IUSD (Regular) Board of Education Meeting Wednesday, April 09, 2025 @ 5:00 p.m.

001Good evening. It's 5:02 p.m. and I'd like to call the April 9th, 2025 regular board of education of the Englewood Unified School District meeting to order. And I would like to ask I'd like to ask Dr. Eugima Hosea to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Dr. Hosea. Hello everyone. Please stand. Put your right hand over your heart. Ready? Begin. I pledge of 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. You may be seated. And thank you, Dr. Hosa. Next, we'll move on to roll call. Miss Sombrano will call the role. Board President, Miss Margaret Turner Evans, present. Board Vice President, Dr. Carlos McGee, present. Board member, Miss Joyce Randall, present. Board

002me, Mr. Brandon Myers, 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 of interpreta. Thank thank you Miss Sbrano. Moving on to approval of the agenda. I hereby approve the agenda with no modifications. Moving on to report out from close session. In close session this evening, the county administrator took action to approve the following settlement cases. SE 42024-2025 CB O AH case number 202411 01 91. Additionally, in close session, the county administrator took action to reject the following claim a skip number 2413159. Moving on to reports and presentations this evening. Our first presentation will be by Miss Naali Chakon, director of English learner services, who will present

003an update on the English learner master plan. Miss Chakon, good evening. Um, board president Evans, Administrator Morris board and cabinet members and all of our esteemed guests. I am very proud to finally share with you the updated master plan for English learners. It took some time, but we're very happy with the final product. This plan provides clear direction for how our schools identify, serve, and support English learners from early education through graduation. It brings together research, proven strategies, and updated state and federal guidance into one framework that serves both educators and families. It clarifies roles, outlines the why and how of progress monitoring, the connection between daily teaching and long-term student success, and the importance of the role families play in their students learning experience. I wish I could walk you through the entire document,

004but I only have time to show you the key revisions that we've made. Our vision is clear. Our English learners deserve a strong academic foundation and the opportunity to thrive. This updated plan is built on research, best practices, and brain-based learning. It recognizes that language and culture are valuable resources and not obstacles. We've emphasized rigorous academics, integrated language development, and access to grade level content, all within the context of preparing students for college, career, and lifelong success. We are committed to using a collaborative team approach to support our English learners. We recognize that no single person is solely responsible for their success. Everyone in our district has a role to play from the classroom to our central office. This share responsibility ensures that English learners are supported by a system that works together to meet

005their needs at every level. One of the main shifts in this revision is a deeper alignment with the California English learner roadmap. The plan is now centered on the four core principles. Schools that are responsive to students needs and strengths, instruction that is rigorous and purposeful, systems that provide consistent support, and alignment across departments and services. These principles are reflected in the instructional practices included student supports and districtwide policies ensuring that our efforts are cohesive and student focused. We've made significant updates in response to recent legislation and CDE guidance. First, we streamlined the identification and assessment process and we updated the initial alternate assessment to reflect our current practice which is using the ELPback. It actually became operational in July of 2022 shortly after after the previous master plan was approved. So, we just needed

006to make that change. We also streamlined the EL and RFP monitoring process and revised the reclassification criteria for English learners with disabilities according to recent guidance from the CDE. The plan now includes the previously approved newcomer graduation pathway and the updated state seal of by literacy requirements. We also added a full chapter on preschool dual language learners, including updated guidance for identification and providing services. And saving the best for last, we also added a whole chapter dedicated to our dual language programs. This chapter describes each program in detail. We've included information on expectations, curriculum, student progress, and the path to earning the state seal of bi literacy. And just as a reminder, or if our families are not aware, we have two dual language programs. We have the dual language academy at Wwood Monroe, which

007is a 9010 language immersion program that supports biiteracy and academics in both English and Spanish. Admission is only open in TK and first grade. Students in second grade or above need to pass a Spanish placement test. At Frank D parent, however, we have a foreign language program where all students receive daily Spanish language instruction. This program is open to all students in all grade levels. Both programs are aligned with state goals for biiteracy, high achievement and cultural understanding. They are standardsbased and they both have a pathway for the state seal of bi literacy. They just have a different purpose and fit different needs. If you need more information, please contact me. My email address will be on the last slide or you can find it on our district website. And finally, to support strong implementation,

008each chapter of the master plan includes compliance indicators aligned with title 3. This support our efforts to stay current with state and federal requirements. The plan is also designed to be reviewed regularly so that it continues to reflect legislative changes, state guidance, and district priorities over time. In short, this revision intends to strengthen our systems, clarify our expectations, and bring everything into alignment with the latest guidance and legislation, and to help us better serve our English learners, support our teachers, and ensure student progress, as well as help us ensure continuity of services and practices no matter who sits in the EL director's chair. Do you have any questions? Board members, do we have any questions for Mr. I do. Okay. this master plan that's been outlined for a comprehensive guide um for English learners. I

009don't know if this is in your well world to answer this question, but do we have a guideline and a master plan for African-American children that have been left out of this process? We have spent a lot of time with our English learners and what I'm finding out is that when these kids get ready to graduate, you want bilingual uh employees, but they're not getting the bilingual assistance. We're doing a lot at kindergarten, but I don't see Spanish as a second language for non um non um Spanish speaking students. So, I really would like to see a master plan that includes um those students that come into our district that are not um at a deficit as being an English learner. Um that continues to frustrate me because I don't see where we're really addressing

010that gap. and to have something this um outlined as a comprehensive guideline. I'm at parent so I'm looking at this foreign language program that we once had a dual language program we no longer have because of the limitation of students but um that's my question and concern and you can answer it. Thank you for the question Dr. McGee. So to your question, we expect in late fall we will be bringing to the board uh it won't be called master plan but a plan for African-American student achievement. There is a committee formed to work on that plan as other districts have. The piloted parent is intended just for the purpose you said you for you for a very long time have communicated and feel strongly about um second language for English only students. I myself learned

011Spanish as an English only and ended up as a level fluency. recognize how important that is. So, the board can expect a plan to come in late fall. My babies are always being a little day late and a dollar short, but I'm glad we we've got a plan. Um, I think you'll be pleased with the with what results. Anyone else? Yes. Oh, you go ahead. I go first. Okay. um just want to congratulate you on your first presentation to the board. We met when you first joined because obviously this is something that my district and my schools are heavily invested in. Um one thing I know that I brought up to the cabinet a lot of times is that our schools are constantly constantly asking for a foreign language program at Oak Street or at

012Payne um or maybe a dual immersion program. Um my district is losing a lot of students to a neighboring district that has those programs at all their school sites. Um and they feel not catered to because of those uh um limitations. So I open this to you or open this to any other cabinet members that want to discuss ways for those schools to have potentially a foreign language program or do immersion program in the next few years. Yes. Um that is our plan. I we started working uh recently with the dual language immersion program and and with the team and we restructure the entire uh program and and how we run it and and so we are going to just start new and based on the changes that we implement this upcoming year uh We're

013going to start looking into replicating that into possibly other schools. Miss Cha, may I add to your thorough response? Yes. Um I do publicly want to commend Miss Chaon, Miss Anna Derez, Dr. Danielle Goulby. This department reports to state and federal um for the work they've done in this area. I appreciate the question question, Mr. Castillo. They have revamped that program based on research. Research identified a new curriculum that is standards aligned so our students are getting the most rigorous experience possible. In addition to that, to Miss Chone's point, um outlined a monitoring uh process that ensures the fidelity and efficacy of the program. So that will allow us to replicate the program across sites in a way that learn builds on the past and honors a future that we all want for all of

014our students. I want to comment on this. I was a couple questions. I just want to follow up on that question. Um, when it comes to parents who are listening right now, because this is something that they've been emailing me, DMing me on Instagram about, um, they're more than happy to do because I'm open book, but if they're listening now, what could they do to support these type of efforts as a parent? Um, they can start by attending our DAC meetings. uh we don't have as much parent participation. So parents attend our DAC meetings, attend uh the ELAC meetings at your school sites because that's um that's the place where they can voice uh their concerns and not only their concerns but their suggestions. We get um all of our ideas and all the things

015that we put on the LCAP from that parent feedback. Uh I can tell you that um the LCAP goal five and all the the actions that were put there uh were created with that parent feedback. So we are listening but we need the parents. If we don't have the parents participation then it's like you know we're at a loss and so we do need them to participate. All right. Thank you. I just wanted to comment on that because I was probably um the board member who was really really um um trying to move our dual immersion program forward and we were able to get it about 10 years ago. But to your point, Mr. Castile, it was the Latino parents that really pushed back on this program. They did not want their students in that

016program. So moving forward, I think that now that they understand the benefit, but that was one of the reasons why um we had a we had a waiting list of over 70 students at Parent when we first started the dual immersion program. And um I just think that now certain parents want it, but we should have never lost it had they participated at a level and we could have been able to get the right instructors in there. Um you know, it it it was it it was a disaster. Um and it didn't have to be. So, in moving forward, I think we're on the right track with having a plan, but a plan is no good if we don't have the teachers and the families that can help implement it. And so, to your point

017and to those parents that are listening, um she's absolutely right. Without parent participation and having the students there, everything is ran by the number of students that we get in a classroom. So, I hope that they understand how important it is to have a dual language program and not to protest it when we um put it out there for them. So, I want to thank you too for your report and uh I am looking forward to the other little master plan. All right, Miss Randall, congratulations on your first report for what you were given. It's a very good report. Um, I'm going to email you and ask you about the academic English mastery program because it appears as if every question you get, there's a defense for it. I don't want a defense. I simply

018want to know is the program existing. I think in my third or fourth board meeting I brought up when supporting the English learners which was a code name uh was made law all resources were taken from the African-American students because that was the law and those resources have never been given back and when we come up with master plans for eels we don't include the African-American student which was not his or his or her original language uh we were not to be negative what was stolen. They came here on you know and couldn't speak our language and couldn't participate in our cultures. So we have a whole different dialect and a whole different language. So we're couched under the English learner but we're not present. We're silent in the report. So that's what I'm going

019to be emailing you. DAC meeting is great but the DLA meeting is not the authority body. Authority authority I'm just getting upset because I already discussed this before. Schoolside council is the body and then we have the single plan for student achievement is specifically because it's a state template ask you what's the plan for African-American students. So I would be very curious as to what we've been putting in that single plan for student achievement but we don't include it in the master plan that's made public. That's what I'm going to email you. Thank you. And Mrs. Randall, if you make sure you direct those questions to Dr. Lucas so she can follow make sure I'll include everybody in my email. Mr. Meyers, well, I wanted to thank you for your report again. Uh, my only

020concern which has already been voiced, but I was thinking about the teachers that you have. Are all of your teachers Spanish speaking teachers who are teaching these classes uh to teach them Spanish and English? Uhuh. I'm sorry. What was the question? Are the teachers in the dual immersion classes fluent Spanish speakers? Yes. Yes, they are. Yes, they're Spanish speaking uh teachers. Okay. So, when you say it's open all students and parent, you have All the students, yes. Are they speaking Spanish to the black kids and teaching them Spanish and English? That was my question before Carlos started. Yes. The the the foreign language program at Parent. Um the students are learning Spanish as a second language, which is different from the dual immersion program. So every student learning has a 45 minute period of Spanish

021um during the day. Okay, that's what I wanted to know. Thank you. You're welcome. And and thank you. Thank you, Miss Chone. I do have to acknowledge Mr. Con is is an early bird and often in that parking lot by 6:00 a.m. in the morning and works tirelessly on behalf of our students. So thank you, Mr. for your presentation and for your dedication. You're welcome. Thank you. Okay, moving on. Our next presentation, Mr. Raphael Guzman, assistant superintendent of business services and chief business official will provide an update regarding the February 2025 cash flow report. Mr. Guzman, So my [Music] screen the cash flow presentation again our purpose with cash flow is um something that we do every month. It's a recommendation from Figmat that we follow this and that we're consistently addressing our cash flow.

022Um that's not to be confused with our budget. So cash flow is the actual cash that comes in and the budget is is a separate thing that we also monitor. However, when we're looking at cash, we also look at what's happening with the budget. Like is is our are our projections actually where we thought they were going to be? And so that's what we do with cash flow. Um cash cash flow is often impacted by budget transactions that occur throughout the year. And each month we check our cash. Uh Mr. Ba and myself pretty much on a daily basis, we go ahead and we look at our cash and make sure that everything that was supposed to come in came in. We also look at what's going out. Did something look weird from one month

023to the next? We need to understand why. So we do that type of analysis. You've seen this slide before. Uh we have the funding uh sources here. That's our main pot of funds where we have local revenues, EPA and state aid. And uh on the next slide, you can see our cash flow. So in this slide, um if you look at the month of February, our beginning cash was $151 million here. Um and as we look at the rest of the the the columns here, we had $9 million of revenues that came in and then we had $16 million of dispersements that went out. Um, and so essentially those decrease in cash of 140 essentially it ended up being where our ending cash balance was at 142.9 million. Um, and again that's mainly because of

024transactions happening between the month of January and February when we're doing uh adjustments for cash um between those months. And so essentially um as we move forward um we're going to be seeing um that cash balance kind of decreasing um and we're projecting it to end at about $127 million which is very very healthy for our district for a district that's our size and our budget. Um here's a more detailed view of our cash flow just so you can kind of see more details of how that looks. just to kind of get an idea what we look at is uh and I'm hoping that you can see what I'm trying to highlight here. Um and and so essentially we tried to look at certificated salaries and we see whether or not things are happening. As

025you can see in the month of January to February, there was a jump of about 3.6 million to 5.1 million from January to February. Um and that's mainly because of the retro payment that was done for the um uh for the raise that was given. So that was a retro to July. So you're seeing that jump on both certificated classified and the employee benefits. That's why you see that on these three month three uh columns here you're seeing a jump from the previous month. Um so just wanted to kind of emphasize that so that everyone could see essentially why that's moving forward. Again, we also look at the multi-year cash flow projections. We look at our first in our second interim, we have those projections out and everything currently is aligning with what we thought

026was going to be projected. And again, for us, it's really important to know that cash is what matters at the end of the day. If we don't have cash, that's a very bad thing. Um, and we want to make sure that we're always having cash on hand, but as it stands right now, um, we are in a very good place with cash. So, that is about it. And I'll it back to you for any questions. Mr. Guzman, with the state of the nation right now, I had a question from a little consortium that I spoke to the other day. They want to know if we have had any inkling of what's happening now that they're talking about shutting down the Department of Education. Is that going to affect us? Have we done any whatifs? Will

027that affect how we stand and the money that we have? I mean, can you give us an idea? Yes, Mr. Evans, that's an excellent question and it's a concern that we all have. So, we partner with school services of California and they have been providing us with updates about where this is going. What we've been essentially told is in order for the government to be able to strip the funding for Title One and these other types of funds that we received, it would take an act of Congress to do that. So even if the Department of Education was per se, uh shut down, it would essentially take an act of Congress for those funds to be eliminated. However, we do have uh contingencies in place that we're looking at in case that does happen, which

028we very seriously doubt. What we're hearing is it's more so a thought of dispersing the Department of Education's functions to other departments. Um is is kind of what the idea is. Um and and that's that's what we're hearing right now. But the School Services of California is monitoring that and is looking at what the what the state can do at the state level uh to address the potential loss of funds. But as of now, we we really don't have many updates. We will have a May revision in the middle of May. Um at that point in time, we'll have probably some more solid information about what would happen. What about the grants that has been um I don't know if you want to say it's been put on pause, but according to uh the person

029sitting in the White House, it's being eliminated. And these funds have been used primarily in inner city uh communities to um help foster um teachers, new teachers. And that's critical at this point, too. Even if we don't lose funding, who's going to be the oversight? And when you say an act of Congress, you're looking at the House with the majority uh in the person sitting in the White House favor. So, I mean, we used to say it would take an act of Congress as a way of just, you know, a metaphor, but right now the act of Congress can enact um some of those um concerns that uh our president here in this boardroom brought up. Absolutely, Dr. truly it is the elimination that's details about Miss Randall, you had any questions? Hello, Raphael Gooseman.

030How are you? Thank you for always being so thorough, always giving us a very accurate financial report. We know that with you at the helm, the barn door is not open. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. CIA. No questions. Okay, Meyers. Thank you, Madam President. Hello, Dr. Guzman. Uh, good to see you today, sir. Um, I want to look at um going to the dispersements on your um cash flow. I believe it was slide six uh and we're looking at um going in dispersements for services looking at 71 million and of course the reason why I'm mentioning this is because uh deficit spending deficit spending deficit spending right how do we try to get to the bottom of it right uh and I'm looking at the month of March I believe in April and I see

031that um there's s there's some significant deficit spending in those months. So me bringing it back to services, what are some things that we can look at eliminating? Uh I know we looked at books and supplies before um not looking at touching any certified or classified staff nor the benefits. something that could be addressed um is the services. So I I I know that you know the number is not high but it is high for us right now. Yes. Uh and thank you so much uh Mr. Myers. I appreciate the question. Um so if you do see that slide um and I can try to project it here so we could all see um one second and um yeah so when you look at the months of March um through April May and then you

032look at the month of June there's a a pretty big jump there really those are just projections at this point in time and really we I I don't think that based on the trends that we're seeing right now I don't think that that's going going to be fully expended. So when we uh when we run the actual estimated actuals for the adopted budget for next year, we anticipate that amount to go down because again I don't see that actually materializing. Um what happens just so everyone understands is we have to project certain budgets to be fully you know as we're going to fully expend some certain budgets like for instance with the LCAP Leo asks us for uh uh to project So, we're going to fully expect. Um, and so what that does is sometimes

033it'll inflate services. And so, we're doing our best to address that, but that's beside the point that you mentioned earlier about reductions. And you're absolutely right if we are able to find ways to decrease services. Um, that would really help. um how and I think that one of the ways that we could do that is looking at some of these uh contracted services that we've had to take on because we aren't able to hire those employees because of uh low salaries really. Um and right now with the 10% salary increase that's going to position us in a better place to be able to hire more employees and and also uh some of the u changes that we did to the salary schedules is going to enable us to do that as well. So, I do

034think that if we're able to do this and recruit those employees, it's going to lower our contracted services because the contracted service for that employee is just significantly higher. Um, so that would be very important for us to do. Thank you. I I knew that answer. I just wanted you to say it out loud to the community. Thank you. I appreciate that. Uh, I have I have another follow-up question just for other outgo uh going back to those months. All right. I see a a big influx uh from I believe 15,000 to 1.7 million. Yeah, some of that is some transfers out that we do. Gotcha. Um and we do it towards the end of the year. So that's and that's when we do that kind of transaction on cash. Great job. Well, thank you

035for those observations. I know that also speaking with Mr. Hughes, he also mentions that a lot in regards to these contracted services and he's he's absolutely right with this and I I'm on the same page as well as everyone that that wants to bring these positions in house and save the district money that way. So, I'm on the same page. Thank you, Doc. Appreciate you. Thank you, Mr. Guzman. Thank Thank you, Mr. Guzman and Miss Evans. Our next presentation this evening, Mr. Raphael Guzman, assistant superintendent of business services and chief business official along with our auditors from Nigro and Nigro will present an update on the audit report for the 2324 school year. Um, unfortunately or for unfortunately, Mr. Guzman was not our chief business official during that time, but we're catching up on an

036audit from a prior year. Mr. Guzman, we'll turn it over to you. Uh, yes, Dr. Morris. Thank you. I'll go ahead and uh start sharing the screen here in a little bit. I just wanted to take the time the time, sorry, uh to thank our auditors um here on the call, Mr. Peter Glenn and and Mr. Oscar as well. Um they have been fantastic for the district. Um they are very fair with us. Um and oftent times I I just I feel very lucky that we have um our auditors and um we've been able to work with them. Um, and I appreciate the time and and efforts that we spent together to try to clear some of these audit findings. So, I will go ahead and turn it over uh to Nigro and Nigro team

037and I'll go ahead and display the slides. So, just let me know when you want me to move to the next one. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much for that introduction, Mr. Guzman. I hope everyone can hear me. Okay. Yes. Give me a thumbs up. Great. Um, as uh as was said, we're here to present the financial report for 2324 and um Oscar was the manager on the audit. I am the audit partner. And again, thank you very much for the the kind words. We appreciate uh the district's cooperation in all the phases of the audit. So, we'll go ahead and jump and see um you know what the purpose of the audit is. I'm sure that many of you uh as board members, you're used to doing this annually. Uh but

038we'll just do a really quick review here. It's uh in order to meet the education code that the district has an a annual audit of the of its financial uh statements and records. And we are an independent external audit firm approved by the state to perform school district audits in the state of California. And um the audit looks at looks at various things. Our approach is number one the financial piece which we ensure we work with the district to make sure that the financial statements that they're responsible for uh preparing and tracking and uh reporting in their unodudited actuals. And then we assist the district in making sure the presentation is in accordance with GAP or what's known as generally accepted accounting principles. The next thing we do, we look at uh some of Oh,

039I'm sorry, jumped jumped a little bit there. The compliance areas, state and federal compliance as you know, and then all of those things require a level of internal controls that the district is responsible for. Okay, now we can jump to the next one. The next slide talks about roles and responsibilities. The the ones in blue are are the district responsibilities and the ones in green are the ones that the auditors is ultimately responsible for. So the district as I mentioned is responsible for preparing the financial information that gets audited as well as all of the supporting documentation through the general ledger and things such as invoices, purchase orders, all of the things that go into purchasing uh services, paying employees through payroll, all of those records and the internal control over those records and processes

040too. the pay wall process being primarily the largest one that a school district is going to have. So responsible for all those internal controls and then our responsibility as auditors is to remain uh remain independent have that professional judgment and skepticism. We assess the risk based on uh different factors. we design procedures and then and then that that kind of drives our testing and then once all that's done we express an opinion on the financial statements and the the state of the district's uh controls. Um I won't get super into the weeds with our testing. Um but the the next two slides are to give you an idea of the breadth of the testing that occurs from a standpoint of attendance. So ADA there is average daily attendance. That's the abbreviation there. So that's the

041attendance and then of course the ASBs are the associated student body funds. So we can go to the next uh couple slides there. That first one was district and these two are the charter school which of course the district has a responsibility of oversight for. And then um again just kind of continuing on. I'm going a broad brush here. High overview of some of the things that we look at. So like I said, the different processes, payroll, cash receiping, dispersements, and then when it comes to federal and state compliance, um every year we have a different array, if you will, of of different programs that we look at from the federal standpoint. So this year we looked at the ESER funds, that was kind of the back end of those funds. We looked at special

042education and also title one and of course the state compliance area that was that was a really large um as it always is a large number of different compliance areas. Um and this the phase two we're calling different phases. Phase two usually occurs in the fall and winter months. So this is after the unodudited actuals have been approved by the board. And so we are auditing all of those, you know, financial transactions and balances that are in those uh unodudited actuals. And then we're finishing up with our state and federal compliance testing. And then we're looking at some of the long-term items that you'll see in the audit report such as your capital outlays, those capital assets that are reporting and a lot of those long-term debt items which uh you know are all a

043part of that financial audit that are maybe not as visible in the fund financial statements but certainly make up um a lot of the audit report. That's the pensions and uh post-employment benefits and relatively newly uh leases. So that's page two of the audit. And then um the last I didn't mention the audit report um oh sorry go ahead um to the next one. The audit report opinion there um our expression our opinion on the financial statements was an unmodified opinion. So that was what's known as a clean opinion, which means all of your financial fund balances, your transactions um that are reported in the audit report itself um those are fairly stated and the benefits you there is as you go about I know you've already gone through your first interim and second interim

044but those those starting points you can have the verification confidence that an independent audit firm went through there and looked at those and is in agreement with those beginning balances so that as you move forward and you build your budgets and you look at your spending that you're at a you're at a clean starting point. Um, another part of the audit that we perform is of course compliance. I mentioned that in the beginning and so we had a number of financial statement uh areas and also state and federal compliance areas. I'm not going to dive in again to the weeds. Those are all spelled out in the auto report. So, we have five different financial statement findings. We had two federal findings. And then you want to go ahead and flip uh the page there.

045We had some findings when it came to state compliance. We had six of those. And you can see the number of state compliance areas that are in the state audit guide. There's 37 compliance areas. 28 are applicable to the district. And so when you look at six findings, that's out of a possible 28 state compliance areas, if you will. Okay. And so that's kind of a whirlwind high overview of the audit process and results. And if you want to uh Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Uh if we want to look back at how this compares to prior audits, that would be the next slide. And I'm not sure, Raphael, you wanted to talk about this. Yes, thank you, Peter. I appreciate that. So, yes, um again, I just want to emphasize how grateful I am

046to Peter and Oscar. It's it's our first time working, at least my first time working with Peter and um it was it was very fair uh a very thorough audit and um really appreciate u their um just everything that was done. So, as you can see here, back in 1920, we were at 13 audit findings. Then we dropped to about eight and then unfortunately it kind of doubled um the year after that and it kept on going up and uh in 23 24 you know we were able to really reduce um seven different findings to kind of back where we were in 1920 I do anticipate that number to go down. I think we've done a lot of work already to try to address some of these findings. Um specifically if you look at what

047we eliminated from the 20 uh from the previous year we eliminated like the capital assets tracking finding uh we were able to implement the appropriate systems we were able to show segregation of duties now in the cash receipt process that's one of the very important things that we implemented uh we are now compliance with public contract codes uh regarding future bids that's something we are heavily relying on if you look at mostly all of our uh contracts that we're bringing forward to the board when it as it pertains to fiscal and and and u facilities. You'll see bids on there and and so we're doing everything we can to make that uh be eliminated. And um we've also done some internal control for people attendance uh the monitoring system for EOP uh for allowable expenses

048that was also eliminated uh in this audit. We we cleaned up a lot of this during year and closing. A lot of this was done during our year end uh which happens from July through September of 23 20 2425. So in July of 2024 through September of 2025, we really worked hard to try to clear a lot of these findings um and just get the appropriate information. Um and you can see a list here of them, but the rest of those findings that were clear um so I think we're in a very good spot. We've identified a corrective action plan. We've already submitted that to Leo and we'll continue to monitor implementation to ensure that all of the issues are effectively addressed. Um, we're making sure that we continue the significant progress that we're making

049and I do believe that hopefully next year we'll be able to reduce these findings even more. So, with that said, I'll turn it back over to you Dr. Morris for questions to our auditors or to myself regarding the audit. So, thank you very much. Mrs. Evans, well, do you have any questions for Mr. Bosma? I'm looking at the number of audit findings over the years and if you look at 2020 through 2021, we only had eight findings and then it jumps to 16 and then 19. Can you explain to me why um what did we do to only have eight findings in 2021? And obviously um we had a problem in 2022 and 2023 and 2024 cuz we're still not down to at least eight. So uh thank you Dr. McGee. That's an excellent question.

050Um what I can say is that really a lot of these findings pop up um when you when you have a when you don't I don't want to say this the wrong way. Um during the year end closing process that happens from July through September, there's a lot of work that needs to be done. Um and you have to make sure that you close the books the right way. Um and I'm not saying that they weren't closed the right way. Uh I'm not trying to imagine any of that. I'm just saying um we do a lot of cleanup work during that time. Um and I think you know even this year we were able to clean up a lot of things. And what happens is after September, our auditors request even more information from September

051through December. And so if we don't provide the information they're requesting, if we don't find the information, then essentially we generate the finding. Um I think that what happened was unfortunately maybe there wasn't uh enough answers to information or or maybe the right questions weren't asked on our side. um because you know we were able even during this during this audit um we were able to identify and answer several of our questions um we were able to track down documents because we kind of know where exactly to look and and where to gather that information um and so I think really that's what what sort of happened um and I think that for next year we're going to see progress because that's on that end but there's things that also has to be done throughout

052the entire year. So some of the things you can kind of salvage as you close your books, but some things if you didn't do it throughout the year, then you're in trouble. And so one one example of that is a duplicated pupil count. We've already began a pre- audit of our duplicated pupil count for this year for 2425. and we're being as responsive as we can to the pre- audit because if you catch these things during the pre- audit that happens in uh you know January uh through the the first months of this calendar year we're if we're able to address those things early on we probably won't get a finding on those on those items. So a lot of it is being able to communicate with the auditor being able to address things as

053the year goes and when you're closing the books that you're able to find the documents you need. Um, so I think that we we're doing a better job of that now. Yeah. Because we are paying Nigro and Nigro a lot of money. It is their job to do the audits. It is our job to make sure that we are in concert um to what they need. And again, I'm sorry you did not answer my question. I wanted to know what they did in 2021 to get only eight findings. And perhaps you're not able to answer that cuz you I thought you were here in 2021. Yes. So I was here Dr. McGee and and yes, we were able to reduce it by implementing the proper procedures. We did a pre- audit throughout the throughout that

054year in 2021 and we were able to identify areas that could have their findings. We were able to eliminate those and when we closed the books in 2021, uh we were able to, you know, address we were able to close the books correctly. we, you know, we just had a better pulse on the budget on the ADA on just a bunch of different items um because we just had the systems in place at that time. After that, I'm not sure exactly what happened. I can't answer that. Uh but what I can say is once we um at least u starting in July and August, we looked at making sure we made as many corrections as we could the prior year uh and and make sure that we close the books the right way. Uh but

055I think Next year we'll probably get around I'm hope I'm pretty sure it will be under double digits because we're already clearing things that have been in the f in the audit findings for years and a lot of that is just again communication with our auditor. So I I communicate with the auditor consistently to make sure that we address these findings and that we don't you know have those repeated. So, you know, and and the auditor tells you exactly what the finding is and how sometimes in consultation with them, they tell you how to correct certain findings. Um, you know, they and so we're able to implement that and so we already have some things in place for that. Okay. I'm going be looking for those things in place. Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr.

056Gman. I have just one question about the student teacher ratio in 2023. Now with our enrollment dropping, how do we have more students than teachers? Is that the time when we didn't have enough teachers to fill all of our positions? Is that audit finding? Thank you, Miss Evans. So that was for um a that you probably saw that on the list of findings that we cleared for 2223. Um, so I think that what happened that was fiscal year 22 23 and you have to make sure that throughout the year we're uh looking at our ratios. Um, and I think for whatever reason there may have been an imbalance in one of those ratios. I'd have to go back and and uh make sure I look at specifically which one, but that's that was for 2223

057audit. In 2324, uh, we were able to correct that. So now we're we're balanced now. We have enough of a student teacher showing at this point. We have enough teachers for all the students that we do have. Yeah. The one finding that we probably won't clear and I don't see a way that we can is is the CA finding. Um and I think that with time we'll be able to clear it as we start increasing salaries and lowering uh contracted services. That's the only way that we can do it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Evson. Thank you. Oh, Miss Randall. Thank you, Raphael Guzman. I believe that it shows a glaring difference that you were in place in 2021. Thank you for that professionally polished answer. You are so kind and so

058gracious. You weren't in place, so it went back up 16. It went back up 19. you're here trying to clean it up, brought it back down to 13. I'm sure it's going to lower even more as you put this Harry Potter spend on this and and find things and implement things and put systems in place so that when you get to the end of the year, you're able to to not have these findings go back up. So, you weren't here, somebody else was put in place. That's when the findings went up. I want to thank you so much for being here, for going over the budget with the fine tooth comb, for working with the auditors. They do tell you what you need to do, but if you really don't know, you can't do it.

059But you know, I'm grateful you're in place and thank you for your work. Yeah. Thank No, I have a husband. I love him dearly. Thank you. And I I think Miss Randle your your comments were um very wise to say you know one of the things that we know and and Mr. Raphael Mr. Guzman will be very clear he works as a team and it's you know if you listen to the auditors they will tell you here's the guidance to make sure that that audit finding doesn't reoccur. Um and Mr. Guzman works very closely with Mr. Bata and Miss Sto. It's a team that if you listen to the auditors and they say, "Here's what you need to clean it up. Here's the system you need to put in place and you put the system

060in place, the audit finding goes away." So, uh, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Guzman, for your presentation. Really, really appreciate it. And uh now we're going to move on to public comments on agenda and non-aggenda items to provide an opportunity for the public to address the county administrator and board of education on agenda and non-aggenda items. A public comment card must be completed and submitted to the safety assistant who's stationed at the entrance to the meeting room before 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 comments on agenda items and 30 minutes for non-aggenda items. If

061the public comment cards exceed 10 comments per section, the time allotted 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 at the discretion of the presiding officer. Anyone who disrupts, disturbs, or impedes the orderly conduct of the meeting will be asked to exit the meeting room. The guidelines for public comment are in accordance with board bylaw 9323. Mrs. I will say that the Brown Act does not allow the board or county administrator or cabinet members to respond to public comments. Miss Embrano, public comments. Uh, yes, we do. Dr. Mars, we're starting with public comments on agenda items. The first public comment is from Mr. Loy Fischer. Mr. Fischer, please come to the podium to address your public comments

062on agenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Thank you. Um, first off, I wanted to uh let you all know that uh you know, we need to save these schools. We don't need to be selling these schools. We don't need to be tearing the schools down. You know, when you could uh try to get out of some of this debt that we owe the state and I don't think we're doing a very good job of it. Uh and you're not doing a good job of getting to the public out. I've been here for 60 odd years and paid my taxes for these schools and then everything else. This uh uh consent calendar I uh was concerned about uh this uh fiscal analyst uh and them changing the name to a fiscal compliance manager

063uh with a salary including uh services and stuff and and money and so I'm concerned about uh you know where and why you know you're giving somebody you already have additional monies on on that with regard to services uh you know you have uh LA Metro YMCA uh enrichment uh safety programs uh I've been involved with YMCA for 40 odd years and uh I know that they're coming here and you're going give them this property for a dollar and when we need uh this property and other properties here. But uh you know it's my concern that uh you know what what are you giving them these safety enrichment programs for? I know you're not going to answer any questions either, but uh uh you have RO health uh with a $250,000 increase. Why? You know,

064you uh have Morningside cheerleaders. They're going to Las Vegas, you know, uh with this sharp uh I guess the contest that these kids are going up there for. Uh I don't know, you know, with the position we're in with this money, you know, why you're taking these kids up there already. But even more concerning to me is that you have this uh uh accelerated radio and cross colors creative center uh that you have added to your budget for them to go up there. You already have uh the the increase of chaperons. I don't know how many kids you have going up there, but uh I don't think it's necessary and Certainly not necessary for these uh uh people to be paying these extra people uh to go up there with them. You have this uh

065TJ Walker Foundation uh reset in installations and I don't understand what all that is. Uh you just seem like Mr. a lot of things that you don't have to do and uh you know as a resident here I'm certainly concerned about it and I hope that many of you Thank you. Our second public comment is from Mr. John Hughes. Mr. Hughes, please come to the podium to address your public comments on agenda item. You have three minutes. You may begin. Uh thank you. Good evening. uh to the county administrator, to the advisory board, cabinet, and to the community. Um a couple of issues that we have and I'll kind of um we'll do some extemporaneous speaking based on the last speaker's comment. Um I wanted to speak on the um theou and on some of

066the presentations that we heard um earlier um through the audit findings and all of the recommendations we did here that the increase is better for the union. the teachers increase, the increase in salary is better for the union because as um we've all we've all heard uh stability is necessary and you can't have stability without um uh properly um compensating people. Uh and to the point of the previous speaker about um funds or things, you know, I asked this uh a while ago about the disclosures. Um we have to be transparent. Um the budget is a nice presentation, but it doesn't trace um sources of funding. It doesn't show openly. Um and people the public should not have to ask for that. um it should be part of the the natural agenda and that was

067removed um some time ago. Um and I think that comes to uh the point that the community deserves um explanation. We're not above explanation. our best um our best or most effective way to show um leadership or to show value is by being transparent and being active. Um you know, a person shouldn't have to find me to do my job. Um I'm I'm readily accessible. So if they can find me and they post my information on the website, we have to post information on the website. We have to post agendas the way they were posted in the past. There was no reason to change the way that we were conducting business. As a matter of fact, we can show prior to receiverhip that um we were performing at um academically and across the board at

068a significantly better um level than we currently are and in our 13th year. So, let's not throw everything out. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know, people in Englewood are capable and I've said it many times, we are experts and we can sit in a room with anyone and show our worth, show our value. This community is very educated. They are not just up here making noise. They're making sense and we should acknowledge them. Thank you. Thank you. Our third public comment is from Miss Diane Sbrano. Mr. Brown, please come to the podium to address your public comments on agenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Good evening. I'm so glad I got here in time to discuss item D1. Uh because one of the things that frustrates me as

069we talk about transparency. Isn't that a nice word? I don't know that we know what that means. I should be able to look at and see. However, when I went and clicked on the nice little clicky place to look at this thing, it said I needed a password. If it is password protected, then it is unrealistic for me to be able to get up here and make a comment about any audit put together by anybody. Here's a really funny thing. You think I look like this and I'm probably a dummy because I'm from Englewood and I'm not on top of that, so I couldn't have a brain. Yeah, I was an internal auditor for a major corporation. I've earned the right to not dress up and not wear makeup. Okay. So, how about we pretend

070people out there know a thing or two? Both my parents had master's degrees. Okay. Created a lot of stuff you don't know about because it's still top secret. So, let's not downplay the residents of this community. don't have anything password protected when it has to do with the money I am obligated to pay, which is another thing that I'll take up on my non-aggenda items. But with regard to even what we did see today that was presented, did y'all notice that in the handout um one of the columns was missing? Which one is it? There's columns up there. I only get two. So, how about if we claim we're transparent, we actually be transparent because the opakeness makes it look like somewhere someone is attempting to hide something very sneaky, inappropriate, not wanting us to

071know because we would get upset about. So, transparency should mean complete and absolute transparent. Thank you. We're now going to transition to public comments on non-aggenda items. The first public comment is from Miss Fidelia. Miss Fidelia, please come to the podium to address your public comments on non-aggenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Thank you. Um I'm a parent from Ben and I'm here. Uh we just left our student side council meeting at 4 o'clock and I rushed home to get here. Uh but I like to communicate the things that I do see my school. We are a team. We have really built a community that we can support each other. Parents, teachers, principal, uh students. However, the need that we have is that um our children, some of our children are coming

072to school and whether they have issues at home or not, we are faced with the fact that some of them need additional help. We only have one counselor for over 500 students, which is impossible for him to do. They do suggest we do have hazel health. We do have we can start tier one, tier two, tier three support and all these things are great and they work. However, we need the physical person to do the followup to do the write up because without all this documentation is absolutely nothing. So no matter how much they try, Mr. Galvan probably comes when it's still dark and goes home when it's dark when it gets dark again. Doesn't eat lunch because I get I spend a lot of the time at school myself. I've been at school all

073day like yesterday, but we don't have the the the the physical body, you know, the person that will do the writing to complete this task that we need to in order for the child to resert to, you know, receive the needs that they have. We do have the facilities, we have the programs, but we don't have the person to follow up. So, I'm asking to please re-evaluate the number of children per counselor do not match what we have today. Back in the days, we were we as I'm talking about as a child were good. We will follow instructions. The children that are now are more open. They they need more. They they they doubt the system. They challenge the system. So, we need the adults to handle this part. My other uh uh need and

074concern is that we need more safety at our school. I walked in school today uh 10:45. There were two uh patrol cars outside, two officers inside. Uh don't know what happened. two weeks ago, two weeks ago, we had a incident at school. We had policemen in the area, but we don't have anybody in our school as security to find out what's going on. Uh, one of the teachers mentioned on our SOC meeting today that one child threw a chair at a teacher. They're fearful. And what my concern is, how do we resolve this? I'm coming to say, hey, we have built a team. We're working very, very hard. Some of our parents like I do, I spend minimum of eight hours a day at school, but it's not sufficient. We need your help. We need

075someone to look into this ratio of students to counselors to protect us. We need to look at our security that we have in our uh, you know, at school in the mornings and at night, you know, when we're going dismissal, we need someone there. We don't have anyone to help us. We as parents try to but unfortunately some of the parents do not have a respect because you know you're just another parent. No, I'm a parent that's here for free trying to help you. Please listen to me. So I'm here to say please help us. Thank you. Our second public comment is from Miss Rosio Sanchez. Miss Sanchez, please come to the podium to address your public comments on non-aggenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Thank you. Good evening, Dr. Morris, wonderful

076board members, Dr. Lucas, Dr. Co Kley, and Mr. Guzman. I'm here today to talk about the community school grant. All of our schools who received the grant were extremely happy. However, I have some concerns. The district community uh committee has only met once this school year back in October. The community school coordinators are still being hired, but unfortunately, funds are being spent without school's input in some schools. I know of a couple of schools that were provided with a child's um institute family ambassador without school's input of course and for the modest amount of $75,000. But it's okay because the cost share among two sides. No school only spent $37,500, right? Nope. It's not okay because our school need to be able to decide how their money is spent. Our students are unique and their

077needs are unique. Many of her students, as mentioned before, they need social emotional support. Schools are seeking to use the funds to provide students with counseling services. The family ambassador job description is like part of our current liaison's job or our future community school coordinator. The family ambassador's job is to provide linkage linkage to resources that families would need. They don't work with students. A few schools staff know of their existence and even a few parents are not even aware of the services they provide. Our schools don't need people who sit behind desk and provide linkage to services. We need boots on the ground. We need to be able to decide as a school where the money will be spent. Just like students, our our schools have unique needs and they need to be able

078to provide individualized resources. Um I just have two last questions. When is the next um when is the next community to school district committee meeting and how can our school return the ambassador back to you? We need people who can work with our students um not point families to resources as the parent mentioned previously. We need counselors. Thank you. Thank you. Our third public comment is from Miss Donna Espin. Mrs. Spinal, please come to the podium to address your public comments on non-aggenda items. You have three minutes. You may begin. Hi, good evening. Um, I want to echo what she said because that was amazing. Um, Miss Fidelia and and her counterpart. Um, I'm from Oak Street. Um, I think we would benefit, every school site would benefit from listening sessions instead of us parents

079coming here. Please come to our schools. Come sit with us. come hear what we have to say, what we need, because every school's different. They need different things. Um, I've been lucky enough to be taken in by BenQ. They're like my second family over there. They're amazing. And seeing what they get and seeing what I get is very different. And I love mingling, but I shouldn't have to go out of my way. Although I do love their campus. I mean, I'm that's my home over there. But, um, it should be better. I have a parent that's already thinking about leaving. And even though I'm trying to to coers her into going to BenQ, she's um telling echoing the same things that I feel like our program coordinator for our special education is not listening. She's

080talking over us during IEP meetings and not listening. And she had she was talking over me during my IEP uh meeting and it was because it wasn't recorded. So there's no proof. She was even throwing a visual fit like and I'm like this is not professional behavior. you're here to listen to my grievances and my concern about my child while you're too busy talking over me and then when I finally speak you're throwing a fit. So, you know, we need to start listening to our parents and our community about what our schools need. Um, so that we, you know, our district can be more proactive and less reactive. So, let's not wait for a problem. Let's try to address them as they're, you know, before they become and escalate to something that's a disaster. Um,

081I do want to ask if before closed the high schools if you allow alumni to come back and open the school for alumni to come visit the campuses before they closed Morningside and Englewood High. Um I also wanted to mention if it would be possible I know at Oak Street we had a mural that they painted over if it would be possible to make a mural for Mr. Barter because he did so much for our community. We miss him all the time. We talk about him. He's he's a legend. Um, I also wanted to share that Oak Street had their first book fair since 2017. It was very successful. Uh, I want to thank the BenQ family for taking me under my wing, under their wing, showing me the ropes. I did it by myself

082because PTA didn't want to, um, they didn't want to support me, but I wanted to do it for the kids. So, I did it by myself. I'm working and I'm working full day at the school doing the book fair by myself. And it has been rewarding to be on one side as a parent and now to be behind that register and giving the gift of literacy to students is beyond anything that I thought I would get. Okay. I I donated and my husband donated and we provided books to whatever student came and didn't have enough money. So I do recommend you guys coming to these schools. RIFF would be amazing for my school. It's never been there. It hasn't been there in years. Please come visit. Thank you. Thank you. Our fourth public comment is

083from 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. Okay. So much to say. Have to talk really quick. So listen carefully. First of all, if you go to US News and Worlds Report, I'd like to brag on my alma mater because well, hey, wow. Ready? We had a grand total of three. One, two, three% proficiency in mathematics. Isn't that disgusting? But you know why we're better? England High had one. So that tells me something's going on very, very, very, very, very wrong here. So, leaving that one aside, uh, I'm going to go on and tell you that I am absolutely Gosh, so many things. Our schools were built a long time ago. I know that. Not the whole

084hundred years. Okay, somebody lies about that. But here's the deal. Englewood High was a WA WPA project because of the earthquake that knocked it down. At a minimum, the administration building should be saved in my opinion because it is a historically significant site. Not very many remaining WAPA projects exist throughout the entire nation. We have a few in Englewood. we have disrespected the vast majority of them. Perhaps Ingwood High could be a different sort of thing there. With regard to that, also I attended a meeting this weekend and it was amazing that if you give one person notice, they'll reach out to other people because most of us didn't even hear about that meeting until the night before. That's the problem. People, don't tell me again you want us to participate if you don't tell

085us where to go and when to participate. That doesn't even work. Uh, it's an insult beyond measure. But then again, not nearly as much as, "Are you ready? There was a breakin at Worthington Elementary." Do you know what the police officer said when I called them? You'll love this. It should be priceless. It should make every one of you run to your local council member, smack them on the back, and say, "What on earth?" because the police officer told me they would not go on and secure the school district because it was private property and I should call the owner. They said they don't go on private property. So here's the deal. Because I told that officer, if you expect police officers to respond when you're getting beaten, when you're getting murdered, when you're being

086robbed, you better hope every one of those things happens between the curb and the curb and not at your house. That is an incredibly insulting, beyond measured thing. And if you think I'm not kidding, go on Transparent California and see how much you are paying those police officers to say ain't my job. That's pretty dog on out there. And with regard to Q Bennett and Black History Month, great job. Wish you all there. And please remember Jesse Enra came from Englewood and gave us the civil rights amendments. Thank you. Our fifth public comment is from Mr. Loy Fischer. Mr. Fischer, please come to the podium to address your public comments and non-aggenda items. Okay, you have three minutes. You may begin. Save our schools. Listen, uh I uh was at a meeting Saturday uh at

087Warren Lane. Uh and just like Diane said, you know, we didn't get any information. You know, I ran from Dan to Freeman trying to find out where I was being. Finally, uh when I got over there, I called a few people to come. Uh we had about 30 people, but you know, I don't know how many of them uh uh even bothered to uh stay and comment, but uh you know, Dr. Morris, you have been around here for a couple years better. Uh I'm sure uh before you there were five or six others that uh were in the same position, you know, but uh what I'm concerned about most of all to all of you is them closing these schools. And I say don't close any of the schools. you know, we paid for those

088schools. And those schools are not for, you know, these contractors that come in and take over, you know, these school properties and build up u housing or whatever. You know, those are school properties and it's up to we the people of the city of Inglewood to tell them what we want to do with those schools and not have you them tear schools down, you know, uh for some other contractors to come in. So, I just uh hope that uh you will listen better to us and understand that some of us really really do care. Thank you. Thank you. Our sixth public comment is from Mr. 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. Uh, thank you. Um, I believe

089it was Frederick Douglas that said, um, it's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. And I would add and women. Um, we are talking about caring. Uh I think that is the message that um I'm hearing is how do you demonstrate that you care? And it's actually by solving problems and it's actually by um uh being engaged in this district. We have too many meetings, too many committees, too many um uh abstract um in engagement and and policies and surveys and things of that nature. In my opinion, if I was running this district, every administrator, every board member, every cabinet member, everyone would have to come to a school site at least, let's let's just say 10%. 10% of the time is two days out of a month. That doesn't occur. We

090rely on hearsay. We rely on uh uh gossip. We rely on the very things that are destructive to not only uh a a organization but to a family. people that talk about each other to each other, practice elitism, all of the things that go on in this district is not good for building strong children. And that's what we are supposed to be doing. How do you address a problem that you don't even go see, that you don't address, that you don't even um uh have meaningful conversations with? You cannot do it from behind the office door. You can't. Examples are in what you give back. How do we show that we care? We show that we care by sitting down and wiping that child's tear from their eye when they come in the office or

091wherever there is. That's how we show we care. We show we care by going into that new teacher's room and telling them it's going to be all right. You're going to have the support and we're going to make sure that happens. That's how we show we care. We show we care by speaking to the community and saying like Mr. Fischer just said, "All of these schools were paid for. Let's stop playing that game that you don't have funds. Let's stop that one, too. If you didn't have funds, how did we find them? How did ITA find them? If you didn't have funds, a budget is about how you manage money. It's not about not having money. Now, the question is management. And we've said that from day one, and we say it today. This issue

092is mismanagement and nothing else. And you must get it together. Thank you. Thank you. And our last public comment is from Mr. Morris Phillips. Mr. Phillips, please come to the podium to address your public comments on non-aggenda items. You have three minutes. You may be in. All [Music] right. Yeshua. Amen. Ladies and gentlemen, this Friday um from 5 to 6 p.m. there's going to be a Zoom meeting relating to the Englewood Unified School District. There'll be a lot of heavyweights on that Zoom meeting. And uh before I take my seat, I want to share something with you. There was a guy named Harry S. Truman, former president of the United States, no hack for Missouri. When he left the White House, he there was this cliche that was attributed to him. It said the buck

093stops here. Everybody ever heard that? Well, let me tell you something. When it comes to the Englewood Unified School District, the buck don't stop with James Morris. Thank you. [Music] Thank you. That concludes our public comments for tonight. Thank you, Miss Sbrano. We're going to move on to action items on this evening's agenda. Approval of human resources division items. Does the board members have any questions or comments on a 9A1 through 96? Board members, any comments? No comments. 9A1 through 9A6 are each approved. Moving on to Educational Services Division. 9B1 through 9B15. Mrs. Evans. No comments. 9B1 through 9B15 are each approved. Moving on to business services items. Uh be before uh proceeding with approval of number one, I just want to clarify that I'm going to pull conference uh from the roster for administrative

094professionals conference which is 9C5 after the item came onto the agenda. Um I found that the conference that was an outofstate conference is actually going to be available in state in California. So, uh, we'll make some modifications to that and bring it back as appropriate. Does the board have any comments on 9C1 through 9C9? No. Thank you. 9C1 through 9C9 with the exception of 9C5, the administrative professionals conference that was pulled from the travel and conference roster are each approved. Moving on to measure GGI and facilities 9D1 through 9D8. No comments. Thank you. 9D1 through 9D8 are each approved. Moving on to county administrators division. Any questions or comments on 9E1? No. I do want to make a comment on the policies. It's uh we have a new board policy this evening I just want

095to point out um which is a policy the board has never had before which is establishment of a student board member seat. our uh county administrator, student advisory council meeting uh a group met yesterday and elected a student board member who will be on the board beginning in July in accordance with this policy and our student board member will be at the May board of education meeting to be introduced. Very very excited. Um, I will only say this. Uh, our student board member gave a speech that would bring tears to your eyes about her commitment to education and to being the voice of students in this school district. So, we're going to have her at the May meeting and I'm going to have her repeat her speech for you. Uh, with that, uh, 911 is

096approved. Moving on, uh, to approval of the minutes. Board members, any questions or comments on the minutes of the March 12th, 2025 board of education meeting? No comments. The minutes of the March 12th, 2025 board of education meeting are approved. And I'm going to turn it over to Mrs. Evans for board member remarks. Okay. Uh, no remarks. Thank you, Mr. Castillo. Thank you, board president. Uh, a couple things. Um, just moving forward, you know, I know we can't respond to comments, but I'm too excited about this. I kind of want to give a little preview. You know, Mr. Barter was a very important person in my life and my family's life. So, when we have the opportunity to do this through the right procedures, this is what's going to happen and I'm going to see

097it to it. But we're going to rename our new community garden to the Richard Barter Garden. And not only that, we're going to accompany that with a beautiful mural, including some students and the student as well that has fallen during his time at at Oak Street. So, that's on the way and I'm really excited about that. I can't let that go without addressing that because that's something I'm very passionate about and I'm very excited that we're going to bring that to our community. Um, beyond that, you know, I I I do think it's important for us to assure the public that as board members, we are visiting the school sites and as board members, we do take a lot of time of our work to make sure we visit our school sites. So, I wanted

098to say that I had the pleasure of visiting a lot of our school sites. Um, even some schools are not in my district. So, I apologize on on behalf of modern board members. But the reason why I think it's so important to do that is because I think a lot of passion that comes from our conversations here is that our students are truly special and there's no test scores. There's no reports that could take away from what they are capable of and what they do on a daily basis. For our students to see us have these conversations, our spirits in because they're needed. Our students are wondering if we could do more. And I think that's a question we all need to ask. Can we do more? And the answer is always yes. Our students

099are proving that whatever mistakes or whatever problems that we're facing now, they're going to address it because they're smart, they're capable, and they know the answers that we don't know yet. So the answer is always support the students, support the students, and support the students. So that's why I'm very excited that last Sunday we had an amazing mock trial with a real federal court judge, uh, Sandra Klein. Um, she takes her time to visit our our our students. We had about 15 participants here from Engle Unified, all girls students from sixth grade to 12th grade. They were paired with a mentor from Loyal Law School and they did a case based on Twilight. And the issue was, is Edward a vampire? They they found that he is, but they found that he posed no danger

100to the community. Um, which I found I thought was pretty heartfelt. It was awesome to see students play the role of an attorney. Some played the role of a jury. Uh, one played Edward, one played Jacob. And there was a conflict interest that arose from that and they they and they all addressed that. So it was really awesome to see that to see the students light up and see themselves as what they want to be is attorneys right one day leaders for this community. That's why I'm very excited for our new student board member and I'm very excited to see our former students come out to support our community. At the committee asset management meeting we had this Saturday. There was a couple of former students that came out and they never really heard of

101anything going on before but they came out because they wanted to say what could I do as a former student? um she was a former Warren Lane student. What could I do to address something that I think is it's appeal appalling that there's a school site that they used to go to and now it's not there anymore. So, they're asking questions and asking the right questions. So, I'm very excited for them to come to the table to find how are we going to find solutions to make things right here in the district. Um that got a little off topic, but I want to talk about the women program again. this Saturday. Uh for all the parents listening, sixth grade and 12th grade, we are having a picnic for to end the program. Um we're going

102to honor our eighth graders and 12th graders are graduating. Uh also want to give a shout out to uh Kevin Hart uh for showing up for our students today. Uh and the mayor as well was there and and our board member Myers was there too and our cabinet. Uh and Madam President, right? Yeah, she was she made it she made it as well too. Uh, thank you. And it it it was amazing because Chase Bank first came to do a financial literacy session with our students and they were so blown away by our students that they came back with Kevin Hart. They said they deserve Kevin Hart deserves to meet these students and that's exactly the type of energy that's going to happen when we keep doing right for our students and expose them to

103opportunities that they're able to uh benefit from. And I'd like to close that we celebrated Caesar Shavez day on March 31st. Uh but tomorrow is equally important day. It is Dolores Perua's birthday uh April 12 10th and she is equally as important as Cra Chavez if not more because of her constant advocacy throughout the years. She embodies everything that we need to be as community members and community leaders and as a board member. So, I hope that we could definitely find a way to honor her here at the district. Um, as the Lord is becoming an official holiday here in California, um, maybe it's something we could consider here as a district as well, too. So, uh, in addition with that, um, just want to wish all our students good luck on testing because, you

104know, the scores do matter, but I know you're all beautiful and amazing and, you know, amazing souls and those scores, you know, don't depict what you are, but end of the day, they do matter. So, please do well. And uh and I believe that's all I have. Oh, our counselors. We're we're facing a counselor shortage. And I think that's something we got to address. I know we have our wellness centers. I know we have a lot of ways for our students to have well-being, but our counselors do so much work on our school sites. And I know we had to make tough decisions, but moving forward, we got to find a way to compensate for that shortage that is coming through our our school sites, especially our K through eight, because there's a lot that

105that only counselors could address for our students. Um, with that I close my comments. Thank you Mr. Castillo, Miss uh Randall. Good evening. Thank you for parents, the community stakeholders who are here today and who consistently come. A lot of things that I wouldn't know unless you came in and told it. So, thank you so much for your courage. We need to be inclusive of all students and given a report that doesn't include all students is concerning to me. We have something called a single plan for student achievement where we're supposed to be inclusive of all students in the school. It's a state template and I am very curious to see the state template for this because the African-American student is cited. We have something called a school experience survey and repeatedly we have parents

106who come up who say I'm not included. I'm silenced. I want to participate but they don't tell me that it's going on. So how I don't I don't understand how we can expect parents to embrace the school experience survey and give us a good report when they are not properly included. when we have uh parents in communication and give out our board agendas that are missing part of the information and are able to hold it up and show that part of the information is just simply not there. Um I'm glad we're going to have anything that honors Mr. Barter. I love Mr. Barter, but I'm concerned about the painted over mural because that's what happened at Kelso. The mural was painted over. It was a beautiful mural. I don't even have a picture of it

107so it could be recreated. And I was told over and over and over, oh, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. No, it's not going to happen. And folk knew when they were telling me that it was going to happen, that it wasn't going to happen. So, that becomes my trepidation with believing everything that I'm told. So, I just have to just wait and see what what happens. We have um I've emailed about four emails that I haven't gotten a response back from. So, I'm going to follow up with those emails this week. It's information that I I need to know. I've received information from parents, emails from parents, text messages from parents about things at the school. So, I need a response to those emails. the social justice leadership institute that's at currently

108at Morningside. I need a report back regarding it. I'll put this time I'm going to keep my own notes so I can add an additional email and nobody has to go back and look at this uh recording this time putting additional work on Marcel. So I'm going to I'm going to make sure that I put in the email today. Um it was one more thing. Oh, we had a walk through for the new school site for Kelso and War Lane. I knew nothing about it. I didn't know about till I saw it in the paper. So, if you're going to have a a a walkth through at a school site that I was elected to represent, I like to know so that I'm able to be there. I'd rather have the option to know and

109say I can't attend rather than being absent as if I don't care or couldn't go. I could have sent somebody but I didn't even know. So I would very much like to be able to know that. I am not at all um in fear that any of our monies at this point are being mismanaged. I don't think they were being mismanaged then. I just think we we did somebody a disservice by hiring a person who didn't know the job and that was wrong. It was disrespectful, but it's done and it's over. Beautiful personality, lovely person, but we set up set the person up for favor and being attacked. So now there's a person in position who knows the job. our finances are much better and we have an accurate detailed report about our finances. And

110then the final thing is that my links work. All of all of my links work here. And I'm going to go on to another I'm going to ask someone to click on another computer to make sure that the publish links work because when the publish links don't work, it looks like we don't want them to be getting the information. So, we just need to make sure that their links work as well. Can't answer. Okay, that their links work as well. See, that's the people text us, call us, they see me talking right now, but they want to give us information and I really, really, really, really appreciate the information. We could have a C. I can have a C at the school. I still wouldn't have all the information because it's sneaky stuff going on.

111So the only way I get the information is that you tell because you're there. So I thank you for that. Continue to keep coming out. Don't stay away. I believe that we all want the same thing. I believe that it's a really good team in place. I really appreciate the Harry Potter move that Dr. Lucas did for the fake map report. And now I keep want to call Dr. Rockfield Gman, you got to go get that doctor doctorate that Dr. Guzman is doing with our finances. I believe that we're in a good place. I'm not happy with schools closing. Uh and and I spoke with the superintendent. I'm transparent. You know, I'm transparent. I spoke with him about my plan and um I'm going follow through. It won't be because I didn't try. Thank you

112so much for an opportunity to speak. Thank you, Miss Randall. Dr. Ngi. Well, I just want to say I'm exhausted. I just got back from the DMV taking over 80 students to uh HBCU tour. Are you still talking? I'mma wait cuz it's rude cuz I can hear you. I'm sorry. That's okay. Go on and finish cuz it's 6:42. Y'all finished? Okay, I will start over again. I'm exhausted, but I have the privilege and the pleasure of taking over um 60 students to uh the DMV on an H.B.CU tour. We visited Howard, Hampton, Virginia Union, Morgan State University, and the University of District Columbia. I cannot tell you how proud I am as a board member, as a parent, and as a former um teacher. The students were absolutely exceptional. I mean, everywhere we went, we

113were applauded for their questions, their mannerisms. I mean, it was just an a beautiful opportunity. This is our third year of taking students to an H.B.CU tour. Um, we had students that had been accepted to Howard University. They got an opportunity to see the school that they hopefully will be [Music] attending. It's probably the president. I'll talk to him later. But um oftentimes you don't realize the value of taking students to see what their options are. We can talk about colleges in universities, but being able to take our scholars to these campuses, it's it's mindchanging. So, and they've had an opportunity to visit many of the schools here in Northern California and Southern California. So, and starting them off early to get them in that mindset that if you're interested in this school, there are

114certain things that you're going to have to do in order to get there. And I think that our students, you know, they understand the assignment. So, I just want to thank all of our chaperons. Um, really a shout out to Miss Melissa Williams who organized everything and all of our teachers and principles uh and parents that went with us um to take care of our um scholars and bring them back safely. So, I'm very very appreciative. also wanted to just kind of echo what uh Mr. Castile said. I have three schools. When we were redistricant, we each basically got our own schools. I'm responsible for trustee area 2. My schools are Sentinel, Latihara, and Parent. I know what's going on at my schools. I visit those schools. And so I just really want you to

115understand um that this is one committed board that we absolutely take pride in our schools, our students, our teachers and our community. And I agree that um we all have a responsibility to look at the whole child and make sure that whatever that student or that community or that school might need that we're able to as a collective work towards that goal. So also I have um shared with the board in the in the um in the past to try and understand facts against opinions. And so when we don't know if something is factual, we have a responsibility to not speak on it but to find out whether or not it's true. Um because people do like to talk. I like to talk but I like to from a point or reference of the truth.

116So, with that being said, um it's 6:46 and I'm going to turn it over to our um president. Madam President, may I make two more comments? Sure. I forgot these two items and they're glaring back at me. A tier one, tier two, tier three are teaching strategies. So once you have 500 students in the school, uh Dr. Morris, could you look at um the ratio for the counselor, please? Because what happens is as a teacher, you exhaust all you can do. So you need support outside the classroom. There's only so much that one person can do. There's only so much one person can do. And increase in teacher salary salaries. We are low on the totem pole and I know you're looking at that as well with Mr. Guzman and I applaud you for that.

117Thank you. Thank you board members for all of your comments. Um I don't have a lot of comments to make tonight but I wanted to publicly thank Mr. uh Brendan Meyers for giving me a call today to remind me of uh Kevin Hart coming to Morning Side High to talk to our students. And if you've seen Kevin Hart on television, you know he working for Chase kind of and advertising for Chase and so forth. So he wasn't there just telling jokes today. He was talking of students about uh financial planning and getting ready to go to college. It was really good information to give our students. So I was happy to make sure that I was there so I could so I could hear what he was going to talk about because I thought what's

118Kevin Hart going to talk about to these kids? but he gave a really really nice speech. So, thank you for reminding me of that. I hadn't read my weekend uh newsletter because I was in Chicago this weekend and I'm I apologize, but I did go through it and found that. So, thank you for for doing that. And and like Dr. Mik says, we do visit our schools. We know what's happening in in our schools. I might not go to Oak Street all the time. I don't know what's going on at Oak Street all the time unless I go over there and I have been over there because they invited me to come over there. But uh right, I do go over to Oak Street. So um thank you for being such an an attentive audience

119and thank you for coming out tonight. Um as you said, I don't want to comment on all the things that were said tonight, but I'm glad I was here to hear some of the things that were said and hopefully we can work on improving some of those things for you and um get back to you with a good report. Thank you. Oh, and happy Easter everybody. Thank you. I just want to mention three things very quickly. Uh one um signature piece uh legislation Governor Nuomo passed is called CYBHI California youth behavioral health initiative. and our district was in cohort one, the first group that uh signed up for the California behav youth behavioral health initiative. And it specifically is an opportunity for school counselors and school psychologists and school RNs to log their time that

120they provide wellness services. And the state will give us new reimbursement money for that, which is an opportunity. It's a little bit of extra work for our counselor, psychologists, and RNs. They have to log when they're providing a direct service to a child and we can actually get a state reimbursement for that. So, it's an opportunity to bring in additional funds to fund additional mental health services for students. Um, and uh Dr. Lucas and Mr. Guzman have really been instrumental in saying we're in we want to be the first group. I did want to acknowledge that. Um, additionally, I did want to acknowledge that AB51, which is Assembly Member McKenner's bill, we do expect it will be scheduled soon for a hearing at the Assembly Education Committee. That is uh Assembly Member McKinn's bill that

121would um eliminate the requirement that Englewood Unified School District pay the interest each year on the state loan. That's about $400,000 for our school district. And you know, we appreciate the assembly members um persistence in working to find some compromise to get that bill passed. Uh the last thing I just wanted to mention, you know, we did a public presentation a couple of months ago and this week was our week to sell our next trunch of municipal bonds. the uh um because of a variety of things happening at the federal level, the municipal bond market is this is not the time to sell bonds. It's just been um chaotic. Um Mr. Guzman and I have been participating in and Mr. Miles uh daily meetings at 7 a.m. to figure out is today the day to

122go? The trouble is so many folks are selling and folks are just too frightened to buy anything right now. And so we're we're working to find the best strategic day. Uh and we have great municipal bond advisors who've been advising us, but we haven't been able to go to market yet, but we expect for that to happen soon. So, um, with that, I will echo the, uh, happy Easter comment and and, uh, um, we will be back. And the highlight coming on at the main meeting is the introduction of our new student board member who will be have officials swearing in and take her oath as a board member at our first meeting in August. What time? Oh, I am so sorry. Thank you very much. Mr. should have poked me and said, "Hey, follow

123your agenda. It's right there." Our next board of education meeting is scheduled for May the 7th at 5:00 p.m. Uh, additionally, we will have a board of education workshop uh study session on April 30th. And that is where Suanne Evans, Legal Council, will be um providing overview for the board on the board's responsibility for oversight of charter schools. And so that will be on April the 30th. Our meeting will stand adjourned at 6:52 p.m. Good night everyone. Oh, good night. [Music]