001respectively do you hear me testing one two three testing one two three all right all right all right let's make sure all right hello everyone we will reconvene Open Session we will get started with our land acknowledgment we recognize that the Mount Diablo Unified School District sits on the territory of The confederated Villages of the leash on the ancestral and unseated land of the baby walk in Northern yokut the successors of The Sovereign Verona band um of Contra Costa County as members of the mdusu community is it is vitally important that we not only recognize the history of the land on which we learn but also we recognize the land that we inhabit and learn on is the ancestral land of these people who are alive and flourishing members of mdusd and broader Bay Area
002communities today and with that um please stand for the pledge all right so for for 3.1 um negotiations the board may discuss negotiations or provide direction to its Representatives regarding represented employees pursuant to government code section 5497.6 we received information 3.2 discipline dismissal release or reassignment of Public Employee government code section 5497 B1 we received information 3.3 expulsion of student number 10-23 from the Mount Diablo Unified School District Madam president I moved to approve the expulsion of student 10-23 to suspend the enforcement of the expulsion school placement will be determined by student services a second there right so that passes um four in favor um zero posed one absent yes um so in favor our um trustees Mason Mayo count and McFerrin and trustee uh president and say we is absent for the vote we
003are going to circle back to 1.2 to roll call um all right um thank you um review and approval of the minutes for a regular board meeting I'll take a motion Madam president I moved to approve the minutes for the regular board meeting on April 26 2023. second and that passes um four to zero one one absent all right just noticing the lighting um okay so um 6.3 review and potential approval of the agenda are there any suggestions or changes to the agenda tonight yes Madam vice president I would like to pull item 15 17. we'll bring it back other than that no other changes Madam president I moved the board approved the agenda with the exception of 1517 which is pulled and will be considered it a future meeting second that Flores yes that
004passes four zero and I just want to make sure that we did um that we did item 7.2 with missile non-renewal okay um in closed session by vote of four to zero the board took action to non-reelect one probationary intern certificated employee and one probationary one certificate employee effective June 30th 2023 trustees Mayo Mason count and mcferran voted in favor and president and say we was absent and now it looks like we can move on to 8.1 public comment all right um the public May address the board regarding any item not on the agenda looks like we have 10 speakers um I think we can have the full three minutes for every speaker please be mindful of the time thank you Jeanette Benitez can you hear me all right good evening board members and superintendent
005my name is Jeanette Benitez I have been an employee at Mount Diablos for 23 years and I am a member of Teamster 856. I'm also one of the 11 member who sit at the negotiation table we want to see this District succeed so how can you accomplish this first and foremost it starts with your employees but it cannot stop here mdusd needs to start listening in order to bargain a better contract for members of teamsters 856. so members and myself are here tonight asking the public to hear us we have 20 positions left unfilled in transportation in our mechanics our un understaffed as well mechanics have to maintain a fleet of 111 school buses and 120 white fleets only having five mechanics is overbearing to complete services and and maintenance on demand on a daily
006my team and I are switching buses with drivers in order to get our students to and from school despite their critical role at Mount Diablo Unified School District we as classified employees are taking the brunt of under Staffing it's time for this District to invest in our children's future and the workers who provide critical services that support their education we have to entertain our employees with a fair contract that is inviting to a potential candidate we are demanding a fair cost of living wage for each of our classified employees we want what we need we're not only asking for what we deserve we're asking for what the district needs to and that's a fair contract thank you Alex zabla members of the board and superintendent I come before you today to speak on behalf of
007the maintenance and operations the transportation the warehouse food services I.T services and all other Teamster members who have long been carrying the burden of the district's Financial struggles for far too long these workers have been subjugated to non-competitive wages and benefits untenable workloads and increasing pressure to do more with less it is unfair and unsustainable to continue balancing the district's books on the backs of these hard-working people these workers play a critical role in ensuring the smooth functioning of our schools they deserve Fair compensation for their invaluable contributions they're responsible for ensuring that our facilities are secure and well maintained ensuring buses and services are running on time equip classrooms with necessary supplies and providing nourishing meals for our students we need resources whether those resources are in the form of more people or just
008time needed to complete work instead they're working longer hours working harder and often working through designated breaks lunches and to complete work with less pay and fewer benefits it is important to recognize that work of these individuals is not important just for the school's ability to function but also directly impacts the learning environment of these students when maintenance workers are unable to keep our facilities clean and well maintained when Transportation struggles to keep buses on time when warehouses workers aren't able to process requests and give necessary supplies to schools and when Food Services Workers are unable to provide nutritious meals it significantly disrupts our students ability to learn on competitive wages and benefits untenable workloads and increasing pressure on these workers to do more with less has led to high turnover rates which has created
009a lack of continuity stability in the essential areas of our district this has caused disruptions delays ultimately resulting in a negative impact on our students educational experience it's time for the Mount Diablo Unified School District it's time for the board to prioritize these needs of these workers to provide them with a compensation and support they deserve it is time to acknowledge their hard work and dedication to the invest in their future I urge you to take immediate action to address the issues facing these workers and to work towards a more Equitable and just district for everyone we must ensure that we're compensated fairly for the contributions and that the needs are being prioritized alongside those are students and teachers thank you Gerald Glasper good afternoon board and superintendent my name is Gerald Glasper of Rio
010Vista Elementary School I started here in 82 and um my thing for the district is I asked the district for a job I knocked on the door and asked them for the job at that point in time I said it's all about accountability and responsibility in 40 years that I've worked for the district I've never called in sick I have three 3 100 hours here and my code for the district was what can I do for the district not what can what not what not what the district can do for me and my thing was not to call in sick even when I felt sick I didn't call in sick because there are people who are more in bad situations than myself so not that I'm better than anybody else we all put our pants
011on one pan leg at a time but I'm going back to accountability and responsibility as a board you knocked on the door and exit District poor job you are accountable and responsible for the custodial staff and the other staff at Rio Vista Elementary and other parts of Mount Diablo to do the right thing um I just want to say that it's not about me it's about we as a hold to get this situation straight and I have concerns about the economics with all of our employees working in the district you can go to other districts and they'll get more we're losing other employees to other districts and other counties and these are great workers I think that we're not the best District in California but we're we are the top five best district and I
012think that we should you know come together and get this situation resolve because you continue blessings you all and I think you guys will do the right thing God bless you um Brett Pini or penny I'm the only plumber in the school district I mean right 52 schools I have to deal with I work 10 hours a day and that's breaking my body down and I care about the school district I went to Highlands I went to Pine Hollow and Clayton Valley and I just don't see that I can meet the need of the district by myself and the thing is if we don't get a fair wage I might have to go on move on but I I really love it here I love the people I love my co-workers I just want Fair
013wage and that's about it I hope you guys do the right thing thank you nobody asked um Faria referia whatever the superintendent the president of the board and members of the board Fair events teachers and visitors good evening I'm noven Favia I've been a pastor John for less than 24 years I want to appeal to the superintendent to the board members to look and to Long balance its books on the back of its maintenance operation Transportation warehouse and Food Service workers resulting in chronic understaffing and competitive wages and benefits attainable workloads and if even increasing patients to workers to do more with less pay Mount Diablo Unified School District is dangerously under staff ing Individual Services 12 conditions for students the district has not prioritized investment in Maintenance and Service workers resulting in student being
014under the source and subject to sub-standard learning conditions in 2021 an independent third party the fiscal crisis and management assistance team figma was engaged to review the District Maintenance operation and Facilities Department program services and Staffing The District Maintenance Staffing allocation with a vacancy rate of 17 percent even if fully staff was insufficient to adequately provide the level of service recommended for a public school just in custodial Department only have a vacancy rate of 8 percent if fully staff is adequate however the distribution of full-time employees across School sites result in equitable workloads Vargas has been made in custodial Staffing issue between teamsters and the districts however the 18 newly established evolving custodian classification positions the main vehicle because of the custodial workers have paid almost 14 percent less when compared to the median of
015neighboring School District as a result of uncompetitive wages experience of equipment and retention issues monjablo Unified School District students and their families deserve the attention and investment in their maintenance operation Transportation warehouse and Food Service workers it's time for the mount joblo Unified School District invest our children future and the workers who provide critical services that support their education so I'm appealing to the district please negotiate in good faith and lastly I want to ask our superintendent and the president of the board and the board members how you consider your custodians food service maintenance drivers itis and Etc have we an asset of the District of liabilities of the district thank you so much Jennifer Rivas Edwards good evening board members um superintendent Clerk um on behalf of the monument Corridor Community we wish to
016um bring to you this matter we wish to inform Mount Diablo Unified School District through this letter that's being passed around of the need of the following um lcaps protocol and set goals plan actions and leverage resources to meet those goals to improve student outcomes Mount Diablo Unified School District continues to use three overarching goals to organize the goals and actions within lcap protocol MCC wants to specifically focus on two goals at this moment that is the high quality culturally proficient and responsive staff that will provide engaging instruction respectful of all students background to ensure they are College and Career ready also for parents family and Community to be engaged and empowered as partners with Mount Diablo Unified School District to support learning and academic achievement in order to comply with lcap protocol and our
017Equity philosophy here at Mount Diablo Unified School District MCC requests the correct allocation of bilingual Professionals in our community schools Spanish-speaking students and parents for example the school district has decided to transfer the only school counselor who is a bicultural and bilingual with more than eight years of cultivating healthy respectful and supportive relationships with MCC and its students at Ignacio Valley High School also Mr navarrete has contributed to increase of High um sorry to increase of high school graduates up to 99 in 2017 2018 and 2019 by understanding our culture cultural sorry language and improv and by providing our sons slash daughters and parents with a sense of hope and belief MCC finds it necessary the need to point out the risk disrespect to our community by keeping the other two Ignacio Valley high school
018counselors with very little experience and who are not bicultural and or bilingual MCC Advocates and supports our families who have confide their concerns of not feeling culturally and professionally respected by them if the school district removes Mr navarrete MCC demands that the next potential counselor or counselors be hired emulate the skills slash awareness and knowledge that Mr navarrete has provided us with throughout these eight years our community requests good treatment services for MCC in Spanish knowledge of our Hispanic culture and respect while we wait for a prompt and respect positive sorry response to our important requests we thank you in advance for your time in resolving this serious error problem that affects and will affect our community and especially our schools in this case Ignacio Valley High School thank you Alex Hernandez good evening Mr
019Clark board members my name is Alex Hernandez and I'm activist parent from the monument Corridor I just want to clarify I'm here today like a parent I'm not represented any committee or any organization from the community so um yeah we're back like we promised some February last time we was here and the lady here behind me that she speak she was here too so um today I use the liver to you guys 369 signature from parents from the community 202 signatures from his students and more members always uh YB so total of 572 signatures so wow the students and brothers they did a good job this time second time we do this because it's not their own it's not the first time we collect signature for some something like this like with Mason Miss maybe
020I don't know if you guys remember when we did this for Middle homes before so it's not our first time doing this so um I want to ask what happened with metal homes seven months already with no principal so school is about to end and we're going to start a new year school year with no principal so we need you guys need to do what are you guys going to do something about it you guys are going to do something about this because like we said in our country when they had is not a house the mice they throw a party so we need a principle in there or group so we need more vice principal our group every time we got a new principles Vice principles we got some good very good princip Vice
021principles but next year they got transferred to another schools why why Always we had to pull these good people from our schools when we need a lot of help and Ignacio Valley High School I think everybody know what is going on in there so um this community this is what we need equity for all more bilingual and be cultural Services transparency respect to our community and they're asked to stop the races so he's gonna end with something really nice the Latino Community we celebrate today May 10 the mother so I just want to say all the beautiful mothers here today happy Mother's Day thank you for your time Elizabeth Hernandez Bella um and maybe Bella Guzman I'm seeing two names yeah well hello good evening um members of the board and uh superintendent um here
022I am again supporting my school um like I mentioned a couple months ago I I am a formal Warrior um I had a 2020 senior I have a 2023 senior and I have a freshman so you're going to see me for a while and I have a Bancroft uh kid out there too so my love to the Mount Diablo District hasn't changed I I believe in the cultural especially in Nature Valley High School that it's fading right um we used to have a lot of Latinos in there um a lot of cultural teachers out there I haven't seen that I'm constantly there I remember seeing uh superintendent there um when a lot of other issues were going on and um I don't see them anymore and what really um kind of shook me was Mr
023navarrete is leading um my experience from him was that one of the counselors um she was she was an Anglo person right she told my senior daughter that she needed to go to a junior college that um it was better for her when my girl has she was three times three years she was a 4.0 how can you tell a 4.0 student that it's better for her stereotyping her I felt that because she was Latina looking because she was a female because she thought her parents couldn't afford a four-year so I went Mr navarate and I told him she's not treating my daughter equal I don't want her to deal with my daughter anymore or my other daughters coming in he held my daughter to go to Sonoma State found all the credits and everything
024he needed researched everything and with health Academy Miss Carr she traded us um she helped me get her to they both helped her get to Sonoma State she's graduating early thank you guys and now she's as well to Sonoma and that's because Mr navarrete was on her telling her you're a female you need to have your backup plans she he went out of his way looking for firefighting classes firefighting stuff that she would need and that is a Latino that is a Latino that we need for him to stay in our community thank you hello members of the board and superintendent clerk I am Gabriela Eureka I am freshman senior at Ignacio Valley high school and as a Latina they're at YB and as a senior it's my responsibility to be the voice for the
025other students who can't step up or like are too scared to step up um and I was just informed that Mr navarrete was leaving and as a Latina and for the other students as well it's not fair for our only Latino counselor to leave we have male students there at YB that don't feel comfortable or can't won't feel comfortable speaking to a female counselor and I mean that's not fair for the other students male M and female that don't feel comfortable speaking to like um like the English-speaking English-speaking um counselors so I feel like it's just wrong for them to like remove him without really like saying why or like just it's just yeah just looking for options I feel like they should keep them to keep that like culture there still at school um
026what's this sorry oh my goodness hmm um he has helped me me personally like look at more options as my mom was saying she would he helped me look at what colleges to look for um I mean I was told that I should go to a community college because it would it would be better for me and I was like I mean that's not right um I shouldn't be told that as from coming from like an adult from YB I mean that's I feel kind of like lowered at a I felt kind of disrespected because I was like you know I could I could do better I can be better in being told that I should be going to like a community college is just not okay um it's I mean it hurts me it
027hurts me that he is leaving that he may leave and he has been with me since freshman year he has been like a father figure to many students not just myself and it's it's just heartbreaking that they have the the heart and them to like remove some someone that had a big impact at YB to YB students and I feel like future YB students should feel and should get to like experience what he's like what his purpose is like what his purpose is I feel like you should I mean he should stay okay Uriel Hernandez thank you hello hello I'd like to say good morning to all to the board and the supervisor I think I'm sorry um I just like to represent Mr navarrete today and that's it um I would like to say
028that Mr navarrete is a real good person and I was wondering why y'all trying to take him out of his position of a counselor as a male Latino counselor I feel that he could do a lot he has helped me I am a senior at YB and he's helped me since freshman year I was doing bad for my sophomore and freshman year and he helped me out real like a lot and all I really want to say is that if y'all take him out of his part of his way of counseling and helping other students of the future I know uh I know in the fact that you guys may eventually end up messing up why we because you guys may eventually take him out he is the only known Latino counselor nyv he helps
029out a lot of students and how this other senior said most students would rather go with him to talk instead of a female in my preference I have a lot of friends that are male they've told me that they would rather go with him instead of a female I have I have a a female counselor and I don't like going with her because I do not feel comfortable I would rather go with him he speaks the truth from the heart and what else can I say all I really could say is that he will help out the future students if y'all do let them stay I could tell because he changed my life he helped me and what else can I say he could for surely help out the other you know students coming in
030and all I really want to say is that hopefully y'all do not take him out of his position hopefully I will leave him in his position I'm sorry about this alarm and that's all we could say all I really could say is that I know a student's voices more heard of an instead of adults because the student really knows what uh is going through in school and all I could really say is that he is a person that would help he will go out of his way to help out a student out of his way to help him out really well but uh I mean that's all I really all are sorry that's all I could really say is that for the new freshman's coming in for the new people and especially for credits he
031could for surely help him out he has helped me out in a lot of ways and all I could really say is thank you for your time hopefully you guys have a nice day today and thank you for hearing me out Teresa bergam it says it says 8.1 on the card whatever um my name is Theresa bergum and I'm here to speak not just for myself but the boardroom's not big enough we have a few of our Brotherhood and Sisterhood in the audience but there are several dozen that I'm speaking for out in the hallway out there so just to let you know um I'm a fourth generation uh well there have been four generations graduating from the Mount Diablo School District um both my mother and mother-in-law retired from this District so it's in
032my heart I've I believe in this District I love this District but we're having problems we're in a really hard place right now first I want to thank you for approving the salary studies for the various classifications within the teamster unit although unfortunately it has not resulted in the recruitment we hope for it has temporarily put a plug in the hole in the dike in the jobs that had the salary increases those people have decided the stage at least in Food Service in part because we're so short staffed they're getting extra hours and that's helped them financially but there are several classifications that were not looked at maintenance and skilled trade workers who are paid 8.43 less than the median in the neighboring districts and custodians are 4.40 under that Medium this has resulted in
033even more serious Recruitment and Retention problems in those areas during negotiations we've asked for and been denied a salary study comparison for those departments in light of the fact that the dma unit received across-the-board salary increases of 13.8 percent in January based on a salary study whose public transparency only included principles it doesn't seem Equitable that so many of our members were excluded please direct the district's negotiating team to agree to a comparison study for the classifications not included in the past year's salary studies in the spirit of equity please also consider offering at least the same 13.8 percent given to dma units to the teamsters unit as a whole thank you okay so we will move to um nine point um 9.0 9.1 District organizations um at regular board meetings a single spokesperson of
034each recognized District organization may make a brief presentation items are limited to those which are informational so we have Mark Jones from Teamsters of course hello Dr Clark school board members um it's good to see you again my name is Mark Jones I am the team straight 56 representative represented for classified staff at Mount Diablo for in the warehouse the ID Department Transportation Food Service mno where we represent skilled trades landscape and custodial as you've heard from some of our members tonight Teamsters are here are asking for the district to work with us in achieving a fair contract I want to say again as I've said before I'm proud of a lot of what's been achieved within the last year bringing increases either to either by restructuring departments and updating job descriptions with additional duties
035that are designed to better serve the district um like we were able to do in the IT department and Landscape or through an equity study that brought parity with other districts to the severely underpaid staff in food service but despite the good work in those areas there's still much more to be done at Mindy at Mount Diablo Unified School District classified staff is still taking the brunt of understaffing currently maintenance and skilled trade workers are not competitive with surrounding school districts as a result of uncompetitive wages experience uh as a real rather as a result of uncompetitive wages we're experiencing very high vacancy rates where one in six positions are not filled in that in mno we recently lost a very skilled electrician to Contra Costa County where he will be earning over nine dollars
036an hour more and that's from going from The District's top step to their low step you heard from Brett earlier is the loan is the loan plumber tasked to serve to service the 50 plus sites at the districts and believe me when I say he puts his all into servicing those sites despite best efforts and routine 12-hour days contractors are routinely brought in at a much higher rate to supplement all the work that is required to be done this isn't just then this isn't just regular everyday work this is this is work that it needs to get done now how much better would this District be served if those other vacancies were filled performing that work back in November the district proposed to reclassify our p and custodians and add 18 FTE to create five
037teams of four that would could go from site to site working on Special Projects or needed areas that are not um you know for upkeep which is a terrific conceptual idea well on board we loved the idea however as of today not one of those positions have been filled and mainly because if after filling it it would leave deficiencies at every entry level position that cannot be filled at the current uh with the current salary that are on that are way below Market median so essentially if you fill those positions you Rob and Peter to pay Paul um custodians are paid almost 14 below median when compared with surrounding school districts and interestingly enough the entire dma salary schedule was restructured to provide what equates to a 13.8 percent increase when compacted over a three
038year span we're not knocking uh salary studies we're saying we want the same standard we want the same Equity we have the same needs uh that is our fight at the table we were all made aware of the deficiencies at the m o Department spelled out in the thick amount report we are fighting to correct those those deficiencies so that students at Mount Diablo Unified School District can come to a school expecting the best and safest conditions because anything less is unacceptable thank you all right we'll move on to 10.0 recognitions and resolutions so just before we start I'm thank you to all the teamster members that come we're now going to get on with our regular meeting so if you guys want to stay you know I think we'll get out of here about
03910 this evening we can if not I mean what do you want to do yeah can I just add one thing that I quickly forgot um The Warriors are playing at seven tonight and look at many members showed up I just wanted to make that point probably okay maybe they'd put it back over in the corner must be in this morning somebody must kill you all right I think that's good yeah Dr Clark could you see if the someone accidentally touched the light switch over there for the lights up here they're checking thank you very much there we go let there be light okay so we will move to 10.0 recognitions and resolutions um starting with 10.1 Dr Clark yeah so um item 10.1 I want to um this is a a very important recognition
040and I want to pay the pay the proper respect to these two individuals so this is a recognition to in in derud parranza and Enrique Sanchez these are parents within the Mount Diablo Unified School District and this year they were both selected as the California Association of bilingual Educators as the parents of the year now this is this is a a Statewide organization it is a very well-known organization and for us to have two of our parents recognized is um is is quite quite an accomplishment and it could not happen to um to two finer people and I'm going to turn this over to miss Garces who I know has some wonderful words for these two incredible individuals I just want to let you oh Clark in Steam board members hello in public goal I
041just want to let you know that that day that they were recognized it was like a dream come true uh for me because the district has been working with uh to be a leadership on our d-lag and seeing two of our parents who have gone to all our classes achieve this award it was just magical indeed I just mean per USA and Enrique Sanchez Osuna have dedicated their time to help their daughters academically and to ensure they will have the best possible education they have a strive to teach them moral principles and to keep them in a world where two languages in two cultures can live and try be an example of great Educators at home it wasn't enough for them soon they started working at their daughter's schools helping transforming the lives of other
042students they soon became involved with the elac uh and Enrique became president in 2016 of 17 of his uh daughters elac and indeeda was the secretary in 2018 they were elected as officers for that District English language advisory committee and Enrique was the president and Indira was the secretary and they served for five years we held elections every year but they kept being related until you know we had to say okay we we need to do something yes developed there as I mentioned their parent leadership's uh project to inspire and they have worked tirelessly to reach non-english speaking parents to increase parent participation at a different school together they stood for many Spanish-speaking parents in the districts as they can easily relate to their struggles they are oldest daughter proudly States my parents have stayed
043together on this journey by taking every step together and it's my honor to introduce you to you indeeda foreign um and I am here um and I would like to say happy Mother's Day to all the mothers who are here and she says something else which I did not hear from where I was standing no problem okay okay thank you good evening everyone I'm so excited for the recognize you know a hardware for in my home and help for the community and school is hard work together so my third language is Spanish the second language English a student parents principals administrators superintendent member thank you so much I love for advocacy for for school I love hell for all community BF I know hard work and difficult time difficult time but is work together everything
044have solution thank you so much do you mind foreign looks like we're gonna let the celebrations continue uh 10.2 and recognition of the Mount Diablo Unified School District 2023 classified employee of the year finalists Dr Clark all right so um wow we we are so fortunate here in the Mount Diablo Unified School District all of our employees are um extremely um dedicated to their craft they're dedicated to our students and um and we appreciate them dearly that said they also get recognized from outside entities and so there is a classified school employee of the year program that is conducted by the Contra Costa County Office of Education and tonight we are going to recognize our our finalists and um and our individuals here so um I just want to make sure Laura I got all
045these in the right order right yes yes all right and in the last two are the winners right yeah yeah yes thank you that's what I've thought so the first one I want to recognize um and I'm not sure if she's here but is Loretta Herbert here can you please can you come stand for us please Loretta right by the podium now yeah now I know that um none of these individuals um this is this is painful for all of them to be recognized for their work and to really be to to stand out so we know the type they they just like to put their nose to the grind and do their work but we are going to embarrass her just a little bit so um so it is with great pleasure that um
046Loretta Herbert has been has been under consideration for classified employee of the year in addition to performing her job as an at an exemplary level Mrs H demonstrates an extraordinary commitment to her students as well as the district she is a great communicator and always looking for ways to help not just our students but the teachers the staff and all students within the classroom she makes sure that students are safe and are getting the support that is needed she also supports them to be included in the general population classes and the school as well as the community she works side by side with with all students and she works with their service provider providers so that students can participate well and meet their goals she continues to make a difference in not just one student's
047life but in all the students lives that she works with ladies and gentlemen I present to you from College Park High School Loretta Herbert give her a big round of applause okay thank you all right thank you that wasn't too bad was it all right so you all know you all know what you're up against here so uh all right so do we have uh Pam filtrup here where's pan all right and I'm just warning you all at the end we're gonna do a picture so hey I'm stand up here let me let me embarrass you a little bit all right because you your hard work definitely deserves it so so uh Pam is in the in the category of clerical and administrative Services I probably should have said that but um and she works
048at Sunrise Elementary in Shadeland preschool it's one of one of the same so Pam philstrup is an amazing person and deserves recognition for all that she does for the last five years her her official title has been office manager but we all know she is so much more she is an administrator a nurse teacher counselor Crisis Support cafeteria worker and the list goes on and on she is in charge of two offices with very limited Staffing the schools are also specialized settings which have students who have needs that differ from other District programs in school stadelands is a special education preschool and sunrise is a k-6 social emotional educational collaborative supporting special education students with mental health needs Pam is someone who voluntarily Works Beyond her job description she manages to be the first person
049to greet you when you walk into the Shadelands or Sunrise office seeming to be in two places at once she is able to keep track of all of the important student information coordinate support for students seamlessly throughout the day and provide a level-headed perspective when any situation arises such as students having big feelings or having multiple staff out at out at once at the site Pam is a one in a kind person and we are lucky to have her as one of our team members ladies and gentlemen Pam filter thank you all right next we have um and this is in the this is in the custodial and maintenance services department and this is uh Patrick Reed it's Patrick here tonight all right and and uh and Patrick works at Mount Diablo Elementary and let
050me embarrass you for just a minute or two here all right so Patrick's been nominated he is the Fantastic daytime custodian at Mount Diablo Elementary Mr Patrick Reed and this comes from a parent so I have been a parent at Mount Diablo Elementary now for four years and from the minute my son was in kindergarten Mr Patrick has been the present and constant life for all students he takes interest in their Sports hobbies and lives he is dedicated to making Mount Diablo Elementary one of the cleanest and safest elementary schools in the district I always see him with the leaf blower dolly or cleaning supplies in hand he also takes time out of his evenings and weekends to attend student sporting events when asked Patrick Reed is truly a huge part and of the heart
051and soul of Mount Diablo Elementary School although he has only been at at Mount Diablo Elementary for six years the school has even renamed St Patrick's Day Mr Patrick's Day I just got one more sentence I should have ended it right there but I got more to say his co-workers will say he is the essence of joy and is always there to lighten the load and brighten the day Mr Patrick Reed is a very deserving candidate for this award as I don't think you could find a better custodian co-worker or friend throughout the district ladies and gentlemen Mr Patrick Reedman thank you now these next two individuals again we we sent five individuals to the county um these two are finalists correct Laura they won at the county level okay so these are County winners
052all right now we have a huge County here in Contra Costa County so can we please have from the Transportation Department I see proud Mr Lepe over there can we please have Ronald revitt come to the front here there we go all right yes yes he is a a school bus driver and and we don't need to say that he that he transports kids every day in a safe manner so let me embarrass him a little bit Ron Riven school bus driver for 16 years Ron rivet is a is the consummate professional he is the employee that wears a uniform every day and Tucks in his shirt because because that is the type of Pride that he takes in the work that he does he is the bus driver that will get to know the
053students by first name and treats them with respect and they give it right back to him that is evident because he has never turned in a citation for the students on his route this nominee is dedicated to his job and his students he takes his attendance seriously this is apparent in his goal to have perfect attendance this year he States I quote my students and their families depend on me I need to make sure that I come to work every day so that my Bay Point students can get to school every day it is with great honor that we recommend Ron rivet for the classified school employee of the year program for the transportation department and ladies and gentlemen you are seeing one of the Contra Costa County classified employees of the Year Mr River
054give him a big round of applause thank you okay I gotta read it I was overwhelmed when Chris leppy yes okay where are you uh Julie Carpenter you're not here where are you yes would you they notified me before I had been selected Transportation employee of the year for Mount Diablo Unified School District this was beyond my wildest dreams not only this honor but also being selected as Transportation employee of the year for all of Contra Costa County this is the hard one I also want to thank all my students from Big Bus 35 for without them this would not have happened thank you all right our next our next individual here uh do we have a Jay morrow in the house come on up Jay Jay Works in our in our um in our
055I.T Department I was trying to think of what the new name was um I.T department and um so let's read a little bit about Jay and and he is a technology user support manager so Jay has has shown Superior work performance in many areas he took great initiative to improve the security camera system across the entire District this included re-planning each site's security camera Suite locating funding for this plan and working with vendors to execute the plan Jay has shown leadership in taking over this program and improving a camera system that will make campuses safer for all of our students Jay is also an important liaison between maintenance and operations and information technology he has provided critical help with mno it projects such as application upgrades security security camera planning and network upgrades his personal
056skills and dedication to customer service have been a great asset to mdusd Jay has also been a strong mentor to technical resource a strong mentor and Technical resource for field technicians he is always willing to help fellow technicians I give my highest recommendation to Jay Morrow for classified employee of the year ladies and gentlemen Jay Morrow all right we're going to do a picture congratulations um yeah I'll give it to you tomorrow foreign [Music] [Laughter] all right folks we got to get on with the meeting that was an impressive cheering section I feel like it was um also a really good warm up for graduation so we're just gonna keep up the energy um okay so it looks like we can move on to 10.3 which is an action item approve approval and appointment of
057student board member 10.2 10. yeah I have it this time I think um okay um approval appointment of student board member for the 20 um 23-24 school year so uh three years ago Mount Diablo Unified School District Board of Education uh began to um began to include a student as as one of our trustees and we've had we've had three student trustees so far they have all been absolutely fantastic they bring a different voice to the board um they they vote on on every item um you know that um that is discussed in open session however they they vote from the student perspective um it is it is a position that um carries a lot of responsibilities and we really try to tailor the work so that students can continue to do their studies but
058also participate in this in this process and this year we um we have had the honor to have trustee Nava Flores as our as our student student board member and and she helped run our student advisory committee she really LED those efforts who came up with our next student board member who's going to be taking her place so with all due respect I'm going to allow you to take this item and to introduce to the board and to the community um our board member who will be joining us next year all right so the student advisory committee and District administration are pleased to announce their joint selection for the 2023-2024 school board member Susana Barrios is currently a junior at white iyvy and has served as a sports medicine president been involved with Upward Bound
059and the Health occupation students of America also known as Jose is a translator and caregiver for the community and more importantly Susana is a powerful Advocate is with such honor I am pleased to announce Susana Barrios as a student board member for the 2023-2024 school year because then if you come and introduce yourselves and if you have a couple of words feel free to say good all right thank you thank you thank you all right what is my agenda so this is an action item so I will entertain a motion Madam president I move to approve the um the approval and appointment of student board member for the 2023-2024 school year I'll second that Cassie Nava Flores how do you vote Yes okay and so that's um that's approved um for um zero with concurrence
060from our student board member next item is 10.4 I'll take this item so I I do see we still have a I see a Teamster shirt in the audience so so this is good I probably should have moved this item up earlier in the agenda um so this is resolution 22 slash 23-55 in recognition of classified employees week which is going to be May 21st through May 27th so whereas classified School Employees provide valuable services to the schools and students of the Mount Diablo Unified School District and whereas classified School Employees contribute to the establishment and promotion of a positive instructional environment and now therefore the governing board of the mount devil Unified School District hereby recognizes and wishes to honor the contribution of classified School Employees to Quality education in the state of California
061and in the Mount Diablo Unified School District and declares the week of May 21st to May 27 2023 as class certified School Employees week in the Mount Diablo Unified School District Madam vice president this item is now in the hands of the board Madam chair I would move to adopt resolution 22-23 I'm not sure why it's got 55 in parentheses classified School Employees week second acinava Flores how do you vote Yes all right and that passes um with four voting in favor one absent and concurrence of our student trustee Madam president I'll take the next item and that's item 10.5 and we have another resolution this is resolution 22 23-56 recognizing June AS lgbtq Plus pride month whereas June is the time to celebrate our Dynamic lgbtq plus Community raise awareness of quality services and
062Foster a dialogue to promote healthy safe and prosperous School climates and communities for all whereas all children and youth should be able to attend school in the safe and inclusive environment free from discrimination and civil rights laws contribute to such environments and now therefore be it resolved that the Mount Diablo Unified School District recognizes the month of June 2023 as lb AS lgbtq Plus pride month to inspire Equity create alliances celebrate diversity and establish a safe environment in our schools and community and be it further resolved that this resolution be distributed to every school in the district Madam vice president this resolution is now in the hands of the board Madam president Madam vice president um uh I just wanted to share a few things on this topic um excited about pride month um uh
063first of all thank you to the district for I did see that the rainbow flag is um on our flagpole out there today um and wanted to uh encourage every School site to fly the rainbow flag at their School site as a symbol of creating a more inclusive environment um I wanted to share a couple of other upcoming events and ways that people can get involved on Sunday June 4th at 10 A.M is the Clayton pride parade and people from all over Contra Costa County are invited to participate they have a poster contest with student submissions that are due Monday May 15th and people can also register to march in or table at the parade um I've I'm in I have organized a group of school board members that everyone is welcome from across the
064county to join us students as well or people can create their own group the registration is by Sunday May 14th um and I wanted to thank uh P flag and our student team leaders and principal Julene McKinnon um for the awesome Pride prom this year and um that the pride prom date thank you and it was so successful they already have a date save the date for next year Saturday May 11th 2024 um and um also because this topic has come up at various School sites throughout this year I wanted to share a Girl Scout silver silver award project that was done last year by members of Girl Scout Troop 33570 and it was called the foothill inclusivity project and they were focused on providing the school staff with resources on understanding and supporting queer
065students so what they did was they said their goal is um we noticed slurs being used constantly by our classmates in addition to terms being thrown around in a negative way staff members often let these remarks slip by and they had learned very little about ways to be supportive and so the main focus of our project was to change that so it was the staff that we taught about the importance of this issue and how they could help so what the troop members did was hold an a training with teachers and staff at Foothill Middle School last year but they also put all of the resources that they handed out there onto a website so now anyone at any school is welcome to use the resources and it's at bitly so bit.ly Foothill inclusivity project
066so one of the examples is for staff with your ID card they have a little card that you can put on the other side that says I'm here if you need talk and has a rainbow heart so that students will know that you're a safe person to be able to reach out to so um yes I will give it to you heading on to um Shari's recognition of recognizing juna's lgbtq plus pride month I want to take this opportunity also to encourage all staff all employees all teachers but more importantly all students and community members to promote and to encourage pride prideness in lgbtq and also providing a welcoming and safe space for our students to be themselves unapologetically but also challenge the negative stigmas around it and promote that inclusivity and acceptance over lgbtq
067plus identifying staff students and community members rainbow Community Center has been a center where a lot of our students here in the school district tend to work in and provide and seek that sense of community and that space where they feel safe and they're able to be themselves so I want to just also end off on the Note um to being Mindful and respectful of our students and our community's identities and one way that we can do that is just um by respectfully asking for someone's pronouns and respecting them and um referring to them by those pronouns and by the names that they prefer so without further Ado um Madam vice president I would like to move to approve the review and potential approval of resolution 22 23-23 recognizing June AS lgbtq Plus Pride run
068second I see Nava Flores how do you vote Yes and that passes four to zero with one absent and concurrence form from our student board member Madam Vice President we have um items 11 1 11 2 11 3 and 11 4 and I have um Mr Sheehy that will take all four of those items right the human resources department is bringing for the board's review and potential approval the appointment of Leah dubinski as the elementary principal with a site to be determined at a later date Lee is a seasoned education leader with 13 years of experience leading at the elementary middle and high school levels she's an expert in leading professional development in various areas she is committed to engaging families and Community organizations to provide parent education wrap around services and student recognition Leah
069holds a bachelor's degree in biology a master's degree in secondary education and a master's degree in education Lee is the proud parent of two mdusd students and is excited to serve the community as a principal with that I leave this appointment in the hands of the board Adam president I move that the board approved Leah dubinski as an elementary school district in I mean elementary principal in the Mount Diablo School District second Nava Flores yes unfortunately she's not able to be here tonight with uh the next appointment the human resources department is bringing for the board's review and potential approval the appointment of leaf uttler as the elementary principal with a site to be determined at a later date Leaf taught Junior High and high school for seven years and served as a junior high
070and Elementary vice principal for the last four years he holds a bachelor's degree in biblical studies and youth leadership as well as a master's degree in educational Administration Leaf is a proud mdusd Alum having attended Fair Oaks Pleasant Hill Middle and College Park High School when not supporting students at a school Leaf likes writing bike riding with his two kids spending time with his wife and going to Giants games with that I leave this appointment in the hands of the board Madam president I've moved to approve Leif uttler as Elementary principal I'll second that Este Nava Flores yes members of the board superintendent Dr Clark I'm honored and humbled by this um opportunity to serve the students of Mount Diablo having been a Mount Diablo student myself I'm very excited about this opportunity so once
071again thank you very much oh yeah um I'm very happy to be supported by and um just I'm very proud to introduce my wife Rachel utler thank you I can't say enough how much I'm grateful for that but once again Boardman board board members and Dr Clark thank you very much together the human resource department is bringing for the board's review and potential approval the appointment of Raquel Rocky chiesen as the district-wide social emotional education collaborative program administrator Rocky has worked in Social Services for the majority of her professional career in the fields of Developmental Disabilities addiction treatment and education she began her career as a school social worker with San Francisco Unified School District and most recently Rocky worked for Contra Costa County Office of Ed where she worked closely with high school students
072in special education assisting to create a supported and caring environment where students feel safe seen and heard Rocky holds a bachelor's degree in Psychology master's degree in social work and is a licensed clinical social worker in her free time she enjoys exploring new destinations with her family taking in the beauty and Tranquility of nature she is creative individual never without a project or craft is constantly seeking new ways to express herself and with that I leave this appointment in the hands of the board Madam president I moved to approve Raquel Rocky gson as social emotional educational collaborative program administrator I'll second that trustee Nava florist yes but first I do want to thank the board and thank Dr Clark for this opportunity to serve the students staff and families in Mount Diablo Unified School District
073um and I want to also congratulate the award recipients and nominees and um just want to Second Susanna's thoughts that was really amazing just that group of people that were up here that really brought me to tears and I was trying not to look at them so um so I want to introduce my family so here we have my husband Craig and he's supporting me even though today is his birthday he's here yeah and my children Lola and Kai so thank you guys for being here uh over the years I've actually had the privilege privilege to be able to coordinate with teachers students and school teams in mdusd and I've been very impressed with the level of professionalism I've seen in the classrooms from teachers support staff and I'm very excited to be able to
074continue my work with you helping to contribute to the overall student health success and achievement and I extend my sincere gratitude once again and thank you all very much we have Dr Rubio is going to do this um this last deployment employment recommendation good evening board members Dr Clark human resource department is bringing for the board's review and potential approval the appointment of Kimberly bayana as the new Director of Human Resources Kim has worked as a school administrator for the last 10 years working currently as the principal of Foothill Middle School she has consistently had the students as her North Star and has collaborated to grow the climate and culture on her campus Kim is devoted to both her family and community and believes in order to do good work you must be invested all
075the way in the totality of it Kim was raised in the Bay Area raised her children in the East Bay and is now the proud proud Nana of three grandsons uh Kim couldn't be here tonight but with that I leave this appointment in the hands of the board Madam president I would like to uh despite the fact that I have received some very concerned calls about the fact that principal beloved principal Viana is leaving that role at Foothill Middle School I know that they will be very happy that she is staying within the district and so I'm happy to move the for the approval of Kim Vienna as Director of Human Resources second in apple florist yes thank you reduce the next one apology right before moving to the next item um so um I'm
076going to make a point of order because our president has arrived and so I am turning over um the chair um to president and say we thank you madam vice president for Pinch hitting friends I'm sorry I'm late 12.1 review and presentation of Concord High School proposed mascot change information items yeah so Madam president I'll take this um item we have uh we have the principal um from Concord High School um and she will introduce her team and um and they will share with this board the discussions and what has taken place on the Concord High School campus in in terms of transitioning from the um uh if there's going to be a change with the mascot so uh so I'm going to go ahead and call the principal and let them do their presentation
077and then we'll take public comments afterwards Ms McKinnon good evening board members and superintendent Dr Clark my name is Jolene McKinnon principal of Concord High School and this evening Concord High students will present the process our school went through to identify a new mascot at the April 26 board meeting parents students and alumni Express their reasons for keeping the Minutemen at Concord High's mascot I too am a Minutemen class of 1991. the message they left regarding Concord High being a community with great parent involvement who are passionate and committed is spot on this is one of the main reasons I appreciate and love our CHS community last year the school began the process of adopting a new mascot but it was not complete nothing was brought to the school board for discussion or approval in
078speaking with various staff members students and parents it was clear that last year's process lacked transparency and an opportunity for the community to voice their concerns I know the previous principle is a huge advocate for inclusion of all students and was following the board's uh 2020 2021-80 resolution stating the need to establish a welcoming and safe environment in our schools it is clear that Concord High needs to embrace a new mascot that is more inclusive and represents our current student community furthermore I believe that the excitement of a new mascot will help increase our school spirit and engagement community-wide which will see an improvement in students taking Pride of the campus and in the classroom in working with the school side's leadership team it was imperative that the process be redone with transparency and student
079driven Although our last round of votes only totaled about 500 after over about 1100 plus students it was a big improvement from the 106 total student votes at the end of last school year in hearing the presentation My Hope Is that you will understand the work our students put into making the process process inclusive while following suit to Ignacio Valley High School's transition to identifying a new mascot now it is my honor to introduce Concord High student mascot committee members REM palmeroy and Brennan pangela linan ladies and gentlemen superintendent hello everybody I'm Brennan and I'm a sophomore and I'm a part of the mascot change committee and we're happy to share this presentation hello my name is Ram Pomeroy and I'm a freshman representative of CHS well first of all we would like to thank
080all of our committee members starting from cyan as author Ellie basil me Naya Thornton Marcus Fernandez and Alexa Alexandra nuget our co-chairs are Ali Flores and REM Conroy our ASB president is Lucy botes and our adult subcommittee members are Miss McCain in this Darby Mr Herod and this stuff to start things off let's go with our contact we're going to start off the reasoning behind the minimum Minuteman yeah Scott and second of all or how our timeline started that was a very long time our student committee and input and our rebranding of CHS okay all right so um the Minutemen the militia Minute Men came to a rise in the midst of the American Revolution on April 19 1775. here is a summary of when they um originated and here we have input from Pioneer
081Publishers from last year's attempt at changing the Minutemen mascot when it was spread to the community and now here is a list of factors that contributes to the concern of the Minutemen mascot and um as a result the concern of inclusivity and the environment of our students and staff has been pushing this project forward an attempt of creating a better Community for everyone who is in Concord High School or who may be entering here are some board statements from last year referencing to the mascot change of Ignacio Valley High and now moving on to our process and how we started so a brief timeline of what basically was in the process of rebanding our mascot January was mainly dedicated I ask you to speak more into the microphone I spent the first hour listening and
082you really truly can't hear so I'm going to do a better job for those watching at home in the future but if you're not speaking of the mascot no one who's watching can hear thank you my apologies I mean sorry the microphone okay January was dedicated to informing our school of and our committee of the rebranding and change of our mascot February and through March was mainly the voting of our math of our new mascot qualities April was that dedicated to the finalization of our mascot through voting and design amazed the finalization of the mascot change officially January mostly consisted of meetings reviews and forming the student subcommittee as you can see through these pictures many students actually showed up to give their inputs and what they believe would be good qualities for a mascot
083very February mostly consisted of student and staff and Community giving mascot suggestions and voting down to our number one mascot choice as you can see this is our community meeting with REM and it went pretty thorough our final 10 mascots were snakes rattlesnakes Condors crocodiles Lions Chargers continents dinosaurs Ravens Bobcats and bears March mostly consisted of voting down to our to our number one mascot and this design for our first for our first vote of the CHS mascot change we had a good handful of students that decided to vote and help create our new mascot the number one vote or or a winning vote was the Bears followed by Bobcats and comets for a second vote for our new mascot more people were deciding to fill in and give their inputs of what they wanted
084to see in our news in our school our our few mascot suggestions were Bears Bobcats and chargers and our final vote consists of 500 students giving their inputs of what they wanted as well as you can see Bears won by pretty handful and April consisted of the finalization of our choices made by our student body and then during this President the official finalization and start of rebranding of CHS and now is our student and committee input the mascot qualities really wanted to Embark embody was perseverance kindness and many more our mascot qualities that were a main input were perseverance creates a strong Community strong more powerful one to be proud of inclusive and fierce okay our main our main voting consisted of 10 options and basically throughout the months narrowed it we narrowed it down
085to one which was the Bears and now thank you Brendan um we will now move forward to the rebranding of CHS so here is a ordered list of things that will be needed to reband CHS in order to fully create a self a safe welcoming and inclusive community whenever people walk upon our campus with this we would like to honor the great Minutemen mascot and move forward to a new and improved mascot the Bears here are a variety of bear mascot designs beautifully designed by Varsity Brands huge thank you and appreciation to them for taking the time and effort intricating a new Mass new mascot emblems for Concord High and now wrapping up this presentation I'd like to thank you all for being here and to shout out all the Concord High Community for being
086here with us in support thank you all for your time thank you so much we'll move to public comments I'm not sure if it's Kylie or kalea Bailey right good evening my name is Kylie chapel and I'm a Minuteman I will be presenting a student's protective of this discussion I attended Concord High School in the Years 2018 through 2022 but not only am I recently graduated alumni of Concord High School I joined the Minutemen Community as early as the age of six months growing up both my older brother and sister attended Concord High and the only only means of life I knew was the Minuteman Way during my time as a student at Concord High School I was involved in many school activities and organizations such as ASB leadership and several Sports within my first
087few years at Concord there was rumor of a mascot change this rumor was made true in the fall of 2021 when an online survey was sent out to students via Gmail and advisory presentations there was no conversation prior to the surveys being out given to students even in leadership a group that typically brings up conversations like this nowhere to be found on these surveys was an option to keep the amendment students were led to believe by faculty that the mascot change was mandatory for the Mount Diablo Unified School District board according to the previous meeting regarding the subject this was not the case the board stated that the school's Administration came to them with the proposition Concord High School administration relayed in entirely different message telling students and staff the changes inescapable personally I cannot
088name one student at the time who was all in for this mascot change for the most part students discussed what new mascot could be a good fit for our school talking about how many how many of the options were quote unquote stupid with that being said students were left confused as to why the change was necessary here we are today several years later after the first upbringing of this conversation fighting what no one had thought was possible the Minutemen leaves a legacy in changing the mascot entirely will not erase the pride and joy it has brought to Concord California this is no small decision and should not be taken lightly let our fight show you the importance to the subject as one of the community I vote to keep the pride of the Minutemen thank
089you Mark Lloyd Kylie for a long time it's going to be hard to follow um but I think I'll use I'm encouraged to give some of the comments or actually some of the speech my daughter gave at the April meeting so for the next little bit here I'll be speaking to my daughter Rachel's voice but a lot deeper um when I was a senior the first announcement of changing the mascot was initiated from what I remember students were not happy we were in advisory when teachers announced it there was a survey that the students had to take choosing which mascot they'd rather have Minutemen was not on the survey students didn't have a choice nor did we have the option to pick them in a man and disagree as students I remember countless conversation I
090had with peers talking about how unnecessary unfair it was for teachers to drop this random information on us without asking for student opinions throughout the year the longer the talk of changing the mascot went on the more we started to question whether it was not the teachers that whether or not the teachers were not doing it for us but for themselves it was so surprising that the first party is not the student's safety it is changing the mascot I'm sure the district important parents would appreciate to know that during the 21-22 school year not once do we practice an intruder drill or do we talk about what would happen if there was an active shooter or person of Danger on campus and sped instead the main topic was changing the mascot well you're sitting here
091in a meeting preaching about spending millions of dollars on a new mascot there are students sitting in a classroom planning their every move to escape in case there was an active Intruder or shooter on campus I was one of those students if the students will remain priority you'd be more worried about safety than the school mascots that the students were main property we would have a choice to change the mascot or not to change it for that matter if you think it's the student's choice to change the mascot you're wrong the surveys that the students took never had a choice to pick the amendment on him nor gave the students a choice why was the Minutemen not on those surveys is it because the teachers are afraid of it actually getting a majority vote I
092have a few minutes left I just had to get some of my own views on this um recent article I read well first of all CHS announced a community meeting three hours before it happened it showed a lack of a much disrespect for us as parents and community and we were treated like that from the beginning of this process we were not to be part of it dating when we voiced our opinion we were treated like villains like we shouldn't even be there there was a time when parent involvement was appreciated I miss those times recent article I read and it said frustration uh Spurs California president to run for school boards across California parents and pendant during pandemic era frustrations over the covered School closure staple protocols this time please wrap it up okay
093and making sure um there was money was pouring into schools which is directly spent on students thank you okay thank you Shannon Carr good evening students community members honor teachers and trustees I'm Shannon Carr I am fortunate to have taught at Ignacio Valley High for 16 years and I am pleased to teach thank you and I'm pleased to teach and coach at Concord High School now yes I have been at both schools while each wrestled with changing mascots wasn't my idea I'd like though to share that I have observed two very different processes concerning changing and selecting new mascots at Ignacio Valley the campaign to drop indigenous imagery was largely driven by teachers and a few parents well-meaning parents it was not a student-led campaign nor were Earnest conversations encouraged I absolutely agree that indigenous
094imagery needed to be dropped why these process however lacked true discussion and struggle with and inclusion of its community I understand the board's resolution to allow schools to choose a non-human mascot or name resolution 2021-80 whereas why these indigenous imagery was racist cultural appropriation Concord High's Minutemen is not inclusive of our student population a white man holding a gun should not represent us our student population is 51 51 Latino and 29 white 49 are females 51 male the current process from this year that Concord High School has undertaken to gather Community input has included numerous surveys an open invitation for students to join the mascot committee a wide array of student leaders selected to receive invitations to join the mascot committee open meetings with alumni and community members community members requests included on surveys the
095mean green I don't know more surveys were administered school-wide what's more timelines were shared ahead of time and data was disseminated afterwards this did not happen when I was at yv having gone through a mascot change before this has been difficult simply to observe but I wanted to respect the new community I've joined and the hard work this requires of all and I am proud of this Brave student campaign to adopt a new mascot the amendment mascot is forever associated with many people's High School memories and their High School identity those will not change the history and tradition of the Minutemen does not change Concord High's achievements won't be erased I'd like to ask the board to defend and ratify this mascot change for the purpose of making Concord High more inclusive a new mascot
096who is strong Fierce and not a human will bolster more students connection to school belonging development and achievement thank you Julie Lister third time's a charm so uh again Julie Lister thank you board superintendent for letting me uh talk tonight I did I actually did not want to be at this meeting I had actually I mentioned to the principal before who I adore I thank her every time I see her I'm so grateful that we have her um I didn't want to bring an adversary thing when the students were doing their presentation because they're awesome the students um REM she did the best job at the presentation made everyone feel welcome so anyways I do not want to be here but as it was mentioned in the last board meeting the previous principal and the
097teacher assisting the students Ms Dell had told us in a meeting last year that the change to the mascot was mandatory and had to be a non-human as directed by the board you informed us at the last meeting that it was not your mandate and rather simply your support of the issue that was brought to you by the school from hearing testimonies of the students during that time it's clear that the majority of the students were not did not wish this change they were give they were not given the opportunity to keep the mascot with modifications and they were told same as us it had to be changed and it must uh and it must be a non-human that this seems like a manipulation of facts meant to mislead and the students and to avoid
098any opposition this is not a democratic process that's a dictorial process furthermore an email was sent out a month ago announcing an auction for Minutemen memorabilia that is extremely inappropriate as the change of the mascot has not even been approved it's only served as more evidence that they are presenting this mascot change as mandatory I strongly feel that a re-vote is in order to include the option of keeping the Minutemen with modification lose the musket obviously and add a woman that the Marquee out there out front which is I believe was actually put by the last was approved by the uh previous principle which I find are ironic that she then had this that was you know offended I don't know why she she allowed one to go up there with a with a gun
099um but again to remove remove the musket add a woman students should be provided the opportunity that they were denied thank you Ashley Barrows Dr Clark and members of the school board the mascot issue has been improper and inaccurate from the start students neither wanted nor asked for a change principal false graph's messages implied that the school board is behind the change to a non-human mascot her first message States it has already been determined that the mascot will change as instructed by the Board of Education through resolution 2021-80 they were the students never asked for this to happen they were simply told that it would happen the school administration through the school board under the proverbial school bus but who determined the mascot had to change has never been clearly explained what is clear is
100that all principal false graphs messages about the mascot change have been deleted from parent Square fortunately I have the screenshot the intimidation that the school board is requiring this change continued this year principal McKinnon's posts use advertising tricks there's a large font for the words mdusd board resolution to not have a human mascot and bold font for the world words schools shall choose a non-human mascot name replacement this subterfuge directs the reader's eye away from those three pivotal words and if necessary to her credit principal McKinnon has been much more open and forthcoming with information than her predecessor at the community meetings we viewed the PowerPoint presentation shown to the students the slide quoting SB 2021-80 the words and if necessary were conveniently replaced with an ellipsis this omission of these three keywords gives the
101entire presentation in Era finality that the school board was requiring the mascot change and that it was irrevocable the school administration does not want the students to know that they have an option to keep the Minutemen or even update it the pathetic turnout of the is a direct reflection of the student's lack of support for a mascot change only 500 out of the 1180 students bothered to vote this is only 42 percent not even a simple majority of all who voted let alone for a single candidate but even that number is artificially inflated at least one teacher made it an assignment in Google Classroom to vote this made the students feel that they had to vote on a ballot that did not include the Minutemen as an option to protect their grades this I believe
102is known as grade hijacking if this teacher has an average of 25 students in each of five classes that would mean at least 125 students were manipulated and voted under duress that brings a number of students who voted freely and of their own accord to a mere 375 or only 32 percent of the entire student body the final vote was almost evenly split among the three candidates they want to change the mascot to a bear for only 125 students or ten and a half percent of the student body are you willing to approve such a huge change to the identity of Concord High for 10 of the students proof of this intimidation again is a screenshot thank you it's the manipulations misdirection and malfeasance would go on forever to start over with a clean slate
103pull the students hold focus groups find out you really want thank you prestige this is just an information item so would anyone like to comment do we have another one okay but go ahead it's on you're good oh thank thank you just thank you president and Zoe um so good evening um members of the board uh Super Nintendo Mr clerk um I'm here uh my name is Angel if you some of you don't know me or know me but I'm I'm also um a graduate of alumni at Concord High School class of 2021 and I'm here like in support of the like the mascot change I mean I think what I'm trying to say is you know um as an alumni I mean ever since I've ever since I've been accepted into Concord High though
104too I didn't know what their mascot was until I met um the principal at Concord I at the time with Miss faltzgrath and at the time um I asked her a very quick question and I asked her what's the mascot at Concord High and Mrs wolfcraft said what are the Minutemen and I said the minute what and I said and she said that um that she told me a little story about the minimum you see the Minutemen is part of our nation's history you know I mean as as in as some people said like in the American Revolution and I think you know um as an alumni and also um uh once a former student of Concord High that's who I came in in support of you know um I mean I am not um
105I mean what I'm trying to say is though I mean um I think that our School's mascot the Minutemen should stay but with some modifications I mean I mean what I'm trying to say is that um we don't want to like Rebrand everything but because that that will cost a lot of money just to like Rebrand everything from our band uniforms our merchandise everything in our campus and our school can we just like instead of using like all that money we can use it just to like you know make some modifications to our school if you've ever been like to any sporting event lately at Concord High whether it's a football game or any kind of game we didn't even have like restrooms all we had bodies a swimming event and every time and every
106time when we go to like any kind of like sporting event or any kind of event and people need to use the restroom they just and trust me I don't want to be in those kinds of situations here but what I'm trying and what I'm trying to say is that um I think that our mascot should stay but with some modifications that do I mean instead of like having like the gun like the rifle there they should have like an American flag and also like a woman next to the the Minutemen right there so that way our school can be more inclusive because I think though too because as as alumni and also like former I mean recently right now I'm a student at the bridge program and I I know because I have a
107few students who graduated from Concord High as Minutemen and also former staff members who are also Minutemen I remember when my first day my first time at the bridge at the bridge program our our principal um Mr Julianne ermson he used to work at Concord high before and he told me that he used to be a minute man also and I think you know that um that this like I mean who wants to just spent thousands of dollars just to like Rebrand everything just for the mascot we should like focus on other things that our school needs you know like recently at Northgate there was an incident where a person was stabbed in the throat by another student and I mean and what I'm trying to say is that we should make our schools safe
108and inclusive for everyone in our school because you know what happens if someone if someone was dangerous on campus who brought like something like a like a knife or a pair of scissors just to like like some just to hurt someone and please finish up um what I'm trying to say that um please let's keep the Minutemen as our mascot thank you so much thank you besties no comments or I just I really want to thank the students um that participated and gave the presentation that was really beautifully done um I like the use of school colors of course um and all the students who are involved I know not everyone was able to be here tonight um I also want to thank the staff for um the involvement in this change you know it's
109a hot issue it's difficult um I just want to just briefly share um that I'm still a classroom teacher um and um I really do understand um kind of the motivations behind making this change um you know whether my students are presenting about um you know gun violence whether they're walking about out about gun violence um or whether I'm in a lockdown with my students I'm seeing police on campus with automatic weapons um I do think it's a mixed message I understand um the impetus for the change um and um I know that it's really really hard to embrace or or you know even accept change and so I appreciate everyone who shared their perspective on this issue and I know that we have great love for our school and our mascot is part of
110that and so I just am really thankful to everyone who reached out to us on this topic thank you vice president I would also like to to thank everyone who presented today um I I know that um mascot changes are not easy I've been through one recently as a board member and as a parent um when I first when I went to my first football game at Ignacio Valley High I was really shocked and surprised to see students run through a giant blow up Indian head onto the field um these are the kinds of things that are hard to change because people even with that which I thought was I couldn't really understand how someone would feel like that was okay um there were there were people who wanted to keep that mascot right um
111what I've seen over the years there is that once the change was made we actually have seen increased alumni involvement on the campus with the families and an increased engagement of students and families on campus um so I think it is possible to come through to the other side of a change and still be able to bring people together um I I hear what people are saying about concern about costs and I think that um it would be I know that this is only info tonight so um before we would take any action um if there are costs involved we should know what those are um and figure out what the plan of action would be to implement I know that on concord's campus in many places it is the letter c and not um
112not a a rifle or gun already so I would think that the places with the letter c could remain over a period of time and you could do some gradual changes I would think um the gender issue that was pointed out in the presentation I want to appreciate the students for pointing that out because I'm not I do not think that that is solved by putting a woman next to a man as we just discussed earlier this this evening with our pride resolution we need to be inclusive of all genders and that is more than just a binary identification and um so I so I don't think you can solve that with with simply putting a woman next to the man um I also have concerns about making small adjustments because I think uh when
113you make small adjustments people still revert back I think that's what they tried to do at Ignacio Valley when they went from the Indian head to the arrow uh with the feather um they were trying to make a change they were trying to tell people not to use the Indian Head anymore which which five years later you know I my my kid was a student on a sports team and they had an Indian Head you know uh like ribbon in their hair you know um so that so those kinds of communications I'm not sure really work I think people who have the history of the thing will still bring it back and and won't necessarily understand so I would think it'd be a little bit challenging to try to make a slight shift I think
114that that gun could still come back right or different um different pieces of it could still come back so that would be one of my concerns um most of all I appreciate that um the Concord High Community um feels comfortable coming forward and speaking your truth and sharing your feelings no matter what no matter where you are on this issue this has been um you know I think there has been a lot of transparency and and involvement over the course of this year which I really appreciate seeing um and so I hope that we continue the the conversation at the board level here as well I think that when we passed the the board resolution we did have the intention of creating more welcoming inclusive schools and the presentation tonight um referred to that I
115think um quite well and I think that was that was impressive thank you anyone else before I go everyone okay Dr Clark it's been mentioned before I say what I think can you clarify I'm really happy my daughter has not in the station gone through a active shooter drill can you clarify how we have prepared for such things despite our students not necessarily seeing that with a safety uh contracts we've yeah so um so great question um the research tells us that we should not be taking our students through active shooter drills because it traumatizes them um so what we've been doing is really focusing on um training all of our administrators and um so each and every one of our administrators have gone through training with um with either the Concord Police Department Pleasant
116Hill Police Department or Walnut Creek Police Department we also had the Concord Police Department actually at Concord High come out one evening and did a community training for any Community member that wanted to come or any staff member who wanted to come on top of that we have um we've also paid all of our employees to attend after school training where we talked about active shooter you know processes and procedures we're also in contract with a Consultant Group who is going around each one of our sites helping us rewrite our safety plans doing training for staff looking at all of our cameras looking at all of our points of Entry um in in that way we have also allowed our local police departments to train at our school sites actually Concord High is one of
117our school sites that Concord Police Department has done active shooter training on weekends or in the evenings um and um and so when we actually do drills with our students it's more fire drills shelter in place but we don't do active shooter drills because an active shooter drill is everyone run like heck get out of here and we don't want to put our students in that situation but we're training the staff so I hope that helps thank you um thank you so much to the students who presented and your colleagues your fellow classmates who weren't here um thank you for your hard work this this year in that and to the teacher who spoke and to the principal thank you for your leadership um so we've had two meetings of hearing why we should keep
118the Minutemen and um a lot of people have referenced it's a racing history we are a board who is not a racing history um we are a board who uh our U.S have we approved the U.S history curriculum or is it is that right social studies that's coming up we are a board that is not running away from the truth in American history so I am very confident that our students no matter their mascot um will will learn the true American history um it's been referenced a lot that the principal only highlighted School shall choose a non-human mascot name replacement and that it was left out and if necessary and then it was also left out what our actual resolution is is that now therefore be it resolved that the Mount Diablo Unified School District
119board sees an urgent need to establish a welcoming and safe environment for all students in our schools and community um I have to be honest that a lot of the comments here made me feel like I would be not I would feel unwelcome for many of the reasons that trustee Khan's counts said um but also like as a African-American as a black woman the Minutemen is not a hero to me someone mentioned at the last meeting that the minute because of the Minutemen we were all free the Minutemen did not free me my my ancestors they are not the reason that I am free um so I just want to let you know my viewpoint on this is that it's not a hero it was a militia it is not gender inclusive which we've even
120had comments around other issues around gender inclusivity um and I'm really proud of the students because that actual voting average is better than our adult voting in actual elections so that's pretty good um it would be awesome if there were more um but I think the intent of not having the Minutemen on there was because we there is an urgent need to establish a welcoming and safe environment for all students um and thus the Minuteman is not a choice because that is not all inclusive um this is just an information item I have no idea if and when it comes to us but um believe me we have heard and obviously listened to everything that everyone has said um and we are I really appreciate it because even if I disagree with you I am
121so into Civic engagement and people commenting and I'm really glad that you all have you've come third time annoyed by it but you've come and you're committed to that and you should be heard and we really we do appreciate that um so with that any other comments thank you um we'll move on but if you're gonna leave I'll pause for a moment so that you can you can and people can still hear all right continue making your way out thank you we will move on to 12.2 annual report by the 20 2010 measure citizens Bond oversight committee all right I think we have one of our members from the oversight committee coming up or something what was yours good evening or good evening superintendent um John ferranti I am still the chair of the 2010
122major citizens Bond oversight committee we have a slide presentation that they're they're bringing up soon there it is this covers the fiscal year of 2122 we meet the requirement we being the district um we do meet the requirements for prop 39 since this is a prop 39 Bond we have all the members that we are required to have um a lot of us are getting tired um all of our minutes reports Etc they're online anybody wants to view them they're free to view them all Barb all members of the board names are also online which again is required um we get our quarter reports from Melanie we are still monitoring the solar production because we put an awful lot of effort into that project status and the financials is what we are primarily focused on
123um we got our audit and they had zero findings which is what we always want we don't want any findings on our audits whether it's Financial or projects um so you look at all the numbers added up together we're a little over when you get all the rebates PG e et cetera a little over 380 million total dollars to be expended and right now as of June 2022 we're at 342 million basically hopefully by the end of this calendar year that number will be zero I don't want to go through this again um there are a number of projects going on currently as I said we are looking for we being everybody on the oversight committee looking forward to wrapping this up and since I am not the chair of measure Jay this time you're
124not going to hear from me on that one there are any questions thank you thank you so much for your continued leadership 12.3 mdusd 22 23 Second interim report response from Contra Costa County Office of Education is going to share this one thank you I know that Mr ferranti can still hear out in the hallway and he thinks he's getting some time off but he's not because he's still on measure J okay um this uh this item is simply a response from the County Office of Education what we've tried to do over the last three years is make sure that we've really increased transparency as much as possible so every time they issue these letters we have them located in a number of different locations on our district website they're on the superintendent's page they're
125on the fiscal page and there's a section there that we have for uh County Office of Education reports and that is there as well so I just wanted to point out a couple of things that they put in this report um they are re they're suggesting some caution uh with moving forward with budget development they're talking about deficits that they are continuing to see when they're taking a look at our sax reports and they're reviewing our second interim report another thing that they talked about is I wanted to point out they talked about the unrestricted general fund plus the fund 17 reserves I just want to point out to the board and the public that we don't have measure 7 19 measure 17 where was our measure C Series from our very first measure C
126so they continue to list that but we don't have that so that was a tad bit confusing and then there's some notable decreases in the Ada projection as a matter of fact uh close to 3 000 students and I just wanted to make sure that the board and public continues to understand that we were in a three-year rolling average which meant that it saved us for a couple of years and we're no longer reaping the benefits of that three-year rolling average Ada is average daily attendance which means the students that actually come to school so even though our enrollment right now has stabilized we're actually catching up on the benefits that the the legislature provided us so the County Office of Education did commend us and they agree that we definitely have our second interim
127report being positive and happy to answer any other questions that you might have is everybody good thank you Dr Gonzalez I like you all okay um 12.4 growing healthy kids 22-23 year in review presentation yes and uh Miss Sachs is going to introduce her team absolutely so good evening everyone we actually have a phenomenal team here who's going to share a very brief presentation so good evening board Dr Clark the community that is listening online as well as the audience tonight we have for you a brief presentation um titled growing healthy kids 22-23 in review and really um we're bringing this to you because it was our commitment after we had our contract approved last year that we would bring an update which includes metrics as well as quantitative qualitative data informing of the impact
128of the program across Mount Diablo Unified if we take a look to see the impact just by numbers across our system it continues to grow the region impact of growing healthy kids continues and is now approaching about 10 000 students throughout the district 11 elementary schools received the core ngss Next Generation science standards in the garden and nutrition education during the school day 52 or 100 students reached at the Riverview Garden on field trips and that's been funded by the California Department of food and agriculture for an additional two years and then with a sixteen hundred students from primarily Title 1 schools were also impacted this year we were very honored to have trustee Mason at many of our events several of our open school Garden events throughout the district and we'd really appreciated her
129foundational work in this area over the many many years that you've been involved trustee Mason in addition to these core offerings growing healthy kids has introduced new programs this year which we're very excited about we're actually going to highlight those during our presentation the U.S department of Agriculture funded fourth grade field trips to the cafeteria and we've got some phenomenal Food Service team members here tonight in order to talk a little bit about what we've been having going on and it's thanks to them who co-wrote this field trip experience and led the field trips and that's why they were an absolute success career Pathways and Partnerships at YB high school as well as Concord High was also very very new there'll be information shared on that and it's really aspiring for the students that are
130not only elementary schools involved in it but also some of our high school students um to be part of this program Career Technical education career exploration so that's super exciting with regards to what we were involved in this year so I'd like to hand it over to Lainey Klein King who will also introduce herself as she comes up to share more about our program good evening superintendent Clerk and members of the board thanks for letting us brag a little bit about the program tonight we're going to keep it brief because we know that this is a long meeting so um just wanted to kind of show off some beautiful pictures from the program our next Generation science in the garden and core nutrition lessons are really the heart of what we do so we were
131at 11 sites this year the plan is to move into 16 sites next year I mean so a total of 16 sites so that's adding 50 more schools a huge jump for us and I just felt we collect feedback from the teachers every year and I felt like this quote from one of our teachers kind of encapsulated that we're really hitting what we want to be hitting with our students and this teacher said I feel my students obtained more meaningful Hands-On learning experiences that allowed them to build a more positive relationship with nature nutrition science and food the science learning we're doing in the classroom is connecting to the learning done with the garden education program this connection allows more of my students to apply the abstract Concepts to a concrete experience so that for
132us really validates what we're trying to do in our garden classroom so this picture is of students in our Riverview Middle School Garden the purpose of this field trip program which has been running now for two years is to make Garden education accessible for all students in Title 1 sites so even if they don't have a current Garden education program at their site teachers can sign up for this field trip the teachers have had a lot of wonderful things to say about it I liked how it made makes the students smile and recommend this field trip to everyone fantastic students want to live here and they absolutely love the garden and as Jen had mentioned almost 2 000 students have gone through this field trip program just this school year from nine different elementary schools
133the vast majority of them Title One a couple schools snuck in there like Holbrook they really like that field trip but the majority Title One students and on the field trips I'm just giving you a few pictures they do next Generation science investigations um such as you can see here students investigating the life cycles of insects and then actually finding those life cycles out in the garden students learn seed to table where they will grind dried corn in molcajetes make Masa and then make tortillas out of those so really getting to see food processed from seed to table and the students plant and harvest they they plant for our Bay Point plant giveaway on Fridays to give plants out to the community and they harvest edible flowers greens and other things which they make into
134yummy things like Garden pizzas so um we're really excited about a program that's operating now for the second year in a row this year every fourth grade class in the district got to go on a special in school field trip to their cafeteria this curriculum was co-written between myself and Teresa Rigo who's here today so I want to I want Teresa to come up and um really want you to hear it from her perspective um good evening more members Dr Clark um I got I work at Rio Vista Elementary I've been with the district um 29 years now more than 29 years I really enjoyed this um fourth grade field trip we had the kids come in they did a scavenger hunt um we had poster boards out to where they had you think uh
135what a pepper was um what broccoli was and a lot of kids what and they wrote Oh peppers are hot I go well you need to go read that board because some of those peppers are not always hot okay and then so that was really interesting the kids really enjoyed that then they got to do a scavenger hunt inside the kitchen where they had to find like a steam table um you know the refrigerator freezers uh the kids would go oh that's just a freezer and I said well how do you know it could be our refrigerator so we would have them come and touch the refrigerator and they would know the difference of the coldness they then got to make a pizza a veggie pizza which when you tell the kids they have to
136put veggies on it they look at you like oh no but I told them you hot you cannot do cheese pizza because a lot of kids they just want to do the cheese pizza so we had them put the veggies on it and of course once they cooked it because they made their own little pizza they don't had their own they could put as many bags they had at least do two veggies and so they after they cooked it they want they try to be sneaky and take the veggies off of it before they tried it so my thing was you guys got to take one bite please one bite of just the veggies and then you can take the veggies off you know if you want so I it was really good experience because
137the kids actually took the bites of those those veggies and they said oh my God Miss Teresa I did not real I did not think I was gonna like this and I really really like this so I'm hoping that um that we can keep continuing this relationship with growing healthy kids because I think um I think the kids that we have Gardens in our elementaries and I really want the kids to be able to grow they're um oh yeah there we go and grow their own food and then see it in our it's not in our salad bars you know I mean if they see what they're growing in our salad bars I feel like they would be eating more veggies and fruit along the way so I'm hoping that um we can continue this
138this um relationship uh the impact of the field trip on both the students and on the relationship between the garden and Educators and cafeteria staff kindergarten and what students are eating for lunch at school um where was my little quote said um so that's what I I just hope that we can keep continuing it was a very good experience the kids loved it I mean it was a little challenging at first because the timeline we had and stuff but I got to go to various schools throughout the district and help with this field trip and it was all the same the kids loved it they want to do more they want to come into the kitchen more and you know do field trips more and stuff like that so thank you thank you I just
139want to recognize Teresa because food services staff they're not used to being Educators and so this process really transitioned our food service staff into being nutrition Educators taking an active role in that and Teresa supported um almost every site in doing that such an outstanding soccer coach and she was an outstanding soccer coach yes that is one of her many credentials um so I just want to call attention to another new program um we had a pilot with the mdusd career Pathways this year um Heather Fontanella and I met and we discussed what would be kind of logistically feasible with high schoolers um so that the elementary students at our sites could benefit from exposure to different careers right and that we'd provide kind of a mini internship for for the high school students so
140kind of working along that work base Continuum and we did do a small project with Concord High School where Tom Trowbridge had 16 of his students make root view boxes large um it's I'm tongue twisted right now but um root view boxes where they can watch The Roots grow right you plant the radishes and carrots and the kids can watch them grow um and he said yeah that's very doable we can do that it was a great project for his students we actually had one field trip to Mount Diablo Elementary um where his sister-in-law works so he said it had to be Mount Diablo Elementary and um his students came and they installed the root view box and talked to the students and the students showed them around the garden it was really great um
141but the major the major partnership this year was with Ignacio Valley High School the education Academy um and I have two fabulous students here this year just to tell you a little bit about their experience so we did a couple of trainings on site with Ignacio Valley at Academy students to just teach them about next Generation science inquiry-based learning and some of the basics of managing classes outside and then we scheduled three different field trips so that all the students could co-teach outside in the garden so I want to introduce two students who've been very patient through this long board meeting tonight we should get a lot of extra credit for this sherlin Zarate and Jessica Cabrera Gonzalez to tell you about their experience hi good night guys um Garden education was such a good
142experience to have because I learned about leadership and teaching I want to go into the teaching industry and this was like such a good experience for me every single moment was meaningful and amazing seeing these seeing how focused these kids were with us how patient they were really helped even though they were they have different like they they like learn different I try to communicate with them help them out them asking questions them being eager to get our answers that was really meaningful to me during the whole time I like to make them happy they were having so much fun during this I was like smiling laughing the whole time I'm super shy and I like forgot about I forgot about like my classmates and I focused on the kids and how to make them
143happy and learn about what we were learning with them they're such amazing teachers for the training it was like amazing everybody was like paying attention no one was like on their phones I was like wow but it was a really cool work based learning experience through our CTE program thank you guys for listening to me um all right so uh for the field trip um the teachers were like since the whole class was like really nervous and teachers like you're all gonna lit up and like they were right we all like smiled we were like interactive with them and we're having fun all together um I'll say it really did build up my leadership skills I can say I got more social more interactive more into things now so like I want to like really
144think to like the teachers and like the trainers and stuff like that because like they've really helped a lot with the support and everything um I'll say like everything build up more and more and more so like I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for like the teachers the trainers and everything so like I would really like to like thank them really much about it thank you guys for your time for hearing us so the other new thing we did this year just really briefly and this is our fabulous Garden educator Marion Woodard who most of you have seen I think at some point at one of our events she's been at El Monte now for I think this is year seven six or seven um since the Inception of the program but thank
145you thanks to a generous donation from the Mount Diablo Education Foundation we were able to do model Garden lessons so we've kind of found that like professional development for teachers to go out and do Outdoor Ed doesn't usually really work because teachers have so much to do so um so we decided to instead for schools that are wanting to begin a garden education program we will just do a full unit of garden education with their classes and that way the teachers are getting the professional development but the kids at the same time are getting outdoors and getting lessons so it's been really effective it worked really well um this is Marion at Cambridge Elementary and she taught a series of eight lessons over there to train teachers and Hands-On Next Generation science and this is
146her teaching about warms and the kids exploring so it was a really successful pilot we wanted to acknowledge the Mount Diablo Education Foundation and their support um for that um our school Greening projects continue to run strong we had planted the 63 trees last year they're all alive yay we're very happy about that um at Rio Vista and Riverview middle school and and um our our garden educators are really helping to facilitate beautifying their sites which is a real sense of Pride for students and families and we're trying as hard as we can to plant as much Native habitat and pollinator Gardens and drought tolerant Gardens to teach sustainability to our students um we're pleased to say that we got some Regional recognition this year in the form of the Contra Costa leadership and sustainability
147award and we had commendations from supervisor John Goya and the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors and a special Congressional recognition from Congressman Mark desolney so we're really pleased to receive that and I'm going to turn it over to Tamara Helfer the founder of growing healthy kids to just talk a little bit about data which you ask for and we are providing tonight well thank you Lainey and and hello to everybody um yes I'll jump right in we have continued doing a um multi-pronged approach to assessment including teacher surveys student surveys and um some other things I'll buzz through here um so our our teachers continue to love the program they say that we're doing a very good job hitting science standards and wellness standards in um that that are great appropriate um there's a
148whole lot of things in here that you can read at your leisure we won't go through them tonight in the interest of time um 20 000 taste tests this year students continue to find the program highly engaging and they are trying more and more fruits and vegetables and they're liking what they try if you it's something that you introduce in the garden you couldn't necessarily pull it off in the cafeteria but step by step we're getting them there um this year last year we added six new questions in collaboration with Jennifer sex to uh the healthy kids survey for fifth graders about things like access to Nature and fruit and vegetable consumption and uh these are self-reported from the fifth graders and the data really reinforced that lessons outside in the garden uh continue to
149be a critical part of giving our students Equitable access to Safe natural outdoor spaces when they don't have that access at their homes or in other activities and then really finally getting to to the serious data stuff there's a whole lot of information in these slides I'm going to highlight just a little bit of it this is data from the 2122 cast data that's the California science test the formal State of California assessment of fifth graders um we uh of 29 elementary schools 10 Garden education schools 19 non-garden education schools and we found what a lot of other formal assessments have found is that a lot of schools lost ground during the pandemic and we're working our way back up on this page the first statistic shows however if you look at um schools where
150half or more of the students met or exceeded cast standards that is the cast scores of three or four where a higher is a better score 30 percent of schools that had Garden programs achieved this goal 26.3 of non-garden education schools achieved this goal the next stuff on this slide has to do with students who fail to meet the standards which you can study at more at leisure I'll move to the next slide which then documents changes from the 2018-19 school year to last year so uh the cast test was suspended during the pandemic so the this these two school years or the years that we can measure the changes and this there's a lot of different ways of looking at the data um what I'm showing with the first statistic is that if we
151look at which schools had the biggest increase of students who met or exceeded standards we see that 30 percent of garden schools um increase their student performances the most while only 15.8 percent of non-garden schools saw this kind of change we can flip that around and say okay who lost the most grounds since 2018 2019 the next statistic shows that the the decrease the largest decrease the decrease of greater than five percent of students who met or exceeded cast standards were now a lower number is better 20 percent of garden education schools are represented there was 31.6 percent of non-garden schools so um we're seeing shifts it's a really a little bit hard to deal it's new to tell whether or not this will persist whether we can see more movement there was more movement
152into the cast equals two category which is um nearly met standards and it it takes a lot to disentangle whether those are students who moved from the higher you know exceeded standards and slip down to nearly met or if it comes from students who failed who are moving up to nearly met so there's there's a whole lot of subtleties going on when you look at this analysis um this the third slide that I won't go through does address students moving from the lowest standards more data about about trying to move them from the slower lower standards up but um let me just summarize by saying that we're continuing to meet or exceed targets for program assessment to make sure that we're meeting District academic and social emotional goals working really closely with Jennifer as we
153expand to meet more students we're going to continue doing this sort of informal assessment with our teacher surveys our students surveys interviews that are follow-ups so that we know what's working what's not working we've dropped some program elements that are not working as well we're trying to really beef up the program elements that are working well and we're going to continue really looking at the the cast data especially to see what we can do to help improve in the future so um let me tear it back over to you sorry I just wanted to acknowledge Mr Palmer who's here from the education Academy who was it speaking tonight but if it wasn't for Mr Palmer the pilot would have never happened and he does so much for his students it's just incredible including abandoning his
154family to be here just to hit support his students so I just wanted to make sure you got a shout out tonight absolutely so in closing and looking ahead to 22 or I'm sorry 23 24 looking at an expansion of ngss in the garden by at least 50 so as you take a look at the contract that's going to be coming forward in the next couple weeks it's going to be increased because we've got additional schools that have sought us out this is a very rigorous process just because people want to Tinker in the dark garden doesn't mean they immediately jump into the program it's actually a really a deep conversation at that school Community between the administrator and the teachers and then often what we do is we collaborate with regards to even funding
155and so they're working with their PTA PFC they're working with their site counsel if they're supporting it out of lcff or title one so this is not just something that you know folks just overnight they wake up and they give us a call to say hey I got this Garden space come on over it is something that we do certainly plan for and we work through very very very carefully the cdfa grant we really certainly want to continue the field trips adding local Farm Partners to our um to our team and the Outreach making sure that we're making taking those connections and Partnerships and expanding into career pathway Partnerships across our own district is an area that we're very very excited about and I really want to thank the folks that took a leap this
156year and connected with us this could not this work could not be done if we did not have a whole lot of partners that we have connected with over the years that we have been on this journey always a huge thank you to the Mount Diablo board of education for your support as well as all of these folks on the slide everybody from Life lab which is actually a major partner that's what the contract we actually contract with in order to support our garden Educators out at our school sites Mount devil Education Foundation as well as the other groups on this slide so we do appreciate your patience tonight as we've gone through this presentation a pretty quick quip so if you have any questions um the team here is available to answer them so
157thank you thank you so much trustee Mason I just want to say I love the data thank you for that and I have to say I would be remiss if I did not say that this was all started by Rich Clark who used to work for the district in Foster youth services and had a vision for that Riverview lot to make an Edible Garden like they had in Berkeley and then he went and retired on me and dropped it in our lap and we ran with it so I'm glad to see it is growing still so thank you thank you for that and I just want to say thank you a wonderful presentation and I love seeing all of the additional Partnerships and the intergenerational um you know interactions that are happening between students with
158their with their Ed Academy and uh and with Concord High and um the career Partnerships Pathways um just really great work thank you also really quick I just want to add on to that um thank you so much for all the work that you do and um our other community gardens also serve our students um I'm really hopeful for the future of this and how we can expand on this in serving our students with environmental knowledge and environmental and food Justice um so really quick just thank you for all the work that you do and all the work that you continue to do thank you so much 12.5 presentation to raise awareness of the fentanyl National crisis and the impact on students in Mount Diablo Unified School District be honest come on up here um
159besides being Mother's Day um for the Latina and latinx Community it's also fentanyl awareness day um as adopted by our nation um we hate being here uh representing the lives of our kids that were lost recently from fentanyl poisoning all students of Mount Diablo School District um we know this is something that's going to take a little bit more time and a little bit more effort um on our part on the school district's part um taking it to the government and throughout the nation um I'll do it as quickly as I can and we'll keep coming back to the board as needed answer questions and provide slides as needed um probably one of the most important messages is it can happen to you your kid your grandkid our kids are the kids they're the boy
160next door they're the cheerleader they're the valedictorian the head of the chess club fentanyl does not discriminate this is just a quick little thing from the California department and Ed I'll send the slides oh not turning there we go um that knows a different Beast it's so deadly it's equivalent to 50 milligrams of heroin It Only Takes Two granules to kill a human being it's creeping into everything it's it's not just in marijuana or Xanax which is what killed my son it's found on grass at playgrounds it's found on dollar bills that are left on the ground for people to pick up door handles drinks on college campuses these are some of the places that you can find it um it's also killing dogs they're they're picking it up what's an opioid overdose what does
161it look like the person will not wake up they won't respond to your voice or touch the breathing's very slow and irregular you can read a little bit more the pupils or change the lips are turning blue slow heartbeat um my son was alive when I found him I didn't know about that dollar Narcan most of the parents in this District don't know about Fentanyl and Narcan Doug's daughter was saved by Narcan it's our goal that every single family in the district gets Narcan and there's ways for us to do that together the Good Samaritan law if you if you are willing to help and we know what it is we'll just keep going uh naloxone Narcan Narcan is Saving Lives it would have saved my son um it's very easy to administer it's easy
162and available on online to admit to get the training um I did I showed it to my staff at Ignacio Valley high school I forgot to tell you I've been a special education teacher for 26 years in the district my children grew up in the district I'm a graduate from Northgate High School myself um every single person that works in the district from teacher to custodian office staff cafeteria worker needs to know how to administer Narcan they need to carry it with them everywhere they go you all need to have Narcan and you all need to carry it with you everywhere you go might say to somebody you don't know it might save your child or your grandchild it's available to middle school and high school campuses like I said there's ways to get large
163quantities enough for the every school every family at every school what can we do we start with the education we have to let parents and families know students need to know it can happen to them I was passing out flyers at lunch today for fentanyl Awareness Day students came by weird pictures I said this kid died from fentanyl poisoning and that kid was my son and they asked questions and they're like what's fentanyl what's Narcan who can it hurt it can hurt everybody that's the message we have to get out so these are three of the four kids from Northgate that died from fentanyl poisoning in the last couple years uh the fourth one the the parents um did not want uh the picture and and any media media um um to be honest daughter
16414 years old from Concord High School passed away recently as well um we are a part where a small group of a larger part of people that can help go into schools educate trained staff um I'm being asked to speak to other school district boards we have a non-profit that has been working to educate schools families students get Narcan into your hands and get narcanon to every family's uh hands in the um in the school district um and that's really it I'm happy to send the slides we are all happy to go into schools talk to any parent um and do training as necessary thanks for your time thank you Dusty count I just want to say thank you so much for for coming and sharing your story um I was just at the ybpta
165meeting a couple nights ago and um yeah so yeah we were many of us were there Elizabeth um and um Alex Hernandez had asked Linda Pete to come and do the presentation that she did at dlac for the parents um uh at yv um but I think you're right that it's it's going to take all of us to get the word out to all of us um just you know us us posting in one place or another you know is not going to reach everybody and the personal stories that you share are so powerful um so I think together we can we can share this with so many more people so thank you foreign sentiment thank you so much um I'm sorry that you're put in the position to be in this kind of advocate
166but I'm very glad um that you are willing to speak up your slides are public um so to everyone who's watching if you go to our agenda and under 12.5 and today's agenda is the slides it's attached um so it's there for everyone who can see um yeah thank you I just want to thank you all for coming and for and for sharing and um and we'll continue to work with with Miss Pete on on getting the word out in the in the district and if we can if we can work together on getting Narcan um in every in every home or make it available for for all of our families then um I think I I speak on behalf of the board we are we are open to doing that and are more than
167willing to put in the late work and and to do that so thank you so much 13.0 board member reports while I was driving here I heard Dr Clark say this is a 10 o'clock meeting let's try and beat him so trustees I encourage you to be succinct and brief with the most important things that you would like to share um I'll start with trustee McFerrin you're in luck um I did not prepare a report this evening great I should note that you know I just came from the East Coast so I don't know how long I've been awake make it to 10 that'll be great trustee Mason and I will just say that I was invited to visit Hidden Valley enjoyed the visit very much and then I was invited to go to Oak
168Grove for their showcase and I enjoyed that as well thank you you guys are being really quick um trustee Mayo I had a report prepared um I think the most important thing for me to share with you is that I attended the self State selpa advocacy day with the special education oh special education uh folks uh from our community advisory committee uh I was going to share with you all of the bills that they presented to our legislators we presented to um assembly member um Rebecca Bauer Khan we went to assembly member weeks we went to assembly member Grayson the assembly member Grayson actually met with us personally which was very commendable and listened to our team of presenters and then we also met with superintendent um Senator glazier's office there were 13 bills that
169we addressed with each of the legislators and I feel that we were heard we had an outstanding team with chair Dorothy weisenberg Lisa buffum Rachel Levy Heather Martin and Melody Royale and Dr agili so it was a great event and um we're going to be watching them closely thank you Bill let's go to Appropriations this month that's where bills go to die or live hopefully they all live yes um trustee count uh let's see just a few highlights because I think I've shared things earlier in the meeting already um I did get the chance to tour the Oakland School District newcomer Enrollment Center with some members of mdusd staff and from refugees in transition and it's an excellent learning opportunity for our staff to look at how our systems work because they their school district
170has had a larger number of refugee and immigrant populations for a longer time than us and so we get to learn from what they've been through over the last number of years and hit the ground running much more easily also right before this meeting was able to attend the tis advisory panel I know trustee Mason was there as well um which is just wonderful to see that the purpose is to provide information about the supports that are provided to teachers clearing their credentials through our program through their program um and they also gain input from district and Community stakeholders to deepen knowledge of the needs the community has for early career teachers and the program and seeing hearing about their mission and vision um of um really mentoring and preparing in a very individual way
171each of the new brand new teachers in our district and and some of the people on the call were had formally gone through the program and they said they're still a teacher to this day in our district probably because the program exists in our districts um and the strong support that they felt in that first year so that was really great to hear and other than that I'll hope to see many of you tomorrow night at the Medea Awards of Excellence event thank you trustee nabo Flores I'll try to make a brief but um everything that I say and everything that I always share out is always with an intention and it always is with emotive so um just really quick I want to start off with what I um what's been going on lately
172so of course like I am still a full-time student so um I'm all I'm in school I'm doing my stuff that I have to do but also a lot of things are going on with like the end of the year so I kind of just want to reflect on that so first of all I want to share that I attended um are Association for Odessa Educators last meeting um last week and we just shared like a goals of how we want to expand and really quick I um I would just want to go over one of their mission statements um that is really prominent and really really vital to the things that we as the school board also stand for and that's to sustain and assess the need for NASA students and families in regards
173to culturally sustaining curriculum and pedagogy and to develop critical Consciousness and equity and Equity lens To Boldly disrupt and interrupt institutionalize racism so again going back to um the recent policies and the recent work that we've been doing here as a school board and diversifying our school our social studies curriculum we are like um just um president president and say we share with us we are a progressive board we are doing change and we are doing what we have to do to make sure that our students are receiving high quality education with um in the aspects of equity and of course educational Justice that being said um going back to um and US diversifying our school curriculum I also want to take this opportunity to encourage all staff employees to continue to educate not just
174their students but also themselves with appropriate teachings and restorative practices May 5th was last week and a lot of people tend to think of it as Mexico's independence day and also take this opportunity to do an act on negative stereotypes and stigmas of the Mexican culture and why I bring this up again is because through education we can combat those stereotypes and that and negative stigmas and stereotypes and narrative around people of color specifically and educate to see a world where we can we can seek prosperity and honor and recognition of our cultures and our heritage right now what's going on like towards the end of the school year of course is like AP testing so I I think we are like kind of ending off on that um but I want to say that
175yesterday I took my AP English Language and Composition test and I saw a lot of student students there of course um but also I saw some District um District employees so just want to recognize that um with that happening and also like throughout the year we prepare for the AP exam and also right now towards the end of the year State Testing is happening throughout our elementary schools our middle schools and in our high school levels with our Juniors um with these two subjects relating with each other it's really we come back to a an idea that we have to always remind ourselves and that is making sure that our students are being equipped with a strong foundational knowledge and um with the students the teacher shortage that we have unfortunately been um been enduring
176um it really does impact our students in their learning and having that foundational knowledge and um to equip them with the right tools and resources to be successful um we are we are making um progress and addressing that but more importantly implementing better pro-educational program and expanded learning programs for students to enhance that knowledge and to continue to learn outside of school and again with the AP it's in State Testing your score as a student also with like academic like facing academic like validation and stuff like that um to remind everyone that your score does not reflect on your character nor your knowledge it's more of what you got out of that the discipline the perseverance that's what really does matter at the end of the day of course with the knowledge but the way
177that you were able to persevere through that and the skills that you gained with it um I want to quickly just share that um with our previous discussion with um chief of Education Jennifer Sachs we are we were looking for student input in regards to our El Cap goals and we create as with the student advisory committee we created a survey where over 500 responses from all over the school district this includes the high schools the continuation schools middle schools and elementary schools Fifth and fourth graders have taken it and provided their feedback on what works what keeps them coming to school and what they want to see change what do they want to see in the future and a really common theme it goes along with mental health with equipping our students and preserving
178our learning programs that do work and expanding on them but more importantly it's they always say that the thing that it comes back to the system that's put in place that of course being our teachers being the curriculum that we are being offered and how we can expand on them a lot of students advocated for anti-racism trainings and anti-biases trainings and really spoke up about the need to ensure that acceptance and that sense of belonging in our school district in a multicultural and a multi-linguistic community and School District it's really important that we have staff and teachers and employees and students that are able to live amongst each other and encourage our heritage and our uniqueness that being said our Multicultural rally for Mount Diablo High School is this Friday I'm going to be the
179emcee and I want to encourage take this opportunity to encourage all of you to attend I saw uh make iron mcfarian last um last year there um and again the whole this is what we do best this is what we do best at our school and the whole reason of that is the whole sense of community and also that sense of um like that emotion of belonging where we are ourselves and we are able to be prideful in our diversity so as my school year comes to an end and also as my role comes to an end um and also appointing Susana Barrios as the next student board member just reflecting back on everything that we do here as the board and everything that um the student board member experience has and that again is
180having an um an ongoing learning experience um where we question and concern have concerns around the education system but the really powerful thing about being a student board member is that you have a voice you have a seat at the table where you can make that change and advocate for that change so um just to wrap everything up I really just hope that we are able to end off the year strong with action and with Justice thank you thank you so much um I just want to first um appreciate and recognize and congratulate all the folks who were recognized at the top of the meeting I saw it I heard it um so to our classified employees to our um our new student board member that's that's the one I regret the most I'm not
181making it I was driving fast too but um and anyone else not naming doesn't mean I wasn't watching it just means I don't remember at this time but I saw it and I want to congratulate everyone and appreciate you um next Tuesday is the Mount Diablo Unified School District black excellence awards um at Concord High School and I will be there and I hope you all are too if you can it's at six o'clock um and I'll just leave it at that Dr Clark thank you and I um those who know me know I like to I usually talk in blocks of an hour um so [Laughter] Theresa laughs no I'm joking so I won't be an hour tonight but I do have I do have a few updates um just always as we come
182to the end of the of this year just reflecting on our on our lcap goals we have a um we have a lengthy lcap with with many goals uh many metrics that we use and um and and we are required to share those out in a formal matter and I know that uh Miss Sachs and her team does does a great job at that and right now we're in the process of writing our lcap for next year as we're closing this one out um and then just also just want to just pay homage to our CCE triangle that reflects those goals in our lcap and I really want to show you kind of just just as as we end this year how our how our lcap kind of um um you know lives through our
183students and and through their successes so this is just the celebrations that we have coming up we have our uh military ball this weekend um uh career pathway showcase um I have over um well over 200 certificates in my office that I've been signing today for this uh for this career Pathways showcase and um and for the the work that those students are doing so as as we look at preparing our students for College and Career um you know here goes things everything on here is is a culmination of students being ready for college or career so um with the career pathway showcase we have the black Excellence award night we're also uh president and zaywe and I also will be holding a online Town Hall but we're going to be we're going to be
184doing we're going to be doing both so uh we'll we'll figure it out um we also on the 17th have our have our celebration of success probably one of the um you know one of the just um so in such an inspiring night where um you know our students with disabilities a staff member um throughout the throughout the district recognizes one of those students and so we're going to bring them all together on May 17th and and celebrate them and then you have all of our all of our many many graduations um and again this is this is the work that we do is preparing our young people to to go off into um you know life after after high school and um and and one thing I I also want to highlight is it's
185not just graduating from our comprehensive sites right regardless of of how you earn your diploma your certificate your GED we you know we are going to support you we're going to recognize you and we're going to celebrate you for um for your achievements so um so we have lots of lots of activities over the next couple weeks but this is all um this is all good and exciting um you know good and exciting things another one of our of our El Cap goals and I think you saw it tonight I think it was um it was you know I was sitting here I had you know kind of tears in my eyes and I do this stuff for the last 29 years so it's it's you know it's just par for the course for us
186but to hear folks who who don't um get to see individuals in our profession recognize and to hear our student board member talking about it to hear one of the parents talking about the reaction that they get and seeing um you know just the pride that that our employees and employees who who have the Good Fortune to work with young people take in their work and whether it's a bus driver or a custodian or a teacher or principal or a district office staff you know we all we all really carry that so so with this goal really about high quality um you know culturally proficient responsive staff this is just some of the you know we're going to spend all night tomorrow hearing about Educators throughout our district um you know we have two teachers
187that are the county um up for County teacher of the year we have two classified employees that are up for County that that have been chosen County um classified teachers of the year without even mentioning all these folks Dana Tarantino received a very very distinguished award um that I was able to attend along with her family last week the um the occult teacher trust award I probably shouldn't say this in public but she received a a large check for herself usually when Educators receive a check it's like okay this is for school supplies this is for a trip then these folks said no this is for you for doing a bang-up job you go and treat yourself or your family for something special and so just a very inspiring night and there were three there
188were three Educators from throughout Contra Costa County and and we had one of them um um we have Judith um I've been practicing this name sosanowski um again these two and Sandy uh kawamara are from our adult adult education program and again Bay Area chapter of excellence and teaching award California state excellence and support services award um our our Prospect High School teacher Elizabeth Libby McDonough not only did she get the 2023 California Education Association Plus region four feature of the year she also got it for the state and again these are folks in our district working with young people each and every day Olympic Olympic High School behavioral health specialist Carrie Carrie uh boot check California continuation Education Association recognized her um you know she was recognize down in San Diego at their at
189their annual conference um and then and then again these are just some of our of our unsung heroes coffee with counselors this is something that they've done already twice this year they do it on their own time Saturdays these are Spanish-speaking counselors they went out to Shore Acres and hosted this for you know for family again we we heard earlier the young man in the front row came and spoke to us again the importance of having a counselor or an adult who understands your culture understands your experience and can and can help you and so these um for you know these coffee with the counselors again this is um you know the second time they've done it this year and uh just hats off to them for you know taking um you know taking a
190proactive step to really going out and working with with their communities and then and then just one of many but our our health our health care careers pathway certified nursing assistance program had a big graduation not long ago and just um you know recognize them so again aside from all that we did tonight aside from this being Teacher Appreciation Week I know we have many more um just employees that are being you know recognized at the at the you know local regional state level um here here in our district and so that's how those goals that we that we talk about that's how they come to fruition and that's what they look like in real life and but that that concludes my report all right thank you so much congratulations to all of these staff
191okay 15.0 is a consent calendar um the consent agenda and what is wrong with my thing there we go thank you items listed under consent agenda are considered routine and will be approved adopted by a single motion there's no separate discussion um however we can remove an item upon the request of any member of the board and act upon it separately um I see a note to be removed to pool item 15.17 and I'm wondering if that wants to be oh you did okay I was just going to remind folks that we can ask questions without removing it okay or is it removed to not oh it's gone oh see thanks for catching me up sorry for being a step behind so does anyone else want to remove anything if not I'll entertain a motion
192I'll move that we approve the consent agenda as presented for a consent agendaitis trustee Nava Flores yes and that motion passes unanimously all right business 18.0 I mean or 18.1 review and potential approval of Standards aligned history social science materials for elementary history social science instruction yeah so if you remember before President we we did high school we did middle school and um now the littles the The Best For Last elementary school and you were right on earlier when you mentioned that we've updated our social studies curriculum stayed adopted and now um we're gonna we're gonna hear all about it good evening Board of Education and also Dr Clark uh before the educational services department is here to present you move the microphone closer to your thank you the educational services department is here to
193present for the review and potential approval of Standards aligned history social science materials for elementary history social science instruction and in the interest of time we're going to go as quickly as possible because you were able to review the process from the last time so I will go ahead and push through and get to the slide that we're all hoping to look at and give you kind of an idea of what the vote shook out and I wanted to definitely honor the questions that both of you had last time and talk a little bit about um looking at this pie graph you see it was a bit of a landslide and if you look at some of the things that were mentioned in the discussion uh that Savas was the choice and that sabbas was
194actually um Superior in a number of ways but mainly in the way that the website is is navigated and the digital materials but you can go ahead and see there's other things of things as well that were um a favorable that were the Sabbath had on its side in the decision making thank you I'll move on from there this was the students the Student Response similar also a pretty wide margin for status and then to answer your questions about the parents and uh just wanted we actually went straight to our publisher and there's lots of information that that parents can access to help them at home yeah support their students okay any other questions I'll go ahead here's our team they were very strong team and um did a great job it's I've said it
195before it's a lot of work to be a pilot teacher so we're very grateful for the work that they did great representation receive a stipend they do not receive a stipend but we do pay them on a timesheet yes yes they get paid oh yeah we would never ask teachers to work after after their hours and so there's the nitty-gritty right there any questions not really a question but just more of a comment from from your presentation um I just want to appreciate um the the diversity of the of the committee and the and the teachers that you had a diversity of teachers and um also School sites and Geographic areas um which I think when you have a more diverse group of people at the table you're going to make the best decision for
196all for all and so um so seeing that and then seeing the the landslide of pie charts and the reasoning um makes it very clear to us you know how this um came through and I appreciate that that the the Spanish materials are available there and that we had dual language teachers that were part of part of the pilot as well so it was very exciting we don't consider any product that does not have a mirrored Spanish product as well any other questions thank you for providing information about the parent resources I think that's very important I agree I appreciate the question because it gave me some time to go back and find it with that I would like to move to approve the standards aligned history social science materials for elementary history social science
197instruction s yes and that passes unanimously and I just want to say trustees we shouldn't take for granted or take like we should know what a big deal that we pass you know true history curricula and we know that many kids across the country will not have the opportunity to learn the full and true history World American or otherwise so thank your team for all the work and I'm so glad to serve with you all thank you 18.2 review and potential approval of Arts music instructional materials one-time block grants all right good evening again all right so Arts music instructional materials block grant um this block grant allocates one-time funding to school districts to use between now and 2026 for five specific purposes um one of the requirements as we do bring a very general
198plan to the board of education for your review and approval the state did not even give us a template for this effort they just said that make sure we're giving you these funds Bring It Forward and make sure you assess your needs and you account for the um the plan accordingly it's the information you're going to see is totally aligned again with our goals from our lcap as well as our triangle as we like to refer to it so there's a bit of a misnomer with this one-time block grant there's actually five areas of focus Arts and Music is actually fully embedded in that first area you have to kind of search for it but there it is Visual and Performing Arts but it also really is all about standards align instructions standards Allied professional
199development so it's very robust what is asking us to do and to spend our money on as we go through it's also about obtaining professional development for improving School climate as well as developing diverse and culturally relevant multilingual School library collections which I appreciate that really connects to certain things our our student trustees shared this evening but it also goes into operational costs including things such as Retirement and health care as well as covid items so even though the title is Arts and Music and instructional materials it's a bit of the kitchen sink one time we'll tell you a block grant so we did take that into account we actually took the opportunity to reach out to our school sites they sent this survey to their leadership team members as well as their staff in
200order to collect some feedback in order to determine how best to kind of organize these fundings into these specific areas this is not just one Grant in isolation we're really looking at activities that is a blending of different funding sources if you take a look at actually in the consent item there is a purchase of Promethean boards for example we are hoping that with the plan that's going to be approved tonight and that item it says pending we might be able to utilize These funds in order to support that effort along with other funding sources so again the learning recovery block grant is one that does not need to come to the board but it is an area we're going to be building in some educational programs into this is connected to prop 28 which
201is very much connected to supporting very specifically the Arts in our schools this is connected to some activities and items that is embedded within our educator Effectiveness grant that we'd like to continue into the future and then you see the alert or other funding sources that we are actually blending together one area is also our a to G block grant which actually ends for certain positions in 2024 we want to make sure that we take a look at other funding sources for those so again it's as you're looking at things you want them to continue you're really maximizing these different multi-year sources to support the efforts so what did our staff identify as areas of need everything from making sure we continue to upgrade our adopted materials and so thank you again tonight for your
202attention to that matter um the culturally relevant classroom libraries and our library books that popped up on a lot of the different surveys from the school sites something we certainly took a look at supplemental novels we did bring forward for your approval our wonderfully a columned list to make sure that we diversify those that popped up foundational literacy materials digital tools facility upgrades additional materials and supports for the Arts of course that was something that we knew is going to pop up what also kind of popped up is supporting of the visual arts through let's say taking a look at our speakers in our sound systems at our different multi-use rooms um actually Dr Clark and I sometimes joke we go to present some places and it's almost using a karaoke machine in order to
203have a town hall and things such as that so how do we work together with our our maintenance team in order to make sure that as we build out these spaces that we do have you know proper equipment for our Performing Arts as well as our community meetings so again the state did not provide us a template so what we did do is we actually were working with a collaborative team across uh the state in order to see you know how best to present this information on the board um item you do see kind of more of a narrative as well as this balcony level uh budget plan uh our first area is really taking on Arts and Music support we're involved in developing a strategic plan for our district it's a multi-year plan to
204really not only take on visual Performing Arts now but also deter helping us get poised and ready for what we're going to be receiving in 2324 out of our prop 28 funds so it's not just funding we're just randomly spending on the Arts but something that we can really utilize in a coherent manner adoption of instructional materials utilizing quite a bit of funding there in order to make sure we continue on this positive movement to make sure we've got updated materials in the hands of our students as well as addressing the needs around foundational literacy our supplemental reading materials what we would like to do is to make sure that we allow our sites to have some ownership of that taking a look at their own libraries so we are taking a look at a
205per pupil funding amount depending on the enrollment at each of our schools to make sure that then that can then be built into a budget that they have access to so they could actually open up the school year with these materials in hand we know that it's not without support from our instructional media assistant specifically our warehouse team in order to ensure that all of our items are properly inventoried so we knew that's going to require some extra assistance and I really want to acknowledge our I.T Department because they have really been working hard with our technology plan to make sure that we continue with one-on-one one-to-one devices that we continue to identify areas to have replenishment plans and also our our schools will not continue to have to fundraise for their own Promethean boards
206their own screens their own projectors those sorts of things bringing everybody into this Century in order to make sure that we've got highly engaging materials and equipment for our classrooms and our teachers this last piece is a bit of a question the governors May revise could be a reduction it might be up to 30 percent of this particular funding source so instead of being caught off card I know we've taken our heads okay again instead of being taken off guard we just itemized that down into that bottom row and then what we will do is if we do receive that funding we will utilize it in order to support the activities there but in the narrative I also identified things such as the speakers and such as a couple of the other activities that actually
207enrich some of the programs and activities and items that are included on this list um field trips speakers sound systems assessing may possibly some you know curtains on the stage those things that make those areas for our performers um more welcoming so what's the next step with the plan well um as you hopefully will approve this tonight so we can start spending some of this money we're going to assess the impact of the governor's revise and that's really going to be coming to us in a matter of just days uh complete the draft of the Strategic Arts plan which will help inform some of the work allocate funding for the School site so they can start purchasing things in order to get their classrooms poised and ready for the opening collaborate with our T department
208on purchasing and the training on Promethean boards um they've really been quite aggressive with regards to planning for current training right now with the boards that we have now and then taking a look at how do we take this on in phases to make sure that these are just not big boards we throw up in there to utilize for anything except just display but they really interact with it in such a way to make sure our students are getting that level of instruction and then convene of course adoption committees we're looking at the fall we're taking a look at 6th through 12th grade English language arts as well as English language development we're very excited about that so those are our next steps with regards to putting this Arts music instructional materials block grant into
209play that being said I be able for questions if you have them when you uh discussed sound systems um was there any request from teachers for the individual teacher microphones in the classrooms the survey that we um that was the information that was submitted back to us that was not itemized as a need I do really want to say that our school sites have built or purchased them across the district in many many schools if it is something that is requested they generally are the first point of contact to make sure that they are able to meet that need was not something that popped up on the survey though okay okay because I have seen it personally make a difference for many students so thank you I don't see any other questions thank you thank
210you I have another question sorry I was trying to let other people jump in um okay let's see not many don't worry um but I just was looking at um the different areas of support and I appreciate your other attachment that breaks it out into how much would be spent per year from 2022 to 2026. um that was some good information and um just looking at the the items that are kind of the smaller amounts the Arts and Music support and then also the um extra support for um for IMA um if As you move forward more needs are identified in those two areas will you have the flexibility to make shifts between the areas here we can have that flexibility if this is again a plan in itself it's not necessarily an itemized expenditure
211chart we can also once we know the governors May revise if we feel that some of those do need to be beefed up that will allow us that flexibility which is why we have the language that it could be utilized for the activities above so that's why I know in certain situations this looks a little bit maybe a little bit more vague or a little bit looser than maybe what we like to see in the plan but at the same time with that level of uncertainty and that language around we can then adjust the funds accordingly we stick with the Integrity of what the plan is and then at the same time we have that level of flexibility okay that's great to know just because when I'm looking at the specifics that are listed you
212know like under Arts and Music support support for area festivals new instruments Instrument Repair you it may be that um as you develop the cost there that it's it may be you know more than what you have allocated in that specific piece but there if there's flexibility then I think that's um I think that's a good thing and I and overall the the different items that you have here I think make a lot of sense um as you know as they're all things that you received it when you were surveying staff so I appreciate that I I appreciate your being prudent around the possible reduction in the grant allocation and my future concern would be that might be a consideration in the next years as well so it you know there's even though we may
213have some good news this year there might be something coming down the pike later I mean I just was appalled by this proposal I would like to make a motion that we approve the Arts and Music instructional materials one-time block grant plan as presented second trusting all the floors yes and that passes unanimously 18.3 review of update to board policy 511 residency I don't think there's a presentation for this I think it's just info okay it's just information do we have any items of discussion about this you see that in the on the agenda is the redlined version so you can see the changes and I'll assume in a future meeting next month or so we will be approving it or not so it looks like there's no questions let's move on 18 point Four
214review of update to administrative regulation 5113 regarding excused absences in accordance with California Education Code 48205 adding in political or Civic actions same thing just info only the idea I heard this bill in committee last year because it was in the same committees as child care and the idea that there are some members who were opposed to this was just appalling to me so I just wanted you all to know that I'm excited that it's here it's a great move and we need to encourage civic participation so I appreciate it all right we will get to approve that at a later meeting as well 18.5 review updates to board policy 6173 and administrative regulation 6173 education for homeless children and just information only thank you you'll be seeing a lot of these because we're catching
215up yeah yeah all right no questions we're good so we will take that up in a future date so the hey we're gonna okay 18.6 review and potential approval of resolution 2223-57 to notify certain classified employees of the decision to not re-employ or to reduce their hours for the 23-24 school year so Dr Rubio is supposed to be walking through that door okay so we'll we'll go here he comes oh there's [Laughter] you didn't expect us to fly through those policies um so we're on yes item 18.6 correct yeah so we are bringing forward uh tonight this is the final layoff notices on March 8th the board did approve the initial layoff notices that were carried out and delivered uh per California Education Code and so we're just coming back tonight to complete that process
216if the board approves we will deliver those final layoff notices I would make a motion to approve resolution 22-23-57 to notify certain classified employees of the decision to not re-employ or to reduce their hours for the 2023-2024 school year second trustee Nava Flores yes I did have a question on this I'm I'm fine with the vote okay um I guess I haven't recalled including individuals names on resolutions like this rather than the employee identification number and so I just I did ask the question by email earlier but you know it's been a busy week so is this the normal practice I will have to look into that and I can get you an answer okay thank you that resolution passes um that means are there any um items recommended for future agendas yes um I
217would like to suggest an information item on the process for um exploring um uh potentially putting a parcel tax on um on the ballot so I'm just I don't know that much about the process and I would be really interested if that's something that um the staff might be able to put together for us so yeah we can do internally we can go over the process with staff and then this will allow the board to have a discussion on this item so so just so we're clear we'll do it in-house we're not bringing in a demographer or a bowler or anything like that but we'll we'll do an in-house presentation yeah anything else well then look at that Dr Clark you were wrong this meeting is adjourned all right