001e e e good evening everyone I will call to order the special Board of Education meeting workshop for October 2nd 2024 um it is just past 5:00 pm uh we are in Open Session because tonight is a workshop um and just a reminder that closed session will immediately follow follow and um this will be um this is being live streamed on YouTube um with that could we please stand for the flag salute all right and um because we are short one board member this evening everything that we take action on uh we will have to do with a roll call Vote or we all vote one at a time um moving on to the consent calendar um are there items that need to be pulled from consent it's a short one seeing none any public
002comments all right do we have a motion I move the consent calendar second dude all right we have a motion by Mr tennis and a second by Mr Lando all uh not all those in favor um any further discussion approval starting down at the end with uh Mr tennis tennis ey Conan ey Dolby ey Lando ey all right moving along two um item three that's the workshop topic this evening um is informational uh for our special education programs update for 2024 so we'll have for Scala join us for the presentation okay good evening thank you for um putting me on the agenda um to talk about something that I love dearly and that is um our special education programs and so um I have to thank Mr Pedro Caldera director of secondary education and Miss
003Heather sentes director of Elementary education they helped um be part of my planning for tonight along with um working with all of you on what you would like to hear about so I want to just begin with saying um we have unequivocally the best special education staff um that I've had the opportunity to work with in a really really long time and and I say that with 20ish years of experience and a lot of different opportunity in different parts of our state and Colorado and the fact is that we have amazing Educators who are out in classrooms on campuses every day working on behalf of our students um really getting creative and finding things that work and collaborating and supporting parents and their educational Journey because um the road to a diploma or 22 and
004aging out is sometimes challenging when you have a child with special needs so um in our department we have 49 and a half Elementary Educators we have 52.6 secondary Educators and over 45 designated instructional staff so designated instructional staff I'll kind of explain what that group entails so my apologies for us being a little bit small um we have broken down special education in the past three years into two separate broad categories and it is a Continuum of services from mild to moderate so our we used to have resource program special day classes all those pieces those have now been combined into one general area of mild to moderate support needs or mmsn and then we have extensive support needs or ESN for our students who have more um challenges and needs across the spectrum
005of their entire day into the community Independent Living all of those pieces so at the high school level you can see we have 18 staff members that are serving students in our mild to moderate support needs classrooms so this could be anywhere from direct instruction in a specific area like math or social studies to academic Support classes where the teachers are just directly supporting whatever Core Curriculum instruction is happening for the student in their core classes at the middle school level we have 13 teachers and at the elementary we have 22 and a half Elementary teachers in our extensive support needs world we have six High School teachers so we have three classrooms at Chico high and three at PV High we have five Middle School teachers in the element and sorry in the extensive
006support needs classes and then we have 18 Elementary classes when we're talking about designated instructional Services these are all of our Specialists who come in and provide identified services is based on individual students needs that are attached to existing IEPs related to those broad categories of disability so we have speech therapists So currently you can see we have 23.8 speech therapists and then a contract um for private provider with of um a little over one and a half uh people a week we have two adaptive PE Specialists occupational therapists we have almost five we have an orthopedic impairment specialist so helping students with movement um getting around safety line campuses transferring from chair to Stander all of those kinds of pieces we have one specialist in that area we do contract out for our visual
007impairment services or VI services our Physical Therapy Services and our deaf and heart of hearing services with bcoe because those students are really low in frequency so it makes much more sense in terms of us working with a contract um through the county office where they hire the employee and they come work with us we have educationally related mental health services so this is therapeutic work that clinicians are doing with students and we have five in the district we have healthc care services with six a little over six and a half registered nurses on campus every day that are providing a wide variety of medical um services in needs on campuses psychologists and there's more like we said there's a range of programs and services in the district and so along our Continuum from mild
008to mod and extensive support needs we also have um programs that are working full inclusion where students with special needs are in their General edk classes with support or um accom ated in any way that they might need that's a little bit different than co- teing where we have two teachers that are co-planning and co- preparing and presenting lessons throughout the day we have co- teing that's occurring at Chico high so that's um a newer model and very exciting we have an extensive preschool program that currently serves all children from the time that they are just about three so 2 years 11 months until they become TK eligible so we have eight teachers doing that work right now we have this year brand new the chico adult transition Center this is for our students who
009are 18 to 22 years of age and four teachers are working within that program with all of their support staff we have an three sorry no that's right three access classes which is um Support classes special education contain classes for our students who have emot disabilities and so often times our clinicians are tied to these access classes at least half of their week so that our students in need have access to a therapist on campus so we have one at the elementary level at Hooker Oak one at the middle school level at Marsh Junior High and one at PV high school and as I mentioned before we have the bcoe programs for the DEA and heart of hearing so students who are deaf and heart of hearing um have to or are allowed to have
010access to their deaf community and that Community for the county of but is in Durham we have the bases program and I wish I could tell you what bases was an acronym for it's a program through bu county office ofed and it is um highly structured behavioral and therapeutic program for students who have difficulties with behavioral and emotional regulation they currently have one classroom for high school students it's staffed very similarly to our access classrooms for students with emotional disabilities except it's not on a comprehensive campus so that can um support students in that realm we have non-public schools or NPS programs these are programs that are um under contract with the district for students who need a significant amount of structure support Supervision in order to maintain their safety and to meet the needs
011of their IEP and we currently have six students in non-public schools we also have medically necessary instruction for kiddos who can't because of a medical disability um come to campus to access their education so we have two teachers who are working with these students providing approximately five hours a day of sorry five hours a week of instruction for these kiddos and then finally we have alternative education so we've got Fairview Cal AFC um Oakdale that all work together with 2.6 teachers in those programs so a huge staff I want to also mention we have two full-time behaviorists on C on um our team that work across the district in supporting Behavior Support plans and supporting teams whose students are struggling significantly with behavior and then we have a little over 3 50 instructional par professional
012staff um when we're fully staffed that are also supporting all of these programs and teachers so I want to call up my administrative team because in addition to all of these folks we have an admin I have an administrative team that's incredibly supportive so I'm going to have them come up right now and just introduce themselves to you who they are and where they're supporting hi there I'm Dana fold and I am supporting marold Emma Wilson and Parkview and um when we're supporting our schools we're supporting all special ed programs on those campuses oh and I also that's right I do I also do um ELD for our special ed um students making sure their IEPs are correct making sure they're um in the right assessment and so I just do all the special ed
013parts of Eld hi good evening I'm Joanna mang I am one of the coordinators and I support the special education programs at our three High School sites py Chico high and Fairview and I also am the site administrative lead at our adult transition Center good evening I'm Gina pton this year I am the coordinator of three elementary schools Shasta hookero and citrus as well as our access programs at the elementary junior high and high school level and I'm providing the professional development for our iby and IP in staff there are kind of behavior AIDS within the program and we do that just about weekly hi I'm Dustin Holly I work with h little Chico Creek Chapman and Neil da as a support service hi I'm Morgan Dar I'm a project specialist and I provide services
014for marsh Cho Jr and Bidwell junor High we should go as one because I'm the first sahie I'm the preschool project specialist and I'm helping support coaching at that level and I'm the other Sarah V I'm Sarah vanart and I support the special education programs at mcmanis Sierra VI rosale and Forest Ranch they're going to come back up in a few minutes so one of the things that we've been working on this year is um in response to um concerns about growing changes in behavior um difficulties happening on all of our campuses is ensuring that these folks are on campuses um every single week so we don't have anybody that's on a campus all day every day but trying to really um ensure that they are available um at a at a when a calls
015needed and on a scheduled basis to provide support so they're providing support not only to um our special education teachers and our prayer professional staff but they're also supporting administrators and making sometimes tough decisions because those happen occasionally in our classes and um supporting general education teachers and how to support students that are in their classroom environments so one of the ways that we're trying to really be clear about how to get the quickest most responsive support to our staff all along the way was to for us to identify different levels of support that's that teams have available to them every single day so we tried to divide into two separate areas where support might be needed so on one hand we have sight level questions that come up all of the time so this
016could be as simple as hey my heater is not working and it's cold in here to um I have something's going on and and the technolog is down and I need some help so trying to direct our staff to when there's those logistical things that are specific only to your school here are all the ways that you could get access to help on your campuses if things still don't get resolved then here's your next layer of support and then here's your next layer of support our our growing concern was really making sure that folks had people to call to get immediate help when needed when it comes to student level difficulties within their classroom those can be a little bit more challenging and we might need a little bit more specialization in terms of who
017can and who should respond so we identified if there are initial issues Who as a teacher can you reach out to for support who can you get consultation from in terms of your team members involving your site Administration and then increasing the level of calling in a project specialist calling in a coordinator if that's not enough then we're calling big meetings and and involving me if necessary the goal like I said was really to make sure everybody understood there are a wealth of people on campuses every day that are available to provide support and we wanted to be clear about who those people could be that you sometimes forget when you get wrapped up in what's happening day to day especially when you have little ones all around you ready ready for your instruction so
018this is I I apologize if it's I know it's gray it didn't come out well for me but I think that this is really important information and let me help you decipher it so on the next slide I included the disability categories and so if you look at this the disability categories the codes those correspond directly with the codes that are along the top and so you can see we have 13 disability categories in this in the state of California that um we follow and you can see from 2007 all the way down to 2023 24 the number of identified students within each of those columns going all the way across showing our total special education population from 20078 all the way down to last year as you know today is seabeds day which is
019our day of calculating here's our initial number of kiddos so I can report that today when I ran my report our number was 2,298 so again another big jump from 2033 last year year to this point in time this year so there are a couple of things I want to draw out to your attention number one MRI ID that is the same disability code but in 20134 the state and federal government renamed that code from mental retardation to intellectual disability so that's why you see that code change um at that point so that's the same number that we're talking about I think for a lot of reasons um Health Care all these other um Quality diagnosis getting things a little bit more clear we have seen a pretty good drop in students identified with intellectual
020disabilities from 20078 to 2023 24 our heart of hearing students have also dropped but we've seen kind of an EB and a flow of that disability area and our deaf students have stayed pretty steady our students with speech and language impairment have seen an EB and a flow and that kind of shows that it's just a disability category that's pretty consistent visual impairment just in general has seen a significant drop from 11 to 3 Ed is emotional disability it actually was considered emotional disturbance and will remain on code until the end of this year as emotional disturbance but that again has been changed starting in January to disability and so we have again EB and flow there of the numbers of students who have emotional disabilities oi is orthopedic impairment so kiddo's born with um
021physical disabilities that prevent walking running all of those standing um have seen a significant or a significant drop other health impairment on the other hand has seen a significant increase over the course of years so that's something for us to keep in mind Jen I'm sorry can you this that that category always kind of throws me off a little bit because I it's obvious it's a catch some what yes yeah so um could you maybe give some minor examples of that yeah so other health impairment is kind of what it sounds like it's a health impairment that affects the alertness and vitality of the student the ability to function in their day-to-day learning environment so so it could be things like um undergoing cancer treatment it could be ADHD um diabetes if it's significant so
022those medical conditions that are not temporary in nature but that do affect the ability to be at school and attend to task and complete what we need them to complete educationally I'm sorry if this is um somewhere else in your presentation but um what's so I know some of those qualify for usually like the 504 yes um and I know that the 504 and the IEP are different um so how does how is there overlap or I mean how is that kind of differentiated in in your in your realm that's a really great question so Section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act is an anti-discrimination act so it was established in 1975 in order to ensure that individuals who have or are are regarded as having a disabling condition have access to all of the opportunities
023of as those without disabilities so it's really about preventing discrimination so when we write 504 plans in the school district what we're talking about is what accommodations do we provide what modifications can we make so that the student can have access to everything that their peers have so it's a little bit m I was going to say it's like a VIN diagram but it's really not so Section 504 would be the outside Circle because anybody with an IEP is assumed to have section 504 rights because we're protecting against dis um discrimination idea which came along much later really has to do with identifying children with educational disabilities that prevent or interfere with learning and that's a service law so that's stating schools will provide these specific services to ensure children can make their educational growth
024so big outside circle is anti-discrimination from the 504 perspective inside circle is the C is the Ida special I think that was the most succinct clear way that I've ever heard it explained yes thank you well thank you I've had that explained to me many many many times and as such I figure other people probably could always use the reminder as well yeah absolutely absolutely so right that's and so the other health impairments that's would be just a 504 and then there's like some gray area there so so kind of that difference of which plan is going to be most effective is how much support do you need to be successful in the classroom to be successful at school if you need direct specialized instruction then we're going to go to an IEP if we
025can um accommodate in a general like classroom and you get it in your set then we don't want to pull you from your peer group we want you to be in there and we can do that with a 504 thanks you're welcome you had you had left off on uh theal yeah and how it has gone up quite and how it yes it has um specific learning disability which is you know for those of us who've been around the special ed game for a while have seen some significant changes in the way we identif ify and diagnose specific learning disability um this really has to do with our kidos who have dyslexia who have disc calcula which is a disability in the area of math or disg graphia which is in the area of written
026language and so it's um those kiddos who are intellectually very capable but when it comes to the pro the way that they process that information either that they see or that they hear is is not representative of what they're really learning and so that sets up a discrepancy between what we know they're capable of learning and how they're performing in those classes so that's specific learning disability again Jen I'm sorry oh yes did we jump over EMD why don't I that's I actually don't thank you recognize EMD is a established medical disability as you can see we just have two and these are our kiddos it's only for kiddos who are 3 to 5 years of age and then we have to switch over to a different disability category it's kind of that we just
027don't really know yet we want to give you a little time it's that one but you can see we don't we don't use it very frequently so sld has remained pretty pretty stable deaf blind which is DB we um are fortunate we have not had any students with both disabilities in that area MD is multiply disabled so this would be a student who is deaf and Autistic or orthopedically impaired and intellectually disabled so it's two broad C categories of Developmental disability that work together um typically our kiddos with multiple disabilities have significant impacts on their daily functioning and that number has also stayed pretty stable I want to skip over autism and just touch real briefly on TBI TBI is traumatic brain injury iny these are brain injuries that occur after birth and so we
028think of accidents Falls car accidents things like that it's really a clear distinction between before and the after of the accident that um that shows us that the child needs specific uh direct service however going back going back to autism I think that this number is very not surprising in my world but very telling for us as a school district so in 2007 2008 we had 111 students um considered on the autism spectrum at that time to last year 476 so this is a growing area of disability not only in our community but across the across the world um part of the change in frequency is um we definitely have gotten better more trained and honed in on identifying children who are on the Spectrum and providing that support there also have been um some
029changes in terms of trying to identify once it's in the genetics so to speak where have that where has it caused um I don't know how to say this in in the easiest way possible so once it's genetically part of our humankind then it becomes much more um readily available through um being passed down from parents to children Etc um there was some evidence when I was starting out my career that um getting like-minded individuals together with um some of our technology positions and things like that had um led to an increase in autism and I think that that had more to do with um people being of liked mind and um having uh relationships and children and it kind of changed I think the trajectory of the way we started looking at children who
030were different prior to that I think we would have um not looked at them as having a disability like autism it just wasn't that frequent so for a lot of reasons what we're seeing is this significant increase in our children with Spectrum disorders in our classrooms so as some of our other disability categories have stayed relatively stable in terms of numbers and other disability categories have significantly decreased with Quality Health Care um early intervening Services all of those things that help ensure healthy um developmental profile from the start we're seeing the change the opposite of that with our children with Spectrum disorders and the last statistic that I heard was one in 42 with autism which every time I hear the statistic it seems like it changes so I don't know that um as a
031medical field as an educational field we kind of have it dialed in yet but um this seems to be an area in flux right now what this means what this means is the profile of our kiddos who are in classes has changed so we know with children in the spectrum that early intervention services is where it's at we inter we intervene early we provide lots of language support we provide lots of supports with sensory motor needs we provide a lot of peer-to-peer interaction and we guide that and teach that just looking at that level of a student you're looking at three different service providers really stepping in and supporting kiddos to ensure that they can be successful and so that's very different than a child who might have a specific learning disability who only needs
032one specialist so some of that is um the changing demographics of what our children are being present are presenting to us with is creating the change in the level of services and supports that are needed on campuses now go ahead um just kind of summarizing the chart of numbers it's it appears that the other health impaired and um a autism um columns have gone up the most drastically um I probably say this too many times but I kind of struggle with just like flat numbers and sometimes it's nice to see percentages um because I would be I I see the percent year-over-year change but that makes it hard for me to to see kind of broad more broadly like how that has of our whole population how that has changed you know if there's a
033bigger um if there's a big if there's bigger growth you know overall or in a certain area that's not proportional to District growth for example um so that's not for now but that's just yeah numbers wise how I I operate is in percentages a little bit better um and that also helps to kind of take a look at um what's happening you know regionally how do we how do how does this look is this pretty standard are we seeing a disproportionate rate of growth in these areas for our district compared to other local districts or even Local Schools you know I would be I would be um interested to know you know what are the charter schools seeing and what services are they providing or are we getting a lot more students in our district
034and the charter schools aren't um because I know that there are I mean anecdotally I know that there are families who decide to to send their students who need special services to Chico Unified um but then their typical children they they send to a charter school which essentially siphons off that you know some of that money that can help support those services for our our broader um special needs people so you know kind of a a on my soapbox issue is is how that impacts our district disproportionately um when it comes to being able to provide services to our students with special needs I would um be happy to to dig in and get some more data for you um I have to say kudos to Jacqueline Krueger because she's the person who's been tracking
035all of this data for us for the past 20s something years um this data is really hard to come by believe it or not in my world because our special a data that we monitor is daily it's live data so one day I might say oh it's this and tomorrow it's it's different because kids come and go and um however I would say compar comparing us to our selpa us to our state the trajectory the trend of the numbers is very consistent um if we I I can happily send that data out to you to compare where we are with this um in comparison to both bu County and the selpa um the charters are a little bit different in bu County in the sense that they're not part of our selpa so um I'd
036have to do a little bit digging but I'd be happy to if you'd want me to and I can just pipe in here um as far as percentage of our tot enrollment I'd say 10 12 years ago um our students with IEPs were about maybe 12% um of our total enrollment for the district and at 2300 what you just said that puts us over 18 and a half percent so um the students with IEPs is growing at a much faster rate than our general overall enrollment is for the District thank you for the bottom that bottom line um we do have a lot of really great data people in the room have have snapshots of different aspects of this data so shout out to all of the folks that are following the numbers yep definitely
037okay so one of the things that you had asked me about was what are some of the things that um have changed since I've stepped into this position and so that's what I wanted to bring um to you tonight to talk about what are some of the things that are different so um special education as you know is is a a program in evolution so um best advice I got from Dave Scott when I accepted this position was Jen special ed is all about Evolution not Revolution and so I've taken that to heart and every day I keep focusing on okay a little bit better every day that's what we do and so um I've divided it as much as I can into two areas Elementary and secondary because they don't necessarily overlap 100% %
038um at the elementary level we have been adding staff so in response to the needs of our our changing student bodies we have nine of our 12 Elementary campuses that have a full Continuum of services so something that is very um near and dear to my heart I'm very passionate about is our kiddos get to go to their home Elementary School and be with their neighborhood peers as much as possible and so nine of our 12 campuses have mild mod Services through ESN Services TK through fifth grade um because of some facilities limitations we have a couple campuses that only have one ESN classroom or one extensive support needs classroom or don't have any extensive support needs classrooms but um I am I am really pleased that um we are this far into the um
039progress with students being able to stay in the school that they've started in and built relationships with those peers in addition we have had we've been fortunate enough to have two all specialed staff program days so in August of 2023 I was able to bring all special EDS teaching staff support staff everybody together for a full day it was was um an incredible time to be able to um not only engage in professional development but to allow for vertical collaboration to allow um experts in this field to be able to work together and hear from each other and support each other build those relationships across campuses so now it's not just who's on my campus for my support but I know I can reach out to my peers on another campus and get ideas and
040strategies from them so putting many heads together we were able to accomplish that again this year in August of 2024 and I would say we had both years about 75 staff which to me asking someone to come back before school starts is is a win if we were able to get 75 of them we have um also been able to pull our elementary mild mod support staff teachers off and do a full day of training with just them in January of this year and really dig in with them because their role has probably changed the most extensively so remember the beginning of this conversation we were talking about we had resource classes we had SDC classes and now we're one big umbrella so we used to we had teachers who were hired as resource teachers
041and now we're saying no you're a mild mod supports need teacher so their role has really expanded so being able to get those teachers together to talk about how do you do this and really we got to think outside of the box and and considering all those challenges that we're asking you to engage in those least restrictive educational opportunities all those pieces and so being able to bring them together I think was a really valuable day um again forging more of those relationships and and common Minds together I'd like to continue doing that again this year if we can we held transition IEPs at all educational levels last spring so um the easiest way to describe this is we do all of our work every single year every child in special education gets at least
042an annual IEP so that's a whole IEP team coming together at least once a year quite frequently we might have two meetings maybe three for our students transitioning from preschool to TK or kindergarten we have to complete what's called a transitional IEP a transitional assessment in the spring we also do that a transitional meeting for students transferring from elementary to middle school and then again from middle school to high school and finally from high school to the adult world so think if you're a middle school teacher that means that 2third of your population you're meeting on at least twice a year once for the annual once for the transition so it is a very heavy lift but it is very very important work what we know is that without those transition meetings where parents the
043current educational team and the future educational team coming together and talking and preparing the student for the next stage of of their education without that work um it's a it's a bumpy start to the next school year so um this past spring we were able to do Transition meetings for every person that was willing to show up and meet with us so a huge heavy lift by our special team um on that aspect and we are scheduling the beginnings of those conversations for January so that we can have our plans laid out to get those done from February through May of this year Jen I'm I'm sorry I'm not understanding something are you um the transition I meetings are happening regardless are you saying that your team is assisting with the school site staff to
044do those is that what's different so what's different is in previous years we maybe didn't have a full transition meeting or we didn't transition students from fifth grade to to sixth grade or we missed those pieces so this past spring we had them all and so you can it's it's probably 35 40% of our of our student population that is coming through transition that needs support and so the administrative team is absolutely part of every one of those meetings but then it's also a lot of um collaboration between sites because the both schools have to collaborate and work together if you're an elementary school you might have three middle schools that you're meeting with at any point time so it it can be really complicated so the team did a fantastic job this year and
045we had a better turnout this year than we had ever had in the past did that answer your question okay I'll keep going if you have another one let me know um last year we also did um with the help of Mr Shephard um a lot of work in changing our delivery model with our speech services so um through a lot of negotiations work a lot of collaborative work with our speech therapists working together to make sure that they had the most amount of flexibility in their schedules to do what they needed to do yet meet all the needs of the students we changed the the method in which they're delivering services and so it might sound like a little thing but speech therapists who are writing services of x amount of time per month
046um transition to a yearly schedule so that they're offering parents these are the amount of the amount of services that you're going to get for the whole year and that allows them to have flexibility and make up sessions when needed and get all of their case management work done and feel supported because our speech therapists do a lot of work with case loads upwards of four in the preschool and 55 at the elementary secondary level and then the last one for elementary is our Loma Vista Early Learning Center so we are currently in a state of flux as you know from hearing in a previous board presentation about Universal prek and the change from um preschool being three and four year olds to preschool being more like two and three year olds and so part
047of special education requirements now also include that our preschool age youth have inclusion opportunities with their typically developing peers just like everybody else so and the state is monitoring our inclusion levels just like they do every other level um in the district and so with the help of Sarah Lim over at LMA Vista um Margie starky and and shaunise Heath started it last year and then um Heather sentes and Kathleen Corbett working with Sarah this year have really um started implementing an inclusive campus where all of our um State preschool classes are at the LMA Vista campus LMA vist is no longer considered a special ed um program or facility it's now a preschool program preschool facility and then our preschool students are um part of those classes with support from special education staff so
048that they can be successful we're still kind of trying to adapt and evolve with some of these changes to ensure that our students if they're not able to get into state preschools they're able to come in and get Services met and um able to make progress in all of their goal areas and has kind of taken the bull by the horns and adjusted and and moved and grooved um with changes that have happened and cuz numbers are high right you build programs and they show up and so that's what we've consistently seen and so our state preschool classes are full but we're still creating ways for students to come in to LMA Vista to get their education to get their service so I did attach a little link here for you it's called Cal Essie
049this is brand new it's not um maybe a year old it's developed by the state of California and it's early childhood special education programming and it is basically guiding everything that we are evolving into in preschool special education world and it it's it's changing all the time questions let me keep going it's a lot of information okay so let's talk a little bit about secondary so true to form our secondary programs have continued to evolve as well we had to add staff at both comprehensive campuses so at the PV campus we had so many students we had to add an additional mild mod special um support needs teacher and at Chico high school we had to add an extensive support needs teacher again we provided that all special ed staff training on in August of
0502023 in August of 2024 which I already mentioned in line with providing the mild mod day for everybody in mild mod Elementary to get together we have planned already for November the 5th a training day for secondary extensive support needs teachers to get together we have a a full schedule already talking about the alternative diploma Pathways that's um new legislations come out um for us to um expand our offerings of diplomas to our students with extensive needs we're talking about curriculum we're talking about um vertical planning of um instruction work experience transition to adult life all of those exciting things so that's planned for November the 5th um transition meetings again add that added that is terms of um the success rate with the number of transition meetings we were able to have and then
051we've started um having conversations this year about expanding our work experience opportunities for students in our ESN level classes so I don't know how many if you guys remember many years ago we would have Diversified occupations through the Roop program where we had classes for students students to take where we would get them work experience in the community during their High School uh day and it was a two period block and students would go out and and basically work get work experience it potentially led to jobs somewhere along the way that funding was cut by the state I can't remember when do funding I don't remember either um the funding went away and so those classes kind of went by the wayside but yet our teach teachers are still bound to an additional level of
052transition planning which is preparing our students for Life After High School with college or career and feeling like we we no longer have a mechanism for engaging our students in work type experience and so um we've already had one meeting with the high school Cho high and PV High School to talk about how can we bring these kinds of classes back onto campuses we have another schedule with the adult transition programs because that's everything that they do in the adult transition Center all day long to make sure that what's happening at the high school is setting up and aligned with what needs to happen for the students to be most successful and work experience in the adult transition Center and then the step after that is to bring in the Middle School teachers in the
053ESN classes to work on what can you teach what can you do to make High School ready to do what they need to do so this is a new area that we're exploring further we've started making connections with our CTE Partners Tiffany heringer to make sure that what we're doing is aligned with her work um and are very very excited about where we can go with this our hope is to have at least phase one of some ideas and and plan in place for 25 26 and then finally um last but definitely not least um the magical work of Julie Kell and Joe Morris and their teams we were able to open the adult transition Center out at the lasson building it has just been so amazing to see um the students love their building
054they love their school their place um when you're on campus or in their facility to see the interaction between all four classes the two classes from Chico High two classes from PV working together the social networking that has happened has just been so amazing to see in our students and so um we're going to continue to evolve and improve for them so that they have more experience out in the community more opportunities to do um hopefully job type placements that they can build upon and retain jobs for after when they turn 22 um it's really been a a fantastic um area of growth and I would love to invite you guys to come out and see it sometime questions on that I have a question about secondary um in general because my sense the sense
055that I get from talking to folks is that middle school is a little bit different than High School even because of especially the Transitions and I guess my curiosity starts with um like Max case load numbers is it different for mild mod and um and extensive needs um Etc and then is that the same or is it different for the elementary level staff so it is actually in Education Code for mild mod support needs teachers their Max case load is 28 um that hasn't changed at all even with all of the changes in the credentialing and and the the division in the two departments um extensive support needs classes Believe It or Not don't have a case load Max according to the Education Code um we know that 28 in a room is absolutely never
056going to happen for safety and all the reasons all the reasons and so we try to make sure that those classes don't go any higher than 12 or 13 um we have been able to successfully keep numbers at that I will tell you um in talking with a peer last week they were looking for placement um looking for placement for one of their students and I asked you know hey how's your numbers cuz we're we're tight we're right at our Max loads across many campuses and in all the different areas and she said yeah our extensive support needs classes have about 17 students right now and I was like oh okay okay that's rough so is that not something that it gets brought up in I mean this does not have to necessarily be an
057answered because I don't know what we're allowed to you know bring up about negotiations but is that a number that has been brought up for negotiating um to set like at least with policy I Charlie's chuckling at me um um and then I know like with our speech and language pathologist like that's a whole other you know Max case load and and there's kind of some interesting rules there too and we're right at the cusp of not being you know compliant because there's just so many so um anyway I I'm trying to grasp those moving Parts um with the understanding that the the workload it has evolved over the last several years with the requirements with laws changing with documentation requirements changing or increasing um at the federal and the state level and so just
058like the thought that um the max case load necessarily hasn't changed uh at least as far as I know for M mod and speech speech language pathologist but that um the the the work expected to be done the number of meetings that need to be scheduled and and paperwork to be done and the follow-ups and the reports and the reporting to whatever you know agency you're supposed to report those numbers to has increased and yet nothing else has has changed to be able to adjust appropriately or proportionally to those requirements yeah for sure I um I would say um just in a nutshell um being part of negotiations all year last year and it looks like I'm a I think Mr Shepard said a de facto member this year um which fills me with pride
059um so we can continue to work on everything that you are talking about and so we have a really great um part of our contract 7.1 one I think don't is that right thank you Charlie 7.5.1 that does guide us that is there to help with exactly what you're talking about so that we don't end up with 17 in a classroom um those kinds of examples and so um we're scheduled and and started our work already this year to um work through the negotiations process of the things that you already talked about now my take away just from the the last two slides so far from the elementary and secondary practices and just your glowing review of of your experience you know as a a relatively new staff person in chica UniFi is that we
060have pretty solid programs going and really solid people who are here and who have stayed um and and that um some of the struggles that I know that we're going to kind of get into a little bit that we might be feeling is really centered around Staffing and workload and and that leading to burnout that probably summarize it and kind of foreshadow a little bit AB absolutely that's excellent for shadowing um I I do want to mention just before we jump into um where did that slide go um before we jump into some of those challenges because I did want to um bring those forward um we have I think amazing parental involvement in our district so and we're going to continue on that Trend so um Diane Olsen's last year in the district she
061worked hard with a core group of parents to create the special education parents advisory collaborative we met all year last year we um met monthly from March I'm sorry August through March um as you can imagine being a parent of a child um with a disability um especially an extensive support needs disability can be really overwhelming so the fact that these folks were um willing to come and meet with me monthly was I know a very big ask um we did three co-led trainings so um their leadership meeting with my leadership doing Al um education on a variety of topics that parents had asked for um we have three meetings already scheduled with CPAC that's what we call it with CPAC this year we had one last week already just kind of to hey welcome
062back this is what we're about this year um and we have a parent our first parent education night scheduled for this month um I can't remember what day it is anyways um focused on understanding your child's IEP just kind of that starting with the the basics we have our two elcap knights that are also in there and so my goal was to maintain that engagement and conversation with parents um continue to get that education piece out because there are so many moving parts to special education and if this then this and the rules and all of those timelines and everything else so I think that um making our parents as informed as possible I think is the best route forward so in addition to those I did want to mention we have a few more
063um other accomplishments I already mentioned sped admin on campuses that's been a huge thing for our administrators this year and they're incredibly grateful for um we also started mentorship monthly and so I'm going to have them come up and talk to you about what that is hi my name is Dustin again in case you forgot uh so let me just summarize the thought process um about monthly mentorship um so basically starting off as an ed specialist is really difficult it's always evolving and it's just a huge overwhelming job for a lot of people and so we wanted to kind of help guide the thought process and learning about this difficult position uh so the monthly U mentorship uh starts off with um kind of like a a training and then it's like a meeting and
064then a collaboration so the training will be something that's kind of in line with what they're learning at the time our first one was about um building relationships with families and then going through the IP meeting and what that should look like uh what you should bring for it and how to conduct a meeting um and so after that we'll figure out what the next need is and so we put a survey out and then we find the needs that that they have and and then try to address those needs then we um have a question answer period after that training so it's open up to a group um it is open to all teachers so some veterans will be there too um as well as the new teachers and sometimes it's very empowering to
065hear a veteran speak and ask a question um that a new teacher has as well right um and then we can break off and and that's the collaboration piece where they can ask specific questions to um veterans or um project specialists iik that happens once a month is it um it's optional so the expectations that new teachers um come but it is optional for veteran teachers so it's it's expect so they're required to it is mandatory but then um you know sometimes the need for a campus meeting that need is uh more important at that time and so then we can collaborate with them about what happened at that training um but then they'll be on campus with their administrative so done it at another time that they would otherwise be in a meeting already
066training it's a meeting time that's already within the we worked with um our principles and went to EAC sorry we worked with our principles and EAC and looked at a bunch of dates and together collaborated with our principles on what date would be the best for them throughout um the year so is it in person it is in person and we meet at the laston building gotcha yeah is it challenging for folks to get to that from their school sites last month it was not we um have worked with um Charlie and the 15 minute for um called meeting time and so we have it start at one time and then we wait until our Chasta group gets there and then we start the meeting so we do work with any other questions no thank
067you um I did the secondary monthly mentorship and secondary is pretty unique in comparison to Elementary some of the things that they need specific training with and we held it at PVE because that's the that was where one of our brand new teachers it was easier to get to him than it would be to Chico high due to all the traffic in that area pb's got that great parking lot we require them to come if they're first year um it can be recommended by admin if they're second year and and then we open it up to everybody the secondary we had teachers that have been teaching for 20 years come and I we had the same topic as secondary um but we did kind of start how is it going what are some challenges that
068you are facing so far and made sure to get that feedback and address it before we went into the topic so that their specific concerns at that very moment could be supported and answered and heard um and then we went into the same topic as they did for the Elementary it's the same day because it is during that called meeting time and it's put out in advance and then um we did uh at the secondary level just kind of talk about what is difficult about IEPs for that first one and making those connections and then provided resources that we have in the district and made sure that they had access to all those resources and then they were asking questions about them it was really a small group and so we could get pretty interactive
069and have um pretty pretty good start um next month it might be different based on the feedback of the topic that we get that secondary once in comparison to Elementary but the topics are all going to be the same they just might be different months that are being requested by Elementary vers secondary do you have any questions yeah just it it's just Ed specialists in the in in those trainings it was open to psychologists um SLP so speech and language OTS it was um um offered to anyone who wanted to come but um there are separate monthly mentorships specifically for school psychologists that Joanna did as well good hi I this year I facilitating the school psychologist monthly mentorship for our new school psychologists this year is a little bit unusual um I I've my
070background is in school psychology I've been a school psychologist since 1998 um and in my experience in Chico Unified in in a typical year we might have one or maybe two new school psychologists join our team this year is a bit unusual we have six brand new school psychologists that have joined our Chico Unified team so um four of the six are brand new to the field just fresh out of graduate school so um so there's a a great deal of training and mentorship that is required for our new school psychologists um our school Psych ologists are um are really our special education leaders on our campuses um being a school psychologist is a very complex and specialized role and so our school sites depend on our school psychologists to be um leaders on their
071campuses for special education procedural and practical matters um so I meet with them once a month again it is required for our six brand new school psychologists uh all of our schools psychologists are invited and um and I've had several of our even our veteran School psychologists join us um for our monthly meetings and so we have an agenda where we discuss various legal and procedural items um and then they are also welcome to bring items to our agenda um things that they are wrestling with or questions that they have on their sites um and it's a time to do some training and collaboration and support um and to answer whatever questions they have um our new school psychologists also are welcome to book time with me at any time during the month if they
072have questions or issues that come up that need to be addressed in an immediate timely manner so I do I meet with them kind of throughout the month um separate from our monthly group meeting um since since you're up here um can you help explain a little bit better the the case load how that works for a school psychologists or no I'm thinking speech and language pathologist it's still an SP thing yeah exactly just kidding no can you explain everything to me actually joh I need it just kidding any other other questions sorry yeah if you don't mind um we have MS clinicians and we have psychologists what so do the psychologists provide Direct Services to students and if so what's the difference between those two roles that's a great question Tom um our MS
073clinicians uh provide services that are are driven by the IEP for counseling and Social Work including Individual Counseling group counseling and social work and so those services are provided as per each student's individual education plan um and they're it's driven by assessed needs in those areas our school psychologists do sometimes provide those counseling services but more often they're providing the broader assessment and identification rule so our school psychologists uh really um provide supports and services for school sites through the pre-referral stage um all the way through the assessment and evaluation and identification and then working with site teams to consult and provide support to teachers and other support providers on their campuses so the school psychologist has a bit of a broader role our MS clinicians are U more specialized and have a narrow focus
074of providing those Counseling Services okay thank you so the idea was um borne out of one of our challenges which we'll be talking about next but we've so far um meeting with our folks monthly we're trying to ensure that they have support throughout their entire first year rather than just at the beginning of the year so um we also last year um continuing along working with negotiations in CA had created um three different levels of Ip or instructional paraprofessional support and these are folks that are in classrooms um instructional support to our special education teachers our general education teachers and teams and so I'm sure you remember the Intensive behavior interventionist or iby that's part of our behavior um intervention team and those folks are now identified um or assigned rather to a specific campus
075we have one on every campus and so they can provide direct um intensive behavioral support to students in need on those campuses um those providers work with Gina Payton once a week doing extensive training so I believe we have on an every other week schedule right now where one week it's asynchronous learning where they're doing lessons through a Google Classroom that she has set up with them they're watching videos um those kinds of activities and then the following week it's it's direct time with Gina or somebody who's providing a behavioral training of some sort with Gina we needed though we felt like something in between our instructional PA professionals and our intensive Behavior intervent vists especially in the area of training and support and development for these folks when they're working in our more extensive
076needs classes and so last year with the help of CCA negotiations um Mr Shepard and Mr Allen we created um what we have identified as an instructional par professional extensive needs that's what the en is for to help us delineate um these folks from our instructional par professionals our ipen staff receive once a month training from Gina and um can participate in more at at they as they wish but we're providing that ongoing training for them um throughout the school year so the goal is really to provide much more extensive training to our instructional Paris staff across the district get more highly trained folks on campuses to support the challenges that our students are bringing to us so in in my opinion this is also an area that we're continuing to evolve and then lastly
077we have a grant that is working with um CSEA or the California School Employees Association um and this has helped me tremendously when we're in hiring of instructional paraprofessional staff when we're talking with those applicants about coming on board with Chico having a grant like this that we work very closely with ER Dr Erin Whitney at the school of education and and her Partners over there to be able to say there's also this opportunity with Chico State to become a teacher and move in that direction has been really exciting for um some of our existing staff and it's been um a carrot so to speak when we're interviewing for staff um that are coming through for instructional Paras which as you know we always need and so this has been a hugely um helpful program
078to have available for them can you explain that just a little bit better um for just people who maybe don't aren't as familiar with that you know um incentive or um program yeah absolutely so I'm looking at Charlie or John correct me if I'm wrong correct me if I'm wrong so the school of education with Chico State um has been working closely with um the area our area in incentive ing young people to go into the teaching profession and so they assist with grants and things like that and when you're a CSA employee they're working alongside of us to really kind of smooth that trail out for them and you're not wrong everything you've said is spot on un fortunately we have a grant writer that used to work for us that now works for
079Chico State and she realizes the need so she has been focusing on um um increasing the number of candidates and so it benefits Chico State as well by increasing the number of candidates entering their program and utilizing our classified staff as as a pipeline to draw interest into the profession first um while being paid right not just an unpaid internship and then um they once they start working with us there's some paperwork obviously they need to fill out to be um involved in the program there's some verification and I think and I think it's an 18-month criteria for them to U be involved as an IP and then they're eligible and supported financially um to enter the Chico State program there's there are some challenges with that just I don't want to paint the rosiest
080picture because obviously they need to have their ba and and their BS to or or their BS to get into the uh credential program but at least it's it's a variation of a paid internship okay so just so I'm getting things clear um is it just for instructional PA professionals or is IPS ipens and IES any of those classifications any of those classifications can once there any of those folks who are employed by chica unified in those positions can apply to if they have the prerequisites to get into um the um the specialist program to go through school to become a a like a mild mod or extensive needs teacher I don't I don't believe that Chico State limits it to just special ed it's just education become a teacher yeah yeah and then um
081is there I don't know I I've heard that there's um something tied to their years of service as a classified employee that might apply to if they were to get hired then as a as a as a teacher certificated person after they go or yeah after they go through a pro program to get is that um something that's in negotiations or has been talked about or is is in process um just to kind of incentivize that internal kind of cycling you know of bringing our bring our bringing our own Folks up and keeping retaining the um that staff who has a lot of institutional knowledge I can speak to that and Charlie jump in if I miss anything um typically it's 14 years as the max to bring people in however um it could be
082years of experience in an Lea local educational agency and we also have the option of um including vocational experience so that's really a caseby casee basis the only thing I had to add is um and our negotiations are completely open is cuta is negotiating or advocating for a more specific um pathway for someone who has experience as an IP or ipen or iby to get credit for that on the salary schedule not necessarily on a one to one year basis but to recognize that service either locally or in another District um but again that's in negotiations right now okay that oh sorry so you you go yeah that follows that falls underneath that vocational experience we've been talking about y so it's not quite set yet district has the um discretion now I would say
083um and we would just like a more um structured and and uh a more official yeah more or guaranteed maybe got it okay so in summary yes there is potential to have opportunity not only with Chico State to uh have a great program to bring folks who want to further their education and become certified in special education or in in education in general then could potentially there's a a discussion about um bringing those years of experience they've already had L Cho unified um in the classified side and applying those to the salary schedule and entering at maybe like a step three or a step four depending on the equivalency that am I getting that pretty clear is it clear for everybody else so that would be like pushing it kind of over the Finish Line
084in terms of trying to keep keep things rolling full circle and and providing even extra incentive internally got it okay thank you you're welcome okay now opportunities for growth so um we we are a phenomenal program and I cannot stress enough um the work ethic and dedication of all of our providers to our students and our families um but we recognize there are some areas for us that need continued growth um and so here are some that I think that are really particularly challenging us right now um the first one is curriculum development we have curriculum in every one of our classrooms that's not a question or an issue the challenge is finding um to you bear with me for a second I see it in my mind like this dance that we have to
085go through where it's a dance between having students in general education in Core Curriculum in core content that maybe is too difficult for them to necessarily access but how do we assure that you're in there and getting to hear it and getting to see it and and in those materials and then still at the same time respecting where your disability may be and how that could be interfering with you accessing those materials and it's just constantly a dance of how much of those materials how much of supplemental materials what are new materials that are coming out that are more um research based and targeted for areas like D Lexia for example um it's it's just a continued dance of identifying the right curriculum is this the best thing it with our extensive support needs classroom
086is this the best that we have to offer we're always identifying okay here's an area that's a little weaker for us how can we bring in more supplemental material is there something out there that we don't have that would be better so this seems to be like something that we can never just rest on we're always looking for better ways to deliver the instruction that meets that perfect zone of proximal development with our kiddos um keeping in mind the core content um next transition planning across the grades span believe it or not this is tricky we're a big district and in an Ideal World our our elementaries could be collaborating with our Junior highs and our Junior highs collaborating with our high schools so that we all kind of flowing together that can be challenging
087in a large District so um getting time for teams to get together outside of um face-to-face IEP meetings and working through what students don't quite have yet to be ready for the next level those are some challenges that we're running into and areas that we're continuing to try to problem solve I think our our time time getting together as teams so like Elementary mild mod teams the secondary ESN time that time to get together to be able to talk about um some of those issues that we're seeing with maybe gaps in what students are prepared to do when we're transitioning from one stage of their education to the next um is an area that we could really improve upon and um that comes with time to work together and so we're trying to build that
088in in there a huge huge issue for us and um I was really appreciative of um superintendent Staley this week reminding me that it's not just special education but um our our attrition rates in education are are really tough and it it hits hard in special education um we want to do everything that we can to support encourage and retain our staff we know that um that it is a very difficult job and we respect that um but everybody's going a million different directions to get the job accomplished and there is only so many hours in the day so how do we keep staff that are doing a really great job in a in a position that takes a lot out of you not only um not only your time but your investment and sometimes
089your heart cuz sometimes we we try doesn't always work for students and so that can be really difficult to watch and and experience and so um the attrition with our staff is um a significant issue it feels a little bit like um every year starting over with a new group of folks and um trying to support them the best that we can so that um they don't experience burnout but then at the same time respect the folks who have been in the classroom on the campus is year after year after year that they don't um lose their fire and their passion for the work that they do and so um it's something that we have to pay close attention to and try to find ways to support them um every which way we can um
090the sped attrition rate in our district um that's you're referencing both certificated and classified I was um referencing just certificated in my mind at this point however if we're to talk about classified attrition rate that's even greater um um for a whole lot of reasons like that's that's a whole other huge area that's that's an issue um one of the one of the aspects of our process that I really appreciate is when positions become available our internal candidates get first right to that which is fantastic and I wholeheartedly believe that you end up in the right position and and you it's not so much work every single day right the challenge is um sometimes the the special education instructional par jobs are really challenging and so it it feels like oh we got a good
091one this is going to be great on our from our perspective and then when the employees like no I I the TK job came open I'm going over there it's like I wholeheartedly respect it but I'm I'm I'm back in the hiring round now so that's a whole other aspect to attrition that I hadn't even considered but you're absolutely right are there emerging themes um that there's a hunch about why there might be this higher attrition rate um in both classified an certificated that that we're working on or that um just need a little extra help to be addressed or is it does it seem broad I and a follow on question really was um back to the monthly mentor ship meetings um the any themes that are coming out from you know struggles um
092across the board that that might be attributing to a the attrici um so I would love to answer your question more in the springtime we've only had one of those monthly mentorship meetings um what I can tell you just as general themes that I'm hearing is um our new folks are feeling like they're just kind of you know a step or two ahead of the day every time they come into the classroom and so if you've got kids that are or our students who are struggling with behavior or emotional regulation and then you have staff who are sick unavailable and so then they're short staffed with their support staff um combined with I'm I'm still learning this new curriculum I'm still doing this whole process like you it it feels like holy smokes this is
093a lot to keep up in the air at the same time and so I think that that's probably a pretty consistent theme our seasoned teachers have figured out how to do that juggle um and that's kind of sometimes what it is and um so I think as far as our teaching staff that would um be a pretty consistent theme across what I've heard with our instructional pair of professional staff it is a little bit different because I think that um the idea of working in a school having school hours um vacations and all of those pieces is really attractive but then when you get into the job and you realize wow this is really challenging every day is something different and sometimes it's every half an hour is something different um and you know you
094kind of have to stay on your toes it's maybe not what folks thought that they were getting into when they accepted the position in addition as an entry-level position we want people to continue to advance and grow themselves professionally if they want to and that's a lot of what I see I see a lot of folks coming in and they're they're young and they want to learn and be in education and so absolutely bring them in get them experience um I I wholeheartedly believe it'll make him a better educator um but that in its very nature is going to mean that we're in constant flux year after year if I can just add to and this isn't necessarily theme related um but in some ways it's a numbers game when we go back to the
095chart that jacqulyn and Dr Scola have been referencing the the exponential growth in the numbers of students needing Services as compared to the number of candidates in the program and and them coming out of the various programs in California ready to teach hasn't caught up and so it's not a Chico Unified specific conundrum it's a regional Statewide um issue that we're we're wholeheartedly embracing and addressing I met I was in a Capstone education um class last night trying to recruit um teachers and so we're hoping that those numbers that we start to catch up that's not an excuse that's it's a numbers game right now trying I can tell you just anecdotally when I was a principal puin Valley High School my largest Department was my English Department um for the first seven years of
096my tenure there it was we had 13 teachers and uh my last two years my largest Department was my special education department just just from a numbers perspective perspective um do we know uh probably anecdotally um if the education department either at Chico State or even just across the state in general um are meeting their their Max you know amount of students that they could let in or if they're like severely under and you know that recruitment you know even earlier on is lacking also I want to be careful with this because we are being recorded and it's live but I do know that um enrollments have gone down and the challenges that teachers are facing is is real um and so enrollment is always an issue with Chico State I can't speak to other
097to other programs but um I know they're they're recruiting as well so in other words we're still encouraging people to apply to those programs constantly they're not maxing out necessarily yeah you'd be surprised a number of times I say oh you want to be a parot can I talk you into special ed let's become a teacher let me hire you let me work with you in my department well maybe if they have a clear path on how they into it that would be even that's right so you know we yeah those those conversations are yeah um I just a couple data points um I I find it fascinating and I wonder if this is typical or if it is a chica unified um thing to to to keep in consideration is on the attrition rate
098um piece uh at the secondary level in our district over the last four years um the number of turnover of our sped staff versus our secondary General Ed staff has been significantly different um and so we're talking about our in within our community our special education staff turnover at the secondary level has been um uh make sure I get numbers right um sorry special education staff 28% um of the people who um have have kind of rolled rolled out of our district um in the special education department um are are gone because they either resigned or or were not reelected or moved away so they they left the district um for reasons versus 10.7% or almost 11% of General Ed so that's a really really big difference and so that's something that I I feel
099like is uh a pretty big point whether it's a chica unified thing or a broader thing that we should be talking about pretty consistently um is keeping staff who can see kids real right I mean it's a problem for everybody but um you know take it up the take it up the a chain of command I guess at the state or even Federal level obviously there's a lot more bigger issues going on so figuring out what we can control and what we can do to help that retention rate um is obviously on everybody else's for for for front of their mind um but as we're talking about budget stuff and adding programs and adding things I think that that's a really important piece to keep in mind is like we really just need to maybe
100not try to think about all the great things that we could be doing and focus on how can we make our currently great programs be more solid with with less turnover for example and this isn't even in touch what the what the um Aid turnover looks like um so another uh uh stat that I received was that um this was a a survey done which I love surveys you know that I love surveys um that of 92 responses um from uh special education Staff last year um 94% said that a sub picks up an aid position half or less than half of the time so we have a lot of unfilled substitute Aid positions which is is a really challenging thing to get we we're already having struggles filling Aid positions anyway um and so
101I I would encourage uh anybody who might be having conversations with with people in the community parent volunteers ptso any of those folks you know if they have a flexible schedule and they can you know volunteer here and there well maybe just sign up for this the sub list and pick up those pick up those calls and and dig deep and know that you're doing a good job just being there to support support our staff and our students um even if it's a hard day you know so that's another soapbox moment for for us all well you already tapped on an issue for that's on our list which is unfilled positions and so um that's those are the sub positions that you're speaking of where um if we if we're down staff in the classrooms
102because we haven't um been able to find um candidates to accept those positions and then we have folks out sick um we've we're basically tap in the subpool looking for subs for multiple positions rather than just one or another and so it it is a big challenge every single day um and it's something that um in addition to all the work that the teachers are doing in the classroom that is something that they then have to sort out so um that's another big challenge for us um I have internships here on as an opportunity for growth um not because our interns are not um doing the absolute best that they can and and doing a fantastic job at it it's just that um when we're when we are hiring interns and um doing what we
103need to to support them that sometimes creates like an extended ripple effect on to support staff around them to ensure that they have everything that they need so um coming into special education as an intern um is a doubly difficult position because at least with a credential in hand you've been through um with a mentor teacher with your cooperating teacher you've been through kind of the day-to-day RAR role before coming in as an intern you don't have any of that experience and so um they're relying heavily and rightfully so on their peers so other specialed teachers on campuses they're relying heavily on side Administration for support um they receive a lot of support from um the special administrative team just because the special education position has so many different requirements and and um all of
104those folks that they lean on have a different level or idea around supporting them that they need so um it it's working for us um but it has some costs and it has some challenges and so um we're trying to really be conscientious about that when we think about okay we're going to bring in an intern is this something that we can sustain and realistically support so that we don't burn out the intern before they have a chance to even be a teacher so um it it's a balance it's another thing that we're having to balance um next on my list is um just a new experience newer experience that I've been having in the last year where families are moving in from outside of our area uh which we know happens all the time
105and is not a problem but we've had a handful of parents move in or families not parents necessarily um that have kiddos with a a significant amount of extensive needs and so um when you've prepared for it and we know that they're coming through our chain in the system we can be planning and mindful of that but um having families move in with kiddos with extensive medical needs that that require support or students moving in who have non-public school on their I already those are things that we um that are difficult to adjust to and and quickly respond to ensure that the student gets into school as quickly as possible which is always our goal so that's been presenting A new challenge particularly in the last six months and then um secondary to those issues
106we have a huge area of need that is a very big challenge for us us we value the least restrictive environment very very much so having students on their home campus with their peers but in all reality for some children that does not work for them they need more intensive therapeutic settings they need to not be on a comprehensive campus that is completely overstimulating it's overwhelming it creates um disregulation and behavior and and um difficulties for them that are beyond our level of understanding and we can't accommodate that we can't change that you can't change the size of an elementary campus or a comprehensive campus for some of these students and it's too much the challenge is we've done such a great job of pulling back programs and serving our kiddos in our in our
107community but we're now finding when we have students who do reach the next level that is outside of any sort of um school facility or program that we have available in Chico we're struggling with where else where else to look where else to access support and services and so um just as we're struggling with hiring staff so is everybody else and so we have in the past had opportunity to um make a referral and place students in a bu County Office of Ed program because they're struggling with finding staff those programs have closed up um keeping programs and non-public schools that are um open just for our students with our most severe extensive disabilities viable and open in Northern California has been next to Impossible and so um it's l left just it's just left
108such a gaping um Chasm between what we know we need to provide for students and how do we realistically make that happen and keep them in their home and so um we currently have four students in non-public school in Sacramento Sacramento is the closest thing to us which which means a two-hour bus drive each way for our students um there is absolutely the cost benefit that has to be done for each one of those children and for these students the benefit is still outweighing the 4H hour commute um but for some students that there isn't they can't do the 4-Hour commute and so then we're schools our team is left trying to figure out how do we ensure this kiddo gets an ed ation because that's really what it's all about at the end of
109the day but this is a huge area that um is a is a big struggle and I need help plain and simply our our teams need help and I'm not talking about residential because we have non-public school that's a day program that's the Sacramento program and then we have non-public school students who are in residential non-public schools and those kiddos um are not safe to even be in their home so they're educated By Us in in a in a non-public school and then the County Office of Ed pays for the residential mental health component so th those are our challenges what questions do you have in terms of the IP positions I believe you said there were 350 about uh roughly what percentage are filled at this point you know I counted just the other
110day Mr Allen I and um we had hiring on Friday I was able to find eight candidates which was fantastic that's really good rate I only had one cancel on me and two accepted sub positions so we we were you know really good turnout last that I counted we had 49 is openings or so out of 350 yeah is that about right I think that's about right so about one out of seven are empty okay 49 openings but but interviewing your you had eight candidates I so hopefully soon 41 yeah yeah still a pretty high percentage we we've been continuously just it's open I mean she's oh I'm sorry um I'm sorry so we have continuously been recruiting and um interviewing I she's probably interviewed more people this year than she's ever had um and
111the number that we get we can get a high number I want to say last time we had about I think eight people come and four will accept a job and so it's about it's under 50% that apply that get to the interview that accept the job so to get 40 um we're looking at we're going to have to get like 90 people just to apply and get to the interview that's just it's a lot and so but it's open we recruit everywhere all the time is there a general pool of of folks in the community that those come from more than others students parents grandparents General community members it's broad it's it's pretty broad so when when you look at IPS it's kind of it's kind of difficult it's Unique right so you have
112a six-hour position for 100 81 days right no benefits and it's an entry-level position so a lot of people um are looking for the eight hours they're looking for the benefits or they're looking you know um so it really Narrows the pool at who especially in this time of inflation and all that who can live on eight hour six hours a day right at an entry level job with you know no um no healthcare no benefits like you have some but not you know not full benefits so um it it's a very slim population that that can actually um work that in especially in this economy in California I would say the the round that we just had on on Thursday or Friday I felt was very very successful the overwhelming majority of them were
113young folks interested in education going to school so maybe they're learning online and working during the day which is great um so that we I felt very successful because they're coming in with um some education under their belt and um that's I felt like Friday why Friday in particular was so successful maybe we need to do some more targeted recruitment like on Tik Tok or something it's not a bad idea so with the students what we see and and and they're great L having the the Chico State students come VI college students come and they will work maybe all year but then the next year they're like oh I can't because my schedule's and so now we're we're rehiring right and it's it's it's constant so yeah yeah very true um I was gonna say
114something else I remember what it was what other questions do you have I have a couple random ones okay um uh is there kind of a general amount of what we would kind of call more clerical work that our certificated staff are are doing that's kind of taking up a book of time or outside of even you know their traditional day having to make lots of more lots more phone calls lots more paperwork making copies I don't know I don't it's not my world so I I'm not really clear on that um and I guess where I'm going with that is back to that like Creative Solutions for staff um where we might be able to offload some of those clerical things um for a different person to help take care of if there's like
115a more centralized way to do some of that um or if there's a disproportionality on Middle School um uh certificated Ed Specialists um that and and maybe the workload is just different at the high school level maybe the high school teachers could assist with the the Middle School teachers on some of those tasks I don't know but is there kind of any discussion about that or um you know I think about how much we we might be paying somebody to be scheduling meetings whe when they're they could be working on their curriculum development for their individual students needs um you know that's a different different different skill set that's required for each of those tasks yeah for sure so we have been talking some in negotiations about what could we um kind of peel off
116in order to um support and and um encourage our our teaching staff in um with IEPs the the paperwork aspect of it the paperwork side of it in terms of the clerical has decreased a little bit believe it or not um one of our accomplishments that I didn't even mention was we have gone um paperless in our special ed offices for as much as we possibly can so um not to date myself but we used to have um those triplicate forms that we would um and hand out during IEPs and we don't do those at all but we used to stand at The copier and make you know three four copies of every document and then hand them out as drafts and then rewrite the IEP and then hand it out as the final um
117we're not doing that anymore we're projecting onto a screen parents are seeing five changes happening we're emailing IEPs instead um the only one piece of clerical that I would see is um signature pages those we still retain the original hard copy signature page that um but even that is becoming less frequent as we do ready sign and things like that so um the the evolution of it as we've gone digital is um changing some of those aspects um the the the scheduling pieces and um other clerical aspects um we're we're still chatting about all those ideas yeah um next random question uh how are the classroom a scheduled especially at the secondary level so um or even just the I students in general and I will say also personal experience and just feedback I've gotten
118uh inclusive classrooms that have especially you know um well I was a science teacher so we can say that there was a year that I had a certain class period that had I think 18 students with IEPs in it out of 35 um and that was a huge challenge are there even caps for something like that um and I know that that's happening still and and you know there's um because we have spe some specialized classes there's a lot of tracking that's going on even though we say we don't support tracking um we have uh students that or classes classrooms that are more heavily you know so just it's as a general teacher it becomes really challenging to be able to keep track of all of those individualized needs for those students um and it
119really is a challenge for for their um their special education staff to also provide those supports um I asked the question but also like that's kind of the context of where the questions are coming from like how are those how are those schedulings done what input is given to to to to build those schedules and then how are AIDS placed into those classrooms or not so um I I don't know if I'm going to be able to answer your full question I'm going to give it a best shot so um when we have positions on campuses we can identify and then work with um the person the aid that we the instructional perah that we've hired if we need to change their start and end times and so we try to be really mindful as
120we're hiring positions that you're not starting at 8:00 at the high school for example and leaving at 2:30 because kids don't actually show up till 8:30 and so we're trying to be really conscientious about that as we're in as we're hiring as we're posting positions that are available we're trying to also be really mindful that positions that are available um to be filled are available for the bulk of the day if not the whole day um believe it or not in 2006 um I worked in a district that thought it could save money by just hiring three and a half hour people and just hir twice as many and it was a nightmare um we did it for a year and a half but it was crazy so what we know is we're able to
121um were able to entice and retain people by having those more like a a full day kind of position and then folks can make decisions about you know what the rest of their day might look like from there so trying to be conscientious about 6 and a half hours um for working at the secondary level that's more necessary than um at the elementary Level Elementary level making sure that we've got a little coverage before school starts when students show up a little before when there in the afternoon so we're working schedules that way I also strongly believe believe that our side administrators who are really have all that responsibility of ensuring safety and coverage for their entire campus all day um should have a say in when some of that stuff is available and what
122that might look like so that they know where their challenging areas of Campus are and they can ensure that there is support staff that's available so um we support the scheduling of those instructional pairs with the site Administration with the counselors those folks um to keep all of those pieces in mind um when it comes to the scheduling of the students into particular sections or classes I know a little less about that aspect of it but like I was saying with um our our special ed administrative team Special Education team coming together with the site Administration looking at where are students falling within the schedule of the day day which teacher has students in there that would need a little bit more support than somebody else and so they're looking holistically and where do we
123have those needs where are those areas and then identifying um the support staff that goes with them based on those higher levels of numbers in classes like you were mentioning Jen if I can add to the master scheduling component just as a as a master scheduler at the high school level and I don't want to speak to Middle School um it's maybe not quite is complex try doing a middle high school what's that try doing the Middle School a middle school high school master schedule even more complex um the balance between ensuring that we have the least restrictive environment for every student that they have access to CTE Pathways that they have they're meeting the needs um identified in their IEP and then also keeping in mind that um our special ed staff and their
124own section allocation the balance between the instructional periods and then the periods that they have for all the other duties uh that they're responsible for that large mix can sometimes result in a bubble here and there of you know maybe more kids um dependent if they're if they're um if they're really interested in welding and there's only one section of welding throughout the school day it's going to affect the number of kids you know in that classroom so it's a really complex Matrix when you add all those different pieces to it I guarantee you that our counseling staff at all the secondary schools when they when they hear of an issue they try to mitigate it because they understand the impacts as well yeah I I know I mean because we are short staffed AIDS
125I know that there's an ongoing issue um at at least at the middle school level um with tracking classes so having more heavily loaded classes that's that's Pro that's making challenges and not enough AIDS support in those classes not enough um pairs in those classes to help support those teachers to provide those those Individual Services I I can tell you we've we've tried lots of different variations of how to how to do the scheduling you know when do you put prep periods for the specialed staff um how do you spread those throughout the day how believe it or not all of that impacts where special education students aren't and where they get impacted into general education sections and so we've um just in my short time here in chica we've tried lots of different iterations
126of it and been like oh that we can't do that again and here we go plan you know next plan and so um I know that is a constant um work in progress that we're always looking at okay we can do this but not that and and making adjustments along the way yeah I guess I guess my hope is that it's not just falling on um you know one person who's doing the scheduling that maybe isn't getting the enough of the big picture or enough input about how the scheduling really should look based on you know certain challenges that that may be being experienced in class room so um and that sounds like a site Administration topic that should be or if it's not being addressed maybe should be addressed can I can I add
127to that really quickly because I want to clarify too I didn't say this earlier that all of the Ed Specialists meet with the principal and the registar and they schedule first they go in and schedule first they're the they're the priority in the spring and did they say how many aids would be needed in those classes also it's all IEP driven yeah then we come back once kids actually land in all of the sections and we look again to say okay um once everybody else starts filtering through then okay now we need to make sure and Aid's in that classroom in that period and make sure it's lined up again and that happens for each School site um I was glad that you brought up admin leadership too um because I I would imagine that
128it's challenging having kind of like this this whole system with its own or chart and you know people who are who are supporting each other and all the way on down to our our School site folks um and I don't mean down really you know what I'm saying though um but also having to work within the the school structure and culture um and sometimes encountering circumstances where it might feel like uh prog programmatic changes or adjustments are are being implemented and the onus or the burden is put on the special ed staff to to be giving directives to to um General teachers for example where the onus really should be on the school side Administration and I feel like that maybe general staff have have had some frustrations or just struggles with that as well
129and I feel like probably or I feel like it also comes down to how it's um impacting the special the the Ed specialist um folks uh where maybe a little bit more um what would strong spine approach from schools side Administration might be appreciated but maybe is uncomfortable to say and so I he there I said it um I I can that's my job I'm the one to say the uncomfortable things um so I I'm not asking for a response I'm just kind of putting that in the in the atmosphere of the discussion um uh so that everybody can hear it at the same time I I do want to share that last year um under J marant's leadership we met with um Elementary principles uh we meaning me representing special education with General Administration
130and Ed sorry general education principles at the elementary level and Ed services to talk about how how do we um improve transparency in in support of special education programs and and all of the challenges that sometimes come with it um on their campus and Heather seent has already this year has set up we've already had two out of our three meetings set up to do the same thing again and so I think that it's really it's really been um supportive and I hope the general education Administration feels supported and heard because they are coming forward with this is what's working and how can we continue to do this and here are some challenges and how can we problem solve them together um and then negotiations last year um Charlie had special ed teachers from um
131both sides of the program mild mod and extensive needs and then we had them from elementary middle school and high school level to provide feedback um to everybody about how we can support them in improving so I really do feel like a lot of time and effort has been put forward to share with each other and be open about what's working well so we can continue to support but again where are the struggles and how can we work together to resolve those I can add something to that as well that uh yes Jen was right under Jay we did look at how we can support the staff on the site staffs better and the site administrators this year I have heard a lot of positive with the movement for uh the This Crew over here
132supporting School sites uh I I speak to that as somebody who's been in that position Gina pton many years ago in under this model as somebody who would come and support some difficult things that I didn't understand and needed to know Gina was one who came to me many years ago with this and um we all want to learn more about special education I am not an expert like these folks are and I think we have a lot to learn from them and I would venture to say our our site administrators feel the same I would say as a general teacher um specializing obviously in science uh that the two classes I had for for special education were not sufficient for sure as an experience um yeah uh I had a thought but I'm gonna
133just disregard it because it's getting late um my last like question that's random and this is a can maybe get back to me later question is you mentioned in the the the things that we're doing that are great full inclusion and um co- teing that's happening but there's no reference to um the occurrence of that so uh you know to what degree is it happening I don't have any reference for like you know percentage of classes that it's taking place in or School sites that it's happening at and so to what degree um those are happening it's nice to say that we're doing it but like if it's just in one classroom on one School site then that's really not the same absolutely and so let me just you know couple minutes or less co-
134teing is is Under the Umbrella of inclusive education or inclusive practices and it's just one of the solid practices of being an inclusive educational environment co- teing really requires a couple of things number one a strong relationship between the special ed teacher and the gened teacher and number time number two sorry co-planning time that's hard to accomplish and so right now where we are successful at accomplishing that is at Chico High because we've got special ed teachers that have been there that have built relationships with General Ed teachers and they are actually co- teing so co-planning co- preparing co-presenting um we would love to see that grow but if we have new staff on either side it's really challenging to say yeah go co- teach um so and then inclusion we do have inclusion on
135all campuses to varying degrees and so I can share specifics what we've got out there okay thank you you're welcome um and then my last point for the evening before my colleagues up here want to throw a chair at me um I'm just kidding I'm being presumptuous but it it's it's getting pretty late um I was wondering what is the representation for slps in this room speech and language mythologist yeah um that is I think a topic for another night I think we probably should talk about slp's um as its own item um my questions uh who who do they report to how are they supported um what are their case loads what do those look like their Max the disproportionality of their case loads um and um how we might be able to provide
136them some more support because I know that they that they've there's been some frustrations from our our speech and language pathologist of which I think that there was 20s something 26 I think I say something I think it was yeah 26.8 I think U I'm happy to get you that information they report to me I support them okay thank you cuz that wasn't in this presentation I don't think really except I mean they were mentioned but like we didn't get to talk about any of those questions I just had so yeah for sure yeah um because that's not a topic for tonight since it's almost 7:15 okay um for for the record I asked um Dr Scola to please take Liberties to be able to address all of the the things that we had asked
137for in our in our two meetings um to organize this and that um I would support a longer Workshop um that I didn't feel comfortable limiting it to the hour to hour and a half time frame so I should have pre-warned everybody that that's what was to be expected but I I feel like that there was a lot of good information shared here and I think a lot of things that we could continue to think about and talk about and check in about um from my perspective um maybe some some followup um after there's time for everybody to process so thank you so much for putting it all together absolutely thank you very much um we did have one person sign up for public comment on this uh and I will also open the floor
138for additional public commenters um if there are any anybody in here if there is there are any folks in here who would like to speak um but I will invite um Julia off up to speak for public comment I didn't know it was going to be this long sorry guys Oh no you're fine this is part of the process oh okay yeah you have three minutes oh thanks yeah thanks okay hi my name is Julia I am a parent of a child in an ESN class at py now she's in high school and I wanted to kind of talk about that that was amazing thank you very much for all that information but I wanted to talk about um something that I've noticed now that she's transitioned to high school and that's kind of quality
139um when it comes to accesses opportunities on the campus um and I feel like she's very limited in her opportunities unless she can present as typical right so um if she wants to take a music class as long as she can behave like a typical student sure she's welcome in that typical class or as long as she can write correctly or draw what they're doing which is very high level art sure she's welcoming into that class can she really participate or students like her really participate in those classes the answer is really no because they're not modifying the classes to meet she's currently in band and unless she can do what the band wants her to do it's very difficult for her to access and then like my friend here who has a child who's
140even more severe than Lily she has no opportunities to access those types of programs all general education students can take you know video production they can take culinary they can there's so many opportunities that our children in ESN classes do not have because they are not able to function as a typical student and I feel like as our ESN classes are growing we have three full classes on each of our campuses and yet we have not given them the opportunity to really dive into those type of um things that typical students have complete access to and I think we're missing the Mark um we need to have things available for the students um in ESN classes that teach at their level that give them an opportunity to explore what they like to do not just
141um the typical students and well I guess if you can sit here for an hour and a half which is basically impossible for an ESN student U then I guess you can stay but are they really learning anything and the answer is no um and I'm not just saying bringing a problem without Solutions a few years ago I talked to the district and we had many meetings about a sports program to integrate uh to allow students in those in those classes to participate in sports which they have no opportunity to do now we had lots of great meetings and then it went nowhere I followed up but again nothing um students ESN classes don't have an opportunity to participate in clubs so I started a club I work at PB now there's a club for
142our ESN students but it needs to be more than me so thanks thanks Julia um if it's not too much to ask uh the I am always interested in hearing creative ideas and solutions if you want to email those out if you have you know if you didn't feel like you didn't get enough out yeah that would be it'd be great to to just kind of be able to reflect on it a little bit more thank you would anybody else like to come speak please um and if you don't mind introduce yourself when you get up here just because I don't you don't have to but it's nice to know name to be anonymous I'm just kidding my name is Maria Seer I have worked for Chico Unified for 27 long years I have been
143in special education for 19 of those 27 years I have a 25-year-old daughter who is now considered to be an ESN she started and she unified when she was two and went all the way through 22 in the adult program so my experience with special education in Chico Unified is very deep and very rich and very personal what I wanted to touch on tonight is a question that was actually presented to Dr schola about the retention of your paraprofessional staffs most of my colleagues will say it's underpaid I would like to rather point out that it is overworked and undertrained we are asking our pair of professionals especially in our exceptional needs programs and our access programs to do incredibly difficult work they come home having hair pulled scratches bites kicked hit I have been
144called every name in the book in trauma informed training we call it pfl ESL is English as a second language in trauma and form training it's called pfl it's Prof ity is a first language that is what your pair of professionals live with every single day and they are not trained they are not trained I am fortunate I am currently an iby assigned to Chapman I get the amazing training from Gina Payton on a regular basis I am so fortunate for that but why aren't the rest of our par professionals getting that we talked about all the wonderful things that our teachers are getting we're not talking about what our actual on the ground ES s support staff is getting those are your pair of professionals not your teachers not your slps not your OTS
145those are your pair of professionals and they are underrepresented I know that many of my colleagues have gone to the union and spoke to the union about this and still nothing is coming of it we had this great opportunity now that we have had this plan and I had this discussion with Kelly Staley she was so generous to spend her time to come talk to me about this and have that beginning of the school year where we could train our staff on trauma informed language and de bringing down our disregulated students and instead we are sitting in training for six hours learning about things that we could do online that's not what we need we need that really deep training so that we can do our jobs effectively stay our jobs and love our jobs
146and most of us do but it is hard it is exhausting and that's what we need and I really want to end by saying I appreciate all of these people every single one of these people have supported us in so many ways but we need more we need that training and we spend thousands of dollars a year to train our teachers and our administrators but not our Paris thank you thank you yeah I think that this is in my opinion the most important thing for us to try to focus on um this topic I did remember what I was going to say earlier um to end it on a high end end on a high note um that was there was a call out of of a anecdotal some so and so is amazing I
147have to say that I've been told um by two different people for the very few people I still talk to because I'm busy all the time and have a four-year-old um thank God for Morgan Dar so shout out to you yeah just goes to show the love goes around and um I think none of you all are are really appreciated um and I wish we could have more of more of this um love to work on it uh I any more people that want to speak from the floor shouldn't have said end I forgot that we were still doing public comment okay please hi I'm Molly and my daughter's Gracie she's in an ESN class at PV and I just wanted to speak about the par professional thing because I was a par professional in
148Southern California and I don't have a desire to work for Chico Unified and that's because your pay is too low your support is too low um in Southern California we were CPI trained we had month L meetings monthly trainings we were really well supported and our pay 10 years ago is higher than what your pay is right now um I can make more money working at a fast food restaurant than working for Chico Unified and so um you were asking about why people aren't coming into the district and I feel like it's because of your pay being too low and your support being too low so that's just kind of what I wanted to say um we're very we've been very happy with our special education classroom for my daughter and um she's severely disabled
149almost completely non-verbal and so I wanted to kind of piggyback on what Julia said there is no opportunity for her to have any type of inclusion with her peers at PV she has a wonderful classroom wonderful peers in her classroom that are also severely disabled but her typical peers are completely inaccessible to her um she's not given any opportunity she loves art she would love to go to a drawing class or a painting class but her drawings and her paintings are not going to look like what's expected in those classes in Southern California she was able to access art classes the teacher modified the curriculum for her when they were drawing she was given a page that was already drawn and so she could color in the lines rather than actually do the drawing things
150like that um she was really well supportive in electives in Southern California there has not been that opportunity for her at PV um and like Julia was talking about with band my daughter also goes to band um she's included because she has a wonderful elvan who is with her every day who gets her a drum finds her a way to be included comes up with creative ideas for her the teacher is not doing that and um I think that there is a serious lack of inclusion for our severely disabled students my daughter cannot facilitate conversation with a typical peer so that's only going to happen through staff facilitating that and through teachers facilitating that um she can't do it herself so just wanted to talk on those two topics and thank you for your time
151thank you for being here do we have any other folks that would like to speak fair enough um okay thank you so much everybody for your input um the information I think this is really really insightful um and I would like to see us continue to to grow with that and um going to take some time to process for sure um does any any else on the board have anything to say or add it is informational this topic is or this item is tonight so there's nothing for there's no action for us to take um no discussion for us to have at this time but um the benefit of workshops is it does give us space to have these deeper conversations kind of Deep dive on topics that we have determined um more important to
152us as a board um and with this information uh we we may reach out to to parents and and staff and kind of do a little bit more information gathering and um may ask for items to be placed for further discussion or action um at a later time um as we kind of keep the conversation going so um it's not all for not uh this is really valuable information for everybody and the community um with that I think we can move to the next item um it has been two and a half hours since we started this meeting um do we want to take a brief break or just move through it okay sounds like the the rest of my colleagues would like to power through um I'm on board so we're going to do
153it um what I was wondering if we need our staff is here to stay if they yeah um if you don't want to stay for the rest of the discussion action items thank you very much for being here appreciate it yes and that's okay thank you for being here tonight have a good night hey you are now all over the Internet just so you know that I mean like the whole world could see that um on the discussion action calendar 4.1.1 under ed services is a public hearing discussion action for resolution number 16612 the Williams textbook sufficiency for the 2425 school year that is correct um this is a public hearing that I know Madame President will I I I I open when it's public comment time thank you is the order of operations yes
154thank you this is my first time through with this one so okay took me a long time to figure it out as I've learned as my first time through this comes annually to the board for are um making sure that our textbooks efficiency is uh where it should be for all of our students Kim Hernandez at the district office starts this process early usually during the summertime August 1ish working with site uh Administration working with the office staff if there are any books that are or other materials that need to be ordered she handles that she has really clearly explained all of her procedure to me me and um shown me the the pieces of documentation that she uses with all of our sites and the signing off on that so um that's kind of
155the background of what this is about does the board have any questions seeing none I will open the public hearing do we have a public comment for this public hearing seeing none I will close the hearing um are there any motions associated with this item I move passage of the aforementioned resolution seconded all right we have a motion by Mr tennis and a second by Mr Lando uh we'll start with a any further discussion roll call vote uh starting with Mr tennis tennis ey Conan I Doby ey Lando ey it passes we will move to 4.2.1 under Business Services discussion action item on Charter Schools measure K projects request yes I'll be stepping for Julie kle this evening um so in front of you this evening is a proposal from um blue o Charter School
156at the last subcommittee meeting for measure K they brought forth a request um in the amount of $6,000 to replace their kitchen freezer so over the summer their kitchen freezer started kind of intermittently going out and they've been able to limp along but they really at this point need to replace it in order to um not lose food um cold food for their students so they've attached three um potential quotes that are in the packet attached to the item um $6,000 should be more than enough to allow for delivery and installation um it would be a movable movable and mobile unit so in the event um that they are able to secure facilities and relocate um to the land that was purchased in Maran Park this unit would also move with them so looking for
157approval um for the freezer this evening I move approval I'll second that one too if you don't mind that we're jumping out of line nope I will just follow the rest of the board's lead tonight on the rest of the night I kind of um took a lot of time with my questions earlier um question um Jacqueline how does a freezer like work like how does it like get cold and stuff like that I'm just kidding so we'll start with a roll call vote we have a a motion uh by member conin and a second by member Lando um and we'll start with with with you Rebecca conen I Doby ey Lando I tennis I all right on to 4.3.1 under board this is a discussion action approval of revised updated new board policies and
158that would be me so as part of our ongoing task of making sure that we have current board policies and administrative regulations we are bringing these forward to you tonight this is the second reading for these policies uh I will point out that the board will need to take uh have a discussion and take action on board bylaw 9220 governing board elections because we need to decide uh whether or not we would like to utilize option one or option two and I'd also ask that the board pull uh 41911 sex discrimination and sex based harassment uh we need to take that one back and make sure that our internal policies and ARS are the same for certificated and classified so we'll bring that one back to you at our October 16th meeting so if we
159can pull 411 9.11 and then uh for sure the Board needs to discuss 9220 the rest the board can pass in a single motion if they so desire so I'll turn it back to Madam president okay um I'm going to just for I don't know if what's the best process here uh let's just pull 411 9.11 and um four uh 9220 um and uh move through approving the rest of the um updated board policies um as my motion I'll second that motion okay um um all those in favor of approving the rest of the updated board board policies except for those two that were just pulled um signify With Your Voice vote uh Dolby ey L tenisi okay it's unanimous um and then we're going to revisit uh 411 9.11 at the October 16th meeting
160and um we'll just have a brief discussion about how we want to treat governing board elections in the case that there is a High um so it is election season um and uh the my understanding is that csba um pulled this uh board policy out um the status quo or what currently exists is that um in the case that there's a a tie um for an election for a board um position that uh the board then decides whether it's going to go to a runoff so another round of special election and and money cost a financial cost um or if uh it will go to basically a tossup a flip of a coin so to speak um is that am I summarizing it appropriately corre okay and so what uh csba is is advising is
161that as a board we decide that ahead of time so we just say at this point we're going to change this policy to be one or the other decisions um and I think that we there's also an option to just leave it as is in stay status quo and cross that when we get their situation um so not written into this policy there's a third policy which is to not change it is my assumption is that assumption correct that is correct their recommendation is that we decide ahead of time so it's very clear what we're going to do um if we wait until there is a tie and again this is only if there is a tie in an election um we would then have to just have a board meeting decide and it would
162delay the process of making the decision so their recommendation is that we choose one of the two options the the options are the same as they are in the current policy it's just deciding it ahead of time thank you for the clarification um is there a motion that anybody would like to put on the table can we get some clarifying questions sure cool um do we have roughly an estimate of what a runoff election would cost yeah I would say in a given I don't know about a runoff year but in a given year our election costs are between 80 and $100,000 um a second question which I we might not be able to answer here now um because I know that of course any election has to be done in accordance with the law
163I would be very curious to know whether a runoff election could potentially be held with a like as a whole city or outside of Just The District in which the original election was held a runoff election or the entire the runoff okay yeah and neither I'm saying given that if a in district election produce an exact tie it might be interesting to open it up to the whole city if that were possible thing to do or the whole jurisdiction my guess would be that that would be a secretary of state question or even at least just ke so guess what I'm asking is can we is it possible to get some legal advice on that just as a just in case are so are we contemplating that we're that that there would be like so
164in one trustee area I think there's something like uh anybody know how many voters there are in let's just say 8,660 that's low yeah I mean there's there's like yeah it was like 20 something I was just throwing a number low 20,000 we're actually thinking that that it would be like uh 99,999 to 99,999 and we're talking about it right now I mean if you are putting much question in the history of election has this happened at Chico UniFi for school no it seems Fantastical why don't we leave it as is and cross that bridge just my thought the probability is extremely remote that this will happen I think the answer to the question I would I will opine that that people in trusty area a have no claim over trusty area B and so
165therefore they would not be in a position to help decide you know a runoff outcome that's my guess that would be my assumption if we were to ask legal advice but that's on just basis of my limited understanding I'm sure there's a quick answer um did you want to set that as a motion sure um I move that we leave it status quo and address it um if we find ourself in this predicament second all right we have a motion in a second um further discussion yeah again I agree that this is very very unlikely that said I do think it's also a good idea to have a policy ahead of time so that we are not potentially swayed by uman it's it's better to have a policy ahead of time so we don't look
166like we're politicking when we're you know making that decision about who might win an election um so I'm going to vote no on this because I would rather have option to I'd rather have the runoff so there's actually some kind of electoral say so there's very there's there's three three directions we can go we can put it up for a vote you can do a substitute motion um or we can uh friendly amend the original motion um to bring this back after maybe a little bit more of those questions are asked um I don't and and then Eileen will also be here I don't know how going to vote actually um I mean I can I can make a vote tonight but um so then we'll have five people and I would feel more comfortable
167with a board of five um voting on on this topic um I don't um I don't know if we need a a full motion on that or a full like act if that's action that we need to take vote on that we have a motion on the floor correct sounds like you just made a motion to table until thank you next meeting thanks for words I appreciate that I'm out of words for the night I'll second it okay I am motioning I I motion to table until our next meeting um we can do motioning yes I said that um to next meeting um to to to have a to vote on a next meeting up fair and we have a second by member Lando um Dolby I I have a comment oh okay just kidding
168let's discuss it um I I I'm GNA oppose this uh I don't think we should talk about it at our next meeting what is our next meeting so I guess I'm confused on process because we have a motion to leave it as it is and we have a motion to to table second sub so my so my motion goes first if it fails then we go to back to Rebecca's motion um Matt did you what was yeah I'm I'm going to vote no on the substitute motion to agendize it gotta I don't think it's worth talking about you know the the scenario where we're going to have 99,999 to 99,999 is in my opinion not worth uh considering at this time in this season yeah I'm gonna um so since we're open on discussion I'm
169going to agree with um with member land's statement in terms of the politicking piece of it um this sets board policy not just for this election it just as board policy for this in future elections it can be it can be Revisited again also um but that said I just would feel more comfortable making a vote even if half of us are decided once U member Robinson's here and we may end up with a tie anyway and need the tiebreaking vote anyway so that's my rationale for my substitute motion um are we ready to vote or for the discussion okay I'll go first um Doby I Lando I tennis nay Conan n okay so in the case of a of a split vote on a substitute motion I think we still go back to the
170original motion um yeah yeah the original motion is that we just stick with status quo and let the board whoever it may be cross that bridge when we get there any further discussion um just for the sake of discussion um if there was a desire to bring this back um and if any sitting board voted a certain way or voted voted for the way that it goes you could bring it back per those rules um really we could bring this back at any time making changes to a Bo policy so um any further discussion all right uh let's start with Mr tennis tennis I con and I all be I Lando uh all right uh with that we can move along to board member request to agendize item uh there was none for this meeting
171um I have a feeling we might start to to uh bring some to the table in the next few meetings um and with that we will go to closed SE section closed session um is there any public comment on closed session seeing none we will uh move to close session thank you if we can be ready to go and close session by no later than