001e e e good evening I will now call to order the regular Board of Education meeting for chica Unified School District it's May 15th 2024 just after 5:00 pm the board will be going into closed session at this time and returning at 6 PM for Open Session thank you e e good evening welcome it's a full house tonight that's exciting for us um I uh opened the meeting at 5 we were in closed session uh welcome to the uh Chico Unified uh School District Board of Education meeting for May 15 2024 uh we were in Clos session uh a couple actions uh that took place during close session was uh that we decided to pull item 9 4.1 for additional negotiations so that item will not be coming forward on tonight's agenda and additionally uh
002the board approved unanimously uh Jessica crane for assistant principal at little Chico Creek so let's welcome Jessica where are you there she is yeah thank you we're excited all righty and uh with that we will please stand for the flag excellent Al righty and with that we will move into student reports please well as always we're in for another big treat tonight I see some drummers over there ready to entertain us and I would like to uh invite Chapman principal Christy tacha up to tell us what we're going to experience [Applause] and team uh thank you School Board I want to thank you for having us tonight it's an honor to serve as principal at Chapman Elementary School and I'm joined by our uh art teacher Megan Callahan who also leads our drumming group losan
003Boris the Chapman uh the picture behind you shows our drummers at an event that they recently uh performed at and it also shows our families so I do while I have you here want to thank our families and give them a round of applause for their support because without them being willing to bring their students to the events and support us through the after school program and at the school in general we wouldn't be able to make this happen so I'm going to give the mic to uh Miss Callahan so she can share about our [Applause] program good evening uh my name is Megan and I am very grateful to be here tonight with all of you to um share a story and also a very special group um it began it begins with our
004heartbeat the very first Rhythm that we ever hear and in the 1990s um another very special person Jan doni brought World music drumming to Chico Unified and her friend and colleague Kathy nass later at Chapman Elementary in 2010 started Los Tambor day Chapman this after school drumming program program with the goal of creating a community that would um build confidence uh build community and share cultural rhythms uh we're supported through the afterschool program and private donors like former teacher lar Vickers who brings us snacks and um of course our principal uh Christy tea who's just she's driving she's getting us shirts she's at all of our events um we have two former principles who've also supported this program uh Ted Sullivan and Mike Allen are both um have been supporters of our program and then
005finally we're blessed um this past year to have uh Baba kauna right over here he's been working to teach us cultural rhythms and more more recently dance and so um I'm going to come over here and introduce our drummers now they're third through fifth graders and some of them this is their very first year doing this so this is Kenyon [Applause] Al Mar life is a gift so live it [Music] is [Music] is for [Music] last [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] that [Music] [Applause] f C we ready [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] no [Music] stop [Music] w [Applause] [Music] than [Music] one more time new time [Music] Rush [Music] y [Music] y y [Music] ready he [Music] the [Music] w [Applause] thank you once again big round of applause for Chapman thank you guys thank
006you [Applause] Evelyn okay we are going to give them just a couple seconds to transition um on out I know they have homework have to do tonight and they are headed off to that right now as we are waiting I'm going to ask Pedro Caldera and John Gunderson to come up to the [Music] [Applause] podium good evening board give him just a second I am going to give him a few seconds you can't compete with that Pedro no but Pedro if you are going to try and dance and drum for us we will we will accept that I was a gerbert School seventh grade break dancing champion at one time you can't you can't say that not show off now there was only 12 eighth graders I'm going to need some proof for that I
007don't believe you just you saying that we'll break out the cardboard and we'll we'll match it up here okay before we get started um there's a group of people behind me um Melvin family I from the bottom of my heart I seriously want to thank each and every one of you you know penny better than we do and I am sure that throughout these years she has come home with her thoughts about her school and everything she needs to do for us and so I really appreciate each and every one of you for bearing with us um and sharing who I call our lucky penny with us and a special thanks to Tom who I know definitely shared penny with us all right this evening I am filled with a profound sense of gratitude and
008pride for eight remarkable years I have had the honor and privilege of working with Penny Melvin at our beloved Chico junor high school and let me tell you it has been a Journey with Adventures Triumph joy laughter and above all in unwavering dedication to our staff and students when she first stepped onto our campus her passion for education and the deep-seated commitment was evident making a difference in the lives of our Young Learners and staff is a passion that I believe still continues to burn brighter with each passing day as a registar she goes Far and Beyond her role she is a problem solver a facilitator and a beacon of support for our students and their families whether it's ensuring smooth enrollment processes addressing academic concerns or simply lending a compassionate ear to those in
009need she always strive to go above and beyond for each and every member of our school community she has been dedicated to our staff and knows and is always there in our time of need truth be told she has a knack of bailing us out of problems in fact she has bailed me out of so many problems that I would walk through the hallways and go Penny could do no wrong she walks on water because she got me out of another problem and that is the truth and with that I used to say that Penny was our lucky penny if you guys are familiar with the whole Lucky Penny if there's a a a you find a penny in it's right side upright with the heads it's a lucky penny and having Penny on our
010campus was like that every single day together we have weathered storms celebrated triumphs and all with one shared goal in mind to provide our students with the best possible education and support system so hats off here's the penny to the past the present and the future of our beloved Penny Melvin may you continue to inspire to empower to make a difference in the lives of all those that are lucky enough to be around you I want to close with the saying that's on the back of every penny ebus UNAM with one small little spin We Are One cougar family big hugs from Mo your Chico Jr family uh first of all I just want to thank the school board and obviously our Ed leader ship for supporting schools um it's amazing to have this level
011of support um and the next thing is I second everything that Mr Caldera just said um I got to be honest with you as a new principal I wouldn't be able to do my job without that woman right there um she's guided me not just with things that are register our based but just great ideas to make the school better um I think she's constantly working she comes to my office all the time with wonderful ideas um usually requires a lot of work for me but the ideas are phenomenal um the other thing that I love about having Penny on our campus is she's a lot of times the first person that you meet outside of our attendance clerk when you come in the office she is one of the most lovely people that you'll
012ever meet in your life she's always kind she's always compassionate I love that she models not only for our staff but our students how to treat people properly and really be somebody that supports everybody no matter what they're going through um she is one of the greatest assets that we have on our campus our campus would be a lot less without her and I kind of think that it shows the importance that a single individual can have on the entirety of a campus and she definitely represents that so thank you so much for acknowledging [Applause] [Laughter] her thank you picture thank that was very kind look at all the people brought awesome go next I'd like to invite up Joe Morris and team Joe Shannon Dusty come on up so just so you know I'm
013not that I'm not that good at that so this is a little I'm a little more to the point so I'm here tonight with Dusty and Shannon to present an award so Nathan Gutierrez who is the senior custodian at Citrus is a rock star just plain and simple um Shannon sees him every single day I don't get to spend as much time with him she does but just knowing from me being a supervisor at the night to the day to now he's awesome he shows up every day I go over there at lunchtime he's interacting with the kids spending T quality time making sure they has a clean environment all the things that you expect out of him he goes above and beyond for it so for me I'm very proud of him um to
014have this award and Dusty would you like to say anything I just want to say when uh when we first hired Nathan um one one thing that we have to do is is we have to call references and I called his reference and his past manager actually started crying say we're going to we're going to lose this guy that shows you what kind of a guy he is absolutely well they say the custodian is the most important person on campus and I couldn't agree more he is the first person that sees most kids in the morning when they come to our morning program and I tell you the greeting this man gives our students is love and energy I come in the door at 7:30 I'm a little bit tired and he's all good morning
015and I'm like good coffee he is that all day um I call him on the radio this is my favorite story about Nathan and I say Nathan don't run and then Nathan's right there like Nathan had to get here he's like he's I just what do you need and that is it really epitomizes who he is as a human being on our campus our students love him our staff love him our school is beautiful because of him there's never a no Code Brown or not he's our guy and I um I I couldn't be more proud of him and and what he does for our campus we really appreciate you Nathan you're amazing [Applause] and uh finally I'd like to call up Tina Kean good evening everybody uh this evening I am proud to be
016here to present a special board recognition to Nord Country School principal superintendent Cathy dalren for outstanding service and dedication in local education Cathy is preparing to retire at the end of this school year from Nord and it is safe to say she will not only be missed by her Nord Community she will be missed from our Charter Community and Chico Unified I met Kathy over 5 years ago when I became District leison to the charter schools that Chico Unified authorizes at that time Kathy impressed me with her calm demeanor her vast experience in education and her love for her school and the students and families they serve in the years since that first meeting I can honestly share that Kathy not only continues to embody those qualities I mentioned but also much more Kathy is
017an extremely strong instructional leader with a sharp eye attuned to data and making sure that students academic needs are met she understands what data points are important to collect and more importantly in my opinion what to do with that data and information once it's collected as a small school the Nord team is able to have frequent conversations about individual student needs and utilize their what I need or win program for their students Kathy has also LED Nord country school's commitment to the social emotional well-being of their students as well as Been instrumental in growing their Junior High Sports programs just to name a few things Kathy has been an integral member of our local Charter School Community I'm confident that I can speak for the other Charter leaders in our community when I say that
018Cathy is seen as a leader among them her vast experience is relied upon by all of them I have relied upon Cathy's good listening ear when I've had questions through the years as well whenever I had a charter school question Kathy's always there to answer me with honesty and Clarity I look forward to visiting Nord Country School each year as part of our annual visits not only do I enjoy visiting with her and listening to her Insight I also get to tour the campus in fact this past year Kathy indulged me as one of the things I most wanted to do on her site visit was to cuddle one of the baby goats that were only a few weeks old at the time and I loved it Kathy you will be missed by your friends
019in Chico Unified you've been a solid and positive supporting partner in education for us for many years while I have no doubt that Nord Country School is in good hands moving forward my wish for you on behalf of superintendent Kelly Staley our Chico Unified cabinet members and our Chico Unified Board of Trustees is that you have many wonderful years ahead of retirement fun relaxation and enjoyment with family and friends you've earned every bit of it with a job in education very well done congratulations Kathy come on up [Applause] and with that I'll turn it back to you madam president awesome thank you that was a lot to celebrate lots of good things going on um all right with that we we'll move forward to number six announcements uh does the board have announce any announcements
020this evening okay um uh I'll I'll be at the announcement that uh Chico Unified celebrated cusd staff Appreciation Week um this was last week this week this week is Staff Appreciation Week um at our previous board meeting uh the board on behalf of um chica unified ed services uh approved a um a resolution for uh the certificated and classified um appreciation week and so they were combined and um there was some goodies that were provided by students in the culinary department at PV and um and it's a an ongoing weekly celebration but of course uh one week is is nothing compared to the appreciation that I think we all feel for you throughout the year so um just wanted to make sure that everybody knows that right now staff appreciation week so if you see
021a school person a school staff person please give them high five or handshake or a hug probably a hug if they if they want it um all right any other announcements or things to add superintendent syy no okay um okay we will move forward to items from the floor number seven uh items from the floor is for a time for speakers who wish to address the board regarding a topic that is not currently agendized um at this time we'll take public comment from speakers who wish to address the board uh as a reminder speakers have 3 minutes to uh speak um at the podium and a bell will ring at 30 seconds um when speaking time remains you'll or you'll hear a um a noise and have a timer um on the board behind us
022uh we do have one speaker signed up at this time for items from the floor and so at this time I will call up Gina back to address the board good evening I am here today because I would like to ask you to reconsider the Mandate for student privacy also known as the CDE guidance and to repeal 51 45.3 as attorney general Rob bonta has stated in federal court that no law requires a school district to follow the advice from the Department of Education regarding keeping secrets from parents your parental secrecy policy was based on guidelines which are no laws or enforceable there are suggestions and unfortunately we have all been misguided schools parents and the whole Community must work together to help children overcome their challenges keeping secrets does nothing but create a barrier
023between families and teachers teachers are forced to lie and parents are kept in the dark regarding the well-being of our children and since I have a little bit more time on a different subject I was very pleased to learn at the last meeting that most of this school board favors implementing a cell phone policy in our schools therefore I encourage you to check the cell policy the cell phone policy recently adopted by the Roseville city City School District I have a copy with me and I would like to share it with all of you with your permission thank you for the time for your time as always and we don't have any additional uh folks signed up for items from the floor um and so if there's nobody else to address the board at this
024time we will move on to um agenda item item number eight so agenda item number eight is our consent calendar is there anybody who' like to pull a consent item at this time seeing none I will ask for a motion I will move it up the consent calendar I'll second that motion we have a motion by Mr Lando and a second by Miss Robinson any further discussion board great this is our first vote for the evening so U we'll do a roll call vote starting with Mr Ten tennnis I Conan I Doby I Lando I robins and I all right it passes unanimously thank you board and we'll move on to our discussion action calendar I think I just ski the page maybe nope um 9.1.1 is an informational item for the annual spring Charter
025School visit report and I would ask Miss cha king to please come up alrighty good evening again uh I would like to invite the charter leaders that are out here in the audience to come on up and join me while I introduce what we're uh talking about here every may we come to the Chico Unified School board with our yearly report not only do the charters provide a report to Chico Unified in the spring but I also give notes from the annual visit that we are required to do per um per mandate per law I enjoy going to the Charter visits each year they um there is always something to learn there is always something to celebrate there is always something to ponder I would say and we do it collaboratively we do it in
026um the spirit of educating kids in all of our Chico UniFi Parton our Chico Community uh at large from Forest Ranch all the way out to Nord and everyone in between uh Tom from uh Tom from um Wildflower is not able to be here tonight he does send his regrets they have their their um town hall meeting with their school Community tonight as well but uh on your agenda we the the reports that the schools provided as well as notes that I made and as I've said over the years we've uh learned a lot and have weathered a lot I don't even want to say the the pandemic word that we all lived through but at this time I would love this group to come up introduce themselves share the schools that they represent and
027uh they are available for any questions you have for them ahead hello I'm Michelle yic director of Sherwood montauri hi I'm Kelly Clark from Chico Country Day along with Gretchen and Claudia I'm Susan Dominy from Blue Oak Charter School Becky Brown Inspire School of Arts and Sciences Kathy doen Nord Country School Casey Taylor executive director of achieve charter schools and I'm Steve Wright principal of achieve Charter School Chico I'm Chris J morasco executive director for Force Branch Charter School Travis bened I'm the site administrator at Pivot Charter School all right thanks everybody for being here and like I said at this time I invite our board members to ask any questions anything you're wondering about they um are here to tell you what they know like they do to me the gentleman and the and
028with the beard and the black shirt could you repeat your name and and affiliation please yeah my name is Steve Wright I'm the principal of a cheve charter school Chico okay got it thank you if you're uh wondering these all of these leaders provide very different um School experiences for kids much like all of our Chico Unified Schools U provide wonderful different diverse experiences for kids Matt you mentioned Steve I happened to to join their uh at their visit on a Friday morning and he was up with a guitar at the school assembly on Fridays that they have and I think he loved it probably as much as the kids did uh I also mentioned the baby goats that I've had the extreme pleasure of of looking at over the year and uh just wonderful
029visits with them and uh we really do challenge each other we ask each other honest questions we ask what do you do for this what do you do for that how does it work and again we we've maintained over the years a honest and transparent relationship with uh serving all the kids in our community thank you and thank you everyone for the input that you provided in your report it it it does really give us a picture of what's going on at your school sites what is our Charter School enrollment at the moment moment Miss Kean oh well total enrollment I don't have have off the top of my head we do have nine schools and they range from 100 uh in Chico Unified up until five probably high 500s at Chico Country Day so
030you figure an average in there of the nine schools they do serve quite a bit of Chico students yes thank you and again thank you everyone for um the effort you put into your reports and on that just thank you for the effort you put into our students um chica was very lucky to have a really broad range of educational programs both in chica unified and in the charter world and we're all better for it um I do think that having such a robust Charter presence in Chico actually um makes Chico Unified better too um we see what you guys do we see what works um and I know the energy and effort that you guys put into all of your students um yeah thank you and congratulations Kathy by the way really excited for
031you the majority of the schools represented behind me are uh TK through through five or into 8 we have a couple of high schools but a lot of the school the the kids that come from the charters do matriculate into our into our secondary schools so there is open communication and dialogue with all of our families Al righty well if there are no other questions thank you for your time and and meeting these folks uh I'm happy to call them not only colleagues but friends as well thank you thank you for coming uh next on the agenda is item 9.1.2 um also an informational item uh an update on the Next Generation science standards ngss yeah we're good okay so uh we get to do a little uh presentation today and and uh provide our
032school board here with an update with our progress towards the mtss standards ngss not mtss sorry about that too many uh so but before before we get started I do want to say thank you to all our teachers that took time to help us with the presentation and also for being here uh specifically at a such a busy time of the school year so Kenji uh Masuda and Olivia theer thank you so much our elementary Representatives our Middle School Representatives Kelly Kum Kyle Gunther and Lauren duon did I pronounce that right all right okay and then our high school representative is Mark Kesler and Barbara berelli and uh uh congratulations to Barbara berelli for um all her years of service in Chico Unified School District so thank you she is retiring this year we're going
033to go ahead and get started with our elementary program so I just want to give you a couple minute update kind of where Elementary is with science and what we do with it on a typical basis so 2021 we adopted amplify as our core program um Ng justs aligned so we went through a really rigorous adoption process I want to give kudos Kelly Kum sitting back there also Kelly was the person that kind of facilitated that for us and so she came down we did all kinds of Pilots of various different kinds of the programs are available to look at with it at that time Kelly gathered tons of feedback coalesced it fabulously so um going through all that about a year-long process uh amplifi came out as the number one choice so we went
034with amplify at that point um when we after we adopted amplify we had 15 hours of publisher provided professional development over a couple years for us we knew that wasn't quite enough also it's always hard to pick up a new program especially with a lot of parts to it a lot of Hands-On kinds of things in particular so we had money so we offered additional hours to teachers to have a facilitated walkthrough of the different units and lessons also and we had people like Kelly and Melinda hilderbrand um it's not hinder brand hilderbrand now it's I forget her married name but Melinda's over at mcmanis right now as the assistant principal they walked through and kind of facilitated let people people kind of unpack the units literally and walk through the lesson with them and
035all those kinds of things with it uh let's see one of the big shifts that's coming up I think in the elementary World fifth grade teachers have always kind of felt the big responsibility because they are the elementary score for the state in science basically so they've always kind of felt a little under the gun to be above and beyond with those things so one of the things our DLC has talked about and is going to start next year there's actually a state fibb a miniature interim assessment block that's been put out for 30 fourth and fifth grade students in science so we are going to try it next year everybody's going to have a chance to give it a shot we're going to gather feedback but DLC is looking to have a pilot trial
036year next year where everybody third fourth and fifth grade gives that assessment we can look at the information we get from it so onetime assessment we looked at we think it'll take about an hour or so to do it and the following year if the feedback is generally positive we're going to move and put that as a uh expected assessment and put it on the report card for parents to see those kinds of things also um you said that's being piloted is there one School site that's going to be piloting that no they're all going to do it okay it was a pretty unanimous decision and DLC said the same thing about fifth grade teachers they really want to ensure that there's more science instruction happening with third fourth grade also leading up to that
037fifth grade level so that was one way to kind of help facilitate some of that is have an assessment everybody gives it um like we're doing it next year we're not forcing everybody to but we really strongly encourag them because we want to hear their feedback want them to go through it take it tell us what's wrong or right with it and kind of see where it goes but they were very much wanting to make it a mandatory assessment the following year after everybody has a chance to take a look at it and give it a try at that point um whoops lost where I'm at here so the next couple things come on there we are uh one of the things it's been really um we're really happy with we've done a big push
038with science of reading implementation and it has really lent itself to a lot of integration with reading non-fiction in particular so we've got a couple teachers here Kenji and Olivia and really what I would like them to do is talk about kind of how they weave that into their daily instruction I think before we had a lot of storybook kinds of things a lot of fiction reading kind of with this different structure we put into place for reading now a lot of lot of ability to focus on non-fiction kinds of reading like that with those things so I'm going to let these folks talk a little bit about what they do to weave that in and kind of just just to help understand that integration between science and reading and how they go together and
039how it allows a lot more time for those kids to be doing non-fiction reading IE science kinds of reading also so Ki Olivia come up and share that all thank you Mr solivan um so I had the pleasure of really trying out the science of reading this year I have just finished today the letters uh letters training so with that background knowledge and the big push that chifi is doing I feel more empowered and liberated to teach things that I feel like need to be um taught uh in this case I was actually inspired by my friend Olivia here one day oh of course she was walking with her fifth graders and they all had these science journals these um great little books and they were walking outside and they were started diagramming some trees
040and I asked what are you doing she said we're doing Power Hour this is English language arts we're we're doing the tier one instruction and I said I have to figure out what you're doing because I need to jump on that so after talking with her and seeing how we can use this framework that we have been taught to and apply it to science text um I fell in love with it and I found out my students totally fell in love with it too so when I teach science I do it nearly Monday through Friday five days a week um and this is during my tier one instruction time I'm using non-fiction text from amplify and I brought some examples here if you were interested in looking at it but um all grade levels have
041these texts available to them I'm also using another program called Mystery Science and I'm also using wonders so it's just a lot of curriculum I'm kind of putting them together and coming up with really great thematic units so with that in mind um Mystery Science I feel like has all these Hands-On activities and Elementary School teachers are very familiar with that amplify has that really deep uh investigation into phenomenons so using Mystery Science as kind of that anchor phenomenon that that initial experience to get the kids interested I will then intersperse um these texts that really relate to what we are learning in class now using the framework and the St the learning that I've done this year I know to pull out vocabulary words tier two words words that are cross curriculum and um
042also using the text structure within these books to teach lessons on Fridays we do hand um Hands-On activities or Labs that just continue to push their understanding on these scientific Concepts so I really feel like um I'm able to bring back that thematic teaching using what we've been learning this past couple years and um having a lot of fun I I I feel like the kids are learning so much the discussions are great they're writing they're even kids that are reading at are writing at like a first grade level and third grade they're able to contribute to these discussions and it's amazing what they can um contribute and their reading has also increased well as well I I have a student from Afghanistan that came about a year ago her favorite topic now is science
043and she still can't read at grade level but the fact that she can talk about it she can write about it she can read about it I think that has a lot to do with just the trainings that we received from the district and being able to apply it to this uh curriculum in a from a different perspective I do have to break it apart a little bit to make it work and it's still like a ship that I'm building but we're having a lot of fun and I just can't wait to collaborate with more people and to make this thing work even better um I'm sorry can you please I don't know if you said it and I missed it but can you reintroduce yourself your name you teach and what level you teach
044of course uh my name is Kenji Masuda I'm a third grade teacher at mcmanness elementary school hi Bard uh my name is Olivia theer I teach fifth grade at mcmanis elementary shout out to the Mustangs we don't have like a cool yeah we don't have a cool Bobcat call but I want to start the nay or something like that we're going to make it work um I started here at The District in 2021 as a reading specialist where I gained lots of experience um in learning about the science of reading through the letter trainings and also the amazing team that Christy bson has um created with the reading Specialist Team um when an opportunity for me to become an intermediate teacher came up I grabbed it as soon as possible because I know I wanted
045to integrate science of reading routines into curriculum specifically science and that of amplify um fifth grade science is heavily focused on introducing the natural biological sciences to students so we focus on ecology the water cycle conservation treatment to water we learn about astronomy our solar system and then molecules and matter students are exposed to amplify in my tier one uh Ela routine which happens Monday through Friday for an hour as well and students read Amplified text in step one which is our read aloud step and this is when they're also exposed to slide decks provided by amplify that promotes critical thinking skills um with an knowledge Gap existing at mcmanis our Title One School we're diligently working to ensure that students have experiences that match the learning that is happening within the classroom so providing
046them with enrichment experiences through field trips um that matches content covered in class is a huge passion of mine um we've gone to field trips this year like at the Hatchery to discuss the Salmon's life cycle for Ecology we hiked up to monkey face to talk about geology and also um the astronomy pit that's over there and um we went to the water treatment center and to learn about how water treatment happens and how important water conservation is for our water cycle unit um our grade level uses field journaling or science journaling as Mr massuda mentioned to create um a cumulative memory of what they've learn throughout the year and what they've experienced so we go out um on campus about once a week or once every other week with their field journals and like
047the last one we did was the wind it was a very windy day and how important the wind is and what are the observations that we can make around us about that um we're continuing to build positive Partnerships with local agencies so and applying to Grants so students can attend science camp next year and other enriching field trips to continue um for them to gain experiences to the concepts that are matched in the Amplified curriculum thank you for your time Elementary questions yeah so um just I I um am happy to hear how well it's going in your y'all's classrooms um at mcmanis um I I would be curious to know if that is reasonably reflective across the district in other elementary schools or even at your grade levels or if you guys are kind
048of an exception um or kind of where we're at overall in terms of of getting kids excited and loving science even if they're struggling with with skills but but loving the the process of of engaging with science Concepts and and practices yeah so what we're trying I feel like is pretty new so we're in the infant stages of it still um as for my team um I have one teammate that jumped right on board with me and she's finding the same results that the kids are really engaged with it um but like I said we're still figuring this out because we still have Wonders that we're still using and um we have resources being built for us so that's the main product that most teachers are going to be using right now um I just
049this is right now another option to show that hey you can use this um my other partner who was um not sure as we were building it like if she want to jump on she's starting to um help us out with a lot of things like she created some slide Decks that now we are using because she's very organized like this is a great way to teach this so collaboration is happening right now but I think um I think teachers right now are just learning how to use this strategy so I think we still need a little bit more time to show that there's other ways and other Tech text that we can apply with that so like I said it's empowering and liberating and I just think um we need to show teachers that
050you know we have other um texts that we can use um most most I guess more specifically um what you're meaning is is how you're leaning into using the text that you have available as part of your Ela instruction correct correct as you know um time is always something that we battle and it's hard to make sure that science and like things like social studies are at the for front and with this routine we feel like we can bring more non-fiction and um build something out of it um what Kenji said is we're still building the ship I think that's a really good analogy for this and um collaboration is happening it's new and I would say it like a lot of the science of reading trainings that we went to teachers knew that I
051was doing this already before we were trained because of my background and they were coming to me how are you doing this how are you integrating like I'm so interested let's collaborate let's do things so I think the passion and the interest is there um we just need more time to collaborate and to build this so that it can be districtwide but I I see this definitely being a possibility thank you just follow like what Olivia is talking about the units that they're creating to kind of weed those two things together we actually have paid time for people to put those together we post them on our website or they're on a hub so they're just available to whoever would like to take a look at those and use them within the district with those
052things also and they're vetted we have a couple of our reading teachers Christy looks at them to make sure they're kind of you know making sense following the steps all those kinds of things as well and I will say our DLC likes what they're seeing with these folks have sharing so next year with our professional development they really are looking to spend about two-thirds of the hours we have available focusing on reading science integration and those kinds of things also so it's a big push next year for us um I have a couple followup questions on that DLC um at the elementary SC Elementary level can you remind me what the makeup looks like one from each one from each school okay one% from me school got it thank you and then um other my
053other question is um I know this is kind of a tough one to sort of nail down I don't think it's in a like true true policy but I understand or my previous understanding is that there's a pretty big percentage of time you know daily instruction or over the course of the week like a large percent that's dedicated to ELA and a large percentage that's dedicated to math and like a proportionally very very small percentage that's dedicated to science and social studies and all the and and then also extracurriculars um can you can you like kind of firm that up for me I I would say we don't have a set like this is the rule you shall do this I think with the one thing we really we have to do 20 minutes of
054PE a day of course that's just an ed code requirement the mandated thing yes the other thing is we've really locked teachers in said we really are expecting you to do an hour a day of reading instruction also kind of using this format with those kinds of things beyond that I would say most teachers are doing a good hour of math instruction and they're certainly supplementing more than an hour a day of English language arts also so I think if you were to look and tally up all what the recommendations are from each of the different subject areas teachers would have to be teaching I've heard numbers somewhere between 8 to nine hours a day to kind of Hit the marks from what recommended from the Publishers and those kinds of things with it so
055there's just really no way to do it short of having an eight or nine hour school day to get everything covered at the level you're talking about how many hours don't I don't want minutes because I don't want to do math right now how many hours are there instructional time of instructional time is there fourth and fifth grade's 300 minutes of instructional time every day so you take out 90 for ELA typically you take out 50 for Ma math you take out 20 for PE you take out 10 for Transitions and you're down to maybe so 5 hours and so sorry I'm just trying to like do a pie in my head so generally three hours is dedicated to ELA um reading and math and then 20 minutes to PE and then and then there's
056lots of other things I'm not being I'm not being judgmental I'm trying to understand kind of like the makeup traditionally across the district in our Elementary classrooms and so the opportunity here is to have some of that kind of end diagram overlap of your reading time and science instruction so you can grow that number of minutes dedicated to teaching science because you're overlapping it with your reading instruction it's not like an added to it's a compliment well stated that's really what they're talking about doing with reading and science kind of overlapping them like that and and we could probably also look into that with math and I'm sure that there are teachers that are doing that as well I would say if you kind of look at what what's happening with it like like the
057expectation of reading and writing happening definitely a nice overlap with math kinds of responses also with things well everybody knows this is no secret that this is something I'm passionate about um and I would just encourage any any folks at the elementary level whether you're in leadership or just getting started to please encourage the board or um you know site leadership for that professional development time or whatever we can do to try to support and Foster that growth I think that you're on you're on a good track um to what I think is a a more comprehensive and um holistic way to approach science uh experience you know instead of calling it science learning or science instruction it really is an experience and that's how we that's how we Inspire kids to to lean into
058those topics so I appreciate you both being here tonight thank you for sharing thank you for your time thank you good evening just really briefly I'm going to share um for each level represented tonight a quick overview of the California science test scores from 2023 um all the charts are the same so I think if I explain it once um I won't have to again um this is the percentage of students meeting or achieving standard on the California science test or cast uh in fifth grade uh the light red line there is the state average for 2023 so what we see there is um a number of our schools I'm sorry I'm going completely blank because like Caitlyn it's kind of hard for me to do math at this time of day um we we
059see um four of the schools below the state average um six of our our 12 elementary schools um increased um we see which means half of our elementary schools took dip um last year from the year before so there's definitely Room to Grow here and any questions about this um just uh wondering what where the 2023 data is for Emma Wilson and Park View do we know about that oh okay yeah yeah if there's right no change got it okay stayed static yeah thank you um and then just with the caveat that these are fifth graders being tested correct in 2022 and 2023 which means that they would have been second and third grade through the pandemic and I like at this time with all of our testing I kind of take it all with
060a bit of a grain of salt right and only two years of data right thank you now we get to go on to our secondary group um our middle schools adopted amplifi in 2021 is a core program and then yes amplify is ngss aligned and then our high schools last year adopted ck12 as their Core Curriculum and yes ck12 is ngss aligned and with this I'm going to start to invite our Middle School teachers Bidwell Jr hi I'm Lauren Jan and I teach at Bidwell Jr I'm a seventh grade um life science teacher there um so prior to the adoption of the Amplified curriculum um we started to align our own um units and our own assignments to ngss so um we were asked to kind of give an update about how amplify is going
061and then how collaboration supports our efforts towards um becoming more ngss aligned and I think because we started already sort of ngss ifying our own um lessons we uh we see amplify as more supplementing us than um us supplementing amplify um we really appreciate and we like the articles that are embedded with an amplify uh students are really able to interact and annotate and um those are really powerful um the simulations are really also pretty well done and students are engaged as long as they only do them once um amplifi tends to go back and back and repeat um and so a 12-year-old and me um can tend to get a little bit um bored of the repeti repetitiveness and we do really also appreciate the the hooks that amplify can provide um they really
062do try to uh have some of those real world problems that students can relate to um in terms of collaboration Bidwell this year we um started a program uh or idea model called Observation inquiry that kind of roughly followed the AO model that we did a couple of years ago um and what what what we did at the beginning of the year four teachers science teachers myself included um were given the opportunity to um meet together to plan for lessons so we were given some time outside of our classrooms to plan for lessons and we specifically chose to focus on the um cross cutting concept of cause and effect mechanisms um we met we planned uh we actually developed a model that went along with uh claim evidence reasoning writing as well because at Bidwell
063we're doing a schoolwide cross um discipline push initiative to um get students to really have the stamina for that kind of argumentative writing writing and to give them some Frameworks so we me and the other three teachers included were able to develop a model that had to do with cause effect and then the mechanism in between and aligning that with claim evidence and reasoning and then we had sort of a basic cause and effect uh mechanism and then we built in more challenging one as we go after we uh developed that tool and introduced it to our students um and so we we got to a observe the first teacher doing this lesson and then immediately after we're able to talk about how it went ask questions um and then you know maybe change some
064of the future lessons um unfortunately for unforeseen and foreseen issues uh like health things our team has sort of disbanded um disbanded I mean uh so uh but I that's a to be continued I assume that we will will continue doing that um to further our efforts in in ngss um and then like I said the schoolwide CER initiative is very aligned with um ngss as well that um argumentative scientific writing um and then we at Bidwell were pretty lucky that if anybody has questions or try something out um we pretty much anybody can come check it out and everybody that is a is a climate that we've established at Bidwell that we're pretty proud of so I I I kind of think maybe this would be a good question to ask many of the
065the teachers presenting but um over the course of the three years that your students are going through your program um what would you say are the strengths that they are coming out of that with out of out of the way that science is being taught at your school site um I I I think our our students were because of that schoolwide push for the last couple of years with claim evidence reasoning writing I think that those that's something that we have um been really proud of pushing across not just in science in a science classroom using the same language throughout um so that students recognize it and multiple different spaces because they're getting a lot of reading and writing practice in in your in your classes yeah yeah great yeah thank you Chico JR hello
066and thank you for inviting all of us here to talk about our science programs my name is Kelly Kum and I am a seventh and eighth grade science teacher at Chico Junior High School and we very similar to Bidwell very similar experience um are using amplify as a supplement to our current existing programs due mainly to to the repetitiveness of the curriculum um we've also seen um that amplify has some significant gaps in content that we're having to supplement as well the simulations are really good the introductory phenomena are really good the um reading material is also really really well done and engaging but um it can be a little bit one-dimensional because it gets locked into a store so we just like to broaden it and make it a little bit more personalized for
067our students based on their current interest levels in sixth grade we're following the dcis for year-long planning and curriculum mapping the engineering practices are implemented when we can Implement them and all of the Cross cutting concepts are integrated in all of our units can you clarify a little bit more what the dcis are the dcis are the discipline content it's the content so it's the um the scientific information that you would have traditionally taught your students but instead of being one-dimensional there it is taught Through The Eyes of the scps which are the science and engineering practices and integrated with the cross cutting Concepts like cause and effect so you might we might be looking at mutations as the DCI just the content and students are engineering genes and U Gene structures and we would
068be looking at C cause and effect of what happens when an amino acid gets changed and results in a mutation so it's more three-dimensional less less of the facts that we saw with a No Child Left Behind standards um dcis are taught through the lens of the scps so we integrate the science and engineering practices into every single one of our units and we try to implement as many as we can in each of our lessons argumentation is our main focus we have a schoolwide CER Focus where the science teachers met with the English teachers and we made common vocabulary so English teachers tend to use thesis or claim uh textual evidence and commentary and science tends to use claim evidence and reasoning so we include both so that kids are not getting confused when
069they come from their English classes and they end up in their science classes or vice versa so we have sentence frames on our walls so they can kind of identify the different structures within an argument so I would say in answering your question Miss Doby um that you asked what our kids are coming out with strengths it would be modeling and argumentation associated with that modeling so kids are getting really good at drawing pictures of what their thinking is showing their thinking through Visual pictures and labeling those pictures or bu constructing models and then developing an argument to help explain how that model works at the mechanism level um we are using ck12 to supplement because there is a lot there's different types of reading it's more of your traditional textbook reading um we use
070that in conjunction with the articles that amplify provides which are more real life applications so we just feel like it's more dimensionally applicable for them and gives them some reading practice um we also use fat simulations to help to help help supplement the learning as well because as Bidwell mentioned the amplify program can often times have kids revisit a single simulation four five six or seven times and that can get pretty redundant for 12year olds who are used to scrolling through social media really fast like lot lots of entertainment said to have them see the same thing over and over and over gets pretty boring for them our challenges um like I mentioned amplify has some significant gaps in content and it can be very repetitive for example um amplifi does teach mutations but they
071don't teach protein synthesis so without an understanding of how proteins are made and how DNA is replicated it's really hard for students to understand how a mutation takes place uh so they they were coming out the first time with that that unit as it was almost like it was a magical thing that happened um so we supplemented that pretty heavily we've seen we've we've also seen some gaps in um chemistry as well um let's see so we are seeing in our students gaps in math skills and we are going to begin working with our math department to come come up with common terminology seems to us in in science that it's issues with basic number sense and we're not sure if it's a vocabulary issue or what so we need to explore that that's that's
072our plan for next year um inconsistent vocabulary in methodology especially in math between math and science is something that we need to work on because it's resulting in student in confusion with students an example would be the calculation of slope for acceleration in math it's called growth factor and so when you have a negative slope in acceleration it's just deceleration students don't connect the word of growth factor in their mind growing means going up so there's a little bit of confusion there um we need more access to content related literature but that's something that all teachers struggle with we have to find information that's um valid and meets our students and their interests like right now my fifth period is very interested in football so we're doing a lot of physics through football and my
073sixth period loves baseball so we're doing a lot of physics through baseball so I I need to find a lot of relevant material to help engage them to find the application of Science in the world outside of the classroom um science is always it's always difficult to do science on a limited budget I think we have $1,800 and that's split across five teachers I think and it science is just very expensive so that's always that's an ongoing challenge that's been since this all started um we do need to have time to create supplemental NG GSS aligned activities due to the limitations in curricula there's no such thing as a perfect curricula teachers have always cherry-picked the good stuff out of the curricula that's purchased um but we have had less time as we shift to
074ngss to develop all that supplemental information that we can also ensure is aligned to the ngss standards so we would like a little bit more time to do that but you know it's very busy um so one of the solutions that we propose is creating space and time for all the teachers at all three middle schools to collaborate on what's working at each site and to share units like we have done in the past we're feeling pretty isolated at times and that's I think that's just something to be expected as we come out of a pandemic and we're implementing new standards and we're we're faced with a lot of new challenges but um I would say overall it's going pretty good the the new curricula was implemented starting during the pandemic right correct when was
075the last time that there was collaboration opportunities among the three middle schools for science I think for specifically to focus on science um units I think it was pre pandemic good yeah yeah pre pandemic before 2020 correct okay thank you Marsh come on up good evening thank you for the opportunity to share tonight uh my name is Kyle Gunther and I'm a sixth and seventh grade science teacher at Marsh Junior High um so in our adoption of amplify four years ago uh the marsh team has stuck to using the amplify curriculum the first couple years and similar to Bidwell and Chica JR we've seen that there have been um a number of benefits as well as some drawbacks to the curriculum to highlight some of the benefits the Articles have been um really nice they're
076short and sweet to the point which I think the students enjoy but it provides us an opportunity to work on reading skills and add in things like how to properly annotate articles and extract information from them also the Hands-On activities and I say that kind of both strength and drawback there are some really good Hands-On activities in there but there aren't a whole lot in quantity um so it's provided us as a team an opportunity to go in and add some extra Hands-On activities that we feel really supplement the material and also the simulations uh there are a number of really strong simulations throughout the curriculum for example the Earth Moon and Sun simulation does a really good job of showing students multiple views how we view the Moon from Earth how the moon rotates
077around Earth and then the sun separate around the earth yeah sun earth rotating and then moon rotating around the earth um and then some of those drawbacks that we've identified so we we find that the phenomenon that guide each of the units some of them are pretty strong but others um seem to kind of drag on throughout the unit and they don't present a whole lot of interest in the students and so we're we're trying to step away in some of those cases of phenomena and um introduce some other engaging activities the engineering challenges a lot of them are kind of left open-handed to the students as far as here is a proposal go and and figure it out on your own there's not a whole lot to supplement each of those and then the
078Sims again I bring up um because they they are very repetitive and and 100% agree agree with the other two sites that you looking at the Sim two or three times a week five or six times um in a chapter can be quite a bit and it's nice to be able to step back away from the computers so two of the big things that we've really worked on in the last couple years are introducing more Hands-On activities and Engineering challenges as well as incorporating place-based phenomena in sixth grade one that I'd like to highlight this year was our stop motion moon phases project so at the end of the unit after students had explored how the moon phases occurred we had rented iPads from U bu County Office of Ed which had a stop motion
079program on it that allowed students to create their own models and then demonstrate the way the moon revolves around the Sun around the earth and while that's happening how what the um Moon changes from our view on Earth looking out at it in seventh grade the microbiome unit uh a couple times comes back to photos and their cartoon photos of pet tree dishes and bacteria slowly growing on those pet tree dishes uh we decided to take it one step further and put together a Hands-On activity where students are given a p tree dish with their lab partner and have the opportunity to do a mouth swab and actually grow the bacteria on the dish and see it firsthand in front of them rather than looking at cartoon images in the in the slides that we're
080presenting and then eighth grade our eighth grade science team this year uh went through some old curriculum the uh CPO curriculum and found a car in ramp um lesson which actually had a physical car in a ramp and they they used it in the force and motion to look at how raising the ramp caused more speed um eighth grade is not my strong suit I apologize uh but along those lines and then incorporating place-based phenomena we this year in sixth grade did an upper Park field trip to look at the geology currently the amplify curriculum um in the Rock transformation unit look specifically at um the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains and comparing how rocks from the M Rocky Mountains get to the Great Plains and while that's a great example of it we
081also have in a magnificent example just a couple minutes down the road from here and so to be able to get the kids out and look at this firsthand we felt was really really strong and then our eighth grade science team took our eighth graders to the but and Glen County Career Day and this career day focused specifically on eighth graders and the careers that we have here in our County that align with the the units that our eighth graders are learning so next steps that we feel would be really beneficial um to continue to collaborate together as a team on site and uh look really strongly at amplify and and see where we can continue to fill in some gaps and build those lessons that we're already proud of doing and then also I
082think a good natural step um as Chico junor pointed out would be to come back and look and see what other sites are doing as well it sounds like there's a lot going on both at Bidwell and Chico Jr um that we could all share and and see how we're adding to our curriculum is it safe to assume that you three didn't collaborate on your slides they're very similar yes yeah um I I love that um you guys took the sixth graders up to look at the geology of Upper Park and it made me think how amazing it would be if there was more opportunities for inner distri cross collaboration if there was you know one teacher that was really strong at doing that and coordinated all three schools to be able to do that
083field trip and so it takes so not everybody's Reinventing the wheel right I know everybody's so tired and just to do one really big cool thing a year is a huge lift um and so that would be an amazing opportunity to be able to share those you know different passions and expertise across the three schools in the district I have a question for just general Middle School um any of you can help respond um so it's not specifically for you Kyle um can you help explain for us just really briefly how phenomena based learning is different because so many people in this room experienced not that same type of approach to Science Education um and so um ngss really focuses on phenomena based learning and just how how how should we be retooling our brains
084to to think about what this should look like in the classroom do any of you want to just give like the 30 to 60 second shiel mute how you're the expert with phenomena based learning typically what we do it's 5V learning cycle um we gauge our students to see where their interest level are is and then we find some sort of phenomenon or thing to teach through that lens and then we explore all different aspects so for example with my fifth period class that I was telling you that likes football we watched a football clip and we talked about why the coaches Place certain players at the line versus the ones that are running and that all led into momentum and was really good uh connection for students um I do have a a group
085of students in my fourth period class who are really interested in cars so we learned that one through Crash Test Dummies and we looked at what happens to the body as it continues to move forward and why it does that so really coming up with these really relevant culturally sensitive too work can on the machupa tribe uh with science projects some of their introductory Phenomenon with um local ecology and and like fire ecology stuff uh finding ways for students to engage in authentic ways with the curriculum through things or phenomena that they find really interesting so I would think that would be the best explanation so the concepts the the dcis are taught not from like specifically just being told the facts but they're they're exploring them and learning them as they explore the phenomenon
086yeah so the dcis which stand for I just remembered I had like a brain fog are the disciplinary core ideas and those are our content ideas so we find something really interesting and then we talk about like for example momentum which is mass times velocity how that applies with the the crash test dummy that continues to move forward so we find current Rel relevant interesting phenomenon for the students to engage with so that they're more engaged so they're more Curious they ask more authen authentic questions we're moving away from Facts like students will know how to this is more like students are going to interact with the curriculum and learn how to be um um arguers I tell that to all of the parents at back to school night get ready for your par your
087kids to learn how to be really good arguers based in evidence and to provide sound reasoning um so it's more of a holistic less linear more of a spiraling curriculum that allows students to engage with content from different angles you really think our students need better skills arguing with us I'm not sure about that they their technique needs a little bit of work the evidence the evidence they don't have the evidence down yet because I want it that's the that's typically what we get so thank you anyways president Dolby I I did want to answer your question with regards to what do you see in the classroom and I do definitely want to share this with you because let's be honest here everything and anything thing in terms of facts that you want to know
088I mean can be found on your cell phone just about right a good 90% of facts and it's growing exponentially by the day every single day so when you walk into a classroom and I think you could say this just about every single science teacher out here I'll tell you what you see you see doctors you see Engineers you see students taking data applying it and problem solving I've seen people die and and and students diagnose and it is the coolest thing for them to say okay you know what uh this uh horse has this issue let's try this to fix this problem it is the neatest thing to watch students and and them to go wow I'm actually doing what a doctor is doing I'm doing what a vet is doing so that's to
089me ngss through the lame person's eyes and say right um next yes so on the 2023 cast test um which is taken in eighth grade at the junior high levels only so eth grade only uh we saw all three of the sites that presented tonight um well above the state average um Chico Jr showing significant growth um Center for Alternative Learning and um I believe that is Oakbridge as well down there um were below um all three sites that presented tonight again though well scoring well above State average now we get to share High School Chico High got Mr Kesler coming up good evening I'm very excited to be here because I've been looking for an opportunity to thank this board because um a little more than two years ago on it was March 9th
0902022 we brought a proposal the district I presented to you and the district brought a proposal to introduce the three course model for Next Generation science standards and you approved it so thank you um I have some really uh really compelling and exciting data to share with you and the reason we brought that model to you is because it it it modernized Science Education it created a more engaging experience for our students and it addressed some P pervasive uh issues of equity in Science Education and be when we came to you we had identified that we were teaching in a two- tiered system we had a tra that was essentially a deadend track that was predominantly populated with students of color low socio economic students students with learning disabilities and English language Learners and it
091was um it was a track that was hard to get out of and hard to advance out of the other track we had was an advanced College Prep track which had a series of of roadblocks and barriers that was PR Ving those students from achieving at a high level and we had very low enrollment in our AP classes as a result of that so we brought that proposal as a way to remedy those situations and we brought to you the 10 dilemmas I have um can we click on that presentation up there so the link underneath there and go to the first slide uh um yes that one thank you so that one shows this is what we did thanks to your approval of the three course model at the top you see biology physics
092and chemistry biology of the Living Earth physics of the universe and chemistry of in the earth system these are the three courses and they replaced our two-tier system and created heterogeneous grouping so now all of our students take these classes so we're no longer separating out groups they're all taking together together uh We've introduced we've um are the lead subject at Chico high for the Cod te special ed co- te model we have a CO two coach teach classes in biology and one in physics next year we'll add another one in physics and possibly chemistry so we have three now we'll have four or five this has moved students out of basic special education classes where they were not getting the experience of a general education science class and getting that hands-on experience so we've
093moved them in there and we've at the same time we've created a pathway where any student can choose the pathway they want and if they're excited about science which they they appear to be they can uh take our for elective courses three AP classes and anatomy and physiology so we presented to you 10 dilemmas next slide we could uh and that's really hard to read um but I wanted to put those up there because uh those are the dilemmas the link there if you want to look at it on your own that link is to the dilemmas that were presented two years ago and I wanted to show that what the dilemmas were and how we've addressed them and how we plan to continue to address them in the future one of those I really
094want to point out out is we number eight is attracting highly qualified science teachers and that was something we hoped this would do and we were very successful in that we we've hired three new teachers each with about 12 years experience experience in ngss and that's really really revitalized our department and it's exactly what we had hoped um and all of those have been addressed to some degree or another and I'd like to show the next SL slide which is some um some to show you where we've made these improvements so and I want to say that the way we made this work was we really wanted it to work so you passed the proposal and we my colleagues approached it with Incredible enthusiasm they poured hundreds of hours of their own time in the
095summer after school before school if you come to Chic OHA you're going to find us there at 7:30 in the in the morning and see us there till 5: uh we're collaborating constantly so was this a real enthusiastic approach to this and there's our special aded students in college prep science courses and you can see directly after the this proposal past we've had a steady increase those are 80 students that would not be in general education classes otherwise that are now in our classes and we're differentiating and providing supports for them so they can feel successful one of the concerns was oh no it'll be too hard and they'll feel unsuccessful and they'll be crushed by that but that's not what's happened we support them um we collaborate on how to help them we're working
096with the Special Education team on a daily basis we meet with them as a group um consistently and I wouldn't say it's been perfect of course it hasn't but um we we are revising and adjusting as needed to support those students uh the next slide shows something we didn't expect the students have really responded to this program we've had our enrollment in science classes increased by 20% in the last two years we have over 200 more students taking science classes even though enrollment a Cho highs dropped 5% and there's an excitement on our campus about science they want to take more they only have to take two classes but we're over three classes average now and they want even more in fact I was just mentioning to a colleague it's almost a little overwhelming they're
097so excited about science that we're having to open new sections and make room for them our classes are bigger it's a good problem and it's really exciting to see that increase on the next slide we show one of the things we did and this is as a quote from the framework from the California Department of Education it shows that one of their uh statements or one of their challenges to us was all standards all students you need to understand the old system only about sometimes as few as 30 and sometimes as many as 60 students out of 500 took physics and and then many of our students never got earth science and so our two trck system had an earth science track and a physics track and so we took to heart to refute the
098com notion that learning physics is only for students in advanced math or that taking earth science is only for students who are not on the college track all standards all students so we address that we hire two new physics teachers we've gone from two sections of physics um to 12 this year so now physics is for everyone and so that has been a big part of opening it up students get a choice between physics and chemistry that's really helped because now they're choosing which class they want to take many are doubling up are some of our Advanced students doubling up they're taking physics and chemistry in the same year so that they can get into AP classes sooner and the the next slide shows our AP enrollment which to me is a real validation of
099what we're doing we've gone from an average of about 40 students in AP classes to over 200 and these are students that are challenging themselves they're excited about science these are hard classes and they're having uh an good enough experience in our three course model that they're challenging themselves and taking it at a very unexpected level so we we had hoped this would work and of course it's early so there's there's more to come uh we' hoped this would work and we're as surprised as anyone is how well it's working and how excited they are I I know you're asking how ngss works and one of our mantras is explore before explain and that's hard for a teacher because we love explaining we love to explain and we're just dying to explain you need a
100day or two of exploring maybe three you need a hook you need a story you need you need a to to struggle to diagram to figure it out this week we're having to figure out batteries and they have to draw what a battery is but they don't know what they are and and then we we lead them to it when I describe it is you would never lead read a mystery model uh a a history no mystery novel sorry if you went and read the last page first the whole point is you want to draw them along have them excited they want to know what's next they come in the next day what are we going to we want to know the answer you're going to have to find out you it's it's going to
101take a while to figure this out and so ngss is about engaging them from the start eliciting student questions the student questions Drive the curriculum they decide where we go and I love how Kelly described that she's letting the students decide if it's baseball football or cars each class is different the students Drive the exploration then they're engaged and then potentially they get to the then we get to the explanation I've got a question this has kind of been on my mind as long as we've been talking about this here and uh frankly I've said this before but when I listen to your descriptions of it and when I see the statistics in the in the graphs I kind of regret that it wasn't like this when I was in school you know there was
102kind of a I was never an AP science person not by a long shot um I was liked the Natural Sciences um based on every description I've heard I think I could have you know done okay and maybe even gotten a thing or two out of the classes that you're describing inspite not having been you know particularly Smart in this category based on the standard that I think existed when I was going through um Chico Unified you know there was kind of an otherness about the AP science students you know I mean they they they were seems to me operating in a realm that was pretty highly theoretical and they had sort of personalities and dispositions that could kind of sit there and take this and and thrive in that environment you know and uh
103you know I think of like my doctor you know if I had like some serious problem like like that I would never understand you know there's a part of me that kind of still is nostalgic for the idea that that my doctor would be some really wonky you know off in their own world person who this is their wheelhouse understanding this thing that I could never understand you know um I'm just going to ask you a just a question that is genuinely on my mind as we look at this um has have the standards on in some in any way in your opinion in any way have we sort of slipped is it is it less rigorous now that we're implementing this you know than it was once upon a time so yeah great question
104um I would say it's more grigor and that uh instead of and someone mentioned all the information on our phone instead of the old way which is a lot of memorizing and memorizing facts and repeat them back now they have to solve problems critical thinking diagram explain and I think it's really important to point out that we can make anything hard hard does not mean learning hard's just hard I can make it hard by doubling the homework for no reason I can make it hard by not providing support to my students I can provide make it hard by not explaining it well it can be hard we're Math teachers now it could be hard if I introduce because we don't used to be there was a prerequisite for math get into these classes and so
105they were expected to know the math and if they didn't they were spit out but now we support them and teach the math so I would say it's not as hard to learn in these class classes but it's more rigorous I have more slides but I've taken a lot of time and these slides that I have after this tell how we're doing this and they speak a lot to our collaboration they speak to the three course um the co- te model um how we're addressing who benefits how we're addressing math literacy scores and science literacy um an Ela in each of our courses we're doing a lot more scientific writing uh they used to be a time when all the tests were multiple choice now we as a department agreed that we give both multiple
106choice and written or requiring more um emphasis on Ela uh math is is emphasized to to a degree where they understand how to use the math and apply it rather than just robotic do it and the next slide talks about how we're doing it and it's continuous collaboration before school during prep after school during lunch we never stop collaborating uh we're just in each other's rooms all the time we're watching each other do the lesson how's it going for you oh you need to change this and refine that explore before explain which I mentioned we have all common assessments every subject is using the same assessment we're on the same lesson on the same day all the teachers in on the subject so that we can work together and track what we're doing and refine
107we're using a lot of data analysis we did the interim cast test this year which is new this year so we have data on how our students are how prepared they are for cast for the California sorry use the acronym the California science test and we are reflecting and we're doing a two-day collaboration after school so as soon as schools out we're going to spend two days together as a team and reflect and refine our units and prepare for next year I just have one question um that I I haven't really got a sense of yet um talking with any of you folks um how how for your freshman um teaching team do you feel that that's starting to be a good like continuation that students are coming in having kind of gone through what
108we've heard the middle schools have been doing and or have been trying to do and and students are used to now kind of this this momentum in phenomeno based instruction and argumentation and writing more writing and involved with the the science classes I know I I collaborate on my own time with Kelly and some of the other teachers at Chico Jr but not not the other schools we need time to articulate that uh we are missing the loss of science DLC has is being felt we used to I I met with you pre pandemic and all the Middle School teachers three three or four times a year that was just um invaluable and so there's any way we can get that collaboration time back it doesn't we we would make a lot of progress if
109we were articulating between elementary middle and middle and high school better um and I I think that would make a big difference and it I think it would be a small investment that would pay big dividends and two I mean from my perspective it would be an improvement not just for science but also those writing skills and those reading skills and those exploration and Discovery skills and just genuinely engaging with school itself because science is dipping into all of those aspects math as well um yeah I the more and more I teach the more I realized that growth only occurs with collaboration lots of time together building on ideas when teachers work in isolation there's only so much we can do um and so that the more we can emphasize that and support that the
110better thank you um I want to thank you for having that attitude and uh for taking your job so seriously and I just have one more question for you has anyone ever told you you're the spinning image of Matthew MCC no but I'll take that thank you and now Barbara berelli from PV thank you good evening um this will be my last board meeting as I come as a parent um or a grandparent I have two children grandchildren in the school system now Little J Creek um so our ck12 um is basically our textbook our electronic textbook we're using that for mainly for the dcis that's the discipline core ideas um most units are we have a fantastic team we've been collaborating for more than 10 years using the deor model that John started at
111our school we still do that um at least once a week most of the biology teachers are meeting two to three times a week um Ry and I have been teaching chemistry together so we meet twice a week so we plan our lessons we plan our Labs um all our units are an overarching question and that the kids have to try to fit solve the answer using different simulations experiments um uh case studies we also use a lot um for the biology the has units um we were part of the medical pathway um at PV and so um a lot of those are ngss also um where the the kids are a doctor or a medical professional and they have to diagnose a patient um they actually run medical tests um we do DNA typing
112Even in our freshman classes and so for example they had to do DNA typing for PKD polycystic kidney disease to find out if it was passed on that's when we were doing the genetics unit and um so the money that was used supposed to be used for the textbooks is being used to give the kids more Hands-On experiences for models um we still trying to figure out which veneer software we want to use so that the kids in physics can be um using those on on their Chromebooks so so um so that part we're still we'll still trying to figure out um but it has has been a change in thinking using um ngss um I do think you know we tend to talk down the dcis um but really that's the foundation that's holding
113everything together um there's still content knowledge the kids have to learn there's still content knowledge that they're going to be tested on in in May on this cast test so we have to make sure that they know the knowledge but through this other way of teaching it and so that they can defend their answer but there still is that base of knowledge that they have to have to know so it's twofold it's not just the experiences but it's also the knowledge that they gain through this process so I just wanted to make sure that I kind of brought that back into it um on the unit organiz ation up there says like for example one of the questions for our biology classes is why do some people get cancer and why do some people don't
114and so we looked at the genetics of that we looked at um how does changes in the epigenetics which is basically how does our lifestyle affect whether or not we get cancer and so the kids had to do some research to figure out why does some people get lung cancer who've never smoked in their life okay or why does someone have a more chance of getting colon cancer so we brought those questions up and the kids had to go through and through different case studies through experimentation through um the gel electroforesis they were able to um come come up with a not a solution but more of an idea of what what causes it so um so in that respect I the the focus is has changed for ngss for both I think both schools
115and actually all the way through you know 5ifth through 12th um speaking from elementary I'm seeing like my my grandkids are doing more and more science which is fantastic my older two went through the school system and Nary school a lot of times they'd have a teacher who didn't do science all year but I'm seeing it coming up I'm seeing more and more kids coming in with that that enthusiasm and that science background that questioning strategy background which is fantastic do you have any questions I do um first of all hi nice to see you it's been a while um know if I'm qualified to speak you're seeing as I if I squeaked by with a D in your class I would have been a I'll be very surprised um but in all seriousness U
116looking at the the data that's presented on the next slide um um Pleasant Valley's uh cast scores jumped like 10% over one year in terms of student SCH profis do you have any idea in terms of practices or curriculum or anything that might have contributed to that that we can replicate um boy I you know one part of the cast is the the children I mean you know you'll get different children every year and some are be just really strong and and others just need more more more help so I I can't I can't say that we did anything um extraordinary um I think again the for us I mean when John um introduced the deor model um to me that was um mainly because when I first came to PV in ancient times 33
11731 years ago um all the science teachers were doing their own thing and then um I felt that that there was a huge inequity because you'd have someone who is who is following the standards and then you'd have somebody who was not and to me as a parent that was um repulsive that one child would get a different education than another and um so when we went to the defor model and so we all give the same test um we all looked at the standards we all um teach the same type of activities um that was that was to me fantastic because no matter who you got you got the same content you had the same experiences and so the fact that we're still doing it I don't know 12 years later um is is
118fantastic and I'm and I feel good about my you know my leaving um with regards to that it's in good hands that we still believe in that model um I think the only main thing that's that's changed in the in the ne the last couple years is we're just trying to to incorporate more of the kids figuring it out um but we're still adhering to the content so the kids still have to know the content so that um they have to be able to use the vocabulary the science vocabulary in answering questions um it's not just oh like for example I teach mostly chemistry so it's not who here's the chemicals you know explore but you have to be able to defend it using the vocabulary and use it properly um so that they it's
119a pairing of the experience and the um DD I don't know if that helped at all congrats on a fabulous career oh thank you in your retirement yeah thank you yeah it's a thing thank you for being here thank you all right so the high school cast uh scores have already been referred to tonight um one of the thing couple things I want to point out about these scores is both of our comprehensive high schools are far above the state average um on the cast test uh as of last year uh another thing I would like to point out in the in the context of tonight's conversation which is um dealt with the three course Model A lot um the first uh Chico Unified students take this test typ most typically in 11th grade next
120year's 11th graders will be the first 11th graders coming through Chico Unified to have three years of the three course model so I would caution you against um using this as any sort of evaluation of of that implementation moving on to my next slide um I was asked to kind of replicate um some of what Chico High had provided um to add PV to add some to add a comparison between the two sites um these charts are are are going to be slightly different a lot different in some cases due to the fact that I am looking at percentages um all of the data that we're showing here um is derived from transcript data which means students finished a term and received a grade um enrollment in the course um is irrelevant unless a student
121um received a grade at the end in some cases it's any grade and in some cases it's C or above I'll point that out as I go so first of all in the top left you can see the percentages the percentage of um special education students um completing terms in a college prep science course um this is includes science electives and you can see that uh Chico High grew significantly last year um and even increased a little bit the first semester of this year PV is making a more modest growth there as you can see moving across the top um students completing terms in any science course College Prep or not um has has grown um more significantly at Chico high in recent years but both sites are are relatively similar students uh completing terms
122in AP science you can see PV um has maintained a little bit higher than Chico High um as of the first semester of this year as far as um sections offered within the three course model over the last couple years you can see the first um four bars in the bar graph there are um The Living Earth um bio and the Living Earth is kind of the the commonly put way of saying it um we can see to start off with um Chico high was significantly higher than PV this year more evened out um in this year chemistry in the earth system you can see relatively similar number of sections then we see a significantly higher number of sections in physics of the Universe um in 23 24 all right so a lot of zigzags
123here so I want to um take a few moments to explain um what you're looking at here is data by grade level um so we can kind of start to paint a picture of what students are doing by grade level at each site um and and this is students who are past ing an adg science or a science adg uh elective course so we can see um both sites um are relatively similar with a with a quite a large Spike um in the last year um of students earning Credit in ad science or science um adg elective courses the chart on the right gives the percentage of um oh I'm sorry this chart on the left was of all students taking a science class so this gives you an idea are are kids taking non-oled
124prep science at what rate and what at what rate are they taking College Prep science so if they take a science class again on the left um we can see a significant Rise um in the percentage of students taking a to G courses on the right hand side we look at percentages of all students um earning Credit in an 8 of g science or science 8 of G elect of course um and we can see um in most cases here a pretty big uh increase over the last couple years which is great to see and here what we're looking at is the percentage of students earning 8 to g science credits by school and grade um the chart on the left is any course in the three course model so we can see grades 10
12511 and 12 at both sites have shown significant increases um in the percentage of students um earning credits in the three course model over the last couple years um Chico High seeing um more of an increase for 10th 11th and 12th grade it as far as AP courses go um both sites have seen a little bit of a downturn in science AAP course um credit earning um and uh we we have seen the introduction as was presented by Chic oh high the The increased numbers of students taking that um physics of the universe class any questions I know a lot went into that presentation so just thank you for spending the time doing that for us um I don't have any further questions and I don't know if any board members do um this is
126informational so there's no action to be taken on this item and um no speakers signed up for this item um but I do think that we got some good information to think about um especially in terms of you know how how to help Foster that collaboration that it sounds like just about everybody asked for tonight um and that uh everything sounds like it's going well and is on the right track so I appreciate all of you for all the work that you're doing out there um I I'm speaking for myself but I'm I'm I'm sure that everybody else feels the same way um so with that um I think that we are going to move to the next item but we're going to do a brief um 10-minute break um before we move on so
127we will come back at e e e all righty we did take a brief 10 minute break and we are returning to our regular board meeting Open Session uh and we will move to item 9.2.1 discussion action for the 2024 summer projects update hello everyone so I'm here tonight to get board approval for summer projects or 820,000 as you can see the projects that we have right now are for a gym at Chico High jym roof at Chico High we have um bleacher work that needs to be done at Chico Jr and we have a courty guard irrigation part at Chico high again so anything that's left from that that amount of money we have will bounce down to the in-house projects that we have at the bottom did you have any questions on this
128is this all you're going to be doing this summer I hope there's other things well there is other things all of the it all depends on how much we can how much cash each we can get but yes that we will be doing other stuff absolutely and it'll all be it'll all be that stuff will be done in house I knew you were going to do other stuff and this just to clarify this is just the maintenance side yes the maintenance side so we certainly have all of our summer cleaning going on by our custodial staff and Team Cleaning and that's where I was going to head to next yes which is summer cleaning is a big part of what we do it doesn't look like we have any further questions um and there's no
129public comment so I will ask for a motion I move approval of these projects second do all right we have a motion by Mr tennis and a second by Mr Lando to approve the 2024 Center projects update our last vote was unanimous so we can um all just give a Voice vote for all those in favor I I opposed none are we okay yep thank you thank you you made me think I missed something um all right we're going to move on to 9.2.2 which is an informational item for the potential new Bond for school facilities however we have um some very patient audience members who have been phenomenal and public speakers who would like to speak on this comment so um if it is okay with the board I would ask that we have
130our public commenters on this item um actually go first before the presentation so that they can go home since it's getting pretty late okay I think that I think that is a go so um same same Spiel as earlier it's three minutes um and there's a 30 second warning um and uh so we have two speakers for this item uh the first one on the list is I'm going to say the last name wrong um Lauren Lauren will you tell me how to say your last name please okay I just can never remember um my name is Lauren Eno yes so I am the parent of three students enrolled in Chico Unified Schools and I'm excited to be up here again kind of agitating on behalf of facilities and the the bond measure um previous
131Bond measures have been responsibly used by the district to remodel several elementary schools on the north side of town to modernize our two existing comprehensive high school campuses and to update Junior High campuses um as they um prepared to take on sixth grade students several years ago that said there's still work to be done um a number of schools continue to patiently wait for our turn to have our needs addressed and these schools offer valuable programs to the students and families of our community including Elementary campuses um with bilingual immersion Dynamic special education programs stem gate and then also our high school campuses with thriving arts and engineering programs and who also offer an alternative pathway for students to be supported in achieving their High School diplomas these schools are operating in facilities that are
132no longer functional or reflective of the High Caliber of learning that our staff are attempting to facilitate for their students last school year the district took time to investigate these issues and you adopted the resulting facili master plan which provides a comprehensive road map for um addressing the structural needs of our campuses and I would just encourage for anyone who's um listening and not familiar with the facilities master plan it's a great resource check it out by going to the Cho Unified School District web page and there is a link to the facilities master plan and it's available by clicking on the first image um typically that loads on the page in order to create highquality learning environments for all our students in our district rather than some as it now stands the board and
133District need to continue moving forward with the implementation of that facility's master plan and unfortunately as we all know um the plan can no longer move forward without requesting funding to do so through a bond measure I believe that our Chico Community will agree that our students in schools are assets worthy of their investment an early polling which was released to the facilities action committee which I have participated in um suggests that this is the case our rosale community specifically is um already aware and knows that we are worthy investment we are excited and already sharing the many reasons why with our family friends neighbors and colleagues and we look forward to supporting this Bond measure as we move forward towards the election in November if you should decide to put it on the ballot
134thank you um next we have be Beth Bradley thank you what do taxpayers want this day and age I can only speak for myself transparency truth and tangible results if I'm trusting you with my hard eared money I want to know there's a plan and then I want to see results see results where my money is going well we're in luck Chico Unified School District District boasts a plan that has been carefully crafted and developed with input from teachers parents and the community and approved by the Board of Trustees the need is indisputable the need is great there's no doubt about it please come tour my school Rosell Elementary I'll show you around ask any teacher student or parent at Inspire or chico High the need is without question if you're here from a school
135with facilities needs please stand thank you so much you miss sit um I got involved in my facility's journey in November of 2022 because my first graders class ceiling leaked despite efforts it's still leaking uh in January of 2023 I met with Kelly saley and a few weeks later I gave Julie Kissle a tour of rosell's Campus I had no idea about measures or bonds or that we the parents teachers staff administrators and students are reliant on the chico Community to come together to vote on such issues from then to now I've learned a lot and I know firstand how important how vital it is that Chico specifically or for Chico specifically the 3,496 students and subsequent staff that will directly benefit from this bond this Bond measure will affect five schools it will completely
136transform three give the fourth a new campus and give the fifth School room to breathe we will come together as a community and invest in safe schools invest in a healthy environment for Learning and growth and ultimately invest in what's so so important to us our children I'm Beth Bradley and if you're interested in being involved I'm talking to you guys are already involved I'm talking to these people if you're interested in being involved or want to talk more about the efforts of a couple of hardworking moms who care about the issue I want to talk to you thank you and were there additional folks who wanted to make a public comment on this item tonight's is informational um and so we will move to the presentation then thank you thank you yes so I'll
137just open up and that was a a great I would say segue by Lauren and Beth um for this agenda item this evening this is an information item um so as it was alluded to the facility master plan was approved by this board back in September of 23 and per that plan it was identified there was over a billion dollars of need um so then the immediate conversation was how do we get that funding how do we secure that funding um so this evening we have Tom Clifford of Clifford Moss who has helped us with public input and public information and we also have Katie Dobson um with Jones Hall who is our bond counsel legal counsel so I'm going to turn it over to Tom and mat Tom wants to know who he looks
138like I was hoping for like a Matthew mccon but I don't think that's in the cards I went to high school with this guy um Tommy Clifford Chico High class of 93 started at Hooker o went to Chico junr and then and then and then made it to the big leagues so thanks for having us tonight I'm gonna be like two minutes because the real sort of show is Katie and the resolution in front of you um but just if I can click here do lungren DOL lungren that's who you look like wait wasn't Dolph lungren um didn't he fight rocky rocky four yeah Rocky four rocky four um all right so just as a reminder we're sort of well along in this process right we started some time ago did some early feasibility work
139some initial polling those results looked um good and we moved into public communication and public education we sent a mailer got beautiful videos of students from many schools including rosale um got about 1300 responses to our open-ended survey in addition to the two polls that we've done and I'll talk a little bit about that we came in for a landing with um some tracking polling that just came in last week and now it's time for the board to take action um and then after the board takes action tonight obviously is just information only um you'll take action in June after that a private citizens campaign will be required outside this building off public funds to I don't know who that'll be but I have some suspicions um so that's really the process as a reminder
140the other thing I just want to point your your attention to is this little ven diagram there's the darker green circle which is what you need and your needs are tremendous as a district right um your needs are I think bigger than any bond measure can ever address and then there's what voters will support and what we're really looking at is like what's The Sweet Spot there that's from a messaging perspective the most important thing that we need to find as we move forward into campaign I wanted to share a little bit about um the this sort of the the Public Communication program so we sent a mailer out and asked Chico folks all parents and all voters what they thought about your facilities needs and unsurprisingly Chico was not shy they did a lot
141of sharing I think what does that say I need glasses 12,200 survey results they align very nicely with what your actual facilities master plan says you need to do which is great the number one issue was just fix the basic stuff Beth spoke of leaky RS that still leak just fix that and I think that's actually great news um given where you're going with your facilities master plan this is just the pie chart version so you can see sort of what pulled the highest in the open-ended survey with no controls on who responds and who doesn't um but repairing basic stuff was kind of the biggest the biggest piece of feedback we got from a open-ended perspective we got a number of interesting comments um lots of lots of appreciation for the district lots of
142go for it fun schools kids need you know great schools to learn in um um lots of support for uh the various things that are in your facilities master plan we did hear some negatives I don't want to dwell on them we do every time you open it up to the community you're going to hear things what I thought was really interesting is we didn't find a lot of negatives that focused on sort of what I would call Unique issues within the district it was a lot of sort of just anti-tax sentiment taxes are too high you've had Bonds in the past um why do you need to do that again and that's something frankly that we see in most communities we do this work it's not something that's unique to Chico and and I
143think that's actually a a good sign as you move forward there will be people who vote against a bond measure many people but I think there will be a lot of people who support as well so I just want to give a quick update on that and the real show is Katie who will go through the resolution one last plug in case no one says it tonight make sure you get all your questions about the resolution because when we come back in June it's like a it's a heads up heads down vote thank you appreciate your time good evening than nice to see you all in front of you for um discussion only is a resolution ordering an election on November 5th and requesting that the county consolidate that election with everything else on the
144ballot that day um the front part of the resolution is is really just the legal requirements of accomplishing those two things and the interesting part of the resolution for our purposes if we can flip to appendix a appendix a includes the full text of the bond measure so everything below the line at the top of that page will be included in the voter information guide perfect thank you will be included in the voter information guide so um some of this is legally required language but most importantly on page A3 is our bond to project list and so these are the typ bless you the types of pro projects that voters will be voting on there's a list um of about 10 bulleted items that we think that the projects that the district is contemplating fit
145into and then there's some additional language and all of this language will be available to voters in the voter information guide before they make their decision um I will also note that 15.4 5% of the proceeds of these bonds are allocated to charter school facilities appendix B if we can move down to that is the 75w ballot question so this is what all voters will see on their on their ballot they'll read this question and then they will vote Yes or no and this cannot read like proper English so don't even try to make sense of it we have only 75 words and we need to fit a lot in there the last part of this resolution that I'll highlight is appendix C it's the tax rate statement so this includes tax rate projections and
146we will also be included in the voter information guide along with any arguments in favor or against the measure and an impartial analysis of the measure by County Council so voters are going to get a lot of information about this are there any questions I can answer can you just State excuse me for the bottom line for folks that are listening or here um what it is that we're proposing to be asking for and what that means for um folks that own property absolutely please so if this resolution is adopted on the ballot will be a measure um allowing the district to issue $239 million in bonds with an average tax rate of $60 per $100,000 so if you own a house that um costs $500,000 you would be paying $300 a year I'm just
147quickly making sure that's right mouth you would be paying um $300 a year while bonds are outstanding and it's currently projected that bonds would be outstanding until the year 20 52 53 yes of course I a question in um our our past experience with um mons we've been able to um take advantage of like refinancing in order to shorten the amount of time that those um Bond taxes are being collected is that something that you can project um or are there so many variables involved that you have to just go with what you find say five years from now look at the circumstances and say okay we can do this and save because I know we've saved several million dollars each time we've done that for our taxpayers yes yes the district has had some
148very successful refinancing and those are completely Market dependent so you want to save money so you have to wait until the interest rates in the market are lower than the interest rates on your bonds so we can't project when that will happen but um your financial team is always looking for those opportuni another question it seems like um the day I was watching the bond sale actually occur um we got really good response because we have a good credit rating right yep okay uh that was a fun day by the way um our credit rating hasn't gone down at all since the last time we issued right no it has not gone down okay because yeah that that was I think Jacqueline and I both sat in on that Bond sale and it was it
149was pretty fun yeah they were fun and I would just expand on that um as a school district we do have tax exempt bonds um so there are there's an appeal um from investors um to invest in school bonds because of the tax exempt nature so essentially the interest they receive um by putting their money up for the bonds is taxfree from the federal government so um we're able to keep the interest rate down because we don't have to pay a premium um knowing that the investors then would have to turn around and cut a check to Uncle Sam so to say so so to speak um there's so the the list the bulleted list um is relatively broad because there's a lot of things that we could be spending money on um facilities wise
150we to have a billion dollars nearly in need from our last facilities Plan update um we had uh taken action a while ago now with that facility Bond update prioritizing um some schools with replacement if we have the funds available um do does this amount will this amount allow us to move forward with those projects um and also support the needs of the charter schools that that they've identified as far as we know I think I probably should oh Jack do you I can speak to that so um we will be going into the next phase the facility master plan with this Bond um and the board did prioritize um rosale Chapman and Parkview elementaries so what we would do is when those dollars come available I know Julie's Been Working on on securing an
151architect so we can figure out what the scope of that project looks like um and the intent would be that those three schools would be covered in the 239 million less the amount we share with our Charter Community yes all schools that's a great Point Kelly all schools will be um touched by the money not just those three elementary schools um we are doing restroom Renovations and there other projects much like we did the secure um fencing single port inventory that too was um how we touched all of our campuses with the dollars and then I I know we still have some Charter folks here in pretty good uh agreement that that this is good for you all to move forward with to okay I didn't know if you had any anything you wanted to
152add head nods are great thumbs ups are great okay thank you I know this informational item um for the even evening but I would um strongly encourage the board to to read through the resolution as Tom alluded to um we'll be back at the June 12th um board meeting and really at that point um to use Tom's words it's a thumbs up or thumbs down um vote to put this on the November election um and then at that point it's kind of out of our hands and then it goes private campaigning at that point and between now and then excuse me between now and then we can ask questions and we don't have to do that here necessarily okay absolutely and I would encourage questions we want to make sure that it it really addresses
153the concern by the board and the concerns of our community um and elicits the projects that are reflective in our facility master plan and the feedback we got from our community okay thank you and on that note I think it's important that we and our Advocates uh for the bond share um this document I know one of the big concerns we hear a lot on social media and out in the world is oh it's just the schools just want more money but it's very clearly written out here how we can and can't spend this money it's specifically and only for facilities Improvement for these listed areas so I mean that's just a message that we need to make sure everyone is aware of yes you can tell you exactly where this money is going to
154go how it's going to help students and create a better environment for education so the more we can make sure that people understand that we have a really solid plan for exactly how this money is going to help students the letter of the lift will be when we get to election season and to add to that I would say um you are stuck with this list so once voters approve it you can't go back and change it it's really important that this covers the projects that you intend to do and then you'll have additional citizens oversight and annual Audits and different transparency measures to be sure that the community can see how you're spending the money someone mentioned the um facilities master plan that's on our website and I would really encourage people to go
155look at that because on that facility's Master Plan you look at the phases that have already been funded and the schools like this one that exist because of bond funds and because we've done a good job of continuing to listen to our community look at our school needs um and apply the funds um what's the word when you get a lot for your money Julie yeah there we go um i' I've watched us is Chico Unified do a great job of getting matching funds from State bonds and things but they're matching I mean that they're just enhancing what our local voters are being asked to do which is to you know just provide what our kiddos need for good educations I don't I don't see any further questions for clarification um we had our public
156comments already um and so with that um thank you thank you very yeah or information only so we'll move right along thank you thank thank you okay um next is 9.2.3 discussion action for the adoption of resolution number 1641 d24 increasing the level 1 Fe hi good evening thank you for um your time appreciate it um Dev tailing into funding for facilities the um this will be a public hearing so we'll need you to open that if you wouldn't mind Madam president um that happens with the public comment okay perfect thank you for helping me um so school districts in the state of California um are their facilities are affected by students generated from residential and Commercial growth that occurs in our communities uh the state allocation board reviews uh those fees that can be
157levied by school districts every two years um this past January the state allocation board authorized school districts to increase their fees um for residential and Commercial projects within our area um the district has developed a a demographic um informational study um the the fee justification study Cal and grber I thank Lynn guber for being here tonight you'll meet her in just a moment for her hard work and answering all of our many questions that Jacqueline and I had so the study has been completed and you've been provided that study for your review the study has also been made publicly available and sent to interested parties as well um as advertised in the newspaper um the proper public notification that this meeting was occurring tonight uh to discuss the increase in these fees um with that
158I will turn it over to Lyn grber from Calin grber who's going to walk through a summary uh for the for your audience and for the the folks watching at home Lynn thank you Julie and thank you for having me my name is Lyn grber C and grber Public Finance so tonight see if I can do this right um I'll go through a brief summary of the develop veler fees developer fees are a one-time fee that's collected at the time of a building permit for new construction and school districts have the authority to Levy these school fees to help offset the impact of new development on your school facilities they can be used for just the construction and or reconstruction of the school facilities interim housing administrative facilities and operational facilities ities the state has
159a uh a fee program that includes level one which is what Chico levies and level two and three which uh level one is State uh is set by the the state allocation board level one is the same throughout the state doesn't matter what your cost of living is it's the same per square foot throughout the state and you have to justify it with the fee level two and three requires certain uh qualifications which right now the district doesn't qualify for but those are are typically much higher than level one so level one again are capped and only apply to new residential and Commercial and Industrial Development the feaps as we've said are set every other year at the state allocation board typically in their January meeting and this past January they increase the fees to
160$5.7 cents and 84 cents those increases are based on a construction index so in order to increase the level one fee we've completed the fee justification study and um again fees are only charged at the request of a new building permit and this is the only opportunity for school districts to um help offset the impact of new construction so the fees justification study um has to go through specific code sections uh primarily government code 66 uh th000 and through the Nexus requirements uh we have determined that the residential impact per square foot is actually $6.90 again that's much higher than the cap that the state has set at $517 we determine the commercial an industrial impact square foot and that varies um rental self storage because they have such low employee count is only 10
161cents per square foot uh and then some of the larger ones have an impact of $753 but remember we're capped at 84 cents a square foot for commercial so uh the maximum level one fees are deemed Justified if the costs impacts are greater than the the fee caps that the state has set briefly I'll go through the study methodology we look at the student enrollment projection based on the new housing that is expected in the next 10 years and the estimated cost per seat best ba based on the eligible uh Capital Improvement project and again we go back to that facility's master plan that you guys have already spoken about and we uh look at those costs as they are only eligible to be attributed to new students from new housing and then we get
162the cost per square foot and if it's greater than $5.7 then you're Justified at the $517 these this is a map of the new projects that are coming on board and I know you can't read those tables so I put them on the next couple slides but we have about uh 3250 projected units to be built in the next 10 years with an average square footage of about 1360 Square ft so we went through the methodology before this overlays the chico numbers to it again we're expecting about 3250 uh new homes uh developed in the area which we expect to generate about 615 new students stents the cost per square foot I'm sorry the cost per seat for each of those students is uh ranging from about 42,000 per seat to about at the elementary
163uh level at about 56,000 doll per seat um and then we have about $30 million worth of cost attributed to those new students the cost per square foot as we have indicated is $ 6.93 which is greater than the 517 so you are justified in leving the $517 that the that the state has capped us at commercial is a little bit different um we look at the employees generated from the commercial industrial categories and the state defines those categories and the study that we have to use new employees create the need for new housing uh employees also uh typically create inter District student impact and then we offset those impacts with uh the new housing that is being built already and that becomes the net impact so that's detailed in the study and then you
164see here the different um categories of commercial and or industrial um all of which U exceed the 84 cents per square foot impact other than the rental self storage uh this is the timeline of the fee adoption process uh we started the study in February and then uh the the notice was uh made public and and published on May 3rd and May 10th and available for public review and sent to those who requested it and tonight we're holding the public hearing and then if it's adopted they would go into effect in 60 days or on July 15th the next slide is the historical developer fees and showing the um how they have progressed over over the years um again this is a 38 cents per square foot increase over the current fees and this slide
165uh is an estimate of what we think we would collect remember our impact is about 30 million um at the $517 we're going to be collecting just under 23 million so again there's still a gap right um and uh on the on the average square footage home uh the difference between the $4.79 you're currently collecting and the $517 that um is is Justified at this point is a difference of $516 almost $517 per house and with that I'm open for questions just um to clarify what I think I heard you say is the developer fees are only collected at the time the permit is pulled am I correct and then and it it doesn't happen again during any part of the process corre that's correct only when a new permit is issued that's the only
166time it can be collected um and you can't go back once somebody's got a permit issued you can't go back and and pick it up later okay thank you are there any further questions for clarification okay seeing none I will open the public hearing um the public hearing is opened um at this time we will invite uh the public to give comment to the board um same as our um public comment periods of three minutes with a 30 second warning and uh we do have Katie t uh signed up so um call on up Katie good evening and I just want to start out and say thank you for serving our community and you've gotten a lot of information tonight so I hope you got room to listen hear me so my name is Katie
167tomman I'm the executive director of the chico Builders Association known as CBA and I'm here tonight to speak on the increase of the level one fees we call them development impact fees um we acknowledge that the state allocation board authorized by the Ed code is permitted just as um your consultant um explained that to you and that if uh that development impact fee was raised to $517 per square foot so I want to give this to you in what this means in real numbers so to illustrate the impact of this in this increase consider the cost implications for building a 1500 square foot home three bedroom two bath at the new rate now that the new rate um with a development impact fee is $ 7,755 Additionally the building industry have faced other Rising expenses
168associated with home construction we've seen significant increases in the cost of concrete and drywall liability insurance for private contractors has gone up significantly and the city building fees are pending for a significant increase later this year these increases contribute to the overall cost of building the home which is now over $300,000 which is actually a conservative estimate the first estimate that I received was 350 and the the folks that I got it from said no use 300 it's conservative it's good and then you add the land costs which are around 150,000 if you can find a lot to to um purchase for a total of $450,000 and furthermore mortgage loan interest rates have significantly increased um adding these additional costs are ult and these additional costs are ultimately passed on to the home buyer so
169in light of these Financial pressures the CBA is respectfully requesting that as this board has done in previous rounds of development impact fee increases the new fee be phased in over a two-year period specifically we would propose the fee um for next year or for this year would be $44.98 and in then the following year be five go up to $517 and also I want to make a note that we have no remarks regarding the commercial rate so we have no concern with that so um if you have questions I'd be happy to answer them you all want to go home I'm sure thank you thank you ktie are there any additional public comment okay seeing none I will close the hearing that was weak there we go give it some o um okay uh
170so we've had our presentation and our um public hearing uh and so I will ask the board if there is a motion a motion on this item yeah I'll call for a motion yes uh Madam president I move that we approve resolution number 1641 d24 increasing the um fee to $17 excuse me $517 for um uh residential and I believe it's it's still at 10 84 84 cents for um commercial I'll second that okay we have a motion to approve the resolution as written uh by Miss Robinson and the second by Mr Lando uh we're open for discussion at this time board any further discussion comments I just want to say I have some misgivings uh I'm I'm going to be in support uh of this um and they stem from the fact that um
171the state has having difficult Economic Times right now and uh our financial future is not by any means certain here at Chico Unified um and I think it would be just um imprudent to um not put the interests of our our constituents and students at the Forefront although I am sympathetic to the higher cost of housing for people who are are moving into a new home so um I regret that aspect of this but um I think we need to act on the interest of the students in this case I would Echo Mr tennis's sentiments um the math comes out at um 1,683 28 estimated dollars that could go back into our school facilities um sooner than later so um that's a pretty good number when we're looking at such a long list of needs
172that our campuses have um and growing population in our classrooms uh so just the need to house them in general um so I I have no further comments okay uh we were unanimous last time and so I'll call for a Voice vote all those in favor please say I I I any opposed okay it passes unanimously thank you board 9.2.4 is discussion action for the adoption of resolution number 16452 4 determining that the acquisition of approximately 2.47 Acres of real property located in the city of Chico California a portion of assessor parcel number 00 218-228 is exempt from the California Environmental Quality act approving the purchase and sale agreement deciding to carry out the project and directing the filing of a notice of exemption that was a long one that was a mouthful thank you
173um so as you are aware um with measure k um which was approved by the voters in 2016 15.34% of the dollars were allocated um to our Charter School community so the project before you has come before the charter subcommittee and was approved by that group um and I have Susan demmin Getti here related to Blue Oak so blue Oak is currently in a rented facility um located on East Avenue and the charer school has been looking and desires for a more permanent location so they've been working in collaboration with the district to secure this piece of land which right now it's undeveloped land um to purchase using their measure K allocation dollars um and then they would move forward with securing um brick and mortar or campus-like um facilities so there's been negotiations between
174the district and the seller over the last two months or so um we have secured a purchase price of 2.1 million for the land um that is contingent on getting an appraisal that supports that um we don't anticipate an issue but it is contingent on that um once the sale is final um then that parcel will be used by um blue Oak charter schools so we'll enter into a facility use agreement um for blue for that property so the resolution in front of you this evening is related to the almost 2.5 acres of vacant land um located in Marian Park um it is right now because it's just a change in title of land and there's no actual development at this point it is exempt from squa the environmental piece um so if the board
175approves this evening moving forward with the project then we will go into escro within 3 days and I will file a notice of exemption with County Clerk um and we will go into the 75 day of due diligence to ensure that the property is adequate for uh Charter School campus do we have a timeline on the uh uh valuation assessment we don't um assuming it's a board approved this evening um then I will reach out um to our attorneys tomorrow and we can work on on starting that just a add-on question um is it we it would it would get done before we would bring it back um at the close of escrow right mean it would have to be done before the close yeah we would only close escrow if the appraisal substantiates the
176purchase price okay thank you yes thank you the word appraisal just fell out of my mind and I could not come up with it it's late I'm seeing no further questions um and no public comment on this if I can I'll just say that uh blue Oak Char School Community truly appreciates the work that you as a board and um your staff have done to support Charters and to support this particular project for our school thank you thank you all righty do we have a motion I will move approval of resolution 1645 d24 second okay we have a motion by Mr Lando and second by miss conin any further discussion board nope seeing none all those in favor please say I I I any opposed it's unanimous thank you all right how exciting thank you
177Susan a a lot of Charter CH chatter tonight it's fun Charter chatter um okay 9.3.1 is a discussion action item under human resources for the de aration of Need for fully qualified Educators thank you president Doby so before you is a an estimate of Declaration of need it's something we file annually for a variety of reasons in um rural suburban Northern California it's sometimes difficult to find um the staff that we um we expect um specifically there are some employment criteria um for some positions that are listed on the attached form so this declaration would support report any emergency credential Andor limited assignment permit applications that might need to be submitted to the uh CTC during the 2425 school year um and hard to fill subject areas so the areas that you see listed in
178the form are again estimates based on past practice I I have a question uh if this is a total of 12 listed positions correct correct okay well positions yes subjects as you can see here we have we have seven but yeah I I meant the what you said yeah and again these are estimates just based on what we've been able to do in the past it's 11 and I think it's 11 it's 11 yeah I just was making sure I was looking at the right thing yeah okay or that it's not in two different places wrong some and the 11 is for single subject are those who you referring to board member Robinson I'm sorry no I was looking at oh okay I didn't scroll down to page three of four yeah okay many more
179okay yeah there's actually so just to clarify there are 11 listed foral subject 12 listed for um sort of uh either uh English learner or resource or Library correct and those could be in various subjects yeah so I was almost right oh you were right you were you were right in that section we were looking at different sections that's what I was trying make sure I understood better okay no further questions nobody gets to ask anymore I'm just kidding um all right and then no public comment on this so we'll just move into motion so moved I'll second that motion okay we have a motion by Mr Lando and a second by Miss Robinson all those in favor of passing I I I okay and no opposed it's a unanimous 9.3.2 is a discussion and
180action on resolution 1643 d24 to allow a credential teacher to teach any single subject class based on appropriate coursework oh we just did that one no we just did this okay yeah we need to separate them out I'll keep it short so this is basically just allowing some people the two teachers that you see listed here have been teaching in these subjects for a number of years and um this Ed code 44263 does allow for us to um keep them in those roles so we I'm requesting um action taken allowing those teachers to continue in those uh disciplines I mean I just want to point out that every year we argue about this a little bit um I think all those questions still stand but at the end of the day we need teachers in
181in classrooms or I'm inclined to to skip the the interrogation this time around yeah same uh see no further discussion um or questions for clarification and um nobody has signed up for public comment I'll ask for a motion I'll move approval of 16432 4 I'll second that motion all right um all those in favor I I 9. 3.3 is almost the same thing resolution 16442 for to allow teachers with a multiple subject credential to teach a specific subject below grade n thank you for outlining the difference between the two so essentially we have a list of people here um who again Education Code 4425 6B does allow us to have people with a multiple subject credential teach um a single subject credential our list just to give people some background here is essentially the result
182of us moving our sixth graders up to the middle school and so this list has been shrinking if you look specifically at the the attachment you can see um again it's it's a shorter list and we hope to continue that list to U it doesn't feel like a shorter list from last year okay that's just a feeling I don't have the evidence for that because I don't have the list from last year in front of me it just feels the same um and we did switch fifth graders on this or you know Sixth Grade Campus to to Middle Schools uh a really long time ago at this point just saving that for the record it does I'm not going to touch that one well some of us don't think we'll ever get to retire so
183but on that note it might be nice um next year when we see this to get to have to be refreshed with a copy of this year's list as well sure thank you yeah um because yes we do hope and I think uh expect frankly that this list will continue to shrink so that we have fully qualified single subject teachers and I understand the argument about how they are take they have taken at least 12 semester units and they do what what they're teaching I understand that right the ultimate hope is single subject where they where they belong right the the the difference being qualified and authorized versus credentialed right correct thank you okay uh no further questions comments uh I think we have a motion by Mr tennis and a second by board member
184Dolby Erica is shaking her head at me uh but but he he did acknowledge that he will put the motion on the table um and no further discussion um so all those in favor please say I I I opposed none it passes thank you sorry I was being a little bit silly um 9.4.1 is discussion action approval ratification of an amended unemployment oh I skipped one we pulling it we're pulling it oh oh oh sorry I thought I was yep you're right okay I did pull 9.4.1 already at the beginning of the meeting so we're at 9.4.2 uh approval ratification of an amended employment agreement with Chico Unified School District superintendent so in front of you is an amended contract I have been uh in the district of superintendent for 17 years now um and
185my contract is structured such that in fiveyear increments I get a 5% at the end of that fiveyear um 1% per year 5% raise for longevity uh there is a chance that next year could be the year that I choose to retire so I am asking that the board uh change that 5% at 5 years to 3% at 3 years should that um come to fruition um so just for clarification this is no change in the amount that you would be getting a raise it's just breaking it down more by year by year instead of waiting till you hit another fiveyear Mark that is accurate but it would be the same amount correct okay um any further questions from the board okay I move are you ready for a move approval yeah I don't see
186any public comment okay I move approval of the um ratification of the amended employment agreement with superintendent Staley second okay um and so for clarification um it will result um in a onetime 8,801 longevity payment and so again we're not inflating superintendent ste's pay just honoring what what has been yeah the intent of the agreement thank you better words than what I have at this point in the evening uh so all of those in favor please say I I I any opposed seeing none it's also unanimous thank you thank you okay it's that the last one kind of um items from the floor do we have any additional public comment at this point okay seeing none uh no board members request to agendize uh I ask if there's a motion to adjourn so moved uh
187we will adjourn thank you