001thank you good evening everyone and welcome to the june 30th special board of education meeting if we could stand first for the uh flag salute i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you are there any announcements no one has any announcements i would like to announce that um we do not have a need for item six this evening closed session so we can end at the end of the meeting thank you caitlin has arrived hi caitlin okay our consent calendar is item number three are there any items on the consent calendar that any board member would like to pull do we have any requests for comment on the consent calendar
002we do not thank you do i have a motion on the approval of the consent calendar i move the approval of the consent calendar second i have a motion by dr kaiser uh second by mr tennis um we'll do a voice vote starting with ms dalby the dolby i kaizerai tennis eye robinson eye landau is absent it's approved four to one okay item number four uh this is a discussion action item from educational services it's the approval of the local control accountability plan that we reviewed in public hearing on the 21st thank you yes i'm uh the ed services team who's taking the lead i'll start us off um president thank you mr marshawn you bet so first before we get into the discussion action portion of this we would like to go and go
003over the yearly timeline that comes along with the um of the approval of the lcap so at this time i'm going to pass it over to my two directors tim karis and tina king all right thank you good evening so we would just like to give you a rundown of the lcap process in its entirety and so i'm going to walk you through the the graphic you see on the screen you also have a handout in front of you so you can follow along the kind it's kind of hard to read from far away and the lcap is really a a process that never ends before we get an approval on one lcap we're already thinking ahead to the next one specifically based on end of end of year data so i just wanted to
004lay it out as simple as i as i could to talk you through the process so in june late june as we are asking for approval tonight that is when the lcap gets approved also in june and actually before the approval happens we're already looking at state test data in a normal year sites are at the site level we are looking at a district level to evaluate needs moving forward into the into the next school year and we're also looking at things like attendance and suspension rate okay so really june is when that starts for the for the upcoming year in september the butte county office of education will notify us of their acceptance and approval of the lcap so after approval within five days by law we are required to submit the approved lcap
005to the butte county office of education for approval typically what happens is they work with us throughout the summer and early into the fall to make any necessary changes per egg code and they'll give us our final approval in september in december the state dashboard is released which gives us another dose of data to analyze and use for planning and then in january uh after christmas the lcap document is then populated by our contractor that uh houses the lcap it is populated from the previous year's el cap into the new year's el cap so we're never starting from scratch the last time we did that was the first lcap ever which is 2013. in february is the first community input meeting with the larger group um and that is looking at data and analyzing our
006progress towards our goals in march the state and cusd identified targeted student group parent input meetings happen and currently right now in chico unified and we hope this changes but our targeted student groups are bypoc students students with disabilities homeless and foster and our english learners in april following those smaller group meetings the focused parent group meetings we then bring the go back to the community meeting for more input so that's our second community meeting of the spring following that meeting based on the input from a variety of groups including students staff and community the cusd staff will revise the lcap based on that input then we bring it forward to the board as a draft plan in june as we did last week and then open up a uh public comment time where the
007public can comment via email or in whichever way they wish really and and we will answer questions and take that into account and then then we start the cycle over again with the approval and then we just keep going around and around each year any questions not a question just a reminder that we're mandated to hold those last two lcap the first the hearing and then the approval within one week of each other so we you know we can't we can't take longer i do have one thing to add real quick to to tim's presentation on the cycle here is that we also work with butte county office of education throughout the entire year they have trainings updates anything that comes out new with the template from the state department of education they update us
008on that and those happen frequently you know adjustments to the template do come out and they want us to know early so throughout the year we are attending workshops from bcoe and they're a close partner in looking at at what we've done and editing and bouncing ideas off as well remember dolby you had a question um similarly as just a clarification or make sure that i'm staying on track with different categories uh the targeted groups listed here those are the groups that are selected according to the dash the california state dashboard is that correct right those are the student groups that we see a significant performance gap okay so according to our scores from based on data right those are the students that are targeted because of their the scores within the subgroup categories in
009those categories are chosen um as a state and and by the state guidelines correct and we also add in our english learners um and they are currently not a targeted subgroup for us student group um but we we need that um input from that parent community sure thank you one thing i just wanted to add to this is the fact that it is never a new lcap it is a cycle it moves from year to year when we first started it the community helped us create it but the the priorities are set by the state those carry over from year to year and we adjust our work based on our outcomes from year to year mr tennis you had a question yes um can you clarify the um the goals of the lcap relative to
010the target categories versus the goals of the lcap relative to the entire district um all the goals are written and i think when we say goals really the measurable outcomes that we're talking about in lcap are the metrics so we use that term because overall goals are very broad the metrics we always write to for to close achievement gaps between groups that are significantly behind the all students student group okay so what that means technically on the state dashboard that is if there are two or more colors away from the all students student group so that's how those targeted student groups are chosen so there's no interest in the well-being of the district across the board through the lcap is all about about bringing the the various categories closer together that that is the focus
011of the lcap but that is not what the lcap is all about um services that we may bring in with the intention even of serving a certain population are available to all students so when we talk about go ahead kelly well i was just going to say the goal of the lcap is that all students achieve at or above standard all students and when we have students that are not or groups of students that are not then providing to the support to ensure that they are when we have individual students regardless of if they fit into a category or not providing them those supports that's the goal of the lcap is the success of all students so it's legitimate for any chico unified family to take an interest in what's going on with the lcap
012yes process said this before um we didn't get notification on these meetings that were discussed in my family and i did some research with other families that i know and i think the district could have done a lot better getting the word out about these meetings i'm here to tell you that in february we have no communication from the district at all that there was going to be an lcap meeting taking place and in march we also did not receive in my home any any information about this with respect to the april meeting i found out about it as a board member that it was happening and um that's when i began to wonder whether you know who was being invited who should come and so forth and so so i actually sent notice out
013to some people through social media um that there was a meeting in april but the zoom call or whatever there was no way for somebody to participate without going to their school site okay i have one contact who tried to go to their school site and it was locked so not an open meeting not not available i just kind of did some research across different school sites and i found varying levels of notice given to families so isn't it one of the goals of the lcap and i know the answer i'm asking a question that i already know the answer to that we be um you know making this information about these meetings available to our clients absolutely so typically this information has come to families through their school site and there are multiple opportunities
014for input when the school sites are developing their own school site plan through pta meetings it's shared through school side council meetings and then when we have these community-wide lcap meetings we have invited both targeted groups members of pta members of school site councils to come to those and i am not going to say that we did we had great communication this past year without a doubt i think covid and our typical communication methods probably threw us for a loop and we can always be better i will tell you though that we did send out a notification when all of the school site plans which are tied to the lcap went out those went out to every parent from the school sites we also sent out notification of the final draft so where we late
015in getting this all out to everyone absolutely have we met all of the legal timelines that we need to meet in terms of posting it allowing opportunity for community input we have done that my right hand person here erica has already said all right we won't we've heard you loud and clear and we have a plan to make sure along every step of the way every parent is notified through our aries communication system for next year so you know i appreciate the input and i cannot argue that communication could be better thank you for that explanation um i have a question because i think it's important that what you did in trying to reach out was important um you know to and i know it was to you and and it is to us after
016this information was out because i think everybody had it um by a week before the 21st did you of which of last last june yeah okay so last week and you've been in touch and and communicating was there any one thing that raised your interest in following up that people were interested in the letting you know that they weren't happy with what was in the lcap what was the feedback well we can hear the staff presentation i mean i've prepared some comments can i have just a point of order really quick because i think that we're bordering on discussion and i just want to make sure that we're not actively in discussion at just at this point and maybe save the conversation for um after the president for discussion yes and mr tennis just indicated
017that was his preference too so thank you thank you caitlin there's no more questions on the yearly cycle at this time really we do not have a presentation because we we had our presentation um last week on on the lcap so basically at this time we are passing it off to the board for their discussion on the lcap and discussion and action item and of course we're happy to answer any questions if questions have come up between last week and this week yeah now we're into the board technical questions for clerk clarification purposes can i just ask another point of clarification of course um so are we are we still asking questions of staff yes okay so we're not we're still not in board discussion because that will be after emotion that's after motion that's
018also after public comment which we do have okay thank you does anyone have questions of staff apparently not okay now we are on to public comment yes dr kaiser i noted that somebody had suggested that using a database to assess our impact on the social emotional and so i think that's a data set we haven't necessarily been able to gather in the past but do we have ways that we think we're going to be able to track the impact of the additional resources that we're providing yes uh the counselor team has been working on that or actually has worked on that and they have universal screeners for ready for elementary junior high and high school that will be given at the elementary level four times a year and at the junior high and high schools
019three times a year in addition students will receive shorter surveys we're still working out the the time frame on that but two and three between every two or three weeks is kind of what's been talked about so we will have that data as of right now we really have one time a year survey data right for the secondary students and then a universal screener for the elementary students so that's really positive because i think it's key that we have um since we're using emergency money in effect that we have a quicker and more wide base uh you know data set that we can look at and check so that's great yeah and that that database that you're talking about that system is called educlimber and that will be used to um to focus our our
020attention with our social emotional services on the kids that need it most and in addition if we're meeting the social emotional behavioral and academic support needs of students we should expect to see a reduction in absenteeism and increase in academic achievement a decrease in suspension and expulsion all of those indicators as well i guess the other aspect of this is now that the state is tracking the certification process for cte that we are having students meet that certification i think that's another aspect of that what we would like to track um somebody asked me what a concentrator course was and i was kind of shocked so you know there are parents and kids out there who aren't aware that if they do a three-course sequence so that again seems another piece it's a new piece
021of data for the state but certainly given the fatality of our cte programs i think that's something we really yeah i i agree and the cte is part of the college and career readiness indicator which in my mind is kind of the gold standard for the results of students going through chico unified and graduating how ready are they for their college and career okay any other questions a staff we're now at the public comment um plus we do have one request mr shepherd if you could contact that person please thank you i'll be calling jessica voicemail there's no answer thank you okay now we're to the board to discuss the agenda item any further discussion mr tennis um i have some comments these will be my last comments on on the item um so is
022that appropriate in accordance with the protocols or whatever um yes okay no we need a motion no you're you're right uh this i will move you're correct i will move the educational services the uh approval of the 21 22 local control account building plan all second now we're good to go yes mr tennis the floor is yours thank you um thought a lot about this i remain opposed to the l cap that is before us today for the following reasons which i've previously stated but will now expand on first i believe the equity shift that is central to this document will contribute to grade inflation at chico unified it will do this by elevating the priority of equity gaps or achievement gaps these are again are the disparities in academic and social emotional success that
023have been identified along racial lines socioeconomic class english learning housing status etc as a primary driver of district policy and educational services rather than the more straightforward bread and butter approach of our previous lcaps i would refer you to goal number one on pages 99 and 100 of this document with this change in focus toward so-called equity i feel that our teachers administrators and the newly minted equity alliance cohorts will forevermore be trying to chase down and erase what are being interpreted as racially based or class-based outcomes but since these disparities are almost certainly not the direct result of something the district is doing wrong i fear staff will feel pressure to take a path of least resistance which could be to simply inflate grades or water down the academic rigor of our various programs
024so that everyone can succeed equally regardless of their actual performance if you look back at how the this issue is is discussed on the state level at the california department of education and the state board of education it is evident to me that that is exactly the approach that they want us to take and as i've pointed out in some of my earlier communications the state is urging us to get rid of things like gait and calculus pathways and this is something that i feel we need to resist and that's part of what i'm doing with this no vote the trend of so-called equity leading to great inflation and diminishing academic excellence can be clearly seen at the university level where the csu system and as of last month the university of california have buckled
025to political pressure and stopped requiring the sat and act tests with student applications this will create a future for those colleges that is actually very inequitable because it will award credentials that would be acceptance and ultimately college degrees to students who simply looked good on paper rather than by accepting and promoting the best as proven through a rigorous standardized test this is a total departure from the past so success quote unquote in california's academic future may boil down to which school districts simply hand out the most easy a's secondly the lcap that is before us today with its heavy emphasis on racial equity is not in my opinion the product of any meaningful input from the community of chico as has been claimed and as would be required by california code section but is instead
026something that has been foisted upon us by academia and political appointees in sacramento with the goal of promoting a high-minded political ideology california code california code section 52062 stipulates that when formulating its lcap a district should notify members of the public of the opportunity to submit written comments regarding the specific actions and expenditures proposed to be included in the local control and accountability plan or annual update to the local control and accountability plan using the most efficient method of notification possible this document by contrast has been carefully word-smithed and incubated over the past several months in meetings that were not generally publicized under the cover of the covid lockdown and only sought input from hand-picked representatives of the target student categories their families or representatives that the state and district have identified as needing special
027attention gone was any early opportunity for the bulk of chico parents to tell the district what their families wanted and needed from our school system which we are paying good money for finally what public comments we have received on this lcap seem to be very negative and unapproving i would never have expected a huge amount of public input from busy parents in the middle of summer on something as arcane as the lcap process but it speaks volumes to how much connection chico families have with this draft we are voting on today that the comments we have received are negative and seem to be urging us to go back to the drawing board i would propose we send up to sacramento an el cap that looks a lot more like our previous ones which emphasized the
028old school values we were told on may 5th we would be in a meaningful sense leaving behind these were number one quality teachers materials and facilities number two to fully align our curriculum and assessments with california state content standards number three support high levels of student achievement and number four provide opportunities for parent involvement and input and number five improve school climate these common sense principles of the past have now been replaced with a much more nebulous very unstem like if i may trio of values inclusive academic learning inclusive social emotional learning and provide interventions and supports to teach social and behavioral skills as someone who values history literature science philosophy geometry geography and art there's little in the new lcap document that entices me to vote for a major change in course for the
029district that once again comes from academia and sacramento and really has very little to do with what we have done in the past or should be doing now thank you very much dr kaiser this is initially an aside but somebody named jessica tried to send an email and then it disappeared so i don't know if that was a person we were i don't have anything now i just saw it and disappeared so i don't know okay so um it's interesting to me that you didn't include gender because the initial change in education happened after the russians beat us into space and eisenhower's president panicked and at that point he said i don't care what gender they are if they can do math and science that's what we need that's me total math and science i
030one time got a b plus in my last calculus class because a junior college professor kept interrupting the teacher but you know it does happen the people who made the decision i have been chair of ge for the csu for the state for a number of years in the past there has been frequent complaints about the s.a.t they just finally came to a head because it couldn't be administered in the normal setting and the normal proctoring couldn't happen either and when they did that they discovered that it wasn't really an effective measure so i do not believe that not using these tests are going to change qualifications the universities are looking at the whole whole part of the student and that's really what we want because nobody goes to college absolutely knowing what they're going
031to be because all they had was high school high school is very narrow you get to college and the whole world takes on a completely different color and shape and you should be able to find what it is that you really are interested in so we have been doing lcap since 2013 we have always up until the covet situation gotten plenty of input and i don't believe that someone's education is going to be downgraded i think when you have more people with different aptitudes but very interested in learning in a discussion or a class that will spark greater learning so the context of this downgrading an individual in a class because other people that don't look exactly like them are there so i was the only girl in my advanced math class in high school
032because the other girl got married and by state law that kicked her out so the teacher would say oh question one was so easy nobody missed that i would miss it he get the question 10 the last one he said oh this question is so hard i didn't really think anybody would i'd get it everybody else in the class was a male you think they were lessened by me being in the class i think i was the only one in the class who went on thinking i was going to measure in physics and getting smart in college and choosing sociology instead but i still did statistics that was my second mandatory language in my grad school math so i don't believe this is a watering down i think it will allow all of our teachers
033to reach out all of our students and the way we do math right now in second grade is already very very different than the way we used to do it because we have realized that not everybody processes their information in the same way and that's an asset it's alby yeah i have a question for mr tennis um so just after hearing your points of concern how do you envision the classroom looks different under this elk cap can you can you paint a picture for me what you think how the classroom looks different under this elk cap as opposed to the previous lcap respectfully i think that question just doesn't have a fine enough point on it i think for me i think what i'm curious about is if you think that we should we should
034just spruce up our previous elk cap and send that to sacramento instead what is your concern with this with this el capitas it has been revised that is that is going to translate into the classroom how it makes the classroom look different and the teaching of our students look different i think that my objection is to the values that are put forward so it's your objection is to the interpretation of the lcap your your objective interpretation or subjective interpretation of the lcap that's that's what it sounded like sorry my um my objective observations of the lcap so objective would be measurable yes and unbiased yes so you're saying that your opinion of the lcap is unbiased yes okay and so then you should be able to speak measurably how you think it looks different translated
035into the classroom as opposed to the previous lcap well looks is a subjective word i mean that sounds like uh outcomes sorry let's say outcomes how are those classrooms measurable outcomes yeah measurable outcomes different for our students um that causes you to object to that cap in its current form well i mean as i stated i i am convinced that this either very strongly could or will lead to great inflation and how does that affect our students that's bad very very bad can you explain why you think that's bad great inflation is the thing that every single one of us up here on this stage should be about trying to make sure that it doesn't happen because if we had great inflation tell me your philosophy on grades i'm really interested i was kind of
036interested to answer the last question before i move on to a new one but uh great inflation is a huge threat to our entire society at every level yeah okay but let's talk about the philosophy of grading in general so what's your philosophy on grading and providing a grade to a student um i think it should be uh objective to use a word we've already put a definition on um yeah i mean uh and as far as testing standardized testing i i think that's a we're living in an imperfect world clearly but standardized testing is very important and so back to the sat example if we're going to talk about standardized testing do you realize that this that there are actual scientific studies that show that there's no correlation or not significant correlation i should
037say between sat scores and success in college and gre scores and success in a master's degree program actually it actually depends on the actual student drive and and you know meeting the student where they're at that's what drives their success in their academics not this test that they they took two or four years prior um there's a lot of academic studies out there in the world you know i mean i haven't done an exhaustive search but i'm sure there's plenty of tests or academic studies that show that testing is an accurate way to measure students um proficiency there are lots of professionals even just in this community who disagree with you who actually do look at those studies and and and analyze those studies i mean we could invite we could invite the more chico
038state professor professors to to come talk to us about those i know plenty of education department people who can talk to us about how standardized tests especially as far as entrance requirements go maybe as checkpoints as we use them for gauging student growth individual student growth that's a whole different thing but when you're talking about a standardized test that is a straight line across the entire population and expecting students from various backgrounds and experiences and education opportunities to meet that same line you're not measuring that student's growth you're measuring that student against some standard that was arbitrarily established by somebody years ago that isn't actually scientifically based anymore it's outdated it's an outdated system on this point of the sats and the sats i am thoroughly thoroughly unimpressed with the people that you're talking about
039who have concluded that it's good for our society or good for our academic system to get rid of the standard standards with the educated people i understand that so back to my original question about how this translates different in the classroom we're talking about providing students what they need where they're at so that they can grow student growth and grades can actually be a useful tool to empower students to continue to grow grades as they are in these terms that you seem to be reflecting on tend to be oppressive and students who are struggling and see that f and they think you know it doesn't matter how hard i try at this point i'm not going to be able to even bring it up to a d like that's what we're talking about here that's
040what equity is is is bringing the students up to grow to a point that they can reach as far as growth goes so my philosophy for grading just so that we can you know be on equal terms as far as our understanding of where each other's stance goes my philosophy on grading as an educator of 12 years is that a grade should reflect a student's growth well i mean clearly we have just very very different opinions because i think that f's are really really important and if people fail classes for whatever reason don't do the work i think that's really really bad if instead of getting them instead we give them a d or a c minus then we haven't done our job we didn't do the work if a student gets a 58 did
041they do nothing did they learn nothing but an f f it sounds like to you and f means that they learned nothing or they they did not learn enough to have mastered any skills but in truth a student could master the skills not have the time to do the homework or not have the the ability to perform in a certain way but have actually learned quite a bit i've had plenty of f d students who actually were very intelligent and had a lot of knowledge they grew but their their work output didn't necessarily reflect that in their grades that's why i'm talking about grades being a poor place to to place emphasis on that student clearly needs to adapt their you know what you say is total knowledge and proficiency to toward test taking and
042the skills that enable them to reflect that and agree because that's life that student is going to get a high a high score on their sats probably and may or may not be successful in college some of that some of those students who fall in that category they don't they don't do any of their work and then they are amazing in college or they become great great in the trades they still end up being successful even though they got that out but we're missing the point here the point is is that we are enabling a system that allows teachers and staff members to meet the students where they're at and to and to provide an opportunity for growth and to allow for their grades to show their growth rather than a specific standard that could
043be subjective yeah i think maybe i just like the idea of measuring students through testing and you don't right it's comfortable to you because it's what you understand i'm telling you as an educator testing students has value as far as measuring growth goes but when it comes to providing grades that is something that can can come with some bias and it can actually really hurt hurt students you know employers they like to see metrics that they can understand and well you know so i have heard in this capacity as a school board member from employers who say they want kids to learn the skills testing is i think one of the most important ways to measure that and my point about the danger in learning institutions handing out easy a's or easy d's for that
044matter is a threat to our integrity you know you're interrupting me uh as an institution of of learning and preparing kids for employment and life i'm also really perplexed by this idea of of handing out a's or handing out these you know if a student is is performing so let me give an example would you agree with a teacher allowing a student to retake a test as many times as they needed to i haven't spent enough time you know meditating on that to to to give you an answer right now so if they see the test multiple times eventually they're gonna they're gonna end up doing better and better and better right so would that be great inflation to you is that something that's not acceptable does that show growth i know it's not always
045the case that people do better on a test the second time around um because i've experienced this firsthand um but that's what we're that's the kind of approach that we're talking about here with this lcap is is meeting students where they're at saying let's let's allow for students to redo their homework and turn it back in as a learning process all the tests that we give let's allow those to be a learning process every test is not just a finality it's a process to continue to learn and to continue to demonstrate what you know and but but people would argue that that would lead to great inflation yeah to me i was just thinking the same exact thing as you said that that sounds like a nice warm moist environment where great inflation could foster
046and grow and become a huge huge who's redone all that work and who has put in the effort does that mean that they that they didn't have the growth that they didn't actually learn does that mean that they should still have the d instead of the a that they you know redid their work on and relearned it and and you know increase their depth of knowledge what if the teacher just didn't want to deal with the you know the headache of of uh you know the the powers to be the administration or their peers or whoever you know looking over their shoulder and breathing down their neck over the fact that they were giving a child enough for a d there there are there that does happen so so i don't want that to happen
047and but but that goes back to philosophy so are we just there to give out grades and to say learn this this way no and that's why i'm voting against the cell cap we're not just there to give out grades and that's why i'm i'm against this l cap today yeah dr kaiser tim we don't use grades as our measurements for our we do not thank you as our measurements for what in our lcap metrics we don't use grades to indicate student achievement we mentioned it in this lcap because uh through covid that was a a huge concern for us you know students missing credits essentially and because the learning loss that it indicates so that's why it was reported but it is not an official lcap metric um i'm going to step in my
048turn um i've been embedded in chico unified since 1973. and i've i've i've seen a lot um as dr kaiser has seen a lot at the university level where uh you know we've we've been there for a few years and i i take a great issue mr tennis with implying that there are teachers that are for some nefarious reason looking at how they grade or what grade they give a student as almost a political statement from my interpretation of what you said that's my interpretation i disagree um when you mention that there was too much mention of racial equity in this lcap i don't see any they're they're nothing that we that we are doing is based or directed at a student group because of race it's because of where they are in their educational
049growth process doesn't matter whether you're black brown green purple where you are and what your need is is what we're going to send to you in the way of help the as mr karis mentioned what we measure in the lcap is the students measurement against their their own growth toward grade level and the competency level that we try to bring everybody up to so that they can be successful as they walk out of high school i mean walking out of high school is just the first step there's a lot waiting for a lot of kids out the door of high school and there are a lot of kids when i was an instructional assistant which we've hired a lot of people to do to work with students that were struggling there were so many kids
050trying to be square pegs placed in round holes and it didn't work because we are all very different in how we learn how we test how we ex how we let people know what we know our special ed students with ieps especially with our our um our high achieving autistic children you won't get very many of them that can pass a test but if you sit down and evaluate what they know in a way that they can trans you know can can they're brilliant they're absolutely brilliant and if we're not recognizing that as school people as parents as employers if you look at what colleges are doing now for special education kids because they know their their brilliance is is not accessible by our our standard assessments that we've always used this school district wants
051everyone to exceed or to succeed to the point they're capable of and in order to have that happen we have to we have to treat kids differently because how they learn you know some kids you know what i mean there there's just so many different things that we need to take into account um and we have been that's why we are a successful school district the problem is we haven't had all of the resources and the tools available to make it better because of covid and the resources that we've been sent attaching that to our lcap and to the other plans that we've budgeted for we're going to be able to add resources that we at least i wished all along we could do and we couldn't afford because california doesn't fund education so i'm
052going to very happily vote yes on this lcap and i look forward to three years down the line when we've been able to assess periodically at least once a quarter with some of the stuff and for some teachers they're assessing every single day did what i taught today work did what i taught today reach 20 of the kids or 70 of the kids what do i need to re-teach every single day there's an assessment of what did i do that was successful and what did i do that wasn't teachers share best practices our our our faculty puts their heads together on a regular basis in the structure that we've provided with our our our district leadership councils and school site groups where we look at what's working what isn't working what isn't working how can
053we fix it i'm proud as a trustee to vote yes on what i think is an amazing job that we've done under the circumstances and i look forward to being able to monitor the um the areas that are working and look at what our teams are going to do to quickly fix the areas that we see aren't working can you any further discussion yes ms dalby thank you i just wanted to kind of address a small elephant in the room too um and and this is based off of mr tennis's comments about the public comments on the lcap having been so negative in the last in the last two weeks that it's been posted and um you know that the elephant in the room is a a political movement to demonize the concept of equity
054and and what equity stands for and this politicization of the word equity and equating that to critical race theory which is not a conversation we're having right now and to say that that chico unified is somehow going down the critical race theory road and we're doing it without you know transparency and we're going to teach the kids about racism that is not what this lcap is about this lcap is about meeting kids where they're at and making sure that they're all provided with with the tools that they they need and as individuals to to grow to reach their growth goals and that we will use our resources and our measurements to to assess that that success over the next few years with this the guide of this lcap um and so i think that the
055public comments that we've received that i don't know if we've received a negative comment that didn't mention critical race theory um to me that demonstrates a mis a misunderstanding um possibly a malicious intent in intended um uh confusion of the concept to to make this a political issue when we're really just talking about serving our each student with the the with what they need that's that's all i wanted to say okay the email showed back up she missed the phone call and she's saying she can respond to a phone call if we try again dr kaiser this is the same person we attempted four times last meeting to reach i don't know yes it is we were able to verify that we made one attempt at the proper time tonight and that's we're going to
056end it there do i have a motion on this item i'm sorry we did yes that's how come we had discussion okay then i'm going to call for a vote and um uh anticipating not a unanimous vote as you've had members indicate i'll call for individual members member dolby i'm happy to vote yes because we have been waiting a long time for those resources to put them towards this effort dr kaiser yes just like eisenhower mr tennis name robinson i the it passes three to one thank you members okay mr baltimore we are at the original budget point uh yes we presented to you the original budget at the last meeting and since then we do have actions taken at the legislative level and at the governor's level just to inform the board so that
057you understand the impact on june 26th or actually the evening of june 25th the legislature adopted or passed their budget that did include the 5.07 cost of living adjustment it also paid off all deferrals cash referrals which we thought was a good move it did increase special education specifically in the area of children ages three to five so it added additional dollars within the formula the ab602 formula for the students that age some additional dollars um related to career technical incentive grants what was the increase in that age i i know what they've been different could you start back at the beginning sure um not at the beginning beginning but that one issue of the differences at the different grade levels so we don't have the detail of how it's specifically per student going to
058impact the ab602 funding formula okay the state has allocated 260 million dollars for that purpose so it still needs to go through the allocation to determine the actual amount that it will impact the eb 602 but it is additional dollars that we will benefit from thank you we are i don't have a slight this is just an update um dr kaiser um i just saw and i'm not sure but i thought that the governor was saying that they would fund tk for all four-year-olds correct so that is actually one of the additional items as well um it adopts universal transitional kindergarten phasing in the expanded age eligibility for full implementation in the year 2526. oh 25 26 25 26 so we'll be phased in similar to when tk was originally adopted and they moved those
059dates back in the calendar year and then we're also seeing additional one-time money related to the a through g completion grant we don't have a lot of detail so as you can see these are just a few of the the key items we're waiting for a lot of the detail since then the governor has taken action to sign this initial it's partial so there's lots of trailer bills that are also going to be coming but one of the key provisions of what was ultimately signed is that unemployment insurance percentage rate that we have represented in our multi-year projection it was a 1.23 increase almost a million dollar expenditure in the current the next year in the 21 22 year they've taken action to reduce that back to the historical rate of 0.05 okay so our
060budget will improve based on what we showed you at the previous meeting by another million dollars so we were projecting a positive change in our unrestricted fund balance of 3.8 million this will add another million dollars to that so we'll be at a positive 4.8 you scared me for a second i thought we were going the opposite direction there i thought you said it's increasing another one or over one percent and i almost choked on my snack here no it actually improves our budget now in the out years we had already reduced that down to 0.20 percent so there is a little bit of additional savings we'll experience in those out years as well but not to the same extent we will experience in 21 22. um so there's still uh information that needs to
061come out uh there's still trailer bills that we're expecting and for the board and the community we will be bringing a 45-day budget update that will encapsulate everything that's included this after july first okay board do you have any other technical questions of mr baltimore kevin i have a question on the trailer bills is there is a cut off on how long they have to get those things through before they become a two-year bill right i'm not sure of that i would have to look into that timeline i do know their timelines i just yeah i'm not exactly sure the specific dates um i i'd kind of like to know before you do your four week the 45 day update to know just a couple of reasons but that's information i'd like to have any
062other quest technical questions members um do we have any requests for public comment miss daily we do not okay do we have any motions from the board relative to this item i move this uh budget second okay we have a motion for mr tennis the second by dr kaiser all those in any further discussion members all those in favor aye aye voice vote again i'm sorry i have to do another single voice vote again because right it was last one was not unanimous thank you yes kaiser tennessee robinson eye four to one approval and mr mr lando is still absent okay okay next item is um also mr baltimore we're going to review the educational protection act the epa that we first heard of last week and yes we also did a public hearing at
063the last meeting regarding these dollars as a reminder to the board and the public these are not new dollars it is really a mechanism to report back how it money was spent related to the bonds that were passed on uh propositions 58 and 59 we use all of those dollars 22 million in excess for teacher salaries exclusively so with that we ask for board approval thank you board members any questions of mr baltimore do we have any public comment requested we have no public comment thank you um board do we have a motion associated with this agenda item i move to approve i second i have a motion by ms dalby a second by dr kaiser to approve um all those in favor aye thank you approved four to one with mr landau still absent
064okay mr baltimore we're bringing now the reserves disclosure on the original budget yes we had a public hearing on this item as well at our last meeting for the board and for the public we are projecting a unrestricted fund balance of 32 million 27 551 dollars at the end of the fiscal year we also show that we're able to meet all of our reserve requirements the three percent requirement from the state the board's two percent requirement and the 1819 one-time dollars that were set aside as board reserves as well which leaves us a balance of 19 million 862 dollars that we are showing a justification related to cash flow enrollment volatility negotiations and fiscal solvency so we present this for the public for the board and we ask for approval thank you do we have
065any public comment requested public comment thank you on board do we have a motion relative to this item i move to approve second ms dalby moves to approve the reserve's disclosure mr tennis seconded any further discussion for all those in favor signify by saying i were we four eyes thank you okay four to one with mr landau still absent okay uh oh i got to write in one of these a couple of years ago this was fun um mr baltimore the butte county air quality management district and the carl moyer program funding bus replacement what's the criteria yes we have an opportunity to receive grant dollars to purchase an electric bus in the amount of four hundred and two thousand two hundred and nine dollars the grant would pay four hundred thousand of that amount
066so the district would have to pay two hundred and or two thousand two hundred and nine dollars towards that purchase um i will note that electric buses we have one currently that we have in our yard one that is ready to be delivered and then this would be our third the mileage in between charges we are not realizing as many as that we had hoped so we're not able to use our large type 1 bus for as many trips as we originally had planned however this would be a type 2 bus that are transporting throughout the day the ability to use them for smaller routes would exist we still think the technology continues to get better so it's really the battery technology that would drive us to replacing more and more of our buses that
067are diesel over into electric so we would recommend that we get approval from the board to apply for the grant and purchase a type 2 electric bus okay do we have any public comment requests we do not thank you board do we have a motion relative to this i move to take their 400 000 and get us another electric bus a second thank you i have a motion in a second to yes take their money and run um drive yes ms davey um so just slightly off topic discussion about this grant funding um it comes from um par in part from butte county air quality management district and i just wanted to put out there should be an announcement but um butt environmental council got approved for a grant also a small grant to provide
068workshops to classrooms about air quality and so we will be pushing for that next school year along with the resource and recycling education program so just fyi that there's more workshops coming all your way teachers great thank you and we can teach about our new electric buses yeah when we took delivery of the first one uh a number of us got to write it and um they're quite impressive we did have to add sound to them so people knew there was a bus coming because they're so quiet yeah that was one of the that's why my prius beep beeps when i back up yeah good thing just out of curiosity what does a non-electric bus cost oh for a type ii electric bus we're probably in the 220 000 range for a diesel okay do
069we have any requests for public comment we do not um we are ready for a vote we already did those steps oh thank you board members all those in favor of taking their money and driving i thank you four to one with mr lando still absent okay district-wide school photography one of the first questions the kids always ask is when are school pictures depending on how old the child is oh uh uh cat mr baltimore sure just a quick background a number of years ago we consolidated the photography contract district-wide really to provide the best and most best pricing and consistent offerings so that parents knew who they were dealing with and the school sites were treated fairly and the same so at that time we used life touch we exited that contract going into
070next year based on some challenges with performance over the last year but we opened up that rfp and we received one proposal also so the board and the public is clear we do not pay any fee for this contract it allows them to come in and market their pictures to our schools so i would like to give a lot of crew credit to rocio french she really took on this rfp drafting that working with our office managers because often it's the office managers who are working with the photography company for scheduling and follow-ups and that type of thing and so we did have a number of office managers looking at the rfp and we did review it with a couple of members that were noted and ultimately they recommended that we move to this new
071company so we are recommending that we um accept this proposal and with i should know the name thank you with dorian studios yes do we have any requests for public comment okay i'd uh just an aside this contract is is with a company that is in sacramento but they they have people as liaisons that are already here in chico and are familiar with our our schools and our process so um is there a motion associated with this item since i have really cute kids i move all second i have a motion from dr kaiser a second from ms dalby i actually have a question i should have maybe asked during presentation um is there any um because it sounds like there's no upfront cost of the district right for for for school photos but is
072uh i and i don't recall this as a teacher something i wasn't really in tuned to but is there a um a system in place to provide discounted photos um for students who may not have the means to obtain their their photos or a way for the district to support a program like that or is there anything like that in place at this time and i don't believe we have anything like that it's strictly voluntary so we have not used any public funds for that purpose okay the if there's a a group photo or yearbook picture produced from the photo whether it's purchased by the parents or not the student is included in that um in that format i understand there's several norms uh in schools that uh still create inequities that i'm always a
073little bit mindful of so that's one of them yep just i i got it off the question no i i i absolutely agree that even at the lowest cost it's still uh i think twenty dollars is the basic one or two picture price and for some families that's just not uh something they can do yeah especially with multiple kids maybe that should be a a good thing for our school sites to discuss um public comment thank you is there a motion associated with this item we already did because you have cute kids okay all those in favor of approval i i thank you four to one yes with mr lando still absent that's that's not a put down of mr lando we're all aware that his need to be gone tonight was um significant i
074did actually have a point of order in that how that's being recorded because his absence doesn't count as a no vote it would just be that it's a four to zero four to nothing um and there's only four members here there's it's it's rega it's reported as however many yes and no votes there are of those of us present right the absent vote is at the bottom of the list and it will just say landau absolutely i think i'm just hearing you say four to one and i'm thinking it sounds like four yeses and one no i just wanted to clear it it's recorded as an absence and not part of the accounting oh we're all i've already flipped the page i'm sorry um mr baltimore again you're on regarding the location mr baltimore's agenda
075location um for our meetings yes so um and in preparation for school starting this facility will be in use for performances and really will not be available for board meetings it served us well during the covid19 pandemic because we have some very nice technology here and staff was able to to set up but we were also able to leave the setup in place so as we go forward we provided four options for the board to consider we added some pros we didn't give you any necessarily the cons because we just wanted to point out some of the positives related to our schools we noted marigold a multi-purpose room it's one of our schools that have been modernized and new construction but it is good size the stage is lower at that school site so the
076board may feel closer to the public i know that's been one of the concerns that marsh that you felt maybe higher and away from the public the infrastructure is all in place to have meetings there there's a proximity to this cfa so from a technology standpoint staff could easily move between this site and marigold certainly complies with the american disabilities act with new construction and there is a room right off of the marigold area for closed session before or after a meeting we also note neil dao really almost all the same pluses the only thing is it doesn't have the attached room for closed session and kneel down so we would have to move across the playground to to do closed session before or after we could go back to marsh um you've experienced that
077but we do note that often the board has felt maybe a little more disconnected from the public and um and it is since it's the location isn't doesn't have as good a parking for the public as well you have to kind of walk into the campus to access it so um it certainly serves its purpose well it's large enough it's well lit and it has all the technology that we need in that space as well and we note the district large conference room we use it for many of our board meetings that are workshops but it's small and would be limited for the public so we kind of know those are four that from a facility use standpoint that we could enter into fairly easily but we wanted input from the board on where you
078might want to start meeting as early as next month thank you dr kaiser i'm going to strongly urge uh marigold i think that its accessibility is quite significant and since uh most of our current facilities improvement under our approved plan are focused on elementaries it's a really important thing for people to see elementary schools who have taken on a new a new character so i am very happy to suggest marigold ms dalby is it my understanding correct that uh there used to be a practice of rotating to different sites um for different for each meeting i'm sure that there's cons to that but i also know that there are some pros to that in in that we would be visiting multiple sites throughout the city yes we did try for two years the rotation of
079sites um and there were issues just with consistency in the public knowing where to go for the meetings that's the first thing that i thought of yeah and the setup and then we did try uh and you know and this is something that is still a possibility we had our regular meetings at a consistent location and then depending on the topic that we were discussing in our workshop we could go to different sites so if we were talking about facilities we could go to a site to see some of the facility upgrades and we can still do that as well i like that idea mr demis did you have actually i was really eager to hear from uh madame kaiser and you uh madam president because you've actually been to meetings and participated in meetings
080at these locations so so yeah no strong strong opinions here with me i mean i would just like it to be a nice facility that's open to the public um so i like this facility a lot so get me as close to this experience that's what i want um i'll i'll weigh in um we when we go when we made the decision to leave the city council chambers it was difficult to have the the feeling of public interaction that we had at the city council chambers when we settled at marsh the first thing that was most noticeable was not feeling close to the people that had come to the meeting that was why i i would not vote to go back to marsh i like the idea of going to marigold i think the lighting
081in the parking area and stuff is excellent and i agree that highlighting the upgrades at an elementary school is is wonderful and i um i think that not moving from meeting to meeting is good because there's so much stuff that has to go with us in the way of media presentations and things that i'd like to stay as settled as yes as settled as possible um so that uh we can you know we can continue to reach out to our public we don't want to mentally challenge our high-tech people either caitlyn i'll also add to your comments about marsh um which i'm obviously biased towards because i love that school um but uh it is difficult to access the multi-purpose room um from a parking lot i had to let a lot of times i
082was always in my classroom until like 6 to 8 p.m every day so i always let people through my classroom my classroom was kind of a gateway to campus from that parking lot so i would agree that marsh for that reason plus what you mentioned is is not the most ideal location either although it is a gorgeous upgraded campus yeah do i have a motion i move marigold do i have a second yeah i'll second that um i just pulled up the picture of the of the new facilities at marigold i haven't even seen it yet it looks like it looks great yeah it is uh okay oh we didn't was there public comment there was no public comment requested okay any further discussion uh would it be appropriate to maybe add a friendly amendment
083and or maybe we could just discuss as a different action item later on um to consider rotating for our workshops just to so that we do have a presence on multiple campuses and and give kind of give the love to everybody but have our our general monthly meetings um wherever we approve is that an amendment or should i just add that sometime later uh one is on the regular meeting location and and the other is is for the workshop meetings um and the the down part of the workshop meetings because we we did go through the rotation effort and it it really the public didn't like it because they didn't know where it was going to be next yeah i think i think my my reasoning for maybe considering that is just that you know
084if we're talking about i think even uh superintendent staley mentioned if we're talking about facilities if we want to upgrade a facility or we we're not sure but we actually have the meeting there or we're talking about facilities and we're at a place that we know needs the most work or you know there's been the most public comment that it needs the most work kind of thing and you know the public sees that we are we are all there to put our eyes on it not just in our own time but just as that effort i'm that's only an example of why i have this desire to consider it but i understand the challenges of the logistics of it as well okay i'm i'm going to um not allow the amendment to be attached to
085the motion so that we have two different issues if that is okay so i do we have any if i already asked for public comment okay and we have a motion and a second and no further discussion all those in favor of uh marigold hi okay we have selected marigold ms dalby if i might suggest down the road if if you'd like to bring that suggestion back to the board after we get settled with our workshop topics and things yeah we could even do it on a case-by-case basis and have it be an agenda item to it you know decide later on too so there's there's different ways to go about doing that i don't think tonight needs to be the decision maker thank you thank you i have a question yes dennis and cory
086what are there no items from the floor in this meeting just curious no it's it's a workshop meeting items from the floor are regular board meetings next is the any board member request to agendize an item at a future meeting yes mr tennis you know i was going to bring something up but i was informed by staff that it already exists so i should have brought this up during announcements but maybe we'll just pretend that we didn't have that conversation and i'll bring this up for a future discussion and you can correct me uh so i thought it would be nice if since we have so many more students who are going to be participating in oakbridge online in the future if those students both on the high school level and the junior high level
087were able to participate in sports programs that are at the schools i knew there had been discussion about once upon a time chargers were allowed to and then not allowed to but for oak bridge i thought they ought to be able able to and so i was going to bring that forward as something mr sheppard go ahead yes they are absolutely eligible to participate and they can also participate in clubs if they wish to attend they do band choir they do participate as a member of the of their neighboring school so they don't get to choose it's based on their neighboring school unless they unless they form 10 but yeah they are we welcome them to participate that's great so please note news media both print and digital or visual that students who are participating
088online through oakbridge can participate in sports programs at their neighborhood school okay i believe we have reached the end of our agenda we have no need for closed session so i will entertain a motion to adjourn iso move second we have a motion in a second all those in favor aye aye okay thank you board