano county school boards association we had our first equity um session last week and we had maybe over 50 attendees um just from throughout the county um folks on city council um you know different school districts superintendents and so it was really good really good um session so we have two more sessions coming up so we look forward to that all right next up is item number 10 which is um comments from members of the public in an effort for our community's voices to be heard busd has transitioned to accepting public comments via the public comment voicemail that will now be available members of the public wishing to address specific items
036on the board meeting agenda are requested to call 707 750 one comment per person per item limited to three minutes on the day of the meeting between three and seven pm please note that no anonymous messages will be played if your comment is for closed session um please be sure to state that so that it can be addressed prior to closed session the board clerk will play the recording of all the open session public comments to the specific items then being discussed by the board board bylaw 93-23 doing the public comment item the governing board allows speakers to speak at regular meetings on agendas and non-agendized matters under public comment comments are limited to no more than three minutes per speaker at which time the voicemail will be cut off by law no action may
037be taken on any item raised during the public comment periods and matters may be referred to staff for placement on a future agenda of the governing board please be reminded to keep your comments respectful and that students may be watching the board meeting my name is ken jensen a resident of benicio for 31 years the past few board meetings have had a lot of public comments in support of adopting the 1619 project curriculum for our school district while i believe the practice of slavery is a stain on our history as a country and it continues to hammer ramifications to this day and i believe that the teaching of our history should not gloss over our faults and flaws i have serious reservations and concerns about this particular curriculum the core premise of the project that
038the true origin of our country was in 1619 when the first african slaves were brought to our shores and that the colonists fought the revolutionary war against england for the purpose of preserving slavery in north america is completely without merit that premise in itself should raise doubts about this whole project fact is that there was a great deal of debate among the 13 colonies and among the framers of the constitution over the issue of slavery what's unique about america is that its founding actually marked the first time that a nation was expressly founded on principles that were opposed to slavery we are the only nation that actually went to war with itself over the issue and as lincoln stated in the gettysburg address we were conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all
039men are created equal yes our nation has its flaws our founders had their fault and none of that should be ignored or covered up but the rewriting of our history is not the answer i believe this proposed curriculum is more about an agenda than it is about actual history and i sincerely hope that there will be much more careful research and consideration given to it i believe that no one should ever be judged by the color of their skin for any reason racism continues to be a problem in our society but to make it the only issue will not help heal and unite us it will only serve to divide us further to pin all of america's founding and history on slavery is to deny our commitment as a nation to liberty and equality to
040teach our children that america is rooted in evil is a great disservice to them and to all we want to make our country better i fear that this curriculum does spoke and i want to voice my opposition to it thank you hello my name is erin i wanted to make a comment regarding the 1619 project i believe in equality for all students and i oppose using the 1619 project in our curriculum there are better ways to teach students about history and the horrible ordeal of slavery an important subject that deserves our finest efforts the 1619 project uses half-truths false information and ignores parts of our country's history being native american this really disturbs me no school system should endorse it no teacher should use it and no students that should be misled by it nor
041punished for reject rejecting its fatally flawed premise thank you for your time hello my name with indonesia is in robert simpson elementary i wanted to bring to your attention concerns that i have about the lack of racial diversity among the benicia unified school district teachers and administrative staff this deeply concerns me because as a parent of black children i have witnessed the lack of representation over the years for black and brown students there have been very few black teachers hired and currently there is only one black administrator this is unacceptable especially during the times where there have been racial occurrences on campus black and brown students have been left to feel unheard and unsupported this combination of lack of diversity lack of support and muted black voices in an inequitable environment causes undue racial traumatic
042stress and creates an emotionally hostile environment for black and brown children to endure for six plus hours every day during the week dr beetson's equity presentation to the board on january 14 data specifically that the mission unified school district needs to do better regarding hiring practices that supported a more richly diverse staff i've become aware that our only black administrator is now leaving his position in this district this not only saddens me but also strikes me fear as he has created a safe space for black students and their voices as his position and others become available in the district i implore you the board members to please pay close attention to the process and outcome of who was getting hired into the vacant spot representation matters and our black students deserve to see a reflection
043of themselves in the school staff who serve them teach them and guide their thoughts and future ambitions the time to change our current and ethical learning environment is now let us move forward together thank you good evening first i would like to clarify the reopening date of school as the motion passed january 14th stated we would return to school march 22nd the first day of the fourth quarter state rules permitted then at the march 10th meeting you again voted to push back the opening yet again even though state rules permitted this time until march 29 digressing to only tk through second grade so my question is which day will the schools open there is an open motion to open march 22nd since the vote is not rescinded i am just confused as to what the
044school board has in mind please clarify next with the motion to open on the 22nd and the teachers needing a 14-day notice how is it possible that notice wasn't given clearly we all agree votes only take place in public so why wasn't the notification given as directed prior to any additional direction by the board publicly will notice be given this time or will that be overlooked again with that said notice or not that is a district grievance problem and not that of the student so do not let that get in the way again as an excuse please clarify additionally the district and the board has had one year to be prepared for the students to return to campus one year how is it that everything being put out is so confusing and feels very last
045minute how is it that the board feels the schedule that is planned is in the best interest of the student still the sport favors the employees over the students and it would be refreshing to see the students interest placed at the top of the list what is best for them please clarify in regards to the functionality of the board i am assuming there is some sort of legal counsel to advise the board how is it the president of the school board can state no anonymous comments will be heard is there not someone advising the president to the civil rights violations that present even the brown act strongly advises against that please clarify how is it that comments are allowed to be heard regarding policy the egg code clearly states as do your bylaws that only
046comments related to the authority of board may be heard how is this allowed to happen and what action will the district be taking for egg code violation please clarify finally laws in the state are changing misguided ones are giving way to more focus i am sure the district is well aware of the recent ruling regarding school closures although this is currently a temporary order expected to be affirmed in two weeks i am perplexed there is not a standing agenda item regarding opening the schools in the event of the landscape change legally i am hopeful there has been some traction made for a full reopening plan in the event you are compelled to allow children back full time i formally request the board hold a special meeting instead of date for full return for school with
047the focus being march 29th for all grades all the science you could read say you can and the public health officials say you should it's about time you follow the rules and educate the children you've drugged your feet long enough thank you jimmy good evening karen dillon 99 rose drive by the chef i would like to first thank those of you that took the time to reply to the emails that parents have been sending over the course of the last few months even those holding brevity are appreciated for those that you chose not to reply or acknowledge i find it lowering of one's moral high ground as i myself have sent more than one and received no reply from the same individuals and it is just plain common courtesy although there is nothing in the
048listed agenda pertaining to returning to school i am pretty sure most of the calls will be questioning this in particular here we are 11 days out from k through 2 start in 11 days i will be taking two of my three to school in person for hybrid however there has been no emails with student schedules for parents until today parents need to rearrange their whole family's lives once again two children in school one child not two parents working going back and forth about who can leave early or why one needs to stay late to meet work requirements and not get let go wondering who is going to leave at lunch to pick up or drop off wondering if the oldest child's schedule will jive with the younger two sitting in sports again thankfully but not
049forgetting the therapy for one child who has an extremely difficult time then making time for the mass amounts of homework that you can't help with so much during the day because you work for a living i am sure you are thinking oh we have sent you classes for parents to help work and mental health and gains the last thing i want to do is look at a screen or for my children to zoom is not a classroom and neither is what looks to be the middle school's hybrid schedule this is not even hybrid it's half of hybrid 130 to 3. seriously how is this supposed to work forget the rushing all over and finding out who can help get your child here and there but how about how ineffective this is for the students what
050kind of plan is this hopefully it's a really short one california has the potential to be an orange tier very soon since the fact that all teachers getting vaccinated by next week should no longer be an issue or be part of the agenda as it shouldn't have before anyways we parents are waiting on the information to move fully in person five days a week fear can no longer be a motive to stay virtual or hybrid that excuse is worn out redundant played out you name it move on with the facts not the feelings the facts were the science said to open weeks ago thank you good evening my name is krista haradia i live on east k street indonesia i'm the parent of two children who attend robert temple elementary and i have an adult
051child who attended both bms and bhs i'm calling tonight with a general comment about um in regard to our continuing conversation about equity i want to bring to your attention concerns that i have about the lack of racial diversity among the usd teachers and administrative staff i'm concerned about this because in the many years my eldest son attended both the nation middle and sinister high he only had one teacher who is not white in the seven combined years my first and third grader have attended elementary school in busb they have never had a teacher who is not white in all of those years we have never once experienced a non-white administrator dr bc's equity presentation to the board on january 14th stated specifically that the usd needs to do a better job in regards to
052hiring practices that support a more racially diverse staff to my knowledge the only black administrator in this district is one high school vice principal who i just recently heard is leaving the position which is prompting my call this evening as this and other staff positions become available within the district i urge you board members to please please pay close attention to the process and outcomes of who is getting hired in city's vacancies representation matters our students deserve to see themselves reflected in the school staff and essentially create their learning environment write down how not represented in our school staffing and the time out as always thank you for your commitment to the positions that you hold i appreciate your time thanks so much bye-bye hi my name is robert crowley i am a resident of
053lived over on people court i wanted to call in first to commend the board and everybody that was involved in getting more information on the 16 19 projects figuring out how we can implement it in schools i've heard that folks are reaching out to other instructors and administrators that have already implemented within their schools one award doing so and i i just want to commend everyone and hope that continues to move forward i think that would be a huge uh difference maker within our community within our school district and it gives us an opportunity to really be a leader in the bay area in the state of california in updating our education i also wanted to call in because i heard that recently our only black administrator in our district is vacating this position and
054i wanted to again encourage everyone that's involved in hiring to please reach out and look for more uh black people to fill this position i think the more black administrators and teachers that we have um it just creates more representation representation matters our students deserve to see themselves reflected in the school staff who serve them and essentially create their learning environment so thank you for your time hi my name is shelby delaney i live on eaton court indonesia i want to start by saying thank you to all of you for your recent efforts regarding implementing the 1619 product curriculum into the usd i appreciate you all looking into that and as well as looking into staff education regarding race and equity uh one thing i do want to mention to you all tonight is that
055now that our only black administrator has left usd um i really want you all to pay very close attention to your hiring practices and outcomes and work hard to fill that position as well as any other open positions with qualified applicants that represent all of your students many black and brown parents and students have voiced that their kid's success in school relies on many things one of which is representation in the staff which is administration and the teachers so as you look to fill that role i hope that you all will try and fulfill the goals you've set with your equity goal that miss leslie beatson has discussed in the past again thank you for your time and all of your efforts thank you good evening ford my name is amber clemens and i reside
056at 129 carlisle way here in venetia the issue i'm calling about unfortunately is not on tonight's agenda i was sickened to see the agenda for this evening and not see the topic of our children being back in in-person school full-time not on tonight's agenda this leads me to feel as if this topic is not as important to you and is not as severe of an issue than i think you realize you see i'm a mom of three children who attend venetian unified school district second seventh and a freshman i have been home with them full time for now over a year and have seen the struggles that have taken place with them not only academically but mentally i sat and watched my seven-year-old cry and cry because he is exhausted from staring at a screen
057i've seen my usual outgoing and bubbly seventh grader become sad and emotional because he was given promises of intervention classes to help him get caught up this year that has still not happened she was also promised and told that he would be able to come back to school for small groups yet we have not received a phone call our freshman is not only missing out on his first high school year experience that has now lost all excitement for returning to school i realized hybrid starts in a week and a half for some of our students but that's just not good enough i zero faith that the school board has a plan in place for our fall 2021 school year why is this not on tonight's agenda what are you doing to prepare for when we
058reach the orange chair and so on what is your plan there have been plenty of there has been plenty of time to come up with a plan and communicate that with parents and students as you can count with other counties and states opening for months now it is possible to come to this plan and our students deserve better than what has been offered to them in closing i would like to address while as tall as my husband and i were during the last board meeting when mr miceli inappropriately stuck his tongue out when he heard a parent's comment how is this okay mr miceli i asked you would you have done this if you're in person does it make it okay to act this way because we're behind you're behind the screen what does this
059teach teach our children of our community because i can guarantee if any of our teachers follow students act like this they would be called out and it would be addressed i pray that this board can get their act together and do what is right for our children and come up with a plan to get them in school in person full time by fall 2021. thank you for your time hello my name is kathleen ruiz and i live on barton way i'm calling more with a statement about stuff that i witnessed last board meeting that i truly feel needs to be said trustee ferrucci asked a lot of very good valid questions and by the response from the board i could tell that they didn't care i really feel that we need to start putting our
060children first and it's extremely sad that we will be the last district in solano county to be returning to in-person learning she also had to ask trustee maseli to not shake her head at him i see him doing that every single meeting and i find it extremely rude and i can't believe that an elected official will do something that rude on camera in front of everybody that's watching people keep bringing up the recall because it is about opening the schools i truly feel that watching you as a board has made me see where i stand on the recall and i hope that everybody watching is paying attention to your behavior moving forward and in the past because that shows a lot more about you our children are suffering and the fact that we are making
061them stay out of a classroom setting for longer than is needed is very disheartening i understand that our teachers right now were set up for failure they did not have the education or training to do distance learning but they were thrown into it i do understand that it is a very difficult position for anybody to be put in but as a community we could work together to get these children back in school safely i hope that with the decisions that will have to be made in the next few weeks that that can happen with tonight's meeting i hope that you take into consideration all of the things that these children are suffering with i see that mental health is on the agenda i hope that whatever you guys discuss you do discuss knowing that there
062are going to be many children coming back with more issues than they left with i know that my experience with the psychologist was not a bad one for my children i hope that we can get another person in there hopefully helping because there will be a lot more issues that need to be addressed as soon as the children do return to school but we've had a year to prepare for it we should be starting it now that concludes the public comment all right um and thank you all again for your comments we we definitely need to hear from you and we do appreciate you calling in um and letting us know um so we're gonna go to see where am i um 11 item 11. and this one is for the consent calendar and so
063all matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the board to be routine and will be approved by the board in one motion there will be no discussion on these items unless members of the board staff or public request specific items um be pulled and discussed um and so for this one we need a recommendation um make a motion i'll move that we accept the consent calendar as presented tonight i'll second that motion thank you trustee ferrucci yes trustee grubbs yes trustee maseli yes trusty moss yes thank you all right next up is item 12 which is discussion items and so um 12.1 initial sunshine ignition teachers association with initial unified school district and venetian unified school district's proposal for 2021 22 negotiations with the venetian teachers association and dr gill i believe we
064will be sharing information on this one yes good evening governing board superintendent community members and staff so uh i have uh miss barbara jones our bta negotiations uh chair also joining us today and she is going to go ahead and share the bta information and then i'll go into the district information afterwards dr gill this is uh superintendent young could you provide a little bit of backdrop for what you know what this is and why we do this every year just so the public is aware a little bit more yeah definitely um so every year with the both of our um bargaining parties which is teachers union and classified employees union as well we conduct negotiations to update our contract or um if are there any articles and specific items that are brought forward within
065that so the one of the processes is that for next school year in this case 2122 school year to start negotiations for that school year we need to per bta contract um sunshine uh what bargaining openers which article bts going to open and which articles uh district is going to open so that we can start negotiations so we basically have to get the approval from the board first at this point uh regarding opening the articles um so after after the sunshine this happens uh then we start the process of actual negotiation meetings where uh both parties the negotiation team from the teachers union and negotiation team from the management meet and discuss these articles and and go follow the process thank you miss jones good evening um i am barbara jones bargaining chair one of
066the bargaining chairs for the venetia teachers association um so i'm basically just going to read the document um so the benicia teachers association initial sunshine proposal for the school year of 2021-2022 so the benicia teachers association hereby submits the following initial proposal for reopener bargaining per our agreement of february 2020 with the benicia unified school district all terms and conditions of the current bta busd collective bargaining agreement will remain unchanged with the exception of agreements that are reached on the following articles bta believes in maintaining stellar achievement as one of the highest performing districts in california therefore bta is opening article 2 wages bta believes in continuing to cultivate a system of social emotional and physical wellness for employees so that they can continually improve practice therefore bta is opening article 5 health and welfare
067bta believes that safe and welcoming schools help students and staff reach their potential therefore bta is opening article 8 safety bk believes in creating a collaborative team of highly engaged staff that supports the academic emotional and social success of all students for college and career readiness therefore bta is opening article 11 evaluation bta reserves the right to create add to delete from amend and modify its proposals and or open articles of the contract during the negotiation process that's it thank you miss jones and busd uh also has the same articles open i just want to give some background uh article 8 and article 11 were the two articles that we collectively agreed both parties last school year um a lot more work needed to be done these are on articles so we're going to have
068committees uh working on both of these articles which include uh team members from bta and management to work on these uh two articles so that's why we have opened them as well questions does anyone have any questions thank you all right thank you dr gill all right next is item 12.2 which is the first reading of the following board policy bp slash ar two 131 three uniform complaint procedures and uh dr um young you'll be sharing this information with us yeah thank you very much actually we have our friend joining us tonight ms jensen who did a tremendous amount of work on this uh policy with us and so i'm gonna ask her to give us a little bit of a backdrop and let us know what we're looking at tonight thank you miss jensen
069so um last year the um we had a federal program monitoring review and um the folks came in and reviewed um a lot of our systems and policies and one of the policies that was of concern to them was our uniform complaint policy it was not that we didn't have an accurate up-to-date policy it was that the um policy didn't cover some of the new processes and language and also some additional ed codes so they requested that we review that and rewrite it and since none of us are policy writers we kept reaching out to california school boards association who does our policies and asking them for a policy and they kept reminding us that they were waiting until they got the word from the federal program monitors as to what they needed in the
070policy and that went back and forth for a while and our curriculum department has been waiting to finalize our federal program monitoring report until this policy could be updated so we finally got the policy from csba it is actually you'll see in the language that it does say that it meets the requirements of the federal program monitor and finally so we are rushing this through so that we can get it approved this is just the first reading and then the next regular board meeting it will come for a second uh reading and approval and then we can finally close our federal program monitor so do you have any questions about the policy or yes betty can you share with us what um some of those um additions that needed to be included actually were or
071whoever works on the committee could do that sure so it didn't actually go to the committee because we had to fast track this so we just got it and we are getting it out right away um so some of the large things that have changed are some of the um groups and group names that are included in the complaint process and then also some of our departments so for instance um preschool use wasn't listed uh in the past in the policy and neither was adult ed so some of those kind of groups have been added it has been reworked the verbiage has been reworked a lot so many of the things were in there before but the federal program monitors wanted it written in a different way and so csva went back in and changed
072that so there aren't a lot of huge changes in the process it's a little more wordsmithing and bringing the policy up to date um with what's happening in the world and what groups are called and that sort of thing okay thank you for clarifying that and just as a reminder too on our board policies you know they really follow ed code and with ms jensen says csba that's a california school boards association and we work with them they help us update policies all school districts do that all right um any other questions all right so next is um item 13 non-consent action action items and we don't have any um and then after that would be adjournment so so can i make a request yosemite um i and i know we all got the email
073um this week regarding a lawsuit that's going on in southern california that could impact every district in california really short order regarding the opening of schools i'd like to request i believe we have a one item special agenda coming up on april 1st is that correct is that our new date uh yes yeah i'd like to request that we discuss this lawsuit and its findings and the implication to benicia and determine next steps at that board meeting like to add that to the agenda and charles it may be that we need some input from josh at this time as well thank you anything else before we um return okay well i'd love to um return this meeting all right all right thank you and good night bye thank you guys you