ABCUSD Board Meeting - October 19, 2021

001[Music] so [Music] mhm [Music] foreign [Music] uh [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] call meeting to order board member chris apotaka will be attending the board meeting via teleconference due to a work obligation come on up here before we get started with tonight's board meeting i'd like to welcome the community back to our board meeting i'm sorry this is for is this right yes okay back to our board meeting please remember if you are in attendance you must keep your mask on at all times keep physical distance between you and others and use the hand sanitizer posted here in the board room those who refuse to wear a mask will be asked to leave and we will call law enforcement if needed we take the health and safety of our community seriously and ask

002that you do the same thank you roll call danielle president say president vice president you here clerk nishi president board member dr apodaca board member mr beach present board member dr eugenio here board member dr rios thank you okay um so thank you daniel for the real call for me next one we're going to have a workshop on the topic so-called ccej this is provided for our board and our staff and i would like to give this one to i believe dr weiss is the one helping us on this one i also wanted a special acknowledge to our superintendent you know they're always something we can learn to improve and i want to thank you dr weiss made and so prompt and get the speaker for us today and i'm so glad our staff is

003here administrator staff and also our board is all here and i also make sure chris board member of dhaka can hear us okay madam president thank you thank you i just want to make sure we all came here thank you very much the floor is yours now thank you no oh my gosh good evening that's a little better good evening to our abc board of education president say vice president you for clark nieshi and to our board members to our superintendent as well as our cabinet my name is dr christina wise and i'm privileged to be the director of secondary schools here in abc i want to thank you for the opportunity to speak about the partnership and work between abc unified school district and the california conference of equity and justice that we know

004affectionately as ccej back in may 2020 after the murder of george floyd we had several students organized protests in our community to support black lives matter although our california dashboard data supports exceptional graduation rates for african american students some of our students express deep concerns about their experiences in our schools in the protests in which students march from cerritos library to abc unified school district our superintendent says something prophetic that touched the heart of so many of us and she said simply we can do better as a result of the commitment to our students and community abc board of education unanimously voted for resolution 19-114 abc unified school district affirms its commitment to foster a campus culture in which all members of the community feel safe respected and valued and because of that resolution that

005began the work for us at whitney high school and working with our principal mr john berkeley our first school in which we supported was whitney high school as a district principal director reena carroll as well as associated executive director daniel solis and director of building bridges kathleen pagdillo and of course our own abc principal and axle principal of the year mr john berkeley is with us today thank you dr weiss thank you so much dr wise thank you so much to the board of trustees i'm rena hijack carol the executive director of ccej and we are really just thrilled to be here with you in person in real life not on zoom we get to see you it's beautiful thank you so much for having us we are honored to be here and to be

006able to share with you so much about the work that we do that we feel so impassioned about and that we get to do with your students so thank you for the opportunity tonight ccj for those of you who may not know have we've been around for about 60 years we work all throughout southern california with schools school district educators non-profits companies to do work around bias bigotry and racism our work is focused on education on dialogue on understanding who and what we are and who and what the community is as we all know our communities are changing and we have many many questions that was evident to us just about a year and a half ago after george floyd and after all the unrest that we had we brought together close to 4 000

007people to have conversations in community for us to be able to ask questions to one another to just hear perspectives and to learn about how we all are different from one another and ccej is just again honored to do this work with your students and with students across the region as you can see on our next slide some of the values that really ground our work are centered on understanding and empathy it is so important that we as human beings living in community understand who and what we are why we think what we think where we got to the place of where we think what we think we do this work with really a sense of asking questions and listening to understand we also understand that everyone is at a very different place on the

008spectrum of this work and so we ask and value people in terms of doing this work by really honoring participation so that people can engage in the work at the level that they are the most comfortable engaging with us at and in that we also very much value honesty and authenticity we want people to show up as who they are we don't want people to be performative we don't want them to say what they think they're supposed to say but we want them to be honest and real because we know that exchange and growth happens through that honesty and lastly we know that in order to do this work in order to do it right we need everyone at the table not just some people not just the people that agree with the other people

009at the table but we need every perspective and we need everyone all together in community to do this work so we are excited and honored to do this work with you all and with your students i am going to pass it to my colleague kathleen who will talk a little bit more about what we actually have been doing catholic awesome good evening everyone my name is cataleya pagdilao i'm like doctor i said i'm the director of building bridges for youth at ccej i'm also a former educator so being on a school setting just is filling my heart right now so thank you so much for having us um so like reena said i'm gonna talk to us about kind of what we did last year right so i'm going to take us on a little

010journey through our conscious classrooms work that we did with both whitney high school and cerritos high school last year so the first piece right our first module really centers on building community how do we come together to have conversations what are some norms we have to create right to ensure that we can talk to one another right about these these topics and be honest with one another like green was saying our second module really centers on identities and me right um encouraging young people um to really explore right what their identities mean to them right i know so many students from the district come from different backgrounds different homes right and so how do we honor one another right how do we honor each other's culture um and be able to share meaningfully about our

011identities the third module really centers on equipping young people with the ability to name write their experiences as they pertain to experiencing stereotypes prejudice discrimination and so that day is really dedicated to talking about social inequity right in a in a way that is of course age-appropriate in a way that centers again their experiences and their choices in the matter our fourth piece is really centered on looking to past movements right we know that the work of challenging you know stereotypes prejudice and discrimination is historical right so we look to the civil rights movement we look to the farm excuse me united farm workers movement right so looking to those examples of past movements that have been happening in present movements that are happening to get examples of what does it look like to be

012more united right within our schools and then finally in the last session around building more inclusive classrooms we equip young people to think about you know if they do see something if they witness something how can they step in how can they show up for each other and so we really talk about ways that they can address conflict ways that they can acknowledge how they feel right if they feel like they're not being listened to if they're not being seen or if their their peers aren't being listened to and seen how can we instead show up for each other and advocate right to make sure we're being um honored in who we are so that's just a little run through as far as what it looked like last year um with whitney and cerritos whitney

013um kudos to whitney they took the charge and really implemented it across the entire school which is something i have not seen before right and so i think it's just a testament to the commitment to to do this work and make sure all the students 7th through 12th grade had some language had some experiences right that they could speak to and really come together right and again honor one another and figure out what respect looks like at whitney right um and so we did work with um over 1 000 students there um cerritos had 12 classes which is also incredible sometimes when we work with partners you know it might be like three to six classes here and there but the fact that cerritos committed to 12 was wonderful as well so we actually worked

014with over 300 students there as well so you know i'd be remiss you know as an educator and someone who does this work to not include student voices so i'm not going to read through all of them but in your packet you do have quotes right that kind of tell us a little bit of a picture of their experiences so we do include evaluation right at the end of our programming to see you know what what is ccj doing right what can we improve upon and so these are some of the anecdotes that we collected from students so i'll read um one in the middle there right a whitney tenth grader sharing i will definitely be more open to ideas and opinions another thing i feel i can really take part in is encouraging new

015friends into friend groups and being respectful of different and all types of people regardless of their race religion or gender identity so just want to again set your student voice is right and kind of what they shared with us for for feedback and i'm going to go ahead and turn it to daniel to share on the next piece uh good afternoon everyone daniel solis and so we wanted to next talk a little bit more specifically about how do we engage the question of race racial identity since i know that's one of the pressing questions right that you all have been discussing about this program and so we have four kind of main purposes that we are looking to accomplish when we bring students attention to race and how they're experiencing how they're living it how

016it's present in their classrooms how it's present and their schools in the community and so first we are coming from a positive youth identity development framework where it's really about how can we help young people grapple with these questions about what does it mean to be an inclusive society what does it mean to be a person who welcomes and respects everyone no matter what differences they hold and how are they tapping into the values of their families right their communities their faith communities and helping them navigate their choices right in school uh so that approach guides us to ask questions of what do they think about differences what are stories they're encountering how do they feel about themselves how do they feel about their peers and their communities and having them hear from each other

017and hearing different stories different experiences is part of where the learning really happens we then want to really focus on reducing bias and stereotypes because we know that that's a barrier to students building meaningful connections with each other to feeling included definitely connected on campus which are all things that can impact academic achievement and their long-term trajectory right in career and academic success so we talk about what is biasing what is stereotyping what are biases stereotypes they may be seeing on the media and social media that maybe they're hearing on campus from their peers right and how are they processing that how are they making sense of it right and how are they suspending a little bit of their judgment to kind of get behind to the who are the people really behind it right

018if i'm hearing stereotypes about a certain community how do i actually hear what people from the community have to say how do i really understand them right to maybe check if that stereotype is true or not right we then also really want to strengthen the connections to peers and schools because that's often a big challenge right especially if students are feeling isolated if they're feeling disconnected if they're feeling like they have to leave part of themselves to be on campus so we do that by sharing stories right we invite students to say how do you feel on campus how are their cliques right how are students talking about conflict right so really just posing a lot of questions and getting them to hear a range of experiences which are things that they often don't talk

019about uh sorry bear with me the mask is a new thing for me um since i'm used to zoom so the last thing that we really focus on our conversations around race is helping them navigate differences with respect and competency because the reality is we live in a very diverse society uh southern california is one of the most diverse places in our country and the realities are going to encounter people who have different identities beliefs experiences than them in the workforce in college in their neighborhood and so how do we help them do that with respect and do that with ways that they can build relationships even if maybe there's places where they don't agree with people who are different than them and so that's a big part of our approach with dialogue it's not

020about agreeing it's not about changing people's minds it's about respect empathy and frankly uh living together right with with respect and minimizing conflict so we wanted to share some some voices from students who shared with us a little bit about how they experienced this part of the program um so where can i start i'll start at the top uh this experience was different from my typical school experience because we actually learned about the real world and society we learned about topics that need to be talked about and heard all in all this program was a realistic supportive great and stress-free adventure that was a whitney high school 7th grader and so to bring in cerritos our other other school i would say that this training was very enlightening and educational it was a great way

021to learn about the root causes of racism making me feel inspired to want to take action it gave us opportunity to listen to others and share our experiences in a comfortable atmosphere at cerritos high school in ninth grader so i think from there we wanted to i'll pass it back to kathleen to talk um about pronouns right and how do we use that in the program which i know is another question so actually let me all right so like daniel said we don't the other question is really pertaining to pronouns and i'll just say speaking for myself right i know when i was first introduced to pronouns that it was it was new right and i was curious about it i wondered why right as someone um whose pronouns are usually assumed correctly of me

022so a little bit of why we utilize that within conscious classrooms um is also you know similar to some of the work we do with regard to talking about race but really to practice respect and inclusion right we want to create a space for transgender non-binary and gender diverse students to express themselves to be included right to be respected and support their health and wellness other studies that show right that when young people are able to share who they are and be honest about that that they have lower risk for depression for suicidal thoughts and other mental health issues so very important right that they are able to to do that with one another another reason we include pronouns as part of our practice is also to strengthen connections to peers and schools right so

023if daniel shares with me you know their pronouns right we can build trust and connection because i can honor how daniel wants to be referred to as so it really helps deepen trust in connection with peers and school staff by putting into practice values of inclusion of all respect for differences and supporting every individual to be their authentic selves and then finally discussing pronouns really allows us to practice navigating differences with respect and competency right so it supports all students to understand and practice an increasingly common part of workplace culture across many sectors for example i know many of the people i email with right now right i'm seeing more and more pronouns show up so i think it's just something that is emerging even more so and so students should be prepared for that

024as they enter college and in their careers right um so to help us kind of um oh and the last thing i'll mention sorry um is that you know our california education code two to eight point um or two to one point eight actually write also inc requires right that we honor students um identities and making sure that they can again express themselves right so that we can honor all these benefits right of doing so so i think we're gonna role model that a little bit so can i pass it to you arena to share your pronouns with us um thanks kathleen for the opportunity to share with everyone my pronouns my name is rina my pronouns are she her hers daniel did you want to share yours uh yes i went my name is

025daniel and my pronouns are he him and his and my name is kathleen i'm gonna go ahead and pass because i realized i didn't get to share the student voice so i'm actually going to go ahead and pass um on my pronouns this afternoon but i did want to highlight some quotes from students right so um at whitney right we had a 9th grader share thank you for asking for pronouns it's not often that people ask as most assume so it was a nice change of pace and then heading over to cerritos a ninth grader also shared right that i will use this info by always asking people their pronouns to get to know them better so definitely cultivating some connections and understandings there right so with that i think that's all from us is

026there anything else all right so i'm going to go ahead i think and pass it to dr brickley over here after i [Applause] thank you board president say vice president you board dr sue you've entrusted me with one of the finest academic institutions in the country there are none finer i truly believe that but when i arrived in 2016 i did a deep dive into the data and it showed me that something was off wasn't sure what but as time went on it became clear our school was not as inclusive as it needed to be was not as welcoming was not as equitable and over time we've seen these things surface both in social media and in the community we had to do something we searched we tried different things we tried generation ready i

027spoke about empathy we had trainings we we sort of went round and round and didn't make positive change we're now making positive change of that i can assure you what i see happening now on our campus students are more aware they're more empathetic they're standing up for one another just this last star this school year in fact we had one of our eighth graders actually challenge a student from another campus for racist comments made on social media this was a majority race 8th grader addressing comments about a minority student we've had conversations in classrooms we've looked again at our curriculum we're making it more inclusive more welcoming for all students i will tell you not just as the principal but as somebody who has been trained by ccej somebody who started as a district intern

028in la unified and has had hundreds of hours of equity training and cultural proficiency training this is the first time i've seen a group challenge us to be anti-racist anti-bias that's what we need if we're going to change anything we can't permit this to happen anymore after working with these folks this past year i have every confidence in them and i want to thank you guys you've been terrific thank you do you have any comment from our board here i just want to say thank you so much you know make us more sensitive become a more sensitive more aware what's going on there and we want to treat the other just the way we want to be treated i think this is the conclusion from today and i thank you the principal from winnie high

029school brought this thing with us i really appreciate it there is always improvement education we're talking about to today it's this tomorrow will be different and because we're looking for the best best best what is the best for our children what's the best for the future you know and the past history that we learned so much especially after mr port for issue there and we learned it we you know even myself become a more sensitive around my area around the people that i work with that i want to thank you for bringing such wonderful workshops to share with our colleagues here and with the administrator and then okay so we do have some comments actually we have about i was waiting for you guys that's why you're talking so number i think the first is

030five which is uh vice president miss suyu thank you madam president first of all i want to thank rina kathleen and daniel for working with the youth the fact that you guys are working with the youth shows that you guys have the best heart making a difference in children's lives that's awesome my question is so do you guys go through the gender pronoun at every session hello um so at the first session we do introduce right the practice of pronouns um and part of this is to make sure that we're we're normalizing it right oftentimes um in spaces for transgender non-binary gender diverse students sometimes it can be a lot to to have to share right if they have pronouns that are different maybe than what people assume and so we introduced the practice at

031the beginning to ensure that we all have an understanding and we're all sharing that together right so we introduce it and then when students are talking and introduce themselves they have an opportunity to share their name and their pronouns they can always of course pass if they want to but it's utilized as a practice to ensure that we're getting to know each other right and so we believe that when people are sharing we can get to know another and then refer to each other the way that they want to be respected so our facilitators also model that um in the practice and then students are invited but of course they can also opt out if they're not you know ready or they don't want to so i grew up in la and i was called

032a lot of names china china hapones you know all kinds of things right but i know that korean youth did struggle with korean-american identity do you guys in your race uh you know training do you guys go through where you the students introduce themselves with their race i'm like chinese-american korean-american how do you guys like help the students understand each other's ethnicity uh so we do lots of activities where students can talk about their personal experiences of what are the words they use to talk about their race and their ethnic identity and first of all just to back up we talk about what is racial identity mean what does ethnic identity mean what's the difference what's culture what's nationality right all these different parts of who we are just to give the students a sense

033of if for example my family is from salvador right i identify as a sovereign american that's my ethnicity but i also identify as latino right that's my racial identity i'm the son of immigrants right and so that um fluency and all those concepts is important to help kind of understand how i might be connected to other people how i might be different than them and also i can make sense of when other people tell me i'm korean-american and chinese-american as opposed to asian right which might be the the label that gets placed on people and then we give lots of room for the students to talk about how do they feel about those labels what are words that maybe don't feel appropriate for them and sometimes we have students who say i don't want any

034labels that's not who i am that doesn't feel right to me and there's no judgment there's no pressure to pick a label it's then given room to then talk about well why like why do you feel that no labels is the best way for you right and then students hear that and then understand where that person's coming from right and so that's kind of our approach rather than like here's everything about this one community because we think it's more about the students doing that with each other and sharing what's important for them and that we work in different schools and so what the issues that are pressing in one community are going to be different from another right so thank you madam president um a couple questions one question and one uh comment um so

035do you ever uh go over you go over some of the historical movements have you ever gone through the reparations movement for um the during the world war ii that situation do you guys ever go over through that so there was a movement in after the war where the japanese were incarcerated without civil rights and so part of that was getting out of the feeling of being less than american and so there was a movement of people and survivors that gave their testimony and heartbreaking because pit brother against brother and sister against sister um there was a loyalty oath and all that other fun stuff so do you guys go through that experience at all or uh not explicitly but we when we bring up the historical movements it's more to talk about um leaders

036that can inspire so we talk about folks like martin luther king larry leong wright we talk about cesar chavez de la suerta so we try to focus more on who are leaders that can inspire us we are leaders that took action who are leaders that practice their values right so um that's definitely something we can think about incorporating is more representation right from all the diversity of the student body so so because i believe there are other groups as well that have similar experiences in america that were also challenging so if you would be able to do that and actually speak to the students then their particular concerns will be nice also i think you guys have a great opportunity here to prove something to have evidence um so you've done it for one year

037and so you're going to be doing it for two years so that's great um there are some evidence that indicates that if people are comfortable in this that the academic success is better for those challenged particular groups you will have an opportunity to at the end of this prove that so i'm hoping that you can have a baseline i remember mr bricklay showing me some of the issues regarding some of the mental health as well and this talks about mental health improvements and so i want to get my money's worth and uh i want to see whitney become even better academically and also in terms of mental health because it's not just so what if you get a's if you hate yourself um i think it'd be good that uh you measure that so that

038we can prove to other schools and so we can if you wish get the evidence i mean hard evidence the testimonials are nice but i want to see results in terms of scores and measurements and things such as that so you guys have a great opportunity in the second year to do that you have a baseline from prior to the pandemic to measure from and uh so that's my encouragement for you that's all thank you madam president thank you okay thank you again and so this evening we'll be discussing the following item through the closed section now right closed section conference with the labor negotiator update on negotiation with a b c f t a f s c m a e and c s e a now do we have any public comment on the

039closed section clerk uh nishi i don't see any madam president thank you now we're going to move the closed section i have a motion to move to close section and second so moved second thank you so i guess we have to do roll calls since abu dhaka is not here thank you mr beach yes dr eugenio yes mr nishi yes dr rios yes mrs say yes mrs you yes motion passes seven to zero thank you and we're to go to the back right oh my god [Music] my [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] me [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do foreign [Music] um [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] my [Music] so [Music] do [Music] baby [Music] of all

040the money that air i spent i spent it [Music] oh [Music] and all i've done [Music] glass good night and joy be with you [Music] had money enough to spend and time to sit on [Music] does my heart be [Music] good with you [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] they're sorry [Music] wish me one more day to stay but since it falls into my lord that i should rise and you should not gently rise [Music] [Laughter] [Music] to me the party [Music] be with you [Music] now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] me [Music] uh hmm [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] foreign [Music] me [Music]

041[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] do [Laughter] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] hey [Music] do so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] oh i'm sorry we have a motion to move our close uh to the open section thank you uh daniel roll call please dr apodaca mr beach present dr eugenio yes mr nishi yes dr rios mrs say prison mrs you yes motion passes 7-0 thank you daniel before we get started with tonight's board meeting i would like to welcome the community back to our board meeting please remember if you are in attendance you must be keep your mass in on at

042all times keep physical distance between you and others and use the hand sanitizer posted here in the boardroom those who refuse to wear a mask will be asked to leave and we will call the law enforcement if needed we take the health and safety of our community seriously and as you do the same i want to say thank you so much for the people in the back i hope the screen is big enough to for you to watch if you have any questions you can ask one of our staff here will make adjustments just for your need can you hear me in the back okay thank you see ya i'm sorry yeah please ask everyone i'm gonna ask everyone please silence your cell phones um we welcome public comments and anybody wishing to make a

043public comment it shall fill out a cart located table by the door and place it in the silver pin ting all public comments are to be made during the public comment section or at the time an item is presented must be done before the item is discussed each comment must be no more than five minutes today i know our public comments say no matter five minutes but i will ask my board carly here because we have so many cars in there i like to ask a consensus from my board change from five minutes to three minutes that give everybody a chance to talk can you just knock your head if you agree for five from five minutes to three minutes i have a board member mr beach so many people here i think the public

044would uh like that even though i would like to give five minutes still there's a tremendous turnout here um i think they would agree for three but it's up to the board thank you so if i receive this consensus please just knock your head that you're greeted from change from five minutes to three minutes and you just okay so one um i don't think we need the motion no it is really just consensus yes yeah okay so yes okay god chris did you hear me chris yes well change it from booming from public comment from five minutes to three minutes thank you sir for your support i'll just hope all the person the majority of the board i think that uh folks expect uh you know full five minutes as we've had uh you know

045i believe it's the first amendment right to exercise it i would just ask that those president not take the five minutes if they can say it in two or three but i'm okay with the majority of the board okay thank you i would actually prefer that as well they can take the five minutes if they want but please be courteous and try to make your comments faster so you move into three minutes because our property comments only one hour unless if the public any public if your comments regarding the agenda tonight then we'll ask you to stay an agenda and present your case that will give other people have opportunity to speak so otherwise um i think the beginning where the i know you'll change your vote i mean not vote you change your consensus

046right now to fight but the rest of the board still says fight three to five minutes madam president yes ken um there are a lot of speakers actually here so that technically if everybody spoke their maximum they we would not get there and there have been times and we have had the maximum amount of speakers i've been doing the timing and some there's a lot of times that that happens i'm wondering if a compromise position would be four four if you did four minutes technically we could finish all the speakers in my hand if any additional people came in how many cars do you have there 17 17 times four that will be 68 minutes we are one hour so we're extending the eight minutes okay it's okay okay so we're changed now to four

047minutes performance but okay i'm expecting the four minutes yeah madam president i i object i think we've never limited public comments nor have we ever gone beyond the hour i think some speakers will speak at the maximum and some won't so i like to maintain our five minute limit five minutes i can cuddle with that doctor dr wheels okay so we have uh war i'm sorry clerk change you for five minutes or four minutes or five minutes okay you all have five minutes in here and we welcome public comments we always do that's our district this is a typical of our abc usd are bored trying to be flexible as much as we can so now we send consensus five minutes i'm asking the audience if you see um booklet can you show the signs

048that you have on your hand we have five minutes three minutes and one minutes in and warning you when you get zero minutes i'm asking you please please and stop your i'm sorry to say that because we really want to everybody have a chance to come up the podium to express their concern and share their issues here okay thank you very much i run back because i'm short of breath here okay and for tonight's close section the board discussed conference with labor negotiator will update our negotiations with abc t a f s c m e and c s e a now i would like to have one of my board member dr rios would you please leave the pledge alleged today thank you so much ma'am please stand put your right hand over your heart

049ready begin 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 thank you madam president thank you dr rios and now we have a presentation today spot on teaching learning which teacher induction program and we have dr gina zillow assistant superintendent human resource and stacey himadiwa program specialist staci are you here oh good good to see you good evening board president board audience we're glad to be here this evening to share with you about our abc induction program we're going to give you a little bit of an overview briefly of what it is have one of our teachers share their experience with the program and then recognize those who were able to be with us tonight

050um coming back in person this is kind of our first group that will be here so it's it's not a large group that came but you know there's a lot of challenges right now with our lives as they are walking out the last half of a pandemic so um induction for new teachers is a program that is two years in length and it's designed to provide individualized support for brand new teachers with not only instruction from how things work within their program looking at english learners looking at how to work with students with special needs and the various aspects of what you do as a teacher but it provides a mentor with them that meets with them weekly um induction is the process in the state of california by which a teacher can clear their

051credential so you need to go through this program in order to finalize your credential this past june of 2021 we had 22 teachers who completed our program and we work in conjunction with los angeles county office of education they provide training for our mentors they provide the instruction pieces and the platforms that we use for our teachers to do their work and then of course we as a district provide the mentors so our teachers here in abc are mentored by other teachers in abc who are veteran experienced and well trained currently in our program we have 44 people in year one and we have another 12 that are completing year two and so we'll have another group next year that come through we have 28 veteran teachers in abc who are trained and work with

052our induction candidates they meet weekly to provide that support and give a space for new teachers to really talk with someone veteran about what they're experiencing as a new teacher it's one thing to learn it in the classroom as a university student in the textbook it's another thing when 38 faces are sitting in front of you or 24 or whatever grade you're working with or subject matter we really work to make sure that the experience is as positive as it can be it has been challenging but it's been virtual uh since march of 2020 and our mentors and our candidates have done an excellent job with that we continue to have a hundred percent completion rate and in addition as laco has tracked data for our candidates themselves even if they have moved out of

053state and they're not in abc these candidates are still teachers they're still in the profession which is the goal of the program we are fortunate and blessed that stacey hamagiwa has led this for us more than 20 years she does an excellent job and make sure that not only our mentors but our candidates feel welcome and provide any support they may need in addition we're very thankful for the mentors tonight we have a few mentors with us i believe kim larkin is with us robin nelson cindy newell and bill mead they are a few of our 28 [Applause] sorry kanye nam kay yang came as well thank you yes please stand [Applause] in addition um this process takes place in in what they call collaboration with a site principal and so they have what they

054call triad meetings where the principle of a site is working with the mentor and the new teacher um to make sure that the support is there at the site in addition to the mentor and so we're thankful for our principles and their work i believe tonight we have a few principals with us who have candidates who are completing mr castillo from carmanita middle school mr garcia from artesia high school dr leuce from gar high school and mr walker from cerritos high school so if you could at least wave or stand we appreciate you so at this time we're going to have one of our candidates share with you about their experience and so i'm going to invite up uh cecilia callejas from artesia high school [Applause] good evening for president uh say members of the

055board and superintendent dr mary sue can you guys hear me okay okay my name is cecilia and i'm a current math teacher at artesia high school this is my third year teaching in abc usd and i've had the privilege of growing up and having worked within the district my entire life i would like to briefly share my experience in the teacher induction program going into induction two years ago i was experi i was expecting something similar to the teacher performance assessments i was expecting the long papers every credential candidate does not look forward to writing however the teacher induction program was so much more than the overwhelming experience i was expecting it was a complete hands-on experience that provided a lot of reflection challenges and opportunities for growth and improvement in every aspect of being

056a new educator i was incredibly lucky to be placed under the supervision of robin nelson my mentor who could not have been a better fit for me for two years i met with robin on a weekly basis looking at my student population their very specific needs and aligning those with the state standards being a graduate of artesia high school allowed for a unique perspective that is as a student myself and now a teacher i shared with robin that the struggles of these students resembled my own struggles 10 years ago i knew what it was like to be an english language learner and not understand the directions in my classes i knew how difficult it was to have conversations in class without feeling self-conscious of my accent or if i was conjugating a word correctly i

057also remembered having extremely supportive teachers and a principal that made every effort to keep me involved in school activities even if it meant translating letters in spanish and personally calling my dad begging him to allow me to take part in multiple activities being on the other end of the students is an honor and i feel extremely fortunate to be able to be a teacher that will make every attempt to differentiate instruction for them to not only understand the mathematics but help them feel comfortable and engage in those important conversations necessary for learning thanks to robin nelson my mentor for connecting me with the el teachers on my site and helping me see the endless possib possibilities of working with an underprivileged community thank you to my principal sergio garcia for calling my dad he's my

058principal and now he was calling my dad 10 years ago asking him to begging him to allow me to go to calculus camp and translating letters for me i know it's that same support and it gives me that same support in the classroom and i think that that's what has allowed me to stand before you all today i'd also like to thank the abc school board for this opportunity to participate and to continue funding the teacher induction program thank you so at this time i'm going to invite stacey hamagua up to recognize and read the names of our candidates who are here this evening and then if i can get president say to help me we'll hand out their certificates and take some kind of spread out picture tonight our first recipient is cecilia calejas

059our speaker caitlin mcgranahan [Applause] matthew de gucci [Applause] and nancy villalon vasquez and i know that dr zitlow recognized us a few of our mentors that are here this evening and i would like to ask them to also come up for the picture which is connie kay kim and robin please come on up thank you [Applause] oh thank thank you congratulations [Applause] well don't go i don't go yet we have a board member is going to make some comments and when i have uh dr ogarios please thank you thank you congratulations thank you for sharing your story i mean i think it warmed all our hearts right because that's why we're here um i welcome the diversity that i continue to see every year i know that our district will benefit and our students absolutely

060will benefit and again congratulations on your journey and we're here to support you thank you i also want to say thanks stacy and dr zeno for the hard work on this teacher reduction program and i want to congratulation the teacher graduate from there also thanks to the principal and the mentors and thank you for your hard working and there you call in now and still help them and support them and go together and make the better teacher just like you are thank you so much [Applause] okay that will be a proof agenda we have a motion to prove the agenda for the regular meeting october 19 2021 motion to approve eugenio [Music] okay daniel please roll call dr apodaca yes mr beach yes dr eugenio yes mr nishi yes dr rios yes mrs say yes

061mrs you yes motion passes 7-0 thank you that motion to approve the minnesota regular meeting of october 5th 2021 motion to prove you daniel second daniel roll call please dr apodaca yes mr beach yes dr eugenio yes mr nishi yes dr rios yes mrs say yes this is you yes mushroom passes 7-0 we um i just wanted that back a community member please we have three more seats in the front you're welcome to come forward and i also want to thank you be patient with us we're running a little late um when we get back to our board meeting here so next one will be our beautiful student board representative i will have i have james lee and julia modena from winning high school the floors you are now sir and lady [Applause] good evening

062president say vice president you superintendent dr sue distinguished members of the abc school board mr brookly and guests my name is julia modina and this is james lee and we are speaking on behalf of whitney high school to present our events and activities from the first quarter whitney high school's associated student council has organized a variety of events with the intention of boosting school morale and promoting unity among our students on august 20th asb held an in-person new student orientation for incoming 7th and 8th graders to familiarize themselves with the campus and learn about the different academic athletic and extracurricular opportunities offered at our school during the week of september 13th through september 17th asb also put together a mario themed spirit week for students to dress up and earn spirit points for their grade

063some examples of the dress-up days were twin day beachwear day and mario character day our most recent event was club rush week starting on september 20th and ending on september 24th each day of the week was dedicated to a different type of club such as special interest clubs community service clubs and cultural clubs students were strongly encouraged to join groups based on their endeavors and participate in the club life at whitney lastly our school has implemented whitney ware wednesdays in which students are encouraged to dress in whitney apparel every wednesday to express their school spirit and pride our next upcoming event is red ribbon week which will take place from october 25th through october 29th this year our leadership team wanted to place an emphasis on the dangers of drug abuse and the impact it

064has on our youth therefore we will be holding meaningful activities on each day of the week to urge students to live a drug-free lifestyle and spread awareness about this topic in addition to the school-wide events that have occurred over the past few weeks our class cabinets are also in the process of planning activities for their classmates to engage in the seventh graders recently participated in asb elections to select four individuals to represent their class in student government the eighth graders are currently fundraising for their eighth grade dance which is scheduled to take place in the spring the freshmen have prepared a new class shirt design and are working on delivering class apparel the sophomore students are fundraising for prom and organizing a movie night for their first quarter activity the juniors are working on fundraising

065for their class as well as their prom club last but not least the seniors are currently in the process of selling and distributing senior merchandise to celebrate the future graduates as with our numerous spirit-filled school and club events whitney high school strives for excellence in our academic and athletic domains as well we are proud to announce that eight of the national merit finalists are students from our school their names being swathe ganesh ali chang sirikulapali rohan jain justin g shirakata sarah park and brian suite our school also goes on with great efforts to create an environment in which students of all levels are able to succeed academically our whitney after school tutoring program facilitated by whitney high seniors and juniors allows for older and more experienced whitney students to help younger students in whatever subjects

066they require assistance with ranging from algebra to biology we also engage ourselves in various competitions that allow whitney students to pursue their interests and further develop their problem-solving capacities our model united nations team which debates in cities all around america ranging from chicago to new york recently competed in the cerritos model united nations conference where we were given various awards of excellences we also boast an active science olympiad team and japanese quiz bowl team where olympia members engage in stem competitions ranging from crime busting and meteorology and quiz bowl members participate in quiz events that test their knowledge on japanese language and culture woody high school also puts great emphasis in giving back to our community and the world last week our whitney key club hosted a school supply drive where whitney students came together

067to donate supplies ranging from crayons to binders to local elementary schools that need them as for this week to the end of october whitney's unicef club is hosting a trick-or-treat fundraiser to raise money for the distribution of vaccines and hygiene products to families in poverty in various third world countries our sports team have also had a successful fall season so far with all five teams approaching league competitions volleyball won 64 in league girls golf is currently in league preliminaries on the road to cifs and boys water polo cross country and tennis are all currently competing for for spots to compete in the league as well all of the events and activities held at whitney are carefully done to follow the health guidelines set by the cdc and the abc usc district we continually strive to

068make the best out of our current situation in a spirited creative and above all safe manner thank you board members for your time and dedication and to keeping our students educated and protected [Applause] thank you mr lee and thank you miss modina and um let me see do you have anybody okay thank you very much you know especially this is school uh school time now and you stay here so late uh thank you very much for attending today and and give such great information about your school we really sincerely appreciate an event if we can't we're trying to go there too okay thank you so much you did a great job actually oh you have now okay we have our board clerk mr ernie nishi so i have a couple questions um so are you

069anticipating your new science building are you are you juniors or seniors or so you'll get to get to see the first beginning of the science center i'm expecting great things out of that science center you know okay thank you that's all madam president it's a great presentation thank you great job i also want to say thank to the community for your support for major bb to make impossible to become impossible our kids have a new equipment and new building to go in there i i want to thank you to our community for your support okay next one will be our superintendent report dr sue thank you very much first of all i want to thank julia medina and james lee for doing an outstanding job at what is going on at whitney high school thank

070you so much on monday october the 11th i participated in the cerritos artesia rotary club meeting the keynote speaker was chungbo city of cerritos mayor pro tem he did a wonderful presentation on politics and law enforcement a new member who will be installed is mayor of artesia renee trevino in the evening on that day at macaroni grill i was at the adult school to meet with their county office of education and wasps team members a number of our district team and adult school staff members were there to support the program on tuesday october the 12th i visited carver elementary school with principal deborah berlin we visited many classrooms that day including special education english classes math classes and science classes on wednesday october the 13th i participated at palms elementary school with principal julie yabumoto

071we visited numerous classrooms including special education english classes math classes and history classes there's a beautiful garden there that was created by one of the teachers at palms elementary school please visit there and go through danielle eastman to coordinate your visit later that afternoon i was one of three speakers in aasa's webinar on how to build and sustain community support this was coordinated by brian joff who moderated the event the other speakers were michael hinojosa who was the superintendent of dallas school district in texas and melissa kim who was the board of trustees in washington d.c we had numerous questions at the end of the event and we addressed all of them on october on thursday october the 14th i practiced a series with robert kane who will be moderating our series i will be

072presenting at the csba conference on december the second at the convention center in rome 6 d and e for those joining us please attend the session on december the 9th the virtual series will be on throughout the day in the evening of october the 14th i participated in abcma's leadership panel dr maida lozano principal at hawaiian elementary school p.a white principal of leo elementary school and patrick walker principal cerritos high school participated on the panel they shared how their leadership styles managed through the pandemic and solutions to support them on friday october the 15th i visited gar high school with principal dr ricardo leuce we visited many classrooms together including foreign language classes in spanish and japanese english classes math classes history classes and science classes dr ricardo leuce was deliberate on sharing with me

073their plans for improvement during the next two years i have completed all my evaluations of our cabinet members have a wonderful weekend this concludes my report well i want a special thanks to our superintendent dr sue thank you for your visit school to school and also keep us updated here and show the support to our staff boys in city appreciate you and next one will be employee representative report i know we have a regular abc ft the president right are you ready thank you for cleaning that oh for the audience if you come off the podium please wipe out the microphone then you might need to help us to clean the podium too would you please good evening president say board trustees superintendent dr sue administrators teachers nurses parents students and community members before i

074get into my free plan here i wanted to say thank you for having an in-person board meeting it's great to see you i miss you and it's great to see the community here thank you for coming out on such an important day every board meeting is important it's your community my name is ray gear and i'm president of the abc federation of teachers communication to abc of abcf team members is vital for our union's success in addition to our weekly newsletter our members which we call the union news every friday the leadership of abc ft has a live monthly chat with its members to deliver news updates and to give members an opportunity to provide feedback on matters that directly or indirectly affect their classrooms and their students thank you to you members who came

075today for the chat it's great to have a 100 groupies who show up all the time to give us feedback so thank you there is never a shortage of topics to discuss but this month's chat was filled with a number of teachers and nurses who have expressed their disappointment in the actions of a couple of school board members over the past month i've debated on how to speak to this if we should speak to it but it is important we're community members we're part of the abc community but we don't make the final decisions the voters do but i thought we would give our point of view the abc federation teachers along with other employees of afscme csea the administrators are comprised of vast numbers of diverse backgrounds and beliefs and although we are different

076in many ways we believe in the value and importance of each member of our community i can speak for the members of abc baby cft but i will say that a number of our members are shocked and disappointed at the divisive comments and actions of a couple of school board members recently a couple of weeks ago the local community newspaper did an important article on the private meeting that was held in cerritos by local city politicians to the astonishment of my members two abc school board trustees attended this meeting which served no other purpose but to misinform the public about critical race theory which i will state for the record is not taught in abc but also additional misinformation about harmful sex education in our schools i won't go into details but what was said

077in fact but what was said or the fact that two school board trustees were pictured with a symbol of the department of education with a strike through over the top both miss you and dr eugenio took an oath to uphold the core values of public education as a gateway for all students regardless of their backgrounds they say actions speak louder than words i know it sounds cliche but there's some truth to it when i look at mrs u's voting record on this school board i can see she has been supportive of students and employees of the district and through her voting record i think i think i can say that she does value all members of the community in fact it's to you who spearheaded measure bb to improve our schools and without her leadership

078and generosity that measure most likely would have had no chance of passing and our schools would look like our neighboring districts where they look more like prisons than schools is there a possibility of redemption i don't know that's for the voting community i would like to give the benefit of the doubt when i look at the positives in all people looking at dr eugenio's voting record i can see that he has voted no on most of the important issues of curriculum fair pay for employees and in fact he voted no on an agreement last spring to get our students back into the classroom what a disaster for our students if that agreement didn't pass i personally got to work with the kindergartners of nixon and in mr beach's trustee area we talked about getting kids

079back in school it was the right thing to do furthermore dr eugenio uses his bully pulpit to bash unions spout critical race theory rhetoric and just recently he called our sex education program pornographic i find the actions of both trustees divisive and not supportive to our mission as educators again what is to be done to fix this wound in our school board it's not up to the employees of the school district but it's up to the community members we are part of the abc community but we trust that you will do what it takes to steady our nervousness in this situation as employees we don't want to hear about calls of resignations for trustees that's not right either because it doesn't allow for dignity or due process instead let the voters decide in closing i'd

080like to make this point that trust is the main currency that we have in this community teachers work hard to gain trust with their students and parents principals work hard to solve problems to help teachers teach which builds trust and so on and so on all the way up the chain of command ending here the word trustee is not without some meaning and i think as a community we need to start thinking about how to rebuild that trust i hope that we can find ways as a community to heal and rebuild the trust i've worked to sue you on a number of things over the years and we've done good work and she's somebody i could work with in the future abc federation teachers can work with her though i don't know dr eugenio very

081well he's brand new to the board i always want to have conversations with him so we can work to build trust and to move forward let's spend our finite energy dr smutz superintendent of abc used to say we have a finite amount of energy let's spend it working on the future for students and not fighting like adults modeling bad behavior taking our eye off the main thing which is our students our community is our students area agreement says tonight get it out of your system but we need to heal let's move forward and continue the good work of the abc unified school district thank you [Applause] next will be afscme president mr tony bernardo daniel please thanks danielle thank you danielle otherwise i'll go down members of the school board uh as ray talked about

082members of the school board have made comments that hurt members of the community and many in abc i mean ask me employees we are a diverse community of color race we all work together to strive to make things great i think in trying to repair diversity i would like to request that the indigenous day be turned into a holiday to celebrate the diversity of our district and all our employees and help bring back unity to something that got broke a little bit thank you very much for your time [Applause] next one will be my board president uh report i added it to our agenda which is being full why already and the reason is i add it in because i do know sometimes receive the public comment email to us so that i choose the

083major things were discussed during the report time okay it is clear that it's harder to be a school trustee now than it ever has been before according to the csba which is california school board association executive director mr vernon i like him he's really good when i hear a lot of things coming from her regarding our board trustee how we work with the public this is what he said he said governing in a time of choice before meeting in the age of kobe ncrt or ethnic study i have heard some concern from parents and the community including number one some parents want to plastic shells on the desk to remove some don't as your board president and with the 40 years pediatric experience i ask those who are against the plastic shell to to hold

084on a few months here's why the winter is here during the period of the time we will see fluid asthma upper respiratory infection the show may provide some protection to the great level from kindergarten to 8th grade student because they are sharing the desk two people sitting on one desk they're very close to each other and the germs easily spray among us speaking as a teacher with the years of ex practice we did have teacher and student catch call from each other so using the seal can also protect the children temporary the district this is the thing i want to let the puppy know the show will be stays in there and we're trying to secure as much we can but we are doing something to protect our children what is the best for our

085children's health the district is monitored the local kobe infection rates if the rate continue to drop then we would take the plastic shells down please be patient with us we all want to do the best for your kids to be safe i received a picture from a parent showing that her son was scratched by a plastic shell the teacher will remind the district will remind us our staff because we have a superintendent meeting with our supervis meeting with our principal so this will be reminded on the next meeting to remind our staff to keep the shell secure on all desks there's another thing about zoom common public comments i know a lot some parents say you know what i really don't want to go to the public since our board policy once we open in

086person the board policy and state laws that i am a senior board member here and i know the ballpark as well i'm sure to follow it and also one of the major things our district staff reports that we don't have the technology to do so so i want to remind the community and as an elected official we follow the board policy and the state laws but there's always a room to improve so i'm making sure that our podium as you can just see i just remind our secretary the microphone will be wiped down with antiseptic each time it's used if we did please do so too or or if then you're busy i'll go down to claim the podium just for you yeah because we'll want you safe and i want special thank you to

087daniel we have created a safe distance and enough city in the board room and have added additional chairs at outside the room with a big tv screen i will constantly monitor this to be sure everyone present can hear also you can submit your concern by mail every email will be placed on each four member desk for review don't forget you can track hovey exposure information on our website which is update frequently the minute you click on abc abc website you can see the kovi information on right hand top corner so next one is uh my report to visit the two place one is on october 14th the abc adult school had a wasak team visit this visit was positive with a few recommendations but overall our district staff did a great job and was a

088team praised our board and the district my comment was that credit should go to our adult school learners and the district staff due to their hard work they make sure it pays off for our students so today publicly i would like to say again special thanks to the adult learners entire adult school staff and our district administration staff and most important ms nancy amara our newly promoted adult school principal thank you for your leading the wasab visit and i know that it was tough but you did a great job and represent our and your district and miss nancy omar also sent the notes to me to appreciate our board was there and we have a board core member mr beach was there and i was there i want to thank you for your support it's

089so important to our staff the westside representative just shared a few thoughts and i want to share them with you this is what she said we offer high quality education the adult school site are in a great location adult school team is very approachable and that led to a positive outcome but we have few areas which we need more focus like i always say there's room to improve this is what the gentleman said close monitor our enrollment amazing he said we did a 17 000 mailing but he suggests us to use googling it may reach out more student and i think nancy took that advice we will focus on that she also said the resource and financial should visible and we should be posted letting people know what we offer to the parent i mean

090to the adult learner so we encourage more to come take the opportunity on october 18 i attended la school trustee association meeting where we discussed community college good benefits for our k-12 giving students have the exposure to college experience and prepare students for higher education the association also offer washington dc trips some leadership training program including student board member training finally i would like to thank you today we have a ccej that's called california conference equity and justice for their presentation earlier this evening um thank you dr sue and thank you dr weiss provided for us so quickly to update our board about a year and a half ago we were at crossroads after death of george floyd now thanks to ccej and principal briglett our students are learning the difference and not a bad

091things but good things everyone is a different and we need to be honest and respect about who we are people the the the discussion of our difference is important in the end we need to treat each other with the respect and i want to thank you so much this concludes my report next one will be our public comment and i like to call the clerk please read out and then make sure we have total five minutes for each person i mean five minutes for each presenter thank you thank you man president first is wishing to dress the board should fill out a card looking at the table at the door place it in the silver tin the speakers will be called in sequence during this public comments section which is limited one hour and each

092speaker to one presentation in five minutes unless the board wishes to waive the time limit those who have a group concern are encouraged to select a spokesperson to address the board i've never seen that happen yet a person is wishing to address the board on a specific agenda item at the time the item is under discussion are limited to five minutes each and will be called to speak following the staff comments and prior to the board's discussion and taking action average comments about a person's race ancestry ethnic group identification religion color national origin sex sexual orientation gender mental or physical disability or age may not be made we'll be enforcing that concerns presented to the board will be followed up and addressed by the appropriate staff i believe there are several public comments are there

093any additional public comments in the silver basket there aren't any additional okay just have to maybe one more first speaker will be alex alcantar and if you could uh come in line so the next one is david chang christine show i'll call them in order so that you can stand and be next good evening i'm alex alcantara i'm here to speak tonight against comments made by boris vice president suyu relating to latinos critical race theory and history the comments related to hispanics needing to spend more time studying and getting tutored instead of spending money on things like quinceaneras i have to say i find this comment quite offensive it implies that hispanic parents and students don't prioritize education i'm here to tell you that's not the case please know that we work very hard very

094hard indeed to ensure that our students take education seriously seriously and yes surprise we can handle both quinceaneras and education at the same time it seems that soou has low disregard for students this district the philosophy of this board states that the governing board believes that all students can succeed regardless of their race background or ability school staff shall embody the philosophy this philosophy and all district programs and activities the comments made at this meeting do not seem to be consistent with this statement but for me the bigger issue stems from her question quote why should white children feel responsible for what happened to 200 years ago that's a quote vice president you may i just say that i don't know of anyone who is asking k-12 students to feel responsible for slavery or acts

095or racist acts of the past critical race theory analyzes how society uses race sexuality gender and other differentiate differentiators to systematically separate and discriminate against minority groups in other words it doesn't think seek to impl simply make people feel bad it seeks to prevent racism and discrimination in the future i hope you're not against this it's highly concerning that vice president suyu doesn't seem to understand that difference have you forgotten about the black lives matter protest from just last year did hundreds of thousands of people protesting not impact you if so i have to question your qualifications to be on the board at all sue you stated we need to teach them math we need to teach them english we need to teach them critical thinking skills so they know that they can think for

096themselves critical is the first word in critical race theory are you against that and if so is sue you against teaching crt in public schools and is she working to eliminate that from abc if not why not perhaps it's because critical race theory isn't a subject taught in the district it was announced that sue used subject is not subject to censure because her comments were considered personal opinion the bylaws of the board state that when speaking to community groups the media or other members of the public individual board members should recognize that their statements may be perceived as reflecting the views and positions of the board board members have a responsibility to identify their personal viewpoints as such and not as the viewpoint of the board end quote did you identify your comments as such

097i'm not sure but i do know that you did identify yourself as a school board member you commented that quote school board members that you elect they do have influence on how to and what to make a priority unquote the board has done many positive things in this area such as uh hiring diversity equity officer adrian thomas and approving funding funding for diversity and equity training at whitney high school and yes i appreciate that board member nishi and war guaya and president sophia say wore a mexican dress in celebration of hispanic heritage month at the last meeting these are small but important signs of respect for their constituents while i joined for the call for suey to resign i don't believe that'll actually happen so let me ask the sport tonight if critical race theory

098is being taught in the district to please identify the grade level the school and the class where this subject is being taught if this is not the case i asked board member suyu to explain why she's publicly criticizing the teaching of a subject that is not being taught in this district and consider it an obstacle to educators let's stop being divisive i'm a proud whitney parent and i'm active on the whitney lpa latin parents association as well as the whitney high school foundation while i do not represent those organizations tonight my comments are reflective of the thoughts of many parents in the districts that i've spoken with i'm here to tell the board tonight that there are parents who will work in the coming elections to ensure that they are represented by people who respect

099the values and ethics of their constituents thank you very much next we have david chang and christine cho thank you good evening board members superintendent cabinet members and the community my name is david chang i'm a proud father of two students currently attending star wars elementary i myself happened to be a product of abc usd having graduated from whitney high school and before that attending juarez nemes and palms elementary school i want to start off by offering my thanks to the people serving our children through the various positions within the district i'm sure is often a thankless job filled with criticisms and unwarranted blame but your sincere commitment and dedication to providing our children with a quality education is deeply appreciated and for that i thank you from the bottom of my heart as i

100became an adult and began to think about the future in education for my children i automatically gravitated towards abc usd and ended up moving back to cerritos to make sure that my children received their education here not because of what i heard from others or because of school rankings because i've been a part of this education system and i have trust that abc usd will provide my children with the best education possible when i was a student my parents had minimal involvement largely due to language barriers as first generation immigrants they simply placed their trust in the district and schools with the faith that their children would be appropriately taught the things they needed to know my parents could have chosen a relatively comfortable life in korea but they believed that the usa was a

101land of opportunities and they sacrificed all they had to make sure that me and my sister could capitalize on every opportunity for a better life with countless hours of overtime work multiple jobs forfeiting luxuries of life my parents spent what little money they had to send their children to private tutors music lessons sat academies and on and on while i griped and groaned as a student for never having any free time apart from my extra classes and always being told that we don't have enough money to go on a family vacation like everyone else i look back now and i couldn't be more thankful to my mother and father for the sacrifices they made for me of course the world i grew up in is vastly different from the ones my kids are growing up

102and now many of the cartoons i used to watch on tv have now been banned for violent themes and for negative cultural stigmas whereas today my kids get their throat from watching other kids unpackage toys on youtube i exaggerate to make a point that education has also changed with the times nowadays it seems that more decisions about my children's education are made by politicians in sacramento rather than the teachers students and parents in the state assembly passed a bill called ab329 which mandated all schools to teach comprehensive sexual health education this was never put to a vote to the people but rather passed by lobbyist-led politicians who never gave the general public a say in the matter districts and teachers were allowed some degree of control over which resources could be used and i'm very

103thankful that our school district seems to have taken a less extreme approach for the subject matter if there are any parents listening or unfamiliar with this i urge you to take a deeper look into the curriculum of comprehensive sexual health education and decide for yourself if these are the things you want your children to be learning at an early and impressionable age some of the content shown here would not be allowed to air on television or even in a rated r movie so why are we showing this to our elementary and junior high school students my family will be opting out from this curriculum and i hope that many others will as well to send a message to the politicians in san francis in sacramento additionally it was brought to my attention of a conscious

104classrooms curriculum which has been implemented at whitney high school led by the california conference for equality and justice as an asian american who grew up with his fair share of harassment simply for being asian and being told countless times as a young child to go back to your country i'm a big proponent of teaching our children about acceptance and tolerance but i have to admit i am worried of certain elements in the education curriculum that may hint a critical race theory and gender spectrum theory being introduced into this narrative i see both of these theories as heavily left-leaning philosophies which are trying to reposition themselves in the public eye of centrist views i had a chance to look over the conscious classroom's objectives and standards and i noticed that the very first lesson in each

105of the five modules is gender pronouns i'm perfectly fine with my child being taught about gender pronouns but the fact that all five modules begin with the lesson on gender pronouns suggests to me that there's an ulterior motive embedded in the curriculum i also find critical race theory to be dangerous it's a dangerous school of thought that forces people to take sides between oppressors and the oppressed contemplating all the misgivings of society as a product of social injustice simply breeds hate anger and retaliation putting an emphasis on the mindset of children that focuses on how have i been victimized won't cure racism it will only aggravate it in new ways curing racism and discrimination is as simple as this famous old quote love thy neighbor as thyself i implore for the leaders of this district

106to carefully consider the social and psychological impact of teaching our children the ideas of critical race theories as a fact rather than as a school of thought but if you have to teach it this way please remember to include depressions that have been suffered by middle easterners by the native americans and by asians and by so many others remember to talk about the chinese exclusion act of 1882 and about the japanese internment camps during world war ii and the la riots of 1992 and the asian hate crimes we've been seeing rampant on the news in recent days it's the chain i'm sorry to warn you your time is up may i just have one one more minute i'm at the end education is something that i believe should be neutral neither leaning to the left

107nor to the right the leftist views and righteous views should be equally presented as different viewpoints and children should be given an opportunity to figure out on their own as they grow and mature we need to stop it that's five minutes i'm sorry thank you [Applause] and next is john darnell good evening my name is christine cho i'm here to express my gratitude to the abc school district board members and to make a small request i'm a korean immigrant who live in cerritos for over 20 years my daughter and son were born here and now a high school and college student i love our city and very proud of our school district because i believe is one of the districts where diversity and cultural differences can come together respectfully and allow us to live in

108harmony it has been a great joy for me and to many other parents to see our children mature and grow together what a fantastic experience for my children to develop friendship with children with children from diverse cultures and background i cannot describe how happy how happy i was when my daughter's friend many of them who are hispanic and filipino asked me to teach them how to cook korean food or with when my son friends who are african-american filipino and indian waved their hands and said anigaseo which means hello in korean or called me call me mom in korean this was possible probably because of the diligent work from teachers principals and counselors and our superintendent dr mary sue and her cabinet member who works with ulmost passion thank you for your service i'd like to

109thank you board member for giving your time to serve on the board and our district i would like to address two things first of all about mr su you i may not know her well personally but i i witness how much effort she put in her in for our student community and korean immigrants like myself board vice president president suyu has served at the bridge between the school district and parents for eight years in the last board meeting there were few people who want once her wanted her to resign and accuse her as a racist i was heartbroken while watching this video i hope you know that she just like us she's a parent of this school district and an educator who works her best for the students i strongly believe that she's not a

110racist secondly i would like to address my concern regarding sex education we can compare our education system to an umbrella this exam example shows that in the education system the progressive teachings make up the tent while conservative teachings represent the frame an umbrella cannot be an umbrella without one or the other i believe when the tenth and the frame work together to unfold the children in our district will be safe and be protected but this day it seems like this balance of teaching system is broken we are all aware of the many angry parents that are going to scoreboard meeting because of comprehensive sex education which include includes extreme radical content taught to their young children i think that is one of the biggest reasons why many parents move their children to private school or

111homeschooling in light of that i also want to truly appreciate abc usd for choosing to use conservative and non-graphic sex education curriculum and for this reason there are many parents out that admire our school district i hope abc usd continue to maintain this balance of teaching both progressive and conservative side of our education system and become a positive influence to other school districts thank you once again for all your [Applause] efforts if you could please come to the podium so we can uh expedite this a little john darnell and mel cortez and after that will be eddie salcedo so if you could please line up so there's no pause i want to get as many speakers as we possibly can hi everyone my name is john and i'm john darnell and i live in cerritos

112my older daughter attends whitney elementary school and my younger daughter will attend whitman elementary school in its tk program in january i'm here because i live in the area that board member suyu represents um and i was very disappointed to hear my elected representative talk the way she did at the crt event that was hosted by the cerritos republican club i know she apologized but that was only because it was made public by the people who attended and she was caught she said two things that struck me first that blacks and african-americans should get over slavery second that latinos should hire tutors or whatever they need similarly like her company for example for their kids instead of attending quinceaneras the event was hosted by racist and anti-semitic folks who have a history of doing events

113like this just to bring drama and they brought it to our city board members suyu felt comfortable saying these remarks because she was around like-minded people would she say these things during this board meeting and to the staff that are latino and black or african-american here i hope not diversity and inclusiveness should be at the top of every organization's agenda if it's not then they're out of touch with the pulse of what's going on not only in our school district but our country this isn't the 1950s anymore what the school board member did was give this district a black eye and since over a month ago when she said it the school board and the district haven't done too much why is that i'll bet if someone made a remark about your race then you

114might speak out more it's called empathy creating the pipelines for those that have not had opportunities in the past should be one of your top priorities so now even though school board member sue has apologized i wonder how many biased decisions were made when it came to promotions hiring who gets to work on what important project of the district or policy set by the board maybe not too many maybe no no i'm not sure but it brings a question this is how it impacts the constituents in our school district now i'd like to finish by addressing the remarks made by board member suyu about why we should all just forget about slavery my name is john darnell and i am a descendant of slave owners the darnells came here from england in the late 1600s

115and soon after they got established they owned slaves if you ever meet someone with the name darnell and they're black or african-american then that's mostly most likely where their name came from i won't go into much more than that because i know you have a long meeting but the issues of police brutality lack of family wealth and so on are a lot of the issues that still are here today because of that and a lot of the last century's rules that have been imposed because of the white supremacy that has continued you're saying forget about slavery flies in the face of all the people who fought and died for each of our civil rights there's still work to do and i would like to see this district take diversity and inclusiveness more seriously one of

116your own has embarrassed the school district when you start to not like people based on their race gender or other protected classes then you are about you are being selfish you are hurting the organization you belong to you are tarnishing the brand of abc whitney high school is one of the best high schools in california and in the usa board merci represents this area and therefore carries our school districts brand i hope her continuing to serve doesn't hurt our brand as a district now this isn't the biggest reason not to say these racist things but it's a very important one and maybe that's a different way to look at it and maybe the way that the board will act thank you [Applause] mel cortez next is eddie salcedo followed by daisy lagaska good evening before

117i start when i show you right here i got a video with sound so it's not hearsay whatever i'm going to tell you and you probably won't get it the only times you'll probably get it before you do and now so i'm here on my own no one asked me to come to speak on anyone's behind um i'm not with any groups uh i was gonna come here two minutes ago but i decided to wait until i got more information i came to two weeks ago also so no one invited me to come and speak on anyone's be uh so so you said at your meeting with a racist woman that we should get over it it happened 200 years ago they should get over it what do you want me to get over what

118do you want all the children from abc usd to get over you want us to get over because some people might feel guilty i don't know anybody that feels guilty after studying history i don't anybody so what facts should this history book should i go in here and what pages you want to tear right here what history do you want to erase because people might feel sorry about it slavery the real reason why the civil war started the new orleans sicilian lynchings mexican lynchings hanging dead so irish immigrants wellness suffrage that they fought so hard to get the vote should we just get rid of that side because it happened a long time ago and some people might feel guilty segregation you want to raise those little girls walking to school what people were speaking

119of them should we take those pages off because some people feel guilty that's what you said it happened a long time ago get over it i'm not getting over it the you want us to get rid of the alien landlord varying asian immigrants from owning land take that from the books because some people must feel guilty they secretly order 1966 japanese internment camps should we get rid of that so i'm looking right here what do you want us to get rid of the 19 1830s in the removal act the trail of tears because lots of people feel sorry for that too they feel guilty that that happened nearby west minister unified school district where near uss citizens went to enroll and they were denied the president of the mexican school because they were not white

120that's right here on our backyard how about the mexican repatriation program when my grandfather usa born was taken from the usa from his country and sent to mexico because he looked mexican how can i forget about it how can i go on a book and tell people get over it it happened a long time ago we should not teach our children that because they might feel a little bit guilty oh but i know why you want us to get rid of quinceaneras there's not on the book right here you said that get rid of quinceaneras because the latino parents need to start having them and they could stop going on field trips on trips to mexico tell me what book should we get rid of this history book i got more right here i was

121looking through them and i was thinking okay let's see what will make sue you happy so people don't feel guilty i need our community needs for you to stop embarrassing this district i came two weeks ago and asked you to resign and i still stand by it this is the best for the district don't you please don't be selfish do it before lulac before the naacp starts coming start coming right here there's more people here today just wait for two weeks from today so please do the right thing other board members i know they said nothing they saw right there like nothing happened so today to them i had nothing to say oh by the way it will look nice the abc logo back there will cross and you guys taking a picture you're used

122to it okay [Applause] eddie salcedo next is daisy lagaska and jeremy yoon i got my timer ernie five minutes to do my part to change the life of our kids for the better for the record here's a picture sue you with a known racist conspiracy theorist with the logo of the california education board crossed out good start for you four minutes and 35 seconds for you to make the right decision sue you you must resign this is not about politics this is about what's right and wrong suyu showed up at this event being promoted as a member of the abc unified board the board was so worried about this that they had legal counsel take a look at her attendance in the term that she attended as a private citizen despite her billing on the

123flyer so we had our taxpayer money looking into how to protect suyu and this board from legal liabilities sue you stated anyone can benefit if they study hard a wise statement my father is a testament to this a mexican immigrant who translated his homework from spanish to english played soccer and football in high school and college on academic and sports scholarships went to community college went to uc riverside and put a tassel on the end of his education with the masses from usc he represented the united states in 1972 at the olympics not that you deserve to hear his accomplishments with my mother he sent my brother and i through the abc unified school district and on to university he did this by as you say benefiting if they study hard no paid tutor in

124sight on his journey i really feel a tug in bringing up his story because you don't deserve it on one hand because you demean his story with your racist and ignorant comments and ethnocentric views of the world on the other hand you need to hear that you're not the only ethnicity that can rise from the challenge you've finished your statement anyone can benefit if they study hard and pay for tutoring you own a tutoring company by your own admission our education system is a pay-to-play model if i'm a young asian black white any race family and i'm i have aspirations aspirations of sending my kids to kennedy and i'm looking for the extra kick for my kid to get in and i look i see a board member of abc mem unified that owns a

125tutoring company i wonder if i would send my kids to company a no board relation or company b board connection real or not perception is reality are our teachers not enough our school programs not enough then our school district it's not enough and our board is not doing enough you may not say you are racist but it's clear that you hold racist ideological views which you are clearly not capable of moving on from nor learning they are wrong it's ironic that you preach opportunities of learning but you sit on this deus on principles of profit pay for it or you're destined to the life of quintineras and pinatas i said last time i don't know you i was wrong i do know you and the people out here know you your racist ideology of white

126is good asian is good brown is bad your fear-mongering is antiquated your views have no place in this world and certainly nowhere near our children your time a free brain of this board is over you will fight it your supporters will fight it but that's democracy in action given the demographics of this country i suggest on top of your tutoring company you open up a dress shop and a travel agency because they're going to be a hell of a lot more things in your house and travel to mexico in the coming years sue you you are an immigrant you were given an opportunity and you took it and we applaud that you now have an opportunity to really live the american dream and be a leader a real american success story be a leader i

127have my doubts that you know what that means like too many of so-called leaders it's power i like to have happily control yourself please thank you they don't mean anything like let's get to it sophia say you need to bring a motion to center sue you be a part of the solution not part of the problem dr sue you need to issue a statement rebuking this heinous language sue you issue a real apology full stop don't divert the conversation with sex education and crt sue you this is the refrain of the song resign board members do the right thing show some resolve and censor sue you in no way support her to be the next board president you cannot remove her but you can demote her and rebuke her we have lawyers reporters and most

128importantly private citizens of abc unified that demand you hear us my five minutes is up and sue you your 15 minutes is up thank you [Music] daisy laguska jeremy yoon and gabriel roe oh my god do we just have to get a stone and burn and whatever mis misu because the hate here is too much unbelievable mr rhaegar is another one hold on hold on i am from the community and i have the right to say something you may talk we do have a rule though it's ridiculous thank you okay thank you very much for calling me today i have worked at seven o'clock i requested to be the first speaker because i re supposed to be working now but unfortunately i have to call in because i want to speak my name is daisy

129lagaska a mom of abc students i have two kids in abc i'm a neighbor of the majority of the people here my god i cannot even it's been a month after that event in the library from the moment it was posted some people were already went crazy that this speech the speaker is so and so and so and so newspaper prints came out different pictures came out and this is the reason why i don't want to be a politician because they were going to just you know people who doesn't like you will going to do everything for you to fail social media newspaper tv everything sometimes has fake news and they were going to use this against that person back to that event yes we all know that many wanted um this event to be

130cancelled some cried some begged some went to the city council meeting to beg to stop to cancel this event but thank god it was done i heard both sides but i wanted to go myself i want to listen and seriously i was not expecting misuyu to be there because of how i i don't know her personally but she is i did not expect her to be there because you know she is so not not i was not expecting her to be there but that was the time that i have to admire her people knows me when i speak up it might not be nice but that time i have to say admire her for standing up for what she believed and and there are so many people who are like oh my god they i'm

131lost yes i was there and most of the people who criticized her were not and yet they have a lot to say those people there are people who who are attended and oh my god let's say they went there for a reason they were there to just make something else to they are made up their minds already so it doesn't matter if dr eugenio and misu spoke they are still were going to be criticized because they were there one minute and to chris apodaca i was so disappointed of you because you know i have to it's not here but it says there that they are supposed um these are representative of the abc usd and they were just being you know after this they were bashed why why don't you guys us talk as a

132team you should spoke to them what's going on because i think you guys are all you know misunderstanding what this is what i'm talking about whoever have the video show it so we will going to see all together and we'll go rather than you're going to bashing your bullying or whatever it's so so much hate dr apodaca is like even the one you know why don't you guys talk as a board so you were going to understand what they meant rather than oh you resign you you this you that it's like just burn her your time is up it's ridiculous [Applause] jeremy yoon next followed by gary bill rowe and after that eli good evening everyone both members superintendent and cabinet members principal and irish community i really appreciate this opportunity to speak in this

133room tonight thank you my name is jeremy yuan my kids attends real elementary school during these seven years of school life my kids is really well learned and well educated through this time i usually like to express a big oppression for all conservative teachers principal and school staff members even board members too i was really happy and satisfied with the abc usd education program for seven years i would like to appear to you tonight that each one of us our children are so precious our values for kids are strong work ethic good motors love for community and neighbors not about like you know blaming each other point out each other you know uh even you know not about you know comprehensive sex education i was so satisfied with uh conservative and class way of our

134education for our children so far our parents our parents would like to have an opportunity to review all material regarding the comprehensive sex education and gender identity and gender pronoun education before the class start also our parents want to have an opt-out option for our kids about these issues during their learning time please inform the parents what teachers are going to teach especially regarding gender issues and comprehensive sex education and we have the right to know also you know all the board members they are like uh we actually we've been elected to represent uh from you know the resident we we elected we voted and then right now you know you know in in our life we we can have some kind of problem definitely you know no no one has that you know everyone

135has that issue right and you know suddenly we kind of since we have some problems we start pulling out and then flame you know like point out one person and claim that uh that is really you know like heartbreaking feeling i have right now so um why don't you collaborate and why don't you like help each other like even both members there are all the people from us it's same as definitely why we like criticism should be like constructive not like you know break the order like you know community connection community network right so we are all immigrant right even you know so especially i really appreciate missus ceo she helps a lot of different uh community like you know she grew up with a latino american and african-american community so she has a lot

136of uh friends from other other communities yeah she she can be making a mistake sometime but you know we gotta be collaborate and work together and then make a better value for our kids and our future so hopefully um we would like to respect each other without you know blaming each other so i i really respect to all the food members for hard working and even at night in the morning and then all the extra contribution to the usd so i really appreciate that thank you very much [Applause] gabriel rowe if you could please come wait in line so that we can go through this and get as many people in as possible next is eli and rosie following that thank you good evening board members and abc community my name is gabriel i am

137a sophomore at california state university fullerton i'm here tonight to share how my life has been influenced by suyu or as i call her misu first and foremost i would like to say that misu is very blunt and straightforward she tells you what what you need to hear instead of what you want here and this has been really useful as times where i've been slipping off she has gotten me to the right path there are times in which it may seem harsh of what she says but it is actually what needed to be said also i would like to state that during kovid when schools were shut down when schools were shut down she offered me a place to do my homework and be away from my house as it was crowded with my little

138sister and my little brother's always crying this led to me to passing all my finals and passing my classes thanks to miss toot miss sue i am a first generation hispanic university student also currently in the university's honors program [Applause] in conclusion i would like to state that ms su has been really supportive and really influential in my life and for that i would always be thankful thank you [Applause] eli thank you good evening board members in the abc community my name is eli and i am a senior that is currently attending cal state l.a i am here tonight to share my personal experience about miss su who has been a family friend for over 10 years we often get together for family gatherings to which she never fails to come some of these include

139birthdays baby showers and weddings a few years ago one of my uncles got married and misu was of course invited to join us on the celebrations my family and i would get together with her family to enjoy the festivities by dancing eating and laughing together i would also like to add how considerate misu is to my family during these celebrations see when mizu would join us at the at our family gatherings she would communicate with our family and friends in spanish instead of asking us to translate she knows that there's a language barrier between her and others but she never manages to put in um sorry but she manages to put in the effort to communicate with them this effort has made her very approachable to newer members that we have presented to her during

140the holidays our families get together to hand out food and water to the homeless as a way of teaching us the importance of giving back to our community misu is someone that that my family and i enjoy having as a guest at our home and we always look forward to future visits from her if if we could keep the applause to a minimum i do want to get through all the speakers rosie oswald ramirez and cj hybrid if you could please come to the forward so you can actually get two of these speakers in a timely manner thank you i would like to share with you the experience of friendship that i've had with miss sue for more than 10 years she has been a close friend and we have shared many family reunions with

141her senoras universidad when my children were going to go to the university she was a very good academic guide for them she is a very simple humble and respectful person gracias i am very thankful for having her as a guide but most importantly for having her as a friend thank you ramirez [Music] followed by cj herbert and charlene park uh can i go yes hi so my name is ramirez i'm a senior at uc riverside hopefully hopefully to graduate this spring very excited and i want to talk to you guys about my journey to how i got there so i'm a first generation college student when i got to high school i didn't know anything my parents never i don't think they even reached high school so i didn't have any resources to to really

142get exposed to college but mizzou really helped me and i i am always going to be thankful for that she uh she helped me get tutoring for ap classes i know i was taking ap classes ap statistics ap calculus i was but it was so hard but just through her resources and her hope i was able to get through and then senior year junior year came the big sats she helped me a lot with that too and i just really appreciate that i don't like i'm hispanic and i don't know it's that college it's like a big step for us and me reaching that as the first generation is just amazing and i'm really happy that sue helped me through that and also the essays for the uc's for the uh applying to cal states

143doing the fafsa all that i didn't know how to do that she helped me out through that she gave me the resources and i'm just uh really thankful for that and uh yeah um i i do see her as a role model an influential person and i don't know i just i just love her so much she she helped me so much and i'm just really appreciative of that and yeah thank you and also uh dr olga rios i've seen you uh uh trying to get more education more support to us latino students and and i really appreciate that thank you board members and thank you for having me have a great day [Music] thank you audience cj hebert charlene park and michelle martinez board members greetings my name is cj i'm a retired educator

144of over 30 years working in the classroom and as an administrator in various contexts including the inner city of chicago as well as the suburbs i'm here to promote family-based education in the school system there could be a lot said tonight that includes the breakdown of the family and the government being the substitute parent or even the co-parent but suffice it to say that the government was never meant to be a co-parent at least not in this country i understand that there are topics that are that have been discussed tonight that assume the supreme authority of government dictating their role in what is taught in public schools that is really foreign to the constituency of the united states of america the people by design in our country must have a say about what their children

145are exposed to in the classroom which is one reason why some are advocating for cameras in the classroom after what shocked parents learn their children were taught in zoomed meetings during the lockdown of 2020. now i'm not here to promote or defend uh any particular thing in its details however let me just say not long ago i had a colleague a fellow teacher who was originally from russia and she said to me cj what you see happening in america is what happened in russia she was referring to the divisive tactics of those pushing a narrative when actually it was really issues of power that were at stake my point is families families need to have a significant say about what is taught in schools as opposed to merely teacher unions and administrators and boards of

146education this country was founded on discourse dialogue and discussion families that have a say in their education understand this and they affirm the value of diversity and ethnicities in public education most importantly though family-based education in public schools affirms the common sense notion of parental roles and discussing sexuality gender identity and gender roles in the home and society so in conclusion let me pose a question for you to consider for everybody here in discussing all the pros and cons of the different controversial topics tonight whose interest are you or we truly interested in are they really about the children who are the future of this nation or are they questionable self-interest which may not actually be those of the same dear children who are created in the image or loving god thank you very much

147[Applause] sharon park charlene park i appreciate all of you your efforts and time for us to join this public hearing and i was i am a retired registered nurse at the same time as the pacific university theoretical seminary professor and pastor part-time too so i really appreciate your hard work and loving care for our growing students my title is what is educational direction that hispanic and asian americans are demanding two nights ago i had an opportunity to join the hispanic community leaders meeting there i heard the voices of the hispanic speakers emphasize that we were born into biblical foundations so we do this but we don't do that their positions were the same as the majority of asian americans which is against the abc usd plans for teaching our young children crt improper gender identity

148sex education using materials that are graphically similar to pornography and encourage lgbt sex life we the people came here this evening for our children's higher quality education that you have offered for many years in here they've been working so hard everybody wanted to move into this city so that was actually conservative kind of education reading writing science and mathematics etc as foundations demographically forty percent of asian americans and thirty percent of hispanic americans here in this district strongly oppose these improper teachings but embracing your conservative teachings you have been doing we all have the legal right to be in charge of our own children's education we demand that the government and schools not indoctrinate our children with these improper teaching materials we align with the moral code that the american founding fathers built up for

149us which is to follow god's ways we also learned that a well-known board member yusu in this district going through a very difficult time largely because for the sake of our young children she tooth stood against teaching these improper education you should know that what she said was not the real meaning she was talking real things improper teachings to be gone so she had a sentence out of that main important work ask that you get rid of these improper materials as quickly as possible and keep what you have been teaching proudly we will continue to support what you have been teaching under the freedom of information laws this laws is going to help us to see what you've been doing all along we also ask you to give us these documents with the information on

150what the board member said and how they voted this particular agenda and also what had been going on in here we want to have documents under the law you should prepare for each one of us to receive we are american citizens who are assembling peacefully to speak out on behalf of our young children's education thank you so much and thank you for listening uh madam president yes yes uh just to let you know that i counted time is 9 17 it should be the ending time we have two minutes before the end of public comment we currently have approximately 13 more public comments uh it's up to the board's desire whether you want to extend public comments for any amount of time or not um first of all i there's two things that we're going

151to put on the table here we're going to talk discuss eight number one four already approved for five minutes to the audience one year proof to them then they all have to be treated equally okay so we're going to extend in our public comments one at the board now so you want to agenda today it's worth we have to watch our time too because our board policy is ending at 10 30 and then we probably need to extend our meeting tonight as far as i see the meeting tonight um i need to discuss with superintendent see which one we can delay to next time we're going gonna have a little break later on probably by 10 o'clock we have a little short break okay so that amir can uh superintendent can discuss but i also

152want to let the public uh to be aware you are a speaker's come to the podium you're addressed to the board not to the audience i want to control that please okay so don't look back and you know talk to others you are here all of you folks that's here we thank you for coming here and share your thought but i want to remind you you are here to address the board not to the public thank you so we are extending one more hour um to 10 15. how many people you have left now i have 23 so technically we can't get that done in an hour if they all take five minutes and they have been taking five minutes well i need a consensus from the folks this year i'm gonna then roll call

153each one and see what we will not agree to attending for one hours and president may i for discussion's sake go ahead dr go um you know again we were absolutely more ready to not limit the time however part of our policy is an hour we do have a lot of business to get through we do have a second public comments i like us to consider to abide by our policy of limiting it to one hour continue with the district of the district and then consider that extension after we get our business i absolutely agree with that because you know actually a lot of uh audience came after that so actually we could cut that to not allow you but as a board our district always fall into to all so i would like to

154i'm sorry no i would like to extend in one hour for public comment if we uh if we running out our time i like to have we i also have a second comment and you're welcome to second comment because we do have a lot of gender need to be discussed so i want the public uh to understand our situation here and we want to be keep us mind clear because the later we get sometimes harder because some board members also work in a day shift i mean daytime so i like to ask audiem to help me out help our district board here we'll give you one more hour to extend it and then after please stay after the uh our board meeting and then we'll have a second comment to provide it for you yes

155we extend one hour right no one hour so my suggestion was that we've reached the limit which we abide by as part of our board practices that we continue with the items on our agenda and then if we need to listen to more public comments that we extend the second public comment section okay in that case you know because we have no hold on a second we have total 15 minutes because you say we have 23 speakers right am i right for uh clerk yes madam president no 23 times five is we have 13 more speakers 13 okay so that's uh is there any more in the 65 minutes madam president extend go ahead madam president i vote to extend thanks dan let the public speak agree okay so i have two people and then

156how about vice president yes they've been waiting so i agree okay so from now on if we have any more card i like to have our public relations director mr smith i need you to control the number no more adding cards the card will the the more card comes now it will be cone to the second which is include the recipe will go to the second comment would it be okay for you guys yes okay so i would like to have the lady since you're on the podium already please proceed and that the rest of the folks is here please stay on the second comment after i'll finish our agenda no i'm sorry we'll get a one hour we'll do one hour and then after 10 15. oh gosh i don't think you finished getting

157consensus again we all chose one majority so if the majority rules to extend then we all go to extent but i don't think you've finished getting so everybody's because right now we have about four at least four people right now for extending one hour so maybe we'll just say are you there chris shall i sit while you determine when i'm you have one more minute i'm sorry one more second i'm sorry go ahead i'm sorry about that madam president can we just call for a roll call that might make it simpler okay so um if the board agreed to and i'm gonna have a roll call now uh the genders before if the board agreed to extend it why not please say yes okay chris can you hear me yes madam president it's a little

158muscle though there's a lot of crosstalk um but uh since you called on me really quick i am in favor of extending it and you know we did let some folks speak for full five minutes i think it's a it's a matter of their first amendment right the public should be allowed to speak just as the others who have spoken before them so i'm in consensus to allow the public comments to complete so uh to be clear you want to extend the one hour am i right i'll go with the majority of the board for the time frame because i don't know how many comments are left i'm just concerned about the agenda being done before midnight so i'll leave it up to you into into the majority of the board okay so um let's

159have the lady finish it first go ahead and then so i think we should i think we should do is go ahead extend it one hour and we need a motion i need a motion for that madam president if i may yes go ahead before we vote there's 13 people if they all took five minutes it would be 65 minutes and you'd actually be cutting off the last speaker uh i vote we make it 65 minutes just in case they all go the full five 65 minutes okay um by 10 but by 10 o'clock i like to have a break so me and dr sue have a really close uh talk about which agenda we can take it out so would i be okay thank you soon okay so i guess i have to have

160to do roll call right now um go ahead daniel so wait wait what is the motion takes 65 minutes extends 65 minutes for public comments that's on the table right now daniel roll call dr apodaca yes mr beach yes dr eugenio yes mr nishi yes dr rios yes mrs say yes this is you yes motion passes seven to zero then we're going to extend the 65 minutes after this six um 13 people that will be going to second public comment thank you go ahead that's ten ten thirty ten technically our meeting is over at 10 30. yes michelle martinez you're next thank you thank you for patient waiting for us ms martinez good evening board members and community members um as a latina and formal council member of another city i know what it is

161to work with school boards and understand how important our education system is so let me just begin by taking us back to 1996 at the dnc convention when hillary clinton stood before america and told us that parents were questioning a popular culture that glamorized sex and violence smoking and drinking and teaching our kids that the clothes and the logos on their backs are more valued than the generosity in their hearts if hillary clinton understood then the importance of preserving the innocence of our children and that it would require a village including the education system to protect this idea then we parents concur because it has never been more needed than in these current times how is it possible that 25 years later this promise has been completely eroded and the new mandates being implemented across

162our state are harming our children with forcing unknown substances into their body sexualization in their curriculum and forcing a false doctrine of critical race theory you school board are the gatekeepers and you are mandated with teaching our children as parents we entrust our children to you during the school day to educate our children and train them up to be prepared to either enter higher education or to have the fundamentals to flourish in today's commerce and to raise up their families to be self-reliant and successful it is critical they be educated with strong solid basics that pre prepares them to be productive citizens instead today's culture is focused in redefining our history and focusing on the color of our skin teaching our s our children then somehow as a brown child they should linger in the

163past transgressions of our country rather than the american spirit the american spirit which offers the hope to grow up to be possibly the united states treasurer or even the president of the united states all things are possible for those that believe that it is not the critic who counts but rather the individual who strives they may fall short but they learned that the victory is in daring and i may have stolen the pres the words from one of our dear presidents but it holds true today that our children should be taught that with a fundamental good education all things are possible regardless of their race as a first generation american whose parents immigrated from peru i was the first to attend college i was the first to sit as a ceo at a table i

164was the first to accomplish those things to serve my community to have safeguarded our futures for my family and this is possible because of a good education system that based itself in the fundamentals of math sciences and english and what we need to survive in this world we leave our past behind us where it belongs and the american spirit is to look to the future and all of its amazing possibilities in a country where democracy comes first so latinos value family and god and the opportunity of free enterprise we come here in search of the american dream this requires a solid education and tenacity and hope and an environment that focuses on celebrating the possibilities night not the hyper sensitivities of a race driven politics in closing i remind you of hillary's final comments at

165the 1996 dnc parents are first and foremost responsible for their children but we are all responsible for ensuring that our children are raised in a nation that doesn't just talk about values but acts in ways that values families and i am so thankful for vice president su who actually exemplifies that in the witnesses that we've had here tonight that have been impacted by her good guidance so i thank you and i asked that this board would continue in that tradition thank you sharon washington and megan mitchell [Music] good evening school board it's nice to see you in person as a school board you are tasked as the gatekeepers of what is allowed into the school district and what should not be allowed in the school district i see already the exam the emphasis you place

166on academics and extracurricular activities and those things that help make a well-rounded student however with the very radical and disturbing comprehensive sex education curriculum we see the challenges with that which sexualizes students and at the same time it grooms them for pedophiles and if we're looking at the fruit of what these decisions in our curriculum can have on children according to the cdc 15 and 24 year olds count for a half of 26 million of the sexually transmitted diseases in this country 15 to 24 years of age so if we're pressing and pushing a curriculum that that that edges on pornography what are we really saying in terms of valuing the outcomes of our children and our students and with regarding crt my son unfortunately was indoctrinated into that in college and the divisiveness and

167the hatefulness and the anger because of a lot of misinformation has left a person who i myself i'm part chinese i'm part um scottish and i'm part african to see this stressed on to a family who is a who i'm a first generation american is very disappointing and disheartening so when people act like this is something that is just something that's going to improve conversations about racism it's not true i grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood i heard things but it was because of people's ignorances if i was one to be offended by every time somebody said something because they didn't know any better i would spend my life as a very angry person but instead i grant grace because we all learn and if anything from what i've heard from the testimonies of

168the students that know you and that is that you speak bluntly and you feel comfortable enough to say what you say without the fear of someone misinterpreting misinterpreting your intentions and i think that what we should do i should look at the fruit of the person and look at the fruit of what you as a border going to produce and the students that are to come so again i charge you with this to make sure that you look into these curriculums and parents don't ask for permission you have the authority over your children and so therefore make sure that you hold them accountable to what is actually being taught and with that i say thank you thank you [Applause] megan mitchell and john dawson good evening board dr [Music] i have in front of me

169a document so i was introduced to cultural proficiency in november of 2006 it's a work in progress i am by no means completely fluent in it but there are some terms i need to explain you can be culturally destructive you can be culturally incapacitated you can be culturally blind you can be culturally pre-competence you can be culturally competent and you can be culturally proficient when i listen to your board i can put your statements in each one of these categories the last board meeting the persons whose voice resonated with me was actually dr rios because what she said we all need to look inwards to figure out what to do that is in the best interest of our students with the inclusion of family when we did this cultural proficiency work one of my colleagues

170said ultimately what i learned about myself was most surprising after attending the conference i realized that i have much to learn about others and their perceptions about my actions i learned that i've already been practicing daily some of these behavior of cultural competence without realizing it i simply never considered that some of the attitudes and values that drive my behavior both good and bad have a diversity issue now i do so miss sue i know you are a good person i i know that you do very hard work on behalf of the board but the statements are reprehensible because i am going to i do not consider you to be a racist but it is in this continuum that you lack the awareness of how your words may be interpreted or not for me it's

171about this very confounding issue what is the purpose of public education in theory public k-12 education should prepare a student for a continued college education or for the workforce this is a premise built on the belief that public education will provide a solid basic academic background and personal soft skills such as time management critical thinking respectful relationship attributes that will enable a high school graduate to live independent productive life that is what we're trying to do nowhere in this expectation does it say a student needs to go to an after-school program this is where i challenge you find your resources no child should ever have to go for a resource to be educated outside the school classroom that is a promise of american education so when we suggest you go to after school program no

172you need to provide that and you need to provide to all of our students you know where the gaps are some of you have taken doctorates you've studied you have stats take a little data of our students we extol the virtues of students who succeed can we focus on the students who are not successful we have the ability the means and the direction what we're lacking is cultural competency to actually address the issues engage the parents because what we have is a gap between expectation of what education is supposed to deliver and parental expectation which is left behind 20 30 years ago we need to bring the two together so that we can understand what the kids need today to be successful in work why ethnic studies matter why because your boss might be from

173korea your boss might be an indian who came from india and his values are going to be very different and when you say the wrong things you won't have a job that's what our kids need to do be educated be culturally competent and be successful and i know abc can deliver that thank you megan mitchell john dawson maggie kaning originally i was just coming up here to speak as a parent but as a teacher i would just like to clarify that no teacher in abc unified school district is teaching critical race theory that's one and second to continue to get up here and accuse teachers of doing something that has been stated time and time again that we are not doing is only a mere distraction and is continuing to spread misinformation in the community

174but what we can address and what we do have proof and fact about is the fact that comments were made by a board trustee who yes has done a lot of good and i'm not negating the fact that board trust eu has had positive impacts on people's lives however words mean things i as a teacher can do a lot of good with my students but the moment i get up there and say something that is racially offensive or rooted in rooted in implicit bias or rooted in ignorance i have to be held accountable for that and that is all that i'm asking be done here unlike many of the people that spoke my ancestors were not immigrants and they did not have the privilege of coming here and being brought here to start a new

175life my ancestors not so far removed five generations away from me were enslaved people so to hear a comment that says that the slaves weren't ready to be free is not only infuriating to me not because i'm holding people accountable for slavery but we would not say publicly that people of jewish descent should just get over the holocaust and i think we could unanimously agree that saying a comment like that would be not only rooted in insensitivity but would be rooted in racism and misguided information and so the fact that we are having to we're having a campaign up here to try and excuse comments that were willingly admitted that she that she made she did not deny making the comments but you were trying to negate the fact that these comments were made by

176a publicly elected official that were offensive and downright wrong to members of this community yes african americans and black americans may not make up a large demographic of abc unified school district but nowhere in the board policy and nowhere when i was when i'm teaching my students do i look at the percentage of students that i have in my class and say well looks like i have more asian students today so let me only teach them it doesn't matter the amount of black americans that are in cerritos we are here it doesn't matter the percentage of latinx americans that are in cerritos they are here and when comments are made that are egregious and ignorant in nature something needs to be done i did not call for your resignation for trustee sue i'm not going

177to that is not my position you're not my trustee but what i will say is training needs to be done so that these offenses are not continuously made it seems like the only time that people care about what black and brown people feel is when we have to get up here and scream for attention we are often disregarded which is why last year in 2020 we had to come out in full force to remind people that we exist still so i understand that she has done a lot of good i'm not i'm not denying that i understand that your constituents are very happy i'm not denying that as well but what i am saying is that for the small percentage of black americans that are in cerritos that comment was hurtful one minute i understand

178that there is a lot of feelings here tonight this is not a political statement this is not about voting records it is not about politics what it is about is right and wrong i did not feel like your apology was genuine and that was hurtful because you heard from people like myself who were offended i have no personal issue against you but i did take personal offense to what was said so i'm not going to ask you to resign i'm not here to campaign against you what i am here is to let you know that what you said about slavery what you said about the black community hurt members of the black community and we may not have the same numbers but we're still here and we still matter thank you john dawson maggie and

179leticia mendoza thank you superintendent sue and board of education abc my name is john dawson my wife and i have been residents of the city of cerritos for like 48 years sometime we've been here and our children have gone through the abc unified school district completely um i will be very brief so i won't take my five minutes but um i just wanted to say that i wanted to make a repeat a quote that is some years old and primarily for those people who are calling for suyu's resignation and that quote is he who is without sin let him cast the first stone thank you maggie kane hello hi everyone good afternoon or good evening um sorry my name is maggie i'm here to ask our board to take actions to support our students mental

180health i'm a current employee as a parent educator i support students that have special needs and are that stem from anything from a physical mental or just like emotional disability that could be caused because of being in a foster home because of just any home situation or generational impacts so anyways and i've taken the district-wide training that you may all be familiar with the keenan trainings every district member or employee takes those trainings in that training it states that 5 000 students a day or 5 000 children a day attempt suicide the rate goes up for students who experience bullying such as not their their gender pronouns not being honored sexual harassment rates drastically increase when drugs or alcohol abuse is involved now one of the greatest causes for drug abuse is lack of resources

181such as food and housing with that being said i have asked for asks for the board one please pay our mental health providers so they can afford to serve our students currently many board currently many of our mental health providers have asked our board to support them financially and i i think that's just a reasonable ask especially in this time of coped two make the position of community resource center coordinator a full-time position so that our current coordinator martha martinez excuse me can afford to serve our students for those who may not know our current community resource coordinator is the person who makes the calls to get our students in touch with resources like food housing clothing mental health services and other basic necessities just because that we don't see it in many of our

182classmates classrooms evidently it's not obvious many of our students do struggle with those things and martha martinez martinez the key person who gets them in touch with those resources she needs to be able to go to work and so that our students can show up and be educated um excuse me also i would like you to stick with your vote to continue the ccej training and possibly extend it on their website the trade the organization states that they are a human relations organization dedicated to eliminating bias bigotry and racism through education conflict resolution and advocacy i think everyone here whatever side of the discussion could say that we all need that right now so that training i think should continue and just stick with your current vote because it's a good idea all right and

183then um they also do say at every single lesson to honor each other's gender pronouns i want to state that again suicide rates are already high no matter the child's gender identification their race whatever but when bullying such as not honoring a student's gender pronouns is present in the classroom or any type of school environment that rate skyrockets so that simple act has saved many of your students lives and lastly my ask is please address the many title 9 complaints that seem to have gone and heard i know we're very distracted right now with coven and everything but those students are most vulnerable and need to be reached out to i also want to specifically address dr eugenio this month is filipino american history month and i want to remind you that on october 25th

184it is larry it leonte not less than 100 years ago thank you he fought for the rights of laborers to be paid just under two dollars it is on his shoulders and many other filipino-american shoulders that you are here today then i am here today and i i implore you to please vote can on the side of similar laborers or just asking for a little bit more to make it day to day anyways thank you so um yes dr eugenio please follow in our predecessor's footsteps and and represent those who do not have enough to make it to work and who may look like oh excuse me thank you okay thank you former board member leticia mendoza good evening president say board members parents communities my name is leticia mendoza i'm a proud latina former

185board member i'm probably the first one to come on the board and celebrate hispanic heritage month and so it was really disturbing that these comments were made during hispanic heritage month because instead of celebrating our heritage we were having to defend ourselves and when i heard about the comments that uh board member su you made amino go cheese i don't like gossip i called her up i confronted her she admitted it to it she said yes i did say those comments and i really had to say to her do you know what quinceaneras are because quinceaneras are not parties we don't just go out our whole family parties it's a religious event and so for you to see a comment like that was very hurtful to to me to my community and it's you're very

186religious i'm very religious so comment that made against my religion to say that we shouldn't be spending our money on parties it was hurtful and during a time right now in this society we've gone through trauma as a country we've gone through trauma with different cultures it was very traumatic i spoke to you i told you that i had parents calling me they didn't want to speak to you they were hurt i've had parents i've had my own daughter ask me about the situation i've had teachers reach out to me ask me about the situation and i know that there has been a comment made that legal counsel said that nothing can be done you can hide behind legal counsel but as elected officials you are an elected official 24 hours a day you don't

187get to go out and say okay from nine to five i'm gonna be at work from six to nine i'm gonna be a board member you're elected official by the people 24 hours a day your words matter if one of our abc teachers had said comments like that to our students what actions would a principal take what actions would a superintendent take what actions would a board have to take when that teacher made comments like that that hurt one of our students we just had a student cop comment on mental healthness i just i don't know where we go from here but i think a lot of us are hurt with the the response that you had it wasn't hurtful it wasn't meant for and i think that you do need training as a board

188you do need trading because many times we've been on the board we've had these trainings and we don't see eye to eye on things which is fine but we do need to respect each other's culture we do need to respect each other you need to continue the work that you're doing so that our students can see elected officials that care about them because over 45 percent of our student population are latinos and that comment you just kind of said to them you don't matter and you say yes these are your elect these are the people that elected you but many times on the board i've heard we elect we are we represent all the students did you represent the hispanic community that day did dr eugenio represent our trustee area when he didn't speak up

189when the both of you are standing behind a seal that's crossed out of public education what you do and what you say matters to our students you need to keep that in mind every single time you make a comment on social media when you're out in public and you say something it matters to be blunt does not give you an excuse to say whatever you want you represent me you represent everybody else too that includes latinos that it includes color people that includes everybody on the board and the board outside the board so i think you guys need to do some training our students need to see you guys do some training and you need to come back and maybe see a little apology and say i'm sorry you know and let's move on but

190you need to understand that your words mattered your words were very very hurtful and i just i wish that i was on the board so that i could say more i know that there's stuff that goes on the board that that can't be said i know that some of you on the board cannot speak up because for whatever reasons you may be running for council you may have other aspirations and you don't want to hurt anybody's feelings you don't want you don't want to you know jeopardize your your your leap to whatever you're going on one minute but everything matters to our students and you know you know the same our students are our main theme and you need to keep that in mind every single time you make a comment every time you say

191something about a family member a community a culture because i may be here standing by myself but i'm not by myself i've got lots of people standing behind me i'll get text messages right now i'll get emails tomorrow saying thank you lately for speaking up because i speak for those who can't speak i speak for those who don't want to come and speak in their native language so i hopefully that you guys all on the board will continue the work that you're doing but you need to get some training and really really consider what the words that you're saying thank you benti gabriela dominguez and you benti okay maybe you know binti after that will be gabriella dominguez and in zhongyu hello or did i start okay get a timer yes i'll give you signals

192okay thank you all right um please do not believe the reports that crt is not being taught in k through 12. woke teachers are injecting crt in all the other subjects crt teaches children to be victims and turns functional adults into children no one owes you anything except being trickily treated equally under the law if you aren't civil rights leaders have already fought and died and won you the right to take legal action accordingly but there is zero law that says someone will like you period and in the spirit of i'm sorry so if someone commits a crime against you don't further make yourself a victim it's already a crime be strong and make the report keep records and be part of your own justice no one will care about you or your family more

193than you please grow up and in that spirit of being a part of your own justice we have report that some of the board members are trying to bring graphically inappropriate and agent sex health materials to 10 year olds this stuff is not your national geographic pictures of native tribes with exposed female breasts or as my first great friend who showed me it for the first time he called the booby book okay so it's not that it's much worse it's like a hustler magazine so i suggest that all the concerned parrots out there make a formal police report against the board members who are supporting this material for distributing adult materials to children which is you know child pornography or child endangerment all the other applicable laws and to help children grow up normally i

194would love for the board if you guys are still on there after all that um or change your ways to please start reinforcing uh california ed code 4900 5.8 which basically says it's our existing law that says that children cannot have their face covered against their will it's already a crime uh it says uh an educational provider shall not do any of the following use seclusion or behavior restraint for the purpose of coercion discipline or convenience um use lock seclusion and facility unless it's otherwise permitted by state rome use a physical restraint that obstructs a people's respiratory airways or impairs the people's breathing or respiratory capacity including techniques that staff members place pressure on a people's back or his body weight against people source their back or this is section four use a behavioral restraint

195that restricts breathing but not including limited to pillows blankets mats carpets or other items that cover people's faces okay so there's laws being broken everywhere and it's very bad i would wish you guys would uh start recognizing uh california education code 4900 5.8 again parents take it down write it down it's california education code 4900 5.8 this law is already on the books please demand its enforcement and um let's see okay so there's also a lot of parents that have uh religious convictions or medical conditions uh for their children that uh basically says that they don't have to show the children their the faces of the children and is abc unified going to honor its own anti-discrimination policy which protects uh children let's see i have it right here it prohibits district employees from discriminating

196against or harassing any other district employee or job applicant on the basis of the person's actual or perceived race religious creed color national origin ancestry race sex i mean material marital status gender gender identity gender expression sex or sexual orientation so one minute i'm pretty sure that the law is already being broken here um by the way the best mask is an n100 mask they sell them on amazon and ebay so if we're really taking this seriously everybody needs an n100 level mask um and i see a lot of you see a lot of you guys on the board have uh doctoral degrees i'd wish you guys to use that scholarly training to look into all this um if you want to email me uh my to get it it's my email is b-e-n-t-e-l-l-i-g-e-n-t 1776

197at gmail.com again that's b-e-n-t-e-l-o-i-g-e-n-t 1776 gmail.com and finally if that other speaker he's probably not even here anymore if mr arnell he would like to personally give back give black people his family's wealth because of his family owning slaves let him that's his choice but citizens of this country will not be punishing innocent children for the sins of their ancestors and if you're a communist board member you will be replaced by competent parents let's go brandon gabriela dominguez followed by in zheng yu and sylvester ani please come forward if you could hi good evening board members superintendent superintendent cabinet members principal and abs community my name is in zheng yu and my kids attend the camera middle school and within high school it's a short time and i'm not good at english so i will

198just get to the point today i would like to speak two things firstly i want to thank for the members of you she always puts schools and students first major bb which passed a few years ago is one of them on that time she had opened up her own business office to be used for major bb campaign so that time i had a chance to meet many board members and prisoners then thanks to that the bill was passed and vinnie high school is able to build a science center it's finished soon within a month and the kamehameha middle school have various safety measures so i so thank for that too i've also seen over the years suyu has made choices for schools and students regardless of race or views of political parties i'm truly grateful

199that cu works for our district and secondly our district has a conservative sex education program i am very thankful for it and i want to ask board members to exclude the details of gender identity from the social justice education program as a parent i don't want details of sexual identity to be taught to my kids at school yeah thank you so that's ronnie followed by roger garrett is there anymore good evening everybody um i just i just want to say that um i'm really disappointed by the distraction that all of this has caused um especially with all the pressing needs that we need to invest into our students into our teachers um and into our parents coming out of kobe this is this is what we're talking about um and the part that hurts the

200most is the conversations that were had and when it comes to healing because i really felt like this could have been an opportunity to really heal and reconcile as a community going forward we've made it about ourselves in defending who we are instead of centering the people who were impacted and speaking to what we're going to do differently going forward to to heal the harm that was caused instead it's been turned into defending one person and just forgetting why we're here in the first place which isn't about us but it's about the kids it's about the parents it's about the schools not only is it not only are we forgetting about that but we're also undermining our board members too i attended that meeting the first statement that was read brad beach said there is

201no crt in abc usd that's the first thing he said and i appreciate you for saying that making that clear he said that he took the time to do that but because of comments that were made during that meeting now we have people bringing that energy to abc usd when that's not what we do over here when it comes to what was going on in with the sexual education i spoke to sue about that she said it it's not going on in our school district that's other districts that's not going on here but now we have people talking about different things going on here that's not happening and we're not focusing thank you and we're not and and and now it's becoming a distraction and misinformation and we're taking all this time to defend one

202person instead of talking about the different things that we need to invest in we got teachers who feel overworked and over stressed we got nurses who don't feel like they got the support they need we got mental health professionals that don't feel like they got the support they need and all of that circles back to the kids we can't support the people who support the kids if we can't focus on that then what do we have that's how we lose trust that's how we lose faith that's how we get off target on a what what really matters so i'm hoping that today isn't i'm hoping today that we we take a look in the mirror and ask ourselves are we making things more about us are we taking attention off of the things that need

203to be focused on what's really important this really could have been an opportunity for something different um to happen and i'm disappointed that this is what it's turning into and i'm hoping going forward because again the people going to decide how all this is going to play out at the end and everybody's watching and i'm and i'm going to be involved all the way um you know to see how that that part ends but for those who care let's let's let's get back to focusing on why we're all here in the first place which is these kids which is teachers which is the parents and and making sure that they have everything that they need to succeed because that's why we that's why we show up in the first place every day is for them

204not for ourselves thank you mr roger garrett um before rogers uh you speak i'm sorry i'd like to ask podium we i said the beginning already you must be wearing masks when you're attending the board meeting um if you don't i'm going to ask my security do you have our security here dr zena i need your help yeah i think yeah you're on the way okay thank you go ahead sorry about honey go ahead roger sorry about it many many of you know me already for those who don't i am roger garrett uh i've known sue you for many years she was on a pro prayer breakfast committee with me and i think of her as being a good friend and a person of real integrity that cares for the community that cares for students

205and all people in the community parents as well you know this thing i think has been politicized i i looked at the paper a few several weeks ago i believe the editor of the paper and owner of the paper that came out the community news likes to sensationalize a lot of things as well and i look he had two articles in that regard and all of the i was at the meeting and i i found it to be informative there was some discussion the bottom line though is we need to be able to to give our opinions and and be forthright and i i in our society today there's a lot of seems like censorship or cutting people off and not allow them to to give their opinions you know whether they're right or wrong

206and i thought about the uh the content that night there were two areas that were covered one was the mandates from the state regarding sexual education and it's a lot different than than when i was growing up from what i saw i grew up in the 50s and and and things have changed a lot i know that you get a lot of mandates from the state education department and uh they're they're quite different than than the traditional mandates and you know i felt really angry tonight when some of the comments that were made about uh mrs yu the comment used uh the term racist and you know when when that term is used that's when the conversation usually ends because it's hard to for one to depend to defend oneself and it's it's so ridiculous

207i have going back a hundred and about 170 years i had a relative named thomas garrett who was an abolitionist and he was one that uh that really was a good friend of harriet tubman helped uh finance her he gave uh shoes to people that to the slaves that were going north and i'm sure that he would be turning over in his grave today thinking about what has gone on tonight in the sense of some of the anger and so on and all the talk of victimhood and all the things that have gone on in our country and so on and so forth you know people want to come to the united states they they don't want to leave and we see that even the southern border which is overflowing right now unfortunately uh because

208but the thing is that uh it's better to that we within our own hearts to heal our country and not divide it and we've seen tonight some of the deep divisions as far as the anger and angst of of some of the individuals that have spoken tonight but i just want to commend uh sue you for the great job that she's done uh and appreciated uh uh her coming and also uh uh dr huni eugenio pardon me if i mispronounce that but uh it was an interesting night uh uh that we had at the meeting but i the bottom line is that uh sue you've done a great job and i commend you for it thank you very much [Applause] that's it um there are no further comments as far as i can tell thank

209you uh mr nishi this is tough today thank you so much for controlling the world um and before we go i'm going to have a five minute break for the to the board and audience too please you're welcome to stay but i do before we go i need to ask extend it to another one hour to the board so we'll be finished we're trying to get it done by 11 30. would i be okay it's 11 15 because 10 30 so i'll cut down times sorry 11 11 30. oh we'll probably finish before that but i'd like to have enough time here's the second public comment section just fyi yeah right so um is that okay do i need a vote for this or not really just consents everybody agree with it so i'm gonna

210have everyone to go take a short break and come back we'll reason back 10 20. okay [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] teleconference due to her world obligation i sincerely apologize to my colleague didn't make the nonsense beginning but now i just reinforced that he has his personal um work obligation not able to attend in person the second thing is since we have our staff here so late already i'd like to ask board to be um give me a consensus moved uh the gym i mean the action item like 1.28 first and before the consent item then can you do roll call for me please oh i think dr apodaca mr peach yes dr eugenio yes mr nishi yes doctor yes mrs say yes mrs you yes motion passes 7-0

211thank you the action item 1.28 may have a motion to approve committee member on and student appointments to board advisory committee motion first and second approve now can i uh angelica diaz and narenko which is our child welfare attendance interim supervisor would you please come to the podium is that right thank you and thank you for being patient waiting at this point this hour since they apologize for that inconvenience to you your mic's not i'm sorry good evening president say vice president you ernie nishi clerk of the board members of the board superintendent dr sue and cabinet members my name is angelica diaz naranjo and i am the interim supervisor of child welfare and attendance i began my work with abc unified school district in july as coordinator of people support services and attendance and

212shortly after stepped into the position of interim supervisor of child welfare attendance where we are continuing the great work that mr tim catlin has done i will be the administrative liaison for the student transfer committee for this school year thank you oh sure do you have any public comment on action item 1.28 kirk nishi 1.28 i don't see any public comment thank you any discussion for our board i just want to say welcome ms uh dies naradjo and oh oh do you have a comment sorry yeah i thought she was waiting there for to make public comments and we're just like oh my goodness yeah so yeah thank you so much for being patient welcome to the abc team know that your job is very important and please let us know how we can support

213you welcome yeah and thank you very much for staying late too again um daniel can you do roll call for me please what is the roll call for i'm sorry you have to make the motion yeah this is actually needed roll call forward wait so are we doing consent calendar right now we're gonna have to pass this one first before we go go to the consent item okay yeah thank you i apologize dr apodaca yes mr beach yes dr eugenio yes mr nishi yes dr rios mrs say yes mrs you yes motion passes 7-0 thank you daniel and i sincerely apologize uh board member uh miss up mr abu dhaka next one is consent calendar i have a motion to approve the consent island calendar second is anyone who wishes to remove any item to

214be considered separately yes madam president i'd like to uh just for a comment is a 3.4 and 4.3 okay go ahead it's yours so with 3.4 uh this is amanda contract with tutors on llc what is someone see do we do metrics to see if these uh tutoring services are actually effective in increasing the public the scores for these kids like the difference between a kid who is being tutored and kids who doesn't maybe maybe a lot they don't fail or something like that do we ever do we have some because we keep renewing these contracts i just want to make sure that we're doing a good job and getting our money's worth so what thank you for the question last year was our first time working with them in the middle of crisis and

215so the metric that we really looked at was students attendance and students who were passing the class as a result of attending if they were getting homework help and so for the most part the role of the tutor is to help students complete their homework and so this year we are taking a closer look at the correlation between the students who are completing their homework and them also earning a passing grade in the class but last year was really focused on getting students to actually attend because they had been virtually all day and so for some students it was challenging for them to come back virtually throughout the day so we did a variety of things we have drop-ins where kids can come in as they need to we have scheduled times and we have

216students who have required set time so we're doing a variety of approaches this year but we are also taking a closer look at the passage rate of the courses great thank you so i guess the cover year is not a really good comparative year obviously definitely not um but then i guess going forward we had support for kids and we do know that we had good attendance and students verbal feedback was very positive so those who attended said it was really helpful okay so then going forward we're going to do some metrics and make sure that this is a great thing for our kids absolutely thank you thank you and just number 4.3 you know i can't uh let it be unsaid because there's this one name that donated four thousand dollars to carver and

217um two thousand dollars to serious high school it's in the agenda i know we can't really pull out the names and it would be inappropriate but and it's also with school parents community members who did this it's on an agenda for the public to see that there are some great parents out there and great organizations that are making some great donations and really provide a service to our community and and i mean that's what makes our district so great we have great parents that really put in the extra time and money so thank you madam president that's all i wanted to say thank okay thank you now daniel please roll call for us 3. i'm sorry dr apodaca mr beach yes dr eugenio yes mr nishi yes dr rios yes mrs say yes mrs you

218yes motion passes seven to zero thank you now we're going to go down to the action item uh this one will be one point three dash eight can i have a um i have a motion to approve request to adopt the elementary and secondary school at emergency relief or esser3 expertise i'm sorry plan so moved dr mayfield thank you good evening board president say members of the board dr sue and our community by law we are required to present publicly the esser 3 plan as indicated by board president say elementary and secondary school emergency relief the board did receive a copy of this last week and it is also available on our district website and has been for the last few days and so our public do have access to seeing a copy of this

219presentation the sr-3 funds were intended to address the academic social emotional mental health as well as opportunity gap experience by students due to the pandemic by law we are required to use up to 20 percent of the estro funds to address the impact to students and their loss of instructional learning time we are required to also provide evidence-based interventions which include summer learning opportunities extended school day comprehensive after school programs as well as extended school year program we're also required to engage in consultation the following community members students families school and district administration as well as teachers school staff and local bargaining units the board has to act on this by october the 29th and following the board meeting i have to submit this plan to our los angeles county office of education who must

220also review and absolutely approve the plan so they are the final approval of our plan here we have listed the allowable expenses that these funds can be used for so i want to assure the board and the public that the recommendations from the staff tonight are consistent with these allowable expenditures to engage our community we used an approach in which we provided a survey in which we gave all community members meaning our parents and guardians high school students and all permanent employees in abc an opportunity to complete a survey to provide input in the sr3 funds the survey was structured where there were statements that were aligned to the allowable expenditures as well as an opportunity for participants to write in their own ideas and make their own recommendations following receiving the survey data we

221did meet with our principals and our employee groups to take a look at the results and to talk about how do these results align to the other initiatives that are currently in place in abc school district so to give you an overview of our participation rate for our communities we had close to 2 000 parents and guardians who participated meaning that they actually responded and submitted returned a survey to us we also had about 107 high school students and 272 staff members so a total of 2 448 participants in our survey important to us was the opportunity to ensure that some of our participants represented our or serve on our district level committees and so we have our variety of board advisory committees from the strategic planning community to the alleged policy committee as well

222as finance and audit committee and so of that 2448 respondents 23 of them represented members of board advisory committees 21 our district english language committee for our dlac 18 our lcap parent advisory committee 17 our community advisory committee which is for our special education students and then 15 from our lcap pac english learner and 13 from our title 1 committees and so again we feel that there was representation from the various groups who serve our district we do ask each school to have at least one representative and so in abc we have 29 schools k-12 and so you can see that there was some representation from almost all of our schools not quite all of them for in terms of our district committees the next two slides represent the tables that show how the survey

223data we look for trends in the survey data based on the areas where students parent and guardians and staff indicated were very important and we also read all their comments and in reading their comments we also looked for trends there as well and so what this chart shows you are those recommendations that were reflected in the feedback from our constituents and those recommendations that the staff have included in the plan that you'll be hearing tonight and so there was feedback from both students and staff on a need to improve campus wi-fi and internet at home there was also requests for more professional development for teachers that came from our parents and our staff technology support meaning newer devices from our parents and our staff access to dual enrollment academic and cte courses from our parents

224and our staff lower class size and eliminate combos from our parents and staff enrichment programs like arts stem and robotics at the elementary level was strongly supported by parents and staff additional support for nursing was from our students our parent guardians and staff our community liaison which will serve at our schools where we're wanting to focus on ensuring that students are attending schools so our schools where we have attendance challenges and our community liaisons are actually will outreach to families to make sure that the families have access to the supports and resources that they need so that students can attend school daily so that feedback came from our staff as being important tutoring homework and support so earlier you heard onboard clerk nishi ask about tutor zone and so again we'll be taking a closer

225look at the data this year but still our families are asking for tutoring support and so as i shared earlier we're using a variety of approaches we have what's called on demand meaning that we just have set hours and students can drop in on demand meaning when they need help some students have scheduled tutor because of their grades we're coming up on progress reports at the elementary and so some students may be required to go to tutoring support to get extra help with their homework the tutoring support is taking place after school and for high school there's also tutoring support that's being offered in the evenings um intervention reading teachers we're really excited that we have hired our intervention reading teachers they have undergone some professional learning and they're already beginning to support our students

226so there was definitely feedback from staff that's important for our elementary schools extended learning time is again intervention support for students and that can take place after school or during school the need for academic college career counseling support we have feedback from both parents and staff in regards to the importance of keeping that in place in an area of additional mental health support when you read the comments from our parents and guardians and even from our students they talked about the need for social emotional learning curriculum as well as more training for both students and for staff maintain our board certified behavior analysts which also provide support for classroom instruction support for students who are having challenging behaviors additional outdoor seating and shaded areas that was a lot of feedback from students parents and staff

227again when you read the comments it was interesting because the outdoor cd shaded area was not really just focused on for meal times for breakfast or lunch but really it was about extending the classroom providing an outdoor classroom where students can go and participate in learning outside and not be in the classroom there was a lot of feedback about covet testing unvaccinated staff and strong support from both of our parents and our staff and then the importance of maintaining clean disaffected high traffic areas like restaurants hand washing stations cafeteria drinking fountains and door handles again strongly supported by our parents and our staff and so that shows you the trend pattern of the three of the results from our survey again the statements that were aligned to our expenditure plan as well as the written

228comments by the different groups and those comments and that feedback is reflected in the plan that you'll hear this evening mr nguyen thank you dr mayfield so in the current year the district received 13.4 million dollars in one-time funds from the state of california under the program called expanded opportunity learning grant or rather i'm sorry expanded learning opportunity grant e-lock and the board approved that expenditure plan back in june of 2021 and based on the survey result it appears that we would like to expand or rather extend the the use of the sr-3 funds of 23.6 million dollars to extend for two more years the e-lock grants expenditures that was approved by the board back in june and and the survey results from from the different groups really strongly support uh how we spend the

229money the sr3 funds twenty percent of that requires us to spend to address uh learning loss uh in in the in the plan here we actually spending eighty seven percent of that uh or almost the majority of that to support our students so um thank you okay so this would be the um i will go over the recommendations on this is where you see how are we spending the twenty three point six million dollar in ns3 fund so everyone can see uh outline between the next two year uh 2022-23 and 23-24 so we will spend a total of five million dollars to extend learning times for students so it's either additional block schedules additional support during before and after school year more summer school or additional instructional day for the next two years a total

230of five million dollars is recommended for this effort close the instructional opportunity gap 5.1 million dollars to be spent um in this area again this is the 19 intervention specialist one per elementary school you know the e-lock grant provide funding for this year esther will extend it for two more years so the schools will have at least three years of the specialist to help the students the intervention specialists on top of that we will looking at again tutoring support programs for english learners and also enrichment program for elementary school like stem arts and robotics so 5.1 million dollars in the next two years for this effort more training for our teachers and educators uh in items like we talked about um for to address the students need with ieps and english learners so 750 000

231to address training for uh for for our teachers on number four professional learning uh this is again more pd however we we are not allocating any funds here because the district is receiving a a different grant call an educators effectiveness grant to address all the training for teachers for the next few years so we have a separate funding source to address this effort not that we are not providing training in the next two years it's just the funding just not coming out of this program because we have another fund um number five a 3.5 million dollars and next to you to support students again you've heard from everyone the needs for social emotional support the needs for additional nurse equity diversity training for for students and staff to support homeless students to provide community liaison

232at the elementary school and at the high school level to provide student relations coordinators at gar and the sro at artesia so we were able to use this fund to extend this program for two more years another um important effort in this grant is to support our secondary students the high schools and the middle schools to ensure that they have the needs to graduate and with a through g completion so we are proposing to spend 1.25 million dollars in this effort this is in addition to another grant that we just get about 1.4 million dollars to support this effort so the 1.25 is in addition to a new grant of 1.4 million dollars we always try to coordinate the different fundings to support our students so this is for credit recovery for middle school promotion

233requirements college and career to to ensure that the high school have a college and career counselor and to support our high school students and middle school we will spend about 100 thousand dollars to train just classified staff on seo again and trauma informed practices so so that is our effort out of here and the next item i can't speak enough of this because it's very popular for everyone parents staff lower class size and reduce combination classes so i like to report that due to the effort from the e-lock program this year our average class size of our 19 elementary school for tk to third is at 23. the contract is at 26. so we stop on average we three below contract and for the upper 46 is at 26 versus 32 so using this money

234we provide additional teachers to every school to lower class size and to reduce combination classes for the regular instructional program in school out of the 19 school we only have one class with combination we were able to eliminate most if not all of them so number nine is item for covet response anything that we need to support our schools where there's additional peer educators additional cleaning additional new supervisor anything that the school need to keep our students safe is under number nine and this is also including indirect costs that the state allow us to charge so this is about 2.9 million dollars so these two pages provide a comprehensive but detailed list of how is the district spanning the 23.6 million dollars again parents can view this on the website because we have it up

235there so outside of this we also have other funding sources like the sr2 to support other programs that we offering this year if if you're aware we have our independent study programs about almost 700 students is part of this long-term independent study program that the state is allowing for this year only for those families who choose not to participate in person so we have that program going both long term and short term for those students who have to stay home due to quarantine issues so so we have that program going strong enhanced technology we are continuing with providing the hot spots for students that started you know last year in the spring of last year when they come back or even before that actually in the spring of 2000 when when we have to close

236schools and provide remote instructions and that effort is the cost is almost a million dollars a year to provide hot spots for students who need them for for this entire school year a lot of them have come back right but a lot of them still be online but they still need that to do their homework and other things and of course you know improve indoor air quality throughout the district that's part of an additional layer that that we provide you know to to ensure the safety of our students and staff so that is the additional fund to sum up the items that we have here under the s3 plan that we are recommending the board for approval and then after that of course it will be sent to lago for their final approval with that

237okay um thank you tuan and thank you dr mayfield next uh do we have any public comments mr nishiii ironically no any discussion for my colleague here i have one on the night this i will have uh four member mr beach first and then second will be vice president miss uh miss you and third person will be bore clark uh mr nishi go ahead thank you madam president tuan i realize it could probably be under number five or number nine but i didn't see anything specific to mental health and wellness is there any money we could allocate for that thank you for thank you for the question so um we have in the lcap provide about 3.5 million dollars to hire the 34 mental health professionals that we have throughout the district so both under

238number five you write there and uh to provide additional support for number four training but mainly it's number five to support our students with additional help if they need bcba is important not just mental health but behavioral you know for students so it is in here over the three years if you um look at that 1.9 million for this year and 3.5 for the next two years almost 5.4 million dollars to this effort number nine is more general more of a physical safety issues things that they need at the school uh you know like i said um additional support just to keep the students safe make sure they you know follow all the safety protocols from the state i just wanted to make sure it was in there thank you so uh first of all

239i want to thank the cabinet for diligently pursuing all of these grants i mean you guys are doing a fantastic work on this and uh for this esther grant this is just one time funding and it's going to be applied to all the students or students in certain category or how is it so the services will actually impact all students but specifically there are services that are targeting student groups as well so it's a combination of the above so for example when we look at our extended learning time last year we offered an expanded summer school that not only meant for students who were who needed additional support but it was also for students who were already at grade level and performing above grade level so that was an add-on last year that we had

240not been able to provide previously but then there are specific services like for students who are english learners students who have an iep and so it's a combination thereof when we talk about number nine the covert response that's for all students when we talk about mental health services nursing support that's for all students when we talk about intervention support then we're going to use the data to tell us what students need the intervention support and so it addresses the needs of students across the district so it says 20 has to be used for academic needs correct and i think mr nguyen indicated we're at about 87 percent about 80 of our funds we could use more than 20 but minimum 20 has to be correct yes yeah i would like to see you know a

241lot of that also uh go towards uh helping out with the learning loss for the in the math specifically because if they don't do that additional math this year then they're going to struggle next year so you know coming back from clovit i think many students will need that extra support thank you and absolutely that's part of our intervention plan is both language arts and math okay thank you thank you okay next one will be bulma uh book club please thank you madam president i have questions two questions and two comments and uh hope i'll be very quick um but actually just to tag on to uh uh president vice president suyu so how is our math score doing in this the latest testing that we've had so last year the state assessments were suspended

242and so our students will be taking the test this year we're using local measures to look at students test scores so at the elementary we're using the star math assessment and at the secondary we're using a district benchmark assessment and so basically our data had indicated that students pretty much flatlined across the district in terms of their data so we didn't see significant drops and we saw some spotlights of you know growth but in general it would say it was pretty flat and so that's our baseline data for this year and that's the data we're using to identify students for additional support thank you and i would reiterate that math is a very important skill to have uh regarding extended learning time that's the question are you using certificated teachers or any percentage of certificated

243teachers to do this extended learning our extended learning time as certificated teachers that's our summer school programs that's our block schedules that are offered and we have schools who are exploring block schedule so that is our classroom teachers thank you thank you i appreciate that item two's close instructional entrepreneur gap with uh this is just a comment actually i think a lot of the presentables have been very happy to have these reading interventionists um it's been phenomenally a lot of the principals have said this is great it's 5 million dollars up until year 2024 what happens after 2024 so this is an item that could be embedded into our lcap because when this three year cycle ends it'll also be time for our next three year cycle with the l cap and so there is

244space for us to continue these actions great thank you i only have two more uh and i know we have to get through this uh nurse support so uh as i remember we don't have a nurse at every single one of our schools even though we're in a pandemic and there's a nerve shortage i understand that and my understanding is there's issues regarding being able to keep the nurses right in relation to being competitive this is not going towards that right how is this a providing nurse support so these are these funds will end at uh 2023-24 i'll take that so the intent of the funds here is that due to the pandemic right so there's additional needs for nurse support so we will use that for the next two years to provide additional nurses

245we did a survey of surrounding districts and with uh almost 15 fte nurses we have the highest number of nurses among surrounding district so we will share that data with the board um through thursday notes so having said that right we will still want to provide additional nurse support so we will do that this year and the next two years and hopefully the theory is that by that time the panic pandemic will be over and they're always going to be need for nurse support but at least it won't be as high as in the current time so unfortunately this is one-time funds and we have a three-year plan to support our students but we need to be realistic and know that these services will not exist beyond 23-24 dr mayfield have mentioned that if the

246things that's very important to the school we will try to build that into the lcap for the next cycle but again the cow cap is a fight nine dollar amount so you add something you may have to take away something so but that we have a very well thought out process dealing surveying our parents our principals our teachers our groups to ensure to get their feedback and input to incorporate into the next three-year lcap beginning in 24-25 well it's really good that you're thinking that way because uh i know i didn't know that we had an extra a lot more nurses because i've been hearing that the nurses are really overworked with the current workload and and they're telling me they're dying out there and it's not issue of covet it's just everything else that's

247been added on top of their duties so you're saying that other school districts are experiencing similar heavy workloads in fact maybe ours is a little bit less so i appreciate that um and so i'm not moving anything that terms of that item the last one is just kind of a compliment but also a small suggestion in terms of the code response i've seen the efforts that you've done in all the schools in terms of providing all the protective layers and and things like that so that's um the only suggestion i would have i know you've already bought them already but those temporary tents so kobe's not gonna i'm hoping i'm praying that cope is not with us forever um and so some of these temporary things i'm hoping that we can apply it to future

248expenditures so instead of something that's fabric that will disappear that uh to the extent that it could have a dual use for a longer term purpose i would request that that would be considered i know sometimes you got to buy it because you need it now i'm never going to question that i mean right now safety is important but if you have a little bit of time a little bit of extra which i know you don't have a lot of think of that that would be great thank you thank you for the work you're doing i know that it's amazing some of the things that they've done very quickly in comparison to other districts that i've seen it's an amazing thing so i let i'll i'll give my time back and uh it's kind of

249amazing that we don't have any public comment on 23 million dollars of spending but that's okay are you done i'm done thank you mr president next one a board member dr reels thank you madam president um you know i'm gonna sound like a broken record but i i'm very concerned and very interested in hearing about program evaluation and metrics that we're going to put in place that is going to assure that these 23 million dollars are going to give us a return on our investment um you know pre-covet we spent a lot of money on programs and we saw very little movement um so i'd like to know specifically who are we charging with these tasks and i like to think it's not principles because i know that they have enough to do so i

250don't know if it's directors i don't know if it's somewhere up but that would be my first question thank you for the question so part of the plan which the board received on friday it indicates the metrics that we are required to use so it's actually had to be reported and that document is also published on the district website and so for the different interventions we had to state what metric we were using and the frequency of that metric and so for a lot of our metrics uh we are using local assessments and so as i indicated earlier the star reading and star math is one of our metrics that we're using for elementary as well as early literacy start early literacy for our dual immersion schools we have star espanol at the secondary we

251have district benchmark assessments as well as curriculum-based assessments we also have other data that we're looking at like when it comes to our community liaisons their primary role has to do with attendance so we're looking at attendance data we're looking at discipline data and so we'll have various metrics that are identified specifically to each of those items in the full plan that the board received on friday and that's also available at our district website in terms of who oversees the work we do have a district liaison who is the overseer but ultimately principals have to be involved because each of their schools and student populations they serve are different and so for example for our intervention there's actually a one-page intervention plan that principals have to provide us in which they tell us what metrics

252they're using in the frequency of their metrics what instructional materials they're using to support the intervention who's providing it and when it's being provided and so we do expect our principles to be monitoring their data and to be making sure that students are making growth and that students are having the opportunity to exit the program and that when programs are not effective that we are not continuing those services so it is a partnership in collaboration with district staff but principals are definitely involved in leading their schools and leading these initiatives and that's probably what my question was more about because i did hear you talk about assessment but i'm more concerned about who is looking at this data and what is being done when progress is not being made because you know that leads to

253my second question we know that um reading by third grade is an initiative that's being taken on by the governor i'd like to see some of this money earmarked for us to get ahead of that and start putting pros processes and programs in place that will allow us to meet that goal i mean again i i think i brought it up at this last meeting i don't know that us as parents would be okay with our kid not reading by first grade you know but yet we have kids that are exiting elementary and are finding themselves at the high school level who are not reading professionally because they didn't get to read proficiently by third grade um so i guess that was not more not necessarily a question but it kind of goes back to

254that to the first part about having systems in place that are going to make sure that progress is being made and you know that do support the principles because i get it of course as principles it is expected that they're monitoring progress um and whether that's fair i don't know i guess i'll visit schools and have a conversation with them about that because you know in in conversations in the past they've told me that they need support they need support and having people help them analyze the data and do some action plans so that they meet their growth targets and kids learn because that's why we're all here and we actually do that we meet with principals to do data analysis to take a look at the data to make sure teachers understand how to

255use reports because reports actually inform them of which students need what level of intervention as well as what level of support they can be provided in their instructional materials so that system of support of data analysis is in place in our district in terms of read by third grade that's an initiative that's part of our investment in our reading specialist is because that is our strong push to make sure that we are focused on students who are not meeting that target we're also pushing and focusing on students being reclassified before they leave elementary school at support a lot of those initiatives so we are having high expectations of improved outcomes for our students and that's my ultimate we need to do better i i think we absolutely can do better thank you dr rios that

256was a good point just a piggyback where uh uh clerk nishi talked about the orange shortage i remember about two meetings before september meeting i think dr zeno has proposed the union has agreed to hire lv instead of rn right so we have been using an outside provider to add additional support to help our nurses at our sites and we're continuing to look to add people there as we can in addition we're flying our nurse position again yeah i want to thank you especially our president still here right here please let the staff know we appreciate the staff working very hard in the past weeks and weeks and we do know the shortage and people calling sick and then other teachers have more duty to do plea let them know boys appreciate them the hard

257work thank you madam president yes um would you be willing to reopen public comments for one public comment um for re oh no uh you we have public comment related to this topic yes you would have to uh reopen public comment oh okay so so are there any public comments yes but we hit closed public comments so yeah i'm just going to open again say do we have any problem yes we do regular where you're going to clean your podium okay twine just cleaned real good i saw him cleaned it thank you ton i saw you good job and after you're done ray you're gonna clean your podium okay good evening again thank you for allowing me to make comments about this um this is the most important work that the board is working on

258it's great questions this money is vitally important because it's a bridge for what we will do with these students there's going to be a new reality for our classrooms are going to look different because of measure bb thank you community some of the the things the lessons that we've learned on how to reach our kids during the pandemic cannot be wasted there are new ways to reach kids there's new resources there's more efficient ways that we can deliver curriculum and bridge that gap because there was definitely not the same caliber of education across this country and across this district it's just not possible of what happened last year and these funds that i know you're going to support are really vital for those students to get back in to where they need to be and

259i'm so glad that the board is doing this and they're asking really good questions and um yeah thank you for doing this work thank you any other public comment i do not see any okay chris do you have anything to say chris no i do not madam president thank you thank you i just don't want to you feel like i'm annoying you so um since we had a board discussion already so now i'm going to ask daniel to do roll call please dr apotaka yes mr beach yes dr eugenio yes mr nishi yes dr rios yes mrs say yes mrs you yes motion passes 7-0 i want to remind my colleague here we have two more um three more i believe so right three more agenda to go on so um three more and then

260we also other board reports so please um conserve our time um 2.28 i have a motion to approve the new job classification job description and range for coordinator and expanded learning program motion and second second motion thank you dr zillow good evening assembly bill 130 was passed and approved by the governor back in july and this bill basically establishes the expanded learning program or e-lop for our students who have who meet the requirements of udp which would be our foster youth our english learners homeless students to have three hours a day after school of additional support as well as 30 days in the summer in order for us to meet the expectation of serving at least 50 percent of our students who fit that qualification this year and 100 percent next year we're learning looking

261to establish a coordinator position this person will be working and we'll be looking we'll be serving up to 5 000 students possibly in an after-school setting and in the summer so we're looking to establish this position so we can begin to put it in place and get these programs running for our students okay thank you any public comment on this matter i see none madam president okay now back to the board discussion okay go ahead it's okay don't worry about it okay i was just going to say that this is a very critical position seems like so this person will coordinate not only a lot but would this person also coordinate the esser grant or justice no it would just be these programs it's going to be working to extend what we already have with

262our aces program and it's basically looking to reach every student who meets these qualifications not just some i see any others remember abu dhaka any comment not at this time madame president thank you okay so her no more uh go ahead and roll call dr apodaca yes mr beach yes dr eugenio yes mr nishi yes dr rios yes mrs say yes mrs you yes motion passes seven to zero thank you next one's item 2.3-am i have a motion to approve the new job classification job description and range of supervisor instructional technology dr zillow thank you this new job that we are looking to establish is really a need with the expansion of what has happened with technology it has been growing for some time and is something we've been looking at but is now needed

263because of where we are with use of technology and we have an i.t manager who is on the technical side this would be a supervisor on the instructional side and the two would work in collaboration to ensure that what we're doing instructionally is supported with the infrastructure and the the materials we have and they would then be working under our it director to make sure that things are running smoothly for our classrooms thank you do you have any public comments we're in public comments no one i don't see any madam president thank you discussion for my boy okay i have one which is um four o'clock missy yeah thank you madam president just one question uh i know that we typically recruit from certain sources and i'm kind of hoping in this case since it's

264in the technology type of uh source that we don't necessarily go to the same well and that we try to do an innovative way of uh finding the technology person because sometimes if you go to the same place over and over you'll get the same people and i'm hoping that we can broaden our horizons in terms of recruiting for this particular position so that's my only comment madam president thank you thank you okay here none um i'm sorry one more or so dr reels i didn't mean to ignore you i i just you know i appreciate these positions but i just can't go without saying that i find it amazing that you know here for an equity officer we had such discussion and it was such a hot issue but yet you know here we

265are the same salary two positions not a problem let's get them thank you okay here none uh daniel roll call please somebody had to say it dr abadaka yes mr beach yes dr eugenio yes mr nishi yes doctor yes mrs say yes this is you yes motion passes seven to zero next one 3.5-8 may have a motion to approve request to amend the services college dura enrollment course agreement to include the course title contemporary health problem adopted textbook choosing health third edition and emotion and second motion second thank you dr mayfield please thank you in abc health is a graduation requirement and as a result we want to make sure our students have various pathways to meet that graduation requirement students can take help during the regular school day but students who have impacted schedules

266they need other options and so this will provide our students another option where they can take a college level health course and in taking a college level health course they'll earn credits for both college and also for meeting the graduation requirement here in abc so the textbook is a college level book it is an option students who don't want this option will have to take the high school course that's offered during the school day or summer school this course will be offered online or through a hybrid model thank you any public comment i don't see any madam president now back to the table here do we have any discussion that i don't see any and president i will abstain from voting on this one i'm sorry i'll abstain from voting on this one i apologize

267okay you i'm staying so then your roll call please dr apodaca yes mr beach yes dr eugenia yes mr nishi's abstaining dr rios yes mrs say yes this is you i'll abstain also motion passes 502. next to a board member report please i'd like to see seven four member speech and following that will be dr reels then following with the mai ehino thank you madam president i attended the adult school wasc interview i learned a lot and i'm confident staff there will make all the corrections that they suggested i also attended the asian pacific islanders school board member association meeting about navigating the political landscape of ethnic studies i enjoyed that as well the nixon watchdogs is alive and well at nixon they're back working the perimeter to help traffic and we have melinda ortiz

268in the audience who started the program seven years ago i wanted to thank her i enjoy serving and i encourage all elementary school dads to think about starting it at your school tomorrow night is the la county sheriff department cerrito station tip a cop at lazy dog between five and eight so if you're hungry stop by and support them and the last thing is i'm wearing an orange tie today it's national bullying month and my kids will be wearing orange for unity tomorrow at nixon so everybody wear orange tomorrow thank you i will next one there will be um dr rios um first i want to make an observation because usually i reflect on this when i go home that every time we have presentations we kind of put cabinet on the hot seat and

269that you know sometimes i feel like it should be our superintendent because she's the one that answers to us but she sits up here and we rarely do that so when it comes to accountability i think i'm going to be a little bit more mindful of that but i appreciate your able to answer your questions since you're the ones that make the presentation anyway just know that i do recognize that so tonight was definitely a thought-provoking experience to say the least i um you know we rarely comment on public comments but when things that they say resonate with us we make exception and i have to say that i i share the sentiment that this was an opportunity for us to move forward and instead it appears to me and obviously to some members of

270the community that it became a showcase crt and sex education were not on our agenda um a board member's goodwill was not on our agenda um i've said it before i was not at the meeting and so i don't i'm not privy to the to exactly what happened um i understand there's a video i don't know if anybody's going to make that public but it's going to be interesting when we do get to hear more about what was said know that i did have a conversation with board member you about the comments that she made regarding the latino community but it beca it's becoming evident that there were more things that were said as a district i think that we're working very hard and diligently to combat racism and our efforts to become a truly

271anti-racist district began last summer i don't want to see those efforts derailed by self-serving tactics um two members were at that meeting cu and board member eugene dr eugenio um but you know i wasn't the rest of us wasn't and so now i can you know as people have come forward and provided more and more information about what was said i totally understand now the request for censure answers actions speak louder than words and it is situations like this that truly test what we stand for i have questioned our efforts before and have challenged us to match our words with our actions and a sense of doing what is right i participated in an event coordinated by council member yokoyama calling for unity and standing against hate i did not hesitate because that's how we

272heal president on wednesday october 6th i attended wars academy's virtual presentation titled all about bullying hosted by dr baldwin and presented by miss melody clark school social worker ms clark identified numerous forms of bullying from physical bullying verbal bullying social bullying and the most intriguing cyber bullying cyber bullying can happen at any time and has its unique concerns in that it can be persistent the content an individual shares online can often be viewed by strangers and acquaintances cyber bullying can be permanent most information placed online can be permanent and public and can possibly affect the students college admission and or employment and cyber bullying can be hard to recognize by teachers and parents this is a subject that hits close to home for me as a parent one of my children was bullied during grade

273school and the effects lasted for years parents be aware of the various emotional behavioral and physical signs of bullying with parent and school staff recognition and support a child's resilience can develop and help them cope when they are faced with difficult experiences like bullying i'd like to thank dr baldwin for hosting and miss melody clark for providing a great presentation on an important issue that affects many of our youth today infirm the information presented was invaluable may god protect our youth and may god bless you all and keep you well that's all my own president next one will be uh book club mr nishi please thank you madam president uh really quick some news here october 21st me burrito fundraiser kennedy so anybody's listening out there uh come on down get a burrito i'm hoping

274that we can all be there so we can really support our our parents and our kids because this is a big part of what makes our district even better uh involvement so if we can all be there that would be great november 5th there's a deadline for the cerritos high school art contest uh somebody has a suggestion about uh pta that why don't we have pta give a report on a regular basis maybe just one from one school like we have the students um men that might get more parents to want to join it or it might actually get them to not want to join it who knows but um it would be nice to have a voice there because i think parents do have a certain important things to say not just to complain

275but also to say the great things that we do here um finally obviously the public had a lot to say it was quite the night right and i really encouraged the public to let it all out there the positive the negative everything was uh talked over the hours i can understand why we didn't have time to read out all the the online potential comments that are out there so uh for a night like this that would be impossible um i really think that it's great to have all this public comment but i'm looking at a room that is empty there's only a few of us i'm sorry it's not empty there are a few of us that are interested we just voted on 23 million dollars of spending on some great spending by the way

276that will advance our education i know advance our education and nobody had a comment on it i guess they trust us which is great but i wish that we could get all this energy that's out there on these things go ahead talk let's get these things out let's blow through all the issues and we don't forget we just but we learn we grow and let's spare some of that extra energy some of it to also talk about these big issues the 23 million dollar issue the big 260 million dollar budget that we spend um i'm hoping that the public can also weigh in on those really important issues that we determine for our kids because the main thing here right now is education right and so i'm hoping that we can grow i'm hoping that

277we can build i hoping that we can love one another and uh not forget but forgive learn do what institution does thank you that's all madam president thank you next one will be vice president miss you i'd like to thank those who came out to speak tonight my goal has been consistent from the beginning putting student achievements first and i will continue to serve all of our students good evening everyone okay next one announcement next regular ball meeting tuesday november 2nd 7 p.m at district office board room here committee meeting will be strategic strategic planning board advisory committee will be on tuesday october 26 6 p.m virtual meeting legislative policy for advisory committee will be on october 27th wednesday at 6 30 pm virtual uh meeting finance audit board advisory will be on october 28

2786 pm on thursday the special event will be on college connection week october 18-22 2021 and virtual meeting do we have any second public comments mr nichi nope nope okay and so i'll need the motion and second to adjourn tonight's meeting i'll move second here gracias okay good night chris i just wanted to know my phone riding battery everybody saw that right okay so i didn't mean you