Board Meeting 02 22 2023 part 2

001I'd like to reconvene into Open Session um I'll begin with our land acknowledgment we recognize that mount that the Mount Diablo School District sits on the territory of The confederated Villages of Lee Sean The ancestral and unseated land of the bay Miwok and Northern yokit the successors of The Sovereign Verona band of Contra Costa County as members of the mdusd community it is vitally important that we not only recognize the history of the land on which we learn but also we recognize that the land we inhabit and learn on is the ancestral land of these people who are alive and flourishing members of mdusd and broader Bay Area communities today as we head into the end of black history month I would also like to acknowledge that upon this stolen land I acknowledge that the

002foundation of the United States of America was built upon the forced labor of stolen black Africans and their descendants although the horror horrors of chattel slavery ended only Generations ago the Legacy and aftermath of enslavement persisted through reconstruction Jim Crow and remained today through persistent contemporary systemic anti-blackness we recognize that our nation punished black Africans and their descendants for learning to read during child slavery that junk and false Neuroscience promoted the belief that black people were not intelligent and therefore intellectually inferior to White dominant culture that Jim Crow laws allowed for black schools to receive little to no resources compared to their white counterparts that the desegregation of schools forced black children to leave their communities to integrate white schools with the sanctioned educational malpractice and psychological harm and abuse that followed and never the

003the other way around resulting in way too many black children today rarely being taught by black Educators acknowledge that modern policies like prop 209 and No Child Left Behind harmed black children and were only made possible because of our nation's Unapologetic history of anti-black policies and practices we I understand that the way black children and their families are often treated in public schools dismisses children's black children's Brilliance and creativity cultural capital and disrespects the expertise of black parents and family members but we know black children are brilliant and worthy and their families are resilient you can rise to say the Pledge of Allegiance we've review and 6.2 review and potential approval of minutes from the regular Boardman meeting family motion Madam president I move to approve the minutes for the regular board meeting I will

004check with that Justina the Flores that passes 5-0 with our trustee do not trustee concurring 6.3 review and a potential approval of the agenda are we cool yeah no change okay I make a motion that we approve the agenda as presented second trust you have a florist test her microphone their microphone trustee Nava Flores his microphone isn't working foreign student board member all right report out on our closed session 7.1 negotiations the board may discuss negotiations and provide direction to its Representatives regarding represented employees pursuant to government code section 549-57.6 and we received information um 7.2 dismissed discipline dismissal release or reassignment of Public Employee government code section 54957b1 in in a closed session by a vote of 5-0 and no abstentions the board took action to approve the resignation of employee ID number 41449

005for their agreement [Music] um and or and the expulsions were finished sure oh and we have one more um we also in a closed session by a vote of five to zero the board took action to non-reelect employee IDs number numbers 39127-45944 -27635-46105 effective June 30th 2023. I'll skip ahead and come back to 7.3 and go to 7.5 existing litigation conference with legal counsel paragraph one of subdivision D of government code section 54956.9 Mount Diablo Unified School District versus Clayton Valley Charter High School at all Contra Costa Superior Court case msc15-00574 we received information okay so we'll go to seven point to 7.4 is that what you're asking Justie Mason yes okay 7.4 expulsion of student 9-23 from Mount Diablo Unified School District Madam president I moved the board approved the expulsion of student nine

006point Dash or 9-23 and the student prior to readmission the student is expected to complete the rehabilitation plan set forth by June 2023 the student must participate in 20 hours of counseling to address drug use anxiety and Trauma and the student must show evidence of a successful School experience with no suspendable infractions earn 30 credits maintain a 2.0 GPA or better and have a 90 percent attendance rate I'll second that yeah trustee pond yes should I see me sorry trusting Mayo yes trustee McFerrin yes trustee makes mason yes and I vote Yes that passes five zero now 7.3 and now I move the board approve the expulsion for student 08-23 prior to readmission student08-23 is required to meet the following conditions participate in 20 hours of counseling to address empathy safety and decision making and

007show evidence of a successful School experience with no suspendable infractions earn 30 credits maintain a 2.0 GPA or better and have a 90 attendance rate second trusty count yes trusty mail yes trustee McFerrin yes trustee Mason yes and I vote Yes that passes 5-0 thank you madam president no problem we can be flexible now we have public comment 8.0 public comment the public May address the board regarding any item not on the agenda Alice Allison Fahey um good evening I'm Allison figgy I'm here to present to you postcards that were written by certificated staff around the district I think we all can agree that we would all like what is best for our students that means ensuring that all students have credentialed teachers available to teach them certificated Librarians Librarians to help them access literature

008and encourage lifelong readers School nurses to help maintain standard of care speech therapists to help develop the next best order Mount Diablo needs to do more to attract and retain all needed staff to serve our students at Concord High where I teach they currently have five open positions without a credential teacher that means every period 160 students are not being served with a qualified teacher that is just at one school had one type of position at the school with openings currently listed are 33 M Medea openings in the district now is time to act we can't wait to hire people on the first day of school it is imperative that the district leadership takes action not just to hire new staff members but to take action to keep staff we have I urge you to

009read all the narratives from across the district to see how certificated staff are feeling act with a sense of urgency and think of ways to retain the staff we do have while recruiting new staff yes School Staffing shortages are nationwide but ask yourself why then what actions can this board take to help solve the problem as a teacher I am asked all the time what actions and steps I take to solve a problem now it's your turn our students deserve the best your actions as the board need to reflect that problem thank you Olivia Rivera amen astardes High School good evening I am Olivia Rivera and I'm a mother of a student from Ignacio Valley High School even an organ High School and I am here because I found out that the only school counselor

010that knows the Hispanic culture and speaks Spanish fluently is being moved to Northgate High School s and we are keeping two new counselors that don't speak Spanish and don't know about our culture is and I think that's not fair I think there's not and not any no kind of equity in here is and I'm here on behalf of other parents that were not able to be here tonight but that support the same situation that I'm presenting to you tonight Latinos and I would like for this person to remain at the school because it's very helpful for us as the Latin culture is and I believe that only then there will be equity in all the schools um foreign and for today it's all I'm here the uh for today is the only thing that I

011would like to request but I am willing to get back here if you need to hear more about why we need this gracias thank you thank you oops okay Jane voucher in low board members good to see you again um I'm Jane balcinlo I teach at Sequoia Middle School and I've been teaching for over 30 years today is a job as a teacher it's just gotten harder there are bigger classes and student behaviors are more challenging than ever since when I started over 30 years ago we need qualified teachers to support our district the teachers can't teach without preps or or with extra students you just had a town hall last night where you saw how disruptive and disturbing problems students can be we need qualified teachers so that our students succeed how can we

012get qualified teachers you might ask we can pay teachers a competitive salary pay full benefits of a hundred percent and support teachers who have students with difficult behaviors teachers are leaving our district for other districts that have better pay and better health insurance coverage please consider these things as you try to fill what I think are over really 40 vacancies because you aren't counting the par the the substitute the long-term Subs that are in the classes you're not even counting those on your Edge join so there's really more than 37 empty spots in your District right now and there's going to be more next year so I I beg of you as a teacher who's going to retire in a couple of years in about three four years and no one's there to replace me

013because this job has gotten so hard and the only way to make it easier is by making smaller class sizes better pay better health insurance and keeping it more competitive so that we get the teachers at our school district instead of having them go to other school districts thank you thank you Linda Ortega thank you good evening my name is Linda Ortega I'm the Medea vice president and I'm speaking here tonight because I attended the town hall meeting last night at Pine Hollow Middle School and just like many of you I was appalled about what I heard and how our students are being treated and bullied and harmed our schools are supposed to be a safe place and the adults are supposed to provide that our teachers are are trained to share what they see

014and what they hear and they give that information to their administrators we have administrators that would tell our teachers oh don't worry about it I'll take care of it and then nothing happens and then the teachers will bring it up again and then they're told you are a troublemaker leave it alone or then they'll be called in you're now reprimanded I've had to be in those those meetings this could be avoided we need to listen and do something our students need to know that the adults in their life have their back and our teachers need to know that their administrators have their back and will do what's right for our students I also want to bring to life something I've I've shared with some of you already is I am a Mexican-American descent and I

015I am aware of some of the comments that are made and it's hurtful and I also have been receiving phone calls from our own teachers teachers of color of different backgrounds and they've shared with me not only are our students getting these racist remarks but our own teachers and when they also bring this up nothing is done so I I want to bring this to light you as the leaders of this District please know that this needs to stop I don't know what the plan is I I'm relying on you to bring up the plan but I know this has to stop because our schools need to be that safe place thank you thank you Julia Jameson funny that hello uh members of the board Dr Clark thank you for your time my name is

016Julia Jameson and I'm here tonight as an English teacher at Mount Diablo High School where we started the year with seven vacancies actually we started the year with six vacancies and then we increased to seven vacancies because some of our classes were so overfilled that we needed to add a position in the English Department I was actually the member who was directly affected by those overages the other part of this story we're now down to three which sounds great well not great but it sounds good but the other part of the story is that only two of those seven vacancies were actually filled by hiring someone the other two that no longer exist were resolved by taking opportunity for classes away from students we started the year without a computer science teacher as our computer

017science teacher had been promoted to be one of our vice principals we advertised for a computer science teacher and shockingly couldn't find one until about November and by that time the decision had been made that it was better for students to be moved into other classes for most of those sections and keep only I believe the most advanced class only the seniors and of course our vice president principal was actually doing double duty and was functionally teaching that class doing everything but supervising the students in class in order to ensure that those seniors who had completed two years of a three-year pathway could complete that opportunity um the other classes were disbanded and once we were able to hire a teacher in November uh the classes were reopened second semester but that means that four

018sections worth of students lost a semester of computer science because there was no teacher we also lost our French teacher we started the year with a French vacancy and it was a 60 vacancy so we had one section of French two and two sections of French one they spent all semester without a teacher and again at the semester the decision was made to collapse the French Classes the French one classes and so students no longer have the opportunity to take French one at Mount Diablo High School and the French 2 class only was able to continue to exist because one of our teachers took a 1.2 so the district has vacancies and while some of those vacancies are actually being mitigated by hiring some of those vacancies also are being mitigated on the backs of

019students and teachers students shouldn't lose the opportunity to take a class and teachers shouldn't have to step up and work overtime in order to solve for hiring problems hiring problems should be solved by the people who are responsible for hiring teachers and the people who are responsible for making employment in this District attractive enough to keep the teachers who already work here that's you all thank you very much thank you Catherine Wally good evening members of the board I'm Catherine Wally resident of Walnut Creek I grew up near Diablo View Middle School attending schools in this district and spending summer afternoons biking with my friends to the Clayton Market on Main Street my parents chose to raise me here because they thought it was a place that would prepare me for my future but even

020as a kid I could tell that my school family and Community were ill-equipped to prepare me for to make sense of and effectively respond to the injustices I could see around me one afternoon I distinctly remember coming home from elementary school distressed about the anti-blackness I observed in school and in society at Large my mom still recounts my saying how unfair it was that white people were treated better that our bodies were my highly valued that opportunities were inequitably afforded people like me and how these outcomes mapped onto race my mom not having the language to help me work through it responded in ways that she like many of my teachers had been taught to think and discuss race color blindness she tried to explain that everyone regardless of skin color was equally valuable but

021this response was insufficient and did nothing to help me understand my cognitive dissonance because if everyone was equal then why did such disparities exist why did anti-blackness exist and what could we do to change it and what could I do about the shame I had at my relief for being born white in a white supremacist Society and if it was true as the adults around me were saying that everyone is equal but there were still inequities and still Injustice occurring around me that I could see as a child didn't it mean that we were blaming people for the harms they experienced for the anti-blackness and racism that they experienced confused and unsupported without a framework to make sense of what I observed I learned to say silent on issues of race and silence is complicity

022as the white kid growing up here I was woefully ill-prepared to have healthy and productive conversations about race to understand my own whiteness and to learn about the ways in which I could be an active agent for positive change rather than an agent of white supremacy in learning about incidents like the ones that have occurred at the middle school I can't help but think that decades later we are still falling far short in protecting our children from racist harm and truly investing in the preparation that they need to participate in creating a better future for us all thank you so much for your time thank you Alejandro Hernandez good evening more members Dr Clark so today I'm just gonna go straight to the point I'm here for the same reason uh Mr Mrs Rivera so

023after eight years we hear the the only uh counselor bilingual from ignition Valley high school is going to get transferred next year to uh Northgate so my understanding Norway have only one five fifteen percent of Latin students versus 80 Latin student at International Valley high school so what is the equity I don't think that's fair so after eight years Mr uh navarrete he didn't always have his office doors open to the students and for the Latin Community parents so I hope you guys can do something better and let's see equity on that school and be fair it's uh in sideways I'm so happy to see that you are the president so I don't know you but I do remember when you was running for B on that side you called me and we support you

024campaign and so um we had three meetings with you last meeting I recruit more than 100 people to your meeting I don't know if you remember I do so um those kind of people we would like to see your support the way that we support your campaign congratulations that you've been the president this year thank you thank you good evening excuse my winter coat here it's a little Breezy out in Bay Point my name is suleima moss I'm the principal of Riverview Middle School I am Angelo Das I work at Holbrook Language Academy and Bancroft Elementary and we are here today also as officers of are Association of rasa Educators I am artist president and I am the pr person and we are here for many reasons we also attended the town hall last night

025and we provided a statement of support and solidarity to our black educator Association and Dr Clark and we'd like to read that today us are officers stand in solidarity with our black and African-American Educators students and families while we are still in the developing stages of building arre we are fully ready to stand alongside our black and African-American Community we stand with you and against the recent hurtful and hateful acts of racism in some of our school sites we are here to listen collaborate and support in any of the future efforts that were discussed at the Town Hall last night please draw upon us we are ready and available we are also here to share with everyone in affirmation to ground us in our Collective Humanity it is a piece entitled from Pennsylvania written by

026Luis Valdez you are my other me respeto if I love and respect you respect yo I love and respect myself if I do harm to you Ami mismo I do harm to myself thank you Guadalupe Sanchez good evening to send this one uh I'm here I'm the mother of a student Kevin Savannah and I'm here to request the second shines for my son so he's able to stay at the school yes um foreign that's what I want to request a second chance whether he goes to the same school or to a different school I'm just asking you for a second chance thank you thank you all right um oh Charlene leathers good evening Dr Clark trustees first of all I want to begin by identifying who and what I am in regards to being here

027first of all my granddaughter is a high school student she refers to me as Nana so I'm Nana and as you all may not know in the Black Culture grandparents are referred to in many ways big mama mama grandma granny and so keeping that in mind realize that African-Americans have got such a strong history in this country not only have and I refer to us as being my ancestors brought into this country and enslaved and as a result there has been a lack of respect to the fact that we have built this country and continue to receive such racist activities actions such as the cotton incident and by the way I I would love to know what state superintendent Thurman would have to say about what's taken place within this District we all know it's

028nothing new it's happened many many many years and it will not stop something I would like to see happen is those students involved and I understand that there was only one that had in-house suspension um the rest of them and anyone else that uses freely uses the n-word and staff whether it be teachers the principal vice principal who becomes aware of what goes on a simple hand slap should not be given I I have worked for I think three school districts and I know that every year there are pink slips that are distributed my opinion there should be strong consideration for those principles teachers who have failed and other staff other non-classified staff who have failed to speak up for not only black students but other students who have been racially targeted I um and

029I I remind me of my time okay because I can go on and on and on um in in regards to education our students need to be taught not only students but aren't teachers are staff members need to be taught that during the Civil War the South fought so hard in order to keep the slaves in place why one biggie was cotton Pickers okay and as cotton Pickers these slave owners um happened to profit greatly so when it came time to um eliminate slavery what our government was looking at was the fact that these slave owners were not really paying taxes they were benefiting from from the backs and I mean many times it was on the backs of those that have been whipped those that have been burned those that have been hung um

030I think my time is okay so I can go on and on and on I have more to say later thank you Alvera hello board members I hope you can hear me on under the weather so I need to keep my mask on I'm a little emotional about the incidents have been happening a week ago you had non-black students passing out cotton balls for Black History Month today I received notice that a flyer was posted at Mount Diablo High either online or passed out I'm not sure celebrating black history month but it included an invitation to come dressed up as your favorite black character for a while now you've had non-black students making monkey noises at black students and teachers not teachers and it makes me really emotional it is not just white children and

031teens participating in these anti-black behaviors it's also black it's also a brown children my people Mexicans helped blacks protected blacks from U.S slavery when they were running away this is not our way so it makes me really emotional that it could be my children Brown children white passing children participating and making monkey noises at their peers for black teachers this is not the way to build community I'm embarrassed and I acknowledge that my community needs to do better but we need your help to build community in the schools I know that I'm going to talk to my kids about this I do it all the time but not just once when my son goes to Monte Gardens and over a year ago people are the new principal there is long Brown indigenous hair his hair

032was cut the school all they did was talk to the students did it get reported to the school district that someone cut his long indigenous hair we don't know we have to do more to allow safe environments for students and teachers to report the incidents to you we need a process for that you have alkalanis a bias incident reporting system that welcomes people individuals and students or teachers to report incidents anonymously and a weekly examine these incidents and this primary function is to keep record to figure out how to make a solution so let's do better thank you Willie mems you're the superintendent president of the board and board members some of you are still so yesterday it's been a long time I've been a long time since I've been here if I wanted to

033know that I've been watching you I've not forgotten about you or anybody else um so you know I was somewhat you know I went to the you know the community Forum last night I'm somewhere disappointed because uh like a community Forum was supposed to be based upon an incident that occurred at Mount Diablo races I mean a Diablo view a racist incident and so you had people that came there and they hijacked that form and talked about every the majority I'm talking about everything that separates as though they're afraid to even bring up the issue of race and it was racism and and the racist incident that happened at that school and not just that school but but some other schools too throughout this whole District that cause uh Dr Clark to call that Community

034forum and so I was somewhat disappointed because you got someone hijacked but I don't want to uh going in too much now because I wanted to say something about the uh this is Black History Month we have to understand that the history of black people did not just begin here in this country 1619 our history spans back 5 000 sometimes ten thousand years but it's not being taught in the schools our history here in this country is not being taught it's not being taught about the role that the African-American soldiers played in the uh Revolutionary War there's not being taught about the role that the African-American soldiers played in the war of 1812. it's not being told about the true story about why Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st 1863. The South was

035kicking the north but every step of the way the North had not won one major battle Lincoln's soldiers uh generals was begging him to plead there were black soldiers being trained to fight in the war but Lincoln did not want them to fight until this his gentleman gave him one major victory they gave him a minor Victory and that's all and that's when Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation which did not as some of you may not know which which did not free one single black person at all period the only Emancipation Proclamation and there was four of them that happened in this country the the uh and I'll tell you about the third one it happened on April 1862 it's called the DC emancipation act or the black emancipation Act of BC do you

036see house more than more ever more enslaved African-Americans in any place in this country 3 200 of them and so the Congress felt embarrassed because the capital of this country was housing the largest concentration of enslaved African people so they created legislation to free these African-American people and Lincoln signed it but he had nothing to do with he signed it and that's the only time that blankly was set free in this country when uh Emancipation Proclamation uh well not in fact it's called the black emancipation act or uh DC compensation emancipation of April 16 1862. that's the only one Lincoln's was a phony fake uh emancipation thank you Mr Mims foreign I'm sorry if that there's another letter so that's why I'm confused raise it there's space I'm sorry Kevin Grays thank you good evening

037and grazed I think you guys are familiar with who I am um but others in the uh Board Room are not uh I would just like to share my story uh this is my first board meeting and not my last you will see me again I'm saddened here so much pain coming from my community teachers other parents this impacts the social and emotional learning that the school district is supposed to help Foster for our children the future of our nation I don't need to inform you of the local the Mount Diablo Unified School Districts uh local control and accountability plan you guys wrote it I also don't need to inform you of the special education mission statement because you guys wrote it [Music] with that said you guys know I responded to a prior written

038notice denial of services that should have been offered under the individual with disability in Education Act and the free and up appropriate uh public education it's been over a year or about a year since I first submitted a request for a complete evaluation and I've been denied twice I wasn't prepared tonight so next time I will be thank you Rochelle Miller [Music] give about a minute I would like to add that uh during this school year I was doing research uh one of the speech and language Pathologists was asserting that my granddaughter had add in doing so she was laughing uh I went to and she mentioned that oh you know you can you know change her diet so I went to the District's website and my home schools website to look at the nutrition

039section just to see what information I could find in doing so I clicked on a link that said Healthy Living eat healthy live healthy and when I clicked on that link pornographic material popped up your District that you guys should be or your your your websites that you guys should be monitoring had pornographic material pop up which was accessible because it was in the news section it was accessible to students anyone that wanted or anyone that clicked on their in the news section so with that said there's a lot of stuff that I am gonna if you can wrap up now that's almost your three minutes you can finish your thoughts okay I I'm just gonna say there's there's more to come and I will elaborate and you'll hear from me again oh or wait

040Rochelle Miller sorry I did not come prepared to speak at all but um my husband asked me to say something my name is Rochelle Miller I am the mother of a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl they currently attend Bancroft Elementary we are very happy with the school as a whole um but it seems as if some of what we've experienced is a culmination of shortages that are going on you know worldwide including my place of employment um as we know whenever there is shortages or whenever there's a recession it's often the most marginalized people that are most affected um I just heard the gentleman talk about his situation with a child with special needs of my son who has also been deemed as gifted also requires a little bit of extra energy let's just

041call it that I don't think he has a formal 405 but he requires a little bit of extra attention um we've witnessed my husband and I have witnessed on multiple occasions uh situations where he was targeted or singled out as a result we hired a therapist we got we paid for private evaluations we also paid for a consultant to teach us how to interface with the school district if we were to approach a 405 or IEP or a child who was Dean gifted we spent probably about six to seven thousand dollars in these types of evaluations that we were happy to pay for we also bought a home in Clayton California a home where we looked at the school's ratings ahead of purchasing the home but as soon as we moved in our one black

042neighbor God bless her and Dana Hill said do not send your child to Mont Diablo Elementary send them to Bancroft because it is a much more inclusive culture and so we got William accepted into the two-way dual immersion program and we are very excited about being there we're I'm the room parent active active you know contributing to the PFC anything that you need me to do as a student I volunteered for the HBC unite that the school district had I'm also one of the sponsors for the Contra Costa science and engineering fair I'm the president of the ERG I am active and here and one of the comments that was made last night was that it was the black maybe if black moms or black parents were more involved they could mitigate some of these

043injustices and that I'm not even gonna go about what was I was on FaceTime I wasn't there in person but I was on FaceTime and some of you might have heard me comment um under my breath but um but the fact is is that there needs to be more accountability um across the board of course you know I'm also in leadership in my job there's no way that we can mitigate individual acts of racism but we can do all that we can to root out mimic matrices of Oppression and I am happy to serve as a support as someone that you all can bounce ideas off of I Am the President of our employee Resource Group at Hinkle Corporation the Aerospace cultural Alliance we are here to be Community Partners we often partner with the

044Bay Area leads and hope to work all work with the teachers more intimately if you can start wrapping up thank you thank you that I wasn't going to say anything and I'm saying a lot but um but I am here to to be a support my husband and I made the decision last night based off of the testimony that we heard and based off of um interactions that my son had he went from being a star student to not wanting to go to school this year because of One Bad Teacher and we wanted to so we made the decision last night you can wrap up I know and people to pull him from braincroft and and homeschool him but we are still Community Partners and we hope to find some that's okay OG strogates I

045apologize if I mispronounced your name good evening I'm OG strogatz I live in Walnut Creek I'm here to share my sorrow shame and anger at the most recent sickening racist insults to our black students and teachers it is my deep hope and intention that we channel the pain of this moment to practice restorative justice to understand fully the harm that has been committed to acknowledge thoughtfully and respectfully everyone who has been harmed how toxic it is to the community and the healing that's required I personally look forward to supporting this work in any way I can thank you we will move on to Communications District organizations at regular board meetings a single spokesperson of each recognized District organization may make a brief presentation items are limited to those that are informational Anita Johnson evening imagine

046you are a student in a classroom that does not have a teacher how does that impact you well that depends if you're a kindergartener I think you would think this is School nobody no one likes this this is chaos I don't want to come back if you're a first grader you probably won't learn to read I'm not going to go through all the grades because this is a brief comment but if you are a third grader you probably won't learn to multiply if you are a fifth grader you probably will not be prepared for Middle School if you are a sixth grader you will experience an unbelievable level of bullying because no substitute teacher can stop bullying the way a regular teacher can if you are a ninth grader and are having trouble with the

047transition dropping out is a very real possibility if you are a 10th grader and you are College Bound but there's no instructor in your say science class will the grade you receive if you even get a grade will it reflect anything will you be ready for college and if you are a special education teacher because some of the current vacancies are in SDC classes if you are a special education student with no teacher in that classroom your needs will not be met not only will you not likely make progress toward goals but you will very likely regress in your behavior and your skills and that would be a sad State of Affairs in all of those situations so please do not risk our students educational experiences please don't just cross your fingers and hope this

048won't happen again next year because schools in this state next year will be divided into the Haves and the have-nots more than ever before because some districts will be proactive and competitive and they'll have teachers and the rest will be impacted by the teacher's shortage which side of the Divide will our schools be on it's up to you please take action now recruiting for next year is happening now there is a job fair on Saturday please take action now to protect our students thank you thank you we'll move on to recognitions and resolutions item 10.1 review and potential approval of board resolution 2223-39 to authorize local assignment options Education Code 44263 yep and we have Dr Rubio Chief Human Resources officer he's going to take item 10.1 and 10.2 good evening board members good evening

049superintendent I have before you a request for two of our employees where uh the employees holding um with consent uh with 18 lower division units or nine upper division units may be authorized to teach with their consent in any single subject or multiple subject area I make a motion that we approve resolution 22 23-39 Local assignment option ec442563 second trusting other floors yes that passes five zero with concurrence from Justine Naval Flores 10.2 great thank you similarly we have two more of our employees who have a multiple subject credential and with their consent uh May teach any class uh below grade nine where they have completed 12 semester units or six or six excuse me upper division or graduate units of coursework for your review and request for approval Madam president I moved to approve

050resolution 22-23-40 local assignment option EC 44256b second Justine Ava Flores yes passes five zero with concurrence from trustee NADA Flores thank you 10.3 review and potential approval of resolution 22-23 23-41 in recognition of prescription drug abuse awareness month thank you madam president I'll take this item and um this is resolution 22 23-41 um and I'll just read very quickly whereas prescription drugs are strong medications which require a prescription from a doctor or dentist such as Vicodin Zyrtec Advil Prozac and Ritalin and whereas every medication has some risk for harmful effects doctors and dentists consider the potential benefits and risk to each patient before prescribing medications and take into account a lot of different factors described below when prescription drugs are misused they can be just as dangerous as drugs that are made illegally and So

051within the revolution there are some numbers so when when we printed this resolution the number of overdoses whereas there were 14 million 777 000 that number has has since risen to um to more than a million more and whereas there have been twenty one thousand sixteen Emergency Department emergency department visits that number has risen um from Sixteen thousand up to twenty one thousand and whereas um there have been five thousand and 502 deaths from opioid overdose just in the last year that number Rose to 7 000 deaths and whereas there's been fentanyl overdoses of 3 900 that number has risen to 5900 and whereas there were 198 sites in California um participated in the dea's annual National prescription drug drug take back day that number Rose from 198 to 5144. so with that said therefore

052be it resolved that the Mount Diablo Unified School District is hereby declare March 2023 as prescription drug abuse awareness month and encourages all community members to participate in prescription drug abuse related prevention programs and activity be it also resolved that the Mount Diablo Unified School District board members encourage all community members to pledge to spread the word one pill can kill this item is now in the hands of the board thank you any comments I just want to say I appreciate this being Something That We're highlighting it is something that many of our families um are faced with and many of our students as well it's a big challenge in our country right now and I appreciate the um the recognition of the drug take back day but I think also it's important for people

053to know that that's available uh year round I think most of our cities have it at City Hall many of our drugstores do as well um so it's it's really easy to make sure that you properly dispose of all medications and never flush them down the toilet and get it into our water systems so with that I will move to approve resolution 22 23 41 in recognition of prescription drug abuse awareness month second trusty NADA Flores yes that passes 5-0 with concurrence from our student trustee right I have the next item and president this is resolution 22 23-42 in support of National School breakfast week which is March 6th through the 23rd I do not see Dominic Machi in the in the audience so I will go ahead and take this item whereas the National

054School breakfast program has served our nation admirably for 48 years through advanced practices in nutrition education and whereas the National School breakfast program is dedicated to the health and well-being of our nation's children and now therefore be it resolved at the Mount Diablo Unified School District Board of Education that it celebrates the National School breakfast week from March 6th through the 10th 2023 and we do offer if you would like to come by any one of our sites and try out the breakfast I think we can work something out for you Adam chair I'd like to move to approved resolution 2 23-42 in support of National School breakfast week second um I just want to add that breakfast is really important we know this and we know that schools understand this because before we had

055Universal meals schools would feed kids breakfast on testing days so we know it matters um and I always encourage I'm very passionate about this topic about food and hunger is that breakfast should be offered after the bell and their ship or if it's offered before the Bell there should be a second chance breakfast so that no one no child has to wait until lunchtime in order to eat and especially because I know some of our schools start well before eight o'clock now breakfast before the Bell can be nearly impossible for even the most efficient parent Flores yes that passes five zero with concurrence from trustee Apple Flores great I'll take the next item Madam president that would be resolution 22 23-43 in recognition of March as women's History Month whereas American women of every culture

056class and ethnic background have participated in the founding and building of our nation made historic contributions to the growth and strength of our nation and played a critical role in shaping the economic cultural and social fabric of our society and now therefore be it resolved that the Mount Diablo Unified School District put claims proclaims the month of March as wit as women's history month and encourages all schools to commemorate this occasion with appropriate instructional materials and be it further resolved that this resolution be distributed to all schools within the district this item is now in the hands of the board so uh I just want to add um say something about this um as an all women bored although I do identify as non-binary um I am a woman but I mean you know you

057know you'll know um but um that being said um growing up as a woman as a girl um I faced many gender gender stereotypes and gender gaps throughout education but also throughout our systems so I'm just proud to also say and recognize that all of us here are challenging and breaking those gender stereotypes and I also want to encourage everyone um listening and everyone in our nation to continue to support and encourage feminism but also women of color feminism and with that let's see yeah oh yeah I'd like to make the motion uh so Madam president president I moved to approve the review and potential approval of resolutions 22-23 um 43 in recognition of women's History Month second trustee Nava Flores yes that passes 5-0 with concurrence from our student trustee Public Employee appointment 11.1

058yes and we're going to have um Dr scudero take this next item 11.1 the human resources department is bringing for the board's review and potential approval the appointment of Ivana wheeler as a principal at Bel Air Elementary currently Ivana is working as a program specialist at Riverview Middle School prior to rejoining mdusd Ivana completed three years as an elementary principal in Vallejo Ivana has worked as the vice principal at Bel Air and has 20 years of experience serving the Bay Point Community in mbusd Ivano holds a bachelor's degree in liberal studies and a master's degree in educational leadership with that I leave this appointment in the hands of the board Madam chair it would be my honor to move that we approved the placement of Ivana wheeler as the new principal at Bel Air Elementary

059School and as I'm sure my peers are sick of hearing we got to work together for many years in the after-school program and we have stood side by side to fight for the rights of the kids in Bay Point so it is my honor to nominate you for this position second Christina before us yes congratulations good evening Madam president members of the board Dr Clark good evening to the Bel Air staff and Community I'm I am Ivana wheeler and I am thankful for this opportunity to take the Baton confidently from Robert Humphrey and to continue to move the students at Bel Air forward there is this saying that has been in the Bel Air Community for many years once a bear always a bear so I am grateful for the opportunity to return to Bel

060Air and to serve Bay Point in a different capacity thank you thank you all right 12.0 reports yeah so um so this next report is um we are we are just absolutely thrilled to be working with ccee um and I'm going to let them I'm going to let them introduce introduce the team and whatnot but I just want to say a few words before we start is the reason why they are here um is because for a long time we have had several student groups in this District that have not been successful and I know in public education there's often a um a bad habit of of passing blame or making excuses and I know that we've heard a lot over the last few years about the effects of the pandemic and where the pandemic

061has been extremely taxing on every last person within our community and within our district the um the low performance of our student groups have been present for some time and so specifically African-American students Foster students and homeless Youth and most recently as it's been uncovered are emerging bilingual and of course for a very long time our students with disabilities and so when I entered the district we had already started working with ccee for technical support however when I came I did not blame I did not point fingers I took full responsibility and put it on my shoulders that this was going to be the work that I support and lead and so I support the efforts of the California collaborative of educational Excellence they are a team of absolute professionals they are all either at

062one time have been practitioners teachers administrators superintendents working for the State Office of Education and and so they have come and helped us with professional development with looking at our at our systems and looking at the things that we do instructionally to really inform to inform our prac practices and find better ways that we can support our students so um I am 100 behind the efforts of ccee and I hope that all of our partners educational Partners join me in that in that in this journey as the one way that we can ensure equity for all of our students is to make sure that each and every student is getting the highest quality first-time instruction in the classroom so without any further Ado I want to turn it over to the CC staff and they

063will introduce themselves but Dr Gregson will start this off thank you Clark my sand and I'm Nick I'm major at the California collaborative for educational Excellence also known as ccee I'm happy to be here tonight to share with you the journey the CCE Contra Costa County Office of Education and the Mount Diablo Unified School District has been on over the past several years I'm here with my colleagues Hannah ma from Contra Costa County Dr Roberts and Dr Wright and Craig Wheaton from our team at CCE tonight I'd like to share with you a little bit of the purpose of our partnership and why it is important as an educator with over 25 years of experience starting as a classroom teacher and most recently the former Chief Deputy superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of

064California I've seen a lot of great things districts and counties do in supporting students and families and I've also seen some missed opportunities the main theme of The District's most successful in their response to supporting students and families is they worked as a true team Dr Arturo gawandi is talks about being pit Crews instead of cowboys let me explain what I mean a pit crew only has seconds to put tires on check fluids check on the dry room whatever it else it takes to make sure the driver and car get back on the track as fast as possible they are a system working together as a whole they aren't just individuals with great skills they are a team understanding how they all come together to take care of the driver and car to continue the

065race the best care and education system we can provide our students is the one absent of blame and looks and feels most like a system where the Pieces come together as a whole when the pieces start to come together there are three behaviors that are very apparent one the group has the ability to recognize success but most importantly recognize their failures they are interested in data that exposes their failures so they can learn and improve as a system two the group uses tools to help make them better and remind them of key things that can be forgotten they are prepared for the unexpected and three the ability to implement engaging in these behaviors together forces the team to behave with a different set of values humility discipline and teamwork this isn't easy and there can

066be deep resistance but educating our future is complex and complexity requires group success with Dr Clark's leadership our partnership is focused on supporting the Mount Diablo District team and becoming a pit crew to help students thrive so tonight we're going to share with you the Journey of where my Mount Diablo Unified has been the current state through data areas of focus that will help support the district further in becoming a pit crew and next steps with recommendations let's begin with where Mount Diablo Unified has been as it relates to our partnership and work with the county office in 2017 Mount Diablo Unified became eligible for differentiated assistance in 2019 the Contra Costa County Office of Education referred Mount Diablo Unified to the CC for more intensive support in the form of a systemic instructional review

067focusing on the following student groups African-American students with disabilities Foster Youth and students experiencing homelessness the systemic instructional review began in 2019 but was paused in 2020 due to the kova 19 pandemic the systemic instructional review resumed and was completed in 2021 since the completion of the systemic instructional review the Mount Diablo Unified team with CCE and the Costa County Contra costasars the braces Contra Costa County Office of Education have been engaged in systems improvement work with Dr Clark's leadership the Mount Diablo unified's goals have been aligned and deep systems change is happening there has been a support team behind the Mount Diablo Unified team in the form of the California Statewide system of support the California Statewide system of support is the support system built for districts in need of assistance the Contra Costa

068County Office of Education and the CCE has been wrapping supports around the Mount Diablo team over the past few years you'll hear more about these specific supports after we explore the current state of student outcomes I now like to have turn this over to Dr Jenny Wright the senior manager at CC working with Dr Clark and his team thank you good evening members of the board Dr Clark I'm in a review a snapshot of the most recent California dashboard so starting with the English language arts data this graph shows the percentage of students that have met or exceeded standard in the last school year what you see is the overall performance of The District African-American students students with disabilities Foster Youth and homeless youth on this next slide this is again English language arts data

069this is the distance from standard again same student groups will be on every slide in math the percent met or exceeded overall at 35 percent you will see the Foster youth on this particular site as blank as there were not enough students to report without giving away individual information this is the distance from standard in the area of math here is The Chronic absentee rates again starting on the left with overall students across the district and each of the student groups that I named earlier just for reference the state average in chronic absentee is about 30 percent here you will see suspension rates across overall and within each student group again for reference the state average is around three percent and lastly is the graduation rates across Mount Diablo Unified overall and each of the

070student groups and again for reference the state average is around 87 and a half percent at this time I will hand it over to Hannah ma from Contra Costa County Office of Education to review the work that has been happening around differentiated assistance good evening my name is Hannah mom the district director of district and school support thank you for having me here and I just want to share with you the work that we have been doing this school year so far so we're talking 20 20 20 22 23 school year so first bullet right there is differentiate assistance and comprehensive support and Improvement network of the local education agencies within our County so there are a number of districts that meet together as District leadership teams and Mount Diablo is one of the districts

071that are part of this network and so the two highlights from that Network that that meets regularly is a learning by doing sessions together and the ability to share practices so I'll just give you a little bit of a summary of what we have been doing so far so we've done some data dive specifically in um chronic absenteeism as you saw the chronic absenteeism rates were a bit higher for some of our student groups where um Statewide we're at 30 and by the way just uh just in case um people are not sure what chronic absenteeism means it is when students are absent for 10 or more of the school year so out of 180 days that would be 18 school days um so we did a deep data diet we um asked teams to

072identify the problem um by looking at the data and then we went through a process map of learning about where the attendance procedures are so we learned about how to go ahead and draw it out and then pinpoint some of the areas where there could be some um need for further investigation or some issues that are related to the procedures then we dove into root cause analysis what are some of these problems from a result of what could it be communication could it be uh you know in addition to illness what are some of the other reasons where students are absent with excused and also some that are not excused and sometimes there's just no um no reason and it's just default to unexcused then we spent some time on identifying the vision around student

073attendance and then I and then um writing out a specific aim to meet that vision and so part of that was identifying What specifically are we trying to accomplish what what changes might we introduce and why and then how do we know that A change is an improvement so we are actually working on that currently and then we're going to go through the Improvement cycle um also called plan do study act you might have heard of pdsa Cycles so this is the learning by doing work that we have been engaging engaging in and as you can see the second bullet here individual check-ins between sessions um so we meet individually via virtual meetings with each of the teams and then um the the last bullet there lcap training so we have been um we just

074completed our full day of lcap training with again teams from the districts within our County and we were very um cognizant of how we need to align the work that we are doing with the lcap plan for the next school year as well and I'd like to just add one more thing that's not on this slide which is for our um comprehensive support and Improvement schools so we are currently partnering with turnaround for children which is a non-profit agency and we're doing a whole child Improvement Network learning series it's a five part series and we're just really excited to have Olympic High School site team as partners in this learning so that has been a really great opportunity as well for this improvement work thank you can we ask questions along the way here you

075want to ask questions at the end or that's what it was we're almost done okay I promise then would that be okay okay great go to the next one so good evening everyone uh these are CCE supports and so just like Dr Gregson uh presented at the beginning you know coaching the pit crew ensuring that we have frequency of contact with with the district the district leadership team um also with uh faculty uh teachers uh and the ones that are actually out and doing doing the work in the field and so a lot of our work is just about assisting the district and keeping a focus on Improvement keeping a focus on the priorities we hear a lot of that in the room tonight you know what are the the competing priorities that the district

076is pursuing and how do we ensure that the path is clear so that that results can be can be made from that the second bullet is uh more specific it's support for specific implementation around mathematics uh strategies standards-based approaches in in the classroom that work's been going on for a little over the year uh and so they're starting to get some really good results we've sat in on on a professional development sessions with teachers the questions that are coming out are the right questions that that need to be fielded from from your faculty and so that uh the the turns can be made in learning and instruction uh with with their help because they're very very important for this this process the second is uh really just spending a lot of time with your District

077leadership team as Dr Wright mentioned going through data protocols assisting with that assisting with just coherence mapping you know what does it look like to have a system that actually you know cooperates and works together so I can tell you the consistency that we've seen with the district since we've been engaging over the past two years has been very much appreciated and uh and bodes to really having successes for students as as we move forward as you go forward in in your District Endeavors the last one I would say is more monetary uh CCE also supported a what's called a I don't want to get the name right administrator for district and and school continuous Improvement position this is a position that was uh funded through Us in the county office to to just add

078an extra body to assist the district to make sure that the focus is there it's kind of like us and our normal lives we have how many priorities in a single day it's how do you how do you sort of keep that singleness of purpose to the way you can achieve the goals that you're after and that's it's really sort of a simple process that way again three areas of focus we like to sort of encapsulate it in this this visual but the first one is to really serve what we call focal groups there's those are those uh four or five student groups that were mentioned um significant you know paying attention to those students the students aren't on every campus um so how do how do we sort of come up with a plan

079that's going to address the needs of those students um in a way that's urgent that really is is takes care of the learning process now the second one is the implementation of mathematics practices some some really good grounding is going is taking place in the classrooms on that one so we're looking forward to the continuation of that and the deepening of that work especially towards outcomes around math so one of the things we want to see are the outcomes and especially from Assessments in mathematics you know continue to go up so we'll be looking for that the last one is what we heard a lot about tonight is just being in service for schools you know as a district leadership team being of service to schools and students to develop and retain principles specifically and

080I know that this is a specific goal for the district this year looking at attrition rates over the summer especially with site leaders and such making sure that those site leaders are instructional leaders as well able to work with their faculty in a way that is common to to really moving students forward if that makes sense so these are good ones to encapsulate again two to three goals and then lastly these are recommendations and next steps we want to continue to deepen and Coach the focus on Improvement there are specific ways that we try to create that discourse within within your District uh to get folks working together to uh find Solutions in Among Us in in the problems that we're trying to tackle to be very clear on the problems that we're trying to

081tackle as well is always very helpful the second one and this is a big one too continue to align beliefs and practices especially around student Equity it's it's a big part of your work here and we know that it's uh it's a focus of um of the work going forward and so we we want to encourage that that work definitely continues the third one supportive Benchmark student data so what you saw tonight was the summative data right once a year Benchmark data gives you a more uh sort of frequent look at how students are doing so the district is really stepped up to ensure that those data are available they're having conversations with the right people to ensure that that decisions are being made from the data and so it takes a while it takes

082a while to get those practices sort of in in place but we're really pushing it because as uh miss Ma pointed out as part of a pdsa cycle or a plan do study act cycle data is really a big part of it it's like what is it saying and then what do I make a decision from from there the next one is about improving outcomes for all students again but especially your focal students hopefully that word's okay and then lastly continue to support and encourage the development of your instructional leaders and your faculty as they they take on the work to really move your students forward um and I think that that's it I want to thank you thank you yeah as well yeah I just wanted to just make a comment before we open

083it up to questions is that um you know again this this came from you know from this from the state and from the county and and I know that you know we have heard um pushback on on the math work that we're doing on the work that we're doing with our focal Scholars and and even at the superintendent level sometimes there was pushback in this work however when you embrace it and you sit down as a team to to find ways because it's for the betterment of our students right and so so I just I just want to thank the CCE staff because you know we're meeting with them every week almost or every other week and it just really keeps keeps us focused on what's important because there's so many other distractions that come

084up in this work but making sure that we can disrupt that mathematic data that we saw that those students are are not performing by making sure that that's how we're showing Equity we're going to talk about racism in the next couple items but this is that this is that that that human right that every one of our students come to school for is to get that education and and and I just have a hard time why we aren't more enthusiastic about this as an organization of really getting behind this so I just want to just again thank CCE for for keeping us focused and keeping us grounded and keeping us focused on the right thing which is that academic achievement for our students now I'll open it up the question thanks Mark um so actually

085so I had a question for Miss ma um but um I also have it so either way everyone do this um uh so it was good to hear about the network um uh of the CSI uh school districts um and um you talked about um exploring the root causes of chronic absenteeism and so I was just curious what some of the root causes were that came up in that conversation so there were seven school districts and each of the seven districts come and um have explored the various causes so some of the root causes that were uncovered were the in the process um sometimes they're some of the barriers were um this there wasn't the ability to check back on all of the students for the reason for absence so um when that's the case

086then the student is unexcused so it's a little bit harder to figure out why this student was absent other root causes where students were not feeling emotionally safe um part of it is related to the physical illness and when other students are sick or it that's it's this you know since covet it's become very very intertwined when students are um you know coming to school some of them may not feel safe to come to school because they are a little anxious about getting sick that's part of it but also it's uh social emotional Wellness itself that's been a real struggle other root causes were also that um the parents were not able to bring students um to school on time um there are not I'm I can't identify this these were all the reasons for

087you know Mount Diablo but just the reasons that have come up um there are incidences in another school district where actually the tardy policies um were working against student attendance where the tardy policies themselves were um kind of a motivation for students to just rather be sick and stay or sit you know stay home rather than be punished or having too many tardies so those are some of the root causes that were uncovered some were surprising and some were not others were also that some of the parents were not quite aware of how important it is for all you know there's children to to get to school and were surprised by how intrically linked that was so that was some of the yeah those are some other root process thank you I have a question

088okay I was just going to thank you for coming I think it's imperative um thank you Dr Clark's leadership to bring this periodically to us so it keeps it in the Forefront of our mind like you said if we don't keep our eye on the ball other things time to step up so I really appreciate all of you taking the time to come here tonight and present to us thank you same um I really appreciate I really appreciate the transparency that we've shown through this process um for the last I've been a part of it since 2021. um and yeah I really appreciate I have a data question just and I think it's easy and quick um there's African-American students students who are homeless students who are in foster care students who have disabilities are

089those unduplicated can there be a black student who is also a student with disability or who is also yes they're not unduplicated okay yes so that you could have students with disabilities African-American and English learner within that category in that subgroup right okay thank you that I had that question and I was going to interrupt you but then Dr Clark be like my next it's not this I don't know how to I don't know if this is a question or just a thought or a comment we know Dr Clark do you happen to know was there ever a time in Mount Diablo where black students weren't um achieving at the level I hate that word achieving weren't achieving by this by the measures that we have at the level of the like the overall do

090you know um I don't know but I know from my from my research there there has not been a time in my lifetime when that has been the case um in the Bay Area I just didn't want to make a sense I'm older than he is and went to school here and I would say no so I guess my my wondering and my fear even though we're doing all of this and our district our leadership is all in is what's going to be different this time um how are we going to lift these students um what's going to change because it's clearly not it if it's never happened you're a little old if it's never it happens in your lifetime only a little older than me if it's never happened in your lifetime I wish

091Mr Mims was here because he oh he is oh I can't see I'm certain that Mr Mims will say it's never happened in in since he became an educator um what's different this time because we know it's not because black children can't learn it's the way our systems and institutions are designed to not really teach them appropriately so what's different this time I don't expect it well if I can just respond that's a question you have to ask yourselves we can facilitate that conversation we can facilitate the reflection but really you have control over how you answer that question and to make sure that it's a constant in the conversation how are you serving black and African-American students how does this impact black and African-American students how does this impact your English Learners your students

092with disabilities you have to constantly ask those questions to ensure that there aren't any barriers or challenges in the systems that's been created in Mount Diablo that have the consequences that are impeding student outcomes for black and African-American students for students with disabilities English learners and so related to that I think the in the three areas of focus CCE talked about how one area is to serve focal student groups to urgently meet their needs and I know we've been really trying to work hard to make sure that we are hearing directly from those student students and their families about what it is that they see um and so I would be curious to hear from you what are some of those needs that have been identified that that are urgent that we have been able

093to begin to meet what are you seeing foreign I think it was it was very apparent in the report that although we had pockets of Excellence throughout the district it wasn't systemic in every single classroom and so I think that is you know that's part of what I spoke about earlier is making sure that every student regardless of uh of who they are and what student group they belong to that they are going to receive high quality first-time instruction that is that's at the base of it secondly there has to be that relationship piece which which you know really comes into you know the equity work that we've been doing with our administrators um you know they're there there needs to be that like we need to look at this um we need to look

094at at this at this Challenge and embrace the challenge of getting to know our families and getting to know our students and getting to know the gifts that each student brings within the as they come into our classrooms and historically that has not happened and so we want to work with different leaders throughout the school district to make sure that those events are taking place and that we all are embracing it and it's not a perfect science but we have to we have to start somewhere and and lastly then I'm gonna turn it over to Dr Roberts is I am committed to that and that that is what I speak about that is how I lead that is how I I would I expect my principles to lead in that way but it's a learning

095process and and so therefore when it's a learning process we have to continue to grow and continue to work towards those goals so yeah yeah Clarks is exactly right and when we ask the question what's the problem what's what's the need what what what area is the data showing that that we need to pay attention and then like you said there's there are certain systems that we've just been doing the same thing for a long long time and so you ask the question as part of an improvement a process to say is that working what's not working what's working well and then what can we shift to and that's the beginnings of sort of saying where's the Gap in in what we're doing another part of it too is to go out and do empathy

096interviews is to is to really pull the people that you're serving to be of service to the district means you really understand and listen uh Beyond The Boardroom uh in terms of what your your cons your constituency is saying and what students are saying so really trying to triangulate and trying to uh you sort of corroborate or collaborate those you know the those data sets and then beginning to set goals that you identify who can do what in the district because you have you have everything you need you've got resources you have everything you need it's about challenging people to step into the role to ask the difficult questions and to make a change to step into it and to also work together as a team too often school districts uh Silo there's different different

097operations that dictate different discourses or different conversations breaking through those barriers having courage as a leadership team and stability in your leadership is extremely important and it shows it shows that there's more stability in terms of being able to ask the difficult questions to say how what do we need to do differently and so I think to address your question it's taking your teams through those thought processes to say what can we do and then really memorializing it documenting it putting it into a process where it's checked within like a six week period of time or something a very short window where you say did you do it did you not do it did it work did it not work what happened and and really just stay on it so it takes a consistency and

098so where you could be of assistance as a board is to is to continue to raise the transparency love the word thank you for bringing that up to continue to raise the transparency of what needs to happen and continue to tell your public what you're doing so those are the those are really areas that you can do to knock it out of the park so it's nice to see you this evening as well any other questions for us well you know where to get a hold of us and certainly Dr Clark can can get a hold of us too I feel like this is the only first time we've we've heard from you since the report came out yeah we had him next door over at um however we have weekly bi-weekly meetings with them

099we we get updates all the time I know I've shared some of those um throughout the time but I really felt it was important that we saw them face to face and and and they could also sing the Praises because we have been working extremely hard at this I gotta I gotta also recognize you know the team um Jen Sachs and her team um you know the whole cabinet we we meet regularly and and and um you know whether it's special ed um everyone's at the table and um and again we put on professional developments we're training our principals to go out and and and and and work with their teams so just today I was at Bancroft and they were they were talking about learning acceleration this is the the contract we did with

100tntp originated with the work with with CCE they started it we piloted it and and then as a district we took it over so so again we're we're continually um you know working with the county working with CC on this and so so again I can update you all regularly yeah I was just going to offer that perhaps we could see you every semester and for her well he's been he's in Los Angeles and he's in Los Angeles but yeah the rest of us surprise well she's somewhere in Contra Costa at least your opposite and then Dr Clark um perhaps quarterly we can get that because you I know you do monthly reports you can consolidate it's a quarterly for us I think that would be great I committed at every meeting yeah I have

101an academic you have an academic talk and this is yeah this is the academic talk thank you thank you thank you I don't know what you just said I know uh miss Ma talked about uh turn around for children the whole child and the Olympic site team is a part of that I would love to hear more about what that is and how it's going as it moves forward last thing I'll share is for district this size to have the superintendent in our meetings as consistently as the superintendent has been is is uh really moved your work forward even more and so we look forward to the continued conversation and anytime you need us we'll be here all right thank you have a good evening I'll start oh I will do that um on this

102item 12 point one is out of two all right my Michael are you here for CCE or technology okay hold on I couldn't read the number um Willy Mintz uh first of all I uh you know I think that uh appreciate Dr Clark and his commitment I heard the uh the team mentioned consistency but it has to be a commitment along with consistency and I think that Dr Clark has shown that he's committed to this process and I hope that is it's successful uh one of the concerns that I've had it's been over the years um you know everybody is using the term data driven but when I look at lcap playing School site plans and I see and I see you know they did not go to California data Express website and see suspensions

103uh low test scores and don't see so if you are truly data driven then you would then your lcap plan will reflect the data that's being provided and so if it does not reflect the data that's just catch words that they use all over the place so I hope that you know that the uh that you are truly this time being data driven and not just saying words that sound good and and everybody uses you know we are data driven but your results not just here but everyone I've gone have not shown that you're truly data driven so I hope that this process that's Dr Clark and the team is going through right now is truly uh data driven but I'll be looking at your data and seeing if it's truly that way but uh

104president zayway it um you know in terms of the question that you asked about Mount gambling Empire school district and I tell them I'll tell people flip a coin and wherever there's a concert of African students going to find the same problem lowest test scores highest suspension rate but the but their lcap plans don't even hardly address that problem so that's my concern um one of the questions I want to ask the team is that lcap training so what kind of training are these members of the of the lcap training going through and so because somebody asked me that question that's all I have thank you thank you did you want that tonight or did you want it in in writing that would be uh that would be either um either uh oh go ahead

105yeah uh lcap training what type of lcap training have we gone through as as a district to address some of these deficiencies the county office is the overseer the lcap and works very closely with the district so I'll let Hannah uh talk about that what I can tell you is that your lcap's been aligned with uh the sir recommendations or the recommendations that came out of this strategic uh systemic instructional review sorry too many acronyms um so we know that that's happened and that happened right away uh does it need to be refined yeah it'll go through a refinement over time because what you have to do is say is the system pushing in the right spot to ensure that the students move and if the question of that is no then you gotta you

106gotta move it around and that's an lcap revision as well the the metrics become or the data outcomes become more realistic in the lcap when we do other types of data conversations uh so that it informs a more realistic sort of outcome within the out cap because sometimes there are rubber numbers for lack of better words um but so those are areas that we continue your L capture driver as you know so along with your budget so ensuring that there's alignment of those resources the thing I'll say too is an improvement science it's a it's a lever of change a lever of change labor of change uh to to do alignment of resources to ensure that your resources are aligned to ensure that your infrastructure is built up those types of things so probably answered

107too much but you get the idea and Panama okay just to answer the question about what the lcap training was like from the county office we have 18 school districts plus our um plus the charter schools that we oversee so we gather together a full day that was one day of every component of the lcat because we have a mix of Veteran writers as well as new writers people that need introduction to all the all of the components of the lcaps that we go through all the components and show everybody what is required and also give some exemplars as well as tips for Success so that's kind of the layout of the day we also have a breakout time where we uh do our sessions in smaller groups sometimes one-on-one according to their needs a

108Mount Diablo was one of the districts that has a requirement of of specific goals for persistently low performing students so we we do have that time to talk about what um what that entails what are the requirements and also how the goals and actions must be different from what has been done before so that's part of part of what we train on and since that training we also do monthly check-ins individual check-ins oh we just started in in February so we're going to be doing one each month so answer that Rachel Levy or Levi Levy sorry thank you hi good evening I wasn't planning to speak on this item but I feel an obligation to um I did go to a lot of the meetings about this issue about African-American students being over identified um

109I just want to share some of my experiences as a dyslexia Advocate as a person with dyslexia and as a parent of a dyslexic child I'm also a regional leader for decoding dyslexia and so I have worked with a lot of families that have been touched by dyslexia and I just was listening to the presentation and a few things stood out to me what's working what's not working and what works better that's really important in general education a lot of time we think of learning disabilities as only a special education issue it's not our kids are General Ed kids and we need to have like Dr Clark said best first instruction it's so important for these kids unfortunately I've met a lot of African-American kids who have not been identified with learning disability especially dyslexia

110so when you have the diagnosis or the quality qualification as dyslexia it's actually a privilege because when you are qualified as having dyslexia you do get the best type of instruction you get structured literacy you don't get that in General Ed and the most and most of the time so most of these kids that have disabilities um like dyslexia or other language-based disabilities especially our African-American students are not getting that intervention if you look at our schools are schools that are serving our students with dyslexia they're mostly white affluent families and that's because to be qualified with dyslexia you need an advocate you need a parent who can advocate for you or you hire an attorney or you hire an attorney an advocate or a parent a lot of times when we do that our

111kids get instruction my son was so far behind he's one of those kids up there a kid with a disability and if I didn't get him the instruction that he needed the structured literacy he would still be very very low the only reason he's at grade level is because I advocated for him and I fought for him to get structured literacy now we shouldn't have to qualify kids as dyslexic for them to get that that should be given to all kids all kids are bad and I just wanted to come up here and share my experience because I feel that it's a huge Equity issue I mean it's not just our district it's Statewide when we start screening all students it will change I think all students at that time will be offered evidence-based remediation

112I think that's going to be what changes but I also was just wondering did you guys look at students with learning disabilities The Haves and the have-nots of structured literacy and intervention because that's something that should really be looked at so thanks so much for the time thank you 12.2 update on mdusc strategic technology plan that's going to be uh Robert sidfert good evening trustees uh and Dr Clark and president uh it's my pleasure to present to you uh the uh annual uh biannual I guess update on our strategic technology plan am I okay to continue or yeah um so I always begin with um our technology plan imperatives uh and uh just to to list those briefly uh those are to empower teachers uh in providing meaningful instruction through technology provide students with meaningful

113access and opportunities through technology and then also to ensure that District can maintain the necessary Technologies and support systems to make sure that every student graduates ready to thrive in a technology Rich world so I wanted to start with a number of things here uh and I will be brief I know we've got a packed agenda so I wanted to start with some accomplishments and then talk about some challenges and then next steps for this year related to technology and I I would like you to um I would like to ask you to focus on a handful of themes that I think are are evident in our in our work as a district and as an I.T Department this year and those theme are really better and more Equitable service to our schools uh oh

114thank you that a little better thank you I'm going to raise that up a little uh so better more Equitable Service uh to our schools uh standardization and distribution of equipment which is an important component of an Enterprise organization and and again that Enterprise approach to Information Technology Services uh so um going uh looking at some accomplishments in 2022 and 23. um firstly and I will be brief with these I I promise I you're well aware of some of these these initiatives and so I'll focus on some of the newer things that have been happening but our district-wide one-to-one program is well underway um it is uh implemented uh and additionally by the end of this year we will have rolled out um uh laptops Windows laptops to all of our staff um as a

115uh as an initiative to make sure that all of our staff members all of our teachers have um up-to-date reliable equipment um for teaching and learning we are also and you'll still hear more about this uh in a later item tonight uh we are working on a uh or we have drafted a district education specification uh which will be presented this evening we also have uh improved a uh our zone system of providing Technology support so where our schools used to have a particular set amount of time for technicians on site now we follow the need so you know certain schools from a from an equity standpoint have certain needs based on the Technologies they have deployed more than others and so we've got a more equitable distribution of our of our technicians additional accomplishments

116we are finalizing an architectural services plan and we will be presenting that for your consideration uh next board meeting and that is the next step on the way to our Network infrastructure refresh which we've all we've all been very excited to have and I know many of our staff members and principals have been in our District staff of course as well have been very excited to to get underway we have reorganized our department thank you to the board for recognizing the need for that to better align our I.T Staffing to the needs of our sites and then in collaboration with our Teamsters Partners we've been able to modernize three critical job descriptions that that helps us make our department more able to recruit and retain really important staff to serve the district a handful of

117more accomplishments before I move on to challenges we have Implement improved and modernized our systems and Partnerships uh for our backups and disaster recovery and also our cyber security protection these are really important as you uh as you hear in the news from time to time one of the most recent ones uh you know large-scale ones was uh an attack on Los Angeles Unified which we all were you know a little bit concerned about and so you know we have really focused very heavily on cyber security initiatives and services uh to to support our efforts there one of those is an incident response plan for us for ransomware and we will be expanding that plan to include other uh um other vectors of attack as well we have focused very heavily on technology equipment refreshes

118Chromebooks you're well aware of laptops uh and we're working on a desktop refresh right now so we're excited to be able to deploy those out to places where desktops are a more appropriate technology than the more mobile devices we have completed the uh photocopier rollout so that's been you know refreshed our photocopiers and brought that contract into a single contract where in the past it was a a variety of different contracts which were very difficult for our schools to make sure that they got Equitable and good service um we also uh are working on our printer refresh which uh we're currently doing a final survey of sites to make sure that we have deployments of printers that are appropriate for the needs of our of our schools so those that will be underway um later

119in the spring probably in the next several weeks actually so we're excited about that and finally one I'm I'm particularly happy about um just it's um you know semantics in a way but I think it's important because it reflects our what we hope is our professionalism in providing services to our uh our district and that is a rename of our department to the Department of information technology which is much more common across the across the uh um you know it organizations so some challenges uh these are challenges a couple of these we'll be bringing to you in the next um the next few uh board meetings for your consideration one of those is we've recognized the need for a more modern asset management system you can't refresh what you don't know you have and so

120you know we we I think have outgrown some of the systems that we have implemented and so we need to consider a much more robust way of managing our devices so we'll be bringing your proposal for that shortly we were unable until recently to hire an education technology coordinator we've been now been able to do that we're very excited and the board approved the appointment of Aaron Vallejo starting and actually that's been adjusted now to just early early March so we're really excited to have her on board and we're excited at the work that she'll be doing and coordinating our technology integration leaders and a lot of the work that they'll be doing as well so we're excited about that manage management tools for Windows devices we have not really had adequate tools to manage

121our Windows devices kind of ironic because they've been around the longest you know District but we will bring be bringing your proposal for that shortly as well and then I mentioned also various security improvements anything with security you secure something more it requires cooperation and sometimes some a little bit of I don't want to say pain but a little bit of additional effort on the part of users and so we're We are continuing to work with our staff and students on on updating and maintaining our security posture so this is really the last slide I have I just wanted to talk briefly about some next steps and some current work we will shortly and with Aaron's assistance of course we will be because you know she is our link to the education side of the

122of the house more than anything else we'll be conducting our annual review of the Strategic technology plan this is a intended as a 10-year plan with an annual review as you know so we'll be doing that throughout the spring with the idea that we'll present that draft of that to you in June with a final approval in August as usual uh we have a network infrastructure plan underway or planning for that we will bring that to you uh our intended to bring that to you for approval um next board meeting with that to be conducted May through August and then um uh with the design work rfps those sorts of things going out in the early uh anticipate that in the early fall of of next school year we've also been obviously doing a lot

123around equipment refresh we've been you know able to with some one-time money of course be able to refresh a lot of our equipment which has been great we um you know I've mentioned the copiers laptops desktops printers um and uh the other thing is to make sure that we are supporting appropriately our non-standard equipment and identifying what that is there are always exceptions to any standards that need to be understood and so for instance just as an example with our printer rollout we know that there are many cases where there are printers that are special purpose printers that the the lease that we're entering into does not go into does not cater to those needs so we have a process in place to make sure that exceptions are tracked approved and that we can make

124sure that we're updating the firmware on those those sorts of things so we'll have that in place a concurrent with the printer rollout another play place where that hits is with our Apple devices we know that there are many places where Apple devices are important for instance you know one of the largest is our CTE programs where they are um you know industry standard equipment and so we need to make sure that we are um you know supporting those but the reality is recognizing that as a department we are not staffed and we you know we don't want to we don't want to advocate for staff to support devices just purely based on personal preference we need to based on an educational need and so we will have a processing place for that so through

125the rest of this year and into next year we'll be making sure that Apple devices are phased out as a personal preference but maintained in places where educational need is appropriate so it's just another example of that and then obviously again uh just mentioning you know uh cyber security improvements we um you know obviously won't uh in a public meeting Express a lot of the uh the improvements that we are making uh but we have a very very very strong focus on that we've acquired systems we've acquired Partnerships with external organizations uh and obviously our cyber Insurance you know all of those sorts of things occur on a regular basis and we um you know feel that we have a much better security posture than we've had in the past and need to continue to

126improve that with that um that's all I have but I will be happy to entertain any questions Michael Schneider help with you my name is Michael Schneider um many things are starting to appear in the technology plan as green and fully implemented the federal plan that they are following with the district on our technology plan as measurable goals and expectations that must be met and from what the district is presenting at this time how do we know that those goals are really being met one of those goals are internet speeds my knowledge are supposed to be one gig per student not only in their classroom but at their home currently what we're doing is issuing hot spots to our children or for use at home it's not a good solution there are Parts in the

127district mostly in our underserved neighborhoods they don't have the minimum federal requirements for internet speeds set forth in the Obama area this is an equity issue as children trying to do their research their homework Google Classroom suffer from disconnects excessive wait times while their fellow classmates are able to quickly get done with their homework and move on to other things the federal plan we are following requires quarterly audits from a third party vendor to verify data speeds not only in the classrooms at Peak values but also at the homes in regards this is an equity issue as you can see from what I just handed to you even though hot spots do exist you can see clearly that we are way below the federal standards but I do believe some of the the plan has

128already said that we're fully implemented we really need to know what are those speeds are we truly 100 percent as you look at those plans you can see how Shore Acres Bay Point they don't have internet reliable even with a hotspot you can look at the cable of what's available availability and you'll notice really tiny right across the street from mental homes cable's not available even though it is around the neighborhood at the bottom there is a disclaimer even though some of those are green connectivity varies especially in high density areas where there's apartments where a lot of our students especially low income are residing once they all start doing their homework we are putting an excessive load of a four-way Highway and we're condensing it down to one lane so I'm asking when can

129we start using the data when are we going to start seeing presenting the data when are we going to have workshops where the public can go ahead I'm trying to think for all this technology that we can go ahead and move forward thank you very much thank you just as you respond to the board's question you can weave in responses to his but see what the board has um I had a question um so as a current student and also as a student that um attends a title one school many times we do face um Internet outages and stuff like that but my concern also is is as technology is advancing and the needs of our students are changing what are we doing to stay on top of it and meet the needs and demands

130of our students uh thank you for that question that's a that's really an excellent question and that's why I think our plan is is a 10-year plan not just a typical standard you know two three or even Five-Year Plan I think this is a plan that needs to evolve and it needs to be a conversation at the board level um you know on a continuing basis um regarding uh regarding internet speeds uh and and making sure that we are meeting the needs of our students and our teachers um obviously you know there's the internal within the district side of that and then there's the external side not actually I really appreciate the comments by the member of the public um because this is a this is a really critical issue and it's an issue that

131occurs nationally and even internationally that that um you know we do not in the United States have a national Broadband program and so you know we're reliant on um the uh the ways that our vendors that our Telecom telecommunications companies actually deploy Internet to our families and that is known to be inequitable in many in many cases so working with our partners in the industry is I think an important thing that we need to continue to be doing to make sure they understand the impact on our students of not deploying broadband internet in some of our communities so on that side of it as well we are doing what we can we're making sure that we're publicizing the current fcc's affordable connectivity program which provides very low cost internet for families that can demonstrate a

132need typically through a free reduced lunch letter those sorts of things so we have that available through the FCC and then you are correct that we also are deploying hot spots as possible that is not a complete solution as that sounds like you're well aware it's um you know we don't always have the best coverage in all of our communities that you know across the valley and so it is not a 100 solution um so so you know I'm not going to stand in front of you today and say we've got this covered for our communities for our families I I think there is more work to do internally and I'll be brief with this I won't geek out on it but just because it's been raised and I think it's important what we have

133done as a strategy is um you know for internet uh for basically Wi-Fi and internet connectivity within our buildings um we have upgraded to um and this is all e-rate reimbursed at 60 percent which is our e-rate reimbursement rate as a district that we qualify for through the FCC we have uh we have 20 gigabits of Uplink to the internet we also have two gigabits in our Wan our wide area network to each School in the district we also monitor that on a regular basis to make sure that that's sufficient the other thing that we and again briefly negotiated into the contracts that we we went out for under e-rate rules over the past two years is to make sure that those amounts are scalable so if we have additional needs within our schools we

134can make sure that we are Meeting those needs we can basically you know effectively dial up the internet at any particular school at any time one last point on that just because it is it is important it answers the question is um in the edge spec that you the education specification that you will see in the next um in uh in the next section here or later this this evening there is actually a a portion of that that discusses Wi-Fi in learning spaces even if they're external to buildings so expanding the accessibility of Wi-Fi within our schools and external to our schools is also an important step in that so it's a it's a variety of solutions to that there's no one solution that most districts have been able to come across that that really

135answer that question so I apologize that was a long-winded answer but it's an area that's that I think is very important thank you okay now I'm more confused this is not my area but doesn't some of it depend on the who's the who your provider is because I know insure Acres if you have a t you've got fiber optics you've got Xfinity I don't know what you have but so how does the school manage that does that matter how does that affect you if we've got fiber optics in Shore Acres is that something can help our schools or you're not even in that system so so we um our current contracts are with ATT and those are Bid out um through e-rate so a t provides our um Internet connected basically our Wan connectivity our

136wide area network connectivity um the county Contra Costa County Office of Education provides there are ISP or internet service providers so they provide the actual internet and they have multiple Pathways out to the internet I'm not sure if that answers your question exactly yeah I I question right um I also have a question um in one of the slides they talked about redistribution of new technologies and within our schools so again my question with this is um are schools that are receiving like these new technologies and new um infrastructure are they in some way prioritized or will all schools be receiving them at the same time so that's a fantastic question thank you for that obviously we um you know many of these rollouts we um are able have been able to do relatively quickly

137um you know in historical terms typically you know there would be a portion of money that would be allocated for deferred maintenance of these things and that would would be refreshing schools over a period of time the reality in our district is that most purchasing has been done at the site level and so that's been an area where Equity has not been able to be a real priority for us because some schools as we know very well have more ability to do that than others and so that's something that I'm really pleased that the board has been able to um to see the value of making sure that we're committing dollars to making sure that those Technologies are spread as equitably as possibly across our across our schools so the initiatives that I mentioned earlier

138are all things that are going across the district and you know for every student one-to-one I always say one to one is an equity initiative not a technology initiative it's an access for all students initiative that's that's what it is and so if we are not a one-to-one district if every student does not have access to a device 24 7 when they when they have the need for that believe that may answer your question it did thank you thank you so much thank you for this presentation and this update um I do want to mention that um responsible um technology use and social media um definitely was a topic um discussed at last night's town hall meeting um and um definitely because um that access and those kinds of interactions really impact our students um

139social and academic experiences on our campuses um I'm really interested in um in action step 1.1.2 Implement and communicate a district-wide digital citizenship curriculum I'm designed to be embedded within curricular content at all grade levels which is an absolute need and I'm really glad to see that the implementation is in process progress um and I'm wondering if you can tell us more absolutely thank you for the question that that's uh one of my favorites as well um so uh digital citizenship is uh um you know for the for the benefit of those who aren't familiar with the term digital citizenship is really you know the ability for us to make sure that students have within themselves within their own thinking about their online behaviors the ability to act as good as Citizens in that way

140um so very much like you know how do you act in person how do you act easily well the reality is technology can create a barrier for us that social media you know you know if you've got that barrier there between people it's it's something that uh it's more easy to to act in certain ways that may not be appropriate so what we do with that is we um we work with we use uh um a uh a uh a adjustment of the Common Sense Media digital citizenship curriculum it's actually really excellent curriculum it's free freely available um it's too much for for us to you know if we were to implement the entire thing our schools would be doing that you know every single day for a half an hour or something like that

141and there's no way we're going to do that so we have been working and with our previous Ed Tech coordinator um working to actually develop an implementable plan for that that can be distributed to schools I'm sorry to say I'm just full disclosure you know with the um the lack of an edtech coordinator over the past six or eight months that project has been um not pushed forward as quickly as I'd like to see it I look forward to being able to push that out and work through our edtech coordinator through our technology integration leaders to make sure that that program is is in place because it is absolutely critical in today's world that students are are you know have the tools within them to be able to interact appropriate with technology thank you very

142much thank you oh sorry just briefly um a couple of comments just to let you know what I'm hearing out there uh one is on the sort of printers and copiers roll out um just making sure that those are functioning well for all staff before you start pulling any of the other ones away um just hearing a little Rumblings about that um and then uh Chromebooks for elementary school students I often hear uh two sides of that either it's an area where they don't feel like it's either safe for students to be taking this the Chromebooks home and back or they don't come back if they go home or people feel that they're too heavy for elementary school students to be caring particularly the smallest ones to be carrying in their backpack so um as

143you move forward in your plan looking at do all of our elementary schools have the ability to store the one-to-one devices on site when that's preferred at that particular site site and then lastly the you talked about the non-standard equipment what comes to mind for me there in particular is our computer science classes because Chromebooks are really fully inadequate for computer programming um so as we move forward into uh to become a district where we actually want all of our students to learn the language of computer programming various computer programming languages because that is the future and it's going to give them a lot more career possibilities going forward that just to recognize that Chromebooks are going to be fully inadequate for that and we should be planning to provide those devices and provide that

144type of instruction not just how to use Google Docs thanks thank you thank you um 12.3 first interim reports Dr Gonzalez has 12.3 and 12.4 so this is real quick that we're transparent s the county office recently sent to us was a review of our first in-room report the good news is that they verified the certification that we put on so we said that we had a positive certified budget they agreed with that but now that Bill Clark is at least temporarily back at the County office I really appreciate the the way that they've Set uh this letter up and so if you take a look at the attachment what they've done is they're really graphing out what the future looks like in the three years of you know they take they take a look

145back but they also take a look at the nyp right the current year and the two future years but what's really important in the graphic that they show is that they are acknowledging that we are getting into a realm again of deficit spending meaning we are expecting to be spending more than we are bringing in and so the second graph um that I think is is much more interesting is the one that takes a look at the unrestricted general fund funds because we know that a lot of those came in because they were one-time dollars and we had to book them and now what's happening is we're spending that down and we're spending that down and we're spending that down and so as we spend it down we have less than our Reserve so I

146just wanted to point out that piece and then of course they're acknowledging uh the Ada projections we have that three-year rolling average which means that even though we may be flat this year we are still taking into account the significant losses of the last two years and so they just graph it out to make it a little easier for the public to understand we do have these letters that are posted on the website but I wanted to make sure that I was putting this on a board agenda so that the public could see this as well as the board that they are verifying but they're continuing to say just be careful because we're heading into a time of uncertainty with whatever is going to happen with the governor's predictions and you know Cola moving forward

147cost of living adjustment moving forward any questions on this letter thank you okay thank you oh you have the next one I do I also have a 12.4 so what we do every time that we bring a B 1200 forward is in at least the last seven or eight of these we've brought forward we've been able to get the county offices response loaded generally Laura is receiving those from me at the very last minute from the county office and so we've been grateful that the county office has been able to move fairly quickly we didn't give them enough time this last time around with the agreement for the teamsters and Landscaping and so I committed to them that we would bring it back we would put it on a board agenda and we would make

148sure that it was public and this is their response to the ab1200 they were acknowledging ahead of time and and we knew that night that we were going to be getting this letter it's just the timing of it didn't didn't happen but they were verifying that we did have the funds to be able to afford the increase and the restructuring that we did for the teamsters in the Landscaping Department I appreciate that it is on the agenda for the record thank you thank you thank you board member reports or is that where we are wait yeah I'll start with trustee Mason okay I'll be very very surprised is that what you said to me yes yes um I went to the csba meeting the county one and listened about on the budget news which is

149good the day it's given and then the next day it's new news um I went to Rio Vista and had coffee with the principal and the parents again that was very nice I went to the board breakfast with um almost all of the board members were we all there are I think not not Mr okay and that was interesting and I also went to ignition Valley High School for the business meeting and um trustee Mayo is a representative for that meeting so I will let her give the report on what happened at that meeting thank you then I'll just pass it on to trustee man don't you love how we just passed this off um I attended the CAC meeting in um Miss McFerrin may wish to report out as well a review of the

150legislative day was presented and I would like to advise our community members to save the date for the celebration of success which will be May 1st at 6 45 p.m at Concord High School and that's always a very heartwarming event to attend um I did attend the business education Alliance meeting and this time it was held at Ignacio Valley High School it's great to be on the campuses rather than having those meetings during zoom and it's great to um vary the locations of the meetings um through their it opened with a recognition of the Mount Diablo high school students who completed their uh certain training which is Citizens emergency response team training and my husband was cheering as he read the information because he is involved in the Pleasant Hill cert and believes strongly that

151that will support our communities in a major disaster um at the meeting we adjourned into work groups which uh each work group according to an industry partner thread was uh to provide feedback on proposed expenditures and finalize a career pathway map which will be printed and posted on the website and those Maps will be especially helpful to inform parents about the coursework that their students can take to achieve a certain pathway they are very colorful they're uh expl they explain a lot and instead of just saying you'll take math 1 and math two there's a better descriptor of what kind of math is going to be taught in that particular program um and um there was an opportunity for those uh the staff members who were there to share their accomplishments within their industry sector

152for example maybe they took their students on a field trip to a particular architect's office or to a particular uh construction firm one of the groups has been involved with a Habitat for Humanity and construction so they were out there originally helping to did foundations and this last time they went they were actually able to do some Hands-On hammering and construction work which of course when the Walls Start to go up you really feel the energy in a building and you are connected with it best day will be held on March 13th and that's always an exciting day so I hope all of you will Mark that on your calendar and um uh we are in uh seeking internships from our businesses for students uh work in the summer uh hopefully there would be a

153small stipend with it but also uh just a work experience for students in their particular field of Interest so if a business who might happen to be listening would have that opportunity for some of our students this summer they should contact Heather Fontanella in charge of career Pathways or Dr Clark's office any of us will get you connected with the right person I as you said we attended the Alcosta SSC School Board breakfast as the guest of Medea and I want to thank all of the Medea team who was there to welcome us and um one point uh there were presentations uh Senator Aisha wahhab from District 10 advised the attendees that legislators have been cautioned not to expect results for bills that they submit requiring Revenue because of the economy downturn so that was

154sort of telling that you know we there are um shall I say symptoms of an economic downturn uh on February 15th I attended the budget advisory committee meeting and then the 16th we were at measure J and major C so thank you Jesse McFadden good evening everyone over the past few weeks I've attended the meetings that I regularly join although now I go to the parent advisory Council CAC and the measure c um and Jason Bond oversight meetings rather than the budget advisory Council meetings but what I really want to share about tonight revolves around last night's town hall meeting at Pine Hollow I want to thank president zawe and Dr Clark and our District staff for organizing and communicating out the details of this event and the Pine Hollow team for hosting um and

155for so many community members um and um local electeds for coming out to speak listen and offer Direction and solutions to issues of both bullying and persistent acts of racism on our campuses um we heard parents students and staff members speak about microaggressions black students being made to feel othered rather than respected and included we heard about incidents of fighting that at least one person called wolf pack incidents versus kind of one-on-one fights or or kind of more um consensual type fights and we heard about students not feeling safe in our bathrooms due to threats of violence we heard from parents saying that they encouraged their kids to report these incidents and they do but the bullying continues um there were a lot of feelings in the room um what I sometimes called Big feelings

156um valid feelings um and in that room I really appreciated that um and I also appreciated that so many speakers spoke about solutions that could help us address these persistent problems um which are issues that aren't limited to our district boundaries I heard ideas about parents getting involved in their schools like councils and I think that may have been something that was that was misheard I heard someone saying that really just um as a way to support schools and for parents to be kind of more involved um in what's going on at their School site and to have some control over the vision um and funding for for their specific schools um and I don't think it was mentioned but I do want to remind folks that if some even if someone isn't elected to

157um serve on the School site Council any parent student or faculty member is welcome at their school's meeting and can speak up on agenda items that are important to them and I encourage parents to do this um and um well I don't remember something uh someone naming it hearing about a lack of consequences or a perceived lack of consequences whichever one is the truth and maybe in some cases both sometimes and issues that persist among students um this is a really good opportunity to bring some um to bring or to um maybe emphasize use of restorative practices which are learning opportunities for students whose inappropriate behavior could um in part be addressed with a chance for them to make amends for their behavior and see consequences that they somehow maybe didn't see or understand um

158while they were acting out um in terms of harming a person and their school community and then I also heard about irresponsible and dangerous use of social media and so I really do appreciate that our technology plan um is one part of addressing that um and um I am um very curious um some issues have come up around um Spirit weeks um and so I do have if we have kind of future agenda items I would um just like to know more about how we're making sure that um we're being racially and culturally sensitive to all students in um implanting Student Activities and um I also want to mention that a lot of the comments last night had to do with concerns about middle schools and so I would like to know more about how

159we are um supporting student wellness um how we are managing conflicts um and just how we're addressing um kind of the major student behavioral needs in in our middle schools and that's all I have this evening thank you thank you trustee count all right thank you um one of the things I wanted to highlight was um the wonderful PTA Founders Day um which are trustee Linda Mayo was one of the organizers of so thank you to trustee Mayo to the 32nd District PTA Velma Wilson Aisha West the California state PTA and all the organizers of the event to recognize local parents and teachers who work together for all kids in our public schools and congratulations to all the scholarship winners we did have two scholarship winners from our Mount Diablo Unified School District from College

160Park and Ignacio Valley High so that was very exciting to see um I also wanted to point out that there is a a fairly new group forming that's the Contra Costa cultural planning and Arts Council you can find a Facebook page that's called that um and basically what happened was our Contra Costa County hired Consultants to work on the goal of identifying and establishing a county-wide non-profit Arts Council that will address the needs of artists Arts organizations Arts consumers and arched Educators with a goal of ensuring access and Equity they're holding visioning sessions March 14th to 18th throughout the whole County the one closest to us is March 14th in Walnut Creek at 5 pm at the Heather farm community center I'm excited about this it's great timing I think because our district also is

161beginning to engage in the district-wide Strategic Arts plan this spring as well and so my hope is that those two will really dovetail together and that there will be people who will be attending both um I want to give a quick shout out to my own teenager Kai account who was just awarded the National Merit scholar finalist we just received that information very exciting um and uh and lastly I do want to thank um our board president occasions are we superintendent Dr Adam Clark Holly Tillman from Clayton city council and everyone who attended and spoke at last night's town hall on racism and bullying um I feel like though these are things that are hard to speak and hard to hear about it's so important for us to shine light on this so that we

162can fully address it take action and clarify with our schools and communities that we are firmly against hate there was a speaker at the very end of the night who was a fairly new teacher I believe she's still in training um to become a teacher who spoke last and as a Mount Diablo Alum who said that she felt that she couldn't come teach her now after hearing these things um and I feel like I want to clarify to her and to the community at large that the fact that this topic is something that they're seeing in the media and you know coming to coming to light I don't feel that that means that racist incidents in our schools are particularly heightened Beyond other school districts in our area or in our state or even in

163our nation what I think it really means is that this visibility means is that we in our district are willing to name it and face it which so often is very difficult to do um so um and then I think a lot of the stories um a lot of the incidents that have been happening show this this deep level of ignorance um in the form of racial taunts violence and microaggressions by students and even some of our staff um and so there's just a huge need to educate uh everyone for all of us to learn more um about about race um and to talk about race um and so I look forward to our next topic on the uh Equity policy for us as a board and definitely have uh want us to be sharing

164out more specific resources to our schools thanks for us so I want to start off tonight's border Port um by just saying that education is power knowledge is power and we all know that but now I want to ask you all to what if we are constantly talking about educational Justice educational equity in our school district what exactly does that look like to you what does that mean to you and what actions can we take for that and for those goals to be met I'll share a little bit of what um what I've been up to um I feel like these last couple of weeks have been really heavy um not only with like things that have occurred but just like the atmosphere in general um but I want to highlight that um I visited

165the Northgate campus for the first time um and I had a discussion with Mrs Honey about the ethnic studies curriculum that she will be teaching next year um and with that discussion I there are a couple of things that were discussed or that brought up is how can we ensure that all of our students are being represented are being highly um with all like like I like always mentioned with our being represented or being taught have access and opportunities to learn about ourselves of our our own history our own communities our own identities with dignity culture dignity honor and respect um I also want to bring just bring that to again um to highlight like what's been going on not only like in our in our school district but also like on our Nationwide um

166how there are some curriculums and some like ethnic studies that can't be taught in certain States um like what's going on right now in Florida but even like as I found out in like ethnic studies class in Arizona there are you can't teach Latino and Chicano studies in some states you can't talk about white supremacy you can't um have discussions that challenge like critical race Theory so living and being in a multicultural multi-linguistic District it is important that we are able to provide these opportunities for all of our students for the students to come in the future generations and also to to provide that need for the students that we couldn't serve and that we couldn't provide these opportunities for um we had a student advisory committee meeting February 18th uh 15. I'm sorry 15th

167and um basically what we what we've been doing throughout this time is coming up with a proposal with an issue that is prevalent in our community and what Solutions as students can we all collaborate with and come to and how can we propose these solutions to everyone um but through all of these discussions and everything that everyone shared a common theme keeps arising and that is student safety um reading office diverse diversifying academic teachings and this is not just with the social studies curriculum it's also in our literacy in our English in our math and our science and that our practices are restorative and unfortunately racial bullying xenophobia and discrimination among students of color and not only at that of Educators like staff um and I have unfortunately have to had have had to witness

168that um and that being said when we come up with these with with um with these Solutions some of the solutions we're holding Community workshops I'm so thankful that we had this town hall meeting um last night and we were able to have that space for the community to come up and speak up to start to break the silence into voice again for themselves for the their past their for their past Generations but also for the future Generations so it's important for us to continue to create a nourishing and encouraging environment where our students can thrive and as a student again I feel that I need to talk about this issue because it's something that we need and we need to continue to address and that's the teacher shortage um and our Title One schools

169that are being being affected and impacted firsthand why like we are coming with solutions by recruiting teachers we um giving raises and all of these things but what are we doing to prevent these issues from happening next year what are the inequities that we've experienced at our school sites how are they being addressed and ensure that they will not happen um in the years to come and that again like with the teacher shortage it does affect stability within our students a lot of students are being denied that the right to an education um and like many like many said um I can give an example like my my twin brother if you all don't know I have a twin um we're in the same grade level um same school same same classes that we're supposed

170to be taking but I have a teacher in the chemistry department and he doesn't he has a vacant and he it's vacant in his classroom and he's he's had substitutes in and now right now they have a permanent sub but I recently found out that that class is not College credited because he has never participated in any labs so then I bring the question again how are how what are we doing additionally to prevent these issues to happen ever again um and what restorative measures and effective Solutions are we doing that well we will make sure that the decisions that we are making up here in the district level are being met at the ground level that goes and goes the same way with the equity policies that were that we are passing keeping accountability

171accountability like we've mentioned consistently um and this message also goes out to all community members all staff all administrators all leaders in our community that the things that we're doing here at the board are also being done at our school levels at our communities at our cities but also in our homes um and again I just want to really appreciate that town hall meeting that we had where we were able to provide this safe space for people to come and speak up and come voice their needs and come highlight these like these demands that we really do desperately need um and I kind of just also just want to end off with some things that some important deadlines that are coming up um I always talked about like Civic engagement right what the importance of

172students being involved in the school sites in their schools here at the district level um and during I want to congratulate first of all the students at Mount Diablo High School who gained a certification in cert um they were honored by Dr Clark and other board members um where they're present but that during that celebration there was also a CTE meeting and I was able to participate in provided student input and that's actually one of the first meetings that I've ever attended um and you know as a student board member I sit here in these meetings I continue I network with other members in the community but being at this um CTE meeting where we are actually making decisions of the curriculum that's being offered next year how can we improve student experiences it's very

173important for students not only students already involved but students that are in these classrooms to be encouraged to come out and give feedback because that's how we know where what areas we need to improve on so I just also want to like highlight them um and I also just want to mention um like for College and Career Readiness um that the FAFSA application does close March 2nd and so does the California Dream Act um and tonight I just I want to close off with reflecting on last night like my my terms so far um and I've I am honored to serve in this board and to serve alongside all of you um like I said like we we are all resilience we are the representation of different perspectives different experiences and different narratives that need

174to be brought to light so I just want to acknowledge my um my stance a student board member but also sitting in this um sitting in this sitting in this room sitting at the table and being able to provide these perspectives and these narratives with you with you all and again I am honored to work alongside all of you and I am I just also want to just give you guys a recognition because sometimes you know we don't get the recognition we deserve um really like the work that we are doing here um it matters um and it truly does affect our students like uh it affects our students and the future of our students so I just want to again continue to encourage all of us to embrace and embrace Pride Embrace celebration and

175accept Embrace acceptance of cultures and all identities and always again bring it back to the community and to the people that we serve thank you um that's everything I have to say well I'll say under the next item but uh I'll just let people know that tomorrow I start my school board Finance training but I'm sort of excited about but I've chose to do it so I actually am uh so I'm it's gonna be good it's through a genomics at from Georgetown University and it's just for school board members to understand budgeting and finance all right 14.0 superintendent reports yes thank you so much um you know I I um first of all I want to respond to the to the um violence that we discussed last night at the at the Town Hall and

176I'm going to be brief you know I was gonna um I was gonna read this article from the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday there was an article in there about a 13 year old Ukrainian Refugee who uh had to flee Ukraine because of war and she's in Middle School in San Francisco and what she described was very much what we heard last night um and and if you get a chance to read this article it really does give the reasons why we we might be seeing an uptick in in behaviors across the country in middle school I think it's similar to the uptick that we see in second grade because the these students um they they were out of school for some time and um and we have sort of this this meeting of challenges that

177just kind of creates a perfect storm however I will not blame I will not point fingers and I'll never blame the children right we're the adults and the problem is with us and we need to work to solve these problems we need to work collaboratively together we need to work with the families most importantly we have to work with these students we do suspend we do expel we expel two students tonight um you know unfortunately we've had some students who have been arrested and and taken to jail from our from our campuses that doesn't solve the problem the the problem is deeper than that you know at a typical Middle School you have 75 adults on that campus it is not the responsibility of the principal and vice principal only it is everyone's responsibility to

178make sure that the environment is safe so I will keep working with our teams and sitting down with anyone who's willing to sit down and talk about these things and if that means having Town Halls if that means I'm collaborating with the police department if that means collaborating with mental health collaborating with our labor Partners I'll do what it takes to make sure that we're getting our students what what they ultimately need so as we um as we move into our Equity policy policy zero four one five equity okay I don't know if there's two cards for 14.1 and not 14.2 so I don't know it's all for Equity I would imagine because yeah I don't have anything listed on super I know so is everyone speaking for 14.2 yeah okay so so um you

179know last um at our last board meeting as it was the night of black history month and I and I made the comment um you know I really hope that we celebrate Black History Month throughout the district but if we don't that um that we are having an event tomorrow night at Mount Diablo High School where um where we will be celebrating Black History Month and this is the second event that we've done that we've been um that we have been very intentional in inviting out um African-American students and families and everyone else right where it's it's very inclusive however when you when you have a group that um you know that historically has faced many challenges um you have to be intentional at times in addressing some of those challenges that they face and

180so I'm really looking forward to to tomorrow night and and I think that it it is representative of the goal that this board has set forward and the expectations that this board has set forward I'm so much more motivated to talk about Solutions and putting actions in place rather than pointing fingers making excuses and and casting blame and and unfortunately I hear so much of that in in my position and and I just really won't won't engage in that um however what took place at at our Middle School at Diablo View Middle School was completely unacceptable we had a um you know we we had a breakdown of the communication amongst adults at that at that campus and ultimately I'm responsible um you know I put the principle in place we put the administration through

181Equity training we don't do Equity training with our teachers we haven't that's something that we'll I would imagine will need to be negotiated at some point um however the principles are my responsibility and the administration is my responsibility and I take I take responsibility for that for that action and really what the action what the lack of action was was that we had an event and um and it was a very harmful and hurtful event and just a punitive response is not enough when there's been serious harm and um and and I'm not one to to call anybody out I think that unfortunately I've seen enough of these missteps throughout my time in this in this District um and I've seen it in my previous district and I've seen it in the previous three districts

182I was in it's it's a problem it's a systemic problem that we have but this incident struck a nerve um you know there is uh there's there's mistrust amongst the adults at this campus and so there's not an environment where the adults can speak freely on either side right and and there is a lack of trust and um and I think if there had been a lack of trust then the adults on that campus could have gotten together and come up with a response that acknowledged the hurt and pain that something like this caused and really could have turned this punitive situation A punitive response into a much more restorative response and again I take responsibility for that the the system that we have established to ensure that this doesn't happen isn't working and and

183I will bring about change in that system on how we work with and and train our people um both on discipline code but also on the restorative on the restorative code and um and that is a that is a misstep on my part that I take responsibility for I'm embarrassed that this happens um you know that this happened under my watch and um and I will work tirelessly to ensure that it doesn't happen so with that I we have the equity policy here and I will turn it over to you president and say we should we do a public comment first what do you guys think yeah we I mean yeah we have public here who's been waiting it's nine o'clock thank you for hanging in there for your patience for three hours yeah I've

184learned my daughter who's home alone that this would be a long night probably but she's probably enjoying alone time um Anita Johnson okay um Willie mems uh is is there a staff report on this I mean I know there's one online is there a I'm sorry what did you say staff report oh it's our Equity policy which we passed November yeah yeah bring up on the screen so folks can see it um I was uh I had a question on item number six underscore climate I couldn't bring that up okay I'll read it it says um building a positive School climate and culture that promotes students the belonging engaging safety and academic and other supports for students um my concern is the uh when you listen to the the voices of the African-American students and

185their parents there doesn't seem to be a lack of I mean it doesn't seem to be a lack of baloney or some kind of empathy just like one of the parents said yesterday that last night that she spoke to a principal about what was going on with her child and she felt dismissed you know so that is a racist kind of reaction when we just miss someone you know and my question is that this this missile is Just Happening across the board with this particular principle but what happened at uh the Diablo View is nothing new about what's going on in my school district has been going on for years and in fact some things happened this this past week uh and in fact you know when we were under the pandemic you had racism

186bombs that were directed at black people you know and and my concerns what would the teachers doing at the time this was going on was this reported did anybody get penalized this is almost as though like okay well just this message just happening you know we won't uh we'll we'll just talk to the student but it was system y that was going on across this District but the issue is you know again I had brought up last night if you don't uh address the issue of race and racism within your schools nothing will change if you don't begin to talk um in in terms of Dr Clark's famous words having discussions on it I mean what's why why is it District why why are so many people afraid even bring up the issue of race

187and race within the schools why won't they why want the teachers to even teach the history the true history the real history of the world that black people played in this country they won't even teach that why don't they even mention the fact that that uh African people were enslaving this country over 250 years this country is 950 years old but when you look at the dang history books you'll see a little small paragraph or a page or two but there's no question for 250 years so you don't give this this this particular group that separate 250 Years of Slavery and 100 Years of racial religion terrorism on your page and as though it's nothing so the the issue is that the the this District not just this District are in total denial they don't

188want to discuss and tell the truth about what happened to this country and I think that the children that they're being told that from the beginning you know I mean you don't have to overwhelm them with such the brutality that you start with small segments and then you from the third grade all the way up to the 12th grade and then you bring up all this and mention everything else so they have some some sympathy the truth thank you Holly Tillman councilwoman Holly Tillman a trusty Mayo would correct me if I did give you the title no you you like decorum and thank you madam president and Dr Clark and fellow trustees that are here um I'm here tonight as a parent but I in full disclosure I am a city council member um and

189I have I had one student who graduated from this school district and I have a Curtin student who's in 11th grade at Northgate High School and I also serve as part of my Council duties as the liaison to the school district so I sit on the a bar committee if you see my post you see I always mention that when I discuss any issues related to our Council and the district and so I was honored last night to stand with you madam president for our rally that we had before the town hall um I was it was unfortunate that I had to miss the full Town Hall I got to hear the first speaker and what I heard was horrific and then I just kept getting texts the entire meeting I had a council meeting

190of a lot of the bullying which there was a lot of it in our district and so what I will say is although we don't want to have to place blame and I understand that you don't want to point fingers I would say that our district and Mr Mintz is correct it's been going on for years I haven't heard any solutions yet and I'm hoping that we hear that when you guys get to have the mics back but I will say that we have a Culture of Fear here in our district and let me explain why it's a fear from students who are afraid to speak up when something happens we heard this last night from parents who spoke for their children there's a fear from their from the parents as well of speaking up

191we had a parent that spoke actually in front of the press conference that we have with the NAACP he also spoke last night I'm hoping that he shared it again his fear was even though he heard about the cotton ball incident was not to not to bring it to anybody's attention because you actually want to be sure that he got the services he needed for his his student his child at that school and he was already having issues with the admin he shouldn't have to choose he should be able to get all of that we have a culture fear with teachers who literally fear retaliation for speaking up and if I'm not exaggerating they're speaking up they share it and there's a retaliation that's happening to them where they're being forced to be silent that's

192unacceptable I'm here tonight to let you know I'm going to speak for them if I have to and I'm encouraging as many of them as they can to come and voice their own concerns and I will give you their names privately so that when you see that something happens to them behind the scenes you know I was right and they're right people are retaliating against them from this District staff are afraid to speak up community members are afraid to speak up people are mad at me for even shining a light on this at all because they're embarrassed oh my gosh you're shining a bad light on Clayton it's not about that it's about doing what's right for those kids so I'll tie it back to this Mr Mims was right it's part of uh number

193six building a positive School climate and culture that promotes student belonging engagement safety and academic and other supports for students the safety piece is lacking all the way around and I will say that I need you guys to do a deep dive on who continues to be The Gatekeepers for Progress here in our district and what I mean by that are people who are skating so think about how long this has been going on and who's been in positions of power in the district that have not stopped this and do something about it because it's time I would also say if you can I will wrap it up right now as far as getting our students what they need they need admins to stop speaking sweeping things under the rug and until that happens the

194culture and feel where fear will persist thank you Charlene leathers make it even better than that um you know first of all in looking at the um the equity policy review and I didn't know that I could you know hit on whatever down here and I can actually see additional information so I want to speak on the equity policy review amongst other things um but I don't know if you can answer a question when is there going to be a plan in place to address such issues and what steps will be taken what actions will be taken can I ask that question can I get an answer okay okay um secondly even though it's been mentioned that Mount Diablo is having this problem this isn't just a Mount Diablo problem we all know that this

195is historically a problem throughout this country so Mount Diablo you know maybe it's one of the worst things that has come about and I doubt it's the worst thing I'm sure probably they're not probably but I know there has been worse I don't know offhand specifically but there's been worse and I know my granddaughter and um I I know that you said it last night has heard the N word every day since she's been in Mount Diablo Unified School District and um it's hurtful it is truly hurtful and of course I can always tell her well you know you need to respond this way and you need to respond that way and I'm sure if she did that you know her hand would be slap because Nana necessarily you know will speak frankly um and

196you know just something that we shared with me by her last night um said in her PE class there is a new student from Afghanistan who does not speak very or really does not speak English nor does she understand English very well and she said you know Nana it's a bad part about it is the Pediatric teacher hollers at her speaks down to her so you know and previously mentioned teachers May stand here and say they need additional teachers they're lose or you all are losing good teachers but I'll be doggone if you have don't have teachers in this District that aren't compassionate aren't compassionate um don't know the things that they need to know in order to be culturally sensitive to be culturally aware and so you know it's just not losing the good

197teachers but the teachers that you may have now may not be the best teachers that you want to have around so that's all I have to say that was short and sweeter thank you okay I'll go um it has been a very long month a very very long month um and that longness really has been and what's happened in our community um yeah from the very beginning before I want to just tell a story libraries are written down I just for full disclosure that is my mother she pointed at me that hopefully becomes clear but I write it down so that I don't Meander Dr Clark I really appreciate the words you opened with I really um appreciate your emphasis on collaboration between all of the adults and that this is an adult problem that

198all of this is an adult problem because we are responsible for our children whether we're the parent whether we're the teacher the the staff members the administrators the food nutrition the bus drivers the custodians the security guards everyone we're we're responsible for our children and we have to collaborate together um and yeah I'll get to more later um so I'm gonna take my time because it's still Black History Month if you're black you might get that okay um so this school year is the fifth year that we've lived that my daughter has gone to school in this District so when we moved to this District my daughter was in the fifth grade I looked up the demographics of her new school and knew she would be just one of a handful of black students having

199grown up being one of a handful myself I did my best to prepare her based on my own experience especially around classroom lessons about slavery or the Civil Rights Movement what I mean that that is in my experience when you get to that topic being the only black student in class everyone turns around and looks at you well much different than the district we came from there was no acknowledgment of Martin Luther King day that I like that's the low bar to me or black history month so I was really annoyed but then I paid attention to the next month women's history um and then Asian American Pacific Islander History Month which comes after that and the same silence persisted so then I concluded well at least it wasn't just black folks we're equal opportunity

200ignorers of the Multicultural Society in which we live here at mdusd but I must admit I really missed the outward expression of celebrations of all cultures in our old District so the spring dragged on until one day I came home so excited to tell my daughter the most amazing news about something she just accomplished it was really big um I already called it like everyone in my family and I knew that she would be so very excited um so I burst through the front door she was already home to find her doing her homework on the couch and before I could get a word out she looked at me and said so and so called me and my friend the n-word today and I just thought well I didn't just hear that what she repeated

201herself and I dropped everything in my hands and I was honestly paralyzed having absolutely no idea what to do um I know I didn't expect that whatsoever especially because in I don't know you're 10 in the fifth grade or 11. um I took very deep breaths I immediately wanted to call my mom because I literally needed my mom in that moment um I I just needed her um but I knew that if I called her then she would roll up to the school and I wouldn't be able to stop her um and I knew that I needed I needed to woman up as a mom and I needed to be the one to roll up to the school so instead I looked at my daughter and explained calmly that my reaction has nothing to do

202with her and everything to do with her because I will do absolutely anything to protect her then I told her her good news and at least she was uplifted immediately I learned from her as we continue to talk about it that she and her friend indeed marched right on up to the office hand in hand to tell on that boy they told the vice principal yet I had to hear it from my daughter the next day I dropped her off in the drop-off line I parked I rolled up into the office and asked to meet with the vice principal we met he told me he'd spoken to the child's parents but he can't tell me the plan for discipline and it's only recently that it clicked that he spoke to that child's parents but not

203the parents of the children who were harmed he also told me that you know kids listen to music and that's how they learn it and I tell him no this boy used the word as a weapon not a lyric I decided not to waste my time with him anymore I left I wrote to several District administrators which turned out to be another waste of my time I got absolutely nothing um so I can't do nothing my daughter's future depends on it avoiding the Judgment of my mother depends on it the well-being of our Mount Diablo Unified School District Community depends on it um for the two years I've been on this board I've witnessed the shift of it towards an equity lens in everything we do like all the conversations we have today are new

204they wouldn't have happened in 2019 right prior to Dr Clark coming um just a few months ago we we passed this Equity policy where we identified what needs to take place which is towards the top two of them are sorry proactively identifying class linguistic and cultural biases including unintentional and implicit biases that negatively affect student achievement and interrupting practices policies and institutional barriers that negatively influence student learning perpetuate achievement gaps and impede equal access to opportunities for all students as Dr Clark mentioned over the last two years since you've been here School site administrators have been required to attend um Dei trainings required to lead Equity work with their staff and share their Equity Journeys with their peers our district is all in in implementing our plan to address the disparities in achievement of African-American

205students as well as all that we heard as well as and how students and students in the foster care student system unlike other districts and I've heard it from Dr Clark but I actually heard it hear it from colleagues in my day job there are districts who don't who want to keep this hidden who don't want to be outward with their work like we do um around these students but we're we are transparent with our problems like trustee Khan just said it feels really bad because we're hearing all of it and we're talking about it but that's what's going to make it really better and that's what will make us better is that we're facing the dark which I think will just bring all of this bring on the light um um and I really

206appreciate that we put a lot of focus on the adults which goes back to that top of our equity policy which says interrupting practices policies and institutional barriers so clearly it's not enough at all um I think that when we have the cotton ball incident when we have wear black for black in on in honor of black people when we have dressed as your favorite black character um when we have students being told they shouldn't worry about college because they are and you can fill in their race that's not white there when we have students who are bullied for being Asian for being Muslim for being indigenous for being Latin a we failed our children um so now everyone has asked for what are we going to do about it so here I go here's

207my here's what I would like to see us do about it um we all know that um a budget is a is a is a reflection of that governing body's values so the state budget our County budget our School District budget um and I learned about many years ago I learned that if you really want to get something done in my day job um I do work in policy advocacy if you really want to get something done you do it through the budget so at this point I'm convinced that our policies like I think our policy is right I think our policy is just but it's not getting anything done um I would really like to work with you all to put forward proposals that put our money where our equity and anti-racist mouth is

208um I want to I would like to see us pay to bring in experts educational leaders who have gone through this um focusing on the children the adults and our families so experts in um uh someone said culturally responsive teaching experts in I don't know in oh uh in the CCE empathy interviews I know what those are you know um just well we don't go into it now but like that would be really great um experts in uh family engagement and respecting families and respecting the expertise of families um because that often I as as I was reading the data the student data I was I know what it's like as a mother who is black and whose child is black to have to to be concerned about how I'm perceived if I go to

209the school to try to address a problem and I know what it's like to like have that teacher usually um I don't know how to say like not to mean me but like they know best and I can only imagine how much worse it could even be for a a parent who is has unstable housing so for a family who um is homeless how the the Judgment that could potentially come across for a family that has a student with special needs who has a disability or for a student who is in the foster care system and their family at the moment is their life is in complete disarray um we passed a resolution as we did how many resolutions we passed today like okay we passed a resolution in honor of every month every cultural

210month that there is which I'm really proud of people think it's a waste of time but it makes us all aware that all of these different people religions cultures exist um but I'm sure that we can all confidently say those of us who have students currently that um although we want in our the end of our resolution we always want the School site to to teach about this to have to yeah teach to honor these months I'm sure we can confidently say that that doesn't happen um because teachers one they're left to figure that out on their own um so I would like to purchase culturally responsive and affirming curriculum and not let it sit and collect dust um all of these histories need to happen all throughout the year we need to fund field

211trips we've got a wealth of cultural museums and Exhibits and shows in the Bay Area so students can learn about cultures they are familiar with and cultures that are new to them and gain respect and appreciate appreciation for all in our communities it's in our it's in our Equity policy but we need to continue to diversify our staff I know that there is there's so much in the world that makes that hard because of where we are economically we're like literally our location being in in the Most High Cost of Living area it is literally illogical to move here from anywhere else um to be an educator or a staff member or an administrator but we really need to diversify our staff as I said in the labor acknowledgment at the top it is so

212rare almost impossible for a black child to ever experience a black educator my daughter has never been taught by a black educator and because of the school that she's at now if I look ahead there is no black Educators there she has three more years it is very doubtful that she will have ever experienced being taught by someone who looks like her and I know that it's easy to take for granted how important that is if you always get to have somebody who looks like you but I can tell you I had one black teacher in my school career and I remember her name and this would have been um I was in the third grade so this would have been the early 80s her name was Mrs Franklin and she was to me this

213is rude but you know my daughter thinks I'm ancient she was a nice old black lady that was my vision of her she probably wasn't that old um and that that that she is literally the only Elementary School teacher I remember we need to continue bringing together our community community in that collaboration that Dr Clark mentioned because I imagine you know we are a district of 20 30 20 some odd thousand students plus all the staff plus all the families so can you imagine the impact we will have on our corner of the world and the World At Large because we graduate students who honor and appreciate and respect and affirm the diversity of the world around them um I think this is a very pivotal moment and I'm really glad that honestly it feels

214like everybody is all in and everybody is all in out here um this isn't an exercise uh we cannot do nothing where I know that this board is committed to not doing nothing um and so those are my ideas oh the bias incident response team is one I didn't mention um we don't we have no data so it as as has been explained it it whether uh something is reported and to whichever adult and it makes its way up to the administration of a particular School site then it would be up to them to determine whether that's something that warrants an incident report which this district has and I know that there's like a gazillion each day um but we have no idea the extent of this problem and if we had um what's called

215a biased incident Response Team there would be a place where anyone can report these things and it goes to a team um and then we know the data of what's Happening so I will stop thank you are there things in the policy I mean that we sorry my computer just went to sleep so well are there things in the policy given what we've gone through in this past month and even though we know that none of this is new it's not the first it's definitely not the last because each week it seems to get worse um that anyone has a suggestion to update in the policy where can where where in this um policy and maybe Um this can be taken somewhere else where can we implement the education and the training of combating these

216uh cultural biases and these complicit biases um would this be something um that we can do outside of the policy like how can we how can we Implement that into our policy that there are there are um educational resources there are trainings that um the adults are being held accountable to the students are being held accountable to how can we go about that um and another point that I want to make also um is if we can we can implement the wording of um self-identifying as a non-binary individual and a part of the lgbtq community there have been times where I've been called like derogatory terms and I've been misgendered consistently and I understand that this is new but part of equity is respecting all forms of intersectionality um so I would also like to

217know like where that can also be be implemented I think that's a really good point um and I I think what I'm feeling right now is that we have the policy and the so for example what um trustee now Flores was just saying about how do we how do we go about implementing whether it's uh training the staff or the curriculum those are already here in the policy so I feel like actually we're in a good place as far as the policy as it is with with this additional piece number four under teacher and learning that's on here um but The Next Step would be the administrative regulations that go with the policy which are usually more detail about how we are going to implement these things um and and then for us to also

218um as I think president and zerry said um that uh we can look at specific proposals that we budget and plan for that fit under different parts of this policy right um one of the things that um I was thinking about after last night's Town Hall as well was who was not in the room um it turns out yeah it may have been because it was quickly put together and I'm glad that it happened quickly but we did not have um translation in the room and we um did not have representation by parents who did not speak English last night um and so I'm thinking about a Next Step so it's not a change to this policy but a next step in terms of action to be able to hold similar types of uh Town

219Hall meetings maybe one that's fully in Spanish that's in a location and a place where where those parents can easily access um and also looking at one in in some of the other prevalent languages that uh that we don't often hear from for example we have our newcomer Afghan families if we were to partner with an organization and and hold an event like that in Farsi and Daddy and Pashto [Music] um wouldn't we learn an incredible amount that we haven't been able to hear so far right um and then I also did want to mention that just for people's knowledge on the top of the equity policy when it says original adopted date um those dates are all when csba created their model policies they're not when we adopted them so csba created a sort

220of model policy on July 1st 2018 which is what it says at the top um we actually first uh created our policy 0415 on June 8 2020. um I remember that because I was there and this one was pushing for it so um just to clarify this is the progress that we've made so far was beginning this policy in 2020 and then when Dr Clark came beginning to really review and implement it and make it a central piece of what we're doing so I think we are making progress but it feels to me that I don't necessarily have a lot of changes to this policy as much as we need to stay focused on it and and what those implementation pieces are but I also want to say thank you for talking about the self-identifying

221um and are there are there any changes to the wording of this policy I just wanted to know more of like um you kind of answered my question like how this policy um more about like how can we Implement these things um and that being said um with what was mentioned also in the public education is such an important um factor in combating these issues and facing racism and facing discrimination of all forms um so here in like in teaching and learning it says stuff about the students providing District staff and curriculum um but put it going back to the safety portion when we're having these ongoing um discussions about race of intersectionality um how can we ensure that students feel safe that the Educators teaching these things are also um their safety is being

222is being met and is being prioritized because oftentimes even with my experiences ethnic studies there are even like individuals that I can't find the word for it but us believe that the teachings that we are gaining the knowledge the strong knowledge that we're getting from ethnic studies and again I exploring all forms of identity exploring our own history our own selves our own culture being connected to that sometimes it's like in outside of the community too I've like I've had interactions wearing I walk down the street um down down the Todo Santos Pasa and I am some like there's individuals that have digest me and said and I question what we learn um like I can't find the wording Spirit but ensuring that all of these things that we are learning and when we are

223learning about um about about the cultural competency and restorative justice in all of these things how can we ensure that students are safe in that these educators are also safe do you understand do you guys understand my question if um my one suggestion and uh I'm not going to word Smith it right now would be that we think about perhaps under the school climate section adding a um another item that would address restorative practices within our communities um the um in workshops that I have attended years ago many years whether it was PTA or csba there were comments that if the students were to um uh what do I want to say decide on the discipline for their peers they would be much harsher with their peers than the adults are so it's important that

224we learn how to uh identify restorative practices that will truly be effective and then welcome back the individual to this this the group so that they can move forward and be part of the group again because when you further alienate someone with a a discipline they are going to continue to be a problem so for me adding something here under restorative justice or practices that help not only students but adults as well achieve that restoration would be something to consider I really like that idea and and I think that trustee McFerrin had a really good description of what it is that we were looking for in your board report about um what it what restorative practices look like um and and the outcomes that we're looking for because I think sometimes people use the word

225restorative um in a very general sense I suppose but um but I know that there is very particular training that we do have staff in our district that have gone through this but we need more staff to go through it so I appreciate you Dr Clark talking about that that we if we have um very specific training around restorative practices and how to implement restorative justice and make sure that that those are really implemented with Fidelity because in the end if it's done right what the whole Community is supposed to feel is that justice has occurred right that the people who the perpetrators of the of the uh incident have learned from it and have uh created some level of restitution to not only the victims but to the whole community so it should be

226something that's actually visible what it is that's chosen for them to do right but the idea of what that is comes from the victims and the and from the the discussion if it's done really well and really carefully so um without that uh really specific training I think these things can easily go wrong or or what happens in in your story and in so many people's Story the uh the the students who are the victims and the families of the victims have no idea what happened so that in my mind the restorative justice then did not happen in that case and and should have right just punishing them and not telling anybody else what happened doesn't bring us to what what trustee Mayo is just saying where we have to come back together as a

227community you can't just keep throwing people out it's not going to solve the problem just um you know I've done a lot I've done just a ton of studying in this and I've talked to folks all over the country and and it really is a is a comprehensive solution and needs to be um you know there needs to be social emotional um Circle time that happens in every class every day well that's negotiable we have to negotiate that we got to negotiate the curriculum we got to negotiate the time we as the district I can't just say I want you to spend 15 minutes you know every morning checking in with students hearing voice um you know talking about a topic and I'm not you know I don't want to alert the you know folks

228out there who think we're trying to brainwash kids and things like that but it's more as teaching us how to be in touch with our emotions teaching us to have empathy for one another like those are things that should be taking place every day in a classroom like for 5 10 15 minutes that can take place that needs to be negotiated it needs to be worked on um the other thing is the folks who are who who are holding positions who are are are are in charge of doing these things counselors psychologists behaviorists they all need to be in on the same page on on those same things that we're doing in the classroom with the kids we need to then support that then our principles need to they're they're in charge of their school

229sites they need to ensure that these things are taking place and that as the leaders of their school sites that they are advocating for all students and the and their staff members their teachers um and and other classified staff on on the campus it is imperative that our principals lead this work the the opportunities for training we have four Wednesdays a month two are for the teachers that we can't touch another one is generally for you know School type business things procedures and processes at schools and then the other ones on it's either you know going to be on some curriculum Focus which which we're we have a focus on math so there isn't a a whole lot of time you know during the the work week for this training we could pay stipends for

230folks to come on weekends we could pay stipends for folks to come in the evening and get trainings again if you're talking about aligning a budget to this we could set this up but I want you to think about a chain and on a chain if one of those links comes apart the whole chain breaks so if we have staff folks who are coming in on weekends or working on a on a on a certification or something around you know culturally sensitive or just facts of social emotional learning and and someone's not doing it right or not being trained then it's still not a safe place for students and not and and not a and not a place what the board has done you guys have put a document in place that really does set

231a framework and an expectation for this work to take place and then what my job is is to attempt to implement it right and and again these things unfortunately take a lot of time and sometimes you know you need sort of these wake-up events to say hey there's a problem I want to empower our parents so that our parents are talking to every principal every teacher every staff member saying where is the social emotional learning that's taking place with my son or daughter or or child where is that happening and and that and that we are being directly responsive to our to our families and to our parents I've done listening sessions with parents unfortunately I know what they're going to say I've I've heard it for hours like and and it really comes down

232to the same thing but in this culture where we are blaming or putting all the emphasis on one person solving all these problems it's never going to happen and that's what we're dealing with right now we're in this place where well it's this person's um this person's fault it's the counselor's responsibility to do this well then the counselor said well I have 500 kids on my caseload I possibly can't do it but everyone's pushing towards the counselor it's impossible everyone needs to chip in and what we need is you know we've we've done the work with the with the policy and yeah we could do some wordsmithing on a few things here and there but there really needs to be a call to action and and the community is going to have to force us

233to break down these silos that we have set up within are these educational organizations and again you're absolutely right this stuff is taking place in every District around they're banning books they're having conversations of banning books right next door in one of these districts that you know we heard earlier that people want to go to because of of money or something this stuff is happening and so we are and I'm not afraid to talk about it and to put it on the agenda to have these conversations to have a town hall to take responsibility for the for the for the shortcomings of of our of our programs I'm putting it on my shoulders as the superintendent however I don't have the Magic Bullet it is going to take everyone to do this work and people

234may get frustrated with that answer but that's the only way we're going to get it done and our values are not aligned and we hear that over and over and over in public comments and in comments that are made and actions that take place so we need to continue to work on that coherence and aligning our values I will do my part with the principles with the with the with the students with District staff but I need others to step up and and come to the table I've been working with Linda Ortega and we've been talking and we've been able to find um common ground on on many things on things that we believe in and I will continue to do that I will make that commitment to continue to work with with Miss Ortega

235about some of these things and my staff is working with other labor Partners throughout so if we each start working with folks we can make we can make some progress here so hopefully this is a call to action from our community and um and and and again I I will work full heartily with with our administrators there will be I told them before there's going to be some changes on how we do things and what the expectations are and really what we're you know how we are getting back to putting students and Families First and at the center of all we do and that restorative process absolutely absolutely has to happen but any changes we're doing in the classroom or to curriculum that has to be negotiated and that's something we have to work through

236even if the board directs me to do that like like we still have to make that it's a change in working conditions I just want to share oh go ahead for me I've been unusually quiet tonight you might notice um when I started school in 1960 at Bel Air this was going on when I graduated in 1973 Pacifica High School this was going on but it mostly was going on in West Pittsburg and nobody really cared that much my daughters both had it a little tougher because they had to leave Bay Point and go to mount dabble High School where people say oh you came from Pittsburgh and you're from that area and oh she actually had a friend come to our house and said oh your house is really nice I'm like what did

237they think we live in a hut because we live in West Pittsburgh um that's the reason I sit here today is because I've made myself fight for these kids I've worked in the district for 22 years I've brought services to the district I brought parenting classes I brought a clinic I brought Gardens I've done everything I can do and I decided to run for the board and hope I can make a difference and I finally feel within these last two years we're at least having the conversations we're having honest conversations hard conversations to hear and it's just very sad that when we're on the precipice of being so real ready to deal with this we have a country where our kids are seeing them an Insurrection on the capitol on people trying to tear down

238democracy and of our legislators coming to fist fights because they can't vote on a leader so we've got a double problem now we've got to get past these years of common practice while the rest of the country is falling apart but I think we can do it and I think we can be example for the rest of the country because I don't understand maybe it's the Sicilian and me I don't understand the word no I um I just really wanted to also add on to that um with what happened yesterday and students were and advocates in the community coming out and talking about the measures that we should take for those that committed these actions what measures will we take to help the victims of these actions um how can because a lot of the

239times our experiences are invalidated and dehumanized as if we should like like they said be brushed under the rug as if we should just let go of it that we're exaggerating so what how in this Equity policy but also like in our safety fund wherever we can take this how can we help that move to like how can we help these students move forward or these individuals to move forward how can we help them heal how can we give them these resources these opportunities to grow from it and for this not to for justice to be served Justice to research I think it's that restorative piece yeah restorative peace and that I'm sure that we Implement definitely and it's already in our policies so uh beyond the equity policy we have policy 5145.9 that's specifically

240hate motivated behavior and in that it does say that as necessary the district shall provide counseling guidance and support to students who are victims of hate motivated behavior and to students who exhibit such Behavior so so this is another case where we've already written it at this level but we need to figure out how to really make sure of it yeah make that's that's what that's where I'm going the things that we're doing up here in the district level are they being met at the ground level are they actually they're clearly not like that's why we're here that's what brought us to this day and like Dr Clark said like we needed this you know Kickstart re-kick start whatever sadly which is to the detriment of our of our children um but I think that

241we get to move forward I think I hear appetite for coming up you know with the everyone actually contributed um great ideas including Dr Clark because he's got a doctor in front of his name studied this but I can I just mention two more yeah quick ones um just because we're talking about things that take more time and take budgets um just uh to remember that there are for our Educators that do want to do this and for our families that do want to do this there are free high quality uh resources out there that we have shared before um but just two that are kind of relevant right at this moment um one is a master class is uh is providing for free um a three-part online uh class that's called Black History freedom

242and love that's presented by seven experts on the topic and it's uh it's the tagline is the history you didn't learn in school um past present and future um so that's a great resource that's out there right now that's free that could be used in a classroom or in the home and then the other one that I think is really um valuable but I have not really seen it come to our district but it is it exists is ing.org um ing.org which is we had uh the executive director of this organization come and speak at a board meeting a couple years ago um and they are all about educating for Multicultural literacy and respect they are Americans of a diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds working together towards peace in our country and around the world

243they support Educators and trainers with free speakers who will come into your classroom and online curriculum so just to have a few freebies out there of places people can start if they're looking to start the work in the meantime thank you um so I'm just thinking perhaps um there's a lot of work ahead for us and that it might require like us I'd like a round table not this so I think that's called a study session um as we move into the budget season um that we you know schedule a time together to talk just about our funding and our budget and what we how we can put this to action and where where we take the money from or where we find the money or where we find free things because you're always good

244for the free 99. thank you chesty god um so that would be the direction I give thank you loud and clear thank you thank you thank you and thank you to everyone who spoke on this today because I know it's topics like this that can be so painful it's hard and scary so thank you okay it's unclear just some people in our community whether we are voting on this policy again or if this is the current policy the current policy we didn't make any changes yeah we didn't make any changes tonight we adopted this policy was it in December or November um but we haven't renumbered the numbers okay right I think the the number four in blue that was added right just to be clear we already voted that one in yes yeah we

245did vote on that that exists yeah yeah just let people know number four in their teaching and learning actually exists and then the numbers should keep going sequentially after that all right what is when do we have to um extend the meeting at 10 30. you have plenty of time dude we I'm like dude I'm consent do not pull anything off I know you do I know there is yeah okay so we are um going to move on to the consent calendar consent agenda um items under consents oh it's late I mean we knew this was going to take time today and we took the time we needed and I appreciate you all for that um items listed under consent agenda are considered routine and will be approved adopted by a single motion there will

246be no separate discussion of these items however any item may be removed from the consent agenda upon the request of any member of the board and acted upon separately trustee Mason I'd like to pull 15.3 oh yeah that is all right would anyone like to make a motion for the remaining items Madam president I move we put a move we approved the consent agenda uh except for item 15.3 I'll second that Justin Nava Flores yes and that passes five zero with concurrence from our student trustee so 15.3 becomes 16.3 points is now 13.1 right 16.1 okay under new hires we hired a person at El Dorado Middle School who started kindergarten with my daughter and her name is not Bridget wetty it's Bridget Welty and she's always wanted to be a school secretary it's a

247big moment for her so I told her I would make sure I set the record straight and that the new attendance secretary at El Dorado is Bridget Welty born and raised in Bay Point thank you it's always great to have alumni um so we need emotion or what do we just yeah so we need emotion for 50 for 16 point whatever one well I would make a motion that we approve it with the change of Bridget wetty to Bridget Welty second trusting all the Flores yes in case you wonder why this takes time Laura over there has to now edit what happened because it's not how it was that passes 5-0 with concurrence from trustee Nava Flores all right so Madam president on this next item if if I may if I would have known

248that a third of my um a third of our elementary leadership was going to be out at 10 o'clock at night I I would have probably asked to uh to move this item up um however I I made a commitment to this board that we would um that we would bring information forward we would we would we would operate in a transparent fashion we we do this with our um with our with our with our board agenda with the Friday letter we do this with um you know with with items that we bring to the board I don't want to bring items forward to the board that that are surprising I want you to have some sort of some sort of knowledge about that and we sometimes talk about that in our one-to-one meetings um

249this is this is a a topic that is important to our to our educational leaders and um and I I put it out to them some time ago that if this is something that you feel will benefit our students and benefit your your operations of your school sites then um I'll set up the the space for you to come and and talk to the board and just by seeing so many many folks in here tonight that this is something that's important um I'm wondering who's the spokesperson going to be after the sex so some of the sacks take it away I'll be quiet because I know these Folks Gotta gotta get to sleep but I know that this is important otherwise they wouldn't be out so late at night absolutely so thank you everyone for

250your attention I I know it's late and we've got individuals in the audience actually they surprise me I I was not actually expecting a whole crew so I just want to really recognize the principles as well as the teachers in the audience that came this evening to talk about this informational item which is expanding out the curriculum Associates contract um and of course we're always going to want to start with our why and we wanted to ground it with with our local control accountability plan and the goals which actually have been mentioned quite a few times today not even just by your superintendent but also by members of the public this item really fits within a couple of the different actions under goal one the curriculum Associates contract right now is being utilized as a

251diagnostic for grades first through third as well as a metric that is provided to our emerging bilingual students in order to help them be reclassified as they go through our grade levels it gives them multiple opportunities it's a a resource that allows us to focus on standards-based instruction providing scaffolds it's part of our multi-tiered systems of support to allow an Adaptive way in order for our students to show Mastery on standards it's also Incorporated within an Extended Learning Program and so we're currently using it again as a diagnostic but really we're here tonight to inform the board and how we would like to utilize it and bring back instructional modules which have actually been missed especially as our students have returned after are very very challenging pandemic under El Cap goal 4 and I'm not

252going to read this whole thing but our focal Scholars goal really focuses on our African-American students our students experiencing homelessness as well as our foster Youth and really our ability to focus in to make sure we have instructional scaffolds and understanding the the data and where they are succeeding and where they need additional support relief falls under action 4.1 and 4.3 with regards to specialized supports for families making sure under a new reality with our one-to-one devices that we actually have this resource available before after school intercession summer school as well as throughout our after school programs just as a side note I know our CCE friends that were here earlier really spoke about one of the areas that they were very impressed with of Mount Diablo is that we were trying to get our

253diagnostic house in order and we kind of went from massive assessments across the board you know grade levels giving four to five to six different types of Assessments now we've limited it but we also have quite a plethora and opportunity to scale it down we actually have fragmented quite a bit at the elementary level so again this is our attempt tonight to share information with you um on what we are looking at for the future and what we'd like you to know about plans for this in the event the board does approve this contract at a future board meeting so that being said I'm going to call up Celeste thank you Celeste for being here and please each of you whoever is speaking please introduce yourself and what school site you're representing good evening Celeste

254Kitts from Red Avenue I'm not going to go Bullet by Bullet and I may repeat some of what um Jen just said but please bear with me based on the ongoing review and work we are doing with CC with the ccee and the March 21st serve report we have flushed out the need for a consistent Diagnostic and instructional component in reading and math to be used in all elementary grade levels currently we use I ready for grades one through three and the fiab for reading and math after trying different interim assessments over the past three years and collecting feedback from many site administrators and principals we are proposing expanding the diagnostic I ready to all grades K through five and adding the instructional models as a current member of the ccee task force we have

255focused on a specific data protocol using three different assessments and or Diagnostics spanning K5 the analysis was quite challenging due to the lack of consistent data that's why we're proposing both pieces thank you so you just lied um so at first we thought is this kind of fragmented is it just one or two of us were thinking i-Ready might be important so we put out um a survey to all of the elementary sorry I didn't know I was supposed to do that so we put out a survey to all of our elementary administrators and said hey what are you currently doing are you using i-Ready other than what um the board is already providing to us do you want to use your I ready if you're not using iready why are you not using I

256ready and the the results were very fascinating uh turned out actually 21 of our elementary sites were either using site-based funds or PTA PFC funds in order to support additional portions of the i-Ready Diagnostics and instructional components and of those schools 30 out of 30 administrators responded back to the survey that yes their school would be interested in continuing on with expanded i-Ready for their students if they could at least get partial funding from the school board because it's it's not a cheap program and it's difficult to fund um at the school site level um the next thing that we wanted to talk about is why do we think it's important that we not only have the diagnostic but move back into using the instructional and structural instruction it's late instructional model modules so thank

257you again my target audience is usually 12 and under Van Halen so why do we feel that now is the time for this move um well we are still filling and we'll continue to still feel the loss of learning that we suffered through the pandemic um and as an elementary team we've been focused very hard on trying to accelerate our learning with all of our students and being extremely standards based so that we don't continue to build a gap for students that we're trying to catch up here and there we need to make sure they're receiving that high quality tier one instruction from their teacher all day long but we still have pieces that we need to build in and those of us who have been able to use the instructional mod instructional modules are

258finding that they are extremely successful for our students especially when we're able to integrate them into our classroom small groups where we can keep our students focused on very targeted um items that they need to work on or even that they are able to use them as they will at home or over the break some kids do them because they love them um with the expanded learning opportunities across the district and the expansion of our technology program across the district a lot of the uh items that got in our way in the past especially uh the availability of Technology within our schools that's no longer an issue when we're finding that the program is really helping and being very beneficial for our students we reached out to teachers and we had a few teachers that

259were coming tonight to share with us unfortunately they're not all here now but we have some stand-ins button book I've learned good evening my name is Katie Sanchez I'm the principal at Mount Diablo Elementary I recognize all of you uh I forget forgive me I'm gonna be reading from a paper I am speaking for one of my second grade teachers Miss Colleen van otreef I was so disappointed to not have I ready lessons this year they are such a valuable tool in my teacher toolbox I ready Diagnostics gives me an accurate snapshot of where my students are overall as well as as well as within each individual strand this is so useful in guiding my instruction and it saves me hours of administering and correcting pen and paper assessments once I have the data iready

260provides me with next steps and instruction in addition I can quickly and easily make differentiated groups for reading and math lessons I already makes me a better teacher by having differentiated groups created by using i-Ready data I am able to meet the children where they are I am able to accelerate learning for those that are ready and provide intervention to those that need it these are the best teaching practices right now we don't have I ready lessons that means that I need to come up with activities for the other children to do while I'm teaching small groups so many times I wish those other children could be on i-Ready lessons I know the lessons are leveled for each individual student and the children love them being able to teach small groups while knowing that the

261rest of the class is receiving focused appropriate instruction in the grade level standards would be amazing with iready I could do just that regular diagnostic testing allows me to diagnose and respond to students ongoing needs and make adjustments to my small groups on a regular basis I know that iready provides rigorous instruction and has been proven to improve students knowledge base and test scores having i-Ready assessments and lessons is the best way to meet the needs of all Learners provide proven instruction and be sure that I am using best teacher practices every day sincerely Colleen vanotreef I thank you for your time excuse me who knew that the clicker was going to be the most challenging thing in this entire come on up I am I'm Jonathan Moses I've been teaching for 17 years in

262mdusd um the last 14 at Rio Vista um all in fifth grade and all that time I've never had such a discrepancy in student abilities I had more than one student this year come to me scoring a kindergarten level and then more than one at fifth grade level uh the strains on teachers right now to differentiate modify and scaffold have increased along with our burden and our stress level and we need some help and I already does that first diagnosing student skills is obviously critical and already really helps with that the diagnostic Assessments in math and reading which are designed to be similar to the State Testing offer an easy to understand look into where a student's skills are in reading and math they offer an overall score and a breakdown in four math domains

263and six reading domains including suggestions for specific skills to work on further I find the Diagnostics to be really incredibly helpful to parents who are unfamiliar with the granular focus of modern education I can tell them that their child is scoring in around the fourth grade level of reading and that makes a lot of sense helping them and us see the big picture in the students abilities after the diagnostic tests I already provides independent and differentiated instruction at each student's individual level which is the task is challenging and necessary as it's ever been in my time as a teacher to be able to have time during the day where everyone gets instruction at their particular level is profound and furthermore since the instruction is independent and online I can use this time for small group

264instruction and it's easier for me to hold the other students accountable since I can easily check to ensure that they have been on task through the reports that I already provides saying children loved the lessons might be a stretch but especially my low-level students who struggle and struggle with fifth grade work they find something to be proud of as they pass lesson after lesson and see their diagnostic scores go up and up it greatly edifies their self-esteem and the belief in their ability to learn because I read it does an excellent job of making lessons accessible to all students further the nature of the program makes it very easy to offer rewards so you pass the lesson great write your name on the board I'll check off a box on your I already prize card

265oh you got 100 let's make it two boxes you've completed 10 boxes on your prize card pick a prize oh you proved your diagnostic score great job more prizes if students are intrinsically motivated by the Diagnostics or the lessons we have our tricks for about 20 to 30 minutes a day I already give students and teachers much needed support in our battle to close the gap it is not busy work it's not hey everyone do this word search or basic assignment you won't need help with so that I can pull a small group it's meaningful it's edifying and it's a support I find invaluable thank you Valhalla represented where am I right now so I'm going to share uh the testimony by Miss Austin and she's at Valhalla Elementary School let me back up my

266name is mignon Perkins I'm the principal at Value Verde proud principal of Bayou Verde Elementary School and I'm going to share the testimony by Miss Austin um a teacher at Valhalla Elementary School in previous years I had concerns with I ready however now that our school district has streamlined and supported our one-to-one Chromebook program and updated our Wi-Fi accessibility I've been using I ready with great consistency in our classroom our school purchased I ready and this individualized program has really helped my students to become more independent thinkers build their confidence and challenge them especially due to the pandemic just this year I have had 16 students who have made considerable grade level gains in just the past four months alone in math I ready I ready is an essential Ela and math program with just-in-time

267scaffolding that helps students get up to grade level and make growth on mastering grade level standards iready has also helped me plan for and facilitate small group intervention access to the i-Ready teacher toolkit would provide further lessons and teaching tools for those students who are reaching for grade level standards I appreciate the school board's consideration to purchase are ready for our school and all schools within mdusd again this is Erica Austin Valhalla elementary teacher I don't think you want me to play with this please serious it is I'm Jenny Vargas principal of Sunrise seek and I am sharing Mrs Rojas who is a bilingual educator at ignatia Valley Elementary statement I am a fifth grade dual language teacher in mdusd and I am a strong believer and I ready I have seen firsthand the benefits

268that come from using iready in my classroom the program is carefully designed for the individual student and guides them in a way that is accessible to them at their own pace the students enjoy the lessons and are able to keep track of their progress throughout the lessons they complete I strongly believe that we should have I ready in all of our classrooms and especially the expansion of I ready in Spanish for the Dual language program thank you hi everybody my name is Katie Koontz I'm from Gregory Gardens um so we we know everyone has the option of like why is why this one why not a lower cost option we do acknowledge that however the ird platform is comprehensive supporting the needs of elementary students in a post-pandemic environment we're so lucky enough to have

269the one-to-one Chromebooks this makes it super easy for students to have access before school after school during cares and in the classroom we don't need to reiterate all the reasons why we enjoy it and currently right now in our in our world with our budget this is the most well-rounded option for all of our students so again I want to thank everybody for sharing either somebody else's testimonial or um your own experiences with the the program itself next steps to Fidelity and access if there's something that comes to fruition what's going to be different let's go around well of course the technology is going to be different we're now one-on-one or our structure and our infrastructure is one where we know it can be supportive even with our youngest Learners there must more they can

270adapt to the technology because of their experiences over the past couple years the data analysis will certainly allow us to be more aligned and coherent than utilizing three different assessments at each elementary school so when we do talk with our CCE friends and they utilize the protocols they're not having it together three different ones because we do not have common data points we're able to use the reports in order to have our director of Elementary School support administrator Aaron D Martini thanks for being here as well as our director of English learner and dual language support in order to monitor student progress which of course is incredibly important we do want to streamline the other supplemental programs that we have in order to make sure that we're making very clear decisions with regards to the

271time and effort we're putting into different training differentiate a professional development for sites and incorporate the programs and lessons for before school after school intercession we have just blown the doors off with our expanded learning opportunities program which also means we're partnering with folks such as like Diana dare or the Concord youth center and so making sure that they also are aware of this resource so they can encouraged their the scholars that are involved in their program to access it is also really important I just do want to clarify two things that have popped up and different emails to myself as well as Dr Wendy aguily one of them was whether or not this has a text to speech type of support and the answer is yes the other area that seems to be needing

272some clarification has to do with this being a dyslexia screener I want to be really clear and I was um on the record at our last dyslexia task force meeting when it was asked is this what we're using to assess and provide screening for the entire District as we move forward in order to meet um state law the answer is this is one data point this is not a deep um specific dyslexia screener that we have landed on we are actually exploring other tools in order to utilize that and I really want to um appreciate Dr Kathy Federman and her work in that because she has been very helpful in helping the team identify screeners that would really fit Mount Diablo's context um so again those are two things that have popped up but I

273do want to make sure that I had an opportunity to add so again thank you very much and just let the public to know the resource that we're utilizing or we're hoping to use to pay for the contract would be the learning recovery emergency block grant which actually is a one-time grant that we are receiving to spend over several years which is really targeted to support our scholars in helping them with learning acceleration thank you for your attention thank you questions comments I would like to go first trustee McLaren um of a comment sorry Michael Schneider long busy night you may have to take a pause nope my concerns with this program remains as it has for five years when I first came acrossed it they collect personal and educational data for one student group

274low income students and parents and guardians of low income this includes names address email address phone and just to name a few why like what kind of research are they doing with this data has the equity Department reviewed this does this sound like a company that is aligned with our lcap safety or Equity goals there is no supporting data or proof that it actually improves test scores on the reading claims of the cast scores the contract States if you have a lawsuit you must file in Massachusetts if you win that lawsuit your monetary reward is the cost of the license this is including data breaches if they go bankrupt or sold to another company the data is free to go to anyone that they so choose they only cover two of the privacy laws in

275California in their license agreement they give discounts to the product to teachers that leave favorable reviews independent reviews show only a two-star rating with community some of the 60 plus non-compliant data issues are not intended for children under 13 unclear whether intended for teens unclear whether intended for adults over 18. personally identify the information is collected unclear where the product it goes on and on and on out of a score of a hundred thirty five percent on individual control of the data 69 on school purpose following student data and privacy laws 65 on ads and tracking 60 percent data safety promoting responsible use this isn't even on the Clearinghouse this doesn't even qualify for Title One funding as what is required in many of our programs for evidence-based this is a highly controversial program if

276you go to commonsense.org type it in look at the security download that report I have submitted it over and over they have made improvements but those improvements and no matter how good this program is to Target low-income students only it's a no-go there's other options 25 other options that are better thank you I'll entertain a motion to extend the meeting to 11. I second that no I somebody needs to move it I would like to amend the motion to extend the meeting to 11 30. yes oh sorry you know trusty Nava Flores yes oh should we do a voice wait okay sorry um trustee count yes trustee Mayo yes Christy McPherson yes trustee Mason and I will vote Yes I know no well I'll go with the team but we're gonna work come on uh

277Rachel Levy thank you all right um trustees did you said you you don't need to take it you just need to submit the card so councilman Holly filming Tillman um thank you um trustees really quickly I just have a question about the the survey that went out and hopefully somebody can answer that I think it said when survey 30 out of 30 Elementary sites responded Yes when asked a question and I'm curious if that was the only question that was asked or were they also asked if they preferred another tool besides iready and what the response to that was and then just a comment um and that was my concern in hearing that there are prizes being given out as people are going through the modules I would caution against that um just because I

278think it'd be demoralizing for students who are going through it slower and receiving less prizes um I think there's probably a better way to do that and so that's it thank you all right um what was the question foreign if that was the only survey question were they asked if there was anything else yeah actually the survey had probably about 12 to 14 different questions um everything from um you know there was a comment where they were listing other things that were they were utilizing questions around would you utilize this only for emerging bilingual students um would this be something that you would as we mentioned um be interested in if the board did agree in order to help support the contracts itself is this something that um you know who's helping you fund it

279PTA or School site Council which again School psych councils have teachers as well as the administrator as well as the parents so it was a fairly in-depth survey and I think actually the team itself was very surprised when not only 21 out of the 30 were spending their own site dollars on it actually this came up at a parent advisory committee in the fall and the parents were concerned that this was not an equitable practice that we allowed some of the sites in the room to have access to this tool and then other sites were not and that really had to do with the fact that maybe some sites were quite a bit smaller and they did not have the budget in order to help support it so long answer to the question is yes

280there was quite a few questions on the survey there there were other options being looked at um some of the sites continue are using Dibbles let's say and when asked the question whether or not they would want to use I ready the answer was yes they would want iready as well because Dibbles was more of a deep dive a one-on-one assessment with the little ones mostly um K1 and 2 often three in particular circumstances other ones said yes they would still you want to utilize it but they still wanted to continue with let's say Accelerated Reader AR because they felt like that was something that they could really utilize with fluency and with some other items some of the schools were also investigating off the top of my head possibly IXL and they still felt

281that with proper support that they would want to supplement with the I ready just simply because it has the diagnostic it's got the instructional modules and it was ones with the teacher were able to utilize for their Scaffolding in the classroom so those were some of the other ones that were specifically mentioned off the top of my head trustees a weekend last question right or I'll be really brief um I just want to thank everyone for coming out um so late and um sharing with us how this program is helpful to you at your school sites um and um I do absolutely see the value in differentiated um lessons that are easily accessible um and um I used I ready the the one year that I taught ald at Mount um I didn't receive any

282training on it so it was a little bit hard to get through so I liked um seeing that there will be um professional development on it so I just wanted to provide that feedback are you ready for my comments okay um I appreciate the question from uh council member parent Ali Tillman about whether other tools have been considered because it seems like the survey was very specific to if you were offered already would you want it or not um and it was funded um so to me that's not not really a full study of all the options that are out there um iready is something that we've used for eight years now um and my experience as a parent and as a school board member I have to say has been extremely disappointing as a

283parent um I've heard that iready has improved but uh to me it seemed like a lot of time that I watched my kids be required to spend on this tool um that was all a complete waste of time in my particular case um I give the famous example of the um penguins jumping off the diving board I don't know if that one's still in there but this is in the math module before you can even do the math problem you have to watch this whole story of these penguins that are going to jump off a diving board and then slowly watch each one bounce bounce bounce oh I see some nodding in the audience okay you're familiar with this one and then it bounces then finally you can do the math problem right so when

284teachers are assigning this not only as an assessment but also as hours and hours of lessons both in class and at home to us as parents that feels does not feel like adequate teaching shall we say which is why we went to let's just use this only as assessment and only in the places where it's needed so I am surprised to see people wanting it back as lessons um for that reason um I have to say I'm also surprised to see this coming to us now because um we have a school well we have many schools that struggle to teach kids to read but we have in particular a school that was identified as one of the lowest levels of reading in the state and therefore it qualified um for funding right um for the

285literacy block grant um so Bel Air has this funding um and is it's the early literacy support block grant and they have presented to us um and my understanding is that the early literacy support block grant includes Bel Air and 70 schools from school districts across the state including locally here Pittsburgh Oakland West Contra this early literacy support block grant uses and recommends to all 70 schools to use Dibbles to Monitor and Benchmark literacy growth in the early grades and they require that they report this to the board annually so we should be receiving another report from them soon my understanding from them when I've gone out to visit and spoken with them about how it's going is that the the first implementation of Dibbles that they used was paper and pencil and so it

286was very time intensive they needed to have extra staff come in to be able to do those assessments and run all of the kids through these the assessments it's not something you'd want to place on it on a single teacher to do but in further exploration I've realized that actually there is a digital version of this and San Ramon in fact has implemented it and it's called M class and it is it is a digital version of Dibbles it takes like one minute to do um and uh the company that that provides that amplify um does have many of if not all of all of the different characteristics that all of you have expressed is what you value about iready right you value your time your teacher in classroom time you value being able to

287put people quickly into small groups you value being able to figure out their level and get information about literacy right but there's something that m-class Dibbles has that iready doesn't have and that's why this early literacy block grant support has been using Dibbles it's because they use uh they actually measure and give you results for um phonological awareness for all the things that that have to do with being able to hear different sounds and phonics which is part of the science of reading which is part of the whole thing that we've as a nation have been learning and particularly as a state have been learning is what we've been doing wrong all these years in teaching kids to read so we have this Treasure of a resource the early literacy support block grant we have

288Bel Air piloting this we have them talking about how Dibbles is providing this crucial information that then gives the teachers exactly what they need to be able to properly teach kids to read in a school district where we have been failing in teaching our kids to read um so to me if I'm going to look at something that's going to be district-wide and required of all schools and by the way on the last slide when it said we're then going to remove the other begin limiting the supplemental programs being used to address the areas built into i-Ready to me that says you'll require everyone to use I ready and therefore not Dibbles and not any of the other types of programs out there that feels like Monopoly from a for-profit company that we've been spending

289a lot of money paying a lot of money to for years now without results when I look at bel-air's I ready scores and then I look at their cast scores they don't line up for multiple years since I've been on this board we have had presentations by these schools showing beautiful graphs of i-Ready increases that go like this and then you look at that same school cast scores and that is not the case and it's been going on for years so I do not understand why I feel like it's the definition of insanity we are trying to use the same tool that has failed us for so many years so I think before we make any decision about a district-wide plan especially something that we're going to require of all schools we need to actually

290research all of the options and to the point of uh of Our Community member who spoke we need to actually compare what the what the what the tools are that are out there there are some excellent tools San Ramon has put M class uh as their tool for mtss that does all of the things that you're talking about only it is specifically focused on the science of reading so why have we not piloted that actually oh I'm sorry there is a pilot Bel Air is piloting that in April and May through their literacy support Grant so why would we not watch and wait to see what their results are maybe even let a few other schools pilot that as well not require them to do I ready at the same time because that's a heck

291of a lot of Assessments for one kid right and then compare at the end of next year perhaps the schools that love I ready go ahead you use I ready let's fund you to do that and let's fund the other half of the schools to do M class and then let's figure out what happens from there the other piece of information that I have is that decoding dyslexia has looked at um uh the M class uh Dibbles um dyslexia screener and that is the one that they recommend I ready has what they call a dyslexia screener that is brand new that has not been validated and verified to my knowledge so why again why do we feel connected to this four hold on I'm almost done um so the other piece that I'm very concerned

292about is the quality of Spanish language um so when I look at M class and what I've heard about mglass is that um their dyslexia screener that's in Spanish is very high quality decoding dyslexia says so um and when you look at m-class on the Spanish language version um it was uh it was developed with a team of experts representing a range of regions from Mexico Central America South America along with the focus groups right um so it's it's Spanish language is supposed to be very good in contrast I've heard that I readies is severely lacking and that in fact it may be their dyslexia screener Spanish piece is a completely different product than the English one so I again I'm I'm shocked that we would decide to tell all schools when we have this

293exciting possibility that we're learning from I thought we would learn from what happened at Bel Air and expand that district-wide whatever they learn from and are showing success from that actually is the science of reading training and professional development that we've been providing and a dyslexia screener that is fully adequate and proven why would why would that not be the direction that we're going uh and then similarly with math if we're going to get rid of the supplemental programs to me that says we're going to get rid of bridges is that true because there are two School sites that use Bridges math right now and they love it as far as I can hear they've gotten very good results Walnut Acres and Sun Terrace and that has its own assessments and you don't need an

294extra I ready on top of that I would be surprised that they would feel the need to add additional testing for their kids I think that's all I have to say I have a question at kind of piggybacks um well and okay thank you Mr Moses for saying maybe y'all kids aren't that like excited to use it because my memory of I ready in my house was much like um trusty cons like what in the world are you doing and having to spend so much time and so it was two things there was no parent education on what was the point of this because to me it was busy work like she just had to do these things over and over and over again and I only learned from my daughter that it grew with

295her like I didn't learn that from her teacher um that came from my daughter and I feel like it should have come from the teacher so I would want to know I don't see it on this last slide 12 slide 12. I would want to know what the parent education plan is but in parent engagement um and then the evaluation because so it was really exciting last month at the focal student Awards um to see like the student growth right like from whatever the their baseline from the beginning of the year of I ready to the to then um I personally don't know what that means but it was like super impressive they were big numbers it was really cool the children were so proud and so happy um but I know I read he's

296not new and our students in this case it was the focal Scholars um who are the black students um it hasn't as far as I can tell shown an improvement in our cast stores in our dashboard if we've used it for all of these years before so what would be different now um that if we see Improvement because of their i-Ready lessons that that's going to translate to actual demonstration um of knowledge like what are we doing differently how are we engaging parents again um and how yeah and how will we evaluate I think that's a great point that you bring about the focal scholar night that it looked like it was there was wonderful things that we're celebrating Somebody went from 50 to 500 on on I ready what does that mean as a

297parent I don't know what that means and when I asked why we chose to use iready when we could have used some other things to show that night uh the answer was parents no I ready they're they're so familiar with it so we thought that that would be the best choice but I'm a parent and if I ask another parent what does that mean that I my kid went from 50 to 500 or whatever the number is doesn't it's not telling you anything right so for example in math when there was no adequate curriculum for my children uh who were Beyond grade level in math and one wants to major in it potentially in college um we used Khan Academy which by the way is free okay and I've heard that there are teachers in

298our district that use Khan Academy and that there is a version of Khan Academy that can be used with the dashboard and that all that kind of information that you're talking about there are schools that use it that way and and it gives you all of the information um and it's a non-profit organization Dibbles came out of a university site you know so that's also kind of coming from the non-profit world it's not a company that's trying to profit off of us right so if we do have some school sites that are using something like Khan Academy are we going to tell them to stop and they should only use iready because we want to use that across the board I haven't heard about how it's going I've just heard that there are some teachers

299that use Khan Academy I don't know if they've been able to Pilot using the the full dashboard um that looks like an i-Ready dashboard where you can see all the students and the different skills that they know what I do know about Khan Academy is that as a parent it gave me way more information than iready at any moment I didn't have to wait till the end of the quarter for the teacher to print out some color thing that told me that they passed grade level and Khan Academy every day I could see and my own student could see for themselves where they were on the grade level and within the topics within the grade level and they LED their own learning that's that's how my kids learn math in this District they went on

300Khan Academy they LED their own learning and they just kept going to the next grade level the next grade level the computer programming whatever else there is it's all free and you can add a coach so that your teacher can see your progress so why is that not something that we have compared we're not even having these conversations the only presentations I have seen for four five years now four and a half that I've been on this board are I ready yes or no I don't think that's an adequate way for us to make this decision so if I may I think um I think the team has heard questions this is why we bring things for info and and um you know and I know we heard of two schools uh Walnut Acres and

301Sun Terrace who are using something else and I know we heard of Krusty Cowan shared her experience with her daughter um who's a who's a National Merit scholar and so I think what we're saying is we need to bring back um data and information and you can email that to me and I will take that information and disseminate it to all the board members evenly and um and go from there but that's why we bring these items forward to get the um the temperature of the board and what they're feeling about them and questions that they have and then we respond to those questions so either someone was taking copious notes or um or we can we can watch the video when it'll be uploaded and we got our crack we got our high level

302team over here that thing will be uploaded in no time we can go back and watch the video get those things responded and uh and send that information to me all disseminate it out it gets posted it gets uh posted with our agenda and we can have some of those questions asked and to the other trustees I know it's I know it's late if you have if it sounds like Dr Clark is saying Miss sacks that you don't have to respond I believe I just want we will be responding back yeah no I just want to thank you for your time and attention and I think the the questions are very we're very well stated uh we have a team here that has a lot of experience I could absolutely answer just about every single

303question that you threw out but we will make sure that we're thoughtful about our responses and make sure they get back to you so thank you thank you so much and thank you to all the Educators who stayed all night thank you and of course presentation sleep well um 18 point three okay we're gonna make 11 o'clock you all 18.3 18.2 no sorry don't worry I'll be brief so Dr Clark appreciates my brevity so right right I mean Dr tinderell I want you to break down the data and tell us what's in those sarc plans and and everything so I'm just bringing forth uh review and potential uh approval of the 2021-22 school accountability report cards the sarcs so the sarks in general provides background information about the school and its students summarizes the school's

304missions goals and accomplishments in addition by state law the sarc contains demographic data school safety uh and climate for learning information academic data School completion rates class sizes teacher and staff information curriculum and instruction descriptions post-secondary preparation information and fiscal ex expenditure data so the uh the Starks are also provided out so that parents in the community with important information about each School the Sark can be an effective way for a school to report on its progress and achieving goals the public may also use a start to evaluate and compare schools on a variety of indicators uh with these sharks we we post them and they are available on our district website uh with our accountability and it's kind of group with our our sipsas and our lcap and we make them uh very transparent

305so I'm here to answer any questions if you have any we have one public comment sure um so Willie Mims foreign [Music] those who know me I've been probably the first critic of I already program since they came here when it comes to African-American students I already program has gotten nobody has gotten no one ready for anything the the uh the data has not improved one iota it's like we said when you look at the California data Quest site D compare their data because you know it's Flawless but anyway so I've been the biggest Korean event and I think uh that uh I go along with you board member I mean everything that you've said I agree with 100 so um there were three schools that were part of this item here one of them

306was a Diablo View Middle in the reporter says uh it was recognized in 2017 as a California gold Ribbon School um what does that mean and is is this particular school at this particular time in our history still recognized as a gold ribbon school and if it is then somebody's lying I can make can money answer that question is is this school still recognized as the California Gold ribbon school and what is a gold ribbon school anyway so I gotta get that answered president Zoe I can get you that answer but I know that the um gold Ribbon Schools was a shift that the CDE took some some years back right huh no no no it's called ribbon yeah it's called ribbon yes right between it was basically the California distinguished schools California distinguished schools

307really can be um it's the New Testament but no California distinguished schools that knock on them as many people say that it's really determined by the ZIP code um and and the um you know and the wealth of a particular Community that's the knock on it the gold Ribbon Schools wasn't was a test an alternative to that where they looked at things more holistically they looked at the total school programs that were offered in the exemplary um you know achievement in those programs and it wasn't just the academics it was a little bit of everything so just like uh I mean once you're recognized as one of those schools you put the flag up you put the painting out and and you're that school but you're only at school for that year but um and

308then the next year another designation comes out doctor come on again like that laughs yeah yes did anyone else okay Madam president I moved to approve the 21-22 school academy of Italy report cards trustee Nava Flores yes you're good too yeah all right yeah all right that passes 5-0 with concurrence from trusty Nava Flores 18.3 now thank you thank you okay foreign so the district is amending our December 14 2022 Sun signing for our collective bargaining proposal to Teamsters to include additional articles those articles specifically Article 1 9 24 32 and 33. we ask that you move to approve the sunshine of these articles and I'm here to answer any questions if you haven't I would make a motion to approve the Mount Diablo Unified School District Sunshine proposal for the 2023-2026 successor contract to

309the Teamsters Local 856 for the successors contract to mdusc Flores thank you 5650 thank you okay um 18.4 review and potential approval of Elementary Middle High School Educational specifications and District standards everybody's tired everybody's gone great thank you for hanging in there Dr Gonzalez this evening is the end of about a five to six month process on educational standards and District or educational specifications and District standards and there are four of us that were really sort of um trying to lead this entire process covering multiple departments and includes Melanie kozlow who's not here this evening and and gen sacks as well as Mr sydford who is behind me and so we're going to do is I'm going to give you just a tad bit of History to frame where we've been take a look at

310what they are why we need them the process that we used and then we're going to explain what happens next as to where have we been back in 2018 the voters approved measure J after they approved measure J there was a facility visioning was taking place about the same time many of you were here um I've just heard a lot about it but what happened with that facility visioning was The Architects at the time went and they talked to every single School community in the district and everybody got to put everything they wanted on wish list and that wish list sort of became a plan that we then sort of dialed back and said really it was just a visioning process but what they did at the time was they put a 1.2 million dollar

311price tag you know as far okay all the batteries died right before you came in yeah I know that feeling so what we really want to let you know is that this is not just about measure J this is really about a number of funding sources and we've worked really hard over the last year to try to multi-fund wherever we could to stretch our funds as far as they can go and this is the foundation that we need to start putting projects into the state reimbursement program so that we can get start getting that 60 cents on the dollar back from these projects so as you'll remember about a year ago we went through some project planning and we went through some implantation and we gathered a whole lot of data and we came up

312with a prioritization plan that looks uh pretty much like this and for those of you in the community that are letting us know that the coloring on this is rough we have heard you um we are going to be replicating this because we know that some people have a difficult time with this I just wanted to put that out there um and so what we what we basically said we're in phase one right now and we've been taking a look at LED lighting we've been taking a look at some roof Replacements we've been looking at HVAC in the muz at the middle schools and we're rolling out Valley View as our first prototype and then scaling that across the district but we're kind of stuck in this place where if we want to get into

313the state reimbursements we really have to have educational specifications in District standards and so that's really what this entire project was about um so I'm going to pass uh I'm going to pass the microphone to Mr sidford but before I do that I just want to let you know that there are two large attachments um that took an awful lot of time to get finished and we're going to explain that process but those are really what we're bringing forward tonight for discussion and for your approval thank you Dr Gonzalez uh so what are oh I'm going to have to multitask with my hands here oh nope somebody got me thank you appreciate that uh so what are educational specifications I'm obviously not going to read through that slide uh but basically I wanted to just

314sort of um you know outline what the what a what an ed spec is is is really by saying it's it's really a broad statement about what the space is in our buildings need to do it's really you know what are those spaces what do we envision happening in those spaces whether those are educational spaces or for other purposes that we utilize in schools so it's really that broad clear statement of that purpose um and and really uh that bottom line there is really where it's the most important for us at this point which is we will provide these to Architects to help us when we either design new schools which of course we're not doing at this point or modernizing existing schools which is what we're talking about here so that's really the overarching

315purpose of an ed spec uh what they are not and I think it's it's important to to clarify what they they don't do and are not intended to do because other things do do these things um they're not a detailed design or specification for these spaces um so they're not construction specifications they're also uh not a master plan for prioritizing our work that's a different process these are simply that broad statement of what our spaces need to do in our in our buildings um and they are um not used alone in planning modernizations they're just a statement about what the spaces are so what are district standards District standards are separate but um related strongly to the Ed to Ed specs uh basically uh what the the Ed spec document does is it um it

316this includes a broad statement on District standards as well which outlines a consistent approach when we plan projects so basically there if you look at say that second example down this is a statement of a standard that we would expect to be happening in our in spaces in our schools but it's not a clear this is exactly how you would do it it's just a statement that that's an important piece of what we want to to have happen in these spaces and then finally for me why are Ed specs needed Dr Gonzalez mentioned um that um this is uh these are required for applying for reimbursement through various you know State modernization matching funds other other programs like that um but we also uh need to make sure that we're clearly and transparently um stating

317our our priorities for our buildings to our community um so that it's it's something that we're really clear on exactly what these spaces are intended to to be um and finally and I I sort of touched on this already Architects really need these um so that it it creates that initial conversation with Architects to be able to guide their work so that we can make sure that we get what we want when we approach an architect to design a space or something for the space you know from my perspective obviously designing a network requires what are we going to do with this space so when we provide that to network Architects that will give them guidelines on on what we're expecting to have happen so they can plan for that I'll pass it back to

318Dr Gonzalez so how are these going to be used moving forward um in in the short term we're going to be using these for remodelization projects um we've got it at least we think we can get through the first phase at least two if not three um full School remodels which means we're going to be looking at everything from Windows to flooring um to the technology the infrastructure um for for those sites long term if it turns out that we're building schools we have these District standards and these educational specifications that we can fall back on so that when we're designing spaces we can really say these types of things go in a front office these types of things this is how a bathroom would look or the type of you know hot hot water

319in bathrooms um but not all the recommendations are going to be possible because we will always be constrained by budgets and so that's something to just really be mindful that it's a set of guidelines that gives us the framework for the direction that we need to go forward and so we are ready once the board approves these tonight hopefully um that we'll be able to give these to Architects to really start moving on some projects quickly because this is the last piece that's really been hanging us up so the last slide that we want to share is we we want to talk a little bit about what the process has been so we started working with HED Architects back in September and we've worked hand in hand with them over the last five to six

320months the first thing we did when when we originally brought this to is we said we wanted them to understand Mount Diablo you can't take a template and just give it to another district and say okay it worked here so now it's going to work over here so they spent a couple of days they walked through two elementary schools two middle schools and two high schools the sites are there they they then went back and they drafted some specifications um so they they took a look at some of the projects that they'd done before and then they Mount Diablo eyes them um and then what they did was they also took into account Ed code current building standards because when you go in and remodernize a campus you have to bring it up to what

321the current standard is we sent drafts of those two documents so at one point in time it was an elementary middle and high school we combined element entering middle together we had multiple copies running all over the district office but we had ed services special education technology facilities maintenance operation Transportation food nutrition so everybody had an opportunity to weigh in over on the Ed Services side of the house not only did we have Mrs sacks working through it with us but we had the leaders in elementary education we had the leaders in secondary education also looking at every single document we then circulated it through a staff feedback process so once we got two really really super clean drafts we put it out through parent Square email to all the staff and said look we

322want to get everybody's feedback on this and we had 47 staff members that responded with certain things that they thought were good certain things that they felt were missing and then as a team we went back and we said okay is this a nice to have or is this something that we missed in the plan and there were some things that we missed in the plan for example gender-neutral restrooms we didn't call it out as gender neutral and so we made sure that we went back and we we touched upon those pieces and then um so we had that survey open for seven days and then we also said at the same time that we were launching it we want everybody to know that we're going to have an open meeting and there were four

323of us that were the four of us that you see on the front page uh hosted that meeting and I want to say we had four attendees or so it was on a Monday evening and it was just pretty much open we talked about any topics that anybody wanted to bring up about anything in the plan what they like what they didn't like if they thought that we missed anything and we took that into account and then what we did was we took all of that feedback we brought it back we ran through the drafts again and then we went into the final editing phase to bring you what you see here and so um what we also did was I don't I certainly am not going to pretend that I know what needs to

324go in certain places and school offices and so we would always go back to a lot of our Chiefs to say we'd like you to vet some of these ideas is this a must-have or a nice to have and so we really did weigh all of those and so there was never one person that was saying oh that should be in the plan oh that shouldn't but it was really a group conversation throughout and so what we're bringing you tonight is we're bringing you two versions we're bringing you an elementary middle school version and we're bringing you a high school version for your approval so the two of us are happy to answer any questions I know that some of our colleagues are also here if there's anything that you would like to hear from

325any of them as well seized so I do have a couple of questions and a couple of concerns that I want to share um I've had feedback and also I've experienced this where sometimes the basic necessities that we need to thrive or even like have safety in our schools are not being met um so in one of the slides I mentioned about the implementation of water fountains more specifically water fountains with water bottle filling stations so um I want to share this like I just want to have a clear understanding um when if these are implemented how are we making sure that they are accessible to students uh during before school during school and after school because a lot of the times um at the middle school and high school levels there are sports going

326on after school um and I know like like for example Mount Diablo there's only two working water uh or water water stations basically um of like for the entire school um and similarly at other school sites there are water fountains but they're not being kept up to date they're not maintained properly and of that they also don't have the water filling um like the water filling uh yeah yeah yeah um so my concern is how can we ensure that when these are being implemented that they are accessible and that all students at all district levels um have both a water drinking station and um the additional part where you can fill up your own water bottle so when when we go through and we remodel we will be making sure that the stations are bottle

327fillers okay right so they have both of those components um I want to be clear and I want to manage expectations that in this first round of funding that we have with measure J we are only going to be going into two or three schools in the district so so what's not going to happen from these plans is we're not going to adopt these and then launch into working on all these things across the district because they're they're simply are not enough funds to do it but but when we go through a modernization process at a school site um we will be meeting with the school Community to talk about you know here are the things that are going to be changing and there will be a clear understanding and expectations as far as these

328drinking fountains will look like this this is what will be in these locations absolutely I hear your point that we need to make sure they're accessible outside of the school and not just inside buildings like in gyms I know that that's a popular place to have them in middle schools and high schools but that will be part of the planning process and so if there's ever a question from students like you or from any of the adults that are on campuses that will be the time where we're able to respond to that to make sure that those are there the concept of them working is is a different issue okay right so if there are drinking fountains on campuses that are not working that's a different issue that needs to be tackled but right now

329what we're saying is we're establishing the expectation that when we start replacing items they're going to replace be replaced with bottle fillers that have multiple abilities to do multiple things in various locations on campuses um I had a step up for a couple of minutes but um I don't know if you might have gone over this where does um heating and air conditioning or air like ventilation in our classrooms um come into this with modernized modernizing our schools um and going like my school was built in 1902 1901 is over 100 years old um but a lot of we see we still use a lot of our facilities they've been modernized throughout the time but a lot of their um AC systems fail during the beginning of this year and the summer there was no

330air conditioning for a lot of our classrooms um and right now even like during the cold weather and not just that the high school level but also like in the elementary school level some schools didn't have um heat or air conditioning to um ensure that their students can be safe in the classroom and not have to focus on you know folk have their focus on their learning foreign I hear you so again with with the educational specifications and the district standards when we go through schools if they need the remodelization that includes the HVAC systems absolutely that will be taken care of as a matter of fact one of the conversations we're going to be having after tonight is we've just been getting some quotes on if we were to go in and look at

331the top 30 schools and and really go in and make sure that all those HVAC systems are really working appropriately because we have a lot of very aged facilities that's really a different issue outside of these um you know but I want to say some of the things that we've learned with with the um with the HVAC assessments that we've been doing is that you know covet hasn't helped us right we took a brand new filtering system that fit it physically would fit on the units but it's it's been causing a lot of the units to burn out much more quickly so we're not getting as much use out of the units that we had on top of that and I think this building is a perfect example we probably have 33 units in this

332building that need to be replaced because they are so old that they're they're about it I just know we got 14 minutes to wrap this meeting up okay I'll send you one question we're gonna talk yes right okay thanks no thank you it is are there more questions thank you okay so as I just to make sure we all understand this is like the guide for when we get to do work how the work is done it's not the plan for when it's going to be or even where so what we're voting on is the when work is done when we get a gazillion dollars this is how it will be done can I entertain a motion educational specifications and District standards Christina the Flores oh everything just the last movie that passes five zero

333this is Mayo may we contact you offline and and go through any questions or concerns that you had okay okay good evening board members I have before you for your review and potential approval item 18.5 which is we're bringing back uh from last time which is our board policies for our 4000 series we've seen these before are there any questions they'll entertain a motion wait a last one yeah I win okay I'll entertain a motion Madam president I move to approve updates to board policies and administrative regulations four thousands Flores that passes five zero thank you thank you 18.6 karaoke night oh sorry yeah I got changed so it's 18 points 18.7 0.7 yourself good evening or good night uh before you uh before us or before you is a uh we have a second

334assessment that has been made by our ex's liability carrier it's our carrier but really it's us we are part of a pool of many many many many school districts that have joined together to create a fund so that we can fund any cases where where there is a finding or a verdict against us as a district over five million dollars this was created back in 1986 I believe and as a result of a new law that was passed effective January 1st 2020 which uh increased the liability for sexual assault cases and in essence removed the statute of limitations meaning that it doesn't matter when it occurred to be 50 years ago people could now file a lawsuit against a lawsuit against our pool so as a result of that there has been an increase there

335is a request to fund that excess liability and that is what's before you now this doesn't mean that there are any cases that are pending necessarily against us but there are many many cases pending against our fellow school districts that are a member of our pool as a result of that and because we are a member of the pool we have to pay our share unfortunately this uh statute actually is is now pending again before the before the legislature and I'm sorry to report that that actually may may pass so such that this um the the the Revival of the cases may be be gone indefinitely so I am definitely lobbying my local Senator to ask that school districts not be included or at least any of the public agencies not being included as part

336of this this uh um this uh California's child's victims act but in the meantime we do have to pay for for what happened many many years ago in all these cases that have been revived if there's any questions please let me know emotion Madam president I moved to approve the invoice received from self for this fiscal year for a total of 830 759.65 to cover mdusd's portion of the self-assessed contribution amount of the ab218 funding plan for this fiscal year to fund excess coverage for retroactive liability imposed by law second that Christina Flores this will be an annual premium it may very well be depending on whether the law is extended indefinitely we are dealing with it I also should point out that this is what the invoices now to to us currently however this

337doesn't mean that it will be the ultimately the amount that we pay we are negotiating it we are discussing myself and we're trying to come up with a way of reducing that amount as much as possible but in the meantime we do need to thank you for for for for allowing us to proceed with this and as well as to settle up when it is time to do so thank you that passes five zero eighteen point eight oh yes this next item is the um csba delegation and um this is something that this we bring to this board um every year every other year to are we going to take action on it on a um oh we have to vote for three to three it's info action so I'll throw it out there I

338don't have a mic Dr Haley uh Liberty Union School District will still have a representative on delegate assembly so if you wish to spread the opportunity around to other districts uh I would suggest voting for one three and four I'd second that I'm doing it all right well there's a motion in a second so uh trusting another Flores they're spreading the representation oh trustee Mason that class is 5-0 with concurrence the 18.9 yeah so um we bring before you tonight the 2023 certificate of signatures it was adopted at the annual organizational meeting but however due to staff changes we've had to bring it back and make adjustments you have a motion Madam president I moved to approve adoption of certificate of signatures for February 2023 to December 2023. I'll second that interesting all the Flores

339yes