001okay it's 5 o'clock on February 27 2025 I'm going to call the policy of management subcommittee meeting to order can I get a roll call here BS draft here this is here Eric superintendent Che services okay this uh this meeting is being live streamed on Zoom for people to attend is there any public comment at this time seeing none hearing none we'll move on to the information on development on board policies presentation by Mr weard uh can you hear me okay hello can you hear me okay it says uh that I can't start my video because the uh the host has disabled it I just Ena it R oh great perfect but you can hear me okay great yes so I I didn't uh prepare a formal presentation about the district policies but basically District
002policies the purpose of District policies is to implement uh federal law and state law and in particular the Education Code and Title Five regulations the board policies need to be consistent with the Education Code uh and typically they're written in layman's terms rather than in legal language so it's much easier for School Employees to understand and follow board policies and also they provide greater detail and Direction so as long as they're consistent those board policies uh and regulations uh can provide guidance to School Employees on how to carry out uh the policies uh of the board and so it's really a tool and one of the best tools for the board to implement its Vision its philosophy uh and its thinking about how uh the the staff should Implement uh the policies and and move
003forward with its educational Mission uh so I didn't as I said that's kind of just a general overview I'm happy to answer any questions about board policies we frequently get uh questions about whether particular board policy is consistent with the Education Code uh generally they are most districts use uh the csba policies the policies that are recommended by the California school boards Association and they uh have a staff of attorneys to look at those policies and make sure that they're consistent with uh the Education Code so with that I'll just leave it if open to questions if you have any questions I'm happy to answer Ron this is Eric can I may I ask a clarifying question sure just just for a community uh to have a understanding uh would you be able to go
004ahead and differentiate between um board policy and administrative regulations board policies are the overall vision of the board and they're uh approved by the board and then the administration the superintendent the assistant superintendent draft regulations that are consistent with those board policies to carry out those board policies uh so it's kind of uh if you look at it you've got the Education Code then you've got the board policies that need to be consistent with the Education Code and then you have the administ of regulations that need to be consistent with the board policies thank you R um Ron I want to um use this uh as an opportunity to talk about um the overreaching the subcommittees were formed this year starting with the facilities and finance subcommittee and the education subcommittee and finally the uh
005policy and management subcommittee I think the focus the overall focus of the effort given by everyone um has been safe learning environments so I think that started off with our facilities safe like physically safe or it programs safe is the stuff that the um the people that maintain our facilities and systems they had pretty much of a microscope looking down at at at what happens there and for example the um Finance has informed the budget for the first um time in that I'm aware of that we're going to fund x amount for Capital Improvement projects basically that are going to that that are like keep the lights out stuff and there's a placeholder there the education um subcommittee talked about safety and the um the hiring process doing background checks and there are some challenges
006there beginning with that the school um uh the credentialing Department can take two years to put a serious violation on somebody's thing that would red flag somebody would take an action now carrying on with the safe thing you know me Ron and dealing with me I'm going to give you some unorthodox examples that are pretty clear and Point Blank they're theoreticals they shouldn't be extrapolated to mean that anything that's happening now or that that that has happened but I think it's pretty common for Schoolboard members not to understand sometimes they Lane um that we don't go to the campuses and have our ear to the ground as somewh put it and then we see oursel as the defender of the public against the evil that is the administration the district we know that the superintendent
007um that the board member should deal with the president um and and and then the superintendent not be giving direction and staff but sometimes especially when it comes to student safety you will have assaults um substances I mean these are all things that happen in schools and you will have someone who wants to you know with good intention come forward and say um yeah uh superintendent a hock in I got a bunch of parents blowing up my phone I'm getting these emails here's where the theoretic starts um we know that sometimes there are people that have IEPs um we know that if somebody is involved in something like that and there's a potential uh suspension coming on prior to a possible expulsion that there are certain circumstances that require something called a manifest determination hearing
008you know what I'm talking about yes yes I'm familiar with that process and you know that that process is very much different than if the average student who did not have some type of accommodation or identified formally identified eligibility that there are certain differences when it comes to handling the case correct yes right so let's say I'm the principal and I just say you know what the parents are blowing up my phone I say hey look there's nothing I can do the district office has my hands tied and um I want that kid out of here and the principle were to say well the kid has a manifest determination hearing coming on I really can't do do anything it says so in his IP is there tell me what exposures there are potentially for the
009the the employee the uh the principal and and a board member for example it involves himself and pressures up on the superintendent tell me about are their liabilities are they legal are they potentially fiscal as well well uh let's start with the manifestation determination that process and then I can answer your questions uh the way it works is when you have a special ed student who uh engages in misconduct and uh is recommended for expulsion federal law says you cannot expel that student before you do a manifestation determination which means that you have to have psychologist other professionals examine the conduct and determine whether the conduct was a manifestation of the disability if it was a manifestation of the disability then the student can't be expelled you have to look at alternate placements for that
010student if it was not a manifestation of the disability then you can go ahead and uh discipline the student in the same manner as a non Disabled Student so that's why people get frustrated sometimes because a lot of the behavior is a manifestation of the students's disability so for example if you have an emotionally disturbed student uh who's been identified as emotionally disturbed and he acts out and hits somebody or hits another student parents want that student expelled or out of there but it's not that easy to uh expel that student because if it's determined that it's a manifestation of the student's disability you got to come up with some other Alternatives so those other Alternatives might be a more restrictive placement might be private school it might be putting an aid in the classroom
011you know or some type of behavior plan so those are the kind of Alternatives that you look at so if you look at it from the perspective of a parent whose child was in the classroom and who may have uh gotten hit by that student they're not interested in hearing about all the federal law and the procedures and everything that you have to follow um so that creates a very a dilemma for everybody for the board member for the superintendent the assistant superintendent the principal uh because parent wants action and you know which is understandable but you know like you said your hands are tied so you need to follow the process if you don't follow the process if you try to cut the process short and just remove the student um you can run
012into potential liability first the parent of the Disabled Student can uh sue the district and the district could be held liable for not following the proper procedure uh you know there could be like a restraining order or court order of some type there could be damages so there's got to you know um you got to weigh all these factors and there's no simple answer uh and a lot way you have to determine is you know how serious was the conduct by the student were there any injuries how serious were those injuries are there other steps that can be taken so it's it's a a very difficult situation so uh you know liability if you you know there's potential liability if you don't follow the federal procedures but there's also potential liability if you get injured
013so there's no simple answers I'm not sure if I answered your question maybe if there if I didn't maybe a follow-up question and I can you know get a more precise answer let let's do this let's say I just want to showbo to the community and I I think you're relatively aware of what happened to me recently so um I'm not coming at this from a cold place but I am put in a position where um it's kind of like the community expects because they voted for you that you're effective especially if they know you and you hold yourself out as somebody's community-minded it becomes very difficult for people to look at at at you and go okay you're just you know part of a machine so if I if I let that get to
014me and I start calling up the superintendent saying you get that kid off that campus and start using the color of my authority as a board member at what point do I lose the privilege of my protection meaning there's certain things that come with serving as a judge a police officer a public servant but when you step over those and outside of the lines what are the potential uh ramifications for somebody like me who just does not and will not listen to policy I'm above policy well there's some real potential risk there individually so if you're acting within the scope of your position as a board member then you're protected but if you go beyond that scope then there could be potential individual liability so what you're describing is a situation where you might have
015a board member who goes beyond that scope so if the board member tells the superintendent to just remove this student from the classroom and uh didn't follow of the federal procedures the parent of that student could sue the school district and potentially the board member individually the superintendant individually saying you violated the federal law you knowingly violated the federal law uh which is a little harder to prove but possibly given the facts you gave me um maybe the person the board member already knew what the law was if that's the case you're talking about potential liability so you're talking about monetary damages you're talk talking about a court order you're talking about you know potential contempt to court if you don't follow court orders that come down later um so there's all potential uh liability
016if you don't if especially if you knowingly don't follow the law my Ron my concern here is that uh when you have that kind of a climate relationship with board members and that type of thing and the superintendent staff I think it undermines um the dependability that the staff understands they don't like this anymore they're not the ones attacking students they're not the ones they're trying to actually help the kids with the disabilities so I think it it can escalate pretty quickly into where superintendent and board member relationships and then board member and staff relationships become all Ary and then the next thing you know um staff just learns not to trust to follow the rules because they won't get the support above that's just my comment um Ron this isn't accusatory or anything like
017that but I think that the current board policies on suspension expulsion and what the due process um policies are like the one two three do this than this um I think that they were last updated in 2005 given that this issue has popped up at the education subcommittee I'd like to make sure that the educ ational uh group uh knows with confidence that the reason I brought this up today is because these um uh subcommittee meetings go into a library uh so anyone that would have a question about something that we can't talk about with a specific case we could refer and the staff could refer to this example or or this I would hope that these that these um presentations are being keyworded so they're easy to find if there's if we discuss explosion
018here if we whatever we discuss here the people could go here I think this is a handy tool for people who are thinking about coming to work here so they can understand what we're serious about I think it's a handy tool for someone who wants to become part of a committee Safety Committee um a parent group um and I think when it can be used as a training guide for somebody that wants to get on the board and get the basic how do you stay out of trouble rules out of the way um I would ask um this will take um some staff to come in on this and make comments but I would at least like there to be a cursory review of the uh 514 4.1 uh uh District School Board policy uh
019to make sure that there's nothing missing that the language is clear and that we are ready to post this up along with this presentation when the time is right um I'll yield the floor to the chair thank you Mr Ward I think I have one question when you talk about when there's a manifestation and um alternative placement is necessary because the kids St because the student is staying in the school district does that include online school within the district or is that excluded from uh alternative uh like well it's not uh legally excluded per se but it has to be a if you're going to put them in an alternative placement it has to be an appropriate placement it h it has to provide the student with a free appropriate public education so the psychologist
020and the staff would have to agree that that's an appropriate program for that student and usually it's not the case that it's appropriate because usually it involves emotionally disturbed students and usually they have you know impulse control problems they have attention problems uh they have all kinds of issues that would preclude them from being successful in an online program because you have to be more self-motivated you have to have more self-discipline then you know you don't have an adult teacher uh you know keeping you in line with for lack of a better term uh and on task uh so usually the um IEP team will not recommend an online program but sometimes and I've had this happen in a few cases that's what the parent wants and even if it's not you know the best
021program for the student or it's not an appropriate program for the student sometimes that's where the student ends up because that's what the parent wants um but but there are you know sometimes cases where it's it's appropriate so we really rely on the um professional uh expertise of the psychologists the Educators involved to to make a recommendation typically they'll go to like a you know special day class or maybe there's a neighboring District that has a program uh for emotionally disturbed kids where you know like a regional type program uh you just depends on what resources you have available but typically the staff is aware of those Alternatives and uh frequently those students are placed in those programs and some and very often successful sometimes they just need more structure uh so you know uh
022just we like I said we rely heavily on the professional expertise of the staff to come up with alternative placements thank you Ron um could you um do a cover uh if you have a recommendation back to the superintendent the sup the the recommendation would go back to the superintendent um please note that at the uh request of the board member who made the request that would be me that you um attended the meeting of today by name of subcommittee and that the request was to have a look at uh the appropriate policy on um suspension and expulsion sure I'd be to review the policy and give you a recommendation thank you Ron okay we'll move on to the superintendent's initiatives I'm not sure if I have enough copies share please if you don't want
023one I won't be offended um thank you Alex for projecting so the focus for for with these initiatives is to ensure a collective um platform bless you uh between between our newly formed subcommittees uh a couple of plans that we have in place that really kind of Drive the initiatives such a strategic plan that we updated all the way through 2030 as well as the lcap plan local control accountability to make sure that all of these aligned um my efforts need to be aligned as well to support the growth of every student in our district so with that Alex thank you so goal number one ensure maintain expand and Advance a robust and rigorous academic program and of course we're in the business of teaching learning and academic and student achievement is is high on
024the pr list is number one so what you'll see here in order to M ensure maintain expand and Advance our academic programs is to expand our my efforts and maintain efforts with the goverment board uh School site leadership to be enhanced and to be consistent at the sites um teachers and staff and all appropriate educational Partners to ensure that all a USD students are engaged with a rigorous and robust academic learning program in both gened as well as sped what you'll see here are hyperlinks that will be at towards the end of the presentation in terms of some of the work that's already being done we have quite a few um initiatives and efforts in place thank you to teams and staff of a DSD so for example our professional development for educators we have
025a professional Development Council the PD council is very keen on assessing and tailoring our professional development based on the needs of the district what the challenges are and what the teachers need because not one size fits all and so we differentiate between certificated and classified and we make sure that we are responsive to their needs um we make sure that our special education teams as well as a newly hired um coordinator for special education is in conjunction in terms of collective efforts with the avac uh Community advisory committee our newly formed subcommittees three that are now active as of today um facilities Finance education policy management uh special education PD there's been over I want to say 15 trainings and workshops since the hiring of a new coordinator so kudos to uh missana principal meetings
026between um our director of at services and our principles as well as one-on-one meetings to make sure that we uh maintain a Rous program student voice is critical so um resurrected I resurrected the superintendent student advisory we have fantastic students with different perspectives some who have been with us since Kinder Metar High Desert and Basquez and some who have just entered in 10th Grade some who have entered in 11th grade um academic academically strong um ASB you name it so they're sharing their um perspectives and community outreach uh we' enhanced with our principles and my team community outreach and parent Ed with lat with leadership as one example the two next two bullet points I'll quickly go through this expand events monitoring of general education special education instructional delivery making sure that things that deliveries
027of quality of our programs consistency and ongoing progress and how do we do that it's through an assessment of the learning process um our staff K8 have gone through I ready um it's a platform to uh for informal assessments of reading and math as well as tailoring instruction in the classroom based on each individual child's needs and making sure that all of our efforts are aligned to the California dashboard when we're taking a look at our um Ela scores when we're looking at our math scores and making sure that we are progressing along next slide sir R number two again my initiatives have to do with ensuring maintaining expand this one has to do with safety and wellness students need to be feeling safe welcomed connected to the school site in order for student achievement
028to excel so with that expanding programs and learning opportunities for both gened and special education students are in development in these areas um how we do this is with curriculum such as second step PBIS positive behavior intervent to support rewards as incentives at our sites navigate 360 is another platform existing grants and new Grant applications um to enhance our mental health awareness and services and our principles have High attendance initiatives I know we've talked about our average daily attendance increasing by 3 to 4% in the last couple of years good to the principles ensuring that our schools have a robust Mt SS multiple tier systems of support PBIS that's being actively implemented and making sure that we're progress monitoring improvements and then you'll see hyper links that will take you to what these programs are
029about specifically um ensuring an expanding parent and guardian learning opportunities we as many of you have seen during our close sessions and once a month we have staff presenting as part of parent ambassadors anywhere for maintenance and operations in terms of their key inititive and work their roles um I know that um Dr Chamberlain presented for at services and her role um save the children is another initiative that we are looking to launch that will help to support parents we launched a virtual parent education called projects Inspire it's it's a series of family leadership development online uh work trust for our parents we're expanding positive communication and opportun for the district uh we're looking to bring uh resurrect trauma informed care uh for staff which also includes self-care uh for staff and we've already implemented
030cultural competen of training uh with all of our staff um advancing safety uh safety of ADC facilities through site assessments and improvements for the safety of our students our department of justice Grant uh Department of Justice stop Grant specific typically um addresses the um implementation of safety measures and training uh we have a principle here principal here Mrs Van Oram most recently we had um emergency drills specific to an active shooter simulation at each and every one of our sites with a consultant you know kind of take taking a look at what what we do well what what were the deficits and the challenges and how can we improve our practices in emergency situations such as an active sh um and so all of that in terms of consultants and time and energy and funds
031come through the stop next slide sir goal three again ensuring maintaining expanding advancing capacity when I look at capacity that has to do with our enrollment our programs and then opportunities for our students so you'll see those three sections in the next uh two slides including this one so enrollment increase and stability over the last three years we've increased our um enrollment by close to 80 students and that takes a major impact on the um fiscal piece in a positive sense so maintaining consistent Outreach and engagement strategies to retain our current students how do we do that that's with marketing expanding our opportunities expanding our programs uh taking a look at technology heightening our Steam and stem our Arts education and so forth I also have here additional example dual immersion um dual immersion I'm
032I'm really keen on in terms of students you know picking up another language early on in their education so working with my team particularly with Dr Chamberlain uh exploring an opportunity to bring dual imersion Spanish to metal art starting with the early grades and moving them up so you see how there program quality assurance maintaining regular program reviews insur alignment with academic standards and Community needs uring teachers and staff have access to appropriate PD and resources and effective and relevant monitoring student outcomes so again kudos to the PD Council our PD offerings um for not one siiz fits all and making sure that all of our staff receive what they need in a Tim and Manner and there's arts arts education interest survey for the community that's being pushed out um sooner than later and
033then with our board ensuring that IC plan updates are presented at cter board meetings to update our community and our board and our staff continuing with the last slide for goal three opportunities accessibility and support expanding Partnerships uh with local organizations so we're looking to expand our programs and offerings so a marine jrc is on the horizon we are planning for a visit from jrc Marines to the Vas side to make sure that we have means facilities and capacity to actually host a JC which would be exciting I know the been asking for quite some time heightening our Arts education and heightening our CT Pathways there's a counseling presentation there in terms of what the sellis as well as the inperson instruction for CT pathways are are included at um f going to jump around
034so please bear with me um expanding contingency plans to address disruptions of Staffing Staffing shortages thank you to Mrs erri um director of people culture HR um expanding job fair opportunities and transitional subsidize employment to make sure that we have a robust pool of candidates at our fingertips at at any given time maintaining funding levels to ensure extracurricular events placement Career Technical education programs are sustainable um I have the counceling presentation as a link jump around here okay here the last bullet point or comment Ure development of life skills financial literacy and wellness programs into the curriculum to prepare students for real real world success um currently um our fers cross I applied for a community schools grant for C California CL education to leverage resources and Partners to our sites uh when it comes
035to additional counseling supports parent education and the next slides are just the hyper links to all of the documents that help kind of substantiate the goals moving forward my my intention is to actually bring this to to the board a regular board meeting and to kind of go through this in a little bit more in depth take addition question um comment I would hope that the updates that you can give updates um as necessary to the subcommittees and include that kind of like you know 30,000 foot stuff and then uh increasingly the topics should guide how the agenda for the subcommittees is um structured as time passes um I don't know that everybody body knew it but they do now that safety is is a big thing there were certain things we could talk about
036certain things that we cannot talk about and I think Ron talked for us about something really important I think for example that everyone should realize that determin the the reason for the Manifest determination is not to figure out how to punish the person but mainly to how to figure out wait a minute are we doing what we're supposed to do how can we loop back with these Community programs I said in the board meeting look has anyone ever thought about offering help to the assults uh family maybe there's somebody there that doesn't know how to manage this anyway the end game is is that all the nuances when people look at this and they're deciding to move here the number one thing that they want to know is is this school system the say as
037I can reasonably expect it to be for uh my kids and that's why I would choose to buy a house in the new development or relocate to act in and I think um once everybody understands that this is measurable I think that you look at it and say safe got this we've got individuality we've got a track for people to go out and get a job when they're done here go on to school and then get a job I think at the end that is going to make uh attracting students which goes right to the fiscal issue so um thank you for everything this evening I'm very pleased Mr fsra um sorry to the committee but you you just J my memory if you could go Alex the second to last slide in terms of
038um measurement of goals so I mean this is just a lot of words but you know what do we do in terms of the accountability our things actually progressing forward as outline so I just provided some examples everybody um you know again you know how do we know we're making progress with our students when it comes to Chronic absenteeism suspension rates um uh meeting standards for English language arts and math and so forth so that will be the annual California dashboard data uh that would review um all of these goals are tied in nicely to the lcap so it is an offshoot um in terms of initiatives our average daily attendance percentages you know are students actually physically in the classroom learning every single day is the Ada going up number of out of school
039suspensions this is quantifiable easy to measure um parent participation and parent offerings it's quantifiable are we increasing our parent involvement um with our offerings here at go as well as at school sites our educational part uh partners and their participation at the subcommittees you know how to increase par involvement Community involvement at our subcommittees so that's something that is on my agenda number of educational Pathways and enrichment programs increasing those offerings because I truly believe our students um deserve any and all opportunities as our neighboring districts and um increasing our fiscal capacity with increasing the number of local state and federal federal thank you thank you um future agenda items do you have any recommendations for um I would really like um that to be determined by staff that thank you so I'm just going
040to briefly comment on my goals of being in this committee one I want to make sure that our uh our policies are current and they are in line with best practices and with of course the educational code also I want to figure out what policies are we missing like what's not included in this in our policies currently and the only way to do that is to collaborate with the principles because they're in they're on the ground they're doing the job day to day so I really want to collaborate with them to figure out what's missing because when we have policies of course it's going to mitigate litigation it's also going to stop the guessing especially like for example the the power outage right is there a policy that says what the schools shall do during
041a power outage right I don't know if that's already in existence but I would love to see it if not that's something that I think that's that we can look at um to take out the guessing word and just hold people accountable and mitigate our liability so in the future I really want to get that again I thank everybody for being here I know you guys are really busy so I appreciate your time and your dedication to this committee with that our next uh our next subcommittee meeting will be a month from today on March 27th March 27th I do encourage the community to like you said Dr sakan to get involved and listen to our comments and address their concerns if I me for for the the board policy that we highlighted this evening
042policy 5144 one suspension expulsion as well as the AR um you know from what I heard and I gather as as far as a future board agenda um do we bring this back as a priority as for any what what I would do is if I may what I would do is I would um make sure that it gets reference in the subcommittee reports first uh and then when we're talking about future agenda items I think that you heard a recommendation from me that I'm not giving direction that that should be that and I think there's two things on here that would be reported out tonight that there was a 30,000 uh foot look at um whether expansion uh suspension expulsion policies are are current if they need to be updated and then as well
043as um the dependability of the grid and what that means in terms of what if then and connect those dots so um in terms of I don't want the sub it was not my vision to the subcommittees inform every every and and have have business happening with two board members at this level it requires a a staff to determine what was on the agenda but I do think that these subcommittees when the stuff does come on the agenda rather than looping through and get board member comments because they can be driven by just about anything the appropriate thing to do is have someone summarize and what came out of the subcommittee can the subcommittee make a recommendation on this that we could all support so it takes a lot of individual discussion out it it
044um it gets rid of a lot of three to2 votes and a lot of the community understands when it comes to getting kids in school with lights on we are all about that when it comes to making sure that we're not soft on um um discipline but we're not send somebody on track where they're going to be in state prison next year that we are all kind of United on that so that that's my comment about that more comments it's a 5:42 I'll adour this meeting