001[Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you foreign [Music] am in the date of September 26 2023 welcome to the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education closed session meeting I will read the purpose and Authority for the stuff we're going to hear for public comment under tab one Personnel government code section 54957 employee discipline dismissal release inspector General's evaluation superintendent's evaluation under Tab 2 conference with legal counsel pending litigation under government code section 54956.9 under Tab 3 conference with labor negotiators under government code section 54957.6 I'll note that there's two cases under pending litigation do Jane V LAUSD and Jane Doe h-a-v-l-a-us-d under Tab 3 conference labor negotiators negotiators are Dr Murphy and Mr de grazia the employee organizations represented our associate administrators Los Angeles California School Employees Association Los Angeles County
002building and trades construction Council Los Angeles School Police Association Los Angeles school police sergeants and lieutenants Association service employees International Union SEIU Local 99 Teamsters United teachers Los Angeles District represented employees and contract management personnel so with that we'll go directly in the public comment Wendy M let me remind everybody who comes up for public comment that you are to speak on the item that you have signed up for unless you've signed up for just public comment so that's what we're going to require that if you signed up for superintendent's evaluation you talk about the superintendent's evaluation uh they haven't taken it yet I totally forgot to take role that's a good point Thank you thank you very much you had one job Mr McLean you had one job okay Dr McKenna yeah here Mr
003Ortiz Franklin President board president Goldberg here okay we are fully formed now we will go into public comment Wendy M are you on the line Wendy M if you are press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Wendy m M okay not are you Wendy M okay come on up is Wendy Mina so um this is my first time coming and giving a public comment I have so much to say so many things um that I've seen uh throughout um you know um in LAUSD I do have children ranging from 3 to 19. um so my kids have all been in LAUSD I have seen a drastic change recently um in curriculum in performance and in teaching you know my oldest daughter um luckily she she is
004in an Ivy League school but I have noticed that recently my kids they don't get homework they come home they don't get any homework everything's online everything's um you know 20 minutes on this computer program 20 minutes on that program one of my children she does have an IEP and I feel that instead of supporting her um and you know boosting her they just kind of you know put her to the side by letting her sit in the front letting her have um you know kind of time out they're not really supporting her I feel another thing last two weeks ago I actually attended my first board meeting um that week that same week on Thursday a parent called me at um at 10 o'clock at night asking me if my son had told me
005what had happened at his school so what happened is this child that had been making threats for the past year made a list and the name on the list was of people that he disliked when I called the school to find out what was going on because here I have parents calling me telling me that there was a hit list made the school told me that it was just rumors but I had already spoken to my son I had already spoken to other parents which they confirmed that their children said the same thing you know a student took the list from the child from the kid I say child he's probably a teen senior um and she you know she was scared she was uh scared for her life because she saw that her name
006was on that list and I did talk to the operations coordinator who on Monday four days later so I went the whole weekend worrying about is my kid going to be safe going back to school you know the principal at his school is not giving me answers you know giving she's just giving me the runaround so um she told me because it didn't say hit list that there was no credible threat another thing is um these bills that just passed recently I'm really concerned as a parent you know I think it's SB 507 the one all gender restroom I'm really concerned as a parent um how are my children going to be safe how are they how are you going to keep the kids safe in school how are you gonna you know SB 1078
007just got signed how are you going to keep the kids safe from accessing you know inappropriate material and like I said you know I've seen a drastic change in the school system maybe it was already there and I just didn't see it or the schools that my kids were going because I moved four years ago and that's when I noticed that the schools on this side are I guess they have more propaganda thank you very much for your time I just want to remind folks we value your comment but this tab won Under action item one is Personnel matters so when you have the three minutes under tab one to discuss your comment it should be relative and relevant to Personnel matters thank you very much Diana Guillen come on up Miss Gian is going
008to speak in Spanish and we will do simul translation within the boardroom so if you'd like to hear what she's saying in English as she is speaking in Spanish Mr Norberto is passing out headphones if anyone needs them so put your hands up if you want to hear what she's saying as you're saying it if not the floor is yours gracios hello good morning members of the board my name is Diana Guillen I've been the uh director for d-lot committee for four years and I'm here today because the evaluation of the superintendent is of interest but also the Inspector General matters so as parents we don't even know what the functionality is of the general inspector so I know these evaluations are for the school police and this board has not taken in consideration what
009they've done for their work so as for the superintendent I think he has promoted committees that's what is said I don't know if that's true right he has promoted committees to be region-wide and you have said no because that the parents get in fights with one another I don't know if that's true but that's what has been told uh to me and I'm here to talk about Mr Placencia because he's been one of the people that likes parent conflict so that nothing changes and so that this district has no real parent involvement the way we actually do need so I don't know what re what reason they don't want to have the region level committees with parent representation that is significant right now according to the PAC elections a district-wide they are doing it with
010three days of announcing it with three days in advance so right now they're going about the North and Mr Schmelson represents that area and I think as well as Miss Gomez and there's always been very low participation on behalf of parents and with the very little uh promotional time more so so lcap is supposedly for that for transparency in the investment of funds and there hasn't been transparency because we don't have correct information we don't know how these funds are being invested and here more money is requested for schools but we don't even know how that's spent in the school so mainly because this board does not want to open region-wide informational groups so parents are limited to what the principal is willing to give as far as information and communication so I know in
011the afternoon you're going to have a discussion about the vaccines and US parents want that to go a way to be able to volunteer so you were responsible you were not responsible when you had this policy made and teachers that are suing I know you're not going to pay out of your own pocket our children are the ones that are going to actually pay due to bad decisions and I know you don't care you're not even looking at me and you're not interested in these topics but you're not paying for this the students are paying for this and their education is paying for this because so much money is invested in the politics that you forget that these children need to learn how to read and write and we are doing so poorly thank you
012okay I'm gonna call up the next three people uh they're in person uh manuk Gregorian are you here in person no okay Ian Jameson are you here in person uh Mirna Joy pilot are you here in person or pilo okay and on the line we have Juan Jose mangandi are you on the line okay he is not and sunny Lloyd Sunny Lloyd I see you on the line please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Sunny Lloyd yes I'm here hello yes we can hear you please go ahead you have three minutes okay yeah and um basically like this whole uh vaccine mandate and I think it's well known for dude and I would like to consider you know the people who are infected who are
013put out of work uh who were moved off campus Mr Lloyd if it's possible can you please speak more directly into whatever device you're using because you're coming through fairly faintly yes um they deserve back pay with interest credit toward retirement plus illness personal necessity and vacation days they would have occurred if there was no involuntary separated Force retirement uh three uh restored back to the same position at the respective School sites with 10-year whether their position was filled with an employee with more service credit or not so those are some things that I believe these teachers deserve to return is very important not only returning them to their schools but for their communities where they live and you know to also just reminded to the board you have a due process of looking into
014these things and really seeing if they are safe and effective before mandating them on on healthy people we we all had a very good reason to not comply with this mandate it's all the information that's coming out now there's a lot of safety concerns there's as you know over a million adverse reactions 36 000 deaths of you know people after taking the vaccine no protection against infection or transmission and so you know the long-term effects of any medication it's always going to get worse people you're going to mandate medical treatment on people you you owe it to them to really study what that's all about and make sure that it is 100 safe and effective and in this case it obviously obviously so I believe these people deserve the right to return and uh that
015pay and an apology thank you thank you for your time Jason napkin I see you signed up to speak remotely but you are not signed in right now at this time um are you here in person by chance Jason knopke under Tab 2 conference with legal counsel okay we'll go to tab three Maria Daisy Ortiz I see you are on the line Maria Daisy Ortiz please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin Maria Daisy Ortiz por favor good morning my name is Maria Daisy Ortiz and I am here about the negotiations and I want to know what are the negotiations that you are doing with parents because you negotiate with all your employees that are paid but we that are parents volunteers that do not receive
016any kind of payment you want to insult us in not respect us as well as to plant our voice with a family Academy those is that the negotiate the negotiation that the superintendent is to have parent engagement it's an embarrassment those types of negotiations because I went to PCS the building at PCS to make a video for a com parent conference and then it says that PCS is closed when they join perform parents that you were to close PCS how is how is that office updating that supposedly that it got wet but as parents are not your priority but we are the people that bring the funds because for you to be see that there you are getting money due to our children you cannot come to say that you have to talk about this
017topic if if not you're going to be cut off no Mr Michael you have not trained parents to come to this platform in the board there is no training what is the process that parents should use to come to the board and that you come and want to cut off the voice of the parent what is that about is it is it to censor parent voice that is the only way that we have to come and report your anomalies your incompetencies Mr Carvalho how is it that you can say that children are ready for the world when you still graduate students with a d when you brought um interventionists so when you get sick with a Tylenol you get better and that's what you want to use with our children because their interventionists will have
018training a six hour so that they can train parents teachers I'm embarrassing please do not install my intelligence and do not use that uh open way our education of our children our children are intelligent they're able who are incompetent is you in the negotiations that are so cheaply done with those that pay you but those parents that come free you don't even want to speak to you took away the parent subcommittee and now PCS is closed and it is the limitation there's Pac elections in the schools do not even announce it so what's that about thank you and have a good day thank you for your time Monica arazola I see you signed up to speak online but um you are not signed in right now are you here in the audience by chance Monica
019arazola are you not here okay Tracy Schroeder Tracy Schroeder you signed up to speak remotely are you on the line Tracy Schroeder the Schroeder is not here Ariana Jurado signed up to speak remotely under Tab 3 conference with labor negotiators but you are not here are you here in person by chance please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin on labor negotiations thank you because the last time I did the same thing and you were not you did not let me in so that I could speak and I did the same operation that I do today and I was able to go in I am in agreement with all of my parent colleagues that spoke before me about what they mentioned you are a way to
020opaque uh manipulate the situation when something's not your convenience you can't talk about this you can't talk about that but when it's something to your convenience you say parents come and support this and that and the union has the economic power and that's how you listen to them because you also benefit from them because you are employees of that department and that is why you support them but parents just like my colleagues mentioned you do not listen to us you just let us know or just count us uh where a number you don't care about what we think and based upon those numbers that we make up that we represent our children that are the ones that give you that feed you they're the ones that give you the money so that you live as
021you do you do not take us into account I have already told you very little parent engagement why because the information is not given before with time with clarity now I asked an investigation about Reseda Charter High School because they are wasting more than 170 million dollars it's just to be making a whole new high school again and nothing has been done nothing has been said it happened two weeks ago graffiti in the same school where it said if you don't want it if you want if you want to come next week don't if you want to live don't come next week but for the principle it wasn't important because it was just graffiti it is a threat and all the threats are to be taken seriously because it is our children who are enduring
022these situations are the ones that can endure the consequences of things such as this but they're not take into account the principle the regional North Regional North Mr Carvalho doesn't know that you do you guys know I don't think that you even knew about it and now it's not just that school in many schools so many things happen there's videos how they mistreat children how they get hit how this and that and what happens nothing happens you take away the police but listen but in the board there's police because we need to be careful about the parents maybe they'll do something to us right and it's not that way why do you take care of yourselves but you don't want to take care of the children with the same police why did you take away
023funds now everything that is happening it is a muted voice from parents that don't want to don't come that don't speak because they don't know how to because they're embarrassed because they don't know how to whatever reason because they're in despair they're tired they're fed up that you they speak and speak and that thank you for your time I just want to remind folks that this is Tab 3 conference with labor negotiators our rules state that um you're required to stay on the topic for what you signed up to speak if it is not general public comment so for example if your name is Nara vardarsian I'm sorry about that um Nara Derek I can't say it Nara V if you're speaking next you're signed up to speak on uh remotely you're supposed to limit
024your comments to the subject conference with labor negotiators and I can refer you to the rules so miss Nara I'm sorry for how I mispronounced your last name please go ahead you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin I see you're online remotely ready to speak just please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin Nara V okay we will come back to you it seems that there's something not working okay going to General Public comment so these are comments that have to do with anything having to do with LAUSD business you have three full minutes to talk about whatever you want having anything to do with District business so Alejandra Guzman Alejandra Guzman you're the first speaker please press star six to unmute yourself and
025you have three minutes to speak once you begin Alejandra Guzman okay I will come back to her Maria Luisa Palma I see you in the audience please come on up you have three minutes to speak once you begin good morning isn't it great for the Latino community in La that we have so many board members and Senior District officials who speak Spanish but what good does it do our community when you don't authentically engage with us my name is Maria Luisa Palma and I am here speaking today on my own behalf as a parent of an LAUSD student imagine as Citizens and taxpayers getting a notice on a Friday of an election that would occur in less than a week let's talk about this so-called parent advisory committee elections you apparently plan to go ahead
026with this week starting today on Saturday I emailed you all an open letter signed by a list of parents many of whom are very active on formal committees across the district plus other constituents where we outline the details of this absurd indefensible election process we also have the public participating through an online petition on change.org titled LAUSD remove barriers to parent committee participation and respect parents you first quietly posted notices of the elections on Friday buried on the S face website which nobody even knows exists for elections scheduled to start on Tuesday today at 10 A.M in region north and the rest of the week in the other regions there were no social media posts that I was able to find before that and I've seen only a few since then none of your individual
027board member or superintendent Facebook pages have the election flyer which looks like this no board members not Mr carvalhs so are you all trying to keep these elections a secret too and this is just one example of parent repression out of many for example the CAC membership debacle or the repeated request by dlac for regional committees so it's so great that our superintendents speak Spanish board members earlier this year I asked you to require Mr Carvalho to make appearances on Spanish language media to promote the existence of parent committees at the school sites and at the district level did that happen because I haven't seen any why the secrecy is it so that your administrators can install the chosen designated parents on these committees so that they'll approve whatever you put in front of them
028you already get to select some of the pack members yourselves directly are you going to continue to allow the s-face office under direction of Shannon Haber and Antonio Placencia to continue this shameful treatment of parents to conduct sham parent advisory committee elections and therefore to allow the local control and accountability plan advisory process to also be a sham your staff continues to disrespect parents to underminer democratic rights to participate in state mandated processes and to make a mockery of parent engagement to use parents as a rubber stamp so the state and federal funds continue to flow without accountability ironically the lcap which includes the word iconic accountability so when does this stop when do you muster the courage to stand up and say when will you speak for us the families who pay for your
029salaries when hasta cuando Basta thank you for your time okay I'm going to call up the next three I'm gonna actually call the next four folks so the folks who I call up please stand stage right Norberto standing all right so Norma Gonzalez come on up you come directly to the podium you have three minutes to speak once you begin anaheed are you here anaheed if you are will you step up to that side and then once once uh Miss Gonzalez has done it will be your turn Rosado I don't see you here but I will call you rosalba are you here okay there you are step over to the left side of the room um when you are ready and then Lucine Kira kosyan you'll also be up and uh momentum order we're gonna
030do the simultaneous translation for Miss Gonzalez so if you'd like to hear what she's saying in English as she is speaking in Spanish in the very same moment please raise your hand if you'd like to these headphones if not listos members of the board I'm Norma Gonzalez I'm a mother of four students that are in within the district it is concerning how there has been there is and there will continue to be fights and drug consumption in our school sites it's vital for the school police to return to the district and the schools is incredibly important because every day more young people are becoming Intoxicated by illegal substances and they aren't being protected in one of my child's school there's young people smoking in the bathrooms and there is a policy that hasn't been shown
031that they have to find the student with the actual cigarette in the mouth to do something about it or to be able to redirect a change so that this person can respect that so what is the policy that the school district has so that students if found even with you know the ash or with the smoke nearby can have some kind of assistance so they can stop doing this in the schools also the fights there are too many fights in the high schools and middle schools also bullying and sexual assault all of this because we don't have a representative of Justice if it can be called that a lot of Staff members are in agreement that school police should return but however this District hasn't done anything what do we need to wait for for
032one of the students to get to call severe damage or more fentanyl intoxication or marijuana there are so many things that are being ignored also another point I wanted to address is the parent involvement up until now there is a lack of parent involvement and we are being ignored and this new policy of volunteer uh is a says that it's 30 days before being approved and it's been over 30 days and they're still not approval due to vaccines or because there hasn't been a signature of approval from the principal what are we going to do about that I think it's important that there is involvement for parents why so that we have no more problems in the classroom so that there's more availability for communication with police with parents so that it can be a
033team but in reality that's not being that's not happening and I think the most important thing in my point is that the students have more availability and opportunities for programs but to be honest the programs are very limited for a handful of students for the ones that actually do have problems they are continue to to be ignored so please thank you for your time anaheed anaheed come on up you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin are we gonna have side conversations or do I speak you have three minutes to speak once you begin my name is anate malikin a mother of three and a product of LAUSD my three minutes is going to be split between two very important topics first one being discipline in our school systems is non-existent when I was
034in seventh grade at Madison Middle School I was in violation of a dress code I was made to wear loner clothes which were basically old set of PE clothes I decided to write on the clothing just like all the other kids had done so before me the only difference was I was caught by Mr Liu and sent to the Dean's office and subsequently suspended guess what I was disciplined for my actions and never again suspended that's how children learn right from wrong when they make a mistake they answer for their actions and are given a way to correct their behavior children need guidance children need to understand that there are consequences for their actions I look at the suspension rates for my local schools and it is almost non-existent we don't punish art students because
035excessive suspension rates have a negative effect on the local housing markets according to the California school dashboard my alma mater Ulysses S Grant High School has a suspension rate classified is very low according to their school website Grant High School shows a suspension rate of 0.0 percent for 2114 students Grant High School is located in Van Nuys and homes and the home school of students from Sherman Oaks in the studio city area monox Elementary in North Hollywood shows a suspension rate of 0.1 percent for 663 students what do these rates tell you except the fact that location matters and that for some reason Elementary School students are suspended at a higher rate than high school students this all brings me to my second issue which is the fact that most of this school board voted
036to defund the school police I will refer to the Los Angeles Times dated May 3rd 2023 quote where during one school day this week La unified grappled with three emergencies a double stabbing outside of high school a suspended fentanyl overdose at a middle school and a traffic collision outside an elementary school that badly injured a child the article goes on to state in part that the trauma was so alarming it prompted a morning call between mayor Karen bass and LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho the article continues to State the two leaders identified key safety concerns to address urgently traffic violence and drugs quote the mayor and I agreed that there are three main causes right now in our school system in our community they are putting young lives at risk Carvalho said so I ask you
037all to take a look at those three safety concerns and take into consideration that defunding the police which I will again remind you most of this board voted for has had a negative effect on our school system since defunding the police was such an important task for the board to handle I would like to ask who deals with traffic violence and drugs if not the police then who it's surely not you sitting comfortably in this boardroom looking down on all of us parents who are demanding you to do better teachers don't have the time and the resources to deal with this teachers are not paid enough to deal with this teachers must spend their time on education and not indoctrination we need to have teachers contr we need to have our teachers concentrate on our
038embarrassing test scores and not try to figure out who's bringing weapons into our campus when you defund the police you put every single child in danger any childhood as a result of the lack of presence of our school police is blood on your hands thank you for your time [Applause] you have three minutes to speak once you begin good morning superintendent Carvalho good morning board member Dr McKenna board member Dr Lucio Divas board member Scott schmerelson president for Jackie Goldberg our Secretariat Mr McLean board member Nick Melbourne and board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin good morning my name is rosalva Villanueva and I have served the students of Los Angeles Unified for over 24 years unpaid for the last 15 months for over a year I have come before the board to ask that the district's
039covid vaccine policy dated August 2021 be amended to include reasonable accommodations for myself and hundreds of Highly qualified experienced and trustworthy colleagues certificated and classified per the policy LAUSD deemed forced retirement forced resignation and involuntary unpaid status as reasonable on September 14 2023 judge Nelson of the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals commented in the Z pills versus J.R Inslee the governor of the state of Washington that quote an exemption without a legitimate accommodation seems like a sham and judge Hawkins described it as quote egregious on the same date September 14 2023 in the same courtroom the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals I was present in Seattle to witness Health Freedom defense fund represent California Educators for medical Freedom among other plaintiffs present oral arguments against this same mandate before judge Hawkins judge Nelson and judge
040Collins during the hearing judge Nelson was quote shocked and later quote really floored by lausd's argument for the vaccine policy that is still in place today similarly similarly judge Collins labeled lausd's current vaccine policy quote irrational and completely arbitrary to know counsel from other cases on both sides were taken aback that there existed a vax mandate that was still in effect interestingly enough when I became aware of the district's uh this titled the rescission of the alausd vaccine requirement to rescind the vaccine mandate I noticed that it was submitted also on September 14 2023 the same date as the above hearing I asked that when the vaccine mandate is lifted you will present a just return agreement and make whole all employees who were so negatively affected by this mandate thank you for your time
041Lucine kirikosian come on up you have three minutes to speak once you begin good morning board on September 14 2023 a federal judge sided with two teachers from Escondido Rincon Middle School who sued over the district policies governing what information can be shared with parents of transgender and gender non-conforming students the judge wrote A Parent's right to make decisions concerning the care custody control and medical care of their children is one of the oldest of the fundamental Liberty interests that Americans enjoy the judge agreed that the teacher's religious beliefs were violated and wrote that students in that position would be harmed because they need Parental Guidance and possibly mental health intervention utla calls us extremists I'm sure you can't do the same to this judge though surely we can't all be extremist sitting here today
042taking time off of our jobs to be here and address you we're simply parents we care deeply for our kids and the quality of Education they are entitled to receive I want the board and the union to consider the teachers for a quick second Any teacher who discusses sexuality with my child I can file a claim against them at the commission on teacher credentialing which is a California website it's impossible to discuss topics of lgbtq without talking about sexuality so you're not only violating the teacher's religious beliefs by making them lie to parents but you're also putting them at risk of losing their credentials that they've worked so hard to obtain I'm here today urging you on behalf of all the parents sitting in the audience and many more who couldn't be here in person
043to consider placing parental notification policy on the agenda to be voted for the same policy that six other districts in our state have already passed let's talk about books for a quick second an organization called gender Nation donated 75 000 books to LAUSD elementary schools all with one objective to sexualize and confuse children books like Annie's plaid shirt Melissa I am Jazz it feels good to be yourself red sparkle boy and so many more these books are available to kindergarten to fifth graders all these books discuss how kids can miraculously not be a boy or a girl or neither and they could choose this is dangerous rhetoric to serve to a four-year-old who doesn't even know how to tie their shoelaces Governor Newsom signed into law yesterday ab1078 which took away the parents ability to
044remove books that we deem inappropriate I have a proposal for the board our organization is ready and willing to donate books from bravebooks.us organization concentrates on instilling pro-america and pro-god values into kids we just need the green light from you if having lgbtq related books is a necessity and a must we like for God to come back into the libraries at all schools across LAUSD the minute we stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance every morning and took the word God out of all the libraries is the moment the indoctrination started again I urge you all to consider this thank you for your time Stephanie I see you're on the line please press star 6 to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Stephanie hi good morning esteemed board members and
045superintendent carvajo my name is Stephanie maynetto Jackson I am part of Board District 2. thank you for allowing me the opportunity to address you today as a graduate of LAUSD and now as a parent of LAUSD students we must recognize the critical importance of addressing the negative impacts of co-location and the ongoing trend of privatizing our education system it is imperative that we heed this call and take immediate action to safeguard the future of public education and LAUSD and across our nation Charter Schools currently lack oversight and accountability they are held to much different standards and it is well documented that they are not inclusive in nature our public schools are already struggling to provide a quality education to our students due to inadequate resources and insufficient funding Norm days have only become worse in
046LAUSD the combinations of grades does not benefit our children co-locating charter schools within our public school campuses further compounds these problems exacerbating the challenges our students and Educators face daily it's a zero zum game where the winners are not our children but those with vested interest in the privatization of Education according to lausd's 2022 2026 strategic plan the mission is clear realizing Excellence for all students by providing the unique rigorous and culturally relevant education that each and every student deserves one solution that can be implemented in a pilot program to move forward with I have emailed to all the board members and superintendents our Title 1 Elementary School Buchanan Street Elementary is ready and willing to become a fully steam magnet with a dual language option something that is being done at school districts all
047throughout California and in the biggest District in the nation New York City this will allow us to move forward with the pillars in our strategic plan and bring our students back to actual Public Schools our School receives their ecas and lost all those new students to Charter Schools private schools and those are schools that won't take our current special education students that won't take our English learner students but with this program we will have it all we will do what pillar 1C says eliminating the opportunity Gap pillar two welcoming learning environments pillar 3 leading for impact pillar 4 we would use data-driven decision making to make these efforts something that's already done in LAUSD in secondary programs this is something that it is not done at the elementary level due to a budgetary line item
048this is something we can change and help and we're moving to towards the promise of bilingualism the Seal of by literacy which You're Expecting 50 percent of graduates to have by 2026 if we start this at the elementary level where we know the data shows children learn faster are able to learn languages one of the other things that this would provide is pillar 5 the diverse Workforce that we so desperately need in LAUSD thank you for your time I appreciate I appreciate it and your consideration sorry I'm starting to make it under three minutes thank you very much for your time we appreciate it uh Carl Peterson I see you're on the line Carl Peterson please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Carl Peterson good
049morning back in June the department of students family and Community engagement f space presented this board with the proposed membership list for the community advisory committee CAC that purged experienced members including the elected chair after this was brought to your attention the approval of the list was pulled from the agenda with the expectations the process would be Revisited unfortunately the next iteration of The Proposal membership proposed membership was almost exactly the same as the first however the delay was useful in that it provided additional time to delve into the bylaws that are supposed to govern this election process as was reported to you in August these bylaws state that it is the CAC not f space that is supposed to control the process it is the CAC that is charged with establishing an appointment committee
050by selecting half of its members the appointment committee is empowered to create the rubric used to judge the qualifications of the candidate since none of this was done the item was pulled from the agenda again once again with the hope that the proper procedure would be finally followed unfortunately there was no indication that f space is willing to remedy past the stakes an appointment committee has not been stated by the CAC because essays will not allow the CAC to meet sspace is also refusing to divulge what rubric is being used in the selection process the officers of the committee have asked for this information but have not been given these details so much for a selection process driven by peers as you have already heard the leadership of the parent advisory committee is now also
051alleging that s space is not following proper procedures for that committee's elections the board can no longer remain a passive bystander to these issues the State Education Code mandates these current committees and s space is supposed to provide support instead they are acting like they have the right to control them if the leadership at the s space cannot act in accordance with the law then they need to immediately be replaced with my remaining time I would like to speak in support of the resolution that you will vote on later today to provide protections to Lac LAUSD students whose neighborhood schools have been forced to give up space to publicly funded privately operated charter schools I would like to note that the AstroTurf organizations that have called this proposal devices said nothing when Charters were allowed
052to display students with special education needs forcing them into closets they were silent as mvmi students bullied a BOCES public school student as he participated in adaptive PE I have not heard anything from these organizations as Charter Schools refused to pay the millions of dollars they own penalties for taking more space than they were entitled to I am proud to stand with the many school-based organizations that represent LAUSD students who signed a letter supporting this resolution these parents students and teachers have personally seen the damage that prop 39 co-locations cause and seek Solutions instead of rhetoric thank you thank you for your time Paola Meneses I see you on the line Paula menaces please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Paola m hello hi are
053you one of the year okay good morning good morning I am Paola Meneses I have three children that attend LAUSD schools thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today the parents of King view have a lot of worries and I want to tell you that Personnel calls me to obtain information but I don't see any solution the parents of Kingsley we've tried to have a dialogue with the principal we have no success she promised that in the beginning of elac committees they would she would open the parent Center and as the superintendent mentioned as of now this has not happened I also asked the principal Yoon what was her plan to bring and to involve more parents and she ignored me as of now she only has new personnel and they don't know
054what to do and when the elections were made the principal decided who will Who was going to be the president and the secretary or the chairperson and the chairperson is the one who took charge of this meeting she counted votes it is very difficult to have a principal like Ms June she has no empathy for a Latino Community then she knows we don't speak the language I feel discriminated and on October 19th at 8 30 we will have a meeting I would love for the district Personnel to verify and join us and see that we are sharing it what I'm sharing is true and take this consideration parents there are parents that we want a different what we want a different principle we don't feel welcome and in the contrary parents have are not attending
055the meetings because of the way we are being treated is it possible that you do something listen to us I ask you as a mother please please do something Miss Jackie Goldberg would join and visit our school I always said hello to her for many years and I would love for the superintendent visit our school he has promised to visit all schools and honestly I would love for him to visit our schools believe me it is very difficult to be there and see how the principal treats us we cannot have a dialogue with her we feel that she ignores us please I ask do something about it for myself and for all parents and for the children that we have at our at our schools it is very sad how we are seeing how parents
056are not getting involved and parents are even pulling their children from that school and putting them into another school because they don't feel comfortable imagine how this school will be left there will be no children left we had a d-like meeting and the principal said that there are not enough students why is it it's because of the way she's treating us children's are being pulled out I feel very honored for this school because my children have graduated and they've learned two languages English and Spanish and now believe me it looks so great when they speak both languages at their new school I don't want to feel sad about this school and I don't want more things to happen because of this principle please I ask thank you forgot about my heart do something we appreciate
057your time thank you Robina sule I see her on the line please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Robina Sewell Robina good morning good morning we're being a school the executive director of California state schools I'm the co-coordinator of the Los Angeles environmental justice Network recently California State School sent a letter to the board from approximately 40 individuals representing diverse groups requesting that the School Safety Committee add the integrated Pest Management policy and committee to their agenda based upon an LA unified board May 2002 decision making process for the LA unified integrated Pest Management policy and oversight committee which directs matters to the School Safety Committee so to receive notification via email from the board Secretariat stating that an ad hoc committee that had never
058convened nor fully publicly identified or confirmed its members and is preempting a previous board directive was enormously troubling by its very nature and ad hoc committee is not fully public or fully transparent it doesn't allow full public participation and the selection of committee members is done privately for parents teachers students and all School stakeholders you deserve especially at La unified full transparency and full public participation not less equally troubling is a request for a proposal distributed by the district to develop a new integrated Pest Management policy and manual at the cost of 250 000 possibly more for a three-month contract why is it that no board members that we or our Coalition members have spoken to are aware of this contract and when we directly ask board Secretariat he too claimed to have no knowledge
059of who initiated this contract please please board members and superintendent advise us who initiated this contract I think it's important to have a very short history of how this policy came about 1998 students at an elementary school were sprayed by an LA unified Gardener wearing a hazardous material suit with toxic pesticides the School Safety Committee aware other incidents like this had happened convened a working group of parents teachers District staff medical experts scientists who work together for one year to create a groundbreaking policy that led to California legislation the healthy schools act and assembly Bill 405 whose author was the phenomenal Cindy Montana sponsored by California safe schools Side by Governor Schwarzenegger the LA unified policy has become the gold standard it's become nationally and internationally celebrated done at no cost full transparency and full
060public participation there needs to be an immediate course correction the board is being misled in believing that the problem is the oversight committee the problem is actually maintenance and operations management not the technician thank you very much we appreciate your time thank you okay uh Dave I see you're on the line Dave just please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Dave my call is concerning the covet vaccine mandate LAUSD is currently being sued over the coveted vaccine mandate where there's a recent video of three judges from the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who are having a lively exchange with the district's lawyers one judge says your policy today is a vax mandate that is Satisfied by a shot given two and a half years ago
061that's not rational the CDC concedes that after a period of time they don't prevent transmission and yet you're insisting on it still another judge chimes in later saying and the fact that 99.9 percent of government bodies aren't requiring mandates anymore isn't enough to establish for you I'm honestly shocked by your argument LAUSD was aware that the vaccines do not prevent transmission because many of the unvaccinated teachers who went through the interactive process in May of 2022 had argued this point to the district Personnel in the meeting in all circumstances the district never provided a valid scientific explanation other than stating they are doing it for health safety reasons here you have an employer issuing a vaccine mandate where one group can't take the shot due to medical reasons and another group can't take the shot
062due to legally protected sincerely held religious beliefs and the employer intentionally does not provide any scientific rationale as a basis for the Mandate even when challenged and still proceeds to deny employees their jobs so I'm not a legal scholar but I mean you know one could conclude there that appears to be medical discrimination and religious discrimination the way that I see it is that LASD has two options going forward option number one continue on with a vaccine mandate however you need to explain the rationale of why the Mandate is still necessary in addition since you are apparently still concerned about employees transmitting covet the district must amend the mandate to immediately require every single LAUSD employee to receive the newly released covid booster shot or option number two the board votes to end the Mandate
063today and then starting next week you bring every single employee who has been displaced uh by the mandate every educator who is on unpaid leave or has been terminated needs to be immediately reinstated and placed on full paid status with Benefits fully restored including back pay for every day of work missed in addition you bring back the teachers they were forced to retire early and fully restore them this issue doesn't just affect unvaccinated teachers it also affects our school kids LAUSD has a severe teacher shortage where too many classes do not have a seasoned teacher but instead are taught by either a substitute teacher or a teacher who only has an emergency teaching credential let's bring back the season tenure teachers our kids deserve it thank you very much thank you for your time Carla
064Franco are you here Carla Franco come on up and if you'd like to hear what Miss Franco is saying in English as she speaks it in Spanish please put your hands up and we will give you these headsets which will allow you to simultaneously hear what she's saying buenos dias superintendent I am here because the situation in Southgate High School really is out of hand completely for the principal as well as for the superintendent Huerta I just submitted to the superintendent superintendent documents of a student of many that have had and have consequences for their lifetime it's a record that they were hospitalized in November it will be the fourth surgery that the student will have in their ear they lost their hearing for life what I told the superintendent I think that I'm you
065know really saddened me because the principle does not report what is really happening in the school site for years he has been covering up what's been happening on last Wednesday there was a very bad fight we know that there are teenagers and they're stronger and that's even more dangerous and instead of taking them to the discipline area they just pushed them off like criminals and they took out the backpacks Mr Choi close the door and Mr Martinez did as well so that they can continue their fight outside they have Personnel that does not look after students privacy they expose not only the students for danger but also their family that is that student that I just gave you the documentation to the superintendent the dean shared their home information and all of their personal information
066to those that attacked him and now they're being being chased by the outside the family outside of the school side see how serious this can get when there's no action taken this is one of many cases that I'm helping many parents with and I'm so saddened to notice that we are getting worse we've told you before that we want the police the staff cannot do it I have the videos here of how the teenagers are fighting and the personality cannot handle it let's not wait for a tragedy to happen just like I told the parents and the superintendent Huerta after what I went through with my son Jose I swore that it will another student will not suffer from bullying and no other family would either and it's so sad to see now that this
067still happens because you're not listening to us you just have us as problematic parents and I it makes me laugh to notice that you say that if you know something say something how do you plan to carry it out we have it dictator as a principal the Personnel is not respected parents are not respected students are not respected and the type of personnel are the ones that we don't want you know what they told me that the principal will not be removed because he's the superintendent's best friend how is it that because of a friendship you are putting in danger the life of our children Miss Jackie ice Mr my son John sent you a message this morning he asked me again why is he in The Culinary class if you could please if you
068will um take him that stove Elizabeth run the line Elizabeth Robles please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Elizabeth Robles courtroom didn't mean hi is it the uh the vaccination requirement is still in effect yes is there anywhere else in the country where that's still the case I don't know your honor but you're coming here and saying no we have a right to condition employment on you conducting your medical treatment the way we like that's that's not Jacobson that's something really different your other similar arguments have been asserted in other cases around the country no I didn't find any other court that adopted the medical treatment yes I mean you don't need that broad of an interpretation of Jacobson to win the case correct I
069agree it's a rational um thesis that is all we have to prove and I think I'm so sorry but Jacobson won't apply if if your position you can see that the vaccines don't um prevent transmission I mean and that was it's alleged in the complain and this was done on the pleadings that they don't and there's a fair amount of science at this point that their ability to prevent transmission is a very limited window and expires and yet you're willing to accept someone who had a vaccine two years ago who clearly has no it has no ability to prevent transmission and yet today it this doesn't fit Jacobson and it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense I mean what is the what if we're here 20 years ago 20 years from now and
070the LA's you know still requiring a whole new generation the LA school districts required a whole new generation wouldn't we say wait you can't do that there's no current threat the debate that's not that's not my question what happened in 2020 happened in 2020 here we have a situation where you're still imposing this requirement and so I I mean at some point the rational basis starts to wane or not now so most of the people in the building are unvaccinated that there's a handful of people who have to be have to be vaccinated wonderful what about today what's the justification for keeping this going I mean we've had we've had every other attorney in here saying there's no way we would require vaccines again today you couldn't get away with it and you're up here
071standing you're saying No this makes this is completely Common Sense uh we you know we can keep doing I mean your theory we can keep this in place for the next time okay thank you for your time Mark W are you here Mark W come on up and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin okay um good morning supervisor Carvalho members of the Los Angeles Unified District Board of Education I'm Mark wichke 30-year adult and teacher who just retired uh you may or not remember but I was here last year and the occasion was to ask for an adult audit of days the division of adult and Career Education the request came on the heels of an audit of Montebello Adult School by the Los Angeles County Board of Education which revealed that
072268 thousand dollars was paid to Montebello Unified employees at its adult schools some for working with no class was in session or for classes with as few as one student the payments were made over the last five years without district and or board approval the root cause was that select teachers and non-teaching employees were tapped for extra assignments in adult education the audit found that employees who landed the Cherry assignments received overtime and even double time two employees in 2015 and 16 and again in 2016 and 17 made more than 180 000 annually when combined with the regular salaries of the 268 000 columns the question 84 percent was compensation paid for work either not board approved or in violation of collective bargain agreements and then in some cases a potentially gift of public funds
073lately another Scandal came closer to home and that was the uh when a small group of Los Angeles Flight School District employees collected more than seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars combined in extra pay over three years however as my colleague and I reported last year the extra pay corruption at days quite exceeds the Montebello and West local district office scandals in days dozens of people with teaching certificates are making well over with the adult with the average adult classroom teacher makes drawing Hefty six-figure salaries with gilded out of classroom assignments now the average pay for this Adult School teacher with 20 to 30 years of experience is about seventy thousand dollars I retired with seventy three thousand dollar salary 30 years experience according to data from transparent California in 2021 the latest data available
07474 certificated non-administrators made over a hundred thousand dollars with the top person earning a hundred and thirty five thousand dollars nearly double that of the average adult ed teacher in past years that same teacher who made that top amount has made up to a hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year of those 74 people making a hundred hundred thousand dollars or over all but 15 are assigned out of the classroom this has been going on for years there are many violations of District policy and Doling out this large s uh I won't I don't have time to get into it um but I think I'm not going out I think I'm not going out on a limb to suggest that the average taxpayer wants their hard-earned tax dollars to go to teachers who don't teach
075six-figure salaries thank you thank you for your time Mary the acrosack I see you're on the line Mary zakrasek please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Mary Z good morning I was a former parent representative Miss Z is it possible for you to speak up more directly into your receiver and I will also turn up the volume in here we just you're coming through very faintly thank you good morning I was a former parent representative on the IPM committee yesterday a research report came out that had reviewed all available scientific literature on pesticides and children 0 to 14. one finding in the report is that there are links between Cancer and 70 percent of commonly used School pesticides researchers are calling for a halt to
076pesticide use in favor of other safer measures 25 years ago due to the shocking pesticide spraying of children by a gardener in a hazmat suit LAUSD worked with California safe schools to create just such a policy it used methods based first and foremost on prevention this proved to be so successful it led to the healthy schools act nab405 notably the use of Roundup was banned 25 years ago on school sites with such a successful track record why would a request for proposal be initiated to develop an IPM policy along with a 250 000 plus contract with the LAUSD IPM policy known as being the most stringent in the nation any other policy would only lower the standards in regards to the agriculture product the district was cited for illegally applying on school sites the product
077used is an anticoagulant amazing it reduces the clotting ability of the blood and causes bleeding the board was told it was merely the wrong size bag that was ordered and all was fine the truth is the product order clearly is labeled with ag on it requires a special license to order the company it's purchased from is not allowed to sell it to school it's not labeled for use on school sites and every staff person and manager in mno should know this how did all those missteps occur and were parents at all the school sites that were diseased on ever notified the LAUSD investigative report on the use of this product has never been released to the oversight committee additionally even with a procedural protocol in place the 52302 decision making process document district is still
078choosing to delay the confirmation of a parent representative nominated a year ago and a physician representative nominated two months ago what possible explanation could there be for not approving these representatives to make the IPM committee fully functional as research continues to show the role of pesticides and causing chronic health conditions and children being the most vulnerable now would be a prudent time for the board to prioritize the protection of children and all School stakeholders with the immediate approval of these Representatives request the investigative report and reveal why an outside firm is being hired through the RFP thank you for your time returning to the first Speaker Alejandra Guzman I sit around on the line Alejandra Guzman please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Alejandra Guzman
079Alejandra Guzman please press star 6 to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Alejandro Guzman por favor muted yourself good morning my name is Alejandra Guzman and I am a mother of five children that belong or go to the LA unified and first of all I want to address three points first to ask to for the police to return the schools where my students uh attend are in Hollywood and many of us parents are concerned due to this um situation of constant danger that they're having not only inside of the schools secondly also if please please bring back the student the teachers that were let go 2021 just when they wanted to express their rights just like as we parents denials the opportunity to answer those who do not have
080that vaccine in our bodies and third and lastly on the 14 uh we had the back to school night at Grant High School after that I had the opportunity to talk to other mother of how their experiences had been and particularly when I was with a mother who had already shown me her concern that her 11 year old felt very comfortable the first days of school when seeing the lgbtq flags in her school the point is that when this when she had the opportunity this parent with other parents to go into the classroom in return she did not see any other flags and that's why she asked her daughter and she confirmed that the teacher had them when he she exited the classroom when she left the classroom that day so I'm asking why is
081it the teacher that it is okay to have that flag in for more than seven hours during the day for children that are 11 years old in sixth grade but it does not feel correct to have them a few hours before the parents so I also want to ask why do you want to take away the rights that the policy grants us from laus d to review the curriculum the rights that the state of California grants us but most of all the time the rights that the United States Constitution grants us what makes you think that a teacher in the community or you can know better our children why don't you let them um have their infancy um to have childhood to have they're just children and they need to be allowed to be that
082children take into account there's so many children that feel intimidated with the the community flag in their classroom please as a parent I asked to leave our children alone thank you thank you for your time and for the uh board members staff and listening audience we have some folks who showed up for Tab 3 and we're going to get to you right now Monica arazola I see you're here come on up you have three minutes to speak once you begin and right after that we'll do Mr David tokowsky and then there are a couple more Collins who also showed up for tab three I'll note that tab three is conference with labor negotiators so tab three is conference with labor negotiators thank you for the opportunity to be here today I tried communicating via cell
083phone but it's incredibly difficult actually I understand the parents that have been trying to call in um and asking to speak I'm saying one of the 430 parents that have signed my petition and have told me that it's been very difficult for them to connect to this system so I tried it and I also saw that it's horrible and frustrating not being able to connect via phone uh so thank you for the opportunity as far as item three is to talk about the police because we are in favor of them as parents and we are coinciding in that it is very important since it's safety in schools and we also agree that police needs to be physically present in school sites and we don't want anything to happen that would affect other people I've had
084the opportunity to speak to those parents and we're all in agreement that yes it's very important security within the schools not outside outside you know what already happened happened inside the schools right so inside the school sites it's where we need to have this support in this Focus because our children are not having breakfast and why because they're scared to go alone to the bathroom and they're closed and they don't have the confidence to go to the bathroom and especially girls when they're on their period for example they need to go to the bathroom that's so important so you know I that's a personal thing that we need to be able to do is go to the bathroom and our children are not eating to avoid having a confrontation in the bathrooms and the fights
085that we're seeing we're seeing what happens when there is no Authority present and and the fact that there was one or two police doesn't mean that all of them are bad just you know there's good women bad uh good men and we can't generalize and say there's you know there's always good and bad so it's very important that police presence be at the schools and have already said that I already have a petition of 430 my goal is a thousand I personally am going to submit those thousand signatures and we're going to have a group of parents come to submit them as well and just like me there's other parents that are also collecting signatures and it's going to be something big and notable so to express that we want that police support because we
086know that's what's going to help us anyway thank you very much for the opportunity thank you for your time have a great day uh Mr tokowski the three minutes is yours once you begin good all right Madam president Mr superintendent members of the board uh senior staff a very Happy New Year to all of you and as well to a happy budget that you'll have the unaudited actuals I congratulate you on a a process that has yielded a another positive budget for the three school years ahead I'm speaking on the litigation matter and of course those are very difficult cases you have in closed session today and they are a drain of course the litigation costs are a drain on the budget and and these cases and like cases are I think approaching over half
087a billion dollars over the last 10 years and so something has to be done on the defense side but as it's football season we know that good defense would be a good off a best offense would be a good offense and there's a number of litigation matters and I believe that you could be doing a little bit more the Inspector General found a number of cities municipalities who haven't paid their developer fees I don't know if it's moved from an audit to action and the resources so it'd be good to to pursue uh that Revenue we haven't even touched the city of La and and some of the bigger entities this kind of action is something that a board member melvoy did with respect to the tobacco industry when he first got on the board
088to pursue litigation against uh those that who are affecting our children similarly the big lawsuits on artificial intelligence and the effects on children these are litigation that will yield in in the medium term not the long term or the short-term revenue for this District we know this because I when I was on the board we did the lawsuit uh involved eraf what's called eraf and you'll see the e-wrap in your budget on our actuals uh this is this was hundreds of millions if not cumulative over a billion dollars uh we had to sue the DWP who was charging us the wrong rate we had to do what was a Quee Tam lawsuit in the best interests of the children that yielded 150 million dollars so there are litigation that you can pursue uh offensively uh
089some of which you've done some some could be done enrollment um this is very important and I'm going to just return after a year almost two years of talking directly about the Affiliated Charters if we have an online school and it is any good it should be an online Affiliated school so kids from Del Norte to Mexico can enroll on our online that that would yield thousand two thousand three thousand students because other school districts don't have this similarly we could be doing our continuation schools our opportunity schools other districts don't have the likes of these if you made them Affiliated kids will come enrollment will increase Revenue will help the budget and it will not be a polemic with respect to health benefits health benefits are Central to this district and I joined the
090league of Davids that you'll be in closed session with as another David saying do the right thing support your employees and build the revenue of your budget thank you very much thank you for your time I'm going to return to two folks on the phone uh Nara V I see you're on the line with us still in Nara V please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Nara V I see you're unmuted hi can you hear me now we certainly can please proceed hi um since I took my daughter to school at sarikoi elementary we have been going through a tremendous amount of stress just a few years ago we were fighting just to to be able to attend classes because my daughter was kicked out
091of school for not wearing a mask even though she had a medical exemption signed by her doctor my daughter missed most of her first grade then last year she was having a perfect attendance until June 2nd I just wanted my daughter to be opt out from Friday assembly on June 2nd but no choice was given even though I I collected 514 signatures from parents who also didn't want the assembly to take place in sariko elementary or at least to have an option to opt out but nothing changed the assembly took place even though uh we didn't take our kids to school on June 2nd and outside of our school that day antifa was offending and fighting with parents and on June 2nd that same day when I approached to Mr Carvalho to ask why he
092never responded my emails or phone calls he didn't want to talk to me he didn't look at me and told school police to tell me I would get arrested if I wouldn't leave this is a shame to have such District many of our ta's teachers employees lost their jobs to the covet vaccine we can't become volunteers now because they're asking for covet vaccine enough is enough NP circus please time to leave us alone and leave our kids alone thank you thank you for your time and our final caller on Tab 3 for conference with labor negotiators is Tracy Schroeder so Ms Schroeder we look forward to your comments on conference with labor negotiators Tracy Schroeder just press star six to unmute yourself and we look forward to your comments on conference with labor negotiators we
093sure can go ahead oh good um I apologize I'm actually looking at the building um so I'll need to pull over but luckily the light is red and I will be hands-free um so good morning thank you very much for uh for uh allowing me to unmute and um I wanted to address the school board this morning so I'll begin my time now um good morning my name is Tracy Schroeder and I would like to take a little walk through history beginning um August 13th 2021 and on that day employees who had already begun work uh with their classes um in classroom setup and um and ready to go in meetings ready to start school with their students um were sent an email that said that they would no longer be able to work um
094uh in in due time unless they took um a shot uh required being required by our school board um since that time um hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of employees were blocked off of LAUSD campuses unable uh to even set foot on a campus um due to this this uh requirement um on December 7th of 2021 not long after nearly 500 classified employees and a handful of sophisticated employees were told that they would be fired by this school board I called in on that day and actually was in about the same location that I am right now and um trying to get in to speak to you because for many of us it takes nearly two hours to get uh to the the school board offices and this is important because um because hundreds of
095people lost their jobs and I know many of them by name I know their stories they have families they um they they care about about our schools and the students who who attend they've been loyal for so many years but that's not the end another 300 certificated employees who were put online uh were we're told no position for you and put in some strange classification and and and and have been without pay for I believe 15 months that's over a year these are loyal employees highly qualified and excellent at what they do they love the students they care about the parents and and they respect the space of learning today on your agenda is um is in labor negotiations you are going to be meeting with United teachers of Los Angeles with Allah and and
096I also believe um I think that the other Union um um the eiu seio thank you very much for your time we appreciate your time thank you because I just my last statement is that something's been omitted an amendment is needed and for that reason um these employees need to be made whole thank you for your time okay this completes public comment for the period it is now 10 33 21 we will adjourn in we will I'm sorry um I believe we have a presentation oh there's a presentation in this oh I'm sorry if I was in the afternoon meeting I'm sorry go ahead we will now hear from our superintendent with a presentation I thought it was for the afternoon thank you very much Madam president um the presentation shall be a brief one
097but uh it is intended to shed some a truthful light on the matter that unfortunately has been fraught with some degree of uh innuendo and and rumor mongering I believe this uh this school district this board this Administration currently treats and and Views health care benefits for our Workforce as a sacred right as a human right and uh that is not changing um it has been it's unfortunate that however it started there are some entities in our community respected entities former employees received heartbreaking emails for many of them who labored for decades for our great school system and today are left wondering as to whether or not the health care protections that have been afforded to them and were guaranteed to them as they enter retirement whether or not those would continue so I am
098here to put their minds and their hearts at ease this board sustains often many accusations as does this Administration and it's okay to sustain those accusations when they are rooted in truth here's the truth this board this Administration have never contemplated have never discussed never Advanced a single proposition that would lead to an end result that would undermine the health care protections that our retired employees benefit from the board that's sitting here today you know that it's true never has it been discussed never has been proffered or recommended not by the board not by Administration secondly even if that Preposterous proposition had been considered I think there are enough individuals who know number one it would be unfair you do not change a deal that was made with these individuals as they enter retirement you
099don't do that I wouldn't do it to my parents my grandparents we shouldn't do it to anyone secondly from a legal perspective there is some degree of Truth associated with the fact that these individuals based on what they signed up for as they entered retirement have some degree of property rights over their health care benefits that cannot be altered cannot be changed so it is the right thing to do so simply said this Administration this board have never considered discussed or Advanced any proposition that would undermine the health care benefits that our retirees benefit from there's not to say another truth and these are mutually truthful at the same time in the outer years this District does face some serious Financial concerns associated with the escalating cost of Health Care but that is not the
100fault of this board not the fault of the workforce not the fault of Labor or unions that is a reality in our community in our state and quite frankly across the country not enough Health Care reform has taken place at all levels at the federal level at the state level there's still a lack of transparency asked to the costs associated with health care the transactions between the providers Hospital doctors clinics and the insurers lack of transparency no doubt resulting in profit to some at the expense of the workers of our community particularly Los Angeles Unified this escalating nature of health care costs nine to ten percent a year is not sustainable it is not sustainable it forces us to look at the same dollar that is invested in terms of student programs initiatives support systems
101or compensation for our employees side by side with their health care needs it is just not right not fair at the same time I want to declare the work that the health benefits Council has done over years in terms of mitigating cost escalation is remarkable and I want to salute that we look forward to continuing our relationship our participation through this process to ensure that despite the escalating nature of health care costs we can arrive at a negotiated solution that ultimately protects high quality health care for our employees and their dependents not only those who are active employees but those who have entered retirement or will enter retirement we are in that process right now today's brief presentation serves two purposes number one to shed light on the process itself inclusive of information specific to
102financial information the process the timelines secondly as I just stated a firm affirmation that we are not pivoting away from the commitment that this board has made to this Workforce and as we continue these conversations and negotiations we have both a professional responsibility but in this case also a moral responsibility to do right by our employees and their dependents the financial world is not going to go away though there's hard work ahead but that hard work needs to be timed appropriately if in fact we are to reach solutions that are practicable and implementable so with that said let me turn the stage over to someone who I believe you know well take it away please thank you superintendent good morning board members staff senior staff members of the audience people here and at home and
103wherever else you may be so superintendent said it really well and I wanted to make sure that not only his words but our writing absolutely State we're not going to do anything with respect to retiree benefits it's not on the agenda never has been so that is the very first slide and the first thing we start with for those who need it in writing there it is so the agenda today we're going to very briefly go over the background projected causes impacts what some others are doing and then where do we go from here so really we're talking about the why so we start with the why why do this today we're doing this today because the super sent as a superintendent mentioned the health benefits agreement that is the document that controls the language
104between the unions and the district expires at the end of this year most of our medical plans also expire at the end of this year and as you'll see when you hear from the finance folks we are facing a very substantial deficit for 25 26. so that was the why the who is who is covered by our medical plans so this is a is a slide to just give you a snapshot on who is enrolled in what and who is covered by this of of note uh you'll see when you look at the number of employees it's 55 684 is listed here um you might know that we actually have more employees than that so why aren't all the employees on here well a number of them about 4 200 of our employees choose what's
105called an opt-out program and they're not listed here because they are not enrolled in a plan they take advantage of the district offering to pay them Alum sum of money in lieu of joining the health plan many of those employees are married spouses within the district so they take advantage of having that full family coverage and then their their spouse can get some money instead it also does not include the about 2 800 people that will be added to the ranks of benefited employees come January 1st as a result of a prior labor negotiation action you'll note the number of retirees along with their dependents is almost a third of the total people covered by our benefit plan and that number is increasing over time as employees are living or retirees are living longer and
106we continue to hire so that number goes up so what we're talking about here is almost 200 000 people who are very much directly impacted by the decisions that the districts and the health benefits committee make so now we turn to the how how is it that we decide what our benefit plans are so the structure is gosh it's about 30 years old if I'm not mistaken and it was set up then so that the labor unions would make decisions regarding plan design it averted a strike in 1992 and was generally well received at the time when I first got involved in this in about 2006 the district ended up with one vote so prior to that involvement the unions made all the decisions the district had no voice in plan design we did pick
107up one vote so the current language current situation is that there are nine votes total each Union has one and the district has one so in terms of planned design the district has about 11 percent of the influence on the decisions so the governing document that controls how all this is done is the health benefits agreement that is the agreement that we have with each of the unions it spells out the roles and responsibilities of the parties so the health benefits committee proposes all the plan design modifications does the first round of negotiations on the Health and Welfare contracts is as superintendent noted responsible for maintaining and working within a budget and containing costs whenever possible and also we have current language in the agreement that asks the health benefits committee to work with us
108on addressing other post-employment benefits we've got a couple of slides coming up on that later and we'll go into more on that so now we turn to the what so what what is the Union's position on funding so we met with the unions last month all all uh eight of them and they gave us this proposal The Proposal uh called for fully funding benefits for three years uh based on the cost estimates that the benefits consultant Siegel provided and they also wanted to have a 200 million dollar ending balance a surplus if you will at the end of the three-year period when we costed this out it works out to about a 35 percent increase in costs we'll get into the particulars later when you get to the finance section but that was the main
109thrust of their proposal to the district they also wanted to remove the reference to uh meaningfully addressing the district's untunded liability that is the opeb funding they wanted to take that language out citing that the district hadn't met on it for a while and therefore it was unnecessary they wanted a commitment Clause to ensure equity for all employees in specifically looking at Family formation benefits increased mental health gender affirmation care and they wanted to remove remove the section within the existing agreement that calls for the district's ability to unilaterally Implement premium changes premium contributions other very adverse actions in the event that an agreement could not be reached then earlier this month we met with the health benefits committee and we outlined our counter proposal our counter proposal called for full funding for one year
110one year of full funding in order to give us time to sit down and talk about the concerns that we have for 25 26. the idea being that would buy us time to be able to sit down negotiate the changes that we need I did not include a reserve because with the promise that we would be fully funding benefits we felt a reserve was unnecessary we offered to have successor and negotiations immediately upon the board approving the health benefits agreement which we hoped would happen in October we still hope it would happen in October we just we agreed to discuss and evaluate the equity commitment that the unions asked for and including that we also said we want to talk about Wellness offerings we feel that Wellness has been a really good topic of late
111and would allow us to offer more options to employees create a healthier Workforce and also presumably decrease costs over time by having a healthier Workforce we proposed an equitable representation for labor and management and that is with mandatory binding arbitration to resolve disputes our thinking here was right now the current situation is there are eight votes for the unions one each and one for the district so all the disputes that we have related to how to do health benefits all come after the fact after health benefits the plan design has been established it makes it very difficult when the district's only recourse is through paragraph 10 which allows us to say no and then impose premium contributions if necessary to fall within an existing budget our feeling is if there's to be a dispute it
112should be on the front end when there are planned design discussions not after the fact when planned design decisions have already been made we're not aware of any other organization that does plan design in this matter right we've seen joint Labor Management committees which we're supportive of but we've not seen any where 80 90 percent of the voting privileges go with the the bargaining units we also have found that this is a good precursor to the availability of total compensation bargaining meaning that we would be able to provide individual unions benefits that match their particular needs as opposed to a one-size-fits-all so we said we have to keep paragraph 10 because in the absence of other language to the contrary that would give us the protections that we need we would revert back to the
113time when we didn't have paragraph 10 in which case uh the health benefits committee would come before the board say we tried to save money but you need to fully fund health benefits and there was no recourse to the district so our view was that is a non-starter in the absence of some other kind of language that might allow for joint Labor Management decision making we see no way to abandon that important paragraph finally for some reasons it'll be forthcoming we wanted to retain the current language of the opeb committee now that may very well have been the basis for some of the rumors out there that the district was interested in taking away retiree benefits but we want to continue to talk about the opeb committee and the obligation to fund our retiree benefits
114a lot of great work as a superintendent said has been done with respect to that work the 50 state Medicare program comes to mind it saved billions of dollars in opeb we feel that it is essential to keep that conversation going to see if we can control our costs to be able to guarantee those benefits for our retirees with that I will turn it over to our finance people to talk to you about some of the cost implications what you have before you is our projected uh the cost of The Proposal as we received it as we Quantified it a couple of things to do in terms of level setting As We the finance team have discussed matters of the district's current budget and multi-year forecasts we go to some length to clarify what is
115in and in some respects in what is out we have not added any costs into our multi-year forecast for any expense related to HBC Health and Welfare beyond the cost that we currently are funding in the course of the 23 24 budget year so that means that these costs here would be in addition to and a a draw Upon Our fund balance later today we have conversation about the unaudited actuals and we will be back again in December with our first interim but you may recall that the balance in our forecast was a rather than 22 million dollars the total cost here is being shown across a calendar year basis it's important again as we do the level setting to understand that we we risk confusion because our budget is a fiscal year that runs
116July 1st to June 30th but our benefit year runs January 1st to December 31st the contracts with which we engage as it relates to Health and Welfare run on a calendar year basis both for the employee but also with our vendors so you're going to see between this slide and the next a depiction one on a calendar year basis and one on a fiscal year to quantify this it is appropriate for you to understand the following we estimate the cost in total to be 868 million dollars I would say to you at this moment in time that that number is light for the following reasons one we added 70 million dollars of our own accord in the spring of 23 as we closed out the 22-23 school year I think it is appropriate and reasonable
117to add that to this total which would raise the the total approximately to 940 million secondly as the footnote here uh somewhat goes to length if you will to try to explain these projections are based on current plan design current enrollment so there is no distinction drawn in the future for a different program a different number of participants a different part in any way shape or form but I think it is fair to assume that the future will be different than our current we have reason to believe that there will be more retirees you've heard from me you've heard for some time that retirees are are more expensive class it's not an issue of stepping away from that it's rather making sure that we have adequate funding to maintain the commitments that you have heard
118the superintendent and Mr Holmquist speak to it is also the case that if we were to address the equity component I doubt that that will be highly doubt that that would be cost neutral and there would be costs associated with that finally it is worth noting that in the proposal the additional 200 million is a sizable percent of the 35 percent that Mr Holmquist uh spoke to what that is the equivalent of is asking students today to forego monies that might otherwise be utilized by them for other reasons to fund a future Surplus that kind of goes against the grain of what we have done in other elements of our budget and draw that to your attention it is the case then that as we address this we will have to focus increasingly on budget
119to actual variants one of the challenges that we have is that we will need to rethink our underlying commitments as they relate to budget the district as you have heard from me before and I apologize for the broken record aspect of this we default to budgeting in a current year based upon the budget of Prior years it is appropriate for us to shift and to introduce reform in how it is we approach this and have a cleaner depiction of what our actuals will be and based on those actuals use that as the Baseline on a come forward basis with regards to the numbers that are here I would also suggest for you that the funding that is then uh on this page let me get this to turn is the general fund component this represents
12083 percent of the total that was on the prior page the other 17 percent is largely picked up by three other funds among others but it would be our bond fund our cafeteria fund and our other restricted or federal funds the expectation you should have is that as we assess how it is we budget and we look to sharpen to begin a current Year's budget based on the actuals of the prior year and based upon the actuals we would expect to expend in a current year that you could see a boomerang effect as we push additional costs to the cafeteria fund or to the bond fund they're not in a surplus position such that they can absorb this without consequence would expect that there would be ramifications in that regard looking uh let's see just
121to finish on this this then would suggest that the 22 million 23 corrected here uh would be at the end of our forecast period a deficit of 648 million uh all other things being equal no changes and I'm saying to you you should expect that there would be changes if there are changes it is likely that they would be significant and I think more probable than not that they would be more rather than less costly in terms of how to think about this in the in the matter of time the slide 13 depicts the Health and Welfare costs over the last 10 years as you can see it has been increasing in the total cost you can see that that has not necessarily matched to our enrollment nor our staffing point being is that as
122student enrollment has dropped our Health and Welfare costs have increased it is also the case in noting that as our enrollment has dropped our staffing has dropped initially in the first couple years but then in the in a if you will transitional period with the pandemic we have added staff I remind you that 20 years ago Circa 2020 2002 the district had an enrollment of roughly 735 000 students today our enrollment is at uh just north of 400 000 students and in our forecast period we would expect to drop below 400 000 students over that 20 22-year period it amounts to an average of 15 000 students per year that are no longer enrolled compared to the prior year though we have had and enjoyed a significant increase at different periods in the amount of
123funding per student it is very difficult for the per student Revenue to offset the loss of the 100 loss of funding that comes when a student is no longer enrolled the reason to take you down this path is that means that the burden on a per student basis is increasing when one thinks about how much revenue we get per student relative to the obligations the discretion then that the Board of Education and any Administration enjoys is going to be if you will removed from the equation as we deal with the consequences of rising Health Care a declining enrollment a relatively robust level of Staffing compared to our historical Trends and the nature of how it is we fund opeb and the reason I'm mentioning the opeb is that we have a liability that is it
124as of June 2022 that is the latest data for which we have an Actuarial report stands at 8.5 billion our annual required contribution at this moment in time is estimated to be 480 million dollars to clarify with regards to opeb we we Fund in two streams one is a pay as you go and then we add beyond the pay as you go which is to find the pay as you go is to fund current year costs if we wanted to retire this obligation within 30 years we would add an additional amount such that the sum total would be 480 million this year we will add something that will approximate that amount but we will not get there in our forecast period the amounts that we are contributing are roughly half the point being is that
125the liability will not be retired at this level of funding within that Horizon but in time the pay as you go requirements will require an even greater share of our contribution and that ends the presentation turn it over to Mr Holmquist thank you Dave so uh board members we want to take just a very brief look at what some others are doing they have situations involving this the same situation that superintendent mentioned that this is a national problem so what are people doing about this this slide alone begs in my opinion for a deeper Dive by the board and in the past the board members have had deep Dives on Health and Welfare benefits we could have a hundred slides to support this I would encourage the board in the coming weeks if you have
126the interest to have a deep dive so we can explore more deeply what others are doing what options are out there how others are coping with this situation but wanted to just give you the briefest overview on cost sharing and District premiums and so you can see we are the only organization that we know of that we've been able to find that has no cost sharing of premiums for employees regardless of whether it's single party two-party full families for retirees also with their dependents and Carries those for a lifetime right and so that is without regard to provider plan or the number of participants so that is I think a great source of Pride for the district but because of the cost of doing that it is also a great source of concern how are
127we going to be able to sustain that kind of level of benefits something has to give in order for that to happen and one analysis that staff is working on right now is if we had provided a free family full family coverage plan a number of years ago and the excess was put in to salary for those who wanted to purchase up a more expensive plan so that we were able to still provide a free plan what would that do to salary so I think salaries would be substantially higher had we done that then and we still would have allowed for a free full family coverage plan those are the kind of options that exist and are out there I know they can be scary change can be scary but some of those things are
128not lose lose but rather win-win so anyway others have gone down that path and we can learn from them what they did and why they did it now Mr Hart mentioned opeb I wanted to give you a little snapshot of that here as well this is our current unfunded liability and relative to two others that we found because San Diego and Long Beach both provide retiree benefits not the same kind of coverage that we have but they do provide it and I mentioned before that the health benefits committee has done some great work to control those numbers I know the last number that I saw on the unfunded Actuarial liability was actually over 10 billion dollars and it was implementation of the 50 state Medicare Plan I mentioned in the egg whip that reduced that
129that's good work and we want to continue it and that's why we we want to keep that language that allows for us to do that but as Mr Hart mentioned concern over the ability to pay for these lifetime benefits continues I know that we're only currently funding at about a five percent level and so I think it's basically a pension benefit I mean that would be the way that I would characterize this because it is a post-work benefit that comes to employees and I think if pers or stirs was only funded at a five percent rate there would be a lot of anger and angst and fear over the ability to maintain those benefits if that was the funding level but we find ourselves at a funding level of only five percent which means we
130either need to fund more we need to find some more good things we can do like the 50 state Medicare plan that will bring down that obligation and further guarantee that we're able to meet our requirement and our duty to provide retirees with benefits so where do we go from here well we are as superintendent said and I believe you all know we are negotiating with the health benefits committee now to see how we can do this thing make this thing work given the financial considerations that we have also pointing out that we will begin we are actually finalizing negotiations with CSEA and we'll be starting salary and work salary negotiations with SEIU and the other unions very soon so now is potentially the time for us to take a look at total compensation bargaining
131it's also a time that we can see if we want to address some of these long-standing issues and work together to figure out how can we address these problems going forward and make sure that we continue to provide benefits for everyone so with that board members that concludes our talk our very brief talk I'm sure you have a lot of questions but as I suggested it's a brief overview and so I would suggest a deep dive if you want to spend a lot of time on a lot of these issues but notwithstanding that I think we have enough staff here that if there really are some burning questions we'd be happy to try to answer them okay page one that's not a good sign item number two retirees will continue to have health benefits does
132that mean that you'll have health benefits but perhaps if you have Anthem you'd have to have Kaiser is that a true statement that that would be something we're doing no no well then I need you to rewrite page one and it would say retirees will continue to have the benefits that they choose period because I find that very very very confusing very deceptive retirees will continue to have health benefits that is not a uh an accurate statement for me thank you we I can put it I don't know how to do it but someone could probably put it right into the slide right now well if I may uh as I said at the at the onset of today today's presentation there has been no recommendation entertained or profit to the board no requests from
133the board and no advance in any way shape or form that would change alter the options that retirees currently have at no cost no no such thing and we will since this is a public document to your point board member merlson we will alter that there is nothing that's been envisioned discussed as the board knows that to be true or Advanced that would change any one of those elements nevertheless I still would like number two change to read that retirees will continue to have health benefits that they choose that's how I want it okay thank you they just said they will do that and when I see it I will say thank you very much Madam president we will have it for you in a matter of minutes oh Dr there was a comment that
134you made earlier somewhere in here about there was no need for the reserve would you explain that to me sure so under the existing agreement the funding for the health benefits committee is done on a per participant basis and so the participation changes over time and so what was done in the past was additional funds were set aside in order to guarantee that there wouldn't have to be any premium contributions on behalf of employees we've flipped that and decided that the cleaner and better way to do it is to just guarantee up front that there will be no premiums for employees for 2024 and then there's no need for a reserve because we're making the guarantee on the front side rather than the back side so obviously that contemplates no mid-year changes in plan design
135because if the health benefits committee came in and wanted to offer much more expensive plans we have to put that limitation on it but there would be no need for a reserve if we're guaranteeing that the benefits will be fully paid this plan that we have now where the district is one of nine participants in the process I'm concerned about that because given what seems to be a movement and always is and the media excitement about it and the enthusiasm that people have for shut it down shut it down as though that's going to help we as a trustees up here have the responsibility for protecting the physical stability of the district and I think it's important to remind the community and I think everyone here already knows that I want to say it publicly
136we're a public entity not a private company we as a private as a public entity on Trustees of a public entity cannot legally negotiate ourselves into fiscal insolvency no matter what demands and the word is to be demand instead of requests or suggestions is often made the demand for and they fill in the blanks of what the demands are and there's an RLS attached to that but the other Rios is that a public entity can be put into fiscal insolvency and also bankruptcy and the school district can be put into receivership I have been involved in districts that have been in receivership and threatened with receivership at the level of superintendent I can tell you that there's a perception these are my comments these are not questions and I've heard it says the district is
137too big to fail that's really not true that's not a fact anyway that may be somebody's truth because truth can be what you believe and beliefs and truths are often confused with the facts anybody can be put into fiscal insolvency in any District can be declared and so on an entire city can be put into insolvency like a Detroit and be put into bankruptcy no matter what the people said before they're not going to take responsibility for the outcome to celebrate the fact that they put themselves into a control over management you can't control management because somebody's got to manage the farm somebody's got to be held accountable and responsible and although everybody gets a right to a voice to write to a voice doesn't give us as human beings and employees and employers and
138citizens and parents and activists who have no children in the school at all the belief you have the belief that you have a voice and you do we all do I only have one vote up here I have no control the superintendent has no votes at all all he can do is manage the outcome of what the seven of the board members decide but we cannot negotiate allow negotiations encourage negotiations celebrate negotiations that offer additional resources to employees at the risk of fiscal insolvency and in the past I've heard people say they're not gonna you know they're always threatened us with the fiscal cliff but the cliff never comes we're not Lemmings we're not going over the field the hill we're not going to jump off and then somebody says well the money's always been
139there we just don't tell us if it's there they're hiding it somewhere they're putting it in a Hip Pocket or someplace that we don't know about and it will materialize eventually so we can give it now and worry about it later and being a board member who is not here permanently this is not a permanent position it's not like the Supreme Court Justice that can be wrong and stay wrong until you die and then die when you shouldn't have because you should have quit earlier and given somebody an opportunity to replace you with a reasonable replacement so this is not a lifetime appointment we don't get voted on I mean I was our positions don't get they're not lifetime so whatever decisions we make affect the next group of board members that come in with
140whatever their agendas are and the challenge of this board as large as we are the greatest challenge is that we are elected that's a benefit and then a deficit on the other side sir because if we differ with each other enough we can never be unanimous and the decisions that are made are said the board's decision but it wasn't unanimous it was just the majority so the majority of four becomes the most important number to govern the superintendent and then the politics of who become the four is part of the spending that goes along with elections and I've heard already and I'll say this out loud that some of the labor unions say we're not going to support anybody running for office who does not support our agenda of what should and should not exist
141in this District not whether they make a good board member you must have our agenda to either improve or not improve necessarily but change and the word change does not always mean improve and I've said that publicly since I got on this board I've heard people talk about we must disrupt we must change never said improve we've got to change it and so I'm hopeful that this District which has been my home for many years I will be leaving the district next year at the end of December next year and all together I will put in over 40 plus years in this District plus years in other districts and I'm very touched by the notion that this District can still be solvent but I'm also frightened by the people that say we have to unite
142and it's always unite against somebody it almost sounds like Washington DC people that disagree with us are our enemies they're the other so unions are necessary but the opposition to Management Authority and responsibility Authority and responsibility bothers me not because I was in management I was also a teacher but I have been in management and I know what it means and the board is also in management and all of our board members have have not all necessarily been managers at the school site that's not a deficit that's just a circumstance thank you I've not done oh sorry um I want to remind the public and us that this is a precious Institution it is probably the most important Institution in the city of Los Angeles and public schools in general are the most powerful institution
143in America because they are the only institution that requires the presence of students by law children now I don't know anybody who thinks children are less important than they are not just because they're young and innocent but because they are are our future but until they become adults they can make decisions I worry about people who use children to make that political points and even influence through social media children to join them in their political activism nothing wrong with political activism I was a political activist in a segregated community of New Orleans Louisiana even before I was in high school I had to be because I realized I was still going to be sitting in the back of a bus and our schools would still get second hand handbooks and my mother who was a
144teacher and when he give you a book in his was it always I never got a new book I always got a book with the names of the people the previous people in the book were all written in in a little label that they put in the book so you gave multiple people had the book before I did and Pages would be missing and sometimes you'd have to share the chair with the woman girl sitting next to you and two little kids can slide in one seat when we're both little as we got older we couldn't do that but we still have to share a book because we didn't have no books that was my experience growing up we don't have that now because we've got Williams legislation all of that but we must manage
145the budget in a fiscalous solvent with less emphasis on individual politics because one of the deficits that we have an advantage of being elected is that we have to run on our own platforms and who's who supports us fiscally financially to get these seats that we sit in often expect something in return for the pleasure and the privilege of sitting in the seat it's not always a pleasure to sit in this seat but it's been a privilege for me and for me representing my community this has only been one African-American at a time since this board of education I remember the first black board member has only been one at a time at one point it was not large running and now it's in districts and people are free to run whoever they believe that
146the community will support and I think it's important that we realize the influence that money plays on the fact that we sit here I know that because I'm not the greatest fundraiser in the world and one of the primary Reasons I'm sitting here truth be told and I don't mind telling the truth my truth because my name recognition I didn't have to advertise who I am and what I am and where I've been I mean somebody else did that for me they plastered me all over all over the country there he is get his autograph he might go away I have to run away I don't want to give autographs I don't think I'm famous I don't even think I was that great I just worked hard still do but I'm not in here to
147make money and I'm not in here to satisfy any political outside group and help me get here but we have to but we have to remember that that's not a wrong thing to do in America because that's how the system works that's how capitalism works is that wrong Are We Wrong to be in that system where we're already in it and so you run for office people in Congress have to run every they always run it two every two years they get reelected or not do the best people win people with the most amount of money usually win or they're the best people you've seen who we elect presidents that the best possible person you judge for yourself so we have a tough test all well-intentioned people and now others that have Sitting these set
148in these seats so the protection of the fiscal sovereignty of the district is as important not more important but as important as the outcomes for the children yet we still have underperforming schools with a title in the label on it underperforming school underperforming by whose standards and they've always been underperforming and they're in the same neighborhood the school hasn't gotten grown legs and moved over here it's the same school in the same building that was there but the demographics changed around it does that mean the children can't learn if you don't believe it they can learn then you won't try to teach them you want adequately resource the children and so when we begin negotiating do we leave the children out what programs do we have to give up what programs does the superintendent have
149to dilute to minimize and maybe eliminate in order to satisfy the expectations and demands of the labor force and yes we are stuck with an unaffordable Community called Los Angeles how did it get there are we responsible for that I don't know I know that my house is worth more than I could pay for it right now if I had to buy my own home I couldn't live in it but they tell me that's what it's worth does it help me no it just makes my taxes go well that's the only house I have so I'm in it and then we almost have to be real estate agents how do we get our teachers to have an affordable place to live when they come here brand new teachers we recruit them from the south where
150gasoline is three dollars a gallon you come out here and you can't even find out what the gasoline price is is what where did you at what street did you drive on today it's almost seven dollars a gallon and we're stuck with that and people living in Little Boxes and calling those my home there's no land to buy anymore you buy the third floor the 13th floor on a high-rise and that's your home that's all you can afford okay all of that goes could you please try to conclude yes I will try thank you I will try as I've been truncated before Madam president I understand it but I'm taking my time because I'm not going to get another time but I think it's your main now because when we get ready to deal with
151this budget there are many things to consider and it's not easy up here it's not easy for you to just listen to us pontificate and not do something about it I wish I could do more but I'm only one vote maybe I should go into trying to be in a being a dictator in all the crap I probably get assassinated does that make everybody else upset so democracy does have a place along with capitalism but if all democracy does and help us to elect our dictators and we're still stuck with knowing how important it is to be a voter and be aware of what you're voting for and with that I thank you madam president thank you those are obviously important Notions for us to keep in mind as we look at the budget boasts
152again this afternoon in the regular meeting we will now close let's recess this session to go into closed session it is 11 24 we will try it very hard to be back at one o'clock uh so that means we have to forthwith get into the a closed session thank you all very much and we'll see you back at one o'clock okay Welcome Back The Time Is Now 1 56 on September 26 2023 we are uh reconvening the 9 A.M meeting um I will go ahead take roll and then report out uh reportable actions from closed session and then we will close briefly and reopen as the 1pm meeting started just about an hour late uh Dr McKenna here Dr Rivas Mr schmerson President Mr Melvin here miss Gomez here Mr Ortiz Franklin President board president
153Goldberg here okay we have Quorum under this is the reporting out language under tab one Personnel Employee discipline dismissal release the board authorized the initiation of dismissal of one certificated employee the vote was seven Eyes under tab two uh pending litigation the Board of Education authorized the settlement of Jane Doe V LAUSD and Vivian Atkin lasc court case number 21 STC v04277 terms and conditions will be available upon the finalization the agreement the vote was seven eyes the Board of Education authorized the settlement of Jane Doe h a v LAUSD lasc case number 20 STC v35068 terms and conditions will be available upon the finalization of the agreement the vote was seven eyes so as a procedural note we're going to close the 9 A.M meeting we're going to reopen the 1pm zoom meeting under
154a separate Zoom ID and we should be starting in the next three minutes thank you so much for your patience I appreciate it Time Is Now 1 58. again uh foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] because [Music] thank you [Music] foreign let's call this meeting to order at 204 pm and call the roll please Dr McKenna here Dr Rivas president Mr schmurelson President Mr Melbourne here miss Gomez Miss Ortiz Franklin uh Miss Goldberg here and board student board member Ramirez here okay so we have a video to queue up for the Pledge of Allegiance all right good afternoon how much do a program at Euclid I'm a new community school please stand so your right hand over your heart ready begin I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and
155to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all please be seated have a great board meeting thank you so much appreciate the uh leadership of our young people start today with a certificate of proclamation making September 26 Catherine kirka day so you wonder who's Catherine kirka why are we doing this well we have a resolution but basically I just want you to know a little bit about her she served the United States as an Army Nurse during World War II in the jungles of Burma and recognized the importance of addressing hardships she believed volunteering was essential and was a volunteer at her church another a lot of organizations under the Good Shepherd Center for homeless women and children spent time providing meals to homeless women and
156children living on the streets of Skid Row Catherine kirka joined the LA Unified School District as a school nurse in 1945 where she established a Children's Fund at her school to help students in need she mentored School nurses as a nursing coordinator as a director of nursing services she expanded the Children's Fund to help students in need throughout the entire District Catherine kirka retired in 1984 and then promoted the formal designation of the Children's Fund and established a Catherine kirka Children's Health fund with all volunteer board of directors she and the members of the board obtained approval to become the Catherine kirka Children's Health one of 501c3 non-profit organization in 1987 and by 1994 it became a recognized charity in the LAUSD sharing brings hope Consolidated charity