001Well, we have quorum. How about we move into call um I'll call this meeting to order and then we'll move into close session. Okay. Like to call this meeting to order. Roll call, please. President Rios, present. Vice President Mendoza, present. Board clerk, you here. Board member Apadaka here. There we go. board member law is ill. Board member Nishi here. Board member stay present. Thank you so much. Thank you. May I have a motion to excuse board member Mayor Law due to illness? So move by Sophia. Second, Sue. Roll call. Board member I'm I'm sorry. President Rios. Yes. Vice President Mendoza. Yes. Board Clerk U. Yes. Board member Apadaka. Yes. Board member Nishi. Yes. Board member say present. Yes. Motion passes six to zero. Thank you. This evening we will be discussing the following items in
002close session. Conference with labor negotiator. update on negotiations with ASME and CSEA and anticipated litigation um advisory concerning appeals received. Are there any public comments on close session items? Madame clerk. Um there is none. Thank you. Um at this time, may I have a motion to move to close session? So moved. Second, Sophia. Roll call, please. Dr. Apadaka. Yes. Vice President Mendoza. Yes. Board Clerk U. Yes. Board member Nishi. Yes. Board member Se. Yes. President Rios. Yes. Thank you. Motion passes six to zero. Okay. At this time we will log off log on to our close session meeting. We'll see everyone back in a bit. Okay. At 7 o'clock. Um going to call. Do we have all board members present? Let's see. Vice President Mendoza. Board member. You on you on? Yes, I'm here. Okay.
003Um Dr. Abadaka, see you. Ernie, I think everyone's here. I see everyone. Okay. So, board member say there you are. Okay. So, I'm calling um let me see get back to my right place. Hey, can I have a motion to um continue the meeting in open session? So, move second. Roll call, please. Dr. Apadaka here. Mrs. Mendoza, Mr. Nishi here, Dr. Rios here, Mrs. Say present. Mrs. U here. Motion passes six to zero to move to open session. Thank you. We welcome public comments. Comments submitted will be presented during the public comment section which is limited to one hour. or any speaker to one presentation of five minutes unless the board wishes to wave the time limit. Those who have a group concern are encouraged to select a spokesperson to address the board. Comments submitted
004regarding a specific agenda item will be presented following the staff comments and prior to the both board's discussion and taking action tonight. In close session, the board discussed the following conference with labor negotiator, update on negotiations with ASME and CSEA, and anticipated litigation advisory concerning appeals received. Okay. Can I have um Vice President Mendoza lead us in the pledge? Yes. Please stand. Put your right hand over your heart. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the to the flag of the United States of America to the republic stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. May be seated. Oh, thank you. I like that flag waving on our screen. Usually we're like, "Okay, which way should we face?" Okay. Um, next we will move on to presentations, recognitions, excuse me, induction of
005the 2020 2021 student board representatives. Dr. Sue, thank you so much, President Rios. I was able to meet many of the students on Monday, September the 14th for their orientation as student board representatives. And I shared with them that they needed to introduce themselves tonight. So, I'm going to start with the list of people that I know that we have. Uh, Juliana, can you start out with us? I know she's here. No. Mike mute. Hello. Can I be heard? Yes, definitely. Um, hello. So, I'm Juliana De Hoya. I'm a senior at Artisia High School. Um, aside from being one of our school's student board representatives, I also serve as the ASB treasurer, the leader of our video committee, um, our school's key club social media coordinator, um, the Filipino club secretary, and a leader and
006music minister for my youth group. Thank you so much Juliana Dana Garcia. There you go. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Hello everyone. My name is Dana Garcia. I'm also a senior at Artisia High School. Um, and aside from being a board representative, I'm Renaissance president and I oversee the graphics and media uh committee and as well as that I'm environmental club president, CSF NHS president. Um, and I'm on school site council. Um, outside of school I work, I volunteer and I run a podcast. And then in my free time, I like to sew, read, and watch shows. Thank you so much, Dana. Next, we have Brian Cool. Hi, my name is Brian Coup and I'm extremely excited to serve as one of our school board representatives for Cerritos High School. I'm currently
007a senior and outside of ASB um in ASB my position is community uh commissioner community relations but outside I'm heavily involved in model United Nations and lots of external programs like Red Cross and um many volunteer activities that just help um people in need and in my free time I like biking, hiking and reading articles. Thank you so much, Brian. Next, we have Jaden Zachariah. Hi, I'm Jaden Zachariah. I am an 11th grader at Cerritos High. I'm involved in ASB and serve as this year's commissioner of community relations as well as being vice president for our school's girl club and I'm also involved in model UN. Outside of school, I am an ambassador for an organization called We Rise Above and I serve as a state representative for Be Strong Global. Thank you so much,
008Jaden. Next, we have Anna East from Mendoza from Gar High School. Hi, I'm Anais Mendoza, a junior at Gar High School. In ASB, I serve as one of the commissioner of academics. Um, outside of ASB, I'm in Key Club and this is also my third year in the marching band at Gar High School. Thank you, Anise. Mani Ahmed from Gar. Hi, I'm Anah Ahmed. I'm sorry. Can you guys see me? Yes. Okay, cool. So, hi, I'm Anah Ahmed and I'm a junior from Gar High School. I'm excited to be involved in the schoolboard meetings. I serve as one of the commissioner of academics from Gar High School. I'm involved with soccer and mu and outside of school I like to read and volunteer. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm not sure if our Oh,
009yes. I I see somebody from Tracy High School. Matthew Lurca. Matthew. Can you unmute, Matthew? There we go. Uh, hello. Can you hear me? Yes, definitely. All right. I was having a a glitch. I was hearing some other people talk over other people people. Oh. Uh, in any case, uh, my name is Matthew Larka. I attend Tracy High School. Um, as of recently, I'm obviously a board representative. Um, but aside from that, I work on the KTHs program that was newly installed last year. Uh, I should be having someone else uh here joining me, my co-presentative. However, uh she's having technical difficulties with her uh with her Zoom, so uh she's able to join currently. Okay. Thank you so much, Matthew. I'm glad you're able to be with us tonight. Thank you, Ma. from Whitney.
010Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, I'm Na Federova. I'm serving I'm a 12th grader at Whitney High School and I'm serving as this year's ASB president. Um, other than ASB, I'm involved at school with theater, volleyball, and track. And in my free time, I really enjoy jigsaw puzzles, playing piano, even though I'm not very good, and learning Mandarin. Thank you. Thank you so much, Na. Next we have Maxine Garcia from Whitney. Hi board members. My name is Maxim Garcia and I am a representative from Whitney High School. I'm currently a senior and am serving as the student government vice president as well as the drama club president. I love watching movies with my family and playing with my dog. Thank you. Thank you so much, Maxima. Next we have from adult school Yenia Yenia.
011Hi. Hi. Um my name is uh Yenia Rios Galdamez. I'm the student rep for the adult school. I graduated from Bell Gardens High School and went to TCLA and I have a PhD in molecular sound developmental biology. But for the last seven years, I've been a stay-at-home mommy for my three little girls. So that's how I got um involved with the parent education program at the adult school. So two of my daughters graduated from there and my 18-month-old baby is currently taking the classes through the program at the parent education and happy to represent the adult school. Thank you so much. Next we have uh Molina from adult school. Is Molina here? I don't see her. Yeah, maybe she is not here with us. But just to let you know, we look forward to all
012the board representative reports uh beginning next month. And we know that we're going to learn a lot from uh what you are doing right now, especially with our virtual academy and many of the activities that we have still on our campus. And so we look forward to your comments. Uh next week, as I mentioned at our orientation, you are welcome to stay for the entire board meeting tonight. Um, if you have a vote, um, they won't be counted as part of the board vote, but you can still have a voice in the meetings for tonight as well. Thank you, Madam President. May I make a comment? Yes, absolutely. Madam President, is that okay? Yes. Thank you, Madam President. I just want to welcome all the student board representatives. I know this is not our normal
013way of doing this. Yeah, we're going to we're going to go with the with the new way, this virtual way. Um, but I know you guys are still doing lots of exciting things with your school. I know you guys are planning different things. So, thank you for doing that, going the extra mile. And I do want to I do want to let you all know that one of the representatives is my daughter, Anais Mendoza from GAR. So, I look forward to she's on the Zoom over there in in the rest of the house and I'm in the garage. So, but thank you all. Thank you for all your work and your dedication for this school year to try to make this as normal a new normal as possible for our schools. Thank you, Madam President.
014Well said. Welcome. Okay. At this time, may I have a motion to approve the agenda for the regular meeting of September 22nd, 2020? So moved by Sophia. Second. Mendoza. Roll call. Dr. Apadaka. Yes. Mrs. Mendoza. Yes. Mr. Nishi, yes. Dr. Rios, yes. Mrs. Se, yes. Mrs. U, yes. Motion passes six to zero. Thank you. May I have a motion? O, just a minute. Okay. May I have a motion to approve the amended minutes of the regular meeting of September 8th, 2020? So move. Second by Sophia. Roll call. May I have a question? What what was amended? It was added that board member law Let me look really quickly. Um, it was amended that uh board member law did not return to the meeting after the break. Okay. Was the roll call complete? Danielle? No. Dr.
015Apadaka? Yes. Mrs. Mendoza? Yes. Mr. Nishi, yes. Dr. Rios, yes. Mrs. Say, yes. Mrs. U, yes. Motion passes six to zero. Thank you. Um, superintendent reports. Dr. Sue. Thank you very much, President Rios. Um, first of all, good evening to everyone who are here with us tonight. Our ABC District Health Services Department is partnering with health care agencies and local colleges to bring free flu shots to the community. Anyone aged nine and up who is healthy enough to receive a flu shot may get one. The clinics will be at the following locations and times on Wednesday, September the 30th. It will be from 12 o'clock to 3 o'clock at Artisia High School and that's located on 12108 East Delamo Boulevard in Lakewood. On Wednesday, October the 7th, it'll be from 10:00 to 2:00 at Burbank
016Elementary School located at 17711 Rosen Avenue in Artisia. And on Wednesday, October the 21st from 1:30 to 4 o'clock, it will be held at Hawaiian Elementary School located at 12350 East 22nd 226 Street in Hawaiian Gardens. The Hong Presbyterian Hospital Health Ministries Department has donated the vaccines. Nursing students from Biola University and ISUsa Pacific University will be assisting at the clinics. According to Patty Dupont, Tyler, head of health services in our district said that she expects this to be a difficult flu season and we need to make sure that we are doing all we can to keep our communities well. We are all grateful to the Hogue Hospital for donating the flu vaccine to and to the universities assisting us at the clinics. No appointment is needed. Just drive through and receive your flu shot.
017All receiving flu shot should adhere to the public health guidance like wearing a mask and social distancing. Parents and or guardians must accompany children under 18 years old. On September the 18th, Governor Gavin Newsome signed into law SB820. SB820 prescribes that as a result of the coid9 pandemic and the need to comply with state and local health guidelines, the administration of the physical fitness test shall be suspended for the 202021 school year. Therefore, the physical fitness test will not be required to be administered and the California Department of Education will not be collecting physical fitness test data for the 2021 school year. Yesterday we held our golden bell zoom validation meeting with Donald Lelant from Downey Unified School District. Rebecca Michelle MSAS, president of our CSEA chapter, and I described the PAL 2, which is
018partnership with administration and labor events that have taken place since 2012. Kester Song, supervisor of human resources, provided a wonderful presentation regarding our PAL 2 events. Dr. Gina Zitlo and members of our CSEA and our PAL 2 committee were involved with the meeting yesterday. We will be producing a Zoom acceptance video tomorrow. Again, I'd like to thank Rebecca Michelle MSAS, president of CSEA, our PAL 2 committee, and our administration for the great work that have been provided all these years. This is the ninth year of the PAL 2 program. Finally, on September the 10th, the California State Board of Education approved of the state seal of civic engagement award. To earn this CEO, students must demonstrate excellence on civic learning, participation in civics related projects, contributions to their community, and to an understanding of the
019US Constitution, the California Constitution, and the American Democratic system. Students may earn the seal on a transcript, their diploma, or certificate of completion. And again, finally, you know, this is Hispanic Heritage Month. It began on September the 15th and will continue through October the 15th. So, happy Hispanic Heritage Month, everyone. That concludes my report. President Rios, thank you. At this time, we'll move on to employee representative reports. Ray G Ray Gar, APCFT president. Thank you, Dr. Rios. Uh, good evening, everybody. Um, good evening, President Rios. Dr. Rios, uh, board trustees, superintendent Dr. Sue, administrative cabinet, teachers, nurses, students, uh, ABC parents, and of course the ABC community members. Uh, my name is Ray Gar. I'm president of the ABC Federation of Teachers. Uh, first I want to thank all those students and and teachers for
020making the best of this virtual education situation we find ourselves in right now. uh your resilience and willingness to find new ways to engage in live instruction is definitely commendable and I I've learned as I've talked to teachers across the district that their classes are getting into that allimportant like flow of instruction uh where there's a social contract between the teachers and the students and uh and that's really where uh there's honor in in finding uh education you exciting and it's what makes our classrooms unique. So, uh I'm glad to hear that we're we're in that mode right now. Uh it's it's that's a it's a hard place to get to and we're doing it virtually and and that is really important. Uh let's not forget all the ABC parents. uh your patience and support
021and guidance during this uh situation uh is really counting and uh we appreciate it as a as a teaching staff and um you know we're not perfect as a district and we know we're working on how to make things better all the time and uh it's just important that we have a common message uh you know as a community that we're working for student achievement and really looking out for our students mental health together. So, that's really important and that's kind of my message for tonight. Um, I know that over the past few months, uh, many community members and and students have come forth to express their outrage and concerns of issues of equity in our schools, sexual harassment, and mental health awareness of our of all of our students. These are not new issues
022in ABC and all other districts in the United States. However, there's not been a time probably in our history as a nation where these issues are seen for the impact that they have on every every single student in our education educational institution. Um, so I want to thank the community members for, you know, guiding an expanded spotlight on some of these important issues. We might not all agree on the tactics or the messaging, but the core belief is that we need more conversations and more importantly actions on these serious topics. We need to seize this time, you know, because the the the window for change always moves. And so we need to seize this moment and make change. As teachers, uh I just want you to know that we do get mandated trainings each year.
023They're called the Keenan trainings. Uh it's a common thing here in ABC. Um and we attend or participate in these trainings every single year and they cover child abuse and neglect, sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, youth suicide awareness, prevention, and postvention. In total, this is about three to five hours each year depending on how fast you go through the training. But there's always secondary trainings through PBIS and other supports that we have throughout the year. Uh these are really important refreshers that our teachers get every year and they're critical for the safety of our students. Uh but we know that the depth of these trainings can always be improved and that's something that you know we'll be looking forward to looking at. So, uh, these are important community issu is issues and, uh, you know, like
024legs on a stool, we're only one leg and there needs to be all the legs to make sure that the stool stands correctly. So, I think we, if we're able to dive into these subjects together, hand inand as a community, then we can make systematic change. Um, like board member Sophia Se said to me the other day, and she didn't know I was going to say this, a clap takes two to make a sound. That really struck something with me. Um, and and I, you know, like I said, if we're going to make a sound, we definitely want the ABC teachers want to work with you. Um, working together, we can make lasting changes and we can impact decades of students in ABC. So if we're able to handle and tackle such a difficult situation
025together and a difficult topic, there's really no limit to what we can do academically or for the emotional um skills of our students and these are skills. So I know that the the ABC Federation of Teachers takes these subjects very seriously and we look forward to making systematic changes with all of you. So, we want to build that social contract with the community, the board, the administrative cabinet, administrators throughout the district, and other staff members throughout the district. So, thank you for your time, and we look forward to working with you. President Rios, I haven't done that in a while. Forget to unmute. Okay, at this time we will move on to public comments. Board clerk Q. Thank you, President Rios. Um, persons wishing to address the board should provide public comments during the public
026comment section through the following method. myabcusd.org/boarding and use the link or phone number to participate in the Zoom meeting. If you're if using Zoom, please use a raise your hand feature during the public comments portion of the agenda or during the public comments time after an agenda item. If using the phone, please use number nine star 9 to raise your hand during the public comment portion of the agenda or during the public comments time after an agenda item. Then use star six to unmute yourself when you are called on to speak. Comments will be presented during the public comment section which is limited to one hour and each speaker to one presentation of five minutes unless the board wishes to wave the time limit. Those who have a group concern are encouraged to select a
027spokesperson to address the board. Comments submitted regarding a specific agenda item will be presented following the staff comments and prior to the board's discussion and taking action. Adverse remarks about a person's race, ancestry, ethnic group identification, religion, color, uh national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, mental or physical handicap, or age may not be made. Concerns presented to the board will be followed up and addressed by the appropriate staff. Okay, let's see if we have any public comments. Scott, can you help me? Do we have any uh public comments? We do. We have several hands raised. Again, speakers have five minutes and uh please state your name when you begin. The first speaker is Justin G. Okay. And I'll now allow them to talk. Justin G, you have five minutes, sir. Thank you. The GenUp Critos
028chapter is a youth advocacy group based in Critos, California, which is established through the organization GenUp, where our chapter was just recently created by nine passionate students within the ABC Unified School District, forming the executive board. I am Justin G, one of the directors of fundraising for the Jennuperto's chapter executive board. The youth in our district believe that necessary change needs to be made when it comes to the topics of cultural competency, diversity, and equity. As the recent movement of Black Lives Matters showed us, the people within our district are willing to take immediate action when it comes to the social issues. Our ideal view of having cultural competency, diversity, and equity would begin with more student repres representation within the district itself. For example, if we had a student board member within the board
029of education, there would be more communication between the adults and youth in our district, allowing the student representative to easily relay the common cultural issues of each and every school. These cultural issues range from people getting judged for what they eat and wear to the consistent amounts of racism that go unnoticed within all their respective schools. Therefore, in order to alleviate these problems regarding cultural incompetency, we the students believe that the implementation of ethnic studies should occur in our district to eliminate cultural bias and educate those that were once uninformed about these problems. In regards to the to the dilemas that can be observed in our district in terms of diversity, the students believe there are multiple approaches to resolve these problems. Hereby, we announced the take a seat campaign which petitioned for a student
030board member position within the ABC Unified School District Board of Education. Within the last 40 days, we have obtained nearly 400 signatures in which we are well aware of the fact that these signatures acquired represent many of the students that support this idea. Furthermore, our chapter fir firmly supports the board of education's idea of the creation of a diversity task force force which would handle the situations concerning the lack of diversity. Finally, the Jen Upstritos chapter's ideal view for equity would be to push and approve the enforcement of the equity office as we believe that this would be the essential catalyst to establishing true equity in our district. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker, Scott is Emily Chen. Emily Chen, Emily, please unmute. You have five minutes. Good evening board members and
031superintendent. My name is Emily Chundarnell. I am a Whitney High School alumni, Whitney High School Foundation board member and my child is an ABC USD student. I am supported this district having equity officer to address diversity and equity challenges from the equal distribution of technological resources to the development of ethnic studies curriculum. We thank the assembly member Christina Garcia who supports our commitment and drive to promote equity in our schools. I felt compelled to speak about this topic because I'm disturbed by how the current cultural climate under our US president has attempted to reverse the progress toward racial equity at our schools. Also, I found it disturbing to encounter some individuals within our own community that have denied that racial discrimination occurs in Cerritos or in our nearby communities. Having attended the schools in this
032area in the 90s, I recalled seeing children at diverse backgrounds during my elementary school, junior high school, and ele uh high school years. By junior high school though, this paradigm shifted noticeably, and I noticed that my environment included people who thought and looked a lot like me in class. What was lacking in my educational experience was class discussions about the importance of diversity and culture. It was a given that our cultural experiences and cultural history were taught to us by mostly non-Asian teachers. By my college years and my graduate school years, the cultural diversity and mental health counseling classes I took were taught by African-American, Latinx, and Asian professors. It makes sense that at ABC USD, the ethnic study curriculum should be taught by staff who represent and can speak about their cultural traditions and
033values to students. Recently I too wondered about the this equity issue at the schools from participating in these community discussions and examined the academic performances and school conditions data presented on the California dashboard in the eddata.org websites for the 2017 to 2018 and 2018 to 2019 school years. Since the data analysis is detailed, I emailed the board member superintendent and teachers union president. The actual report data can be cooperated by data presented in these educational databases. The conclusion I derive, which is consistent with what educational researchers have been saying for so many years, is that there are disparities between ethnic groups, Caucasians, Hispanics, African-Americans, and Asians on several academic metrics, including suspension rates, noticeably here at at ABCUSD middle schools. The suspension metrics provided clear-cut data to support the observation that students of color at
034the middle schools here have higher suspension rates compared to Caucasians. So offering implicit bias training to staff, students, and parents will force people to examine how their own unconscious biases affect the way we evaluate and treat people students that look different from us and have different skin color. Emily, you have two minutes. Okay. A holistic approach including parents and staff in this training ensures that the primary influencers of the students attitudes and prejudices provide the tools for them to understand how to be with students in diverse environments at school and work. We advocate then for this school district to expand the implicit bias training offered by CCJ at the school sites that report big disparities in academic metrics for students of color. Thank you to the Winnie High School Foundation board to who took they
035took steps to offer this training, but we want to see that this training is offered to parents and staff at school sites that may not be able to provide the funds for it. Thank you, Emily. Board clerk, you the next speaker has the phone number that ends in 778. Uh for this speaker, please state your name and unmute yourself, please. Go ahead. Good evening, board members and superintendent too. My name is Aa Gurigan and I'm a Nepalese immigrant from Kathmandu and currently reside in Artisia, California. I would first like to second a lot of the comments made by the Jennup Cerrito's leader Justin G and also Emily Chen in discussing the necessity of holistic education and lasting systemic changes in the community and beyond by unifying students from different backgrounds to work towards multiaceted levels
036of justice throughout our district. Equity is an important topic for me to bring up in the community because as a Gar High School alumni and active member of the diverse local community, I believe that it is crucial to include ethnic studies as part of elementary, middle, and high school curriculums. We must amplify uh black and indigenous voices as well as voices of people of color and local organizations of young students such as Jennup Cerritos, the local diversify our narrative chapter and we rise above which has actively um brought advocacy and a voice towards the sexual harassment cases in the communities especially at our local high schools. I believe that in advocating for students, we should also consider how microag aggressions against students can negatively impact their mental health and also ability to function and um
037provide a holistic level of education and understanding in the classroom. I would like to show support for the bill written by Assembly Member Christina Garcia 331 that asked students to take cultural studies classes as a part of high school graduation requirements and emphasize the need for this as a not only a part of school but also a larger communal issue through which um we can understand one another better and also continue to a amplify the voices of community leaders. such as the Whitney High School Black Alumni Association. We must consistently from a young age young age prioritize how we can empower all children regardless of socioeconomic statuses, gender and cultural backgrounds. Change begins at home and the ABC Unified School District is in a great position to be able to bring about these changes because
038of the resources and teachers and community support that we already have. I believe that education starts with families and communities and should be focused on intersectionality as a whole. Uh we we can work towards also empowering parents along with teachers and students because especially with virtual learning a lot of parents are the ones that have to bring about change and advocate for their students at home and also address adjust their schedules to provide uh efficient care and as as well as a a holistic learning environment for uh their children at home. So along with highlighting the importance of students and teachers, I also want to place emphasis on providing resources and advocacy for parents in the district. You have two minutes. Lastly, lastly, I want to um talk a little bit about how cultural conditioning
039could must be addressed at each level of education. Since we have such a diverse community, we have community members that come from different backgrounds and different levels of understanding for for issues of equity as um especially when considering the Black Lives Matter movement. So in order to bring about lasting change it starts at home and for many students that means that their interactions in their households also determine how they will bring themselves into uh workplace school everything along the lines. So, I just want to thank the district for the wonderful work that we already have been doing and emphasize the need for an equity officer and a continued support for things like Kenan trainings that would allow for students and uh educators to continuously advocate for the equity in the community. Thank you very much.
040Thank you. Board Clerk Hugh, the next speaker is Alex Alcantar. Mr. Alcantar, please unmute. Good evening. I am Alex Alcantar and I'm a proud Whitney parent. Uh, let me start by saying thank you to the board for having made the tough decisions during the pandemic. uh decisions that can never satisfy all everyone's concerns but certainly have to be made uh to ensure the safety of our kids and our educators and it is very much appreciated. But I speak tonight uh in support of the implementation of the diversity and equity officer position within ABCUSD. I'm here representing the Latino parent association at Whitney High School as well as the Whitney Foundation for Educational Excellence. Uh I'm also becoming involved with the diversity and equity task force at Whitney and I was also part of the selection
041committee for the vendor who will provide equity and antibbias training uh at uh Whitney High School. Uh parent groups in my personal experience have been instrumental in helping to bring attention to issues of student and parent concern in situations where faculty, staff, and admin may have difficulty. These difficulties are not due to a lack of effort or availability on the part of the school district employee, but they may have causes relating to issues such as language barriers, issues of cultural capital skill sets, issues of class such as work schedules, and other reasons. It's often easier for parents and students to open up to those that they believe to be are similar situations. uh they may feel more comfortable reaching out to us because they know that we don't have competing interest or responsibilities. But parent
042groups are limited in several important ways. We aren't full-time in this position. We have limited resources and we have very limited uh actions in terms of responding to situations. A diversity and equity officer would have as a primary objective to listen to the concerns and issues relating to issues of race, class, sex, orientation, language, capability, etc. The position would have resources at its disposal and would work on a full-time daily basis to resolve these concerns. And even more importantly, a diversity and equity officer would have the ability to impact policies and procedures and perhaps even hiring practices which would proactively address these issues of concern. We face many challenges both in our society and in the ABC community rel relating to race, class, sex, orientation, language, capability, etc. And conflict impacts our students and parents
043on a daily and ongoing basis. Students are and parents are concerned right now about issues like racial discrimination. Think of the social unrest and black lives matter movement. Implementation of an ethnic studies department requirement. Excuse me. Concerns about affirmative action both uh stigma and lack thereof. Sir, I'm sorry. You have two minutes. Okay. um and uh issues relating to sexual harassment, especially as it relates to students as well as equal access to resources. These are areas which need to be addressed. The implementation of a diversity and equity officer would go a long way toward demonstrating that the ABCUSD school board takes these issues seriously. I'd like to echo and second many of the sentiments already presented, especially that of uh teacher Ray Gar. uh uh please add my support in considering an implementation of this
044position. Thank you. Thank you. Board clerk U. The next uh speaker has a phone number that ends in 823. Speaker, if you'll unmute. We are unmuted. We can hear you. Good evening. Go ahead. Please state your name. Good evening. Uh, Michael Eugenio. Good evening, board president Rios and board members. I am Michael Eugenho. I am a resident of Artisia. I would like to address my concerns about how this board handles public comments. On July 17th, 2020, the board held a special meeting to discuss the reopening of schools. On that agenda, there was a section for public comments. However, this board made the decision and publicly announced at the meeting that they would not consider listening to any public comments because Governor Nuome had already made the decision on how schools were going to reopen. This
045board is a body of governing members that were elected by the voters and they took an oath to uphold the law. When you come together, you are creating a public meeting and a public meeting have public comments. Public comments are in the California statute and are protected by the Brown Act. How can you say we are not going to listen to comments because we have already decided what we are going to do and posting comments online after the meeting is not doing your due diligence of listening to your constituents. This board acted illegally. I am asking this board to agendaize this item again at your next meeting. allow for public comments and then revote on this item. As elected officials, you should not be casting a vote on any item without first hearing from the
046public. By reagendizing this item, the vote doesn't change. The outcome doesn't change, but you will make it right with many parents that you ignored. I also want to bring to your attention at the September 8th meeting, I was very bothered about how this board handled extending their meeting past the 10:30 p.m. deadline. There is nowhere in the bylaws that say the meeting can only be extended by an hour. The board policy states that board meetings that need to be extended past 10:30 p.m. must establish a time to end. It does not say 1 hour. This board is making up their own rules. Also, there was discussion on trying to establish the length of public comments and how long they would allow public comments during a meeting. This board is operating outside of their bylaw and
047it needs to stop. This is nothing. There is nothing in your board policies that says public comments must be heard within an hour's time. Again, this board continues to make up rules as they go. I urge this board to read their board bylaws on how to handle public comments. You cannot deny parents and students their right to address this board by illegally creating your own policies with total disregard of the law. I have read your board policies. It is the 9,000. Every board member should do the same. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next speaker we have is Cynthia Corales. Please unmute yourself. You have five minutes. Cynthia, please unmute yourself. Good evening, board president Dr. Rios, Dr. Sue, the entire board and ABC community. My name is Cindy Corales, parent of a junior
048at Whitney, two Artisia graduates, a Tracy graduate, grandparent of a student at Tedoff and Palms, and past ABC Council of PTA's president. I'm the current Whitney PTA president. On August 31st, ABC Council of PTAs disbanded. This council had been in existence since 1925. The reasoning placed the blame on ABC council of PTA's inability to operate according to PTA guidelines and meet the obligations of probation. Previous boards sought assistance from 33rd district PTA several times in the past four years to address the issues hoping for a remedy. Their unwillingness to address the concerns and input of longtime PTA volunteers in ABC open the doors for people with cruel intentions to destroy what many had worked hard to establish. Individuals who opted to use the role as a PTA officer for their own gain. PTA presidents asked
049for transparency regarding the actions that led 33rd district PTA to recommend the dispanding of ABC Council of PTAs and received none. The result of disbanding has left PTAs under the helm of 33rd district PTA. There are rumors as to what led to the demise of ABC council. However, I assure you the actions of an illegal few do not represent the many honest, hardworking, truly dedicated PTA volunteers at our school sites. I encourage you to continue to support these units. It is important for these volunteers to know their time spent raising funds to support our school sites, caring for student outcomes by providing assemblies, school supplies, book fairs, cultural awareness programs, scholarships, now virtual field trips, and most importantly, engaging parents and families and keeping them informed about all things ABC is appreciated. I do have
050a concern that I feel you need to be made aware of. PJs and ABC have discussed expanding. Some prefer not to serve under the helm of 33rd district PTA. They are looking into establishing PTOs, boosters, and foundations. The future of parent involvement in ABC may look much different. I encourage you be aware of any changes of parent groups at school sites. You do not want to lose touch of the opportunity to engage with parents. There are a new generation of Ernie Nishi, Sophie SE, Ogre Rios's, Armen Reyes, Louise Dodsons, and Olympia Chen to name a few ABC leaders who served on PTA boards. Not to mention the many PTA board members who went on to serve as employees in ABC. To the ABC community, I say now more than ever, parent family involvement, support, input.
051A true partnership is necessary for our students. And to the parent with the concern for their student, advocate for your child. To be silent is to be complicit. On another note, I encourage you to establish an assistant superintendent of equity officer with the prevalence of incidences of racism, bias, bigotry in today's society related to race, gender, and sexual orientation and new policies and rules of law that seem to be routinely changing. and to provide oversight for the forthcoming education to end hate initiative grant from CDE. There needs to be a point person to research, lead the new equity committee, gather staff, parent and professional input, implement and monitor the programs at school sites, and work to ensure ABC schools involved to a model representation of a modern, united, diverse community of acceptance and understanding of
052one another's cultures, identities, and religions. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. Thank you. The next uh board clerk, you the next speaker is Yolanda Williams. Yolanda Williams, you have five minutes. Hello. Good evening to the members of the ABC Unified School District Board of Education, Superintendent Dr. Sue, my name is Yolanda Williams and I am a parent whose children have grown up and graduated in the ABC school district. As an African-American parent who has served on every level of the PTA in this district, I have heard both positive and negative stories from African-American students in the district about their safety, their respect, and their value. With the current climate of our nation and our local communities, I must say that your resolution that you signed in June of 2020 regarding standing up against
053systemic racism was welcomed. Well, now it's time to do the work. So, with that in mind, I am here to introduce to the board an organization that will work with you in serving our AfricanAmerican students. Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated has a 110 year history with over 300,000 members in nine countries and including the United States. With our theme exemplifying excellence through sustainable service, we have partnered with local communities, regional and national organizations with targets such as women's health care, economic legacy, and global impact. However, one of our main targets is supporting historically black colleges and universities, H.B.CU. We want to educate students, particularly African-American students, on the options and importance of attending an H.B.CU as well as assist them with the college entry process. For our organization, this is key. And it just so
054happens that this is at HBCU week. And just yesterday, our organization raised over $1.3 million for scholarships and endowments in 24 hours. In fact, this was the third year that we had done that in a desire just to make sure that students um parents, communities are educated about not only the importance of H.B.CU, but the options of H.B.CU CUS as well as our CAPS program which is our college entry process. We want to provide resources and support to parents as they navigate college and career readiness. The Cerritos chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sority has been in existence since 1982. And at this time, we are offering our time, our experience, our commitment to serving the students, particularly the African-American students, as they get the educational and the support resources they need. Again, your resolution was
055welcomed. It's now time to do the work. We are already aware of the black college fair which will highlight some of the H.B.CU and the parent association of Africa African-American students and we intend to participate speaker. Two minutes and fully support activities geared to helping the African-American students feel safe, feel respected, and feel valued. the members of the Cerrito's chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated will be here and we're going to do exactly what we do best and that is to serve and support. Thank you for the opportunity to introduce ourselves and we look forward to working with the district. Thank you. Thank you speaker. The next speaker is uh Dana. Dana, please state your full name and you have five minutes. Hello. Uh, my name is Dana Williams and I currently attend Certo's
056High School. Over the course of the last few months, many students have come out with their stories regarding sexual misconduct inside of ABCUSD schools. Within three months, not much progress has been made as far as consequences. I would like the board members to know that the longer you have waited is the more time you have given perpetrators to get their story straight. You have given them more time to delete evidence that may be on their phone and you have given them a feeling of comfortability because they know that not even the school board is taking what they have done seriously. To be clear, I know that your policies about sexual harassment are on the agenda tonight. We know that you have policies on this, but your staff and your teachers are not following through. We
057know that they have yearly trainings and that's really that's not the problem. They have to follow through on what they are being taught so that your students don't feel as of most of the time I've heard that their staff that they have told and the teachers that they have told don't do anything. You need to enforce rules because policies can be there, but without them actually being enforced, they mean nothing. More and more students are going to tend to push their luck on rules that in the past have not been executed properly. I'm not very pleased to say that I am in a school district that does not sympathize with their students, nor do they communicate with their students about important topics. Speaking of communication, it's important and fundamental that communication is used often when
058community members are asking for help from a school board. It is also that you all with the exception of one board member have failed to do. Anyone who is passionate about getting justice for victims knows that this is not an overnight fight and it will not be easy. But we would at least like to know the steps that you are taking to ensure victim's justice. Ensure that students are educated on topics such as this and ensure that your students know consequences if they do something related to this. I am disappointed but not giving up. Please do better as a school district. Thank you. Thank you, Dana. The next speaker, board clerk U, is Megan Mitchell. Megan, please unmute. You have five minutes. Thank you so much. Um, good evening ABC board of trustees and superintendent
059Dr. Sue. My name is Megan Mitchell. I'm a proud product of ABC schools, having attended Whitman Elementary and Whitney High School. And while I am the daughter of a retired ABC teacher, I myself am now a teacher in ABC myself, as well as a parent of an ABC student. As a black woman living in Cerritos, I know all too well how it feels to be a micro minority. Being one of only seven black girls in my graduating class at Whitney, I know firsthand how it feels to only see yourself represented in lessons that revolve around slavery, struggles, and civil rights. It is deflating. It is embarrassing. And it is time for that to stop. While I excelled academically, it was not until college when I was able to enroll in women's studies courses and ethnic
060studies courses where I finally was able to see the value in people and was able to connect to the curriculum because I was able to see diverse representation from global world changers and people that look like me. It's no surprise that companies like Fortune 500 companies such as Amazon and Google have departments and staff that is dedicated solely to examining equity and diversity within their companies. It should no it should be no different for education specifically public education where we are charged with laying the foundation for our future within ABC. Equality is no longer enough. Equality in American public school systems is what allowed schools to be segregated. Equality is what continues to allow disparities within communities based on their their based on their socioeconomic status. It is now time that that we move forward
061and upward from equality and strive towards equitab equitability. Equity is about ensuring individuals are treated fairly and receiving the necessary support that they need in order to be successful. Equity ensures that no matter of race, culture, gender, age, exceptionality, religion, or sexual orientation that students, staff members, parents, and community stakeholders feel valued, represented, and included. Equity isn't about simply checking off a list to make sure that everyone has the same resources, but it's ensuring that everyone has the resources and support that they need. Diversity is about recognizing and respecting the differences that make us unique and having students, parents, faculty, and all stakeholders realize the importance of creating an all-inclusive atmosphere and environment. Promoting promoting equity and diversity in education two minutes. Thank you. Is not only essential for both teachers but also students. The
062aim should be to create a classroom environment where all students can thrive and understand that individual characteristics make us unique and different but not in a negative way. All too many times in ABC I have sat in classrooms as a student and felt like I was being treated that I was only there to to meet a diversity quota. That has to stop. The ultimate goal of promoting equity and diversity should be to ensure that the generation after us is able to recover and overcome the obstacles that were faced by their predecessors. And I hate to think that my son is sitting in an ABC school right now and feeling the same way that I did over 20 years ago. With the current climate of our nation and our communities, we can no longer continue to
063sweep the issues that previously and currently plague our district. I implore the board of trustees to not only implement a diversity and equity officer, but to also vote to create a diversity, equity department within the district. I also beseech our board of trustees to vote in favor of extending CCJ trainings to all staff, all students and parents within the district. ABC is known for its academic excellence. It's time that we are also known for our inclusivity and our diversity. Thank you. Thank you, Report Clerk Hugh. The next speaker is a phone call with the last three numbers. 441. Speaker, please state your name when you unmute. Hello. Hi, my name is Sice Fratando. I am an ABCD alumni, Filipina, and first generation daughter of a single mother. Today, I'm here to amplify our voices of
064our community and stress the importance of implementing an equity officer within our school district. Having one parent, my mom worked 12 hours a day and was unable to advocate for the needed resources for myself and other students that lack the necessities and support needed to put us at the same level as other schools and students. If I was a 10-year-old elementary student today, I would have no Wi-Fi, nor tutoring, or additional help for my studies. My lack of resources would put a strain on my academic performance. And this is only a fraction of the reality students, especially black students and students of color, face on a daily basis. With that, it is no secret that our student body is diverse. We have students from different classes, different backgrounds, and different ethnic groups. And that's exactly
065why it is so important for us to invest in an equity officer. In addition, our school faculty fails to reflect the student de demographics. Out of my 12 years within ABCUSD, I have had about 50 teachers and out of those 50, I've had only one Hispanic teacher and three Asian teachers. The rest were primarily white males. With that, I raised this question. Why does the ethnic background of the school faculty reflect our ethnically diverse uh student body? To prove this observation, the district can simply survey the e the ethnic back backgrounds of teachers and staff at each school site. The data will be no surprise to students and alumni who have long remain silent. Back in June, I held a peaceful protest in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. There we held an open
066forum where students were transparent about the discriminatory experience within ABC Unified. In the following week, a Whitney student held a protest in front of the district where even more students and even faculty expressed their concerns about the racism our students experience. From microaggression aggressions to vernacular to blatant racism, none of it should ever be tolerated, let alone encouraged and practiced by the faculty that greatly influenced our children. On that day, you, the board, stood and listened to all these testimonies. You know that racism is is present in our district. So, what will you do about it? What will you do to make our schools safer for our black students and students of color? Will you hold up hold up to your word and make changes or stick to the institutional paradigm? Four surrounding districts including
067Los Angeles, Long Beach, Los Alamos, and Lynwood Unified School District have already invested in an equity officer. So, why have we not done the same here in ABC? By investing in an equity officer, you are investing in our children and you are investing in an empathetic future. Our current climate has shown and proven to us that racism is not dead and that we all need to intentionally try harder, put in the effort, and make changes against systemic racism and make changes to alleviate the struggles that black students and students of color combat on a daily. Over 260 parents, students, and people within this community signed a petition requesting that an equity officer assume responsibilities to address equity concerns in our school community. Our assembly member, Christina Garcia, wrote a support letter to affirm this need
068and emailed it to the district and board members. We are now asking that the board members and the superintendent consider the importance of continuing this discussion about racial equity within our schools. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Daisy Lagasa. Daisy, please unmute. You have five minutes. Daisy. Hello. Can you hear me? We can. Please go ahead. Can you hear me? Five minutes. Yes. Okay. Yes. Good evening. Uh thank you, Scott. Um to the boards and to the parents. Um, with what I heard, I think the kids, these students have more their their messages have more value rather than those who are really like those um this educated, highly educated people. Um, I think as simple I, you know, as simple parent as I am, I'm a single mom myself and I think those
069I I I admire those students who came out and speak up for themselves because it's very hard for them. I'm sure it's very hard for them knowing that some of them are still students in the high school and when their friends will going to or and classmates will going to hear about what they're talking about it will be hard for them and I just hope they were not going to be bullied uh for uh speaking up of what's happening and um yes there are polic policies that the teachers, the staffs will going to go on this training. There are policies and we can have all those thousands, millions of policies, but if it's not being enforced is nothing. It's useless. I when I spoke last time uh I received um response from ABC and they're
070talking about confidentiality. These kids already spoke up. What confidentiality are they trying to protect? These kids are already exposed themselves and they're they're expressing what's going on, what happened to them. So, I'm just wondering what the ABC is protecting. What confidentiality are they talking about? are they seriously, you know, protecting those teachers or those staffs or those bullies uh in the school district. A friend of mine told me that I'm supposed to be very careful because I don't know what the ABC is doing or what they have done. But you know there are still kids who are speaking up. So that means something is not being done. It's not enough. If ever they are doing something it's not enough. As I said they can you know they can attend all this three to five hours
071annually training and everything. If they are not enforcing it it's useless. It's nothing. It's meaningless. um you know it it's just so simple that you I just h um you know we can hear we can see in the news about you know the school districts reporting um to the sheriff reporting you know they are mandated reporter and they're doing it and we can see them in newspapers that we are seeing that these teachers or staffs or these adults um in the school district are being punished. I'm just wondering if any of those um staff that committed this uh these things to the students have punished. And then second, the reason why I I called here is I remember Ernie Nishi talk about um the the representatives and I hear that one in the one representative
072is I guess a is it a sister of Miss Olga Rios and the other one is a daughter of Leti Mendoza. So it's like really I know maybe they are also deserving but are there any other you know how many students do we have in the ABC Daisy you're there they are the only ones who are going to be representing the All right her time expired that the last speaker that we have right now is Mel Cortez Mr. Cortez, please unmute. You have five minutes. Good evening, board members and everyone listening or watching. Um, the census is due October 31st and it's very important that for the school district that we get 100% count. So, I'm not sure. I haven't seen anything from the district encouraging our families to complete the census. Um, I'm sure
073it's happening somewhere, but we want to make sure because at the moment, the city of Cerritos has 82% response rate. Artisia has 76% response rate. H Hawaiian Gardens 65%. Lakewood 79%. Norwok 72%. So I seen a few things happening but we depend of the census to make sure we get the funding that we deserve. So we need to push this harder to make sure our families respond to the census. Um my second thing I know there was going to be child care for parents and suddenly it was cancelled. I did not hear publicly about why it was cancelled. So, I'm not sure if um something I missed. Um but something that maybe the district could uh inform parents about tomorrow there um there's a program through the county child care for essential low-income workers and
074that's opens tomorrow. So it's for parents of students of that have parents of essential workers and need child care. They must meet the income requirements and they might get child care until December 30, 2020. From now until December 30, 2020. So that's something that maybe we should push for because uh since it was cancelled for the district, some parents still need the child care. Um, one thing that uh I want to make sure that parents out there know and district um on March 14, 2020, the day after schools close um I started a group Facebook group teach at home. Right now we rename it ABC Unified School District Teach at Home. We have almost 900 parents of ABC school students, some teachers and there's a lot of um information that parents get right there between
075each other, collaboration. So that's a place where a lot of parents are getting information from each other, helping each other and getting a lot of different ways to help their kids at home. So the group for any parent out there, ABC Unified School District teach at home Facebook group. So it's almost 900 parents and some teachers. So I encourage you have two minutes parents to join. Um second thing while my at the end right here um I keep hearing all the allegations sexual harassment, racism. I hear about PTA but I mention right now because it was mentioned again today. So there's so many things that have been happening for so many years. Not right now. Right now things are taken care of. Some of the new school board members that came up are taking care
076of things. But some of you have been there for 10 longer than 10 years and all this has been happening under your noses. Why now? Why not fix things before? So, um, some of the, uh, the group that Whitney chose and the district chose CCHA. Um, I'm glad you chose that group. Um, I did I was a counselor for them when back there in college when it was called NCCJ, National Conference for Christian and Jews. I was a counselor with them. I help we train middle schools and high school students and even college. So that's a really good group to help students to learn about themselves. So that was a good choice. And I second what somebody else said. It should not just be a Whitney. Let's try to include other schools and help other
077high schools and middle schools to uh be part of um this kind of training. Thank you very much. Have a nice evening. Thank you. We actually have two more speakers. Uh the next speaker is John D. John, if you could please state your name for the record and you have five minutes. Hi, my name is John Darnell and I'm a resident of Cerritos. I'm proud to live here and enjoy my diverse city, but unfortunately racism is alive and well. I've attended numerous marches and protests here in Certos and elsewhere. We live in a time where we have the chance to make massive change. I am adamantly in adamantly in favor of the school district hiring an equity officer. Please be on the right side of history and not with the thinking of the past that
078of the past that is both draconian and ignorant. I also know that racism is alive certos. In my city of Cerritos, we have Facebook pages where residents debate the issues of the day. We were recently debating this topic of the school district hiring an equity officer. I was encouraging people to sign a petition in favor of it. There were about 260 signatures. A few days after this started, someone went on the petition page, wrote my name, and said, "Black lives don't matter." This is proof that racism is alive and well. This is not a joke. This isn't just the students who want an equity officer. This is adults, but the students have the energy and they're growing up with it, and they're sick of it. My neighbors also want it. As for me, I'm a
079white male who comes from an Anglo background, whose family's been in this country for 350 years. I know our history. It's time that we step up and make more big changes to address our cardinal sin, racism. We can address this in a big way locally by going after inequities. Lastly, I work for the city of LA and that has and we now we have an equity office equity officer in every single department and the city will come up with a big plan to address everywhere inequity exists. It is my hope that this school district makes a plan as well. Thank you for your time and for your service. Thank you, John. The last speaker I have right now is Kira Chahan. Kira, please unmute, you have five minutes. Thank you. Good evening, President Rios. Board
080members, Dr. Sue, it is no, how can I put it? We are living in unprecedented times both in terms of what's going on in the community, students and their rights and you know my position about equity and inclusion. People have said enough. So I agree with their request about equity officer. But I want to go back to last meeting that we had. At the last meeting there were definitely some highlights. The highlights were you got an agreement with your bargaining units about how to best use resources and staff, including bus drivers, to support our schools. Great job. But we also saw a budget that did not make sense. There was a plan to spend $11 million. Some of it was supposed to pay back the furlow. My question one would be why that furlow should
081be paid out of the general funds. Why? Because the state gave you your funding for this year and the next year. So that expenditure should be removed from that $11 million. As far as staff training, I agree with that that any training that we provide the staff that is going to enhance our student and their ability to learn during this time, great expenditure. One more expenditure I have a problem with the 800,000 for technology. Unless I misheard, what was said was that this was a part of refresh cycle. Refresh cycle materials need to come out of the general funds. Yes, there is technology needs. You need to expend that 800,000 in terms of whatever it is that the students need. They all don't need a hotspot. I said this before. They may need other devices,
082other assistive technologies that may help them. But let's not stop at the door of the students. Let's provide our teachers adequate technology that so that they can provide good instruction from their home site. That's what the expenditure should be about. It's how you improve and enhance the learning of all of our students. It is not a replacement program for those actions you intended to do. So, please re-evaluate your expenditure in light of what it what the money was intended for. And given the fact that you have been assured that you will get money for the next 2 years, you are being held harmless. So stop pawning or siding sidelining some of this money. It is really bothersome to me and to some of the community members. Thank you, Madam Clerk. That is all the public
083comments we have at this time. Madame President, if you may, point of voter, may I make a comment, please? Um, yes, board member Mendoza. Thank you, Madam President. Um, I just want to say that there was a comment in regards to my daughter being a student board member, and I just want to provide some information. Um, I I can only speak to GAR because that's my experience, but students actually have to apply um to get into ASB and they also have to apply to become um a student board member, an officer. or they have elections. So, I I don't want the impression to be that my my daughter had any um favoritism or there was preference for that or for that matter any student. I think these students work really hard at their schools and
084they want to be involved. They want to be part of um their school's uh uh problem solving. They want to be part of um leadership. And for anyone to come and and comment and say that my daughter had favoritism or anything like that, I will gladly sit here as an elected official and listen to comments from the public because that's my job. As an elected official, I need to sit here and I need to listen because you are the voices of our students. But when someone makes a comment towards my daughter um and my daughter cannot defend herself, my daughter cannot come and speak against that. I'm going to be the mom and I am going to speak against that. Um, so I please ask you can make any comments directed to me. I will
085gladly listen. Whether it be good or negative, I will gladly listen. But please, please, I ask, please don't comment on my family. Please be respectful. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. And I'm going to chime in because an allegation was made about my sister as well. And I like to point out that we welcome public comments, but when people come on here and blatantly lie, I mean, I think we all take offense to that and our public should take offense to that. I think that people that speak um we value your opinions because either their opinions or they're based on actual facts, but when people come on here and promote lies, again, I think we all take offense. So, thank you um Vice President Mendoza. With that, we will continue with our consent calendar. May
086I have a motion to approve the consent calendar? Point of order, Madame President. I asked for uh some clarification. Yes. Do we vote? Do we take a motion then second? And then I'll be asking if there's any items that need to be pulled. Uh, no. I'm I'm sorry. My point of order is for clarification for the public comments, not for the consent. Okay. Yes. Is that possible? Thank you. Um, so, uh, just really quick, I'm going to go as fast as I can. Um, but since we have a shorter agenda tonight, I feel like I should take my time, but I won't. Um, I'd like to ask, uh, Dr. pursue or any members of the cabinet are the bylaws which are created by our board. Are they legally binding um in the sense that we
087can be held liable for them? We can be sued in a court of law for them or are the bylaws which the board creates and approves um flexible as long as they conform to law general law by statute as a whole? Let me try to answer that board member Dr. Apadaka. Our policies that we have in place, not just the board bylaws, but all of our board policies that we have in place, uh especially the one on sexual harassment. I have been working on them with our legal counsel. He reviews all of our policies and so I just feel like they are, you know, in line with the laws that we are governed by. I won't I won't ask for a clarification because it's an action item tonight. I'm I'm I guess my clarification specifically
088is for the Brown Act. Given the fact that we are in the middle of not just a national but a global pandemic the likes of which our district has never dealt with before or seen before and Governor Nuome allowed quite a bit of flexibility when it comes to the Brown Act because folks like myself my mother's she has kidney failure she has 4% uh uh uh kidney function she's on dialysis I myself would not present myself in a school boardroom or any other building, right? Um unless I absolutely had to. And so understanding that Governor Nome allowed us as a governing body to well use our best judgment to still conform with the Brown Act that certain flexibilities were allowed to us. Are we tonight or have we been including the last meeting we had
089where we had a senior partner from uh AALR our law firm an attorney? Are we or have we been in violation of the Brown Act by any means, including uh the the um uh uh the allowance or the continuence because we didn't forbid them, the continuence of public comments or how we ran our our our uh our meeting in general. Has public uh has legal counsel at all said, "Hey, you're in violation. You guys have to go back and revoke this thing?" No, we have not been in violation. Okay. And finally, I'd like to ask uh or would like to I personally like to make a clarification for anybody out there, family of board members, family of uh teachers, staff. I'd like to clarify for you. Your family is just as sacred to you as
090my family is as sacred to me. However, I can tell you to clarify for the public at large, board members are held to a different standard. And by different, I don't mean unequal. In fact, I mean board members do not have the ability to say, "I want that person, that person, or that person uh to be appointed." There's a whole process for every single position, including student positions at the school level in our district that we as board members are not involved in. Everything from who represents uh the schools at our none of the the board representatives tonight were selected by the board or recommended by the board. And frankly, I was surprised to hear the names that were put forth. I was happy to hear them because they're qualified. I'd like to clarify for
091the public, you don't have board members leaning on principles, on cabinet members, or any other administrator in the district to clarify. Once again, our job is to take that 10,000 foot view of how we govern based off the recommendation of data that's available to us and then give the recommendation to the cabinet and our superintendent to move forward. And I will say this, for anybody to implicate in any way, shape or form that any member of this board, many of which over the years I have disagreed with vehematly, strongly and passionately have in any way, shape, or form changed the processes without a majority vote or the outcome of representation in our district without a majority vote is uncalled for. And frankly with me, you've lost all credibility. And I think that it's important for
092you to know that even though this board has disagreed in on many instances for things that might seem trivial, we as a board as a whole stand united and we don't want to ever wish the worst on one another. My clarification is again, we don't have that personal at at the school site at the frontline view. We're up here. We're watching. We're offering guidance and then we let the staff and and the school sites take their uh you know, their orders, so to speak, from the district. I'm incredibly disappointed uh to hear that somebody would ever implicate us uh in doing anything like that. I would encourage you though if you are so strong in your convictions um do your homework then and if you can find any any remnant of evidence that any one
093of us had ever implicated or pushed that kind of outcome even for something what might seem like a minor position which I assure you to that those students a very big position. If you really do feel like that, then get some evidence, present it to the board as a whole, and then make your accusations. But for me, that's incredulous. And I'm sorry after hearing those public comments tonight, I I just there are so many more important things that we have to deal with tonight that we have to deal with in the future that we have to deal with as as a as a state, as a and as a nation. They're much more important things. And so I'd encourage all members of the public to keep their eye on the bigger picture here. And if
094you have any issues with that, you know how to get a hold of me. I'm sorry, Madam President, but I I just I'm not going to allow that. I I can't. Thank you. So, board president, thank you. Some of us will have a word. Okay. Can I say one thing? I'm going to save them for the board reports because we're going to um move through the agenda and I think I have plenty of comments, but I think we'll save them for the board. Okay. Thank you. Um at this time we'll move on to the consent agenda. Uh may I have a motion to approve the consent calendar. So moved. Is there anyone who wishes to remove any item to be considered separately? Yes. President Sophia. Yes. Okay. Sophia member say go ahead. You did have
095a clarification. Thank you. Just for clarification with uh I need to ask Dr. Mayfield regarding the page 29 consent item. It seems like same position there. I mean u it's a psych psychology doctor that we have at Larsson and we also hired another person on page 47 which is tonight ashen. It seems like when I look the detail they almost pretty much same job description a little different there. So it's like we needed two of them or just it's just additional one how long the contract will be. This one is for 2020 to 2021. Am I right, Dr. Mayfield? Thank you for the question, please board members. Um, these items pertain to potentially specific students who are being assessed because they have very unique um and specific needs and require a higher level assessment. And
096so depending on the contract amount, if it's for 5,000 or more, we have we cannot use the consent form that's on page 29. We have to address it as a separate item. And so it really just depends on their fee cost. So if the fee cost is less than 5,000, we can include it on page 29, but if it's exceeds that amount, we have to create a separate item for it. So that's why you have the uh page 47 addition another action item for tonight. Is that right? Correct. Okay. So because there are two position I got it. So then Okay. Okay then. Um thank you uh President Rios and thank you Dr. Mayfield. U Madame President I'd like to pull item 3.2 3.4 and 3.7 just for quick quick questions. Okay. Do you want
097to ask them now? Yes that would be great. 3.2 to the question would be um what was the first year of the contract? Is there a metric we can point to to show some sort of improvement? This would be for item 3.2 renew the contract with education consultant Dennis Parker. I'm just um I'm sure the teachers are thinking that he's good. I just uh want to make sure there's is there a metric that we're saying that he's doing great and how many is this the first year of the contract, second year of the contract? The board report doesn't tell me anything. Yeah. So, Dennis Parker has been working with Artisia High School for probably over 10 to 12 years and I would say that their academic data is an indicator of the support that he's
098providing to the schools to help students to meet their achievement goals. Great. Um, and so they must be doing better because of him. So, that's great. 3.4. Okay. 3.4. some of the qualifications. What are the qualifications that the YMCA has for persons who interface with the children? Um, do they go undergo periodic training and do they do the DOJ live screen? So, the staff is hired by the YMCA and subject to the YMCA requirements for qualification. Um, staff are CPR and first aid trained. Um, they also provide other specific trainings that associated with the YMCA. Um, I have I'm going to assume that they fingerprint them. I can verify that with the YMCA, but they are cleared through the YMCA to work with our students on our campus. Um, do they have training uh like
099young education training or a degree? Yeah, they are trained. uh most of them are in college working on um their college degree. Uh but the most part those are the students who the um supports that we have received are typically collegegoing college attending age. Okay. And like I said I presume that they've been live scanned but I presume it's not in the report so I can't presume it unfortunately. Yeah I can follow up and share that in Thursday note. Thank you. and 3.7. Um, it doesn't give me a dollar figure. It just kind of gives me I I just need a ball ballpark. Um, it says cost will vary according to people's individual education program, but just ballpark. Is it within the budget? How much is the total estimated? Yes. So, a the total estimate
100for this particular case is about $33,000, but it does vary because if we're in a virtual platform and then they're also virtual and then they're going to go um in person and so there may be some additional cost once in person services provided, but it's about $33,000. Okay. So, it it would be nice to have just like at least I know it's not going to be down to the penny, but just uh if we put in our board reports a little range of how much it was going to be, that would be really helpful and I can not have to ask any questions. Absolutely. We can do that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's it. Okay. Roll call, please. Dr. Apadaka. I. Mendoza. Hi. Mr. Nishi. Hi. Dr. Rios. Yes. Mrs. S. Yes. Mrs.
101Yu. Yes. Motion passes six to zero. Thank you. At this time, we'll move on to action items. Item 1.2- A. Superintendent and staff recommend we approve the request to adopt the following career technical education textbooks titled contemporary business and business communications for grade 9 through 12. Motion please. So moved. Second by Sophia. Any public comments? Um yeah there is there is none. Roll call please. Thank you Dr. Apadaka. Hi Mrs. Mendoza. Hi Mr. Nishi. I Dr. Rios. Yes. Mrs. Se. Yes. Mrs. Youth. Yes. Motion passes six to zero. Clerk you. I'll ask if there's discussion and if I don't hear an answer, I'll move on. If there is, then interrupt me. We'll move quickly. Item 3.10- A. Superintendent and staff recommend approve the request to contract with Catalyst Speech Language Pathology Inc. DBA Catalyst SLP
102Inc. for a special sorry for a speech and language pathologist to provide therapy services for the 202021 school year. Second public comments. There is none discussion. Roll call. M madam president quickly. Did uh anyone else bid for this contract to provide 120,000 in services? Um board member Nishi, are you referring to the um counseling support the 3.1A the contract that we're approving the approval to request a contract with Catalyst speech? Yeah. So um so no we don't go out to bid and we haven't gone out to bid for these services. We try to contract for various agencies who meet the qualifications which include appropriate assurance as well as credential staff who can provide the level of assessments and support that we need. Um often we have to you'll see tonight we have to contract with
103multiple agencies because at the time that we need to administer assessment the person may not be available and we have a timeline that we have to meet. And so in order to ensure that we can meet those timelines, you'll see tonight that we're contracting with multiple agencies who are providing similar services um so that we can make sure that we can assess students accordingly. So if if I'm understanding, we're having many different companies bid for this particular contract. This one is going to be one of many. We don't necessarily use them, but we could potentially use them in the in the group of uh companies that we'll be using. Correct. Okay. All right. So, it's sort of an RFP, but uh amongst it's like a not RFQ more than anything. Is that correct? Yeah. It's
104more or less to asssure that when we need to assess students, we have qualified um people who have already been approved um and capable of coming in to assessing. So, you're just looking at the qualifications primarily. Well, they have to have qualifi they have to have the credentiing qualification and meet our insurance requirements. So there's quite a bit that they have to do to show that they are able to provide the service to our students um as well as meet our consulting contract requirements. Okay, it's an RFQ. Thank you. Okay, that's the only questions I had. President, can I ask one question? Oh yes, go ahead. Board member S. Thank you, President Rio. Uh Dr. Mayfield on those position. Do we post outside um through the agent or we just automat um we pick the
105people who we know are qualified? So we're part of a SULPA organization that works with greater Los Angeles school districts um districts throughout the LA county. Um they have referrals and recommended proven um staff who um meet the qualifications to provide these assessments and to support students. And so we tend to look to those list because we know that they've already met a standard of approval by another organization that we are a part of. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Roll call, please. Dr. Apadaka. Hi. M. Mrs. Mendoza. Hi. Mr. Nishi. Yes. Dr. Rios. Yes. Mrs. Se yes, Mrs. U. Yes. Motion passes six to zero. Thank you. Next item 311- A. Superintendent Superintendent and staff recommend the approve the request to contract with Dr. John Stephen Stevenson, PhD, a clinical psychologist in Torrance. Wait, did I
106already read this one? Did I lost my place? No. Okay. um will provide an independent educational evaluation and a functional behavioral assessment for students with special needs for 2020 2021 school year. Motion moved second public comment discussion I have questions okay go ahead Dr. Mayfield again it's the same as page 29 um Dr. Mayfield on the page 29 that that uh person we use your run per hour charge and this is just one time a yearly um doesn't matter we use or not use it what we use more frequently than than other position we have to pay per hour or no just one time. So, the law allows families to request an independent educational evaluation assessment. That's a requirement by the law. And that means that a p a parent can request an assessor outside
107of the school district. And when that request is made, we have to have people who are qualified to provide that specific type of assessment. Um, so this assessor could be one that's being requested specifically by the parent. And because the cost to administer the assessment, attend the IEP, write the goals, and evaluate, the cost for this assessor is $5,000. So it's like consultant fee, $5,000. He is a This person is a clinical psychologist who will be assessing a student with in special education. What about the hourly? If we use it more long I mean when you say 5,000 is concerned for that year or just uh 5,000 is for one assessment but one assessment includes assessing the student um as well as writing the IEP goals attending the IEP meeting interviewing staff interviewing parents and
108um observing the students and so it's a very comprehensive assessment that's very detailed that this person engages in for $5,000. So that's this particular item, the item that you were referring to earlier, um item number 289, um that person gives options, hourly options or flat rate options. And so we are required to have a list of already pre-approved um individuals for independent educational services. Um, so again, we're building that list so that if a parent requests it, they're already been approved by the board. Gotcha. Thank you. Thanks, President. Thank you. And I would just like to think that our staff is considering the, you know, I mean, if there is a demand for more staff to allow for such services that we're considering that because I know that these are tough times and they may
109be temporary uh that temporary spike in demand. Um, but you know, we've seen a trend with our special ed population. Okay, next item. Oh, I'm sorry. We need roll call. M, just one question. Um, what is a rough order of magnitude of how much we think this So, it's 5,000 per assessment. Do we think he's going to do 10 assessments or just one? Um, this person is most likely scheduled to do one assessment. Thank you. I'm ready to vote. Okay, roll call, please. Dr. Apadaka. Hi. Mrs. Mendoza. Hi. Mr. Nishi. Yes. Dr. Rios. Yes. Mrs. S. Yes. Mrs. Yu. Yes. Motion passes six to zero. Thank you. Item 3-2A. Superintendent and staff recommend approve the request to contract with stepping stones DBA pediatric therapy services LLC for a speech and language pathologist and school psychologist
110to provide therapy services for the 202021 school year. So moved by Sophia second Mendoza public comments discussion there is none madam president. Thank you discussion. Okay roll call please. Dr. Apadaka. Hi Mrs. Mendoza. Hi Mr. Nishi. Yes. Dr. Rios. Yes. Mrs. Se. Yes. Mrs. You. Yes. Motion passes six to zero. Thank you. Um item 3.13- A. Superintendent and staff recommend approve the request to contract with Explore Learning LLC to provide digital science licenses known as Gizmos for grades 6 through 12 for the 202021 school year. We have a motion. So moved. Mendoza second. Sue public comments. There is none. Discussion. Yes, Madam President. I question. Yes. Dr. Dr. Mayfield, if you can just um give us some more information about this. Um I didn't understand it. Okay. So, this is an amazing tool for students
111um especially who are taking science classes um to have access to real lab simulations. And so, as you're aware, we're in a virtual platform. Labs are still a very important part of student science experience. So, through these live simulations, students can actually enact real life experiments. they are engaged in project- based learning um inquiry as well as exploration. They can manipulate different variables to see well if I do this how does it affect the outcome of this um and so is a virtual platform that allows students to engage in learning through live simulations um specific to science standards and Dr. Mason will this be incorporated into the daily lessons or is this something outside of their class time? This will be incorporated into the daily lessons. Um this Gizmos um software licenses is standardsbased and
112so it aligns to any curriculum that teachers are using. So if they're teaching like meiosis or um I'm sorry, osmosis, they can take kids to a lab simulation and let them see how that is actually functioning um how that works. Um and so it really does support and align to any curriculum area. Thank you. That's it, Madam President. Hey, roll call, please. Dr. Apadaka. Hi. Mrs. Mendoza. Hi. Mr. Nishi. Yes. Dr. Rios. Yes. Mrs. S. Yes. Mrs. U. Yes. Motion passes six to zero. Okay, next item. Um 13 is 13-1 13.14- uh superintendent staff recommend approved submission of an application to the local childcare regional office requesting a waiver for license exe childcare provider to exceed the limits of the lensure exemption. Approval of this waiver allows the district to offer child care incl during
113school hours at the locations listed. Motion please. So move Mendoza. Secondaka. Dr. Mayfield. Thank you. So as you are aware we opened our child care facility on September the 2nd and within days we had to close our child care facility. Um there were both there were 15 parents who were involved in child care and those 15 parents were notified that we are temporarily closed um until we uh receive a waiver for childcare license. So, a little bit of background knowledge or information. Um, prior to COVID, um, ABC operated a before and after school license exempt child care program. Um, with the state and as well as governor pushed for districts to offer child care during the school day. Um, that was a changer for us and it requires us to have a waiver to exempt
114us as a licensed exempt child care provider. Um that waiver will then allow us to offer child care during the school day which is something that we had not done previously. And so in order to attain this waiver we're now subject to um more guidance documents that we must adhere to. The good thing about it is that for the most part in reviewing all the guidance documents ABC was already in compliance. um we just now had to show proof um that we were in compliance. And so we have to provide the first aid and CPR um certifications for all of our staff. We have to provide background reports for all of our staff. We have to provide the fire report to show that our facility have um met the u qualifications or criteria by the
115fire department. We have to provide our emergency reports. And so now it's just a matter of gathering the various reports and documents to provide to the childcare regional office um to indicate that we are and ready and can provide the child care um for our students at the schools located. Now the goal here is just to bring all the school elementary schools so the board can approve them in one meeting uh because also part of the application is board approval to offer child care. Um but at our initial goal is not to open up the child care at every school. Um basically the data doesn't support it. You know we were planning to we had had opened eight child care centers. We were staffed at two schools for 80 families and only 15 students showed.
116And so while there was this demand, apparent demand for the feebased program, um it did not um actualize when we actually opened child care. Um we have started collecting applications for our free child care. Um and the free child care is based on families who qualify for free and reduced lunch. Um and already we have about 240 applicants. So clearly there is more interest in terms of families who qualify for the free child care. Um this process can take anywhere from two weeks to a month to a couple of months. Um and so we don't get to expedite the process. So um we get to provide all the documents. Those documents are subject to review by the different agencies and we hope to be up and running fairly soon. And so we'll continue to provide
117information to our community as we hear more information back um about a potential opening date for child care. Okay, with that um roll call. Yeah, roll call, please. Have question. Oh, okay. Go ahead. Board number. Dr. Mayfield, the child care, what is the age limit there? So, for our child care, we're looking at supporting elementary age students. Students in grades TK through sixth grade. Um, mainly TK and kindergarten students of older siblings and TK and kindergarten students who are able to work fairly independently um in a child care type setting. I do want to say thank you Dr. Mayfield and your staff. Um well remember Ernie we went to the visit the school we looked the school you know the teacher working so hard and then the principal some of them starting set the room
118up and they say we don't mind we want to open it so and we went to see the fountain drinking water everything got new set there and even uh every I mean I we went to one of the school which is serious school another school they have alcohol gel every corner so the kids can use and clean their hands and this is really I see the people really walking ahead even though we haven't opened our school yet, but we are doing the prepare preparation. It was really I mean I see the done deal there and I want to thank you and your staff leading the school make sure we have a healthy and safe school when we're ready to open the school. Thank you again though. Thank you, President Rios. Madam President question. Yes. Go
119ahead, Dr. Mayfield. Um how long will this waiver how long will it take to get the waiver? The wave process can take anywhere from two weeks to a month to a couple of months. So we we don't have a they don't provide a spec specific timeline as to when they will review the application and approve the application. If it happens to be within the next two months, then we'll notify our communities. Absolutely. As soon as we get word that it looks like we're going to have an approval date, we'll start messaging our community and getting our students ready to um come in to receive child care services. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. One more question. Sorry, President. Um Dr. Mayfield, do we accept the volunteer? like some of the nursing student I know especially
120I'm leading the pediatric right now they all looking for a place to volunteer nurses wise and do we accept the child care uh volunteer at this time we are not accepting volunteers in any of our school facilities that's one of the recommendations under co um it helps us to ensure that we're keeping groups together for contact tracing in case there is a um COVID case and so we're not accepting volunteers we have the staff who are ready to provide the child care. Thank you. Okay. Roll call, please. Dr. Apadaka. Hi. Mrs. Mendoza. Hi. Mr. Nishi. Yes. Dr. Rios. Yes. Mrs. U. Yes. Motion passes six to zero. Thank you. Item 3.15-8, superintendent and staff recommend adopt the 2020 2021 learning continuity and attendance plan. May I have a motion? So move. Mendoza. Second. Aadaka. Public
121comments. There's none. Discussion. Roll call, please. Dr. Apadaka. Hi. Mrs. Mendoza. Hi Mr. Nishi. Yes, Dr. Rios. Yes, Mrs. S. Yes, Mrs. U. Yes. Motion passes six to zero. Thank you. Item 4.5- A. Uh, bid award. Superintendent and staff recommend approved bid award ABC1559, unit price painting to GDL, Best Contractors, Inc. as lowest responsible bidder. Motion moved. Second by Sophia. Public comments. No public comments. Discussion. Roll call, please. Dr. Apadaka. Hi. Mrs. Mendoza. Hi. Mr. Nishi. Yes. Dr. Rios. Yes. Mrs. Se. Yes. Mrs. U. Yes. Motion passes six to zero. Thank you. Item 4.6-8. Superintendent staff recommend approve request to contract with frontline education for time and attendance management software for three years from September 28th, 2020 through September 27, 2023. Motion moved. Second, sue. Mr. W. Thank you, President Dr. Rios. Um the um
122contract with Frontline Education will provide the district with the ability to generate time cards and time sheet digitally so that our employees almost 3,000 of them uh due to CO 19 they don't have to come in and sign their time cards and time sheets um every two weeks. Uh you can see the issue with that in terms of keep everyone safe. So because of that we are looking into a system that work with our current absence management system number one and number two can produce um accurately digital time cards and time sheet that the employees can sign digitally so that when it get to the payroll department we can process the payroll using the time cards and time sheets generated by by by frontline education. So this is a necessity because of covid-19 because we
123have encourage um employees working remotely that they don't have to come into the office uh every two weeks uh to sign time cards and time sheet and this um sufficient uh legal as a legal document for time cards and time sheets for the district uh with our auditor. So we are recommending the approval of this with frontline education. The reason we recommending frontline education is that one they can work they have worked with our absence management system so the two uh can talk and that would create a seamless trans transition between the absent management system and the time cards and time sheets. Uh we look at three other vendors Kronos and associates and time clock plus and we decided that because of cost and compatibility we are recommending frontline education. Uh this is um for
124three years. Uh hopefully um in by 203 um the county office education would have finished their best system. Yeah, they're working to upgraded that and then we can transition into the new best system with the county. Okay, thank you. Any public comments, discussion? Yes, m president. Um, so really quick, so I've heard of Kronos and Time Locks. Those are pretty named brand ones. How this frontline education? So what were some of the do we like send out a formal RFP to uh acquire this contract? There's not a lot of information in the board report from Yeah. So for this one again, uh, because of the service, usually um, we would just talk to the vendors and tell them their needs. The important thing here is that they have to be able to talk to or
125compatible with our absence management system that that the human resource department currently using. Uh so that's that's key. Uh on in ter of cost the the well-known names as you know they usually cost more and and they may may not um provise what we have. So this is tailored to what we have and and and and the cost is within what we believe is reasonable for the needs. Okay. So, we didn't do like a formal process. We didn't No, but we did talk to the other vendors um um in terms of our needs and what we were looking for and uh they're they're came in higher especially time clock plus and associates. So, is there a threshold where we decide we want to do a formal process versus an informal process? Like is there a
126dollar figure threshold? So, there there's a couple things. First of all, with services, um we we don't have to legally go out to um you know to do a formal bid. We can uh solicit a quote. Uh and depends on the timeline if something we need urgently like this is the case where you know um the employees are now working remotely and and we need to have the system in uh but usually depends on the dollar amount. I believe in uh the policy somewhere about $50,000. That's the case. And we would do a formal um quote, if you will, a bit, but we always do three quotes. Anything over $5,000 as a practice, we get three quotes. And then you have like a scope of work that you determine and then this is what we
127need and that's how it goes. Okay. One quick question regarding the substitutes. Does it does it cover the substitutes? Because I used to see the substitutes come in all the time. signing these things. It was crazy. Is it going to cover them so they don't have to come in? That that is correct. This covers all substitutes and and employees and permanent employees. Okay. Yes, it does cover all sub substitute teachers and not just teachers, all substitute employees. Great. And permanent employees. Can they get automatic feed into their payroll? You know how so it does get into get into um feed into their payroll. I I I mean to their bank bank account. Yeah. I think you the question you want to ask is um whether can they have a what is the term autoatic deposit
128deposit or or sub right right now we we uh we are making it available just to permanent employees because of the um uncertainty with the subs um because there's no guaranteed time but we are exploring that but right now their checks are being mailed to them because I know know that subs not doing it all the time, but there we do have like a stable of of subs that normally work for us. There's both. There's both long-term subs and there's limited term subs, but not even that. I mean, that they they typically will subs for us at least once or twice a week or maybe once or twice a month. Like I said, there's both. Yeah, there's both. There could be ones that sub for us every day. Uh there's one that maybe you only
129eat them once in a while. So maybe those subs could have the um automatic u um payment correct deposited. So that's more with Lego and the county payroll system versus this system. This have nothing to do with with that. That's more with with the county. Okay. And then when we switch over to the other county system, are we going to have the same functionalities? Yes, it would be plus more. we will be in the 21st century versus the 19th century in the current system. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank I just had to qu there's not enough here for me to write. So, thank you. I have a question now, Tuan. I know I think President uh Rio is probably just trying to get something. Uh Toran, I have a quick question to ask
130you. I heard about you talking about sub for automatic deposit. I know a lot of school does that right now. I know you're going to try that. You just mentioned that you're going to try like I said, right? It said it doesn't not pertain to this item, but we will look into that next. Can you please Thank you. Yes. President, when you come. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. P. Um, roll call, please. Dr. Apadaka. Hi. Mrs. Mendoza. Hi. Mr. Nishi. Yes. Dr. Rios. Yes. Mrs. Sik. Yes. Mrs. U. Yes. Motion passes 6 to zero. Thank you. Item 4.7- A, superintendent and staff recommend approved request to contract with zoner systems in to provide student writer reporting system. Motion so moved by Sophia. Second second. Apadaka. Mr. Wen, you're muted. I get to save that for
131once. Go ahead, Mr. W. Still muted. Let me test. Great presentation. Okay, I'll text him right now. I'll text her. It's a It's a robust report. He doesn't have to talk. Okay. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay. Thank you. So, this this um Zpass um technology by Zona is our student writer tracking and reporting system. Uh we're excited about this and because when we ready to transport our students again, uh the students will each will be given um like an ID card that they would carry with them. Every time they enter the bus, it would get clocked immediately. So we can track on real time the location, the time and the day when the students enter and exit the bus. So that's important, you know, if we ever need to do um contact tracing
132with with COVID 19. But beyond that, we will always know where our student is, when did they enter the bus, if they enter the wrong bus, it would also been uh we will be also notified. the parents. Uh there's a second phase of this is there will be an app that parents can um can can be part of where they can always track and know when their student their child get on the bus and get off the bus um and where the bus is traveling. So this is um a a a great enhancement um to our student safety that we can track uh our students uh the bus rider and we can always provide a report real time to know where they are at any given time. uh and if they like I said if
133they enter into the wrong bus we we know right away and not only that this also also provide for every trip we have to do pre and postrip check uh um uh verification uh or inspections and this will also assist with that too and keep that on record virt uh literally so so that we don't have to do a lot of paperwork with the pre and postrip inspection with that too so I'm excited about this item we again look at three vendors and talk to them and and get quotes and proposal from from uh three of them and we are recommending Zona. Zona actually um I can have a list for you. They are providing this for 39 school district in California including u the major surrounding one like Long Beach um Orange um Capistrano
134and San Diego. So u I'm strongly recommending this uh to the board for approval. Any public comments? There is none, president. Okay. Any discussion? Yes, madam president. Go ahead. Um, thank you, Tan. I I want I want to know some more details like I'm thinking of our elementary students. Are they providing lanyards um for students or is that something that the district has to provide? We will the district will provide lanyard and an ID card for them. they would carry, you know, on them. The minute they enter the bus, there'll be a reader on the side of the bus that would read that and track that and click that immediately. Okay. So, eventually when this does become um you know, usable, we're gonna we're going to train our students and our parents on this because
135they're they're going to be the ones who have to have to learn how to scan themselves, right? No, it's automatic. All they have to do is walk past the machine and the machine picks up automatically. So, all they have to do is wear the lanyard with the ID card. With elementary students, that can be challenging sometimes. Just letting you know. Yes, ma'am. You're welcome. Anybody else? I just have one quick question. When you say the lers, you're hanging there, right? The neck. Is that not safe for the kindergarten to the first grader though? So, we can have the lanyard or we can have the clip, but the lanyard is always breakable, you know, for safety purposes. if if something were pull it it it it it breaks away. See, that's what I'm worried about. Also,
136can can hang by something accidentally. So, we can do the clip or the lanyard and it's break it's breakable. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'm just thinking about safety. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Hey, roll call, please. I'm sorry. I I didn't know if we were going to go to order or not, Madam President. I was waiting to to be called on. Go ahead. Board member. Thank you, Madam President. Uh, Tuan, is this have to do with the Paulie uh school safety bill which was uh passed by uh retired state senator Tony Mendoza? Um, 1072, right? I I I actually no, this have to do with more COVID 19 and the safety and how we do contract sing and all of that. I'm not familiar with that bill that you mentioned, but I can look into that
137and see if this meet requirements the requirements of that bill. Okay. Well, and the reason why I bring it up was that for for this school year, it was brought up. I believe now it's the extension was Senate Bill 1269. Um, but uh, you know, making sure that our students um are where they say they are, where they should be. I I just want to make sure that we give credit where credit's due because that did beca be you know that uh that whole thing came up with uh you know Paul Lee which is a a story you can share if you'd like um with regards to you know um student safety especially our special needs uh students uh who are you know being transported via bus and we've had incidences not in our district
138I'm sure um but I just wanted to make sure that I wanted to see if that was connected right thank you for that It it now that you say that it does do that where that um it would let the driver knows that there's no student would be left on the bus you know now that they have remembered with the bill they have to go to the back of the bus and press a button to to inspect the bus before they can vacate the bus. So yes it will it it will be part of that too and it will do that uh for the driver also. So thank you for that. It is part of the it it will meet not we are meeting the poly requirements already. This will also help with that. Okay.
139And I just wanted to to encourage any members of the public read about the Paul P A L Lee L um school bus safety law. And uh it's actually interesting. Something that seems so simple can actually be quite devastating to a family. Um so I just wanted to to make that comment and introduce that there. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. Anybody else? Okay. Roll call, please. Dr. Trapadaka. Hi. Mrs. Mendoza. Hi. Mr. Nishi. Yes. Dr. Rios. Yes. Mrs. Se. Yes. Mrs. U. Yes. Motion passes six to zero. Thank you. The next are nowformational items. We will move on to item 1.3- I or one board policies on sexual harassment. Dr. Sue. Madam President, can we take a short break? Yes, that's what I thought we were going to be doing next. Yes. You
140know, you have a dock a second. I agree. Thank you. Yes. Five minute break, please. Thank you. Oh no. Sorry. [Music] That's what I figured. One bite. All you have to do. Come on. Up top Okay, I think we are all back. If not, please come back. Board members. Okay, I think we're all trying to sneak in a little dinner. Um, Dr. Sue, board policies on sexual harassment. Thank you very much, President Rios. Um, I've been working with our legal counsel, Jim Baka, to review our sexual harassment policies for the past several weeks. He feels that we have strong policies in place for our district in our district administrative regulations regarding sexual harassment for employees. We already addressed potentially sexually harassing social media. It's not necessary to revise district administrative regulation 4018.1C. And this is
141for all personnel. They are proposing revisions to administrative regulations 5145.7 which is for students that explicitly include social media as a sexually harassing electronic communication. They also proposed revisions citing provisions of the education code supporting the district's authority to discipline students for sexually harassing social media that originates off campus. But before I continue, I would like to have Dr. Christina Weise, director of secondary schools, Tim Catelan, supervisor child welfare and attendance, as well as Melinda Ortiz, director of school services, provide just a brief presentation of what and how our district processes a sexual harassment charge. Following their presentation would be Dr. Gina Zitlo, assistant superintendent of human resources, who will also share information regarding all personnel involved with any of these charges. Dr. Regina Wise. Thank you so much, Dr. Sue. Good evening, President Board
142President Rios, as well as our board members to our superintendent and our cabinet. We are so excited for the opportunity to be able to present and talk about the policies and procedures that we have here in ABC Unified School District. Um, I've been working with Tim Catelan for the past month being that I'm new to the position, but not new to and our board policies and procedures are not new. Tim is an expert in the area of ed code here for us in ABC. And so, he's going to be working with me as we present information for us regarding sexual harassment and students here in ABC. Next slide, please. Our objective in our presentation is really to define sexual harassment, review the board policy, how we in ABC handle complaints to also look at the
143fural laws that support and protect students as well as EDCO and really looking at the campaigns that we are be using in ABC to support students in the in in the event that they need support from us as administrators here in the district. Next slide, please. With that being said, we're going to refer or begin our presentation with Tim Katlin, our supervisor of child welfare and attendance. All right. Well, oh, go ahead. Joy, if you don't mind opening up that um data report for us. Well, thank you, Madame President, board members, Dr. Sue, and thank you, Dr. Wise, for the opportunity to present here. It looks like we got blocked out of our data, but um what I'm going to do is begin by stating that the data that's going to be shown is a
144five-year history of suspensions related to uh just the ED code that uh results in a suspension for sexual harassment, which is 48900.2. um as as we work to get that data up, what's going to happen is um I'm going to kind of explain a little bit about what it means. Um once a sexual harassment um allegation is brought forward, and I'm going to go through in detail what that is. Um it may not result in an actual suspension for sexual harassment. might be a suspension for bullying or some other kind of uh violation. It also may be a more minor uh consequence which is built into the ED code which states that we should provide other means of correction at all costs prior to suspension. However, we do suspend for uh that. So, what I'm
145going to do is I'm going to go ahead and move on and we'll we'll work later to try to get you that data so you can see it. Next slide, please. So about uh June of 2019 uh the board approved uh board policy and administrative regulation 5145.7. Uh the opening line of that board policy is set in front of you in that first paragraph. But I want to emphasize uh what it provided the schools when it comes to evaluating and investigating uh any allegation of sexual harassment. So I'm going to read to you very quickly on that second paragraph. Prohibited sexual harassment includes, but is not limited to, unwelcomed sexual advances, unwanted requests for sexual favors, or other unwanted verbal, visual, or physical conduct of a sexual nature made against another person of the same
146or opposite sex in the educational setting. And so the there are several conditions that uh we we're going to talk about here, but the the board policy is very broad. Um, but I'm going to go to the next slide, please, and explain what we are promoting at the school site um, as far as uh, as a checklist. So, next slide, please. So, this checklist is something that we um emphasize to our school administrators that annually we should be working as hard as we can to make sure that they are aware of what it is that we have to have in place to be in compliance with any kind of uh sexual harassment allegations and what we should be doing to promote uh to our students solid messaging. One, what the definition of sexual harassment is
147is that we have a message that students do not have to tolerate this. Finding ways to encourage students and have them feel safe in reporting. Uh a clear message that student safety is our district's priority. Um and then also clear message that every sexual allegation is uh that uh involves a student shall be investigated and a prompt and prompt action shall be taken. Uh we're going to actually go over these areas again. So I'd like to go to the next slide please involving investigation. So in the district um we try to provide as much of a process as possible for every kind of uh discipline code but in particular for sexual harassment in the board policy that was approved in June of 2019. We came up with this uh this line of investigation. in the
148process. So, first of all, a complaint that is reported by a victim or a witness or you know anybody um is then going to be investigated to assure that if it is an allegation and it is a valid complaint that we will take action. notification to the district is extremely important because we need to know if something's coming down the pike that we're available and we're ready for any further um appeal or complaint if it if it doesn't meet their satisfaction as far as the investigation goes. Of course, we always want to take appropriate action. And I just want to emphasize that under the ED code, uh certain um certain allegations and and uh ED codes that are suspendable cannot be uh utilized on a first-time offense. We we are required by the ED code
149to provide other means of correction. The sexual harassment ED code falls under that under that rule. Uh so generally what we will do is do as much as we can to educate, prevent and keep this type of thing and stop it from happening. And then of course we record all allegations that come in uh involving sexual harassment whether it was deemed sexual harassment or not. Um and it's put into our student information system. Next slide, please. All right. So I'm just going to briefly go over what other means of correction is. as I just stated that there's only five ed codes that you can suspend a student for on the first offense. Um, since we're talking about sexual harassment here, um, if it was, it would have to be very severe or pervasive for it
150to for a principal to make a decision to suspend on the first time offense. However, there is a lot of uh, under the other means of correction rule, there's a lot of steps that we take to try to curb that behavior. works the same with bullying or any other kind of possible severe or pervasive activity on a school campus. So, as you can see here, um we discuss um with our school sites that we should redirect, we should keep our eyes and ears open at all times. Um we should listen to our students, counsel them when needed, call parents if we if we see that allegations or um or that there's suspected possible sexual harassment. And then of course um the teacher or witness or victim or whoever should report to the office so that
151we can take the next step of action and that is to investigate thoroughly. Um it's always important to do that and it states it clearly in the board policy. We want to follow progressive disciplinary actions um that are stated at at the school with any kind of things other means of correction and then of course provide intensive intervention and prevention first before we do anything uh because we're we're trying to educate and correct behavior. However, if suspension is needed, which in many cases is, um the ED codes that we have provided our uh administrators fall under 48900.2, which is sexual harassment. um 48900R which is bullying and then of course 48900I which is an obscene act. Uh if it progresses beyond that and severe and pervasive enough the student could be sent to the committee
152at the district office the student evaluation committee and an involuntary transfer could take place or where the student is moved to another school um or if it goes beyond that expulsion um depending on the severity could be from six to six months to one year. Next slide please. All right. So it is important to keep in mind um that all incidents of student records and and discipline um require us to be very confidential. But in particular in the board policy that was approved back in June of 2019, uh that confidentiality is written in there that all complaints and allegations of sexual harassment shall be kept confidential except what is necessary for the investigation or consultation. So we're not sharing that information. Another thing to keep in mind is that FURPA, which is the Family Educational
153Rights and Privacy Act, is the umbrella that says we do not share student information unless we were given permission by the the parent or the or the guardian. And then, of course, we have an ED code, which is 49076, which also emphasizes the fact that school districts shall permit shall not permit access to pupil records to any person without um permission from the parent. So this is an important aspect to our board policy and anything that we do that we line it up in that way because this even the the the victim, the perpetrator and the complaintant um have the same rights under the privacy act. Next slide please. All right. Well, so what often happens um sexual harassment as you saw in the definition is very broad, but one of the areas um that
154we have to address as administrators, school officials, um is inappropriate student photos that might um be sent from one student to another or from who knows where, but the inappropriate student photo I'm referring to is that of a minor. Um, so what we have done and we have maintained this as as administrators and as a school district that incidents that may not have happened at school and do not connect to school but are reported to us that we encourage families to report to law enforcement because of the main fact that any inappropriate picture of a minor is um is a crime and it it could be legally addressed. And I'm going to I'm going to explain that here in a minute. However, if a the sexual harassment did involve a student photo and it requires
155um verification that we encourage our administrators to um utilize law enforcement to assist them in the search of that. In this particular case, because of the sensitivity and the fact that um uh it it's illegal to have possess or distribute any kind of um student photo of somebody who is under 18 years of old, 18 years old. So, um administrators should not compensate the phone. So, we we tell our administrators that and hold it. They they can keep it on the edge of their desk while police comes in. Um, and then the phone can be searched by the police and they can make that determination. And of course, if it produces evidence uh of a suspendable offense under sexual harassment or expellable, then of course they would notify child welfare attendants and we would consult
156and and work on this in the most appropriate manner. So the last slide that I have here today, I just want to emphasize this and the reason why I'm so um somewhat intense about this. Next slide, please. is that the the penal code basically 341 uh.1 I'm sorry 311.1 311.2 and 311.3 indicate this that it is illegal in California to produce possess or distribute obscene manner of a child under the age of 18. Violation of this law applies to any obscene image of a child whether it's a hard copy or an electronic image. When a text message depicts obscene images of a minor under the age of 18, the person who takes the photo, sends it as a text, or just simply possesses the text can be prosecuted under the child porn pornography statute. And
157the law applies to minors as well as adults. And so the takeaway from this is that when we are dealing with this sensitive of matter regarding uh sexual harassment, it's very important that we educate our our young people that they are just as culpable as the adults are. So um at this point though, I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Weiss, who's going to um basically enlighten you with the efforts that we're making from this board policy to really campaign and get the message out that we're working very hard to to curb this on our campuses. So, Dr. Weiss, thank you. And you may take over. Thank you, Tim. I appreciate all of your efforts and educating us as a district. Um, moving to the next slide, Joey. our campaign message for us as
158a district. Um, and I want to thank Scott Smith and Stephen Zipa for all of their help and really helping us to create appropriate campaigns as we're going to move forward in this new school year in supporting our students. And so what you see here is an actual flyer that we are promoting that we want our students to feel safe. And the reason why we want to feel safe because we want kids to know to take it seriously because we do. So, they're experiencing bullying, online harassment, abuse of language, sexual orientation, physical or written threats, racial discrimination, or sexual orientation. Our directions here on the document is to contact your teacher, your school counselor, or your school principal so that we can help. As well as we've also listed here the district safety tip line
159so that students can also report anonymously. And again, that phone number is answered by our IT department as well as our child welfare and attendance. And so we have an expedient group that is ready to answer the phone calls of students. But in sexual harassment, I think the biggest thing for students and to ensure that we're safe that we are doing proper messaging as it's stated in our board policy that students safety is our district's primary concern. Students will know what are acts and behaviors that are sexual harassment and what to do and what to do in case sexual harassment occurs. They do not have to endure sexual harassment here in ABC. Every allegation involves sexual harassment for our students will be in investigated and actions will be promptly taken. Students will remain safe during
160any investigations and students should know that we have procedures for investigation investigating complaints. And more importantly, all students and parent guardians have the right to file a civil or criminal complaint in the event that students have been felt or treated uncomfortably here in our school. We our biggest message is take it seriously students because we in ABC do. We're going to move to our next one Joey please. So our thoughts are we should really campaign for our students because our number one issue in schools are really having to do around social and social media when we look comes to harassment. We're a little bit concerned about if students are doing this behavior, what can we teach them to help them do something differently. So on our home rooms and advisories, we're going to actually have
161a campaign that will happen across our K12 program to ask students to think before you post social media. Ask yourself, is it true? Is it helpful? Is it I for inspiring? N for necessary or K for kind. This will be a campaign across our K12 environment because we really want our students to think about what is being posted on social media. So our thoughts are teaching our students to think before they post. I also wanted to list some things for you so that you would know some of the procedures and policies that we have in ABC to really support students and making sure that we are the proper adults to make sure that students feel safe. So number one, every year we have mandatory training for all employees and anyone interacting with students on our
162campuses. One of the trainings is entitled sexual harassment, sexual misconduct and also mandated reporter which brings me to my next slide. In this mandating reporting responsibility for all employees in our district, I've listed the telephone number. Again, another number for students that need protection to be able to call, but we hope that their first line of defense is really working with our schools. Our third is really curriculum instruction. Going back again to talk about how we're instructing our students. So, here on this slide, you will see elementary schools in fourth and sixth grade user health standards to cover bullying and harassment. We've listed some of the things that they do in both of those classes. This is taught in our health classes. And we also support PBIS. So in all of our elementary schools, PBIS
163is a positive behavior support plan that we have for our students in that program. Um, moving to our next one, in high school, we also have sexual harassment lessons in our positive prevention plus curriculum, and that's in our middle school program and our high school program. We know that less than 5% of our parents opt out of health classes um or sexual training, sexual training um in our high school and in our curriculum. But that means the more majority of our students have the opportunity to learn. If you look at our secondary curriculum, you'll see some key terms that are taught there. Sexual harassment, bullying, non-verbal communication, and meaning yes means yes, and no meaning no. In high school, there are other terms that are far more appropriate for their age level, but to talk
164about sexual, emotional, physical, and verbal abuse, sexual harassment, bullying, non-verbal communications, sexing, sex trafficking, and really consent. In our high school programs, um, our next support for our students is really our mental health provider. We use a large sum of our LCAP money to support so that all elementary schools and middle schools and Tracy have one mental health provider and our high schools have two. But if you look here, there has been work that has been done to make sure that there's a theme thematic theme where our mental health providers are supporting our students um each month at our school sites. I do want to make note that in order to be a mental health provider here on ABC, it requires a master's degree in social worker, psychology, or clinical counseling or marriage and family
165therapy. And so, each one of our mental health providers have done dozens of hours in order to be a mental health provider here in ABC. I'm going to go to the next one. Enjoy. Our number six item is that we actually use our principal meetings to update each of our principles and administrators on ed disciplinary guidelines and matrix. This year we've added AP meetings in a consistent manner. So every other month we'll be meeting with our APS to really continue this information about what we're doing in terms of e code and our consistent policies and procedures. And I think the biggest thing that you will see here is our constant meeting about see something, say something. In order for us to support our students, we must have knowledge about what's going on. And so we're
166going to hope that our schools have established enough trusting relationships so our students have safe places to go and meet with our our mental mental health providers as well as counselors, nurses, and administrators. Last but not least, I cannot emphasize enough the safety helpline tip line that we have. And again, it reinforces this whole thought that I can call for myself or I can call anonymously for a friend. Well, we sincerely mean see something, say something so that we can ensure the safety of all of our students. In our last meeting with um Mr. Catelyn and myself and the assistant principles, we confirmed with each one of our high schools about their virtual plans in our virtual platform. In the pla in the past and years before our virtual platforms, we would have assemblies to
167meet with students. We wanted to ensure that those virtual plans were going to still be in place while our students are in the virtual environment. So, we will ensure staff safety and training that have already taken place in our schools. that we have human resources which includes our mental health providers as well as counselors and principles and nurses to support our students needs. Our policies are listed in our handbooks for each one of our in our handbooks that are given to our students every year and we will be updating all web pages to include our think campaign as well as our take it seriously because we do. And again, I want to remind us that in our virtual assemblies, we are really working with our students to create plans about this digital footprint because many
168of our students are not aware of the impact this digital footprints do do in social media and our jobs are really taking it seriously to inform our kids and to teach our kids better so they do better in this virtual environment to make sure everyone is safe. With that, I hope that you can see the work that is happening in ABC to support our kids and know that we are taking this seriously about their concerns about sexual harassment here in ABC, but more importantly that ABC has the personnel and the staff to support our students here on our campuses. Thank you. Thank you, Christina and Tim. Next is following uh with Dr. Gina Zitlo. So, good evening everyone and um as we um reviewed all of the items for our students this evening, um many
169of the same processes and practices really for investigation and promptly looking into issues um apply with our adults as well. Um, in terms of our board policy that applies to our employees, um, the board policy 4018.1C prohibits sexual harassment and it prohibits retaliatory behavior against someone who complains or reports um, sexual harassment. It also applies to employees and other persons that are on district property. Um maybe they're an intern or a volunteer or a contractor. And so the policy would apply to any adult working in our school settings or working with our programs. Um the the consequences met out in this policy really um deal with um looking at if an employee engages in sexual harassment or encourages it or is part of inciting it, they then um are subject to disciplinary action up to
170an including dismissal. Um there are really uh a number of things that the policy lays out for us to do with our employees so that we can take action to ensure prevention um investigation and then correction of that behavior. Um we provide our training as you've heard this evening. Um in addition we publicize and disseminate the policies and this happens in a couple of ways. It's posted around in all of our sites at all of our schools and all of our departments and it gets updated. Um, human resources regularly reviews make sure the data is up to date and then we print out and send out to our sites new uh posters and information that needs to be posted. In addition, all employees at the start of every school year are guess given an a
171a a set of annual notifications and as part of that are the sexual harassment policies and practices. Um, we work to have prompt, thorough, and fair investigation. And if there is an allegation between two employees, we investigate those as quickly as we can through human resources and working with site administrators. And the same is true if there is an an allegation um between a student and a staff member. Those are also investigated promptly and as quickly as we are notified about them. Um our goal in everything is to take timely and appropriate corrective action. And so that action can look in different ways. Um it may mean that we have an employee who isn't at work for a while while we investigate. It may mean that we have to um as part of a corrective
172plan um with training um change the employees uh spot where they are working um in in planning how to correct the behavior moving forward. Um another piece of this policy is that we evaluate the effectiveness of the district's strategies and preventative plans. And so, um, employees will be receiving, um, shortly here, uh, after the 1st of October, uh, a an feedback form, an evaluation form of the trainings that we provide and areas where they think we need additional prevention or growth. And so that will be coming out shortly. Um, in terms of just reporting and complaints, if anyone feels that they have been sexually harassed or if they believe that they've witnessed it, they are encouraged to report that to their supervisor or if they're not comfortable with their supervisor, they can report that to
173human resources. We take all of those um reports seriously. we begin to work with the people involved that have reported to investigate and gather information to determine if we need to take further action in regard to what has happened. Um in addition, if there are complaints of sexual sexual harassment that are filed and investigated, um there is a process under administrative regulation 4030 which is about is our non-discrimination and employment policy and an employee can um file a complaint directly with HR and we will investigate as well. So all complaints, allegations, everything must be kept confidential to the extent necessary just like with students um in order to ensure that we have not violated um privacy rights um as we work with employees and students. And so um many of the processes and procedures that
174are followed with students are also followed with adults. Um and we definitely work to um investigate and remediate if we can or um address the issue more significantly if we need to. Thank you, Dr. Zlo. I just want to give an opportunity for Melinda Ortiz to just say a few words about uh how we handle our complaints regarding sexual harassment. Um, good evening board president and board members. Dr. Sue. Thank you. Um, I think that um, Dr. Wise and Mr. Catelyn did a wonderful job of sharing um, how we're working to prevent any type of sexual harassment in our schools. um specifically to the elementary schools, PBIS is um one of the um strongest holds that we have in helping to reduce and any type of sexual harassment, but we approach it more at the
175level of bullying. uh where PBIS is a system where we uh work with adults and students to teach them how to respect and treat one another so that we don't get ourselves into these bullying type situations. Um they they learn how to establish positive and and uh preventative environments that reduce the effectiveness of um bullying behaviors. So in our elementary schools, PBIS, as I shared before, is pretty much our stronghold in this area. We do have some curriculum in our health uh our health adoption. Um but it is a little bit of an older adoption. So more of it is towards um uh recognizing um stranger danger. Uh we're looking forward to uh new curriculum and new guidelines that will be coming out, which I understand will be coming out very soon. um to uh
176address some of the sexual harassment issues actually at the younger age and with younger students. But as uh Dr. Wise shared and also Mr. Catlin shared following the procedures to recognize the situation um and our principles and teachers um address it immediately um with the student and with the parents and working to uh work with the child to learn and prevent any future incidents of um a situation that could lead to sexual harassment. Thank you so much Melinda. I know that in our chat box uh there were questions about the data that uh Tim was going to share and we're trying to work it out with Joey Machado at this time. Um can we entertain questions? Dr. Sue, are we having public comments on this information item? I'm sorry. One more time. Are we going
177to allow public comments on thisformational item? We can Are there any public comments at this time? Sorry. Are there any public comments, Madam Clerk? Not just We'll move to discussion. Actually, there there are four hands raised right now. I'm sorry. This is Scott. Um we have four hands raised right now for public comments. if you're ready. All right. The first one is Dana Williams. Dana, go ahead. You have five minutes. Okay. Um, after listening to that, I can definitely tell that you guys rushed through that and it's been three months. The reality is that we don't feel safe and your staff has not taken action. Students report and it's thrown to the side and it's forgot about. It's been 2 years for me. Imagine how I feel. I ask that you go back to all
178the filed complaints and you re-evaluate what you have actually done for these victims. Do you seriously think that students shouldn't be offended shouldn't be suspended on their first offense? Are you serious? Do you know how serious this is? Do you know what it does to the victim? Because I don't think you're sympathizing and I don't think that you're understanding. If an inappropriate picture of a minor is illegal, then why aren't you doing everything that you can? Why aren't you doing everything that you can to make sure that it doesn't spread around the school? Because that's what happens. You guys are the board members. You are not inside these schools. You have you have no idea what actually goes on and the feelings that people actually have. Your actions speak way louder than your words. Seriously,
179your actions have not been delivered and it's just it's a huge problem. This is reoccurring and you're not doing anything about it. It just keeps getting buried and all you do is just say we're going to do something about it and you never do. Do you remember in 2013 when a student was abused by a par educator in your school district? That person still walked free today without any consequences. You say you're wanting your student to feel safe, but the the reality is that we don't feel safe. We don't feel safe talking to a teacher or a staff member because they have done nothing in the past to help us. They have never been on our side. Your procedures and policies really mean nothing if they are not carried out. Your yearly trainings mean nothing
180if they are not carried out. I see a whole lot of talking about what you're supposed to do and not actually doing it. You're supposed to fulfill the requirements of your community, but there has been no justice for the victims. You rushed through the meeting after three months. I don't know how many slides, but you rushed through every single one and you're not doing enough educating. Why aren't you educating before the fact? You're not supposed to educate after it happens. You're supposed to do it before to ensure that this doesn't happen. There was no priority in this situation. I can definitely tell. You have not been acting like adults. And us students have been forced to step up and start acting like adults. We expected high school to be the best experience of our life.
181And I never thought that as a junior I would be attending a schoolboard meeting fighting for people to receive justice when they should have received justice months ago and even years ago. As I said earlier, you need to do better and you need to start acting like school board members and start acting like adults. All right, the next speaker is Kira Chahan. Mr. Chahan said Dana. Yes. The sexual harassment policy is missing a phrase from my perspective. I've read it and it's missing something to the effect the employee receiving the complaint shall file the complaint with the child protective services. It doesn't say that. In essence, let's go back to the status quo of one adult reporting to another adult who reports to another adult, which is why we're in the mess that we are.
182There has to be some change in the language. That expectation is written in board policy 418 again repeated on board policy 5145. You have to explicitly tell your staff if they receive a valid complaint that they believe is believable that their first priority is to report it to CTS. Then inform the principal, do everything that you need to do. I understand the process, but you are then if the way the policy reads, you're trying to very cleverly circumvent the intent of the current requirements why everyone needs to be trained. So it's it's bothersome to me that we don't have the language that we need to have. Also I need to understand or need people to understand no board policy noou no agreement can supersede the law. Thank you. The next uh speaker is Meldy. Meldy,
183can you please uh unmute yourself and state your name? Hi. Uh good evening. My name is Meldy Asis. Um I just joined in this call so I didn't hear the whole thing that was going on but uh I know this um the meeting was about um the sexual harassment and I wanted to say that um Certo's High School has completely failed my attempt to get justice um for my daughter and since we reported this to the school there's no action that has been delivered yet the principal is very active in being against sexual harassment as he says keeping his students safe. I don't see any of that. I don't see any actions. Nothing has been done since um we complained. I know this has started sometime in July of this year. Um I want to
184see some actions. I mean at least what when I spoke with the principal all I got from him was oh uh I can only give him a behavioral I you know I behavioral um some kind of you know uh uh punishment for for you know for the student that went against my daughter. So the thing is what I'm asking is we need to see justice some kind of action coming from the board someone coming from your side that we need to see that you're on our side. We need to see that the kids are actually getting some kind of justice for this type of harassment. My daughter is going through a lot of things right now. Um she has to see a therapist just to go through this whole thing. She lost a lot of
185things. She's she's gone through so many different things at the hospital. I mean like to the doctor everything else. So I I want to see that all other kids doesn't have to go through go through all this things that my daughter's going through. We want to see something. I know that you guys have been going through all this meetings um discussing all this you know what what needs to be done but we need to see actions and that I I just again I want to re iterate that Cervito High School has definitely failed my attempt to get justice for my daughter. Thank you. Thank you. There are no more hands raised. I'd like to go on to any discussion. Rios, are you there? Sorry, I forgot to unmute. Okay, at this time, um, we'll move
186to board comments. So, I'll go down the list. Vice President Mendoza, may I make a suggestion to maybe start with the other round instead of starting with me and vice president? Just start with maybe u um Sophie or you know Ernie. So, I just go through the list accord that's listed on our I think it's easier for me to keep track of who's Thank you, Vice President Mendoza. Thank you, Madam President. I do have a couple questions. Um, we don't we didn't get a a print out of the of the PowerPoint, did we? Can you is it possible to bring it up? I want to go back to the slide that shows um I guess consequences maybe consequences if you can pull that slide up, please. We sent the uh PowerPoint presentation last Thursday. Oh,
187I I I don't think I got it. It wasn't in my packet. It was in my packet. I didn't get it yet. Part of the board briefing. It was included in the board briefing, but it wasn't in our packet for with our agenda packet like No, it was a part of the board briefing. Yeah. No, I I see. Um Dr. Sue, if I could just make a suggestion. We're all on Zoom. Our eyes are really tired and um I know looking at it, I know it's it's changing. So, if we could get a print out of it, um it just makes it easier looking at paper instead of the the the the computer all the time. There was one that I wanted to pull up and I wanted to reference it. It said where um
188if there were photos that were found or possibly um photos on a phone that it's highly recommended to call law enforcement. I would like to make a recommendation that if there's any suspicion that there are photos um of of miners that we that we do call law enforcement. That is not highly recommended that it is a must that you need to call law enforcement if there's any suspicion that there are inappropriate um sexual photos on a phone that we do not just sit it there that we make a call to law enforcement and we let them come and find the photos. I'm not comfortable with saying highly recommended. I'm more comfortable with saying staff has to call law enforcement. And I think that would um make it more of a serious issue that parents don't
189see that we're trying to, you know, cover things up that we absolutely are getting law enforcement involved with that one. So, I don't know if this is going to be an action item for next meeting if we can make that change in there. Um, another one is, and I don't know if you can break that up. You can bring that up. Okay, I'll just go on to the next one. The next one is ABC safety tip line. Who answers that phone? When I when I call as a parent or a student, who answers that phone? Who am I? Child welfare and attendance. So that would be Tim as well as Bill Hunley and also the IT department. The I Why is the IT department involved? Is that because Tim, you want to help me out
190on this question regarding it and their support? You're muted. Okay. So, yeah, I see that. Um, so it's a it's a uh it's a recording. It it goes to a recording and we monitor it. So, it is involved because we have more eyes on uh when the recording comes in. So, it's it's a anonymous tip line that that's recorded. We get we get a a print out and we also get the recording. So, that's why it is involved. So we have more people involved in in seeing these come in. So it's not an actual live person that I'm going to speak to. It's going to be a recording that I leave. Correct. Okay. Okay. Um and I I think you know we have a lot of programs in place but um I know and and
191and Dr. Apadaka or whoever else can help me. There was a student of ours at ABC who is doing a program called We Rise Above. Mhm. I would love to see if we can reach out to her and get her involved because I being an educator in the classroom, I've learned that kids learn from each other. They they they want to hear from their peers. And I think we have a wealth of knowledge right here in our ABC community with our students and they listen to each other. You can tell that they share share things on social media. I would love to work with her and see if we can get some kind of program going where she can come out to our schools, especially now virtual. you know, we don't have to go to
192the schools and do an assembly. We can do it all virtually. She can she she's already done this. If we can work with her and do that. Another one, I know that we um were working on uh cyber safety with our our little ones. I know that we have some programs. What What is the name of the program that we use to teach kids about cyber safety? the staff know no I'm sorry it doesn't come to come to my mind at this point but I I can find that out for you. I think I think that would be really great and to make sure we're showing that to all of our students in the elementary. Um I know of a of a nonprofit that's called Safe Surfing. They do an amazing job. I've worked with
193them before and it's at their level and it really speaks to them. Um but I think we we need to start at the younger years and build it up as they see it. You know, they hear it over and over again. And then are are are we looking at our our policy? Are we not making any recommendations for policy changes to our policy? Is that what I heard you say, Dr. Sue? Yes. Um, we are making a change to AR, which is our board policy administrative regulations 5145.7. Okay. There's a couple recommendations and I I know we've already worked on this, but on page 59, the first paragraph, uh, last sentence, a supervisor administrator who receives a harassment complaint shall promptly notify the coordinator or superintendent. I'd like to make it both. I'd like to
194make it both that the the superintendent and the coordinator know that. Um, are we going on to 5145.7? Yes. This is an information item. I don't think we're making changes right here right now, are we? I'd like to see those recommendations made so that when it comes to action, it's already done. We'll end up spending time debating this when it becomes an action item. So, I feel like we'll have this discussion all over again if we do it now. So, I'd like for all of us to consider really carefully reviewing this policy. I think we all share um the idea that, you know, we care about our students and we absolutely want to continue to enhance measures to help keep them safe and supported in our schools. Um so again, you know, it's anformational item.
195I like for you to take into consideration the public comments, the discussions that we've had throughout the summer and um into today and when it does become an action item that we voice our suggestions, recommendations, opinions, etc. Okay, I I I will I will stop asking my questions, but I I just want to make a comment that in previous meetings, we've had board members who have gone 20 minutes long asking questions. So, I would hope that the next meeting that I I get time to make my recommendations. Thank you, Madam President. So, I mean, we still have that option. I'm still going to go through the list. So, if people want to continue with questions, you're more than ha you can. I mean, notice that it is 10:09 and so we have about 20 minutes
196left of this meeting before we extend it. Okay. So, Madam President, may I continue or do I need to defer to another board member? It's up to you, Vice President Mendoza. Okay, there's just one more and I think um uh on page page 63, recordkeeping. The superintendent or designate shall maintain a record of all reported cases of sexual harassment to enable the district to monitor, address, and prevent repetitive harassing behavior in district schools. I would like that to be part of a quarterly report like with the Williams complaint. And that's it, Madam President. Thank you so much. Thank you. I would like to have um ask our director Melinda Ortiz to voice um what she put in the chat. I don't know that the chat is available or visible to the public. I think that
197would be good for Melinda Ortiz to answer. Yes, absolutely. We do offer cyber safety training. Um in fact, we require it for all elementary age students. Every year we do this training. um we've been doing it for years and our teachers as well as our principles uh sign off that all students have gone through the training. Typically it's done in the month of October I believe. Thank you. You're very welcome. At this time, we'll move over to board clerk U. Sorry about that. Thank you, Madame President. And um I want to thank our um you know, Dr. Zitlo and Tim Catelan and Dr. Christina Weise and Melinda Ortiz for your presentations. Uh it's very reassuring to know that we do have um good practices in our board policy. Um I have few questions. Um and
198yeah I'm waiting for the data of um data of the the reports that have been made in the past few years. But um meanwhile my question is what happens when um you know for the the reports right when what what happens when the reports does doesn't get reported on time and it's reported after like a year or two years later what is our responsibility? We're still responsible for our students safety. And so if students give us a concern or a complaint about anything that's happened, we still go through the same process of investigation as well as connecting with the students and parents to kind of talk about exactly what their concerns are and find some resolution for students. That is our our job no matter the timeline in which it happened to students. That's that's
199really reassuring to know. Um and I know that as far as the results are concerned, I mean it's just a fine line how much you know which case goes to the police, which case the school handles and who has the authority to punish. But in you know these cases um it's pretty tough call to to have that result. Punish who? and seems like that that that punishment or the consequences doesn't satisfy um both sides. How do you handle those uh tough cases that's that's you know not like really clear and you know because we're talking in particular for student to student we do have fural laws that protect both students rights and so we're not allowed to talk directly about the consequences of students But we are having the right to be humane. And so
200I think for the most of our counseling and counseling teams are in position to talk to parents about things that we can help correct. You know, things we have supports on our school staff in terms of nursing as well as counselors um that are available to support students. And so our remedy is really to provide supports inside and outside of schools. So generally our most of our counselors and all of our counselors have PPS credentials that are also taught about how to support students and so we have a of support on our sites but again we must preserve the rights of students and I understand I'm a parent I have daughters you know I I I understand of wanting to know what the consequences are for students but as custodians of student records it's imperative
201that we follow FURPA laws um to ensure that the rights of students are not violated That brings to my other question. You know, kids are kids. And I just saw a documentary where um pre-teen uh depression rose, it tripled teen um this is with a G generation, the teens that are today's teens and and the teenage uh depression doubled mainly the social media, right? And so my concern is I know there's a lot of clubs in school on campuses but how safe is it for you know uh teen youth to share about some of their experiences with another teen. I'm just concerned about the confidentiality and the protection. What would you recommend? That was one of my questions in terms of us teaching our students about their digital footprints. I think oftent times our students
202are unaware that whatever they put into social media is a forever footprint. And so that's why we've been working with our counseling teams to actually directly create commercials and infomercials for our students within the school day to kind of talk about how do they protect themselves from social media, protect their social input because it has dire effects for our students. Colleges look at those, employers look at those and these are records that cannot be embraced. And so in our nurturing thoughts for students, our thoughts are always how do we protect our students and even protect them from themselves. So that's why that's why my concern is if it's like a you know there's a there's so many clubs like CSF, Key Club as a service organization, but if there's a club where you can share
203some of this sensitive issues, is that something that's recommended? Absolutely. So, as of right now, our mental health providers and our school counselors um all provide multiple um demonstrations of how they're giving information about the digital footprints. I was just watching the presentation coming from Whitney High School um as they're going to be going into their classrooms to talk about digital footprints with their students. Um there are multiple things that we do in school to inform inform students. So we hope students are not absent. They're present um and present in both ways physically and mentally as we're presenting information to students in this virtual environment. That's so reassuring to know. So you're recommending that students who go through this experiences really need professional support who have credential and who has the training. That is my
204suggestion that we really use the mental health providers and our counselors that are that actually have credentials to support students. The resources within our district is what you mean. Absolutely. Between our psychologists and our school counselors as well as our mental health providers, there is multiple streams of support for students. What do you think about outsiders coming in to inter intervene or or to work with our kids? Well, I always have to look under the caveat of how are they professionally prepared for working with our students. As of right now, we do not have volunteers on campus and our co however um I don't think that we should use entities that are beyond or do not have the same amount of professional guidance as with our professionals that we have in our school campus. And
205so we worked in conjunction with them or under the guidance of our mental health providers that may be possible. But of course, we want to make sure that the professionals in the building um have the oversight of our students and know what's going to be best for our schools. [Music] Thank you very much, Dr. Krishna. That was very helpful. And I know that when the when you know any assault is reported, I mean by law and by our board policy, our principles and educators are bound to um do the investigation and follow through the protocol. Correct. 100%. Okay. Thank you very much. Member Abadaka. Thank you, Madam President, and please get comfortable. Uh, members of the public and my colleagues. So, if there's anybody here who's listening, maybe we need to extend the meeting. We're
206at 10:18. Madam President, I defer to you. Um well you know again this is anformational item I just want everybody correct the fact that you will be discussing this item again at the same time I know that people are passionate about this topic so let's let Mr. Aadaka finish and then we will con entertain the motion of extending the meeting. I'm not intro I'm not going to so I'll give you my word. I'm not introducing anything that's not new. If anything, I'm following up on comments that have already been made tonight and have been made in past board meetings. So, I'll leave it up to the respondents how long we we have to be here. Uh, however, I do want to say for members of the public and for my colleagues and um our our
207district administrators, I will be here as long as it takes. I will uh this is something that is very near and dear to my heart. Um not so much because it's a passion of mine. In fact, I don't like talking about this. It bothers me. It it keeps me from sleeping at night. And honestly, you know, um a few years ago, it kept me from being able to go to work. Um I don't like hearing about these things. Even the mere mention of it, whether we can validate them to be 100% true or not, anytime a minor is subjected to any kind of trauma or abuse, sexual or otherwise, it affects me. It always will. It always has. It always will. That said, I would ask the the uh the you know, if we have
208to extend it, we'll extend it. That's fine because we can. We have that ability. But I'll bring it up the next board meeting and the board meeting after that and the board meeting after that. And I'll bring it up on social media. I'll bring it up uh in conversations publicly and privately in between all of those until we no longer have children submitting public comments saying that they submitted reports of sexual either harassment or abuse to administrators, teachers, or otherwise in our school district. and that it went unchecked. So, I want to set that tone right off the bat. That said, thank you, Madam President. I appreciate your accommodation. I want to just set foundation here. Does anybody here on this call, district level, cabinet level, or board level, think that or disagree with the
209fact that inappropriate photos of a minor is a crime? Inappropriate videos of a minor are a crime. the possession of such, whether you're an adult or a minor, is a crime. If you disagree with that, then that's a whole another discussion in board meeting. We mentioned the penal code tonight. We mentioned the fact that some some some students post things that, you know, that's inappropriate that they pictures they took on social media. Okay, I'm not talking about that. All of this originated from a click, a private group at a high school that not only received inappropriate photos and videos, but shared them, disseminated them, and printed them, okay? Not just outside of school, but also within school hours at a school event, at a football camp. And I'll leave it at that. So for me
210my question is how many people whether it's students whether it's coaches administrators supervisors assistant coaches whatever their title is ever since this came up months ago how many have at the very least been put on paid leave for review do we have a number at all at any schools without going into I'm talking general in our district. Has anybody been put on paid leave pending a review or investigation? Dr. Apadaka, are you asking about the case in particular that you referred to? I'm asking about anybody anybody in general at any at any high school or middle school in our district. Have there been any administrators or supervisors, assistant coaches, classified, non-classified, certificated, non-certificated that have been put on leave pending a review or investigation? Yes, we have done that with any cases where people have
211been accused so that we can investigate the allegation. Okay. I'm not going to ask you for details because I imagine you don't have them. However, I would like them to be provided to the board if Thursday if not by Thursday notes but to the public for the next board meeting. Um, and I think that it would also be helpful without obviously revealing names because personnel records I understand um, you know, we we do have to, you know, respect privacy especially if they're um, vindicated. Um, but I think the public should know that also in 2017 there were allegations which were widespread. Again, I won't go into details. However, as a board member, I can tell you that for me, I had never in a million years imagined that we would have a parent and family
212members um come to several board meetings to make accusations to then, which is not the fault of the district, to then have the district attorney or the deputy, whoever it might be from from justice in LA County, dismiss the case not on the merits but rather the excuse was they were too busy. So I have to ask while I understand we are not a law enforcement agency and I do acknowledge the fact that we do fully cor cooperate with law enforcement when asked by law enforcement. I have to ask as policy which was mentioned tonight but I'd like this on the record for for the public as well. Do we then if there's if there's something that comes to us, do we then refer that uh complaint whether it's a mandated reporting calling the 800
213number and they take our name or information and then we never hear from them again. But if there's something credible where we have pictures, we have videos, do we then refer that to the local PD, uh the local DA? Um, do we then refer that to law enforcement as a district as uh not just policy, but I'm asking as practice? Yes, law enforcement is involved as well as referral to CPS if there is any accusation um about a minor involved with uh any adult. without going into detail, not not for tonight, but for the next meeting or for Thursday notes for the public, how many of those referrals have actually resulted in any outcome? Um, and I understand we're dealing with minor, so maybe you can't provide that, but I I'll say this, and I've
214got I've got pages and pages of notes. Um, we have we have a choice tonight as a board, and I'll save you all the time, so we have to, you know, we don't have to vote to extend it. I'll make it very simple. We either believe the young people who have called in and submitted their public comments, their parents, their family members, or those especially those who have reached out to us because I'm not the only board member who has received phone calls, text messages, and emails. I know this for a fact, right? So we either believe them when they say I reported this and nothing happened or I reported this at my school site and nothing happened. My position has been it was reported at the school site and it was resolved at the
215school site. That's why it never made it to the district. So I would propose even though this is an information item that before it becomes an action item, we include consequences and we discuss with labor and we discuss with our labor groups the consequences for failing to to do obviously your mandated reporting but also failing to notify not just a superintendent but the entire board that there was a student or a parent who made an allegation of sexual abuse or in this in this particular case which was shared tonight and over the several meetings that we've had of several students being in possession of photos and videos that were explicit and that as we said earlier is a crime. It's child pornography and yet these students are still in our schools. We have to come
216up with consequences. We have to put them in the policy, not just say that, but enforce it and make it clear to parents and and their children that if we come across a student who's in possession of again inappropriate photos or videos of their peers, they are subject immediately to disciplinary action. at the very least a suspension pending an investigation and frankly expulsion from our school district. If they're on a permit, they're gone. If they're from within our district, they're expelled. They have to find a new school district. That's what we need. That's what I'm seeking. And frankly, literally over the 200 plus parents and students and former students that I've spoken to over the last three months, nothing less is acceptable. you can fill in the blanks. Um, and I'm sorry, Madam President, for
217being so verbose, but I'm tired of hearing about this. We have so, again, we have so many other things to deal with, and I know that there isn't one person on this board that thinks any of this is acceptable. We all have different ways of how to address it. We all have different ways of how to mitigate it. But at the end of the day, if we have folks, if we have students who are victims at any grade level that come forward and they're credible, they're gone. And then we refer them to law enforcement. And and I think there should be severe penalties. Again, consult please with our labor groups and uh with our management groups, but there should be severe consequences for administrators, teachers, and anybody else in any other capacity who's employed by
218our district for failing not only to to to report it. Um but also to make sure that you know the student and the parent um you know doesn't have their rights violated um either board board-wise, policy-wise um or or or state or federally. Uh and that's all I have. I'm done. Thank you. Thank you. At this time, I'd like to have a motion to extend our board meeting given that we are not finished with our agenda. A movement. I'll second that. Nishi. Okay. Is everybody in favor? I opposed. Okay. Well, I'd like to suggest a fiveminut break before we go another hour. Everybody agree? Agreed. Thank you. Five minute break. With apologies. Thank you. [Music] Okay, we are back. We're videoing. I see. Are you on Chris? Present. Madame President. Okay, let's continue. Um, we'll
219move on to board member Nishi. Do you have any comments? Yes, I do. So, I don't think any of the board members in this room deny um number one that we are concerned with all of these calls, all these allegations, all of these situations. Something happened, right? Um, I have a daughter and if something like anything like what is described in any of these situations ever happened to her, there is nobody that could stop me from going after that person, whoever it would be, male or female, um, and just wreaking revenge. Okay, that's that's the father in me that would fight for whatever to make sure my daughter wasn't hurt or harassed or endangered or anything like that. Um, and I don't think I said any of our board members. Uh, and I very much
220sympathize for the speakers that have spoken today repeatedly. I I don't have the freedom to say anything I want all the time. Unfortunately, that's just the way the rules work. Um, so there's another part of me that also is out there and I'm I'm a lawyer and uh um there's something called the law and the legal definition. I know there's a big difference between what we feel in our heart and what the law is and what we can actually do in these situations. I remember when we worked on this agenda way back when and you see all these little blue things here from the the agenda that we worked on. I micromanaged each word thinking this is my daughter that we're talking about here. This is our families that we're talking about here. And if
221anybody ever says that I didn't do everything that I could to stop this this stuff from happening, I would be extremely upset. And I'm not going to go into the other words that I could be using here. Um, but again I have to say that I'm a lawyer that must follow the law whether I like it or not. It may not be my feeling but it's the what I must follow. Um so first off in terms of some of the remedies here uh data uh I don't think there is any issue here regarding the data but I'm sure since we have have this data all the time let's have it published let's put it on the net and so there's no guessing and wondering was it reported wasn't reported we can easily correlate the data
222and put that right on the net not of the specific person's name we're not doing that we're doing the statistics how are we performing as the district in terms of these issues. Um, and that's I'm sure okay I am sure staff here and I totally apologize to the staff that some board members said that you're too busy to follow up with any of these complaints. I am sure that none of you are too busy to follow up because all of you I know have families and feel very strongly about this issue. So that a board member would accuse you guys of being too busy. I know there's a lot of busy things, but this is one of the most important things that we would uh be doing. And I know you would never fall on
223your duties. In fact, I'll bet you that if you ask about this uh in terms of a policy, if anybody tried to put this under the rug, anything like this, um what would happen to the individual or the employee that tried to put sweep it under the rug? Dr. uh Zitlo, what would happen? Would they get to keep their job if they swept it under the rug? If they said it was too busy? Yeah. No, we would investigate um that as well and we would follow through with um appropriate consequences for not following through with their job in reporting or um investigating something significant like this. And um it would definitely impact that employee. So if somebody didn't report Doesn't our rule say that they have to report? Wouldn't they potentially lose their job? There
224would be legal consequences for not reporting, which is potentially a loss of a job and potentially going to jail. Yes, actually. Okay. So, if you sweep it under the rug, you're going to lose your job potentially. But if you report it, there are no negative consequences for reporting. I mean, you don't get any extra points if you have more or less of these situations here because you're trying to solve a problem. We never go and get mad at the people who are trying to solve the sexual harassment problem because that's like getting mad at the reporter, right? We don't get mad at the reporter for reporting. They don't suffer any job loss because they reported sexual harassment. They might even get a reward for reporting something like that, right, Dr. Zitlo? We don't have any
225kind of rewards, but um there are no consequences unless they intentionally um reported something knowing that it wasn't untrue. Right. So lying is very bad in a report, right? Correct. Correct. Um if they were to intentionally uh mislead or lie, there are consequences with the law for that as well. So this is one of those situations where I think it's um having a student in the actual you know maybe a p a student not just giving a report like we usually have but maybe sitting with us to give us input as to what it is like to be a student in the district and how our policies actually play out in real in the real terms. um even though it would add a little bit of time even if they're not a voting member to
226have that kind of unfiltered input might be a benefit to our board. I I think vaguely remember somebody gen up suggesting something like that in this kind of situation like I don't know all of the situations that are happening at the schools I only know through my daughter and uh um because I know through my daughter I may to to provide information but if we actually had the direct source you know she doesn't tell me everything all the time either so um that might be a thing um so we are working on the policy I remember microman managing the previous policies, but I'm not a this kind of attorney anyway. So, I'm glad we're going to have experts to look at it. But sometimes there's an issue on difference between policy and the actual implementation
227and what we can actually do. Um, so I know that uh we're going to do our level best to make sure that we have no situations like this in the future. Um, but we're going to do it within the law. There's a lot of restrictions that we have that we can't actually do. Uh, and that was described in these things. By law, we cannot do many of the things that people want us to do because we're not a law enforcement agency. Um, we can report a lot. We can encourage a lot. Um but in terms of the actual remedies that we have and levers that we have at our disposal besides firing uh or transferring which we have done and there's records of us firing and transferring and uh disciplining and suspending people for these
228acts um we will be doing that and I'm sure there's a little bit of room for improvement. So I'm sure we're going to do that and I trust that we will follow the procedures, do what we can to improve it. We'll have as many minds as we can have on it. So maybe we can have the legislative review committee. Is if there's actually is there time enough between now and the next uh agenda to have the legislative review committee look at this? We have a committee, right? We have a procedure and policy. The way we do this, um is there time to have them review through this? We could have them review through this. Um it was updated not long ago. So looking at the other pieces that are being recommended, I'd have to see
229if we could get it in um to our next meeting or if it would have to be October. Okay. But we need to do it right anyway. I mean, so I mean, the issue is I'm not saying that we didn't do it right before, but we ha we're going to have um the lawyers look at the specific language and um make some additional changes. And then we would have the real-time people maybe even students um look and see how that will actually directly affect their uh lives and the issues of reporting, right? Sometimes students don't feel uh comfortable reporting to administrators. Um I know my teenager doesn't tell me everything and she might not report everything to me. Uh but having those mechanisms in place that are peer related um peer related but not necessarily
230not not monitored um but people who are actually um looked at with experts and monitored carefully. um maybe that would be a potential way for our next agenda. And so I I'll just close with um again I I think that uh uh this is a serious issue. I definitely sympathize and empathize and understand what's happening here. But the law is the law and um I have a whole career of of doing that. And sometimes I'll fight to change the law, but that's and we'll do what we can here, right here and right now. But uh um I trust that we can implement these things and we have the motivations in place. Now that we've heard these comments, these these comments, now that we've heard everything, we will act and we will be better. That's that's
231all I can say. Thank you for the time. What member saying? Thank you, President. You know, um I guess I have to confess if you never experienced before and you can't speak up for them. When I was um elementary school actually, I personally saw the things what happened to the kids. This is talking about this is talking about elementary school level and they don't. So when we talk about whole night, we're talking about teenagers. Well, the thing about this can be started from K to 12 and what happened those young kids age that I saw that before and I don't know what to do and it's still in my heart and I say I wish I tell my mom this is person did this to the to this person you know it just when I
232heard from the fa when I saw the Facebook people complain what you do what what do you do as a board member you should have called right away there's a fine line there what we had happened before this number one I remember as a board member I would say the police know that what happened to teacher or what happened to student we don't point at one person the only the student could happen to the teacher too can be both way not just one way so we we talk about social media we talk about Facebook Instagram Twitter can be creative way to connect with one another but social media can be problem for several reason but however tonight we focus to me is what I heard heard that Miss Williams talk about when I heard the
233certain high school parent talk about it and I'm thinking what I had done in the past what do we do as far I was told and we know police teacher suspended or student got suspended it can be both way but I'm thinking the lesson to me today is what do we do in the future what can we do there's a video is a highlight talk about who got your back I like the word who got your back we were talking about Dr. wise you're talking about we want to create a safe environment for our student then I think the highlight for today is we got you back we got both back we got the teachers back we got the the children back too there's some teachers also blaming sexual assault or something but they didn't
234do it affect the rest of their life and then can't happen to children which I personally saw that and I think we need to focus on that what can we do today we we need to make sure All of us here tonight, all of us here I say we play the critical role in here, the school board member, superintendent, teacher, parent, caregiver and and mentors. You know, we need to prepare our children and I prepare my young my grandchildren for the spirit on going to school in an effort to facilitate an open dialect to have them to talk. Maybe we should some of the kids they don't want to talk about it. Maybe we should. They don't want to use a cell phone because the minute you use a cell phone, maybe they're on the
235record. Maybe we created a hotline phone in the school, a red one in some place that kids have a chance to call. You know, I I really want to say the final word. I don't want to fingerpoint each others. You didn't do it. What you should do? I don't know. And I think what we're going to do is how we going to solve this issue. We got you back. I like the words. We got your back. and we would have worked together not finger upon the staff or not finger upon the parents. I think I like to have a meeting even with Williams. I think we need to get a lawyer to solve the problem. It see it seems like she still has so much in behind that as a healthc care fever. That's not
236healthy just like me. That's not healthy. Even my mom didn't know what happened to my life before for a long time. I couldn't do it but I didn't do it. So I want to end up today. Do not fingerpoint each others that do as a critical role for us right now. We got you back and let's work together. Thank you president. Thank you. I will just quickly say also that you know we we hear this issue and we can all say that you know the fact that it has raised tremendous awareness um and consciousness about this issue will allow us to move forward. You know ultimately as board members it's our job to adopt policies and move the district forward. Um I think now it the responsibility lies on our staff and I'm going to
237say that you know specifically at the site level that they improve their practices and that they improve their culture so that students do in fact feel safe. You know unfortunately we can't change the past but we can absolutely have a say as to what happens today moving forward. Um, so I challenge I challenge our staff to to really bring about positive change and use this as an opportunity to improve school culture because I think a lot of our schools already, you know, are doing a lot. Um, but again, here's, you know, challenges present opportunities. Okay, with that, um, I think I need to make a correction. We did vote to extend the meeting, but we didn't say by how long. So, I think an assumption was probably an hour. So we will um extend the
238meeting to 11:30. Is everybody okay with that? Yes. Anybody oppos? Madam President. Okay. We will move on to item 1.41, Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. Um and at this point I will um defer to Vice President Mendoza. Thank you, Madam President. So, um, I'm I'm very happy to see this as an information item and hopefully bring it back next board meeting as an action item. And I just want to share some information about Hispanic Heritage Month. So, the United States Congress approved public law 90-498 in 1968 to designate the week of September 15th as National Hispanic Hispanic Heritage Week. The week-long celebration was extended in 1988 by Commerce to a month-long celebration September 15th to October 15th effective the following year. The September October period covers a wide range of independence days for the five Latin
239American countries. Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates the history and culture of the nation's Hispanics and Latino. And I'm going to put in their Latinx because a lot of our community identifies with Latinx now and acknowledges their influence on politics, economy, and the social and cultural life throughout the United States. Hispanics and Latino Latinx Americans have distinguished themselves with their achievements in cultural, economic, political, industrial, commercial, scientific, and social fields. and the contributions of Hispanic and Latino Latinx Americans have contributed in countless ways to the social fabric of the ABC Oops, sorry, I was already making a resolution to our communities, the state of California, and the United States. And so I would ask that this be placed on our next board meeting as an action item. And for the years that I've been here, we've never
240had a resolution to support this. So I would like this to be our first year. Um, and I would also like to include Dr. Sue, if you can include in our resolution the percentage of student population that identifies with Hispanic or Latino Latin X in our district, that would be great. Um, and I just want to I think this is a great start um to start off the school year with Hispanic Heritage Month and May maybe looking forward at the calendar and looking at all the other different cultures that we celebrate and actually doing resolutions for those. So, if um I can help out with that, I'm more than happy to help out with that. Thank you, Madam President. Okay, let's move on to board review. Yes, thank you, Madame President. Um, you know, Latin
241American, Mexican-American, Central American or South American, I mean, you know, all speak Spanish. And, um, I grew up with 95% Latinos, Chicanos in my elementary school. That's all I know. and um they are a um very very important community for our economy and for our country and especially California. And I just want to um you know remember Caesar Chavez uh we have a Caesar Chavez uh you know Avenue in Los Angeles you know uh he's a hero great role model you know to really advocate for the the the farming you know community the union I mean the farming industry is such a important you know uh industry in California So he really was a you know, you know, paved the road. So a time to remember. And then also I just wanted to include that
242in um our community um we all the minorities make up the whole. I don't know if you understand what I'm saying is we have the the Asians, we have the Chinese, the Korean, we have the Vietnamese, Cambodian, um we have the Asians, and then we have the Latinos, you know, and we have a small, you know, African-American, and we have a very small white American, you know. So, what I'm saying is that we are very diverse. We are very diverse and I think that's why um for us to you know have that advisory committee is so important because uh we we could celebrate Latinoameans, Asian-American you know and we had a lot of public comments today but this even in the CSBA Abby I've been on the meeting for the every Sunday to get the
243ethnic studies in our curriculum and it was it's really really encouraging and we're I know they had a meeting you know with um CDE E yeah yeah and uh it was a great you know result so we're doing it we're all the public I was thinking in my heart that hey they're really um you know advocating what we have already done we made the advisory committee you know uh you know Sophie's on the the board she is the in the on the board of Abisma advocating for ethnic studies and that's She's been mentioning ethnic studies at ethnic studies and folks it's happening. It's happening. It's going to go on our curriculum and you know by 2020 uh graduating class of 2026 it's going to be a requirement for graduation. Okay. I know that in that
244ethnic studies uh Latino Americans they have you know uh uh Mexican-American, Central American, South America, you know, South American they have couple chapters. So I'm sure we'll learn more and I would love to learn more about different diversity. It just helps me as a person to be whole. Thank you. That is the end of my report, Madam President. Thank you. We'll move on to Dr. Abalaka. Thank you, Madam President. I've got my little rancherto hat on, my cowboy hat uh because my mom's from a very very very very rural uh ranch uh in Chihuahua named uh Matachik Chihuan in in Mexico instead of Matach. And um this is a source of pride for us. You know, she met my father in El Paso. He's a Texan, so I wore the hat for him as well.
245Um and uh you know I think that there's there's absolutely uh you know no reason for any of our students uh uh which I' I've come across every now and then especially those who may have um you know more recently being been acculturated to um to the US and to what we do here and um uh I want to say you know felic and uh because I'm from Chihuahua I can say we are Chihuahua we are Mexico but also So, uh, thank you to the many, um, Latino, uh, countries and Hispanic, uh, countries, um, who, uh, who whose immigrants have shaped who we are, not even as a country, but even here, you know, in, um, in in Southern California. So, um, I just want to say, um, Mexico, and thank you, Madam President. Thank
246you. Next we have uh Bournemishi. I'll be try to be quick because I know it's getting late. So I think our history is very intertwined, right? I mean I was born in East LA and just down the street from Boil Heights where uh Caesar Chave Street was uh um when I literally used to walk there all the time and um the Gomez family used to kept our house during the war. So where everybody else had to sell their house, the Gomez family um kept it and after the war because housing was very tight, we had I think maybe 20 people in a two-bedroom house. I think we would have broken all the the building codes. Um what I mean to say is that our culture and our histories are all make us all richer. I
247think that uh it's it's important that we study each aspect because I think it helps everyone in this and I think uh uh it's not just an issue of academics. It's an issue of um of making a better person and a better future for our country. So that's it. Thank you, Miss Madam President. Uh board member say I did have to move after the um the the policy but I have to separate them. So here's my cat. Um um well for myself actually my entire career is in the uh Hispanic area Hispanic and African-American area. My life has been in linguual content. I end up retired state the area. So most my students are from I would say 60 60% is from the is Spanish background and I would say about 30% is from African-Americans.
248So um I was like raised in there and and and lived there. But I do want to say I came from Taiwan. I've only been I was like 19 20 years old. I started learn English and I so I see how a foreigner struggle went through. Even today I still have a lot of issue. My kids always laugh at me. You Chinese driving crazy. But however I you know and I have a really great experience uh with the absma we were talking about a lot of ethnic studies. That's why I was pushing our school back couple years ago. I say we must have that. And I want to special thanks to our princ superintendent Dr. Sue starting the ethnic study uh starting from a teacher school and originally we were Dr. We were planning to
249go all the high school. Unfortunately, after COVID 19, we were not able to. But you know during the XMA two years with all the different board member and we with the California State War Association president along with the Hispanic representative and African-American representative, we learned each other's more and we talked each other's more. And I can see there's a change there. You know today we talked about so many issues so unfair but now the door is open now open for all for you and me for the student and the parent come to talk about it and then we trying to work through it so I want to thank you president um you brought a lot of issue there and about fairness not fair and uh we are open the door we're working towards that goal
250I want the community to um give us a chance let us work together it is a critical stage with you I mean Not just the board member needs to know. You need to we need to all work together to take care of our kids. Like I just said, we got you back. Thank you, President. Take my head off. Um, thank you. And also, you know, again, um, Hispanic Heritage Month is a recognition and celebration of all the contributions Latinos have made to American society and culture. As was mentioned, it is celebrated from September 15th to October 15th. And I just wanted to add a quick fact that did you know that 60.6 million um is the number of the Latino population in the United States as of July 1st, 2019. Um making people of Latino
251origin the nation's largest ethnic and racial minority. Um Latinos constituted 18.5% of the nation's total population. And um I highlight that because the above facts are available thanks to the public's invaluable participation in the US census. So we appreciate the information shared by each respondent as we continuously count um and measure America's people's places and um economy. So I urge our public and our everyone to be counted and participate in the 2020 census. I also agree with the suggestion that was made to put together a diversity celebration calendar. I think we all enjoyed um last year where we were invited to participate um for the various activities that the schools put together for um Hispanic Heritage Month, Black History, um I don't know if we celebrated Women's History Month, but I know that we participated
252in in a variety um Chinese New Year, etc. So, I don't know if we want to task that to the diversity committee that we've put in place. Um, but again, these things are very important because acknowledging and celebrating our own culture allows us to appreciate other cultures more deeply and you can see that reflected in our own board. Okay, with that we move on to board members reports. And you know I'm going to take um board clerk you's suggestion and start from I was trying to keep it organized so let me start from the bottom. So we will start with board member say. Wow thank you. Well well we I had a really great time in the past couple weeks. Well not just visit the the students and teacher we I had really the last
253week I think was a Friday. Um I me and board member Ernie and we went to visit a couple elementary school and I want to public to know you know it seems like our teachers stay home. know some of our teachers stay in the school and we went to this classroom. The classroom is prepared for the reopening. We are trying they're trying it as I mentioned hand gill the sink the water everything is ready there for uh ready prepared for student coming back and we went to the classroom there's some teachers there and you know when I was there I see how teacher present the class in front of them is a big huge um computer monitor there has all the you can see the faces out there and they they're watching it and next
254to them they have two other laptop in front of them one the program and the other one they're talking it one person operate all three things. It's not that easy. This is the kindergarten teacher that I I was watching observing that um know so teachers in there I also worry about the teacher in the room. I say who's watching that? You know how they they all into their own room and the big school, right? And they say, "Oh, they have SIA watched." And they also check them in and checked out. We also saw they have a new uh um the automatically temperature checking it. When you walk in, they take your temperature within two seconds. They know that uh normal temperature, abnormal temperature, then they will let them in. So, we are preparing that. I
255want the uh the resident know that the school has to be prepared for reopening anytime. And please uh believe us and trust us. Let's work together. Um thank you um President Rios allow me to talk. That'll be my end report. Thank you. Thank you. Donuts. Bought donut. I'm sorry. I bought the donut. People say the m where'd you get the donut? Do you get a donut money from your um from your campaign? I say no. You know all of us in here when we travel local area, we don't get the uh gas and reimbursement. Our donors is we pay our own pocket. Sorry about professor I mean Dr. O that I interrupting. I apologize I missed that part. Thank you. Okay. Next we move on to board member Nishi. Um really quick teachers are working
256really hard. I've seen it. Um I've seen some pretty amazing teaching and I see how our district is supporting those teachers. I see the huge barriers, not just the minimum, but some based upon science to keep them safe. It's it's pretty flexible. So, some teachers who don't feel comfortable are not coming in and the ones that are are. And uh you can tell that there's a lot of love from the teachers to the students, I mean, they don't have to be there, but they're there. So, I'd like to shout out to them. Also, uh to the students that have sat through this whole thing this entire time, I think we can learn a lot from them. It's their environment, their place. They're they're in the thick of things and they're uh affected by the direct
257policies that we make. And you know, if we gave them a little louder voice um part of the dis rather than uh separate from the DAS, that might be an interesting uh concept to put out there. Um so that's uh that's basically all I have. You're doing a great job, President Rios. Um, this was a good meeting where I think we kind of uh went through a lot of the issues and uh I appreciate that. It's not easy to to uh to corral all the crazy cats that we are. So, thank you. I gave up on the idea of finishing this meeting early. Okay. Next, we have board uh member Dr. Apadaka. Thank you, Madam President. The hat's already on, so I'm going to keep it on. Um, I just wanted to say to to
258members of the public, um, this board, again, we always debate. We always put things out there. The hallmark of a very healthy democracy is having debate. If we rubber stamped anything that came to us that was sensitive, um, you should worry. Uh, but the fact that we take the time to actually tease this out, whatever it might be, is a sign that your board members are working for you. There's not one board member who is sitting here. And maybe, okay, even though Maynard's, you know, he called in sick. I think he's playing hookie. He's probably, you know, in Palm Springs. He's getting ready to play golf tomorrow, but don't tell him I said that. Um, you know, he's really not. He's actually sick. But there's not one board member elected right now who does not
259care about your well-being. There's not one board member right now that does not care about the voices of parents and their rights to make sure that their children have a quality free public education. Um, I want to make sure that you all know that as board members, this is not something that we sign up for because we enjoy the conflict. It's not something we sign up for because we get massive paychecks. We really don't. Especially after taxes, we get nothing. Um, we do it because we care about our kids. We care about our stakeholders, our community. And uh in reality, I can't think of anybody um I had this conversation actually a few weeks ago with with a state legislator who said that you could not pay them enough to sit on a local school
260board. Um and I think that says a lot. So I hope that all of you know that we we care about you. We're looking out for your best interest and um you have the right to continue to come back during public comments. you have the right to contact any one of us and you have the right to contact your local school um as well as your your superintendent. That said, I will say um I wasn't expecting to let that out tonight, but I did. Um if you could please keep my family and my mother uh uh in your thoughts, your prayers, your well wishes, your good vibes, your good juju, whatever. Um you know, as the outlook isn't so good, uh with her kidney failure. Um uh with that said, uh I I really do
261look forward to seeing you guys all in person very soon. And please remember the fact that um there's not one person here that does not care about you or your well-being. And um I have to say that especially during the rhetoric of election season, um there's not one administrator or or principal who doesn't care about your well-being. If you ever feel that way, then just bring it up. But, uh, we're here for you. This isn't our first rodeo and and we're okay with, uh, with you coming forth to talk to us about what's troubling you. That's what we signed up for, and that's what we'll continue to do, uh, as long as you continue to allow us the privilege to serve you as your public servants. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. And yes, all
262the best to your mom. Um, next we will hear from Border uh, clerk U. Thank you, Madame President. Um, I want to commend the people, our community uh, advocates who are passionate and who really love our community and concern and they came out to speak and um, many of them spoke on the the ethnicity. Um but you know we just um formed the advisory committee as I shared before diversity unity um ethnicity advisory committee I don't know if I said that right and if any of you are interested the CDE is still accepting the public comment to advocate and it's still accepted until September 30 please do so because we're advocating to put the ethnic studies in and I I think that's going to be huge for our children to learn about their um background
263and their root. Yeah. And also I want to thank our uh staff Dr. Christina Wise uh Tim Catlin and Dr. Zidlo Melinda um for you know sharing about our policy in place. uh nothing is perfect and um even though we have the policy you know we're there's still going to be pain things happen on social media things happen through different factors and I would I would really like to encourage our community to um to work together I know there's pain and sometimes when we have pain when we're hurt we can lash out at each But if we can come together to to work together because I know for a fact that when the the the the reports come in, the principles, they're on the case because I called and I found out they were investigating
264the whole week. So I do want to encourage our staff to continue keep on keep up with all all your hard work. But we always have room for improvement because times are changing. We can always try to foster and nurture an environment to encourage our children, our employees to to make the report. I know that even in our handbooks, I know that Mr. Walker has, you know, the TV announcement, he does he he has his thing through the TV announcement, through the handbook, the campaign is there. Campaign is there. And I know that our educator, they're doing their best. They're doing their best. If there's room for improvement, we need to give them a positive shout, you know, accusation, um, accusation of something that they are already doing is not healthy because accusing them of
265something that they're already doing because if they weren't doing, if they were not investigating, they would not be working right now. They would not be working, you know. So, let us keep it positive, folks. And, uh, our board members, we will work harder, too. We will work harder. keep our ears open. Uh we want to support our hardworking staff, you know, and it's a we're very fortunate to have Ernie Nishi, you know, a free legal advice on the that, you know, advisory board to work on that board um policy. He's the one who worked on it and he's really adamant. I could feel feel his his tension when he shared. So, if there's room for improvement, and I'm so glad to hear that something was added about social media because we didn't have that problem
26610 years ago or five years ago. This is a new thing. So, you know, we're all struggling. We're struggling parents and I hope our, you know, board members and staff can also have compassion on the parents, too. It's hard raising children these days. It's hard. It's tough, but we have to do it together, not finger point at each other. That's end of my report. Thank you, board member Mendoza. Board Vice President Mendoza, excuse me, president. So, again, I want to wish everyone a um happy Hispanic Heritage Month. Um you can see we're all wearing our our our our traditional Mexican attire um which I do every year and I'm glad Dr. Rios is joining me and and Dr. joining me this year. Um I do want to say happy birthday to board member Sophia Day.
267Today is her birthday. Sophistic Daniels. Um, I just want to make a couple things on my report. One, one and most important thing is the census is coming to an end and we got to make sure our communities fill out those forms because the funding does affect us as a district. Um, it affects our communities, affects our city. So, please please if you can get the word out that please fill out the forms. Um, I want to wish all our students and staff a happy uh school year. Um, we didn't get a chance to do that last time because our our board meeting went long. So, thank you. Uh, teachers, uh, I know I know what you're going through because I'm there with you in Zoom. I know Dr. Riosa and other board members are
268doing Zoom meetings all day long. Um, I ask everybody for grace because nothing's perfect when you're using you're using technology and the whole world's using at the same time. Be patient with our kids, be patient with our teachers. Um, we're going to have problems. They're going to come up every day, every week, but we'll get around them. And just, you know, just have patience with everyone. Um, we heard lots and lots of um, public comments today. Um, we heard from the Alpha Kappa Alpha, I hope I said that correctly, that they want to help us. They want to work with us. We heard about the GenUp. We've heard from um, we rise above and I think we have a lot of um, groups that want to help us in in moving forward. And I think
269as a board, we need to reach out to them because there's a wealth of knowledge there. Um, the next one is um, oh my goodness. I think I'm gonna take a little deep breath when I do this next one. This is my last one. And I think I'm going to take a leap of faith and say that I'm speaking for all elected officials when I say this. We are elected officials. We are public servants. We're elected by the people. We serve at the pleasure of the people. And our families support us. But our families are not the elected officials. they don't have the luxury of sitting here and and speaking up for themselves. Um so I just ask um that you respect our families, you respect our children, especially if they're minors. If you are
270going to go to any public place and you are going to criticize and you are going to name call an elected official, that's fine. That's what we signed up for. We knew that. But when you come to any government agency, public gathering and you attack and you say comments about our family, that's not acceptable. I'm sorry. I I've been in political life for many, many years. I've grown a very thick skin. And tonight when I had to go back into my house, I'm in the garage in my classroom and I had to apologize to my child who was watching and heard what a a a member of our community said. It was very hurtful. It's very hurtful. But luckily my my daughter has been in this life with us for the last 15 16 years
271and her her skin is grown thick but it shouldn't have to be. It shouldn't have to be. I ask everyone in our community that you can come, you can criticize, you can tell us a good job that we're doing. You can tell us we're not doing a good job. You can call me whatever name you want to. I will sit here and I will respect that. That is your right to come and say that. But when you say a comment about my daughter or any of my children or any of our our children on the board or any elected official child, that's not right. And we've lost what we were doing here. My child is also a student in this district. So I please ask respectfully that if you're going to come and comment that
272you don't comment on our children, they're minors also. That ends my board report. Dr. President, Dr. Thank you. Thank you. So I think in le of a board report I have more of a statement. Um how are we doing with time? Okay 10 minutes. So in June uh we discussed how challenges create opportunities. We presented a resolution that bolsters solidarity against social injustices. And so we created an equity diversity committee with the sole purpose of promoting social justice in our schools and our district as a whole. I want to acknowledge our board for the courageous acts and taking such action. Um later in August it was offered that we go one step further and create a position or office to oversee equity specifically and to not ask our current district staff to do this in
273addition to what they already do. We have created positions in the past. Um I believe equity is such an important and crucial topic. Um I was so happy to know that our community is so concerned and incredibly supportive of this move. um there is a need for a person who can focus on identifying disparities in our school programs and services and I mean we're all aware of them but creating ways for our district to address those gaps um we heard about those gaps today we heard about gaps diversity in our staff discipline outcomes and student representation um we are a good district so that's better uh next we welcome public comments I think that we need to clarify something regarding the July meeting um because I noticed it's come up almost every meeting. Um this
274was not a regular board meeting. It was a special meeting. Right before the meeting, we were given a directive by our governor that our schools in LA County could not reopen for in-person learning. There was no decision for us to consider. A decision was made for us and as a school district in LA County, we had to follow this order. it was an order. Um to not follow this mandate and consider another option would have absolutely created a problem for us. Um such as reopening. Um again reopening was not an option. Uh we had to make a motion at that meeting so that our staff could move forward and begin the hard work of preparing a distance learning plan. So I hope that that clarifies for people um the whole issue about that day. Um,
275lastly, when I was a seventh grade teacher, I had to start my year with a disclaimer to my young students that every adult person who came into my class was not a relative. You know, it would never fail that a male would walk in and they would ask, "Is that your husband? Is that, you know, but they were children. Um, I guess I didn't realize it would be in my interest to do so as a board member. I am not related to all people who have the last name Rios and um in any way serve the district. If that were the case, I would proudly announce that. Um I would ask that the assumpt that assumption not be made for any of us. Also, as cont constituents in our district, our families have every right
276to participate if they so choose. Um I want to praise all our board representatives for the courageous participation and welcome them to our board meetings. Um, we look forward to hearing for um from them and their reports at our next meeting. Um, with that, I want to say good night. Um, happy first day of fall. I wish all of you a very happy and fulfilled autumn season ahead. Board President, there's a couple public comments. Uh, what should we do? Second. We We're not there yet. We will get to the second comment section in a minute. So, um, our announcements. Our next regular board meeting will be Tuesday, October 6, 2020 at 7 p.m. virtually. Um committee meetings, we have finance and audit board advisory committee um on Thursday, September 24th um 6 p.m. That will
277also be virtual. Um legislative policy board advisory committee will be Wednesday, September 30th at 6:30 p.m. virtually. Um second public comment section at this time. Board clerk. Yes, we have couple board uh public comments. First, we have actually we had a hand up by Dana Garcia and Ray Gear. And then in the community, we have a um phone number that ends 441. So, we can start with um Ray Gear, Dana Garcia, and the phone number 441. Go in that order. Yeah. All right. Thank you. I just want to say happy Hispanic Heritage Month. Um um my mom was the youngest of 14 u from a family from Mexico and she taught kindergarten for 25 years and uh probably why I became a teacher. Um I wanted to make a comment about the discussion of the
278sexual harassment language. Um, I've been president for this is going on my 10th year. And I just want to let you guys know and the public know that I've never represented any individual who has had sexually inappropriate photos or videos or I've not represented any individuals who have uh had sexual harassment cases with students. Um, and just the thought of that is repugnant. Um, you know, to say that again, it's extremely distasteful and unacceptable. And so, I just want the public and the board to know that ABCFT works very closely with human resources to address even the hint of inappropriate contact uh, conduct and we deal with those issues in a swift manner. Um, I agree that the safety of our students is paramount and ABCFT works proactively to ensure that teachers know firm boundaries
279and that there are dire consequences for failing their primary objective, which is to teach students. Um, you know, most most union presidents won't admit it, but we do counsel uh teachers out of the profession when it's not not good for kids anymore. And I I probably counel out about a handful of teachers every year when it's you know we do it in a dignified manner so that they feel good about the decision but there are reasons why teachers need to leave the district and we do ABC has a history of doing this with a dignified in a dignified manner for teachers that need to leave and um you know I I think that's really key. I liked what Dr. Rios and the board worked on the the stronger board policy language uh to support these
280changes. Uh I totally agree with that and I I know all teachers would agree with that and I like the way Dr. Rios kind of summed it up. We're making positive changes to make a difference to the future. So, thank you. Okay, board clerk, you you're you're muted. So, I will go ahead and ask Dana. Okay. Go ahead. Yes. Dana, if you get unmute and All right. Uh, can you guys hear me? Yeah. Great. Um, so, uh, my name is Dana Garcia and I am Artisia High School's, uh, student representative. And, um, I just wanted to talk about a couple things. Um, first of all, I am currently enrolled in the ethnic and cultural studies class at my school. And, um, I can say so far I'm learning so much more about my culture and
281other cultures. And I think that, um, it should definitely be pushed to the other schools and to, um, not even just in our district, but every school. I think it's very uh, important. and I think it's a really good class. So, if there's any way to really push this um to all the schools in ABC school district, I really think that this would be a great opportunity for all students to learn. Um and also uh what I wanted to talk about was what Mr. uh Nishi talked about with having like a a student kind of speak with the board and talk about their experience and their life in the ABC school district. And um I know I would uh be defin I would definitely be interested in something like that and kind of speaking about
282um you know what goes on inside the school scene um as being a student from ABC for over 10 to 12 years of my life. And um I just think that you know since I am a school you know board representative I should be using my platform and using my voice. And um uh there was a trip, the Sacramento safari trip about two years ago that I attended and if I learned anything from that, it was that I needed to use my voice as a student in my community and uh you know in my state and in my area. So, I believe that um everything going on with the sexual harassment um I know people who were affected by this and I just really think that there needs to be justice and I believe that
283I could be a voice for the students, you know, as a board representative because I'm in this, you know, state to conversate with you guys, you know, monthly or weekly and be in touch. I just think that, you know, we really need student input and I think that um I would really really be interested in, you know, speaking with the board, you know, on behalf of other students and really just being involved and what I can do as representative because I would hate to have this opportunity and this platform and just this chance and just sit here and, you know, knowing what people want to be voiced, but you know, they're not really having so much like accessibility to things like this. So I would just uh like to offer myself as like you know
284being a representative of the students and not only my school but you know other schools as well if they would because I have friends from you know all over the district. So, I would just basically like to um kind of let you guys know that I would like to use my platform and I would like to use the place that I do have and the voice that I do have in this district because, you know, I do believe that I can uh not really make, you know, the biggest difference in the world, but be able to just uh contribute some help to, you know, my friends and fellow students to uh the board. And, you know, I know that you guys really do value student input. So, I would just like to be able to
285um offer that soon input for people that don't feel like their voice is loud enough uh because I do not mind, you know, speaking on behalf of others and helping others out. So, that was all I kind of wanted to add. So, thank you. Any more comments or clerk? You I don't see any more. Okay, with that, I'd like to adjourn the meeting in honor of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Vader Ginsburg, who spent a lifetime flourishing in the face of adversity before being appointed a Supreme Court Justice um where she successfully fought against gender discriminations and unified um the block for the court. So, in her honor, I'd like to adjourn. May I have a motion? So moved by Sophia second at least from me Ernie Nishi. Uh roll call please. Or should we do
286a unanimous? All in favor of adjourning the meeting say I. I. Any opposed? No. Okay. Good night everyone. Good night everybody. Good night. Thank you president. Oh happy birthday board member say happy birthday. Thank you. Won't let me leave. Thanks.