BUSD Board Meeting 12/10/2020

001e e e all right good evening everyone and welcome to benisha Unified School District governing board meeting this is a special board meeting for December 10th 2020 in compliance with executive order n 29-20 and n 35-20 issued by the governor on March 12th and 21st 2020 respectively this meeting is live streamed and recorded via the buusd YouTube Channel also this meeting is being conducted via Zoom from the benisha Unified School District boardroom at this time we have nothing to present from closed session and we will be going into opening session now so the first thing I would like to do is to call for an approval of the agenda as written I move that we approve the agenda as written a second thank you Mr melli a second by Mrs Zada all those in favor

002say I I and any opposed hearing and seeing none the agenda is approved will everybody please stand and join me in the pledge I pledge alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all please be seated okay at this time we're going to move into reports and I am going to turn to Dr Young for the superintendent report uh thank you president fuchi welcome everybody we have a a number of um guests who have joined us uh this evening so we're very happy that you're here thank you so much for taking time to join us uh this is a special board meeting and um I I don't have um a superintendent's report any comments I

003have I linked them to the items that are upcoming all right thank you do do any of the board members have any reports over the last week that they'd like to share okay Dr hogi um we Sher Zeta and I were able to attend the CTE uh stakeholders meeting for the high school this last week and um it was really fascinating they did a great overview of all the CTE programs and the progress that the campus is making and they'll be introducing two new programs in the year to come um so we wanted to just give a shout out to that group and let everybody know that there working hard to continue to improve programs for our students and then um Diane reported out to the board on the uh County CO call today so

004we've got our updates and of course we need to continue to be careful and stay home and keep our keep our masks on thanks yes all right anybody else have any other reports for the evening president fi I did forget to say that I just wanted to let the public know that the school and I attended the California school board's uh csba conference on Thursday or Friday of like next last week uh it's something we attend every year it's an opportunity for the superintendent the board and our two assistant superintendents to get together and attend with Schoolboard members throughout the state of California I think there's uh almost there's over 1100 school districts in California it's quite the Gathering and I have found csba to put on a really terrific job and those two days

005together for us I thought was invaluable um terrific conferences with a focus on uh Equity some really terrific speakers um so I just wanted to point that out to let the public know that that was a um time well spent for the board and I and the team members down here to kind of help us focus and think about our work as we move forward yes I I thank you I I just wanted to say yeah I thank uh the school uh the district for allowing us again to be part of this csba a um conference it was really well attended by a lot of people it was a different environment alling online and I really have a different appreciation now for teachers and parents that are actually working with their student or their child

006at home and educating them I really that's a long time to sit I mean hours we were sitting wa watching different things and you really I I have a whole different appreciation so um thank you you know for allowing us to attend that I appreciate it thanks for coming okay thanks Miss Zada anybody else want to make a comment okay I'm just going to share real quickly a couple of updates that I had um I set in on a lot of Zoom meetings these last week and a half with all of us I also um attended the delegate meeting the day before our conference started and one of the biggest things that I I'd like everyone to know is that um I I voted and we supported the notion that we want um csba to

007speak with the governor's office um they are coming up with the priority list for people who should be getting um vaccines or who should become eligible and we said one of the one of the working groups that is absolutely missing from the list that they that they put out was school Personnel if they're going to be going going to work and we're asking them to come into the schools and actually begin to work with children we felt that they should be on that priority list as well so that is going forward based on a vote that we took that day as well so I just want to make sure that all of my colleagues know that that we actually were trying to speak up and address the need that we believe teachers and ministrators and

008person and all of the classified Personnel need to make sure that they too are addressed um I also attended the Valero cap meeting the other evening um they this is there once a year in December is their public meeting so it's a meeting that brings a lot of City personnel along with community members there and they were talking about some of their updates that will be going onto both the city of bisha website reports as long as well as their bisha Refinery website so I encourage the community and anyone else to make sure that they're following along and that they are checking to see all of the things that in fact are going on it's a real concerted effort between our city and and the Valero and I appreciate the work that they're doing together

009um today I also sat in on a Liberty High School and a Rotary meeting um that's always fun because they're always planning good stuff for our kids over at Liberty High School so um I'm always excited to be part of that meeting it's about an hour and we did our first Zoom they were trying to do it in person but based on the way the numbers were changing this week we decided to go just the zoom meeting as well um we talked about um you know but new budget protocols and I want to thank Mr rahill and his office they're doing a great job setting up Kim was very excited and the team was really excited for the way that they'll be handling that additional support from rotary we talked about reopening of schools and

010what that plan might be that we had addressed the last meeting but really the focus was on the wellness centers and the fact that we are really trying to make sure our students have mentors that our students are not alone uh a lot of our high school kids especially over at Liberty are are by themselves at home they're trying they're struggling to do school Andor they don't have an outlet so the idea of reaching out to them and making sure that they are not alone so and for all of the mentors and I know a few of you are on the screen right now um as well as anyone else who might be out in the community I just want to say thank you I mean they could not be more appreciative of you than

011the the words that that were flowing from all of them this evening so I just want to say thank you to that as well and that concludes all my zoom meetings for the week so um with that said if there is no one else that has a report I'm going to move on to section nine which is members or comments from the public members of the public May submit comments on items on the agenda and any item within the jurisdiction of the school district in the following manner for meetings during the shelter and place executive order they submit these meetings on a Google form that is open to the public from 6:00 to 7: the day of the meeting the governing board allows speakers to speak at regular meetings on agendized and not agendized matters

012under public comment comments are limited to no more than three minutes per speaker by law no action may be taken on any item raised during the public comment periods and matters may be referred to staff for placement on any future agendas so the speakers are myself and Dr hogging so hopefully we can honor the three minutes so with that said I'm going to ask Dr holing to please start we have nine comments tonight well my first one will definitely fall under the three minute category our a comment is from Kristen eels and it says elementary schools should go should be using the hybrid model for two full days in school and three asynchronous days at home rather than four half days this will be safer and easier for parents to manage thank you Miss okay

013the comment I have is for 11.1 which is on the social and emotional wellbeing it's from Eddie erson and it says to whom it may concern I have lived in bisha for several years and there is much I love about this town I also have had the unfortunate experience of being confronted with racism on multiple occasions as a mixed race Mexican africanamerican man with three children in bisha schools I would like to see the school district actively create an anti-racist and inclusive environment for our children thank you Mr Emerson our next comment is from Laura Cohen also on 11.1 I am a Jewish mother of two children that attend school at Robert simple my family is Jewish I want to stand up and call our district to action towards making our schools Equitable for all

014of our students as they return back to school safely I want to call our school board to action to address the imperative need to open our schools with an equitable anti-racist lens as a concerned and passionate parent I want to know what actionable steps have been taken to provide mental health and social emotional support for our most vulnerable families who have been impacted the most during this pandemic racism and INE inequity is in our community in our neighborhoods in our schools and I want to call our school board to take action now the only way to become anti-racist is to take actionable steps to change our community climate and culture all of our students need to feel supported our teachers and administrators need to receive race and Equity training now our community needs to start

015the process of healing by taking action now in incoming mayor Steve Young inaugural Steve Young's inaugural address he references the city council recently approving the hiring of a limited term part-time employee to oversee racial Equity efforts and also the formation of an ad hoc commission to review issues of diversity and Equity he said several people in town have questioned the need for these actions believing that bisha has not been affected by racism I believe systemic and structural RAC racism is everywhere and bonisha is not immune to its corrosive effects only one needs to follow any social media platform to see ugly and unfortunate examples in this our in this our own town we need to acknowledge as a city that racism is real here that black lives matter and start to do the hard work

016needed to make our community a more diverse and accepting one of all of our citizens and visitors alike we want to build an inclusive community that creates a safe space to talk about race and racial Justice we want to create an environment where students feel safe to voice their experiences and learn to sit with their peers and act ly listen we want to shift the Paradigm Shift our school culture and shift our community culture now this is a pivotal point in our nation's history where covid-19 and social justice issues have converged to reveal our racial inequalities as a diverse and engaged Community we have a unique opportunity to be at the Forefront of making the essential structural and educational changes that will benefit everyone please let's not miss our chance thank you for your com

017just made it okay 11.1 and the speaker is Paige Ellinger I feel racism is becoming more legitimized in the last four years and it is traumatic to hear a very vocal minority of racists acting out publicly I'm white but it is terrifying me I don't feel safe in a community where racism is tolerated excuse me our principal addressed it at simple and I'm grateful for that but I would like to see it addressed at the district level I want all our children to feel safe and welcome also I am concerned about the price of internet for family struggling and how that can affect their access to education thank you for your comments our next Stace you're on [Music] mute thank you [Music] I'm so this also is on 11.1 equity and the speaker is sakuro

018Rodriguez I'm a parent of a child that attends Joe Henderson school I want to bring to your attention concerns that that I have that the school district has not done anything to address or speak racial speak to racial inequity in our schools I'm concerned about this because my family is multi-racial I see a large population of Children and Families of color in Venicia and our teachers and Lead leadership are basically all white and my children aren't seeing people of color in the people that teach them and have people that represent them on leadership as a parent it is important that our district lay out an action plan about how they are going to address this very important issue now to increase the diversity immediately thank you for your comments okay again this is 11.1 and

019it's Nicole apad I'm a parent of a child that attends Robert simple Elementary School I want to bring to your consent con attention concerns that I have had that school district has not done anything to address or speak to racial and social inequity in our schools I think it's very important to address this especially as we approach a return to school after a long and challenging time at home during the pandemic there will be clear inequities in our students as they arrive back at school after distance learning those Joseph had little to no support at home for a myriad of reasons parents who work siblings Elder family members to take care of internet connectivity issues ETC will be at a greater disadvantage teachers will be facing a huge struggle as we return to school with

020students facing behavioral and learning issues though this is a stressful time for all a clearly defined set of practices and resources for the teachers can only help not hurt the situation we want them to to be as prepared as possible to address any new and old issues as well as being able to help all students to the best of their ability as a parent it is important that our district lay out an action plan about how they are going to redress this very important issue thank you for your comment our next comment is on 11.2 and it comes from Sher gady I respectfully wish to voice my concerns regarding the push to require families to make definitive commitments to the types of return to school in a time when of Co in a time when

021of cold and flu season as well as covid cases and numbers are the highest they have ever been I cannot tell you how conflicted and distraught I have been over these past two surveys powering through and committing the first time left knots in my stomach now being asked again and the only change does not positively impact any possible scenario from my three children in the elementary school system first I do not agree that the safest time to return to school is in the red tier as the date of the last board meeting indicates we can be in red one day and next day bump back to purple the rising numbers of cases is a real concern and I can't filter these facts while trying to guess how things will look the when we are next

022in the red tier secondly the options for return and possibly of staying with teachers and academic routines my children have come to know this year are limited to only those households who have midday Transportation abilities because my job keeps me from being able to transport I am automatically disqualified from selecting the new select newest selection of staying with my kids's teacher no matter what and this breaks my heart I know there are good intentions behind adding this scenario but it also ostracizes many of us as well my largest concern is this push to require a commitment at this time while I respect that difficult planning needs to take place much like it hasn't much like it has to in the summer before every school year what the district may not realize is how this has

023caused extreme stress in many of our households making the choices in the midst of the worst case numbers has added a level of stress new to this whole pandemic I will be unable to make this hard choice I just can't bring myself to do it until I know our community is safe and we have schedules that better mean the needs of most households not just the ones who have a stay-at-home parent relative thank you thank you Miss jady for your comment what I have one additional comment you have one additional yes I have one additional comment it's on 11.1 Christa Heredia is the speaker I'm a parent of two children who attend Robert simple Elementary School I want to bring bring to your attention my concerns that although I know some fellow parents have already

024repeatedly asked our school board has not yet done anything to address how as a district we plan to combat racial inequity in our schools I am especially concerned about this as schools move to reopen into hybrid and eventually full-time in-person learning our teachers will be faced with the inevitable behavioral challenges that come with students who have endured the trauma of distance learning also the challenge of managing the wide range of academic competence students will have based on how much support they had at home during the distance learning months there were most definitely disparities in home support and access to resources prior to the pandemic but at this pivotal point in our nation's history covid-19 and social justice issues have converged to reveal our sickening rational inequalities as a diverse and engaged community we have the

025unique opportunity to be at the Forefront of making the essential structural and educational changes that will benefit everyone this is the time to equip our teachers and school administrative staff with the necessary tools they need to view student Behavior through the lens of racial and social economic disadvantages our students who have the most vulnerable to who have been most vulnerable to academic and social emotional disadvantages also happen to be those living with the effects of systemic racism that's a fact all need to acknowledge if this is not a statement you view as fact then I implore you to examine how privilege may have blinded you as a parent it is of the most utmost importance to me that our district lay out an action plan about how they are going to address this very important

026issue addressing racial Equity is a job for now I'm sad to hear that some of our school officials believe they are too busy or overwhelmed with covid safety and reporting to address to to address Equity issues you also cannot assume that your teachers feel too busy to address inequity issues I know for a fact that two teachers at Robert simple as well are well-versed in restorative justive te techniques and are eager to share their knowledge with others if only given the opportunity there is no better time to address this issue we are never going back to normal at least that's what I hope because Normal was not Equitable now is the time to plan School reopening in a way that will finally beneficial to all thank you Mr edia for your comment all right thank

027you I'm ready to move on to item number 10 which is the consent calendar and it is an action item all matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the board to be routine and will be approved by the board in one motion there will be no discussion on these items unless members of the board staff or public request specific items to be all can I have a motion please to accept the consent calendar as written I'll make a motion that we accept the consent calendar as written I'll second or thank you Mr M Mrs aen Mr Meli thank you all those in favor say I I I any opposed seeing none the motion passes okay I'm going to move on to number 11 which are we have two discussion items this evening number

028one is 11 .1 which is our social and emotional well-being and support systems and the suicide awareness and prevention um Dr Young are you thank you yeah I just um I'm I'm G to leave it um up to the team to introduce the folks uh our guests that have joined us this evening um this is a very important topic and it um it's always on our minds and in particular last week when we heard a very unfortunate situation that happened with a a suicide of a a student in the uh Dixon school district and had uh lots of conversations with superintendent Dolan and the other superintendents in Solano County um and their response to it and there was another very unfortunate situation I believe it was in Loi with an even younger student so we

029thought that it would be very important as a school district to assemble this really remarkable team that we have as a school district and as a city in this partnership that we want to continue to Foster to talk about this important topic to to acknowledge it uh hopefully tonight what we hear for the community can act as a resource uh for folks and also the board that you know we can have this conversation and have an awareness around the kind of work that we're doing and the things that we should be aware of as we support our students in general and you know living in a very very different time as the the parent speakers have pointed out um in and of itself and then certainly heading into the holiday seasons for some people can

030be very joyous um and then for some people hard so as a district we make ourselves available and present to this and throw our arms around uh all of us and certainly our kids so we're listening to them and we're supporting them and and our staff obviously as well so I'd like to turn this over to Jessica Garcia who's our mental health coordinator and if you could just spend a moment uh introducing our guests who've joined us this evening thank you Miss Garcia thank you um I can I share my screen to do the presentation yeah all right um well as we get started I just wanted to take a moment and um thank yeah thank you Dr Young and thank the board for giving us the opportunity to present um and share this information

031tonight um we did want to present um to really be able to talk about the fact that especially during covid we've seen drastic increases um in mental health challenges across the board uh not just with students but with adults alike um many of us uh participating and listening to this meeting have experienced it ourself we usually talk about um three big emotions that we feel uh anger anxiety or sadness and I think uh the range of what we've experienced from the time where shelter and place started through now uh We've we've all experienced different and new levels of these things at different times and these feelings um like Dr Young had shared you know we also wanted to present because many people have heard about the recent suicides in our County um sorry in our

032nearby counties and we really feel like the time is now to continue this conversation um and continue to raise awareness about suicide prevention to continue to reduce the stigma um and really focus on different ways that we can help prevent more suicides um you know now especially it's dark earlier like Dr Young was saying the holidays are here it doesn't always um it's not always a happy time for everyone we don't celebr Cate it the same and things are different we have a lot of uh different restrictions again because of Co some people have very very uh covid fatigue and it's really difficult so the stress that not just our students but we who um Provide support or our parents um and who are you know providing leadership to or feeling is more than ever

033so it's really important that we're taking the time and having this conversation um as we get started I did just want to say um very quickly that we do recognize uh that through this presentation this is a really difficult subject um but it is one that we feel really strongly we need to talk about openly and that helps reduce the stigma around it as well um I also wanted to respect the fact that there are probably there are people among us in our group um probably people who are listening tonight also who have been directly affected by Suicide have somebody very close to them that they have lost um lost to suicide and that this presentation um is not just going to serve as sharing information but also as prevention so that we have the

034hope that through this um someone could be listening to this who might learn some new information to be able to help somebody um and that you also if you are somebody in need might be able to find some resources that could help you um we're hoping too that those of you that are listening um can find also ways to connect and uh that we're also really stressing to you that you are not alone in this so with that being said um I do want to really thank the people who are here with us tonight uh as we know suicide um and suicide prevention awareness this is a community responsibility and a community crisis and so we're really lucky to have such a large group with us um members of the community from a number of

035different organizations in the county um and then also students so I am going to specifically introduce everybody actually a little bit later as we go through some of the slides um and then there's going to be time at the end for any direct questions and answer time for everyone so uh I'm gonna just get us going if that's okay with everyone uh so to take a look quickly at some data um it's really important that we kind of recognize why this is such a why this is um something that is affecting so many people um in the age range of of people 10 to 34 it's the second leading cause of death in their Nation um 46% so almost half of the people who have died by Suicide have a related mental health condition so

036that's a really important thing for us to think about um also 90% % of people who die by Suicide have experienced a symptom of a mental health condition so that tells us that sometimes there are people who have symptoms and maybe are not diagnosed or receiving treatment uh and then we also really want to recognize that lgbtq youth are four times as likely to attempt suicide uh so in the next few slides there's a little bit uh more data I to take a minute and thank both the bonisha police department and uh the Kyle Highland Foundation uh teen center who's with us tonight for sharing this data um we were able to work with work together and there's data that's pulled from both 2019 and then 2020 from the beginning of 2020 in January through

037the end of November um to compare and so the data Compares calls made to the polia sorry the banisha Police Department um calls in for Suicidal Thoughts um an attempt that was made or a suicide so those are on the next slides that I'll um I can answer questions about at the end but we're going to go through um another important piece of that data is that in 2020 for our age group that is our school our older school age uh students we only had two more calls for attempts um from this school year or for this year 2020 versus versus 2019 um but our calls in for suicidal thoughts also lessened um from 2019 to 2020 in that same age group they went from 25 calls to 15 um in that data we also

038had only one suicide and that had been in the adult age group for 25 and over um so you know the question is what does that data tell us um you know it tells us that Suicidal Thoughts could have lessened calls to the PD have lessened for that but I don't know that that's really telling us that um maybe there are other ways that people are getting support right um you're we're calling to the police department but there's this doesn't show us data from emergency room visits um or other crisis lines too so that's an important thing I think just to keep in mind as well so when we're talking about prevention one of the things that we really want to focus in on are risk factors and there are numbers of risk factors um

039I have a couple slides that have a number of different areas that we want to pay attention to um some that we want to point out a risk factor is alcohol and other substance abuse disorders um another one is mental health disorders particularly mood disorders and schizophrenia more risk factors include a loss of relationship so sometimes that is um a divorce or a a lot of time for our um High School age students a breakup um a relationship break up a loss of a friend um that also could be somebody moving far away an important family member not being available or having a Fallout for some reason within the family another risk factor is a stigma Associated when asking for help so if that's something that perhaps in the culture in the family that is

040really not talked about um that's a big risk factor as well warning signs that we want to pay attention to and these are really important because again right now while we um you know are distance learning our teachers don't have eyes on our students is is um clearly or easily as we would in a classroom um parents and families are all in the same house together but sometimes doing their own thing there's other things going on and stressors right now some of these warning signs look really different um and some of them look like they've increased during this time of covid as well so again ones to pay attention to um that I wanted to point out with substance abuse and then also disinterest in favorite activities so that's one that I think is a

041little bit um tricky while we're in covid you know there's a lot of people who the things that made them happy before it just isn't maybe available right now or something that we're really um you know into a lot of the times um kids younger kids especially they're kind of regressing and what they're playing with so we might think that they're changing their favorite activities um but those big this big disinterest is really the key there if they're not having that interest in something that they like to do other warning signs that we want to pay attention to include all of these um but another one that's really important is beginning to neglect hygiene or personal appearance and then another very important one is risk-taking behavior so I wanted to point those out as well

042especially during the time of the pandemic so that being said um and US learning a little bit more about some risk factors and warning signs uh there are different supports that all of both you know ourselves in the school district but then also the community have in place and we've done a lot of collaborative work um not just this year but in the past as well together especially in regards to um Suicide Prevention so so I wanted to share this um this is I think a lot of people are really familiar with this still this is a you know the um you're probably familiar with it from PBIS but the tiers of support so the green on the bottom is showing the areas where um there are supports that everyone would receive uh when we

043get up to the yellow it is supports that only some a targeted group would need or receive and then the red is few so it might be more intensive um and this is link for everyone to take a look at as well but a couple things I wanted to point out as it pulls up um this is our District's um social and emotional learning uh tiers so it's broken up by both Elementary supports and secondary supports um but basically we can go through you know schoolwide and districtwide we have things like um starting to implement some social and emotional learning curriculum at all of the sites um also our wellness centers that are at every site we've been able to open them virtually and with that we have um a whole lot of support from

044uh Solano Office of Education in terms of what they are offering for whole classes targeted groups that we can uh support students with like workshops um and then opening you know opening virtually our uh Wellness Center in office hours we also have at the secondary level that we will kind of kickart off in January an app called The Atlas app and that's a mental health app um it is designed that it has different resources for students like podcasts that are focused on different mental health topics um they've tried within the app to promote different topics different times of the year so maybe in February there's a lot of information about healthy relationships um there's also way for students to connect with each other in a safe space um consider con comparing to other different social

045media apps we have in our um tier two so when we've identified that some students need some more support or intervention we have other supports for both Elementary and secondary students uh we work with an agency called a better way they provide some counseling for students um and then we also have workshops as well and things like specifically like a grief group that we have at our high school we also have um our Mentor program too and then there's just the other things I wanted to make sure that I shared tonight as well um our tier three so our supports for few uh we are starting to work with an agency called care soless where we will be able to for any student in the district uh their family and our staff be able to

046help refer them to outside mental health supports so one of the I had this conversation tonight with a parent one of the biggest barriers in in the in mental health and um uh intervention is getting matched with support you know if we're going through insurance for some people getting an appointment in a timely manner is really difficult and then for other people depending on their provider getting to that person they might be given lists of people to call um and try to find somebody and that is really difficult especially if you're trying to do that for yourself or a family member who's in crisis it's adding another really stressful thing and a lot of times that's a barrier to care so this um care soless is a way for us as a district if we

047know and can help a family um or a student with this we can call and um refer the family to talk to someone who will really work with them in whatever their insurance is or if they don't have Insurance until they have an appointment set with someone which is really great um so they really will uh you know hold your hand until there is someone to to provide the service which is really cool uh okay so I wanted to share and introduce some of the people on the call with us tonight um our Community Partnerships we can't do the work that we do alone and really we value so much the work that goes on with these organizations um we have Rick small with us who uh leads the mentor program with myself um he

048has been himself a mentor and worked um not only to help make sure that every student at Liberty has the option to be paired with a mentor but also over the last couple years we've expanded the mentoring program to middle the middle school students and high students as well so that partnership is in place um to serve with students uh we also have uh Barbara jasi and ly Hoy tonight who are with us from the Kyle Kyle Highland Foundation teen center and I'm going to share a little more information about the teen center in a minute we also work with like I said before an agency A Better Way who does um individual and group therapy at a few specific sites um we have Meredith web with us tonight from the Solano County Office of

049Education who's helped a ton with us with our um wellness centers with our grants and services for students um I added we've also worked a lot this year in our continuing to develop our relationship with Solano pride and I forgot to add on here also um salano County um Behavioral Health we do some work with as well and then really I love that we have such a great representation tonight from the B Police Department um and there are a whole bunch of people so I'm going to see if I can get some names right we have Lieutenant creado with us uh Sergeant Hart and manzor our youth services detective um lanquist and then our two sro's so our school resource officers um SoDo and tickner so I really appreciate you guys being on here tonight

050um and I think that that's really important as well when we're talking about mental health because a lot of the time both mental health and um police intervention uh intersect and so we need to be working together to help support um people in crisis appropriately so I appreciate that relationship a lot so uh just some new notable supports that we have going on in place within the district uh like I shared we've started to put in Place social and emotional learning curriculum our Atlas app and care soless which I talked a little bit about um we've offered staff support this fall as well with a self-care series for staff we have a um Workshop series a parent Workshop series that has started actually this week where there is a h topic each month and then

051also some of the other organizations have parent workshops we've been offering as well um and then we also have a mental Wellness subcommittee that we are going to get back in action and that committee uh does have a major focus on looking at our Suicide Prevention um policy and updating that uh our partnership with Solano County Office of Ed like I said we have our wellness centers um there's a link in here to the virtual Wellness Center if anyone wanted to take a look uh the salono office of Ed has provided Specialists for trainings for staff and students office uh sorry an intern who provides office hours in our wellness centers uh a lot of parent trainings um TIG training that a group of uh administrators in um our district nurse and a campus supervisor

052have been going to which are um trauma I forget what it all stands for trauma something in intervention maybe and grief um so we're looking at like SA protocols Suicide Prevention um all those different components of Crisis we also have offered Mental Health First Aid um they are also going to be working on screening for suicidality that they can do with students and then one of the things I'm most excited to see happen uh is a mobile crisis unit in our County where I think that's really important so like I was saying before if you're in crisis who can you call this is someone who would be able to come and provide immediate support um I also wanted to be able to share a little bit about the Kyle Highland teen center um like I

053said we have both Barb and Lynn with us tonight um but I wanted to share to you the mission of the teen center it's to establish and maintain um a teen center in bonisha where teens can be provided educational and emotional support through music art counseling and mentoring it was established in 2016 and its location is on Church Street right across from bonisha high school which is great because typically when we're in person kids can just walk after school across the street and um get to the teen center um and and right now because we are virtual um the teen center is in a virtual model as well some of the things that the team Center is still providing are Virtual Teen forums uh they are Thursday evenings on Zoom it's open to any bonisha

054teens and students of bisha schools so uh middle through high school students are invited and the topics range um from what students are interested in so they've talked about anger management Stress and Anxiety and different coping skills they do informal processing and then they also do tons of fun activities crafts games and other things to connect with each other uh one of the new things that that the teen center is is working on is a community program so that they can continue to raise awareness for prevention mental health bullying um gender equality cultural differences Dating Violence drug and alcohol abuse and partnership with uh School clubs so the idea with the community program is to have week-long campaigns with a committee of supportive adults and teens who are interested they would be doing social media

055posts have signage on campuses ask for a city Proclamation and recognition of the campaigns have giveaways to encourage participation and also create um a club that would create videos and social media and artwork for the signage so we're excited about continuing that partnership with the teen center as well we also have with us tonight um a number of students who are part of our Friday Night Live club and they are going to talk about some student Le prevention that they have been working on oh and they have fancy stuff so I'm actually going to um have we have three speakers I'm not sure Mr Gore if you're joining but I'm going to let you guys introduce yourself for this portion and share your information yeah hi thank you for having us my name is arushi

056core and I'm joined by my peers Yuna B and Sophia Lee and we're all sophomores at bisha high school we're actually part of a club on campus called bonisha Friday Night Live we're a youth Le organization that engages students as active leaders in their community and promotes a drug tobacco alcohol-free lifestyle today we've prepared a presentation to hopefully teach you something about mental health Jessica you'll need to click for them yep sorry so I want to start off by talking about what mental health is and what mental illness is mental health is how you think act and feel this is influenced by both your genes and your environment it's a state of well-being that helps you deal with life's challenges which includes your thoughts emotions and behavior mental illness is a medically diagnos diagnosable illness

057that result results in the significant impairment of an individual's cognitive effective or relational abilities this can be a result from someone's biological developmental or psychological factors I also want to point out that mental health is different from mental illness and that not everyone will develop a mental illness but everyone does have mental health so what is mental illness stigma mental illness stigma is when someone views a person in a negative way because of their mental illness people living with mental illnesses have been blamed and called names for their condition such stigma causes people to feel ashamed for something that's out of their control remember people don't choose to have mental illnesses it's something that they're born with it has been proven that negative thinking can deplete our brain's chemicals that are required for happiness so

058by seeing the world in a more positive way feelings of happiness hopefulness and excitement will occur instead understanding your own emotions and others emotions are important by understanding why someone feels the way they do this can help you craft a more efficient and effective method to help and support them eating healthy getting plenty of sleep and staying active are just a few examples of healthy habits in the long run healthy habits are one of the most effective ways to decrease chronic stress this is because when a body is healthy and well rested it reduces both physical and mental tension and last but not least is to build meaningful connections with others by focusing on supporting open and honest relation relationships your mental health will improve on the other hand if you focus on toxic relationships

059your mental health can drastically worsen anxiety is characterized by feelings of worry dread or fear that are strong enough to interfere with one's daily activities stress is how you react to your environment everyone can experience stress in different ways for example some might experience stress in his or her physical body While others might experience stress as something that impacts their emotions or behaviors but no matter the form any type of stress is valid and should not be disregarded and finally depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of Interest in activities and events that used to invoke passion so these three are the most common types of mental illnesses as seen in students in fact about 20% of all children are suffering from a mental disorder and about 40%

060of all high school students are living with a mental disorder so our goal is to reduce the stigma surrounding mental illnesses mental illness stigma never produces any positive results it only puts people down so I want to start by always seeing the whole person after all a person's mental health condition doesn't Define who they are also don't be afraid to challenge any misconceptions about mental illnesses there's lots of stereotypes and myths floating around and they can cause people living with mental health conditions to feel unaccepted and alone which is why it is so important to debunk these myths next offer your support and assistance it is always nice for a student to know that they have an adult Ally to talk to and lastly this might be an obvious one but be sure to avoid

061using labels such as crazy or unstable lots of hurtful words and phrases have become normalized but it's never too late to stop using them an important question to ask ourselves is how how we can identify or tell if someone has a mental illness to answer this question we need to understand and be aware of the signs and symptoms a person shows a sign is an observable trait while a symptom is something filt internally by the person some major signs include drastic changes in mood excessive use of drugs and alcohol self Haring and countless more symptoms are harder to tell since we can't visually see them but if someone speaks about having a depressed mood over an extended period or even mentioning that they have Suicidal Thoughts could all be warning signs that the person has

062a mental illness when a person is experiencing a mental illness they will also experience a change in Behavior thoughts and feelings such as excessive anxiety and low self-esteem another important question to ask yourselves is how to help a student experiencing a mental illness the first step is educating yourself about mental illness to better understand what it is and the effects then you should know whom to turn to if you have any questions or concerns about a student's behavior for example School nurses or school counselors as teachers and staff you want to help ensure a positive safe School environment reinforce positive behaviors and encourage helping others there are also strategies to apply during class time that can support the mental health of all students not just individual students who may exhibit mental illness in a normal

063year are during distance learning taking five minutes to practice deep breathing techniques at the beginning class can stimulate the brain and improve thinking skills which can help students better concentrate there is a mental health first aid action plan you can apply when helping a student or anyone you know or think that is experiencing a mental health illness a pneumonic to easily remember the plan is algae it is a nonlinear plan which means means that there's no specific order of steps you have to follow the first letter A stands for approach and assess if the person is at risk for suicide or harm you want to approach the person in a private place where no one else can hear you and then treat any physical injur injuries the person might have before going on to your

064next step the L stands for listen non-judgmentally when you are listening to the person you want to make eye contact maintain good posture and not interrupt their speech the G stands for give reinsurance and information giving reinsurance helps remove a person's fear while giving information lets the person understand a concept and indicates additional support the first e is to encourage professional help this could be informing them to see medical doctors counselors social workers and more the second e is to encourage self-help self-help is the method that each individual uses to recover or feel better some strategies are relaxation training exercising more and getting plenty of sleep not everyone wants help due to personal reasons such as denial fear or maybe the cost of treatments when this occurs you want to encourage the person to talk

065to someone they trust never thre them and remain patient friendly and open with them we know that everyone here is very busy so we are very grateful for your time and want to thank you guys for your undivided attention thank you very much for that presentation it's amazing and you guys did a great job I wanted to share also that um this was presented to the bonisha high school staff in their staff meeting I think just last week um and it was just done really well and hit all of the major points it was great um thank you for presenting tonight all of you um I wanted to add just a couple more things as we wrap up so a lot of what um the ladies just shared is also related to a program uh

066that we have at both the high school and middle school called sources of strength and this focuses on suicide prevention by stories of Hope strength and connection um they run different campaigns through sources of strength and I apologize that my picture is a little bit fuzzy um but as you can see this is what we call the sources wheel and just like what was shared uh in our sub presentation um the idea behind this is that everybody at some point is going to have a hard time um just like I was saying in the beginning some people might feel really anxious or sad or angry especially during this time um that we've been having to deal with the pandemic and covid so the idea is that within this wheel there are all these different um

067pieces of the pie and we no one we are not going to have every piece of this pie uh in place and strong at all times but the more pieces that we can have being strong pieces the better this wheel or this net is uh when we are going through a hard time we have things to fall back on so when we focus on getting professional mental health support or focusing on our positive friends or healthy activities um those are things that are going to get us through tough times so this is another uh student L um Suicide Prevention club that we have going on uh they've been running some campaigns so again with covid it's just been tricky to have things going but the middle school just did an art campaign uh and the

068winners of the I think it was a poster contest um the winners were invited to be peer Leaders with sources of strength which was very cool so I believe this was the sixth grade winner from bisha Middle School uh the middle school also did a warm coat and blanket drive to focus on ways to be generous during the last month and I believe had a couple hundred donations given to them um the high school did a whole week of campaigns where they focused on um different Big Ideas and had activities and then uh ways like like the ladies were saying ways that we can integrate this into our classrooms and into um daily practices um and then the last thing I just wanted to share was like we've said before uh if you are in

069need of help um you can always reach out to your counselor to your school psychologist your principal um a trusted adult a person that you can talk to but there also are hotlines that are always available if you need someone to talk to uh and then for teens there also are Teen um text lines um there are also on our virtual Wellness Center specific links for um teen crisis and that is it and so I would open this up also to any questions anybody has and thank you everybody for presenting and being here with us again everybody thank you that was outstanding thank the students and Miss Garcia thank you so much so just to open it up to the board I don't know if you had any questions or thoughts for the team I

070do have a question actually if if you don't mind um I know we just started with the welness centers this school year and you're actually doing them virtually so my question is um how are they being received and what kind of um a response are you getting yeah so um they are at every site um physically we're not opened yet so we're still setting up but we have all of our our materials and Furniture ready to go um so we have a couple sites who have opened virtually through uh office hours um the high school has had on Fridays a counselor and school psychologist open up an office hour where students can come and check in um we have our intern from um office of Ed uh Robert simple and uh Liberty who we're in

071progress of finalizing we've just finalized our times for that to open it up um so I wouldn't say that those are fully open at this point we're getting there um the ones that have been open it it's been hard to engage students we have had some kids come here and there um we don't have tons as many as we think would be obviously when we're in person um and we're trying to find ways to get students in and linked up by you know asking them to have an appointment during that time or um this is when someone's available um and then some of the sites like the school psychologist has also added office hours to the week for students if they want to check in so it's going I won't lie it's been It's Tricky

072it's really tricky um and I think a lot of our students too are you know on Fridays have had a lot of zooming and this is another Zoom um but we have had people participating small pockets okay thanks Jessica I just you know it's just becoming a real concern what in light of some of the um news that we have been hearing around our County these last couple of weeks with with um some of our children and and you know that it's a there's a struggle with the family as well so I'm I'm just concerned in making sure that in some way we are touching wrapping supporting the families and the kids yeah and we're I know that the um principles too are sending out you know um reminders of when the office hours are

073and links to the virtual Wellness Center and then also um the parent uh workshops that we're doing and that we have calendared also um like the like sko has one that is for parents also different times so um yeah we're we're pushing the information out as much as we can I have a question I just I want to ask the students um you guys participate in Friday Night Live so how are are students really engaging with the with the club how is that going I want to know a little bit more about that so we're actually holding weekly club meetings to kind of get everyone together and discuss things on our agenda and we've actually been recently attending a lot of Youth Summits for like um our whole state and a few of our members

074have been presenting at those um we've been doing I would say a pretty good job of keeping connected virtually just by meetings and like all the virtual events so yeah um I just wanted to say to an is it arushi Sophia yaa you put on such a professional uh slide presentation in this that I I was just very impressed by the work and the knowledge that you guys all have regarding this difficult subject matter um I this uh I recognize a lot of phases I'm really happy that Kyle Highland um team Center is represented here um they do great work and I've attended many things at their at their location and and the work they do is phenomenal and I rick small um thank you for all your work we've we've talked several times um

075and I really appreciate your work with our uh district and this hits really really really really close to home for me um I've had three close people that have passed from suicide and I have other issues that have been related to it so I know firsthand how difficult this is and I think it's really important that and I'm glad that to see it evolv um from what it was to what it is now for our students in venisha un School District so again Jessica Garcia thank you great job you guys okay does anyone else have any other questions for all of our presenters could I ask a question absolutely Barbara um I have a couple of questions um um one of the questions is around sources of strength it's a great program peer-led suicide prevention

076program I fought very hard for that program with this board um School Board not all of you were here at the time but um but I was I'm really happy that it's at bisha high but I do have concerns um in particular about the fact that what would normally be done is um at the beginning of each Schoo yard school year in October there would be a training for the adult advisors and probably even more importantly the peer advisors the the students um it's a two-day training um one one day for the adults and then uh the second day for the it's interaction between the adults and the kids um I was involved last year um which was great this year um the training was eliminated even though it was available through um in a

077virtual model and so as a result my concern is that as kids um I had heard um that you know there was a statement made that um that well you know the adults have all been trained you know there's already been a lot of training every year but the whole point of the training is to to train the new kids that are involved if you don't continue to train those kids then the program eventually those the kids that were trained they graduate out of the school and the program dies so it needs it's a very important program directly related to Suicide Prevention and it's the only program that you have at the high school that's related to Suicide Prevention you have a um School connect curriculum that has not been implemented it's great that I'm

078happy to hear that you actually have something now um you used to have Suicide Prevention and you used to learn about mental health um in the health um class as freshman they learned about that but that was a ated several years ago and so at the high school level you really don't have that kind of training so it's really important um that we you know that we really do try to educate the kids as much as possible so those are those are a couple of my con my biggest concerns I think um thank you for thank you for sharing Mr vess Mr small did you have anything you wanted to weigh in or anybody else uh yeah I think it would be great to hear from Rick especially since we just highlighted the the well

079um the mentoring program from Liberty maybe Rick can tell us exactly how it works and how you've reached out to the other schools as well thank you sure um I appreciate it um thanks for having us all here this this evening so the mentoring program was started back in 2001 by um uh Jerry parder you might remember him he was a resident in town and Patty Baron who had up the volunteers for the police department I came on board in O2 and I kind of took over coordinating it in 2010 and um it originated at Liberty High and it was there as we got the mentors enough of them every student there had a mentor um a few might have opt out but um basically between the 60 and 75 students there everyone had a

080mentor that met with um their students or however many they had one so week and it was it was great um probably about um six years five years ago it um we got it implemented at BHS and and at the middle school so we have probably between 15 and 20 mentors right now on board and uh most of them up until the spring of this year um were seeing students which was great um and you you folks know more than than we do but between those three campuses there are two 2,000 plus or minus students and if you just say only you know 10% have a have an issue they need to talk about that's 250 kids so the problem we're having now as Jessica alluded to is it's just um engaging with them because

081you know as many adults are a lot of the students are zoomed out and U we would love to meet uh in person but it's we're just not there yet we're working on it um I'm meeting with to to access um classes tomorrow morning at bonisha high and I'm talking to the teachers there and the students and just letting them know that we are available um we aren't we aren't psychologists we aren't psychiatrists we aren't counselors we're adults who are just there to to listen to kids no judgment uh we're not going to parent them uh we're just going to be adults who would like to listen we have some some great questions we like to ask them from Ice breaking to some pretty indepth ones and we we try to get into where they're

082at we try to help them to be able to look outside the the box that they may be living in and it's um it's been very successful so I do appreciate Jessica for for um you know being our guide through this um um Dr Young is on board and you all have been you you've supported it and we appreciate it so we're we're working our way through it we are available and um you know hopefully soon we can we can do one on ones at the wellness Center you know being separated in mask and that would that would be great so that's where we're at right now and we're available to um any of the students that that would like to speak to an adult excellent thank you Rick how about officer creato or uh

083Meredith you you don't you can pass if you want but just giving you a chance if you have anything Tod like to share yeah I'd be happy to uh comment a little bit um first uh the three young ladies that presented that that presentation was excellent I I took a lot from it actually and it's going to help me with the conversation I want to have with my son so um thank you for that that was really good um some of the the statistics that that we um that Jessica spoke to about earlier um we had less calls for service in 2020 with regards to responding to calls for uh mental health evaluations um but those who were placed on Mental Health evaluation holds was increased and so I think what looking at that data

084what stood out to me was we had less calls or service and I think what it reflects is that we have less access to our youth and and our students and we don't have our sro's present with them every day and we don't have our youth um being monitored by peers and counselors and teachers and administrators and they're not confiding in people they can then tell an adult or go to the sro's office and so we're new we're missing those opportunities and I think there's a lot of time s where that results in a call that then there's you know some Services provided and all our officers and in particular our SRO have Crisis Intervention training so they can recognize that and then go through that that process so I think that's what stands out

085and what's really important for us to communicate to the community to all of you um is that we're still here we're just not on campus where you can see us and you know I love the idea of of of office hours and maybe create an opportunity for um our youth or teachers to reach out to our school resource officers during office hours I mean they're always available anyways and I know they check in um but I would like an opportunity for our youth to still check in because they have they've built relationships and I think it's really important to maintain those and be another trusted person that they can confide in or look to for help because um it is very challenging for these families right now at home feeling isolated um and we have

086we're building these great opportunities but you know if they don't check their email or they're not connected they're missing those opportunities for us to connect with them so our message is that we're still here uh and we do want to help and make ourselves accessible and available so please call us you can call our non emergency line um and we'll put you in touch with the school resource officer our um our youth services detective um and our Sergeant um of Investigations who run oversees them he's here this evening Kenny Hart the other three ladies had to leave tonight just so you know they turned the camera off they got had to go assist Patrol on something but um that that's what I want to say is one thank you for the presentation thank all of

087you for making this such a an important conversation to have and we're here and we want to continue being a part of it we're not have gone just because of Co Lieutenant Creo or maybe Miss Garcia um could you share with us a little bit more about the mobile unit that's coming online for the county that's actually at Meredith I wonder if you wanted oh excellent thank you perfect yes thank you um and I do want to say that presentation was excellent you guys uh I present that stuff and I learn new stuff from you and I think it so much more impactful when it comes from young people to young people I will definitely be outreaching and do some collaboration with you um in regards to the mobile crisis um we intended to be

088able to Pilot it in the start of the Fall so we received a grant through County Behavioral Health um to start school mobile crisis so during school hours um if a student identified as having suicidal ideation uh they would contact our crisis line um and we would have a trained Mental Health commission um respond and do the screening um actually at the school um and determine I mean ultimately what we're trying to see is can we stabilize by getting resources up and running right away can we stabilize a Young Person's so that they don't have to go to an emergency department or the crisis stabilization unit um and sometimes because of lack of resources they are sitting there for days and' heard of young people sitting in um emergency departments for up to five days

089which is only more doesn't address the mental health needs um but also for those students that we recognize no they do need this um to be able to Advocate on their behalf and make it a a smooth transition um to crisis um with us being able to give some m Health background on the screen that we've already completed with them um so with covid uh the timeline um was definitely interrupted a bit but we are hoping in early um 2021 to uh work with bisha unified with two other districts in the county that we're working with um on rolling out that specific um that specific uh crisis model and then not to speak for Solano County Behavioral Health but they have also um Beyond just school hours have partnered with an agency to do uh

090countywide well we're going to start in fairfi ass soon but ultimately countywide mobile crisis um outside of school hours for all age ranges um so that is in place and that is coming soon as well so I think just a lot more lab around services that we be a to provide work excellent thank you excellent thank you very much Meredith anybody else have a comment good Dr Young nope just U wanting to thank everybody it's a I'm glad we spend the time on it and you're all just such important Partners in the effort and we have to remain ever ever Vigilant so thank you so much for for being here and your participation and I hope the folks that watched it uh tonight that are watching it or get a chance to watch it that

091you found this up helpful of as we continue to support One support one another so thank you very much all right again thank you again I think on behalf of the board we really appreciate all of you and everything that you are doing for our students so I'm sorry okay all right so I just want to thank everybody I know times are hard and again I just want to give an extra shout out to all of you for what you're doing our children are very very important to us as are their families and I think we need to make sure we're taking care of them so thank you and for our speakers that joined us tonight I did just want to let you know that um you know these presentations are um staged on YouTube

092to be they're they're run live tonight and then they're staged on YouTube so they can be reviewed there again so if you wanted to go back and watch that presentation I know a couple of people mentioned how wonderful it was so there's um 32 people watching live as we speak but we have learned over this last year that um many more people come back and watch it at a time that's convenient for them so your work tonight has reached quite a few people and we really appreciate your time all right thank you and with that we're going to now move on to our next discussion item and that is 11.2 and it's an update on timeline for inperson small group instruction with Dr beatson oh uh I'll just duck in there real quick before we

093turn it over to Dr beon just uh I think we've had the all things related to learning on every board agenda since March uh rightly so we're living in a different world now with covid so uh Dr beatson will be providing a thorough update tonight to to talk about where we are in the progress uh based on the the motion that was uh made at the last board meeting and approved and to let everybody know how we're doing and how we're progressing and to make sure that uh we're upfront we're transparent and we're clear uh about the work as we continue to navigate this together uh just as a reminder venisha is not alone in this effort this is a challenging path that every school district in the state in the nation certainly in our

094state is you know trying to figure this thing out and trying to do what's right for you know for kids and staff and families and it's challenging and uh I I know that we've got the right team to do it and I and I think we're making some really good inroads here so I think you'll be um interested to hear what Dr beatson has to say one other quick point I wanted to note that part of this big effort is putting together and this was part of the approved motion last board meeting andou with uh the teachers union in this particular uh case it's a it's um a memorandum of understanding uh and it's something you a process that you go through so that you bargain the impacts and the effects uh of any change

095in uh working conditions for staff and I just want to highlight I know Dr Gil and I and Dr Bon has done that as well that that partner ship with the teachers union has been very much appreciated I think we work very closely with one another uh this is um not um no one's complaining but it is an easy work it's complicated uh it's detailed uh and then teachers are uh the ones that are at the bargaining table they also have a full-time job of teaching and then they you know they take this effort on so the other thing we wanted to note um Dr Gil and I was kind of nice we got an email from uh the CTA representative who sits at the table uh and in um is part of the conversation

096since she was complimentary uh the district's uh you know partnership with the Union uh and that you know we're listening and we're engaging and and want to be on the same page with one another as we go through this this efforts um it's important for us to to know that because that partnership is is key and we've been working on it for some time and we want it to continue to be healthy and productive Ive because we know that the kids all benefit when it is so so that being said I'd like to turn it over to Dr beatson okay thank you so much um it's good to be here I it's going to be a hard act to follow because uh Jessica and her team and the students and our community members did such

097a great job um but I'm pleased to share with you this evening the work that we've done um on uh being ready to um Implement back here uh to implement small group instruction uh so tonight I really want to talk with you about uh as Dr Young said the decision that was made on December on November 19th excuse me and the eligibility and some of that criteria has changed um a little bit and talk about how all of that uh the different decisions in the county and in the regions um intersect talk about what we believe small group uh structures could look like and should look like the next steps that are being uh done right now and will continue to be done so that we are ready um to come back in small group

098and then um open it up for an implementation discussion and so uh as Dr Young said on December 19th the board made um a two-part motion one was to begin small group instruction pending theou as he just discussed in January because that can happen while we're in the purple tier the other half of that motion was to uh uh begin hybrid inperson instruction again pending theou when in red and when we were eligible to do so eligibility uh just to remind our viewers is based on a state government tiered system um I will get a little bit more into that in the next slide just to remind everyone that even when account is in the purple tier which we are um we can do small group uh instruction in person um the requirement around that

099is that there are no more than 16 people in a group and that would be any combination of students to adults um the other piece um that is new uh is the new um stay-at-home orders that are are happening um through the uh Regional system that's now in place um that's happened right now around the counties around us we have not gone into that yet in Solano um that depends on the ICU bed uh capacity and those orders don't affect the tiered system for school reopening and that's made been made really clear and lots of different um uh information that's come out from the state and so the the four tiered system for the government is purple where things are widespread red that's where we were before we've bumped back into purple orange and then

100yellow um and as I said we haven't we in the purple and we have not entered the stay-at-home order yet here in salano County the other piece of legislation that we always have to bring to the Forefront and remember that helps Drive our work is that there is a Senate bill it's Senate Bill 98 um and that contains the statement that um local education agencies leas districts shall offer in an instruction to the greatest extent possible there's a whole lot of other information about distance learning in there but um this is another key piece that we have to remember and uh so what would small group look like um again we uh all of this is pending the ratification of theou between BTA and buusd and it's been a great collaborative effort um and uh

101the other thing that is in that that I want to point out is that all the small group structures that I will talk about in just a minute are based on staff volunteering to do so for the inperson while we're in purple so before we're able to go back in hybrid um if we're able to continue to do small group in person um those are dependent upon uh teachers volunteering to do that so we really see three different ways of doing targeted small uh small group instruction excuse me in person first is targeted and so um we talked about that and it's actually a connection back to Miss Garcia's presentation that she did but really identifying criteria data for participation and then inviting students who are really struggling academically and it gets to our Equity

102issues um or social emotionally and having systems set up where they would come in for a set period of time and receive small targeted instruction based on particular skills Concepts or needs either in the academic arena or in the social emotional Arena um the next type of uh small group inperson instruction is for virtual support and what we mean by that is um we have some students who even with lots and lots of Outreach and and work to try to connect are just not participating they're not showing up to their virtual classes um it could be that you know they go back to sleep after someone goes to work and and it's they're just not participating for whatever reason and we've got a whole plan uh to do Outreach but if we're unable to engage

103them one of our structures for small group support is to invite those students to come and do their virtual learning from the school site so that would look like uh kids coming in they don't get to do their zooms and virtual learning from home they actually come in and they're supervised to do their Zoom lesson so that could happen uh right now um when things are still virtual and then um another uh possibility is Teachers classroom teachers we know that they're teaching kind of you know all day long stem to stern but if there are teachers that want to find ways to weave in or have the capacity to find ways to weave in some small group support either during the Monday through Thursday or if they chose to do something on Fridays and that

104would be teacher chose uh directed and facilitated so if there was a special project a lab um someone needed some extra help they could choose to do that as small group instruction in person as well um I think one of the things that is important for us to remember as we're thinking about um preparing to bring students back for small group instruction in person is that really knowing um who our kids are so really looking at data that's been really tricky lately and how to meet their needs and remembering that um everybody doesn't get the same thing and so you're still focused on the outcomes but the path may not be the same for each student and so some students will get invited to come in for small group instruction because they meet certain criteria

105and we need to be Equitable in trying to work close those gaps and so what's been happening um is that we are uh working collaboratively with our teachers our administrators um different departments Education Services student services special ed to really say what is the data that we have that we can count on right now uh across our district because being in a virtual world it's been difficult to do any sort of valid assessments and then what are the cut points or what are the the criteria for which we would use to invite students to come in and participate in small group instruction that's been a collaborative effort looking at what is the data we have and what should we use as we begin to create these small in groups the other piece that's happening currently

106is really looking at what other assessments could we use some of this time to get some more in-depth assessment on students with whom we are concerned and identifying what is the right curricula that we can use in person to support them um we have made a commitment with our teachers that the invitations for participation students to come in in person and creating the groups and schedules would be a collaborative effort between the district office and the site Administration so that parents and families really understand why some students are are invited to come in in person during small group instruction and others may not be getting that at this point in time and then another piece that uh we haven't started yet that we do need to start is once we have schedules in groups and

107and numbers of students and and so forth is looking at the facilities and working with our maintenance department and our administrators to identify spaces at each site that we could do those um small group instructions have um and then other a few other things just to keep in mind as we start to talk about um the start date for small group instruction in person um I know there's a lot of numbers on this screen that's because we added one additional survey which took up a whole block down here um but but uh as of um sorry about that yesterday morning um the Ser we sent out one survey and it was a TK to 12 survey and we had asked two questions did you want to come back in person or do you want to

108remain 100% virtual we only have about 2500 um responses to that survey which is just about half um of our student population and currently we're at about 56 % say they want to return in person and 44% they want to remain virtual based on feedback that we got from families we revised a separate survey just to Elementary families that would replace the the responses they gave to that initial survey because we added a third option um one was do you want to return in person the second was do you want to remain 100% virtual and then this third one um the the idea for this came from families that said we could do either as a family um but we would like to stay with our classroom teacher if at all possible and so that

109is about a 30% split across the board and we have about um it was actually up to 900 um responses earlier today but when I put this slide presentation together there was about 800 so just about half of our elementary families have returned that survey and we've asked for that to come back by the end of next week just so that we can start planning for the time when we can come back in person in a hybrid model so I think that's data that that um is important to know that that um more than half of our families are wanting to come back in person another piece of data to consider as we continue the conversation is um how our student performance is doing and right now I'll be honest we're using report card data

110and that would be uh Elementary report cards that went out at the end of the first trimester and then um the first quarter grades for middle and high school and so as you can see um across the top is our reading or Ela percentage of students receiving either a one because the Elementary report cards are standards based in it's one two three or four and a one is far below standard um or an f and so you can see that we have approximately 10% across the board of students receiving a one or an F uh that last column is a bonisha High School Liberty percentage um and we heard oh gosh it was a few uh board meetings ago um that Liberty's been really struggling to have their students attend and so that has and

111and we heard from Rick to just really trying to get the students to connect and attend has been um tough and then math we're actually doing a little bit better in terms of the percentage of of students who are really struggling with a one or an F across the board in mathematics and so I think uh we we don't have an exact um correlation to where we were at this point last year but um without doing um a mathematical analysis at this point it isn't looking like it's too different than where we were a year ago there is a link here uh if you're interested in looking at the breakdown by uh site and grade level and so um with that I just open this up for any further comments or or questions or discussions

112um in our planning stages to return for small group instruction while we're in the purple and um if you have any questions or or additional things you'd like us to think about um I clarification you can hear me okay right I can hear you yeah a little bit okay let me move in so I wanted to look at looking at the numbers in terms of the responses so you so the number we have 2563 of the families who responded and that was the looking at TK through 12 and but you're saying that that's only we've only had half like just half of parents who responded so now we have this whole other chunk of the population who has not responded so what how are decisions going to be made with say for that population are

113you going to go ahead and say well if they haven't responded we're going to just automatically um keep them in Virtual or or what kind of considerations in terms of being able to make a decision great great question and um I actually just was uh talking about that with someone today I talked with our principles and we haven't talked as a full principal team yet but um I just sent the middle school and high school the two high schools data to them from that survey so that they could start to look at it and then the next level of conversation is how do we send it out again how do we who who's missing who hasn't responded let's start to identify who hasn't responded and then do we need to send out do we need

114to do some phone banking to give people the opportunity to continue or or to to respond we wouldn't go as a first step right to just assigning them to one thing to the other we would do definitely some additional Outreach I do know some of the feedback from parents and we heard that um in some of the comments uh over the last couple of meetings is it's really hard to decide right now um and we've we've heard that over and over and especially as it seems like every time I send out a survey is right when the um metrics in the county are changing and so it it you know there's never a good time but um what I have reassured families is that um you know the county and uh Health Department have specific

115guidelines on when we can come back safely the school board is taking that into consideration and we would um use those metrics as that decision is made for a DAT because we want everyone to stay healthy it doesn't do us any good if if we were to bring back people back in it was unsafe and then and then I know that we kind of talked about this at the last meeting but but having to make that decision hey do Dr M I thought um I you're a little um can't hear you as good okay how about this go better way better so with the families having to to be in that position to be able to make a decision with is you know is difficult just because of the spike and everything so so is

116it still to the point where it's an absolute like if they make a decision they still don't have the option of you there's no way that we can work with them on like you know I don't know any adjustments to schedules if they decide that they want to stay keep them virtually there's still like absolutely no way that we can provide them an option of maybe I don't know half halfway in we only have a few months left to school at this point so right what what any other accommodations that we're going to be offering to families to be able to if they if they want to decide to have their kids go to school um so right now we we have said that you know the decision for our planning purposes needs to stick

117um I think it is dependent upon what our numbers look like and how many kids actually come back because we have other factors that impact our ability to shift it's not that we don't want to do that work but one to CL is full for contract we can't go over that number and so it I think it's hard for me to answer that question on a on a global scale because I think it depends on the numbers when it is in the year which direction people want to shift do they want to come in so one of the things in theou says no more than 50% of the students in a class and so um a lot of that will be on a Case by case and dependent on on how things sort of shake

118out in terms of of numbers okay so if I could oh I'm sorry go ahead oh no I was just say the other thing that um families have asked is if if we have a vaccine come March and things are completely different then I would imagine we would be coming back to you because the county would be lifting some of these restrictions and we would look at the whole system again you know so if if we're able to really come back in a much broader scale with a with a um vaccine I think that would be a different conversation I think uh oh go ahead I'm sorry nope I was just going to say yes Mr now I couple things uh Point uh from the presentation number one talking about s sp98 it's under I'm

119under the impression that it's still left up to the leas to decide whether or not they do want to come back in purple and I know what you're saying there's just a second part to what I'm at but to say that you have to do inperson learning from my reading of it it says that you have the ability each local Education Agency has the ability to make that decision what they believe is safe correct for purple and it's only the only thing you're allowed to do in purple Beyond getting a waiver is the small group instruction at no more than 16 people right it doesn't say you have to um it it it pushes us to do as much as practically possible right and I yeah think that people get confused thinking that you have

120to or that you have that choice and we do have that choice um just to pigy back on what Dr Moss said too that it seems like we really need to get a better amount of the surveys back and I do I agree with that right now especially with the spiking you know it doesn't as a parent you know and I've had Parents email Migo and what this is an very difficult if not impossible decision you're asking me to make to decide a month down the line to send my kid back saying that it's non-revocable when things could be a lot worse or a lot better um I was pleased to see that the uh grades don't as you said don't seem to be uh much worse than last year when we were in person

121so the concept of virtual uh learning being not going you know being terrible or not going well doesn't seem to be you know holding up as much do would we all like to be back remember I'm a teacher too yeah I would love to be back but I think we need to look at the safety and then the the last point I want to make uh goes back to what you started with which was the decision uh on November 19th to go back uh small groups in purple and I I expressed this earlier uh I don't think that everyone knew that's what they were voting for to go back I I think um that is something that I would like us to revisit and we will disc discuss that about the how is great when

122we discussed it last on the 19th the the how you want to go about doing everything you guys dotted all your eyes and crossed all your tees but I think the when um I still think it you know we need to revisit and see if we really meant to say yes we believe it is safe to go back second semester in January in purple in small groups so I'm going to suggest that you know whatever happens with it that we take it because we do have that ability uh in the local Education Agency to decide whether we believe it is safe to put have people face-to-face back in classrooms in January it doesn't mean we would never do it but we would have that ability uh to decide the when so that's something I'm going

123to put out there um as a part of it I do appreciate you guys listening to me thank you absolutely thank you any other comments I I have one more closer I don't mean to take over have another clarification so um I know that you I believe you mentioned and I can't remember which slide it was but you teachers you are going to have to survey the teachers again to see who will be returning or who who agrees to return it um and not teach virtually is that correct or who's going to remain virtually did I hear you say that no we didn't say that we were going to do this the teachers this was so we're doing the this the families we redid the elementary and then I think we all look at our

124data to see because I know that um Dr Gil has been working with uh teachers that need to stay virtual and in theou there's um a whole it's not a hierarchy but a um steps priorities of who who would have uh the option the options to stay and how we would determine that and so part of it is dependent upon how many virtual teachers we need so in some districts they needed more virtual teachers than they had expected and so part of it will be once we get this data we'll be able to take that next step and start to say do we have enough teachers based on they have a medical note or they have one of those criteria or do we need to put it out there so that we would get more

125teachers to do virtual okay so then you already have the numbers in of you know how many teachers are going to be able to to work in this model is that you are you saying that is that you're saying um we have we have information on some folks but not I don't know if we have everyone okay right this kind of dve Tails into the question I was going to start a moment ago um right off of Dr Moss's question and that was that we established in our prior mou a whole criteria for who was who could come back or for the teachers to help them decide who was coming back and who needed to provide additional information so based on our survey numbers of the number of students that want to come back then

126we decide how many teachers we need right so and because the teachers have that in their negotiated M us that's how that decision is made right okay because they're negotiating that with their board through their Union and their board that's not our decision that's the negotiated decision decision Dr Gil do you want to talk a little bit about that piece is he with us sure I was just thinking um so there there two pieces to it so there were uh you there's no good answer like one answer to any of this as we know so we went back and forth even when we were writing this um priority system about virtual teachers uh with our uh BT members we were discussing should we do a survey first and find out which teachers need to stay

127virtual which teachers or should be find out how many which positions we know we how many virtual positions we needed each of the school site so what we landed with was that based on the number of virtual positions we needed of the school sites we will open those positions and have the teachers give um uh their doctor's notes to us we will work with them on those specific things and assign the teachers Bas on that priority so it's very defined uh in theou clearly who will get first priority to teach virtually get second priority to teach virtually and so on so can I ask uh Hopscotch on that one theoretically if I had a doctor's note are you telling me that you guys would look at the doctor's notes and compare to see who would

128be allowed to teach virtually what if I happen to be teaching at a site and you felt that there was a need to have me in person would could you theoretically uh force me back even if I had a doctor's note or would you have to find some other way to do it we cannot uh so we have to go through a process which is called interactive process uh uh to provide accommodations for any employees who actually have a doctor's note for themselves so we go through the process meet with the person virtually and so on uh so to answer your question Mr Masali we cannot force somebody to come teach in person if the doctor says uh that I ask this person to work virtually from this time to this time okay so the

129doctor's note uh could not be overruled by the district saying hey we need you in class if the doctor says that they need to work virtually okay because their health yes thank you of course we have to go through a process meet with them do the whole thing uh but cannot so then we we also wrote that language if that happens that a school site has more virtual teachers less are needed or vice versa we also have language according for that also in theou for that I think that was my point was that it's um the discussion in theou between the union and the district that is determining who teaches is and where it's not anything that I mean we get it from theou we're not determining it or we're not impacting that right no

130I just was wondering if somebody could be forced back in the classroom even with the Dodgers not regardless of where has their own personal health issues their own personal health issues um we cannot force that person to go back and medical note or overrides um needs or School needs okay thank you and I mean this is specific to co that we're speaking of so I get the difference between that and regular year yeah if somebody says I have a doctor's know I'm medical leave we cannot talk to that person basically we can't ask that person to work right well yeah but the virtual that's correct the virtual they could say I have a DOD that I have to work virtually and then the district would just have to figure out how to make it work

131okay thank you that's corre and I guess I just I continue to ask questions just for clarity because I want to make sure that you know I appreciate the process and everything that you've taken to to provide us this information um and I just remember even like with our with our last meeting we had presence of site Administration facilities and everybody you know attending the meeting and kind of sharing and supporting and I just wanted to make sure that the teachers even though and I I followed up to ask that question to make sure that that um teachers are have definitely been involved in this process um so that we're all on the same page you know in terms of understanding so that's why I continue to ask because I do want to make sure

132that when we're you know making the decisions the decisions that we're supposed to be making I need to make sure that everybody has that we've had their input like you know and I know there's still the process of of you know there's the bargaining that has to happen um outside of this this setting but I just really want to be rest assured that folks are having a say in terms of you know that we're that we're doing right by everybody basically and I do want to honor of course the parents I know that we do have we have this small percentage of parents who are definitely just okay with with hybrid then I I definitely want to make sure that we have a population um of the support that they're to get you know from

133the teachers that it's a you know that it is a working it's a working unit so to speak so so that's why I keep asking I just want to make sure and so just uh so checking one of one of our favorite uh educational thinkers Mike schmoker this is uh focuses on for teachers right Mark and G the checking checking for understanding understanding yes so I'm checking for understanding so dear board uh we're under the direction from you to um just we clear to um you teachers are talking about theou and weighing in on it and if they approve it uh we'll bring it to the board meeting next week and what that would involve is when we come back from the holidays based on what Dr beon was talking about we would do the

134small group very targeted instruction in purple the way that Dr beon has defined it uh this is our understanding and then the other part of the understanding uh if we need to clarify it we need to talk about it is if um a after the first semester if the district is in red then um we would be able to implement the hybrid model now there to two time frames in that you don't get into red unless you it's like 14 days right you got to be in there for 14 days and then once you are you the language in theou is that the teachers get 10 days you just roughly you know really two weeks to for turnaround time so that's our understanding so I'm just checking for those two time periods consecutive or do

135they follow each other like we have to stay in red for two weeks and then the teachers get another two weeks yes okay so a month after we hit the red category before anybody would be in class that that's that's been the the conversation agreement with the association yeah I don't I thought we discussed not after the holidays to go back to purple but theoretically even though I still think that we need to relook at that I I thought the concept was that it would purple would be second semester not right after Christmas because the thought was that you'd want a clean break I mean you don't want to start coming back with only a couple weeks left in the semester or am I wrong I could be wrong I'm often wrong ask ask my

136wife she'll tell you small group um we had said in January now it won't start that first week back because we still are putting our data together and need to do our communication and in invitations and so forth um the hybrid was when we hit red and we don't know when that would be we had said you know we had said you know the second semester doesn't start until mid January don't even know if we'll be in red I mean that was one of the things is we didn't put a date on it it was when we get into red then you've got those two weeks to settle into red and then two weeks uh to give the teachers that time so that could be January it could be February we don't know but the

137purple you're saying would be right when we go back I don't think it would be that first week because we would be still setting things up the second week have some work to do okay well and the second week is when we the semester breaks and we go into the second semester because the semester ends the 14th right which is the second week in January it's the two weeks the Martin Luther King yeah so I think no I mean I'm just I'm surmising that it's not going to start the first two weeks in January you're not going to have it together that quickly with the kids right we're getting close but um we still have some more work to do and then um the small groups though don't necessarily have to coincide with the semester

138because it's a kind of a an addition it's like a core plus more right they'll get their classes but then these foury olds or fivey olds need to come in and get some some reading in because they're struggling or you know high school math or something even child go ahead even if a child is invited to the small group they aren't required to come correct correct I want to thing from mou perspective please that before we even will invite any students it will be very important for us to have the staff which is teachers and classified staff right volunteer uh because uh if we first find out who volunteers and then invite students right and you say volunteer in terms of willing to work in class not volunteer as in they aren't getting paid for

139extra time right right they're working virtually but volunteer to work in person with students right right well and I assume they're also going to be helping to verify the students that are going to be coming for the small group instruction because it's going to be data that the teachers are generating with their classroom work is that not accurate as well correct which kind of had I I just have to throw this out there I know it's it's another train and we don't want to go there right now but um just want to verbalize it you mentioned the reading and that has been something that has been really Weighing on my mind we talked about the reading a lot it's our big city project which I know has been put on hold um we have put

140a lot of money into that we've hired a lot of extra um classified staff to help with that and so my question is how is our reading going because we're saying that our third graders will all be on grade level by third grade and putting a lot of support into the primary grades so I'm at some point i' like I you all look at his gr pardon me oh I'm sorry I was just thinking to myself sorry I'm gonna mute now I'm really glad you asked that question and I'm going to see if uh Miss rice wants to jump in but we do I I should have started by saying we are doing small group instruction currently it's all happening virtually um so our special ed services are happen happen in elel services are happening

141and then intervention and reading tutors um and uh Miss rice oversees that program and has had the pleasure of popping into several of those sessions so do you want to just give a you know a thumbnail of what's happening there uh sure so yes it is happening virtually um we are serving in elementary our first second and third grade students we have some criteria um that we ident identified so that we did reach out to those families to give additional support um they're using programs such as literacy Footprints it takes them through guided reading guided writing um most of the kids are engaged um but you know there is still a barrier with that virtual peace um so um we are providing the support we can provide right now virtually and we're also brainstorming on

142you know what other ways trying to think outside the box that we can uh support our students and so the other data that we have that we're starting to look at because we tried to give the map assessment which I think uh miss frie you knew from Fairfield um excellent assessment platform really difficult to deliver over uh Zoom um right especially because we we'd never administered it before so we didn't even have the familiarity with it so we put a pause on that and so we're looking at grade and um we have a couple of online reading programs and math programs that we can pull reports on on kids participation and how they're doing in those programs on the standards and so we're using that as well it's it's just more directly tied to a

143program versus uh a a more Universal screener if that makes sense so we can definitely bring that that data back for you too so going back to dates for a moment um even in talking about bringing back purple and small groups in after the first of the year or after do we have that two week lag time for the teachers to transition so once we identify teachers they still get two weeks after that that's a good question um I suppose if they're volunteering they could volunteer to start on whatever date we choose or right or decided this small group piece is embedded in the bigger MO the hybrid mou and so I think the two correct me if I'm wrong Dr Gil but I I think the two we turn around time was um to

144bring the whole system back on to hybrid versus coming in in small but we'll have some flexibility around that U the two weeks timeline was written in the health and safety right which basically had said inperson learning it didn't really say hybrid or small group so it'll be interesting to see how do we interpret it then okay but you know I I only I bring it up because lots of people are asking questions about timeline and I know it's so difficult to nail it down and families are understandably really challenged by trying to figure out um how they'll handle all of this so that's why I keep asking these questions about timeline to be able to help support people make their decisions and if they're thinking that it's going to be January 14th and we

145can say clearly it's not exactly January 14th it could be January 30th because of this two- week timeline I think it would be helpful to deliver that information to families as soon as we could good point yeah I think that's good because that that two week live time is a little looser than than I first understood you to say that to so it could be applied to any of the situations which is fine but it maybe it'll help to better identify timing I I just think that a lot of parents from what I've heard this is not a good time to force decisions on people with the spikes happening and again I'm going to repeat and if it if it goes It goes if it doesn't doesn't but I really think we need to look

146at pushing back the timetable until we have a better you know till the state and the area has a better grip on this I do realize we voted on the 19th but I will uh restate that I don't believe everyone that voted knew what exactly that were not only were they voting on The how we're going to go back but they were also voting on The when to go back so and if I'm wrong the rest of the board can tell me I'm wrong on that but uh I I just really feel that way all right thank you okay anybody else have any other comments well in closing for me I think it would be important for for the red I mean we we're talking about this thing all the time I mean when if

147we're in the red we're watching it we're talking about it I think it would be important in my mind push back if you want obviously that you at a board level we're confirming it de board this is the date this is where we are this is what we agreed so we're you know talking about it openly with the public so that they know what that date looks like because I some districts are picking a date and I don't know they can't really do that Ian yeah you don't know where things are going to be right you can't so for checking for understanding again if we're moving ahead with that scenario I think we come back as a board and and we talk about it and say hey look this is this is where let let's

148say it plays out and we're in the red here we are 14 days we got we got two weeks we talk to one another at a board meeting okay we we've qualified here's the date where we can come back are we all comfortable doing that right I think it would be wise for us to do that because it's transparent and it's clear to the public and uh I think it would be smart for us to do that rather than just you know sort of clicks over and on you go that would be my thought does that make sense well that makes perfect sense because honestly I'm sorry gity I'll go ahead why don't you go first oh no I was just gonna say I mean I appreciate you saying that but I I also just

149want to reassure families that they do have a choice and so that there's still choice in the matter it is unfortunate that you know having to make a decision in the midst of of everything is is very difficult um but I just went to you know to still reiterate that there's still a choice so nobody's being forced to go back right well but butach yeah but I think that I thought I heard um with Dr be saying that that still parameters around I guess as they're getting information on who is you know who will be coming back right so there's still somewhat of a choice I'm hoping that's that's what I'm hearing at least that's what I thought I heard well the parameter is they're negotiating in their so but can't hear you gity I

150was saying there's still there's still choice in the matter so right if the if the um if theou if the BTA passes the mou over the next several days uh as Dr Gil always does she'll bring it on the 17th and then uh she'll do you know summary of what's in it Dr Moss great questions uh so you know as a board you'll have read it ahead of time because it'll be in the board packet and then we can you know a ask ourselves any questions about what what's in that document if well and I think it's also going to be really important because the classified who are also extremely important they are going to be the support for our teachers they as they approve their mou we need to know what their what their

151positions are as well yeah what I what I was going to address to the dates Mark is um I the I the understanding and everybody I think understands how the governor's tears are working for the State of California so there's there's no really timing or date for us to pick until we hit the red I would I would rather leave it that once we hit the red that's a discussion we could begin to have we need to be in it for two weeks and then we could say okay this will be the date because we know there's another two weeks that need to be added on for the teacher contract so this is our Target date for opening school but to turn around like I am hearing some other districts saying okay we are opening

152up January 19th and we're still in the purple now you've got everybody geared up and ready and you're going to say oh never mind you know things changed again I I think that's going to be more upsetting and more distressful to parents than than just the clarity of we can't do anything until the till the red hits right and we know that and something that's coming out from the state we're not picking the red but we're asking the parents to make a decision now about what happens a month plus down the line and I mean I think that's rough right now so we really are asking them to make a decision are we picking a date no but it's you know and I remember looking at the letter and it's saying that you know you

153really can't and I get it because you have to be able to plan you have to be able to balance classes and everything so I totally get that but you know it seems like a really hard decision to ask people to make right now but that's just me and I agree it is a really hard decision to make but we've also I also feel like there needs to be a piece of being respectful to all these people that need to plan be pulling data and setting classes in children so it's a it is it's a balancing act and it's not a great place to be I I don't know a way around it because you just can't have people all of a sudden come I do and I think there there was one more thing

154I'd like to um yeah would like to add I think um that we want to be as least disruptive to families as possible and so by saying when we get to Red there's a twoe timeline we stay in red there's a twoe timeline for transition then people can anticipate as things happen what's going to happen next I'm really concerned about the idea that we would get to Red and then go let's vote again whether or not we're actually going to go back because that would throw everybody into turmoil again because if we if we can now say it's going to go to Red you have a month after red to get ready I think that's a much more uh set idea for people to work with then we're going to get to Red and then

155we might vote again and change our mind that makes sense no I understand that that makes good sense that's what I'm worried about now here's the question I have with that theoretically let's say back in October when we decided not to go back when we were in red to hybrid and then as many people knew we went to purple you know the holidays so is there part this is probably for Kush Is there anything in the that says okay we go back in red to hybrid and then bam if we're back in purple we do XYZ or we just going to say well we're back we're back we're not going anywhere I don't is that part of theou nothing in theou is written for that okay so guidelines that we know from the state but

156nothing in theou is mentioned so the guidelines from the state if I'm not mistaken say that if you're in red and you go back and then you're County goes to purple you can stay in school am I that I don't know about the health there but yeah you're not required to stay but you can okay you're not required to stay but theoretically you could stay so really we might end up having let's say we went to red and we decide to go back we get back in and we end up in purple we might end up having to come back and vote again anyway because you're saying we're not required to but we could stay in if we wanted to okay I just wondered thank you and maybe we'll be really really fortunate and we'll

157slip right into orange because that's the way I'm going to think I'm thinking the vaccine until we get the vaccine going it's gonna be it starts next week in California yeah so so just from me as we close it out so we keep moving along here I think I think we're clear um do I hear head nning we clear going forward how we're progressing do we no Mr Meli not oh I I get what every I still think that the the going back in the small groups in purple I just don't think every but apparently I'm alone on that that I'm not alone that I thought that the boat was just you know on the 19th was unclear but if everyone else feels it's clear about going back in small groups I'm not holding anything

158up and it's it's voluntary so so what happened if no one volunteered would everyone have to say virtual theoretically we can't provide the service then okay we would we would continue to provide it virtually yeah okay thank you I was just curious okay okay and then more more to come we'll we'll keep bringing this up we'll the fun continues and you guys this it's complicated chapter 95 coming up next Thursday right we are not alone iting that everybody's trying to figure this thing out we keep talking to our so we We Do It Best by having these kinds of conversations which take a while but I we got to do it because we got to have Clarity okay okay thank you guys thank you you know I I and I just wanna I just want

159to thank everyone including everyone of of my colleagues on the board this it's hard I I don't know how else to say this except this is hard I you know I I think we all go back and forth we're all wrestling about what's best for our staff and for our children and for our families it it's not easy um and and I just appreciate all of you and I app appreciate in the conversations that we have I I I get it's hard I thank you so just want to put that out there because we have some interesting conversations these days okay if everybody's comfortable I'm G to move on to the last part of the agenda are we okay am I getting nodding heads yes okay all right we're going to go into um 12

160and 12.1 is our non-consent action items and the first one is a consideration and approval of the appointment of a bond oversight Committee Member and that I'm going to go to Mr Rao for hi good evening uh school board and um everyone uh we had a vacancy on our citizens Bond oversight committee and U Scott berford uh who uh completed his term and um vacated a spot we have a candidate before you tonight um it's recommended um by the superintendent and the cabinet it's Mark Hughes a member of the community for a very long time involved with the schools the city council um has had uh experience in the utility business and the business associations and uh we were we're asking uh the school board to appoint uh Mark Hughes to our uh citizens Bond

161oversight committee uh the purpose of that committee is to um hear reports on our school facility Bond program and to review the expenditures um from the bond program okay does anybody have any questions or comments for Mr rill can I call for a motion to approve the appointment of Mark Hughes to the oversight committee I move that we approve Mark Hughes to the oversight committee do I have a second second okay thank you all those in favor say I or raise your hand I I any opposed all right seeing none tell Mr Huge thank you very much and welcome aboard I'm going to go to the second one right now 12.2 m m Mr rill again um it's consideration and approval of resolution number 20- 21-10 to meet legal requirements and mitigation fee Act and

162the government code 66,000 Mr rill hi yeah good evening so this is um a standard uh report that we have for you tonight uh it reports out um all of the school districts in California um are able and charge a what's called a developer fee when you have um a housing project or a commercial project um right now uh the residential project um it's about $3 per square feet and uh industrial um is about 50 cents per square feet and we just report out in this resolution um what uh what our balances are and you can see you know as you all probably are aware banisha as a city is pretty uh bu out and there are some infill projects from year to year um and there are there really there and there is some

163industrial projects as well but mostly it's been infill uh residential residential over the last 15 years or so and so we bring in um this last year we we brought in about $37,000 uh and we use these funds to augment um the projects in our facility master plan obviously um our our bond fund which which is separate from this um pays for the majority of those of those projects um as does the the money that we're going to we're start to get from the state but these are Developer fees that um help us in our school facility projects and uh we're just reporting that out to you um at this uh this time of year uh asking for your approval of this resolution I'll make a comment that uh in a month or two what

164we're allowed to do um I I think that's also an annual thing in in a month or two we'll bring it back we do um a full a more complete project about what's going on on our district and we're able to um all school districts in California are able to do this other report which um justifies whether or not you're able to increase those rates that we're charges we haven't increased these rates for many many years um I think in a month or two we'll bring forth a report for your consideration about um considering to to increase those residents rates but for tonight this is just an anual annual report out of what we did last year okay all right so this um is a roll call Vote for This resolution yes okay so um

165do I have a motion please I'll make a motion that we approve resolution number 20- 21-10 to meet legal requirements of the M mitigation fee act okay I'll second that okay thank you Mr melli okay Mrs Martinez a roll call please yes yes okay thank you now on to 12.3 again Mr rill it's going to be you consider consideration approval and Adoption of the 2020 21 budget overview for parents great um I think I'll go ahead and just share my screen um for a few minutes here I'm going to show you a couple um graphs and then um Dr beatson is going to I think chime in with some of the um descriptors towards the other part of this um lcff budget overview for parents um which is on the screen right now and the

166intent of this it's just a four-page document and uh it is intended to pull from our our in our first interim financial report our budget reports that you'll see in the next item and just highlight our budget and um our uh what usually is the local control accountability plan uh but this year it's the uh the LCP um the and I'm sorry it the the name is escaping me because it's a continuity the local continuity plan and attendance so um on the screen here it basically just pulls uh it's a it's a it's meant to be a I'm a parent and or a Community member I just don't have time to go through all of the budget documents you know there there're you know many many pages and so this is just four-page overview U

167which pulls the numbers from the budget report so uh on here uh you'll see these numbers again uh in the next item it just gives you a nice a big pie chart about our projected revenues and the intent here is to tell our parents and our community that uh the school district in bisha gets most of its fun funds from the uh local control control funding formula that's about $40 million you can see in the blue uh and then they break out that into our general lcff funds and then um right now we get um just under $2 million as a supp uh with the lcff um this these other pieces of the pie are smaller pieces you can see you know there's a pretty good chunk there uh through Federal cares when we've been

168buying all of the um uh the computers and other technology for students and staff as well as uh personal protective equipment and other things to address the the impacts from covid so I'm going to scroll down to the next page again this is just a parent overview just trying to highlight it's a document if parents want to go to it they can just get some big picture items here um what uh uh Dr beatson did is she led our uh community in this um uh effort for the learning continuity plan again that that uh took the place of the um other plan that was established with the uh local control funding formula um and so you can see that we have a a detailed plan in here of that three ,99 uh3 Milli 99,000 and

169and how we're spending that on students um with high needs and I believe uh you know the the rest of the budget really is our general operations budget and I can go into a little bit more detail in the next item which is our operational costs for our our employee salary and benefits and the uh the other operational costs of our district but this gives you a little bit more insight into the special things we do to help um serve our our students and and help them succeed in school um and so that goes into um our descriptors here on this page and I'm gonna um I'll go ahead and keep my screen up uh Dr beatson if you want to just highlight a few of the items on this page sure so typically um

170as as Mr rill said the parent overview comes to you as an action item when we bring the lcap to you and it's just uh a description of how we're uh spending the funds in the lcap this year we brought to you an LCP we had to have that approved in September um they had postponed the budget portion of that um the LCP I mean the um parent overview takes in to account the funding that we used in the LCP and then the rest of the budget for the district the slide before this the page before this that Mr rill showed um was how the funding was spent in the LCP which I'll go through in a second and then much of it was spent and targeted for our students who are El uh Foster

171youth or so socioeconomically disadvantaged so that's our supplemental funds we made a decision with our our team to not change the use of our supplemental funds so those all the things listed here are what we had have been doing um with our supplemental funds so our second step program paying for Staffing through school psychologist counseling our professional development days um English learner coordination English learner uh intervention teachers um our alter alternative Ed program all of that is paid for supplemental funds but we didn't write about that in our LCP instead in the LCP that I brought to you in September we focused on those learning loss mitigation funds and spending down that it was about the same amount of money actually about $2 million for technology so all of that technology that we purchased we

172did a lot of professional learning we bought lots of new curriculum that we needed to purchase because of um learning through distance learning so a lot of our programs we bought the electronic versions of or some supplemental programs um we added some staff uh stiens through Tech Mentor so every site has a tech mentor we've added some after school tutoring we did the buusd after hours interest based classes to provide mental health support for students um and some other mental health so this really shows the the overview for parents shows the um how that that was spent through the lcdp and then the the supplemental pages that I just went over we left kind of out of the LCP because we were just keeping those as two separate two separate is clear but together it

173makes up all of our funding yeah and I think on on this last page of the the parent overview um again I think um it just it it tells you the um the special programs that we offer regardless of everybody's distracted by the impacts of covid-19 but these are the programs that you know we've had in our our lcap for for several years now you know our Community Day School program English language development translation services that we offer uh daac and some math support so um basically again our uh our summary here shows you know our budget our budget was about two 2.1 million um our actual expenditures were just just over that at 2.2 million which means we were able to dedicate some of our um other budget line items that may or may

174not have been fully spent in and allocated um to towards this useth so um this is a this is a new document it's the first year it's this these four pages um and I think it's yeah the intent is for our parents just to see a quick four-page summary of some of the Big Ideas um that are going on in our district uh and they are always welcome to go to the full LCP document uh that was presented at an earlier um board meeting or in the next item uh it's the full package for our budget and and interim financial report so um this is the state's attempt this is a this is a template from the state so we drop in the numbers and and fill it out for them it's not something that

175we create ourselves and so this is a this is an action item for you guys tonight we're asking you to approve our uh parent overview related to the LCP okay so I'm going to call for any questions first from for Mr rill anyone have any questions I do okay I I do hello all right well go ahead because I have one too um Tim when I was reading I think you clarified for us uh when I read it initially the uh actual budget looks like we went into deficit but you're saying we were able to um that we're not in the deficit we didn't we overspent in this category but it doesn't create a budget deficit because you re reallocated money to this category correct okay I don't think it says that anywhere in there

176since it's a public document I just didn't want it to look like we were O overspending Okay um I'm we could probably add some a descriptor in there um if we if you would like us to go back in and revise it we can can add a descript descriptive to that extent um I I'll leave it to you to decide how you want to do it I just thought since it was a public document I didn't want it to publicly look like spending we had a deficit so maybe even just in in the note at the bottom okay Miss Hulen are you Dr Hulen are you talking about this particular page that he's showing right there yes this one so this is this I if we added those up we're still within our whole budget

177so it's just showing that that we have some uh that blue bar is our supplemental and then how that's what we're given but we we've added more services in there that are from other sources as well so some of the Staffing maybe all of the Staffing isn't paid for out of supplemental but some of it's paid for out of other funds so um I think I do I I think I do understand what it's sharing I think my point was is we didn't necessarily explain it that way because it does if you just look at the graphs and you look at this was our budget and this is what we spent we didn't clarify that we've added other funds to cover the difference right I just remember our earlier discussions in the year about budget

178deficits people being concerned about layoffs and so on and so forth so I was just thinking public document we might want to be clear yeah we can revise that last paragraph to to indicate that awesome thank you okay all right and then one other question that I had is how are parents going to get this um that is a very good question it's a it is a brand new uh four-page report um it let Dr beatson I I assume it will be posted on the on the website it will be posted on our website um I don't know we did this last year as well that last year was the first year actually that we had to do an El uh budget overview for parents I don't know if we mailed it out to people

179as well um we could do that but we definitely the the requirement is to post it so I wonder if also since we communicate with parents through Power School Andor email we could even at least do that with a link because I'm not sure they would think to go look for it on our website and I think that's a problem we always have is things get buried on the website and people don't really know if they're looking for something that they need to look for something that's new so if this is a relatively new thing I I wonder if we could consider that sure because otherwise you've done a lot of work and not very many people are going to access it we can definitely look into that okay are there any other questions from

180the board because I only see Mark hi Mark okay can I call for so if we're gonna make the little correction can I call for a motion that might include that little adjustment to the to the St the paragraph and then get a second so that we can move on because Stacy and Georgina and are sitting here in the boardroom and bisha has a 10 o'clock curfew so we're gonna pick up the pimpo here a little bit because I don't want to be cut speeding with all the cops that we've had on our board thing here okay so I'll make a motion I'll make the motion that we pass the parent overview of finances with a minor change I'll second that motion thank you can I get um all those in favor say I I

181or raise your hand okay um any oppose seeing no one the motion passes thank you very much okay Mr rill the next one's yours and we're gonna push you on a little bit um this is a review and approval of the 2021 first interim financial report for Venicia unified great okay I'm going to go ahead and uh share my screen again I have a few documents that I will walk you through they're the same that you've seen before in regards to our interim reports and our budget report so um as we do every year um we do uh two interim reports this is our first one the second one will be done in March and uh we look at um our budget assumptions or our our fiscal factors that we look at and we don't

182look at it just in the budget year we look out at least two years and um I'm G to go ahead and scroll up on this slide um we start with our known um expenditures our known salary costs um we have our um salary schedules and we have increases in our salary every year um and as well as the amount that our district pays into the Retirement Systems uh we're reminded this year we did get a break on those rates because of the covid um and this next section uh is all the other revenues uh that come in and this big this big pot here um is about just over $2 million $2.2 million that the feds gave us to address um the impacts from covid which a big chunk of that is technology and

183um and also the personal protective equipment that we've needed and supplies uh to keep people safe and our facilities clean and into the future as well um so those are so so those are some big items in our in our budget um we also look at uh the lcff the the way that the state funds our schools uh based on student attendance or student enrollment uh you see a bunch of negative numbers here that's because our district is declining enrollment um they do give us um normally a hold harmless uh for one year so if we decline in enrollment we we don't feel that impact until the following year and what this shows you right here in the middle is that the state is giving us a two-year hold harmless so even though bisha continues

184to decline with the number of students that are enrolled in the schools uh we won't feel that impact next year but we'll kind of a double whammy in 2223 um when normally that would have been spread out over a couple years we'll take a bigger hit on L lost student enrollment out there so we we we always update those numbers every year sometimes it's a little bit different um this year it was a little bit lower it's probably going to be a little bit lower than 94 because um our uh TK TK counts uh were down by about 15 so uh in addition when we uh when our enrollment is adjust adjusted downward we also adjust Staffing uh related to teach the kids and support the kids so we make some staffing reductions as we

185can um every year the state looks at its budget uh the governor's coming out with a proposal in January for the following year uh right now everything we've seen and heard is uh there's no um increases which they refer to as cost of living adjustments so we're just counting on zero for right now um and what's that impact on what's all that impact on this number six to the actual revenues we get uh we we got a couple hundred, hit this year uh remember I said they're giving us um a hold harmless in 2122 so we just have a slight decrease then but um you know we're potentially at over a million two loss in funding in that second year out because again uh we're we're catching up to that lost enrollment and the and

186the State starting to adjust the um adjust our revenues um this last section um it's always just kind of a reminder of you know when you're facing declining enrollment or you have a a financial crisis uh all school districts consider whether or not they have to do budget cuts based on the information we have right now based on this state approved budget and into the future it doesn't look like we would need to uh make budget adjust ments um this year or next year uh but you know it's possible I and at this point it's just a projection it could be two million it could be less than that um we've got we've got a long way to go before we get to 2223 uh and we update that um each quarter as the state

187puts out new information so it's just kind of a uh don't forget um in the future it's possible that you know our district like many others might have to consider budget cuts but we appear to in a safe zone for right now this next slide is just a reminder that um our retirement costs um uh have been had been pretty stable over previous years but um recently those Retirement Systems have not been producing um as well as they have in the past so our our contributions to those retirement plans have gone up um we uh look at now we're kind of going into our pie charts here which look a little uh similar to what you saw in that parent overview so our uh budgeted revenues um for our district right now are just over

188$50 million again this this big uh purple blue pie is the lcff funds uh over um you know uh three quarters of our revenues and then it's it's back filled with some other Federal and and local revenues there including um you know the big piece uh or one of the the bigger pieces that we've gotten special for this year for for Co um we compare that to um the expenses um which are um you know over $53 million uh the reason that we're uh um able to do that is uh the nature of how we operate is um we don't necessarily spend all of the money in the year uh that we receive it and it carries over into the following year so right now we do have um our carry overs budgeted um it's

189possible um that you know as as the year goes on that those carryovers probably won't get spent this year either because uh we've been able to utilize the federal one-time covid funds uh to um to get us through this year through virtual learning which was the purpose of those funds and uh which is a which is a really good thing because then that just makes our our carryover funds last longer um at the end of the day at the end of the year right now we're we're looking at um a fund balance of about $8.8 million um the state um uh recommends that we or requires us to have that 3% reserve for designated economic uncertainties our local board um has adopted uh a board policy on top of that um the sum of those

190two amounts together is the equivalent about um one month of payroll for our district um and so we have um on top of that uh some one-time monies that are are part of our fund balance as well as uh some carryovers for our restricted programs that uh we have not put into our expenditure budget so that puts us at 8.8 million um we uh this next slide uh it kind of tracks what our operating deficit is over the current and future years uh in this top part and in the bottom part it kind of tracks what our um fund balance or what our remaining balance is over the current and future years and so really um what what you can take away from this is if we don't do anything our our operating deficit really

191starts to get um um starts to increase over the years because of our declining enrollment and it's possible in the outer years that we will have to consider budget cutting this scenario doesn't have any budget cuts um and you can see that we're still able to maintain a Reserve balance but um every year you postpone um getting uh getting your goal is to try to get to uh to a zero or a break even as much as possible um so we continue to monitor that again each quarter and Report out to you uh so you can kind of see how this this number changes based on um many many different assumptions including what the new state budget will be um this next uh slide is a scenario uh it's not in our our current um

192budget it just shows um to the extent if you were to do something like a $2 million budget adjustment in the outer years that it kind of maintains the the fund balance Reserve that we currently have decreased by a little bit um I've included in the packet I won't go through each line item here but uh it's always good to remind ourselves why we maintain a reserve um you know to help our board um do do one of its many responsibilities of adopting a sound budget and uh protecting the district from unforeseen Financial Obligations um another big one here is uh in order for the state to pass its budget it included a budget that included cash deferrals or IUS so um they're not actually going to be giving us uh and all of our

193school districts all of the cash and so we're we're faced with covering that cash shortfall through through uh one way we do that is through our Reserve um I think with that the last two slides here are just summary of earlier slides I'm going to um bring up uh one of two PowerPoints um again I know that we're a little short on time but um at the end of the day how will we certify this budget and it's basically a positive certification um we base it on um it is based on the state adopted budget including the the state of California deferring that cash in the in the form of an IOU so we've accounted for all of that and we've also included um the financial funds uh from the onetime funds uh for covid-19

194so we just talked about um it looks like we're okay for the current and next year uh well January's budget proposal will will will shed a lot of new light on that um we will maintain our 3% reserve and we will maintain um our local board policy Reserve um at least in the near future and then depending on what happens over the next year or two um it's possible that the board consider tapping into that um this is just a reminder that the state funds us through the local control funding formula uh right now we get about 9,158 per per student and that's kind of stays flat as we get a 0% Cola it includes that um supplemental Grant to help uh provide services to students that are enrolled in our free and reduced lunch

195program our English Learners are are homeless and Foster youth so that's about 25 % um of our population um again we're reminded in order to receive those funds we put a document together called the the lcap this year they they swapped that out with the LCP or the learning continuity and attendance plan due to covid-19 and uh Dr beatson again leads that effort with uh with our district group uh made up of Staff members and community members um to bring that forward to you at the appropriate time during the year so our next steps um is to really continue to monitor our financial future uh with the information that comes out of the state of California the next big one is uh Governor nome's budget proposal he's going to release that in January and then

196um also a big focus is uh um focusing on our cash and monitoring that so that we have sufficient funds to pay our bills when they come do um I did have the last time I presented um I provided uh School Services of California's a detail for multi-year projections and monitoring cache it's included in the board packet um but I will um I will just say that we can go through that if needed but it's it's in the board packet it's the same information that we provided last time that just um emphasizes the the need to focus on those multi-year projections and monitoring your cash so I won't bring that up now unless unless you would like me to and I'll just wrap up with our next steps after um once approved by our school

197board this uh first interim financial report we filed that with the County Office of Ed and send it to the California Department of Ed um and our next big step is after the winter break um and the governor uh proposes his state budget for the following fiscal year 2122 uh we bring back a report uh to you guys in late January early February about what that January budget proposal what that impact means to um our school district and then we kind of formalize that we give you a heads up and then formalize that with the second interupt in March all right Mr rill thank you does anybody have any questions for Mr rill all right with seeing or hearing none can I call for a motion to approve the first um interim report I I

198move that we approve the first interim report I'll second second I'll second all those in I I all right it's approve okay we have seven minutes I will see you guys next Thursday good luck getting home safe you guys don't get caught by the C seven minutes to get uphill don't get caught by the cops man bye all right you guys be safe everyone and stay well we'll see you next week