001cedral items the board will hear 30 minutes of public comment at the end of the meeting which usually ends around an 11 p.m. there will be another opportunity for additional public comments so if you do not get to speak during the first opportunity we encourage you to stay to the end if you wish to address the board please fill out a green speaker card they're located on the table in the back thank you speaker cards will be organized by agenda item and the board president will rotate through those agenda items in order to hear from at least one person on each agenda item he usually will call our students first and we'll also prioritize those green cards that were submitted by 7:15 please note that if there are a lot of cards once again not
002everyone who turned to one end will get to speak during the first opportunity if your name is called and you wish to seed your time to another speaker you may do so by standing up stating your name and indicating the name of the person to whom you wish to cede your time you may only see your time to a speaker who was addressing the same topic you have written down on your card so when you seat your time you also give up your opportunity to speak on that topic and no one can later seat their time to you to speak on that topic we do not allow a speaker to combine speaking time for multiple people the board president will determine whether to set tonight's speaking time at two or three minutes per speaker on
003an individual basis he also will allow for extra time for those who need translation or have other speech needs while you are speaking please note that the light at the lectern will turn yellow when there is one minute left once your time has elapsed the light will turn red thank you and you will hear a beeping if you are still speaking when your time is up you are allowed to finish your sentence but please do not try to speak beyond your time we understand that there are many issues that are important to many and in order to be fair to all speaker so we can hear from as many as possible we ask that you please stick to the allotted time if you have further questions I'm happy to answer them on an individual basis
004thank you [Music] all right good evening everyone let's try that one more time good evening everyone I thank you all for coming welcome to the November 14 meeting of the Berklee School Board if you'd like to follow along on our online agenda you can do so on your phone or you can borrow a computer from Miss gitis who is right over there I'd like to remind everyone that we are broadcasting live on YouTube this means that our meetings and anything captured on video will be archived online and archived online forever I will now call the open session of tonight's meeting to order call at 7:35 for the record closed session began at 5:35 miss Chaidez please share with the committee members community members present our process for translation of the meeting and then please take
005the role when I snore chessy bienvenidos ein Brazil public okay nice and early he salami say direct Eva in necesitan traduction English on espanol favor Giselle Milosevic al agra agra gara tiempo Deschanel peridot hos comentarios muchas gracias director Petri sniper color is excused tonight director Arvind ree-ree yeah director Karen hem director Anita Abrams this excuse director Tai Alper president vice president Judy Appel present president Josh Daniels presents alright now we get to look at our agenda are there any changes to the agenda I know that there are a couple things we should talk about but let's do the easy ones first mr. superintendent any changes to the agenda president Daniels I wanted to approve yeah I wanted to pull 12.2 and 12.3 so for 12.2 that is I think the super scented it just tabled
006for now so why don't we just take that off but you want to pull 12.3 yeah I just want more information that we can get it okay are we pulling it and we pulled 12.4 I wasn't sure if that was able to pull that because I think they go together 12.4 is is I believe different from 12.3 okay so you're pulling both or just toe point three I was revision of classic eight hey you know I have to look at the agenda will come okay yeah I would like to pull 12.5 which is the sustainability master plan for action won't be here to midnight yep anything else just let me check that I think you meant 12.3 director poem she did sato appointment I said 12 point two and twelve point three not to a
007point for nuts I wasn't thinking to a point for okay I apologize to my was twelve point three twelve point five anything else but wait I'm sorry are you are you wanting to pull twelve point three off the agenda or for action to discuss no I wanted to pull it I want to table it so that we can get more information you're doing 12 point - I'm asking for twelve point three when you say table do you mean take action tonight or not not take action tonight yes okay well we can discuss it that doesn't mean we'll necessarily take action but sure that's very good so we'll move 12 point three two action we're moving 12.5 to action any other changes okay just what that means then is that I'm looking particularly at vice-president apparel
008and director Hemphill twelve point eight which is the approval of the geotechnical study for Oxford will be approved and then the new board can have whatever presentations they want it so that's that was the decision that we made at the at the facilities I think there was a little bit that was said in Friday notes about something that at a later date the board will probably want to speak about okay in discussing all right and in terms of the order then we just add are there any particular placement for for twelve point I think twelve points we can probably go to the end because the people needed for that are already will be here the entire time I'm sorry go ahead could we put twelve point five before number sixteen sure twelve point five okay
009all right so is there a motion to approve the agenda as amended in following ways removing 12.2 moving 12.3 to the end of the meeting for action moving 12.5 to between items 15 and 16 for action their motion to a Proma motion by dr. albear is there a second second second draft is in the pail without objection the agenda as amended is approved okay I'll now report out of closed session item 3 point 1 point 1 the appointment of the director of fiscal services we are proud to a point by a motion from myself second by a director of bachelors in Appel a 300 approval with directors of a Cutler and Alper absent Wien entity voted to approve Antoinette West to be our next director fiscal services welcome now we have a few words to
010say about MS West we're pleased to welcome Antonette to the fiscal team Antonis is a California CPA and has our MBA from Columbia and has over 20 years of experience working in the public and private sector so we're really happy she's gonna be joining us in the new year and be welcome aunt in it so thank that welcome item 3.2.1 collective bargaining negotiations with bcc II the board received an update item 3.2.2 local 21 negotiations the board receive an update item three point two point three collective bargaining negotiations with the booklet reduction of teachers the board of c2 update we received an update discussed and gave direction item three point three point one conference with legal counsel claim number two zero one eight zero six zero six eight four motion by a director of vice
011president Appel second by director Alper with a four o vote with director of a color absent the board approved staff recommendation to enter into a settlement three point three point two claim number zero two zero one eight zero three zero five one seven motion by myself second by director Hempel with a 3 overs alper and live a cutler absence the board voted to approve staff recommendation to appeal an OE h decision excuse me OAH stands for office of administrative hearing item three point four anticipated litigation there were two potential cases on the first matter by a motion by myself second by by president pail with the four o votes the board approved the settlement in the matter and the second potential case Ida by the motion by director temple a second by vice-president Pell with
012a 3-0 won by director Alper was the abstention and director of a Cutler was absent the board approved settlement in that matter and lastly the super-dense evaluation we we discussed the superintendent's 1819 evaluation okay that now leads me to the overview of tonight's meeting so every meeting there is something that is critical to the work of the district that comes before the board and tonight is no exception the first item on the agenda after all public comment period has to do with our special ed program it is a combined update that focuses both on the program programmatic aspects of special education as well as the financial aspects and for those of you who have been tracking this issue that the the board's focus on it or staffs focus on it we have a fantastic new
013executive director of special ed dr. Jen Hamilton who'll be part of that item we're looking at it from their perspective both as I said programmatically and financially almost a year ago there was an evaluation done of our program by a consultant that led to certain recommendations and we have some serious financial challenges in the district and for those of you who attended the superintendent's budget advisory committee last night one of the things we talked about there was the fact that the issue with special ed has to with cost containment that for this year we projected an increase in the costs and then our actual costs were even higher so when it comes to making sure that we follow our budget and make sure we don't overspend this is one of the many issues that we
014as a district and as a board as a community need to figure out so that we can actually spend serve the students provide faith etc and spend what we budget spending because that budget then dictates what we think we have four other important things in the district if we overspend our budget then we we refer to backtracking and being reactive to that to that situation so if you can stay for that we certainly hope you can if you need to leave again you can watch it on youtube but we are here in the public eye to do this work collectively as a community so we need your attendance and engagement in things like this so hopefully hopefully you're able to stay and again if not watch on YouTube another item is happy with what's called
015local indicators so the new way that California is measuring the success of schools is called the California school dashboard and the dashboard replaced the API which was that single number test-driven way of telling you whether a district or school was good or bad which we all know is completely you know not the right way to understand a complex system like a school district or even a school so they replaced that with this dashboard that looks at multiple indicators some indicators are called state indicators and their cult there's a color coding system that looks at both overall status and growth and then there's also something called local indicators and tonight we're going to look at those local indicators and those local indicators we need to use self-reflection tools basically we get to create what that looks
016like to see how we're doing in five areas so this is a report we get once every year we then basically upload that information to the state and then it goes on our dashboard so that's the second major item of tonight and again I understand you know you probably feel work tomorrow you might have kids at home but if you can stay we certainly would value that and if you can't you know listening or watching on YouTube is you know recommended the sustainability plan that we have had an update before on was pulled from consent so that is now on the agenda so we'll be getting that for presentation and and action and just to make sure I'm not forgetting anything I just look at this real quick we also have a notice of intent
017to revoke the the realm charter which you clean if you're interested you can look at the agenda item and that is the first step in a process there's no verification going on tonight it's the first step in a in a in a quite a long process before any revocation would happen but that is the first step in that process so that is the overview of tonight's meeting hopefully I said something that enticed you to stay and if not you should just stay keep us company because we'll be here for a while okay so now we move on to tonight's trivia question which I know you're all here for so the intent of this trivia question as always is to educate and engage we've been doing it every board meeting for this calendar year typically we
018read the question at the beginning of the meeting and then provide an opportunity to answer that question around 9:30 tonight's question is a bit different drum roll tension and excitement so there as you'll notice there is no handout in the back of the room like there typically is and the question will be asked and answered at the same time so on November 6 2018 the voters of the City of Berkeley elected three individuals to this board one incumbent and two new board members who are they and at last asset they all three stand so we can congratulate them on their election now yeah so next next slide in case you don't know their names are Julie Sonic Khadijah Braun and Ty Alper we'll say probably a few more words about them at the next meeting
019but I will simply say that this district its students its employees its administration this community as incredibly lucky to have these three people elected to this board serving for the next two years as part of this this board oh yeah so the three of them will will will will be on for four years but because of the way the cycle works it's a group at least four for two years and I don't want to do anyone's thunder but just to briefly very briefly just say that you have one board member ty who sue me dr. Alper who's been on this board for four years and has served admirably so he brings obviously that experience julie-san I know has served on the board but is connected to the City of Berkeley the University and to many
020of the key commute and work for the district you know the connections that she brings experience she brings will be invaluable and you have Khadija Brown who would actually met when she was a student at Berkeley High and the student court program that I ran there back in the oh 708 time who is absolutely fantastic and one of the many things that she brings as she is a current teacher and while every person's experience and perspective is valuable the fact that this this board will finally have a teacher's perspective a k-12 teachers perspective will be so critical the challenges that we face so congratulations again and I'm excited to be watching you from that side of this Dyess okay so now we will get to public comment thirty minutes everyone's didn't even three minutes we
021probably won't get to everyone tonight there's a lot of public comments mr. chair this is art explain explain that process yeah well that's your sorry so to keep things moving I'd like to ask the speaker who is next in line come forward and wait against the wall next to the picture over there so we can keep things moving quickly and I apologize in advance if I pronounce anyone's name incorrectly please note that the board does not respond directly to comments or questions made during public comment board members the superintendent staff do take notes and we may follow up with the speaker after the meeting later in the meeting there is a period on the agenda during which board members and the superintendent have a few minutes each to make comments about whatever they wish that
022is a time in which board members can choose to respond to something said during public comment we have found that this process keeps our meetings running smoothly allows for a maximum amount of people to speak during the 30 minutes a lot of a public comment and it ensures compliance with the Brown Act excuse me which does not allow for board discussions about items not placed on the agenda I want to remind all speakers that there are children in the audience or they may be listening or watching online so please keep that in mind as you speak also if you have complaints about specific district employees we encourage you to take advantage of our formal complaint process rather than using the public comment period for that purpose again please remember that anything you say is being
023broadcast live and will be archived online forever lastly if you did not get a chance to speak we encourage you to to stay and speak at the end of the meeting during which is another public comment tonight that's looking probably like 11:00 11:30 to be realistic all right so first up will be Rachel Alper followed by Shannon Irby hello everyone my name is Estella hemp and I'm the junior class president at Berkeley high school my name is Rachel and I'm the junior class vice president Berkeley high we're here today as student representatives to encourage you to pass a district policy that requires Berkeley schools to stock their bathrooms with free menstrual products I want to thank the board policy committee and director Leyva Cutler for working with me on this a national study on women
024in the u.s. showed that 86 percent of women have started their period unexpectedly without the supplies they need unfortunately pads and tampons are scarce on most school campuses and many girls feel uncomfortable asking their peers for supplies sometimes there's no one else in the bathroom at that time and in that case there are two options go to class and lead through your clothes or ditch school to find the tampons somewhere else nobody would disagree that school bathrooms need to stock products as necessary as toilet paper soap and paper towels and that failure that failure to do so imposes barriers to learning a search for a powdered tampon can cause a student to lose valuable class time or suffer extreme embarrassment if a girl leaves class to go to the bathroom and discover she has her
025period she will likely not have anything with her and have to return the class to grab her bag and then go back to the bathroom teachers simply do not allow that this problem has a simple solution we need to stop school bathrooms with free pads and tampons some legislators are starting to wake up to this issue for example New York City now requires schools jails and homeless shelters to stock bathrooms with free medical products Illinois has the same law for schools and the state of California agrees that free pads and tampons would help a lot of students in particular those who have trouble paying for them for this reason Assembly Bill number 10 was signed into law in October and California state law now requires that any secondary school in California that meets a 40
026pupil poverty threshold stalk half of its bathrooms with free pads and tampons while Berkeley high and many other BSD schools don't meet this poverty rate I've still worked with principal Aaron Schwing to get six pad and tampon dispensers installed at Berkley high bathrooms by the start at the start of the school year and that and the California law is a great start and in particular I want to thank principal showing for working with me on that however the USD should implement a policy that requires free pad and tampon machines in all secondary school bathrooms and we need to make sure that those machines remain stocked regularly please consider this policy as it is a simple and relatively inexpensive way we've estimated that will cost about five thousand dollars a year and I think that that
027cost is worth the success of thousands of female students in the district who would benefit from this policy thank you very much thank you Thank You Shannon Irby followed by Marjorie Alford hi good evening my name is Shannon Irby and I teach in the arts and humanities Academy and the multilingual program at Berkeley High School um I really feel like I have the best job on earth I work with creative and compassionate and intelligent young people who inspire me to do my best and they still show me that there is still possibility for the world to be a better place I work 55 to 60 hours every week that I can live up to my kids expectations of me I love my job I'm quite good at my job but I cannot afford my job
028I have been teaching in Berkeley Unified School District for 14 years and even though I am considered a veteran teacher towards the top of the pay scale it's still not enough until recently I lived in a non rent controlled apartment in North Oakland my rent increased 10% each year whereas my salary increased between 0 to 3% year about two years ago I had to figure out how I couldn't make more money so I signed up to teach Saturday school I accepted the site rep position with PFT this year I began to Proctor for the GRE and SAT and other standardized tests at Berkeley high and at this point I'm even considering and driving for lyft in September I was fortunate enough to move and to stabilize my cost of housing which is that 45% of
029my paycheck however I moved to Richmond this increased my commute from a 10-minute car or bus ride to a 30 to 45 minute drive I still continued to work between 55 and 60 hours each week and to be honest with you I'm tired I'm tired of working without adequate compensation I am tired of worrying about paying my bills I am tired of accepting groceries from my sister and I'm 42 years old I may still have to accept help from my parents occasionally and I just think that's really problematic I'm educated I am a professional I work really hard and I deserve more I have to ask is teaching worth it I look around my classroom and I see my kids and I know it's one of those dumb questions of course teaching is worth it
030like I said I'm good at it and I love it however I look at my bills I looked at my most recent visa statement and decide that no matter how much I love it I really can't afford it so I know that each of you believes in quality public education or you would not be here in this capacity I'm only asking they support quality public education teachers and pay us what we are worth Thank You Marjorie Alvord followed by Cornelius good evening as a berkeley community member I'm pleased that the USD has been working on developing a sustainability plan and when I read the plan document in tonight's packet I was actually quite happy by the quote from dr. Evans on the importance of being prepared for climate change and I'll read what it said
031at the top of the document that educating our children to know what role they play is vital to our survival as a human race thank you for that this got me thinking what role can students play in helping to mitigate climate change well one of my favorite answers is they can take alternative transportation to school walk bike take the bus of course I'm mindful that family circumstances are different and what may seem simple to one student or family can be quite challenging for another but I do think it's important for the be us D to encourage students and families to decrease reliance on personal automobiles in fact I think it's imperative transportation is now the biggest source of global warming pollution while California reported this summer that certain legislated greenhouse gas reduction targets had been
032met early the news from the transportation sector was not so glowing in fact the amount of greenhouse gases coming from transportation has been increasing I think the story is a bit complicated but the increase significantly stems from our over-reliance on automobiles and people not being able to live close to where their work is also a huge factor I've noticed that little by little more kids are walking and riding bikes to school these days and if we can further reduce cars coming to school we make it safer for those kids to do that but I really am not sure we can continue to be complacent with a little by little approach to changing transportation habits news of increasing transportation greenhouse gases coupled with the October UN IPCC report indicating that we need enormous reduction in greenhouse
033gas emissions with just within just a few years means that we need to have all hands on deck we really need our leaders to make reducing greenhouse gases especially transportation greenhouse gases a priority we need that leadership from the school board and from the be us DS senior staff and from our students I hope we can count on you to help them make the difference thank you for considering my comments and thank you for serving Thank You Cornelius followed by Donna story good evening board I'm Cornelia Smith I'm a school safety officer at Berkeley high I started with this district in 1991 between Berkeley Unified Haven in San Lorenzo I have over 30 years of experience as a campus mediation counselor Safety Officer YP director you name it and also for the City of Berkeley
034have you ever heard of the word unappreciated think about that word and what it means have you ever felt unappreciated if you guys really understand what the teachers doing the safety officers do in class K through 12 you would understand that we play a vital role in that not only are we in our position and our title but we're people we're to these kids with some of their parents or not mentors money encouragement you name it we play a vital role because if the teachers can't teach and the kids can't be safe y'all don't have a budget and y'all don't have a job think about that each kid is money for the district we make sure those kids are safe every day do you understand everything that we deal with every day I've said every
035day not some time every day disrespect talking crazy verbal abuse verbal threats you name it not only are we not asking for a raise we don't have to beg because we earn it I had three degrees and when I'm not here I'm also and office with the Federal Reserve so you're not talking to a rookie I represent all these people and all these students we earn what we work for we're not asking for we're not begging for we earn it just like you guys and it's not fair it's not right we shouldn't have to keep going on and on over the same issue when the proof is in the pudding if I'm not there and the other safety officer is not there and the teachers not there what do you have we are supposed to
036be helpers one to another so we're not just talking about it let's do it let's lead by example and call this thing a team there's no I in team the last time I checked and 12th and people don't appreciate the people that's behind the scenes because if I'm not there who comes on campus pedophile rapist a homeless person they have shooting as you name it so my job does mean something because if not you have a lot of lawsuits so think for a minute have you ever felt unappreciated Thank You Donna story followed by Joe Vega the California school dashboard local indicators are meant to provide a more complete picture of how our schools are meeting the needs of all students through surveys of the community regarding parent engagement and school climate I urge you
037to consider expanding the survey outreach to include the student experience in Berkeley high math as the moderator of the website Berkeley high parent advocate and former ACAC secretary I've been hearing from parents about their experiences under the new MVP curriculum for four years many serious concerns about the new math program have been ignored or dismissed at every level from the school site to the district this is a school climate issue if we want to improve student performance in math and I know dr. Evans is paying particular attention to Berkeley high math this year I urge you to engage with the community through surveys and public listening sessions there can be no meaningful evaluation and improvement of the math program if you don't ask the students what is working well and what challenges they face given
038the failure rates of 18 to 28 percent overall with even higher rates for students facing headwinds we need to figure out what's really going on only students can tell us my group has been trying for six years to encourage the USD to give students surveys in every classroom to no avail we finally put out our own parent and student surveys and I'm happy to provide copies of the reports to all of you respondents talked a lot about positive experiences in math we need to appreciate what is working well and encourage more of it however equity issues were also highlighted currently students in the same course might have very different experiences with some teachers providing extra support materials while others believe in letting students struggle on their own that is as the students put it in
039the surveys not fair especially again to kids facing headwinds a number of parents also reported that their students with 504 plans are afraid to ask teachers for accommodations we can do better the survey respondents also report that about 50% of hired a private tutor this certainly skews the performance data and put students without these resources at a further disadvantaged a survey of all students on this topic would allow us to determine how much private tutoring plays a factor in the achievement gap let us commit to the you nine value of justice and all become agents of social social change who disrupt and dismantle systems and structures that prevent all of us from reaching our full potential the first step is to truly listen to the voices of all students through a district sponsored survey in
040every classroom as well as forums where the concerns of parents will truly be heard then we can claim that goals for parent engagement and a responsive school climate will have been met thank you Joe Vega followed by Edith smiley hello I'm Joe Vega president of the Berkeley athletic fund I'd like to cede my time to August furn to speak about to you today about coaches stipends hello my name is August fern I am a parent in the district I have a junior at Berkeley high a freshman at Berkeley high and a seventh grader at Willard after spending many years at LeConte as well we're here to speak about Brooke from Berkeley athletic fund which has been around for 35 years raising funds to support athletic programs at Berkeley high I hear you guys don't hear
041about sports very often so we're just gonna just let you know some of the things that are going on so over 1200 students participate in a sport at Berkeley high school on an interest classic athletic team 1200 that's a huge number the list of benefits of participating in a sports team is long it includes cooperation teamwork skills leadership respect for teammates a sense of belonging self-discipline patience persistence oh yeah and you know physical fitness they're doing a sport too for some students participation on the sports team is their single most important reason for going to school maintaining passing grades and that is where they most strongly identify as as a member of their Berkeley high sports team so every team is led by an important person the coach right the impact of coaches on the
042development of these young people cannot be overstated for the rest of their lives personal I can personally attest to this these students will remember the lessons that the coach taught any most of them have very little to do with like the technical details of how to play the sport so years ago almost all of the coaches at Berkeley High were Berkeley high school teachers that's how it was done when for years when we were kids right that's how it was done but over the last 20 years that's changed and so these days now only two out of seventy-five Berkeley high coaches are teachers so you know when they were all teachers have made sense to negotiate the coaches stipends as part of the teachers contract given the current realities it doesn't really make sense anymore
043but now setting the coach of stipends through the teacher contract just it kind of places undue limitations on the school's ability to attract and retain the quality coaches that we need to lead these 1,200 student-athletes who are to participated in BHS sports so we're gonna be contacting you very soon working with the BFT the proposal is to separate the coaches stipends contracts from the BFT contract because coaches are not really teachers anymore and then that gives us some more room to figure out a good solution for going forward and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna ask you to ask the board to approve a new kind of coach's stipend schedule but that'll be in a few months so thank you thank you Edith smiley followed by Karin Zapata good evening this school board
044has rendered itself a nonentity due to board policy 3401 this board has surrendered its fiduciary duty of oversight of the administration and the fraudulent activity that goes along with it employees are asked to rescind their complaints so the issue can be covered up and buried quoting the policy management personnel shall be responsible for detection and Prevention of fraud and proprieties and other irregularities involving district resources each member of the management team shall be familiar with the types of improprieties that might occur within his or her area of responsibility and be alert for any indication of irregularity the policy also says number one any dishonest or fraudulent act the question must be asked whose job is it to detect and manage the fraud of the administration who is causing and perpetuating the fraud as a result
045members of the administration including Donald Evans Pascual Scuderi Evelyn Bradley Pauline Florence me Brent Daniels Erin Shuang Janice set Levinson and Patricia Sadler who engaged in and recommend hostile personnel actions against employees who exercised their protected rights under the California state constitution in various state laws including the California air clothes board policy 3401 mandates complete silence if fraud is found or revealed in turn the fraud is managed by outside lawyers like Fagan Friedman Poole Frost who have Roy combs and Joshua Stevens these bullies who work with the administration to defend the district against its own fraud this board has rendered itself powerless and defunct the taxpayer and the students suffer as a consequence it is on this issue where the lack of integrity in public education and be USD must be engaged by the certificated
046and classified employees the accountability is non-existent in the results heads the employees and students lose tails the employees and students lose this fight is just beginning you're elected by the people not the executive board that drives out of your city daily many of them sitting there with you two have no children and be USD they don't care as long as they get their paychecks why pay a board that does nothing we need raises why pay administrators that are not effective and calls fraud and major lawsuits in this district that is why this district cannot give these teachers the raises that they deserve and all employees because there's fraud here you can't mistreat people and think that they're just going to walk out and say okay it's not going to happen not on my watch Thank
047You Karin Zapata followed by Ben Palos good evening my name is Karin sapota I teach English and coordinate professional development at Berkeley High School and I am a co-lead of Berkeley international high school I have been a teacher for 21 years and have taught in B USD for the past four years I love my job because our students are amazing I have been working on building an inclusive and supportive community in my classroom and that was put to a test recently in the days following a spate of violent incidents in our country we held a circle creating space for reflection and sharing in my classroom as you can imagine this is delicate work some students are in pain in the wake of these incidents others are involved in their own personal ones after some time
048in a particular circle that wasn't going very well I asked if anyone had a circle question that may be more helpful one student suggested we ask why do people hurt one another this prompt found immediate resonance students eagerly sought to make sense of the recent event framed through this simple question by listening to and trusting their brilliance our classroom came alive I tell you this story because I hope to make it clear how much I love my job and how good I am at my job but as our bft campaign communicates I cannot afford my job I am a single mother of two and I leave live in a reasonably priced rental in Albany I'm only able to stay in the area because of this rental but like many renters I live in fear of
049losing my home I know I wouldn't find anything close to the $2,000 I pay a month for rent at the end of the month I fit some charges into my credit cards and I'm able to breathe when my new paycheck comes in I work another job in San Francisco that requires a two-hour commute every Monday evening I love I would love to work in Berkeley Unified for the rest of my career I can honestly say that but I know that without an increase in pay for B UST teachers I will have to leave I've even began to risk research the possibility of pursuing other positions for the sole reason of increasing my pay I'm good at teaching I love my job and I cannot just cannot afford to stay here without a raise I believe
050that it benefits everyone for a teacher to be woven into the social fabric of the community in which they serve we deserve a salary that allows us to raise a family pay rent save for a down payment and pay off our debts instead of heading deeper into them I hope you will consider increasing the pay of all be USD employees so that we can stay in this beautiful area doing what we love and our damn good at thank you thank you Ben Palos followed by Markram iya hi I'm Ben Paulus I'm a parent of a my son's at Berkeley hi my daughter's at Jefferson my other job is that I'm a renewable energy consultant I work for the US Department of Energy Berkeley Lab East Bay Community Energy and others I'm here tonight to talk
051about the sustainability plan and one one particular aspect of it which of course is the energy aspect that's what I'm qualified to talk about and I'm urging that you modify one particular part of the recommended plan having to do with solar on schools the in 2011 the district put out a master plan for solar looking at the buildings and the opportunities in 2010 voters approved funding for that so eight years ago Berkeley was a leader on this topic but eight years ago is eons ago in the world of solar the cost of solar has plummeted about 80 percent since then it is a way to save money now it's not simply the sustainability option it's a cost saving opportunity and because it's a cost saving opportunity I urge you not to as the plan recommends
052to revisit the master plan from eight years ago I urge you instead simply forward in Precure solar the clock is really ticking for three reasons one is that because it saves money the longer you wait to do it the more money you waste on your electric bill so doing it now will save money now doing it ten years from now five years from now will result in wasted money the clock is ticking for another reason there is a federal tax credit for solar that is scheduled to start ramping down after next year it ramps from 30 percent down to 10 percent by 2021 that's a 20 percent cost share from the federal government to pay for this that will go away I know there's you know a desire to put it in the 2020 facilities
053plan which can save money but you know through cheap finance but it will lose the opportunity of the tax credit if you do that and that's a 20% value and the third reason the clock is ticking is that this is a climate emergency as the council that's the City Council is set when we started eight years ago Berkeley was a leader on this topic now there are approximately 2,000 schools in California that have solar there are over 550 500 nationwide so you know it's too late to be a leader on solar in Berkeley but I hope you will be a follower at least thanks thank you Mark for me a followed by Leslie Lippard my name is Mark ramya I'm an instructional assistant my voice is a little bit shady with this smog I'm an
054instructional assistant in Berkeley high school a topic that's been coming up for me lately is bullying I've looked at the anti-bullying policy and I'm confused why everybody isn't included in this policy I see that there's a concern about bullying from students to other students students - I'm sorry students other students adults - students but I'm not seeing anything talking about adults - other adults specifically employees administrator to employees employees to other employees I see that we had a professional development day on our campus talking about this issue we had I think a lady named Miss Estes who has a lawyer show up and talk about how there was to be immediate care given to students who were dealing with anything concerning bullying the moment they reported it I would like to see a unified principle
055being dealt with here so that if an employee is being intimidated or is being bullied by another employee or an administration is is intimidating or bullying an employee on campus or teachers or other employees I would like to see that also count in in their directional so in other words I would like to see it with all within all groups not just adults against students or students against students but I would like to see it done among adults we set a precedent if there are adults abusing other adults if there are adults that are intimidating other adults we're there on campus at Berkeley High School with many other adults the students witness this this is modeling they're aware of this they're paying attention their eyes are wide open I don't accept that there's something in
056I don't accept that there's something not including bullying against employees whether it's by other employees whether it's my administration to employees whether it's by students bullying employees thank you [Applause] Thank You Leslie Lippard followed by Eva Herrera I'll go with that hello I filed a formal complaint using the uniform complaint process last year because my daughter was sexually harassed in fifth grade the BU SD response found that our daughter was bullied rather than sexually harassed because she was targeted on the basis of her perceived gender identity however per title 9 this doesn't track constitute sexual harassment because we disagreed with B us these findings and the lack of a concrete remedy we filed an appeal with the California Department of Education who found in our favor the CDE ordered three things they ordered that the
057district would provide sexual harassment training to all district personnel on harassment diversity and implicit bias that the district would provide education at Cragg menthe school that addresses peer-to-peer harassment and that the district would provide training to all district personnel on the UCP requirements I'm not aware that any action has been taken to educate the affected grab month students on October 8 B USD conducted a staff training intended to satisfy requirements 1 & 3 I attended the morning session of that training and I observed that it significantly missed the mark apologies sometimes computers are not as easy to use as one might hope ok there are many logistics issues associated with training during the roughly two-hour session I observed a steady stream of people leaving the theater and many others surfing the web on their phones
058during the presentation there was no testing for comprehension no testing for retention of the material and I'm not aware of a makeup day for anybody who is unable to attend further the continent the session didn't adequately fulfill the intent of the CD order because it didn't address educator obligations pertaining to incidents of harassment discrimination and implicit bias most of the lecture focused on the relationship between trauma and performance with words like implicit bias and harassment offered as examples of trauma as important as that is absent was any discussion of an educators responsibility when confronted with harassment situations which was the point of the CDE order the session also included a presentation the UCP process but the information shared about PUSD policies was factually inaccurate no handout was offered my understanding is that changes were made
059in the afternoon session to correct some but not all of the most egregious errors this perpetuates confusion around how the complete process works at b USD and renders educators unable to assist students and families who need help the USD is not complied with CD orders and school staff members remain unprepared to deal with these issues when they arise I urge you to rectify both of these things immediately anything less is a shameful abrogation of BU s DS responsibility and this board's responsibility to over for oversight thank you thank you Eva Herrera I cede my time to Donna story I'm sorry it's naive a total of if it's the same topic you have a total of three minutes if you have a statement it's slightly different it's just if it's the same related topic for you
060to perform charm of story we threw three minutes per per person per topic if you have a statement somebody's gonna read it for you but but yeah and the next person will be Stella happen this is from a parent of a student in the class of 2019 and it follows up on the math department issue thank you so much for advocating for kids the California State University College applications are due on November 30th so I'm hoping that the Berkeley Unified School District might publish an addendum before so many kids are about to submit their applications my daughter would have had a great chance at college but those two D's in math destroyed her GPA and have rendered for practically ineligible it's so sad to see her feeling as if her future is pretty bleak she's
061a bright and capable gate student who excelled at math before Berkeley hi I hope and pray that Berkeley Unified School District will provide some context for the class of 2019 to include in their applications which are soon due Thank You Stella happen and the last bigger the night will be Lewis harm I would like to comment on the settlement mandated public statement and ad-hoc comments made by the board on October 24th to one of my classmates in addition to the settlement mandated statement many of you on the board made additional voluntary comments or statements apologizing to him in those voluntary comments each of you had the opportunity to acknowledge the harm to me and all of the students in room 204 instead of rising for that opportunity you chose to focus your attention and apologize
062to the one student who is the primary offender of my harassment your apologies ring hollow many of us and our parents came to you as a group in community both privately and at multiple school board meetings during the fall of 2017 we asked you to intervene in the awful classroom situation your answer was to remove me and other victims from the classroom in violation of title 9 there are no consequences for the harassers you know insult in class support was offered until January 5 months into the school year and four months after we formally complained in writing about their Hasmukh to my teacher and the school principal you had the chance to act and didn't not since when you finally did it was too little too late the remedies you put in place created hardship
063for me and other girls and accommodated the harasser 'he's doing nothing in saying sorry sorry after the harm is done simply isn't good enough that your voluntary apologies are limited to the harasser is disgusting you need to focus on the solutions not apologies fulfilling the requirements that the cdc ordered in response to my appeal would be a good start thank you and the last day of the night is Lewis harm hi I'm Louise harm and I cede my time to Terry Goodman hello my name is Terry Goodman and I'm a counselor and former math teacher at Berkley high school Josh's math teacher I feel profoundly lucky to have every he is they knew he was then too um every day I get to work with amazing young people and a fantastic staff of adults I
064help kids to develop study habits to figure out what they want to do with their lives to make good choices to solve personal emotional and educational challenges and to mature into successful adults who are ready to take on the next steps after they leave high school unlike so many people I know I look forward to going to work each day I also feel profoundly lucky to have managed to live in Berkeley and raise a family here while working in bu SD my sons and I lived a frugal life I kept taking on extra projects to earn a little more sometimes I had to work so much that I barely saw my kids and my kids were literally in middle school when they found out that not everyone got all their clothes from Goodwill but still
065I feel lucky because somehow we actually made it today that's gotten even harder for a Berkeley educator I personally am struggling to figure out how I will eventually be able to afford to retire but I can't even imagine how hard it is for current counselors to figure out how they can afford to keep working and be USD at all while I've managed to stay at Berkeley high school for 22 years I've watched turnover increasing in my counseling department because my co-workers can't afford to stay here in B USD I've watched counselor after counselor all of whom loved their jobs and loved their students at Berkeley high eventually feel forced to make the decision to leave Berkeley High School because they just can't afford to stay in bu SD they have to choose between B USD
066and finding a reasonable commute and a way to pay their bills especially as they begin families and have children they find themselves forced to prioritize salary / continuing to work at Berkeley high school I love my job I love my students and I love Berkeley high school but I hate watching my students Berkeley high school students get another brand-new counselor year after year and most of all I hate watching my co-workers give up on be USD because they just can't afford this job my sincere hope is that with your support the USD will find a way to hold on to my fabulous counts their colleagues for the long haul thank you that now concludes this public comment period thank you to everyone who came to speak as a reminder if you did not get a
067chance to speak or did not get a chance to speak enough you can always stay for extended public comment period at the end of the meeting additionally you can always email the board directly at Board of Ed at Berkeley net or you can contact us individually our information is posted online at Berkeley net / school - board now there is an opportunity to hear from our unions each union has five minutes to address the board on issues of its choosing Ms Robinson miss Campbell all right miss Robinson from BCC anyone from local 21 who wants to speak tonight okay Yuba okay we'll do mr. Robinson in there miss Campbell welcome evening all I've heard this evening is about accountability for our board for the individuals who are in our district that's all I've heard that's
068all the ask has ever been what's sad is once we walk out this door you do no more you choose not to investigate you choose not to make decisions that actually support the well-being of our students you choose not to invest in our students I keep saying if you properly invest in our students you would actually take care of all the needs that were asked here tonight what's funny to me is you've asked the unions to come up with a plan to cut two million dollars from the budget what you really mean is you want the classifieds to give up some more people we can't afford to give up any more people the teachers can't afford to give up any more people the maintenance department no one can't afford to give up more people but
069you can't afford to stop padding your pay it's interesting how in the past ten years the field at Berkeley High has been done more than once one of those times was because it was done wrong and then you spent nine hundred thousand to fix it that's almost half the issue right there another issue is when you choose to manipulate the numbers and the money doesn't go towards the children and it goes towards your pockets that's a problem and what's funny is the more we look at the numbers the more we see that they don't add up I'm trying to be nice I really am but it's really hard when people keep coming in here and begging you to do right when people are saying that they have to walk away from their jobs and I'm
070talking about good hardworking people who actually invest in our students that's what you're supposed to be doing you're supposed to be making sure that this can be done but you refuse to why you say other districts are going through this no they aren't you say cut special ed how we're not properly supporting those students as is every single substitute we have in our district is working every single day we have no more to give we are giving blood sweat and tears literally you have made it where since you have no accountability neither do our students you guys don't want to suspend the students right you don't want to make sure the special ed students have proper supports well you're going to get a complaint because a special ed student literally took his finger and violated
071an adult male while he was assisting another student because you guys won't do anything you guys now allow the students to hang out on the campus green and as long as it administrator comes and has a conversation that's credit recovery what are you doing what standard are you setting who are you actually educating better yet what lesson is being you're teaching our students not to want more you're showing them how to bully and we see that every day complaints come through you say use the complaint process the complaint process that does not work and that came from you dr. Evans it doesn't work because none of you guys will hold any of the individuals that actually violate somebody accountable and if somebody really want to get real I got some perb Doc's that they can
072read so you guys either do what you need to do or we will start showing what's really going on around here thank you Miss Campbell from BFT here to pass okay now there is an opportunity to hear comments from our district committees live we have one CTE advisory anybody else all right miss Allen good evening my boss when skills is attending a conference in Southern California since he's not here I can say that the prescient decision to not only create his position but hire him for it has been borne out we've made enormous strides in building our CTE program since he came on board the success of career technical education at Berkeley high can be measured in many ways in the recent WASC report the CTE programs were called out for special mention and for
073good reason let's quickly you know I'm sorry miss Allen if folks could continue coverage to the outside I would really appreciate it just go he could hear miss Allen go ahead thank you and the recent WASC report the CTE programs were called out for special mention and for good reason let's quickly look at the data to see why WASC was so impressed first in terms of individual participation 813 students are enrolled in a CTE class this year since some students take more than one CTE class of time there are 1,150 filled seats and CTE courses as of this fall all racial groups at Berkeley high participate in CTE within 5 percent of their overall population percentage that means we're attracting a diverse group of students in terms of a male-female ratio 56% are boys and
07444% girls while males are currently over-represented in CTE population and CT participation those taking part by race and ethnicity track Berkeley high at large very closely within plus or 5% for each category in terms of household education levels students from families with no post high school graduation degrees are represented equally with those who have bachelor's and higher degrees that means that all household education levels participated in CTE within ten percent of their overall population percentage of our CTE students 46 percent are a si 3 or more this compares to 30 9.75% Berkeley high overall this tells us that we have clearly connected with the students most in need of CTE pathways which is a key goal of our program the growth and success and enrollment of such a broad and diverse cross-section of the Berkeley
075high student population has really come within the last two to three years with three key pathways just launching this fall so while it may seem that the numbers who have completed a pathway are low some 285 several of our newer pathways have not yet reached their first completer course these include robotics engineering carpentry stagecraft law and social justice also Berkeley high allows exploration across pathways versus the vertical completion that CDE pushes a student might take digital media in the 10th grade in computer science and the 11th for example this is not allowed at many schools what is clear is that Berkeley High students have embraced CTE in a way almost no other program offer it has been we know that not all students who enter a pathway will necessarily then go into that career well
076we have seen is that students vistas are expanded careers they never thought of become post graduation goals and the learning of core academics such as math science and English language arts is embraced with enthusiasm and even joy that means our goals of educate graduate and employee are being achieved this is a report for our advisory board that we sent to them which we wanted to give to you tonight thank you [Applause] any other district committees okay now it's time for board members and the superintendent we got three minutes who would like to go first director hurry anything yeah sure so last week I was in Sacramento all week helping run a conference for kids all around the state to kind of band together and talk to the State Board of Education about certain issues that
077they chose that they were passionate about so they created four proposals I created the fifth one and we went ahead and presented them at the State Board of Education meeting at the California Department of Education office so it was super cool we got to yeah we got to meet a lot of cool people we got to meet the board members and there's a lot of follow-up that I'm gonna be doing and the other students are going to be doing to make sure that you know we have a voice in our education so I just thought that I would make that known to everybody here and you know change is possible at the local level at the statewide level at the federal level so yeah good evening I wanted to start by congratulating director Alper and
078Julie Sinai and Khadija Brown for your successful runs to join to be a part of this body and I really look forward to the new energy that you're gonna believe bring even as I'm gonna miss my outgoing colleagues and I look forward to learning from you so and continuing to learning to learn from you ty I am what's not a joke this is absolutely true president Daniels I also I wanted to talk a little bit tonight about something that I've been thinking about and a policy that I'm going to request the policy committee take up in the near future something happened recently where the high school has to order their cap and gowns for the fur graduation and we've asked we had kind of talked about we talked about and requested that the caps and
079gowns no longer be gender assigned that boys have the boys have the red and the girls have the yellow caps and gown and while that wasn't able to they didn't that wasn't able to happen this year my hope is that this is the last year that we actually have that default that boys use red and girls use yellow and it's not just because of the color of caps and gowns is so very important but because I think making dividing based on gender continues to send the message to our students to our children across the board that boys and girls are fundamentally different and because of our society in that equation it generally results that girls are actually less than in some ways than the their male counterparts now of course we do have an option
080for people who don't want to either use one don't want to use the color that says that's their default that they can request another color but that is asking those students to step forward as other and so what's this is this is one one area where we do this when we kind of do one thing for boys and another thing for girls and we ask students to choose one or the other but it made me think that although our district I think does better than most about not really having very many activities that divide divide into boys and girls and then again force our students to choose one or the other we still do do that and I've seen that throughout the district and so one of my commitments and a request that I'm formally
081making to the policy committee is that we have a policy in this district that we no longer do that and I think that's important not just for our girls not just for our boys not just for a gender queer and fluid students well for all of but for all of them together so that's something I wanted to talk about because I'm and I'm hoping that any student who doesn't want to wear whatever color doesn't feel comfortable but with a red or yellow ground will request whatever they feel comfortable with so that being said in my two seconds I just wanted to say that in case people had missed this that the vote count for the State Superintendent of Public Instruction has now has now changed so that Tony Thurmond is now in the lead with
08215.5% and Marshall talk has 49.5% and finally I look forward to seeing seeing you at my office hours from three to five of the first first Sunday in December for Sunday of the month at mojo on Sacramento thank you for the election update of course we obviously aren't partisan not technically okay first of all I want to just briefly talk a little bit about the afro-american 50th anniversary as you know I've been talking about this not every meeting but we are now going from planning to actually having the events in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the first and what we believe to be the only African American Studies department at a high school in the United States and if you look in your if you look at the agenda packet
083you will see resolution nineteen point zero zero 100 I think that's item 12 point 17 and that is a resolution recognizing the 50th anniversary the Afro em Department I'm not going to take the time to read it but I since it was on the consent calendar I just wanted to point out that in fact there is a resolution that will be part of the permanent record recognizing that achievement this week there are events all the tall week today I volunteered a lot of energy of our high school students it was a music day so it was looking at the afro M celebration is partly about the department but also celebrating issues and culture of african-americans as well so today was a recognition of musical contributions and really nice music tomorrow afternoon will feature the screening
084and welcome to the neighborhood for those of you who don't know it is a neighborhood based in Berkeley that talks about the gentrification that has happened in Berkeley through the story of the Howard family which is one of the probably well most well known families in the black community at Berkeley Mable Howard was a civil rights activist and fought hard for the undergrounding of Bartlett was supposed to go right through the black community above-ground look you see in parts of Oakland in Richmond and then her daughter Mildred Howard is a internationally known artist and the documentary is about the fact that after living in Berkeley for sixty years all of her life that Mildred Howard now has been forced to move to Oakland because she can no longer afford Berkeley so it's taking kind of
085a social economic issue and personalizing and making it relevant in a way that many of our students I think will it will resonate with them and I'm looking forward to going tomorrow and being part of that panel and then Friday there'll be a visioning exercise for students to explore what is the importance of African African market departments themselves and what they would like to see going forward and how what are some of the issues that they face on campus so I looking forward to all of that very quickly I just wanted to mention I won't see everything since I ran out of time but I wanted to compliment on the young women who came up and spoke about the need for sanitary products and I want to make the request that when the future board
086looks at that as a policy we don't limit to secondary schools we have students who start their cycles in 4th and 5th grade you know eight nine year olds do you have cycles and and that is an age particularly I remember when it happened to me I was much older I was embarrassed didn't know what to do and it's not that I my mother wasn't supportive it was just I was up an age at that kind of thing just embarrassed me and so I think particularly for those students that are starting in fourth and fifth grade that would be a huge a good thing to do for them so I will stop there I wasn't playing anything but just in response to that I think could be happy to know director hempel that the proposed
087policy actually does say that each k5 school will have at least one bathroom and that was something that director labor color also felt strongly about and so even though none of the other policies that we've seen talk about the elementary school level we looked at the statistics and director beery was also helpful for this and and they're in there they're significant in terms of the number of gross who do start yeah so so we did include that in policy all right so as I think I mentioned before this is the second to last meeting for a director hempel and myself the last meeting will be in two weeks November 28th it's gonna be a light meeting we're gonna hear a update on the state of the district from our superintendent and then it will be
088the director bill and director Daniel show and it's true yeah it's it's tradition for outgoing elected officials to bore you with their wisdom but I do want to invite you two to come if you are able to last night we had the superintendent budget Advisory Committee meeting the next meeting is Tuesday December 4th it begins at five o'clock and the previous two meetings have focused on sort of building the foundation for sort of where we stand from a financial perspective but starting on December 4th there will be real conversations around the reductions that we will potentially that the staff will potentially bring to the board and so I want to encourage all of you who are able to attend it will not be being broadcast live but it will be open to the public like
089all those sorts of meetings are there's public comments so if you were interested in able one encourage you to attend that meeting on December 4th one of the great things locally at least that happened on election night was the passage of measure o which was a hundred and thirty five million dollars for affordable housing that was passed by the City of Berkeley so the City of Berkeley put it on so it's a City bond measure not a district bond measure however the mayor presented to us on measure o a couple meetings ago and said that it is certainly his intent and he believed that will the City Council to work with the district on financing housing for our employees we've heard a number of presentations about that including the one at the previous meeting and
090I bring that up because we have heard incredibly compelling stories from our employees at this meeting and previous meetings it has been put in opinionated pieces in Berkeley side there are our neighbors our family members our friends our kids teachers in some cases my own previous teachers and you know the issue that comes up again and again and again is the cost of housing and the crisis that we face as a community and we'll certainly employee compensation writ large is something that we need to look at we should be looking at it we want to make sure that we can compensate our employees for the fantastic work that they're doing the financial situation of the district is such that that is not as simple as just making it happen so while we will certainly be
091looking at that I also really want to encourage us as a board as a district as a community to move quickly on the opportunity that measure o presents us with and to try to engage with the mayor and the City Council around that opportunity because even if we were to start today au 'not wouldn't open for a few years when the crisis is even worse and so we have an opportunity to go beyond just compensation and really address it's heart some of the crisis that is plaguing our employees and lastly I'll just mention as I have in the past that I have a kindergartner in the district and I've talked about how awesome his experience has been so far and last week I had the pleasure of attending our first parent-teacher conference in the same
092room as I mentioned before that I attended kindergarten and not the same teacher the same room and one of the one of the many amazing things was the amount of time that my son's teacher had put into this conference and it was clear there was not just me because I'm a school board member it was true that she had done this for every single one of her 23 students and that requires an incredible amount of attention not just in preparation for a parent-teacher conference week but every day when students come in and she looks them in the eye and sees how they're doing and the way in which my son's teacher has approached this class and I can only imagine it's reflective of the entire district is with an intensity and care that I feel
093so blessed and lucky to have my son experienced so I just wanted to continue how appreciative and thankful and lucky I feel to have my son start his educational career in public school in this way and I just it's just incredibly lucky and I just wanna express my appreciation for all the work that they let my teacher but all the teachers you know are doing thank you good evening everyone it's always good to see everyone out I want to thank all of you for sharing your concerns when I hear some of the issues and many of the concerns I want you to know that we do try to do our very best to address all of the issues but I'm always reminded of how much more work we really need to do and so we
094are putting forth that effort in trying to do those things best for students I do want to talk about the smoke from the wildfire that's affecting the entire Bay Area and I just want all of you to know that we're continuing to monitor the levels the next day and all the next the days after that you will be hearing from the district maybe not tomorrow but the next day and we'll try to keep you updated in terms of what the district is doing and we are you know consulting with our local agencies as well on best practices in terms of what we should should not do and as we are receiving this information we're trying to get that information out to you as quickly as we can I do want to thank or congratulate actually
095our new director Julie sorry Nye our new director Khadija Brown and congratulations to Ty for coming back to the board and I do look forward to working with all of you and then I want to say I'm very appreciative of our superintendents budget Advisory Committee president Daniels talked about that we've had two meetings we have a couple more meetings coming up one in December and if any of you are interested I hope that you will come by and participate or at least join us and see what we're considering for 1920 this has always been a difficult process but we're trying to be transparent and open about our process all right alright consent calendar as amended is a motion to approve consent calendar motion by director Alper is there a second second second by director Hariri
096without objection the consent calendar is approved moving on to item number 13 update on special education program and budget and we turn this over to our associate superintendent Gary to introduce this topic so good evening board members tonight we'll hear from dr. Hamilton and our assistant superintendent Pauline follansby to talk about one of the areas that the board and staff has identified as a key focus for the year as you know our special ed program runs the gamut from preschool students all the way through 22 year old students in a transition program and we like other districts across the state face increasing challenges when it comes to cost containment and how to offer an optimal program while containing costs at the same time so without further ado I'll turn it over to dr. Hamilton and
097Miss Vaughn's be thank you good evening distinguished board president board members superintendent dr. Evans it's my pleasure to give you an update on a special education program some of the initiatives that we've started for this school year the following at some of the areas that we have been focusing on and they're primarily came out of the audit report that was conducted in the district last school year the Special Education Advisory Committee building House capacity when it comes to behavior intervention specialist currently we use a lot of non-public agencies looking at a different way of approaching serving special education students through a Learning Center model and supporting our students through special circumstances independence assessment which is called a sphere the creation of a book to provide processes procedures for our personnel and providing updates in a
098newsletter with special education at a glance and also for a reading program to support students with readings al Wilson reading program the Special Education Advisory Committee is had two very robust meetings we've had a very good attendance from all stakeholders throughout the district it's been very well received we've looked at our programs both at the preschool elementary middle high school and post-secondary programs took a deep dive into seeing what is working and what we hope to try to improve in coming years additionally we've also looked at our budget and how can we use the resources that we have currently and do things a little differently the goal is obviously to create a strategic plan we're using a professional learning community model looking at what why we exist as a as a special education department what
099the mission is is that is to serve our students with special needs what our vision is and that is to prepare our students for graduation college career employment opportunities when they graduate from our schools and also to look at once we've done they also look at what are our goals as far as measurable goals that we can put in place over the next three to five years to support our students we have tried to create a program called a behavior intervention specialist position and that is trying to mitigate some of the costs that we currently have within on public agencies we have a very heavy reliance on non public agencies but more importantly it's trying to build capacity within our district with philosophies that we hold clearly dear to our students and how we work
100with students with behavioral needs we have had one cohort go through they are primarily instructional assistants from in-house and our next move is to have internal and external candidates into our into those programs provide some trading and obviously try and support having cohorts coming forward to mitigate some of them MPA costs as we have currently at the Learning Center model I talked a little bit about we are actually using the Learning Center model in some of our schools and it's really looking at how do we provide special academic instruction when we have a full inclusion model which we are doing a very good job at and we really want to start looking at you know how can we serve students all of our students in certain areas particularly when it comes to students that are
101struggling with reading math particularly when we're looking at students front-loading and we teaching them what does that look like if they're in a general educational classroom can we better serve students in a learning setting model and to support their needs moving forward we've also implemented a special circumstance its independence assessment called Askia and that was primarily implemented it's part of our supper Agreement northern region self or agreement but it's the important part about having a scare is to make sure that we've used all our Tier one interventions for students that have some behavioral needs tier two interventions if they need some more support and then finally if they truly do need additional support is a one to one we have some data to support that and help get them the help that they need it's
102important to note that once we do that we have a plan in place with those students we implement the plan and then eventually when a fade that students so that they become independent and autonomous the special education handbook we're still working on that and it's part of one of the initiatives of the order religious look for we really want to place some processes and procedures in our districts so that we are legally defensible moving forward that's also a great reference for our special education personnel and administrators as it relates to special educational practices and making sure that we're legally defensible moving forward as well we put out a special education at a glance is this last month and the idea around that is just really to try and keep people updated on what's going on
103in the district as far as special education both at the preschool elementary middle and high school and post-secondary levels each person did a little just a snapshot of what's going on and that was disseminated out to a special education personnel and administrators will also put one out in winter and then spring in summer we recently had a Wilson reading professional development we've had to to date we've had for the elementary and the secondary level we've also had our is also be part of that reading program and it's it's been very well received it's a very robust program it has a preventive intervention and intensive element to it it's very well researched based and I think most of our personnel are very excited to begin the process of using that program thank you Mike financial update
104there you go and why do we give a split a second from us chatez to adjust the the presentation so I've been looking at them the financial update for special education and again our focus is to ensure that we're meeting our students needs and at the same time focusing on special education as cost containment over the cost containment lens so what we found traditionally over the years we've spent over spent our budgets in these key areas it's non public schools non public agencies settlements unlegal and when we look at our non-public schools looking up but this year and the prior year we can see that our budget 1.7 million dollars in 1819 1.7 in in 1718 or cost the data what we've been doing is as we receive contracts we're logging them in this intense
105this huge spreadsheet which we already shared with a with the board which is a step that we're doing just in terms of monitoring our cost and as we get requests for non-public schools we're logging it and kind of tracking them as they come in so you can see last year we actually ended up spending 1.8 million dollars and we're over budget by 94 thought that 4,000 but that was after adjusting our budget you know at the first interim the second interim when we adopted and then in 1819 we're already three hundred and one thousand dollars over budget but we have to take a closer look at all our contracts because right now we have contracts that were in place from the year before possibly and contracts that Jan is working on so we'll be working
106closely in terms of identifying students needs that are being met and the number of students for each contract and the work we're working on that just to kind of make sure we're analyzing the costs in detail same thing with our non public agencies and this is the kind of decision that we face we had a million of a budget of 4.1 million in 1819 and 3.7 in 1718 or across the date before or Juve account in 1819 was 3.3 million dollars so we did have a surplus of $800,000 then we got a juvik on tract that came in that was partly as a result of clothes closing the CEC and other costs and that is on the board's agenda tonight for approval so that has now taken us from a positive situation to a negative
107situation so we'll have to be exploring again the costs that we have to date in terms of students being served totally vetting that with the program folks and working closely to make sure that you know we're providing services for the students that were actually serving serving and in 1718 again our budget when we when we had our budget of 3.7 million dollars that was after adjusting our budget at the various interims as as cost became known settlements you can see her budget $500,000 is very conservative costs to date we're halfway through the year we do have one hundred and twenty four thousand dollars left this is one of the areas where we can't really project where it is kind of like recording as the costs actually come in last year in 1718 that 1.2 million
108dollars were assuming most of that would have been one time but we're tracking them closely again same thing with our legal costs we ended up spending three hundred and four thousand dollars in legal costs and it's interesting usually in the past we would have either high legal or high settlement and not as high a cost for NPS or MPS's but now we're seeing that all areas are increasing to date we have received invoices or contracts for ninety two thousand dollars and were in excess causes an excess of budget for 1819 and we came in under budget for for 1718 so in terms of our pilot program yet Jan mentioned that we're looking at behavioral specialists so we quick cost analysis in terms of once we implement this program what does it mean for the district
109so in terms of looking at our 10 behavioral specialists we think that that they will cost the district five hundred and sixteen thousand dollars and the thirty hours of training will be in another twelve thousand dollars so the total cost for these behavior interventional specialists would be five hundred and twenty nine thousand dollars but when you compare that to what we're paying Juve afore the current service were paying about eighty five thousand dollars per aid so that would be a savings of three hundred and twenty one thousand dollars in year one and three thirty three assuming that the same bi behaved integrated intervention specialist will be trained from one year to the next and then I added this slide just to remind everybody that our special education funding is a problem that is not only
110in this district it's statewide and there was an a/b 3136 it's now stalled in the Senate Appropriations Committee but there's a drive for us to try and get additional funding for special education through the legislation so we're trying to focus on that as well so that's um any questions thank you for the presentation both of you as always to the point informative helpful readable for those of us and in the audience so thank you questions comments from board members dr. Han pill okay and also you didn't lose all your art is this the time left so I'll try to make my comments brief first of all I want to thank you for focusing on program quality and servicing the students who receive special education I was a little dr. Daniels you started with the budget
111and I he started with the budget I'm glad that you didn't because it's always been my thing is I wouldn't mind spending all the money that we are if in fact we were providing what I thought was the best and appropriate care possible but we've not been doing that so in that context to me it was all about looking at program quality and quite frankly you know we were paying for things that were not delivering quality for so I'm glad that you started off with looking at the program and then as you look at the program and try to make it a better program you know how within that framework can we find some savings so I want to thank you for the way that you did your presentation that I think was I hope
112that's what came across to the public as well one of things I didn't see mentioned in this was the transportation cost affiliated particularly with non-public placement and I know in the past that there are I mean there are some schools that are just incredibly expensive in terms of the tuition but a lot of the pulp the non-public placements that I'm familiar with in some cases the cost of transportation is more expensive than the tuition itself and so that's an area that I'm hoping that we can look at whether it's the economies of scale or its linking trips or its you know hopefully me or me or working with some of the other of our neighboring school districts to look at bringing some of those services in-house I remember back in the day when we had
113a different model of special ed Neil Berkley had the autistic class and Albany had like another class and Albany kids went to Berkeley if they had autism and that you know we might have had to transport some kids to Albany for what they provided but that was a lot better than going you know I know we're going to Livermore and you know really far places so I would really like to well probably wouldn't be me but I'm hope would you do this again for the next board I know that I would appreciate hearing about the transportation cost if that's still an issue and if so you know what are some thoughts about how we can get that down I also as I also appreciate the fact that you're looking at renegotiating contracts looking for bids
114you know you know asking some of our long-term partners you know whether or not you know they do you have to you know whether or not there's some opportunities there I would hope that this that a board would look at new contracts for our non-public placements our non district placements also to include mandatory cultural competency training and/or some type of response to how do they ensure or what are their steps to providing as much cultural competency with the staff that they're providing to us for our students I have heard families complain about some of the staff from Seneca and from other of our partners that you know they aren't necessarily as in tune with trauma they're not solely in tune with you know what there's a lot of sumption that some of the staff make
115because they're not familiar with communities different than they are and they don't eat they're not even required to provide whatever training we would provide for our staff doing the same work so I think that that's another place that I think we really should look since we're doing new contracts anyway and lastly I just want to mention you know is that I think when we particularly we're looking at cost containment but also just the appropriate way of serving our students the biggest problem we have in special letters disproportionality you know 27% of all black students in our district are receiving special education services I'm talking I piece you know not you know intervention literacy straight up they are in special ed personally for me every person who touches a student should be outraged by that and
116should be seen and I would like to hear more of that outreach from our staff quite frankly because I don't feel that I've heard it enough I feel that sometimes it's a way of outsourcing the responsibility for students that are not in the comfort zone for some of our staff to teach so with disproportionality obviously even the least IEP in terms of resources is a lot more resources and serving the student in a general you know through general education so if we don't target that now we were one doing an absolute to service I mean I actually every time I think of 27 percent of all black kids being identified as special ed what only 10 percent of white students are I get furious because either you know it's a problem or you're a racist
117one or the other and not say it would certainly get our cost down so on that I'll stop just a comment on that color and I actually met with Katie Babcock last week on that very topic to explore and to look at some of the data around there and and we really need to look at a plan because in 2021 we will actually be out of compliance and all those areas just because of how they we've changed the ratio on that as well we've kept Obama's pre sitting around the quota and we will be in all areas we really need to start focusing on what that looks like I'll just comment not only will would be under state and/or federal monitoring but I do believe that we have some we've already seen some lawsuits around
118our handling of special ed and I suspect that they will become more frequent questions come and start rapper I'm gonna I had a I'm glad director tempo mentioned transportation I'm I think I brought that up before to it the report again I don't think it's just transportation for kids in non-public schools the I think it's the the report says that 28% of our students with IEP s have transportation this exceeds the average of 10% that's found in most districts and and as and our transportation costs are projected for 1718 at one point three million dollars so it seems like a potentially fruitful area to look into so I also would like to hear more about that at some point I guess on the point that director Enfield just made it's um I wonder if we
119could just talk a little bit more about it what would and I appreciate that you're looking into it what are what are strategies that other districts have employed to reduce racial disproportionality in their identification of students that we might put there must be some things we can start to think about actually implementing because we you know director humppa brings it up at every meeting and I think it's a really important point you know I think you know a lot of its around cultural competency I'm looking at a multi-tiered systems of support how do we support students at the Tier one level I think that's a really essential starting point and then looking at tier two what does tier two look like and then looking at how we assessing our students and I think they're all
120pieces that I think we have to look at is for the whole child sometimes students maybe it's maybe it's their exposure to school as well but I think tier one is really the critical piece even when we're looking at the number of students in special education is how do we support teachers in the tier one arena before we even think about moving into the tier 2 which is the SST the RTI process and trying to support them there with some more intense interventions and then if all else fails that's when we start looking at perhaps a section 504 plan for accommodations for a student with a disability and all then assessing them for special education I think the bottom line is that special education is not the Silver Bullet I think we really have to
121start thinking there how do we support all students needs with the resources we have you know multi-tiered systems of support is really a key piece I think no longer can we think about special education as an aside we have some fabulous staff I mean our schools we have school psychologists and like now many of them all they do is assess and they've got so many more gifts and talents that we are not tapping into their speech therapists can certainly support students with language needs as well what does that look like if they aren't in special education our occupational therapists we have a really big menu of folk out there that really can support our students very very well and the disproportionality piece is a big piece of that I think looking at that cultural competency
122and how we dress different students needs is a really key piece as well ecology system of support I think is a key piece that looking at the academic and the social-emotional behavior piece of students the whole child is really where we need to start be focusing on not just once upon a time and it's just the academic piece and it's much bigger than that and I just want to underscore the tier one approach and I also want to add the equity strategies as well along with the cultural competency training soon that this will be a focus to this Committee which is it a brown act committee is that the meetings just not around our committee okay it would be good to see I don't think we've seen I'd be Kirsty just who's on it just
123so on the budget will you provide that to us and Friday notes um it says assistant superintendent phones we said these numbers that they find these numbers fairly alarming I wasn't sure what you meant on the first one the non-public schools when you were talking about studying it you know looking into it more deeply were you saying in order just to kind of for us to know where these costs are coming from or is it that maybe these numbers aren't completely accurate well I think we just track the numbers as they come in so if a contract comes across our desk we're just kind of making sure we're recording it and tracking it against the budget but I also need to sit with program program staff just to kind of make sure that yes we
124do in fact have these number of kids at this particular school or in Addis just vetting the numbers that we have just going over them to be absolutely sure we do have contracts in place where we just need to make sure the services are being rendered that way yeah okay this is Anna cumbered number not an expense no this is an incumbent number these are the actual contracts that we have that would project that's what we're gonna need for the year okay so there's no reason to think they're gonna be much better than no but I mean you know we can we can verify the numbers and it sort of income in comfort so these this is the money that we should they set aside to pay contracts for the costs we expect for this
125year as of whenever this you know what went to print so it could it could be more as additional contracts and costs come in but these also as of now could be you know an over estimate coz might not need to pay out all those encumbered dollars right but the non public school too unlike the non public agencies they're usually attached to each student or two and so they're probably closer to actual than with the non public agencies you have a contract and then you use whatever hours you use and then there's sometimes something left over is that correct yes so yes so these are this these numbers are really of something we should really be concerned about and I know this is still this is still your first year dr. Hamilton so there's no
126way you could adjust this yet but I really appreciate that you're taking it seems like you're taking a really hard look at how we're doing things with both in mind number one how we can best serve our students and best you know utilize the the resources we have in district to better serve our kids and then also how that will ultimately reduce costs and if I understand correctly so I'm hopeful about that and I I also really think in taking looking at the tier the MTS s approach and really looking at tier one supports but also this model of bringing more people on-site and I'm hoping that one of the things that might happen as a result is that we might end up not having to identify so many students that maybe otherwise if they
127were getting served because IEP is still and just special it still has a certain amount of it's like restrictive and some you know what I mean it's still if there's stigma attached and so I mean the number one goal is that the students are served and that they're able to learn and and integrate well into the into the classroom and the school community so I'm hopeful about this but it's it's clearly in a year when we're talking about trying to having to make cuts to see there were already over budget in special education is very sobering so I really appreciate your work but I liked I liked Jan's part of the presentation [Laughter] directory now you're good all right I'll I guess a couple quick I mentioned this at the superintendent's budget advisory committee meeting
128last night but you know the the distinction that we want to make with respect to special education is that we're talking about cost containment and not cost reduction and both are important but there's and both will will you know benefit the district but but this the budget reduction process is looking at where we can actually reduce program and that's not really special doesn't really fit into that bucket what we're looking at is how to contain costs to keep the challenge amenable a manageable challenge so it's not I I think we oftentimes want to look to everywhere in the budget for where we can you know cut costs but with respect to special ed the key takeaway I want to encourage us all to understand is it's not about cutting costs and saving money is about
129containing costs and not spending more money or maintaining a quality program I think it depends on which year you look at right like I think that that's I think we can look and if our costs continue to go up possibly going back to a year to ago yeah it's just tricky cuz the maintenance of effort and other other requirements around that that you have to worry about and I don't want to you know that they don't they can they can say I'm wrong in some sense I think directly up here to question what's the difference so right now we have a goal set to reduce two million dollars so we're not going to find reductions in special education to solve at two million dollars however if we contain the cost with in special ed we're
130not going to need to reduce more than two million because our costs are contained and our on budget which are already as we see from here tricky so so I mean you know we don't have the full picture we just have pieces of special ed so this isn't the full comprehensive picture but but I I just want to just make a distinction so we're looking at special life from a containment perspective not from a reduction perspective the budget reductions are a separate process they need to look at other place that's the simple sort of takeaway related to that I know you know that that we need to look at every aspect of our budget and leave no stone unturned and I know that often times we think about special ed and we think about settlements
131and legal costs being a large driver and that's not to say that we shouldn't look at them and stay attentive to those but in terms of the the drivers of our challenges around cost containment settlement and legal even if they are slightly over budget are not a large amount so that's not to say that we shouldn't people shouldn't be coming to us and making sure we are on that point but by itself it is not going to help with the containment it's just simply not big enough to to make a huge dent even if we were to get rid of all legal costs it does actually save us that much money so I just I just I don't I'm not to say that people can't come to us about it but I don't want it
132to be like that is where it's a problem and the solution live because simply it's not that's not big enough and the last thing I'll say is you know if you talk to different people I didn't want to talk about learning centers and inclusion but or overtime so I won't will say that for the next board you know the role of the board you know in it differs district to district and each board has to find its own sort of relationship with staff or around things like this but I do think that this is a proper role of the board in January we recognize this as a significant issue for the district we've prioritized it and so we've spent time looking at it which has meant that staff has spent time looking at it which
133has meant that our community and our public has spent time looking at it as well and we can't look with this depth and attention or everything we have to pick and choose but it certainly seems like based upon these numbers that this is the right place to spend our time that both from a programmatic perspective around the challenges that director hempel has raised and other issues that the audit and the review have has raised the fact that our numbers are such that they are you know we we need to figure this out and you know if we just look at the be at the MPs the non public schools for the netbook agencies those costs are gonna have a significant if only one time depending how we handle it a significant impact on our budget
134and it's going to really make our fiscal challenges that much more challenging so I know dr. Hamilton has was said before that you're you're new here but you know we really we really need as a district to - this is urgent and I think by spending board time now and open the future we can really support the staff in making that happen thank you both very much you're you're killing my fun it's like the great ending thing go ahead I'll make it quick one of the things that I when I was saying my comments before and I was talking about just proportionality and I've said this again as well is that a lot of what special ads problem is as a general ed problem and when I we first started talking about response to intervention
135on this board that was supposed to have the effect of also reducing our special ed cost and reducing our disproportionality and in fact over the time that we've instigated response intervention in our district disproportionality has risen so I think and I think part of the issue is that there's a silo between special ed and general ed and that oftentimes it's given to the special ed Department to quote solve a problem that's really a journal edie problem I wonder if in fact specialized shouldn't be under the same boss so to speak as general IDI to force that collaboration it's not something that we that's not the model we have today but you know I think as long as special ed is seen as over here it will be where folks in general Ed's say well I'm
136gonna outsource that responsibility for those students as opposed to realizing there is the tier 1 responsibility that then as needed brings in those other tiers as those those other services so I'll say there but that's been one of my real concerns is that what we said was going to make a difference has actually resulted in more identification of black students and special it okay thank you both very much it's moving now we've audited the trivia moving on to item 15 the California school dash bar board fall 2018 local indicators I'm going to turn this item over to associate superintendent Scuderi to introduce this this item so tonight we'll be looking at an overview of the California School dash board which is the as described at the outset by president Daniels a new online tool for
137how educational agencies on the state and local level develop their profiles for for accountability so dr. Sadler is going to be with us tonight running you through some of the broad-based metrics as well as the local indicators that are a part of this new newish accountability system so good evening board members excited to be here this evening to share with you our data collection for the local indicators but before I share that I just want to share with you an overview of the new California dashboard it has been revised this is the second year of the dashboard it is scheduled to roll out in early December so this is my objectives for this evening is to share the dashboard and then for the local indicators there are four of them these are the priorities that
138are addressed in the for local indicators so this is what the face of the new California dashboard will look like it's a clean fresh exciting opening they call this the landing and actually it has pictures of students at all phases throughout the educational experience starting with preschoolers up to UC graduates they're actually this page is part of the pre release I felt like I got to share this with you this is current live data this has our total total student enrollment it has the percentage of students that are low social economic students in our district has the percentage of English learners and then the percentage of foster youth when we did our first El Cap five years ago we had 17% English learners and you can see that we've had a significant decrease down to
139eight point nine percent so this is a sample of the landing page for the state indicators it looks very different than it did previously these are called meters and you can see that they're very easy and and visually easy to assess where a district will land or a school and these are the state indicators so you see that there's English language arts and math those are our academic indicators they won't include a data for students in grades three through eight and 11 you can see that there's the English learner progress indicator there's college and career chronic absenteeism graduation rate and suspension rate and tonight I will share with you the data that we've collected for the for local indicators number one which is basic needs which used to be referred to as Williams it's our
140teacher credentialing our availability for instructional materials and then how well our facilities have been kept the indicator local indicator number two is the academic indicator and that really focuses on the needs as indicated by our teachers as indicated by our district office staff around curriculum training materials and primarily needs for professional development we'll talk about our parent engagement survey and I heard loud and clear tonight from the parent that's booked during public comment about the need to really expand our our survey and then finally our school climate which is based on the California healthy kids survey data so this is another screen that will be available when the dashboard rolls out it's very easy to look at and identify the student groups that will fall in the red category the orange category yellow green and
141blue we hope that most of our students fall in the green and blue we know that last year we were in technical assistance for our homeless students meaning that our homeless students had at least two areas where they had a red they were red in the indicator this is another example of the new page this is just one indicator you can look at the graduation rate and you can see clearly at the bottom how many subgroups are red near orange how many are yellow how many are greener how many are blue and this was redesigned primarily to be more user friendly for parents and for community members the feedback was that it was too complicated to figure out what how it was indicated previously so the reason why we have the California dashboard is that
142it's really important for districts to be able to identify the areas of strengths and their areas of need that data is supposed to drive our decisions around budget around curriculum and ultimately it's supposed to be used to inform the El Cap through the stakeholder process so our local indicators there are three areas that we had had to collect information one is on teacher credentialing the second one is on access to instructional materials and the third is on facilities so in working with HR the information that we received is that we have 22 teachers currently who do not have the correct English Learner certification we have zero teachers that are Mis assigned and when I received the data last week we had four vacancies as far as instructional materials and working with James in student services
143there was zero incidences where students did not have the appropriate instructional materials and in working with Steve Collins there were zero incidences of what is considered deficiencies or extreme deficiencies regarding school facility repairs during the 1718 school year under priority - this is looking at the implementation of the state academic standards we collected this data by we surveyed the site's last spring and then we worked closely with the office of professional development with Suzanne to come up with the readings and so we felt that based on the data collected that we're doing relatively well with English language arts we have work for room for improvement with our eld program we have we're doing well as far as our professional development curriculum implementation in mathematics we are improving but have a good foundation around our next
144generation science standards and history and social science was lower because there are new standards and we're in the process of going through an adoption for new curriculum so that's professional learning the next area is programs to support staff to improve an instruction additional input from the office of professional development and you can see that there's always room to improve we felt that we have a pretty decent implementation of the current curriculum all of our curriculum is Common Core aligned but we'd like to see us go deeper to have stronger outcomes for all students and then these were the other academic standard area CTE you heard a report on that this evening we've made a lot of progress with CTE we need to go deeper with our health education content standards and so we feel like
145there's an initial implementation but it needs to be developed deeper physical education was very highly scored especially at the secondary level we know that it's new at the elementary level and we hope that that will align with the strong program at the upper grades we have a really strong visual and performing arts program and we surveyed in the last couple of weeks all of the elementary schools because wanted to know what type of visual arts options were happening k2 at the elementary schools because we know that starting in third grade music happens and at all of the elementary schools there's either dance there's art or there's some type of music happening at all of the schools and then the last part of priority 2 was engaging with teachers and with school administrators and so we
146collected this information through the survey last spring and so we know that identifying professional learning needs of groups of teachers or staff as a whole there's definitely a craving and an interest in more professional development always we have been working on identifying what the strands for professional development will be moving forward especially as we think about the needs the changes that maybe require it with the budget and teachers felt that there's been a great increase of professional development in the last year and a half however there's definitely room to improve so priority 3 was around parent engagement and this particularly pertains to our survey so last year our survey was completely redesigned first of all we call it our family engagement survey not parent and so there were areas of strength and then there's also
147areas that we feel we need to grow so first of all the implementation of this survey was very different than how the survey had been in previous years it was less questions but they were open source questions they were questions that were pre-designed and they were deemed to be reliable and valid questions and one thing that that was very common in the surveys is that parents felt like it was a vehicle to connect them with things that are happening at the school and they were able to share that they felt that communication had increased at the schools and it was consistent across the sites and the survey results that parents were aware of the activities happening at the school in a much more consistent way we weren't pleased with the survey response rate we felt
148that we should have received more responses and so this year we're going to work closer with the site leaders to try and ensure that we hear from more more parents and then we also identified a common theme and that was child care often times was a barrier for families to be engaged at the schools to be more involved they felt that oftentimes the to arrange for a babysitter or to find childcare to participate in activities that may happen during the school day was a challenge and the other areas that we felt were significant in sharing we're that the parents weren't really clear of the role of the family liaisons at some of the sites as well as the counselors and so really being able to clearly identify what those roles are and how those folks
149are in place to support students and family was something that we felt was worth recognizing and then for priority six it was around school climate and with the school climate this is basically just data that was collected through the California healthy kids survey and the survey was administered to students in grades 5 7 9 and 11 and you can see that we had a large sampling of results for students in grades 7 through 9 and not as large of a sampling for students in grades 5 and 11 so that's an area that we feel needs to be addressed that we need to have more authentic data so that it is usable in helping us plan for student program to improve how students feel connected with in the schools we also felt that the overall theme
150that was that surface is that students felt safe at school and I think that that's a really positive being that this year we really heavily focusing on goal three and El Cap which is all around safe and welcoming school campuses and for that one and then this is the new priority priority seven we didn't read on this last year and so this is about access to a broad course of study and there's a CDE Dataquest report that you can actually pull up and it shows you how many courses are offered at each grade level at each school and so it was really interesting and that's why we did the survey to find out what type of arts our students were exposed to in grades K through 3 because we couldn't detect that based on the
151data and data quest so what we looked at for this is the first part of it was to identify the locally selected measures that would track how well our students had access to or enrolled in a broad course of study and so these are the the the indicators that we identified enrollment in a through G approved courses access to appropriate instructional materials enrollment and specialized services such as eld or interventions or forests or special education our state and local assessment data GPA data and then reclassification data the next requirement was to use the measure to summarize the differences across school sites or the difference across how students are enrolled in the program and so two significant things that we found in this data collection were that we need to make sure that our students have
152access to quality interventions that are better created that are creating better being offered during the school day as after school for students and they should be offered by highly trained teachers and support staff and the other thing is that we highlighted that we piloted a new digital assessment tool to inform instruction and interventions this year the next requirement under priority 7 is to identify the barriers preventing eliezer districts from providing access to a broad course of study for all students and so the barriers that we identified our scheduling and programs can impede access to intervention classes inconsistent access and usage of common core aligned instructional materials and then the need for more professional development and a comprehensive plan that would be offered for all students and the progress that we've made is that we have
153worked using the illuminate system strategic course scheduling especially at the secondary level with easier access to intervention classes we've implemented a stronger system to monitor access and usage of the Common Core aligned instructional materials and we've developed and implemented a comprehensive professional development plan primarily the work of Suzanne Reed our amazing professional development coordinator to ensure that we've expanded our professional development offerings to include quality offerings for classified staff as well and so this is how we read it Berkeley for the local indicators we felt that we've made progress in all of our areas that we have identified us as meeting the minimal requirements for each of the local indicators yes we have more work to do in these areas but we do feel that there has been progress made since last year and that
154concludes this presentation and I will open up for questions thank you questions comments on the board thank you for that at a couple questions when I had a question about the I had a question about the dashboard indicator regarding access to curriculum and I know that we've had an issue with getting our common core curriculum translated into Spanish and that was a real issue that we did not have you know Spanish translations of math or trim you know and so I didn't see I mean is that has that been corrected or so that's been corrected okay because the last time that was an issue okay so this dashboard indicator represents the fact that we've corrected that yes yes the question that I had was where is health taught at Berkeley High look at what part
155of what what no I mean back when dinosaurs ruled the earth and I was in high school health was part of PE but most many of our students don't take PE you know they get their PE credit through sports or through the Y so I'm I've never been clear I mean small schools have more have more like a homeroom kind of thing where I know that that's where they've taught health and drug education it's unclear to me an IB or AC where that where that is taught and I know at one point it was supposed to be taught as part of history and English language but it's not clear to me that in fact is a standard across the school across Berkeley high so I do think we do have some students that are receiving
156the appropriate health education but it's not clear to me that in those learning communities where they don't have more of a homeroom or advisory where that's being taught I assume that that may not be a question as much with you 9 but certainly for other grades I also wanted to make the point that while our indicators around math are saying essentially we adopted common core and we provided professional development having said that clearly our math program is not where we want it to be and I just want to say that because I don't want people to think that we're patting ourselves on the back when clearly we know that it's not just a math 3 problem you know for those of you who follow you heard me say quite a bit I mean I have
157said for years that math 1 is a problem and a lot of the students that fail math 1 in ninth grade fail math one in 10th grade by 11th grade they may be out the door or you know are no longer on the track to really have a high school education that's worth much whether regardless of what they're doing post secondary so I just wanted to say that that we and we have been taking steps this year we hired a math coordinator to work with our math department you know there is a lot of attention being made so I just wanted to make that point and lastly I just want to say that I guess it's official now that this will be your last time having to deal with dashboards and El Cap presentations in
158terms of this so I just want to thank you for your service over the years thank you and our kids are still friends so our kids went to school together and she was the principal of my son's middle school so anyway I just want to thank you for your service Pat and wish you I too just want to thank you dr. Sadler you're the reason why I'm on the school board today you I joined the SGC when you were principal of Rosa Parks 12 about 12 years ago I saw Rachel yeah yeah and it's been I've learned a ton from you it's been a really real pleasure working with you and a bunch of different capacities in the district congratulations thank you and we're really gonna miss you thank you does someone else have some
159that I can jump in after okay here we go so hi directors hadler I am well echo well we'll have another chance to recognize your brilliance so not I'm gonna be in denial a little bit about your leaving just asked you these questions so um so I'm sorry if I missed it but did you tell us when the dashboard will be populated maybe director Daniels gonna answer that question my understanding is that'll be early December is that what you would smarted to pose president Daniels early December last year it was December 7th there they're rolling it out so there's a private preview for school districts to get a sense of whether they don't have all of the is that up now the private previous private preview for district administrators such as dr. Sadler unique when
160I gave you the demographic yeah but I would I would imagine you know just to maintain expectations call it you know December 15th and the latest well hopefully we'll have it fire before our last board meeting of the year um so then I had a question about how you rated yourself because that was your self-evaluation on all of those scores that you gave there one through five and I was curious to know what your criteria were because there were some that I thought like oh I would actually have given us more than that or maybe a couple where I thought you were very I would have maybe not rated us as high but mostly I thought like for example evapo I would have probably it's an area where I probably would have given us a
161five since or once one of the best you know in the state or I don't know I just was wondering what criteria you used Arthur so we just collected a survey data you know yeah yeah and from see some teachers yes got it okay and then I was happy to hear that there's there's some movement on adopting the new curriculum for the history history Social Sciences and so I'd love to get an update on that maybe through Friday notes or we could just talk yeah but I'm director riddle as a person who's do yes okay and then also you mentioned that we did get the checks data back from the California Healthy Kids Survey data back very disappointing that we didn't get data for fifth and eleventh grade so we did get data right oh
162that's great is what it's not significant again yes but I would really particularly around the eleventh grade and some of the suet of suicide Asian data is really important to know and so anyway is that available to us is that on the website I think maybe checks data might be public is it on the website you know no we received it from student services but I can have someone make sure that we share it with you and Friday no it's perfect yeah thank you how was it I look forward to seeing all the data it was a very helpful presentation the checks assessment could be given annually to more grade levels if that's something that district chooses to do other districts do so that might be something to look into it's a good measure of
163school climate and social emotional needs for our students that's a really good point and we could do that and do that if I mean I know there's a cost associated to with it but it would you know there's different additional like components that you can add what do you call them there and so Michaels in modules and we might want to do different modules like alternate you know one one year do sexual harassment and other one do something else oh that's great great idea so just just very quickly thank you for the presentation dr. Sattler all of the work that went into this you know the expectations the the hope I think for districts was that this would lead to additional conversations at the district level around the areas you know that they don't want
164to focus on so just to be clear we are met or going to be met once we submit this information after today's board meeting not because of the actual results but it really means that we reported the information at a regularly scheduled board meeting to the public so we could have been the best in the state or the worst in the state the Met sort of rating would be the same so there's no requirement that we do anything other than what we want to do but I would hope that we would want to do something so for example as of you know the reporting date the 22 miss assignments for teachers of English learners that seems to me to be I don't know how compares to years past but that seems to me to be
165a high ish number that we would want to take a look at you know may go down over the course of the year I don't know but certainly something that strikes me as being you know not not de minimis priority to so there was an optional basically self-reflection tool that is provided to districts that's what that's what dr. Sadler used I think you laid it up very well I think it's an accurate reflection you know it doesn't even so far as doesn't give us all one so it you know it feels like it's so we want to be I guess the one the one question I I would I would ask is that while this is about implementation of academic standards not necessarily outcomes you know to what extent do we feel like our focus
166on the way that we have implemented academic standards visa V math you know is interrelated with the focus we've talked about at the board around math outcomes now I know you now is new Brookley high and so you know there's things that may not be reflected but we have invested a significant amount of money in you know math one and math 2 so it's at initial implementation you know for that amount of investment just something just sort of again it for me take away things about look into that would certainly be you know one of them I love the fact that were you know rating a four on CTE certainly given what the MS Allen said from the CT Advisory Committee that that that's going quite well so that seems to you know sort of
167jive and connect with that so I you know I I think we talked about Rosa de pal mentioned the the healthy kids survey and that the challenge of the small samples has particularly at eleventh grade and then the priority seven access to broad course of study this is the first year of this indicator and so you know I applaud you for for figuring out a way to make it work the state provided very little guidance on what how to even approach this and it's a fairly broad question I mean think about it in terms of do they are our you know K through five students exposed to the necessary you know course access they're all the way up to high school I think we've talked about you know with the massive schedule Berkeley High and
168the u 9 and different learning communities how students have access or not access to different levels of courses so this is you know encompassing a wide array of sort of ways of looking at it and and I'll you know just sort of leave it at that this is the first time we've we've seen it but looking at I don't slide it is it's the priority seven the the chart it identifies barriers you know just you know some of those things that I think we may want to you know take a look at so you know that's the bell as long as we upload today or tomorrow we should be good because that's the deadline all right thank you very much you're welcome next up is twelve point five this is was on the consent calendar
169the sustainability plan do we have a a deck for that miss China's no no okay so who from staff I have our manager Steve Collins from facilities here to answer any questions that you might have on the sustainability plan no right here no so so dr. salad don't leave so this was pulled from consent no you're good I'm gonna so if there's any questions for mr. Collins about the stainability plan and Susan miss silver she wants to visually if she needs to answer the question as well vice president Appel I think you'd pull this item Oh director Alper thanks so so I'm fully supported the plan and I and I really again appreciate the work that you all have done on the reason I pulled it was because well I had a couple questions and
170I also just thought that it's the were the the worst thing we can do with plans like this is spend the money and a lot of time creating them and then they just end up on a shelf and nobody ever looks at them or implements them and I and I'm sure neither of you wants that to happen and then of us want that to happen and it's a really important plan that touches on pretty much every aspect of the district so to me it seemed it we don't have to spend a very long time on it and I or a long time at all but to just pass it on consent without discussing it all seemed didn't seem ideal to me and and specifically I wasn't sure so I have to so my two questions
171related to what it means for us to approve the plan tonight which again I'm very much in supportive and I guess there really there are more questions I guess for for you dr. Evans then for mr. Collins or miss silver so yeah I'll just say what my new Gardens r1 is what does it mean for us to pass the plan I know that there's immediate steps on page 54 so I gather so maybe just correct this is right that by saying we approved this we're saying we generally approve the many recommendations that are in here knowing that they're their only recommendations we're not necessarily saying we're going to do every single one of these things but we like the idea of them but we do and we do direct staff to do the things that
172are listed in the immediate next steps and to expend the resources that are listed in that section of the report is it that's right okay and then I guess so it seems to me we should include in here some kind of well there'll be a sustainability committee which is part of the median except so that will happen and maybe just the existence that committee will ensure that we get reports back as a board because I think we need there's so much in here that's really exciting but we haven't heard from a bunch of the different departments that are that are implicated here and I would love to hear from them or from the committee about what are we actually going to do how are we actually going to reduce waste and nutrition services you know
173how are we actually going to incorporate sustainability into our curriculum through ed services so I don't know if this needs to be part of the motion that we make but I would like us to have some some report back either annually or semi-annually with an with maybe updated recommendations based on sort of real-time capacity and then the last thing I'll add then this is truly a question dr. Evans who where does this sit so I really appreciate mr. Collins you're you know taking the leadership on this and working with miss silver but seems to me that facilities or maintenance or facilities isn't really the place where this ultimately sits so many of the aspects of this report have nothing to do with facilities there's nutrition services there's IDI services so it really is though it
174wouldn't it doesn't really you know I don't know so that's my question this body's looking at me yeah so we haven't decided actually will this occur where this will sit okay you know honestly and I do appreciate Steve taking this on and really following through and to answer question number two we actually did meet with many of the departments yeah so that has actually been done right and so so we have not decided actually where that sits right now so I'd have to come back to you after we figure all that out so with the sustainability committee I would recommend that there are various departments that are actually represented in the committee yeah I assume that on the committee will include any Lisa represented from each of it irrelevant is there any but when you
175say house you know who's going to be overseeing yeah who's gonna be I know ultimately it's you but actually okay I appreciate that you haven't figured that part of it out yet and now the only person who's just looked at me was associate superintendent Gary is there any objection to the idea of the of either the committee reporting back because just sort of update us on the recommendations and the implementation yeah we can definitely update you on the recommendations but as we move forward into this whole process of implementing the plan we can get back to you and report to you you know on a regular basis I'm not gonna say quarterly but at least you know a couple times a year and they'll be a part of that that presentation yeah and the the
176concept is that you know the low-hanging fruit is the immediate next steps that's the easy stuff that we can move on fairly inexpensively and then there's a lot of big-ticket items in there that you know will take 30 years 40 years it's the long-term and so we didn't have the chance to do the full dive of research you know I mean for some of these items the the solar piece and the carbon neutral piece you know we're properly talking about you know tens of millions of dollars over the next thirty years so that really needs a deeper dive so the the concept is this committee will get with the facilities department and do that research to the extent that's related to facilities yes yes for though for the pieces that are related to facilities because
177electric buses for example that's not you know correct correct but you know yes and but on the on the one big commitment for electric buses we we spoke to the manager at transportation and she's all on board with that so and we also don't don't know how much money will be saved either there's definitely some some significant savings from energy and waste so that's also a consideration and if I could just make one point on that I appreciate bringing that up it would be particularly as we're looking for places to save money across the district if there's anything that we can be doing to start tracking that now so that as you start to implement some of these things we actually know what we're saving so that we can include that in our budget reductions
178yeah you know if it's real absolutely yeah we we are benchmarking all of our sites right now for for electrical use and then we're trying to do it for water and garbage as well I'll move to approve the plan in motion by director Alpert to approve the plan item 12.5 there a second I'll second it second by vice president repels the roll call vote yes yes so it passes zero I know the director Leyva Cutler wishes she was here she's very much in support of the plan yeah okay thank you very much for staying all right we're gonna take a two-minute non banana break you can go to the restroom check your text messages and we'll come back in two minutes two minutes you want okay two minutes is up all right so we're moving
179on to item number 16 approval of notice of intent to revoke for a realm charter school director follansby go ahead start with you so on September 20th that brought what they noticed a violation to the board in terms of REMS temporary location in Contra Costa County and he had on December 5th for a notice of duis October 5th to respond to the the Notice of Violation we did get a response on I think it was October 15th and with that in mind realm is still located in Contra Costa County I know they're working on various permits and working on their building in Berkley but it's not ready as yet so the fact that he's still in the fact that realm is still in Contra Costa County is cause for us to move forward with a
180notice of intent to revoke and that has to be held at a public board meeting so this is our opportunity to do that but I think it may be helpful for us to hear from from Victor who's here just to to explain and let us know what's going on with the building and some of the issues and challenges you may have mr. day off three minutes please Liz if you could just pause the timer and go to three minutes we can come back in 28 minutes after that good evening I would just like to make a couple corrections to the agenda and are the notes in the agenda actually under the background information and it says on September 20th the board approved a Notice of Violation there was no board meeting on the 20th I
181think these are sis's supposed to read I'm sorry September 20 the meeting was September 26th so that's the first thing second what ed code says about our responses is to provide a reasonable amount of time for a response not for the remedy I'm think everyone's pretty clear that the remedy this situation is actually for realm to operate in Berkeley or at worst in Alameda County so I'm not sure if the board feels that being noticed on September 20 or that the board approved the Notice of Violation on September 26 that a response by October 5th is it a reasonable amount of time so that's the first thing I would ask the board to consider in terms of reasonableness second ed code section 4 7 607 subsection 2 says that the authority that granted the charter
182school the Charter shall consider increase in pupil academic achievement for all groups of pupils served by the charter school as the most important factor in determining whether to revoke a charter so having a conversation about whether the district should move forward with the revocation I ask if that if the board has even considered or even knows about our academic performance for all of the pupils and of the groups that we serve I'll cite that again it said code 4 7 607 subsection 2 and finally it's important to say that I've in August when we assumed and hoped to be moved into Pacific School of religion we've signed a long-term lease there as I mentioned before Pacific school of religion has put over a half a million dollars in tenant improvements to improve the building realm
183has put up several hundred thousand dollars to improve that building we've gone through the process of getting a change of use we went through the city of berkeley for that it was granted we had a public hearing we had public meetings that was granted we've done work on that building we've been our building permit was split into two parts so that we could accelerate the move-in date one part was for the seismic work that was needed so that permit was granted and about 99 percent of that work is completed and we expect it to be final this week as you can imagine the building structure and in a college is different in terms of the integrity of that building versus what's needed for a middle school so we have to have structurally reinforced that entire
184building if I can be given just another minute or two I don't know if the three minutes has enough time for me to explain something we're talking about replication of the Charter there'll be a public hearing so if you could finishing up your thoughts so we you know I'm not sure what else to say other than no one wants realm to operate in Berkeley more than I do more than her board and certainly more than our parents and staff everything that's been asked of us to do to operate in Berkeley we've done the biggest hurdles what has prolonged or exacerbate our move-in date has been frankly it's come down to one issue and which is the fire and life safety issues of the building it's an entirely cement building so there was different interpretations between
185my architect and the head building official and the fire marshal for the City of Berkeley in terms of the pre-existing conditions of the building and what we needed to do to make the building safe so there's been about a two-month conversation about that and there have been plans that have been submitted back and forth we're on our third round of submittals so we're doing everything we can to move in as quickly as we can operating there in El Cerrito is obviously a huge expense for us it's we've lost families as a result it's a strain that nobody wants to be operating in El Cerrito we're actually really lucky that we have that opportunity but we're doing everything possible to move back in to or to move into the mud building okay thank you very much
186all right board questions comments you can reset it for 28 minutes through 27 actually there you go doctorate director Hemphill well mr. Diaz I'm sorry director him but we're gonna address our questions to director following speak not to mr. Thomas okay mrs. Fawley that to my understanding of the notice of eye of the the notice of intent to evoke is the follow-up to a previous Notice of Violation that we issued in September for which unfortunately I guess mr. Diaz was not able to attend because he did not attend at that meeting so he's attending today back that meeting my understanding is that the reason that we were going down this path it was not because well was because that the law is clear there that there should have been a material revision if you're changing
187a site but you're still within the same County and quite frankly I think if that was all that we were talking about we wouldn't be here today however there's an absolute prohibition my understanding and please correct me if I'm wrong my understanding against a charter that is chartered by a school district in one County operating in another County and that's why we're here today correct right and I you know am sympathetic to realms realms situation I have been on this board since since I was on the board that originally chartered realm and since that time I believe that all of our renewals as well as accepting material revision has always been done because we valued the curriculum instruction that has made a difference in some of the students lives so I take a little bit
188of exception for anyone to describe the actions of this board any differently because I believe that we have done everything from giving cash in there to help make payroll we have given technical support in terms of administrative needs we have I think it could be argued to a fault have looked at the instruction over even fiscal solvency so my understanding is is at this point the real issue is that it is a prohibition and the Education Code for a charter to be chartered by a district in one County and to be operating in another correct and there is no if ands buts right it's not a situation where you can ask for forgiveness her as opposed to permission right and it doesn't make a difference whether it's a temporary relocation or not and we stress
189that and the Notice of Violation that we had given to and it may be an issue for an attorney or something or maybe the superintendent but I want to get some sense of if this board was not to continue the process and essentially look the other way what could be the impact in terms of continuing to not not do the oversight that we are charged to do well I think I think I think rum is scheduled to move in so it's a matter of timing at one point we thought it was going to be earlier and due to construction delays he's still there so we would have thought that at this point we wouldn't have needed to even move forward if he had actually relocated to the Berkeley site so and if we took the
190action today what is the timeline before in fact the board would actually what's the timeline and the process still remaining before the board would be in the position of having to essentially take a irrevocable action so that so the next action would be a public hearing which would be at a board meeting within 30 days so it could be at the next board meeting or they the one following that so as long as during a 30-day window will then need to have a public hearing and then the board would need to take to take action on the intent to revoke at the following meeting within 30 days so there are 30-day windows that we'll be looking at there is the option to have that second 30-day window be a 60 day window by agreement with
191the parties so if everyone agrees to extend that second but not not the public hearing window that's 30 days fixed but the second one the vote 30 days default six days if everyone agrees in writing to make it so we're talking 90 days this could take which would be at the end of the day if it's a moot I mean if you're back in Berkeley my guess is a future board would not be interested in going on with revocation for a error that has now been rectified it has not been right well what I'm saying but in the 90 so it it could be rauner could potentially have 90 more days directed to rectify at which point it would be a moot vote on whether or not to actually revoke because they would be back
192in the county correct and even in in the city correct um it's my understanding that there's only one board meeting left this year 22 to two is last one in December correct okay so that still falls within the 30-day window correct okay thank you any other comments is there a way to is there any way under the law to postpone this decision to at least the next board meeting are we required to make the decision now based on the timeline let's see I think we would need to make the decision if we if we decided to to go ahead with the intent to ripple that would have been 40 days after the end of the remedy period and we do have up to 60 days to respond so if we we could do another 20
193days you know to actually decide on the Notice of Intent terrible that would be within the window so it sounds like there's probably - I mean I think we have to go down the process - the law has said that we're supposed to go down on the other hand it sounds that there is at least some interest in drawing out that process as long as possible to give the opportunity to actually make any permanent decision moot because run would be back in Berkeley yeah I mean I have no interest in revoking realms charter yeah yes I appreciate you wanting to speak so I was gonna say you know I don't have any I don't have any desire and I don't think anyone here has a desire to revoke the Charter based on this you know
194I mean it but it's I also feel like we have an obligation under the law and this was a clear like redline violation and not only that but we weren't even given notice and so I think that you know official notice there's no attempt to - whatever it is amend the Charter so I'm just trying to see if there's a way that we couldn't we can avoid the next step and it sounds like the only way to do that would be to to vote on the for done whatever the next what is it the twenty fourth twenty eighth twenty eighth does it have to be another hearing or can it be on consent you mean taking this item and putting on the 2028 not sure if it could be an consent I mean is it
195paulien do you know if I just I just would say that even if we moved it from this meeting to the 28th the public's hearing would not wouldn't could not change why because there's after thirty days from November 28th is December 28th and the only so yeah I was trying to avoid having to do this on the 12th because I'd rather not do that on the first meeting on the 12th so but it sounds like there's they wouldn't change that so then I'm doesn't really matter the only thing that matters about it is that we wouldn't be walking up I mean we could avoid having to take this step right yeah you know I think I think we should be clear that there are really three issues going on so one is the location of
196realm in a different County as you said it's violates a red line the second is that the current Charter doesn't have them listed back to here it has them listed at a different locations so there's no material revision with the Charter that has we're located here let's look at it yeah and and and then it's then obviously the notice which the notice is you easily rectified but it's the material or vision so there are multiple ways that you know there are other locations in Berkeley that or in Alameda County that could potentially satisfy the law we've not seen a material or vision to extend it even explore there's an option and and so you know certainly I'm with you I I hope this can get resolved but as director Hempfield mentioned you know as authorized
197err and as the XD it oversees realm we have we don't have any choice in the matter and and so if something you know heaven forbid something were to happen our our liability there are reasons why the law is the way that law is so I I think that notwithstanding the challenges that any construction situation faces there are other remedies that realm can pursue to rectify the situation beyond just fixing the location right I mean I wasn't I wasn't I mean I think I wasn't suggesting as I said that we not move forward we need to it just I was looking at the timeline to see if we could do it on the 28th instead of today and I mean do you have any idea when realm intends to it currently plans it looks like
198they had thought they'd be in by Halloween and that didn't happen so do you have any idea Pauline I mean superintendent follansby we need to get updates from rim because it's a it's a moving target you know motion by director Alper to approve the notice of intent to revoke from charter I'll second let's do a roll call vote abstention director head pillow director all / yes vice president dick pal yes president Daniels yes passes five oh one two three oh excuse me thank you 4:01 I just want to say I really hope that at the end of the day that we don't have to do the end game of this process and that realm is able to rectify their violent their violation and continue on all right moving on to item 12 point three I
199believe was pulled by Vice President Appel 12.3 I actually was requesting that we table it the superintendent wanted to discuss so do you want to just give some information about yes over to Evelyn our sister superintendent Bradley too this position because one of the things I want to say is that is the personal Commission approves their range and we approved the position so I want to turn it over to you to explain this more in detail sure the reclassification for the student admissions manager is that a new position what it is is an expansion of the duties that have been performed over the last few years I think 2015 there was a new board policy at that point that was passed for the admissions manager at that time and there was also a reclassification study
200that was done this position was not reclassified when that classification study was being conducted so these students service manager missions manager went to the PC Commission and asked that his classification be reclassified a desk audit was done by director dual director dual completed the audit gave a recommendation to the PC Commission last Thursday which was approved at their board meeting so therefore we're taking this here tonight to ask the board to approve the recommendation of the job duties that were also listed on the job description with the director dual that had approved yes that's and there's a $30,000 fiscal impact right yes eyes includes fringe benefits and in the whole yes do we have any choice as far as the like what are our options we could go back to the merit Commission and as
201that they real akat it as far as the salary is concerned but based on the job duties that were presented tonight in the board packet that is the range that was selected for that job description well you change his responsibilities or you change the responsibilities that is correct seems weird that we have to do this another concession because it's somebody's job I yeah yeah and I don't think we can change a responsible because the desk got it that was that was conducted is what the director had said that he get is joined so it was an accretion of duties over the past few years same in your and you you your observation as the HR director you agree with with that I do I do and and when does this when would it take effect
202the when would the fiscal impact immediately immediately as soon as the boy as soon as if we approve this the the classification takes effect salary changes yes just not for nets next fiscal years this no its it's effective immediately thirty four years so if he if it takes effect no the impact for this year would be fifteen thousand are there any are there any other positions that are I mean what's the timeframe how long has the personnel commission had this on its agenda are there any other positions in their works is I mean one I don't know I don't have any opinion about the particular position in the job description but it's a little bit disconcerting to in the middle of a fiscal year find out about you know a significant ongoing expense where when
203we're in the context of having to make ongoing budget cuts so is this something that came up recently or and or are there other positions that were that might be coming down the pike where AM facing the same decision I'm not understanding the question is there anybody else who's made a similar kind of request of the personnel Commission or at this time that we can anticipate a similar type of item coming up in front of the board there are there are positions that are coming up there was one just recently the HR analyst just came up an HR tech position came up it's over time so they may ask months prior and then when it's conducted and finish it goes to the Merit Commission to approve the classification and that comes back to us so
204it depends how long it would take so for this particular went to I believe to the director and I think was during the summer do you have any idea why in the first in the original class and comp study this wasn't caught as as a position that would oh you're saying that his his responsibilities changed over the last couple years no it just wasn't it was I can't speak to that you can get the information for you but I understand that it was brought to the personnel Commission in 2015 but it was not reclassified at that at that time and I don't know the reasons why okay I would have to research that with a personnel Commission I guess the only thing I would ask is that if so if this has been in the
205works since this summer I guess if there's other positions that are gonna have a big fiscal impact like this that the board being notified that this might be coming six months down the road as opposed to just finding out about it an agenda yeah I don't know if there's any other others that are in the works at the moment I think that the reclassifications that have been asked for for desk audits that have been approved by the personnel Commission I don't have any right now I mean my questions have nothing to do with this one position or the one or the person who's filling it it's just we're in a position right now where we have you know a lot of people who are working hard and does really are you know haven't gotten raises
206and you know so it's a it's it's just a little quirky of a process that then some one person can go to the personnel Commission and get a huge bump and it's up in his salary you know without the negotiations so that's just you know I think that's what I'm responding to it's nothing against this particular employee you I know works very hard for her district I just wanted to say that and you can correct me if I'm wrong you know many times we don't even know whether or not a employees going to request an audit of their job and so and they can do that there's window that says they have to do it between a certain time they can request an audit you know any point of the year am I correct that
207is that is correct they can they can request an audit at any time and it goes through the director of personnel with America mission not to the District I'll move the item okay I'll second the real call vote hi director airhead bill yes director Alper yes vice president of pal yes president yes passes five oh all right public comment would anyone who's remaining like think a little comment good evening some of you I know very well fellow community members in close neighbor to my church but you have a new Baptist Church I'm actually here representing Boca I'm kind of just listening right now as we've been contacted about some issues at Berkeley at Berkeley high and so but I'm actually here as a parent I was listening to some of the things that you've been
208responding to about the math curriculum situation with the young women they were talking about having supplies in a women's bathroom and that really struck a chord with me because I have a 16 year old daughter and that issue actually came up with her where she didn't have anything with her there was nothing at the school she missed the whole class and I received a phone call so I'm like wow and I appreciate that you all are really you're listening to to these things and really considering implementing some some of this another thing came up for me too I'm kind of I'm tired has been a long day and I know you all are tired as well I was looking at the piece around a special education director you struck a chord with me again because
209my daughter has an IEP and it's really specifically around she's had some challenges or with her math she the focus you know 30 minutes and then she's over there in there peace about it stigmatizing and kids being embarrassed that whole thing and that struck a chord with me and I'm thinking wow our school board actually is really listening and I think that's a great thing and you director him Phil I love you because you've been the same no since I remember when you came on a school board I remember and you've really been talking about that work about the equity piece and identifying how young men of color in particular disproportionately there was issues around the discipline piece now we're having young men that are being thrown into special education and for me it might
210work involved with boys and men of color black male achievement I'm thinking okay here's another piece around school to Prison Pipeline now I'm not saying that the Berkeley School District and you asked school board directors supporting that piece but it exists and is still happening and I thank you for bringing it to attention thank you thank you anybody else hi my name is Emma Padilla and I actually am various things with realm but one of the main things that I was is a parent of realm my daughter was one of the founding sixth graders and I work at realm now and I see the hard work that's being put in by the staff by Victor by all the wonderful educators and I want to tell you that realm will not be in Contra Costa County
211if we didn't have an option it was two years before we were able to find PSR so try to find a location within a month just so you guys can keep that in mind I appreciate director pel that you try to extend that that deadline and it's really appreciated but honestly at this point it felt like there was no more options than to fighting whatever was open so you know we look forward to seeing you guys again on this M in December thank you for staying anybody else sir my name is Michael Forman and I am the parent of a child at Craig Mott elementary school and I wanted to ask for a formal response and why the administrative staff of the school district has spontaneously it seems tonight my request for the electronic communication
212between mice regarding my child at Craig Montella mentary I was instructed by the teachers and the staff at Craig MA to first seek a Freedom of Information Act for the information I filed for Freedom of Information Act requests they were denied seemingly on principle and now I am waiting on a response from basically we have to go to court now pending the three subpoenas that I had to file for the information the reason I am asking directly is because I was told each step of the way this is actually following a hard meeting that you attended ma'am I was told each step of the way that I would not be facing any sort of this information but as soon as it got escalated to the district level it's just been one denial after another so
213I'm just seek a response to that formally thank you so much for staying no we're not allowed we can't really discuss this but if there's anything I can I am interested in hearing more because it's a little difficult to know exactly you know we're in the process your issue is and I don't know about knowing some details of what you asked it's a little difficult - yeah so if we can do that offline or something sure like know where you are and in the process as well that would be helpful yeah to be fair I completely agree I I think I missed you by five minutes the other day at your office hours so that's kind of why I had to come back alright anybody else want to make public comment all right meeting adjourned