November 12, 2024 - 10am Committee of the Whole

001e e e [Music] w he h [Music] okay good morning everyone and welcome to today's committee of the whole meeting I'm scottson board vice president and chair of the committee of the whole we have two presentations today with the first one from our chief of legislative affairs and government relations Miss Martha Alvarez on our legislative advocacy agenda our second presentation will be coming from the chief of school operations Mr Andres Chate and the district's plan for providing a phone free school day now I have a few announcements and housekeeping items to share as usual we will be taking public comment towards the end of the meeting and additionally to comply with the brown act we will not discuss any items that have not been properly agendized for today's meeting before we start our presentations we

002will turn to any labor partners that wish to address the board and Mr mle do we have any labor Partners who signed up today we have none okay therefore I would like to introduce the chief of legislative affairs and government relations Miss Martha Alvarez to walk us through the district's goals and initiatives for this upcoming legislative year with that please introduce yourself Miss Alvarez and get us started thank you good morning I'm looking for a clicker if there's one it's been a while that I've come to the board so did not know we had modernized the technology here uh good morning uh pleasure to be here with all of you today Martha Alvarez chief of government to of relations and leg for La unified um thank you for having me uh it's one of the

003the few times that I come to the board uh today's presentation is timely giving you an update um regarding the upcoming cycle for legislation and superintendent carvalo anything You' like to mention before I get started great great well thank you so much um this is an opportunity for the board to ask questions see clarifications uh provide feedback um as of now uh the plan is to come to the board on January 14 so you have two whole months to engage with their office if there's any other feedback you have um but uh traditionally I've been doing this for a number of years now giving you an opportunity for public conversation around priorities that are emerging at the local state and federal level so with that let's get started um I'll give you a very brief

004summary of what happened in Sacramento over the last um the last cycle giving you a preview of the merging priorities for 2025 and again to underscore they're emerging they're not final and they can be modified between now and when when I come back to the board in January asking for final approval um and then any question or comments you'd like to provide uh will be helpful to me and my team uh looking at uh the the last uh 10 months in Sacramento the legislature introduced over 2500 bills uh which is typ typical of the 120 legislators each of them has about 40 bills they can introduce in any given year um a th000 20 1,200 of them were sent to the governor um approved by the legislature and the governor signed uh over a thousand

005bills as you can see in this slide um our department of office of government relations we tracked um over 678 bills um that we saw there was uh some Nexus opportunity to interact with schools and then of course there's other items that we track like artificial intelligence uh gun reform uh and mental health prevention and many other areas that are in and outside of the schools that we still care about we uh had a very successful uh session in Sacramento this year with um five of the bills that we sponsor this year that were signing to law um that the bills that did not make it Forward were the mtor kindergarten bill which I'll address in a later slide um the five that did get signed into law um is AB 2046 by as um

006Isaac bran this bill extended up a deadline for La unified pilot on single gender schools we have currently three uh single gender schools Gala Bala yoga and then a charter school GS that also gets to U benefit from this legislation we extended the pilot to authorize that um those schools to exist until 2031 we hope that it will be a successful uh continuation of the educational program for students that we can make it into a permanent pilot uh or remove the pilot and make it into permanent law uh by 2031 AB 2073 um by Sharon Quirk Silva uh it allowed us to um codifying statute flexibility for um alter alternate school schedules uh for physical education courses we had been going to the State Board of Education for a number of our schools for many

007years um the State Board continued to approve those waivers and we thought it would be better to just codified in law and as as um you can see the legislature and Governor approved um that that proposal ab2 9998 another bill that we work very closely with um the LA chair delegation um Tina mackor we have this bill that authorize students to carry uh NX on at schools um or School settings um if they're 12 and older um SP sp98 by Senator portantino this is our bill that we have been working a number of years while the bill had to be streamlined to make um and cortell to make it into a study bill um it creates a pathway for the legislative analyst office to evaluate and uh explore what would it take for the State

008of California to move to anoman based funding system like the other 43 states in the country um this bill requires the Lao to do the report by January 1st of 20 um 2026 um So within the next year um I've already been asked a question the implication for schools the law did not change from 88 to enrollment based funding this is a study bill that would enable us to understand the cost the the implications what would be Pathways to get there um by next year in the early 2026 when the report comes out we l USD working with other partners we can uh consider uh possibly budget advocacy and other mechanisms to pursue this uh to make it a permanent change and then lastly uh Senate Bill 991 by Senator Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez um

009this bill um made the office of the Inspector General for Le us the permanent in law um we had them for over 25 years uh on different um pilot periods now this made it permanent uh once and for all Martha sorry can I just you said for the the enrollment based funding report early 2026 or early 2025 it'll be due January 1st of 2026 it's going to take a whole year to study Year yes um the the Lao and we work with the Lao to develop the questions just to make sure that the the questions would be the right questions to be asking and what data they have um they think that they can be done with it earlier than that but the bill is not an urgency bill so it won't go into effect

010until January 1st of 2025 um and because they will be working through the governor's budget in the beginning of 2025 they want it to not overpromise and underd deliver so so we think that they'll probably be ready by late fall um of 2025 um but by law by January 1st of 2026 as we look at the at the upcoming cycle for 2025 five um a lot of areas um of of continued priority for the board and superintendent and our district leadership um you can see here a list of various topics that we'll be bringing forward to you as what you might remember approving on last year and it'll be a similar document that we'll be updating um is known as the policy guiding principles and priorities so we come to the board um every fall

011as I am doing today and for approval in January seeking your approval of what those priorities would what this area of focus for the guiding principle and priorities enables my team and I is to um have um some uh principles or value statements when we're analyzing legislation in Sacramento or federal legislation local issues we can refer back to this guiding principal document that provide some parameters as to how we believe um what is appropriate for us to pursue and Advocate um in support of or at times in opposition of and so this is just a the subject line of the topics each of these topics includes a paragraph statement again value statement um that is aligned with the strict plan um along with other board actions um so should you have any questions I'm happy

012to answer them when we come back during Q&A um but again this is a preview of the topics that will be provided to you in writing as part of the guiding principes and priorities um as we uh explore legislation for next year so so we um have in the past and have done it again this year we asked the Board of Education and your staff we ask um District uh Department uh division leaders cabinet members superintendent's office and others Office of the general Council we ask for feedback and input about build ideas that we would like to pursue in the upcoming cycle um we uh have also engage parents and we will plan to do so again um with the survey to parents over the coming week um and uh and so any revisions that

013we include would be reflected in what the board will be asked to approve in January so far there's these are what we're considering as potential issues for sponsor legislation that L USD would lead um and possibly get other co-sponsors um the first one is regarding revising the opin or consent requirements for dental Envision screening um for unhoused students um we know it's a population of students that requires a lot of uh continued followup um and and we want to ensure that they're not um drastically uh uh impacted by not having the parental concern consent requirements met um that therefore we cannot provide the dentor vision screening free of charge for them at schools so there would be an exemption a targeted exemption for the unhoused or homeless student population we um are that's one idea

014one bill idea we're we're uh as have now planning to pursue second one is providing greater flexibility for continu students attending continuation schools um the law requires students to be in school for 180 school days um for and for continuation schools they have to be there for at least 15 hours per week um over that 180 school days we'd like to have greater flexibility for students in continuation schools to get um a Class C time if they were to pursue Workforce uh or CT type of experiential learning experiences once or twice a week um because right now again they have to be in a classroom setting but if they were to do an internship or some other um opportunity outside of the class they wouldn't they currently do not receive that class time or seat

015time uh we think this is a line with the government Direction with the master plan for Career Education a report that will be released in December or January and where the state is uh and we as a school district are moving with making our schools um more attentive to the student needs and the greater um needs of the of the um employer employment SE sector third um this is a uh creating a permanent authorization and statute for a a Contracting method known as best value procurement uh currently La USD is the only School District in California allowed to use this um cont Contracting method we've had it as a pilot for a number of years and the law requires us to provide a report to the legislature to identify the benefits uh it's um objective

016criteria that we're required to use um in in deciding what contractors to use for school facility projects um it does not require us to use the lowest C cost bid because we're looking about um experience um doing certain type of scope of the projects uh looking about their history with finishing on time and other important criteria that are are will help us deliver on those facility projects and to our communities and students um so we're looking to make it permanent and possibly making it um authorization for other scho in California to benefit from this law next um as you are apprised from prior conversations uh we have incurred um but have not been asked by the state to repay yet uh fiscal penalties related to uh being an early adopter of the traditional kindergarden program

017next year in 2526 all of school districts will be required to offer it to students La USD given our leadership of our board and support intendent uh we as you know have been an early adopter of this program for a number of years um the state changed the law very last minute in 2023 and so we're asking for a very um minor change in the law to revise a calculation of the penalties uh currently um there's different set of penalties um but one of them in particular requires the penalty to be done as across Ada for the entire School District um on on just this knowing that this came out of the women's caucus I think the chances of getting much change is not much because they're trying to protect the little homebased child care

018people I wonder if we could do some legislation that says we're not trying to hurt them uh we actually want to begin to hire them as we expand and we would like to be able to get some funding from the state to transition them into jobs that are paying better than they can get at home and into jobs that may have benefits and have retirement and we're not interested in putting them out of business we're interested in hiring them into our business uh and those and not mandatory and those that don't want to that we have some authorization to reach out to them to give them some additional training if they're just going to stay at home with their granddaughter and three other kids I mean I think there's no solution on the money but

019there might be some Solution on saying this this is an early childhood education issue and are they better off in some cases I think yes in that little home thing because that's grandma and you know that's pretty personal on the other hand no not not necessarily and we need to be able to say we want to invite you in we're not trying to put you out of business we're trying to put you into the business where you get a real salary where you get better training I I think that's the solution cuz I was in the women's caucus and I can assure you once they've done something together they don't you know that they don't change they will not change they will fight this to the death they may not fight something that says we

020want to include them the people you're trying to protect and can you write legislation that lets us do that I think that's a much better approach to this uh because see the women's caucus is one of the only places where the Republicans and Democrats work together and usually they pick one issue each year and we all say when we were in the women's caucus no budget's going to pass unless you do this one thing that was the one thing they wanted they're not going to take that back I was there six years they're not going to take that back but their interest may be an interest that we have too and that's what I'm trying to say thank you let's see if we can find who in the women's caucus has pushed this let's see

021if they will Author a bill saying we want to have a a opportunity not a requirement because I don't want to close anybody down that has only three or four kids and everybody's happy but an opportunity to begin to find a way to move them into a system where absolutely they will make more money than they're making now because they're not making much now and where they have an opportunity to have a career in early childhood education so maybe you'll find a couple of authors in the women's caucus that that will say that's what we're want to do is protect these people all right protect them up into a better job thank you thank you Board of President Goldberg so we we have had some promising conversation with the women's caucus consultants and also with

022some of the woman caucus members of our La delegation on this particular issue um I think they've come to re recognize that there was some unintended consequence of the penalty the way that it was written so our proposed solution is very straightforward and simple it's um for any school district it's not just only for La USD but it would be for any school district that did um inquire the penalty by being over one kid over the ratio instead of calculating the the penalty over across all of ADA for a school district it would base on the School site level so the current law is very punitive that it gives the impression that every school was out of compliance only if a handful of schools were out of compliance so the language that we have is

023very straightforward um we have not gotten push back so far it's pretty uh so far I'm surprised and uh we also have working with DIN tagawa and PIAA aalta we also have done a survey to parents to understand the value of the TK program and what the options would have been for them had we not offered them this early opportunity to it's a parental choice they chose to bring the children to La Unified Schools in this case um and also reminder to to the state legislators and others uh we don't receive funding for these kids we're we're it's an investment that we're doing in the Early Education and engagement um but I you know appreciate your feedback and we'll continue to work on trying to do this both through the um a bill and also

024through the budget advocacy um and then the lastly uh the last one um as you can see here why references as a budget item I mentioned at the beginning of my comments that um we had the only bills that St in the process this year was making kindergart mandatory it's the third time that we have pursued this bill in Sacramento this year we brought in their Coalition by having the California Teachers Association CTA as one of our key co-sponsors of of the legislation um the bill once again um unlike two years ago where the governor beat to the legislation this bill um ided the Appropriations Committee to due to fiscal concerns that there was no money in the budget for you know if more kids come to school that means that cost to the state

025and so uh we um have been in discussion with senator moruchi who was the author of one of the bills this year and Senator Rubio uh who may also consider reintroducing the bill in 2025 um what we're asking the board is for uh possible um authorization for us to pursue the bill again if the authors um decided to move the bill is not that we would be one that would be prioritizing per se but if they're ready to move forward in 2025 um that we could engage as a co-sponsor and if not maybe until 2026 which would be the governor's last year in office and perhaps more willing to consider this legislation as a legacy setting um but we can discuss that as part of the budget this next item on state budget advocacy um

026so again this is an emerging list of priorities it's not conclusive and it's not final um this is an opportunity again for getting getting your feedback um we uh are planning as of now uh continuing to work with the urban education colleagues and others who have um similar budget priorities um one of those areas would be on maintaining or increasing the projected Cola for uh 25 26 um when the legislature and Governor adopted the budget this past summer they mentioned it would be about a 2.93% cola um the latest that I heard us about a week ago that Cola might be clored to 1.7% um given that there's various economic factors that contribute to the cola and so we we that's why we say the word maintain or increase at a minimum they should keep

027us at that 2.93% um that was projected when they adopted the budget in June um another big area is protecting lcff and local control and the legislature had a hearing about a month ago in the State Assembly talking about lcff and uh 13 years after it was adopted by the legislature many of those legislators were not around uh not even four years ago not 12 years ago either and so one of the areas that the legislature continues to talk about is possible modifications to lcff um Forex example adding a regional cost factor or adjustment for areas like LA or others San Francisco San Diego that have a higher cost of living adding some adjustment um talking about possibly duplicating students so prior under the prior system to lcff um economic impact Aid um they used

028to have if you were a low-income student and English learner you would generate funding twice under lcff you you're the duplicated student you only generate funding once according to the to the various um crit IIA or or um uh challenges or vulnerability that you have um there's conversation about providing more funding at the school site level similar to seni um so it would be in set up as school districtwide it would be more at the school level um and there's other topics that have been in conversation um it's un uncertain right now whether the legislature want to pursue a bill and my budget discussion for sure um but what we're doing working with our budget department and our our superintendent office and Leadership is um starting to consider what would be priorities for USD uh

029should we need to weigh in or want to weigh in um in that discussion around lcff um and ultimately the other option might be that any new money should be put into the lcff current Formula that could be a position that we could take and which would allow more funding through the base Grant supplemental concentration dollars and that's been our position in the past as well uh why I mentioned maintain local control um the the local control is beginning to erode that notion about uh you all um local elected board members and and District leadership have a best know way of knowing uh how to best uh leverage your funding from the state level um there's been efforts in the past several years to add more ear marks or categoricals at the state level and

030so I think it will be up to the urban districts those of us who have the greatest needs with their student populations that we serve for us to to continue to um advocate for local flexibility on the funding um there is likely going to be um some uh additional prop 98 funding uh for k14 schools uh 12 and community colleges uh known as a declining declining enrollment dividend um because the state budget and typically is around 38 to 40% of the budget for schools um with declining enrollment as a whole that means that there would be more funding available on a purp student basis and so the legislature would have to weigh in and the governor where do they put this additional funding towards is it for enrollment based funding is it for manatory kindergarten

031students is it for again changes to the El a formula uh more money for special ucation um so there's going to be a conversation around what to do with that extra money if it materializes in the upcoming cycle I already mentioned about the modifying the TK penalties um because it will have to be part of the budget conversation um and then also fully funding the the required TK ratio of 1 to 10 uh come next year that's will be the the anticipated ratio um unless things change in the state law um by 25 26 school year um and also the the class siiz ratio um requirements and then lastly a top that we're exploring and whether it might be for 2025 or may may have to wait until 2026 is increasing funding uh reimbursements for

032school districts who serve students with Moder to disability students uh we know that LUSD uh has a disproportionate number of students that we have seen over the course of the last decade um we we are uh pleased and proud to serve our students uh families trusting us to to serve the needs um of students meet the needs of students yet um the state and federal government do not provide provide a proportionate reim ement for those cost of services um this advocacy that we started to pursue in 2019 and 2020 and then with the pandemic um we shifted our PRI budget priorities to other more uh T sensitive um covid related expenses but um this is one that we're exploring what that might look like um since it's currently not part of the lcf funding formula

033potential local advocacy um you can see here this is consistent with our past advocacy um in the interest of time I'll just mentioned you know these are just a examples as you can see this is not an exhausted list this just examples of a few advocacy U continue to work with our both County Board of Supervisors with the city council and then with our new education compacts that we have um you can see here we have N9 to date uh we plan to bring forward to the board another one for city of LOM likely in December and working with a few other municipalities in the New Year Federal advocacy um this is um this PowerPoint slide was uh developed um prior to knowing what the terms of last week's election would be uh nevertheless uh

034it's important to me for me to underscore that um our our vision continues to remain the same which is to support and underscore the needs of our students these are just examples of the areas where we have um advocated for in the past and will continue to double down on on that priority um I'll just mention a few quick points that are not in this slide um there has been uh you know public um information about the president-elect Trump uh possibly wanting to dismantle or eliminate the Department of Education um that is a a major task that would see if if Congress um would would support um with that said uh we plan to continue to engage with our Council City School partners and identifying other partners that we can build bipartisan support for the

035needs that we have um given that um the needs of students is a bipartisan should be a bipartisan issue um title two and Title One and title three uh could potentially be um seeing reductions under a trump Administration uh we have over 54% of our funding comes from Title One um over 20% of our funding comes for Ida or special education and so those are two of our major um supports but we also receed close to 5% of funding for uh title to for educator support and professional development uh we have um also uh a few I think about four or five% also for title three so all of these different T titles that you see are important to to our um delivery of service to students and and to help our staff build our

036capacity um so we will continue to focus around Federal engagement and how we can um make sure that we protect our funding and support for students outlook for 2025 um again the state uh as of now likely will continue to focus on implementing sustaining existing programs uh you did not hear me talk about the elop the expand learning opportunities program um I don't anticipate that there will be changes to the program at as of this upcoming cycle given that they made some changes to the program this past year um TK you know it's a significant new investment for the State of California uh School meals for all um new program as of a few years ago so again I don't anticipate there'll be much more new programs as much as just contining to pay for

037what we currently have um from the state of California you heard me talk about the restructuring of lcff um and uh you know the potential return for ear marker categorical uh we have um as as have mentioned in the past the the one unfortunate aspect of the state legislature right now is that neither the assembly speaker or the protim are from the LA region um so we have doubl done our advocacy and engagement with our um assembly member um Jesse Gabriel who's the chair of the assembly budget committee assembly member um uh Rick Burr who's the chair of the assembly Democratic caucus and has those two individuals are key um allies to the speaker of the assembly and so getting them to to understand our priorities assembly member Tina mckin who's the chair of the

038LA County legation and then on the Senate side we have Senate Majority Leader number two in the Senate leadership senena Gonzalez who also has Long Beach Unified along with LA USD as two major districts um so we are continuing to assess uh who are those Champions that we can leverage our relationships with and continue to Foster that engagement um and again uncertainty at the state and federal revenues um the governor has called a special session starting December 2nd um trying to uh identify areas uh regarding climate change immigration uh health related issues of concern um that would enable California to have a strong fooding starting to the new year uh to prevent any potential impacts from the Trump Administration um we will continue to engage with leader State leadership uh to ensure that any protections

039for schools um also considered any legal aid support for um undocumented or immigrant families as we continue to make our schools an inclusive and welcoming environment for all um with that uh we have again 55 elected officials give or take uh not including the smaller municipalities um that we have our nine education compacts if we included them it would be over a 100 elected officials uh we have probably about a third of them uh but that you see in this um breakdown a third of them that are new state legislators or Congressional members uh we have at least uh one US senator um uh that uh that will be starting Adam Schiff we have two Congressional new members Laura fredman and L Rivas who are former from State Assembly members so uh friends of La

040USD and and our pass engagement with their office um and there's at least two new state senators and about five or six new State Assembly members um and then City Council Members there's also two new for the LA City Council that will be um building the those relationships with over the coming months now turning back superintendent carvalo and that board thank you just a a couple of closing comments um Beyond and and perhaps still wrapped around some of the priorities that uh that Mara so eloquently delineated for the benefit of the board and the and the community I believe there are some major priorities uh that fall under the umbrella of the new political reality that uh we as a nation uh uh are facing at this point none of these are Savory but I

041think they're all uh in need of some definite strong leadership and partnership uh with a number of different agencies the first one Mart alluded to there's no doubt that over the next months will not take long there will be challenges to entitlement programs whether we're talking about uh Title One Ida title two Title 9 title 4 uh we should expect challenges modifications to formulas particularly uh concentration formulas to make the use of those dollars more liberal Beyond High y uh districts districts that have a high percentage of English language Learners Etc so we will prioritize working with Partners across the country to protect those entitlement programs secondly and I think this board more than any other board that I know across the country has um a well-established uh set of beliefs and values but I

042think we need to re-emphasize them and develop strategy to protect uh Fally fund federally protected civil rights for uh our students our Workforce ensure that uh anti-discriminatory policies remain intact in this District affording everyone under our care whether it's Workforce member or student the protection Safety and Security that they deserve thirdly we need to ensure protection of students and Workforce as individual rights Beyond civil Federal rights individual rights and I think everybody knows what those are we cannot do this alone this will require partnership with local Municipal entities next is a protection of school board's independent status there are tangible possible threats to the way School boards do their work and I think this board ought to be vigilant will take whatever actions are necessary to protect the independence of this board fifth ensure through

043uh Partnerships with Municipal and state entities that the that the control of actions within losen unified within our jurisdiction are protected meaning no outset agency shall take action against our Workforce our students or their relatives Within the jurisdiction of Los Angeles Unified and last but not least uh this will be more of a local uh effort considering the Despicable racially charged insensitive messages that some of our students alongside students across the country began to receive over the past few days particularly targeting a black students referencing dark dark days of America uh I think it is in our interest and I've already began to take actions to create a rapid response multi-divisional multi- agency task force to address hate actions whether they are speech or whatever they may be including not only law enforcement uh City

044governments community- based organizations this cannot be the new normal and the way to reject that possibility of a new normal is by taking taking preemptive steps in anticipation that these actions uh of of that we saw over the past few days uh probably more than likely will repeat themselves if not in fact intensify thank you very much thank you thank you Martha before we get into questions I want to tell you how pleased I was when we were at the Getty House with uh mayor bass that everybody in the legislature just knew who you were and uh had such a warm relation ship with you and I I'm just so proud to see that that happening so thank you thank you so much I I needed to make that comment thank you to my right

045questions sorry okay just everything you know um your me we here discussing about the potential you know ramifications has just got me um just all over the place but um just concerned you know and making sure that our district is definitely prepared and thank you superintendent for those words and that we're going to be continuing to uphold um the district and what it means particular for our communities our undocumented students um particular newcomers and all lgbtq plus our transgendered students so I know that I feel confident that this district will continue to protect and um push back on anything that may come my way and I'm glad that our governor is um is taking a stand and also also uh Rob B our state um attorney right General General um so okay so my questions

046um so for the legislation on uh the O the synthetic opioid crisis can you expand on those um efforts and does that include vaping and accidental overdoses you can just give us a little bit more on that if on that um great thank you so so it's not legislation it's more local local engagement last year we had the um fentel prevention uh Tas for that Dr Webb and Andes Chade from our Operations Division LED Dr mahra of course was involved in that that effort last year so it's continuing to ensure that we um given recent incidences over the past several months at schools middle schools elementary schools um with the gummies and other you know areas that we ensure that we continue the strong communication and partnership with the local enforcement law enforcement with health

047departments the cities and governments at the county level so it's not legislation but rather just the partnership that we have in place um and then we also had the board approved this past um October at one of your board meetings the board approved the um updated mou with the US attorney uh US District Attorney U Martin estada um that they'll be providing some support from um the the US attorney's office when it comes to any legal and and training for staff um so so just continuing to work on what we've done before and what um additional efforts at least in the federal level to support and protect our documenting students particularly our DACA uh our dreamers um have you are you plan on meeting uh with our new State uh Federal um Representatives particularly law

048freom and L Ras and everyone else on how we can you know work to make sure that that is uh continued um to be ratified to protect them definitely so as you saw it was one of the the last slides and under the federal um priorities um is one one example of the federal priorities uh we have been uh supporting legislation Senator Padia US senator Padia had a bill around immigration reform um that would better protect families including students given that um both at this time um the US Senate and the House of Representatives will be uh Republican controlled along with the president um it's going to be difficult for any new legislation to move forward um if anything as span carvalo alluded to there's going to be a lot of Defense um but but

049uh realistically um will continue to engage but realistically it's going to be really hard for any of that legislation that we would normally support uh to really move forward because of the the results of the election and both with the Senate being now controlled by the um by the Republicans and the house as well which was not the case this last cycle this last cycle we had the US senator who was democratically controlled and uh Republican controlled house and for the December 2nd um the meeting that the governor has um asked for will any of you or your any Representatives be there so so so it's not a meeting it's just a it's the the convening so it's the the State Assembly and state senate they have their Chambers um they just have conversations I

050don't know that there'll be taken any action at that day but that's when the session will begin but we'll be monitoring the conversations um there's uh on the floor session there's no opportunity for public comment um we will just listen in um but between now and then we'll definitely be engaging with the governor's office to underscore that we want to be a partner with them and also with the Attorney General's office U but we'll make sure that we continue to apprise as part of my updates to the board um every week okay thank you so much I have that for now and I I have another question later but sure let's go to my left Jackie yeah I think on the issue of federal funding uh I think it would be good for us to

051be taking into account which Republican Le States would be most negatively affected by changes in title one because those folks are not going to they have to be reelected in two years and my experience in this is is that if they were to harm those Southern States those poor states that are getting a lot of Title One money uh they will get fight back from those people because not the Senators but the Congress women and men have to run again and they'll have to run on cuts to them so I think that one of the strategies I would urge all of us to do is to be finding which of those Republican states would have the most harm from any cuts to these titles and begin Tre creating a coalition that says to them okay

052you that's what you want to do find then you will know that I won't be back next year because in my district if you were to cut Title One in Southern Mississippi uh I'll be I'll be gone I'll be gone and I think that that has to be driven home immediately the fight back has to begin before he takes action we learned in 1938 that fascism takes hold when we don't fight back immediately and we have to begin saying to the Republicans you may think that that this is a great day for you but I got news for you a lot of what he wants to do harms your state and your people and are you really going to go along with that because if you do and you're in the house you'll lose your

053job in two years I think that's got to be we have we have to begin talking about what things the president elect wants to do that harms Republican states as much as it or more than it does democratic run States that's got in my opinion to be key to this strategy and not to wait to the measures to come but to begin now in saying to the president through their various channels these are things if you do you will lose House Seats next time they'll they'll be gone they'll be gone and and I think it's not too soon for us to begin doing that I also hope that we will have a a a um Sanctuary uh State legislation in this uh session that he's called into I'm going to be bringing a sanctuary District

054motion to the uh next board meeting saying that this district is a sanctuary District uh so I'm announcing that I am having that done because we need to be the key thing in it in 1938 was people gave up their power before it was taken away and if we are going to survive this as a school district that deals with mostly very lowincome kids we have to be ahead not waiting to see what he's going to try but ahead of it by creating coalitions with people who will also be harmed by the St things and we need to be letting the president elect know you can probably have the power to do any damn thing you want but don't hold on to the House of Representatives if you do certain things and you understand that

055Mr president-elect okay that's that's what I'm trying to say and I think it's really really important that we begin to develop these relationships right now and let the president-elect know that there is no support for this in his in his party because that will cost them the house and it will it honest to God will uh you begin messing with title one we get a lot of Title One you look at Mississippi Alabama uh you look at um North Dakota and South Dakota both all of those States all these red States get more money from title one per kid than we do and if he begins messing with those it is time for us to say uh-uh not going to happen not going to happen not gonna happen uh okay that that's the most important

056things I wanted to say thank you okay back to my right Nick thank you Mr scharon and thanks Martha echo my colleagues heo Mr Sharon's praise and when I'm meeting with legislators out there they're always saying what a great job you and your team are doing so thank you and then also Dr rus' and Miss Goldberg's um righteous indignation which we support I mean it's uh early on in my tenure we were in the Trump Administration part one and I know we did a lot including a sanctuary um uh District resolution and so happy to to reinforce that we also uh protected you know our DACA students and teachers and staff members and so it it would behoove somebody whether that's your office M Alvarez or someone else to kind of figure out all those

057the you know I guess the governor is calling it Trump proofing but those things that we did locally uh and revive and if there's things we need to re recommit to I know we'll we will uh I think quite unanimously do that um few questions about potential State legislation whatever happened I know one of our P well I don't know if it was an explicit priority of the board but I know it was some of ours around discretion for uh expulsions around marijuana use um we still get a lot of expulsions for marijuana at a time when there's kind of changing Norms around around that I'm curious if that's a conversation that's being had and how to insert ourselves again in that thank thank you for the question so I'll be glad to follow up

058with your your staff as well with some additional details but uh in the the short for the entire board and superintendent uh we did look into this bill idea that was submitted by your office uh we engag with with Andre trade and Dr Webb Kelly Barnes and ogc and others uh so complimenting my colleagues in our various divisions were are instrumental in helping to formulate our policies and priorities in Sacramento DC and local um in this particular legislation looking at the data doesn't seem that the trend has been as high as we had before covid um there's been a less number of students who have been um uh expelled um for for uh carrying marijuana on campus there's Al also some legal challenges because marijuana is not legal until age 18 and over uh it

059would be difficult to justify um you know there would be a disconnect between the law and students being um you know off the hook so to speak for for uh being out of you know not following the law and then thirdly there was a bill this year that um as Ramos um not from our delegation from in Riverside County area he introduced around something similar to this topic the bill was significantly watered down and so in talking to his office and the committee Consultants it didn't seem that in Sacramento there would be an appetite for this given that they just try to do a similar bill this year that got significantly modified at the end of the of the process um so given the data that we have talking to committee consultants and others it

060didn't seem to be the right time for for getting support in Sacramento um but it's on something on our radar that we'll continue to explore if if the right time comes great that's a helpful update thank you I had questions about any potential changes to elop funding but it seems that you suggested that we don't think there will be changes at this point so in the budget bill that was signing into law in July of this year there was some modifications regarding um I would say more modest modifications regarding the reporting requirements um districts like San Diego unified who get tier two funding so they're not guaranteed the dollar amount per student they get leftover money after every District like Al unified gets the funding um based on according to student needs um the district

061like San Diego and others under the proposed the the modified law they can get now um uh any leftover money that schooter not there's any carryover money they would be getting that money before it goes back into the uh the overall pot um so besides that there has been any other changes I don't anticipate the governor uh wanting to make any modifications in this upcoming cycle there's a bill that was sign into law I think AB 1113 if my memory serves me right by uh mccardy from Sacramento that bill is requiring new tracking of data for elope and other after after school programs so I think the state wants to know more of what it is are doing with the students and the funding before they start tweaking the formula um so besides that I

062don't anticipate um because this upcoming cycle would be the first time that we have to provide data to the state got it states are interested in that and some board members are interested in that and I know I think it's at the first interim superintendent in a few weeks we will have an update on our our elop spending but I continue to think that that enrichment after school before school is such a critical Source I'll be curious to see how we're utilizing it and then advocate for its continuation um uh in the past there's also been discussion about more pension or OPB support guidance from the state I don't know if there's any conversations Martha Statewide around you know as districts opep pension costs are increasing and crowding out other essential funding for current students

063if there's conversation around relief or increasing State contribution decreasing the district requirements or anything along those lines so there hasn't been any open conversation with the state legislature the the legislative analyst office the Lao they did a study about two or three years ago a report um that discussed openly the the current liability across California uh however there was no indication of the Lao or others at recommending to the governor in the legislature that they put any um support for school districts the way that I I perceive um the state legislature opinion on this topic is that it's a local liability therefore it would be a local solution for how we pay for it because at the state level it's a zero game so it would come out of prop 98 if we were to

064get any any um support from the state that would taken away from other priorities um so I don't see the state um taking in any ownership on the liability because they also have their own liability for their own uh Workforce um uh but it is someone that I'm aware of of of priorities and interest to your office um I can prior the Lao report from a couple of years ago but again there hasn't been any discussion in Sacramento as them wanting to prioritize State funding for this purpose understand them on the opep because that is locally um created I guess uh in districts kind of un restrictions there the pension is seems a little different but I also know that there's going to be advocacy that we're hopefully going to be leading around ab218 and

065some Statewide funding for those liabilities because we already see and we're seeing the trickle down effects when it comes to nonprofit insurers for stuff like that so I know that's that's something we can discuss at a future date um the uh a couple things well I guess we the next presentation we have is our cell phone presentation and I am curious just you know as we will be the biggest mover not just in the state but in the country around cell phone free days the governor after this board passed our resolution um followed suit but I think will'll be interesting based on our implementation and the state law and some I think vager in state law when it comes to emergency exemptions or just to see how our example is um edifying maybe for other

066districts and make sure that we have a feedback loop there too because I think some of those things were done you know of course you want an emergency exemption quote unquote because it's just easy to throw that out there without actually understanding what that looks like so I could see updates there I also know and we're going to be discussing it this afternoon in our facilities and procurement committee put some of the work this district is now doing to improve our practices around efficiency and cost savings there's a audit that this board appr ratified the contract for a few weeks ago on comparative study and I could see a world where in the coming weeks and months we have some ideas of State fixes to facilities that we need things like you know we've done

067the shade structure bill but also around Greening which is a priority of this board and others and so I you know would love to continue the conversation about what facilities codes uh updates do we need and then one just that's relevant to one of our local advocacy priorities but around Community School Parks my understanding we'll follow up with your office Martha but there is civil code section 846 which is around third party liability if you open up public lands for recreational use and one of the challenges we're having with the city of Los Angeles right now and you know I'd like to see this expanded to the county and other cities in our jurisdiction is opening up schools on the weekends as parks and one of the challenges besides just maintenance and operation is the

068liability if you know a kid falls off the jungle and so it seems like there have been some proposals that we haven't embraced but that could amend state law to um reduce our liability or share it so I'll follow up on the specifics but that seems like a no-brainer that we would also get a lot of other districts to join um so the just a few more questions for me on the state budget I was interested in what you were saying about declining enrollment and then increasing the per pupil one thing I don't think we've seen in a while is an a per pupil a state per pupil dollar figure and how it Compares historically into other states and so I know I'd be interested in seeing that right now if there's some if we

069could get that um I'm interested now also on shifting to the local now that we've had a few years of these um uh education compact efforts if there's a way we can point to any tangible benefits um and maybe that's a follow-up report uh just in terms of like you know around safe passages or joint use or all that um I just mentioned you know one of my big priorities which is the community school Parks it's exciting that we have 10 now open through the city partnership oh I don't know what uh the was hearing some background noise um 10 uh with the city of La and a few through the uh Civic Center act um that are funded by neighborhood councils I think we should have a lot more and seems like we've hit

070some snags with the city around thatou and that joint liabil that um jpa if you will so I'd love to see us push in there um and then do we need to Advocate to continue the free metr press program or is that pretty much um proforma and like an ongoing commitment at this point thank you for the question the on the LA Metro um this past June it was one of the mayor bess's Last Action as the chair of the Metro last cycle um they made it into a permanent program um so the only uh possible outcome in the future would be if Metro can back to LA USD asking to renegotiate the rates um that we contribute a per student amount um it's about my recollection is about $7 per student that we contribute

071uh which is for the entire school year any use of daytime um weekends Etc um but otherwise the the law the program became permanent this last June great well I know that I mean I remember just a few years ago when we were advocating for that and it wasn't guaranteed so congrats and you know to everyone who was involved that's great um do we have an ongoing commitment from the city of LA on the college savings accounts programs because we still run the largest program in the nation um and I'm just curious you know what the fate of that program might be uh there's no commitment that it would be an ongoing funding source I so right now it has been prioritized as a pay as you go every year they will have to allocate

072the funding given the city's Revenue uh shortfall that they're facing I could anticipate that perhaps this would be one that would be a consideration of not continuing especially if um the state of California has the Cal kids um Savings Program uh obviously there's a key difference between the two programs um that under the city program any student is eligible for the funding whereas for set of California is mean tested according to income eligibility and other criteria um so so it is one that if should we want to advocate for we could um but we just have to be mindful about the various other funding that the city of La provides for crossing guards for many other things that we care about yeah that yeah I mean I continue to think the city should do more

073I mean maybe and maybe it's something that Mr smarson or someone can agendize for the cow I'd be curious It's been a few years since the district has had a presentation on how many students are enrolled in the college savings account program um uh what it cost and like I I do think it should continue to be a priority but seeing the data would be helpful first step and then I think last local priority I know the rfps from the district will go out in the next few months around our housing program for employees but just more collaboration with the city and the county around housing um and then just quickly on the federal piece I I you know agree with what my colleagues were saying it does seem like we need a more protective

074rather than proactive strategy giving the incoming Administration and I assume there'll be some national organizing along the lines of what Miss Goldberg was suggesting when it comes to which states have the most to lose but also around um you know protecting the Department of Education protecting the office of civil rights and our most vulnerable students one non-financial priority that was actually adjusted during the pandemic um but then uh reverted was these congregate dining rules where students could leave uh leave the school grounds with food which both I think helped reduce waste and alleviate hunger and so that would seems to me to be a no-brainer that I'd like to see us advocate for which is allowing students to take home their supper uh to Hungry family members or just if they're not hungry at 3:30

075but are hungry at 5:30 so that was something that we got relaxed during covid seemed to make a lot of sense and now it's back for I think think some Antiquated reasoning so I'd love to see us look at that I know that was a lot thank you thank you Mr smon thank you so much okay let's go to my left Kelly your turn yes well I I agree with what with much of what's been said and obviously um for my community diverse um many immigrant families and ensuring we're doing the most we possibly can to protect our immigrant students their parents our employees um that that continues to be a priority and I appreciate the superintendent's words and um your work in Partnership with other entities the state of California the Attorney General's office

076our city Partners to ensure as much protection as possible um with regard to you know Sanctuary District I know that that is already in place I think that there's a couple steps that we could take Beyond what's you know it's a fairly lengthy resolution with a lot of great components but um you know thinking about what we can do to support our employees who have work authorization via DACA and TPS is one area that I don't see mentioned that I think um should be lifted up uh there's uh transportation and safe zones um not just Safe Transportation wise but safe um from ice or other immigration enforcement to and from school um on our school buses or for families who were dropping off students I know in 2017 there was a well publicized case of

077a LA area parent who was um who was taken up by Ice um while dropping his daughter and a charter school so I think whatever protections we can put in place to ensure the safety of our family Ames um as they are transporting their kids to and from school um as well as our adult education students many of whom are immigrants themselves um that is a large population of uh students that we serve in adult education um and I think we want to ensure that the messaging is going out for our adults as students as well um and then the last piece that I think is is newer maybe wasn't in the 2017 resolution because of that is just uh Kata so you know we're supporting our students with completing FAFSA or Kata depending on

078what their eligibility is and we want to ensure that our students who are eligible for th those DREAM Act um protections and funds uh on the state level aren't dissuaded by um this hostile environment um from pursuing their dreams of higher education so um would just lift those up uh humbly um as far as the state side goes um one I think really relevant piece um Martha's the dream Resource Centers there was legislation um authorizing them this past year but it was not funded and I think particularly as we look at um you know a a xenophobic attacks um on the federal level that providing funding for those dream Resource Centers is really critical um for the governor and his team at this upcoming session um especially and Expediting that um so that those centers

079can be up and running and funded as soon as possible um on the Early Education side I know there was a bit of a discussion about it obviously continued to support our work around the TK penalties but um pushing for for an alternative rate setting methodology to cover the true cost of care for all Early Education providers this continues to be a priority for um whether it's small family run daycares or our Early Education Centers um they are they are funded according to the same formula and we know that it it unders serves and underpays all providers um so I think that that's a really important area where we can Advocate both for quality in terms of truly covering the cost um but also lifting up women of color women from immigrant backgrounds who are

080the main Workforce in this sector whether in homebased settings or in um educational based settings uh it's a it's a win-win on both fronts and it also provides more supports for Working Families to be able to continue to access care and education um finally I hope um you know protections around ethnic studies programs are also on on the docket for the state um we have been a leader in ethnic studies here in La UniFi and also the state and in the new graduation requirement that will be instituted um but I think again being proactive on our ability uh to determine curriculum locally and ensure that um our students histories and cultures are accurately taught in our classrooms um and then I just had one quick question um on the state front on the funding for

081students with disabilities um for our moderate to severe um students I recall that the governor was looking at special education funding grit large like a 602 um are there any updates on that more comprehensive look at special education funding on on the state front thank you for the question so uh great recollection um since 2019 that when the governor new uh took office there's been a significant shift to par more funding equalizing funding through AB 602 about the last time that they really put more money into the F was about two years ago to try to get everyone up to the I think the $86 from what I remember being at an equal standing with that said there has not been different differentiated funding for moderate to severe disabilities uh what the state did during

082Co and since covid they added also one-time grants for um inclusive practices for um Early Education inclusive uh block grant uh trying you know to for the for school districts to incentivize and also ensure that we are U bringing together general education and students in with disabilities into the same setting um but besides those two efforts inclusive practices and um and ab62 there has not been any any Focus around monit severe um there studies that the the um legislature and the governor commission with West did um they were completed in 2021 right during covid so unfortunately I don't think they got the same attention that they deserve um we have met with the West uh um individual who wrote the the studies recently um one of the ideas that he proposed was creating a weighted

083formula under three buckets so depending on the disability type you would get more funding if you were part of what particular bucket the concern has always been whether this should be overidentifying students um our to that issue is um this res don't get additional funding as it is and so there's no in pervasive incentive to be overidentifying when you don't get the funding for kids that we serve um but it's a topic that we really want to bring forward knowing that um we have seen a significant increase in this population of students despite declining enrollment as a whole um as a district right our share continues to grow even as our overall student population goes down um well I think lifting that up and also uh potentially ongoing funding for inclusive practices is we know

084that inclusion when done well um is is resource intensive you know it requires more support more Staffing and then more support to the staff in classroom to be able to sustain those efforts but in the long run it's much better for most students um so I think um lifting that up as well as our population of duly identified students English Learners who are also students with moderate to severe disabilities um obviously that is a unique population and one that we we service a large percentage of here in LA unified that could benefit for more resources very and thank you and your team for all your work I thank you I also hear great things um and we appreciate your your advocacy always thanks thank you as you can see we all appreciate you uh let's

085go to the center now and uh although Mr melne did touch on this many issues uh affecting LUSD families have to do with things outside of the classroom and the district is spending a lot of money to address the needs of our unhoused Youth and their families and I understand that the district uh plans to build staff housing around Los Angeles and it's like a cycle because we're losing funds because we're losing enrollment and we're losing enrollment because La has become unaffordable for many families so the initiatives that you have in mind that your division is taking to advocate for more affordable housing or increasing housing in general anything to that point Martha um thank you for the question so um superintendent carvalo and uh joined super superintendent uh um Thurman this past summer talking

086about what we have done as L unified uh to support um employee housing and possibly at a later time um student housing with that said um the state superintendence office has mentioned that there's interest in possibly doing legislation pursuing legislation um to streamline any housing initiatives at the state level we have been the sponsors of legislation over the past 5 years we've had at least three bills um during my tener with the district that we have pursued that um have enabled us to have more flexibility around housing projects uh what we have heard from our staff and outside Consultants the issue is not so much legislation and flexibility in state is more developers and funding finding the funding for it so at the state level at this point I don't think that issues more like

087streamlining legislative requirements is really just the finding the the funding to support those projects um but I know uh our leadership um Christina toes Jim torren and others are continuing to work about the local solutions that we may have in place okay um now getting down to back to LA USD I'm glad to see that many of the bills that were supported by us passed last year can you think of any District supported bills that didn't pass and and do you know why they didn't pass why did they fail any District supported bills I mentioned there was the manary kindergarten bill that we sponsored it fell due to the cost uh there there's no question about the benefit to kids coming to school um as as you know young especially now with the the state

088TK program there's this um loophole that there's no clarification that kindergarten is a manatory grade level that was based on cost um I'd have to think if there's I cannot think on the spot if there's other bills that we supported um that did either fell through the committee process or through the governor's office um there was one around solar um uh solar um cost uh for keeping enabling us to continue doing um solar panels at schools and other um ecos sustainability efforts um that bill was beo by the governor uh given that the the California Public Utility Commission had already taken action um but I'm happy to follow up with your office since I cannot think right now precisely what other bills might have been of interest um but we can always pursue them in

089supporting them if they come back next year and and what's most important is the strategies that you're keeping in mind for future bills coming to make sure that they're able to pass um anything that you can think of as strategy wise to make sure that our bills do pass so one of our strategic um strategic um plan goals uh there's five that my office ogr is responsible for and I want to give an acknowledgement to my colleagues who are tuning in for my team this morning to to your feedback um I have a a great team both in Sacramento and here locally supporting to to Advocate on our behalf um we uh one of our two of our strategic plan goals efforts is to build more coalitions that would be with the pursuit of more

090coalition letters um more um signatories in those letters and then we also do quarterly briefings with our partners we just met with them about two weeks ago uh so continuing to identify who else can we bring into our advocacy plans um and in fact we met with them about two weeks ago just to be giving them a preview of what you were hearing uh you're hearing today so that we can engage them often and early and we can uh not just be a transactional interaction but we really you know want to know what what they're working on and finding those commonalities okay lastly just a recommendation and you think think it's possible that our Congressional La delegation along with our federal lobbying team can sit down and do a round table with us with the

091board to align our strategies and our interests and if it's possible Maybe by Spring 2025 and that way I I like to see uh some progress on Ida funding and how we're getting closer to the 40% that the federal government has promised to school districts and lastly a plan to regarding the protection of various federal funds including Title One funds especially since the incoming uh Administration has openly stated that they're looking into closing the US Department of Ed so maybe a sit down with the Board of Education I think that would be a great example now before we do round two I know you're there miss Ortiz Franklin up in the there you go would you like to have us do round two or would you like to comment uh just a few quick on

092thanks and I know the team has received a lot of feedback and we're really good at adding to your list of things to do so apologies for maybe a couple other ideas um I just wanted to appreciate the pipeline support for diverse uh teachers and staff um the Recruitment and Retention is you know something we've been really focusing on um particularly for community members and that look like our students um and and one thing in addition to the pipeline I would just want to put in the ogrs or um are these concepts of like loan forgiveness or covering the cost of entrance um exams or or various barriers that are sort of put up um MoneyWise generally um by the various institutions that you know people have to get through to work for the district

093um and I know we've done that in some capacities but I would uh encourage us to keep thinking whether it's like a forgiveness program or um you know paying for credentialing programs uh residencies like all of that sort of pack page of supports uh I want to just lend my my encouragement for those um I would also welcome some discussion I know there was a family leave Bill that we were not able to support this last year um but I think bringing um issues like that to the board is really helpful uh I know costs can be really hard on us um and we want to think about what are the trade-offs between what we put upfront to bring people in and then what we have to pay when we lose them um so you

094know if things like that come around again again I would just you know welcome a board discussion on on those kinds of you know potentially controversial but um uh maybe really detailed conversations that that we should have with one another um two other quick things I'll say is I love the safe routes to school I know we've been doing a lot locally I wonder if there's something we can do at the state level because we're hearing from some local municipalities in my district at least that it's really um costly for crossing guards um I have a lot of LA City and we're grateful for all of those folks who are supporting our schools but for the smaller cities they're really not able to fund crossing guards and neither are we so maybe there's some State

095resources that could be allocated to support the smaller municipalities we could work together districts and cities um and maybe even um look across the state to see if their models for that already happening um and then I guess my my last request would be to really consider the zero to two-year-old slots in early Ed um I know we've been doing a lot for our four-year-olds and expanding our TKS at the elementary schools um but as a result of many of our early ed students going to the elementary schools we've got space and I don't know all of the technicalities but I hear there might need to be some work done on the zero to twoyear old um spots different from the three and foury old spots so feel free to comment Miss Alvarez or not

096I just wanted to throw those ideas out there great um thank you uh I did engage on the the issue that you about before about crossing guards with the center meri's office last week and uh one of the challenges is that it would be considered an earmark or a categorical at the state level um other jurisdictions do provide um school districts um provide um some funding to the to um reduce the cost for the local municipalities um but at this point uh just one conversation I've had so far I don't think there would be appetite in Sacramento to create a program that you know they will say well you have local control funding formula funds to prioritize should you need to or want to for that purpose um so I could see some um uh

097not a whole lot of traction maybe support for the policy but not for that year mark uh given that would be again creating a categorical when there's a lot of push for for local control funding um but but thank you for the feedback on the other areas uh one thing that I I I will say um for example I know Bard member gonz brought up the the issue around um alternative rate methodology um you don't see it on the document here today or the PowerPoint I should say um but that's an example of something that would that we are capturing um as as priorities for supporting as part of our guiding principles and priorities um so that's the purpose have the document that what you heard today is more about sponsor legislation in Sacramento um

098but it would be a really long list if I had to hear you know every single topic so that's you see the focus areas that we'll have a description on on what each of those areas looks like for our advocacy should bills be introduced in sacal next year and um Miss Alvarez we're approving that in December or January January 14 okay great thank you thank you Tanya Jackie just one more issue he's made uh the president-elect has made a big deal about saying that that he will remove funding from school districts that use critical race Theory though he does not know what critical race theory is I think it's not too early to begin trying to get legislation to Define what critical race theory is because it's a graduate school program that no school districts

099in the country uses or does what he's really trying to say is he wants to get rid of diversity and equity and we need to begin now to try to explain the difference between critical real critical race theory is not what anybody in the entire country is doing at K12 schools there isn't any it doesn't exist it's a graduate school kind of look at a larger segment of history and populations to see what actually there has been involved in critical race Theory so I think if we can try to get ahead of the game to try to get some agreement on what is defined as critical race theory that it is the graduate program and what that actually is I don't think will be successful but it won't hurt to start early by saying the

100critical race theory is not teaching about the diversity of American history that is not critical race Theory that's just teaching American history all of it okay and that and that's what we need to be talking about is is that that that that what they try to say is anything we don't like is critical race Theory anything anything we we white supremacists don't like is critical race the it's not and to whatever extent that we can begin fighting that fight now when he decides that he's going to not fund school districts that do critical race Theory we may have had an opportunity to say guess what we're really not talking about critical race theory that you're talking about you're talking about not teaching American history not teaching world history and nobody should be outlawing American history

101or world history that's the argument we need to make early on thank you that's the last thing I had okay back to my left Rosio second round for you um just one I just wanted to add um in the areas of focus um I don't see it here specifically is just continuing to address the needs um of our transgender and lgbtq plus um to continue um legislative efforts or advocacy in in in in for those students as well well and um and the other question I had had to do with special a but that that was already as so that was it thanks Kelly second round yes very quickly um I love the ideas for potential state sponsored legislation on um just the greater flexibility for class time I know continuation schools specifically are mentioned

102um but I know I've heard it from other comprehensive high schools and interest in um possible flexibility around seat time to allow for um internship and other work-based learning opportunities if it's directly tied to the course of study um I think it would tie in really nicely to our link learning programs Etc um so it's it's something I've specifically heard from uh Educators in my district so I hope maybe we can think about broadening that idea potentially Beyond just continuation schools we've spoken with DOI as well division of instruction and our attorneys and as of now it appears that there's already flexibility in law for CTE and Link learning so that's why we're not adding them currently to the bill but we have had discussion just to ensure but we'll we'll follow up if need

103be it came from a pilot school so I don't think they're specifically linked learning but maybe we can explore other uh flexible School models and whether they can be included as well Nick second round Tanya last chance for second round none for me thanks okay thank you again thank you Martha for the great Pres presentation thank you so much thank you thank you very nice very nice so we're going to move on to our second presentation and that is providing a phonefree school day and uh this past June the Board of Education passed a resolution supporting student student mental health and learning ensuring a phonefree school day and that directed La USD to update and develop a modern self phone usage policy and on August 16th the state of California passed assembly Bill 3216 authored

104by assembly members Josh Hoover ad07 and Josh lenthal a69 and Al maruchi a66 called the phonefree school act and that requires every District every charter school and every County Office of Education to develop a policy to limit cell phone usage by July 1st 2026 before I start any comment Mr just uh just very briefly thank you very much um Mrs schmon so as as Mr Andes Cha's up this very important conversation I want to thank the board number one for your strong and Visionary leadership of protection of our students it is clear that our students our youth's addiction uh to to their cell phones but also the content that cell phones so easily uh bring into their lives that completely dominate their awake time needs to come to an end we understand now based on

105uh over a decade worth of research that the Deary's impact on students mental health um is is significant it is real it is undeniable so this board has once again taken bold action in fact action one year in terms of implementation one year in advance of future State action uh we were methodical careful and all-encompassing as we pursue the best approach uh regarding compliance with a board's resolution this included many conversations with stakeholders uh whether we're talking about principles teachers support staff students themselves parents uh Na for-profit organizations um labor entities um researchers technology uh entities to come up with the best possible approach to ensure that during the school day during the school day not just during instruction our students would be protected from the influences of these devices I think uh we arrive

106at a position that strikes a fair balance between what is reasonable in terms of separating students from their mobile phones but also what is reasonable in terms of entitlements that students have particularly those exceptions so students with certain types of disabilities for example insulin dependent students who need to read uh their ongoing tests on their cell phones for the purpose of translation for English language Learners some students may have a specific 504 accommodation as well as access to the phones during a time of Crisis or emergency I believe we've been able to decode the set of solutions and implementation practices that address all of those issues we've also been impressed uh and I myself took some field trips to to schools where on the basis of the honor System or using uh Tech deployments the

107implementation is not only successful it's been successful for a number of years and I think we were inspired and quite frankly felt reassured that our approach was the right approach so I look forward to today's presentation I want to thank the board once again for your diligence I want to thank Andre Chate and the team that so uh diligently has worked on this important topic thank you very much much thank you Mr Chate take it away thank you superintendent uh thank you uh Mr schmon and Bor good morning again I'm going to fly through a bit of the foundational pieces because Mr schmon and superintendent already laid this out for us again this is born of the board resolution that was passed in June calling for a f a cell phone free school day inclusive

108of recess lunch nutrition that being the key difference between this new policy and current policy as always we had to ensure that our policy was consistent with any California and federal legal requirements and of course uh as superintendent alluded to already in his remarks uh we feel that we have hit that uh sweet spot if you will okay again the the most relevant language from Ed code in terms of shaping our policy is something that is in the current legislation and also in the amended legislation that passed earlier this year and it speaks to the circumstances under which a student should continue to have access to their phone notwithstanding whatever policy a district May set so as you see in front of you the most critical examples of course are in the case of an

109emergency or in response to a perceived threat of danger and I I will get into that a little bit later in the presentation of course when a teacher or administrator grants permission uh for health reasons or as required in an IEP and again this was the amendment uh that passed just or was rather approved by Governor Nome this past September uh now all uh school districts in California are tasked with developing a policy prior to this they had the option of developing a policy that spoke to cell phone utilization now it is a requirement that all districts have one in place no later than July of 26 as superintendent already shared we are well ahead of that time I also want to to lay just a bit of foundation in terms of what our current

110policies are on the left is the policy the bulletin that speaks to social media usage among our students uh again that works closely with our responsible use policy it also goes hand inhand with the presentations that we do around cyber security as part of the every school safe blueprint for safety and again it impresses upon our students and our families by extension uh of course there are certainly uh potential uh beneficial outcomes to social media uh but but there are many many many more areas of concern than there are benefits and we want to make sure that our families are aware of those on the right is our current policy uh Visa V cell phones again the key difference being that in the current policy which I want to stress is still in place in

111the current policy cell phone use is restricted during instructional time but a student may use it during nutrition and lunch uh as this uh was being brought to board in June I do recall board president Goldberg sharing an anecdote of time when she was visiting a school and it was lunchtime and every single student almost immediately pulled out their cell phone and were actually talking to each other on their cell phones rather than interacting intersecting face to face so that is currently allowed if you will under the current policy but will be restricted under the new okay so as I go forward in my presentation there's there's really two uh huge uh big chunks one is development and the other one is implementation so in terms of development we started with a review of all

112of the existing research or not all of it excuse me but a number of significant articles uh related to cell phone use by adolescents and I think it comes as no surprise to anyone at the board or anyone who may be watching this meeting in person or uh via Zoom that there are significant negative impacts related to cell phone use and social media use by our students I won't spend too much time here but again I do want to call out some of the most critical ones you you know third from the bottom an increase in teenage anxiety depression suicide that is of course absolutely critical uh certainly there are negative impacts to academic performance uh and again an over stimulation on a brain's Reward Center and we know that that's not only for our

113adolescence a lot of times adults of course will engage in that as well I'm pausing because there's a little bit of feedback thank you so as we went forth with the policy development we engaged all of our critical stakeholder groups uh we talked to parents across the regions we had at least two meetings per region one in person one on Zoom so that our parents could participate we convened student focus groups we of course met with employees and certainly we met with our administrators both those implementing the current policy if you will and those that already had a more stringent policy in place so as you'll see there are some some common themes that are merge but I also want to call out that as you read the slide you will see some statements that

114contradict each other because again we wanted to capture the authentic feedback from our audiences so again for for many of our elementary parents it seemed like I don't want to say a moot point but to some degree a moot point because there isn't the same utilization of cell phones or these devices for that age group although that again is changing and I can share that as a district parent myself um we had parents who just blankly told us or excuse me bluntly told us uh that depending on what the policy looked like they would instruct their children to to violate that policy so that's something that we have to be mindful of uh that said many I I would say the majority of our parents were thankful that we were developing the policy thankful that

115we were engaging with them because they too obviously as parents see the impact that this is having on their kids and of course one question that came up consistently was around the protocols for utilization of phones during an emergency uh towards the bottom of each slide you'll see just Snippets that we captured of quotes taken verbatim from folks that participated in these engagements for our students again some of our students uh flagged that currently uh in many cases teachers are asking students to use their personal cell phones for instructional purposes so again even in a district that is a onetoone device uh District we have to be mindful of that that that's certainly a culture shift that we'll have to manage over the next couple of months uh they also uh again asked us to

116potentially consider an approach that was a bit more targeted to students that we deemed as maybe having problematic Behavior around cell phones or social media rather than a policy that applied to all and again the theme about uh emergency access emerged again for our staff again uh many of our staff members particularly teachers uh expressed uh enthusiasm around the uh policy or practice that their student students will no longer be on their cell phones uh during class that said certainly there were concerns about buy into to the policy um and of course there's always the question of who who will enforce who will implement the policy in talking to our administrators again we talked to principles who in many cases were already implementing policies that are consistent with the new policy I want to mark

117that uh in going out and talking to folks we found around at least 50 schools that had a more stringent policy than what is currently called for so we had sort of a control and a variable group if you will uh with the control I'll start on the right uh that's the folks that are currently implementing uh or implementing right now the current policy they asked about funding of course for products if a school should select a product because not all will and there was a question around span schools and could span schools for example select uh two different modes of implementation uh to meet the needs of different age groups on the left you'll see feedback from folks that were already implementing uh more stringent policies and you'll see that for the most part

118the feedback was positive uh students leave their phones in the back in their backpacks for the entire school day phone pouches have had a very positive impact on the community uh there was advocacy for considering incentives student level incentives to reinforce the policy and of course uh we convened with our labor Partners we offered two opportunities for folks to come forward and meet with us uh you'll see the feedback that's captured from some of our labor partners and again there was some inquiry around the funding that would be uh uh produced or excuse me provided to schools uh there was again positive advocacy around the impact that this would have on students their ability to regulate their own behavior potentially as always there were questions about enforcement and what staff would be tasked with that

119certainly makes a lot of sense from that group um and again the the call to us was to make sure that we were providing staff for the tools to enforce the policy as it rolls out lastly we met with a number of external folks both from Academia from other districts that were already implementing policies consistent with our new policy we also met uh with medical professionals and again this simply reinforced really what what the research already told us that our folks see a for the most part an overwhelmingly negative impact on our youth by the use and overuse of phones and of course by extension uh social media we convened a number of school districts that were already doing a a version of a policy that aligns with what we we are in the process

120of rolling out uh and again they reported for the most part uh positive outcomes you know less anxiety among students uh most I want to Mark are implementing their policies without necessarily relying on a product per se it's it's more about uh creating that culture where students understand that the phones should remain put away during the the school day uh number of fights were reduced and student engagement increased uh but again they did Mark some challenges particularly at our secondary level when you're talking about lunch and passing periods and students wanting to access their phones during that time where I'll end uh my presentation around the development of the policy before I pivot into the implementation itself like I uh remarked earlier we had well over 50 schools that were already implementing uh what we

121would consider a more stringent policy a policy that was consistent with what we are in the process of rolling out so I wanted to highlight two such schools in my presentation today and in fact I have the principles here uh from both of these schools and they're they're I was going to say they're happy to answer questions I they're definitely available to answer questions when the time comes uh so I want to start out in region north uh with Holmes Middle School uh this is one of our earliest implementers that we could find this is a school that's been implementing this policy for almost a decade and again their policy revolves essentially around some folks have called it the honor System but it's about phones being put away in backpacks during the entire school day

122and in fact uh they took it a step further uh part of their policy is that there is a quote unquote grace period immediately after school for about 15 minutes that's when students can take out their phone you know hey Mom I have practice today can you pick me up later can you pick me up earlier make whatever arrang ments they need to make but after that 15minute grace period concludes if students choose to stay on campus for beyond the bell or what have you the phones remain away and again uh principal dooso uh has you know again has been very forthright about the challenges around implementation and around uh monitoring this but for the most part the outcomes have been very positive from region South I'm I'm happy to have principal Bradley here from

123diim Ley High School uh they've been implementing uh policy for about the last 3 years and their policy uh utilizes the Yonder pouches which is a product that I think is familiar to folks in this space uh she again has also reported uh mostly positive outcomes uh reduction in incidents involving social media because it isn't just quite as handy to students uh she also called out and again this is something that was consistent with what we saw in our engagement uh that parent staff and student Buy in is absolutely critical and again that very much drove our policy uh before I transition over I do have a brief video to play uh but I will share that that is beyond my capacity so I will do my best bear with me we don't want students

124to be distracted or looking on social media during the school day we want our students to be engaged in the learning during class time and and more importantly during lunch and nutrition we want students to socialize with their peers our cell phone policy is very simple when students arrive on campus put it on silent or turn it off and put it in your backpack throughout the school day it makes me more social since I'm not always on my phone I have opportunities to talk to other people and make new friendships really helped me stay off my phone even outside of school and help me I guess live without my phone my parents think it's a good idea because they know I'm always on my phone and they like that I'm not on my phone as

125much at school and I'm starting to play more Sports and do my homework more here at homes we've been implementing this policy for over eight years now because it's a policy we all believe in in terms of how we keep our students engaged and build great social skills during their teenage years at di high school we had a lot of issues and concerns with engagement in the classroom but also with safety of students for various reasons what we really learned was that students were dependent upon the cellphones it became their lives they were addicted to cell phones we decided that we needed to minimize cell phone use on campus in January of 2020 we launched Yonder here at daim high school we saw an immediate shift in classrooms we saw students engaged in instruction talking

126to one another we saw students increasing communication skills reimagining skills that have been lost due to the cell phone [Applause] addiction and thank you again to principal dioso and Bradley for making themselves available so again now we transition from the development of the policy to the actual implementation a and one of the things that we really put a premium on is a very thoughtful and deliberate implementation of this policy at our school sites that engaged all stakeholders and allowed for school level Choice again many of us as School site administrators have had things that have been imposed upon us some good some not so good in my experience there is always more buyin more authentic Fidelity to what you bring forth if there is some local voice included in the process so the way that

127we're rolling out the policy is in three phases and of course right now we're basically in Phase One and I'm going to spend a little bit of time here on this slide and then I'll go through the the subsequent slides so our first phase which basically began about two weeks ago and goes pretty much until right before winter break is around communication and choice communication communication communication we have provided our school Leaders with decks with resources that they can use both to relay information out to parents students and staff we have given them resources to convene faculty meetings student assemblies coffee with the principal because again as front of Mind as this issue has been for many many folks we also know in a district as big as ours you will have folks that for

128any number of reasons may not engage with this until it's actually on their campus so we wanted to make sure that we built that base of knowledge and everyone had that understanding so again that's actually where we're in now we're in what we're calling week two of the communication phase building that base of knowledge letting everyone understand what we're doing why we're doing it once that phase is over our schools transition to the choice module and again and you'll see this in our subsequent slides what we've asked our schools to do is to convene their governance committees in most cases it's a local school leadership for some of our schools like Affiliated Charters and Pilots it may look a little different but for the most part it's their governance councils and to come together and

129and for those folks who may be watching our governance councils always include parents employees administrators and at the high school level will include student voice as well so again to bring this team together this group together and say based on the knowledge that we have both of the policy and of the culture of our own campus what do we think is the best mode to implement this policy at our school acknowledging that school a may make a bit of a different uh decision than School B so if a school selects a product essentially before they go off for winter recess they submit that order and again I I'll get into that a little bit more in a subsequent slide so those are the outcomes before winter break communication and choice well we come back from

130winter break so again January 6th we're well into phase two more communication we want to let folks know we're developing one sheet summaries so that if I'm you know I am a District parent at my children's School they'll send me a form in one page that says Dear Mr Chate at such and such school this is the cell phone free policy for our school and it will lay it out in one simple document that our parents can read they can put it up on their fridge as they would like just to have it in a very simple summary we will have additional convenings of parents students staff member so that everyone understands what we're doing why we're doing it and most importantly at that point how we're doing it at that campus being purely pragmatic

131this period of time also gives us a little bit more runway for any issues that may arise in terms of implementation we know that it is quite likely that as a district we will be putting in significant orders for products that we may not have ordered at this scale before so we want to make sure that our schools have enough time to take receivership of those products train folks on them install as may be appropriate so we wanted to build at that time and so then in phase three roughly around uh President's Day or Valentine's Day is when we really and truly go into full implementation by that point there's been a lot of communication at the school everyone should know exactly what the policy is for their site and that is when the policy

132goes into full implementation again there's some variance there are some flexibility there we always have our schools that are maybe for any number of reasons a little further ahead we may have schools that need a little bit more time for deliberation that's okay we want to build that in and give folks that time and flexibility so that's sort of the RIT large how we're rolling this out now to get into a little bit of the weeds again we have provided our principles and we refreshed this on a weekly basis just this past uh Friday uh we uh dropped as they say the local school leadership deck into these resources and of course we're providing training so we have a live document where our principes can see all of the resources that they need available to

133them for communication again moving into the local school leadership uh segment of again uh communication and choice we're recommending that the engagement for these meetings you know originally we were looking at October now we're in November of course so early to mid November there are schools as I mentioned that are already implementing a more stringent policy the ask of them is that they do bring it forth to their governance committee so that everyone has a chance to review the policy and to bring some sunshine to it so that there are as few surprises hopefully no surprises as we roll this out again this is this is the the policy summary if you will so students may not use cell phones on campus during school hours and for the purpose of this policy we Define school

134hours as essentially the school day so for example for me as a former Elementary principal it would be 8 to 223 or what have you for our secondary sites it may be 8:30 to 3: so on depending on their bell schedule and again that is inclusive of nutrition lunch recess passing periods and so on regardless of whatever mode of implementation the school selects the minimal expectation is that the device is turned off and stored I want to emphasize that the reason we we are requiring that phones be off is because again if phones are on airplane mode vibrate and so on there's still that accessibility that we're trying to to limit to some extent again this applies to any device that essentially has the same functionality as a smartphone so if you have the the

135smart watch watch the earbuds I know I've seen many many many commercials lately for the new uh glasses with the uh capability again those would be uh governed by the Same by the same policy uh when it relates to Cellular devices that may not have that for example if someone has a phone that simply allows for uh calls and texts again it's basically the same expectation the the intent here is to limit the the distraction factor to our students and students may use cell phones on campus before and after school uh one question that I've I've been asked a few times is uh what about our kiddos who ride the bus and the answer is on their way to school and on their way back from school yes they can use their phones okay and

136again as the policy is implemented at each school there are some critical pieces that still have to be considered uh any policy that's adopted must allow students to maintain access to their phones in the case of an emergency situation and for the purposes of this policy when we say access we Define it we mean within the classroom setting so for example it doesn't necessarily mean that the phone remains on the student's person not even necessarily in their backpack but as long as it is accessible within that classroom setting so that if there is that need the teacher or the staff member can provide the access as needed okay uh I also want to call out that schools can also have some flexibility here to establish uh local exceptions based on their need uh I'll I'll

137give you an example as we were rolling this out I was at the principal meeting in region South and uh the principal from Harbor College TPA approached me and she said well Mr Tade a lot of our kids uh travel to the Community College to take dual enrollment classes uh what say you about cell phones during that time and that would be an example of a time where when the kids are off of our campus participating in a program they can have access to their phones okay again digging just a little bit more into the emergency Provisions here because this again this is called out uh very black and white if you will in the state language although I do want to Mark uh that the state does not necessarily Define for us what constitutes

138an emergency and that is certainly something that that raises some questions so again the phones have to be in a space or a place where it's accessible to our students one of the things that we are putting into the policy is and I want to stress this it's in the second bullet during an emergency students will be able to access their cell phones when staff determines that it is safe to do so we say it often in our messaging to our communities right that the safety of our students is our top priority so in that environment If there really is a Bonafide emergency we have to prioritize the the physical and soci emotional security of our students when we get to a point of equilibrium where the staff member feels that now the situation is

139normalized enough that phones can be distributed then they can be given out but we want to avoid any situations where in the midst of an emergency and a rising emergency there's this call or expectation if you will that phones are going to be distributed as a priority that's just not feasible in this kind of an environment the last piece that I want to call out and again this is the language directly from the state is around a perceived threat of danger that when a student comes forth to an administrator or a teacher a staff member and says I want to have my cell phone because I perceive myself to be in in danger and maybe for any number of reasons again applying current policy applying current practice and applying most of all common sense I

140cannot think that as a principal if a student approached me and said Mr Chate I feel that I am in danger for my own safety can I have my phone I would be committing administrative malpractice if my response was to say then here you go have your phone and left it at that so what we are recommending or excuse me more than recommending what we are advising our administrators to do is what we would normally do outside of the space of cell phones if a student comes forth and says I feel that I am in danger we immediately convene a threat assessment we may develop a safety plan we may contact parents and if as one of the outcomes of that entire deliberative process folks make make a determination that you know what in this

141instance it actually does make sense for this youngster to have their phone on them at all times then certainly we can provide that but it should not be done just immediately and again I think Mr schmon mentioned this in his remarks as did superintendent there are already a number of exceptions uh that are called out and also at least one uh that is uh local to the district uh that came forth from board member gones if I recall correctly uh in June uh and frontloading this piece we are working with all of the relevant departments to finalize what this will actually look like in in application but again health-based need the the example that superintendent gave about a student who maybe uses their phone to monitor their blood sugar of course that would be allowed

142if there's an IEP or a 504 plan uh in in talking to folks I don't know that the IEP or 504 plan would actually say cell phone what it would more likely say is that a student needs access to an application or a program that allows them to to interface with instruction or maybe for socio emotional support and if the IEP team says you know what it makes sense for the student to access that through their cellular device then again that would be granted uh this again was the sort of the local design we know that many of our newcomer students rely on phones both for social and academic translation so again that's a POS that's something that we will provide to our students and when I say provide to be very clear I mean

143access this does not contemplate us actually providing phones to students for that purpose and the last is local need and again I already gave an example of that so as we went through the process we started out I believe with about at least nine or 10 different options products things we were looking at uh and As We winnowed Them Down based on again uh the state language and also the feedback uh from the folks that we engaged with we landed on these uh about five options so again we we started from a place of storing it in the backpack having students uh who uh as part of the culture of that school they understand that during the school day the phone remains put away in the backpack for the balance of the day uh another

144option that came up was portable storage this is essentially a box a box with little slots and it would be used in the classroom so that for example as the students come in they deposit uh their phone inside the slot that's assigned to them and in the case of an emergency for example if a teacher needed to uh relocate the students as you can see the box has a handle it's very light this is not a a heavy box so it's something that's designed for portability there are two different pouch devices uh their uh brand names are Yonder in the middle and then Faraday a little bit to the right uh Yonder has uh some functionality around being able to actually lock the device but that in turn means that you have to have the

145devices to unlock it Faraday essentially is a velcro product so again you know that doesn't no adult has to unlock something but again students of course can access it more easily and of course we even go back to a very simple option around a classroom pocket chart one thing I want to Mark here and and it may seem obvious but it needs to be said there is no Silver Bullet here there is no one product that will meet the needs of every single school there is no one product that will not require staff as they always do to help us to implement the policy every single one of those options you see before you brings benefits and considerations what we're euphemistically calling our pros and cons so again that is why we want each school

146to engage in a process and think about what might work for them and also think about what might work for their level if you will I was an elementary principal for me a pocket chart within the classroom where it's a self-contained environment that may be the best option if I had been a high school principal maybe that wouldn't be as good of an option because there's movement there's passing periods and so on so again we want folks to truly engage in in this process here okay as far as funding and I know that I I had the opportunity to to meet with each board member uh in anticipation of our presentation today so I know this was a a question that was raised uh there is a onetime allocation of funding it's uh $7 million

147that's based on some calculations from procurement uh it with some assumptions made of course you know if you assume that most elementaries don't buy a product if you assume that most high schools will buy a product what number do you do you land at uh that number is our estimate again if when it's all said and done the cost is 7.2 million if the cost is 6.8 million we will we will honor that um as far as the funding on this uh we will be taking orders and by we I mean division of School operations working hand inhand uh with procurement we will take the orders from school so we will not be pushing dollars out they will submit their orders to us and then we will put in orders uh this streamline excuse me

148streamlines the process and also frankly allows for some better pricing my last two pieces here before we jump into any questions or feedback that you may have around the the implementation and the the discipline policy related to uh our our new uh cell phone policy uh as we do with any of our policies on campus uh we take a a restorative positive behavior approach so again we start from a place of like I said communication communication communication building that bandwidth of our students letting them understand what we're doing why we're doing it how we're doing it once we go into implementation again it's about verbal reminders counseling conversations with parents is there a place in a space where it may make sense on a number of levels to restrict the phone access even further that

149may be the case but again it would not be the immediate response I I sometimes chuckle because when I was a principal many many years ago I used to tell my kids if I see it if I hear it I take it you don't get it back that in all cander would not fly in our current policy all right we need to give verbal reminders and opportunities for redirection okay and so in closing this really is just a summary of what I've already presented the new policy aligns of course with the board resolution and with all California and federal legal requirements schools will continue to meet because this is happening right now with school stakeholders and we'll have options around how to implement the policy at their specific School site and again we will continue

150to message out to our communities what we're doing how we're doing it with lots of opportunity for dialogue and feedback back around this and again uh this last bullet I wouldn't say that it's inaccurate but I I might argue that the policy has already launched because there's significant work that's already happening at our schools uh but again when we come back in January 6 we will continue this process with that I thank you for your time and if you should have any questions or feedback I'm happy to help and we thank you for your time that's a lot of work and I appreciate that Mr CH thank you so much I'm going to start uh in the middle today and then I'll move over to both sides I just want you to know that right

151after the board approved the resolution my team and I in Board District 3 conducted several surveys via social media to hear directly from Board District 3 constituents engaged in conversations in a couple of schools about how they were currently implementing the existing policy and I also had the opportunity to get an update for Mr Chate prior to our meeting and had many questions answered and I thank you for that m Mr CH and here's a summary of what I heard from our surveys and conversations with schools implementing the policy in Board District 3 parents feel very strongly about being able to reach their children in the event of an emergency most parents trust that their students will keep their phones in their backpack during instruction teachers want to see rules and staff support for enforcement

152of the ban in the classroom principles who have been implementing the policy with Fidelity and engaging students in understanding its importance have been most successful students from my own advisory Council many students that said they would never resist putting their phones away when asked they said that screen time limits and pouches could be helpful and they don't appreciate having their phones taken away and what I'd like to do now is just share a couple of recommendations that I hope will be helpful for the implementation and that is building a collection of best practices by grade span would be important ideally these best practices could be developed into short videos that students could could participate in producing a after seeing how students in one of my schools put together the weekly bulletin I realized that how

153powerful it could be for students to be the communicators and celebrating the benefits of a phone free school will be critical parents are very Focus focused on re reaching the students in the event of an emergency that's the key parents are let me just say it again parents are very focused on reaching their students in the event of an emergency and we want them also to focus on the techniques and the benefits of helping students and adults diminish their dependence on their phones and that was my investigation in Board District 3 so this time let me start to my left please sure yes um well thank you so much Mr chap for the presentation and for the ongoing efforts you're making to engage with all of our stakeholders it was helpful to hear the variety

154of feedback that's being pro provided um overall I definitely believe that this is a good and important policy to improve the mental health of our students and contribute to a more positive learning environment um and in particular as you raised I'm glad that we're taking into account the diverse needs of our students in the implementation process I do I know you mentioned that for um our students with disabilities for our newcomer students that those um implementation policies are being finalized I do think um getting the how the how and the who will be deciders on that um determined as soon as possible is really important uh particularly if you know if it's not currently in a student's IEP for example if they need to make a a change to their IEP that would necessitate a

155meeting and convening the IEP team so I just think as as soon as possible as we can communicate with those specific families about what specific T steps they may take to obtain an exception um would be really helpful um and then in in general the ongoing communication with families is something I am very interested in um I know that we have been communicating with families about the policy about um up coming changes but again continuing to communicate with them why this matters for their students health and wellbeing um maybe what they can do at home to help reinforce um you know this overall effort um those kinds of things I think would be helpful to Think Through not just leading up to February but on an ongoing basis so that's I don't know if you

156have thoughts about that but that would be my only question right now thank you and I also want to go back to to remarks made by by Mr schmon um and I'll start there around the student voice very much agree uh as part of what we're doing in in what I'm calling phase two of this we are very much engageing what we're calling student ambassadors students who can again speak on behalf of their peers and talk about the value of of limiting access to phones and so on and again we're looking you know we know a what is it a picture is worth a th words well then a video is worth 10,000 so we're looking at uh filming short vignettes at the school level that can speak to that uh board member gon is

157as far as the communication again agree what we're really trying to be cognizant of here is that you always have folks and again it can be for very valid reasons you have folks you have parents that may not be tracking a change in policy that may not be tracking an impact on their school until it is happening already so we want to make sure that we build in as much time right now again it's about what we're doing and how we could potentially do it at our school as part of the presentations that we're doing we're letting folks know this is when the local school leadership meeting is we've even advised our principles this is not a oneandone meaning there may be some schools where a single meeting of that governance body suffices to put

158the policy in place but we're also cognizant that there may be some where it's a conversation that continues over two or three meetings and then come January again very much on point the resource is to let our families know this is what is happening at Superstar Elementary this is what we're doing if you have any questions here's who to contact and hey here's some great things that you can do at home as Mom Dad Guardian Auntie to help us out uh great that that sounds helpful because ultimately it's it's a cultural shift and I think obviously we we can control the policy environment at our school sites but for it to be most effective and most beneficial it's working in partnership with parents um on the home environment one actual last question for me is

159um so the bottom bulletin on slide 20 says students may use cell phones on campus before and after school I thought maybe when you were highlighting homes that it was noted that they have a grace period and then the the phones go away so does this pre vent a school from deciding locally to to take the policy a step further are are there flexibilities within it on that front thank you very much for calling that out uh consistent with the current policy even in the new policy a school can Implement a more stringent policy if you will uh so again the example that we gave for homes middle a school could say at our site past a certain grace period if a student remains on campus before school after school phone access is still Limited

160okay to my right Miss Rosio uh well first um thank you to you and your team um I feel that this has been a very thorough study analysis policy everything was very thorough particularly the feedback from all the stakeholders and um and the training and the phases I think that's um I just commend you on on the thoroughness of of everything all the work that went into this into this um presentation and the policy um so my question is what constitutes um an emergency how would you define an emergency what are the different um examples of what will be an emergency excellent question and again as I referenced earlier that that is a place where the state is essentially silent they don't Define for us what an emergency is so when all else fails apply

161common sense right so in terms of an emergency the some of the Nob brainer examples and I don't want to use that word to diminish these situations because they're obviously important situations but if for example a school has to do a rapid relocation right when kids have to actually leave campus to go to an alternate site because there's an issue on their campus that would certainly constitute an emergency uh one of the ones that comes up most often is the dialogue around a lockdown uh in a district of our size we have lockdowns on a daily basis usually more than one so the guidance that we're providing is that a lockdown in and of itself does not constitute an emergency a lockdown is a response that a school takes in order to ensure that their

162students are safe so for example if we have a lockdown and we have many of these where the school goes on lockdown for literally 10 minutes the principal says you know what the common example I see a helicopter overhead while I make contact with school police and so on let's go on lockdown in abundance of caution that would not be a situation where we would necessarily handout phones on the other hand you have a protracted lockdown you're on lockdown for 1 hour 2 hours 3 hours because of whatever may be going on and usually mercifully it's uh outside of the school campus that would be a situation where we would tell our folks yes go ahead and give kids access to their phones but one thing that I want to Mark and thank you for

163bringing this up Dr Rivas because I was remiss I didn't say this in our presentation a couple of things about Communication in an emergency one Studies have found consistently that in an emergency when you have folks many many folks in this case students that are all using their cell phones at once to try to communicate externally it actually impedes the response to that emergency so I want to call that out and two I also want to mark that it is incumbent upon us as a district and like anything else in a system as big as ours we're not at Perfection but I would argue that we are significantly better than we were a few years ago it is incumbent upon us to advise our families of emergencies as quickly as possible so that again at

164least there is that basic knowledge not to keep harping on the lockdown example but the expectation that we give our principles now is that within the first 10 minutes of a lockdown they send out just a two- sentence Robo call if you will we are on lockdown all students are safe more information to come I guess that's three sentences but it's very brief and then depending on the length of the lockdown they send additional communication and I know because I engage directly with parents you will always have that parent that says well that's not what happened at my school and I don't invalidate that experience we we need to make sure that we have that universally as a system but again in terms of an emergency response I I would hope and expect that our

165families are not relying on communication from their kids to know whether their kids are safe or not they should be relying on us thank you for for that um on page eight you mentioned for the students feedback that there are instances their phones are used to complete tasks or School instruction teachers um use their cell um cell phones for you know for whatever re activities or classroom um have you identified where these instances are and what are guidelines that you provide the principles and the teachers and how to address this and you and try to use the cell phones as minimal not use them at all in this instance the there are a few instances uh one that we have found to be pretty common is for simple surveys you know for example there's a

166number of applications none come to mind in the immediate but there are a number of applications that you can use on your phone to just do sort of a quick snap survey so a lot of teachers will say okay everyone get out your phone go to such and such app you know let me know your feelings on this and the other so that's one example another common example is around notifications not so much necessarily for instructional time but hey everyone the such and such Club is meeting in room 42 instead of room 38 after school so those kinds of notifications that's yet another reason why we wanted to take a phased approach and build in a Runway here so that our schools could make shifts we are a onetoone device District so we want to

167make sure that you know if I am that teacher and I am using the the or instructing my kiddos to take their cell phones out for that survey that instead I pivot to the Chromebook the tablet whatever the device that's issued to that child or that student likewise if I'm communicating and I've I've come to rely as a club sponsor if I've come to rely on cell phone communication it could still potentially happen right after school but I have to be cognizant of that thank you um the on page seven where the parent that said my child will violate the policy and bring their phone what is um at least some ideas or guidelines on repeat offenders right you've gone through we did this you know and then we took the phone and it's still

168happening what would happen then what what thoughts are there so we would always start from a place of dialogue connecting with the parent trying to explain to them the why number one number two this comment because I I remember the night that this happened I wasn't there but it was reported to me pretty much right away um this comment if I if I may be so bold as to speak from this for this parent comes from a place of fear comes from a place of making sure that their child is safe and is accounted for when they're on campus so again it would be that responsibility to say here's what we have in place just so you know you know parents so and so if there is an emergency here there is a time in

169a place where your kiddo would have access to their phone we would start from there again in all cander and honesty we know that we're not necessarily going to get to a place where every single parent will will agree with us but we would start from there and then work our way forward that is very true it's based coming from Fear right yeah um can you touch on the mental health supports that will be in place you know and in the initial start students are going to be feeling anxious they want their phone you know there's going to be situations where um the school needs to provide some mental I know that of a middle school some midal schools that have Zen rooms or have zooms where the students can relax so what um guidelines

170or first of all what are the mental heal supports and what are some examples or help that you can you know let the schools know that they can have a Zen room or whatever other areas that the students can go and feel safe well you you certainly already called out uh one of the options that we're most recommending to schools and and fortunately we're in a place where a lot of schools already do have those kinds of spaces so uh number one the the majority of the dialog around mental health for our students some of it is happening in phase one but a lot of it is happening in that phase two because remember that's a transitional period the policy is not being implemented yet so the phone has not been removed or what have

171you right we're not at phase three so during that time it's having a conversation with students really from a place of this is what you might experience this is what you might feel and and that it's okay to have those feelings it doesn't say anything about you in a negative sense it's just a Detachment that is difficult number one number two two giving our schools the time to build out those resources if they have them to amplify them if they don't have them to put them in place and then even I go back to I was going to say relatively simple but nothing is relatively simple uh really things about what do we offer our students at recess nutrition and lunch for engagement a lot of times our students May rely on their phones because

172they perceive that there's no other activity for them to engage in and they may not have a network of friends so again to the mental health piece it's incumbent upon us to provide them with alternatives to give them activities uh specific to mental health yes we have working with Dr maholtra and Mr C netos we have a number of resources that will be rolled out around mental health mostly starting January 6th a little bit now and I did when we had our beefing I mentioned that um I've met several of school climate Advocates who do a lot of activities during lunch and nutrition and recess to keep the students engaged and I think that would be very beneficial to um provide that support to the schools because there will be um that moment that the

173students don't have their cell phones during nutrition or lunch so what are they going to do right um so I think changing that culture and changing the behavior of our students would be very helpful in providing those supports and I did um in the principal feedback it said consider incentives to help reinforce the policy I think that would be very um important and essential um as we roll out um actually when it's you know you said Valentine's Day or after that when it becomes a policy that has to be adhered or enforced I think that would be very beneficial and then just since we have just my last Point since we have the two principles here from homes and I'm sorry the other school d d DIY um I would love to hear from you

174um what you both mentioned there's been an increase in student to- student engagement during recess and lunch how um how is that demonstrated in your schools and what advice would you um give your principl I I I was you read my mind you read my mind I was going to have you answer questions I was hoping we can get all the questions out first and then have you two exemplary principles answer the questions that we have for you because you know best you know best so if it's okay okay yeah that's fine yeah so that would be my mind um just lastly I I thank you for providing the different options is not one siiz foit all every school will be able to communicate on all the stakeholders I know in my son School my

175principal has already um sent out a survey and she's having those conversations so it's as I I can I can testify that is actually the phase one is very much in um active right now and I look forward to phase two and three and addressing you know any issues um or situations that may may happen that can improve upon in this policy so that is all for now thank you thank you Dr Rivas and let's all remember our questions when we have our two wonderful principles come up Jackie I actually don't have any questions uh you know I think this is very thorough and I thank you for it um and I think that we will find that it is widely going to be enforced and widely accepted as a good idea uh I've visited

176a couple of my campuses that have already gone ahead of the time to do it and the change is remarkable and observable the only thing I would really request is is that at the end of one year of this we talk about what the effect has been on the district how much bullying was reduced how many fights were reduced how much more attention that kids were paying in school how much more homework was getting done whatever we can quantify because from one time to other somebody's going to come up and say don't do this anymore and the best way to do that is to say well we've done this for a whole year now and here's the results that we can show you uh and any problems that have got come up you could also

177say and we need to address the problems but other than that I think this is fine just as it is thank you very much thank you Jackie Tanya are you gonna would you like to give a comment or a question Tanya Ortiz Franklin I don't think she has okay okay we'll come back to you Mr melvoin thank you and thanks um to you and the team for all the work on this I echo my colleagues for your gratitude for our gratitude it's not easy work not only the implementation but this is really cultural change that we are pushing for not just for kids but for adults whether that's faculty members or parents and their um insistence on immediate contact and so we we are you know I know we've been asked as a district how

178ambitious is this policy I think incredibly so we are trying to change a culture of addiction to harmful products um so thank you this is very thorough and thanks to our principls who I know we'll hear from in a minute as well um I do have some questions and just comments and and suggestions you know one is I know we're the biggest adopter but when you were looking nationally is it common that the districts allowed schools to have discretion with enforcement like was that a a through line or was it mostly they had one implementation mechanism for the districts that we spoke with they had a method of implementation be it put it away in the backpack be it pouches or what have you uh I do not believe we engaged with any that provided

179that School site optionality can you say in light of that and I have supported and always talked about and envision this with discretion but why then if that if the norm is one size fits all why given the nuances of La unified we decided to do something different culture and buyin uh the the culture of our district and and I say this as someone who's been with the district about going on 26 years our our culture has always been to allow uh a fair amount of voice and choice at the school site level um in rolling out uh large products if you will or large policy changes uh there is uh I don't want to say push back but there is a reaction when it feels like again it's it's to use the the term

180already used a couple times one size fits-all uh so that's one and the other one again is is the buyin piece um at the school site level when folks feel like not feel because that minimizes it but when folks actually get to have a say in how something happens at their School site more likely than not you will have greater Fidelity greater Buy in if there are parents that are represented in that governance body if there are staff members that are there and they say you know what for us this is what works our our estimation based on passing experience with these kinds of Endeavors is that there will be greater buyin and on that buyin just for folks who aren't familiar with the nature of these Local School site councils or governance structures you

181mentioned the composition and I love that at the high school level there are also students But ultimately is it a majority vote or like you know can you just explain like who who is the ultimate decision maker you you strive within local school leadership or the governance committee you always strive for a a unanimous decision obviously you want want everyone on the same page uh and there is a deliberative process right that's also why again we're not trying to rush this we're not telling folks to just have a meeting and call it a day ultimately if despite everyone's best efforts there really isn't that consensus if you will where everyone is on the same page then it becomes like many of these kinds of committees or councils it becomes a majority vote within that body

182got it so there is a world where like a principal could be overruled by a I mean I know this is very rare I'm just like as fol have asked questions who ultimately decision maker we really are having Buy in here with principles we hope there's consensus but also parents and teachers and stuff um just a few discret points that you mentioned you know one is I know the policy says the phone if it's in the backpack has to be off I do think there's a lot of research around when something is on vibrate that just a vibration in your pocket or your backpack you have that Temptation so I do hope that schools really I mean that is the policy off but just for folks who think oh silent or VI is okay it's

183really we just and I think that's all true I see a lot of nods in the audience you're at dinner and your phone vibrates you're thinking who could it be and you check it um you know I do agree with some of the concerns I've heard from principles about funding for devices ongoing and one of the things I am going to Advocate to you and to the superintendent for in the budget because I I do think you know to make this successful we need to have ongoing commitment to to its implementation and I think it should be similar to um School site devices are one to one which is that there's a district Central procurement and payment and then individual discreet you know what wear and tear is on the School site but every few

184years there is a refresh because I don't want schools who think you know and we have Diamond Lee who are here for I don't want schools who think that yonder or a pouch is the answer to say well I know the district's going to fund it now but in four years when I might need a refresh we're not going to do it so I will be advocating just for folks listening and talking to the superintendent on the budget that there is some in the in a few years the way we do that device where if there's wear and tear that should be on the school but in a few years if there's increase Improvement in technology or or a refresh that we do take some of the owners off of school sites because I think

185the key thing is I don't want cost within limits to be the barrier to a policy that's going to work because I think the return on that investment and I agree with Miss Goldberg about tracking this but is going to be huge so just want to note that for folks who are listening I also think you mentioned it communication with stakeholders is going to be key I I do think that we should be educating folks about how best handle emergency I really appreciate that you mentioned that you know that in an emergency situation there's this visceral reaction to want to immediately communicate with State parent Guardian put that from a safety standpoint it's pretty universally acknowledged that adults at the school site need to do that but I will say that when it comes to

186um communicating about a lockdown God forbid or an emergency or just a change in the schedule that uh you know I have seen the district be a little too vague and I think Aaron the side of caution and and go through the bureaucracy to send a message that is so vague that parents end up calling the school because they don't know what it means that there was an incident at your son or daughter School site so I really hope and I know that's part of this toolkit but that while we're we are we're removing this tool from parents to check in yes there is the onetoone device there's the email and all that we are also trying to have a cultural shift not only around emergencies but like you as a parent don't need to

187be texting your kid every hour right especially when they're in class time I see our principals nodding like give them that space But but when there are things the school need to communicate making sure principes can communicate in like human talk as opposed to through bureaucracy and I think is going to be really key um you know I really agree with what Miss Goldberg said too about compliance I think overall this is going to be adopted and people are going to see the benefits and like with any policy we're going to have kids who try to break the rules I've had some of my student advisory council members say oh yeah they're going to bring um dummy phones you know put in their fake phone these are kids Ru for them rules are meant to

188be broken so I do think we'll have generally Universal compliance but I do think one of the things that makes me nervous and I appreciate Dr Rivas asking about it is Clarity particularly for principles around enforcement some of the schools have already adopted this after a few warnings do take the phone and the parent has to come and I think that while we always want to start with the dialogue as you said and the discussion I just want to make sure as we're tweaking this in the next few weeks that we are clear that like after whether it's two warnings or three that the principal can take the phone or the teacher can take the phone phone and then there's a consequence so I don't know if you can speak to that too because I

189don't while we're leaning into the restorative practice I think we also just need to be very clear about there are consequences in complete transparency that is absolutely where this ends after a number of engagements with the parent and the student so in other words we're not going to tell our administrators that they cannot remove a phone from a student right what we're telling them is that there needs to be a process right of conversation and dialogue and so on but yes to your point there can come a time where you can say as the principal you know what student we have had a number of engagements we've had a number of warnings so at this point this is the restriction on the phone we'll communicate with parent and so on so yes that that is

190important I think that Clarity to principes and teachers and staff so that they know what that they're in line with compliance I also think you know along with the thoroughness and thoughtfulness that you all have put in this implementation I think this um kind of phased an approach sense but I would encourage and it seems like that what you're doing not say that the that we've fallen behind on our timeline of January but that it is being implemented and the the punitive the consequences are going to be phased in as as we hope people will learn and we try to win hearts and Minds if you will so I think that when I look at that timeline it it does start next semester we do have a phone Free School District January 6th but the

191consequences we will be a little looser in enforcing so that seems I'm seeing you nod so that seems to be yes that's correct um and then just finally you know I think both tracking the The Beneficial effects to this around things like referrals to counselors Behavior depression achievement and then also in the shorter term tracking implementation and enforcement because I think that some principles who maybe did the backpack option you know if they're seeing a lot more infractions they might want to know in six months or next year to go to the pouches so making sure that we're tracking both the implementation so that we can learn and limit the enforcement needed but also the benefits as people are learning from this and then the last thing I'll say is just you know we only

192have so much we can do as a school district we're doing a lot but I hope parents will heed some of the other advice that is out there around protecting kids from their smartphones such as no smartphones till High School no social media till 16 and all these things and that's why this educative piece is really helpful because we are saying that you know in local parentis and as kind of the uh caretakers for kids during the day we see these harms as the superintendent you know articulated off the bat and we're going to protect your kids but there's a lot that goes beyond this that would make the enforcement easier I know we're not saying especially at the elementary and um or at the high school level leave your phone at home the cou

193you know the toothpaste is out of the tube a bit there but I think we should talk to parents at the elementary level about your kid doesn't really need a phone and and so this as part of this larger culture change and you know there's only so much we can do we can enforce as a district but I hope we're educating uh parents around these other best practices so thank you again just so much work that's gone into this really looking forward to seeing the results uh look forward to asking the principls a few questions and a few but thank you um for your leadership sorry we're going to ready for round two and I hope my two principles are listening to all these questions because I don't know if we're going to remember to

194ask you those same questions but you're hearing them uh just a couple of concerns from me for round two um when a student I Andre you kind of explain this when a student has a panic attack or uh anxiety there's a pro there's a process for handling that student it's just not a matter of the phone it's bringing them to the office and talking to them I get that and that's excellent I really appreciate that let me just say principles when you go to a school that has a phone policy that works so well a lot of it has to do with the culture of the school itself forget the phones it's the whole school it's the trust that they have in you it's a trust that you have in them and it's something that

195is built from the school so I I appreciate that now some of the feedback from the teachers I heard is who will be liable if the phone is confiscated by staff and then the phone disappears is it the district these are questions for you guys too is it the school is it the staff member who took the phone who's responsible for a missing phone that was confiscated so it would not be the staff member let's start there so if as a teacher in in good faith I'm following a school policy a district policy and I'm asking students to put their phones in a pouch and what have you and then that phone cannot be located later we're not going to turn to that teacher and say oh you know what you you need to make

196restitution and so on um beyond that for the most part I think there may be some and I'm trying to stay in my Lane here and frankly this is not my Lane um there may be some limited ability and I want to emphasize that limited ability for a dialogue I'm I'm trying to hedge here as much as I can a dialogue around restitution but I don't think that we as a district would ultimately uh be responsible because I think that's what nod from D'Or which is always a good time I think that's what teachers fear most that they're going to be responsible for that phone and speaking of that one thing I do not want to see is a tug of war ever in a classroom give me your phone no give me your phone

197no I mean talking about losing instructional time I hope that that will not happen that will not happen no again I I hesitate to speak in in universalities because we're such a big District but certainly that would not be part of the direction or advisement that we would give a a teacher if if they've already advised a student to give them their phone and the student refuses to cooperate much like with really any other issues around non-compliance to to a policy there are other folks that can be called upon to help and last difficult question who's going to contact the parent is it the teacher is it the administrator who's going to do that you know our principles are kind of busy as you know as you know and uh taking lots of time with

198contacting parents and back and forth and back and forth I'd like to make sure we understand who's going to be responsible for contacting a parent when there is a problem with the phone it depends on where we are in terms of the the Continuum of dialogue with this family so for example to me a reasonable expectation if it's the first time that this happens there's no prior instances might be that the teacher sends a message through schooly and says you know hey Mrs so and so today there was an incident with Johnny I reminded him to make sure that he puts his phone away right after maybe the first incident then maybe it's a referral to if it's a secondary campus it may be a referral to a counselor a Dean a restorative justice teacher

199advisor schools that are and this is separate and apart from the cell phone policy schools that have strong policies around discipline and positive behavior are folks that have had that conversation what we used to call in in the olden days a referral Matrix and you have a conversation about okay this is handled in the classroom this is handled by the dean or counselor this is handled by the administrator got it got it okay round two continues with Kelly I'll be super brief because I know we've covered a lot of territory already but just on the staff training pieces I know that that's listed in phase two if you could um expand upon that what kind of training will be provided I assume it's not just on whatever product or um storage tool we're using but

200also on the enforcement policy so right now staff is already being uh onboarded for lack of a better term around again the resolution the fact that we're putting this new policy into place the options at the school site so again we're building that base of knowledge when we move into phase two when we all come back in January 6 the training for staff would be in part around whatever the mode of implementation is right so for example if it's Yonder pouches this is what the pouch looks like that we'll have the uh locking or unlocking mechanisms in this hallway and that hallway so it might be those very practical pieces but it will also be what Mr schmon was alluding to so when this happens in your classroom here's what to do here's who to

201call and so on so it would be a little bit of both actually a lot of both yeah just we often I convened my teacher cabinet last week and one of the things we hear a lot about is new initiatives without enough time or in-depth training for our staff so it it's just top of mine but I I think that that sounds spot on thank you that's it Rosio round two no um the only other um area was you mentioned it was um instructional time as the staff and the feedback and the questions said that this will be a loss of instructional time but um just wondering any guidelines and and whatever option the schools may you know want to um follow um any potential instructional I'm I'm assuming in the beginning there might be

202some if they're putting it in the pouches but eventually it just becomes something that is done every day so it won't take as much but in the beginning any guidelines or um you know best practices so there won't be an impact in instructional time uh spot on uh so again that's why we want to have that time between January 6 and about President's Day for folks to message this out even practice you know if for example if it's an elementary class and you're going to have a pocket chart just having the kiddos put it in ideally and I emphasize ideally maybe not in every single classroom ideally it shouldn't impact instructional time for example with the Yonder pouches for the most part the schools that implemented already the pouch is issued to the student they

203have it on their person and basically what they do as they come into the campus is they lock the device and then go on about their business so it shouldn't impact instructional time same thing with you know obviously the backpack one would hope that it's in that's ideally now on a pure a more practical realistic certainly I could see some some Growing Pains as this is initially rolled out and and lastly for students for some exemptions right for students with IPS or 504 plans or or for health related you know issues um it's essential to have communication across the school to identify these are the school these are the students that are are able to use or and whatever case may be so you know establishing protocols for you know um to to provide support

204for schools to make sure that you know um for instance a campus say say oh you're not supposed to have your phone say oh but I have but then you know that mean going back and forth and and um trying to um prevent any you know situations that may affect a student when there isn't proper or uh communication or uh understanding across different staff members in the school so that absolutely we want to make sure that the folks that need to be aware of of the exceptions if you will are while still certainly respecting the privacy of our students particularly of course as it relates to any health issues thank you that's all no round two for Jackie no round two for Mr Mel then I'll do a round three just for me and that's

205for the parents one of the benefits I saw of the cell phone was if if a parent reminded a kid on the on a message you know don't forget go to the attendance office we have a doctor's appointment today now that will be done through the office that'll be the parent calling the office I guess telling the you know would you get a message to my son about this um another message you know I can't pick you up today after school so I need you to wait for Uncle Joe who's going to pick you up you know that those are going to be messages that used to come on the message on the phone but now we'll come through the main office and I just want to say it's going to be a burden for

206the main office staff to have to do this but I understand I do understand so my my fantastic principles could you come up now please H about a hand for my fantastic principles yeah we're ready for the lightning round from us anyone who wants to ask please do um just my question uh was around your um what you have seen the difference in engagement in students um and also how were you able to make sure that there was Buy in across um all stakeholders from your staff your teachers your students how were you able to establish that and what what difference do you see in student engagement um so we've actually seen an increase in student engagement in the classroom as well as outside of the classroom what uh really shocked us was that again

207our students turned into kids again and so they began to have conversations with each other they actually be to play again at lunch in nutrition um our buyin actually came from our teachers our teachers are the ones that approached us with the fact that they were struggling in the classroom because cell phones were dominating their time um so in speaking with the teachers and speaking with the other staff members and bringing in the parents um we we our buyin was was rather easy in the sense that are we spoke from the perspective of safety we spoke from the perspective of uh not having these phones to post things online that they shouldn't be posting um from talking about the cyber bullying that we were experiencing and parents coming into US asking us how can they

208solve this problem um so that kind of supported us with getting the majority of our community to buy in and I say the majority because not all Buy in but the vast majority do about 95% of our community um supports Us in this and one interesting thing that we learned is that we use the Yonder pouches and our parents would come in and tell us that was the best thing that could have done I actually use the Yonder pouch at home [Laughter] now for us it's really we started this journey about nine years ago when I first arrived there so because I wanted to make sure that the kids were engaged with each other and the teachers instead of their cell phones so in terms of buyin um every year we're constantly revisiting this policy

209to see does this work for us does this continue should we keep going and really at the end of the day it's really the teachers are fully committed everybody is on board in terms of what that looks like what happens when a kid repeatedly you know doesn't follow the rules what do we do for that who's responsible for getting the phone and you know we've had our fair share of challenges but I think um we as a school we are also reflecting on how we've been doing this for so long that we're so happy to see the board considering this policy because for a while it was just our school and parents used to complain about why is it just you guys you guys are so strict about everything this and that so last year

210we decided to make it even stricter because we were noticing that there were a lot of discipline issues coming from after school beyond the bell program because it was you know less structure the teachers are not around and we notice that when there are issues things were being posted on social media of things happening after school so that's why our Council decided last year that we're going to make it even stricter and allow kids to only use it in the first 15 minutes of dismissal to allow them to contact their parents or anything that you know in terms of where to pick them up and then along the side of that um I know Mr schmon brought it up how does this impact the office staff it is very challenging on an average day we

211probably get between maybe on average about 15 to 20 phone calls from parents in terms of can you relay this message to my child can you do this for my child perfectly fine because we feel that even though it does slow us down I think the investment is so far much greater so yes it does impact our office staff a lot thank you and you mentioned something that um I guess we haven't discussed is how LA's best or after school program since the the student students are not able to use their phone I'm sure they're going to very anxious to use it then so it would be good to look at the um the impact that it will do on um after school programs or LA's best or um so I think I'm glad you

212mentioned that because that's something we hadn't considered and before we even put this policy of the after school we did speak to our after school program Partners beyond the bell and Arc in terms of asking them do you think you could help us out in terms of doing that honestly they were thrilled because now the kids are actually playing sports which is really what the program was set up for and then doing homework and so they do um they do tell us you know from that time in time you know they do have to call us out to say remind the kids of the expectations but one thing they did say is it's made a tremendous effort in terms of the problems that they're having after school because kids would film themselves doing goofy videos

213I mean middle school kids so um you know videos that we don't want anybody to know but um it's it's really helped us out but again we included them in our conversation before we actually rolled out the policy thank you and I just want to mention that it'll be very important that all adults at the schools be Role Models because if the student sees a a staff using their phone it's like how come so it's important at least you know that um everyone in the school is also very conscious of being those role models and not also using their phone or you know whatever the case may be and I hope you are available to Mentor your colleagues or other principles and being there um because I'm sure there's going to be a lot of

214questions how did you do how did you deal with that so I I thank you for being those um those leaders um that led the way and then you will be there for your colleagues as well to help out thank you questions Nick go ahead sure just thank you for being early adopters and leaders on this and thank you principal diio I know you spoke to on my on my team as we were rolling out this resolution and and crafting it I guess two questions one more specific to some of the feedback I know we've heard from students around um something you were just alluding to but the things like um QR codes around the school you know click on this QR code to get the college application or we've heard from some students that

215the way the students store the cafeteria works it's like you know using your phone or so how I mean because that seems one I mean there are definitely students I would say in general most students that I've spoken to at schools that have adopted this have have appreciated it but there's we obviously know there are some who are nervous about it but there are some who've reached out with like valid concerns and this seems to be one of them which is okay there are certain things that the school has us to do that um now we can't to so I'm just curious if there are instances in your schools and how that how you would you know ad uh adapt it to the cell phone free reality so this uh has come up actually uh

216for a number of years especially when we get near college applications in fasta um but what it has actually afforded us to do is it's actually afforded us to actually have a group meeting where they're all together so say for our seniors and we're doing College FASA and we do bring the unlocking device into uh this multi-purpose room where now we work as a team and it actually serves us twofold because now they are unlocking their phone but they're also getting individualized support with these college apps or fasta and so forth um other things that you would think impede student uh achievement in the classroom because of the lack of the cell phone is the translation that's actually not an issue that we've encountered at DIY high school because we do have Promethean boards where

217we actually instruct our teachers to have that translation going down the bottom of the board at all times anyway and then we utilize our devices Chromebooks we utilize tablets for uh translation support as well as well as we offer all of our student earbuds so that they can do various activities such as I utilizing the sound that they're that's needed as they complete those lessons so um it hasn't impeded instruction as much as as we may think that it would um we've been using Yonder now for four years and over those four years um again other than our students are extremely brilliant and they learned how to get into anything that we put we placed before them which I love um it just makes us become that more um that much more smarter in trying

218to ensure that we are doing everything we can to not interrupt their instructional time and have either of you one of the things I've seen in schools that have adopted this is like a a reversion to you know technology that was around when like I was in school like a digital camera or like a Walkman or something uh have you seen that at all on campus oh we've gone back to all of that so yes um in our our video production class you know we use a lot of camera and Technology to take pictures and create those videos it's actually uh redeveloped and have them gain a greater appreciation for what we used to do 10 years ago because they do have these these items um we don't do walk bands anymore but what we

219do do is we play music at lunch and you know we have games that are brought out at lunchtime and so it does again take them back to there's no other way that I can equate it other than being a kid again and so it really has shown Shine the Light Shine the Light on them being just that acting like kids again uh having communication increasing those communication skills so it served us on the multiple multiple layers and then I guess my last question you know not to put you on the spot in front of the board and the superintendent but just you've heard this presentation you've been early adopters are there things that we should know or that other principles could benefit from you know tweet I mean I won't put words in your

220mouth but I assume like more Central funding versus less Central funding is is beneficial but are there any things that you think we're missing or that we should as we're kind of going to this Final Phase before January that we should be aware of I think one of the things that we need to talk about is you know making sure you communicate to your parents extensively in terms of what that looks like having assemblies with the students to share your expectations and back to your QR code we're an iPad school and so we used to use a lot of QR codes but over the last couple years we started avoiding QR codes when it's outside of the classroom because now we have a no device even during lunch and nutrition because what happened after was

221the kids were on their iPads literally playing Minecraft and all these different games and not really socializing so now we've also baned that as well so if you need to use your iPad during lunch or you know nutrition for instructional purposes then you have to go to the library and that has been sorry so just like what Mr Tate was saying which is that you could have you could go or to miss gonz's question you can still go beyond the policy you're saying this our current policy with no cell phones during lunch and recess but District devices your students were on their District devices so now your policy is they can't be on those devices yes and I think that's really important we need to consider too because iPads and Chromebooks become a cell phone

222because um even during covid kids were meeting with each other on Zoom through their um devices so those are some things to consider and so we stopped doing QR codes outside of the classroom because then there's no gray area in terms of I have to have my iPad out to scan this because we used to have a QR codee where hey scan this in to find out the weekly rule of the week and tell us to give us an example to enter in a raffle but now you have to start thinking about okay what does that look like at lunch and nutrition so you can just minimize and stop those issues Al together and if I can add to I think um another point is that at dial we actually the teachers don't have any

223responsibility to the cell phones so if there is a student that may not have put their phone in their pouch and the cell phone comes out it's not the teacher's responsibility to try to retrieve the cell phone we actually have our campus AIDS and our support staff go up to have a conversation with the student and we usually we tend to pull the student out of class um we have created such a great culture that if the admin team or a certificated support staff walks in the class and we see a phone we just have to do this and the student merely puts the phone in our hand and we walk away um we do have a very strict tracking system where if a phone is uh retrieved from a student through the school day

224it is logged in the main office so that we know who took the phone um which uh student it belonged to so that when that parent comes to pick the phone up we know exactly how many times the phone has been taken so it's a really good tracking system for us where it takes the onus off the classroom teacher and it puts it on us as a staff as a school staff you you probably have already done this but if you haven't connected with with with uh Andreas on like just even some of those templates I know principles could really benefit as they're thinking of a logging system if you already have a great Google sheet or whatever it is so thank you both really appreciate it Kelly I'll just say thank you I think

225the insights are really helpful to hear kind of on the ground practical suggestions and I I Echo to the extent that there's mentorship opportunities or best practices that we can highlight for um principles districtwide I think you all seem like excellent resources for others to learn from so just thank you for your time yeah uh just an if then statement you know if this happens then this if this happens then this if you have things that that already developed that with your teachers that would be wonderful for us to have as a template to share uh because I think one of the few things that I've heard that people were nervous about was what if they aren't compliant okay you've already dealt with that for many years that would be something that would be very

226helpful for us to get away from saying give me your phone what did you do before that and when did that decision get made that this isn't working discussing it calling the it's not working I am now going to take your phone particularly the login part because uh the principal that I've talked to the most about this said that they don't have the problem so much with the kids putting the phones in because they carry them in their backpacks and once they knew that their phone was not being taken away not going to have to go to an office and find somebody to give it back to them that compliance went way up uh and I just hope that we can spread that word out to people so that they know that basically as long

227as whatever you do ends up with a student holding on to their phone in some fashion or another it's a lot less a pain at the end of the day when someone comes in and said no no you took my phone and no I didn't yes you did well now we got real trouble thank you very much I appre appreciate your being leaders in this and taking the chance to do it thank you so much yes yes great job uh you know Holmes is one of my schools and so is um uh uh I'll think of it in a second oh a frost is another school that does it the policy very well Derek harwitz a school um no Nobel Nobel uh you know I was there visiting and I saw someone had pulled out

228a phone during nutrition time cuz I go out and supervise with the principal at nutrition time didn't say anything someone went up to the nice nice young lady and said well that means take your phone over to the attendance office and of course the bell rang and before I left school that day guess where I went to visit and that was the attendance office and I wanted to see if she actually turned it in and yes she did so it is a possibility so thank you guys thank you so much what a what what an example for principles I appreciate it thank [Applause] you well believe it or not uh we have reached the end and I want to thank my colleagues and our guest speakers for their amazing presentations and I hope that members

229of the public who turned in today learned as much from these presentation as we did and before we conclude the meeting I would like to address the recent events in our country and we have just finished the election season and members of our LAUSD Community have expressed concern about what will happen to them and their families and we have many hardworking members of the community who are amazing parents amazing siblings and good people who are concerned because they are undocumented so I want to say with absolute Clarity LUSD will always be committ commed to the safety and protection of our students families and staff and this does not change regardless of any election outcome anywhere in the United States so if you are nervous or you're afraid reach out to your local school we have

230lots of people at the school who can help you we have counselors therapists and other resources available to help you during this time and we will get through this together don't you worry our next Committee of the whole meeting will be on December the 3rd 2024 at 10:00 a.m. and with that let's go on to public comment good afternoon everyone uh we will go ahead and do public comment I will as usual call the folks who are listed as calling in person and then we will transition to the folks who are speaking remotely so I'll call Maria Louisa Palma come on up you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin and then after Miss Palma it'll be Mr Juan mandhi then Maria Daisy Ortiz and then di guen so first Miss Palma then Mr

231mandhi then Maria Daisy orz then di again please go ahead good afternoon I am here sadly to let you know that once again your administrators continue to deliberately withhold information from parent advisory committee members the office of government relations Miss Martha Alvarez who is here with us today uh is planning to bring you a request for a waiver to the California Department of Education Board of Education on certain Personnel practices at next week's meeting however uh they need to get input from a parent committee which is the parent advisory committee despite the fact that the parent advisory committee officers have been require requesting the full information the documentation of the entire application they had only provided supervis superficial information to agenda planning to that committee uh making phone calls to the officers individually they've been

232withholding the fact that the par and advisory committee has the right on the state application for the waiver to either support to remain neutral or to object to the waiver okay because we work together with the officers independently outside of the committee we research this information and obtain that information however the office of esface with Mr Antonio Placencia is intimidating the officers he has made statements to the committee that the schools will suffer if this waiver does not get approved pressuring them uh he they wanted to present this information under announcements not as an action item so not making it available for a motion no discussion no vote we reviewed the prior two waivers that were approved by all of you back in 2021 and 2022 and we found that and you can find this

233in the video evidence of that committee video it was presented in announcements only they were never told that they can object that the objections would be registered in the form to the state uh it was presented only as information not that discussion not that they could object not that they could remain neutral so all of you who are supposed to be representing the communities and the parents you are helping to withhold vital important information from these parents what are you going to do about it thank you for your time uh Mr Juan mandhi come on up you have two minutes to speak once you begin Mr Mandi is going to speak in Spanish so if you'd like to hear what he's saying in English as he's speaking Spanish please put on these translation headsets to

234experience simultaneous translation so if you'd like to hear what he's saying in English as he's speaking Spanish please put your hands up and we'll get you these devices okay listo good morning I'm not sure why I'm stubborn trying to guess the devil's thinking I think we have to be a bit crazy about that and I say this because we continue to see where is Mr carbal oh he's not here do you have a you have a new president right in Florida I think he was a Republican and he's out of this party here how do you say that in English Mr Rosio what I'm trying to say is we are seeing how a measure that's so ridiculous measure is becomes a very theatrical a few years ago I said that cell phone so will cause

235a big damage in mental state of the students and any declaration from any board members or superintendent that are winning those $400,000 or more they can do that and the principles would accept that but you're making a the you're making a big deal off of it there are people that working really hard to come up with things from their offices and under air conditioning but how effective is this and and we are talking about things that are not what people want it's basically what your interest is what are you doing with security with the quality of of Education what are you doing so that education equality becomes better because they have been deepened with democracy what are the new programs that are going to be effective you attack the ones that we criticize and the

236incompetence of them and the lack of studies cultural studies and to understand the community that you serve right this is the biggest problem what are you doing now there's a big message 43% voted in against of all the politics that you believe that Latinos are interested in and this message has not helped you because while you are talking of how what we're going to call the child how they identify Jesus or J jesusa and the lack of work for Latinos that is what is not being resolved because you are in the correct Place education Community thank you uh Maria Daisy Ortiz come on up you have two minutes to speak once you begin Miss Ortiz is going to speak in Spanish so again if you'd like to hear what she's saying in English as she's

237speaking in Spanish please uh use a translation headset good morning to all my name is Maria Daisy Ortiz and I am here first uh first and foremost I want to say that I don't agree that you remove cell phones because I don't trust you all and in the last meeting $250 million and none of you made a question and this is to pay sexual harassment from the employees and this uh doesn't allow me to trust because the cell phones there is technology and it is used for instruction and it is also used to communicate will you remove the cell phones from the teachers as well you won't right therefore I believe that you're afraid of something else and second thing secondly I want to remove all the bad stuff that's being done here you don't

238speak about the demand that the district has with the arch dasis because they didn't send the school to from the public schools and we're not talking about El shabab he was in charge of intelligent artificial intelligence which was $3 million that were wasted therefore in reality we have people we can't trust in we they're not confiable and the parents they don't they don't like parents if you want to remove cell phones you need the school police needs to come back because you shouldn't have removed school police school police if something very important for security within the school especially now that there's drugs gangs and there's a lot of bullying that's happening there are a lot of fights therefore you you should not remove if you want to remove cell phones you school police needs to

239come back lastly I want to tell Mr carvalo that stop saying lies be that students levels have gone up at Franklin High School only four students were reclassified for English lers and you call success they've only went up 2.5 that is that you're insulting my intelligence and this is why there should be more transparency because this is from 2021 and you're presenting this to pack 2022 and we want our comments thank you very much information please be more transparent and each one of you are the responsible U Miss Yen come on up you have two minutes to speak when you begin and then miss Mendes but miss Gan will be speaking Spanish so if you want to hear what she's saying in English as she's speaking Spanish please put on these translation headsets otherwise gracias

240good afternoon members of the board my name is Diana Gan and I am the chair of the pack committee all the information that Miss Palma said is true all of that has happened about the waiver so they are using the committee and it's something that we are against because we as parents have the right to give our input without being cursed but as a parent in the community and also as the organizer of the parent Network for uh student safety I want to say a few bullet points here you are doing this are doing this option for cell phones so that they removed in schools and you have a lot of options for certain types of children for those that are in special education for those that have certain needs and that's good but what

241I say you always talk about options about Community Schools for students that are gifted dual language but there's no option for school police to come back which one of you will make a resolution so that school police can return to schools because truly taking away the cell phones the parents is not that they're not in agreement that the cell phones go away but we know that the students have an addiction to their cell phones but the problem is that we can't rely on you you are not reliable the schools do not provide the information that are necessary we get informed because we do our homework but many of our families Latino families we do not have access to the information because it is not in our language so those one of the things that are

242happening and I would like to know which one of you will make that resolution I would like for Miss Rivas to do it because in her community are the ones that are fighting the most for school police to come back but obvious maybe obviously the interests are with utila who's doing all of this and that is against the families and parents because they think that the police are hurting the schools and just like Mr McKenna said one day there has never been an incident where a police officer has killed a student so I want I want for the a Latino parent Latino community and that one of you takes the responsibility because you're taking away the cell phones we want for school police to return thank you for your time uh Nelly Mendes coming up

243and Miss Mendes is also going to speak in Spanish so if you'd like to hear what she's saying in English please put on the translation headsets okay gracias well good afternoon the first thing that I wanted to say is that right now I am very happy with the school where my daughter Janella is I do ask Mr wera who took the time and Mr Fran that made a safety plan but what I'm not in agreement with is Miss Kelly gones that wants by force to take away school police school police is very important I don't know if you know that there were two close schools because there was a man with a gun there was no police in the school they got there and there's no police and what about you miss KES are your

244children safe in school or do you have your own security for your students Mr caral also he's very comfortable with his police to his side and in the school there's no police instead of Mr carvalo to have police why not assign it to schools because it is so needed at the schools and so I hope that Miss Kelly gones leaves this time and definitely so that we can Implement school because school school police helps us to be safe now about the cell phones they're going to be elim taken away but when something happens what are we going to do we're not going to be informed about anything because the school police is always needed at the schools what I want is for school police to return to schools I want to see police officers in

245schools I go and there's no police before there was two or three patrol cars and now there no patrol cars there isn't the ones that helped the students to on the passage and when I see that there's no on Thursday they almost ran over a student and nobody was there I'm Carver Middle it was so close to running over a student there's nobody there that's watching out for the children the one the crossing guards I know Miss gones maybe this bothers you because your students also go to the schools and are they safe because you work and you have a nice position but there's no safety return the police return safety and if you're going to take away the police have the police be in the school so that we trust that the students will

246be safe thank you for your time okay we've got uh Maria araga are you here Maria come on up and after Maria will be Maria Torres and then David toosi and if you uh listed yourself as calling in but you're here in person we will get to you also no fear go ahead hello and thank you for allowing me to speak today here I have taken some time off from my work work schedule and and am here to speak today on behalf of my son who is a third grader in District 5 of the LA USD he also participated in the after um in the after school program beyond the bell for which I am very GR f as a single mom it is very difficult to be and find someone to pick him up

247from school as it intervenes with my work schedule um my son and I are going through some challenging times at school and by challenging I mean him keeping his hands to himself and choosing his words wisely I've never encouraged my son to solve any misunderstandings with other students by hitting or saying hurtful words the complete opposite I've asked him to walk away from situations and keep his sense to himself and not to say anything that could be mean to others I've always encouraged him to go by the same treat others as you would as you would like to be treated unfortunately that hasn't gone necessarily as taught and my son has gotten into many altercations with um multiple School multiple students I've been asked to tell tell my son on when I've asked um my

248son about these altercations um he has told me he has reacted um on how other students have um been with him and my time is up um pointless I am here today because my son is going through some very challenging times at school and his princi ible has encouraged me to teach my son to report every action that has happened with him and I'm free and welcome to email this to anyone that I may need to do so because it it I timed out already um my thing is I asked his principal is there any in the anything in the future curriculum of the LAUSD that such actions will be taught quote unquote to our students thank you thank you for your time I'm we have a couple of folks are going to come speak

249with you about the issue specifically just after you're off the microphone so awesome I appreciate you your time again thank you thank you very much for coming down okay next we have Maria Torres Eng English oh perfect so good afternoon this is my first time here I would like to say that I'm very disappointed with the LAUSD uh my grandson us uh he attends Santi uh high school he was a victim of a crime and um also for Carver Middle School I have an autistic grandson who is currently being bullied hit um he's been ignored I've been sending emails for the past two years no one has done anything about it he has IEP I have another granddaughter and Sally R which she's been emotional verbally abused physically uh they've been neglecting her since they

250went I I requested help I don't know what to do anymore I reached out to the district nothing has been done the schools I don't know why the phones are going to be taken the school phones are not functional they haven't been working since June of last year and uh they're not working they said they have the Google connect and Google connect does not work I don't know how you guys are going to fix it but there's no way my grants got jumped by 12 kids and no one notified me the school fails to answer the phones there's no phone system there's nothing if it wouldn't for my autistic grandson that calls me every time the that he's in danger and that the bully is hating him and that the bullly is threatening him and

251the principal I've had multiple uh emails and no one till now hasn't reached out to me I am scared that my grandson's going to commit suicide he is going through an emotional stage with uh one of his friends getting uh ran over while crossing the street and this is ongoing for two years I just had a a meeting uh last last week and I haven't seen any results none I want to know who's going to help me here with my my situation we need the school to be uh we need the school police to be in schools we need the schools to be protected I mean we need the police there's no other way you're this this is going to be resolved until the police starts jumping in I'm sorry I don't I don't uh

252I don't agree with the police being up we need police we need police attendance in the schools we need security thank you for your time someone's also going to come speak with you thank you thank you for your time5 okay Mr David tolkovsky come on down you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin David to kovski thank you very much I enjoyed the committee of the whole I want to focus on the uh Sacramento and Beyond peace uh one you need to get uh report on the uh Revenue the stock markets boom has yielded a significant amount of money and I haven't heard it in open public session number two with respect to uh civil rights issues that the superintendent brought up I was on the school board during proposition 187 209 and 227

253we received incredibly good outside legal counsel uh for for these matters from Munger TOs and OLS and particularly BMA Martinez as lead counsel I strongly suggest you find out EX exactly what kind of outside Council you have and on the other hand during uh bad times we've also uh elected um Jeff Horton to the California Schoolboard association with significant number of Republican women who voted for him across the state I think there are opportunities Career Technical education in particular Apprentice programs uh we got the impact fees and developer fees with a republican uh Coalition under Santiago Jackson and and Ron PR think big on legislation we are the largest most significant district and with the other districts of poverty we can we can do good things uh you need a presentation on proposition four Nick

254on E elop it's ongoing uh and districts are returning money so the district could be applying for the return money from other districts as well as ongoing and way ongoing David can I Mr can I ask you to pause sir can you please have a seat in the audience sir just to not disrupt the meeting we appreciate it thank you very much go ahead thank you very much um uh Ida uh M Mr Schon is the entire budget it's not just a small little piece all students are search and sered yes there could be efforts uh on federal funding on the housing grow enrollment we still have not in three years of superintendent added one seat in Affiliated Charters one seat not at all not in a continuation school um and I share Miss Goldberg's

255concern about uncritical race there Theory which is more of a problem than critical race Theory and I report the American historical association's study and lastly there was nothing significant on Community Schools today that is billions of dollars and the children youth Behavioral Health Initiative uh is also billions of dollars so in tough times there are often Silver Linings and I uh want to sucessfully say that early Ed was at the national early Ed conference recruiting people getting people to come in and doing exactly what you described today so they are on top of that today thank you thank you for your time sir okay next speaker is Marcela Garcia Marcela Garcia are you in the room Marcela Garcia see you're signed up to speak remotely but you are not signed in right now why can't

256you have people we will go to Karina Lopez why have that Karina Lopez it says 15 minutes oreli Caba are you in the room those Caba get it all right Evan Davis I see her online Evan Davis Oris cabera did you just sign in okay Evan Davis please press star six to unmute yourself and you have two minutes to speak once you begin Evan Davis Evan Davis please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin hi this is Ean Davis I'm an LUSD parent and School site council member last June the principal Dr Linda Moore at chevat Hills High School graduated 43 continuation school students into the world of work College trade school and the military I'm telling you Dr Moore made sure every student graduated with

257a plan for their future that is why I was shocked to learn such an accomplished principal was recently removed from her school site by Jesus Angulo florita arera and Elizabeth Kain in fact I was extremely concerned by a telephone call I received from Elizabeth Kain who falsely identified herself as an employee of a CDE program for homeless students pretending to follow up on my daughter postgraduation when I shared our much improved living circumstances and my daughter attending Santa Monica College while applying for nursing school Miss Kaine changed the tone of her phone call and pressed me to make disparaging remarks about the principal Dr Moore that was a huge red flag her deception was so odd that I called other parents to see if they had been contacted and many of them had with the

258same vein of pressing them to discredit Dr Moore my inquiries uncovered SE uncovered several things that are blatantly discriminatory like 17 African-American students several of which are homeless have recently been disenrolled from the school by the interim principal and the new options director florita Etta one of those African-American homeless students was disenrolled without even first speaking speaking to him or his parents several parents have submitted uniform complaint forms directly to the state the new interim principal has told two African-American students that want to enroll at chevat that the school is full and not accepting students even though enrollment is now down to 19 students chevat Hills High was seeing much success but now your options managers are systematically and strategically working to dismantle it I implore you to go to shevat Hills High School speak

259with staff and students directly call principal Dr Linda Moore please find out why this African-American principal and her students are being targeted thank you very much thank you for your time let's see I have a caller online Karina Lopez I see you're online Karina Lopez please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin Karina Lopez Karina Lopez hello hi hello hi hello good afternoon my name is thank you my name is Karina Lopez and I'm expressing this comment publicly about the presentation today about the cell phone policy um it is important to ruce the the electronic device use but the presenter is conscious about the emotional handicaps that are currently uh present in students how will that be treated there's a lot of inconsistencies to have a

260uh strong result um given your presentation I don't think it was an appropriate team to do this presentation there's a lack of or there was talk of the emotional uh Health uh students but a little bit ago a student left school uh they with autism with an a special need and the parent put a GPS on the cell phone and the mother found it and the police was called and they helped quite a bit in the documentation process it's in these inconsistencies that don't match up with the with this presentation today you also I wanted to talk about how they need to there needs to be support to montabello uh School District in for support in Los Angeles thank you very much thank you for your time let's see Marcela Garcia I see you're on

261the line Marcela Garcia please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin Marcela Garcia um I've been well speaking about that the cell phone removal in the schools there's parents that work and only are able to communicate with their children once they're out of school and are directly going home so so sometimes this communication can save lives remember one time that it was there was a downpour and the student called their mom and said Mom I'm walking and she called where are you going I'm going home but but it's raining a lot so the mother was worried about where they were going and the child got lost and I don't know if you remember that it was around Eagle Rock that area and the child got lost

262because it was raining too hard but the mom at least could understand where they were going because like the previous mom said parents are communicating with their kids and that's how they know their location when they're walking alone with no one being able to pick them up because parents have to work that are working very hard to provide for the home so there's also H how are you going to prohibit them take cell phones to the school and not use them um and that's all thank you thank you for your time okay Irene Morales Irene Morales are you in the room you're signed up to speak remotely but I do not see you with us Miriam aspara are you in the room Miriam Esparza you're signed up to speak remotely also but I also do

263not see you in the room nor nor online uh Marcy Winograd Marcy Winograd are you in the room you're also signed up to speak uh remotely and this concludes general public uh comment what about the 15 did you sign up Sir didn't allow me to to sign up on anything okay so since we uh didn't have hear all the speakers um please share your two minutes and then please give us your information afterwards your name and yeah say your name yeah yes um you know I've been I've been coming here trying to draw some attention to uh my concern and that is what is the reason behind um going through this random calls with your department the department continues to show its failure of not knowing their their position their job it's almost like a

264pattern in practice of of ignorance and stupidity I should I should only have to make one call deal with maybe two people but not go through six people I'm here to find out why the school district retired me and didn't take on my FMLA to return to work and so basically you fired me or you detain me not to work I want to know why I want an explanation and a reason and I want Personnel to explain to me why after 18 years you decide to throw me under the bus like this I mean it's disgraceful it's humiliating and it's stupidity on LUSD and it goes to show the explanation behind this maybe if you would hire credential teachers to fill in all those empty schools those brand new schools that you can't even fill

265up with the population that are moving out or that are leaving because they understand the problem their children are not getting an appropriate free education they're getting dumped and the complaints by people registered today talking about what's going on in their schools it's a fact I worked there 18 years I did two good things in my life I have two students graduate from a high school at Garfield High School and I'm not asking for any honor any credit of it other to point out that if you don't think outside the box you're not creative thinkers if you're not challenging children to think then they will always be the disgraceful scummy little shits that you created by putting them where they belong out on the street thank you for your time that concludes general public comment

266that was interesting and uh the time is now 1:25 is there shall we adjourn we shall adjourn a meeting adjourn thank you everyone thank you very much [Music]