001Good evening. It's 5 o'clock p.m. and I'd like to call the May 7th, 2025 regular board of education meeting of the Englewood Unified School District to order. I'd like to ask our student board member elect, Miss Amaya Hazard, to please lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Miss Hazard. Hi. Oh, hi everyone. Please stand. Put your right hand over your heart and face the flag. Ready, begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. May be seated. Thank you very much, Miss Hazard. Uh, I would now like to ask Miss Sbrano to call the role. Miss Sbrano, please call the role. Board President, Miss Margaret Turner Evans, present. Board vice
002president, Dr. Carne McGee, present. Board member, Miss Joyce Randall, present. Board member, Mr. Brandon Meyers, present. Board member, Mr. Ernesto Castillo, present. Dr. James Morris, present. Dr. Bernard Lucas, present. Dr. Brian Coffee, present. Mr. Rafael Guzman, present. Thank you. Please be informed that Spanish language interpretation is available during this meeting. ations. Reporting out from this evening's closed session. In closed session, the county administrator took action pursuant to education code section 44954 to release temporary certificated employees from employment identified as employee number 222, 223, and 224 effective at the end of the 2425 school year and directed the assistant superintendent of human resources or designate to send out appropriate legal notices. Additionally, in closed session, the county administrator took action to issue notices pursuant to education code 44951 that the certificated administrative employees identified by number
003111, 121, 131, and 141 shall be released from their administrative assignments effective at the end of the 2425 school year and reassigned for the 2526 school year. and directed the assistant superintendent human resources or designate to send out appropriate legal notices. Also in the closed session this evening, the county administrator took action to approve expulsion case number 2025001. The following settlements were approved in close session. Oah case number 202412110. O a case number 0357. O a case number 2024120657. O AH case number 2025 03 0425 and O AH case number 20250 sorry OAH case number 2025 03 0255. Finally, the county administrator took action to reject the following claims. A skip claim number 25130 43. A skip claim number 2413337. Moving forward with our agenda this evening, we're going to begin with a very, very
004special introduction. Inglewood Unified School District has a historic event that will take place at the beginning of the 2526 school year. For the very first time in the history of our school district, we'll have a student board member who is a participant and member of the board of education. There was a rigorous process. This student who was selected was elected by their peers for their leadership skills, for their amazing ability and dedication to the school district. And it is my great honor and pleasure. We will actually do a swearing in in at our August meeting because then she will become officially seated. But it is an honor and a pleasure to have Miss Amaya Hazard come to the podium. And I ask Amaya to just present some brief remarks. when she was elected by her
005peers, she gave the most incredible moving speech about her dedication and her goals and her ability and desire to serve fellow students. So with that, Miss Hazard. Hi everyone. This is the speech I gave to the county administrative student advisory council in April. Good evening everyone. My name is Amaya Hazard and I am in the 11th grade and I go to Englewood High School. I am honored to be standing before you today as a student board member for the 2025 to 2026 school year. Since I was young, I've always been that person, the one asking and thinking, why can't things be different or why can't things be better? Whether it was in the classroom or just in everyday life, I've always known one thing about myself. I care deeply about people and I care deeply
006about change. That passion led me to fall in love with public policy and political science. Not only because I love politics, but because I love people. Because I believe policy is personal. It shapes the schools we walk into, the resources we have access to, and the futures we're told we can have. And I know that my future lives in this work. Being a student board member isn't just a title to me. It's the very first step in a lifelong commitment to advocacy, to service, and to creating real change that starts with listening to the voices that matter the most, students. This feels personal to me because I am one of those students. I know what it feels like to want more. More resources, more representation, more opportunities to be heard. And I know that change
007doesn't happen unless someone dares to step up, to speak up, and show up. I want to be that someone. Not because I have all the answers, but because I'm willing to ask the hard questions. I'm willing to listen. I'm willing to learn. And most importantly, I'm willing to learn. I'm willing to lead with heart. Excuse me. My dream is to one day write policy that changed lives. To sit in rooms where decisions are made. Not just for students, but with them. But dreams don't start in government buildings or fancy offices. They start right here. They start in our schools. They start in our communities. They start when someone takes that first step. This is my first step. I'm And I'm not here just to hold this position. I'm here to pour everything that I have
008into it to make sure that every student knows that their voice matters. To be the kind of representative who doesn't just speak up, but fights, advocates, and acts on what students need. Because when I look around this meeting, the county administrator student advisory council meeting, I don't just see students. I see future leaders, future change makers, future voices that deserve to be heard. And I am ready. Ready to represent, ready to serve, and ready to begin the first chapter of the change I want to spend my life creating. Before I close, I would like to thank my mother and Dr. Manuel for supporting me throughout this process and getting me to where I am now. I would also like to thank the board members for being kind and inviting ever since I was elected. I
009can't wait to serve and work alongside you all. Thank you. Will you stay right there, Amaya? Just in case the board members have any questions they wanted to ask, I'll turn it over to President Evans. You can come back to the podium if you don't mind, Amaya. Sorry. That was a wonderful speech, Amaya. I got to meet you last week and I was very pleased. Your demeanor, you're just such a marvelous young lady. Uh board members, do you have any questions for Amaya right now? Board members, you told us why you were doing it. So, you already answered our questions in your speech. So, I just want to congrat congratulate you and I look forward to working with you or we look forward to working with you as a student board member. Thank you. Thank
010you. Thank you. Thank you so so much, Amaya. Um, and moving on on the agenda, um, we're going to have a presentation by board member Edinto Castillo on the Women's Law Mentorship Program, which has been an incredible opportunity for students throughout the district. Mr. Castillo, thank you, Dr. Morris, and thank you, President Evans, for allowing me to make this presentation. I promise I'll be brief, but I wanted to make sure I talked about this amazing program. Um, since so much work has gone into it, so many law school volunteers and our teachers and our principles have been helping to make this possible. So, I just want to share the joy that we had past couple years. This photo is really special because those um students performed on the Oscar stage with Becky G um and
011they decided to find out more about being entertainment lawyers. So, that was our first event we had here. Um, so thank you so much Dr. Lucas for being there and supporting this program. Next slide. So, our mission was empowering girls in Engle Unifi to explore careers in law and leadership by building confidence, connections, and a sense of purpose. And here we have photos from one of our events at the wellness center. Next slide. Uh the program matched students one-on-one with Loyola Law School mentors. There are monthly mentorship sessions, uh workshops, panels, and law related field trips. We focus on career exposure, confidence, and academics. So, representation changes futures. When our girls see successful women in law who look like them, they realize they belong, too. And the photo in the bottom is a panel we
012had with law professor Katherine Pratt. Um, and we're doing a briefing session with uh our own real quick on why representation matters. Only 2% of lawyers are Latina and only 2% are black women, but drastically underrepresented in law. Even fewer come from Englewood's um communities like Englewood. Mentorship boosts academic success, confidence, and leadership skills. Representation shows our girls that they belong in positions of power. We are cultivating the next generation of change makers. Uh so in our first two years we had 80 student mentees um ranging from sixth grade to 12th grade from schools all over the district. Croser City Honors Inglewood High, Morningside High, Oak Street and Parent. And we had 50 plus loyal law mentors from various fields of law and backgrounds including an Inglewood High alumni and first generation law students. And
013then we had the MA trial. uh mentors and mentees participated in a mock trial with a real federal court judge uh Sandra Klein who's there in the middle. Um next slide. The case was based on the Twilight series and the issue was is Edward a vampire? Um and the students found that yeah there were vampires. He was a vampire but he didn't pose a threat to the community. So the mentees acted as prosecutors, defense attorneys, jury and witnesses in front of a real life judge. And then we had an amazing beautiful day at Edward Vincent Park Jr. Um, sorry, Edward Vincent Jr. Park and we uh had a special guest uh Councilwoman Dion Faul came to speak to the students and we had a great turnout and then everyone brought their own food and um
014as you see one of our amazing principles is there Dr. I who supported the event as well. And then we had an amazing Valentine's Day vision board event where everyone we had a great donation from the Ingwood Public Library by the way of magazines that they used to cut up and to visualize what the year was going to be like because it was still the beginning of the year when this happened and I think that probably the best event because they really got a chance to talk to each other and talk about goals and plans they had um beyond high school. So yeah, as I mentioned, the mentees and mentors discussed their 2025 goals and created that vision together. And after creating vision boards, the girl visualized their goals through an exercise, a breathing exercise
015led by our city honor superstar Kenya. And then she's amazing. And uh one of the other events I want to highlight is we had a Halloween pumpkin painting event at the LMU buff uh bluff. Beautiful campus. And thank you to Upwardbound for hosting. Uh then there's the last slide. Huge thank you to Loyola Law Women's Law Association, our own the Heads Up Foundation that sponsored a couple events. LMU upperbound who has been hosting a couple events as well. Our amazing principles who are here as well who've helped uh chair the the program with their students. Um Miss MSAS and Miss Williams are amazing counselors who made sure that students were aware of the program and showed up. Uh Dr. Lucas and Dr. Morris who I I took some of your weekends. Um, but they came
016by and they were supporting the programs. I really appreciate that. Again, Councilwoman Deion Fog for coming and supporting. Our student leader uh Patrick Cruz who's here today uh for always making sure that the flyers are up at the schools and our assembly member Tina McKenner's office for uh supporting in person and for providing uh certificates for special mentees and mentors. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Castillo. Moving forward, Dr. Dr. Carlos McGee, board vice president, will provide an update on the Child Development Center parent collaborative committee. Dr. McGee. Thank you, Dr. Morris. This um is always uh a privilege and a pleasure to talk about those little honey bunnies. Well, just to get started, they learned um Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. um you know, his contributions that he made to society. This
017was their activity in February and students treated their families to a wonderful African-American and black history program. During the month of March, they celebrated women's history. The students learned about several diverse and magnificent women and their contributions to society. They had a blast celebrating Dr. Seuss week with extended to the literacy month. Um they had the honor of having Mrs. admire the wife of board member Brandon Meyers. Tell your wife thank you. Okay. To come and bring snacks and read to the students. The students really were impressed with Miss Meyers. She was engaging and the stories were very comprehensive um for the students to engage and enjoy. Um they had the fire department to come, the fire station, they sent the truck. You know, these are little honey bunnies. They get everything. So, um, yeah,
018they get fire trucks, fire hats. Um, so they had a good time with that, you know, just seeing the firefighters, the water hose putting on the hats. They had an opportunity to do that in March. And um in the month of April with um spring blooming um uh the hallways and the classrooms at the child development center were filled with caterpillars, flowers, ladybugs and fish. The students are learning about the metamorphosis and they are watching live copillars transform and they are currently entering the cell phase of development. It has been a delightful experience to watch these young people watch these caterpillars. And earlier in the year, the students studied gardening. The students learned about agriculture and are monitoring how their plants are growing. Currently, the students gardens are actually producing beautiful vegetable. Soon the students
019will be able to sample what they're growing in their garden. They're also learning about um important role insects play in the ecology system. The e um you'll hear them say um um cute little words that are associated with our um our our what is this? I'll just say with our garden, the final new addition uh to our on-site mini animal kingdom is fish and our new classroom fish tank. The students are working on names um for their fish. It is a whole process requiring them to choose um and name based their fish and the classroom gets to vote on it. So, it's not like they have 39 little fish running around. they have one little fish and that fish will get a name and it will be done uh in a democratic process and so
020they will be naming that fish at some point. Uh and to wrap up the month in April, our health and nutrition assistant, Miss Mary Connors, provided spring gift baskets filled with goodies to all of the students. And furthermore, parents attended their final parenting class with Rethink Ed. And the classes covered teaching students self-regulation and positive redirections when exhibiting challenging behaviors. And the final meeting, it went well. The facilitator was pleased to share with us that our April executive summary, which is highlighting a 70% decrease in office referral since August and 98% family workshop satisfaction. I'm going to read that again. They are experiencing a 70% decrease in office referrals. And that's Yeah, thanks God for that. Um and in August they had 98% family work uh shop satisfaction rate. I want to thank our parents
021for participating in that because participation from our families is everything. So that concludes that report. Okay. And Dr. McGee, you will continue for us this evening. Thank you so much. And give us an Inglewood Educational Foundation update, please. I will give you the Inglewood Educational Foundation for um the month of well um year to date. We have spent u quarter of a million dollars or more on the district. Um we have the senior banners going up um within the next month. um making a $100,000 contribution to our July 4th parade with the Inglewood students um participating in Washington DC. And today we had the employee of the year award. We awarded four five employees with a $500 um um check. So that concludes my report for the month of May. And and that is a
022lot. Uh moving on on our agenda, our board member, Mr. Brandon Meyers, who represents the board on the Los Angeles County School Trustees Association, commonly called Laxa, will present a report. Mr. Meyers. Thank you, Dr. Morrison. Good evening, community. Uh so somebody says, "What is Laxa?" Who is Laxa? Laxa is the Los Angeles County School Trustees Association. and it's filled with 90 I have to say 90 out of 93 school districts throughout the Los Angeles county. So our our our goal uh meeting every month is to um uh indulge in trainings um gather information uh as well as network amongst each other. And so uh this month's presentation was focused on my favorite education workforce housing. So, I want to commend uh Mr. Greg Francis from CSBA who is a senior project manager uh for
023education workforce housing who did an amazing job. Um myself as well as uh Dr. Morris and Jordan Miles, we attended a workforce housing uh seminar back I believe in uh last April. uh and uh CSBA, which is the uh California School Board Association, uh they presented um uh this uh workforce housing presentation of um the significance of how it can benefit each district around the state. Um so people say what is workforce housing, right? What is it? education housing for certified as well as classified staff. So when we look at why do we need it for recruiting and retention, we need staff. However, we don't want our staff living an hour, two hours away and having even have to fight through traffic just to get to teach our beautiful babies. So how do we do
024it? How do we do it is we bond together as a community. we create this synergy, this conversation, and we also tackle down these elected officials to start lining up the row. One thing Greg did uh present to us, he presented us with a a layout of all of the districts that were uh either in the green, which indicated the uh education workforce housing construction project was actually initiated. They uh presented the uh the the color orange for districts that were in talks and the red for districts that had hadn't even started the discussions. I'm happy to say, but you know how I feel because I texted you right after, but I want to so I'm happy to say Englewood is currently in the orange phase. I I want to be in the green. And
025I want to be in the green is because this helps out our district as a whole. It helps out directly our students. I'm going to digress right there because there's not enough words that can describe what Dr. Morris, uh, Mr. Miles, and myself experienced last April. So instead of uh you all packing up a car and going up to a a Jefferson Union High School located in Daily City, we decided to bring Daily City, Jefferson Union High School down to Inglewood. So, I'm ready. With the skyrocketing cost of living and widespread teacher shortages sweeping the nation, school districts are being forced to get creative with how they retain and recruit qualified staff. To alleviate this issue, the Jefferson Union High School District opened the district's affordable educational housing building at 705 Ceremoni in the spring
026of 2022. One of the first in the nation, this newly constructed 122 unit apartment community is exclusively available to our faculty and staff. Our housing has been a great tool for retaining staff and recruiting from across the nation. We were challenged with what we could offer teachers and this provides a great resource to not only retain our staff but help them with their dreams. We take a lot of pride in that. The main goal of the project is to reduce turnover and to make us more competitive. And how could we make it more affordable for our teachers and staff to live and work in our area so that our students can have teachers that stay year after year and can have a stable environment. Really, with the staff housing, it just shows how devoted they
027are to recruiting and retaining. That alone just makes Jefferson unique because they're one of the first in the whole country. When I heard that Jefferson High School District is building housing for teachers, that would be a great help, especially with my finances. We wanted stability for our students. So, we thought that one thing we could do is provide them with some stability of staff staying year after year. And it's helpful because we want to be fully staffed each school year. Oh my god, I love it. This is the best decision I made for myself. I mean, the Bay Area is so expensive. The costs are rising. It's hard to find an apartment in San Francisco unless you want to live with a roommate. It's such a beautiful new apartment complex. I was blown away at
028what they were able to create. Well, we wanted to make sure that this housing was very nice. We wanted it to be on par with any market rate development. And so making sure there were ample spaces for people to gather, spaces for children. We wanted this to be family friendly. We have a playroom. We have outdoor play structures for both young kids and older kids. And we put laundry on every floor because we knew that everyone had the same work schedule. And so we didn't want people to have to wait for a unit. The structural design is so good. I can't hear anything. I don't hear any of my neighbors. I have my privacy, but then I also have the opportunity to connect with community, too. I think the space is so welcoming. They have
029a community center, a fitness room, the front desk. They're always very helpful with maintenance. With this housing, it gives me opportunity to have an easy access to all kinds of transportation. And with the highway being right here, I mean, the location could not have been more perfect. I get on the highway and I'm at work in 6 minutes. Aside from being close to my job site, we also have the Ceremony Shopping Center down the street. and even I can just walk down the hill just to go to malls. We have already seen benefits from the housing project. We were able to start our school year fully staffed with teachers when some of our surrounding districts weren't able to do that. The students in Jefferson Union High School District deserve everything that any other student in
030any other district receive. And I am hopeful that this will improve education for them. I needed my own space and this was opportunity to be able to stay in the Bay Area, be close to my family and be able to go to work. Anyone who is looking to teach in the area and is looking for an affordable and lovely place to live, this is such a great opportunity for you. For other districts that are considering building employee housing, I would encourage them to move forward. I think having a united board, having a union leadership that it supports the idea and including everyone when you're making plans would be my recommendations. And I say go for it. Visit our website to learn more about how we turn this idea into a reality. I guess that's all
031folks. Yeah. And thank you, Mr. because it really is about having that vision and then turning the vision into reality. So, thank you so much. We will continue this evening with um our esteemed assistant superintendent of educational services, Dr. Bernardet Lucas will provide an update on student achievement, attendance, and wellness. oftentimes at a board meeting we do a lot of talk about business items and what's happening with facilities and construction and it's a pleasure to have Dr. Lucas kind of give an update on what's most important to us student achievement attendance and wellness Dr. Lucas thank you so much Dr. Morris, Board President Evans, board members, our esteemed board members, and my cabinet mates and community members. I am so honored to give this update on student achievement, attendance, and wellness. Um, I do want
032to focus on the title of pre of the presentation. We are centering our students above all else. They are our reason why. They are the reason we do every single thing we do. And that stays very um front of front of mind for all of us, every single division. This update is on teaching and leading for learning, wellness, and impact. I'm ready. So, um, so a quick overview. Oh, I'm sorry. Thankful. You're like, do it yourself. Um, a quick overview of the agenda. Um, the welcome of course, a quick review of our theory of action, which is critical to how the work is done here in the district. how are English I'm sorry attendance ELA math um how are they going I'll give a quick update on social emotional and then the next steps based
033on that which I share with you this evening um so I want to start with this notion of our collective power at the beginning of the school year Dr. Morris reminded us of three very essential um habits of mind or approaches to our work. One of which was the our collective power and what we can do as a team. And for those of you who are familiar with John Hattie, he has outlined without question and I I do want to read this to make sure that I don't miss one point. Collective efficacy means a group's shared belief in its ability to organize and execute the actions needed to achieve a specific goal. And John Hattie who is an esteemed educational researcher shared that this belief collective efficacy right here is um has a predictive rate
034of student achievement of greater than three times the next three most important predictors which include u motivation and concentration, persistence and engagement. And if we all take a second to think about what that means, our belief in our ability to get this done for students, it has a profound impact on how we approach our work. I also want to call out before I get to what how we roll out collective efficacy and ensure that our colleagues feel that sense of um of effort together in getting a job done that we know collective efficacy works in this district. Because once again, I'm going to highlight the fact that the collective work of every single employee in this district led to a score of six in pupil achievement. Anyone who's read those standards and understands what those
035findings and recommendations were knows how incredibly difficult that was. In addition to achieving a score of six, we have no scores below a four for all of pupil achievement. Thank you. And that is because of the collective work and the collective efficacy of the employees in the district. The IUSD theory of action. When Dr. Morris was here before um um before he came back as county administrator um he outlined a theory of action that is based on research and without going over every line because I have a limited amount of time to present to you. These elements in the IUSD unified theory of action are absolutely critical to ensuring and bringing about student achievement. They are and they are important to read out loud because I'll be talking about them later that you have a
036robust curriculum based on standards right tier one instruction excellent tier one instruction and when you implement tier one instruction well you will reach at least 80% of students and so let's go back to collective efficacy if you believe that if you know that you can do that you will roll out a curriculum that meets the needs of all students and there's some um pieces to that that I'll talk about later in addition to that that we have clear instructional practices based on research that again are well implemented throughout the organization that professional development is aligned with those instructional practices. In other words, teachers I could go on all ITA members um receive professional de development that support them in rolling out the curriculum and instructional practices that in addition to professional development staff has co
037have has coaching. There's no good professional development without strong coaching. Every single person in here who's working or has a hobby or is endeavoring in anything needs a coach whether that coach be in formal or formal assessments that we have a robust assessment system that measures that curriculum not not as misaligned to the curriculum but we have an assessment program that is aligned to the scope and sequence of our instructional program. I'm very proud to say that the work of our um advisor Lena Atuto of assessment and instructional technology has worked very hard with ITA and IMA members to ensure that that calendar was co-created with our colleagues intervention for students so that when they need that additional supports support um be it to bring them up to grade level standards or be it that
038they are already mastering grade level standards and they need enrichment that students are getting that intervention. Oftentimes people think of intervention as the student is struggling, but it also means when a student meets standards and needs to be pushed or challenged even more that they get that support because one of the ways we lose students is if they're meeting that that standard and then they not they don't get that that additional piece that they need collaboration that colleagues that professionals are collaborating around the work. I have never in my career seen a successful school classroom or um educational organization that that was not built on strong collaboration. I've not seen it and the research supports my experience. And then lastly, but not least um certainly not least, administrative leadership. Second only to the classroom teacher
039in terms of imp's impact on student learning is guess who? Principles, please stand. I did ask the principles to be here because second only to a teacher's impact is a principal's impact. Research clearly supports that. Every other position in the organization supports those two people in realizing student achievement for all students. Now we have four drivers that facilitate the theory of action. Professional learning communities. I know the board knows because you see our agreements out of educational services that we have invested quite a bit of re financial resource in professional learning communities and th that traces directly back to almost well every single element in this theory of action. Um so we have a devoted uh I'm sorry a very intentional excuse me implementation of um professional learning communities where teachers meet in grade levels
040and departments um counselors meet together um uh advis uh instructional coaches meet together to refine their practice based on student data. We're not willy-nilly coming up with stuff. We are using student data, the results of that assessment piece that I talked about from the theory of action to move instruction and to plan um for our students. The multi-tiered system of support um is another driver. In other words, the tiered supports that we give students um as they access and master the curriculum. Student support teams where we study individual students and ensure that they get the resources that they need. And then lastly, um the another one of our four drivers um for the for the last several years is the leadership of every every colleague in the district. Okay, let me stay in my time.
041Um I do want to take a moment to celebrate the hard work that um continues to happen throughout the district. Um ESSA stands for Every Student Succeeds Act. Um without going into great detail, it's the way that um the performance of schools is measured. And so as we look at the improved academic achievement of our students, there are benchmarks and milestones along the way that show that we are making the progress that any community member would expect of us. So when you look at this, I can't read every school because I don't have time, but we have, and this is a big deal, we have schools um that went from the number nine in 2023 to 13 having no status, meaning they are not in any um dire need of in of meeting the needs
042of students. This is huge. Um in terms of and the legend is down here defining what each of these terms mean. We went from three ATSI and TSI schools to two. We had four schools in CSI in 2023. We went to zero. That's a big deal. These are milestones on our way to improved inu improved student achievement. California dashboard 2023 versus 2024. Of course, I I don't have time to go over this in great detail with you, but I do invite um our community to study this because one of the things I feel very strongly about is we are a public school and uh the school system, school district, and we are to be held accountable to the community for the way that we're serving its children, its young people, its future. Oh, thank you.
043Okay. And so this is one of the ways the state holds us accountable. And I as assistant soup of ed services, I have zero fear of being held accountable. I love questions because when you ask questions, that means the community is engaged in the work. It means that they're paying attention. It means that they're keeping um the community's children centered. Um so what I do want to share is that um based on this data, we do know we have work to do. I mean, I' I'd be crazy to stand up here and say that while we celebrate all of our incredible successes and milestones, we do have continued work. Um, when you look at this, um, if this were a workshop, it would take me about an hour to go through this sheet, this document
044alone. I want to thank Dr. Danielle Goulsby for putting this together so clearly. But when when you um review this data, there are four groups of students that we have to pay special attention to. And the state of California has called us out um for I don't mean literally called us out, but identified that we need to continue to work on um meeting the needs of our African-American students. You can see this from the data, our English learners, our students with special needs, and our Hispanic students. We take this incredibly seriously. Okay. Okay. So, and there plans in place to meet the needs of these four groups as we continue to meet the needs of um every single one of our students. I tend not to say all students can learn because it's ambiguous. I
045I I like to say each student will learn like each student like we have to have every single student in mind not them as a mass body. Then um our attendance data let's move to that. We have experienced um in terms of like percentages and statistics a relatively significant improvement in attendance. That said, we have a long way to go. Our goal for attendance is um not between 95 and 96% um I don't I don't want to put Mr. Guzman on the spot, but Mr. Guzman, for every percentage of increased ADA that we earn, um what does that equate to? Uh yes, Dr. Lucas, it's about over three years. in three years um about a million dollars. Yeah, that's 1%. Um importantly, in addition to the fiscal impact of improved attendance, the most u you
046know the reason for all of this is that the more that students are in school, the more they learn, the more they master standards, the more they access their futures. Um so attendance is a critical metric for us and we've been incredibly focused on it. Okay, I have to hurry up. I'm sorry. Um this next slide, our dibbles data. So, Dr. Morris um piloted with the support of Dr. Hosea James um CKLA um last school year. All schools, all UTK8 schools um rolled out this year. And one of our metrics for assessing the impact of this program that's highly rated program based on the science of reading is DI is Dibbles. And so when you look at this data and dibbles is an assessment that our student our um youngest students take to assess their
047proficiency in reading all the elements of reading. Unfortunately I don't have the time to go through all of those elements but suffices to say that it's a researchbased assessment that many many districts use and it's based out of um the University of Oregon. And so when you look at our if you look up at um the top left um we're looking at grade K and grade one. So these are our youngest amongst our youngest students who have only ever known this program in most of our schools and you see the growth in them already from the beginning of the year benchmark to the middle of the year benchmark. So this is evidence this is another milestone that shows that this program is working because we see the growth from the beginning of the year to
048the middle of the year. Our end of the year data won't be out until the end of May, beginning of June and I'll be happy to include that in the board report. Um if you look at this legend down next to the chart at the bottom right you can see in grades two through five the benchmark um changes. If you see um uh words per minute BOI that stands for beginning of the year words per minute April progress monitoring and words per minute WPM end of year. Okay so those are the benchmarks that students are expected to achieve in order to meet standard. So, you might ask yourself, okay, I'm looking at grade two, grade three, grade four, grades four in particular, and they're they're um increase scores don't seem to align to grades K
049and two. But when you think about the history of the program's implementation and our story, these are the students that didn't have this program when they were young learning the fundamentals of reading based on the science of reading. So, this is not unexpected. And you can see, let's take grade two. the beginning of the year they were supposed to read 49 words per minute. By April it jumps to 86 words per minute. So there's a significant increase. I want to be clear. We are not saying that we don't have the expectation that the our students won't meet these benchmarks. We do. We absolutely do and work toward that. What I'm saying is that we're seeing the impact of students who started their academic careers with the program compared to those who did not. And knowing
050that now that we know that second, third, fourth, and fifth, well, fifth, fifth is they they're they're they're on par. Um what do we need to do with second, third, and fourth grade? It goes back to our theory of action. Um using those interventions, collaborative teamwork where teachers are planning based on student data, so on and so forth. So interim assessment um are based on our state testing. So our IABS or our interim assessment blocks are predictive or should be predictive of CASP. So when you look at this for grades for most of our grades, you'll see that students experienced a significant um increase in our internal assessments. That's something to be incredibly proud of. When you look at our elementary grades all the way through to um our middle grades, they have the same
051assessment over time. So it's comparing oranges to oranges. When you look at our high school assessments, you'll notice that the high schoolers are taking different assessments beginning of the year, middle of the year. So, it just helps you contextualize the data. And again, I'm sorry I don't have more time. I feel like I'm rushing, but I want to be mindful of our time. Okay, moving on. If we're looking at English learners, we can see the growth in our English learners from the beginning of the year until now. on on the left. On the right, we're looking at our African-American students. And we did call these populations of students out because I shared toward the beginning of the presentation that we have four focus groups of students and we believe strongly in accountability. Um, so we
052wanted to be transparent about how those two groups are looking in terms of the data that's rolling out. Again, this is English language art language arts. If we move on to math, we have our interim assessment blocks. Again, one also obviously based on our um back and our um California state test. Want to pause here so everyone can take a peek and you can see the growth between the beginning of the year and the and the middle of the year spring. And this is something to celebrate. The question will come when we get our CASP results because again IABS are supposed to be predictive of CASP. If they are, we have a lot to look forward to. U but I have something to say about that that I hope I get to in a little
053bit. math data review English learners and African-American students just so you have that information right in front of you and you can see again from the beginning of the year to the middle of the year we are seeing growth and these are objective assessments again that are aligned with um ESPback or our state test okay our English learners are obviously a focus group of ours and you can see our year-over-year um comparison of how they're doing with their summitive LP packs and the number of students who are being class reclassified. This is huge. I thought I would get applause here because the increase is so dramatic and it show you all heard my pause um that we have got to celebrate that that goes back to tier one instruction and effective implementation of EL or
054English language development. Do we still have work to do? Yes. I don't want anybody to think I'm not clear about that. We absolutely do and I'm obsessed with that. I'm obsessed with it as are my colleagues. Additional data on our cast results that you all have seen. So, I won't spend a lot of time here. We we've all seen this, but I thought it was important that we call that we call it out. So next steps because I think a big question is always um okay we have all this data what are you going to do about it? I don't want to read the slide to you because everyone has it. So I I want to be intentional of what I call about what I call out. Um so without reading the district has very
055clear instructional plans that outline all of the strategies and expectations of our um of our certificated staff um in meeting the needs of students. So those plans are updated based on data and based on the latest information we have. So I called that out a little bit at the top. Okay. Our continued focus on the four groups of students. And some might say, someone might be thinking, you have students who don't fall in any of those four groups. What about them? Every student in this district is our priority. I want to be clear about that. But when you see a group of students who is struggling more than another group of students, it's like someone in your family, would you say, "Okay, this person um is sick. Um so I'm not going to give this
056person medicine because a healthy person doesn't need the medicine. Thank you." Um so you give people what they need. You give you meet them where they are. That's what equity means versus equality. That's what inclusion means versus uh I know we're not but I'm saying equity. um our continued focus on attendance. Okay. Our differentiated support of the schools. Each school is different just like each student is different. Just like each staff member is different. So educational services. I'm going to ask Ed services to please stand. Let me tell you something. It's like I have the gate cluster every day. This this is such a phenomenal team of human beings that work themselves to the bone to ensure that our schools have the be best support possible. I can't say enough about all of my colleagues.
057Um, continuing on, our LCAP is based on the collective needs of all of our students and the dollars that we spend in support of our students are outlined in that incredibly important document. Don Dr. Danielle Goulby deserves to be called out for her ridiculously incredible work on that. our data summits. Um we institute we implemented data summits this year where every single school brings a team of educators from the school and they study each other's data together. I would like you all to imagine our community to imagine a bunch of educators coming into community studying each other's data giving each other feedback holding each other accountable asking each other questions that builds collective efficacy. So we're not hiding our data. not ashamed of it. So that let's say um Dr. Kaine, you know, sees something
058happening at um at at Inglewood High and like, "Oh my goodness, how did you all do that? Explain explain that to me. We might want to implement that." So it it tears down the um walls of shame and isolation and siloism so that we're working on all of this work together and holding each other accountable together. learning walks, educators visiting each other's classrooms, not just the assistant soup of ed services visiting classrooms. That's different. That's not collective efficacy. That's big sister coming in to to check on things. Um my goal is for my colleagues, my certificated colleagues to hold themselves accountable, not for me to do that. They don't need me to do that. They I mean, I'm doing it, but um yes, I'm doing it. But um I think what's much more powerful is
059when colleagues hold each each themselves accountable. And so that's what we're facilitating by empowering educators to learn together. Um I really want to highlight this. We're implementing a social emotional screener next year and a bonafide social emotional curriculum because our students have so many needs so that it's not haphazard how our students are getting wellness support. and then the implementation of the uh community schools grant. There's a whole team working on that. I want to thank Miss Deborah Tay for her leadership of that. Um and that that community support is the kind of thing that bolsters the theory of action because students are getting what they need at every single level. We're meeting families and students where they're at. In conclusion, because I think I've taken I'm like almost afraid to look at Dr. Morris.
060Um because I've taken a little bit too much time. I want to share this and I mean I I I submit this to you humbly. It's one of the great blessings of my life to have served in this position both professionally and personally. Coming to this district has like changed changed me fundamentally. And I'm not making this about me. What I'm saying is that this is a very special place. Um I've worked with incredibly incredibly special people and that group of special people has brought results. It's one thing to say, "Oh, you're so great. You're so great." It's another thing to say, "You're so great because of results that I can point to and use those results to motivate our continued growth." So, in conclusion, I do want to thank every member of ITA, every
061member of IMA, I want to thank every member of Teamsters because we could not do any of this work without the support of our classified staff. I want to thank um human resources. I want to thank business services. I want to thank the county administrator's office and I want to thank our parents, the community, and our board members because it takes every single one of us to make sure that our students are getting every single thing they need. And we are relentless about that and we will not stop until every student um is proficient in every grade level standard and every student is well, healthy and whole and poised for the future that they deserve. Thank you. [Applause] and and Dr. Lucas, before I turn it over to the board president, I wanted to thank
062you. Passion, clarity, transparency, and commitment. Those are those are the the words that come to mind. I'm going to turn it over to President Evans for questions or comments from the board. Thank you, Dr. Lucas, for your passion. I you can just feel it and we know looking at the Figma report that this is the truth because we've already gotten past that that benchmark that we needed to get to and we're still climbing. So I thank you all of you teachers, staff, you know, principles, everybody because everybody has a a moment to touch the life of a student. everybody in this district who uh deals with a kid, whether you are a teacher in the classroom, if you're the janitor, you might have to give a word of advice to a kid. So, I mean,
063it's just it's evident. And I just want to thank you myself. You know how I feel about student achievement. So, I'm not even going to go there, but uh thank you very much. Board members, questions. I I don't have a question. I just have a comment. Go ahead. I'll make it brief. I'll try to at least. It's just, you know, it's it's it's emotional because I remember around the same time last year, we talked about the plan for this school year and the reading program and everything that we had excited for this school year. And to see the result of all that, it's just really emotional. And you know, being a board as a board, we are communicating with the parents constantly. You know, there's going to be ups and downs, but we saw it
064through. And at towards the end, I had parents coming up to me saying, "I see it. I see my students ring better. I see my students performing better and I believe it and it's all thanks to you and your leadership and our principles. So, big shout out to my principles, Miss Fson, um Miss Calhoun, uh Dr. Collins, Miss Booth, um because they've done their job and they've done an excellent job and I'm just so happy to be in this position to give back to our community and to see the success in our students. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pio. Dr. That was long. I was talking fast, too. Shout outs to Sarah Appleton. All right, Dr. Kane in the house. All right. No. Uh, Dr. Lucas, amazing presentation. Thank you. Thank you so much. Dedication,
065dedication, dedication. That's what you got, girl. Thank you. So, thank you. Appreciate it, Dr. Lucas. Yes, ma'am. almost cried at the Figma report when I read it when we were presented the results and they said there would be a onepoint movement in two years I'm like she's a chief academic officer she has a doctorate in this you said don't worry I'm like one point in two years you said don't worry and I kept and you said don't worry you pulled it off you pulled it off the staff is tremendous. Dr. Goulby is an example of a student who comes to the school district, takes care of her business, and then comes back to give to the school district and refuses to go anywhere, no matter what it looks like, no matter what it smells like,
066no matter what it tastes like to give back to her district. And I do applaud her. She is [Applause] Your staff is tremendous. And for the RFPs, the reclassified fluid English proficient, I was so stunned. I couldn't respond to go from 42 to 155. That is a tremendous work. And it does take everybody. Everybody from the person if the bathrooms aren't clean, if the campus is not clean, it takes everybody. There's no small eyes and use. It takes everybody. And you have come together. You have brought everybody together. They're here smiling way past their work time. Nobody's frowning and everybody's pulling together. It takes grit to stay in Englewood. Yes. I applaud your efforts. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Randall. Are you guys finished? Okay. First of all, um, Dr. Lucas
067knows that, um, I'm probably hard on everybody when it comes to what our students are getting. I love the fact that you I always say, you know, students first, cuz if you put our students first in everything that you do, you'll never go wrong. I want to admonish you for apologizing so much this evening. I don't know how much time Dr. Morris gave you, but this report was very, very important. So maybe we'll have to have a workshop and you'll feel more comfortable that you don't have to rush through it, but this data is something that we've been waiting on. So you never need to apologize when this information we've been waiting on and we're expected to look at a Power point. You are the power at point. Okay, I am the PowerPoint. So, since
068since my board of members were giving a shout out to their principles and my three principles are here, Miss Branch, you know how I feel about you. Uh, Miss Miss Miss Boris, you know how I feel about you. And Robbie Tate, you are killing it. We are so happy to have you at um at the helm of Sentinel Parent and Latiara and I'm just overjoyed for the team. Yes, for the team. You know, often we have to take it for the team, but when the team is taking it with us, you see the results. Yeah. So, I commend you and your team this evening. Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, Miss Green. Hey. Hey. Oh, wait. Let me shout out my principal back there. I won't let them not overshadow me. Uh, Mr. Jones
069back there from Highland, the uh, administrator of the year. Everybody, [Applause] please Dr. Aria back there. I don't She City Honors and what's my other school? I don't have another school anymore. She's a city. She's cur and city honors. So, I still congratulate her in her absence. Miss Branch. Yes. Okay. Miss Branch, you know how I feel about you. So, congratulations to you. Thank you so so much board members and and a special thank you to Dr. Lucas who is a a quiet force of nature. So, thank you. Our final presentation this evening will be cash flow report. And uh Mr. Guzman, we turn it over to you for our final presentation this evening. All right. Well, um, it's hard to follow that, but I will try. So, uh, you don't want to know if
070you have enough cash for the I'm gonna take your cash. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. All right. So, uh, thank you all for, um, good evening. Uh, Dr. Morris, our board president, Miss Evans, all of our board members, our community, uh thank you all. Our student board member, thank you um to uh for being here tonight. So, we're going to go over the cash flow, and as you know, our cash flow statement is extremely important, and it's important that we look at it every month, and sometimes it looks a little boring, but it's important that we do that. Um the cash flow analysis should not be confused with our budget or our fund balance. Those two things are other things that we look at as well, but we have to monitor cash flow because at the
071end of the day, if you run out of cash, you are in very, very deep trouble. Um, we are hearing that there are school districts that are starting to run out of cash. Uh, we recently went to uh something up in Sacramento and we heard of it that there's another district that may be entering receiverhip soon. So, it's this is becoming a very difficult thing. And so we have to make sure we're monitoring our cash levels. When you answer receiverhip is because you ran out of cash. Um and so that's something that we have to monitor very closely. Um cash flow is impacted by budget transactions that occur during the year. And each month the district then what we do is we pay attention to our expenses, what we're spending our money on. Um is
072it what we're projecting? And we're making sure that we're looking at that. We're also verifying that we're uh ensuring that the revenues we said were going to come in are actually coming in. So that's something that we do on a monthly basis and um so I want to thank Mr. Sedat Ba who's back here uh for all of his work that he does with that and uh as well as Miss IsaTo yeah and our entire business services team they do tremendous work with monitoring the budget making sure our our staff has the resources they need. Um, as you know, just real quickly, LCFF funding, the local control funding formula, that's our main pot of funds. It's funded by property taxes, by state aid, and by the education protection account. So, we monitor that. That's our
073biggest bucket of funds, and we're making sure that we are verifying that. So, uh, draw your attention to the screen here, um, in regards to cash flow. So, we're looking at the month of March. You're you may say, well, why are we looking at March? We're in May. because uh when it comes to accounting, we have a couple of weeks after the month closes to make sure that we we do our closing transactions. So, our official numbers for March are ready to go, and that's why we're presenting those here. So, as you can see, we had about $142 million in in cash available. We received about 9.9 million in cash. We expended about 13.2, which means we spent a little more than what we received, which is typical at this time in the year, by
074the way. you know, it's the way that that school district funding is. You get uh different ratios of funding. So, all your money doesn't come at once at the beginning of the year. It comes throughout the year sporadically uh depending on what resource we're talking about. But, as you can see, at the end of the day, we ended cash at about 139.2 million. If we project the future years, we sorry, not years, the future months, you'll see that we'll end we're projecting to end at about 128 million in June. Here's a more detailed view where you could see kind of like what the cash is over here. You can see the the revenues of of what what we received and you can see here how that was received and the months are up here. So
075if you're interested in looking at this report in more detail, happy to show it to you and walk you through it. Uh the dispersements is what we actually expended. So um as you can see here, uh we have the amounts that we're projecting and this is what we're spending each month. You can see that in the month of March, we went back to kind of a more normal amount. We had a jump in February. If you look at, for example, certificated salaries from five, we went from 3.6 to 5.1. That was because we did a retro that month. If you recall, we had the largest um increase in in England Unified School District history of 10% increase. Uh and so we were able to do that. And so um that was why you're seeing that
076that jump. But now it's kind of now in March we're living with what is actually the projected amount and that's what you're seeing there for certificated and classified unemployed benefits. I do want to just mention in regards to this section here services as you can see uh last month we spent in March 4.4 million we're projecting about 6.4 but these other months we're we have 8.4 and 9.1 a lot of that is probably not going to materialize. Main reason for that is we have to project certain amounts in budgets as fully expended, but I do not think that's going to materialize. Um, however, we have to put it in the budget as though it will. Um, and so that's something that is a difficult piece of budget and cash. And so we're monitoring that very
077closely to make sure uh but I don't think it's going to get to the 71.6 that that's there on the screen. However, we have to project it as though at this point in time. So at at the end of the day, uh, this matches what we shot what we showed in the previous report. 28 million is where we're expecting to end cash. And so, uh, how does this all impact us? Well, we have to make sure that we look at the multiple years in the future, make sure we have sufficient cash to cover our expenses in the current year and the two subsequent years. One of the things that I mentioned earlier in the presentation is that the cash is critical for our operations and we have to make sure that we monitor it consistently.
078One of the things the last things I will say in regards to the presentation is um as a lot of times I get asked the question what could we advocate for? What could we ask for in regards to schools? The reality is that we are severely underfunded in many areas particularly one of the areas where we don't receive sufficient funds for our students is special education. So, anything we can do to advocate for funding for special education, I really think if we could all come together, that would be very helpful to do and in in other areas as well because our students deserve the best. And I think that that's something that will help us uh to be able to provide the services that we need to our students and and some of our more
079vulnerable students as well. We have to do what we need to do uh in those areas. So, if we could advocate for that and advocate for more cola, our teachers certainly deserve more in salary. our classified staff to serve more in salary. That comes through uh raises in cola and and increasing our what we what we bring in. And so uh as we advocate this year and as we move on to the future, you know, let's continue to advocate for increased cola, for increased special education revenues, that will really help this district meet its goals financially, but also academically. Uh and that is it. So, thank you so much. I will turn it back to you, Dr. Morris. Thank you. Thank Thank you, Mr. Guzman. Miss Evans, I'm going to turn it over to you
080if the board members have any questions or comments. Board members, any questions or comments for Mr. Guzman? Mr. Guzman, I have just a question. Uh, since we went to Sacramento, you mentioned that. And, uh, Assemblywoman McKenner was fighting to save us $400,000 a year for paying the receiverhip loan back. What are we going to do with that $400,000 a year? Are we talking about putting that into special ed or what what's going to happen with that money? Um I that's that's a that's a great question. We'd have to look at the budget uh for next year. We're making those projections. Once we know uh we'll be able to give you a better a better detailed um analysis of what that what will happen with those funds. The good thing about that is that they would
081essentially be unrestricted dollars. So yes, we could use them for special education. We could use them towards salaries. We could use them towards a bunch of different items. and that's why we're fighting for it because it's going to open up funds for for those priority areas that we were speaking about before. Thank you. For those of you who don't know who Tina McKenna is, she's our assembly person in Sacramento. She's fighting for this school district. And if she can pull this off so that we don't have to pay out $400,000 a year, that would be such a benefit to our school and to our students because that money goes back into the school's pot for them. So, I just wanted to mention that because that's what we were doing when he was talking about move
082to Sacramento. That's why we were in Sacramento. So, thank you. Thank you, Miss Ev. Anybody else? Thank you. I agree with I agree with our board president on Tina McKenna. Uh Tina McKenna was my treasurer in my first campaign and she is a woman of integrity and great passion for this community. And when she couldn't pull off the first thing that she wanted to do, I knew she would not let it go until she was able to do something for this community because this is where she lives. So I'm very very happy that she continued to do that and I'm very very happy that we have a fiscal advisor that does not let go. Thank you so much Dr. Newman. So, thank you. Thank you very much. We're going to move on to public comments
083on agendaized and non-aggendaized items to provide an opportunity for the public to address the county administrator and board of education on agenda non-aggenda items. A public comment card must be completed and submitted to Mr. CESAC who's stationed at the back of the board meeting room prior to the beginning of the public comment period. Members of the public who wish to speak about an item on the posted agenda must indicate the number on the public comment card. Three minutes will be allotted to each speaker and a maximum of 30 minutes for public comment on agenda and non-aggenda items. If public comment cards exceed 10 cards per section, the time allowed may be reduced to hear from more speakers. Speech or conduct that is disruptive, defamatory, or impedes the orderly conduct of the meeting is not allowed
084at the discretion of the presiding officer. Anyone who disrupts, disturbs, or impedes the orderly conduct of the meeting will be required to exit the meeting room. The guidelines for public public comments are in accordance with board boy board bylaw 9323. The Brown Act does not permit board members, county administrator, or staff to respond to public comments. Miss Sbrano, do we have public comments this evening? Yes, we do. Dr. Mars, tonight we're starting with public comments on agenda items. The first public comment is from Mr. John Hughes. Mr. Hughes, please come to the podium to address your polling comments on agenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Yes. Good evening to uh the county administrator, to the board, to the cabinet, and to the illustrious community of Inglewood, which I am a part. I'm
085here today as the ITA president to speak regarding uh the certificated uh roster as well as um some of the presentations that we saw you know regarding the achievements which are commendable. Um and I just first of all first of all would like to thank the teachers um for persevering for being persistent and being um perfect for our children. I think it's necessary for us to um realize the the uh in in teacher appreciation week uh that the appreciation for our teachers um should be reflected on a daily basis. Um you know, we've come through a lot with this district. We've been through a lot and we're still here. As um council member member uh Randall said, you know, it takes grit, it takes toughness. And I think um our teachers are that we have
086to um really embrace uh the notion that as I've said many times the most important relationship in in a educational system is the teacher and the student because we have to have learning. Um having said that our leadership should be reflective of those qualities. It should be reflective of that relationship and we have to make sure that um our our students are at the center of it. Our students are the essence of excellence. Our students are every reason for all of us uh coming together. And if we keep that in the proper um alignment, we won't uh we won't look at data. We won't look at obstacles. We won't look at any of that. Excellence just comes out. If you're teaching, you don't have to worry about a a state assessment. You don't have to
087worry about it because it's going to come out if you're if you're drawing the best of of students. Um, and that is the focus. You don't have to deal with a lot of the um curve balls or or distractions that exist. So, we want the focus to be on students. That has to begin with keeping them safe. That has to begin with keeping them engaged and keeping them inspired to learn. And those things are reflected by our actions as adults. So we have to model that which we want from our students. And that happens by treating each other with the respect we deserve. So to all my teachers, I love and respect you. Thank you. Thank you. We're now going to transition to public comments for non-aggenda items. The first public comment is from Miss
088Donna Espin. Miss Espel, please come to the podium to address your public comments on non-aggenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Good evening. Um I sat in my school's SSC meeting where it was a privilege to meet with staff from Hutton as we are projected to get close to 150 children once the school shutters next year. But we will get to that in just a bit. Although the experience was mostly positive, I will leave with this first impression of a kindergarten teacher that personally left me asking if this district is the right place for my daughter. I asked about the new curriculum and question its effectiveness in teaching fundamental skills. This kindergarten teacher responded that she had 31 kids in her class, but really she had 30 kids because she had an autistic
089non-verbal child and he didn't count. And that a good 15 kids were well on their way to reading already. The breath left my lungs when I heard that. Being non-verbal does not mean that a child will not learn to read, nor is it a qualifying indicator on how fast or slow a process that may be for that particular child. This teacher represents your district. My daughter is autistic and will not be reading by the end of kindergarten either. But did that mean that she doesn't count? Is that is this how this district views my daughter? Personally, I wouldn't want my kids attending a school that has staff with these types of views because where does her abbleist ideology or flatout discrimination end? You are closing schools to save money and because of the idea that
090these schools are showing low enrollment. Now, you are packing these classrooms to full capacity without considering how it will affect these children that are already struggling to meet state standards. These kids will get even less facetime, one-on-one time with their teachers. How are you investing the money you are saving from shuttering schools back into the schools that are still open? These kids need more individual assistance and these teachers are being overextended. It only makes sense to add support such as teachers aids uh into these classrooms to help carry the increased overflow of students or hire PE teachers to allow teachers more planning and prep time intervention and/or attendance recovery at the 11th hour. I guess better late than never, but there are questions if the MTSS approach this district is currently using is successful or
091can use some tweaking. We are constantly assessing these students and what are we doing with these results? As a parent, it seems like you are being reactive instead of proactive. Almost like you're waiting for our students to continue to fail and fall further behind before you actually intervene. Why are we not looking at these results and actually using them to meet these children where they are and provide the proper supports in real time? My daughter is receiving intervention and it is working, but she still didn't start until January. Paper didn't start until March 21st, and my kindergartner still does not have access to it. I see a slow and steady flow of progress, but nowhere near enough for her to catch up to her classmates. I feel like this shouldn't have to happen to her
092and to others like her if her education team was equipped to help these kids, and that's without being at the cap. Adding more kids only puts more pressure on a system that is already broken. You keep applying band-aids to these issues with no long-term fixes. The question is when will this district stop focusing on quick fixes like hey tutor which is great and a good tool but not enough and start focusing on how to use these funds to get more staff in these classrooms helping the kids. Thank you. Thank you. Our second public comment is from John Hughes. Mr. Hughes, please come to the podium to address your public comments on non-aggenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Um, in ancient Egypt, we're familiar with the pharaoh and people think that the pharaoh
093was just adorned with all of the riches of the country. But in the structure of the government, the pharaoh did not represent monarchy as in the west, as in Europe. The pharaoh represented the people and the people the people's interest is what led the pharaoh in his decisions or her decisions because you have to understand that that was one of the first countries um to acknowledge a female ruler. Um and having said that we're we're speaking about what is our leadership structure in Englewood. Um we have to start shifting. We have to start changing in a um in a way that um for some will feel risky. Uh for some will feel like um a departure from what is norm or normal. But that departure to me is necessary. We're in different times. We have
094different students with different needs. Um and we can't abandon the core principle of uh education, the core of education. Um similar to what this uh previous speaker said for um peripheral things, you know, it's quicker, it's easier, it's more comfortable, but is it better? See, we have to start dealing with what's best for um for our students. So I think what's best for our students is putting in place and and and committing the resources uh where they need to be to uh again promote the learning that we just saw on the uh dashboard. You know there's data but then there's data that needs to be sanitized as well because there's data that um reflects how well a student may test but some students may not test well. That doesn't mean they're not smart. that doesn't
095mean they're not uh capable. They just they don't like tests, right? But if you give them another form of expression, they can show and demonstrate. If you give them a project, they can they can show engineering and mathematics. You can do it a lot of different ways. So, I don't I want us to really be serious about the change and the focus in in in in Englewood because if we do that, we'll do something different. will do something that will attract students back. We can combat the negativity and the public the negative publicity and all the things that are remaining unanswered. We can combat that with our effort and and demonstrating who we are on these mares around the city. We should see our students. We should see them in action. But we see a
096lot of adults, but we don't see our students. If you want our students back, show them. Thank you. Thank you. Our third public comment is is from Good Citizen. Please come to the podium to address your public comments on non-aggenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. How you doing, Mr. Brian? Again, I'm I hope you address the situation. I'm not going to be very nice with you guys. All you guys talking about this school, this this um donating stuff and this money situation and like that. Let's talk about the video. The video that surfaced about the little kid in the restroom. That's what we should talk about. I'm pretty sure you guys probably seen the video already and Mr. Brian um um like you said you wanted to delete the video you accomplished
097that but a lot of people seen it by about 180,000 before you decided to delete it or whoever you told to delete Mr. trying you guys accomplished it, you know, but the good thing about it that so many people shared it that it's already out there and it's your school district, bro, England. I don't like to come to schools district meetings. I don't really like to do this because you guys are the ones that got to make a change for our community. I really don't like to do this But when you have principles like that walking out from a public meeting that that they got to hear the people because they work for the people, they walked out of there because they don't want to hear you guys no more. They just want to hear
098the oh, everything was good, everything was this. We have a mother right here of that child that was bully in that restroom. What you guys are going to do about it? What you guys are going to do about it? We the people want to see what you guys are going to do about it. Who we hold who we going to hold accountable? Since this lady over here want to talk about accountability. Let's see what y'all guys are going to do about it. Cuz the video don't lie. Your mob could lie. You guys want to give out numbers that send you straight to voicemail. That don't work no more, bro. It's all about transparency. The people is tired of this. It's a lot of stuff going on. There's a lot more videos that I got going
099on in the city from restrooms, from kids. I don't think that's a pretty sad your city going to have. You guys want to talk about your kids, protect the kids. Make it about the kids. You guys want to talk about it? Be about it. Don't just come out here say all this little la what you want people to hear. Nah. Say what it is. Protect the kids, man. You guys want to see a lot of people out here talking about the situation because what this happened it touch a lot of people and I hope when you guys seen the video I hope it touch all you guys and I hope the people understand when you guys seen the video I hope you guys understand that. Thank you very much. I don't need a lot of
100time. You guys will see me here a lot all over the city. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. Our fourth public comment is from Fidelia Lar. Miss Larox, please come to the podium to address your public comments on non-aggenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Thank you. I when I come to the meeting, I always come with an agenda in my mind, but one thing I do remember all the time is Miss Randall says, "Keep coming back. Keep coming back." And I'm here. And I I do have the the my teachers are that are so dedicated. They're so We have teachers that really care. They are there because they care. I have the privilege be uh be I go to the LCAP meetings. I go to the DPAC meetings and I understand the the
101data. I love to see I know what it takes. I have two kids at BenQ. But one of the things that I don't understand is that we can have better houses for our teachers. We can have that. And I do believe in the curriculum. I believe in Dr. Gooby's work. and it's not anything that she will uh you know just disguise or not put it out clearly if it's not know working she will say what do we need to do and what I'm asking is that if we have better housing for our teachers better pay for our teachers but our children are not safe at school then we don't have a scenario here to live by it really to me is I've been asking since beginning of the school year we need to look at
102our ratio of counselors to to students We don't have enough counselors to deal with the problems and with the needs of our children. We do not have security in our campus that I can say my children are safe. My children may not be safe because they are either other children that are upset that we're not dealing with their needs and or other parents angry that come into the building. So, we need to look at that. You know what I'm asking is let's talk, let's get together. We have spent another 23 24 25 school year and we have not accomplished the fact that our students are not safe in our campuses. We ask for somebody at the door make sure the parents some parents are angry. We are all humans and we're upset but we should
103not be they should not pass our gate when our children are coming into our schools. So I ask please what can we do? I'm a parent but I'm a parent that lives at Bennett. Now it's not my second home. is my first home because I want to be I want to ensure that the children there where my children went and now my grandchildren is a place where I can proudly say my kids go to Benu and Englewood when like they like I used to when Mrs. Chinaga was the principal and when we had things in place. Miss Appleton wears the hats that you don't understand probably but I do feel I see her not physical hats but I can see and I'm like which one is it now to wear? So please bring us to
104the table. Bring the parents. Bring the teachers. Bring the community. Let's work to have a safe environment for our kids because it's not working. And I hope that if we are doing data, data is great. But if I have a day, a child that accomplishes so well in cast but is so mind not mindful of himself and other kids, then I don't have a whole child. And I just learned that term. So please, we're here as parents. Thank you. Our fifth public comment is from Miss Diane Sbrano. Miss Sbrano, please come to the podium to address your public comments on non-aggenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to me last week about the podium, but it still didn't change. We can't see you in the
105back. So, I would hope that we do move that over. Now I would like to address one of the comments that were made last week because apparently someone misunderstood me that a system is sometimes a failure does not mean we should look at the children as individual failures. So I hope you misunderstood and now I've corrected that. When the children don't have the tools they need and they fail, it is not the child's fault. Every single child here deserves an education. And I will tell you it was sick, sad, and pathetic that the first time I came here was because there were not textbooks for some 25 plus years. I'm thrilled that we have textbooks now. So there have been accomplishments, but I will tell you that when the money comes back from the state,
106I hope it is retired against the bill that we owe the state because we the taxpayers were kind of misled on so many ways and that money should come to us. I will also tell you that I'm thrilled to death that at least one school is going to have some great field trips. But you know what? Some of you haven't made the field trip less than three miles outside of town. So, I'm going to ask you to cross the freeway and go to the Sentinel Adidobe and discover that maybe it would be exciting to know that most of us are here because of the efforts of a man from Englewood. Do you know that Jesse Unreal lived near Circle Park and he gave us the Civil Rights Amendment of California 5 years before the US
107amendment? You would learn that there's a lot to learn. June 8th is our barbecue. And before I move on from the happy cherries, I'm going to tell you, I sure as lightning hope that was not pulled. Every child needs to know that they are safe. I know a 17-year-old that I'm trying to encourage to go to college. He's probably one of the brightest young men I have ever met in my life. And I've known some, but he was bullied in the second grade and is scared to death to go to a classroom. My next door neighbor went to Monroe. The teacher nor the nurse ever called. I looked in that girl's eyes and said, "What happened to you?" A young man had hit her in the head with a pedlock. She ended up with surgery.
108He was never punished. And guess what? She, like the girl we heard about today, was suspended. That should never happen. Thank you. That concludes our public comments for tonight. Thank you, Miss Embrano. We're going to now move on to approval of action items. Human Resources Division items A 9A1 through 9 A6. Mrs. Evans, we have no questions. Thank you. 9A1 through 96 are each approved. Moving on to educational services division. 9B1 through 9B22. No questions. 9B1 through 9B22 are each approved. Moving on to business services division 9 C1 through 9C9. 9C1 through 9C9 are each approved. Moving on to measure GGI and facilities 9D1 through 98. No question. Items 91 through 98 are each approved. Moving on to County Administrators Division 9E1 through 9E6. 9E1 through 9E6 are each approved. And uh moving on to
109approval of the minutes of the board of education meeting held on April 9th, 2025. April 9th, 2025 uh meeting minutes are approved. Moving on to board member remarks. I'll turn it over to Mrs. Evans again. Okay, I'll start with my vice president. You have any comments? No, I don't. Thank you so much, Miss Randall. Not at this time. Thank you, Mr. Castillo. Yes. A quick comment. I I omitt it to thank uh Amaya Hazard for her help on the woman mentorship program. She's also a mentee in the program because she wants to know more about law school and we know she's going to be a great lawyer one day. So, thank you for your help on that. Um and I'll admit the rest of my remarks. I'm going to play a quick minute video. Uh
110a couple years back I I connected with Synopoulos, a brand new movie theaters here because there was a real special movie called Blue Beetle about a Mexican superhero and I took 140 of my kids to go watch it. um because they I've never seen a Mexican superhero growing up. So um because of that relationship, I reached out again like we do this again. Um and this time we brought double amount of students to the new luxury IMAX uh here. And if there's anything I want to do as a board member is to create memories for our students I didn't have as a student here. So I wanted to make sure I get an opportunity to appreciate everything that's new here in Englewood. So I'll let the video do the rest of the talking. Thank you.
111[Music] Hi, Jackie. [Music] Thank you. Hi. What? You got M&M's? Oh yeah. Next time you need a champer on, let me know. Yeah, Mr. Myers. Thank you, Madam President. Um, I'd just like to thank all of the um AB51 supporters that traveled up to Sacramento. is greatly appreciated um on this end. Just seeing you guys uh fight for us and advocate for us uh up in Sacramento. Great job. I want to also welcome um our newest member to the board uh Miss Hazard. I look forward to sitting you right here next to me uh helping you get this mic adjusted and stuff like that. So I I look forward to it. That's it's going to be a great time. And also um I want to say congratulations to all of our seniors who are graduating
112from uh City Honors, Morningside, Inglewood High, as well as our adult education. Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations. Also, uh May is the uh mental health awareness month. So, I want us all to be uh cognizant of that that is going on in our communities. And I want to wish first of all these beautiful ladies up here happy Mother's Day. I love you. God bless you. and then to my beautiful mothers all across the district, all of our teachers. Uh, God bless you and happy Mother's Day. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, I was supposed to think there was one thing I wanted to say. No, I didn't write it down. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Myers. Happy Mother's Day to all of you. I We missed Cinco de Mayo the other day, so happy Sinco de Mayo.
113Also, it's although it's over, but we had tacos tonight just for Cinco de Mayo. Yeah. So, thank you very much. Well, I I thank you so much. Just moving on to county administrator remarks. I'll make it very brief. And I also wanted to just wish very happy Mother's Day. And finally, in conclusion, I just want to remind you we'll have a board workshops retreat study session on May the 21st. We may have a couple of business items at that retreat and study session. It will be primarily focused on uh study session on the board's responsibility in overseeing charter schools. And with that, Miss Srono, the meeting will stand adjourned at 6:38. Um, and I would invite board members to convene in the conference room for just a moment. Thank you. Good night, everybody.