Lancaster School District Virtual Board Meeting

001c mic test mic test one two c [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] c good evening uh to those who are now in attendance we are going to reconvene to open session at 5 00 i'm sorry 604 and the report of any action taking i'm sorry listen mr mr win we can hear you through here okay i think now they can hear us through the the pa system so we should be good i'm sorry please continue thank you gives me a chance to repeat myself we'll reconvene to open session at 604 pm we have nothing to report of any action taken in closed session pursuant to government code section 54957.1 and we'll move right to the pledge of allegiance by mr keith giles all right welcome everybody if you wouldn't mind standing with me please and

002i'm gonna i'm gonna unhook this and then i'm gonna say ready to begin with my voice because i don't wanna block the flag that i'm pledging to ready begin and to the republic for which it stands one nation under thank you keith thank you for all who uh spoke right along with that we're moving on to 10 addressing the board board members will be utilizing electronic devices during the meeting to access the online agenda and an electronic device may be used to record this meeting individuals who wish to address the board may complete a speaker card and present it to the superintendent secretary the board president will recognize individuals who wish to speak individuals wishing to present testimony to the board concerning specific items on the agenda may do so once that item has been

003moved seconded and is on the floor for discussion time limits of 3 minutes per person or 20 minutes per item shall be allowed that's bylaw 9322 board members may ask questions for clarification purposes however no action may be taken and no discussion may take place on an item not on the posted agenda that's per the brown act moving on we'll move on to comments from pta seeing no hands we'll move to comments from csea we have no requests this evening thank you oh i'm sorry okay mr coleman sound check you're in the back of the room can you hear us can i'm sorry ma'am can you hear us now can you hear me okay so mr nguyen i just need to ask you to make sure your microphone is right in front of your mouth

004thank you thank you thank you um with no one from csea any uh comments from the teachers union yes thank you hear me or do i you can't hear me okay hi good evening okay i'm getting feedback i don't know if you can hear um okay hi i'm gina whipple uh president of the teachers association good to see everyone tonight i just want to share with the board that we are very very excited about getting back to school very happy to hear about all of the safety protocols in place including the masking so i appreciate everybody following those guidelines from la county and also i want to share that we've been working really hard completing pd and preparing our rooms and getting everything ready so that we have just a great environment for our kids

005so i appreciate your time have a good evening and i will be reaching out to all of you soon thank you [Music] thank you gina um one of them will learn that is the audience we'd love to hear from you we do have several cards that were submitted to speak this evening and before we go on i just want to apologize to everyone for the feedback we're working on it and we hope to have that problem resolved by the next board meeting so thank you for your patience this evening as we work through this our first speaker will be laura giles this evening good evening this is not an easy thing to do to speak in public especially with the feedback so be patient with me no a healthy nation protects its children children need

006to be able to live their lives they need to be able to go to school they need to be able to play with their friends they need to be able to have a childhood if american adults want to protect themselves get the vaccine teachers can get the vaccine mom and dad can get the vaccine grandma can get the vaccine our children should not break the bun of this pandemic as a mother of four children it will be required to wear a mask for the entire school day i'm very concerned not only with their physical health as this illness does not pose a great risk of severe outcome in children but also their psychological and emotional health as well listen to their words i have a statement from my daughter caitlyn i'm in the fourth grade

007i don't feel good having to wear a mask in school it gives me headaches i want to see what my teacher looks like we don't have to wear a mask outside so why do we have to wear a mask inside this is from my daughter bella she says i'm in the third grade i hate mass i can't breathe it fogs my glasses and i can't see i want to see my friend's whole face i can't see my teacher when she smiles at me this is from my son jayden he says he's in the fifth grade i don't like mass because it gives me headaches and it's hard to breathe in and i can barely talk in it and i barely get to see my friends and talk to them i implore you as our elected

008representatives do your own research on the risk of covet to children on the dangers of masking children physically psychologically and developmentally i'm also asking that as a school board you adopt a resolution to protect the health and safety of our children follow the examples of placer county school board the orange county school board and the el dorado county school boards who all adopted healthy children resolutions i will provide you with a copy of these healthy children resolutions i also ask you to write the california department of public health the la county board of health and the governor with your concerns i also ask that you put mass choice on the agenda consider making mask a parental choice instead of a mandate thank you and i have copies of those resolutions and i think someone else

009is going to read the letter let them brief uh letter and i have a copy of that to submit as well thank you very much mrs jones if you'll just share that with mr conte thank you very much there was also a card completed for brianna and caitlin were they going to speak or you read their statement okay brianna please come to the podium thank you all right so hello my name is brianna giles i'm going into the eighth grade and i am uh i don't like to wear a mask especially in school because it fogs up my glasses and i can't breathe well on masks are bad for kids because how are we supposed to be doing pe in the gym with masks on when we're running with masks what do we what do

010you think will happen to the kids with medical issues with their lungs like asthma it is so hard to socialize with friends and teachers because with masks it is hard to see friends and teachers faces with the masks on so i like to see my teachers and my friends with their whole face showing and that's all i have thank you very much brianna nice job our next speaker is laurie carragosa carricosa i'm sorry good afternoon uh this is my first meeting i um i came here to talk about um the mask mandates i don't want to be redundant and repeat a lot of things that many many informed community members parents and citizens have already voiced their opinion about voiced the data about and all the other things because you have all that information and

011i realize that you are under the community guidelines and you have to go by what the county public health officers say i also realized that um as many of you already do sorry this echo is really making me crazy um that both city of palmdale and city of lancaster have issues with the public health department already and they're trying to move forward with getting our area and our numbers uh out of the numbers of la county which you have to adhere to now and that's temporary but it could take a long time but it is very apparent that it is a problem um and the kids are suffering because of that so i've read a lot of different uh mandates and and uh school uh oaths and things that that the teachers take to help

012the children and do the best that they can to provide a safe environment for education and um i understand that there this is an extreme difficult circumstance and you guys are your hands are tied in many ways um but i would hope that you would consider the emotional effects on these children um we're created and for relationship we can't express our relationship to the children we can't have they can't express their relationships they can't communicate if they have learning disabilities or language barriers or so many other things that these masks really inhibit them from being able to do and you to be able to communicate to them and help them my daughter has chosen to move out of california because of all these things and um there are very few states that are doing such

013harsh measures and trying to push this kind of mandate in the schools that where she lives in georgia it's optional for the children to wear masks at the very first beginning they uh had an option to either wear a mask or wear a shield for some of the children and some of the adults and shields are um much more approachable and better for the children better for the adults to communicate and i would just hope that you would take into consideration the rights of people to make their own choices to get vaccinated if they feel it's necessary for them but the the vaccines you've already got the data on that but they the fda is not even approved it's experimental and now they want to intimidate different sectors of the population the schools federal employees

014nurses you've seen all the stuff on social media everybody's got an earful of everything um but it's not helping our kids today so maybe there's a better option um when you go to a restaurant you come in you sit down you're in your space you don't have to wear a mask the entire time you're there why are kids having to wear a mask in school what what is the point of that they're they're required to go on the honor system and fill out their form every day they don't have fevers if they do they're you know you deal with that but well children and well adults don't spread disease they just don't and i just hope you would take that into consideration thank you thank you very much we have one more speaker barbara long

015don't like this thing hi there i'm barbara long as you said and i was here two weeks ago at the last board meeting and there were six others that spoke concerning the mass mandate first off i want to thank all of you for letting me approach you again i'm a little bit better prepared this time when we were here last time i shared concerns about the mass mandate most of us left after we spoke however i did go back and listen one of your members on the board at the end commended us for coming in and stating that the board needs to consider what we said and talk to our legislators on this issue i'm wondering did you if not can you direct us to who we need to talk to i read over your

016agenda for tonight and i'm real concerned about 11b the covid surveillance grant i'm staying to hear tonight what that's about when i was here last time i also asked about the critical race theory curriculum and the new sex education curriculum and was going if it was going to be taught in our schools here dr bowers you did let me know that somebody would follow up with me and i've heard nothing so i'm here asking about it again okay and i made a copy of a flyer that i sent in with my blue card it looks like this one and um somebody had posted this on the internet and i know it's from a different school district but it's from a los angeles county school district and i'm wondering if this if this is posted in

017our schools as well here um there's you know pregnancy testing or pregnancy teen pregnancy prevention birth control condoms emergency uh contraception std hiv testing pregnancy testing sexual health education and then at the bottom it says parental consent not needed i mean i know what the laws are that a 12 year old kid can be escorted by the school nurse to go get an abortion but i just want to note and have it on the record that this is appalling and um let's see okay enough about that oh i know one other thing i wanted to say when we tell our kids when you know when we're raising our children and there's somebody in their life that's telling them don't tell your mom and dad don't we tell them that's a perpetrator you know so i

018know many of you are probably parents and grandparents yourself i hope something that i sing you know i've got grandkids i told you last time how big my family is um i'm not here just for myself but for a multitude and even though my child is in special education and he's isolated from a lot of this other stuff um i did interview him regarding the mass not to go back to that again he said it's hard to see people's expressions as this has already been stated by all the other kids um it's hard to breathe and it's hard to concentrate especially when it's hot this is very concerning to me because he lives on the spectrum he has autism concentration is really hard for him to begin with and i already know that you've been

019presented with tons of data regarding mass and kids and i want to add especially you know what do we do for kids with disabilities i mean i want to fight for all the kids not just mine or kids with disabilities but you know there's enough evidence to show that these things really don't do any good and you know help us fight help us fight for our kids um he just came in last night because he didn't know that until i started writing this stuff and kind of talking about it on the phone he didn't know that the beginning of the school year he was going to have to wear a mask at school all day and he came in with his shoulders down and he said mom if i have to wear a mask all

020day in school i don't want to go back and um i don't want him to do distance learning again as i said last time i was here he regressed a lot from being at home stuck with me you know and so that's that and then uh i'm well aware from many conversations i have two kids actually three kids all together that were on ieps um but i've had many conversations with a lot of teachers over the years you know when i had two that were piggybacking on each other i built a rapport with these teachers and most of them shared with me that they don't even keep their own kids in public school and for families that have kids with disabilities that's not an option to put them in private school and you know several

021of them said yeah off the record you know in 2014 i pulled my kids out of school to homeschool you know i'm elderly and homeschooling at 60 years old for the first time was very challenging but i did it for three years um i don't know i'm just pleading with you guys and i shared with you when i was here last time that last week was the first school board meeting i've been to um i feel like some of this is our fault because we didn't get involved and as long as i have breath and two legs to walk in here on i'm getting involved so i'm coming back thanks for listening thank you very much and mrs long i just want to assure you i'm going to ask krista to wave her hand if

022you see the young lady behind you she's the one that has tried to get in touch with you so she'll connect with you this evening to follow up on those items and this was from another district correct or another area just okay okay thank you very much and to all the board members i will make sure that you get copies of all of the documents that were shared this evening i'll make sure that this is scanned and shared with you and once you've had an opportunity to review it then we can talk about discuss all of this further and that is all of the cards that we've received this evening thank you uh dr bowers and thank you for each one of you for getting up and speaking we'll move on to uh number 11

023for informational items 11am power charter school dr goins you're gonna present right yeah dr goins actually has some slides that he'll be sharing so you'll see that on your screen and the audience should see it on the vision board i believe okay thank you okay so i've made enough mistakes in terms of present in terms of presentation online that i wanted to make sure that this was done properly and i thank rit department for being there to support us in every particular aspect so thanks guys that's awesome all right so tonight is this is gonna be funny okay tonight's gonna be to my the purpose of my meeting with you guys tonight or having the opportunity to be able to speak in front of you tonight is the idea of being able to give you

024some information about a school that has existed okay yeah gotcha okay so the school you got you have two options you have two two times to catch me okay so with this particular presentation what we're getting into is a charter school that is within our boundaries that is existing that is moving into being a a nine through 12 charter school that is currently chartered as a 7 through 12. the school is called empower generations charter accounting or charter school so the purpose of tonight is to provide an overview okay so the purpose of tonight is going to be to provide i have to get a van slicer it's a new room everybody we're working on it try enabling editing two there we go okay so again empower generations charter the purpose of tonight is to

025provide an overview of empower generations charter school that's the first piece that we're going to do secondly we're going to provide details as to empower generations charter schools authorization so to provide some information about the actual authorization itself when it started all of those pieces and then if we have a little bit of time we're going to provide an overview of recent charter legislation regarding charter schools and authorization um just want to make sure for everybody for everybody's for everybody's information this is for informational purposes only so there's at this particular point we just want to make sure you're aware so the mission of empower generations charter is to collaborate with learners in health and wellness lifelong learning college and career readiness and community partnerships learners become self-directed leaders problem solvers creators collaborators innovators and

026active community members and we or they accomplish this through a rigorous relevant and attainable education program that blends independent study community experience and one-on-one support based on the common core standards we celebrate birthday celebrate and foster learners individuality and support them in discovering their highest potential in the environment that is best that best suits their best suits their needs the vision goes on to discuss the idea that all learners will possess that knowledge and skill and confidence to achieve health and wellness raise healthy and happy children i want to emphasize that raising healthy and happy children master academic standards and develop a deep understanding of subject matter and collaborating effectively with the community in which they live all learners will graduate with awareness of the preparedness for the endless possibilities of their future while meeting

027rigorous and attainable graduation requirements i want to make a point there and the fact that there's specifically in their in their charter there's many areas in which they discuss the ideas of raising healthy happy children and attaining um graduation requirements just that's going to play in to the next few slides so the background of the power generation charter is this charter was original this charter was originally authorized by acton-agua dulce in 2016-2017 school year it the power generation charter was recently renewed by acting agua dulce in december of 2020 for a year term which is not the highest term that you can get but the second highest term that afternoon with dulce could provide the term begins on july 1st or this year of 2021 and will continue through july june 30th of 2026 the

028charter received um a letter from in order to be able to exist within these boundaries the charter received a letter from the antelope valley union high school district that i believe i provided to the board um that shows that of their knowledge of the existence of this charter through this at this particular time um the focus of their education program is on pregnant and parenting teenagers on ages 14 to 24 the interesting thing about the charter actually says that it focuses on parenting teens who are 14 to 24 however says provides for grades 7 through 12. all right the educational program consists of this um and a lot of this still reflects the idea of what it is in terms of pregnant and parenting teens um but empower the power charter focuses on a program

029revolving around personalized learning health and wellness and we wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that this is what we call a dashboard alternative school so there are different rules and accountability in which they are held to as opposed to what lancaster school district or even the antelope valley union high school district would be helped to personalized learning they focus on control constructivist methods which means that they're using project-based learning in order to impart their their teaching and learning competency-based education making sure that there's an understanding of things before they moving before moving on individualized learning plans blended learning and flexible learning all parts of this in terms of the health of wellness for their educational program is a focus on pregnancy and parenting attention to the whole child and the whole family so

030it's not just reflective of the student themselves but but but the the school does work to um or pretends to work with the whole family provides for unique graduation requirements on connection to real world experiences play-based child care as well uh there's also the opportunities to be able to work into korean or career readiness um they do have uh workforce innovation and opportunities um they follow the workforce innovation opportunities act which allows them to do cte career technical education um type courses so the one thing that i mentioned earlier that i want to make sure we come back to so that there's an understanding of is the idea of a dashboard alternative school that's a dos that's a dos school a dashboard alternative school the purpose of this school is to serve students who are

031considered high risk or highly at ri or who would be highly at risk there are six indicators on the dashboard that they follow just like us academic on a dash school that's modified based upon their own measures chronic absenteeism college and career readiness english learner progress indicator that what we call the lp is something that they follow and they have to report on and the graduation indicator which is modified for a dos meaning that in a normal high school environment you are grading you're gonna grade the school on their combined uh their combined graduation rate for kids who are in that school for four to five years whereas in the dash school you're only looking at that 12th grade year so those students who have come in on 12th grade and graduated after 12th grade

032so that's how that works and then finally the suspension indicator most of these are just like what you see with us we don't have the graduation indicators because we don't have high schools um but but most everything else in the crew we don't have career and college readiness either but the other pieces you do see with us so the target student population for this school is pregnant or parenting teens you'll see that there's various other populations that do sit within that you sit within other areas it's not just they don't just have pregnant parenting teens however that's their target population although they are they have stated that they will but they do take in students who are disconnected disengaged in many other areas justice involved youth uh systems involved youth are all brought into their

033and brought into their program as well students who are who are who need to get uh who need to retrieve credits are also brought into that course of study in the current petition from 1617 and even currently sitting today that petition says that again grades seven through twelve or f or students who are ages 14 to 24 years of age this is the enrollment over time since 1617 with this school what i've done is i've highlighted the area that would be our that would have impacted us in seventh grade there was one student that was when we did i want to make sure that we understand this i don't we don't know that these kids were pregnant or parenting at the time we don't know what what their situation was however what we do know

034is that they that they were of the seventh they were in the seventh or eighth grade at the time so um seventh grade the first year they've had a for the for the total period that they've existed they've had effectively five of five students within that middle school range so finally um i wanted to provide an update over the work that we've done so far with this school at this point so i want to make sure that everybody in the board that the board understands that we have contacted acton agua dulce we've talked to antelope valley union high school district and representatives from empower generations charter with regards to the matter of the charter including grades seven and eight because that would effectively include or impact our students after conferring with um empowered generations charter

035we've informed we've been informed and believed that empower generation starter has corrected their charter petition um in order for that they will only have grades nine through twelve i have a draft of that of that current of the corrections that they've made to the to the charter that's going to their board on august 12th this month this correction will shortly take effect after agreement with acting dulce unified school district's board meeting on august 12 2021 we've been in contact with our own attorney to have a discussion as to what uh what was what actions were best to take in this situation and we were told that the action that we've already taken in order in having the conversation with um acton-agua dulce and power charter school or power generation starter as well as the high

036school district was appropriate and that that's what they were looking for us to do and that's what that was our our guidance and we've requested that upon completion of the board meeting on august 12th that that correction of the charter documents be sent to lancaster school district so that we might be able to receive that letter and have affirmation that this that the work has been done so with that said i just wanted to provide a real quick overview of what's going on with this school and where they're at as they do exist within our boundaries so are there any questions yes ma'am i'm i'm sorry mrs could you turn thank who you their presence in the internet they are connected with i lead which is a charter school that we have chartered lancaster school

037district has approved their charter so yes we have i our i lead lancaster in our system but there's also uh there's there's they have various sites that are either at like i lead antelope valley which is the height they have they have various other sites throughout the valley not just our valley but throughout santa clara as well but their address is listed in lancaster at the same location as the eye lead the empowered generation starter they're actually getting yes but they're and they're actually getting ready to they're from what i've been told they're being ready to move i haven't confirmed that yet though okay so there is obviously a connection with eileen who we have a relationship with we have really yes we have a relationship with eileen charter yes have we talked with them

038yes we did okay thank you that's our person the same lady the same person who uh who runs their charter does their charter petitions um is the same person who we connected with in terms of empower and generations charter school noticed that their board members their board members were the same yes so i i'm very curious to see if they do make that correction removing the seventh and eighth graders i i they so i already have the documents to say that that already have it and they're all they need to all they need to do now is present it to the board their board you're welcome mr jobs yeah i think you pretty much answered it oops sorry hold on no i guess you can hear me can you hear me yeah okay i guess

039um so my question is do they have a campus in acton or they just have a campus in antelope valley no campus in acton so okay you know shasta they're allowed to charter they they used to be able to their charter one a site outside of their outside area okay so basically yeah you don't really know where their campus is at this point you know you said they were moving but you don't know it is there is a campus on division that they do that they have okay thank you thank you for the thank you for the work you've done on this you've explained it quite well from uh my first uh inquiries about it and even though there's only been five students that is five students taken away from our district that really are

040being taught nothing more than what all of our schools do so thank you again for looking into this and uh with diane grooms i also ask that you provide the letter once they have changed their status to 9 through 12. absolutely i was look i'm looking forward to handing it to you i have one additional comment having run a non-profit organization program that serve pregnant and parenting teens these are valuable programs otherwise these kids do not complete school they have very special needs and i am highly in support of the differentiation of the education that they need and i just wanted to be really clear on that so i'm i'm supportive i just want to know that we are connected properly with them absolutely i play bass my ears going out on my left side

041can you stop sharing the screen so that the audience can see all the board members please thank you oh can you hear me okay yes we can thank you miss price um i worked for los angeles county schools pregnant oh god that's awful uh that's a feedback um for pregnant minors for three years and as diane said these are incredible programs and and i'm not sure i know i think the law has changed and said that pregnant girls can go to self-contained high schools right and but i want you to know that we had girls as young as 13 and 14 in our program so if it's just a condundrum that yes we want to make sure we have all the right places for our students okay thank you i hate my voice and i

042would just like to assure the board members that yes you're correct we do have young women that are finding themselves in a situation where they are pregnant at early ages and when we have that situation occur we work with the family we work with the student on a one-on-one basis so that we can structure something that's going to work well for them it has happened and we have worked with those students and we will be very happy to continue to work with those students as the need arises thank you sandy yeah we can hear you thank you how come when i'm telling you i'm here i was gonna say you're yes and you're still thank you dr glenns okay great move on to 11b covered 19 surveillance testing grant michael dr bowers thank you actually

043julie utzler is with us this evening and i'm working her overtime so she has been taking the lead on getting this structured getting information so that we can figure out what's going on and see how we can utilize this grant to benefit our community thank you julie i have a tendency to talk fast too so i'm going to do my best we were lucky enough to be included in a grant that came through the la county department of health and laco the la county office of education is the one that actually is helping the districts run the program last week or the last board meeting actually you saw the grant come through and it will provide us up to 2.34 something million dollars to put this mitigation factor in place and so i just wanted

044to give you a little bit of information tonight you'll get some more information as soon as we have all of the details and i'll give you a presentation and everything so you can see it um but a few just really important facts about what we're doing um what we are doing at this point is we're going to be providing a voluntary covid screening program in our schools it will be available to our adults as well as our students and we're going to be putting together a campaign to get people to participate in the voluntary program we will be testing people regularly and right now we're looking at every other week that is one of the suggestions for using the testing that we're going to be using i'm not sure if you were aware but we

045actually started doing some testing for our staff members back in april we offered two days a week and people could come in on a voluntary basis to get a covid 19 test we're using the pcr test which is a test that actually takes a look at the genetic makeup of the information that they gather it's a very simple test it uses an anterior swab which basically is just right on the edge of your nostrils this is the whole test kit it only takes minutes to actually administer it and have our nurses gather the information gather the actual test kit and then get it prepared for sending it to the lab it's not a rapid test it takes 24 to 48 hours to process but it is the gold standard it pretty much tells us anyone

046that has coveted or is close to exhibiting symptoms and remember what we're looking for when we're talking about screening tests is the asymptomatic people symptomatic people we usually find out about because they respond to our screening processes or they have a fever or they're just not feeling well the screening processes help us identify those asymptomatic cases along the way and if we're testing a group of people every two weeks we get a real good feel for the health of our district it's one of the mitigation factors and mitigation strategies basically that's recommended by the department of health in order to keep our campuses safe so we'll be looking at we don't have all of the details ironed out other than the fact that we're looking at every other week we've already worked with the lab

047it's valencia branch labs that also is being sponsored by the la county department of health right now the actual testing and testing kits are free so what we're looking to do with the grant money is increase our health services staff with additional rns our regular school nurses and additional lvns which are our licensed vocational nurses that can also assist with the testing process the test is so easy it's set up so that most people can actually do the testing themselves but they have to be observed by a healthcare professional and so we're able to also use the grant money for incentives um for little treats for any of the students or even staff members that participate in testing at prizes for people that participate in our program for a long period of time and also

048support for families or for students who maybe have a whole family that have covet so kovitz supports was a big part of what we're able to use the grant money for as well uh let me see if i missed anything i have a whole lot of notes but i don't want to give you too much um just a little bit of information about where we're at um we currently have hired a couple of school nurses so we have um one additional to what we had last year and we've brought in eight lvns to our department which are new and they are not new to our district it was great because we do have other lvns in the district and they were happy to come back to home at psa and work with our school nurses

049i know i'm proud i'm sorry um work with our school nurses to help do the testing program and the testing protocols on campus so they'll be working to learn exactly what it is they need to do again part of the sign up procedure is for parents to give permission so nobody's going to be tested without parent permission as far as students go and when the adults sign up for the cova testing they give their permission as they do the sign up process we will also offer um some tests that we will give people that either have gone in with symptoms possibly to our um wellness rooms on the campuses so if a student comes down with symptoms during the school day we can offer the parent a test right there before the child goes home

050the information from testing comes back to us by means of charts graphs we can see where positive cases occur and then start working on them and make sure that we don't have more cases than than we might have otherwise parents will also get the information on their student and that will allow them to seek medical help if they need it it will also give them peace of mind if the tests continue to come back negative any questions at this point yes the grant money we have a year and so the grant money will be available to us this year we can use it for materials and supplies and using it for our staffing obviously you know we're hiring people i will tell you that we need those additional people for more than just the coveted

051testing and so i think that as we go through the year we'll see how they can improve the health services that we have to offer our students and hopefully we can find other funding to keep a lot of the people that we bring in okay thank you is it a one-time grant or is it a possibility to renew it at the end as of right now it's one-time money yes i think the money was intended to help us get through this first year and get kids back in the classroom and keep them there it was a short notice for when we received the money because it was we were notified at the end of may early june and it almost went into effect immediately so we've been trying to get a lot done in a

052very short period of time keeping in mind that we only have a year but we are excited and appreciative of the fact that we are able to really focus on improving our health services as we return students and staff members to our school because we know that that everyone's going to be sensitive about that and we want to be proactive and not reactive any other questions for julie at this time she will be coming back when we have more details about exactly how this is going to come together but we wanted to make sure you were aware that we are moving in this direction we have received the grant and we're very excited about the increase in health services that we'll be able to offer as schools school year begins thank you in advance because

053i know it's a lot of work julie thank you very much we'll move to 11 3 hv ac replacement thank you very much mr winn uh so dr freeze will be talking about uh considerations we're we just keep making improvements so considerations for hvac replacement thank you dr bowers good evening members of the board if you recall the district took advantage of proposition 39 funding a few years back that was money from the state that was designated for districts that performed energy retrofit projects what was special about that money is that we had to demonstrate a certain savings to be eligible for the money and when the district conducted its initial analysis the intention was to replace hvac units replacing those units alone did not meet the standards that the state designated which is for

054every dollar spent you had to save a dollar and a penny at least in energy and that's one of the reasons why the district pursued the batteries that are now part of our solar system those batteries helped us make the calculation we replaced as many hvac units as the calculation would allow which i believe was about 110 120 units we have way more units though that need to be replaced and so we were very excited when we saw the expenditure requirements for some of the federal dollars and some of the state monies too and one of the options for expenditures was to improve indoor air quality in school facilities specifically through replacing hvac units so when we saw that that was going to be one of the standards before we even received money or even

055knew how much money we were going to get we made a decision that this was a path that was extremely valuable to the district and it's primarily because so many of our units are old it's difficult to find parts they're incredibly inefficient some of these units are 40 years old and some of them just don't work as well as a new unit does and we've even seen some challenges with some of the older units in working properly with the merv 13 filters those filters are stressing some of these older systems and so in january i directed mmo staff to begin a count of the number of hvac units by school site their relative age and the condition of those units we got back a priority list of replacements based upon first the age of the

056unit what was its general condition and could that unit still function properly with regular service or was it reaching a point where it wasn't serviceable it might have been out an odd unit that it's difficult to get parts for or something of that sort of strategy it was amazing how many hvac units we have in the district that are 40 years old i have i have a rental house my hvac unit went out at 15 years it just died and yet we have some that we've kept going for 40 years which speaks to the talent of our district m o staff that they keep these units going well you can imagine how difficult it is to get parts for some of these units right now so when we saw the age of so many of

057these units we decided at this point that we entered into discussions with our architect and a mechanical engineer to begin doing some deep analysis of all the units district-wide to determine a priority list of replacement because the key thing we have to be concerned about is especially for rooftop units we can't increase the weight of a unit as soon as you do that it triggers a dsa review and you all know how long it takes to get something through dsa we're taking the same approach that we did with proposition 39 and we're doing like for like that's what we're considering at this time to minimize the amount of planning time and certainly to keep it from having to go through a dsa review through that review that's been done by flew ellen and moody and

058their engineer their mechanical engineer they've identified upwards of 500 hvac units that could potentially be replaced these are wall mounted units on portable classrooms they're also rooftop units and there's also something called a split system some of those units so our strategy at this point is to first apprise the board and that that's the purpose here this evening and then developed a sequenced project that would replace the units during off-track times and so that would be taking advantage of the three-week holiday break and the summer vacations to replace units when the employees aren't there because we have to basically take a classroom offline the units we replace with are both for heating and air they serve dual purposes we don't know yet how many units we would actually attempt to replace because we don't know

059what the bid values would come in at if you can imagine every district in the united states of america had access to these same funds and considering the age of schools throughout the nation there are probably many districts who are anxious to purchase hvac units so when you talk about supply and demand at some point you're going to reach a demand that's going to outstrip supply and likely going to have an impact upon prices that's why i can't come to you this evening and give you any idea of what this is going to cost but what we will do is identify which units that should be replaced in a priority order and that way if we reach a point where the board is only comfortable spending x number of dollars we can look through our

060priority list and take care of the units that have to be taken care of first and obviously those are going to be some of our oldest units uh in the future you will see a a purchase order item that will be coming forward that represents some of the invoiced costs that the architect has put in for these initial designed phases we will also bring forth hopefully in the next 30 to 45 days information about what the bid package looks like with some potential estimates for costs and then we'll apprise the board of the situation and uh try to get some direction upon which route we want to go i'm hopeful that we'll be able to knock out 60 to 80 percent of these units and you can imagine the investment in our district that this

061represents because these units are so old they're extremely inefficient and so as soon as you replace them the value you get back with decreased electricity costs will start to pay for these units over time not to mention the challenges we face right now in repairing these units the parts have become extremely expensive a lot of times we cannibalize one unit and use those parts to fix other units wouldn't it be great if we could get brand new units and we wouldn't have to take that course anymore and it also relieves some of the stress that our our two hvac mechanics are experiencing uh right now in our system i think we had upwards of 60 work orders that came out literally today specifically for hvac our guys knock them out quick and we actually place

062additional employees to take care of those issues but with new units you would almost eliminate that seasonal call on having to repair the units so i can answer any questions you might have this evening yes so is this a federal grant program there's actually two pots of money that we can draw from one is the s or three dollars but there's also some cde in-person instruction funds these also qualify for that expenditure so we have two areas from which we can draw these are one-time monies miss price did you have a question yes are you going to be able to get units um that's a that's a great question i was on the road uh on the weekend about two weekends ago i never saw so many semi trucks with trailers pulling air conditioner units

063to california so there's certainly demand i think the companies that produce the units recognize that there's going to be a nationwide demand but i also think we're ahead of the curve because we started our analysis in january we saw the writing on the wall and we got to work right away if we can get our bid out before other districts we'll be ahead of that curve that i think will be able to secure our units and get our projects done before the real demand kicks in so we did intentionally start early knowing that the demand would be there um i bought a new air conditioning heating unit today i had four different people come out to give me cost and three of them have a very difficult time flying finding any of the equipment it's

064not just the equipment it's the all the cellular things that go inside so um it it's been frustrating it's been frustrating so i'm i'm hope we're ahead surprisingly the people i bought from today did this last winter they bought extra so they wouldn't have to worry about the new the rush so i think one of the other advantages is the way we're structuring this we're going to have work at different periods and so we can put in our orders for equipment six to eight months before we actually need to install it that'll give whatever contractor would get this project if we decide to move in this direction time to place the orders for the equipment so that by the time that that time period come up comes up those units will have been manufactured and

065delivered for installation if we were trying to do them all in one summer i think we'd be out of luck but we're going to be stretching this over multiple years to make this actually work out thank you larry thank you for your time that concludes our presentations this evening or actually our informational items i'm sorry uh we'll move on to number 12. and that is presentation request proposals and reports as it pertains to 12 a independent study program for 2021-2022 thank you very much and we have the fabulous and recently very overworked mr wood our principal at our lava program who's we've been keeping him very busy and mr hoffman is going to be co-presenting with him this evening on independent study and some of the changes that have recently occurred and how we're responding

066to that principle volcano oh all right so thank you tonight uh mr wood and i are going to take some time to bring you up to speed on both our lava program and the changes that have occurred in the independent study recent legislation um lava is our lancaster alternative and virtual academy and mr wood is the principal of the school so next slide so on july 9th governor newsom he signed a assembly bill 130 into law which created new provisions which included some significant modifications to the independent study program which blends the traditional model of independent study with what we saw in distance learning last year it was an effort to bring some of those pieces of distance learning into a model that already existed in districts throughout california and we saw that there was

067a lot of interest still in virtual education and this was a way to bring together an opportunity to offer folks independent study in a virtual format and we offering options and excellence already have a program in place through our lava program so the school districts are required to offer independent study programs as an option so either in person or independent study and a district can choose to work with a county office of education with another district or they can run a program in their own district through our lancaster alternative virtual academy we are basically geared up to implement this pretty quickly and make some and add the modifications as needed the bill requires that the districts notify families of their options to enroll in person instruction or in the newly modified independent study therefore it's

068pressing that our board policy and ar are updated to reflect these required changes csba put out some sample language recently in the last two weeks giving us a language for board policy in ar that you'll see on for approval tonight so it's our purpose to present the updates and the impact on our independent study program we'll also give you an overview of our independent study program and we'll highlight rather than giving a checklist of the new things that are in the board policy we'll embed through our change the changes through our program so you'll see how we offer the program and the changes that we've made to embed the ab130 language into what we're doing with our new and our new independent study program next slide so independent study program is there is a long-term

069independent study and the language is 15 days or more up to one school year there is a short-term independent study that has been five days but is now three days in the new language but tonight we're going to talk about the long-term independent study as it would be offered through our lava program so it's an alternative instructional strategy it's not an alternative curriculum it's optional so a student can opt in to this program if it's something that they're interested in and if a parent is interested to get into this program with their child they can request an orientation conference and then meet with mr wood and to talk about the program learn more about what's offered and how the program works next slide the biggest change about the language is that it is substantially equivalent

070in quality and quantity to classroom instruction found in traditional classroom on a comprehensive campus [Music] ways you'll we'll discuss ways that that occurs especially in synchronous instruction live interaction as we go through the presentation tonight it also provides parents and guardians with options and procedures for enrolling and disenrolling we'll talk a little bit more about that later as well next slide an independent study students will work independently there will be synchronous opportunities live interaction as i mentioned but a bulk of the work is independently through asynchronous work where students have time to work at their own pace and the board policy outlines the amount of time that students would have to conduct assignments where our language talks about weekly check-ins all right well dr bowers thank you for the brief introduction i am mr wood

071i am the proud principal of the lancaster alternative virtual academy and so thank you board members for pointing me to that position i hope to do you proud and continue to offer options and excellence for lancaster school districts students and families so our pathfinders is our basically our mascot our motto our vision is to build self-driven learners and help students learn how to advocate for their learning needs we have the compass as kind of like a tool to guide you as if it were in a forest and you need to find your direction on a hiking trail we help students navigate through their curriculum and courses for kindergarten through eighth grade so we are not a comprehensive campus we are a school of choice we will offer english learner services of integrated and designated supports

072we will address iep services an iep team must meet to review discuss and agree independent study we also need to determine whether the special education services will be will be provided in accordance with the agreed upon iep regarding independent study each iep and service that is provided whether is resource speech and language mild moderate students that will be done or conducted in a live interaction virtual learning service session we offer multi-tier systems of supports students with mtss needs will be provided for students not performing at grade level or in need of support in other areas such as english language support students with disabilities with individualized education programs or a section 504 plan students in foster care or experiencing homelessness and students requiring mental health support lava's virtual program consists of some of the following and

073not all of the following self-contained classroom synchronous online instruction asynchronous instruction and activities standards-based instruction integrated lessons tiered supports re-engagement strategies vapa our visual and performing arts component innovation pathways which is our college and career readiness for students sixth through eighth grade and then lastly our project based electives which is our signature practice lava also offers home hospital so that is done by a doctor's orders for a specific length of time with an anticipated return date we'll provide textbooks and technology the instruction can be delivered synchronously or asynchronously teachers will provide one week worth of assignments we also are proud to say that we will provide one hour of personal instruction but due to cover 19 we are not going into the home until state regulations and federal regulations are lifted and allow us to

074provide that service the asynchronous platform will be delivered through google classroom which will maintain work samples for auditing purposes and collected into the google database overseen by lancaster school district and then lastly teachers will have the ability to access the student work and vice versa students will be able to access the teacher's assignments attendance will be taken for the virtual academy through a virtual or face-to-face virtual using the webex platform or including the google platform and online assignments a weekly learning log will be completed and submitted which will show time values and equivalencies to the work done by the student all grades will be uploaded into power school and the grades as usual will be determined by the teacher with work completion and quality and poor attendance we always remind families can result in lower

075grades they do have lower grades we will initiate our tiered plan of re-engagement for students to provide additional supports our student expectations complete assignments producing quality work grades are at least a satisfactory or better the new assembly bill 130 removed the c criteria and now labels it as satisfactory or above online portfolio must be maintained a pe log done monthly and that pe log is still in accordance to the state requirements must show documentation that the student is completing 200 minutes every 10 days of pe or physical education we must take state and district test as mandated and if identified for support a student must attend intervention sessions as directed by the teacher our tiered re-engagement elements contain sst eld integrated and designated support ilps which is our individualized learning plans for students that are

076struggling in a particular topic or area if i were to give an example it could be a kindergartner that is struggling with uh phonemic blends like p h th sounds or maybe even one of our eighth graders that are struggling with quadratic equations in algebra attendance monitoring counselor supports health and wellness supports available for families and students provided through the department of pupil safety and attendance in conjunction with our counselors and psychologists including our school nurses and health clerks and then we also address as appropriate students with individualized education plans or tiered re-engagement for evaluation are grades lower than satisfactory for attendance of three or more consecutive days absent in assembly bill 130 they mentioned 60 of the work week so we've equated that to the three days and or three missing assignments they could

077have three missing assignments within one day or within the week we will still need to offer some sort of re-engagement support time for completion of assignment assessments and other things will be part of the evaluation process providing students with intervention supports and then we will review the appropriateness of independent study before a student would be dismissed and asked to go back to in-person instruction that is clearly outlined in assembly bill 130. we offer tiered re-engagement with individualized learning plans i addressed that in the previous slide it has the diagnostic testing last year for the state assessment we used i ready we also use the formative assessments as back or casp as we refer to it teacher and student goal setting targeted instruction with tier 2 and tier 3 supports teacher and student assessments and then

078is always updated throughout the year if a student were to start an ilp they could be on it for five weeks they could be addressing that for a semester maybe even the year my intention is not to have a student continue to get services for a year but to make sure they are leveling up to their grade level and being academically uh prepared for their next grade level i'll take this slide so families who wish to return to in-person instruction from independent study must request a meeting to discuss disenrolling so that's been a question that folks have had that if you're in and wanting to return to your neighborhood school are you not allowed to do that no you wouldn't need to request the meeting to discuss this disenrolling and you would be able to

079return to your home school if you're in one of our school of choice and you've been in that already enrolled but you decide to go on independent study and for some reason you decide to go back you would still have a space to return to the school that you were enrolled in that was a school of choice so that's an important distinction as people weigh out the options of joining independent study back to you robert so we will provide technology i know the district has a plan for all families that the technology is not to be turned in no matter what location they are going but if we do enroll new families and we have families from all over los angeles county and outside of our county coming into our program looking for that virtual

080experience so we will provide those chromebooks we will also provide hot spots if needed and for our families that may be in a homeless situation we can exchange those or give them the ability to charge a device if needed they just need to get in touch with us insurance is also included with those devices if they are interested two main learning platforms are webex which we do our virtual and face-to-face instruction and then we also have our google classroom as mentioned earlier where we store all of the data i can access all the files from teachers from the previous year when i was there as well and we will hold that as long as the state requires it which i believe was four years i actually hold it indefinitely since it's digital we will address

081the core curriculum math uh pe which we do loan the equipment if a student or family so desires to need equipment for instance if they're working on baseball skills we'll provide a ball a bat and a glove if they're working on soccer skills we can provide that with a kickback net or bungee cord so we have a variety there that we can loan out to them social studies science english language arts and of course the writing listening speaking and reading components are embedded within those subject areas elective classes such as maker space video editing book clubs coding readers theater animation and our music program which we will also provide the equipment for at no cost if there is a question that a parent would like to get a flute we will go through our music

082teacher and put in an order to get that because we do not want to deny them that service also in the independent study education code it states that we cannot deny them something if they have it on a traditional comprehensive campus we should be able to provide it on a virtual campus or alternative campus so those are just some of the electives that we have lessons on the far left corner curriculum support small group instruction and intervention we must have the attendance accountability piece on the left in red go over the assessments in the green box as mentioned earlier and then cover the listed objectives not only that are offered by our school district but are mentioned in ab130 our sessions will look roughly like this our am block will be from eight to around

08311 15. the staff will take their break and then we will have a pm session starting at 12 going to 2 30. and then at there will be an extended period of time till 3 where we can provide services of intervention and re-engagement supports our typical day monday through friday the top pink area would be our synchronous instruction all the core curriculum ireti is done in an asynchronous format with virtual check-ins from the teacher to make sure students are completing that the gray section is the asynchronous platform and then pe of course that's done asynchronously outside of our school and completed at home and tracked with a parent pe log attached with some digital data such as a picture from the cell phone they can paste that right into the document if needed sora is

084our online library that our district provides and that can be done for teachers that assign reading logs for the week to our younger kids all the way up to our older students and so we're looking at roughly a six plus hour day completing at least the 30 hours for the week through our psa department in conjunction with lava we are looking at our social emotional development we are doing that district-wide professional development on thursday around social emotional learning will provide the positive behavior interventions and supports as ppis as we know it ckh student recognition is part of social emotional development we have our pbis matrix to the left and then we also have our school counselor and that is actually a link to her webpage and you can uh visit that website and the counselor

085provides all types of additional supports as needed from 9-1-1 to emergency hotlines for families that basically do not know what to do and need additional help so our master agreement looks a little like those three photos on the right um we had just updated that uh in the ed services department and uh we are already starting to initiate that and through the business department we have docusign because in a b 130 we want to be able to provide the parents the ability to digitally sign so they're not driving around all over the place to collect signatures or come to us and get things so we do have that in hand and we are programming that to get it sent out and we are at the end of this and i do want to let the

086board know that i do have a quick one minute 40 second video that is digital that its has put on our webpage and after questions i would love to share that with all of you are there any questions mr wood you did a fantastic job thank you so very much i know that you've been burning the candle at both ends trying to keep up and get ready uh for the the russian for school to start but thank you very much for all that you do just know how much you appreciate it thank you hey sure okay thank you very much we're going to pull up the video uh doctor that's okay yes that's wonderful [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] so thank you so i have a quick question is this available in spanish the presentation

087the video not yet but we are working on it okay thank you are there any other questions it certainly is comprehensive absolutely the we're happy that we did not have to start from scratch a lot of work had already been done so we were able to build on the program that we have in place uh which made it a lot easier but there have been a lot of new changes that we've had to make some modifications for but it's going very well we're excited yeah great job i like all the the new changes and um great video to go with it yes absolutely so we'll be sending out a parent notification letter probably tomorrow or the day after notifying parents of the availability of our independent study program and we will continue to move forward

088and preparing for that and making sure that it's available to parents that are interested well thank you very much dr wood and mr hoffman that was quite for what 30 days is all you've had to put all of this together something like that quite a lot of work to do in such a short period of time thank you moving to number 13 individual action items of the superintendent first being a adoption of resolution 2020 40 202 board member compensation to missed meeting for greg tp to have a motion zombies moved by uh sandra price second by diane grooms is there any comment discussion with none we'll vote all in favor say aye aye negative they one abstain okay abstain or just not vote and when abstain yep and i appreciate that it was a family

089emergency so thank you for covering for that thank you moving on to number 13 b it will be a motion to adopt of update to board policy and administrative regulation 6158 independent study ended hang on one second that's it and deletion of board policy 6157 distance learning so moved second moved by mr giles second by mrs grooms is there any discussion i do like the last part of that and that is deletion of board policy 6157 distance learning it is uh nice to be back at school with that all in favor say aye aye aye any negative saying well thank you and now we can move forward to action item 14 the adoption of resolution 2021-22-01 resolution of the board of trustees of the lancaster school district authorizing the issuance and sale of its general

090obligation refunding bonds 2021 series a literally taxable in an aggregate principal amount not to exceed 20 million dollars and approving certain other matters relating to said bonds moved by mr tp second by sandra price any discussion to say there was a presentation last board meeting by emilio flores from cfw and we do have cush here from cfw to answer any questions push would you mind approaching the podium i know mrs grooms has some clarification that she needs thank you hi good evening ladies and gentlemen i'm kris kiara with cfw very pleased to be here tonight uh to answer any questions on this item that you may have um start most of the documents that were provided in our board packet were forms that did not have actual dollar amounts or even examples of dollar amounts

091of what we would be refunding what we would be receiving back and i just don't have a clear picture at all of the financial structure of this absolutely uh thank you ma'am that's a very good question i'd like to first address just the structure in general and then i'd like to come back and address your specific question as to why this document contains blanks that's being brought for your consideration tonight refinancing a school bond is very similar to refinancing a home mortgage when you issue school bonds essentially investors lend you money you use those monies to build and construct and improve school facilities in the district and in turn those bonds are being paid back by property taxes being levied on property owners in the district currently those bonds using these very round numbers are

092carry an interest rate of about four percent which was the market rate when the bonds were issued back in 2013 about eight years ago either nine years ago uh today as you know we're near historic lows on interest rates and those same interest rates are a little bit below three percent the savings are generated by having applying a lower interest rate because when you pay back the bonds you pay back both the principal as well as the interest on the bonds uh just using round numbers a one percent difference against twenty million dollars is about two hundred thousand dollars a year and so you'll be paying approximately that much back less of that you'll be your payments your interest payments will be reduced in the first year uh and in in future years the total

093savings are estimated to be a little bit over two million dollars almost two and a half million dollars right now uh as interest rates have actually dropped since uh mr emilio flores made the presentation to you so that's essentially the mechanism as to how the savings are done it's uh the fact that you'll be paying a lower interest rate on the new bonds very similar to refinancing a home mortgage where if you have a lower interest rate you're you're still going to pay back the principal that won't change the interest component is lower specifically to answer your questions the board resolutions for your consideration tonight establish a framework for your staff to go ahead and complete the acts required to refinance these bonds and to be able to work on your behalf to negotiate interest

094rates with the underwriters so the reason that you have a lot of blanks is until the day of the pricing and the date the pricing is the day that you sell the new bonds and we will represent the district as your financial advisor we will invite the county treasurer's office to participate to assist in representing you as well and this team will then negotiate with the underwriters and interest rate based on the prevailing rates on that day uh once those interest rates are established then we have the ability to lock in what exactly the uh dollar amounts will be and then a purchase contract is established and provided to your staff for signature at that time to lock those numbers in but the current documents just provide a framework for your staff then to proceed

095with the process we're unable to provide you a specific number today as to what the interest rates will be at the time of the pricing which once again we anticipate to be about two weeks out so at a minimum i would like an example we're talking about 20 million dollars in bonds how many are you talking about refunding um how much um just give me an example of how that might look as opposed to a document that's full of financial blanks oh absolutely so the current estimated savings to taxpayers after all costs at today's interest rates is about 2.5 million dollars so they will be paying two and a half million dollars less over the life of the remaining life of the bonds if the refunding were to be completed today that number may vary

096we would hope it goes up but it can also go down and what your staff retains the ability to do is on the day of the pricing if the rates of the savings are below what they consider acceptable for them to say that they do not wish to proceed but the best example i can give you i'm sorry that's not giving me the example of what i need there are costs to the district expenses that are listed and the cost of refunding the cost of reissuing i want to know the cost to the district for making this change because i've been through these processes before and we did not have enough information i want that information to make a good fiscal determination as to whether we should do this at this time absolutely mrs grims

097and i think the question you are asking if i understand is what is the what would be the cost to the district if we proceed with this okay i understand the question now the total fee basically a comparison to if we left it as it is now and if we changed it who benefits who where the costs are that are related on both sides and um the difference on the impact of our own credit rating by re refunding these bonds etc so i don't know that the refunding will have a direct impact on your credit rating mrs grooms but if it does it would have a positive credit rating because you're lowering your debt burden within your district it would definitely not have a negative credit rating it may have a positive credit rating and

098you're asking a great question that's a process that your staff will be going through to secure a rating over the next week or so but there will be no negative impact on your rating specifically regarding costs the costs of issuance include the bond council fee the financial advisor which is my firm the underwriters which is the broker who buys the bonds the rating agency which is the folks that give you the rating and there's various there's a couple of other components like the trustee and so and so forth the total cost of issuance including all of the above we anticipate to be somewhere in the region of about 270 thousand dollars in addition there is insurance that we may or may not purchase what insurance is is a entity co-signs the bonds and says for

099any reason if you cannot pay the lancaster school district cannot pay back the bonds they will pay that in exchange for that they will want a fee okay the fee is estimated to be about fifty five zero thousand dollars we don't have a bid yet but that's what we estimated to be we will only purchase insurance if purchasing insurance reduces the cost of borrowing by more than fifty thousand dollars okay and why would it reduce the cost because some investors get a level of comfort if there's a cosigner on the loan and they'll accept a lower cost of borrowing so those are all of the costs if the transaction goes through after all costs today we estimate that the taxpayers will save about two and a half million dollars because today they're paying over market

100rates on the bonds if the transaction does not go through if for any reason your staff determines if the market moves away from us if the savings move away if the savings are not sufficient your staff will then make a determination not to do the transaction at that point you don't owe me any fee you don't know the bond counsel any fee you don't owe anyone any fee except for the rating agency that's the only fee that's not contingent because it would be a conflict of interest for them to do on a contingent basis so if the transaction were to go through today after all costs you would the taxpayers would save about two and a half million dollars uh if the transaction would not go through the only uh out the item that the

101district is out is the rating cost and typically what would happen is we would wait until the future until another opportunity came along what's giving you the unique opportunity right now and why the savings are we initially told you two million and they're about two and a half million the treasury rates have actually dropped over the last few weeks and it's primarily been based on the fear of the the delta variant and the potential impact on the economy going ahead what's bad news for the economy is good news for bonds now could you just clarify for the board i believe emilio had mentioned it in his last presentation that the two and a half million dollar savings is after the cost is subtracted from the proceeds so there is no net cost to the district

102with the exception of the rating thingy if we decide not to go through with that no that is exactly right dr bowers so in another way to see it is the total savings would be 2.8 million dollars i'm using round numbers over here approximately 300 000 of the savings would go to paying costs and a net of two and a half would be passed back to your taxpayers uh at the end of the day this does not result in got additional dollars then is part of that bond it doesn't come out of our general fund okay great questions any other questions um if we do initiate this how how long of a process is it from start to finish um we're hoping to fast track this and wrap this up in the next two to

103three weeks we're in a there's two situations which are favorable to us right now one is the interest rates have dropped once again doesn't mean they couldn't drop even fewer more in the future but they're back to very attractive levels right now and the second factor is bonds mature typically in august so in august folks get redemptions from the bonds they get money to check in the mail figuratively and they're looking to reinvest that money potentially in additional bonds bond sales are about demand and supply we want to be in a situation where there's a lot of money burning up figuratively a hole in people's pockets looking to buy bonds so your staff has been very kind in being very generous with that time we're hoping to get to the rating agency in the next

104couple of days over here potentially uh post the prospectus to the investor sometime next week and by about mid-august we're looking to lock in the interest rates because we believe this is a favorable time to do it and i believe mrs grooms may have another question i just wanted the opinion of our superintendent on this item absolutely i am completely in favor of this as there is no cost to the district but the district still gets to be good stewards of this bond and take an action that is going to benefit our community to the tune of two and a half million dollars so i put cush through the ringer before i brought it here you did checking any other questions further questions yes move the question do you have a question no i said

105are we moving the question thank you very much cruz i think uh so much ladies and gentlemen good night thank you we'll be able to look at this now and and ask for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye aye any negatives say nay vote passes five zero yes thank you for staying so late safe drive back to los angeles thank you board for your support we're counting on your oversight we'll move on to number 15 consent agenda items superintendent 15 a to 15 d do i have a motion second thank you moved by mr giles second by mr teepee is there any discussion well i think we should uh acknowledge again kb homes for the donations they made for the welcome and wellness center and what the great uh backpack giveaway we

106had um it's companies like this uh that are out there and i'm sure we'll be seeing some more in the near future perhaps amazon and others so with that if there's no further discussion we'll vote with that vote is five zero now we'll move to the consent agenda items for business 16 a through 16 g to have a motion so move thank you motion by sandra price second by keith child is there any discussion nice to see the completion of the preschool concrete work these equipment will be able to go on right with no further discussion i'll ask for a vote all in favor say hi hi all right all right any negatives in a boat passes five zero moving to 17 educational services consent agenda items 17 a through 17 half the motion so

107moved second thank you moved by miss groom second by mr tipi is there any discussion with no discussion i'll ask for a vote all in favor say aye right all right any negative saying a vote passes five zero moving on to consent agenda items number 18 a through 18 c to have a motion so moved second thank you motion by mr giles second by miss price is there any discussion we're all quiet tonight i'll ask for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye all right any negative say nay look passes five zero went on to 19 consent agenda items innovation and technology services still new through 19h motion motion second thank you motion by mr tp second by senator price any discussion there are some really neat things on on this uh particular

108consent items here there's the um asus programs just a lot of good things that i'm glad we're approving tonight so that we they can keep going because they have really been helpful really been helpful during covid and they uh good work here here i agree i think we all do um with that i'll ask for all in favor say hi hi hi hi um any negatives in a vote passes five zero [Music] and we are now in second readings of uh 4141 4241 and uh update the board policy secure employee security to board policy 721 r11 developer fees and regulation 4158 4258 4358 for administrative regulation for employee security and administration administrative regulation 7211 developer fees is there any comments i think that does it michelle i think they're uh we have passed through all

109of the uh concern agendas and legislative discussions and we will now move on to comments from the board another discussion as it applies we'll start with dying grooms thank you for indulging me my many financial questions um i read every page of every one of those documents and i i could not develop a a clear start stop example like i could when i refinance my house as he as he put it even the escrow department would give me this is our example of our fees and this is but they're none of them are secure until the close of escrow i understood that but i think it would have been a lot easier to understand if there was at least an example of we're talking 20 million dollars so that's that deserves a lot of our

110attention so thank you for indulging me those um questions i am excited that this will not in any way affect our credit rating in fact um may put us in better standing that is also a concern for us when we're talking about this and i did not realize the um timing of the um completing this within the next couple of weeks so that people who have additional investment monies could take advantage of this so that was very very helpful um i have to say the uh innovation and technology department they got the best names for the companies that we deal with kangaroo time asset panda all of these things i can understand exactly what they are before i even get into the second paragraph and it's really fun and um i do appreciate there are

111very few acronyms anymore that that is important for our understanding of the whole community about what we're doing i'm very pleased that there is legislation now to support um changes in distance learning that really do support our kids it does make it hard to do our work but it is supposed to be hard and our only our children will benefit and i also would like to thank for everyone for their presentations especially dr goins on the empower um charter school that was very informative i did not know much about that program but it has been a cause of mine for much of my career to look after those young people and and in my program we served 175 young women who were pregnant in parenting and more than 80 percent of them had been former

112foster youth and that's that's really sad that their um you know the community has let them down so this is another way to at least assure they get an education and that we don't have generational poverty so i really do appreciate that program and even if we did need to extend it to seventh and eighth graders i am in favor of looking at that because it is unfortunately it's a valuable program and at that age and many times it's actually a family member who has been involved so anyway thank you this has been a very educational board meeting thank you dan we'll move on to mr teepee thank you and uh i just want to welcome everyone to going back to school i thought it was great to hear the teachers uh excited about setting

113up their classrooms and and seeing the kids and i thought it was also neat that we're being proactive and developing our independent study program so that parents will have an option if uh if they do choose to continue uh with the independent study so i'm glad we're we're helping parents uh wherever their needs are and i also want to um thank the parents for their comments for tonight and i will definitely look into their comments and their suggestions um also was neat that our district was being uh proactive both with the hvac program and they were ahead of the curve on that and also with the refinancing of the bonds so it's great to see both those programs going through so thank you very much great meeting [Music] thank you uh greg glad to have

114you back um we'll move on to miss price oh thank you am i on yes um yeah julie thank you so much for all the information on testing that um that gives us a lot of information to tell the community when they ask about because you know there's a lot of discussion about testing and the variant um thanks jordan for giving us that information about the charter school it it just isn't interesting that they had originally had seventh and eighth grade in that program it's like it was slipped under the rug or something i'm not sure um larry thank you for um and your everybody for redoing the air conditioners now is probably a good time to get that started and um they're going to go up a lot again um my air conditioner was

11540 is is as i sit here 47 years old when he looked inside he just they don't make this they haven't made this in 20 years so it has held on until the new one shows up so yeah with it you just can't do all of this without having the proper air the proper coolant and and for our children and everyone that lives here um i do like the refinancing i think that's just i like the fact that we can say to the community that we're going to send um save them or 2 million 500 000 on their taxes i know it for each individual it may not be enough but i would like the community to know that we're thinking about them there were several other things in here that i thought that's another

116the community grants the grants for community learning and it i want i want parents in the community to know that we're we're always thinking about them and our children so thank you sandra mr giles for a good meeting uh thanks to all our presenters i think everything's been about said um i'm looking forward to saving a little bit of money on my taxes on my house because i pay a lot there's a lot of school taxes on there but hey i'm glad to pay it because i'm a recipient of all that uh goodness for our kids so uh thank you for uh or uh our speakers that spoke in our meeting regarding masks and uh safety and uh want to encourage people to do their their research because i just realized new hall who's pretty

117close to us adopted a healthy children's resolution that allows uh i don't know what it's going to do they're still in la county but it does they're probably not going to enforce the mask mandate so allow it to be optional other states and other counties are are looking at this a little more seriously and i'm going to do some calling to our local officials we have our we have tom lackey our legislator we have senator wilk and we also have mike mike garcia as our congressman so i'm making calls this week i also wanted to put a shout out to fulton and alsbury for their their uh induction into the best of 2021's animal valley press winner and also for their congratulations for their former student to be inducted and or drafted into the nba

118i believe it was the tennessee grizzlies or anyways 10th round draft pick so that's pretty cool that we're that we're on the map there for uh one of our students from lancaster and uh with that i'll close it out thank you for good meeting thank you very much uh keith dr bowers thank you very much mr winn i just want to thank the board for their support you can see we've been busy doing lots of things to benefit our students our staff and our community and constantly looking at ways that we can improve our schools and make sure that we're taking being good stewards for the for the district also i wanted to say thank you to all the presenters i know i've been keeping everybody very busy so thank you all for being here

119this evening and for the work that you do and just to the entire district because we've been doing new teacher orientations i had a chance to meet a lot of virtually meet a lot of our new teachers today we have teachers coming back to the site this week our support staff classified staff have been working overtime all in preparation for school to start next tuesday august 10th so we are very excited we feel very ready very prepared we have focused on safety measures making sure that those things are in place and we are ready to receive students so i invite everyone to bring their students back i know that there are some reservations and some hesitation and i absolutely understand that school is the best place for our kiddos though so i encourage you to

120give us a chance bring your child back i don't believe that you will have any regrets about that and we've got some good things in place to make sure that they stay safe and that there's some balance between the mask on and mask off so we'll make sure that we're cognizant of that and very sensitive to that concern also i just want to assure the board and the speakers that the information that was shared this evening the flyers i will have that scanned and send it to you and at the next board meeting under informational items you will have an opportunity for discussion so if there are any additional articles or things that i can share with you in between now and that time in preparation for any additional discussion after you've had a chance

121to review that there will be some time allocated under informational items for you to to engage in that discussion and with that i am going to say thank you very much no thank you uh dr bowers we always uh enjoying hearing you talk about this district and how good it is we realize it and it's nice to hear you say the things that you say um dr freeze air conditioners is what we still have to put new ones in that's tremendous i mean that's amazing thank god they continue to operate through all these years it is uh something like sandy said 47 years ours are 40 years and they continue to function um thank you julie for the covered information appreciate that for krista thank you for jumping up and running outside and talking to

122mrs long i hope you uh and her get the information she needs that'll be very important um i have nothing else other than to say i'm a little hungry so maybe tomorrow night i'll go to a barbecue [Laughter] and i hope all the board members attend anyway thank you very much are there any further comments then with that we will ask for a motion to adjourn at eight third fifteen second first by diane grooms okay my motion but i don't have my mic on so there you go sorry motion by diane say goodbye keith is there any uh anyone that's going to say yay thank you to the audience both live and virtual and this meeting is adjourned you