ABCUSD Board Meeting - October 5, 2021

001there it is it's going to take like 20 seconds [Music] um [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] call the meeting to order before we get started it's on already before we started with the tonight board meeting i would like to welcome the community back to our board meeting please remember if you are attendants you must keep your mass on at all times keep physical distance between you and others and use the hand sanitizer post here in the boardroom 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 your communities seriously and ask that you do the same thank you and then you can do a role call president essay present vice president you yeah clerk

002nishi here board member dr apodaca here board member mr beach here board member dr eugenia here board member dr ria president thank um today you really want to be personally welcome to our uh not newly elected nothing more and mr beach and that dr eugenio i think is the first time you've seen on the dice welcome thank you thank you but you hate though okay yes ma'am okay um this evening we will be discussing the following item in closed section conference with labor negotiated update on negotiations with abc ft afsc and c-s-e-a now by the public comment and close section uh if there are any public comments on the closed section item do we have any scott do we have any okay so can i have a motion to move to close section second okay

003oh in favor say yeah yeah so the motion passed to seven to zero so okay we're going to close the section do we go up we're gonna go there [Music] of all the money that air i spend [Music] and all i've done [Music] i can't recall so fill to me [Music] good night and joy be with you [Music] if i had money enough to spend time there is [Music] alone [Music] grind [Music] with you [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] i [Music] and of all the sweethearts they'd wish me one more day to stay what since it falls into my lord that i should rise and you should not gently rise [Music] me with you [Laughter] so [Music] with you [Music] now [Music] food [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Applause]

004[Music] [Applause] [Music] ah hmm [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] we're wow wow look at everyone red it's happy we're all gonna happy today okay i rush uh well now i have a motion and second form go back to the open section please some moves okay so i have a first and second all in favor say yes okay so motion pass seven two zero thank you i get too excited so i start short of breath right now but forgive me well 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

005are in attendance you must keep your mass off at all times keep physical distance between you and others those who use the hand sanitizer post here in the bottom those who refuse to wear a mask will be asked to leave and we will call law enforcement if we need it we take the health and safety of your community seriously and ask that you do the same i want to say thank you very much as a boy if you have a cell phone on please sign your cell phone this is a good time and we can we welcome public comment and anybody wishing to make a public comment must fill out the form then you then then you will have the form there right okay thank you you must be um fill out the card on

006the table to my left all public comments are to be made during the public comments section or at the time an item is presented must be done before items is discussed each comment must be no more than five minutes and i also want to let the public know so those people not able to come and do send some comments to us all the board members here sitting here they'll have the copy of this and they'll read your comments and we'll take action if there's need to be done me and dr sue will work on that tonight in close section the board discussed conference will enable negotiated update on negotiation with abcft afscme and csea i would like to ask our four member doctor chris abadaka the announcement uh pledge allegiance thank you dr abadaka please

007stand put your right hand over your heart ready 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 for all you may be seated thank you one is our presentation and we'll have principal sergio garcia at teja high school present hispanic heritage month dr sue please thank you very much president say i would like to introduce sergio garcia who's the principal at artesia high school and i know that he's going to introduce his students as well dr say members of the board members of cabinet dr sue thank you for having us here tonight but really i don't think you really want to hear from me you need to hear from our students as in how

008we celebrated latino heritage month so i'm going to introduce to you guys morgan colbert and ashley medina morgan is our senior class vice president and ashley is a renaissance vice president so i'll let them do the presentation and talk to you about it and we'll be available for questions afterwards right principal garcia i want to let you know i wore your school mask last board meeting just won't let you know i promise i keep my promise to you [Laughter] i love it a teacher high school to kick to kickstart our artesia hispanics heritage month celebration we started on monday with our match the flag game which was participated by the freshman class where we had them um name the countries and corresponded to their correct flags we gave them two minutes within each task and

009we split it up between the green team and the orange team and the outcome of that was our orange team um one so as you can see in the pictures we have our orange team our green team and a couple of uh right here a closer view tuesday we had our mod e theater game which was participated by sophomores and maritiada translates to sea and land so the objective of this game was for our mc who oversaw the game to yell out either mod or tiara where our participants would eat would jump to the corresponding side however if at any time a person moved to the wrong side they would be eliminated from the game um so for our next game on wednesday it was participated by um the junior class um so loteria just

010a brief explanation of it is kind of a rendition of bingo but it is typically played in latin american countries and instead of having symbols you instead of having numbers and letters to yell out you actually yell out symbols and images and you place a bean and before if you have like um just one more left you'll yell out yo lotelia and basically the first person that yells lutheria would be the person who wins and then our seniors participated on thursday and we had a pinata and obviously a pinata you just you got a stick and you're supposed to hit the pinata and break it until the candy falls out and um you're supposed to like get as much candy as you can and then our last day of friday was el caballo dorado dance

011it's a line dance typically it's played at a lot of parties in latin america and that was for everyone to participate and it was played at lunchtime just to commemorate and have everyone participate and that was how we closed out our hispanic heritage month thank you and this concludes the report on artesia's hispanic heritage week celebration thank you so much [Applause] you might want to stay here our board may have some questions to you folks unless i know dr reel definitely okay i have a number eight is oh well uh dr reels i think i i have first one is is dr chris so it's number eight i have a number here you are eight right so we'll have the doctor chris abudaka first then dr rios job young folks welcome i just wanted to

012let you know that your principal is amazing i really wish we could have more room so he could demonstrate for us exactly how great he is at it [Laughter] uh this is very important we're so glad that you're here it's so great to start off having everybody back in person with such a beautiful and rich culture that we have right that we share that we have in common that's ingrained in uh not just here locally but in our entire state right up and down the state so i just wanted to thank you for being here saying welcome back i can't think of a better way to uh to welcome the public back besides you know having a just a glimpse really of a very rich and long-standing um uh culture with filled with traditions and

013with uh you know with um morals and lessons right that we pass on from generation to generation so just want to say thank you for being here and great presentation thank you principal garcia as always great job thank you um welcome artesia high school i love that we get to have such a fantastic start um i love that we're acknowledging latino heritage month and when i started to see your post on instagram i mean i just wanted to be part of that for artesia we always hear such good things you're an awesome representation of our district but the students always tell us about how at home they feel and how their school truly is a family and when you have events like this that you know the majority of our students are latino that allow

014them to participate in such a positive way and celebrate their culture we know that students want to belong and i mean when you have this as part of your lunch activities i as a latina myself i know how that resonates and how awesome that feels and if you're not latino then you get to participate in these wonderful fun events such as etc so thank you for your team for putting such awesome events together thank you for celebrating our culture in such a positive way and again thank you for getting us off to such a fantastic start next one well vice president miss view thank you for coming out tonight and really enjoyed your presentation i know that this september 15th october 15th is a national um national um hispanic heritage month did you guys get

015to eat any good food during the week like the garcia supposed to give it to you um we had to sadly we had to follow school rules although if we were [Laughter] although if we were offered the opportunity um we most definitely would have food to commemorate the latino and hispanic heritage yeah okay thank you so much one thing i do know i love pinata you know what i make one actually when my kids small it costs quite a bit so i make my own put a box in them my kids have a hard time to eat it but once they open it up all the candy is dropped it's so it's so fun you know the kids grow up that those times i remember so i want to thank you so much we have

016any other comments here you hear none i want to say thank you so much and you folks both dress so nicely and so professional i want to say i mean i can't see your whole face can you take your mask on let me see your face so when i go back to school i said who you are you know thanks again you know i also want a special thanks to our principal uh mr garcia and i never forget our former board member had asked you your score at that time 600 something and you promised you'll bring up really high and you did you maintain our artichoke high school and the high level test score and i want to thank you so much and the student over there and i have this a couple times they're

017really well behaved very nice i won't call them boys and girls i'll say gentlemen and ladies there you have i want to thank you so much appreciate it thank you [Applause] next one we're going to approve our agenda we have a motion to approve agenda for regular meeting of october 5th 2021 so moved second okay i have a first and second daniel wrote for me please dr apodaca jay mr beach yes dr eugenio yes mr nishi dr rios mrs say yes mrs you yes motion passes 7-0 i guess we can move the roll call because things are in the public right now am i right okay so i'll stop that thank you daniel okay and so i am under approved minutes right i have a motion to approve the minutes of the regular meeting which

018is today october no no no september i'm sorry which one we're talking about october october 5th right so you have to forgive me i'm not used to open section i'm so excited about i totally forgot everything so i'm going to repeat again and i have a motion to approve the minutes of regular meeting of september 21 2021. so move beach you have a new second thank you all in favor say yeah all right yes oh thank you the motion passed seven to zero next one will be um we have a student board oh wow a teacher high school okay i have uh is it a t-shirt high no that's asb the asb i'm sorry okay so that would be our circle high school see the things this year i should follow my thing so where

019is my sergio's high school i can't do it from city good evening president say vice president you clerk nishi and distinguished members of the board i am ashley walker and this is anomal cabala and we are your cerritos high school 2021-2022 student representative we are honored to present the activities our school is organized since the beginning of the school year to start off our school year rsv cabinet held a workshop towards the end of the summer on this day we started off with icebreakers to get to know on each other and since most of us were new it was important for us to get familiar with each other for the rent of the day we prepared for registration where we welcome new and old students during registration we worked student lines and created a relaxed

020environment for our students we guided them throughout the campus to purchase their class packages get their textbooks ids and more for the first week of school we introduced student we introduced students to a spirit week our commission of spirit kobe dykes and santo essay created this year's spirit week to give students opportunities to show school spirit by representing their favorite artists by wearing their merch or participating in quad games during lunch this year's theme revolved around music the slogan that we stressed was get back into the group this year's spirit week included team games like water balloon toss and guest assault we wanted our students to bond with one another and have fun during this highly anticipated first sorry first week back during our spare week we simultaneously filmed our annual sneak peek assembly which

021went back through the decades and reminisced on past events of our school which we which were recreated by our asb members because this is cerritos high school's 50th anniversary our top priority was to promote dawn pry our staff was also incorporated into the video where they even danced it was very entertaining and helped create a closer bond between the students and administrators rsv executives spoke about upcoming events such as homecoming and our various clubs on campus the sneak peak assembly showed off showed off events such as homecoming and our various clubs on campus this sneak peek assembly showed off cultural performances from mazza and a special dance off from our cerritos high school dance team during the second week of school we aimed to give our walls a renovation all of our bulletin boards were

022remade and redesigned to prompt each of its activities we continuously made posters like cerritos way is the best way and dawns are ready respectful and real and with this year being the 50th anniversary is important that we showcase our excitement for this year for this special year additionally our class officers held their first class committee meetings in which they were went over upcoming events and fundraisers during this fall sports season our athletics performed outstandingly our girls volleyball team played their first game against paramount and swept a well-deserving win also our boys football team have started to have a comeback and took a win against banning high our girls varsity and jv tennis teams also had an incredible start to their season with wins against north torrance and el rancho cross country participated in various runs

023like the district cow run and traveled to hawaii for the lawani invitational september 13th to the 17th was cerritos annual club week which was put together by commissioners of clubs each day of the week was designated for different clubs that our students could be exposed to through different types of cultural academic and special interest clubs even though we had restrictions to keep in mind we were able to create a safe and easy way for students to find their interests and build those relationships with fellow students one new thing we added this year to stay safe was instead of having flyers handed out we required clubs to have qr codes through those qr codes you could scan them and get your digital poster online and access important links and dates this edition created less work for

024our lovely custodians and environmental clubs on campus were very happy with september 15th being the first day of hispanic heritage month our commissioners of multicultural affairs were tasked with bringing hispanic culture to life on campus we started by creating country flags such as chile honduras brazil and other hispanic countries we incorporated the culture by playing well-known hispanic songs throughout lunch and hold dress-up days to encourage school spirit one of the recent activities we held in the quad this friday was making papella spicados which were featured in our front office now we're here to the present so future events that will be coming up this october is our homecoming premiere virtually which is tomorrow wow and our red ribbon week the annual halloween costume contest and much much more we will strive we have strived to

025create a safe and welcoming environment for all students and as the year progresses we intend to keep it that way thank you um before you go i'd like to introduce you to to the public and assume your parents here i would like to have you be uh acknowledge the public and i know we have an amika bawa right who is thank you can you take your max out to show your parents right there to the public so we'll see you then real quick and can put it back and then we also have a miss ashley walker you're too so beautiful and i want to sincerely apologize to principal walker because when i see asb i don't know why i was reading like a teacher in high school and i know better the color the difference

026between artisan high and cerritos but i want to thank you so much for your presentation and i do know we have four have some common now our vice president um miss you i just want to say thank you to anamika and ashley walker for your presentation and just your service at your school campus it must be really challenging coming back from pandemic how is it getting all the students involved um it's actually kind of easy because the students like are ready to be back on campus and like ready to get more into school so we have more people joining quad events and playing games and doing school activities fantastic you guys did such a great presentation thank you very much we also have our board clerk uh mr aninishi will have some questions or comments

027to you folks thank you so do you find that it's uh it's easier because there's a pent-up demand for a kid for them to want to go back to events yes so do you uh like to go back to school now it has its benefits i agree with you don't worry the principal's not here listening to you don't be sad this is between you and me [Laughter] but yeah i mainly came back um for my social life but yeah i'm ready i'm happy to be back in the classroom and working with other people not through the screen and like actually talking to them in person and getting to know them yeah last year it was kind of hard getting to know our teachers so this year being in person you really get to have that

028education one-on-one and they give you extra help and it just feels much better learning that's great that's great good job thank you so much [Applause] thank you principal walker okay the next one was it's going to be our superintendent report thank you souffle well first of all i want to thank anamika and ashley from cerritos high school for doing a great report tonight i hope everyone had a great weekend last week congratulations to craig spratt the principal at cerritos elementary school for being selected a national blue ribbon school award as principal craig spratt said being named a national blue ribbon school is a tremendous honor for our students and staff this recognition is due to the hard work of the entire school community a number of us will be traveling to washington dc on november

029the 3rd through the 6th to accept the award for the national blue ribbon school we also received the los angeles county department of arts and culture awards we were one of 41 school districts that advanced arts education the los angeles county of arts and culture has announced that grants totaling eight hundred and sixty seven thousand seven hundred dollars will be awarded to 41 school districts as mentioned by jacqueline chun we are honored to be supporting these 41 school districts and are excited about all the different ways these grants will help them initiate expand or preserve students access to quality arts education at this critical time ms chun is the chief program and operations officer at the carl and roberts deutsche foundation and chair of the la county arts ed collective founders council advancement on grant

030subcommittee on monday september 27th i visited the adult school program with the class fusing class with nancy amara principal of adult school they do amazing things in the class with their projects we held our regular pal council meeting on monday we spoke about the need to revisit the pal retreat we will still be at the sheraton hotel with our cabinet members including the principals and equity officer along with their abcft executive council members on october 28 2021 i visited carmanita middle school with principal robert castillo on tuesday september 28th we visited a number of classrooms that day including foreign language history english special education and math we had a wonderful time together with the administrative team as part of that day i continue with imagine learning with michelle joyce it was a wonderful experience to

031learn what we are doing with imagine learning they provided experiences for administrators in english and math projects on wednesday september 29th i went to adult schools at cabrillo lane to experience the dental assistant program with principal nancy amara i learned a lot of information regarding the dental assistant program from the students in the afternoon i participated in the attendance data works program there were almost a thousand participants in the program with us hedy chang who used to work with us in our district executive director of attendance works was with us all afternoon in addition gracie rollins with the institute for educational leadership in the meeting they had a panel of participants from todd rogers professor of public policy at harvard kennedy school mary bell childress superintendent of a small district in arkansas and charlene russell

032tucker commissioner in connecticut state department of education it was an inspiring meeting that taught us a lot about what is significant with attendance being the focus of the day that night i also attended the tracy high school virtual back to school night assembly on friday october the 1st i visited cerritos high school with principal patrick walker we visited numerous classrooms outside in the quad area they included a math class as well as a history class i spent time in the multimedia lab english class art ceramics class and foreign language class in the afternoon i participated with the axa region 14 superintendents luncheon at parker's lighthouse in long beach there were 11 superintendents that gathered together that day on monday october the 4th i met with our principals in our cabinet meeting they included dr tom

033tracy from nixon academy julie yabumoto from palms academy robert castillo from carmanita middle school sergio garcia from artesia high school and adrian thomas who is our equity officer in the afternoon i attended the i ready commanding the future education data and visible impact the main speaker was woodrow pack there were numerous participants in the event within the next two weeks i will be evaluating our cabinet members they have the dates and times in my office beginning on october the 11th next monday the district will be providing weekly testing of our employees some may take the test depending on their circumstances and the school it is involved in we will provide the board the full schedule of the testing at our school sites have a wonderful weekend and that concludes my report presidency thank you dr

034su yeah i know you always travel is everywhere thank you so much working so hard for our district now is our employee representative reporter and do you have any thank you now it's my turn to give my president report the last two weeks i was very busy i went out for quite few breakfast visits and attended teisha festival i talked on the phone with the local community members some are parents concerned about kobe 19 some related concerns of over ccej crt and ethnic study yes i am aware of these issues and yes i read emails and social media posts as a district we are focused on all of our students two matters that i would like to report tonight one big question was why i took off winnie high school ccej item 3.4-4 i want

035to make this clear to the public i did not remove once again i did not remove the ccej agenda item but recommended our staff to provide the curriculum information to my colleagues to review before we voted tonight this gender item will be put back to vote after my colleague now had a chance to review the information that our staff has provided and we don't take easy here as a private event held a few weeks ago that two other four members attended our district legal council that can mean as it follows there was not a violation of the border code of ethics rather it was a board member expressing their personal views not view of the district censor enough for what a board member action as a board member violates full policy of the law it

036is not for when someone provides a personal opinion but as a board president i will have one old chinese saying that i would like to share with my colleague here disease enter the mouth and of the mouth comes with evil in chinese when we say something we need watch out and this is quite a lesson for all of us to learn today after our last board meeting my colleague dr ryo asked if we can celebrate national hispanic heritage at our board meeting i say of course because so important to to present it here to allow us to understand each other's and what we've been contributing to this country all of us ancestors had did something in here in united states and we would we know about things our born vice president talked about national hispanic

037heritage month and i also want to say i would like to take end of my report with a thought about this let's not just use this month to celebrate but let's remember the hispanic contribution and influence of our nation all year long we need to learn to appreciate each other's we need to learn each other's culture we need to respect each other as a single person we all should be treat each other same and we deserve that our ancestors and our generation our next generation so i that's my end report to have um that's my own report that's why we were the hispanic dress today to show the appreciation and the contribution to our country so i get a little excited you have to forgive me red really put me up [Laughter] okay so next

038one will be public hearing okay and we will have so-called i would like to open a public hearing on the initial proposal submitted by the abc american federation of teacher local 2317 california federation of teachers american federation of teacher afl-cio to reopen negotiation for successor collective bargaining contract for the 2020-2023 master contract copy of initial proposal available for the public to review are there any public comments in here clerk nishi i don't see any problems for this particular activity here no comments the public hearing is closed next one i would like to open public hearing i never have a chance to use the problem for a long time it's kind of scary though so um i would like to open a public hearing on the abc unified school district negotiation negotiating team response to the

039abc american federation of teachers local 2317 california federation of teachers american federation of teacher afl-cio to reopen negotiation as successor collecting bonding contract for 2020 to 2023 master contract copy of district response available to the public to review do we have any public comments sir i did not see any here none comment the public hearing is closed now we're going to open to our public comments person wishing to address the board should fill out a cart located table by the door and submit the complete card to the secretary speakers will be called in sequency during the public comments section which is limited to one hour and each speaker to one presentation of five minutes unless the board wishes to waive the item the time limit those who have a group of concerns are encouraged to

040select a spokesperson to address the board person wishing to address the board on a specific agenda item at a time the item is under discussion are limited to five minutes each and will be called to speak following the staff comments i'm proud to be prior to the board discussion and take action let me sit down because ernie's supposed to say that only that and it continued i'm sorry ernie evans remarks continue sorry average remarks 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 concerns presented to the board will be followed up and addressed by the appropriate staff do we have any public comments yes we do madam president thank you sir uh i will call the three up

041and if you can come up in the order called the first one is joshua pena the second one was mel cortez and the third one is i think it's megan megan mitchell thank you good evening madam president say board members superintendent dr sue members of the cabinet thank you for your time and allow me the opportunity to speak my name is joshua pena and i'm a mental health professional with the district being mindful of your time and the voices of other community members who would like to speak tonight i will be representing 25 of the current mental health professionals with the district during the last board meeting dr apodaca used his report time to discuss his concerns with the turnover rate of mental health professionals at abc due to lower than average salary ranges this

042also is a concern of us the district mental health professionals we have had nine of our colleagues leave this position in the past six months most moving to nearby districts due to salary abc mental health professionals are individuals required to have master's degree and experience we provide services to support students social and emotional well-being we also serve as a link between the school home and community by providing direct and indirect mental health services to students families and school personnel this support has been proven to have a positive impact on students academic and social success throughout the school career and into adulthood a key component of our role is to advocate for our students during staffing ssts ieps 504 meetings to name a few while teachers and administrators look at data such as grades attendance records

043assessment scores to determine how to best support the student the role the mental health professionals to understand the barriers to learning and support the student and families to remove or reduce those barriers so the student is able to learn this could be anything from homelessness death of a loved one our mental health challenges our goal is the same as everyone at abc with the addition of one thing we want to help the students become academically successful and gain highly emotional intelligence throughout their abc career together with teachers and administrators we complete the circle of care tonight i want to i will not only represent my fellow mental health professionals but also the abc students who have received mental health services including students who have wanted to self-harm or die by suicide wanted to harm others

044struggle with anxiety anger or simply have no one to talk to they come to us seeking help we also support our foster homeless and military connected students we are available to every single student on campus as well as all teachers administrators and staff our calling is to support and advocate for those in need but we must have the courage to advocate for ourselves as well during the first six weeks of this school year mental health providers have contacted 398 parents to discuss school-based counseling provided 472 classroom social emotional learning lessons began school-based counseling with 491 abc students in addition to checking in with 478 abc students regarding their mental health referred 38 students to community-based counseling agencies responded to 182 crisis across the district provided 215 staff members with social emotional workshops and consulted 218

045times with teachers regarding best practice with challenging students please note these numbers do not reflect they do not reflect the nine school sites that started the school year off without a mental health professional in the mental health field we have a term continue continuity of care meaning the longer the client and service provider work together the higher quality and efficiency of the service as mental health professionals the longer we are at our school sites the stronger the school community and community partnership becomes when it comes to working with our most vulnerable and at-risk students we are seen as a beacon of stability that represents how much abc cares we cannot be this beacon if our team changes annually or sooner we cannot offer stability if as a team we are not stable we all love

046what we do and are fully invested in the work we do with our students and the local community several of us attended abc usd live in the community and have children that attend school at abc it is our hopes the board can find a resolution ensuring continuity of care by retaining our highly qualified and experienced mental health professionals who have a lifelong impact on our students and community thank you very much for your time [Applause] want to order madam president yes go ahead if i may ask for a clarification really quick uh two things one do we have any other mental health professionals here can you please stand thank you remain standing also madam president either now or before any of them leave would it be possible to get clarification as to whether or not

047we are re-examining and looking at the compensation structure for this particular group of individuals if and when appropriate tonight practice we have been re-examining the salary schedules for all of our mental health professionals and we are sincerely and we are aware how hard we've been working in the past especially with kobe the past two years we want to thank you so much one person well for the whole school sincerely appreciate you all hard working for us actually lord is said it's not or differences that divide us is our inability to recognize accept and celebrate those differences good evening board members my name is matt cortes and i'm here to ask board members for you to resign her position we cannot trust her as a leader in our district to lead our students equally whatever vote

048she takes or has taken in the past are questionable every time i think the district is addressing race bigotry prejudice ignorance and students from students and teachers the district disappoints me this time is not a student this time is not a teacher a principal making excuses for a teacher it was board members to you whether when i'm gonna tell you was said at an official as an official abc board representative regardless of what she says the flyer said abc representatives were invited and two board members shared the stage with a racist woman making present presentation this was a presentation organized by the person that posted caricatures of the white on the white house lawn with watermelons well obama was president this was a presentation of a race by a racist antacidic woman this was said

049at a presentation where the great state seal of california's education department was crossed this was said on the first day of hispanic heritage month september 15th i don't have the right words because i wasn't there i'm not any happy attending meetings led by racist but it was something like this what can latino parties or parents do do to make sure their kids do better in school it's still saying talk to your teacher stay for after school tutoring talk to a counselor read more have study groups etc what we say to all students isn't saying that the response went something like this i will tell them to start having quinceaneras and go on vacations to mexico and use the money for tutoring maybe it was not mexico quinceaneras usually happen in mexico honduras who knows and

050also it was said pay somebody to help you so by now i'm sure miss suyu has a prepared statement with help of district personnel explaining that what happened didn't really happen the statement is worth nothing it's worth nothing because the district has a history of bigotry racism my daughter and my sons have experiences they're not here anymore well my daughter was a student at cerritos high school one example during her spanish class she was shown a movie about a pregnant latina girl surrounded by cholos gangsters to learn about the latino culture after the class i remember my daughter said that they asked me where was my baby my son had to watch a student's made movie made at the school during morning announcement to celebrate hispanic heritage month all the characters were dressed like tools

051and gangsters i sighed because it was on youtube once i contacted the school it was deleted my kids also had to watch the surreals high school students dressed as cholos gangsters doing pep rallies right before they play guard high school so now that this is trying to start ethnic studies classes at two high schools to address also the racism that was brought up in the past two years that have been happening all over so whatever statement you have me sue you is worth nothing no quinceaneras no vacations pay for you on tutoring i'm sorry see i'm sorry it doesn't work anymore the plate is broken your equity officer has a lot of work ahead because your district is broken board members you are neutral or say nothing in a situation of bigotry and racism you

052have chosen the side of racist people happy hispanic heritage month [Applause] megan mitchell good evening dr sue and board of trustees i'm megan mitchell and i'm a parent of an abc student the abc usd policies administration regulations and board bylaws begins with the philosophy goals objectives and comprehensive plans for our district in section this adopted policy sets goals for our district goal number three is to provide ongoing and pertinent training for all administrators teachers certificated and classified staff and goal number eight is to develop a better understanding of the communication amongst all ethnic groups and races in order to promote the concept of a global community further to promote appreciation of unity and uniqueness amongst diversity in the summer of 2020 stakeholders like myself and other community members made it known that there were major

053disparities regarding equity diversity inclusion and representation within our abc community we did a lot of work and with the partnership that we built with schools like whitney high school we have started taking the necessary steps to create a safe inviting and supportive environment for theirs for our students and are requiring the students at whitney high school as well as the staff members and administration about whitney high school to develop a better understanding of the practice of equity diversity and inclusion by attending and participating in professional development and training after hearing the audio and reading the transcripts of the event that took place at the cerritos library i am appalled i am disheartened and i am gravely concerned of the state of our district the comments that were made by boy by board vice president su

054yu demonstrate a lack of understanding preconceived notions and implicit bias against bearing cultural groups and races that make up our school district her comments while they may not have been on the behalf of the board are a reflection of this board to be silent in the face of racism is to be complicit in the face of racism i've heard a few people on this board quote dr martin luther king jr over the last 18 months especially when we're regarding issues of racism and bigotry and specifically during the passing of the board resolution 1914 so here is another quote to add to that this quote was taken from his letter from the birmingham jail because oftentimes we forget that dr king did not stand quiet in the face of bigotry that he did not stand complicit

055when people were violating his rights he actually was murdered murdered for standing up for the equal rights and treatment of others he said i have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the negro's great stumbling block and the stride toward freedom is not the white citizens counselor or the ku klux klaner but the moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice who constantly says i agree with you in the goal you seek but i cannot agree with your methods of direct action a shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection if we as a district

056as a community and as a board continue to sit and remain silent in the name of decorum propriety and civility we are ultimately telling our community our students our parents our families that the bigotry and racism that is apparent in abc and board trustee sue you is not a deal breaker our silence continues to state that it is acceptable to get in a public forum and say these things how can we trust that this board will represent value and celebrate our diverse student and faculty population if our own board vice president can make such heinous statements while also posing for pictures of a cross-hatched and altered seal of the very state board of education seal that you took a vow to uphold this is egregious behavior and it cannot be placated by an apology [Applause]

057mr sam decided thank you daniel keep our podium as clean as we can thanks so much appreciate thank you board members superintendent president for opening up the forum so we can come and speak here one of the reasons i'm here today is as you allow parental communication parental community participation please keep in mind that there are many parents who still believe kovid is real now some of you board members have a challenge believing in that otherwise you would have this zoom meeting available to individuals who want to participate but haven't shown up kod is real this is safe and yet there are individuals who'd like to give the opinions being a coward doesn't make you a good board member by telling your constituents that you want people to participate and they're not even having it

058on agenda and then hiding behind president and superintendent that they have 50 50 right to put what is on agenda is cowardly you want parental participation then act don't talk what is the reason that you don't want parents to positive participate is it your health is it our health as president recently mentioned that our health is important to you well then you should be the first person who would have said let's get these people on zoom give them another option to speak you may want to hide behind something which is in legislation well if you read up sb341b you should know that as of today you are still allowed to have remote conversations so why is it not on agenda well one of the first things that came to mind is because we knew that

059when board members don't want to hear something they will do everything in their power to hide behind words so what happened well we all know that if 35 percent of abc unified school districts children want to improve their studies they need to stop celebrating cancer and going on vacation absolutely that is right but if anyone does not agree with that and want to share with you that that is racist you don't want to hear it you don't even want to acknowledge that what you will do you will go to meetings by some individuals who don't believe in equality in pretense that you want to learn something about critical race theory in order for you to learn something about something like that from a person who doesn't respect are the religions are the races shame on

060you that you have to go to them to be educated on a subject which really does not need spotlighting something is broken in this board and we have known about it and it begins with those of you who wants us to believe in you you have lost our trust not once not twice but on consistent basis by showing that you refuse to put something on the agenda because two individuals here have you guys in chains so if you're board members and you're voted in show some courage don't talk about participation do something so that we parents who disagree with some of the things that you are doing shameful things you are doing can give you that feedback it is important that we lead by example and yes vice president suyu that was shameful and i

061do understand that some of us elites are a little bit pompous when it comes to how other people should be educated should be behaving but the way things have come across i do believe that you have a lot lot to fix and you can start by residing thank you [Applause] so that's ronnie [Music] before the mental health professionals leave i just wanted to just say my support for them and looking forward to the discussion about you know what we can do to continue having retention within um that department so something i wanted to speak about tonight is what's being discussed right now and what's being discussed right now is going to be be the beginning of a lot of long conversations about how we move going forward right um i think it also highlights the

062amount of education and discussion that we need to start having together as a community because of events like this i spoke to sue you in in private and i said the same thing i'm going to say privately in public the statements were wrong in context out of context we're wrong there's no going around that and the thing that i think highlights what's beginning today is that our positions being representatives are not about us but it's about the people who we represent and that's who ultimately holds us accountable for what we do they decide if we should be in these positions to you know in the first place and it's not on us you know to make that decision it's on the people who who elected us to make that decision if they want to see

063you continue representing them i'm always about healing and reconciliation and the best path moving forward and right now what needs to happen is an honest conversation about the with the community that was harmed about how they feel is best to move forward and that's how we have to center all of this is the community that was harmed how do they feel is the best way to move forward and go from there because if that gets lost that's how you lose faith in the community that's how you lose trust in the community so what i am putting out to the board is to listen to the people respect what their decision ends up becoming and move forward from there without making it about any individuals because the work that we're all involved in with education is

064bigger than us it's all about the people the parents the children that we represent and if we lose faith in that then what do we really have so that's what i'm imploring to the board is to support what the community ultimately wants and perceive from there thank you i think that's that uh that's the end of the no more right yes there might be one more oh okay and i also want to let the people sit in the back can you see with the big screen that we're provided for you can see and can hear very well megan can you hear very well from our thank you i just want to make sure that we you guys can hear you can see us thank you ernie ernie eddie salcedo so i raced down here good

065evening everyone and the mental health professionals if you're still here thank you i raced down here i was watching online um to echo someone's comments earlier i had to wait till my wife got home uh to watch the kids so i can come down here so having the option moving forward for people that can't get down here no matter what business you're in around the world whether you work for ibm or the abc unified school district tell the commuting options are there so if you guys can address that and have people still be able to comment on zoom or some form of that this issue there's no two ways about it mr you you have to resign the option isn't there you made a mistake you may or may not have meant it the way

066that it came out that does not matter as a gentleman just said right now you must resign there is no question about it colleagues should ask you to resign that's not to say your life as a valued member of the community or coming back to the school district is out of the question but until that rehabilitation takes place until we can say yes we can trust sue you she understands the devastation the the issue about the right wing all member that was there that has ties to this and that that that doesn't matter for this particular thing it matters in the big picture it matters that some of our council members didn't condemn a certain person republican democrat it doesn't matter there's certain ideologies that just don't fit and especially in this community and i

067don't think you're a bad person i don't know you so i can't say you're a bad person a good person all i can judge you on right now is the comments that you made and you made them and you need to own them and you need to do what you need to do to get the trust of the community back and so i think the right thing for you to do is to resign and you can start right away with how do i get better thank you three minutes how do i how do i change this narrative i mean look at the diversity of this board i i find some of the latino or latinos on this i don't even know how i sit next to you based on what you said do some role

068reversal here had someone said don't celebrate chinese new year or don't do something in some other culture other than hispanic culture everyone would be up in arms if miss rios would have said something like that protest everyone she wouldn't even be here tonight she would have been off this board already so i'm asking you to do the right thing start the rebuilding process tonight by resigning help this community because there are other issues i mean this is things aren't getting better unfortunately it starts at the top we've seen it from the president down to this board level down to the school level pick any level so i'm asking this board to do the right thing and encourage miss sue you to resign and to start a process in critical race theory it's not even taught

069k through 12 it's a college level a concept in in some of these programs that we have at whitney and some of the other programs great let's keep exploring those things but i know that this board wants the best for school we've crossed we've had some conversations i still have issues that are beyond this but i race down here just to look you in the eye and ask you to do the right thing and i'm asking the board to do the right thing and start to say okay how do we look at this from the macro level and what can we do in the micro level so our kindergartners our first graders our 12th graders are going off to college what's a better world view because the diversity of this district is amazing it's one

070of the reasons why we're here we had other options we're here because i want my kids to see brown and white and black and every ethnicity i want them to smell the foods of of of the world but what i cannot accept is for someone to say don't have a quinceanera don't go to your homeland whether that be like someone said or guatemala el salvador or mexico wherever it may be i cannot have my board represent my kids education when things like that are said so i'm asking you please do the right thing please offer your letter of resignation and start your rebuilding immediately thank you [Applause] is that are we closing it doesn't seem to be any more present thank you now i'm gonna close our public comments um so next one will be

071um information item right doctor huh okay person okay sorry about that a motion to move the consent item second nishi does anyone wish to remove any item to be considered separately if none all those in favor say i i do want to remind oh sorry okay i do want to remind some my colleague here that one of the itunes 3.2 c that is a ccej for winning high school and i assume oh my colleague read the curriculum you know but anyway so i do have our doctor avodaka and now seven is oh trying to see that oh we have a board member at the beach for him madam president thank you i don't want to remove any items i just want to make a comment on 1.2 c i'm so happy that our district continues

072to do red ribbon week as many of you know i proudly serve on the international red ribbon movement board of directors and my uncle henry lozano actually started the red ribbon movement in 1985 after the death of a dea agent who was a good friend of his so this hits very close to home to me i'd like to encourage all of our parents it's never too young to talk to your children about the harms of alcohol and drugs and i encourage you to do it during this month when they come home and have that red ribbon on so thank you so for you to say a comment right yes okay so i'll say well we have a motion and second all in favor please say aye aye thank you motion passes seven to zero okay

073next one is information item is regarding california school dashboard local indicator dr mayfield thank you good evening for president sophia say members of the board and dr sue annually districts are required to present to their board of education the california school dashboard local indicators the local indicators that we are required to present on cover five specific areas the first is basic teachers instructional materials and facilities the second is implementation of academic standards the third parent and family engagement the fourth area is local climate survey and the fifth access to board course of study and so this evening i will be providing the district and our board feedback on our progress during the 2019-20 school year i do want to remind the board and the community that this data was reflective of a time period in

074which we were at the peak of the covet 19 pandemic and schools were fully virtual for the majority of the school year until later in spring in the area of basics 100 of abc teachers meet the criteria under teacher credentialing report to be highly qualified in the area of facilities we use the williams facility reports and for those sites that were visited they met the requirement at 100 percent instructional materials 100 of our teachers have certified that they have access to standard aligned instructional materials in the area of implementation of academic standards it speaks more directly to the professional learning that's offered to teachers in preparation for them to implement the state standards we have a comparison to the 2018-2019 school year and the 20 20 21 school year and you'll see that for the

075most part we maintain uh 80 or higher in the areas of ela and eld that's english language arts and english language development math and science we do have a decline in the area of history social science and we are credited to the fact that in 2020 21 our grades k through 6 we were in the middle of a textbook adoption but due to the covet 19 pandemic the adoption process was delayed we are now in the process of implementing we have purchased those materials and we are in the process of implementing that training now for teachers the majority of abc teachers are at the elementary level and so we do anticipate to see this percentage increase in our next report the next area parent and family engagement the state offers a tool which is our

076california school parent survey and that survey we have questions that we have aligned to these three required areas building relationships between school staff and families building partnerships for student outcomes and seeking input for decision making again the survey was administered last year during our pandemic but we had an increase in the participation of our families for 4 55 families responding to the survey 2659 of those family members represent students in elementary 567 middle school 1 219 high school and alternative high school 39 families when completing the surveys districts for us to use the data to examine their progression and so how well are we progressing in these different areas and we rate ourselves based on our progress and so if we are at the exploring and research phase and we will say that we will

077give ourselves a one for exploring a research our beginning development stage initial implementation indicates that there is some evidence that the practice practices in place in our schools thorough implementation means that the evidence supports that the pro practice is progressing and full implementation and sustainability the evidence supports that the practice is not only progressing but it's progressing for multiple years this is our first year of using this survey and so we won't have any indicators at a five yet but if we continue to see progression we can assume that some of these practices are being sustained and so we hope that in the near future we will see five in some of these areas but again this is about our progress towards meeting these practices so in the area of building relationships with parents and

078guardians we were at our families were asked to schools staff treat parents with respect and 88 percent to 96 of our elementary middle and high school parents agreed or strongly agreed and so throughout this presentation yellow represents the feedback from our elementary parents blue is our middle school and green is our high school parents were also asked that they felt welcome to participate at school again the range is from 79 percent to 85 percent of our families strongly agreeing or strongly agreeing with that statement parents and family members were also asked if the school communicates the importance of respecting different cultural beliefs and practices in this area 84 to 91 of our families felt they agreed or strongly agreed that schools are respecting the different cultural beliefs and practices in terms of schools providing instructional

079materials that reflect my child's culture ethnicity and identity we see a drop in the scores in this area and we recognize a need to ensure that there is more representation of our children in their culture in the materials that they're receiving the range here is 62 percent to 77 of our families agreeing or strongly agreeing in the area of how well the school provided you information on how to help your child plan for college and vocational school again these scores indicate that there's need for more work in this area as the scores range from 27 percent to 48 now we know that our high schools do a lot of work around this area when it comes to students being prepared for college and careers and so some of this could be a matter of how

080is that information being communicated to the families students may be aware of it but in this particular case is our families who are taking this our parents and our guardians who are taking the survey so again an indicator that we still have work to do in this area as well and so here is what will be publicly posted at the california dashboard in the area of um in the statement where we rate the district of progress and building trust and respectful relationship we can indicate full implementation and again that term just means that there is evidence that there is the practice in place which is supported by the data in which our families are stating that they feel that the school does respect their what a rate of 88 to um 96 percent in the

081area of creating a welcoming environment again full implementation the data does support this evidence that our parents are feeling that we're making progress in that area in the area of learning about each other's family strengths culture and language and goals we have a range of initial to full implementation and this should indicate that there are some but not sufficient enough in all areas at all levels the next section is building partnership with student outcomes the question was asked does the school provide opportunities for families to partner with the school and again the response was 76 to 77 of our families agreed or strongly agreed in the question the school provides quality counseling or other ways to help students with social emotional needs again our families indicated with a 75 to 76 79 range of agree

082or strongly agree and teachers communicate with parents about what students are expected to learn in class um again the range is 70 to 90 of our families agreeing or strongly agreeing with that statement the school keeps parents world informed of their child's progress in school the indicator shows us that 86 to 91 percent of our families agree to strongly agree with that statement at the beginning of the school year parents and guardians receive an updated electronic or printed copy of district and school policies 89 to 91 of our family said yes um the school provided information on expected role of your child at your child's school again we see that these numbers indicate that there's a need for more work in this area but 44 of our high school parents in very well up to

08362 at the elementary level saying very well so when it comes to providing families information that they need to support the learning of their students at home we are at the initial implementation there are some evidence but not sufficient that we are making progress in that area when it comes to families having an awareness of their child's progress and how to work with the school the data supports full implementation when it comes to parents understanding their legal rights and advocating for their own student again the data supports full implementation the last area is seeking input for decision making we asked families if parents are invited to participate in decision-making meetings at their child's school the range of agreed to strongly agree at 78 percent to 85 percent um the school actively seeks the input appearance

084before making important decisions the range is 70 to 81 percent of our families agreeing or strongly agree and the school actively seeks parents participation in plenty family engagement activities 63 to 80 of our families said yes so in these areas we feel that we have made full implementation meaning again that if you look at a progression there's evidence of support that our families do feel that they are involved in a decision-making process at their schools and that they are involved in helping make decisions regarding engagement activities at school the other survey that is administered to our students in grades 5 7 9 11 is the california healthy kid survey and in 2020 21 again i want to emphasize that we're in the midst of a pandemic and the questions here centered around students feeling connected

085do they feel connected and there are significant gain from the previous year we were not able to administer the survey in 2019-20 because at the time that this area was being administered is when we dismissed for school so that's why there's a gap in the data but from 2018-19 and 2021 and again when you think about where we were at that time there's a significant increase in our fifth graders saying that they felt connected to school even though that they were primarily in school virtually for most of that school year with 66 percent reporting for seventh graders 67 percent but ninth graders which is pretty high for ninth graders and fifty for six percent for eleventh graders so across the board all grade levels had to increase the last area is access to a broad

086course of study if you recall there was a law that passed last year and what that law allows students to do is to choose pass or not pass so a pass or not pass is equivalent to a d minus or higher so it could be a b c and as low as a d minus because of the pandemic the universities did accept a pass as meeting the a to g requirement absent a pass or no pass the standard for a g requirement is a c grade so really the data is not comparable because under one situation a d minus met this requirement but outside of a pandemic students have to have a c in order to have to meet the agency requirement but even with that said overall the district maintained a 59 passage rate

087of students who have passed who have met the adg passage a degree requirement which is a requirement that's established by our uc's in calif and our cal state universities enrolling in our events placement classes last year overall we had 33 percent of our district at the secondary level who were taking advanced placement courses 66.1 percent representing english learners 25.8 percent socially economically disadvantaged 6.3 students who identify as falsely youth 27.4 students identified as african-american and 20 of our students identified as a hispanic and across the board those are slight increases and that is the report on our california dashboard local indicators okay do you have any questions from my any comment from my board here okay so we have a clerk uh mr nishi and go ahead thank you thank you madam president so this

088last one african-american 27.4 in terms of in advance placement enrollment what is the actual enrollment of is that disproportionately high or low compared to the population so in abc overall we have about eight percent to nine percent of our students are identified as african-american students and i don't know what that breakdown in front of me is for our high school students but what i will share is that the year prior we had that rate was 19.8 percent so i don't have the actual numbers in front of me but that's a slight increase in the percentage of students who identify as african-american who are taking an ap class so a disproportionately high number it has increased yes that sounds like a success um i had a question regarding this page eight regarding the um the school

089communicates the importance of respecting cultural differences in both practices did you do a differentiate between different areas of the school district and find different numbers in terms of that particular data point so every school has an individual school report and then we will also receive a district report and so i can provide the board if you're interested a copy of each school's report and you can see how families responded in that particular area and so when we get our report we have it all students it's a accumulation of all the schools and that's how the data is reported at the district level but i do have individual school reports if you're interested so what i mean is uh was there a disproportionate number higher or lower in particular areas of the district you will be

090able to see that from the report i don't have that information with me but each school has an individual report and this question was answered at each school okay thank you and then this is a little bit uh concerning that uh 48 of the students in high school didn't feel like we got enough information about college so keep in mind this is the parent and guardians completing the survey not students and that's why i shared earlier i know that our high schools do a tremendous amount of work in this area and so potentially the challenge for them is how is that being communicated to the families how are they making sure that parents are aware of their efforts and the work that they engage in with helping students to complete college applications to apply for

091the fafsa to make sure that they're enrolled in cte courses as well as our dual enrollment courses so this could be a communication piece but again when we look at the data we can look at it by individual schools and the schools have that data and they're asked to think about it in the terms of their school plan and how are they going to write an initiative or a goal towards responding to not only the parent data but the student data as well so you're thinking that the is that the parents and the kids are not potentially parents are not as aware of all the things that being offered to students at the school okay thank you that's that's it thank you next one is our vice president okay first thank you dr valencia mayfield

092for preparing this uh presentation for us to understand where the you know how we are doing and first i want to thank the secretaries of all the schools the parents feel i mean elementary school 92 middle school almost 90 percent 88 parents and school staff treat parents with respect i mean during the pandemic coming back to school it's kind of stressful for everyone but really want to say thank you to the secretaries and administrative assistants for making the parents feel welcome and being patient and also the school does a good job of informing the child's progress in school and that is very important uh because they send the property report weekly through the email and the school does a really great job and that helps the parents keep track of the child's progress help them

093or you know just talk to them hold them accountable right and that's very helpful instead of having to go into website and to search for it i guess the only area i guess we can improve is the uh maybe for high school and middle school um just to help the parents roll at the school yeah that's it thank you very much next one will be dr wils please thank you dr mayfield can you please help me understand um the data on page 16. so when it comes to a3g completion rates for class of 2020 graduates it says here that hispanics attain this at a 20 percent am i to understand that only two out of every 10 students meet the a through g requirements there's two separate sections the section where you see the percentage

094represents advanced placement enrollment okay and so the tops have is the a to g completion rate and that's where i have indicated the statement that due to the um due to the clever pandemic last year that students can choose a pass no pass grade and so we don't really um we didn't really report the data by breakdown because it's not it's not a traditional way of meeting the adg requirement because traditionally to me a to g requirement you need a c or better got it so it's two separate two sources of information correct okay well yeah well i still you know would like to encourage and you know i want to acknowledge i believe we have our equity officer in the room it took me a minute to recognize hello welcome i think we need

095to move you up a little bit um but advanced placement you know we had a lot of issues that came up today and and i'll i'll take time to address that a little bit later but latinos make up about 50 of our student population and so when i see these numbers low then it tells me that that's a big that that percentage may be small but it represents a big number and so you know i'm i'm curious to see what measures we are taking um to address this i also know that some of our high schools are better at getting kids to take advanced placement enrollment and so i'm also curious as to know where these numbers come from are they heavily weighted at one school or are they heavily weighted at another school because

096even though i know that our latino students are spread out through the whole district um you know again it makes me wonder absolutely i can provide a more detailed report to the board of each school percentage by ethnicity group um one of the things that we know our schools are doing is we've done a variety of things and this is particularly targeting historically underrepresented student groups with our lcap funds we provided a summer advanced placement bridge program with the jump start students and give them kind of a taste of what to expect provide them with some tools on how to be successful in the advanced placement courses and then to provide ongoing tutoring support for them after school once they're taking the course as well as test taking on workshops to help them prepare for

097the ap test and so we've done some targeted services for students who typically would not take the class to try to increase the enrollment we also know that it's a challenge for a particularly our students if they are hispanic latino and english families because of other courses that they are taking so if their english learner they may be taking a course to help them achieve english proficiency and as a result their schedule is compacted and they may not have an extra period during the day in which they can take an advanced placement course until they're redesignated and so at a school like artesia that offers an eight period block that barrier is removed because students have eight periods but at a traditional school where there's only six periods that still poses a challenge and so

098we have tried to offer courses at zero period and we have tried to offer courses after school the seventh period but often the attendance is very low for those courses because that means a student has to be in school at 6 45 a.m which is early for a high school student or late after school so the approach that we're really also looking at is dual enrollment with our community colleges again targeting specifically students who are historically underrepresented thank you do you have any others i have a question about the page the slide 9 say building relationship with their parents and guardians under the number one the reflection statements build trust trusting and respectful relationship with the family and number three and learn about each family's strengths culture and language and goal for their children i

099was hoping if staff can come out something for our board in the future during our uh during the code section where we don't have that much item to discuss if you can come up with some training to the staff or lawyer can do that we really appreciate it absolutely we have done training for our board in the past um we're generation ready on culture proficiency training i'm so excited that we have an equity officer and so i know that we can continue to work towards more professional learning for our school community there's a need for our entire school community but if the board is interested in more specific training those areas we can provide that as well and we have our equity officer here first time show your face here and we'll we'll try and

100i know i know because you're sitting in the back then then dr rios mentioned that i guess you probably didn't hear what we said because we all wear masks but i want to say thank you so much and thank you for staying here with us tonight and we sincerely appreciate and we also want to welcome you i know we're going to have some agenda from you today but i want to thank you so much you're sitting there and patiently with us and and i do have some two requests as you heard already and i'll be really appreciate if you can implement it as soon as possible thank you so uh let me see where i am now now we're going to uh we finished our uh presentation by dr mayfield next one was actually items

101okay i just want to say uh 1.3-8 the resolution 21-35 the national hispanic heritage month they have a motion to approve resolution 21-35 nationally hispanic heritage month from september 15 to october 15 2021. so move second do you have any public comment if none then i uh all in favor please say aye madam president if i may can we take a minute to read it please okay sure okay popcorn read it i'll start us off yes dr rios the floor is yours 2135 national hispanic heritage month whereas the abc unified school district celebrates america's rich hispanic history and the culture with national hispanic heritage month the hispanic latinx population in the abc unified school district is 45.41 and whereas the national hispanic heritage month was approved public law 90-498 in 1968 by the united states

102congress and in 1988 the congress extended the celebration from september 15th to october 15 celebrating the anniversary of the independence of five latin american countries costa rica el salvador uh guatemala honduras and mexico and nicaragua chile belize also celebrate their independence days during this period columbus day in mexico dia de la raza is on october 12th and thank you thank you maybe the next one whereas during national hispanic heritage month the abc unified school district celebrates the countless contributions of more than 60 million hispanic americans to our culture and society hispanic americans are the largest minority group in the united states today and generations of hispanic americans have consistently helped make our country strong and prosperous and the hispanic american community has left an edible mark on our government culture and economy and whereas national

103hispanic heritage month celebrates the accomplishments of hispanic americans who have enriched our culture and society hispanic american men and women embodied the american values of devotion to faith and family hard work and patriotism through their countless contributions as leaders innovators entrepreneurs and members of the armed forces and now therefore be it resolved that the board of education of the abc unified school district celebrates national hispanic heritage month from september 15th through october 15 2021 passed and adopted this fifth day of october 2021 by the following vote all in favor say hi [Applause] 720. thank you and let me just take a moment to thank you madam president who was you know the at the idea of devoting some of the time today to recognizing him hispanic heritage month did not hesitate to put this on

104our agenda thank you dr sue and i like to acknowledge all of us for acknowledging honoring with some cultural wear um i feel like we should have a fashion show uh our board board clerk earning me she is wearing a guayabera [Applause] i do want to say thank you dr rios you know being so sad and reminds me again the last four meeting i sincerely appreciate and like we just say we not to celebrate today we'll continue respect the contribution how hispanic has country to this country and work hard and we i want to sing theory thank you all you know an audience and the public who are watching us okay so the motion passes 7-0 thank you next one is actually continually 1.4-8 i have a motion to approve community member and student appointments

105to board advisor committee so moved second thank you um finally i can call you now it's thomas adrian our equity officer i'm so glad that you're here thank you thank you president say board members dr sue and captain members and the audience watching i am so humbled by this work and this week i'm proud to say that i've completed all of my meetings with everyone on the committee including the students tonight was the last meeting with the students i think it's very important and very valuable to allow them to understand their student voices equal with that of other committee members who are also parents alumni and also business owners in our community for our diversity unity and equity board advisory board the one thing that came out of all the meetings is that everyone is

106ready for social justice in their own way whether there's your experience as a former alum or as an experienced as a current student the number one question was when do we get started what's our first task and i had to explain to everyone this is sensitive and audacious work and it will be a time when everyone will come to understand that we here come together to understand what it is that we need to do to shatter these inequities with that being said i put upon you that when we as a do committee as we call it as a do committee when we input and give you information about what resolutions recommendations suggestions that we make we are going to make sure we resource you so that you can make an informed decision and that we

107can begin to make sure that what we do sticks is what a student says one student said i just want something that sticks and it was really amazing to me because these students some of them were new some of them had been on the committee but they had never met but they had talked with each other and i thought that was very powerful that means they were just waiting on us the adults so i am looking forward to this and i make sure that i do not as i said when i first received this position this is not minds alone this is something that we all stand next to each other and we show to this responsibility and again it will be sensitive yet audacious work so i thank you i do want to make

108this comment before my colleague i want to thank you so much take your position so seriously and inside we have a mold meeting right away um miss thomas decided to visit every single uh committee that we appointed and she spent a time talking to them now she's ready i want to appreciate you know you take this position so seriously and i believe our board and our district too i want to thank you for intelligent work with us thank you so now i'm going to any public comment any discussion do we have any uh i don't see any madame president do you see any okay so none all those favor please say do you have any questions i need to i'd like to put out back to our colleague do you have any questions about this

109i item 1.4-8 and none i oh okay there it goes um you know what you're holding right now i have to get used to who's number two dr rios please i'll keep it brief just welcome again and as you can tell you got your work cut out for for all of us we all have our work cut out so yes welcome to that there you go a week i love it i love it thank you yeah i think we call healing time now this is the time thank you so much so without further ado and all in favor please say aye aye so the motion passed seven to zero thank you thank you thank you ms williams appreciate it next one 2.3-8 my motion to approve memory of understanding between the board of education and

110the abc federation of teachers local 2317 california federation of teachers american federation of teacher afl cio for health and welfare benefits for the 2021 to 2022 school year we have a motion first and second good evening thank you um tonight and what is before you is the percentages and amounts for health benefits for those who are having health benefits outside of the ones that are provided fully either with kaiser or with the trio program and so for anything above that there is additional cost for employees and this lays out the amount that employees would pay if they want a different service any public common i do not see any public comment here any discussion from my colleague here oh i so we have dr reels did you turn off that okay so next one will

111be seven which is uh a board member of vincent beach thank you madam president uh ms it low are our employees having to pick up the entire increase if they want an hmo or a ppo um so no if our employees they are able to get full service through kaiser for them or their and their family as well as through trio with no employee contribution if they want one of the products in the blue shield network that is above that service then yes they would have to pay the cost okay and did their cost go up to 3.27 percent so that would be the total cost for all of the packages that went up but the cost did go up for what individuals would pay if they want over and above okay and then do

112you know how many of our employees have kaiser i'm gonna say close to eighty percent eighty percent ninety percent i think wow it's quite a bit eighty percent go ahead one thousand two hundred eighteen three thousand okay the only reason i asked that question is i'm wondering if a lot of employees because of this increase are going to want to switch over to kaiser and that'll impact the yearly fiscal impact so it's have been consistent year over year we have offered or we have 1609 employees eligible for health benefits of those the district paid for fully 1554. so those are the people with kaiser or the trio plan only 55 employees out of the 1600 have to pay out of pocket something okay that's great to hear thank you you're welcome any other if none

113then the most uh all in favor please say i say motion past seven to zero next one is 2.4-8 my motion to approve tentative agreement with non-represented employee groups for health and welfare benefits for the 2021 to 2022 school year back to zillow please again so this is just for a different group of our employees but the same information our employees are either able to have kaiser for themselves or their family fully um they're able to have that through the trio program through blue shield fully um if they do want something above then they would you access that through the blue shield process and the amounts there thank you dr zillow do we have any public comment here no okay so um now back to our board any discussion if not all in favor please

114say aye pass the seven to zero next one four point four dash eight may have a motion to approve it a word abc17570 custodial supplies to the following as lord's responsible beaters gail supply southwest school and office supply pioneer chemical and magnet men tax for the 2021 school year with the option of renew annually for an additional two years motion and second okay thank you mr you lauren questions go to the 4.4 first since i put a motion a second i'll go back 3.7 it's okay thank you so the 4.14 is the annual custodial bid that the district does this also allow us to extend the annual bid to a three-year contract if the cpi is is is is favorable if not then we go back two bit these four items such as air freshener

115soap um and towers dispenser sponges brooms waste paper baskets so anything relating to custodial items that we do go out for an annual bid and you have seen this every year we the district has the right to extend it for two more years should we choose to okay so um any any comp any um public comments on this matter i do not see any madam president enough okay so on favorite place what madam president oh i'm sorry oh you we have the fourth clerk mr nishi and following that will be our for um dr eugenio so go ahead sorry madam president i just have just a few minor questions uh so regarding the winners of these particular uh bids i didn't see the second place or the second place within 20 of the winning bids

116or how many bids do we actually get on these so yeah for this item because of the so many different items we only provide you with the lowest bid we can provide the second and third in thursday notes so but i'm just curious were they within 20 percent of the winning bids i don't have that information oh yeah because that's that's important information to have right right but uh for this because of the many different uh vendor we just provide with the lowest the ones with the lowest bid these are the ones with the lowest bits okay so um so do we have a lot of bids on these particular items or just one usually for these we usually get three so and that's the range this year because of the supplies issue we might

117have to have alternates because some of them may not be able to provide us with the items that we need in a timely manner there's a shortage of i hate to say everything but about many things so this year's in particular so we this is maybe just a one-year contract and we have to go out again because this year you know it depends on the time you do it the pricing could be not as competitive as as you like so was this big for like air freshener towel and soap things a little bit more than what we usually bid for the same amount of services and items and materials correct but it's still within what expected out of the from the market out there it's not oh no i understand that you have to basically

118you're not going to get below market i'm just wondering if this how much above what we normally pay on the particular items it would be roughly yeah usually the premium now i want to say depends on the items right so it could be anywhere from five to twenty percent how much five to twenty percent thank you and you will see that in the next item on the hvac unit thank you no for the questions madam president okay uh next one talking he knew please mr winn um due to the supply chains disruptions what is our backup plan in case any of these companies can't deliver i wish i have an answer for you but uh we might be facing that soon there's there's there's an issue with paper supplies in our food services department the

119trade the trade that the students use uh daily we may not have it as soon as next week so we would go through the different resources i mean we would send people to sam's club costco amazon business so we would have to resort to the um the different vendors that we normally don't because they still hire they you know so but that's what we have to do and and we start seeing that already with the supplies in the nutrition services department on paper goods so and it will be here to stay at least for this year thank you mr winn you're welcome i have a little problem with my uh my script here so please forgive me and when followed i just made an update on this script so next one i i'd like to

120go back to 3.7 dash a oh we need to vote sorry um after discussion uh of the miss brilliant have presented about this uh agenda um do you have any questions here any any comment from any on public even none what about my colleague do we have any uh common discussion for this matter if none please uh all in favor please say i alright thank you the next one will go back to the uh actually on your page eight it will be academic services 3.7-8 i have a motion to reopen a public hearing and then adopt the resolution 21-36 for textbooks and instruction material compliance and approved certification of provision for standard align with instructional materials with education code grades k-212 fiscal year 2021-2022 my emotion a second move second issue thank you do you

121have any public comment on this matter if none all of those in favor please say yeah all right i only hear three people all in favor please thank you yeah seven two zero thank you back to abu dhaka close the public comments bye okay next one 4.14-8 i have a motion to approve i think i did this right now point five yeah we did that one four point four yeah so my script is a little bit up to today um four point one five dash eight the motion to approve bit of work abc1572 for heat fact replacement at nemus elementary school 2 policy miller construction company um also dba miller construction at lowe's at as low as responsive and responsible beater motion set motion and second thank you this is the most if not one

122of the most expensive hvac system that i have uh brought to the board for approval um for an elementary school and it's only three buildings within that so we're moving away from the the big unit for the entire building to the package unit for the individual rooms the new units would be energy um more energy efficient and also that you know if you have a teacher want to come back on a saturday to to to work and want to be in his or her classroom you don't have to turn the air into the entire building you turn the air on for just that particular room so that's issue number one issue number two with the new dsa the state requirement that every time you modernize or make changes to a school you have to upgrade

123all the ada the american disability act the accessibility and with the restrooms with all the egress uh for to be compliant so that's part of it we also doing works with in new ducting system new lights and new ceilings at nemus so this is um they're gonna have a state of the art the current system is 30 years old and they don't have the parts for it anymore they are on literally last legs they can't even last another year one of the strategy we talked about is can we wait another year and do this not this coming summer but the summer of 2023 and and the answer from staff was they they will not last another year so we have to do it this summer and we are really early in the game this is

124only october and we already go out to bid for summer jobs usually you see you know april march that's where you see the the construction approval for for the summer we we know the market out there is very tight and we go early but it is still about 20 than what we normally would pay so the estimated budget was about 2 million it came in at 2.4 with the allowance it's the lowest bidder is 2.671 million dollars and they are the lowest as you can see uh we have good bits right we have the highest is 3.6 million the middle one is at three and the lowest the lowest one is f 2.671 so the recommendation tonight is for the replacement of the hvac system at nemes elementary school work to be done this summer

125to miller constructions with who's the lowest responsive and responsible bidder in the amount of two million six hundred seventy one thousand nine hundred dollars thank you miss newand do you have any public comments on this matter no madam president i don't see any public comments discussion for my board i have one which is uh board member mr beach go ahead thank you madam president just one question for mr nguyen i noticed that all the money is coming from the deferred maintenance fund on the fiscal impact line and from serving on the bb committee i know that safety upgrades and restrooms were part of that facility uh master plan can some of the money come from measure bb uh yes yes and that is a good point with that facility master plan and that committee we

126made a commitment to the community that any deferred maintenance staff like hvac replacement will come out of the deferred maintenance funds and not measure bb however other work in here could be argued that it cannot measure bb however because of the timing of it we have decided to take up all the safety issues at all school first already and then now we focus on high school the elementary and and and and i mean middle and elementary so they not they like five years away from being modernized so we're not there yet but since we're doing this out of hvac uh this will come out of before maintenance and not measure bb that would actually save them and all because all the budget and measure bb will be available for nemas uh when when it's their

127turn to to be to to get modernized thank you okay next one will be our board clerk mr nishi so i think that's a great decision that you decided to use deferred maintenance funds for this particular item so that uh we can also say to the community that we're not just putting it all on the bond we're actually putting it from our actual dollars we made a promise to spend at least the same amount of money in the bond documents on our deferred maintenance so spending it on the school is is great i think it's a good forward thinking thing it's a lot of money right now i know more than we expected but even then i think in the long run to provide a good air conditioning it's also going to help save us

128some money in the long run so it's a good job i think that was not bad i know there's a difference in the rates pretty substantial but based upon the checks that you made i think they're funny fine so thank you you're welcome if no i just have one question that was uh i saw on the parenthood question on facebook that the question for x-ray vac is all our school has that right yes ma'am every single classroom every single classroom thank you just confirm that um okay all those in favor please aye aye aye motion pass seven to zero network quality willing settlement compliance report for july september to 20 uh july to september 2021 dr souffle thank you president say this is a quarterly report from july 1st to september 30th we had no

129complaints regarding instructional materials facilities or any teacher vacancy and misassignments thank you dr next one will be more board member reports wow okay let me get used to that now everybody push you one time so i will have five which is about vice prince vice president so you hold on one second okay next one will be um seven board member brett beach and following with the uh michael uh so i'm gonna try to reset again there will be okay so far we have three go ahead good evening everyone my name is uh suyu and um there has been you can hear me yes we can hear you okay there has been much discussion about what i said at the cerritos republican club meeting last month i want to be clear that i did not state

130that i was representing the abc school board and i just want to apologize for to my board members for being called out for this matter by the public and i want to formally apologize for the unintended example i used which offended those who attended the meeting and the community using quinceanera was an inappropriate example and again i apologize for the hurt it has caused i understand the cultural and religious importance of quinceanera and what it means to latino americans i had the opportunity to engage with several community leaders and members regarding this matter which was very helpful i hope to continue to strive to learn and improve in this area as a board member and i want to thank sylvester for reaching out to me and being honest and other community members who reached out

131to me and i had the opportunity to engage and have a good conversation um the topic of gaap of social economic for underrepresented group came up which is a concern for all of us parents educators and community leaders and volunteers schools and non-profit organizations yes all of us all hands on deck to support this need and gap especially public education we are responsible every one of us and the bottom line of my sharing was my strong desire to help and see underrepresented group to have more opportunities for higher education and have more economic opportunities in the future and for this reason it's really good to see our equity officer we had mental health it was good and we need to really support and allocate the funds especially the grants covet grants to help those students

132who are in need lastly on the at this meeting there was a presentation regarding comprehensive sex education which is true for other districts and even our neighboring districts and when this ab329 was rolled out and parents from elementary age students came out protesting collected millions of signatures against this bill i was approached by many parents from abc district i had this conversation with dr valencia a few years ago before pandemic and she responded to me that schools are obligated to stay aligned to state mandate and law however the abc district curriculum are aligned to the law but did not use curriculum with graphics i encouraged one of the parents to go and check out the curriculum at the time and she came back and was very thankful that our curriculum was acceptable had i not

133made a clear statement regarding our district's curriculum at this meeting many people would have walked away thinking we used such curriculum for sex ed which would have led our administrators getting the blame for following the law and then the question came up whether our teacher union gave donation to critical race theory advocacy and i answered that our teacher union president ray gear primary focus is on retaining substitute that's his top agenda because teachers there are shortages across the state i appreciate the collaborative relationship between union and our district the students that end up benefiting the most if it was the other way students would hurt the most and this is what i shared at the the meeting which is actually against the seal that was crossed out which i was not aware of i'm still

134responsible and i apologize for that too finally we may not agree with certain things but our common goal is to educate and support our students and i am really honored to serve abc usd because our schools do more than just educating students academically but we offer parent education provide resources and even provide social services as you have seen today we had mental health professionals attend our meeting today artesia high school helps seniors to apply to college over 100 like 100 percent apply to college and that is truly is amazing and inspiring and um i just want to end with um i apologize for all this distress that i caused tonight and i'm going to reach out to equity officer to to work on this issue thank you very much good evening this is our sequence

135for today for board reports we'll have dr oga first then dr eugenio and then for member mr beach following with the clerk nathanie she and our last board report will be by dr chris okay go ahead dr oga thank you more than a report is really just a statement i guess but i wanted to focus on my discussion um primarily on a literacy initiative that's coming down the pike which will require that all students read by third grade it is an initiative put forth by the um our superintendent of schools for the for the state of california and he's putting together a task force and i'm very excited because i know that this is going to have a major impact especially on our groups that are underrepresented and most vulnerable most of our own kids

136i think are on the board we're reading way before this but in our district we have a significant amount of students in some schools more than others who are not reading by third grade teaching kids how to read and write that is the most important responsibility in of our primary teachers and i think that if we have teachers who feel they cannot do that then we really need to do something here again about half of our latino students and the numbers aren't a lot better for other groups such as our african-american students um or a very small number or definitely not the majority are reading at grade level and that is not the fault of the family that is a responsibility of the school and we need to start looking at the systems we have

137in place maybe it's the implicit biases maybe it's institutional racism we need to start figuring out what it is that a top scholar calls the normalization of underachievement and we can start wherever you want you know with the teachers do they have the training they need and the resources and support to teach kids how to read is it the principles that hire these teachers and ensure that there is quality instruction being provided in every classroom is it the district office are directors and superintendent assistant superintendents is it the superintendent who allocates resources appropriately so that schools are equipped with the resources they need or is it the school board we need to have collective responsibility for years it was believed that we needed money well the district gets about 20 million dollars or more now

138to support students that are in these underrepresented groups english learners low income students who are foster and homeless and yet we've seen limited progress we know that this pandemic is going to exacerbate a lot of these problems but yet we've gotten even more money to try to solve it so you know my question to our board and to our entire district is will we see better results and what will happen if we don't we need effective teachers who care about all of our students all of them we need a district to care about all of our students not just someone one end of the district or of a particular group they all absolutely matter we need accountability so in honor of hispanic heritage month i ask that our board and our district do better by

139our latino students thank you thank you dr oka dr rios next one dr eugenio thank you madam president on tuesday september 28th i had a meeting with principal dr lozano of hawaiian elementary school and took a mini tour of hawaiian elementary i want to thank dr lozano and her staff for their hospitality and taking the time out of their busy schedules to meet with me recently i have spoken with one of our para educators of our district and she has expressed to me that we have an extreme shortage of paraeducators she stated we are losing a lot of our para educators to surrounding districts that pay starting hourly wage much higher than ours it saddens me that it's it tells me that it has become very it has become very strenuous for her to keep

140wanting to work at a job that is inadequate in its wages for the amount of responsibility and stress she is going through as a paraeducator our district children are suffering because we are not able to offer them the attention including one-on-ones they need and deserve the wages of our paraeducators needs to be re-evaluated similar to that of our substitute teachers in order to retain and attract more pair educators that concludes my report madam president may god bless our district and may god bless all of you and keep you well thank you dr eugenio at the beach go ahead thank you madam president i've said this in past meetings and i'll say it again i think we should allow zoom comments we have the technology for this and many of our parents aren't comfortable coming here

141yet due to the pandemic or have other commitments i'm not sure how my colleagues feel about this but i feel we should put it on the next agenda discuss it in public and make a decision if i'm in the minority that's fine but i think we should have open discussion in front of the public i want to hear from all of them even the ones that can't make it here in person so i put that out for your consideration thank you clerk thank you madam president so yes i agree that we need to take advantage of what we learned during the pandemic right so some bad things happened people died but maybe we can learn to be more inclusive and get the people from home to be able to to watch and listen and participate

142in board meetings the ones that wouldn't normally come to a board meeting those are the ones we actually need to hear because it's pretty scary to come up to that podium and talk in front of us even though we're not scary so i do agree that we should have something like that on the next agenda and it could be an agendaized item um also wanted to let people know that there is a scholarship out there um which would ask the student to write an essay due in november that explains the power of diversity the power of place and how you can be part of that change and it's basically based upon a location that detained many people and violated rights and we did nothing about it and unfortunately a history was made and and so

143you should learn about the history it's a tuna canyon in los angeles um the third one is i can't ignore the the elephant in the room right i think i admire what mr any said about having an honest discussion and move forward with the idea of moving forward not just focusing on individuals but also focusing on where we want to go i do not condone racism you know i think before there was all these anti-asian issues i was a victim of it and it was scary and i'm i'm pretty well educated and pretty strong guy but yeah it's pretty disarming when you have that hit you you hit my mom right she was a little kid and she was put in jail because of her race i think activism is the great american way to

144make change so the speakers today that spoke their mind and said their opinions about the people here and their feelings about racism that's an important part of the discussion but also i have my way and my way is thinking of effective remedies not just to say you're a bad person but rather you can be redeemed we have to have forgiveness here because there's been too many times in our history where people just said i bash you you're terrible you're terrible you're terrible but nobody learns from that they just get hit more and then we have another group hitting another group and it becomes worse i'd rather build what i love about the school board is that we're about learning we're about learning from our mistakes we're about forgiveness we're about thinking that there is a

145better way and so that's what i love about being part of this school board and being part of a board that we can all learn together so i don't have all the answers and i will stumble but my board members will pick me up they will support me in whatever i say and hopefully i have the right motives but i think that is the way forward through this we can we have a pretty good school district we just need to instead of looking at all the negative things that we have here look at the positive things that we're trying to do and and my approach will be different than the activists i get it but every approach i think is valid to speak in front of the podium is a scary thing and to have

146the guts to say that but it's also guts to do what mlk does which is stand in front of a bunch of people who hated him and turn the other cheat to forgive something i think the buddhists have said something about that too where you know and i know i'm going a little long here but it's something i feel you know forgive me i will forgive you um i won't forget but please forgive me if i can't forgive even um and i think that's the way forward that's what our educational system is about and i think we can all learn and do better in this in the future so thank you madam president thank you uh next one will be dr abduca thank you madam president uh you know when i go to the grocery

147store i do home visits uh especially during college go visit some neighbors and community members or i'm introduced by neighbors at social events birthday parties things like that i'm introduced to them by my elders right as el muchacho representatives literally the boy or the young man or you know the representative from the district or from the schools they don't know what my professional role is this is not my professional role believe it or not i have an actual job outside of this we all do they don't know what i do for a living but they know me as the guy from the schools unmistakable even with my mask on they know who i am but the community my community my neighbors know me and they know all of us here they run into them they

148know who each and every one of us is and so there's something that's attached to that i might be at the grocery store as a private citizen but if i guarantee you if i were to steal a banana and put in my pocket and walk out the door it wouldn't be private citizen apodaca did this it would be board member dr chris apodaca stole from the grocery store and i would be held accountable maybe not legally but socially for sure and that would be a state on my record that's who i am as a person i could apologize but i can't bring the banana back after i ate it so two weeks ago when this came up former board member called in silence there's no apology and there's a reason for that this board didn't

149say anything because even to this day every one of these folks here is duly elected their office they were placed here by the people i respect that office and so we disagree on a lot of things but i'll give them the benefit of the doubt first and foremost because social media there's lots of hearsay there's lots of gossip you know at one point i think one of us was accused of being a reptile or a martian or something a few years ago and that's just that's social media i have a professional courtesy to perform my due diligence to do right by my constituents and to conduct myself professionally and i did sue you was kind enough to send a an explanation i did reach out to her and i asked her did you say this

150i'm working crazy hours right now and i did perform my due diligence and she she made several attempts she called me she text messaged me she emailed me everything short of knocking on my front door and it was my intention to call her back and speak with her and have a conversation until some very bright folks brought some videos and one one person played audio for me one of which was an attendee who is a a long time employee of the school district who feared for their job because they don't know exactly how the board works they don't know that we can't we can't wave a wand and fire somebody that's not how this works our only employee is the superintendent right and we work through the chain of command i didn't need to speak

151to sue you anymore i saw several different perspectives and vantage points of of this event and i listened to the audio over and over again was it taken out of context watched the whole thing was it taken out of context and you know i looked at it from a different point of view the employee this is the vice president of my board she's next in line to be president and speak for our entire district that functions and events you know sue you mentioned in your response you mentioned that we tend to disagree on issues but still work together and you know what have we disagreed on you and i this is going on my seventh year on the board and i've never made anything that we've we've done we've disagreed on personal you know uh

152heated yes but the vote's over we move on the vote's over we move on and in seven years now doing this what have we really disagreed on that is elicited a reaction from you that would make me as a board member you know heated and upset and it wasn't things of policy that you know i ever thought were anything besides common sense and bear with me colleagues i'm almost done the reaction when my cell phone number was posted on social media for alleged victims of abuse you shouted and asked the president to keep me from making a comment when a mother was crying at the podium begging the board for help you had her physically removed when you were president from the boardroom you didn't understand the ramifications of your actions then i don't expect

153you to understand them now which is evident by the timing of your response two weeks later now that there is more social pressure from your community and members of our district outside of your immediate community you should resign but won't we all know that because everybody walks in here asking us to resign i would ask that you take it to heart when a colleague tells you i never thought i ever would have to so you won't it'll be up to your constituents to decide whether you represent them after 2022 and as for the community we don't get to sit here unless you vote us in and as a board we can only publicly admonish actions of our board we don't have the power that is held uniquely and only by you the voter to remove

154a trustee anything and everything we say or pass regarding the actions of a board member is nothing we don't have that power only you do so it's your sacrosanct right as a citizen use it and to my board colleagues i'll say it now and i'll say it again remember that reorganization for who are the officers and who gets to lead this board moving forward is in december thank you for accommodating my my long board report madam president your colleagues that's all i have thank you um thank you as board president i have this chance to to the final conclusion it's not easy running your race you spend your own money for this race what you want to do all of us here there's nothing by serve to the community serve to our future it's not

155easy we also have family there when i say this i want to cry um is it's not easy everything we're safe people watching on us the news reflect our children and i remember one time people accused me of stealing the people things and i did not like chris say you have a title there you're the board member you know there's somebody saying i wish somebody to die and i said how could i wish people die i'm like i'm a critical care nurses i my job to save the person's life but you know it's tough i'm looking at this set is we are working the best we can we have equity officer there let's work together you know none of us are perfect here i always see my boy colleague here as brother and sister here

156because we have different just like a board board member dr abraha none of us perfect the things we say the things we act and through our mouth that person will learn that forever in their life like a like vice clerk mr nishi he said that and i remember in the church the father told me that the the priest told me that he said forgive is easy but forget its heart i'm asking the public to you for your forgiveness i can't ask you to forget totally about this matter and i i strongly recommend my colleague here it and i ask miss william i need your help thomas i'm sorry i need your help you know let's work together the hospital i work martin luther king has really big signs there with the heart say healing let's

157learn to appreciate each other's more let's learn to respect each other let's understand our each culture doesn't matter who you are you come to the world without the clothes you go out without the clothes because it happens but you have to think what you do in here when you have time reflect what happened in the past how do we teach our children what's going to happen the kids say we all grow up together but we'll grow differently some people big some people small and short i was attending dr suwan with me that one of the meeting or the student talk about that let's work together this heal each other's you know i'm asking public to forgive i cannot ask to forget there's a matter there i'm asking the staff culture sensitive cultural witness let's put

158it on the gender that makes sure all of us here including our teacher our parents too to learn each other's and respect each other and to the public i'm asking you once again please forgive us i'm not asking you for giving i sincerely appreciate we're here to serve you it ain't easy we're not perfect people here i remember pastors say that those people who perfect will not stay here god said you had done whatever you had done i told you it's time for you to come back enjoy with me that was a pastor and i'm still not 100 that's why i'm still here i'm working towards 100 i told my kids if one day if i pass with i mean i had done what i was told and i want to thank you everyone for

159listening to me i already finished my president but i still want to say and i want to thank you you staying here for listening with us okay the next one is uh i know what you want our announcement right thank you um next one announcement is next uh regular board meeting on tuesday october 19 2021 7 pm district office boardroom and we have committee meetings strategy planning board advisory on tuesday october 26 2021 6 pm at the virtual meeting let's learn to policy and board advisory club meeting on wednesday october 27 6 30 p.m and a virtual meeting fenris and eddie bohr advisory committee on thursday october 28 2021 6 pm a visual meeting and we have a special event coming up which is college connections a week a connection week which is between october

16018 to 22 and this is visual meeting um now go down to the second public comment section um do we have any second public comment section thank you yes madam president we do we have eddie salcedo uh i appreciate miss say's emotions and i'm glad you can take a minute and welcome back miss a um miss you your apology um kind of curtailed into the sex education thing and a classic deference of any pr representative or any communications expert would say hey let's let's let's move on let's let's not focus on what the actual thing yes the self-education thing is important but we all know it's not even an elephant in the room it is the room that you kind of deferred your comments to going on from yeah i said this and you admitted

161that you said it right and you admitted that you were there and you made those comments and you so we all now we're speculating and i i make i i apologize because i should have said there was a caveat the first time i spoke and that if i was wrong and the information i was provided i i've asked several people like you have recordings you have this through that uh mr apodaca is that how you pronounce it correctly apologize um said he's seen videos you acknowledged it as much that you said those comments so an apology and as i said it the first time in public comment resign it is the right thing and the only thing to do you can rebuild and as mr nishi said we want to listen this has been awful

162for everyone for months years let's let's do the right thing let's show our kids that our leaders can do the right thing then the right thing is to step aside and take a look and say what did i do wrong and what mr nishi is talking about building things back up what you meant what your board members are saying build it back up but it says right there trustee area number two no one trusts you maybe a small group of people who donate money and gets you re-elected and the fact that i just found out that you're gonna be president in december possibly no way there is no way i will let that happen there is no way the constituents of abc unified will let that happen no way so do the right thing doesn't

163have to be tonight maybe tomorrow i don't know when but the right thing he knows it he knows it he knows it she knows it she knows it he knows it she knows she knows they all know it there is no path forward with you sitting as a trustee because no one trusts you you initially denied it right you said i didn't say that did is that what you said you initially said you didn't say it right is that true thank you i appreciate that mr b again caveat if my information is wrong let me know you all have my email i've you have my phone number contact me and say you know what mr salsader you're wrong i didn't say that in in context doesn't actually matter i think someone on the board actually

164said that it doesn't matter the fact that those words are spoken context doesn't matter well contacts always matter excuse me but the words were spoken so again for the ninth or tenth time the right thing and the only thing to do is to resign and start over and no one will ever take away what you do what you've done for this school district and what what you mean to this school and what you or school this and what you've done no one will take that away from you except for this part there'll be a little asterisk and and we can figure it out and how you can get back and help do the things that you want to do and why you're on this board to begin with so i appreciate everything you do as

165much as i might be opinion that you know what to to you guys every once in a while and especially mr smith and the emails i send them and his response are prompt and everything do the right thing let's let's start over and i don't know the answers but come on it's been horrible for so long let's just give ourselves a chance to start having a real conversation and not in the app stack of like hey this would be really cool we got all this money and and i can't imagine dr rio said about how much money we've gotten for all these different things but let's let's do it okay and let's start with you taking a leadership role be a leader and do the right thing that's what leadership is as hard as it

166may be being a leader is doing the right thing so do the right thing and stop everyone with the mlk stuff i love it but we get it do the right thing doctors do or sorry sue you i apologize please thank you mel cortez thank you board members now cortes i wanted to wait a little bit to the end to see your responses and your reactions to bigotry and racism thank you dr christa podaka for being brave and speaking for the community for saying what the other board members need to say thank you for standing up against races and bigotry i know what side you're on and i know what side other people are someone asked me should should you call you can she call you to explain it's not about me i could stand

167on my own there's nothing wrong with me my son and my daughter out of the district they're doing great it's about the about 6 000 latino students in the district and their parents pakistan on my own like i've done many times before they're not they don't have time to come here to speak they don't have time to call because you just are not allowing it but asking me to talk and to talk to me because it's going to do nothing for the community i'm just going to leave this right here doctor mia misuyu i want to say sorry a minute maybe one day this plate will get back together after you keep saying sorry so i'll leave it here for you and it's never going to happen might be one more speaker you can just

168bring it over here that's fine just announce your name at the uh the podium you can just announce your name at the podium uh sylvester annie what we heard from people tonight we heard from the board tonight um one thing that i'd like to bring up is that why it's important and i feel like the board should have it as an agenda item going forward is having hybrid discussions because that's important for having a well-rounded community discussion and not excluding people who can't be a part of the process because they can't show up in person so i'd like to see that on the agenda for a future meeting that being said with the comments that i said earlier you can't have healing without accountability that has to be a part of the process that's central

169to a part of the process and like i said earlier our positions in life especially when we're an elected official are given to us by the community and that dictates whether we serve in this role or whether we serve another role at the end of the day it doesn't matter what role that you have you can still have an impact right but that being said we also can't be a distraction in the work that we're trying to push forward and that part has to be said as well so there's going to be a lot of conversations that are going to happen from this moment on going forward in terms of the direction of the board the members of the board and what type of program that we're presenting what type of image are we presenting

170how we look behind that image that we present there's going to be a lot of conversations about that and at the center of it i'm going to say it again is that we have to put what people feel first and if the community doesn't feel like they have trust you got to respect that if they want to have more discussions you got to respect that whatever people feel you got to respect that because that's who we're called to answer for on another note after speaking um to some of the mental health professionals i was i was made aware of how much they were making and why there's so many disparities in terms of you know the turnover rate and what i was told was that the max was 65 000. that's hard to keep people

171here and the fact that they're willing to show up here tells you how much they love their students and how important they are to their mental health and how mental health is i mean it's a fabric that keeps us together as a community and even just ourselves personally it's what keeps us together and a lack of investment in them not only shows a lack of respect for them but also that also reflects on how we look at our students and how much you want to invest in their mental health so these again these mental health workers came here today because they're pleading that they'd like to work something out because they don't want to leave and go to another they don't want to go 10 minutes down the road and get paid forty thousand dollars

172more they'd rather be here and this board should be committed to one of the key people here that want to be here here finally um i've had a discussion you know with a teacher at hawaiian gardens uh about there being a food shortage or um you know kids are being like kids are coming from lunch and they're hungry right so that's something i feel like we should look into as well um and just i'll put that and i'll just put that out there so that's it thank you good night [Music] do [Music] so [Music] you