001and now I'd like to call upon Francis suaveo and Karen Ramirez our newly named elected not named elected student board member [Applause] no she was elected by her peers the students elected her in a in a district-wide election and uh she will be sworn in at the uh Podium down below because I think that Mac microphone is actually the one that's working so we want to make sure everybody hears you thank you foreign Ramirez hi Karen Ramirez do you solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the State of California and the constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic that I will bear true faith
002and allegiance that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States to the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the State of California and the constitution of the State of California that I take this obligation freely that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion or purpose of evasion and that I will Faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter and that I will Faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter congratulations [Applause] come join us foreign did you have any comments you wish to make upon the swearing-in yes go right ahead too well I have something written down all right so hello everyone oh can you hear me all right hello
003everyone superintendent board members um teachers staff and most importantly the students of La unified my name is Karen Ramirez I'm a senior at girls academic Leadership Academy I'm a proud representative of multiple communities such as unified students My Board District One my oaxacan and Guatemalan communities and I'm thrilled to say that I am your newly elected LAUSD student board member for the 2023-2024 school year um I firstly want to thank the students of La unified who have chosen me to be the representative here on the school board and I could not be more honored to have this opportunity granted to me by my fellow peers my principal Dr Hicks my ASB advisor Rose agamega and Dr Franco I feel so fortunate to have this role and I can ensure that it is one that I
004will take very seriously board members and superintendent Carvalho thank you for your support and for giving me a space to represent my peers I am extremely excited to work with all of you and please know that I'm here to provide a student's perspective I'm here to bridge the gaps between students and our school district and most importantly give you my support one thing I really do want to emphasize is that my main priority here is to listen to the students especially my undocumented and immigrant communities English Learners and other underrepresented groups in our district I hope to bring their comments and ideas to the board and I'm here to amplify their voices and above anything else this will be my top priority ensuring that I am inaccurate and reliable representative of the students of La
005unified so thank you all once again I'm so excited to be here and I'm really looking forward to this productive year [Applause] [Music] and I wish to say welcome everyone to the first board meeting of the 2324 school year we're already off to an exciting start and I want to first thank our governor our Mayors the Board of Supervisors the fire chief our superintendent and all of our First Responders for working so well together and tirelessly to keep our communities families and students safe I applaud them for making the tough calls that were undoubtedly going to be second guessed they did what they had to do and we all appreciate that second I want to address what's going on in the room today that is the fear and some hate mongers who are determined to
006frighten and demonize our children our staff and our families we don't have the luxury of just rolling our eyes about these people this isn't Los Angeles in 2023 I'm sorry this is Los Angeles in 2023 this is not Los Angeles of old this is sustained hateful rhetoric and it's strategically implemented campaign literally a matter of life and death I read yesterday with horror about Laura and Carlton's murder she was murdered A store owner was murdered for having a pride flag outside her clothing store in Arrowhead California and because it is our duty to Stamp Out Miss information here quickly are what the policies are and what they are not first we follow state laws and state approved a curriculum for all our students as someone who chaired the assembly education committee for four years I
007can tell you that a proven curriculum is a long arduous process and one that includes multiple opportunities for public input second as a school district our first priority is always always the children we encourage family engagement when a student is having issues unless it is not safe for that student to do so third ours is a district that includes and values all children no matter ethnicity immigration status gender identity social economic station status racial or ethnic background or the neighborhood they live in here haters will never win not in La unified you are welcome here to speak and now before we take labor Partners I want to remind you that these meetings are held with decorum that means that if you find that something you agree with a speaker snap your fingers so that they
008know it we're not saying don't do that but we do not allow people to shout out or try to talk down or talk over people who are speaking regardless of whether you agree with them or not and I will hold everyone accountable for behavior in this meeting whether you agree with the speaker or not so now that we have done that we always come to the next part of our meeting which is our labor Partners report and I understand we have representatives from United teachers Los Angeles would you please come forward followed by I believe someone from aala Nary are you next and I see Max here is SEIU wanting to speak today no okay thank you go ahead thank you welcome and welcome hi good afternoon um thank you um I'm here with Representatives
009we'll each be speaking on a couple of different issues um but first of all I want to say welcome Karen Ramirez um the over testing and underfunding you're the reason why we do it so thank you so much um I also want to thank um uh president Goldberg for those statements and want to just reiterate utla's full support of lgbtqia students our families staff and community members within LAUSD we agree every single person has the right to feel safe and welcomed in our district we've had actually many members who wanted to come out in support of agenda item number 22 today but to be honest we're nervous about the plan homophobic hate protests outside utla is also in full support of item number 25 celebrating Labor Day and championing Los Angeles Workforce brought forward by
010school board members melvoyne Ortiz Franklin and Dr Rivas now more than ever everyone must do their parts to support workers as they fight for dignity and respect and honestly to improve social Nets that are much needed now that corporate read has a corporate greed has eroded that nurse City and it's our working class who are paying for them utila is in full support of item number 22 creating a charter school co-location policy to mitigate impacts caused by Proposition 39 brought forward by board president Goldberg and board member Rivas the resolution would require LAUSD to adopt a common sense co-location policy that would ensure accountability transparency and fairness for our schools and it would require LAUSD to fulfill its commitment to the black student achievement plan schools and Community Schools the resolution would require District policy
011to avoid prop 39 at co-locations that compromise compromise district schools ability to serve our own neighborhood kids and to avoid co-locations that combine grade spans and put older students with younger students that part is essential every single public school student deserves a neighborhood public school that has space for them and has resources for them and that provides safety for them both bsep and Community Schools need space in order to fulfill their goals of providing students and families expanded and deepen support however there are currently 14 co-located bsap group one and group two schools and six co-located Community Schools there were many parents as I said earlier and Educators who wanted to speak today but didn't get a spot in public comment but I want to share a little bit about the impact of co-location has
012been significant on our schools and I'll just give one example out of many the Westchester enriched science magnets Westchester is a group one vsap school in a cohort for community school and they are co-located due to their co-location they do not have space for additional program and services this is a disservice to our students they have had difficulty with developing Partnerships to serve students because there is no space to host them they are growing their Esports program but they have no secure space to house the Esports lab they don't have space for social emotional room where Westchester students but the charter actually has their own social emotional room there are three B subsequel climate Advocates are all forced to share a very small room and have difficulty storing necessary materials and the bsap counselors are
013are squeezed into cubicles in the counseling office and you can I can you can imagine what that's like it's inappropriate for sensitive conversations happening with students the charter co-location Westchester have had to pay over allocation fines but what Westchester students need is space last year at the 14 co-located bsap group one in group two schools listen to this 10 of the 14 co-located Charters over projected their enrollment taking more space in their legally qualified for and the co-located Community Schools three of the six co-locating Charters over projected their enrollment last year this means that students at those public B7 Community Schools were unable to use all of this space at their schools while the charter schools took more space than they needed or were legally entitled to this resolution would create transparency and accountability around
014prop 39 which we desperately need and I asked the board to fully support the resolution and fulfill its commitment to our students and our communities and passing it over to Georgia flowers League good afternoon United teachers Los Angeles is in full support of item number 25. celebrating Labor Day and championing Los Angeles's Workforce brought forward by school board members melvoin Ortiz Franklin and Dr Rivas more and more workers across Southern California are standing up in unity to fight for dignity and respect many like SEIU Local 99 and utla members have chosen the difficult decision of making the ultimate sacrifice going on strike in order to fight for better working conditions just compensation Health Care safe affordable housing and much more to ensure a bright future for their own children as the second largest employer in
015Los Angeles County LAUSD can set the example and honor all workers for their unique and invaluable contributions towards city state and Country this resolution provides us all an excellent opportunity to stand together to uplift the well-being of our students families Workforce and the health of the Los Angeles community as a whole we encourage every school board member today to support this resolution with a unanimous vote thank you foreign and hi everybody I'm Julie Van Winkle I'm the UF UCLA aft vice president and I just want to talk a little bit about what brought a lot of people outside the building today um lgbtqia plus Educators students and families deserve to be safe and protected in our schools they deserve to be celebrated and uplifted in our classrooms they deserve to see themselves reflected in their
016curriculum nothing will ever change the fact that our lgbtq plus siblings belong and are welcome everywhere there are 35 000 plus Public School Educators in utla and we condemn any and all efforts to strip the lgbtqia plus community of their rights and protections the rally today in front of City Hall and now in front of this building is just that it's an effort to scare and intimidate our queer and trans siblings we won't let anyone come after the lgbtqia plus Community we will not be intimidated by their heinous attempts to dox and intimidate lgbtqia plus individuals and their educator allies for a far-right movement to throw a homophobic rally under the banner of parental rights is an insult to parents across Los Angeles thousands of parents go above and beyond to care for their queer
017and trans children many parents in our district are members of the lgbtqia plus Community themselves parental involvement is cherished and appreciated at our schools the fascist movement in the city is not fighting for any rights just the opposite they seek the oppression of the lgbtqa plus Community they want to see queer and trans history erased they want to drive out lgbtqia plus Educators parents and students from our classrooms all in service to the hateful agenda that fears anything different that fights to roll back social progress and seeks to subjugate anyone who doesn't fit into their warped vision of the world that's why they fought to ban books and remove an accurate history of race from the curriculum that's why they attacked Saticoy Elementary Glendale Unified and other schools it's why they're in front of the
018Boger building right now today as James Baldwin said we can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and the denial of my human humanity and right to exist that's what these far-right extremists do they disagree with established District policies in a way that demands to have parents rights that would enable fascists white supremacists and homophobes to deny Humanity to students staff and community members from historically marginalized groups we cannot accept this and we must work together to root this hate out when we see it at our schools we will protect and fight for lgbtqia plus Educators students and families we will fight to Center queer and trans history and culture we will build a liberated world where all are welcome all are loved and all are safe now
019is the time to protect our queer and trans community members utla stands shoulder to shoulder with the lgbtqia plus Community today and all days to come thank you all right next we will hear from AAA oh no if I'm sorry SEIU come on down Max I'm sorry I thought you said no excuse me good afternoon um well I said no initially because we came to speak on something else but I felt it was important to just voice uh complete support of the lgbtq plus Community one and complete opposition to hate hate has no room in our schools hate has no room in our societies and that is at the end of the day where we're fighting we're fighting hate through love and we must that we that's why we cannot stay silent staying silent means
020just standing in the side of those people how they're protesting so they're just all here to continue to organize towards love and continue to organize against hate uh that is all I have to say thank you very from aala so let me also Echo the sentiment expressed by uh Julie and also Julie Van Winkle and by Max uh we support the lgbtqia students but also our staff we can't forget our staff that are working at our schools or our district offices so we totally support um the anti-love that they're showing outside and that they've shown in other places as Julie clearly and well eloquently articulated so good afternoon board members and Karen bienvenida mi amiga Centro Americana uh good to have you I love your energy and hopefully it'll remain for the year so um
021uh board member uh McKenna board member Rivas muralson Karen Ramirez superintendent or president Goldberg Mr McLean and uh Mr moboine and of course always the folks in the back the support the senior cabinet good afternoon I want to start by saying uh board president thanked the First Responders for all the work they have done and they did uh pre I want to add my aala members to that group of First Responders because they started responding on Sunday afternoon where they heard the news or whether they started getting texts emails calls questions from staff families they started to respond and to try to do the best they could to do what we always do to serve our communities to try to provide a stable environment I want to thank our school support who were helping in
022the hotline the folks with the grab and go I was able to spend some time at the West Valley at Mulholland middle school with some of my b-step friends I don't know if any of them are here that were supporting that group and also directors that were part of the grab-and-go very busy one at Mulholland and any other fashion that school support administrators supported yesterday I want to thank my school administrators again for your diligence and commitment to our students and families starting that Sunday afternoon through the evening and all day yesterday assessing your schools and ensuring a smooth return today for our students and staff my unit J supervisors who set up the grab-and-go centers from facilities and the Food Services supervisors who oversaw the serving of many meals for our families I will
023continue to Advocate on your behalf so that you can feel like the Premier Employee of LAUSD that we want you to so thank you and have a good rest of your day thank you as well I've seen no more labor Partners seeking to speak we usually have an iau report but we have none today and we usually have committee reports but we've had no committees yet this year so we don't have any of those next we go to setting the consent item for those of you oh time certain I'm sorry time certain means that a board member has requested a Time certain to hear a particular item and so we have a Time certain at 1 30 and it is 135 so we will now go to item 25 on the um docket here today
024and that is the Labor Day resolution brought forward by I think Mr Melvin let's get to the right page here we are uh it's all right Miss Ortiz Franklin and Dr Rivas by the way two board members have very small children and you will see them leave the room and come back but they are hearing everything by zoom and they are taking care of those needs while still being a part of our board meeting okay uh so Mr melboine thank you president Goldberg and thanks for your opening remarks as well yes we have to vote on the rule 72 first so I'll turn it back to Mr McLean okay so rule 72 waiver is a procedure that is in our board rules involving resolutions that are timely or done for a specific time and space
025which this one is and in order to obtain that whatever we need to vote on it so may have a motion for the rule 72 waiver okay Mr Morrison second oh Dr Rivas all right Dr McKenna yes Dr Rivas yes Mr Morrison yes Mr Melvin yes Miss Gomez yes Mr Ortiz Franklin yes for president Goldberg yes and student member Ramirez your advisory vote please yes thank you that's our first vote folks fun no that's great thank you again miss Goldberg thank you and welcome uh board member Ramirez uh it's a pleasure to have you serving here and also want to acknowledge I know your oath of office was read by a former board member uh Miss swavio who just graduated from college and I hear may be trying to join us back at uh at
026La unified so um like Miss uh um Martinez said earlier you represent uh the best of our district and why we do this work so I'll make some brief remarks introducing this resolution and then I know we have some distinguished guests here to join us and speak on it um I'm proud to bring this resolution to recognize the important work both of our labor Partners within the district but also the important labor movements happening outside of our schools and just show solidarity for those workers demanding what they deserve on a local and national scale Labor Day was born although we now think of it as a day off from school or from work was initially born out of that struggle more than a century ago and while much has changed much remains to be changed
027which is why I wanted to commemorate this year's Labor Day a with an extra show of support for everyone on the front lines of this resurgent fight and I want to thank in particular our labor Partners here today SEIU Local 99 utla Allah Teamster CSEA and the list goes on and the folks joining us either from The Writers Guild The Screen Actors Guild or Unite Here Local 11. um I I've been on this board for two strikes but during those labor actions I've seen my colleagues in our Administration work around the clock to try to resolve issues and support employees and their families and while I know we won't agree on everything we can always find common ground in the need for basic fairness and decency and treating people with respect and their struggle for
028justice that is something we aren't seeing much of in the current climate outside of this district and that is what's most disappointing we know the tactics of certain employers they are very transparent about those tactics and that is to break the resolve of Labor instead of focusing on the common ground to actually solve problems this resolution more than just symbolism and intends to address those Bad actors and the troubling tactics that are using that they are using to further their own agenda and their bottom line will stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters on the line many of whom are unified parents and siblings and other family members and we will have their backs so with that I'll invite our speakers to add their important voices and then see if my initial co-sponsor is
029Miss Ortiz Franklin and Dr Rivas would like to speak as well so if we can call the speakers Mr McLean thank you okay Yvonne wheeler are you here Yvonne wheeler come on up you'll have three minutes to speak why don't you begin good afternoon president Goldberg and members of the board my name is Yvonne wheeler and I'm the president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor representing over 800 000 union members in Los Angeles I'm here today to speak in favor of the Labor Day resolution as put forth by board members melvonen Ortiz Franklin and Rebus as this is both timely and practical as men in this room are aware the state of California is in the midst of a generational moment that summer dubbing a hot labor summer but when you look deeper
030there's no doubt that this is a once in a generation moment and it's being driven by the brave workers right here in Los Angeles we've seen a coming together around issues of class solidarity that I've never seen before and I've been in the labor movement for over 40 years we've seen strike lines here in Los Angeles well world-class actors Amazon drivers janitors nurses Starbuck workers and hotel workers are standing together one uh standing next to one another and they all see themselves in one Collective fight and struggle but the first time since I can remember workers are recognizing the Dignity of one another's work and how someone else's labor brings value to their lives as a for the first time in a while workers are seeing one another Beyond the Veil of their profession and
031fully realizing the entire person beyond the confines of their profession is quite remarkable one of the main reasons behind this unprecedented solidarity is that the fact that many workers can't afford rent food or other basic expenses we're in the midst of a housing crisis where some full-time workers are living in their cars and we understand that the only way to really push back against this profound reality is to organize and stand together and fight like hell to raise the standards of living in this Industries then and only then can workers have a Fighting Chance that's what's full fueling a lot of the solidarity that we're witnessing today when we raise standards across the industries everybody benefits but the only way we can raise standards like this is through direct action by Brave workers for workers
032to take direct action they must feel supported by having access to unemployment benefits When they are on the strike line without a paycheck sacrificing their labor for the good of others lastly in order to raise standards across the industries who must stand in solidarity and on the picket lines like we're seeing in front of the studios and hotels and willing to call out Bad actors who seek to oppress their workers and with poverty level wages and then keep them one paycheck from becoming homeless then and only then can we have a chance of returning to a world where one job is enough and an earned her worker who make all of their Our Lives and the unherald workers who make all of our Lives better can have a chance at Living a dignified life so
033thank you again for bringing this resolution as it touches on all of us these factors and we strongly urge you to vote yes thank you Alvarado Veronica Alvarado come on up you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin for the audience so folks what we're going to do is we're going to pass out headsets to those who want to hear the translation simultaneously if you want to have a headset so you can hear what she's saying in English while she's speaking in Spanish put your hands up and we'll pass them out my name is Veronica Alvarado I work for ew Hollywood I'm a cleaning lady I have students in LAUSD in Hollywood in 12th grade and a little one into Luke Lake Elementary in fourth grade my smallest one has special needs he has
034autism and for this same reason it's so important to have the support of the LA Unified School District because you also I also represent thousands of other families and they're also fighting for a better quality of life for better security for medical and being able to live close to the schools thank you Gabriel Montoya are you here Gabriel Montoya come on up you have three minutes to speak once you begin thank you good afternoon Madam president board members I'm glad I was able to be here for your first daycare and I was student trustee at Rio Hondo College so it's pretty exciting um I've been an EMT at Los Los Angeles County EMT for almost 20 years now 15 of those years I've been an EMT at Kaiser Permanente I'm a part of uhw seiuhw
035we represent 63 000 workers within the Kaiser system a large majority of those workers being right here in La we represent all the service and Tech workers that work in every single Kaiser clinic and Hospital in the city of Los Angeles and all our Regional Offices you know we spent three years of this pandemic being told by our employers right that we are essential right that we are heroes but we got to have a conversation about what workers are treated like in the hospital right the people that do the hardest work the people that do the most labor intensive work we make Kaiser the 21 billion dollar company it is today right and the three billion dollars that they just made in the first two quarters of this year it was the work that we
036did on our backs that got him that money and so as I had this conversation I want to make sure that we know that we are we we support this and we ask you to vote Yes on this because we need to send a message to the students of LAUSD who who many of whom are likely to go into the health care Workforce doing jobs as a registered nurse an EMT a CNA an M.A that LAUSD has their backs that we support these students who are going to one day graduate and go into the health care field and having a living wage a wage they can live off of there's no excuse for Kaiser to not come to the bargaining table and tell us workers that they refuse to bargain with us when they've made
037more than enough money to do so we have a chance here at Los Angeles to make sure that health care jobs are the job not one of many jobs that you have to have to keep a roof over your head but the job that you can dedicate your work to your community we do an important job we have an important place here in society and it's not just during a pandemic it's every day as we care for your family members it's every day as we care for the the Aging population in California it's every day that we are there to serve in the best way that we know how and so we're asking you to support this resolution because it is important to this community it is important to the students of alausd it is
038important to your constituents that walk into the doors of our facilities at Kaiser Prime every single day to be taken care of and we need to send a message to those employers that you've got her back that you understand our fight that it is not too much to ask that health care workers not be just one paycheck away from being homeless in the city of Los Angeles and I just want to end with this on a personal note I am the President of my Union's lgbtqi caucus and I ask you to support trans kids with everything you have in with you because they are also our patients and we care about them too thank you for your time Ariana Jackson are you here come on up you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin
039hi there my name is Ariana Jackson I have a second grader at Melrose Elementary and I'm a writer who has been on strike for 113 days I was here at the start of the strike when you all first passed the resolution in support of the wga's action it was appreciated then and the continued support even more so now throughout these many months we picketed outside Studios and at location shoots our sister unions in the industry including ayatsi and the teamsters have been on the lines with us and honored our pickets effectively shutting down production across the country we came out to march with the hotel workers and with the UPS workers who by the way successfully negotiated a deal because the company realized it makes better business sense to pay your workers fairly than to
040devalue and demoralize them we have had unions from other Industries march with us from utla and SEIU to the strippers Union and the AFL-CIO we had Dolores Huerta one of the most influential label leaders in history co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association come March at the age of 93 on my very picket line at TV City in July sagathra officially joined us to make this a historic Hollywood fight through it all the reaction from the greater world has been overwhelmingly positive it's clear to so many that corporate greed is out of control when average people are working more and more for less and less when executives are quoted saying they'll wait for us to lose our homes that that's a necessary evil when they say they find us sticking up for ourselves and our
041livelihoods not realistic and very disturbing most people can see that these values don't make sense in a normal healthy Society most people can understand that all of us just want to live our lives raise our families and put food on the table the strike has been hard on everyone it's physically draining many are finding it difficult to pay their bills or to get the sustenance they need but we're out there marching because there is no other choice we have to be the ones to protect the future of our profession because the companies certainly aren't going to do it on their own we March for over 100 days before the studios even deign to come back to the table and we'll be out there Marching for as long as it takes for them to see us
042as workers who bring value to their businesses as creatives who make the things that make them money as humans who ask simply for fair payment for services rendered thanks to this board for your willingness to stand in solidarity with us and with the countless workers across Industries who have spent this summer demanding dignity and respect it's the least we all deserve thank you thank you for your time uh and Mr Max Arias come on up you have three minutes to speak once you begin good afternoon again board member superintendent and Karen which is um my name is Max sarias I am the elected executive director of SCA Local 99 and I want to appreciate board member voyne for bringing this our solution forward as well as board members Rivas and Franklin Ortiz for co-sponsoring and
043uh you know you just heard uh workers speak right uh um we are members as your local 99 stand behind their efforts at the end of the day we have to create a movement we are all fighting for the same thing everybody should be able to raise their family to have health care with one job that's just the way it is especially in such a rich state in such a rich country so we have to build a movement and we appreciate that LAUSD is showing willingness to be part of this movement uh this board passes many resolutions that are ceremonial well-meaning I'm not saying that they had bad meaning but they don't really have an action such as classic for employees week well sometimes you you have a party but Teachers Appreciation week also sometimes
044you have a party since our Chavez Day and the list goes on and they're they're well meaning but I say ceremonial because they really don't impact the lives of anybody or really except for honoring the legacy of the ones uh that you're naming but I appreciate this resolution and I hope there are more like it because this resolution sits that sits before you steps Beyond ceremony and takes specific action to support and honor the struggle and sacrifice of working people it acknowledges our shared responsibility in that struggle and takes material action to strengthen the position of striking workers this resolution tells Studio XX whose strategy for negotiating with striking writers and actress is to force them onto the streets that Los Angeles stands with workers this resolution reminds Kaiser that LAUSD is one of their
045single largest customers with over 47 000 current and retired employees participating in Kaiser including excuse me about that including dependence enrolled in their insurance you know yeah you can laugh a little you know it happens to the voice uh but we will not allow Kaiser to deprive the essential workers at sciu uhw of what is fair and just we cannot allow that this resolution commits the district and its staff to not crossing the her Local 11 picket line no more States no attending events or conferences and no business with LAUSD and so these corporate hotels meets the need and demands of striking union workers furthermore a calls on the city and the state to show up support by enacting eviction moratoriums and access to unemployment benefits LAUSD can make an impact given that LAUSD has
046a budget that is double that of my home country of El Salvador while the workers name in this resolution may not be LAUSD employees LAUSD can use its purchasing power to support these workers as they fight for Better Lives for their families board members I invite you to stand in solidarity with organized labor as to remind those who would see us starve out of existence that La is a union town and I hope that this is a Harbinger off us working in a better way uh next time we negotiate thank you and have a good day thank you for your time this concludes public comment on this item remember artist Frank thank you Mr Melvin for bringing this resolution thank you to all of the community members who spoke it's true what you heard from
047folks that our students should be able to see themselves working in healthcare in hotels in Hollywood in the greatest city in the country I would argue where they deserve just and fair pay for the families who support our children I'm so glad to hear from so many public comments speakers that you have kids in La unified it shows that we are absolutely in reciprocal relationships that when we take care of each other we take care of the future so I'm really proud to support this resolution La unified respects picket lines we encourage fair and just negotiations with settlements and contracts that respect the workers who do what is needed for our community to thrive so thank you for bringing this I encourage my colleagues to vote Yes as well Dr Rivas yes um I'm very
048moved by this day because throughout my life I've always been cognizant of the world class struggle of working class and I'm very honored and very grateful to be part of this resolution uh for many ways for many reasons partly because I was raised with working class values I was raised that work has dignity labor has dignity and we should always always treat every single human being no matter what position they are with love and respect that is something that I have lived my life with you know you know that Golden Rule treat others as you would like to be treated and as has been said you know we have a lot of corporate greed that has been going rampant and we're facing it now this is the the the manifestation of just greed is good
049and that we're you know looking at profit over people and I'm so glad that we're coming here together because this sends a strong message that the district stands behind all Union to this to this city that has been all about working class so I'm very glad to to to say that just wanted to say I do have a few words that I wanted to say um so yes it was mentioned that we are in the midst of a hot labor summer nationally and especially here in L.A there has been unprecedented support of unions and workers coming together to exercise their collective bargaining rights their civil rights and their human rights Los Angeles has always been a hotbed for Progressive unionism led by people of color in the public sector service workers women trades and so
050many others ten years ago we were saying that unions were dying that they were going away I look around the room today and I know that is not true any longer when it comes to demanding living wages Hazard pay health insurance respect on the job health and safety regulations labor is always there on the front line demanding the right thing for their families to have a dignified life to have a job and be able to raise a family how hard what is so bad about that and yet we have so many of our corporate Greek you know corporations and just all over the world that sees otherwise so a worker is currently working out on strike right now to our writers to any future labor Strikers stay strong and know that this District that this
051city is here to support your families that you have dignified working conditions and we will continue to provide resources during this hard time also with this resolution today we are talking we're taking special care to uplift our Hospital Hospitality workers to ensure that no District business is done at a hotel or venue either here in LA or any other City then in the mid that is in the midst of a labor dispute or it does not have unionized representation in their workers I want to thank the unit Representatives that are here today to address the board and also to thank utl and SEIU 99 especially who are our largest labor partners with this District but all labor partners with this District I thank you so much thank you for abort my fellow board members who
052are called you know causing this resolution and commemoring this Labor Day 2023. thank you so much [Applause] Mr schmerelson I will thank you thank you I agree with everything that's been said and I want to remind people who visit our schools parents community you when you go to our school you have to remember that there are more people operating that school than just the teacher and the principal that's who you usually see but you look around and you should thank our cafeteria workers our custodians CSEA our library aides remember them too they are all union members too they deserve respect and everyone visiting a school should acknowledge them it's very important to do that thank you uh Kelly Gomez or are you me are you trying to get recognition or not sure if if now
053an okay time go ahead great thank you great um great to be speaking in support of this and thank you so much to board members Malvern Ortiz Franklin and Rivas for bringing this resolution to the board as has already been noted over 100 000 workers are on strike this summer in the greater La region and it's been amazing to see the tremendous cross-union solidarity as workers organize and respond to the rising cost of living housing on affordability and just a general lack of investment in and respect for workers from screenwriters to hospitality workers to nurses to district and City staffers we recognize the dedication of workers across Industries who deserve Fair compensation and safe working conditions and these workers are also the families that we serve this past spring the district reached historic agreements with
054our own utla SEIU Local 99 and other bargaining units and I'm proud of the work that we've done to raise the standard of compensation for LA and across the country and I think it's really important today that we're standing as a district to recognize the service of employees and the fact that many of our families are being impacted by these labor strikes and it's right not only that we stand in messaging in words but that we're taking action by ensuring that our district resources aren't being invested to support corporate greed but instead we're joining the collective and supportive workers so I echo my colleagues in appreciating the labor leaders who are here today all of the workers who are currently on strike and our commitment to continuing to support these families oh and can you
055please add me as a co-sponsor happily thank you all right uh seeing nobody else I'd like to just make a few comments and first ask to be added as a co-sponsor please see I grew up at a time when La was that's how old I am a city that was anti-union opposed unions had Mayors who ran on getting rid of unions keeping unions out of the city of Los Angeles so this change over these years and really was in my lifetime was started by h-e-r-e local 9 local 11. they were the first to take on the kind of anti-labor and sentiment largely pushed by uh The Herald examiner newspaper and a lot of other folks particularly a lot of politicians who said this is an open town you don't have to worry about that here
056well that's changed dramatically and then the pandemic kind of put a crimp in that and I think what we're seeing now with all of the strikes and all of the organizing going on are people realizing that in a state which is the fourth richest economy in the world not in the country in the world there are only three nations with larger economies than California for anyone not to make a living wage means that somebody's ripping them off period no other way to put it as far as I'm concerned so to mention all of these folks who are putting their lives and their families lives in terms of income on the line we thank them for their courage and we tell them that this board supports their efforts whether they're the parents of our students or
057not but we know many of them are we support their efforts because when there is poverty there are challenges to Children Learning when people sleep in a bathtub instead of in a bed because they're afraid of the fact that the the economy is so bad where they live they could get injured sleeping in bed when we leave at a society where you have multi-billionaires on the one hand and people who can't afford their rent on the other in the same city there's something seriously wrong and I believe the labor movement is a solution to a lot of what is wrong so I thank you for bringing this forward and I appreciate you adding me as a code author organizer of the motion uh to join you and I'd like to ask Mr melvoin to move
058it the second Franklin second it and the superintendent would like to speak and then I'll call them already what can you say when uh basically everything has been said I want to compellingly affirm uh a truth labor rights are human rights you deprive he or she who works from basic human rights through impositions that submit some to conditions and in existence that would not be acceptable to any one of our family members our children then that's the signature and the definition of disrespect you know I think we ought to be honest I think the past year has not been easy but we went through a process but our process led to an outcome an outcome that everyone can celebrate and everyone can take pride in in the outcome however we got there and if we
059were able to do it considering the size of our district the importance of our district if we were able to do it considering the number of employees within our labor force then it should be nearly impossible for any entity in our communion Beyond to not be able to do it themselves it's a matter of priorities we prioritize our children and because we prioritize our children we prioritize those who Elevate our children who feed our children we transport our children who teach our children who lead our children there's no other way of doing it so I want to thank Boardman melvoin board member Ortiz Franklin and Dr Rivas and those of you who have added your names I'm not a voting member but I add my intellectual and emotional and spiritual support to a noble cause
060not only for our district but those in our community thank you very much oh I'm sorry please add me on to the co-sponsor all right thank you all right call the roll please Dr McKenna yes Dr Rivas yes Mr schmerson yes Melvin yes Miss Gomez yes Mr Ortiz Franklin yes uh board president Goldberg yes student board member Ramirez yes all right passes unanimously thank you very much [Applause] and we will ask this superintendent and the clerk of the board to uh forward our recommendations to the city of Los Angeles and to Kaiser's board as well as the others that were in the moving resolve parts now at this point we do what is called the consent calendar and I know it may seem odd to people but we sometimes take a vote on almost everything
061that's on our calendar all at the same time why we do that because board members receive the materials for the board meeting at least a week in advance we then have an opportunity to meet with staff of the superintendent's office to figure out whether or not there are questions we need to ask or issues that we need to raise and so be what we do is we say where there is generally speaking no opposition we put the item on consent and we vote on one vote on all the items that were placed on consent but some items can't be on consent such as number 18 which is original intern permits we're not allowed to put that on consent so we won't we've already taken care of item number 25 so it doesn't need to be
062on consent and item 29 requires a public hearing but it could still be on consent but we would have the public hearing before we would take the vote on the consent calendar so now I'm going to go through the items by number I'll say what the item is about and I'll take it off consent or if they have questions but intend to vote for the item even though they may have questions to raise today okay and as we do that we have a few announcements about things on the consent calendar tab 21 approval of community advisory committee membership has been polled as was discussed or mentioned earlier at the 9 A.M meeting today so we won't be hearing public comment on that item until it comes before the board again for action and I am
063pulling tab 30 minutes for board approval there were no public speakers on that so those two items are not going to be on the consent or for Action at all today and that's it uh not for Action is item 22 which is the charter school co-location policy to mitigate impacts caused by prop 39 co-locations that I am directing to the committee of the whole and the chair of the committee of whole has assured me it will be heard at their September 19th meeting the September meeting of the committee Hall I'm thinking it's the 19th all right having done that let's go through now item one consent no consent consent all right item two wait oh item one is Teamsters Local 572 memorandum of understanding that is what we call the end of contract negotiations item
064number two is the aala associated administrators of Los Angeles certificated also their contract mou consent item three approval of procurement activities spent with coming all right let's see questions from Tanya from Nick from uh Rocio and myself and and Scott okay so we have quite a few questions because there are quite a few items uh but are still on consent is that correct okay got it item number four approval of facilities contracts actions I'd like to pull that there are a few that I'm a no on and so I think so we will leave it off consent what that means that it will be voted on separately and heard separately from the rest of the items item number five authorization to execute an memorandum of understanding with the Department of Water and Power for the
065Hydration Station Initiative Program Hydration Stations are the water bottle filling stations uh that item consent all right item number six oh go ahead question from Dr Rivas okay item number six is uh Define and approve three athletic facilities upgrade projects and amend the facility services division strategic exit execution plan to incorporate them therein consent consent and some of the question with a question okay all right item number seven Define and approve five sustainable environmental enhancement developments for schools we call them the seeds programs and amend the facility services division plan to incorporate them consent and a question okay item number eight Define and approve seven playground and campus exterior upgrade programs and amend the facility services division strategic execution plan to incorporate them therein consent there are questions by uh question Kelly Kelly Nick Rocio
066McKenna and myself all right so that's it with cues okay uh item number nine Define and approve two charter school facilities upgrade projects and amend the facilities services division strategic execution plan to incorporate them consent item number 10 Define and approve 18 Board District priority and Regional priority projects and amend the appropriate plan item number 11 donations of money and materials to the district and item number 12 report of cash disbursements and report of corporate credit card charges item number 13 approval of the signature certification of signatures for the fiscal year 2324. item number 14 renewal of contract California Statewide Delinquent Tax Finance Authority 23 to 25. item 15 application for exemption from the required expenditures for classroom teacher salaries consent item number 16 the revised budget and send us a comment consent I think
067I'm going to say that people may want to have comments and questions there's a presentation about to happen yeah but I'll just say uh comments and questions item number 17 approval of routine Personnel actions consent 18 cannot be on consent item 19 approval of adult education Career Technical education advisory committee consent item 20 education compacts for the city of Maywood and the city of San Fernando consent and comments uh item 21 has been pulled we will not hear uh comment uh from the public on that item item 22 is not being heard today it is uh been sent to the committee of the whole chaired by Vice chair vice president uh merlson and that will be the September meeting item 23 uh a resolution which would require a waiver of board rule 72 uh for
068suicide prevention and awareness month consent item 24 again a resolution commemorating National read a book day with a waiver aboard rule 72. consent 25 we've dispensed with 26 is an initial announcement we don't vote on them they're just saying that they want to say that September is child welfare and attendance month that will be heard on September the 12th and the other one is celebrating Latino Heritage Month uh and that will also be heard on September the 12th so we don't have any action on that today the reappointment uh of member to the school construction Bond citizens oversight committee and by the way when we pass a bond in this District we often include and usually include a independent oversight Committee of people who live in the district and and will then vote on each
069item that comes forward that we're using construction bonds for uh item 29 report correspondence including the Williams settlement uniform complaint quarterly report of which there are now 15 but mostly from two schools inside and item number 30 minutes for board approval and my gratitude that we're getting pretty close to up to date I I'm sorry to report that's the thing I was pulling also oh you're pulling that I'm sorry all right so item 30 has been pulled and here I was just about to say we finally got up okay well next meeting we'll catch up and item 31 the adoption of the 2324 committee meeting schedule consent all right having done that the next item on our agenda is the superintendent's report hold on [Music] yeah oh I'm C okay on the revised I'm going
070to go back to item number 16. that is no longer on consent that's off consent so the items off consent are four 16 18 that's it okay all right we're going to pause just for a second because I believe they're doing photo for the um the labor oh okay so Jackie while we're pausing let me just tell you that the special ed committee I have a date we will be meeting on Wednesday September the 6th 5 o'clock in this boardroom that's for special ed committee September 6th at five o'clock and uh that's all was it 416. oh an 18 can't be okay 4 16 and 18 will each be heard separately though the items that are on consent that have questions on them we will also go through as well um we are waiting uh
071for uh some photographs to be taken and then we will continue all right so for example while we're waiting if you were here to speak on item 21 the approval of the community advisory committee since that item is not any longer going to be heard we will not call on those people to speak and similarly also we are going to require when you speak on an item on the agenda that you actually speak on the item on the agenda lots of times we've been just a little bit lacks on that and people will say yeah I'm here talking about this but really I'm not I had other things in mind so we're going to try to honor our rules which say if you're speaking on an agenda item you need to talk about the agenda
072item if you're speaking on a non-agenda item you can speak on for three minutes just about anything you want that's why they're called non-agenda items beautiful yes so the next item on the agenda is uh the superintendents reports unless you wish to do that before item 16 that's up to you Mr superintendent uh why don't we if it's okay with the board we'll take the reports first and we'll write it actually do them all right ahead so there are three reports of relevance today number one as if you had not heard enough about Hillary I'll talk about the Hillary for a little bit not that Hillary secondly uh both of our Deputy superintendents and their appropriate staffs will cover a relevant points associated with the opening of uh the 23-24 school year then lastly we'll
073have a budget presentation I'll be very brief on my part uh suffice it to say that as I said earlier when it comes to Hurricane Hillary then tropical storm Hillary then sort of a non-event in our community but a significant event in other communities we dodged a bullet some would say we dodged a weather bomb for the Skeptics out there for those who who believe that we went through a lot for no reason you're wrong Palm Springs today could have been la that's the unpredictability of these types of storms one slight little movement east west north south and coming together of forces that are outside of our control could have could have led to devastating catastrophic floods possibly down power lines destruction of property and injury if not death that's the reality that's why you
074prepare I do not take the decision to shut down a school system the second largest school system in the nation one that by the way has been shut down for far longer periods with less notice we do not take those decisions lightly we are informed by the same type of information that guides our health policies and everything else science nothing other than science so let me very quickly detail for you our thought process there is a cone there is a declaration from federal entities that do nothing more nothing less than study the path the conditions the strengthening or the weakening of the storm and by the time this storm approached our shore it was a tropical storm in most places across the country that come into contact with these types of atmospheric events a tropical
075storm warning is a trigger for the shutting down of schools why because of the possibility of strong winds heavy rains and the unpredictability at the actual path of the storm the cone the cone is just a combination of thousands of possible spaghetti lines that the storm will take more than likely one is right the albums will be wrong it is the uncertainty as to which one's right and which ones are wrong that we need to prepare for all of the possibilities now I know a day after the storm there are all kinds of reputable voices as if they had actually studied the matter it's not leadership that's opinion that's opinion what complicated matters most for us was the fact that this storm would reach its peak in terms of impact with possible devastating rains that
076would dump water in one single night to the equivalent level of a Year's worth the peak of the storm would happen in the middle of the night I don't know about the public but you know what I care about the kids and I know the public cares about kids I care about our Workforce regardless of rank of position I am not going to ask maintenance workers principals assistant principals police officers maintenance workers custodial staff to go out to a school in the middle of the night to assess damage or access to the school itself if we're going to be Humane and pro-labor we need to Embrace those Concepts that storm was projected to hit at night and in fact it did not to the level of intensity in Los Angeles but look at Palm Springs
077that could have been us putting us in a position of not being able to assess safety security conditions and access to our schools the possibility of down power lines tree limbs trees themselves mudslides as we've seen in other parts of our state so it was the right call it was a call informed by science and conditions considering the unpredictability and the timing of the storm itself let me speak about another matter that it may not be anybody's concern but it's I guess somebody's concern this is a prepared District more than ever before it was not until late last year that we reached 100 connectivity for students it was not until late last year that we reached one-to-one Universal device empowerment for all students it was not until late last year that we adopted Universal coherent
078reading Mathematics Curriculum systems and digital content for all students once you do that unless you are fixated on the mimeograph or Dittos and if you are go out and find a Blockbuster store to rent Barbie or Oppenheimer unless you're fixated on that it's a new day a new reality which means I trust our principals I trust our teachers they are trained there are skill there are experts in managing the tools they have such as Schoology they are able to upload assignments they do not need to send paper packets home if today in the digital age we still have to do that we've lost that is why we've made the Investments we've made in digital content acceleration software remediation meeting students where they are wherever they are anytime that's the power we currently have to personalize
079and individualize the experience regardless of circumstances like the one we went through Monday so we were prepared we are prepared forty thousand assignments were created on schoology nearly 154 000 assignments were read students were engaged we were prepared but then again Madam president as I close and I turn it over to our Deputy superintendents for their presentation on the opening of this school year sometimes one needs to be on stage with a curtain open and the lights on rather than in the audience to actually know what's going on and I often say it as my father used to say if you have no voice don't pull the mic down because nobody wants to hear it I am proud of our teachers I am proud of our principles I am proud of this board I'm proud
080of our support staff I am proud of the community organizations that rally around our kids not just when conditions are great but when the weather is tough when there are challenges when there are perils so I'm proud the valley USD I'm proud of the decisions we made I'm proud the way we navigated them I'm proud of the way we communicated with the community I am proud about the way we open this school year I've been superintendent for close to 17 years I have never experienced a Workforce a board that's so prepared for a school year as we did the smoothest ever we were ready for we are ready so Madam president I'd like to turn it over to our two remarkable Deputy superintendents Dr Carl Estrada Mr Pedro Salcido for a presentation on the opening
081of schools we good oh wow all right well as the superintendent said um in my 12 years where that I've been with the district I have to say what I observed last week what was the smoothest opening we've had in a very long time when it comes to welcoming our students and families and staff back to our schools I thought it'd kick off the presentation with a highlight reel a video that kind of summarizes the activity that we saw last week the energy and the focus that folks brought to our schools and making sure that we were welcoming our families and students in a positive strong way to start off the Academic Year first day of school it's one of the most exciting times of the year for me it's like the equivalent of waking
082up the sleeping giant called LAUSD from its summer nap [Music] 000 kids over 70 000 employees we're here ready to welcome our kids back it's the best place for our kids to be where they're learning and also getting meals after school programming tutoring so lots of wonderful options available at our school sites I'm super excited about the work that's going to be taking place this year we're here to motivate our students in our schools we continue to look for additional opportunities how to provide service for more students so they can be in the classroom and that's what it's all about the kids are so happy to be back instruction is going on day one day one of 183 for the 23-24 school year and we are excited that our doors are back open and our
083students are back in class it's been you know an entire summer since we've seen them and we're really happy to get them back in these doors and doing some great learning I excited to be back if working with my peers in general working with my classmates is really enjoyable really fun and learning more things the school year I think what I have planned is try to learn as much as I can because I also love math I want to learn something new and math and the most critically important thing I teach the young child this is the year of academic acceleration and look what we have for you new exciting educational programs a universal reading and math strategy before and after school tutoring more social emotional and mental health support the promise to boost adult
084enrollment by 20 better transportation options we have something for everyone [Applause] so as you can see um first day of school is just the energy being there from the very beginning and seeing our bus drivers kind of roll out of the yard and going on to pick up our students and get them to school too the end of the day out in the valley spending time with the culinary arts program there um just it re-motivates you reconnects you and just want to say that our preparation has been primarily focused especially in that first week in creating that welcoming environment ensuring that our families are welcomed in a way that gets them engaged our students are engaged from day one and that teaching and learning begins from the very first minute that a student sits foot
085in class I thought I'd hit on just some key highlights for the first week of school when you look at our attendance rate we are very laser focused on making sure that there is a concerted effort across the system where there is a general responsibility from all staff to ensure that every student is is in their seats every day and because we know that the student that is absent isn't learning on the day that they are in the classroom you cannot teach the absent child we also ensure that as we're looking at vacancies and ensuring that there's credentialed teachers in every classroom that we got close to ensuring that all class classes were covered when you look at just the vacancy rate that we started the day one with we had 11 vacancies we were
086still able to cover those classrooms but when you look at historically what we have started as a district from a classroom vacancy standpoint on average has been about 300 vacancies on day one that is a huge progress and that is huge progress just in terms of operational preparedness ensuring that students are staffed in an appropriate way classrooms are staffed in an appropriate way when you look at our utk program in our transitional kindergarten program this year we have 15 163 students enrolled as of last week that number continues to grow our efforts to continue to outreach and engage our community is one of our key highlights and that this is a new program that we know captures our students at a very young age and provides an opportunity for our families to engage La unified
087we covered 1360 routes throughout the district on day one and we continue to do that and then when we talk about meals we served over 2.3 million meals for the first week of instruction we had 669 and 69 deployed staff to support schools on day one we were able to sustain that for day two to make sure that schools have the appropriate support and principals let us know what they needed and we responded we had 600 6610 devices distributed to students in that the first week when you look at the overall deployment of our devices as a superintendent said we have gone to a one-to-one ratio when it comes to devices and students we have 322 000 devices deployed currently to students and just in the first week we had an additional 6610 devices especially
088targeting our utk and TK students one of the things that we always focus on especially We Begin the beginning of the school year is ensuring that our students and our communities are responding from the perspective of heat waves and heat preparation we had early Communications that were going out the week before but our facility staff deployed additional units to various regions to ensure that there were impacted sites that we were able to deploy portable HVAC units while tickets were open and we had staff responding to classrooms that may not have available AC at the time and then when you look at our help desk historically numbers in this area have been somewhere in six thousand to ten thousand calls we had four thousand four hundred and forty six help desk calls of which calls lasted
089no more than a minute and a half to two minutes we were able to close out most concerns because most of them were folks resetting their passwords adjusting to the new classroom and also many of them were driven by the new devices that were distributed to them uh when you look at the launch of our live attendance tracker was one of the things that we started this presentation with is making sure that folks are aware about our Focus around attendance if you go on to our main page today you will see a live tracker that provides a daily update to our community our round attendance and La Unified this is new we want to make sure that our community knows that we operate from a transparent standpoint but with that we also have a collective
090accountability and awareness around our students attendance we are still recovering from the pandemic but when you look at just the last week our performance from a district perspective is showing that our schools our community is responding in a positive way to our attendance efforts on day one we started at 90 percent attendance we made sure that families were followed up that there was constant communication and that they have the information that they needed to make sure that their student needed to be in class registered and enrolled so if you see over the course of the week we actually increased to about 95 to 94 attendance we had a collective and a community cumulative attendance rate of 93.2 percent over the last week just to provide a comparison last year we were at about 91 percent
091so we already see a two percent increase in attendance district-wide and when you look at particular grade levels we are seeing our efforts actually pay dividends in terms of student attendance so when you look at these highlights they're a culmination of collective work that has taken apart over the last several months throughout the summer to make sure that our schools are prepared and are prepared to welcome our students on day one and the first week all right I'm having a clicker issues when you look at the school operations who was a lead Division and pulling together multiple divisions to make sure that we had key deliverables timelines resources identified that were needed to put together an effective plan to open schools we knew that we needed to have opening Communications for principals for students families
092and staff we identified best practices for preparing campuses for opening we also updated relevant bulletins and District policies for review with stakeholders input making sure that we actually had updated bulletins that had been outdated for more than 10 years that speaks so that the changing dynamics that our schools have and we're talking about accepting our new students as well as uh supporting our current students we want to make sure all bulletins are are supported in that way when we talk about attendance preparations what we are really focusing on is an mtss model when talking about multi-tiered systems of support we want to make sure that folks have accurate data that we have established attendance teams at the school level region level and central office level that we are developing a culture of attendance among staff
093in our school communities as well as developing effective Outreach and intervention strategies all that is bolstered by our efforts to strengthened our relationship with our Community Partners who have that on the ground relationship with our families and can be a voice for the district and and students and making sure that we're establishing strong relationships between Schools staff and students the other element is ensuring that staff have an understanding on the impact of attendance without attendance taking place in a current and most relevant way and ensuring that staff can have conversations about where their attendance rates are per student you cannot have an effective strategy at the school site or Regional level so we are building the capacity and PD to reinforce that practice and so it is that continuous Improvement around attendance that we are
094honing in on this year the Ayah 10 2.0 effort that we launched in August on August 10th and 11th focused on visiting families but in the previous efforts around iatin it had been kind of Niche issues Niche targeted populations now we're expanding what we've learned from there and employing particular practices that were effective last year and targeting broader sets of students populations as well as inviting a broader set of schools and employees to actually support our efforts around our school safety initiatives as we prepared for the beginning of the school year as we as the superintendent noted we learned from the past we perfect our practice one of the areas that we know becomes a point of concern for our communities is identifying early on traffic and safety conditions around our schools and so we
095were able to leverage our conversations with the city to ensure that they were collaborating with LA unified to identify ways to address high impact zones so we were able to identify 45 school zones for slow to actually Implement slow zone areas we had added additional signage we did quick builds which are safety improvements around particular School sites that include the kind of plastic Bowlers and Cones as well as ensuring that we added additional speed humps that it required additional investment from from our city partners when we talk about HVAC preparedness and Readiness it touches a little bit about on that around our highlights it is not just portable air conditioning units it's also deploying box fans as well as high efficiency air cleaning devices and some of you may have seen the air misters that
096we deployed at school sites we wanted to make sure that folks were supported in every way possible this involved all at the region central office and School site level last year we embarked on the rollout of our cooling efforts especially in our cafeterias we are at about 50 percent little more than 50 percent completion of that project we anticipate we will complete that by the first quarter of 2024 what is impacting this particular program is supply chain issues staff are ready to deploy implement this particular program but know that we prioritize areas that were highly impacted by high heat and the recent heat waves the deep cleaning of schools is extremely important in making sure that we have a welcoming environment for our staff and so this was an area that we focused on throughout
097the summer our facilities teams mno teams made sure that we did deep cleaning at every site some of you may have visited especially our summer school sites where we waited to the completion of the summer school program to complete those deep cleanings lastly around transportation and Staffing on transportation we actually did dry one runs three days worth where our bus drivers go out run their routes identify any issues with their routes we make modifications and it's also a great opportunity for them to go out and introduce themselves to the students and families that they'll be supporting every day and so when we talk about some of the first touch points with our families as we begin the beginning of school year it's our actually our bus drivers that do that and so when we talk
098about that Collective effort to engage the community this is an area that we have reinforced and we want to continue that practice throughout the year as we employ new routes and invite more students to participate in our transportation program Food Services also honed in on their practice and their availability of available foods that are actually being prepared for our students throughout the school year and one of the most exciting things was actually getting together with students who actually provided opinion provided their input on some of the foods that we were adding to the menu I will say the blueberry crumble or the breakfast menu and the chicken wings but I'll say the blueberry one it's gonna give it's gonna give the coffee cake a run for its money that's all I gotta say it's and
099it's it's pretty it's pretty darn good I'm just saying um but when you talk about the menu of and and the options that students are actually generating with our staff and our chefs um it's super Dynamic and really reflective of the diversity in the culture of our district and so super excited about the menu options that will be available this year around technology Readiness talked about this we made sure that all devices are prepared to take on new curriculum new assessments and are updated to meet the security uh requirements that our district has uh recently employed and set a new standard especially as a result of the cyber security challenges lastly around Staffing Staffing in classified we're at 93 overall fill rate and I can give you an example mno BNG workers last year we
100sat at about 30 vacancy this year we're starting off at about 12 and so we're making significant progress when it comes to filling critical positions that our schools rely on our communities rely on to make sure that our schools are safe and clean and supported our classified staff continue to go out do job fairs recruit and if anything this is an opportunity to articulate to our community that you know we have a diverse set of positions that are available and open in this District please go to lausd.org and to our Personnel commission website that does our Recruitment and hiring when it comes to our certificated classroom and teaching positions we have a 99.9 overall fill rate we were able to hire 1 308 teachers as of August 15th and we continue to hire we do
101have hard to staff areas around stem so if there's anybody in this room that would love to join us back in the classroom and has a chemistry or a physics credential we invite you because these are the areas that we are currently looking to recruit and fill um and so from here I want to hand it off to Dr Estrada when we talk about the operational preparations of the district we focus on ensuring that we build that foundational environment which actually allows learning to take place learn teaching and learning to take place and so I'm very proud of the team that came together to put the the operational pieces together but so much of that is actually reinforced by the instructional preparation that takes place throughout the summer as well and so I'm going to
102hand it off to doctors but don't go anywhere because at the end of both presentations the board has questions thank you so much as uh as our Deputy superintendent Salcido shared it does really take a collective Village to be able to ensure that our schools are ready and open to welcome our students and families and as many of our board members saw as well as your staff our students were ready and excited to come back to school that smile on their face really makes a difference and not only did we see in the students and parents but we also saw it in our teachers principals and staff and so with all of that I just thank everyone for their hard work to make that happen I want to also say that as we think about
103this work and we think about instructionally where we want to focus as we think about the New Year the superintendent talked about the importance of coherence and being able to ensure that we know what direction what's our Focus instructionally that will move student achievement and I think that's something that's really been important and very much well received by our staff because that way they know what are those elements that we are going to be supporting throughout the year and instructionally to ensure that we meet our Targets in our strategic plan and our student family goals and so with that of course you have to start with our principles it starts in our schools it starts every day within our schools and so we wanted to make sure we were clear as we work together with
104our principal leaders on what exactly would be the focus for the year and how do they continue to grow in their ability to leverage the resources and resources and tools throughout the district but also what are also things that we need to be aware of that they need in order to successfully lead how do they also leverage their instructional leadership teams at school sites their partnership with their teachers and their para Educators and families so all those things are things that were very much explored at the principal Leadership Institute I think it's important to thank our East LA Community College Partners who continue to always open up their site to us and welcome us and make themselves so much available to the very changing needs as the these days go by and so as we
105talked about what would be the focus we wanted to make sure that we offered a variety of sessions for our principals so some of them were topics that are mandatory but then we also wanted to make sure that they had multiple options to choose things that were relevant to them so that meant we had over 225 presenters from central office region school principals and other content experts again leveraging the talents skills and expertise right here within our own District we had over a thousand five hundred attendees which also included our APS which I know that's an important part of making sure we have strong leadership at every level of our school sites some of the topics that were discussed and touched upon included things like continuous Improvement Cycles making sure that we talked about attendance
106our new assessment tool and what that would mean how to be able to use it and what resources are available to them we also wanted to front load our principles with what our teachers were going to be receiving in their professional development we also made sure that we provided opportunities to learn more about about our black student achievement plan budget and finance coaching and providing feedback the least restrictive environment are tiered Fidelity inventory focusing on school-wide positive behavior interventions and supports so as you can see we made sure that we offered a variety of options including social emotional learning and self-care it was one of the key topics that we wanted to make sure that our principals understood it was also important for them to care for themselves and care for their staff you would
107have seen in some of our sessions they had lavender uh Essence in the room creating the real space for relaxation so they wanted a model for our principal so that way they could also take those practices back to their own homes and schools one of the things that we also made sure we focused on was Clarity on our teaching and learning framework this is one thing that makes La unified unique we have a high quality instructional framework already in our school district many other school districts wish that they had something that provided guidance on what is quality teaching and learning well LAUSD has that so let's be clear about what we're going to focus on so people know how do we we go deeper not just broaden add more stuff to the plate let's make
108sure that we're really tight together on what this means and how we can get better so a couple things to highlight one obviously standard space instruction as appropriate for our students we want to make sure all students have access to that and that can look different for many of our students also discussion techniques and student participation and ensuring that we provide students feedback one of the things is we need to keep adding tools to our teachers and principals toolbox on how to ensure that oral language development occurs it's wonderful to say that but if you don't have good Tools in your toolbox it's very hard to continue to grow that we also want to make sure that as we talked about these that we were grounded in a multi-tiered system of support we know that
109we need to make sure there's something offered for all of our students but that we also provide targeted support for those who need it most and those include tutoring locally designed instruction and so on we also wanted to emphasize around these areas the culturally linguistically responsive pedagogy and how important it is for for our students to recognize that their identity their language their cultural background their lived experiences matter and should be reflected in the daily instruction they receive we also made sure that we introduced some other areas so one of the things that we looked in the spring semester we did a data dip of classroom observations so just see what we are seeing in our classrooms and we're not in order to support our students teachers and principals and what we found was that
110we needed to support further how to do purposeful instructional groups when you go to a classroom and you see kids get into these small groups based on need it is something as quick and as simple as a signal but if you don't practice that you don't know how to be able to do that from a data perspective very difficult to be able to do we also wanted to make sure that we focus on language proficiency recognizing that a large portion of our English Learners are still struggling to meet or exceed our expectations on many of our assessments and we know they have the potential and are able to do it so how do we create the lessons that create that opportunity for them we also wanted to Foster the use of academic language and lastly
111but very importantly academic climate you will see that for our students being able to come to a school and a classroom where we're using learning experiences also requires us to think about how do you put kids in a mindset of understanding that rigor difficulty is a good thing and that sometimes we're not going to have all the right answers but that's exactly what teaching and learning is about so all these pieces have really come together to Foster what will be the focus for our school year we also discuss the use of informal classroom observation tools and our pdsa cycle which really is about continuous Improvement we have all been in situations where we've seen where the data and the instruction aligns and we see things move for our students and sometimes it doesn't so it
112requires us to collectively work together leverage all the tools and resources on our campus and Beyond to meet the needs of our students we wanted to lay that Foundation common understanding common language another important part which is extremely important to us as a school district within our school communities and within every region in our district safe healthy welcoming and affirming schools is an element and it starts from the minute our students walk through the gates how they feel where they feel welcomed what does that look like what does that feel like we wanted to make sure that our principles understood or and shared what were ways in which they're doing that and we have many wonderful schools who do that beautifully so what was some of the results we know that we also have to
113continue to improve this is the first time we've had a principal Leadership Institute session in over seven or eight years some in some cases to this degree 10 years so we've really have not had this kind of coming together it was beautiful to see principals who've known each other for years but who had not seen each other for years be able to engage and be collegial with each other but it also requires us to be reflective of did we meet the goals of the principal Leadership Institute which overall we did as you can see there are also some areas where people really felt topics resonated for them I think the other piece though is people wanted to make sure that as we offer different sessions and now because we have an instructional calendar for multiple
114years we can be more planful and also find more sites that would allow for the degree of space that we need and so that way people can get these kind of small group sessions they also wanted to be able to have more of these kind of preview sessions see what's coming in the year be able to give feedback to Regional Offices and central office as well as have workshops I think one of the biggest comments that a secondary principal shared was how much they felt like the pli treated them as professionals and that's exactly what our goal was we want to make sure that they know right here in La unified we have the resources they need and we'll meet those needs as necessary the next piece in preparing our teachers this is another big
115critical part so we wanted to make sure we offered some of professional development for our teachers as you can see we had plenty of days of training it again was an opportunity for us to be able to provide a common understanding across our school district we were able to hear from our principals what type of I'm sorry from our teachers what type of learning experiences they wanted to also get in the future I think one of the things that it's important to know is there were a variety of topics that were Hit Upon I think what's most important is literacy and math were made available to all of our teachers but also wanted to make sure that we made available based on certain roles so you can see that we had something available for our
116Arts your social studies science physical education our health school librarians which I understand they had not received any kind of professional development in quite some time so it was wonderful to be able to make sure they receive that as well as our counseling coordinators and our special education teams please know that we will continue to grow we know that there was a great start created a common Foundation but next year we'd like to offer more Choice options for our teachers now that we have some good foundational topics set we need to make sure that we're bringing expertise from our classrooms to other teachers so we'll be offering more of that as we think and look into next year we also made an introduction I encourage people to ask about the instructional look Force both in
117elementary Ela as well as math at the secondary level we also have one for ELA it's important to be able to know what we should be looking for together and so these tools were serving just as that a tool to allow us to engage in that continuous Improvement some of the feedback that we received I think is really a overall ability and time to plan so not only do teachers get content but they also got time to plan and I think that's one of the things that as we've been providing guidance to our schools as we continue to develop tools to be of service in our school teams co-planning time for our teachers is going to be a big focus and how that can be facilitated and supported it is something that many of our
118teachers have continuously asked to be able to do that so how do you balance that with making sure they get professional development opportunities as well as making sure they have time for collaboration additional feedback we receive thought exchange definitely feeling like some of the topics such as critical media literacy was being used as you know our students having access to large amounts of information which is awesome but how do they differentiate between what is actually quality evidence-based and so on is something that is not easy to be able to do so good feedback that we received and opportunities for growth so what comes next I think one of the key things that it's important to emphasize is that as we're continuing to build that common language common understanding and common Focus that allows us to
119build into our principal meetings so this will lead into the year what those principal meeting topics will exist consist of as well as ensure that at the regional level they're able to dive deeper into school level data with those principles and being able to go deeper into what does that implementation look like what are some of the barriers and most importantly if there are additional resources and tools that we need to develop at the region level central office that we're able to do that in addition at the teacher level we'll be we'll be sharing PD care packages focused on literacy numeracy and a variety of their areas that our principles can use at their school level as well as our Regional Offices and again with an important focus on that collaboration time for our principles
120whether teachers whether it's grade level level or being able to do that at that content level I think that's also where an opportunity as the superintendent shared earlier when we think about continuity of learning one of the things that we as an LA Unified School District are prepared to do especially because of the experiences we've had learnings we've had from the pandemic but most importantly the Investments that we have made in the past year or so I've been focused on ensuring that we have the technology we also have Universal connectivity for our students because we know that we are an evolving space and World our students need to be able to have knowledge tools and lessons at their fingertips at any time regardless of any emergency and that is something that we continue to pride
121ourselves in and lean into because we know that in this world that we live in things could change things happen but we need to make sure that we leverage the devices the personalized learning tools that we've invested in including our assessment to then be able to develop those kind of continuity learning experiences students need to have and that our teachers can have at their fingertips but most importantly and as we discovered on Monday making sure that our teachers then we trust in them to be able to develop those lessons that our students can have access to our families can have access to and we were able to see that based on the kind of continuity of learning planning we've done and we will continue to do so one of the things that you will see
122is constant be checking in on is if an emergency occurred because we have coherence in our district because we have common tools and resources how do we make sure we're ready for any kind of shift and change that our students may need and that is quickly accessible because things can happen in a heartbeat and so we wanted to make sure that we're always prepared for that and so with that um I want to introduce Dr Baez who will go more into the literacy and numeracy focus for the year there's been lots of questions on the new math framework there's some questions on um what will be the focus for literacy and numeracy and how does that align to standards but also around our interventionist Academy and I just want to thank our central office and
123Regional team for other leadership in preparation for a strong start and also to our DOI and and chief academic officer for her leadership as we plan the year thank you so much all right good afternoon board president Goldberg board member superintendent Carvalho Deputy superintendents and welcome Karen Ramirez so very proud of you so I'm here today to speak to you about the evidence-based practices that we're going to deepen deepen practices in the classroom for students to engage in and reach achievement and literacy and numeracy so I'm going to present to you some of the priorities that you'll see in the classroom so there's professional development that occurred in the summer but we want to make sure that teachers have all the tools that they need to focus on the standards that make a difference for
124our students so what I'm going to present to you is based on the California Department of Education standards and framework that detail what students should know and be able to do by grade level I've also used the achieve the core site that bundles and prioritizes standards and lessons the evidence-based practices such as small group instruction the science of reading and writing language development and culturally and linguistically relevant and sustaining practices and the LAUSD strategic plan which highlights our goals and District direction for achieving literacy numeracy graduation and social emotional learning the graduate student profile which promotes the following dispositions being an advocate for self and others being open-minded being adaptable and being an effective Communicator all of these tools were used to develop the strategy for this upcoming school year so I would begin with
125literacy these are the dispositions that students should demonstrate by the end of fifth grade this is what students should know and be able to do and the goal is that for every school principals and teachers are sharing with the parents what students should know at that grade level I won't go to Every grade level but I will just Mark milestones and I'll begin with fifth grade and what students should know and be able to do in Reading Writing and research and speaking and listening as we can see in Reading students are beginning to decode to read complex text they're also making connections to to themselves text to text and text to the world students are writing in a different different genres and they're beginning to speak in conversation and have discussions about the topics that
126they're reading about so the speaking skills are key to emerging bilinguals and Standard English Learners to acquire academic vocabulary and participate in Rich discussion so by fifth grade students should know how to do this and they're not learning to read They're reading to learn by the end of eighth grade students should demonstrate the following behaviors and Reading Writing and research and speaking and listening in Reading students are reading texts across all genres such as expository fiction non-fiction Etc and students are analyzing text to text text to self and text to the world in writing and research students are researching topics aligned to grade level standards students are forming opinions and defending their arguments based on evidence this is where the professional development was very instrumental by helping teachers find the right tools when it comes
127to critical media literacy so that students cite the right sources making sure that they're that they're valid and reliable as they're posing and creating their argument students present their ideas to one another asking questions they're providing feedback as they're conducting their research and presentation by 12th grade they're very similar behaviors that we want to see but at this point the journey in 12 from kinder to 12th grade has allowed the students to demonstrate those graduate student profiles to advocate for self and others to be open-minded to be adaptable an effective Communicator to be like Karen Ramirez who's sitting here this is what we are hoping to produce on every one of our students this is the Continuum of literacy that I'm going to share with you um and what I want to share is that
128these are the College and Career Readiness standards when we see the progression and especially when we begin with print concepts to fluency these are the progressions for early readers Kinders through third grade so students who are not reading this is what we follow we follow print concepts phonological awareness phonics and fluency the science of reading comes at play here students are also exposed to key idea and details all the way to range of reading and text complexity what I want to note here is that as we progress from the first area and we go from the left to the right the left is the is the um the least challenging types of activities and the ones to the right are the most challenging what we would sometimes call rigor we want our students to be
129exposed to more challenging activities Beyond key and DN details because we want students to be able to integrate knowledge and ideas and be critical thinkers and consumers of information we can't do this if we're constantly citing and regurgitating facts so we want students to be able to get it to the far right and be able to to read a range of of um of topics and have complex text in front of them when it comes to writing students have already seen the models in the text that they've been reading but at this point we want students to research to be the writers to be the authors to write in different genres and be able to speak and to present and for students to give each other feedback on their writing when it comes to comprehension
130and collaboration this is what we want to see all day long with our students and be able to present knowledge and ideas so all that students learned early on with the different text types and different narratives and expository texts we want students to be able to speak about what they've been reading and the conventions of Standard English are important for our emerging English Learners and for also for our for Standard English Learners we want them to be able to apply their vocabulary and to have Rich discussions in the classroom so these College and Career Readiness standards is what we've provided professional development around and we'll continue to do so throughout the year and the standards live within these College and Career Readiness standards and so when our goal is for our students to access the
131College and Career Readiness standards so we use a tier one approach which is in in Elementary grades our curricula is Benchmark Advanced and core knowledge language arts we also ensure that our students are receiving evidence-based strategies with culturally relevant and linguistically sustaining pedagogy small group instruction and the strategies that students need to access the the learning and of course on-demand homework help for all of our students when students are not meeting grade level standards based on progress monitoring then we want to provide students tier one plus tier two and the tier two is a small group instruction using these supplemental materials so we need to teach the core and tier one and the supplemental materials in tier two in tier 3 we're continuing with tier one and tier 2 instruction tier three yes that third
132dose of instruction through locally designed uh tutoring high-dose in person through an interventionist approach and this is when our students are getting even more instruction to ensure that students are meeting grade level standards and those College and Career Readiness standards this is done with duration frequency and intensity in the grade 6 to 12 the tier one instruction is a tier one curricula there's a little bit more variability the goal is that we reach coherence by narrowing down the curricula so at this point we have studysync springboard my my perspective and of course students have access to on-demand homework help and the strategies that I just mentioned earlier in in the Elementary grades in tier two with small group instruction with the supplemental materials so students are getting tier one plus tier two and tier three
133would include the interventionist support locally designed tutoring when it could be a one-to-one or in small groups what we have done this summer is provide professional development to teachers in 6th to 12th grade on implementing small group instruction as you know I'm probably experienced in junior high in high school you didn't have small group instruction teachers really that's not really what they do they they do whole group instruction and so at this point where we are we provided tools and will continue to support small group instruction for personalized learning in the classroom our numeracy strategy you'll find is a little different than what I showed you with the progressions in elementary school these are the foundations for students to access the middle and high school standards so if you look at kindergarten students should be
134learning counting and cardinality and Kindred through fifth grade students are getting numbers and operations in base 10 that then becomes ratios and proportional relationships in the Middle grades and it impacts their achievement in numbers and quantity in third through fifth grade students are getting number and operations in fractions which informs the middle school grades with a number system and the numbers and quantity if you look at the blue this is where students have the most challenging time it's operations and algebraic thinking in elementary which informs their performance and expressions and equations in the Middle grades and then algebra and functions if you recall algebra is the gatekeeper to college career and life and so that blue area is so instrumental to Student Success in life geometry is students have exposure to Geometry Kinder through high
135school and then in the Elementary grades measurement and data informs achievement of statistics and probability in middle and high school grades so those are the very important um the coherence piece in mathematics and what we expect our students to know and be able to do in tier one the curricula is great minds Eureka an illustrative math along with our evidence-based strategies and on-demand homework help we provide our students tier one plus tier two when students are not at grade levels so it's small group instruction using those supplemental resources as well as a locally designed tutoring high dose or in-person or virtual tutoring tier three consists of tier one tier two and tier three so a student who's not meeting grade levels should be getting three doses of instruction with duration frequency and intensity which increases
136across the continuum for our high school grades again more variability but we're trying to narrow the number of curricula for more coherence and support is CPM Big Ideas springboard illustrative math and their evidence-based strategies to help our students access those math concepts and of course on-demand homework help tier two consists of small group instruction using those supplemental materials at this point students have received tier one instruction added tier 2 and the students are still not meeting grade level standards they should be getting tier three so we've given students three opportunities to reach grade level standards and this one in particular is through the support of our interventionist locally designed tutoring or high-dose in-person tutoring and as you may know recently the new California math framework was adopted and the adoption has brought us all together
137to unpack that framework the framework shows promise as it provides Direction on integrating transitional kindergarten through grade 12 math concepts around Big Ideas which is a best practice in high performing countries so I'm grateful that we have this opportunity we're going to unpack it and Implement those strategies it also provides models for connecting math to real world problems which has been an ongoing work of ours in LAUSD there's also guidance on personalizing learning grouping students strategically for support and advanced courses in addition the strategies are presented to promote higher and more Equitable engagement and achievement for students who have been historically underrepresented in stem careers including girls and African-American Native American latinx and Pacific Islander students the framework also supports instruction for linguistically and culturally diverse emergent bilinguals who are developing math proficiency informed by
138the California Department the California English language development standards so our math department is currently developing guidance to provide our regions schools and offices on the new math framework because it will also bring new opportunities on courses that students will have access to here you see images of students learning to read and then applying their reading skills in the classroom through science math and presentations this is an example of integrating knowledge and ideas into the learning and so here if just the Continuum of literacy that I shared the progressions and the numeracy standards they all reflect what you're seeing here so in some instances students are in front of the teacher they're learning to read but then students become independent Learners and if you see the student who's uh he's Zeus he's performing a piece that's
139where students are now independent Learners and they're choosing making decisions and choices about their learning as a follow-up we have a new assessment called I ready that provides Educators and caretakers the students level of achievement and English language arts and Math teachers and administrators have received professional development on the administration and reading reports on i-Ready to address student needs and the assessment window has already started there's been a lot of mobilizing around this for Access and we have already practiced and so at this point students we should have the diagnostic assessments implemented and clearly understand where students are performing at this time in terms of our literacy and numeracy intervention and Family Academy when we last met in June we shared with you our literacy and numeracy intervention model since then we've had professional development
140and small group instruction for all of our teachers we had over 900 we had I'm sorry this was the PD for all of our teachers and small group instruction which Dr Estrada had just mentioned earlier the interventionist Academy is what has just launched and we had approximately 900 interventionists participate to understand how to look at data small group instruction how to begin their first 21 days in the classroom their intervention Implement implementation guide for elementary middle and high school have been drafted so that there's clear Direction in the field about what intervention models look like and how to implement them in the classroom and all administrators and teachers have been offered training in the use of iready to begin grouping students for intervention there's been a lot of work done since our intervention model was
141introduced in June I'm very proud of the team that we put together to to plan and to implement these strategies there's also been a Family Academy and we are looking forward to partnering with Community Partners on August 14th there was a session for parent on literacy and grade level standards and on the 21st which was yesterday I'm not sure if it was canceled or not but there or there will be postponed there's a numeracy and grade level standards uh session as well we'll be working with community-based organizations and partnering with them to ensure that our parents understand the science of reading and writing and ways to support reading at home for them we want the classroom teachers and parents to be speaking the same language and to reinforce learning at home so that students can
142have more success so as students are getting tier one two and three instruction they get the additional dose at home when they're reinforcing the learning that occurred during the school day and with that that concludes my presentation our presentation thank you very much and we'll stand by for questions thank you very much uh Madam president members of the board I'll wrap it up very quickly by uh expressing my gratitude not only to our to our Deputy superintendents our chief academic officer their respective teams every single person you saw thousands of people participate in professional development activities during the summer more professional development activities lined up inclusive of the interventionist Academy activities for parents for greater level of understanding about the new tools and systems and assessments that we have lined up when we talk about
143assessments for example we talk about I ready let's recall that we have exchanged a multitude of different assessments for a much more coherent unified process by which students are assessed while learning and with the ability to produce timely real-time information that will help recalibrate the instructional process by teachers principals and us systemically with feedback to parents and everyone else that's the power of what we're doing lastly I I really am excited about the fact that you've devoted this much time to a presentation only in terms of our Readiness for operations and the business aspect of the house but a real deep dive in terms of our instructional focus on literacy and numeracy and what should have jumped out at you it certainly jumps out at me is the absolute focus and coherence about everything we
144are doing the alignment of tools and systems to specific grade levels the tiering on the basis of performance and the gradual incremental levels of support available for students I've never seen in all my years a plan that is as detailed and as coherent as this one is so I'm proud of this work and I am thrilled over the fact that the board continues to support and Elevate us as its highest priority the support systems that will feed your four goals three of which are absolutely reflected here in a progressive fashion so Madam president members of the board we turn it over back to you for the easy questions to be directed to me and the hard ones to the staff wow I'm I I'm I'm breathless I have to say that's that was quite a
145presentation and I'm sure there are lots of things that people want to ask and we'll start to my left with Tanya Ortiz Franklin thanks and I'll start with the easy ones so um slide 40 and 41 uh seem to be a repeat of 8th and 12th grade so if we could get the updated 12th grade expectations and I was curious if we could get that for math because that would be really helpful to see um at the 5th 8th and 12th grade levels um so hopefully that's a yes we can do it for fifth eighth and 12th grade um love the instructional look fors on slide 32 can we also get a copy of those it's a little hard to see the small font but it looks like math aligns to the teaching and learning
146framework which I love secondary literacy seems like a lot and I can't tell if Elementary is just writing so maybe there's a backside that we can't see so if you can send those to us that would be helpful so those are easy questions right we'll send those over to you awesome um harder questions maybe just to jump to the Ops and foreign was texting with me on this just so we can get clear on the vacancy numbers um so I think it helps to start with what's our denominator of teachers when we talk about fill rates and then there were a couple numbers that were shared on the slides 97 99 maybe you can just help clarify what we know about the total number of teachers and then what our fill rates actually are for
147a classroom if it's uh 97 99 and 11 vacancies is what we are right now yeah so you know these are reflective of last week when you look at the 97.2 percent it's actually our sub rate vacancies when you look at our school administrator vacancies we're at 98 filled so 97 it's 97.2 percent is our fill rate for Subs when you look at our principal and school administrator uh fill rate we're at about 98 and then when you look at teachers that is a rostered teacher it's about twenty four thousand uh 166 those are at 99.9 percent filled so we are confident that we have 11 teacher vacancies they're filled with somebody in the classroom who has a credential now but we're still looking for people if they have the right credentials to come into
148those classrooms you're absolutely right and if I may it that number will keep changing so at any day throughout the year last year we had two to three hundred vacant positions that were filled with redeployment what we mean here now is that the need for redeployment of Staff members who are currently not classroom teachers is restricted to 11 people that is an all-time low but we know that people will resign retire move away throughout the school year which will alter that number but the 99.9 percent fill rate is specific to classroom teachers roster based on Master schedules across all schools so 11 positions tomorrow could be 12 or it could be 9 right that's when we said that all positions are filled it's because you will always have a slight little variance I don't know
149at this point of any District in a country even smaller districts than ours that has a fill rate of 99.9 percent and uh a total number of vacancies that is double digit most are triple digit and higher so it's it's pretty stunning yeah definitely better than last year and probably most years or any year that we've had in the district so very exciting and just to let folks know we are hiring teachers particularly in math and science and special education so come work for La unified um and then one more question I'll pass to my colleagues I know there's a lot but on the attendance slide six um can you help me understand when students enroll um is that their first day of attendance so I see the attendance went up but shouldn't enrollment have
150also gone up like if I haven't shown up one day does it count against me as an absence we've gotten those questions from family yeah it's from point of enrollment for a student that is a new enrollee and so we generally will identify students that are no-shows and then if they do re-enroll then we start their point of enrollment and attendance tracking at that point when we're looking at overall attendance the attendance numbers here we do exclude particular populations especially when you look at our etk those that currently don't count towards what I would say Ada and so that we include that little uh that prompt and uh and information on the on the website to clarify that for folks so the 90 on day one is that they were enrolled but they didn't attend
151correct okay so when a student First shows up can you help me understand the e in when when the teacher's like ease you in on the roster how does that impact attendance yeah what I can do is I can invite it would probably be Veronica Regina and team to just speak to to that particular process okay and I can also follow up I see Veronica coming but um I know my colleagues will probably have more questions so I'm happy to follow up on that one just want to understand about it thank you thank you we'll follow up we'll follow up I'm just going to go around the room Kelly next sure um well thank you so much for the presentation very robust um so a lot to dig into um first I just on the
152um utk of it all which is always a focus for me I'm just wanted to celebrate the enrollment numbers of our students and you know for the for the public that doesn't just happen it was really intentional efforts not just through marketing flyers and other types of information but actually our number of our community reps our parent Center directors actually canvassed homes in in the summertime to reach out to families who may not otherwise be connected to our schools to make sure that they knew about utk and I think that that those types of Grassroots Word of Mouth efforts are really essential to reach families who who might not necessarily be following other sources of information so really excited about that and then it follows you know we just need to make sure we have
153a really high quality program for those for those young students I'm teaching a room through a room of four-year-olds is extremely challenging um so uh you know amazing recognition to all of our wonderful utk teachers as well as the AIDS um I also wanted to appreciate Mr stacito the the framing of taking I attend to make it a real systemic approach I think that's one of the challenges that we've had in the past is those efforts have been really disconnected it's been you know a one-time student recovery day we know that PSAs and others are leading efforts at their School site but there should be a coherent system across our school sites and also connected to the region so I appreciate to hear about what that looks like moving forward and look forward to engaging
154in more of those home visits as needed I also wanted to request on the cooling front if we could get more details about the rolling out of those programs and when we will see some of those Investments at our school sites as you all know the valley continues to be extremely hot and only getting hotter so these are things that our constituents often request when we see the misters for example um so it'd be great if we could get a forecast of when we can expect those Investments and at which school sites um and then at the Staffing front amazing to hear about our certificated Staffing levels I mean that that is incredible um I I definitely want to lean in on the classified side to ensure that we're continuing to fill those positions especially
155our school climate Advocates and as I mentioned the utk AIDS I know I've heard from some schools that they have had trouble filling those eight positions and we know in order to meet the required ratios and to provide an excellent education to our little people we need to have those AIDS in the classroom so there's whatever we can do to make sure those positions are filled is excellent and then on the instructional side apologies I feel like I'm talking a lot but I'm just going to keep plowing through it um on the instructional framework I just wanted to to thank you Deputy superintendent I actually I have seen connections between this discussion and with a work of region north both in how directors are visiting classrooms because they've done joint visits with me and I'm
156seeing them using the same sort of materials and tracking the same sort of strategies as well as in the conversation patients and the focus of the region so I think that's really essential to ensure that what what is discussed in this building actually percolates throughout our system and gets to our school sites um so so another kudos for for that one I was hoping that at some point we might get some data on the attendance at the summer Institute and as well as the principals Leadership Institute I think that the feedback that you shared is great but it would be good to know how many teachers engaged in that professional development over the summer we do have that data available as well so across the multiple days as you know the the the PD was
157one in which we had mandatory topics which meant we were going to offer those topics throughout the year so if a teacher could not attend a session during that uh those days in which we offered it we will be able to offer it throughout the year the DOI team is prepared and so are the regions to be able to offer those same sessions to those teachers whether it's during the school day with a sub or if it's on a Saturday so we definitely will continue to do that we had over across multiple days so day one we had about 8 000 for day one then for the two additional days we had about 14 000 teachers across those days and the last day I think we had about 14 000 again for the i-Ready assessment
158day so out of our 25 000 teachers we still have a group of teachers that we will be offering additional training and resources but especially with the assessment just know that principals were told if they needed to have uh additional training at their School site our DOI team and and our CIO can definitely share more about that bring that training to them be able to offer those kinds of of resources at their School site as then they go through the training session for assessment for example they get to learn all the wonderful tools that come along with our assessment resource and I ready so we are prepared to continue to offer training throughout the year that's wonderful um so great to hear that thank you for the for the answer and then the last well
159two last piece is one just an encouragement to ensure that we're always utilizing TK through 12th or pre-k through 12th I know that there was one slide that mentions K to 12 and you know we're all shifting but um you know all four-year-olds are able to start at elementary school and so we want to make sure that we're building those connections not just from elementary to Middle to high school but also with our preschool programs both on Elementary sites and also at our Early Education Centers and just last thing I wanted to appreciate and recognize the work of is it s face I'm sorry um student family and Community engagement um I think sorry it doesn't come out so nicely but I really appreciate the parallel offerings to ensure that our families are really empowered
160to provide support in ela and in math to their students at home I didn't get a chance to attend those but I did attend the back to school Workshop that they had and it was just phenomenal the presenters were really really strong the information was relevant and the feedback from parents was really great so I just wanted to to thank them they're a great partner and they've been working very closely with the DOI team to continue to offer especially around areas of literacy and so on and numeracy some resources so we welcome the opportunity to come back with and share some of those details in partnership with them absolutely thank you thank you all um Mr Salcido I don't think I've seen you down at that Podium since the lcap days so uh but I
161just kudos to everyone for our incredibly smooth last week and uh like the superintendent said I think in in my time on the board maybe the smoothest opening it was great to be at schools and see in the case of one school a little literal red carpet rolled out for students um and fun to see our new tkers I walked into a classroom and one of them said to his classmate wow he's bigger than my dad I was like I don't think I'm that big but fine um and uh I will say that that Monday uh closure did end the dream of a precedented school year but maybe next year but still a very smooth roll out um you know a few questions comments starting with that for the slide four still a little confused
162about the attendance data so Mr saucedo yeah the sub rate so I was in a middle school and again kudos to the team for an incredible fill rate and working around the clock and we're still processing each teachers I know we have a national teacher shortage particularly in high need areas I was in a middle school that has I think three stem vacancies but there was a credential teacher in the classroom so is that the 99 is that the 97 in those instances where there's a substitute who's credentialed in the subject but is not the permanent teacher Mr Frank Serato come and speak to that because I think uh he would be able to speak more eloquently to just how we're rolling out the strategy but you can expect a credentialed teacher to cover that
163yeah because I just think it's I want to be consistent in calibrating the language we're using because when we say you know 99 fill and then School sites are saying wait we have a few Subs I want to be clear you know we're saying okay well if it's if the student is taught by credential teacher even if not a permanent teacher that counts as the 99 and we're still trying to fill those he's coming right down so we'll have him share some more of those details in one second that would be helpful and then um again it's great to have these new younger students in the in the district I think we should and and maybe from a communication standpoint there's still confusion utk etk now it's all Pre-K yeah so maybe we just figure
164out internally and calibrate on what we're calling it because some people say oh I don't have etk UT I mean it's all the same um if I would love our acronyms but I do think we need to put out something that just clarifies communication in case people hear different terms even internally because of the funding we sometimes even categorize internally some of the coding because of how udk is funded so and I know that we're cleaning up some numbers and then we'll put it on open data but that 15 163 utk students am I right that about 10 000 are kind of folks who kids who would have been eligible prior to this year the kind of old cut off and about 5 000 are kids who are eligible in La unified but wouldn't be
165eligible for the state because of our early rollout yes and a little bit more but that is my understanding so one second great yeah Frank we're just talking about so the slide you know the 97.2 percent teacher fill rate 11 vacancies a later slide talks about a 99 so if I have a school where there are still unfilled full-time positions but those students are currently being taught by a credentialed sub is that the night the one percent that's vacant or is that the 2.8 percent that's vacant like how do we reconcile those numbers so for the purposes of having a credential teacher in every classroom a fully credentialed sub is a credential teacher and they can be the teacher of record where I'm the 97.2 percent was referring to sub callouts for that day so
166we had I have the number here but we had of the I think it was like 1261 call outs that's typical for us on a given day you know staff calling sick any number of things so that was um 35 assignments were not filled that day on day one so it was a 97.2 percent fill rate on day one we had staff deployed throughout the district so we were able to assist and cover classes as necessary so credentialed staff were out there to assist the subsequent days after that we've had 98 and 99 sub fill rates on those days got it and yeah again like the superintendent said I don't think there's any District in the world that you can expect someone's not going to be sick hit traffic have to take their kids in
167ETC I'm just trying to understand that better and the deployment and the thank you to a public shout out to the 669 staff deployed those first few days has that number dwindled since and do we have any update like today how many staff were deployed to fill those vacancies oh did you have to deploy any additional new stuff no we have realigned all resources and all staff members so if we've had a lot of we have internal candidates who are in those positions we may have to come back as people leave throughout the year on a monthly basis we can lose upwards of 100 people so it the vacancies are a moving Target we're constantly trying to fill it but we really wanted to capture that data on day one knowing that subsequent to that
168we may have people leave people retire people come back you know to fill a year or whatever that may look like so it's a moving Target we are providing updated data so we'll have that as soon as possible and that 669 was just said oh that's a different number yeah 669 are region and central office support which we used to call kind of dawn patrol he's our school support um for that first two days to make sure that you know we're welcoming families and helping with even traffic and some of the other things that happened on the first day of school yeah but I can see why the confusion because last year if you recall we had around six or seven hundred deployed individuals from region central office to fill classroom vacancies the amazing that's
169not the case this year uh you know the deployment the beginning of the uh well in the first couple of days of school is really to make the transition to provide greater assistance to the principals but the deployment of staff at this point to fill uh credential vacancies is is basically zero that's a helpful clarification I know you'll follow up with some of those specifics but to go from a year where we had 700 people deployed in long-term teaching positions versus just the Don Patrol thank yeah oh thanks uh Mr Romero so just kind of that 15 163 number what's the breakdown sure um uh I'm Michael Romero the chief of transitional programs I support our early Ed Division and our utk efforts um so we have this year 488 of our elementary schools implementing
170a utk program last year getting ahead of the state we had 317 of our elementary schools Implement a utk program last year in those 317 schools by the end of last year we had 13 800 students enrolled we rounded up to 14 000. it was a good start last year great efforts this year we have a 171 new to utk elementary schools so if you add up 317 171 that gives you the 488. in those 317 schools last year those 13 800 students those students are now kindergarten students so we started over in those School sites Master planning and demographics for our district told us that we should expect another 14 000 this year in those same 317 schools and we're confident over time we're working hard still on our marketing and we're just a
171drum beat of awareness we think we'll get there for the 171 schools that implemented utk for the first time this year Master planning and demographics expects us to enroll up to 10 000 students so when we talk about fifteen thousand and ten thousand uh we actually took the numbers from last year 317 schools and we actually took it to fifteen thousand so we're going to expect fifteen thousand kids this year not 14. this year for the new schools we're going to expect ten thousand so if you combine fifteen thousand plus ten thousand we're looking at about twenty five thousand students and I so board member I hope that helps on how we come up with that number so we're looking the goal is twenty five thousand and current enrollment is as of the end of
172last week is fifteen thousand one hundred fifty three got it and for those rare parents who have not enrolled their kids but are watching this board meeting where can they learn more about how to enroll their kids uh they can go to our early Ed website and the first thing they'll see on that website is all the information they need to enroll their student they can walk into any one of our elementary schools 488 of them actually Implement utk um if that's we have about 530 elementary schools some of our elementary schools don't have the capacity for utk uh and some of our elementary schools don't offer kindergarten they start at first grade so they parents listening if you can walk into any one of our schools and the principal will help you get your
173student enrolled it's pretty easy we've enrolled fifteen thousand students so far great thank you all I have a few more questions but I don't know if you want it okay great um uh going through the deck one just a kudos to Minish and his team and Food Services I was at one of my high schools Westchester where the cafeteria manager was very excited to give me the beef teriyaki which was delicious I have to say the on the I.T do we yet know what percentage of our students have been deployed for whom we've deployed technology and I asked obviously you know yesterday's closure came early in the school year but when we think of climate and wildfires and the need to Pivot I know I have some schools Topanga Avenue Elementary up in the hills
174where we might have to do that and I think have a specific stipulation in the contract with our teachers to do that I'm just curious so what percentage of our students have their devices and hot spots and when can we expect near 100. sure uh so because the start of the new year new enrollees and everything right now as Mr cersido mentioned we are at 322 000 uh which is about seven roughly um I will say three or five percent uh the goal is to get back to where we were last year which is about 85 86 percent um uh obviously we're still gonna have some numbers that the student they not gonna take the device home they still have a device available at their schools and they may opt out to use their own
175devices at home so we're never gonna see the hundred percent but we know they are connected and they are receiving services so that 73 includes a device and an Internet connected the full package it is in turn right now it's just connected it's just devices for connectivity we have 100 roughly why the device through the ECF we have about 130 000 that they received ECF devices and about I would say this year we are about ninety thousand ninety five thousand connect activity remain a student that they left the district within we obligated to stop their services so either they graduated or matriculated to a school outside of the district we need to stop those services so you see a drop during the summer great thank you um a few more quick things one Dr Estrada
176we got great feedback from principals in the field on the principals Institute so kudos to you and your team for that it seemed relevant and feedback that they were able to Institute pretty quickly I also appreciate it in that conversation that you were discussing more small group instruction and I hope maybe in the future we can learn more about strategies for schools to utilize their staff to create those groups Tas instructional AIDS also other kind of caring adults on campuses I hope to in a follow up we could see tutoring goals I know we had those last year so you mentioned the tutoring what are our goals and also you know putting it out of the some the jargon of tier one tier two tier three just for parents who maybe were not actively seeking
177the tutoring because those students aren't in the highest tier how can those parents learn about those tutoring options and then I think it would be helpful to have a little more on the math framework you know it's been billed and I know parents are asking as quote unquote controversial a fundamental shift in how we're teaching math you know it's not a normative statement for better for worse but like what is it actually so some of those are the broader Concepts what does this mean if algebra in what grades and all that so hopefully we can dive into that and then finally I know Miss going has asked but it would be great to get attendance on professional development both the buyback days at individual schools and also I know you mentioned roughly about 25 000
178teachers the uh the optional what is usually a mandatory people free day but optional for two reasons one it would be great those schools that have very high PD it would be great to just Elevate those best practices how are those School sites getting nearly 100 of their teachers to come on to campus optionally versus a school that maybe has 20 percent and then also for the especially for that district-wide professional development for the teachers that didn't show up how are we ensuring that they're getting that material are we offering it again are we yes we're going to be offering it on Saturdays as well as paying for Subs if they would like to come during the week we know there are different reasons for not being able to attend so the topics are mandatory
179but we are offering it throughout the year to make sure everyone gets those sessions great thank you all thanks Ms Goldberg again this was the best opening of schools that I have ever seen and I started in LA in 78 started in Philadelphia in 73 but I came to Los Angeles Unified in 78 the best the best opening I've ever seen the connection between instruction and operations was Flawless and they usually they were two different groups but no instruction and operations it was so so so well done great planning so if you know me the most important thing to me is the School site I am a general practitioner but my specialty like the doctor says is is my school sites they're very very important to me and it's so important when I visit schools
180that um people understand at the school how we need each other at the school we should not work in silos at the school we need each other we need the teachers the aides our cafeteria people our custodians so some of the things when I visit schools like I now I see AC and you did it in your air conditioning HVAC for you other uh people HVAC and our cafeterias that is absolutely an accomplishment that you can't believe if you've been at a school in Board District three when it's so hot that you're just melting to the floor it is so wonderful to see air conditioning in our cafeterias that's very very important and they matter they matter too I like to visit the campus aides outside see what they're doing let them know thank you
181for watching the kids really important and especially my special ed AIDS you know I observe them in the classroom and I see how they keep a distance from their students they don't hover over them it's kind of embarrassing when you do that they stand back but they're always watching their students and they jump in when it's necessary to help it's just wonderful I'm just so proud of them I just want you to know that I am also very proud of my Kelly mentioned it my parent reps not only are they comforting to new parents coming in the school but the PD that they offer parents coming in it's just so wonderful it explains everything that parents need to know at the school and they're just Irreplaceable uh Library AIDS you know every secondary school has
182a teacher librarian it's granted to the school which is great it's wonderful but not every Elementary School has a library Aid kind of hard to recruit they're only uh part-time unless the principal wants to back up another few hours to make them full time there's nothing like going to an elementary school library and seeing those kids with the love of reading I am telling you some kids like to go to the library because they're kind of shy and they don't want to go outside and they don't want to mix but eventually they do but they come in the library they sit and they read and that is so so important the libraries are just a wonderful thing to have in our elementary school so I push that all the time so I visit them when
183I go to the school um I guess the best thing is to make sure that any problems that could occur at a school site are talked over with the administrator with a teacher and with others you can have a successfully functioning school and kids who are really really learning unless there's peace and calm at the school and it's very important that everyone get along and that that's my goal When I visit this school is I can kind of feel it when I walk into that school I can tell right away this is a fun place or something's up at this school so it's very very important really that we get along work together and work for the kids so that's my comment thank you Jackie Dr Rivas your neck yes thank you first of all
184I know this was as mentioned it was a big comprehensive report and I know there was a lot and thank you for that thank you I know there's a lot to compact in but it's essential for all of us to know to understand the coherence of all the work that you all are doing and um I will say that um from my first opening of schools as a board member I really had a magnificent time I went to schools and I saw this mining faces not only through our students but all of our staff classified certified it was really a joy to go back and I will I mean it was my first so if if it's being said it was the best ever then I will Echo that because that's what I saw and
185um and it was just a joy so I'm glad to know that you know as I'm starting off you know as a Bermuda Good Foot and my school was you know Wonderful visit so anyway I didn't want to say that so um um at first I want to start by you know just some comments and just some questions here and there but um I would like to maybe request as at a future uh reports if you can include uh dates or Adult Learning Centers what um give us some numbers give us the classes who attended we need to know that information as well because we're investing a lot of money and we have a comprehensive plan on for our Adult Ed and um Learners are adult Learners and I think it would be great to
186you know for the community know that we have these spaces available and that it's open and that way all of the classes that we have and I would love to see that Staffing classes student numbers just give us some data um because I would love to share that throughout my district and Beyond to let them know that the district is offering these spaces so I would love to see that in the future um so just a few questions I just sort of put a highlighted here and there um so just yeah I Echo the you know the wonderful um improvements and changes that are going on in our cafeterias I was going and visiting and I love visiting our cafeteria workers thanking our managers as well um and you know a lot of our kitchens
187are really small right and I did notice and there's pictures here that you know these ACS hvacs are kind of big so they're taking space and it's we need them right I'm not saying we don't need them but I'm wondering if you know if um you know taking in consideration that this is going to take space work with the schools in terms of if they have to displace one of their coolers or whatever the case may be um because you know they're very accommodating but sometimes you know we need to be a little bit more helpful and and um and these changes so you know so they're accommodated and they don't have to like go all the way to the NPR to the freezer or get some food and then come back you know is
188this and especially if they have to leave cool and hot cool and hot it affects um are in place so that's just one thing that I wanted to just um so and then you did mention that there is sort of like a stoppage because of of a chain issue I mean a a chain supply issue um so when do we see this sort of alleviating or when when this is going to happen there we anticipate will complete installing the cooling um of cafeterias by the first quarter of 2024 so January February of 2024. It's a combination of supply chain issues as well as changes in refrigerant for some of the cool cooling devices that we purchased so we're doing that Swap and making sure that we are complying with some of the new state rules
189okay so we're just kind of moving our timeline based on that okay wonderful good to know um and then for Staffing my only comment is if you can include here are Community Schools let us know the Staffing or Community Schools so we know what we can help and support them because a lot of the times you know they're working alone and we want to make sure that we want to know their Staffing rates for Community Schools and I would love to see more info information on that again Staffing um any any data you can give us in our community schools funding so we know the status of and the strength and what we need to help our community schools that would be great um and I I also would love to know the principles for
190the principal Leadership Institute how many went what was the percentage I'm happy to know that there was a community school workshop and I'm glad to know that there were principals there who were interested so I'm like yay I'm glad you're included that so kudos for that but yeah you know wanting to know uh what the percentage here I wrote here percentage of students I mean principals who attended um yeah letting us know a little bit more information on on on the on the Institute which is great and I know it um I saw some pictures that people were posting and I think you know I know it was a big benefit to our um so our principles and they did right here yeah Community Schools was included in that um and I'm I'm really happy
191to hear about purposeful instructional groups I love these words over you know these sort of phrases how we really um um describing what's really happening because we'll see small groups but what do you mean by small groups right we're purposeful we're learning about specific standards we're you know um helping the students in in whatever skills so I'm glad that that's working um that that's actually taking place um I would love to hear about our ethnic studies I know we have here culturally linguistic responsive pedagogy um and then just where ethnic studies Falls and that I did request um uh just a briefing on where we are in ethnic studies and implementation Staffing um you know how we're moving along in in that implementation plan will be great and yeah maybe possibly mixed future and Dr
192Rivas uh board member Revis just know that um we will be sending you a board informative and just know that Dr Baez and Miss Brenda and samiento have been very much working on expanding we're also looking at dual enrollment with some of our partner community colleges which I think is a real opportunity to expand the type of of ethnic study courses that we offer as well I know I was just at a continuation school at Stony Point where they are taking advantage of the Chicano studies at the local Community College I think it's Pierce College because they wanted their students wanted to access more so we're also trying to expand our landscape and so look forward to the team being able to do that they've worked very hard to continue to grow those options with
193our committee members and I just want to give a shout out to our micro credentialing also promoting the work that they do and I know that apart from professional development there's also that credentialing and I would love to also learn more about you know how that the program is going how we can help either increase the number of of courses or how we can support that and also in promoting it amongst our Workforce and let's see co-planning culture of collaboration I love that and and the work that I've done when I go into classrooms and I'm when I see teachers working across great and grade levels and also subject areas when they're not working in isolation I see so just a different culture and a different sort of culture and environment amongst the teaching for
194so I really kudos to you uh Dr Baez I know this is your hard work so you know and I really want to say that I do see the coherence in our classrooms as I was going across classrooms and looking at what they were doing and um our classrooms are changing I do see an element of of support and sort of different seating arrangements and grouping and it's it's definitely different when I was in school you know when the season just in rows here it's just like it's very inclusive and so when you go in the classroom you can feel that energy right and every classroom is different but I can see the difference in and then how are the the the tables are being seated and then you'll have a couch where you know
195students can move around they don't always have to be seated and thank you Dr Bice for bringing that change into our classrooms I appreciate that if you don't mind it'd be great for you to just share because during the teacher PD it'd be great for you to share the type of triple tracking and modeling that was happening so you would see the teachers engage in that Joy so I'd just love for her to share a little bit about that because it's so important to our model I think that you're referring to the warm demand or work that we were doing in the classroom ecology work and modeling so we did provide professional development we showed models and then teachers also implemented those those practices into the classrooms it's all part of the professional development showing
196the models giving them the tools and then supporting them as they implemented those resources in the classroom so it's been a joy to work with our wonderful team who is is um is making it happen so thank you beautiful well is making real transformational change transformational change in us in our classrooms and I see them and thank you thank you for that so yay so continued work on that thank you um let's see I think that's pretty much it to oh sorry I made like a little here ago um a differentiated learning and Scaffolding particularly for Els and newcomers you know I think that's essential for for us to understand the supports that are going there so I know the standards that the students are supposed to be in right but within that we have
197all types of Learners not every so helping us understand the differentiated learning the strategies and I mentioned I know that uh board member Melvin mentioned that the strategies are going inside of our in the classrooms but the supports and I think that's really great too elucidate and also our special education students right um how how does that play out in the classroom how does that look so it would be great to sort of like absolutely extrapolate those absolutely so that so we've provided the base this is the tier one and we provide access points and strategies for our emergent bilinguals our students with an IEP our gifted students our black black students to have access to the learning and that's the specialty piece that each one of our offices and and um and coordinators at
198the school might support teachers and understanding those access points so we'll provide additional information I may also add our Med team also offered 10 days of institutes this summer as well so just know that there's parallel tracks of training happening and so they're also rolling out additional PD remember those care packages I've talked to you that would be sending out to school so that way they can Implement for their Bank Tuesdays they're also working on that based on our assessment results on the lpac so more is coming and they will be continuing to partner with the DOI team as well and my last question is um the Intensive diagnostic educational Center's idec I would love to learn more about those apps is that different from ideal idel is that is there a whole different the
199idec and the Intensive diagnostic educational centers yes and it's been one of our great Innovation spaces for quite some time I remember when I was in LA unified previously it was part of the aura funding that was invested as an innovation and they're great with being able to support our students with dyslexia and so one of the things is what can we learn from the wonderful work they've incubated within their idec centers and they'll be a continuing sure gave them the stage they'd share more but we'd love to be able to share more with you about what's currently happening there and what's our interest to share because we're doing so much to inform around dyslexia what can we do to share what's happening in those places more with the school which they've already started they've
200done I visit I can't remember what school I went to but I know I visited one of the centers and I was just amazed of all the work they do it's like oh my God this is wonderful so I would love to be able to to you know make sure that we're funding in that we're expanding into more schools because they do do a wonderful service for parts not only to sexy students but all the students that can benefit from you know their services and resources that and expertise that they offer so that is all so thank you so much wonderful before I call on Dr McKenna which I will call on next uh to tell you that after this item is over we will go to the speakers that are non-agenda item speakers because
201we try to do that as close to four o'clock as we can it'll be after four o'clock since it's four o'clock now but that's next after that we go back through the consent calendar item so just so that people know where we're going Dr McKenna thank you given the time that has been taken used wisely not taken but used wisely by the staff and the board I want to try to be as brief as possible I can talk for a long time but I think some of you know that but I won't do that I'll try not to worry I am impressed I have been at this for a long time in several different districts I've always prided myself in knowing quite a lot about instruction my chief of staff reminded me as you were
202presenting that when I started off when Dr strata came here I was talking about I've been talking about my seven power skills speak right re-listen think study and take a test it was incorporated and I had never seen that before I've never seen a presentation like this and to you Mr superintendent I congratulate you on the quality of the team that you've gotten here as well as the cohesiveness as you pulled them together it's like you've taken some thoroughbreds and put them on a stagecoach team but they're all pulling together no one person is out there but they're all thoroughbreds they really know what they're talking about if this is an example of how we're starting there's no reason in the world where we should regress the presenters the support team that goes with them
203they've all shown me a cohesion that belies the shall we say the newness of this superintendent to this District there have been people that have been superintendent for years and have never been able to pull together this kind of thing and I've been in this District longer than anybody else come and gone but put it all together I've been here a whole career I started in the 60s and I'm still here I can tell you that the emphasis on instruction so I'm going to compliment not only the team and the superintendent I want to commend the board for talking about instructions for so long and being so interested and curious about it I've been on several boards too of being a superintendent I've never heard a board that interested in instruction and I want to
204compliment the audience for sitting through all of this that's not easy to do unless you're really thrilled about instruction this would probably bore you or put you to sleep so you were attentive to it and the people at home I hope that you're paying attention to what we're trying to do now none of this will work because everybody pays attention it gets on the ball the most important part about in the school year is the beginning of a school year and as Scotch Morrison said and he and I have both been principals we know what an opening looks like and what it should look like and it doesn't always look that way when you're the principal of using things going all kind of which way isn't going wrong because you expect things to go wrong
205kids don't know where the bathroom is kids don't know what their name is if you don't put it on their shirt they want to hang on to their mamas in elementary school their mamas don't want to go with the kids Elementary School is one mess High School is another mess kids don't want to go to this class because they don't like that teacher that they're working oh I want to try to change my schedule on the first day all that stuff goes on in school on the first day in the first week but for some reason not for some reason for the reason of experience and commitment the team has pulled it together the team at the school sites I want to complement the principals who are not here because they do have a day
206job so their someplace right now taking care of their school that's the first thing they're supposed to do I think like Scott does like a principal should you're always concern yourself with the school site School District does not work unless the school sites work the district can't take credit if the schools don't work we can't have underperforming underachieving schools it's like an airline that has some planes that don't land safely don't land at all get lost what kind of Airline is that Airline is only as good as all of its airplanes all of its Pilots all of its crew all the people who build it maintain it put it together repair it respond to emergencies it takes a lot of people doing this this thing called public education is not easy and I'm very impressed
207with what I thought I did and heard I've been paying very close attention to this and I have not seen the depth of all the times I've been in school opening and even not the openings I know that takes leadership to do that I want to compliment the superintendent again I don't want to be redundant but this doesn't happen because all these people accidentally kind of did this it's just kind of randomly put them this together and oh by the way they all just got it together and came up magnificently this was coordinated this was organized notwithstanding the interruption of the hurricane and I don't mean this any disrespect we we did what we were supposed to do the superintendent called the right thing but having come from New Orleans and he coming from where
208I'm at that was not a hurricane there's a lot of water I got that and I appreciate all the people who are affected by it I sympathize and all that but I know hurricanes you don't want to be in a real hurricane if you've never been in one you know the difference the difference in the wind when a hurricane comes you can smell it coming when you when you grow up in the South you can smell the rain smells like a hurricane and when that wind starts blowing that's that's the key and then something called the eye of the hurricane and the eye is the safest part but it's around the eye that really wears you and it stays there for days and days and days it's worse than an earthquake an earthquake is over
209in less than a minute a lot of Destruction but a hurricane can do a lot of damage I sympathize with everybody who's been affected and afflicted by this this weather but the superintendent made the right call because even now we found out that our buses were not able to get out of the bus barns when after the After the flood of the storm let's put it like this so even with that we're still in a smooth flow of operation I don't have any questions to ask you've asked and answered all the questions you can ask more questions board members uh we can be all night asking questions but I do believe that you've seen a model of our school district ought to open and the team of people who are knowledgeable enough to stand up
210here and tell you things that maybe you didn't know anything about or maybe it was boring to you maybe you thought what what are they going to tell me that I don't know there's a lot of stuff they know now that some of the rest of us maybe didn't know I'm I'm impressed and I'm not easy to impress I was telling my team in the in in a stop with this enclosed session I'm frequently gratified but I'm never satisfied and you can put that on my Tombstone even though I've been on the on the wrong side of the grass I'm still not going to be satisfied because I don't know which way I went when I got in there I don't know if I went down but gratification is I seek that but satisfaction means
211you're done I can never say that in education there's nothing that's perfect but we strive for it as much as we can and this is the smoothest presentation I've heard it's knowledgeable it's not blowing smoke is using terminology that sometimes sounds like it's just redundant but it's real this I'll stop at this I'm just impressed Miss Goldberg take it from there I'm impressed March Dr McKenna I have only a few things a few things to add and I want to just join the course of people who sang that this is quite a document and I'm very impressed I want to talk with uh Dr bias just for a minute about a couple of these things looking at pages 39 through um 41. I want to know if there is some method that we can get
212that we can let parents know what these things mean in absolute terms let me just take page 39. apply requisite decoding skills to read grade level text both narrative and informational we all here I think know what that means but I bet I've got a lot of parents that don't so what is narrative what is informational but not just to find them here's a page from a book that's a narrative book here's a page from a book that's informational your children need to be able to read both kinds of these things that's the kind of thing I hope we can put together and maybe through the regions uh actually help parents understand what they need to be looking for and how they can help because I get calls from parents all the time saying I
213don't know what to do how can I help my daughter how can I help my son and these things really are really good guidelines but I think we need to find a way to make sure that we can get them to parents at every school in specific examples the same thing with the arithmetic and math there's a difference between arithmetic and math we're not just talking in arithmetic about functions uh you know algorithms but do they know what cgc is do they know what we're doing differently do they know what they should be expecting should they expect their third grader to know multiplication tables or not should they be expected to know uh factors of a number in what grade and how how will a parent know whether that is if we can engage parents
214more in understanding a document like this in Practical terms I think we'll be able to get more parents to feel like they not only understand what we're trying to do in the classroom but how their role can be absolutely critical in understanding what they can do to help I agree completely and as a principle I can tell you that the district did a really great job of providing me resources for parents that it was at the level of understanding that was simple for um for my family who's maybe doesn't have an educational background would understand what it means so those resources are out there principles receive them we need to update them we need to make sure that they provide the examples you just recommended where we actually see what is a fairy tale what
215is non-fiction what is a expository text that in a way that parents understand it teachers also do have of the resources when they have their open house when they welcome the parents they show them this is what students need to know and be able to do they show them examples but a lot of parents won't come to open house that's why I'm saying I want to find ways that we can communicate this family academies is another one but we will definitely go back and make sure that we have a more comprehensive approach to engage our parents and so that it's simple for them to understand and support at home the other thing I'm concerned about is also on your fifth grade page but it is about building academic vocabulary one of the things that we
216find in our high school students who look like they read and look like they write and so forth and then they get to college and suddenly their lives have ended somehow and I think it's because we we're not completely able to help them understand the difference between just our speaking average vocabulary which we all have at some level whether we're bilingual or not some people can do it in two languages I wish I could uh but what is academic English and where are we teaching it and how will parents know whether their students are getting academic vocabulary as well as the rest of it that's really almost the only thing I wanted to ask is to how we engage parents I've had two small other items uh we see that there are centrally funded interventionist
217positions how will school know schools know when that these funds are available right so that that happened in the spring during budget so they already know yes they've already been identified take care of that problem um school-funded positions can you describe a little bit in Greater detail what we're doing to support schools who will be having interventionists for the first time absolutely because we know a lot of people had them in other ways before but a lot of people haven't had them before yep and we just launched our interventionist Academy we did send out guidance to the principals we did invite all the centrally funded and school funded in addition to that those schools that did not purchase one and those that do not have a centrally funded they've actually decided to send a representative
218to the school from the school so that they receive that professional development and that we reach that coherence in terms of our intervention Approach at all of our school sites so we have another one coming up this Friday so they are receiving the same professional development and finally um well next to the last your July informative told us that title one is a source of funding for literacy and numeracy intervention how much of the 44 million dollars in Lost Esser funding will this cover and is this a permanent ongoing source for literacy and numeracy program so Our intention is to utilize Title 1 resources to cover essentially funded positions all 44 million that has been committed out of this or so it becomes a sustainable resource year over year out of title one which is
219consistent with strategies that you see across other districts it's Title One is intended for intervention for our neediest students so it's very much aligned with the intent of Title One finally I have a suggestion that I've made a couple of times in a couple of places but I want to make it publicly we have ability now for two-year-olds that are potty trained to start school it's a secret in a lot of neighborhoods they don't know it so I'm hopeful that we're going to find a strategy to get that information out publicly because a lot of those families that have those two and three-year-olds that would love to have them in an eec don't even know we have eec's don't know where they're located don't know that it's free don't know that it's offer Working Families
220in particularly because it's all year it has different Vacations or practically no vacations and I'm looking for a strategy that tells parents who are not connected to our school district because we're doing it through our schools for the parents that are there but for the people that aren't how do they know about this how do they know where their nearest eec is how do they get that information that it's free and that your immigration status is of no importance and secondarily the same thing with tketk Pre-K whatever we're calling it when we finally figure out what we're calling it I know a lot of families that do not know that all four-year-olds are now welcome they think oh no my income won't let it or my kid is uh four but I think I have
221to wait till he or she is five that's what I heard I have to wait till they're you know I'm saying it's the same issue particularly if they are not connected to our district already they have no way of knowing that this resource is available to them free without immigration status being important and that what a head start as they used to call it uh it gives kids in school so that's that's my final request that we develop a really ongoing marketing strategic plan on how we get this information out to the vast majority of parents that have kids that could use these services that don't even know they exist all right so now we have this item and I want to thank the superintendent and his wonderful staff for all of the things that
222you put together and for the extraordinarily fine opening that we have experienced thus far this year we will now move to since it's 4 17 we will move to hearing from the speakers um um non-agenda item speakers a non-agenda item Speaker gets three minutes to speak on any topic they want we ask if you hear something that you like to snap your fingers if you hear something you don't like be quiet yeah be respectful because you don't have to agree with all the speakers and you're not going to they we never do so it's not important that we agree it's important that we are Curtis courteous and we give them an opportunity to be heard whether we agree with them or not and we will ask Mr McLean to start calling the group okay here
223we go and before we do general public comment I have a quick plug for the office of Inspector General or oig the office of Inspector General would like to remind you all that they investigate the misuse of La USD funds and resources as well as retaliation for reporting any misconduct anyone can make a report via the oig hotline on their website which is www.lausd .org forward slash oig or by telephone at 213-241-778 or by emailing inspector.general lausd.net reports are confidential and you can remain anonymous if you wish okay I'm going to call folks that are here to speak in person I'm gonna call four names and if you could line up in order that I call you right there at Pillar four conveniently named operational effectiveness so that we can facilitate the smooth transition from
224one speaker to the next okay Stephen Martin you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin Paola Meneses if you could line up there at Pillar four operational effectiveness uh Kinley LaGrange if you're here please line up right after Paula and then Ruben dueñas also line up after Kinley LaGrange all under pillar 4 operational effectiveness Stephen Martin are you here come on up you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin give me a moment to make sure your mic is on stigma Madam president distinguished members of the board Mr superintendent my name is Stephen Martin an at-large officer for the Stonewall Democratic Club of Los Angeles our organization finds it prudent to Pivot our tactics while engaging in public discourse and manufactured outrage targeted at lgbtq culture in the education system we need to
225be clear about our intent the intentions of community organizers who work to cultivate chaos through deceptive tactics and ensnare the passive nature of well-meaning parents without the provocation would live in peace with their lgbtq neighbors Stonewall Democratic Club in the light of the recent murder of Laura Ann Carlton whose burner was caused by her display of the pride flag has begun discussions internally on how we confront the lives of nationalists hold ground defend our culture and responsibly keep our volunteers safe and free of violence during the Saticoy Elementary School hate event members of our organization were subject to harassment assault and Siege the sad truth is madam president instead of parents coming to meet with organized groups such as Stonewall Dems the quality California HRC Trevor Project P flag GSA for cultural exchange to find
226common ground and address concerns National radical conservative movements have agitated the concerns of valued groups in our community all while using their cultural identity as a trojan horse horse for lethal intent it is no longer responsible for organizations like ours to encourage volunteers members and allies to show up only to assert our presence this type of organizing has become ineffective and plays right into the hands of radical white nationalists who seek to capitalize off the images and videos they elicit from confrontation we must not give them ammunition it is incumbent upon all organizers to remember conservative politicians want to fight Us in the stadium of children schools and parental rights because they have no solutions to tackle the real fears of students guns not books so how do we move forward still one will be
227engaging in community conversations to bring lgbtq active advocacy groups and their service providers together for dialogue on how members and allies of the community can come to us and we will help facilitate safe communication with their elected representation regarding lgbtq issues free of violence we must move forward move towards solutions that lead to community cooperation because we are stronger together and on behalf of Stonewall Democratic Club we wish Karen Ramirez a heartfelt congratulations on her election thank you so much thank you for your time Paola Meneses are you here Paola okay I have you listed as in person but I'll see if you were on the phone with us one moment okay I see you are oh wait it's Paula on the line okay press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes
228to speak once you begin okay please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Paula I see you're on you muted and then unmuted and then re-muted yourself uh foreign we hear you now now we don't okay um this is my joke about operational effectiveness coming to get me um the sound is no good we will come back to miss monesses um is Ruben dueñas standing there thank you come on up you have three minutes to speak once you begin good evening my name is Ruben dueñas I'm here today to speak respectfully Against The Goldberg Grievous co-location policy resolution LAUSD should be working with the charter school community on building collaborative relationships in places where shared campuses make sense and a comprehensive plan that would alleviate the
229need for sharing space in the first place I am an LAUSD graduate and a graduate of public schools or sorry public universities and although I am an employee of ypi charter schools my voice today is shaped by my experience as a son of immigrants and most importantly as a parent when I was a child a long time ago my parents had to choose where to live in Los Angeles to ensure their that their children would get the best education possible they chose the best neighborhood they could afford and my brothers and I went to the schools that were assigned to their address I say they chose because my parents did not choose affordability and money made the choice for them my parents did not have a choice on where to send me and my brothers
230we went to the resident school that was the only option my experience as a parent was the exact opposite I had choices not solely determined by my finances when my daughter started school some 21 years ago we lived in a middle-income neighborhood as a result of my college education and the school of residence was considered to be a good school by all of the normal indicators available at that time just before the first day of school my wife and I learned about a dual language charter school that had just opened from my wife and I it was important that our daughters maintained our native language of Spanish as I had lost my ability to speak Spanish and my wife was able to continue with hers we visited the school and we were fortunate to be
231selected through the lottery process Charter Schools provided my family a choice in how our daughters would be educated my daughters are now bilingual and biliterate and both have chosen to be teachers in public schools I hope this board will do everything possible to ensure a high quality public education is available to all of our families in Los Angeles having choices in public education whether they be Charter Schools magnet programs or resident school and zones of choice parents and students have would have the opportunity to pursue their interests and passions in education this co-location resolution will destroy parents and students opportunities to choose the best public school for their family my parents did not have a choice for me and my brothers my wife and I did for our daughters All Families deserve the opportunity to
232choose a great public school in Los Angeles and prop 39 co-location is one piece that allows for our families to have that choice thank you for your attention thank you for your time Maria Luisa Palma I said you're ready to go come on up you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin good afternoon hello once again board members and superintendent my name is Maria luisapalma I'm here today representing oleada a non-profit with the purpose to increase parental involvement in schools and school districts we heard many pretty speeches today in support of your five symbolic resolutions most with a political agenda we also heard comments condemning the parental rights rally allow me to shed some light from the perspective of a parent and provide some clarity on the real issues that parents are interested in
233the parents I hear from want transparency they want transparency on curriculum on student surveys on sex education parents want state and federal laws such as the protection of people Rights Act parents to be complied with parents want to exercise their parental rights to opt out of curriculum they find objectionable parents want to have open dialogues with principals teachers and administrators at regions at schools central offices on these topics again we want transparency parents want to exercise their constitutional rights to free speech freedom to exercise their faith freedom for exercise of diversity of thought we want equal protection under the law and due process under the law parents are concerned they may be kept in the dark about sex ed or gender ideology curriculum parents are concerned that utla's bargaining agreement grants teachers discretion over sex
234ed curriculum parents are concerned that invasive psychological and sexual identity surveys are collecting and aggregating data on our children without the parental option to opt out when when and how will this dialogue towards transparency take place please please I beg you do not dismiss parents with concerns please don't name call don't just don't label us as disruptive parents when we ask questions and demand answers please don't attack us as narrow-minded please give us mutual respect on all variations of thought these are our children we are just asking for you to respect our rights under the law there are children we believe we have parental rights and that is what is being asked for so please let's refrain from name calling there's a lot of clapping in the auditorium when certain people come up here and
235and speak badly about the parents we are all parents please please listen we want to have this dialogue so tell us how when where how will this forum take place how will our questions be answered how will the curriculum become transparent that's what we would like to know thank you for listening thank you for your time okay we're gonna try again with Paola Meneses Paula if you're on the line please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Paola hello okay good afternoon my name is and I am a mother of three students in LAUSD and member of the elac committee thank you for giving me the opportunity of speaking before you and to have you your present I am concerned to see fights in the schools
236and see how this board of education does not look after the safety that is needed school police helps to avoid these fights because they're they are a respected Authority most of all in high schools and also there's a lot of marijuana use in the bathroom in the schools those that take care after the uh patios or the yards and they don't work and that's what we asked for the school police in the school Kinsley Elementary last year we had a lot of problems with the principal they she did not open the parent Center she closed dialogue with the parents ignoring the request of having a meeting with her and to share our concerns with her teachers left the school and today we have different substitute teachers and the only ones affected are the students and
237their education please please I asked for you to do something and I asked to monitor the principles the current principle does not allow for parents to go into the school site also last year I filled out my volunteer application and it was never approved despite that I uh met all the requirements and also she uh took out a student that was already in the school I asked for help and they did not do anything to help me in the Kingsley needs a change of principle in an art region no one is listening to us and we need to bring this uh situation to this level please I request for you to do something it is very sad to see how my school is and believe me that very proudly I say Kingsley school because I
238know that my children went there and it's so sad that in reality you have not listened to us I ask you as a favor to come and to see how the situation is and how the principal is working so that you yourselves can see in the morning the students get to school the new students that are very small they cry and I as a mother I wouldn't leave my child alone because what I want my my student to be well but the principal standing there and she doesn't do any anything that to send somebody to see for that child or at least that the parents can go in to see them into the classroom because they don't allow parents to go in it's very cruel and I as a mother I'm hurting and that type
239of person we do not need them in our school I went to a school with my daughter the first day that is Bernstein I believe that the principal was so lovely and the moment that I got there my daughter was crying she was sad because it was her first day and even though she's older but the principal gave me the attention spoke to my daughter and believe me that type of principle is the one that we should have in all of the school sites because thank you very much for your time I appreciate it thank you very much for your time okay Kinley LaGrange are you on the line Kinley LaGrange if you are on the line please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Kinley
240LaGrange uh we can uh can you maybe speak up and I will also turn up the volume in the in the room if you speak clearly into the receiver on the device you're using yes is this that's much better thank you so much great good afternoon superintendent Carvalho and distinguished board members thank you for a place to speak today my name is Kenley LaGrange and I'm a parent of two children at Baldwin Hills Elementary pilot and gifted Magnet School I'm here in support of item 22 on the agenda which will create policy to mitigate impacts caused by Proposition 39 which allowed a charter school to co-locate on our campus for too long our students suffer because of how prop 39 had been implemented at our school this has harmed our students academically emotionally and socially
241Baldwin Hills is a pilot school with a gifted magnet program and a community school and very importantly a bsat school the impacts were pervasive our community school plan and Pilot School plan were stunted the situation created and inhospitable and at times unsafe learning environment our Healthy Start Navigator representative which is a state-funded program for families experiencing homelessness was lost due to a lack of private space to meet with families in a space to store essential items such as food and school supplies it caused shortened time for students to eat lunch shorten time for recess and Outdoor Learning sensory and social stress on students in our autism specific programs and ongoing verbal and physical bullying at play times and restroom breaks this doesn't just affect our students at Baldwin Hills but it's not fair nor Equitable
242to the charter school either thankfully after eight years of a constant push from parents and teachers organizing the co-location was removed from our campus LAUSD needs a policy in place to protect our school in the future and schools like ours one where typically marginalized students are thriving Baldwin Hills is a beacon for black Student Success and I am certain there are other schools out there who could reach their potential if not first cycling co-location we thank you for hearing us I am in full support of the resolution and ask that you support our students and vote yes thank you for your time Marie Jermaine are you on the line Marie Germain if you're on the line please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Marie Jermaine
243good afternoon good afternoon my name is Marie Germain I am on the board of director for utila West area I was a teacher at Baldwin Hills Elementary pilot and gifted High ability magnet for 23 years with seven of those years and a prop 39 co-location with new Los Angeles Charter I stand in support of the resolution for a charter school co-location policy to mitigate impacts caused by prop 39. in my research and daily experience of prop 39 implementation over the last seven years several patterns emerged as red flags there is a heavy concentration of co-locations and region West especially in school communities that serve middle to low income families for the region West schools that do serve a majority black population and our sites designated for academic achievement with gifted High ability magnet programs these
244co-locations have been in these um home schools have been in some of the most egregious co-location situations such as the case for Baldwin Hills Elementary and Westchester High School over the years our teachers and parents have worked collaboratively to bring Innovative and essential programs to our schools like the Community Schools model and the black student achievement plan only to have School site infrastructure needed for these programs to be destroyed by the prop 39 co-location in addition community members and organizations like black sororities and fraternities have funded Performing Arts programs for our students and establish mentoring relationships with our black male youth schools have worked to build relationships with Community businesses that offer access to high quality enrichment programs like engineering robotics yoga and chess but again and infrastructure is removed by the co-location the impact
245of a charter co-location goes beyond the school walls several years ago Baldwin Hills Elementary and Marvin Avenue Elementary teachers and families were said to have a joint parent meeting one evening the district approved the use of the facilities new La Charter sought to have the district canceled the meeting they contacted operations and Charter School Division a number of times and in turn repeated calls replaced to the Marvin Avenue principal and Chapter Chair they stood strong the charter youth District Personnel to intimidate District employees new La continued to seek opportunities to disenfranchise district teachers and families in March of 2019 Baldwin Hills is on the agenda at the West Adams neighborhood Council where the approval of a resolution to support Baldwin as being a charter-free Zone would be voted for again new La called many district
246offices Council district 10 and the neighborhood Council board to have the Baldwin Hills resolution removed from the agenda newella again weaponize the charter division employees against District employees at Baldwin Hills they also have them attend the neighborhood council meeting as an act of intimidation the neighborhood Council sought through the tactics and voted in support of Baldwin LAUSD board and superintendent it is time that LAUSD have a stronger policy around protecting our public schools from the negative impacts of co-location thank you thank you for your time uh and and those of you in the audience with that yellow sign might you have an extra copy because we can't read it from here okay I'll meet you over at these stairs in a moment if you oh we've got one coming thank you so much I appreciate
247it okay I'm going to call on the next three folks if you could line up around pillar four again uh Yesenia Lopez you can come up on up to the podium Miss Lopez Frank Navarro you would be next Shauna draxton you would be after Frank and we may as well also call Yasmin Vargas to be after Shauna so Yesenia please come on up and uh we'll hear your three minutes of public comment Yesenia are you here no Yesenia Frank Navarro are you here come on up and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin um okay if you're going to give this gentleman your time we'd appreciate his name when he starts hi good afternoon my name is Raj makwana nice to see you good afternoon superintendent Cavallo esteem board members of LAUSD I'm
248Raj makwan a dedicated parent and a volunteer father of our wish Academy graduate a board member and a parent leader at wish community and Academy Schools with grave concerns we address the recent resolution proposed by board members Goldberg and Rivas that affects charter school students today I very respectfully implore you to oppose the resolution that threatens to perpetuate inequality and adversity to these public school students my son who suffers from anxiety and was bullied at a young age thrived when he had a choice a choice that supported his academic and social emotional needs daily in a manner that matched his traits as a parent having a public school option where he himself felt safe and included was not only critical but essential to his future my son's story is not unique this resolution has a
249potential to impact thousands of families who have the right to make an informed choice for over ten thousand Charter students allowing excellent models to coexist is Our obligation as education leaders should the resolution be amended to protect co-locations we still remain steadfast in opposition to preclude the presence of on-campuses without considering the genuine needs of all public school children is and families is unjust we should collaborate and we want to collaborate on long-term strategies that genuinely benefit all students under your stewardship some options to ponder a maximize and bond dollars that have been approved substantial funds to to improve public school facilities that include charter schools to overcome policy barriers these self-imposed policies make it harder for charter schools to find their own sites I'm a commercial real estate Financial professional and I'm very aware
250of the difficulties in public space excuse me private space and we also urge you to consider multi-year agreements shifting from year to year agreements to multi-year agreements Fosters stronger Community bonds between campuses provide stability to all stakeholders and streamlines administrative work for all administrators across all schools I earnestly and respectfully urge you to realign with your commitment to serve all public school children's let us leaders let us be leaders that Inspire pride and integrity by voting against this resolution that divides families it's up to us to bring families together we don't want to perpetu we don't want any policy that perpetuates a marginalized or harms a beloved Public School students we do indeed need each other thank you for your consideration and time thank you for your time Shawna draxton come on up you have
251three minutes to speak once you begin good afternoon superintendent Carvalho and esteemed LAUSD board members I approach you today with heartfelt concern and a deep sense of responsibility for children I'm Shawna draxton the executive director of wish community and Academy public schools with our 14th year just beginning and a decade of sharing space within public school campuses I am grateful for your authorization of our schools as a public school option your Visionary policies dedication to diverse educational choices and unwavering commitment to Excellence have fueled our success which has been consistently voted as the best school and best high school in our area for 11 years we have full TK through 12 wasp accreditation and we've received glowing reviews from your staff we proudly stand as a professional development school for LMU and an international Beacon
252of Education innovation in short we make each other better I'm concerned as to why I admits the rigor Challenge and significance of our mission and all public school missions the students the families faculty and staff that any choice that can undermine our Collective efforts has arisen I am puzzled by this resolution that only sews to divide students staff and families the proposed resolution contrasts starkly with your role as Leaders entrusted to prioritize student welfare through a spectrum of public schooling options it sets traditional and Charter Public School students against each other among five schools co-located on one of the campuses we share to our charter schools and through our traditional schools it's disheartening to see a resolution that unjustly vilifies our community suggesting that sharing schools harms traditional Public School attendees numerous District Public Schools
253also co-locate with other District Public Schools why then single out Charter Public School children this resolution neglects to address the underlying causes of co-location nor does it present a comprehensive facilities plan are two Charter Public Schools contribute over one million dollars to the district for the space that would otherwise be vacant or underutilized our middle and high school shared campus has room for approximately 2 000 students without wish and KJ and City of Angels there would be only about 680 students our elementary shared campus can serve nearly 1500 students without wish there would only be about 400 students using this public school space this is true of campuses across the district there is room for all of us if we're transparent imaginative collaborative our experience is that you're making it more difficult for schools to
254find our own campuses and now making it more difficult to share campuses We As Leaders must make Equitable fiscal sound decisions thank you thank you for your time Yasmine Vargas Jasmine Vargas come on up you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin good morning all or actually afternoon now right we've been here all day um my name is Jasmine Vargas I'm the senior organizer for jobs to move America and I'm here today because jobs to move America supports good jobs and equity for electric School Bus purchases for LAUSD we were glad to see that LASD has moved forward with purchasing 120 buses last month almost 10 percent of the fleet but what we didn't see are the good jobs benefits and Equity commitments that should come with it in the spirit of celebrating Labor
255Day we worry this is a missed opportunity lesd should be using its purchasing power to lift up Working Families building electric buses can be a good clean energy job with the LAUSD leadership those 120 electric buses you buy should incentivize manufacturers that actually benefit the communities they serve and the workers they employ the LA County Electric truck and bus Coalition has been advocating for the U.S employment plan which would support High Road wages and better benefits for workers making electric buses a noble call we can all get behind the best way to ensure that the U.S employment plan will be added to any new electric bus purchases is with your support and Leadership a letter signed by youth climate strike SoCal 350 climate action ibw 18 Nica DSA La Al angelinos for green schools and
256recently the LA Alliance for new economy was developed by the LA County truck and bus Coalition yesterday which calls for board action that would update the district procurement process for electric school buses the U.S employment plan has been used in competitive bidding processes before which ensures that public money for purchases of electric school buses provides public resources through Community benefits and high road jobs working with Community leaders like the LA County Electric truck and bus Coalition that jobs to move America is a part of is a good way of showing your commitment to finding solutions to the limits presented in lausd's procurement processes today we look forward to discussing this issue with you further and finding a way to get a hundred percent of all school buses electrified and Greening our schools together thank you
257so much thank you very much thank you for your time I'm going to call the next three in-person speakers Joseph Sullivan are you here coming directly up to the podium and begin after the other folks line up Elizabeth Padilla are you here Elizabeth Padilla please line up over there by pillar number four if there's space please and uh um Luisa Galindo are you here please line up after Elizabeth if you are here please take it away sir yes uh good afternoon board uh board president Goldberg superintendent Carvalho and staff my name is Joe Sullivan I'm with IBEW Local 11 and the national electrical contractors Association of Greater Los Angeles I am also part of the Los Angeles electric truck and bus Coalition as well and I want to start by acknowledging the great progress that's
258been made around sustainability and bus electrification thank you very much I'd especially like to acknowledge board member Gomez superintendent Carvalho and the facilities and transportation staffs and their efforts to Electrify the Sun Valley bus yard this is a huge step and we'd like to see this create high road careers for local residents and manufacturers ibw and the national electrical contractors Association would like to see Workforce language that would create apprenticeship opportunities with job placement and careers that pay family sustaining wages and benefits added to any RFP to build out electrical infrastructure this represents an opportunity to lift up the community and I've sent suggested language to staff and I'm asking for your support in this process similarly as Ms Vargas just mentioned LAUSD has the opportunity to set a major Market signal to with its
259School Bus procurement by utilizing competitive negotiation process that includes labor and Equity Provisions like those found in the U.S employment plan LAUSD can impact electric bus manufacturing and create good jobs with Pathways for underrepresented populations and lastly I want to take a moment to thank you all for your service and your commitment and doing what you do thanks thank you for your time Elizabeth Padilla come on up you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin good afternoon board members and superintendent my name is Elizabeth Padilla and I was employed by the LAUSD serving students and families at beyond the bell youth development program from 2009 to 2021 13 years for eight of those 13 years I worked as a part-time employee at arara Charter School I am currently full-time at the charter school I'm
260here today because I would like to address my concern with the resolution proposed by board president Goldberg and board member Rivas which were prohibit LAUSD charter school students from sharing space with hundreds of district schools I am aware of the updates to the resolution however I am still concerned with its impact on families and students because it still does not propose a solution the proposed ban impacts the neediest communities in South L.A East L.A and the San Fernando Valley as written the resolution could impact 10 000 Charter students and more than half of charter schools that currently share a campus with an LAUSD school it could impact nearly a dozen charter schools that are also Community Schools I want to share with you my experience at Ararat and our experience on a co-located site we
261have been sharing spaces on an LAUSD campus since 2011 and currently are split across two campuses after eight years at Ararat I have witnessed firsthand the care and concern of all staff members district and Charter towards students there are students on campus who know one another even though they are from two different schools in fact we had two staff members also campus aides who worked at arara during the day and walked across the campus to the whole school to support the after-school LAUSD beyond the bell youth development program this resolution will negatively impact Arata Charter since our current location has been our home for over a decade in some cases sharing a campus makes sense when a charter school cannot locate an affordable private facility or wear a co-location enrichment can help keep a smaller
262District school financially viable my ask for you is to vote no on this resolution or withdraw it completely thank you thank you for your time eloiso galinda are you here Luisa come on up you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin time to this Mom ENT good afternoon everyone put your hand up and we'll pass those headsets out to you good afternoon my name is eloisa Galindo I'm a mom of a girl in the district I'm part of Ross la today I am here to support the resolution because this would bring Daft to all the executives that want to privatize education the parents the teachers don't know I do know what is a what a privatized plan is I am here to support this resolution support the resolution of Dr Rivas and Jackie Goldberg
263I want to make it very clear that we're not here to ask you guys to shut down Charter Schools or to stop them or to take away these parents choice but I am here to ask you to respect my choice my choice to attend a public school that is not co-located by a charter school and I ask you guys share with us the list of charter school campuses that are shared with public schools because you can't so why is it that our public schools are asked to share space with Charter Schools but our charter school campuses aren't asked to share space which chart with Public Schools if it's so safe why doesn't it go both ways my personal experience is with Catskill and Carson they were at they were threatened to be co-located and because
264of that they lost their Bungalows they lost their parent Center and they lost a lot of their programs they lost their school psychiatrists and they're still trying to recover just from a threat of a co-location so I can imagine what would happen if there was actually allowed to co-locate so myself I'm a parent that really believes in parent engagement I believe that our kids are successful when the parent is engaged so I would like to see every single school have a parent Center have a parent Center rep actively engaging as parents and when you put a co-location on our campuses you take that space away from us so as a parent I'm asking you to please pass this resolution be more responsible about our spaces and think about every parent and every student and not
265just the charter school thank you thank you for your time okay next call-in speaker alejandrina Sosa are you on the line please press star six to unmute yourself you have three minutes to speak once you begin alejandrina Sosa hello good afternoon ladies and gentlemen Johnson for allowing me to speak today my name is alejandrina sosa and I'm a dual language teacher at Logan Academy of global ecology which is also a community school I have been there for 28 years I am here in support of item number 22 on the agenda creating a charter schools co-location policy to mitigate impacts caused by proposition 39. Logan is 135 years old this year it celebrated its service to the Echo Park Community in the spring because it is a stalwart of this area we officially became a community
266school I have seen a school step up to the many challenges it faces but in this challenge we need help we have been co-located now for 13 years as a community school we are supposed to educate our children and give them ample opportunities one of them is a dual language program of which I am proud of however we are very much limited in our capacity due to lack of space to provide other opportunities one of our goals is to expand academic and enrichment programs for all our students at Logan our focus is on ecology but we do not have the space for science lab we have a middle school whose students walk around lugging their books and laptops because we have no room for lockers they are required to dress and prepare for PE in
267rooms that are usually reserved for classes and Sharon Elementary library that does not completely provide books and Technology especially for them they do not have access to an art room a media technology lab and additional recreational space or Sports area which they most need if we have a space on campus we could provide these things to our students we did a comprehensive needs assessment with students and parents about what their Vision was for our school and they identify the same things like additional programming for Arts Sports and technology that are difficult to fulfill because of our space constraints all first to eighth grade students have to share just two bathrooms two bathroom areas one located in the front and one on the yard but imagine the conflict that poses between the age groups when elementary
268and middle middle school students are in the same facilities it has caused problems you might say will parents always have a choice to take them elsewhere but that is missing the point the point on the questions are what are we doing for our students to do state what are we doing for the families who want a small school what are we doing for those students who we do teach as a parent and teacher of Logan I implore you that you consider what are the benefits Logan would have if we had our own campus our school was co-located through the back room agreement and that and there's little very little oversight over our co-location I also support this resolution because it would create more oversight over what is happening to all co-located schools all students who
269serve the resources in space to thrive La unified needs to develop its policies to ensure that co-locations do not cost undue farm to our students and our schools and that there is strong oversight and accountability I am in full support of the resolution and ask you to support our students and vote yes thank you very much thank you for your time ivania Morales I see you're on the line ivania Morales please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin ivania Morales ivania Morales hello ivani I see you've muted and unmuted yourself a couple of times press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Morales okay we're going to move on from iwania and go to David George David George
270I see you are on the line please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin David George good afternoon my name is David George and I'm the community school coordinator at Marina del Rey Middle School I'm here in support of item 11 on the agenda creating a charter schools co-location policy to mitigate impacts caused by proposition 39. for too long our students have suffered because of how Proposition 39 has been implemented at our schools co-locations have taken away space that LAUSD students need farming them academically emotionally and socially we've been co-located with the same Charter since 2009. they began as a k-4 school and have added additional grade levels over the years they're now TK through eight if I'm being honest we've enjoyed emotionally cordial relationship over
271the past 15 years unfortunately we've hit it across roads this school year as part of Proposition 39 we had to give up two additional classrooms which strained our ability to provide resources for our students my school is a community school a black student achievement plan school and a priority School having these three distinction provides a wide variety of resources for our kids and their families this year we truly have an embarrassment of riches in terms of resources our problem right now is finding the space to deliver them during the pandemic we partnered with Girls Inc of Los Angeles this Empowerment Group has become a popular after-school program where our students are taught to be smart strong and bold last year's program was based on entrepreneurship participants created their own business with the guidance of locally
272women-owned businesses the presentations at the end of the year were Beyond impressive we hope to continue this relationship with Girls Inc this year but unfortunately they've lost the space used for their program the room that they remodeled for our students is now an office for two of our psychological social workers and our cceis systems of support advisor providing treatments for at-risk students is at the Forefront of our psw's charge managing that part of their job often requires privacy for a student to feel comfortable they manage spread assessments provide interventions to students with depression anxiety and other clinical issues these issues are very real on our campuses having three adults officing in the same location creates a truly connecting with our students in need thank you very much for your time okay ivania I'm sorry ivania
273Morales are you on the line please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin ivania Morales ivania Morales please go ahead ivania foreign is no longer there that concludes general public comment uh Yesenia Lopez are you here in the room I see you signed up to speak online but double checking to see if you're in the room no she's not in the room thank you all very much for the general uh comments from everybody and now we will go back to the items on the consent calendar I will uh entertain a motion to move the consent calendar I need a motion and a second a mover and a secondary move by Dr Rivas seconded by Mr melvoin all right let's take the item one there were no
274questions on it item two there were no questions on it item three we had lots of people who had questions so uh Mr McLean let's start with whoever you have okay uh Mr Melvin Tab 3 approval of procurement actions yes thank you and it's um one uh so this is the a through G bench and I the questions are applicable also to our partnership for Student Success bench I guess the two questions are for our vendors so maybe this is Dr Baez or Dr Estrada but the um which letters sorry this is J J these are the uh various vendors increasingly capacity by 10 million of the district-wide college access services and I've appreciate some of the end of year reports but I'm curious um if we have data on how these particular vendors have
275affected student outcomes and do we have guidelines and expectations for how these folks get on the bench and how do we just kind of Ensure more evaluative data with these Partners we have data for the um the the program the providers who are providing services to our schools we do have data and for the ones that are centrally funded but when schools access the bench we are tightening up our system so that we see the impact data for when they contract with those vendors for services at the school site but we do have centrally Central funded data for those providers yeah because I think those would be how that would be helpful to include in the future I mean this is there are certain uh employee like in in-house I guess if you will Services
276we obviously provide but for this bench um it would be helpful to look at that data and see kind of what evaluations are attached and just make sure when we're updating it we have Best in Class um and and do a comparison to District as well and that's our goal our goal is to make sure that the vendors are providing the best Services we're tightening up our systems and so uh we're definitely looking at progress monitoring data to make sure that they're providing the best service to our students great and then and again I mean that can apply to the um the partnership for Student Success bench as well and on that you know I just I'm I'm um gratified that we're going to be hopefully approving the increase in the capacity for that this
277is item R in procurement I know we've all heard from Partners about some of the complications with procurement and so superintendent I know you're already addressing this proactively but I think some of the long overdue centralized controls around procurement I think we can just do a better job communicating to our partners about what these look like what it means what it doesn't mean and there's a lot of confusion in the field so I think more Communications going out I don't know if you want to address that now but um you know again I've seen over my six years on the board that there are a lot of um there's a lot of confusion and too much discretion and I think we're well advised to kind of Bring It in-house so that we have a centralized
278process but there seems to be some confusion about what that means for schools and providers and if anything we're just tightening controls to better protect students in schools not limiting access to Great programs and so I don't know if you want to mention that briefly just very briefly I I appreciate the comment um and I think you hit on some of the high points I am less than comfortable with unfiltered unregulated not monitored wide array of contracts that individuals at all levels of the organization enter into without any metric evaluation of success or true measure of impact so yes there has been lead primarily by procurement but others as well particularly in the vision of instruction some work done to ensure that in fact what we're Contracting for and with whom follows the actual needs
279and is alignment with our strategic plan in that process we come across some interesting things you know it is not our job nor should it be our job to remind partners that their contracts are expiring mind your house it's not our job if you care about that contract know when the contract is coming up for renewal secondly there's no guarantee it is part of California law that we not enter into monopoly-like contracts or demonstrate favoritism so yes principles are requested and required to entertain bidding processes that ask for this type of service who's available eligible and qualified to deliver it and that's being done so with that said I agree with what you just said anytime is a good time for us to perfect communication protocols to ensure that people understand right the new processes
280and new protocols and I think in that regard we could have been more explicit not only with our principles but also with with the partners and uh and I think Mr Salcido is taking steps to uh to address that as well as our own procurement Division and I don't know if Sun young wants to chime in on that deputy chief business officer so I I think at the um uh facilities and procurement subcommittee we we presented the new initiative where the centralization of procurement would would occur and basically procurement professionals would we leave our school Personnel of the administrative burden of having to to procure to go out and receive the quotations or proposals and undergo the procurement process because as a as a an official who has that procurement Authority I would talk about
281the principles or a site administrator or even a director procurement has now taken that that Duty that obligation on itself to assist actually to make sure that we are endeavoring in the best practices in procurement making sure that the public dollar is stretched and that we're getting value for uh the um the the money that we're paying and so that there are more funds available for the kids in the classroom so that was an initiative that was the purpose behind why now procurement is taking all the procurement functions in internally and in return one of the mechanisms that is provided is that the P card has been increased to five thousand dollars per transaction and so we've communicated this through memos through presentations I we had procurement managers available at the principles learning Institute we've
282talked to a regional uh directors as well as region superintendents so we've been trying to get the word out and I think it was toward the end of the year but again I think folks knew about this uh the new initiative and how it would actually be of help and it would help us to comply with the law as well thank you for that and also I think item Q is our actual authorization or ratification of that increase so that schools have more autonomy to buy the supplies they need and welcome Mr Mount our new Chief procurement officer I do agree I mean just for in layman's terms you know what I've seen over the years is actually problematic for schools who then had to procure their own services or kind of do the the
283validation that really should happen essentially but I've also seen the challenge for partners who go to a school wanting to help they're told great sign here go to the next School sign here they get to the 10th school and all of a sudden everything's blown up because they haven't gone to procurement so my understanding sorry to interrupt is just you know if I'm a partner a forecast or no cost provider and I go to a school we should have a system which is what we're moving towards where you all you have to go through the central Hub to get vetted to make sure that you have insurance to make sure you you know are a good actor that you have a business license I also to my earlier comment think it would be helpful with
284certain providers to then do some vetting on outcomes you know are we do you have a track record of success then once you're approved centrally if you go back to the school and say great now I have a vendor number or you know I'm approved I can come here and schools then don't have the burden of doing that verification I think what we heard from some Partners was one the timing at the beginning of the school year but also this fear that oh now even if we have a long-standing relationship with the school it's only the lowest cost bidder who are now we the stool site has no autonomy can you clarify that that is not true we've tightened these controls but existing Partnerships can still be valued it's not just the lowest cost provider
285and school sites do have autonomy ages with better guard rails to make sure like you said we're protecting funds for kids thank you for the question trustee Melvin uh so so yes and schools can still access uh partners that are that are long-standing uh it's simply identifying the partner as a sole source or a single Source provider or if they're not a social single Source meaning that they are not a unique provider of a good or service uh that we do attempt to get in in good faith according to Ed code for procurement three bids however you also don't have to go with the lowest bid you have to go with the lowest responsive bid meaning that the person asking for the service gets to determine which one is responsive to the needs that they're
286requesting and I guess last question if there are Partners or schools who are still confused by this I know we've tightened our communication and are worried that a um a long-standing partnership might not or now on the sixth or seventh day of school still doesn't exist who should they be reaching out to to try to get clarity and get kind of a fast track approval if deemed appropriate so that they can continue at school sites so the same uh buying team that was previously in regions is still serving our school sites so they're folks that they're familiar with that they know those folks have all moved to a central location our Pico location so they are familiar with those folks we do have a customer service team as well as a help team that are
287assisting those folks for the high level of volume that we're dealing with if that buyer isn't able to assist them perhaps because they don't understand the options or or what's being requested we have a management team actually down there headed by Alicia Martinez who's fantastic and so she's handling those specific requests and and Expediting them uh just a moment ago we were Expediting some by email and of course I've bring the educational lens so so as a principal and teacher myself I'm able to identify some of those things and what they are with more specificity to provide that color to our buying team so that they can they can rapidly move those along great and again just an official welcome I think this is your first board meeting yes I was I I was I
288was told I might have time to go for a quick break and magically I was supposed to appear so my apology we're lucky to have you on board and thank you and I am excited to to vote in a few minutes to approve item Q because I think some of those holdups were because of the partnership for Student Success bench had run out of money because these partners are providing good services and I'm glad that we'll get to extend that today thank you same item uh Scott Carlson yes so my concern is not with the vendors my concern is with my principals who can't do anything and my question is when did you in service the principles to tell them about this new not a new process the correct process when did you do this
289because they never ever heard of this training that they were if they got training did they ever get training yes so a couple of times so they they were not trained but notified last year and then this year for the principles Institute which is both for new and returning principals and assistant principals uh training was provided in that uh venue uh by staff going to each one of those different groups we actually introduced them or reintroduced them to their buyers so that they had names and phone numbers and a face to attach to the service we also went out and and uh or actually the regional staff were here we also did a training with regional staff and we are going to continue with the the principal's advisory committee as well as with going out
290now to Regional staffs and working with with procurement experts the saas the the financial folks in the sites as well as doing uh different uh sessions where they can drop in and and consult with us on better ways to get things moving through the system and when was the training done prior to the start of School principles Academy I I'm not sure July 24th well that's kind of late that's kind of late to give principals this new instructions on what to do they're planning way back in May or April to do all this stuff so I think it's very very unfair to Spring this on them and I understand you have to obey their law and you weren't we were not doing it correctly and you have to be right but the schools are suffering
291because of this I'm just telling you I I should pass my emails to to you guys all the emails I'm getting about they can't get any programs they don't know what to do and who's supposed to help them I know you mentioned some people but school principals which I was one have a lot of things to do besides ordering procurement lots of things so I'm telling you you started too late you started too late I just like I'd like to add here and that you know we've we've sent out formal communication at the end of June early July to inform schools of the change but we began that process prior to that to make sure that we were onboarding different stakeholder groups the secondary thing is not much has changed when you look at what
292we did in procurement we increased you know the P card capacity from three thousand to five thousand dollars on transactions which is actually great for schools because what they generally would have done is actually issued appeal for a four thousand five hundred dollar item and there's still confusion about that and so we're seeing an increase in that so we're clarifying that for schools it also actually increased some of the capacity around transactions and that schools on a monthly basis previously can purchase up to twenty thousand dollars on their P cards I've actually doubled that to forty thousand and so they have more tools at their disposal to actually procure services but what we're trying to do is hone in on those practices where we do see schools not as informed around what's an available service
293and at what cost are they actually getting their bang for the buck and so I don't think it's a significant change I think there's a significant amount of misinformation out there and we want to clarify for folks both our school community and also be very clear to our vendors don't abuse the process we want to make sure that we have a process in place that ensures that taxpayer dollars that are in our schools are utilized effectively and so to that point uh board members merlson we're going to make sure that we're actually doing principal office hours it's a model that we've used for before we do virtual hours they can drop in as they're having appeals that they have questions about we are finding that it's not so much a procurement issue it is an
294approval process issue that there's delays sometimes on staff getting site approvals from their appropriate coordinators and releasing funds and so we wanted to just make sure that yes we're supporting but clarifying for folks it's not only a procurement issue it's a process issue well I want to be clarified and supported also and I did ask for an appointment but I never heard back from procurement that I want to be explained how this works so if somebody calls me I can explain it to him have you ever been trained in this no I think the board members need to know also we will set up meetings and brief you on okay okay um so yes I echoed the same Sentiments of my of my colleagues here I was also approached by a lot of our cbo's
295our providers principals about this new initiative right and the changes that were taking place and yes we have to fix some some some processes right some cleanups and things that you know and I understand that but you know as we're preparing or Lee circular leadership is preparing for a new initiative we have to make sure you have the Staffing because with this as you said this is an approval process has changed but what's changed is also the workload of the central staff here who has to do all the all of this the permits and and the licenses that have to that that is what's the bottleneck here so yes we have a new process but however do we have the staff to really uh you know to really go through all of this and call
296and and do all the necessary processes that's what I see is the problem so we we moved ahead with a new initiative but without the proper infrastructure to really address the work the workload and all of these applications and processes that that comes with this new new initiative so that's where I see as a problem so if we're going to move to a new initiative a new process got to make sure we have the staff there before we move on to the nice process and if you want to communicate with principals and I agree July was or June or where it was is you know you need time to to change something that principals were doing before right and yes we're providing them with you know instead of like you said two thousand five thousand
297POS or whatever but it's the workload that increased particularly and I do believe this may have started during our uh cultural passport because we told all these teach all these principles you have this money hurry up and spend it and then you have a multitude of principals in schools are sending in their their purchase orders or they want to spend the money and then they don't hear anything why because it's stuck up there up here in bojay because it's it's too much work so I want to know do you have the adequate staff right now to really uh do all this increase of workload for that is we we have stepped up uh temporarily because with it being the first time that we're doing it this way we have to get a sense of the
298volume before we add permanent staff to be to be abundantly careful with with the public dollar I I would like to point out there's a little bit of a misconception that I think uh the deputy superintendent was pointing out and that is when people fill out a shopping cart it sounds like a very buying term right that cart doesn't actually come to the procurement team until all of the administrators that need to approve that cart approve it so we don't see that cart until it's done from the time that we're seeing the cart everybody's approved the source of funding the principles approved yes I want that thing or the office person to the time that we are actually issuing the PO which means business is being done we're averaging only between two and four days
299in procurement right now that cart might sit there waiting for people to get to their queue in at the school site or in a central office but the procurement process itself with the staff that we've added is only between two and four days right now that is that is not a long time as a standard for procurement not just here but for anywhere that's actually very rapid so it may be that the problem is that they need too many approvals before their cart gets to you now that's that's an interesting question so uh the approvals are actually set by what I would call the per string holder so depending upon what the funding source is and where it's sitting there's usually at least one or two folks that approve those transactions to make sure that
300they are approving them from the funds that they're controlling for the district whether it's a restricted fund or whether it's General funds at a site so like a principal and office manager if one of those people is busy one day or they're out a couple of days that might get delayed or if they're asking for upper approval that might get delayed my folks don't see the cart until everybody has said yes to that cart moving to us because once it comes to us we're buying it because we've been told it's okay to do it I think all of the board members though are hearing that people are not getting things as quickly as they used to or I had one principal tell me that he or was it she I can't remember that they had
301been putting in money on the passport and then we're told that the money was all spent already yeah so uh we got a couple of those it was it was uh it was BC before Chris I'm Chris so uh we saw we saw that in May in May that passport money a memo came out that that money had to be expended by June 30th and principals and their staff did submit some carts that basically because staff was was in and out got stuck in the system and so as those have come up to me I've actually found them in the system reactivated them even though most people can't go back in time in the system we can we've reactivated them and fulfilled those carts but we don't know about it unless somebody says something because
302this was from last fiscal year so from a prior fiscal year we actually have to go back in reopen it we find the cart I call somebody in fiscal we get on the phone we reactivate it it's fulfilled the next day so there are those those exceptions sort of those outliers scientifically that happen but we take care of them as soon as they're brought to our attention all right okay anybody else on this whole issue of this new procurement policy I know that whenever you change anything in an institution this size it takes a while to work out the Kinks but I think the most important thing is is that you need to be helping principals understand what the rules are how they are where it's getting stuck if it's not at you and then
303we need to ask the superintendent to find out if it's not getting stuck at you it's stating is stuck at the approval process is the approval process the appropriate process or is that slowing things down because I I didn't in the last two years didn't get any complaints about procurement at all uh at the beginning of the school year and this year I've gotten a lot of them so I'm sure it's because people are unused to the change but I do think that we can do something about that by making sure that we get more information to them and more help to them so and then we make sure that we aren't bogging down somewhere which is making everything take a lot longer Jackie I just want to say the central offices should do their
304best to make the life of the principal as easy as possible as it is I'll talk louder I think the job of central is to make sure that the principal's job is as easy as possible without having to spend lots of time on doing time consuming things that could be helped and this uh I still receive complaints and concerns and they the thing is they use their name and when principals use their name they're really mad I'm just telling you right now okay I so by all means I mean we're problem solvers I'd love to receive the names of those principles to personally address their issues and understand the severity of the issue but suffice it to say that a Lion's Share of the challenges are not associated with new processes are associated with the
305reminders that there is existing policy that is not being followed that is the brunt of the problem such as you want a service demonstrate that you sought three bids and as Chris said you don't necessarily have to accept the lowest priced bid you have to accept the most responsive at the best price so this has been a journey of ensuring compliance by and large with existing policy and best practice and by the way this is to prevent the possibility of of real issues and consequences specific to Audits and specific to adherence to of California law specific to procurement but we will intensify the awareness on one hand on the other hand I think our board president made a very good point based on what Chris said it's not a function of procurement there may be
306a backlog bottleneck prior to procurement specific to Regional or a different level of approval so we'll look at the approval chain to ensure that maybe it can possibly be optimized to reduce the number of approvals without compromising the accountability Mr Melvin do you have other questions on this side on tab three I understand Miss Ortiz Franklin you don't have any more questions on this what item okay the next person I have no I've got a I've got your name so I'll just going down the list uh so miss Ortiz Franklin doesn't have any more on three that would take us to Dr Rivas on item three any questions um quick question on Item B the theater pain Foundation um I don't know if anybody is here oh yeah Christina tooks hi good afternoon good afternoon
307um just a really quick question I I love that we're partnering with theater Payne Foundation It's a Wonderful organization um I just wanted to ask a question in terms of our our labor force I know that um or just wanted to know how what percentage of our mno employees or native Spanish speakers and if so I was just wondering you know if this these workshops or this training would be beneficial if they were provided also in Spanish because as I go through our schools I see that you know we have a lot of work you know gardeners and landscapers who Spanish is predominantly their their native language although they understand and speak English but I think overall not only here in this theory of pain but over other trainings I think it would be beneficial
308to to provide them you know learning uh uh trainings and and resources in English and Spanish just because you know as adult Learners it really fertilizes is that a word strengthens it strengthens our learning so I was just wondering if this or future would be you know this you know it's a good thing to do it's a it's a great point we're very excited to be able to offer this training as we increase our native Gardens and drought tolerant Landscaping so I can follow up and find out if they also will provide that training in Spanish thank you that was my only question before you go on I just had a question on B also so we might as well take anybody else who had a question on B okay um how how did District
309staff previously learn how to care for these plants um they did not I mean that's the formally okay they did um they didn't but we're you know we are very limited in our Landscaping Crews to really treat Tremors and um uh grass cutters um but we know that we're increasing the number of drought tolerant and Native Landscaping um and this training is to bring our Landscaping Crews into um and aligned with the projects that we're doing and I know uh it'd be interesting to know how many of our school Gardens are being maintained by m o and how many are by these outside organizations oh um so all of our Gardens are maintained by mno unless there are school-based programs or staff who come onto the gardens to provide volunteer work this is to just
310provide training they're not going to be actually they're doing actually no they're training our staff so that we will be better trained to maintain these go ahead um oh I'm sorry Scott go ahead yes so it's um it will be incorporated in our training protocols with all of our Landscaping Crews our policies and procedures so it's not just the current landscape crew that we have now but for all of those that will come thank you sure really quick question you mentioned uh board president asked if what training they received before and they hadn't so is theater Payne One of maybe future sort of Partnerships and training for mno or we're hoping this is the first the first one of its kind that we're doing um it was competitively bid and we're hoping that we can
311expand these types of programs but this is our baby step baby step okay great thank you so much right so uh my next one is item L the athletic Medical Professional Services bench and let's see my questions um so just a few questions um where are we in hiring um sort of in District athletic trainers I um I know that we're increasing our bench but is there a plan on Hiring Our Own so we can all right services for our own schools this this contract is specifically for providing uh medical intervention at sporting events uh so if you this one is a lot of football and fall sports but at any of those activities since they're in the late afternoon evening that's after regular staff time and so these are medical professionals to stand by
312in the case of a medical emergency are we able to there are a couple of sites that the sponsor identified as having their own trainers that do stay for evening games but sometimes they are still supplemented by by additional in the event that there's there's An Occurrence that needs to be addressed and how many um athletic trainers will be provided through these um three Partners here so so there's about uh I think it calls out a thousand and fifty to to uh 1300 events that medical professionals have to be provided at this fall by these three organizations so they will have at Staffing will be one per game or two is it one athletic um we can have a Andres cheat speak to the item so doctor leave us to your question the standard allocation
313would be one uh trainer for this sporting event usually a football game correct that's the priority but they can be used for other sporting events of course right I was going to say was there flexibility further is that under the purview of the principal or um it's the principal working with the ad at their school and then working with our athletics department under Trent Cornelius uh Scotch merlson you're next you were right George okay you were right so I guess Willis Towers Watson is replacing um Sedgwick is that who they are it used to be Sedgwick you know right that's Sedgwick okay so I'm just curious I know we have we are self-insured it says we are also covering uh contractors and subcontractors involved in projects at no premium costs to con oh hello no
314no premium costs to contractors they don't have their own insurance Chief risk officer Willis Towers Watson is replacing Alliance services and they are providing brokerage services for our owner-controlled insurance program this program saves the district a significant amount of money because instead of each card director buying insurance at the retail price we get a quote from them absent Insurance okay and then the district bundles all the insurance needs and we get insurance at a wholesale price sounds good okay thank I have also one on J about the vendors let me see a second question is um how are we in the district evaluating these vendors and um what about the effectiveness of these vendors how do we find that is an increase to bench and the sponsor is here to speak to that hi since
315the last time we um reallocated this bench there has been 30 contracts made or sorry 12 vendors and 30 different contracts made by different School sites departments and regions and for the a through G we for my department with this sponsoring this bench every contract has an end of year report on efficacy and use and you know wanting to make sure that we have value with it when it's a school site purchasing the services we do not know that but the School site should and for that reason we are changing our own system by requiring that of every contract going forward it's a change of our practice but even if it's a school site we want some sort of evidence of efficacy of that contract and services fair enough okay thank you thank you okay
316I also have one on M um the training will this training also train resource well I know it'll do resource teachers but how about the the special ed aides and staff uh will that be part of the training and they are here to speak to that excuse me hello Alicia Haas from the division of special education so yes and no so the initial contract is going to start us off by training our resource teachers as our primary form of intervention for our students with disabilities who need that targeted deep intensive instruction the contract that we have on the item is to conduct that training and simultaneously train a Cadre of internal trainers to be able to do ongoing training beyond the the first year so that training Cadre will be able to provide additional structured
317literacy training to our special day class teachers our other special education teachers in addition to training that's being provided by DOI the division of special education there's Regional training around structured literacy that will be happening so there's a variety of opportunities for all of our teachers this training specifically is going to for the contract focus on our resource teachers and again also building that Cadre of internal trainers so how could we get the valuable employees known as special ed AIDS or biis how can we get them involved in this training so they know what's going on in the classroom how can we do that so there's a variety of different pieces to that right so we are looking at creating a series of professional developments for our paraprofessionals we do want to ensure that they
318have opportunity as they're supporting the instructional program they have to have a general understanding of what that instructional program is so that they can best support it we're working with our I ready Partners to see how we can create some opportunities for them through that program as well we're looking at the programs that we already are using and implementing through our curriculum to look at how can we assist them in understanding not only how they can support students on the Core Curriculum around structured literacy but also build literacy capabilities for our students that are on the alternate curriculum so we're looking at how can we provide a more comprehensive training training package for our teachers our administrators and our paraprofessionals we see the need in all areas that's great because many times they have their
319own little group in the room and it's good that they're as well trained as the teacher is absolutely I appreciate that absolutely but I do want to point out that this contract specifically is about this I hear you the resource teacher thank you trainer of trainers you may of course you may well I notice notice a promise to but it seems very much related how is this part of the rollout of literacy and numeracy intervention connected to this will we be seeing similar additional contracts in coming months for intervention I'm going to ask Dr Baez to assist me with this because this contract is specifically for our resource teachers around structured literacy as far as additional contracts that I would have to have some additional support with we don't anticipate additional contracts because we have
320our internal Talent who's very familiar with teaching instruction and reading and math so I don't anticipate one but as she just mentioned this is just for resource teachers okay all right go ahead Mr schmarlson last one this is uh item P not for you item P item P Mr Singh oh okay just one question what is a Combi oven I could guess but uh so uh I'll speak on behalf of Mr Singh uh the combi oven is a combination of a steam oven as well as a typical electric oven they're being used in our kitchen modernizations and and they can they can boil liquids and prepare liquid dishes in in Vats in the oven as well as it serve as a traditional oven purpose providing flexibility as they move towards a more near scratch preparation
321hey I'm going to look and see what they look like in the cafeteria will this contract increase the number of schools able to prepare food on site or is this basically an improvement for schools that already have working kitchens I believe the answer is both and the associated training contract that was listed earlier is folks being trained on how to use these ovens yeah and Jackie I wonder how you don't know how big they are do you I don't know I'm just curious because some of our kitchens are so tiny yeah okay thank you thank you uh I have just a couple uh you've covered most of mine just a quicker on K how did we uh let me get the key on K this is a sole source agreement um for Renewal so uh
322is it how did we arrive at a sole source contract for this uh this is this is an interesting one so this is the company active internet Technologies which is also called final site uh they've acquired Blackboard so Blackboard is our SMS system uh which right texting throughout the district as well as our emergency notification system Blackboard has been successful with three consecutive competitive bids to provide that service this contract is a one plus one extension so what we're asking the board for here is one year so that we can put out a competitive RFP to make sure that we are still getting up-to-date service and competitive value that's what I was looking for was how long this was going to go on letter r uh letter r letter r letter r well there's a
323range of issues from tutoring groups to Boys and Girls Clubs to so what are the services that are the most widely utilized by our schools so R is an increase in the bench value of the authorization up by 10 million dollars and I believe the sponsor is here to speak on that one as well Sarah oh somebody oh antenna is coming from the other side team effort here um well the variety of our partners really provide um after school enrichment related Services um tutoring Services academic social emotional Services the resolution that set up this funding stream essentially thought about supplementary supports for students and families that really address the academic and the social emotional needs of students my question was which of these millions of possible services are the most widely used by schools you
324want specific organizations no types types of students it's after school providers um they offer enrichment professional development around Community schooling so you're saying that after school services are most widely after school would be the item that is most utilized okay is there a second place for most utilized I'm I'm trying to get a sense of what schools are Contracting for yeah SEL and professional development okay thank you and on item oh oh oh that's in Tab four I'm done okay all right so we're done with tab three everybody down with tab okay sorry I forgot one more question for item L the athletic I knew there was something I forgot um I know that two of my schools uh Torres and uh Marshall um apply for an outside grant that was that enabled them to
325fund their own athletic um trainers and the reason I bring this up is because in California there is a lack of you know athletic trainers throughout and I would like the district to not be one of them so I would like to know if y'all if you know the Grant and how we can make sure that a lot of our schools know about this grant so they can actually fund their own athletic trainer I'll work with Trent Cornelius and we'll get you that information by the end of the week okay thank you okay thanks all right uh takes care of item three let's go on now to item four and if I could just have one moment Oh by all means we have a speaker to miss that individual Mr Juan mangandi come on up
326this is for tab one the Teamsters Local 572 2023 2024 memorandum of understanding and Mr mangandi is going to speak in Spanish so if you'd like to hear what he says in English translated simultaneously as he was speaking please raise your hand and we will provide headsets go ahead from translations we will um ask Mr mangani to go ahead hello [Music] um many names to give what you're doing and how wonderful it is I don't know why people complain about so many issues about security that Charters are eating Public Schools or I'm not sure why they've been saying wonderful things I don't understand I think I'm out of this I don't do drugs but I don't know this is a world of it's a virtual world what you see and what we live what you
327see and what we live there is a lot of information in regards to numbers there are a lot of experience with in regards to parents the problem is that we're not focusing on the real problems we're lying to people that are paying their taxes we can see that radical religious radical and ideology this Doctrine tanks is nowhere why because you don't you open the door to the dialogue you understand that the only way of speaking with you is stepping on the critical even if we have a proposition you don't care what's important to you is to push your agenda because your agenda has a motive and that is called being above us parents how many of us and this is why I'm speaking how many more things honestly I'm gonna speak in regards do you
328know where these funds come from I'm not against it I want to declare this that I am not against they play a big role in regards to labor Partners I support that I also support that every person that has a sexual identity I will never be against it I will always be in favor I am also in favor that everyone who can choose their own destiny but I also want to say that when you're giving money you are affecting us parents who are affecting the future of our students because we are not talking about security security means that we are able to have healthy children that will not smell marijuana and that will freely there will be no gang member that will recruit them this is what we're saying we need you to take responsibilities
329that when these unions and we need to tell you that the schools have to be healthy and there are issues with the administrators we have to say well look these administrators are not understanding the issues and they're making things harder when we see honestly we have bad teachers bad teachers that are not assisting students they're just here for a check because we are depriving other teachers teachers that are good like us that still love our cause and that still have love for the people that we love thank you public comment for tab one the teamsters mou public thank you we are at tab five and I think Dr Rivas you had questioned yeah I just had a quick question in terms of the um the installations of the Hydration Stations I know they're right now
330we've completed so many I just want to know what the plan is in completing the stations any foreseen challenges um and I also just wanted to know how many Hydration Stations per school is it based on the square footage and just wanting to know any details on that sure uh good evening again Christina tooks Chief facilities executive we have completed approximately one-third of all of the Hydration Stations in the eec's primary centers and elementary schools and we will have all of our elementary schools completed by 2026. we do put in for elementary schools our standard is one per elementary school if it exceeds a certain size we can put in two and then in middle schools and high schools we put in more yeah like what would be the maximum up to um I'll have
331to get back to I think at middle schools and high schools it's two to five depending on the school yeah and um the um in in the location to install the water stations do you obviously I just want to understand the process uh you consult with with the principals and what would be the good place or obviously you want to put them where the tubing the plumbing is right there right but um yeah so what is the process in terms of like meeting and going to schools and making sure that they're allocated in the proper way that and the in the ideal location I bring this up because I know I I can't remember what school I was in but um the students had to go all the way across the yard to get to
332a water station and then to come all the way back it just seemed like it would have been better if they installed it someplace closer so I just want to understand sort of there um the the biggest impact is where the existing water lines are and the cost to drag that water line to wherever the bottle filling station is so we try to find the fine balance of where is it most appropriate given where students are but also where is it adjacent to existing water lines so we don't have to spend it's very ineffective to have to put a water line across the entire playground to set it up on the other side so that's the balances where do we have existing water lines that we could tap into but it's also a place that's
333well accessed by students and in terms of challenges are you encountering any challenges in terms of like old tubes or sort of or no we've really we've invested a lot in our drinking water quality program we have probably the safest water of any school district it exceeds the County requirements of 15 parts per lead per billion so we've I think we are benefiting from the previous Investments that we have made in our water quality programs this is just providing those bottle filling stations and removing the fountains that we've removed as we've replaced them thank you so much sure thank you on uh five okay Dr McKenna you had some questions on six I believe yes there's one question of the two parts it talks about the athletic upgrade projects I'm not sure is is the
334decomposed Grant at the district standards for track upgrades that's the go-to um we uh most or I'd say over half of the districts tracks are decomposed Granite where we have come in and made upgrades we have um added rubberized tracks I do want to speak specifically about Bell High School which does not include a rubberized track in this particular set of actions and the reason for that is because Bell High School is unique in that the football and the baseball and the softball all overlap so if we put in that rubberized track the cleats that are used for the baseball and softball teams are going to one create a hazard for the students as they go from grass to rubber it's also going to tear up the rubber so in this particular project we did
335not go to synthetic Fields because we had to have the same materials for the students who are going to be essentially in the softball and baseball and then into the track and unfortunately the football and soccer because it is a very tight sight and those programs all overlap there are all Synthetic Turf on a track made out of rubber a rubberized no more than half of our schools have the decomposed Granite on their tracks what other substances use other than decompose granite or is it rubber so what's this well you use the word Synthetic Turf if you're talking about a football field yeah a Synthetic Turf is artificial grass yes okay on a track a running track where the cleats are for track yep what is that surface so that's what you would typically call
336like a dirt track decomposed Granite is a fancy name for essentially a gravel track um it's not dirt because it allows the water to saturate and it's built to certain specifications but those are really the two materials either that rubberized track that's typically like a pinkish material or depending on the school could be colored or it's what lay people would call a dirt track it's a decomposed Granite track so the the preference is the decomposed Granite it really depends on the school or the programs where we can upgrade it to a rubberized track we do in this particular school we were not able to thank you thank you oh let me just say that we're happy to see these and particularly uh the whole notion at Southgate of the irrigation and drainage I cannot tell
337you how many calls I get about the drainage because the water just backs up I can't imagine what this Sunday did to them but that's been a big issue there for a long time I'm glad to see it was included okay anybody else on item number six okay on item number seven I have Dr Rivas yeah oh I'm sorry we have a speaker yeah we have one speaker on item number seven uh that's the Define and approved five sustainable environment enhancement developments uh Mr David tokovsky A.D after David not BC okay um I just want to say thank you to the board members the superintendent Deputy superintendent for standing up and saying something about the procurement changes and the way it was communicated and I understand that'll be looked into and assisted there are many
338other procurement issues that I think need review um and but let me just say the most important thing on these facilities items these small ones that are coming for that went through the bond oversight committee the big picture issue is whether or not this board puts a bond on the ballot next year right now you issued 500 million dollars of cops which is to keep the system moving but you can take those 500 million out with a a big Bond because that 500 million is paid for out of teacher salaries is paid for out of all employees salaries it's paid for out of health benefits cops cups all right I call them cops and robbers and they're robbing from the general fund put that Bond on and if you want to this is a challenge
339I know we could do it you could put a bond on at 66 percent under the old Leroy green system rather than prop 3955 you want to get out of the conundrum of 39 you put a bond on because we've passed all of these last ones are rkryny at over 70 percent I believe the people have seen this happen by this board now when it comes back to to the changes in procurement all of that can be good and with the help how many procurements are going in at two hundred and forty nine thousand dollars the intent of a 249 thousand dollar procurement is to break the law that is the intent to come underneath the 250 threshold so they don't have to competitively bid take a look at the 249s informal bid somebody asked
340the informal bid we got an interesting answer on the informal are you saying that there is only one company left in the market a monopoly I think the superintendent was talking about that has the robocalls no that's after many extensions how many of the contracts that come to you have three four five six seven years of extensions the extension is when the system's overloaded procurement was cut a lot of people in the 0708 and they haven't been restored get the change orders oh my goodness you want to talk procurement issues now that facilities not regular procurement it's a different procurement the change orders you've got to rebid things when they go up in into the 25 now some of the escalating costs make us not want to do that but take a look at that
341take a look at some of the delegated Source Soul Source what does that mean it's not spelled s-o-u-l it's spelled s-o-l-e okay you're telling me in the marketplace there's only one person who does that and finally DWP you have some of those today got to be careful okay DWP had to be sued by this Board of Education for taking money away from the children of this District they may be giving you water coolers today but they took over 100 million dollars from the the people in the school system so watch out on a number of procurement levels thank you thank you for your time previous on item number seven Dr Rivas if I could employ you to move your mic a little bit closer when you're when you're talking so we can put it on
342okay is that good yeah um item seven on the seeds I just you know wanted to um know I to understand that I know the selection of some of these applications um just in terms of rank and I understand the process this you know the schools submit the application and um the facilities Department uh helps them in sort of making sure all the elements are there but I I see here that um the ranking of some of the schools that were provided with the seeds Grant one Limerick Avenue had a rank of hype of 594 and I'm assuming it's instant the green index and Sun Valley had a rank of 573. so I just want to understand in terms of approving uh the seeds applications um do you take into account you know applicants who
343have or I just want to understand the mix of the ranking the ranking is a 155 594 56 and 573 and 57 so I understand the selection of these applicants and the varying rankings and how it is that sure um we included the ranking um because we were requested to include it just to indicate which seeds programs got the 100 000 and then if you're in the top where's 25 of The Greening index you get a bump up to get you to 150 000. so you'll see on this um Los Angeles Elementary School and Sylvan Park both with The Greening index of 56 and 57 are at 150 and the other three are at 100 so that's really only the purpose why the ranking is included we don't consider the ranking because it's really a
344come one come all on a rolling basis program and we don't deny anyone in application so this is not a there's a limited amount of money and we're going to pick and choose it's really a rolling application until we no longer have the funds and our staff works with schools to get them to all the information they need to have a seeds projects so no one's turned away if you have schools that are interested please let us know we're eager to do more of these yeah that is my next question what would be helpful to get more of my bd2 schools to apply I know there's a lot of interest and applications that have been said so what what can I do or what can we do to sort of sure great question typically at
345the beginning of every school year we remind principles that this program exists we'll be putting it on the principal's corner to let them know once things settle down we also have if you just search LAUSD seeds the application comes up and we have many materials that we can share with all of our board offices and they can give as they visit School sites a lot of when they go to my a lot of my schools I said hey do you know about seeds and for them it's like oh more work that's something I do but I really want to let them know that it's actually well facilitated there's a there's a guideline it tells you exactly where to write so it's really really easy it's not that you just definitely do need to have a
346good school community that is going to be invested in making sure that this um that The Siege project is is maintained and lasts um well thank you so much I will be you know doing some promotion for my schools on seeds and offering more more support so thank you for that that's all all right now we're going to go to item number eight and we have quite a number of speakers so we'll take the speakers first and we have quite a number of board members who have questions on item number eight okay um Dana Thomas you signed up to speak online I do not see you online with us are you in the room here Dana Thomas nope okay let's go with Diana Shaw are you on the line if you are press star six
347to meet yourself you have three minutes to speak once you begin Diana Shaw please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin hi hello hi hi there I am happy to be here I am a mother at Pinellas Community Elementary and I happy to greet our school board and our new superintendent and we um are very excited about this um resolution um for improving our school grounds and the idea of a playground at campus exterior upgrades is very exciting right now we're working with some very dated um issues and we are thrilled to be able to be considered for deployment in this funding program um and it's a chance for our exterior campus exterior to reflect our campuses interior the Vibrant Community inside The Fosters learning creativity
348and job the prospects alone is enough to inspire everybody here um however as we look to these upgrades we must also be honest about the challenges we're facing our air conditioning and Roofing have really been better days and it's causing us some headaches we had some bleeding happen during our fabulous California earthquake um so we've seen students and teachers trying very hard to concentrate cycling Heat and these things and honestly we can't ignore these issues if we're serious about providing the best possible learning environment for our students while we're incredibly happy to be a part of this deployment so funding and energy to renew our campuses um let's not forego Imagining the base infrastructure of you know very safe dirty group and proper air conditioning so we would have no more distractions from the Heat
349or leaks um it's about conserving the infrastructure and inserting ensuring the safety of everyone inside so upgrades are fantastic and necessary but they're not the whole story and we owe it to our students their Community to address expression concerns alongside with the exciting new changes we're looking forward to by combining our enthusiasm for these upgrades with our dedication to fixing what he's fixing we're investing in a future that's truly worth celebrating thank you for your time thank you thank you for your time Sabrina S I see you're on the line Sabrina s please press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Sabrina hi can you hear me yeah we can go ahead in here hi uh I I was going to say good afternoon but I guess
350it's good evening at this point uh get a good afternoon superintendent carvalo and members of the board my name is Sabrina Siegel and I am the parent of two students currently in attendance at pomelo Community Charter Arts and Science magnet I'm thrilled that we are being considered as one of the schools to receive funding for the seventh playground and campus exterior upgrade projects located in West Hills from Illinois position in one of the hottest parts of the valley easily reaching over 100 degrees every August when the kids return to school with global warming and fires things are only going to continue to get worse the health and safety of our children is of the utmost importance and the approval of this funding would provide our school with much needed shade in the form of trees
351and shade structures more green space as well as the replacement of our deteriorating asphalt with new pavement and cool coating to reduce the heat on the playground for years we have been working to get our yard repaved as it has multiple cracks and Parcels that children have already been injured by so the timing of attending approval is critical that being said I think it is also important to mention like my uh uh Community member Diana just did that for as long as I've been a parent of pomelo which is going on five years we've had ongoing issues with a broken air conditioning system in the main building which houses many of our classrooms and a roof at least with every rainstorm I just got word that five of our classrooms had water come in through
352the roof with this storm on Sunday one of the rooms happens to be my son's kindergarten class which has also been affected by the air conditioning outage in the first week of school alone our children were without air almost the entire week despite someone coming to repair it multiple times we need a permanent fix to this problem with approval of funding for the exterior portions of our school I ask that we also be considered for necessary improvements of the indoor environment in which our students learn it's hard to focus with no air conditioning in extremely hot conditions the system also controls the heating so in winter when the system is down which is most of the time the rooms are too cold to learn adequately I completely understand a new unit of that size is
353extremely expensive maybe units in individual classrooms are a better option I don't know something just to think about again I'm extremely grateful Pamela's being considered for the upgrades and look forward to seeing your hard work enjoyed by all of our kids thank you for your time thank you for your time Rochelle B I see you're on the line or Rachel B please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin Rachel b or Rachel B hi I'm here hi hi good afternoon my name is Rachelle Bell and I'm a parent at Colfax Charter Elementary School in Valley Village our school is very excited and helpful that our campus exterior upgrade project is approved we are located in the San Fernando Valley where temperatures are extremely hot for most
354of the school year this project will replace more than 2.3 Acres of deteriorated Asphalt in the main clay areas with Landscaping shade trees decomposed granite and new pathing with cool coats that would reduce surface Heat by 5 to 10 degrees we would also be able to fix the drainage issues that currently leave puddles on our playground for days at a time providing a safe space for our kids to play even when it's hot outside would not only benefit them physically but also mentally Colfax actually exists on a piece of land that used to be an arboretum so the fact this project would bring 35 more trees to our school is really special to members of our community lastly we would be adding five Outdoor Learning areas for our students by providing 30 of the schoolyard
355with landscape and Faded trees we have the opportunity to create an incredibly useful space that would directly benefit our students and teachers I also want to say I know there is some opposition to these projects because of the asphalt replacement and its impact on the environment in our case the majority of our budget would go towards Landscaping planter boxes trees Outdoor Learning areas and cool coats I strongly believe the benefits outweigh any harm thank you so much for listening to my comment and have a great evening thank you for your time looks like that is the last person signed up to speak under Tab 8 I will call the names of folks who said they were calling in but I do not have on the screen in front of me just someone who listed by
356the name of Kimberly you listed to call in but are you here to speak on this item nope Mark Levy or Mark L are you here in the room you signed up to speak online but I do not have you online in front of me and lastly a parent named Naomi Zimmerman emailed the board for public comment because she could not stay on the line I mean all the board members have indeed received that written comment and now we go on to questions from board members on Tab 8. I'll note that um Miss gona's has her hand up also for a question okay thank you followed by Miss Gomez thank you um I'm looking at this list of schools here the list of unranked top 75 schools in contains Shenandoah Elementary School which is in
357my district um undergoing it was is undergoing a complex modernization I was under the impression that the Bungalows would be removed in this process that have included Green Space upgrades I feel like there are other schools that would benefit from the school for work for bd1 such as Windsor Hills Windsor Hills has a fault line an earthquake fault line under the playground with a big crack in the playground has been there for a long time and can we make sure to validate our criteria and cross-references with existing projects I'm not sure if you understand what I'm saying I don't know when we get around to Windsor Hills it's not even on the list sure so uh the data for the top 75 was based on the deterioration of the asphalt and the number of trouble
358calls that were received for accidents on these sites um Shenandoah was in that list of 75 but we did not include it exactly as you said because it's getting a major modernization so the paving will be addressed as part of that project and we'll be addressing and replacing the paving as well as adding landscaping and removing particles as part of that larger project Windsor Hills though it may have a crack and we'll definitely send folks out to look at it Patrice is showing me how large it is we address conditions of Paving in different ways so we can spot treat it we could come in and repair it or we can tear the entire thing out Windsor Hills did not receive that highest ranking because the entire playground doesn't show that it is completely deteriorated
359but if there is indeed that crack we need to send our folks out and address it and repair it so it doesn't present a trip thank you I appreciate it thank you Kelly Gomez thank you so much um I have just a few questions that I hope will bring some clarity around this program because I've received some emails so I just want to make sure that um you know we help understand how this program fits into the bigger picture of the district's overall Greening goal to get to 30 minimum Green Space on all of our campuses um so Ms tokes if you could help with some of these questions please um first if you could share the purpose of the program to provide these exterior upgrades sure the purpose is really twofold it came out
360of a engagement session that we had approximately two years ago which is to address really curb appeal at our elementary schools to attract our families to LAUSD this will be a transformative project that not only Paints the entire exterior of the building really transforms our schoolyards includes major landscaping and ads privacy fencing as needed it also is part of this large exterior upgrade will address our most deteriorated schoolyards with the worst Paving we know that that came a very hot issue to our elementary schools especially as our youngest kids use those a lot and they do present a safety hazard when they reach certain levels of deterioration so that's really the objective of this program thank you um and does this program add asphalt anywhere that it wasn't already and doesn't increase the overall amount
361of asphalt on these campuses it does not it reduces the asphalt so that in our school yards we will have 30 percent permeable landscape surfaces with trees and shading which is going to be a huge Improvement at all of these School sites from what they have now great thank you and I think you answered this but if you could clarify how exactly schools were identified for these sure we identified schools that had the worst condition of asphalt from that we knew we could do approximately 30 projects with this budget allocation of roughly 300 million we looked at both a ratio of the number of schools in each Board District that had the worst amount of asphalt as well as the number of schools in each Board District that were in the top 25 percent of
362The Greening index and we reuse that proportionality to arrive at the number of schools in each Board District so all of them are considered uh kind of failing for the asphalt in their schoolyards unfortunately we can't get to all of them but we know when future funds are identified we'll continue to make progress okay thank you um and I know you mentioned that we're reducing asphalt and increasing Greening with these upgrades can you um can you explain if we will be reaching the 30 ratio of Hardscape to Greenscape on these playgrounds through these projects yes um we know you know the board passed a resolution making it a goal to make 30 these projects specifically will meet that goal um that is what they're intended to do as part of the other larger exterior upgrades
363so all of these projects will have 30 percent of the school yards greened wonderful and last question I have just a couple comments is just how much tree canopy or other shade will be provided through these upgrades we know that heat is something that a lot of the parents who have reached out have mentioned and the lack of shade yes so I'm I provided uh exact numbers per each School of the amount of trees that we're looking to add it ranges anywhere from adding 50 more trees to approximately 300 percent more trees we have heard from our community members over and over again that it's really providing the shade and tree cabinet P that matters most to our students and their experience of these School yards so we believe that we're going to be significantly
364adding the number of trees throughout this entire program thank you so much that's really helpful information um and I think that the amount of information and public engagement around this item really emphasizes how important Greening is to our communities and how much this is needed especially at our elementary schools we know that this project is just one component of several in our efforts to bring more green space to our campuses but it really highlights the need for a comprehensive strategic Greening plan that helps all of our schools to reach that 30 threshold it's been close to a year since the board passed the green schools for all resolution I know that the staff is hard at work on that Greening plan I know that I am super excited to look at it we need a
365plan that will be transparent and accessible to the public and really help contextualize how each of the different Bond Investments and programs will help us reach our overall Greening goals overall I'm really excited about these Investments that we're making I know that the two schools in my district we didn't hear from any of the school Community but Noble Elementary and Plummer Elementary are really great examples of just how needed this is both of them are at less than five percent of Green Space right now on their campuses so this will be extremely transformational to those students staff and families at those schools and I'm grateful to facilities for bringing this forward next uh Mr Melvin thank you um and just a belated shout out in the last item to the seeds program it's wonderful so
366thank you for continuing that and I think the school cites support and also working with our Architects is helpful and um I know that he can't stay away so I assume markover is watching this meeting so thank you to mark but go do better things and welcome Ms Stokes I think this is your first meeting officially in the new role so we're grateful to have you hi Miss Gomez asked and you answered most of the questions I think it's an unfortunate name the paving plus and I really agree with The Advocates you know who are right and that we need to be more ambitious and not just you know going incremental steps but at the same time we have schools some of them are mine where we do have asphalt that needs replacing and I
367think this is a step in the right direction what these Advocates are asking us is to take a leap in the right direction and they're right so I'm going to vote to approve this today but I think we should heed their call to be more ambitious and revolutionary and how we're thinking about our campuses I will say here you know there are these are important I always wish that we could expedite these projects and if there are things we can do even looking at what we're doing they're expensive and they're taking a long time and like I was going to said this resolution was passed a year ago and so I know your the answer is going to be you're looking into it which I know you are and so in the future maybe you
368can update us but my hope would just be looking at some of these timelines like can we can we expedite them and find more ways to touch more schools and if we can't with the existing budget or Personnel or whatever let us know because you have I think seven board members who this is a high priority for Greening and Environmental Protection so let us know what we need to do whether that is more allocation of funding a bond that some people have talked about Etc so thank you all right next Dr Rivas yes um well I will say you know the greeting committee um this is really the effort right this is the focus and the vision of our Green Schools committing climate resiliency the greeting schools and climate resiliency committee and this is exactly
369where we're going to be you know working towards is making sure that uh we're working towards Greening and you know fulfilling um the resolution that was passed so I know that this is one program and the questions uh the questions that I had have already been asked by uh Ms Gomez and yeah we're going to be adding more trees as you know these are the sort of the topics we're going to be looking at and the next few committee meetings so I'm looking forward to that work and identifying the funding and yes there are their Advocates they're actually part of the committee so I know they're going to be working with us and and and guiding and being the driving force of the district and really investing in our schools and and through the greeting
370of our schools so my only my question is um since the other questions were already asked is just being not a question but more a comment of being um a bit more Equitable in terms of um where we're identifying the need for pavement or just screening because here I don't see Board District 2 schools although you did say that you know it's schools are throughout the four districts are identified but I would like to at least being for y'all to be more mindful in terms of being Equitable so if you say okay we fulfilled so many projects in these districts but identify where there are gaps in other board districts just so we were Equitable across across the board um but no I'm excited on the work that we're going to work together do together
371in The Greening committee and really advancing the greeting efforts and electrification as well because it all goes hand in hand so thanks so much great look forward to it all right I think I'm last so I just have a couple of things since most of mine were asked as well I think maybe we would ask you as you bring these others because I think there are 23 all together aren't there there's 30 all together it'll be 23 more 23 more uh to add into the reports things like how many shade trees are being added just so we don't have to ask on each one of these dollars spent on The Greening as opposed to the cooling of the pavement uh how much permeable surface has increased things like that I think will reduce the number
372of questions in the future and any other metrics that you think might help us all know what these pieces are because I think I got a couple of letters from the living School yards Coalition members and some from The Greening committee uh because they're there's they think that it's still spending too much in Paving instead of Greening I think if we had these numbers in there and that it says yes there's 30 and we're not counting Paving as part of it it'll reduce the number of questions and perhaps concerns um I think there are some from the uh that's living School yards Coalition and The Greening committee who think we should not do any Paving if you know what I mean take it all out or most of it out uh but they are concerned
373that title one schools seem to be underrepresented and I don't know that that's true I'm just reflecting what they sent to me but if that is true I would be a concern of mine um and also they wanted to make sure to say that they want The Greening to take place where students congregate rather than at entryways or on perimeters but I think we're already doing that but I said I would mention all of those um the other question I would say is is that at Grant Elementary the school has a large separate project not in scope that is not a part of the upgrade and is going to involve removing Portables and the California Conservation Corps doing a big Greening project about which I'm overjoyed and thrilled but what could we do to improve
374this kind of cooperation so you're already going to be working at a school and now somebody else says well we'll make it a bigger project are there ways that you reach out or you just have to wait to them to come to you oh uh absolutely not if someone has funds or a project that they want to do at the school site and we're going to be doing one now that's just you know we can do so much more so we would reach out to them make sure that we're coordinated and that you know if we're both going to be doing work at the site that we're you know multiplying kind of our efforts scaling our efforts to get the greatest impact at that school and we don't consider cool coding as part of The
375Greening and Landscaping we do not I've heard several people say yes we do and we don't I want to make that public okay it's permeable surfaces and you said that all these seven campuses will reach the 30 Greening as a result of these projects which I think is important for us to know okay I think that's all I had that takes us through eight we had no questions on 9 10 11 12 13 14 15. 17 oh well we have these sneakers on some of these yes he's stopping me I was going too fast I got excited I'm sorry very quickly and efficiently all right so we have nine let's have speakers on nine please under tab nine um Aaron studer are you here or Aaron stutter I apologize if I've mispronounced your name please
376come on up you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin we're going to call you the patient Aaron studer because you've been here since the beginning yes yes good uh good evening uh board president Goldberg superintendent Carvalho board members I'm Aaron studer I'm the executive director at chime Institute uh first uh just let me say to the superintendent and the board your leadership during tropical storm Hillary uh I really appreciated I know it was a difficult decisions trying to make those calls it was a long weekend I'm sure but I thought you made choices that made sure uh staff and students stayed safe so thank you for that a real brief reminder chime charter school is a TK through eighth grade Charter School in the San Fernando Valley we have 760 students we're the
377professional development school for California State University Northridge and we are a national model for full inclusion uh we have over 20 percent of our students are students with special needs uh and within that seven and a half percent of our students our students with uh extensive uh support needs um and that makes this project a real joy for us on Tab nine to replace the asphalt uh going I know we've been talking about Paving but uh there are a lot of uh ruts holes different things in our kindergarten yard we have a lot of students who use accessibility devices wheelchairs Etc and to get that replaced and smooth uh is a real uh Boon for our entire community so I really appreciate your support I want to thank Maria Thorpe who was a LAUSD staff
378who walked this through this process and the facilities team for their guidance and expert expertise I want to as always thank board member Nick melvoin for your continued support of chime and note that this is a great example of District and Charter partnership to create facilities solutions for all kids we are the sole occupant on the Collier Street Elementary campus and have been so since 2003 and again and again we continue to work with LAUSD to find Excellent facilities solutions to the problems that arise that make sure all children get a high quality facility and education at chime and throughout La so thank you so much for your leadership and support thank you thank you for your time I had just a quick question this looks like uh fall out asphalt to ask to ask
379right is that am I reading that right I'm sorry you thought you were done because it says replacing 6 000 square feet of deteriorated Asphalt in the kindergarten yard an upgrade with solar reflective asphalt yes so this one is a pure Paving replacement however there are numerous mature trees um in this kindergarten yard we are going to be cutting the paving putting in Redwood Planters and then the paving areas are used for their tricycle area and their dining their outdoor eating areas so in this case we are not adding additional Paving okay I just noticed that yep we've been so good on the other ones I thought well what what's going on here all right yep all right uh all right we have I'm not cutting the trees down right right okay just checking okay
380okay uh items 16. that one is on discussion that's on discussion oh that's on the budget okay we'll take that later uh now we have uh provisional a lot on consent on Tab 17 we have a public oh yeah comment public tab 17. correct and I have a brief statement to read about tab 17. okay Senior Management contract certificated uh presented to the board for approval as part of the routine agenda item are the employment agreements for certified certificated employees previously appointed on June 2023. government code section 54953 requires the board prior to taking final action to provide an oral summary of a recommendation for a final action on the salary salary schedule or compensation paid in the form of fringe benefits of a local agency executive including certificated employees during an open meeting in
381which the final action is to be taken that is this the final certificated employees the board is considering will receive one regular Health and Welfare benefits a quarter to 12 month certificated administrative employees of the district two standard Senior Management District vacation and illness days which are 24 vacation days 13 full pay illness days and 87 half pay illness days three use of a district automobile or monthly car allowance of 250 dollars per month for a term commencing on July 1 2023 and ending on June 30 2024 and five an annual salary as follows 224 665 dollars for a Dana Brown as executive director diversity equity and inclusion two 175 560 for Eric Hanson as executive director of strategic initiatives and the third is 175 560 for Latasha buck as executive director Virtual Academy and
382options programs before the Board of Education takes action are there any speakers to this item and there are we have two call them Vince N I see you're on the line Vince n please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin Vince n I see you're online with us please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin can you hear me I can if you could speak up and into the receiver of the device you're using to communicate with us that would help us greatly all right I hope you can hear me well that's much better thank you sir I'm gonna Carvalho and board members I want to first thank you for making the difficult decision of keeping students
383State uh students and staff safe yesterday decisions to close schools are never easy but the storm has passed schools will reopen and students are learning once again um I'd like to just talk briefly about Personnel issues the superintendent has pointed out in recent interviews in the media the learning loss that La students have faced in the wake of the pandemic school closures a hard decision that was made in a crisis I do think however an honest assessment of that learning loss would certainly have to include the removal of hundreds perhaps upward to a thousand certificated Personnel teachers counselors administrators from campuses because of the covid-19 employee vaccine mandate on October 15th of 2021 and filling those positions with subs or out of classroom Personnel who simply didn't have the recency in the classroom to provide
384quality learning opportunities for students in the year this was done in spite of LUSD legal counsel arguing before the federal district court judge in July of 2021 that the district had no intention of mandating the vaccine for employees and in fact the CDC guidance in July 2021 said not to treat vaccinated and unvaccinated differently what was done was done but it is never too late to adopt a new policy I saw the board was briefed by legal counsel this morning regarding the multiple lawsuits the district faces over its very strict vaccine mandate that is going into its third year the misallocation of qualified teachers to online independent study programs not allowing these teachers to take part in in-person PD opportunities such as the district's bsap program Etc forcing teachers to resign or retire early has
385undoubtedly taken a toll on student learning by disrupting the learning programs at schools all over the district in 2021. I hope the board will take action on the employee vaccine mandate and allow the return of qualified staff classroom since you've granted them medical and religious exemptions and safety Protocols are now in place perhaps you can this will help you unwind the litigation the district is wrapped up in the Kobe crisis is long behind us and as president Goldberg said in June regarding another issue fear is not our friend love is segregating employees based on fear uh is is not loving them let's move forward on this policy that almost no other District in California has implemented to the degree LAUSD has returning highly qualified teachers to the classroom will result in an increase in learning
386for students and put the district on the side of rational policy and morality thank you for your time thank you for your time there's one more caller signed up I will read that person's name Angela Chavez is not on the line though she's signed up to speak remotely is Angela in the room Angela Chavez are you in the room okay that concludes public comment for tab 17. that takes us to a board member education compacts for city of Maywood in San Fernando somebody wanted to comment board member Gomez has a comment on it okay board member Gomez hello I just really briefly wanted to share my excitement around the compact between the city of San Fernando and LAUSD we are so proud of the partnership we already have with the city of San Fernando to
387support our students and families I know that this compact will deepen our shared work to meet the holistic needs of our students and families because we know that what happens outside of the school gate has an impact on our students learning and growing in our schools I also um just wanted to appreciate all of the leaders of the city of San Fernando I know that each uh each and every one of them was really interested and supportive of the compact even giving some direct feedback on it so I'm grateful to them and look forward to seeing the impact of this partnership over coming years I thank you public comment on Tab 24 is what I have next too I have Theresa Sanford to speak on Tab 24. please press star 6 to unmute yourself and
388you have three minutes to speak once you begin and I want to thank you for calling back and making this work out so I appreciate you contacting my office Miss Teresa Sanford please go ahead hi hi this is Teresa Sanford and um I am one of the uh teachers that the previous uh speaker uh spoke about um I have been told by HR that I have a position as a displaced teacher with the district but I do not have an assignment I have been in an unpaid status now since February as a result of the Mandate that is still in place here in 2023 three years after the um Sanford is a brief reminder you are signed up to speak under tab 24 commemorating National read a book day and under the poor rules right
389and schedules are constrained to the topic on which they signed up to speak okay I'm I'm getting to that one of the things that I noted during the discussion of this item was um the the necessity for comprehension and understanding um which I was seeing an article on chalkbeach.org regarding this topic and having taught English and worked in elementary for 24 years um I understand the importance of students having a broad background knowledge base uh through which to gain understanding of text in context I did everything I could as a teacher in English science and social studies as well as my time spent as a para educator to activate and try to encourage students to learn and understand right rather than just learning to read reading to comprehend and this is something that I would
390recommend that everybody read if on talk talkbeat.org and it's called the the article's name as the science that's missing from science of reading laws if the author is Matt Barnum b-a-r-n-u-m and this was August 21st so it's a new uh new article so that might be something for everyone on the board and also for help parents who are also in person community members and those listening or watching online I would urge you to read that article and learn more about what's necessary for our students to learn and understand also recommended reading would be thank you very much for your time we appreciate it [Music] all right uh that would take us now to item number 29 which is a pub public hearing and uh it's a public hearing a report on correspondence including Williams settlement
391uniform complaint quarterly report and relative to that I have a statement to read before we take action on this for the board takes action before action is taken on the report of Correspondence regarding the Williams settlement uniform complaint quarterly report summary from the director of the educational Equity compliance office a public hearing must be held this constitutes a public hearing on the report and a maximum of 12 individuals who wish to address the board on this item will be heard those who wish to speak and have not already signed up should sign up in the rear of the boardroom which actually that should be online speakers will be called by name thank you one moment okay uh Karina Lopez are you here with us Karina Lopez okay and if you would like to hear what
392Miss Lopez is going to say in English as she is speaking in Spanish please devour yourselves with these headphones um and we'll proceed just as soon as we are given the heads up thumbs up McLean uh like we say in Mexico you and I will have to eat together very well good afternoon my name is Karina Lopez and the reason why I am here before B before starting with the matter I want to congratulate Virtual Academy and also okay from a kipaka family for their great work the resolution that you're talking about schools charter schools to stop I think that we need to use the Solomon philosophy the Solomon sense philosophy the Sun that fought against Solomon and it says that why not divide ourselves into we have to recognize but who said not to
393touch the the child the true mother and we want to recognize the work of those employees that are really working students to get ahead we cannot be radical we cannot be radical we need to analyze really well because there are a lot of people who are working very well every single day correspondence that means people writing to the school lo siento uh your the the item you signed up for is report of Correspondence that's people who wrote to the school or people who uh made complaints using the Williams complaint would you confine your remarks to the correspondence which is what you signed up for thank you congratulations thank you uh Mr President I don't want to apologize they took away my time and I don't know if you took away in it it should be
394my opinion about the schools and schools about uniform complaints unfortunately it is not having any kind of effect because the school there's a lack of safety to begin with the lack of information the lack of how parents need to respond and how they can complain and that the parents don't need to make a complaint I could be it could be me when I visit a School site there is no safety not even in the air there's too much lead the water is totally contaminated while we are using budget for Greening which is perfect but we really need to give integrity and safety to the students to their health and to their food there's no air purifiers there's too much contamination and so the complaints need to be made in general thank you thank you foreign
395okay thank you for your time uh as board president Goldberg pointed out the board of real estate and our order of business states that when you sign up for an item specific comment especially a public hearing on the report of Correspondence or the Williams complaint the comments are constrained to those two topical items the time is set aside for folks to speak on that item and if we don't hear from folks who could have signed up we're doing a disservice in terms of public comment let's see I have Marcela Vega is signed up online to speak but she is not there online Marcela are you here in person okay Diana Guillen are you here there you are please come on up and address your comments uh on the report of Correspondence and the Williams quarterly
396complaint summary good afternoon members of the board just like my partner said a little while before we are as parents are doing over time because we are very concerned more than anything him about William's complaint that is entirely and schools it's like it doesn't exist the principles do not inform the parents that these complaints exist not even in the dealer committee have they wanted to give us information or training about this uh I have seen in your report that there are only 15 complaints imagine in a district of more than a thousand schools there are only 15 complaints and let me tell you I think I was the second Department because I get more complaints from parents and they come here to me and they say this is happening this is happening but in reality
397we go with the things that should help us and there is no response there are also other complaints that are uniform complaints I've made several and in all of them they tell me that nothing of that I said is true they say that in their investigation have found that nothing is happening and that everything is perfect I was I also made a complaint against Mr Placencia because he was centering me talking to other parents and now I one of the chair person from the CAC confirmed that they told me that not to compare myself with them because I was a problematic person and so I think that those types of comments this person needs to abstain from making personal comments because I am a public figure and I am a figure that represents parents you
398know the parents have elected me because I have come here and I have the um I uh I don't fear talking here and I'm here so that we are able go to dialogue and not just so that the parents just like me that are criticals that we are being slandered and we're being spoken to in that way and also last time I I launched a UCP complaint against a an employee because I wanted to enroll my student I wanted to do the process for a permit and the secretary treated me very badly I felt that she was treated me with discrimination because I asked for a schedule an appointment with the principal she said that they didn't and the only way to talk to this person was through email and I launched a complaint and
399the the complaint Personnel they said look you have two options we can help you so that you can enroll your son in any place or you need to take away your complaint and I said no I will not take away my complaint because they can't dissuade me from my complaint because I've already lodged it and and because I have information and I can come here but how many some of the they take away the complaint that office where we do the UCP they are corrupt themselves because they called me themselves to tell me that how is it that they can't they want to persuade me to take away a complaint that I've already made and so I think that Ms Goldberg you are very responsible in the Williams complaint so that every single classroom and
400every single school and that the parents know what this is about thank you Mr McLean can I just ask Jackie a question sure so if someone fills out a Williams complaint and they the Williams people say that's unfounded is there an appeal process for that do you know offhand I don't know myself well if you take a look at the response talk to let's just take a look at the one on page uh one of 12 which is uh page um 430. what the process is supposed to be is there's a complaint and then there's a response okay uh they talk about whether or not they have completed and closed their investigation that uh I don't know if there's I presume that you could make an additional complaint on the same issue if you don't
401believe that it was resolved so I think what we need to do is just spend a little bit more time having parents understand what how they do it there should be in every classroom some of these complaints I have visited many classrooms that did but some do not uh and I think we just need to make a greater attempt to do that but once it's completed and closed which it has to be by a certain number of days in law once that's done if you're not happy with it there's nothing to stop you from making another complaint all right but certainly if you're getting people who are complaining about any of the things that should be William's complaints I would urge you to give them the copy of one of the forms and urge them
402to fill it out go ahead next okay nolita Mendez are you here nolita Mendez I see your signed up speak in person I'm checking online you are neither there okay um Maria Palma I see you're in the audience come on up you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin on Tab 29 the report of Correspondence and items related to the Williams complaint procedure thank you good evening once again board members and superintendent my name is Maria Luisa Palma I'm once again here representing the non-profit organization oliada which has a purpose to increase parent involvement in schools and districts I find it rather unbelievable that there were only five Williams complaints in during the entire last school year for Teacher vacancies or missed assignments is that really believable does anyone hear that that could be
403so given the Nationwide teacher shortages could it really be that parents in the community possibly are just unaware that they're entitled to have well-qualified teachers for all students by law I've seen it myself at my school site Council the members of the schoolside council were not provided the mandated information on how to file UCP complaints or Williams complaints I spoke up about it and I was told that they would go over it next year but why was that missing so I also saw at a school with when the parents are non-english speakers they were they provided me copies of what they thought were formal complaints that they were filing once I got the copy they were upset because there had been no resolution no response it turns out that the supposed form was a home-grown
404document titled concerns slash sukherencias so of course these they thought they were real complaints these complaints went nowhere but listen to this a Community member who wished to remain anonymous filed a Williams complaint with information on a teacher vacancy on May 8th of 2023 using the Williams Complaint Form yet your report indicates no human resource Williams complaints were filed in the fourth quarter none admittedly I review the email I was sent and it was sent to the equal opportunities section at lausd.net email but your policies indicate that other departments are supposed to forward complaints that come in to the proper location which would be the educational Equity compliance office now to someone on the outside I'm sorry I can't tell the difference I don't know the names of these departments they don't mean anything to
405me so clearly there is a lack of controls in the processing of these complaints and you have responsibilities to create proper procedures which which ensure that parents staff and community members are all aware of the UCP and Williams complaint processes and ensure that all complaints are filed through all channels and make sure that they are tracked addressed and resolved in compliance with the law I urge the office of the Inspector General and the superintendent to audit and investigate these processes I will forward you the specific complaint that I'm speaking of I have that and I will send that to all of your offices but really we are seeing here a lack of respect when parents are going through the process of filing these complaints and if they're just going to get lost because it didn't
406come into the exact email box where it's supposed to be that's a very serious flaw thank you for listening thank you for your time Carla Franco you signed up to call in are you here in person Carla Franco come on up you will have three minutes to speak once you begin if folks would like to hear what Miss Franco is saying in English as she speaks in Spanish please use the provided headphones and we look forward to your comments on the report of Correspondence or the Williams quarterly report thank you good afternoon it's me again Carla Franco and about this form it is sad to get to know I would like for you to come bring William because I would like for him to be introduced because I will need him especially because I don't
407have the information about this form and what does it cover or what you are able to place on this complaint for years we have launched complaints UCP that have never been answered so what hope can we have that William will respond when you have not introduced him here you gave a presentation where it says that 99.9 percent the school sites have the staff for teachers that was a report from superintendent and unfortunately and sadly my daughter is starting her first year in ninth grade and it is so embarrassing to note that the staff that you have asked counseling that is more lost than anything else they don't even know what they're doing how can it be that my daughter Jaylene has two PE classes one in the morning and one in the afternoon she doesn't
408even understand why it's so I had not gone to fix the problem because I was sick and I did not want to I was contagious and they know perfectly that I will be there to fix that problem and now if that uh women's Complaint Form is too large those type of complaints I would like for you to give it to me because the UCP are hidden in the school sites and when you as a parent ask for an eucp the whole uh staff comes after you especially the principal and if I come here and I say did they introduce William yesterday and William is going to resolve all our problem better than a UCP really miss Jackie you are informing me that you are the one that made this law I would like for you
409to take this seriously all these complaints that have been lodged and if it's not true then say how you make the laws that maybe it's just to uh wash your hands and to make us really believe that you will listen and that you will solve our problems the school Southgate Southgate High School they don't have teachers the students do not have all their courses and the evidence lies that if my student is taking two PE classes that will affect her for her G requirements she doesn't have to take two PE classes okay are not interested because the affected ones are not you you still receive money in your pocket those that are affected are our children and I am in agreement with the superintendent and I am happy that uh it's not in agreement with
410the decision of yesterday who paid for the consequences our students thank you for your time Juan magandi I see you're here come on up they have three minutes to speak about the report of Correspondence or the Williams complaint procedure thank you good night once again let me know where to send the overtime invoice first of all this is the problem that exists that is pervasive in the district who is the person who would supervise these laws that you yourselves are approving this Williams Law is a good example what resources exist to monitor even clean cleanliness I invite you miss Goldberg I have many schools where we can stroll through and you'll see that it's a trash can and I'm not even gonna you tell me when and I hope the principals don't even know when
411we're gonna go so that they don't prepare but the point is we're not taking what you're saying seriously everything that you're promoting and when we go to schools the stairs you'll see all kinds of filths and that's we are not doing things properly unions as well how can a parent an average parent average parent go and get the attention needed to fix this UCP we already know that's like my grandmother said you can Bark at the Moon but you know nothing will happen and there's like a code of you know silence and of complacency where nothing happens and you know they have a department of operations but it's like for complaints but it doesn't really do anything sure they they hear one person okay go to a psychologist so you can dump all your emotional
412depressive issues towards what kind of solutions are given now UCP the principles now that they don't want people to participate they hide the formula and then I've gone to schools where it's just there's some teachers that I even feel bad for I I don't even like saying that but I'm embarrassed for them arts and literature person is is there cleaning up in a school all this filth even I'm gonna go see the science center with microscopes that I don't even understand why I think they're the first ones that ever were made in 1800s right I mean it's disgraceful it's absurd and we have to come here and be on your bad side because there's not an honest transparent person that is not biased that is not associated to you or your unions in this case
413associated with the superintendent or the president do you believe that everybody that's coming before you is you know the the most loveliest of people but the ones that are implementing executing everything they're compliant with all these things that I'm talking about and sometimes I feel like they want you to fail because they don't care and something needs to be done thank you and good night you have three minutes to speak on the report of Correspondence or the Williams settlement uniform complaint quarterly report summary when I start this good evening the Williams complaint right well for me too even just recently I found out what uh Williams you know situation is [Music] seeked information from other parents but a lot of other parents we we did not have this information we don't have it if you
414go to a school and you want to submit a complaint they just send you to the voicemail of complaints what for just to just add it so that the principal can read it and say oh she's dumb or crazy or pardon my French but how then to give this information to parents imagine those of us who are here bothering you right all right I I don't want to assume that but we're trying to be here to obtain information you're the ones that have the opportunity and the resources for us parents to give given this information and we're not given this information because I know a lot of parents in the district in the three committees that have no idea what a Williams complaint is they don't know what it is complaints one can make a
415complaint and it just be lost in the wind and when you do a UCP and they ask you if you have um Witnesses yeah but they're afraid then because it's gonna be not just the one who filed a complaint but the witness as well documented with the schools and the principals Miss Goldberg you a smart person this is why you made this proposition this is why you were there please take this information to the parents please communicate it because so many parents have filed complaints that have complained about the teachers the principals and we're ignored please hear our voices we're not here to smile and if we can complain it's because something is being done that is affecting us not just as parents but our students our children please don't ignore us I know I
416have very little time left but I wanted to also Express a complaint twice I have applied more than three years and I've been ignored I'm going to complain about s face or Pace or whatever you want whoever is responsible why because I've been ignored as a parent I'm a parent who has been up to date I want to be empowered I want to work with other parents that are just like me but what happens they ignore us please miss Goldberg please pay attention to the parents the parents that are here legitimately to talk and share information with you we want to work equitably together thank you thank you for your time Maria Desi Ortiz I see you're here come on up you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin I am here with this
417about the uniform complaint and I am completely in agreement with those before me about the fact that the schools this document is something that is non-existent and it should exist and it's true when we go about a uniform complaint A Williams complaint right because the woman complaint is one thing and UCP is another right but the Williams complaint go see the water fountains they're oxidated they're broken they don't work many schools in order for their school safety they'll close the bathrooms okay so right now the education that you are providing in the document it sounds lovely because it's easy to to cover it up but how can you make sure that that's what actually happens in these documents this isn't for parents they're in English when did you inform parents with this new methodology that
418is to be used okay parents we're the ones that bring our children here to be educated with quality education but that's not what they're receiving on the contrary they say I'm in favor of the resolution resolution for the charters why because our schools can't be sold you can't sell them when a school is the spaces they can put a lab there a computer lab there these are the careers of this century and they're out there going to need to compete truly is an insult they're using that office to pay all these salaries just to make Liars out of all of his parents even Title One currently because our superintendent is 40 million primary promise did he consult with to invest this money our children are not just one gracias Mr David tarkovsky thank you very
419much and welcome to Karen Ramirez this item if you actually look inside two of the complaints are at your school um and so you could take a look at how they were responded to you know your school well in the different rooms so uh they're on page 434 and Page 444 it has has how we respond and the president Goldberg has said you know why am I taking calls on air conditioning units and something else we we did the Williams case to resolve these things and so even in this room it would be nice if we actually had the Williams complaint posted here I think it might be in the law I don't know if you did that much writing of it Miss Goldberg I know we tried on the instructional materials to make sure
420children we were on year round at that time could get a book in class and also have a book at home and guarantee it in the settlement we tried very hard with Mark Rosenbaum and others and Governor Schwarzenegger trying to to do that there wasn't as much money as there is now but it is uh unusual I know the superintendent knew that there were misassigned teachers and he's worked on the last year to fix that he didn't fill out the Williams complaint because he knew it was a problem and he took care of it but that's what's supposed to be happening on teacher assignments on curricular materials if the books are over the seven year mark they're supposed to be eligible to be replaced and finally facilities and so you're working hard on The Greening
421of campuses and athletic fields and early Ed I have a special new committee on early Ed but those are small buckets the big bucket the big bucket is 14 billion dollars in the state Bond and putting a bond together to help all of these things I don't know if Government relations has given you the ingredients of the state Bond but John Fairbanks is doing the polling for whoever the client is and the numbers are off the off the roof in terms of the state Bond passing and so it's very important that we as I said earlier and repeatedly that we try to fund things that are capital goods um out of that rather than issuing 500 million or a half a billion dollars of cops when we could defease those with um a um a
422bond congratulations on a positive certification as the budget comes through uh and you do have some discussion time on that the tutoring program is doing some things but it's also missing our far far far far far far far far below kids they're not necessarily calling in or getting the services uh you have 450 million more coming in the Arts money 114 I I understand the new Arts money continues to be discretionary it's being used for salaries I think it says in your notes today and I don't think the public generally knows that and finally we're working hard to make sure the lcap the lcff are serving the children as Mr Salcedo has fought for for a long time to make sure it goes to the right students and it doesn't go to the general operating
423so thank you thank you very much and congratulations on a positive certification thank you thank you for your time next we will hear from the speakers on item 31. okay so Nelly Mendez a committee meeting schedule okay Nelly Mendez I see you're signed up to speak online but uh are you perhaps here in person uh because you're not online okay Marcela Garcia I see you're signed up to speak online you are not there are you here in the room no Maria Daisy Ortiz you were here a moment ago are you here in the room now okay yeah okay thank you we're gonna um wait a moment for um Miss Ortiz to get here welcome back um this is tab 31 the upcoming committee meeting schedule approval we're speaking in regards to the calendar practically I
424am surprised and I would like for you to answer to me be why is it that you remove family committee foreign this family subcommittee this gives us a this sends us a message that basically you don't want parents you say you love our children but you hate parents the practices is this is what reflect being reflected based on the practices and I say well why did you remove it I believe we deserve a response and also I commented to Mr Salcido that the committee of low income that this was this had to be established he said that they didn't do this because in the previous years there was fraud made and I said do you have proof he said that's what I was told therefore as administrators you should not repeat something that you have
425not seen because I testify that this did not happen and low-income committees was removed by superintendent John Daisy because what's against technology and we are parents that would say no and we evaluated this and we develop workshops for parents we did parent conferences and therefore the law did not change who changed the Committees and removed it was Mr John Daisy this is why I am telling you to tell me with an inside the loss 11 16. this is where they say that committees shouldn't be re-established you have more than 900 schools that are low income that receive funds from title one one percent is for parent involvement is so parents can have strategies to help students with math with English and in all grades we don't have strategies our children have two teachers one in
426classroom and one at home both need to be trained but you are leaving us outside therefore we don't want to fight with you we want to work we want to learn because it is very sad to be at home and not be able to help our children to do their homework this is why that one percent the government says one percent so that we can focus on the education and get training and you are not doing that you remove committees do you remove training and you want to give us but Academia a few of this because Family Academy does not train parents honestly and we're wasting unnecessary funds all right that concludes uh general public comment and public comment on all um consent items we're nearly ready to do the consent calendar but I wanted
427to give um let's see we have we have a resolution for um National read a book day and a resolution on suicide prevention and awareness month both require a waiver of rule 72 so let's have a motion to waive the rule board rule 72 for items 23 and 24. been moved and seconded by Scott schmerlson and Dr Rivas okay all those uh let's let's take a vote on the waiver board rule 72. okay Dr McKenna yes Dr Rivas yes Mr Morrison yes Mr Melbourne yes Miss Gomez yes Miss Ortiz Franklin Mr Ortiz Franklin okay we will come back to you uh board president Goldberg yes student member Ramirez yes all right so now I would uh welcome the opportunity if the makers of these two motions would like to make some comments before we uh
428vote on I would I would thank you go ahead I'll do number 23 first which is a suicide prevention and awareness so sponsoring this resolution is important for me because it helps eliminate the stigma behind Mental Health many communities particularly those marginalized suffer at higher rates for mental health issues due to historical and systemic lack of resources at LAUSD we are working to ensure that students and staff have access to the resources they need to be mentally sound we must acknowledge that as difficult as it is to have these conversations because they are essential this resolution also highlights the steps that our district is making to ensure a welcoming environment for all updating information on the district website such as adding a new phone number for the suicide and crisis Lifeline to 988 a progress
429report on the hiring of psychiatric social workers at every school and encouraging a better healthier climate are all simple steps but could help in considerable ways we want this resolution to serve as a reminder to those who may be suffering and some suffering in silence your teachers your administrators and your whole District walk with you and our message should be made clear you belong at LAUSD at this time I would like to allow my co-sponsor Dr Rivas to say a few words regarding this resolution as well thank you um first of all thank you board member schmerelsen for inviting me to co-author this very important resolution and and I just want to say a few words as to why and I think none of you would argue as to why this is so important it's
430important because suicide is preventable uh between 2016 and 2020 suicide was the third leading cause of death for uh 10 to 24 year olds in L.A County we all know that due to the pandemic our youth have been dealing with elevated levels of stress PTSD depression and not only our students but all of us overall factors such as discrimination stigma mental illness and others may result in elevated suicide risk particularly for vulnerable student populations according to 2021 CDC survey on youth behaviors indicated that female students were twice as likely to seriously consider attempting suicide than male students an lgbtqia plus students were at higher risk than their peers to consider suicide this is why we are asking our district community um engagement to engagement folks to share targeted messages and resources that will support our
431families and vulnerable students during September the National Suicide Prevention month and to update our district website most importantly we rely on mental health staff psws and school psychologists and our School site suicide threat assessment teams to intervene in times of Crisis for our students this resolution causing the superintendent to report to the committee of the whole within 90 days on the process of hiring psws and school cite suicide and threat assessment staff the report should explore the potential of developing Regional Partnerships with colleges universities training opportunities and Workforce Pathways for psws and other school-side mental health professionals I think this will be a valuable first step towards building capacity and supporting our Mental Health crisis staff who are on the front line of defense for our students in all of our school communities so I
432think this is a resolution that is very very important and this District of course has been on the Forefront of attending to the needs of her students and this is just elevating and putting it out in the public and all of the efforts that our district is working on to address the Mental Health crisis that we're all facing so thank you for this thank you anybody else wish to speak on this one hearing none I'd like to be added as a co-sponsor of this one all right uh now would you like to speak on National Rita book day yes ma'am we've already done that we did them for both we did a twofer thank you well a more pleasant one now okay everybody it's called read a book day and I'm excited to sponsor this
433resolution commemorating September the 6th as National read a book day for the Los Angeles Unified School District and I decided to introduce this resolution to highlight the importance of reading in school and Beyond LAUSD is taking detailed steps to raise student literacy levels and we must lead by example by highlighting our own positive experiences with literature so as Educators our jobs go beyond teaching students about math and English we remember being inspired by our favorite teachers because they were passionate about their subjects now it's time to inspire our students books play a vital role in our society as they help teach us about academic subjects and expand our thoughts on many positive aspects such as empathy and inclusion it is why we emphasize our staff administrators and why not even board members to discuss our
434favorite books and authors with the goal of motivating our students to read more we also write we also recognize the critical staff that specializes in literature are Librarians you know we have teacher Librarians in our secondary schools and our library aides and our elementary schools and they help our students find books that they are interested in and assist in finding Vital Information so we also request that the district make available necessary educational resources for educators and parents so they can also learn about the importance of reading with their children what else can we say about the experience of picking up our favorite book for the first time those are experiences worth sharing with others especially our students so let's put this commemoration into action on September the 6th and reach our district goal of having
435all of our students reading at a proficient level by third grade what a thought thank you thank you all right anybody else wish to speak on this Dr Rivas um well I'm always an advocate not only of libraries but of course what's inside our libraries are books and for me books really saved my life and I honestly it really helped me um gain you know Proficiency in English so and also for my son when he was six months old when he can hold up his head he had a book in front of him so I am very um grateful to again for this resolution because books are so essential particularly now as um we're facing you know this this movement of banning books and the the sort of the um repercussions of that are so
436dire and so in order to really uplift all books um this resolution is yes it's symbolic but it's more than that it really is bringing us the attention of the importance of narratives all narratives fiction non-fiction the importance of stories and why we have to really tell those stories to our students culture relevant education ethnic studies these are we these are the courses that require books that tell the real stories uh of of our country of our people and just of our history and so you know literacy and reading is of course one of the most important life skills and one of our primary mandates as an educational institution uh reading to our children when they are young and then when as they get older is one of the most important things we can do
437as a parent as a teacher as a society overall studies show that reading a book a day to young children exposes them to more than 390 000 words by the time they reach kindergarten imagine that wow that's just astonishing to me take the opportunity to bring um I want to take an opportunity to bring like I mentioned the unfounded and misleading efforts to ban books being undertaken throughout the nation the people and organizations who wants to who want to censor our youth access to new creative worlds and ideas do it for very cynical and serve self-serving reasons and we must push back against this as a district over the summer I shared some some of our my my staff favorite books on Instagram books that have been banned that on the uh on the band
438book list and let me just say that we received great uh response to this even from the authors themselves that we featured in our Instagram account I say this because this is something that touches all of us all throughout our nation and actually worldwide as well so thank you Mr Schmelson for bringing forward this resolution and allowing me to to co-sponsor it as well yeah I'd just like to comment first of all I thank both of you for speaking as you have it is problematic for me growing up in the community of a segregated environment in New Orleans Louisiana and even now having worked in many inner city schools where they are considered under achieving and one of the greatest common denominators is a lack of reading it's not even required I'd like to see
439every school have children working with a book that they read some I've seen them a book for the month everybody's got to read it something to get them to read the people that really don't read are the young men you can take a survey of male athletes and see when they read a book they don't read books they don't read anything they read what they're required to read not all of them some of them are very astute but the ones that are only athletes and having been an athlete I know you can get caught up in that I'd rather play a ball than do my homework do homework I go to universities I don't even go to class I just play a ball because I know I'm going to the NBA and a lot of
440examples of that some don't even go to college they just jump out of high school and become millionaires playing ball don't read books you can hear when they speak the most powerful the most powerful example of being unable to read you cannot write if you cannot read I know lots of people who can read at the ruler mental level cannot write everybody who can write well has to be able to read and when you don't read you don't know what other people are thinking and you can't find the vocabulary to make your own narrative you can't get the vocabulary to do anything anymore rudimentary rhymings when you do rap I remember when the wife's Prophets years ago there were they were called the The Poets and it was spoken word you listen to some of
441this rap right now and other than the vulgarity some of it you don't even understand what they're talking about I know it's vulgar I know you can't repeat it you don't want your children to hear it but some children that's all they listen to someone playing on the campus we had an incident where the assistant principal stopped him from listening to it and spoke up and kids complained because it the vice principal used the words that they were listening to so you can't use these words and they complained to the principal but they were listening to the rap song just a trap sent by the wrong people for the wrong reason reading is so fundamental it is reading that allows you to work math problems Goldberg reference arithmetic is not mathematic and it is not
442arithmetic is the operations there's only four things you can do in arithmetic acids multiply and divide word problems is where you get into conceptual stuff distance and motion problems but you have to read the problem there's no equation for that you have to make the equation from the word problem if you can't interpret the words you can't understand what the question is how can you then do well on the SAT and some people say well we don't need to give them the SAT anymore we just admit them to school and we don't even teach them math anymore we'll admit them to the freshman year and they'd get credit for the minority enrollment has increased and it can't even multiply two fractions can't add two fractions with different denominators that's mathematics arithmetic they can't do why
443can they do mathematics so I could rant about this but I'm so proud of the fact that we're trying to encourage people to read what that will do I don't know it's a joy to read I don't have any data on this but I know from observation the girls read more than the boys I haven't seen too many boys sitting at a bus stop reading a book I see girls sitting on a bus stop reading a book does it mean girls are better students than boys I don't know but they were better students when I was in school and I was a mathematician all the best students in my class were girls but they didn't become engineers because there was no market for that so they didn't think they could do it until we no
444not until you know there was a movie about hidden figures they were doing all the calculations nobody knew about them and I was an engineer at the time I didn't know they existed and I worked at North American Aviation putting the man on the moon right here right here in Downey and I was well schooled in mathematics and physics and Science and all of that but the fundamental skill of reading encompasses the rest of our lives and then in the earlier times it stopped even putting the box scores in the sports edition and then you got to listen to Bill Pulaski going on and on and on but but I don't even know what where the Dodgers are I know what place they've been in the bus this time why would they stop doing that
445so nobody can do that yeah they're not going to print it they're not going to print it no they're not going to print they print other stuff they printed something today about the superintendent um negative but I think that I applaud you talking about the importance of reading and uh I confess I don't know how I learned to read I don't remember not reading my mother was a teacher so she must have had me on her lap like you said it'll be six years six months over the book in front of your face I don't know it just came to me I did not do it but I smoke but they did it through the road process and people thought I was brilliant because I could read when I was so young another story I'll
446tell you is true when he gave me my first IQ test I tested as a genius level I won't even tell you what the moment they thought it was a mistake I know why I tested so high I found out later that an IQ test for a child is correlated for what you know and your age at the time what you're supposed to know at this age I'm two years younger than everybody else in my class because my mother put me in school two years before everybody else so nobody else was five I was three when they were 14 I was 12. I graduated from high school when I was 15 going on 16. everybody else went to the prom I'm sitting there throwing rocks at him that's that's how backwards that was as a
447boy trying to be a teenager but I could play a ball the point is because I could read at a higher level than my age chronologically it looked like I was a genius and I wasn't I was just younger than the people I knew everything in my class but I was two years younger than my than where I should have been point is there's too many reasons why people don't read and if the home has no reading material where they're going to go to get it the library is the business of is a fundamental place in a school just like the instructional program when they made the presentation that's the Crux of the district says the library is the heartbeat of the district you want to be added as a co-sponsor of business anyway but
448being a close mouth is a symbolic thing okay I'm voting for it all right but I'm trying to reinforce how the importance of what I'm doing I'm agreeing that's why I asked if you want everybody I'm speaking into the microphone and my mom everybody here already reads I got that but I'm not talking to them who am I talking to I'm just talking into the microphone getting that audience out there that that I'm proud of not paying attention but thank you for the thank you for what you're doing all right there we go so wow that was more than we knew and a few anecdotes that we'll all remember okay uh so I think we are now believe it or not ready to have a vote on the consent calendar but before we do that
449we have a board member who didn't get a chance to vote on the waiver of board rule 72. that's exactly right uh board member Ortiz Franklin can I have your vote on the two rule 72 waivers yes and yes fantastic thank you so much all right now would you please call the role on the consent calendar here we go Dr McKenna yes Dr Rivas yes Mr smorson yes Mr Melvin yes Miss Gomez Miss Ortiz Franklin yes Miss president Goldberg yes and student member Ramirez yes all right that will take us now to item number four approval of facility contracts actions and I'm going to start with uh Nick Melvin since he's the one that took it off consent yes and given the hour I'll try to be brief um I'm supportive of all of this
450except items are SNT which relates to the security cameras you know I've railed against the cost escalations and facilities for a long time I know we're working on it and I know that there's a cost to doing business as a public entity in California but there are certain things that just are a little Beyond The Pale to me one of those is shade I think parents understand conceptually why you can't just go online and get a shade sale but they don't understand as they shouldn't why it costs over a hundred thousand dollars to shade a preschool yard and last year at this time when we had our Heat Wave I wrote a piece about it had led to a bill that is sitting on the governor's desk I'm glad Miss Alvarez is still here because
451I know we're trying to get that signed another area has been security cameras I understand it's not as simple as putting up a ring doorbell or a nest camera and I would concede if it was 10 or 20 x the costs but 100 times the cost is just something that has to change and all I've got is my vote so I'm going to vote Yes except for items rsnt with the hope that we continue to work on ways to just make it more reasonable to do things like put up a single buzzer entry or a security camera that's all okay anybody else on item four we do have one public comment I'm sorry thank you procedural pointer can I get a um this is a discussion item so we can can we get a move
452and move it thank you all right so item four has been moved did I hear a second Dr Riva seconded go ahead let's hear from the speaker okay the speaker for tab four Miss Robina Sewell thank you so much for your extreme patience and getting here uh press star six to unmute yourself you've already done that the floor is yours for the next three minutes thank you very much my name is executive director of California state schools and I'm also the co-coordinator of the Los Angeles environmental justice Network on behalf of our Coalition who's worked with the district wonderfully for the last 25 years cooperatively we're inquiring about a request for proposal that was initiated to develop an integrated Pest Management policy on procedures manual according to the RFP the cost to the district could
453be up to 250 000 possibly more for a three-month contract true please initiated this RFP we're asking because no one that we've spoken to on the board including the board Secretariat appears to know the LA unified IPM policy set the gold standard for safety and protection for integrated Pest Management it led to California legislation the California healthy healthy schools act and ab405 Montana the policies won numerous Awards is a national and international model and was created not through nric but through a year of collaboration between parents teachers staff District management Physicians scientists utla PTA and all of our unions under the direction of the board's School Safety Committee these groups also reflect members of the IPM committee why are we not utilizing the IPM Committee in the board School Safety Committee to make any changes
454if necessary to the IPM policy as the board's aware the district's expenses General and the California Department of pesticide regulations found widespread issues with the implementation of the policy and compliance with state and federal law all of these issues emanate from mno management failures they are not from the IPM policy or oversight committee specific citations include the purchase and application of illegal agricultural pesticides on school grounds not having proper safety equipment for technicians and lack of required IPM training in 20 and sorry in 2002 an IPM committee detailed IPM policy protocols through a decision-making process your offices were provided with a copy of the document states that matters involving the IPM committee please be directed to the School Safety Committee which today is chaired by board member Ortiz Franklin referring any policy changes to the
455School Safety Committee instead of a non-public not fully transparent ad op committee or an outside contractor with an RFP would ensure diverse participation full transparent process and without interrupting any established protocols it would also honor the intent of the policy and dedicated professionals through down the oversight committee and who've been committed for 25 years with the sole purpose of protecting children and all School States thank you very much for your time we appreciate it thank you thank you uh anybody else on item four I have a question I don't want an answer just in writing later we looked up on item oo Range Systems hydrogel Technology and it says that it injects a polymer into the soil that absorbs water so I would like someone not now to just write us all and tell us
456what water savings it achieves and is there any environmental impact we should know about okay so ask that that be come back to us from staff yeah go ahead oh okay go ahead on four go ahead an item or PP um I have a question on how are schools accessing this program and how do schools know about the um the empowered programs which is which is going to be providing Pro training on stem curriculum so I just wanted to know how X schools have access to this program and um how do they know about it all right we can come back and let me know and if someone who's not here we can get that answer sent to All board members uh as a as I'm sure that was not anticipated okay all right but
457we've been moved in second at item number four call the role Please Mr McKenna yes Dr Evas yes Mr Morrison yes Mr Melbourne I'm a yes Save item r s and t that's a yes and everything except items R that's a no on r s n t correct thank you uh Miss Gomez Franklin yes uh board president Goldberg yes and student member Ramirez yes item 16. oh I'm just just out of order a motion on the provisional internship permits his murder I'll move it their second Dr viva's seconds call the roll Dr McKenna yes Dr Evas yes Mr schmorelson yes Mr Melbourne yes Mr Ortiz Franklin yes um board president Goldberg yes student member Ramirez yes okay now motion is in order to extend this meeting Beyond eight o'clock since we're going to do the
458budget next and it'll take us at least 10 minutes I think if not longer I'll move it the move then seconded by Dr Rivas moved by Mr Melvin seconded by Dr U.S okay this is the motion to extend the meeting by one hour Dr McKenna Dr Rivas we extend the meeting oh yes thank you Mr schmorelson yes Mr Melvin yes Miss Gomez Mr Ortiz Franklin good luck to me yes yes okay uh board president Goldberg reluctantly yes okay um all right now Mr superintendent I'm sorry see I knew I'd do it once at least tonight I was going up until tonight till then Okay so we've extended the meeting and now Mr superintendent would you make your presentation thank you very much uh Madam president uh so at our June 20 uh board meeting uh
459this board adopted budget based on the assumptions from the governors May revised the revised budget is based upon the enacted state budget which was signed by the governor on June 27th in addition the revised budget reflects labor agreements that were approved by the board in June of this year for details and for the presentation Mr David Hart thank you we'll begin 11 minutes if I could get this to work I'd just go to the last slide and ask for questions uh there we go um that's what I get third to reiterate the point that the superintendent made what is relevant about the actions of the state in June is one giving us some certainty where we had supposition it is also the case to note that in the context of how the state balanced its
460budget two things are worth noting one they did not use any of their reserves so their reserves sit in if you will in a spot where they are available and the reason I'm mentioning that and starting here is my comment to you before was we should take some measure of caution depending upon how the state looks to solve its budget circumstance if they use their reserves it is my opinion that that suggests they think we are on the other side of any fiscal constraints you use your reserves you think you're you're able to get to a place where you can restore those they are keeping them high and I think that is something for us to note as we go into our own budget the point there is that the state has a number of
461actions and I'll cover that in brief in a moment that we need to be mindful of as we look at our revised budget The Guiding principles are known to you these are unchanged and remain constant through our process in terms of the budget highlights as we have covered before the emphasis here again on the what would be characterized as pillar five the Investments and staff and these are very clearly maintained in class size reduction in the Investments as outlined in the various rows here in the interest of time moving from pillar five to 2023-24 budget highlights each identified by name by dollar and also tagged to the various pillars one through four that they are in support of in respect to the 23-24 budget it's important to note what it does not do we do
462not lay off any employees we have not impacted benefits we have not reduced seni we have not reduced the bsap and as you can read this slide for yourself continuing on through this we then speak to what are the highlights as we look at the highlights that this is a couple of things that I wanted to emphasize as I get to the right place in my notes uh bear with me so uh the the state has had two years of unprecedented surpluses the estimated resources though for the current year and into the into the future insufficient to cover uh what are the costs of currently authorized expenditures uh that is they must find a way as a state to either increase revenues or to reduce spending they have estimated that cost to be at about
46326.5 billion dollars revenues are down when One Compares June of 22 forecasts to where the state is now they have a spending plan which I will address in Brie and brief of that 26 and a half billion dollars they're doing 13 billion by way of spending solutions that is a phrase that they use to cover reductions delays or reductions that would be trigger for restoration if revenues were to show up they have 10 billion dollars in cost shifts and then they have another four billion dollars in various Solutions uh this is uh at some level to our betterment uh because what that allowed the state to do is to provide for the 8.2 percent uh statutory Cola which does Drive revenues for us it is also the case that as we are looking at the
464materials associated with let me get to the right slide um one moment please we're going to bounce a little bit here and I skipped past it my deck is different than your deck um all right uh so what we'll speak to here is that this in this regard one of the things that you do see is that the forecast reduction that we had in terms of the Arts music instructional materials uh the reduction is not as severe as we had anticipated and the same is true of the learning uh recovery uh block grant to that degree we are obviously very happy it is also the case though in terms of the equity multiplier but we had anticipated there while it is an increase in 300 million dollars targeted to those low-income schools with high rates
465of student Mobility we had anticipated that the revenue we would receive out of that 300 million dollars in each of the next three years would be roughly half or totaling about 450 million dollars in our forecast at this moment in time as we are now understanding the legislation associated with this particular budget allocation we are materially down from that forecast our estimate is that we will receive about 27 million dollars per year instead of 150 million the sum total over our three-year forecast will be then be on the order of about 81 million dollars as opposed to 450. so the point being is as the state has morphed in its projections so too has our forecast and that is perhaps most easily depicted in terms of the forecast the multi-year projection of our ending fund
466balance so you'll see as we have worked through the costs of the agreements that were alluded to by superintendent Carvalho the various puts and takes related to what we had discussed with you in June and what we now know to be the case the end result is that our overall ending fund balance the difference between 22 and 10 million dollars I would say to you is of no consequence we do have an increase in roughly 90 million in the interim year of 24.25 that just has to do with cash flow the end result is is largely unchanged as we go forward what is needing to be emphasized as we have time and again is in terms of where we have exposure on our multi-year forecast much like the state where they speak to what are
467the authorized expenses what they're speaking to is they're not engaging in conjecture so we do not have our labor agreements other than those that have been approved so the actions taken today will be next depicted in our forecast as we come forward with first interim what you're seeing included here are the costs associated with those contracts as they were approved in June it is also the case though since we are last before you that there has been a revision in our forecast for the cafeteria fund we had anticipated that we would need to contribute on the order of 145 million over the forecast period out of the general fund to maintain the cafeteria fund if you will in the black that has improved in that we are now forecasting based on current participation that that
468subsidy will be closer to 60 million of course we will try to take the steps today to make that a a remote possibility but at this moment in time based on what we know even though the reimbursement rates are up our participation is below where we are hoping it will be and we do have that in our forecast the partial reversal of the cuts is also what you were saying and that is what was booing in part that middle year 2425 in terms of the forecasted fund balance comparing June to August trying to move quickly here what we don't have in here are as I said to be redundant we don't have pending labor agreements coming into this meeting that would have included those that you approved today it doesn't have any additional opeb contributions
469different than what we had talked to you in June and at this moment in time we do not have any additional contributions to the liability self-insurance fund those are areas where we would expect some risk to our forecast but that as we come forward to the first interim will be offset I suspect by counterbalancing improvements and attendance and hopefully in an enrollment and attendance uh with that said as we often talk about fund balance we do want to bring you up to speed on how our characterization of fund balance restricted committed and assigned in particular have changed largely I would say they are immaterial what you're seeing in terms of the restricted is the change that is um excuse me coming to to bear on our financials as it relates to the actions of the
470state around the um uh what are called Arts music and instructional materials Grant and the learning loss recovery the committed is the dollars that are associated with proposition 28 that is the Arts the rest of this I would just say is um rounding of of our curing if you will from where we were in June to where we are now to finish the presentation we're just reiterating the case that in the course of 73 dollars we have on the left side what we had budgeted in 2223 uh both on the left side in dollars and what that meant in terms of FTE and you see that on the right side there is a forecast of the filled positions being greater than the budgeted positions I anticipate that in the course of 23 24 that every
471effort will be made I suspect we will still see an under filling and as we move into the year we'll be able to come back at first interim refine where we are in terms of our fill rate and update our forecast accordingly with that said I believe that brings us to the end I'm trying to keep it short as on some level I would say at this moment in time there's largely a wash to where we were prior the next major place for us to have a discussion will be at first interim and off the top of my head I want to say that will be around December 15th questions very good first we have to get some votes in go ahead yes I'd like to get a couple of votes noted for board member
472Gomez on tab for approval of facilities contract actions uh remember gunas how do you vote yes okay and on Tab 18 provisional internships how do you vote also yes and lastly for the motion to extend the meeting by one hour how do you vote reluctantly yes that's the third reluctant yes I appreciate it thank you so much all right questions or comments on the revised budget for the public that's watching this sometime on Saturday afternoon at home uh what you need to know is is that this is not an unusual behavior we always have a budget that must be in by June 30th ourselves by state law but we don't have always a final budget from Sacramento so it's very hard to know exactly whether we were right or not the revised budget in August
473which is before us is says now that we know what Sacramento has done here are some changes you need to know about we did better in uh in the reductions they were lower than we thought they were going to be but we got much less Equity money which for those of us who've ever been in Sacramento know that should come as no surprise because Equity is not something the state legislature has fully embraced yet and we will hope someday they will do so uh any questions or comments on this Mr melvoy just briefly and Mr you addressed it in the pending labor agreements which are not pending anymore after the board approved the consent calendar um I think there's about 500 million dollars in those labor contracts to our well-deserved employees and um I know
474the suit you and the superintendent are working on the plan to incorporate that in the budget even though it's not in the materials we are approving today could you just speak to some of the strategies to kind of bake that in so that we end solvent yes in short I think there's a number of things to take into account one we are still closing the books on 22-23 our initial forecasts were conservative I think we will see a stronger beginning fund balance based on a which is the ending fund balance for the prayer year so June 30 to July 1. secondly I do anticipate that we will be to the comments you heard around procurement to Common conversate tonight but also comments you've heard from us uh we we know there is a need to
475perfect our budgeting and procurement perhaps I'll characterize it as same side or a coin to which they both have a side uh perhaps historically those have been treated as two separate and independent I think we will see improved performance in that regard I would also suggest that our budget to actual which will be part of this aspect around contracts we can do better we have had an ongoing conversation you and I the cow presentations where at times our budget forecast is all that is possible but practically we know it is overstating our expenses and and part of our effort in the months ahead is to bring that back if you will in a way that is attendant to existing contracts whether that's with labor or with the third party but to just true it up
476and we need to um you know the superintendent has addressed her previous meetings uh and it was a core issue that we addressed to the rating agencies two weeks ago we were a school district that added staff as a result uh uh even pre-pandemic and through the pandemic this is something that when you take into account on one hand the vacancies we have but what we did with Esther we've got some work to do to to if you will clean that up the rating agencies commented that the danger to the district on a go forward basis is our continuing declining enrollment I am one of those who believe that we will be able to if you will stem the tide and that we will be able to drive attendance and if we are able to
477do that an increase in attendance we'll have a definite increase to our bottom line it is that and you know there's an array of possibilities we are still exploring and expecting that we will receive reimbursement for certain expenses so those in total I think will put us in a place where we remain in the black great thank you helpful others no wow okay um I would just comment that the section on what the budget does not do is really important for people to understand and I'm just going to remind everybody it does not lay off employees it does not reduce health benefits or employees or retirees doesn't reduce either the student Equity needs index any or the black student achievement plan it doesn't eliminate literacy and numeracy interventions it doesn't reduce student mental health supports
478and it doesn't make wholesale reductions to student programs it doesn't reduce after school Investments and it doesn't reduce investments in community-based organizations well considering all that this has happened in this budget year I would say those are remarkable things that it does not do I don't really have a lot of questions because I had a great opportunity to meet with all of you and I think that the materials that you have in the budget presentation really help people understand exactly where we are and basically I think we could say that the state of our budget is is that it's in pretty good shape and the only things that will make it better is greater enrollment and greater attendance at this point is that correct that is fair okay so let's see what we can all
479do to increase enrollment and to increase our uh ability to uh maintain the fact that it's a lot harder to learn schooling if you're not in school but just kind of the old rule you got to be here so we're hoping that people will have been overcoming the the kinds of things that caused from two years of being home almost two years being home you know I think it was a lot easier for a lot of teenagers not to have to get out of bed and get on a bus or get out of the house at a certain time and I think that there's still some Rebellion as to coming back and I think that as time goes on they'll find that there's a lot more fun still at school than there is at home
480okay thank you very much and Mr superintendent just very briefly I want to express my gratitude to uh to David and his team and I believe that there's someone on your team that has not been introduced to the board that is the case uh joining me here at the podium Alberto Delgadillo he is a seasoned CFO has been with most recently with Portland Comes To Us by way of Portland but prior to that was Tulsa and uh very happy to name him as the deputy CBO for finance for those that are familiar with the incumbent to that position I think it is known that Luis buendia is uh going to retire at some point when we let him go but for a brief moment that's exactly right for a brief moment in time we're having
481a dual incumbency Louise at 34 years is not easily replaced and so we are having a dual incumbency but let me turn the mic over to Mr Hart is this the gentleman with the real fancy signature that would be okay I see yours okay oh it's a pleasure to be here good evening uh president Goldberg and members of the board superintendent Carvalho uh yeah I like to say uh deputy chief business officer of finance and people look at me like what does that mean I'm like you know Luis Luis buendia like yeah okay so I'm gonna be the new Luis so that's that's the goal that's that's the aspiration so I know some big shoes to fill and I'm excited to be here uh thank you and they're equally so nice uh my last point
482now that we got the nice stuff out of the way um I don't want anybody walking away from today's meeting without a sobering recognition that is our board president stated what this budget does not do is compelling again when we look at what other districts are going through we're not there yet it seems almost miraculous but it's not a miracle but the months you know into the near future will be tough and I appreciate the question asked by board member Malvern so what is our plan we'll be detailing for the board in weeks and months ahead what the plan is uh we're going to do a lot of mechanical shifts that will not impact anyone as David mentioned there are processes and optimization of procurement that will net uh revenues on a recurring basis and
483that comes from what is approved by the board versus what's actually spent there's there are opportunities there but let us just think about these two elements when we were negotiating contracts we received a lot of letters from A lot of individuals who actually control our purse strings that said do it do it do it we've done it now you do it we should have an expectation that those who demanded as appropriators now support us in in delivering because the biggest Financial liability with loading of these contracts going to come in next year and then the year after and the other element is the fact that we cannot lose sight that as we were dwindling in enrollment particularly between the years of 2018 and 2021 our full-time Workforce increased dramatically I'm just going to leave it
484there it's not a sustainable model you're losing enrollment meaning your recurring revenues are going down but you increase your full-time employee count significantly double digit percent wise not sustainable so we're going to have to look at it very very carefully following the guiding principles that our board present read protecting staff protecting programs but something's going to have to give and and that's going to be the work um that this team is going to tackle over the next few months thank you very much very quickly board member Ortiz Franklin has a question before you take off thing sorry it's obviously really hard to have a substantive conversation at eight o'clock at night um so my request would be the next time we have a budget conversation to do it first so we can have all of
485our good thinking and good questions early on And to clarify is that not going to be until December or is there a chance we can review this before December with some of the additional items that are not included in what we're seeing today I think the expectation is that well there will be a lot of work our next formal presentation is in with the first interim and that is in December part of what we have to do and I'm going to just uh to give context to this um I have before me the ratings report from Moody's um which I said two weeks ago we were we were speaking to the rating agencies and happy to report that our ratings were substantiated but these These are independent folks who do their own work and a
486couple of things to note is that they uh the the comments that they make that is to are challenging is they they address ongoing the way it's written ongoing enrollment declines and competition will create credit challenges start the structural budget deficit with their um with the Gap that is there with the Reliance on one-time revenues poses a credit concern what we're trying to do just to be redundant board members we have to develop a multi-year strategy that takes us beyond the forecast period the rating agencies have been very clear if I were to read through this in total what you would find is that they're not interested in what we're doing through 25 26 they're calling us out essentially you've got to walk the talk and so they want to see what we're doing in
487years four five and six as opposed to years one two and three and uh that's that's con that's a significant lift for us things yeah I imagine in December we'll have a much more uh sobering conversation and um to the extent possible all of the factors not yet reflected in the multi-year projection I assume you'll include as much information as we do have including the contracts that we approved today and any additional information um that will help us for those further out years and I see Miss gonas also has her hand raised so looking forward to the next conversation I I would just say in response to your assumption we have the same uh board member gun as I see your hand is up the floor is yours thank you yeah just very very briefly
488I wanted to Echo the request for you know an ongoing conversation on this topic I I think there's a lot to celebrate in this budget a lot of really important Equity Investments and furthering of the Strategic plan but we know that the long-term trends are very concerning um and that this doesn't account for the latest agreements that we have as well as other likely things we'll want to invest in so I hope that in advance of December that we can have a conversation starting to think about those long-term multi-year plans because we know that school budgeting starts early in the new year and I wouldn't want any changes to be sprung up on schools I think we owe everyone who is our stakeholder and open ongoing conversation about how we work to solve this together
489and how do we do so that continues to preserve important Investments and prioritize the academic outcomes of our kids especially those most in need foreign last call last call all right let's uh has it been moved okay we need a motion on 16. second you removed it okay so Nick moved it Morrison seconded it call the roll please Dr McKenna yes Dr Rivas yes Mr smorrison yes Mr Melvin yes Miss Gomez yes Miss Ortiz Franklin yes or president Goldberg yes okay that's seven eyes and uh Miss Gomez can I go back to you for your vote on the consent calendar thank you yes um I am sorry I wanted to be added as a co-sponsor to the suicide prevention resolution if it's not too late and I'm a yes on the consent calendar understood thank
490you so much all right we now have adjourning motions and I'm going to call on uh board member Melvin for his adjourning motions thank you oh I'm sorry you have one as well okay thank you and I unfortunately have two for this meeting um I'd like to adjourn today's meeting in memory of Dr Stephanie McClay a true instructional leader who lost her battle with leukemia one week ago today the age of 56. Dr McClay served in various positions within La unified including that of principal at Portola Middle School in my Board District and a director of Local District Northwest when I first started on the board and even though our time together at the district over only overlapped one year it was enough time to see what a dedicated Visionary and strong leader Dr McClay
491was well respected by students parents and colleagues alike it was through Dr mcclay's leadership and vision that one of her crowning achievements portola's Academy of integrated arts technology became a reality she created a school where the unique needs of La unified's twice exceptional students could be met and it truly is a national if not International model she spent the last few years as the principal of Agora High School where she led the school through the pandemic and Recovery Dr McClay was also a proud parent of two wonderful children who were educated at La Unified Schools her passing is a tremendous loss to the educational community and to those who knew her and we send our deepest condolences to her family and her loved ones may her memory be a blessing I'd also like to adjourn
492in memory of Betty Patterson Garden who passed away peacefully on June 28 2023 surrounded by her family born in Greenfield Ohio in 1938 Betty eventually made her way to California beginning her nearly 40-year career with Ella unified in 1963. over those four decades Petty served as an elementary school teacher a teacher advisor a specialist a counselor a coordinator and assistant principal a principal and a director in the Personnel Services Division Petty was also involved in many community and service organizations but most of all she always had time for her family including her son Sherman D Garden who is now an operations director in region north and her niece Suzanne Patterson Jones who is the principal at Fairburn Elementary we send our condolences to her family in and outside of La unified and to all her
493loved ones and may her memory be for a blessing thank you yeah I'll just piggyback on Nick's just for a moment I knew better guard she was a friend of mine I uh utilize her at her funeral pleased to uh pleased to be able to attend I want to speak in memory of a long time educator another unified named Victor Kimball he was doing three Kimball Brothers they were all we all became administrators Victor Kimble was 86 years old he died on August 12 2023. he was the principal he was a teacher at breed Elementary School from 1965. for 10 years and then he was at beachy Elementary School for about nine years and then he was the principal of flanoi elementary school uh for a couple of years and he was at 42nd Street
494Elementary and he was then transferred to Raymond Elementary School in 1992 until there was his retirement in 2001. so he was a good man A friend of mine he was also a member of the council black administrators he gave his entire career to La Unified and he will be missed many people will may not remember him because he was he left a long time ago from the district but he was a good man in a and a strong administrator and he will be missed by those of us who knew and appreciated I would like to adjourn in memory of Miss Monica Zuniga Monica Zuniga started her 34 years of and 10-month career with LA unified in September of 1988 as a teacher assistant and worked in numerous offices throughout the district as an office assistant
495senior office assistant customer service representative and administrative secretary she worked in the office of the superintendent with six different superintendents and most recently she worked as the executive secretary in the office of Deputy superintendent of instruction she attended La Unified Schools Hillside Elementary Mount Gleason middle school and graduated from Verdugo Hills High School in the class of 1988. Monica dedicated her entire career to Los Angeles Unified where she exhibited loyalty and selfless service she was known for her work ethic dedicated welcoming hard-working detailed calming and can-do attitude her warmth beautiful smile kind of heart generosity Gentle Spirit and unwavering service to support others was unmatched Monica was a dedicated daughter mother wife and sister she loved reading to her two children Ethan and Chloe taking them to the movies playground for an ice cream afterwards
496she enjoyed going to concerts during her spare time Monica zunika passed away on Monday July 3 2023 she has survived by her two children Ethan and Chloe husband Carlos sister Stella and brothers Gustavo and Joe Monica will be dearly missed but remembered Forever by her La unified family and with that at 8 28.06 we are adjourned foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]