Board Meeting 01 27 21 Part 2

001buenos noches everyone welcome to the governing board meeting of the Mount Diablo Unified School District for January 27 2021 if you need translation there is an interpretation button at the bottom that you can push to join our Spanish translation interpretation language interpretation welcome everyone uh we are reconvening our Open Session and we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance and roll call please join me I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all right we will move on to roll call and we'll begin with our student trustee trustee Alice right trustee Mason here trustee Mayo here trustee McFerrin here and trustee and zayley all right thank you everyone all right so

0026.2 review and potential approval of the agenda do we have any changes to the agenda I have uh two changes okay uh first of all I want to change um on item 11.2 we have that listed as an action item and it's it's the info item all right and then for item 11.3 um he is doing several presentations tonight with other boards and so so just permission for if uh if they come on a little late if like we can put them in when they when they when they come if they show up after their designated time all right duly noted 11.3 will move to when the presenter is available thank you any other changes to the agenda do we have a motion I'll make a motion that we approve the agenda with those changes

003okay all right motion by trustee Mason and second by trustee Mayo and we'll put it to a vote trustee Alice yes trustee Mason yes trustee Mayo yes trustee and zawi trustee McFerrin yes and I also vote Yes motion approved all right thank you so we'll start with our report out from closed session 7.1 was negotiations the board may discuss negotiations or provide direction to its Representatives regarding represented employees pursuant to eera government code section 3549.1 agency negotiators Dr Adam clerk Dr John Rubio Dr Dan skadero Dr Lisa Gonzalez Dr Wendy aguili Jennifer Sachs Cesar Alvarado and Mike Berg agencies Medea dma mdspa CSEA CST Local 1 and Teamsters Local 856. we received information and provided Direction item 7.2 discipline dismissal release or reassignment of Public Employee government code section 54957b1 one case was delayed there

004was no information or action on that item all right and so now we'll move along to public comment the public May address the board regarding any item within the jurisdiction of the Board of Education of the Mount Diablo Unified School District that is not on this agenda these presentations are limited to three minutes each or a total of 30 minutes for all speakers or the 30-minute limit the three-minute limit may be shortened if there are multiple speakers on any one subject the public comment period may be moved to the end of the meeting speakers are not allowed to yield their time and we always like to say that when you're providing public comment live like this to keep in mind that we as the board cannot engage in a discussion with you according to the

005brown act that that item would have to be put on an agenda and there would be notification needed instead but during public comment we can ask questions clarifications um and and basically that's that's what we can do so we we listen very carefully but we're not going to engage in a discussion all right um so let's see uh so as uh Miss dranick put if you would like to make a public comment please put your name into the chat and Mr bridenthal or Dr Clark who is going to be um managing the names for this install and and Mr Brian thought we'll manage the names all right thank you very much and I will leave it to you Mr brightenthal thank you for president count I'll turn it over to Mr renick who's taking public

006comment item this evening thank you so far we have one individual who is with has been admitted so uh Mr Noel I'm afraid I'm going to mispronounce your last name so curtnet it's much easier than it looks thank you I'll have you come ahead and speak and when your three minutes will begin when you begin speaking okay thank you so my name is Noel fruitnik I have two middle school students in the district I've got to be honest tonight's agenda is disgraceful it's completely tone deaf where is the agenda item for a detailed report on the specific plans for reopening the district to our students why is this not a standing agenda item at every board meeting for the last 10 months it should be this lack of information and transparency is causing parents to

007make profound decisions regarding next fall that are detrimental to The District in terms of enrollment numbers and you all may not get that to rise up to your level and you may not be hearing that but as the parent groups that are talking this is a this is a real risk to the district next fall is there a detailed plan if so why has that not been shared with the with the parents there's a nice weekly newspaper newsletter with rainbows and unicorns and generalities and superlatives where are the specific detailed plans bored why are you not demanding specific detailed plans again we've been at this for 10 months we can't just be making it up as we go now our students and parents deserve better and bored if you are unwilling to stand up to

008the tyranny of the CTA and demand action from Dr Clark and his staff maybe it's time for parents to begin the recall process and find board members who will thank you your comment has been received and next we have Mr Diego Harris your three minutes will begin when you begin speaking I think I think I made a mistake I think I'm supposed to go later on right okay sorry about that my my confusion sorry about that no problem all right at this point I don't have any other individuals who are asking to speak do you see a question of whether board comments are read the board comments that come in through email um are are available to all of us as board members to read as they come in and then they are posted publicly

009uh for the public to be able to read as well so we don't actually read those verbally out loud because they are available for for everyone to see and um president Khan we do have Laura Steele who's asked to speak okay and Miss Steele you've got three minutes your three minutes will begin when you begin speaking and steel Miss steel it looks like you are muted there we go I apologize okay um just give me one moment um thank you I wanted to thank you for the continued efforts that you guys were able to agree on for the small groups um the special cohorts and um I know that there is a lot of available information um but similar to what um Noel mentioned there there is a difficulty in parents actually accessing that information

010um there are a lot of families who are hesitant to speak up and um and frankly there's just a lot of people who are very busy working and don't have time to invest in all the ins and outs of what the district is doing to prepare for a return back to school I understand that you guys are doing a lot um but I do think that a lot more could be communicated in a timely manner and also um that there there is a lot of Talk Amongst parents to remove their children from school the following school year um through either private school or home school and I'm not sure that the district is prepared for what that might look like because we haven't had another survey the survey we had was months ago and it

011was only reflecting a hybrid program that is no longer being offered we have not had a new survey to reflect people's willingness willingness to come back with um with that new plan so I would like for there to be a new survey to ask if people are willing to remain distance learning offer a hybrid and a third option to do whatever their teacher is willing to do since we saw there were a lot of people who were most interested in staying with their teacher um and I know that that's a huge undertaking but I think it's extremely necessary because um like I said there's just a lot of people who are ready to jump ship here so I really appreciate your guys's continued efforts and I know that it's in good faith I really really

012hope to impress that upon you guys um the the um the benefits of distance learning which were meant to be short-term I believe have now been outweighed by some of the consequences that we're facing at home thank you for your comments and we do have another public comment Jill walson please unmute and your three minutes will begin once you begin speaking hi everyone can you hear me great um I appreciate the opportunity to speak and I know I'm speaking for thousands of families in the Mount Diablo Unified School District children who are in regular education as well as special education we need an active plan we demand higher expectations from our elected board members superintendent and the Union we need a choice for our children we know this is a heavy lift yet it has

013been almost a year how is this not the number one priority for our board meeting neighboring districts and other districts in California have a plan and are executing it please research what they're doing with unions that are strong they are coming together and working together for the best interest of our children there is research that is showing that we can do this even with teachers not fully vaccinated parents need a choice I believe in public education I want my children to stay in this District but there are so many families that cannot function this way I speak on behalf of thousands of families who are scared to speak up we are seeing it children the learning loss the mental health is so huge please I beg you to take that into account thank you for

014your comment and president count that appears to be our final public comment all right thank you very much thank you everyone who made a public comment tonight we appreciate you coming forward and sharing your perspectives next we have 9.0 Communications 9.1 is District organizations at regular board meetings a single spokesperson of each recognized District organization may make a brief presentation items are limited to those which are informational do we have any speakers of District organizations thank you board president count no employee organizations have submitted statements nor have any employee organizations elected to speak in person tonight okay thank you very much all right so then we'll move on to item 10.0 recognition and resolutions 10.1 resolution 2021-40 in recognition of February as black and African-American history month and I will turn it over to Dr

015Clark thank you so much president count um so so tonight we're um as as we um have different resolutions at in every meeting tonight we are recognizing um black and African-American history month which takes place in uh in February and as as per um per protocol I will read the the opening paragraphs and the finishing paragraph and then we do have three speakers here tonight who will speak on this topic and then we'll put it to the board for consideration so if I if I may I'd like to present resolution 20 slash 21-40 in recognition of February is black and African-American history month whereas the Deep rooted intrinsic value of black and African-American history presents our educational institutions with an opportunity for recognition teaching and celebration and whereas Mount Diablo Unified School District recognizes and

016celebrates the history and contributions of black and African Americans who have been overlooked misinterpreted and undervalued in the curriculum of public education institutions so um now therefore be it resolved that the Mount Diablo Unified School District governing board proclaims the month of February as black and African-American history month and encourages all schools to commit commemorate this occasion accordingly with appropriate instructional materials discussions presentations and projects be it further resolved that this executed resolution be distributed to all schools within the Mount Diablo Unified School District so before I um call on our three speakers I also do want to recognize that um our County Superintendent is visiting um our our meeting this evening um miss Lynn Mackey and we want to welcome her to welcome her to our meeting and without any further Ado I'm going

017to call First on Mr Mr Harris then I will call on Dr Frazier and then we will finish up with Mr MIM so um Mr Harris your comments please thank you about 20 years ago I had a professor tell me that one day I'd be speaking to a group of important people I didn't realize it at the time that he was foreshadowing my career as a special education teacher talking to students board members Dr Clark and people who are listening you are important too my name is Diego Harris I'm president of Mount Diablo like Educators Association on behalf of myself and the members of mdbea I would like to express our unwavering support of the proposed board resolution and recognition of February as black history and African-American history month black history is American history and

018should be a continuous part of our curriculum across all grade levels it is my hope that all teachers will utilize the resources being provided to recognize black history in their classes not just for the month of February but for all the months of the school year we do a disservice to all our students when we withhold such valuable information from them this resolution will only have an impact when we choose enact its principles at our sites and in our classrooms it is our responsibility as Educators to teach our students the true accurate history of this country and its people all its people in order to truly address the systemic racism that exists within our district and our schools we require equity and action not just in words at this time I would like to switch

019gears into another role I value as an educator I'm also The Faculty Club advisor for college Parks black student union this role has enabled me to be in contact with members of our community who have reached out to me because they would like to support the BSU most recently I've been able to collaborate with Lloyd Sheen who's a member of the city of Pleasant Hill Civic action commission diverse diversity committee the committee reached out to me because they are looking for a few local Pleasant Hill High School students to discuss why black history month is important to them if there is ever a highlight of goodness to come out of distance learning and zoom meetings is meeting weekly with the BSU students we've had guest speakers include our very own Dr Clark teachers from College

020Park and Dr Carrie Frazier the students have discussed a range of topics that have been on their minds and hearts one of the most poignant moving meetings is when we discuss their experiences with racism as students one student shared her experience of going to a back to school night event and being asked afterwards while our father was not there was he in jail or prison to say I didn't see red after hearing that would be an understatement that is why I'm encouraged when Dr Clark proposed forming an anti-bias and anti-racism committee one of my favorite quotes is from Legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi if WISN if winning isn't everything then why do they keep score I played football in high school I was determined to be a starter even though I didn't know

021what the work mediocrity meant back then I loved mediocrity when it came to playing football I long to be on the field where the action was I was not about going through the motions and just happy to be on the team our desire to make a difference on our team winning two things I thought I would become when I grew up was a rapper of being in the NFL as you can see the rap game didn't work out yet there's still a glimmer of hope for the NFL which means Newfound look not the National Football League I am certain those who are fortunate enough to make it to the National Football League want to have a Hall of Fame career stand out even amongst the best I have stars in my eyes when I say

022this What About Us the Mount Diablo Unified School District as school districts across the country the state and even right here in the Bay Area deal with the scourge of white supremacy of systemic racism there are many who are despondent and cynical yet they still hope that this time of Reckoning of equality and social justice will actually be a catalyst for the unity that is needed to overcome the societal ills of hate I'm currently reading the book rising out of hatred The Awakening of a white nationalist the book is about Derek black a young man whose father Don black was at one time the grand wizard of the KKK and still currently runs the online white nationalist hate site Stormfront Derek's transformation from his white supremacist ideology took place because of the hand of kindness

023that was extended to him by the students at his college who did not recoil from him as a person in turn he was able to realize the impact his actions had on people he never wanted to harm the problem with white supremacy and systemic racism is its impact the Left Behind and undealt with trauma of people left in his wake for those who are impacted by its evil tentacles it is distressing and nightmarish leftover grief and sorrow a company and Linger on for those wounded by systemic racism and white supremacy which brings me back to winning what is Mount Diablo school district is the Beacon of Hope and light with our anti-bias anti-racism committee and commitment to Black History Month optimistically that is what I am confident we can become together a Hall of Fame

024District where other districts look to on how to properly address white supremacy and systemic racism and closing this morning I read a bulletin from the national terrorism advisory system that warned about domestic violent extremists taking action they gave a warning and also a way to help and I quote communities are strongest but they are not divided strengthen your community by standing together against violence unquote I would add to that stand against racial microaggressions and racial bias in all its forms thank you board members Dr Clark and all others who are listening I look forward to working as a unified front together your brother in education d'angel Harris thank you so much Mr Harris good evening to the school district I've had the pleasure of being a consultant off and on with the district for over

02510 years and just wanted to highlight the latest work that I was involved in and that was with in the past four years being able to present black history exhibits at Bel Air and Shore Acres Elementary School as well as Riverview Middle School and I've also had the privilege of presenting exhibits for Hispanic Heritage Month as well as Asian Pacific Islanders month and to date those exhibits have been attended by 5420 students and 60 teachers and I want to highlight that because we're in a time where some people find it hard to figure out what to do I think that we've had examples in many different areas of things that could be Progressive and could move along the agenda of racial equality but the consistency has not been there and so I was really pleased

026to hear Brother Harris talk tonight about his dream for the district and since I've been able to be there kind of boots on the ground I know it's possible and so I look forward to the committee that's going to be looking at lesson plans and other activities for students to have over this month as developing a model that could be used throughout the district and it does not have to be just for black people if you can come up with a model that's fair and Equitable and it's respectful it can be used for everyone all people in the district and so I'm hopeful and I'm looking forward to seeing the possibility of that thank you thank you Dr Frazier thank you and uh Mr Mims okay sorry about that was muted good evening everyone to

027the superintendent to the school board and to the zoom community at Large I want to thank all of you for allowing me to speak as a guest on this very important agenda item I'm the education chair of these kind of nacp I'm here as a member of the Mount Diablo black Educators Association we are in total support of this black and African-American history resolution history is important to one's intellectual and psychological well-being in all of my years in elementary school middle school and high school I never saw a learning anything about the history of black people in this country what did I learned however was the fact that we were all slaves I had nothing to be proud of especially especially uh of Africa where I was told that my people were running around the

028jungle with no shoes as a boy I grew up without having a sense of Pride I was missing one crucial thing knowledge of my history and and the small amount of of the of of the misinformational historical knowledge that I had was basically the same that everyone else had I grew up having an inferior history uh to those who whom I believe out of History it's a period of mind over the years a few things have changed and some African-American history is now being taught but not enough I have hope I have hope I hope that this resolution perhaps will change that from 1699 since have been what my answers have been on this soil and we all came and changed the current history book spends very little time on discussing the 246 years of

029enslaving of black people in this country and only presents a limited discussion on the major role that black soldiers played in every war especially the Revolutionary War the War of 1812 and the Civil War it was the black soldiers who were responsible for all of those victories I did not know any of this during my 12 year educational journey I was deprived and so were my fellow students this deprivation is detrimental to all to all students depriving them of America's Rich history I encouraged the board to adopt this black history resolution tonight and and one of a couple more things I want to say uh in your resolution it has something that I think that's not accurate and but I've seen that in everybody else's resolution that's in paragraph four uh uh regarding Christmas addicts

030a set according to the uh your staff report uh it says that he was the first African-American to die in that Revolutionary War he was the first person to die not just African-American but the first person to die and get that straight so he could qualify that because I've seen that in in a whole lot of resolutions so the um the that if that small amount information is not true the um one of the things that I would suggest that this school district do start off with is to get some clarity and qualification on the word slave because the concept and the mindset that people have is that all that black people were slaves well you know when they came here and I was telling somebody in the pocket when he came here they they

031came here as prisoners of War they did not come here as slaves they did not bring slaves Out of Africa so that that concept and that understanding or misunderstanding should be made clear to your students because they think when you mention slaves so well you know the the mindset well they were slaves no so you can't see a slave but you can see a human being to use the word slave the term slave was a form of dehumanization you are dehumanizing these people so you so you can see a child with change and shackles around his or hurting hands or neck but anyway I don't want to get off topic here I see brother Clark looking at me um I just want to make sure that the the first thing that I would like folks

032to do is to get some clarification on the people that they brought out of Africa they brought human beings Out of Africa men and women boys and girls babies and not slaves okay thank you but anyway thanks for listening to me and I hope I've done something here and I and I hope that you pass this resolution thank you thank you president count it is now in the hands of the board all right thank you very much to each of you for your important presentations tonight I just want to say Mr Harris when you talked about not just February but all months that's definitely something that we're all looking at and is is absolutely what we need to be doing Dr Frazier when you talked about developing a model that could be used throughout the

033district that's fantastic I think that's that's exactly the direction that we need to go and Mr Mims when you talked about um uh well you talked about a number of things but a couple of things one when you were talking about 16 19 I was thinking about the 1619 project and what an incredible resource of information and education that is to get into the the accuracy of the of the facts there like you were talking about um so thank you so much all of you for being here with that I would like to open it up to the board um would someone like to make a motion for this resolution oh trustee and Zoe it looks like you are muted or perhaps your sound is oh you can't hear him we still can't hear you

034what did you have headphones before okay can you hear me now yes okay there we go I make the motion to pass this read the Black History Month resolution all right thank you motion by trustee and zaywe do we have a second I would like to second that motion and just say that um having been born and raised in what was West Pittsburgh at the time now Bay Point which is always a very diverse Community I've always really felt strongly about this um resolution and always stated every year since I've been on the board where we talked about it this month we are supposed to be doing it every single day in every single way and um even though it's always resonated with me I think this particular year it takes on more importance and

035resonates even more and I hope we can become a model for other districts in the area to um really step up and make this a regular part of our conversations thank you very much second by trustee Mason and thank you for your comments yes that's and that's exactly what we state in the in the resolution itself that is really the state history social science framework for California public schools that requires this the appropriate history curriculum um and experiences of men and women of different racial religious and ethnic groups that must be integrated at every level so this is what we are required to do not just for the month of February so thank you for pointing that out any other comments before we move to a vote yes trustee and say we Mr Harris and

036Dr Frazier and your Mims as a child of the 80s who grew up in the Central Valley of California where I was often the only black child in my elementary school class my black history education primarily went like this they were slaves some lynchings here and there then Rosa Ben Martin and now all is well as a child of the 80s my black history was taught by my parents anyone my age watching tonight may remember the documentary eyes on the prize that was must watch TV for me recorded on ph VHS tapes and Revisited year after year after year um it's only because of my parents that I learned about Ida B Wells madam CJ Walker chappie James Malcolm X Alvin Ailey George Washington Carver Tony Morrison Langston Hughes Josephine Baker Nina Simone among many

037other influential and historical figures not to mention historical events I think most agree today that's not right and I'm inspired by the many teachers in our district 2 on their own do everything they can to provide a multicultural curriculum to their students not only during black history or other defined months I'm inspired by students and parents who recognize and stand up against racist and sexist lessons I appreciate the decades-long advocacy of Mr Williams and Dr Carrie Frazier on behalf of black students and Families I stand on their shoulders the shoulders of my parents and ancestors the shoulders of Shirley Chisholm Audrey Lord Georgia Gilmore I hope that our students learn much more than I did as a child about black history this February and all year long and eagerly weight of a voting yes on

038this resolution thank you so much trustee and say we wonderful wonderful to have you as a member of our board any other comments or questions I wanted to say um thank you so much everybody who spoke and that I hope this paves the way for culturally responsive teaching and the active implementation of ethnic studies in all grade levels and in all classes um and I know that there was a tweet circulating by um Miss Reed um who who is the teachers who I know actively implements cultural competency and Reading literature by black authors I read um Tony Morrison Ralph Ellison Zoran al-herson my first semester junior year of high school and that was thanks to teachers like Miss Reed and so many other teachers like that in our district and I really hope this paves

039the way for the proliferation of those methods of teaching in tandem with Dr Clark's um a bar committee thank you thank you trustee Alice all right with that we will put it to a vote trustee Ellis yes trustee and say we yes trustee Mason yes trustee McFerrin yes trusty Mayo yes and I also vote Yes motion passes 5-0 with concurrence from our student board member thank you so much everyone and thank you presenters thank you thank you next we have reports and information 11.1 review the increase and decrease of classified Personnel full-time equivalent for the 2020 and 2021 school year yes and I'll turn that over to Dr Rubio good evening everyone and uh somebody just texted me to let me know I'm currently serving as Jennifer sacks apparently by name so so I appreciate

040Jennifer for forwarding me the email link a little did I realize that that would have greater implications but if there's anyone I would love to live up to it would be to be Jennifer so nothing else is going on you can still call me John but uh I will proceed um uh this evening I'm presenting to you your our usual informational item which is a review of our transactions out of the fiscal office in HR that shows the increase and decrease of positions or changes in budget codes and I thank you Austin somebody who did that I'm back uh and uh our usual uh increases in decreases and changes in funding so after uh any questions please let me know any questions trustees all right hearing none thank you very much Dr Rubio item 11.2

041this is the California collaborative for educational Excellence ccee presentation on systematic instructional review Dr Clark yes so um so CC CE is is known throughout the state and actually throughout the nation they are very um reparable organization and they work with many school districts throughout California um really offering support and providing all sorts of technical assistance to districts so that they can meet the needs of all students and ensure that all students are learning at high levels and so they're going to do a brief presentation tonight for the for the board and for the public and so I am going to turn it over to Dr Roberts can I start with Dr Roberts and then you can introduce your team and I know you have a presentation and the tech team will will put that

042on the screen so without any further Ado we have Dr Roberts from CCE thank you superintendent Clark uh president count and members of the board uh I'm Matthew Roberts director with California collaborative for educational Excellence very very pleased to be with you and your stakeholders this evening um I'd like to represent uh and introduce my team if I can that's uh with us this evening and uh starting from our executive director Mr Thomas armolino who will be co-presenting with me this evening uh Dr Carla Estrada who is our Deputy executive director Dr Jenny Wright who's our senior manager and our Logistics Ace who is uh handling a lot of the scheduling and such uh and running of of our sir process which we'll get to in a minute and uh last but not least we

043have Dr Craig Wheaton and Dr Nick Mize who are really our researchers our folks that are on the ground conducting a lot of the sort of focus groups and individual interviews and such so we're very very pleased with our our team and be able to present with you this evening I also am joined this evening too we're very very pleased to have our our colleagues from Contra Costa County Office of Education uh represented by superintendent Lynn Mackey superintendent Mackie very nice to see you uh and uh Nick zeffeld and Marcia togayashi so we're pleased to have our County Office colleagues together which is much in the spirit of our systemic instructional review process um and actually you could Advance the next slide if you want Roberts if I could just jump in real quick I

044I was I was unaware that uh Mr armalino was going to be joining us this evening and so I just want to officially welcome Mr armelino to the Mount Diablo Unified School District it's been some time since I've seen him but he's in a he's an amazing leader and um and again I have nothing but high praises for the work that he does and and this leadership in this organization so sorry about that Dr Roberts I just really had to get that in no no and uh Mr emerilino I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you for the for the next slide if we can advance to the next one thank you yeah thank you I really appreciate those those kind words Dr Clark I I had some kind words of my

045own for you as well um I want to first uh say good evening to the board and and Madam president and the fellow trustees and and Dr Clark in particular I'm very excited that you have Dr Clark and as your leader uh we have some history together and uh in my experience with him in particular is his Focus needs our Focus always on what's good for kids um you know he's an equity leader a real strong leader around curriculum instruction which is our baby right and we often recognize you know when folks are having struggles financially it's quicker than the instructions that often takes the back seat so in particular it's really why we exist in our new system of support and so I want to share with you a little bit about kind of

046why we're here tonight a little bit about the state system of support and then I'll speak to some of the language specifically um but my main interest is really making sure that we're able to come alongside the district and continue to support the district even though we have the specific role that we have to play our main role always is to advise and assist and be able to support school districts we don't see ourselves as somebody who comes in does a report hands it to you and leaves we really feel like we have some obligation and responsibility right to your students to be able to to really help inform we really see our job as kind of being your eyes and ears initially to give you kind of kind of feedback and tell you just

047kind of tell you what we see both um you know as you'll learn a little bit both with your strengths as well as some other areas to improve and then as I mentioned continue to stay with you and do what we can to support you so what I have here tonight is you can see our key roles in the state system of support and specifically our role is to partner with these local agencies to address chronic and complex instructional strategies and we try to coordinate that individual sort support to make sure that it supports your lcap so we recognize too that is you know that is your document that is aligned with what it is that you need to do so our goal is never to come in and give you an additional plan right

048it's support it should support what you're already doing as well as provide you some opportunity to give you some feedback as well we really see this work and what's unique about our title is we are the California collaborative or educational excellence and so that is what drives our theory of action we believe that we have to do our work by collaborating with others and so in particular we're working collectively with the county offices as a partner we have Partners in the California Department of Education as well as what the the state refers to as our Geo leads which I won't go into too much in depth there too but it's part of our system support which is just another resource that's available and then specifically as we work with partners with the local Education Agency

049next slide please so I'm going to go ahead and yes I'm going to go ahead and turn this over to a superintendent backing um I'll jump in good evening uh superintendent Clark and Board of Trustees my name is Nicholas zifel I'm the director of curriculum and instruction at the Contra Costa County Office of Education um our agency partners with districts eligible for differentiate assistance and this work is centered around understanding that the system understanding the system that's producing the outcomes that are showing up both in local data and the California dashboard uh and then once we better understand the system we support the running of thoughtful measurable experiments to see if we can make changes that sustainably improve outcomes for students on the screen you're going to see a list of bullet points these are

050General steps that we use in differentiated assistance with that said we're eager to partner both with the district and the nccee to ensure that our efforts your efforts and the support that ccee provides are all aligned once CCE systemic instructional reviews completed we look forward to supporting the implementation of the changes that you're interested in experimenting with all of this is done in the name of improving student outcomes in a sustainable measurable way next slide please um so the general model for improvement that we work from is based upon these three questions what are we trying to accomplish how will we know that the change that we make will be an improvement and finally what change can we actually try to make that will result in an improvement and once we have that idea for

051change uh that we believe will make an improved outcome we run small agile experiments called a plan do study act cycle to see if we can make improvements in measurable sustainable ways before we attempt to spread and scale it um to larger populations next slide please so I'll say it again our team is ready and and eager to support the work of Mount Diablo and CCE in your improvement Journey we've deeply enjoyed working and learning alongside Mount Diablo District staff throughout the school year this year I personally had the opportunity to attend a ccee training series around accelerated learning with Miss Sachs we have Mount Diablo team members participating in our curriculum Council and content area subcommittee meetings uh on a bi-monthly basis we have curriculum and instruction coordinators working at Mount Diablo sites to

052grow instructional practice uh beyond the support that we are already providing on the screen you can see a few of the areas that we can look forward to partnering with you um this year and Beyond we appreciate being a partner in this process uh we thank you for the time to to to share from our County standpoint and I'll turn it back over to our colleagues at CCE thank you next slide please so what this speaks to is really and I want to really take a few minutes really to kind of explain them to the board a little bit as to why we're here um and so Mount Diablo was one of four districts in the state that were identified under a new section of the Ed code under 52064 64.5 which is the school

053dashboard and specifically it identifies that if there's three or more pupils subgroups or identified to section 52052 or if the school district has less than three three pupil cell groups if all the school districts people sell groups and three out of four consecutive years are in red that would qualify you under this 52052 so in particularly what we do is is we are really here to look pretty strong lens at those student groups but we look at your District as a whole and so part of our role as I mentioned earlier is to provide advice and assistance we do this through what we call our sir which is our systemic instruction review that you'll hear more about here in a bit and we go we come alongside with the county office and what we'll also

054do is so we have kind of dual roles we have this role that we always have to be able to support school districts and it's really some of the work that we have done in the past even with Adam and his prior District his prior District did not qualify based on the said code but just as part of one of our other roles is that actually through Adam's leadership he had asked for our support specifically we were able to come in because we have that ability if uh if the district would like that service in this role we have to identify specifically what's happening with those three student groups and try to provide you feedback right as to tell you what we're seeing right and then we have some ideas as to how we could

055support you so we have that first roll of advising assisting we do that through our search support and then we also have a role of continuing to progress monitor as the district starts to implement some of the strategies and things that have been been defined and so I want to kind of speak to that a little specifically too and I'll share a little bit about what the ad code actually says that what we um what the cool part about this is It's new and so we kind of get to make it up and so and and we have actually met with the state superintendent when because as I mentioned we have these are our first of our four districts and the interest of the state superintendent and our interest is is to be able to

056come in as I mentioned and identify what's happening and then specifically continue to work with the district progress monitor because there is a role that we have to play in regards to seeing if you're actually being able to implement and being able to support the needs of these students and then I'll speak to what happens as we move forward um so as I mentioned we do that through what we call our systemic instruction review and we do that in partnership with the County Office of we've complete the serve but then the goal then is to help inform the work of the county offices they do the differentiated assistance and so we kind of collaborate and work together collectively so that the district isn't having to do something separate with the county office and separate with

057us and again trying to mesh out with what the priorities of the district already have in regards to their lcap next slide please so as I mentioned right the district and you are well of this well aware of this right has been in differentiated assistance for 2016-17 2017-18 as we know 1819 we did not have data right had that but they were there in there prior as well um here's your student groups that have been identified so you're African-American students homeless Youth and fostered youth and you can see specifically in the areas that they were read next slide please so what I share with you is I want to make sure we're part of my goal and part of my role is to make sure that I'm very clear with the board right both on

058our theory of action but also what the head coach says and so I wanted to make sure that your folks are aware so under 52072 this is the specific language that says the superintendent that being the state superintendent Tony Thurman shell only intervene in the school district that meets both of the following criteria so the school district needs the criteria under Section 5207-064.5 with three or more people subgroups which I just just explained that to you so you meet that first piece of criteria the second piece of criteria on in that statute says the California collaborator for educational Excellence has provided advice and assistance to the school district and submits either of the following findings to the superintendent so as I mentioned the way that we initially provided advice and assistance is through the serve

059so you'll hear about the serve tonight write a little bit as to how we're going to provide that initial advice and assistance then based on the work right we then have to make a determination has the school failed or is unable to implement the recommendations and that the inadequate or the inadequate performance of the school district based upon an evaluation rubric which is the state dashboard right it's either so persistent or acute as to require intervention by the superintendent so this is the part that I was mentioning earlier since we're all new to this we got to Define how it is that we would make the decision to determine if you have failed or if you're unable to implement the recommendations so one of the things that we were clear with we met with the

060superintendent was none of us had an interest of Us coming in doing the sir report and then based on their survey report look at that information and say well we don't think they're able to really Implement these recommendations that wouldn't be fair to you right and so part of our goal then is we submit that information to the board to the superintendent and then it really is your obligation for you to make the decision as to what it is that you feel based on that information you want to do with that information how does it align with your goals writing the ideas of what you already want to be able to do for your students and then you have some obligation to then meet with us and we have conversations around that and talk about

061what are your ideas and thoughts about how you want to move forward based on that conversation we can continue to then jump back up into our roll around advise and assist so we can come alongside you we can meet with the county office we can even provide some resources and specific supports to engage in that work with you and then in a quarterly basis we have this obligation to be able to actually do a report we'll make sure that you you are aware of that report and we report that back to the superintendent basically saying how are they doing are they making progress at the same time the school dashboard right will have continual data as we know it's very unlikely we'll have a dashboard next fall right we didn't have one this year too

062so it's very unlikely that we'll be looking at that b the goal of all of our work is to never get to a right I don't think we have it's actually the goal of the state superintendent as well does it have any interest of wanting to come in and have an intervene so our goal is for us all to kind of collaborate and work together and with the hope of the sir being a resource and a tool that you find helpful and gives you the feedback that that you may not normally get as you try to pursue this on your own next slide please okay and I believe Matthew am I turning this back to you at this point Matt you're on mute no this one's still yours still me okay so our continual of

063support thank you so it says this for school district superintendent May so I apologize so in speaking to the superintendent so if we got to a point where we referred we had to make this decision and say gosh it doesn't look like they have the ability right to be able to meet the needs of these students and make progress right and we would then to turn you to the superintendent the superintendent does have the ability right but he has to do this with the approval of the State Board to do one or more of the following he can make changes to your local control and accountability plan he can develop and impose a budget Revision in conjunction with revision to your local control and accountability plan and the superintendent determinants would allow the school district

064to improve the outcomes he has the ability to stay or rescind in action as long as that action is not required and doesn't uh it doesn't oversee something that's already in the collective bargaining agreement and in particular Focus around preventing the school district from improving the outcomes of people's subgroups as well as has the ability to appoint an academic trustee in the district to support the efforts to make sure that they support the superintendent the attendance efforts working in the district the superintendent has the responsibility to notify the local County Superintendent the County Board of Education the superintendent of the school district and of course the governing board of the school district of any of these actions as I mentioned here one through four that he would may choose to do and then also has

065to have the state board's approval in order to direct him to exercise any of those Powers so I share that with you just so that you're clear on how all of this works what's in statute as I mentioned we're most interested in the theory of action piece and what I can when I can tell you if I'm working with uh superintendent Clark in the past is he's a very collaborative man who really believes sees the importance of kind of working together so we're in here for the Long Haul of you folks right so and we're excited about that opportunity and appreciate the opportunity to be able to meet with you tonight and we'll answer some questions at the end of the presentation and now I will turn it back to Dr Matthew Roberts thank you

066executive director armolino um and I will take you from there if we can advance to the next slide so let's talk about what we're doing now and this is the second phase of our process really uh and uh uh and that's the systemic instructional review process this is uh otherwise known as the sir process and it's really a process that's designed to come in and assess uh instructional practices uh and these basically these 12 uh elements instructional elements that you have listed here and what we do is we do it through an individualized approach uh we collect data we go out and we do interviews uh individual interviews as well as focus groups uh we triangulate the data with other artifacts that might emerge in in the district as well and so we look at

067really from each one of these 12 uh sort of elements um sort of a SWOT analysis which is uh basically what are the strengths what are the weaknesses what are the opportunities and what are the threats in each of these 12 components and there's an analysis that's done based on all of this sort of inquiry that we're currently going through now I have to say thank you very much to the district to Jennifer Sachs to superintendent Clark to our our board members uh to your board members uh our board members I guess I could stay collectively uh for all of your assistance uh access to stakeholders the district and such and so we're well underway um to sort of come up with the these findings if you will or these action steps or recommendations in

068in conjunction with you so uh let's go on to the next slide so these are the possible data Gathering methods that we use we always uh triangulate we go after at least three different types of sources before we cite things uh uh our facts within within the report itself and so it really uh you can look at this report the survey report as sort of uh a checkup it's a it's a way to look at your instructional practices uh throughout the district and really look at systems that sort of support that and the beauty of it is is that as we do that uh the partners that are currently in the room with the county office and CCE and and lots of other folks that are stakeholders can help sort of implement those things so

069um that's overall the process let's go ahead and move on to the next slide so it's important I think to know this is one of my favorite slides because uh too often in education we don't work from an asset-based approach and so with sure process we do uh we want to work with as executive director armorlino talked about the current things that are working well in the district your your current um Visions your current um goals the lcap ETC um the the district has a a great deal of diversity that is is a strength uh in that we see emerging and so really looking at those bright spots uh previous work that's been done again with the uh the prior knowledge of the board as well as superintendent Clark and his staff uh all of

070the site principals um and uh and and teachers and support staff and such so um anyway really looking at those assets so hopefully I hit that too overly hard uh the next one is just a comprehensive swap as I talked about actually go back sorry um so the comprehensive SWAT which is looking at each of the elements so that you know it's it's a fairly objective process the third one is engagement with leas and Coe for feedback so we really want to build Partnerships and so we're very very pleased to be here to do that and then again based on the Sur report we develop and and co-develop I would say an action plan uh that corresponds to your your current uh you know trajectory that you're on but in looking at the three student

071groups especially and in looking at the performance of students and in trying to provide the types of outcomes along with you that really moves your students forward now if you would please move to the next slide so we want to give you an idea of General timelines we're almost Midway through the Sur process next week will be the the midpoint for us um so we're really in that listen and learn um sort of period uh data Gathering and Analysis uh the report itself we have a first draft that will work with both the county office and the district um and share with you a first draft around March 1st uh the second draft will be March 18th and then the final report will be around March 31st so pretty pretty quick timeline in terms of

072report production analysis of of data um and then from there we go on to the multi-agency meetings uh that you know in working with the district and partnering with you uh around those action steps to make sure that they they're moving forward and so trying to do that multi-agency coordination to sort of help help with that process too anyway we're really excited uh to be working with you go ahead and go on to the next slide this is a really good slide too so your role uh as a board you play such a critical role I know you know that and we want to uh really exemplify you for that as we progress into the surf process we really think that there are a few ways among others that that the board can be supportive

073and helpful in this the first is that you participated as an interviewee and and the sir interview so we really really thank you for that thank you um The Voice throughout the district is so important uh in this process um approving an lcap and really making sure your resources are prioritized and connected to connecting those District resources to really those areas of student need and then lastly just being a champion like um like board members are are so great at doing to support the sir actions recommendations for systemic change and really the Partnerships that we're trying to develop within your community um next one so this is where we get to questions let's see if you have any hopefully we've given you a good uh snapshot of what we're doing and what we hope to

074sort of produce and work along with you so I'll open it up for superintendent Clark and we're president all right thank you so much for that valuable presentation I'm really glad that we can be partnering with you and that this is a resource that the state makes available to us um I know it's so important for high performing boards School boards to have a focus on student learning and achievement and I think that this partnership will really help us to to gain that focus and and make those action plans in the areas that we need to so I'm very excited about about the partnership and the information that you'll be sharing with us um so with that other trustees do people have questions or comments oh is that trustee and Zoe I think you're muted

075there you go I can hear you I'm like I did nothing you're back go ahead um thank you for the presentation um I'm curious at that as you've conducted I know that you've conducted a lot of um focus groups at least with District sponsored um committees and parent groups and that our the three subgroups that qualify us for for taking these measures is um black students students experiencing homelessness and children who are um currently in foster care and I'm wondering how intentional you've been an engaging the adults who care for these subgroups in these committees because I don't know that they're necessarily represented in the district-sponsored groups oh I I muted when I met on you uh so to answer your question yes uh engaging with uh all aspects of the of the district are

076very important to us in order to allow the you know the right uh data uh to emerge and some of this is a process of knowing who to talk to next and some of this is you know as we get out into uh visiting School sites virtually and in visiting classrooms and then talking to uh folks around the district like your social workers like um uh parents um so we we get glimpses of of who we need to talk to and then we usually go back to um uh Dr Clark and his staff or in working with other other staff members and sort of begin to um schedule time for for folks uh to to come in for interviews um we you know we operate under um trying to get the data to to speak

077the same language in other words saturation of the of the categories and such so we we work at that um so we'll continue to sort of drill down uh to to uh look at the representative stakeholders that that can reveal uh and we have a lot of questions still and so and I think those questions that sort of guide us in those directions as well we're always uh open to suggestions as well uh if folks and and usually during interview processes we uh we ask those questions you know are there other folks that we can talk to about this so um I think it's the shine a light think of the process is to shine a light on those subgroups but not only those subgroups but all all student groups uh because [Music] um it's

078not only those three we're also interested in all the other students as well so hopefully that kind of gives you a glimpse um we're still in the middle of the process though I think that's such a good point trustee and zaywe that um oftentimes uh the way that a school district or entity works is you know you have certain committees and there's people that are able to access those committees due to their work schedule or um you know time availability and that sort of thing and but that doesn't reach everybody um so I think it's a very very good question to figure out are we reaching the actual are we in addition to all of the focus groups that you all have had so far are we reaching the students the actual students that we're

079talking about here and hearing their voices their perspective as well as their families so I would hope that with Dr Clark and and other trustee ideas about how to reach those those people to make sure that their voices are heard thank you so much for that point yeah and I think the just to respond to that too just to be straightforward tell us who they are right let us know who they are right so we we don't know your local community right so that we are relying on you right to be able to help us with that too as well as the county office so if if you want to make sure that we're talking with specific folks please let us know who they are so we want to make sure that we have as

080much information as possible right that we can so that the whole goal of this right is to have as much information really determine what's going on right what's happening right and why are we not meeting the needs of those students and what can we do differently um so please help us with that I'll be happy to help and at the same time it is a little frustrating and disappointing that the district wouldn't be able to that we as a district wouldn't be able to identify um those particular adults and families um the other question I'd have is Will in the report that will that'll that's forthcoming will there be the data on the demographics of the parents and or stakeholders in journals I know it's not just parents um the stakeholders that were um that

081provided input uh there will be a general um overview of the of the district demographics and you know the student groups that were were talking about I mean the language is alone that are represented within the district or are you know a lot we don't though because of confidentiality in the research process we don't call out individuals uh we we let the the theme or the the factual pieces sort of emerge and then we we deal with it from there uh but knowing you know the the landscape in the organization uh and and sort of we need to make sure that we're talking to the right people so um thank you for the questions thank you other questions concerns trustee Mason I would just say that I'm a big fan of collaboration um I've been

082involved in County collaborations and some State collaborations that ended up in resulting in things that when we started out we didn't even think were possible but when you get a lot of different people with a lot of different viewpoints in the room it's amazing the difference you can make so I'm really excited to have a outside set of eyes looking at this program with us so I think we can do really really good work here thank you trustee Mason are there comments trustee Alice yeah I have I want to say that given you know give thank you so much for for the presentation and and the report um and then as we're in the next three months um developing um the lcap for our district it is imperative that we are intentional about involving um

083students from different demographics in that conversation and not just simply through issuing out some sort of survey um that gets response only from the students who have access to that survey but actually involving students um in the room where it happens um so that would be um you know getting consultation from um demographics who are potentially struggling um school ends a vulnerable groups that were highlighted in the presentation that have been highlighted um you know Statewide um and as groups that we need to look out for so you know English language Learners students who suffer from chronic absenteeism um students of color um you know all those very relevant groups um and being intentional about seeking out those students as we're reviewing the lcap um so that's yeah so that's my contribution I'm totally going

084to be working on making sure that student voice is at the Forefront of those conversations um as we move forward in the next couple months foreign thank you trustee Alice trustee Mayo I looked like you had a comment before very good um I just wanted to say I appreciate the comment that you made um that the uh findings and the changes that the district May will make and we will say will make uh will benefit more than just these three groups of students because we know that there are um different talents among each of our students and oftentimes the benefits of one working with one student also will benefit the second student so I find the intense value that is important across the entire District so I look forward to that piece of it as

085well thank you trustee Mayo um yes as we look at the the um priority areas criteria that that um that brought us to this place I noticed that across the board whether it's African-American students homeless youth Foster youth all three of them have a school climate as one of the issues and certainly if we can improve School climate overall that will absolutely affect all students and improve things for all students so um yes trustee McFerrin did you have any comments or questions okay all right anything else thank you very much we look forward to continuing to work with you and to to see the progress as it moves along thank you thank you very much thank you all thank you all right with that we'll move on to 11.3 key state and federal budget fiscal

086issues Dr Clark yeah so I went on introduce someone someone else who is um just you know well known throughout the state and and nationally and I actually as I'm participating in the superintendent Symposium this week I was able to um hear Kevin earlier today um you know talking to you know hundreds of superintendents throughout the state and and um you know uh taking questions and and um you know just really giving us a good snapshot of what's going on financially at the state and with the legislators so without any further Ado I want to introduce Kevin Gordon from Capital Advisors many of you know him but um but I I think he has some valuable information that can really help our district and I'm looking forward to um you know to to keeping this

087conversation going so without any further Ado Mr Gordon great it's good to be with you and I don't know if you got my name successfully changed you were Dr Gonzalez there Dr Lisa Gonzalez oh that's funny yeah usually it has my kid's name on here anyway it's good to be with you superintendent members of the board yeah um one of the things that you know we do interact with a number of superintendents and cbo's and both these leaders on your team are folks that I'm very familiar with and I you know we've had conversations about my absolute happiness to come and convey to the board kind of some of the issues that are going on in the budget that actually have an impact on Matt Diablo in particular and and we thought we'd go ahead

088and take the opportunity to give you guys your own briefing so and I don't want to take up too much your time but I don't want to leave some time for some questions but really we've zeroed in on a couple of key issues and I did send over some PowerPoints I don't we don't need it yeah we have a presentation there that's great yeah let's just go to that first slide there there's just two slides that encapsulate the key issues there's a lot written and a lot of people talking about what's in the state budget and what's at stake at the federal level what I've done to try to help you guys really focus on this is kind of cut to the chase yeah it is arguably a much better budget than what we were

089facing last year remember in May the governor was proposing the deepest cuts to public education in State history and I know that you guys were reeling about how on Earth were you guys going to tackle some of the burdens that were looking like they were headed our way you might remember that you were asked to queue up budget some different depths of cuts you know once again you know you get elected to try to make a difference for kids and essentially what they were handing you was the obligation to dismantle really crucial things that make a difference for kids and especially at a time when obviously you're looking for as much help as you can get just like you know Tom and his his crew at CCE who are you guys are obviously collaborating to

090do some really important work so What hap what has happened now is our friends in Sacramento gleefully take credit for this huge increase in the budget from what was enacted in the budget until now and you know totally respect the challenge that they were with but when you have folks in Sacramento bragging about a 15 billion dollar increase to investment in education when what really was going on here was a profoundly mistaken economic forecast and like it or not we have a tax structure that is disproportionately focused it's a very progressive tax structure focused on very rich people we've always known that so when the revenue they had to guess on Revenue figures last May and remember they delayed when we were going to collect income tax info your taxes didn't have to be filed

091until the summer so when they were putting the budget together they completely guessed and they were guessing it was going to be offer and what they forgot was this trajectory that we've seen that California general fund Revenue are driven by very rich people and it's the that upper end of what we call a k-shaped recovery the folks at the bottom end of the economic spectrum are hurting desperately worse than the Great Recession sort of almost feels like Depression era challenges that we face with families and uh kids that are at the lower end of the economic spectrum but it's the higher end of that k-shaped recovery that's driving the general fund so that we're in a better position economically with revenues to the state than we were pre-covered we're doing better than the year before

092there was coed so it tells you where the revenues are at so it means that they didn't need to do deferrals they didn't need to make any Cuts they didn't need to do a whole lot of things and so that helps me to focus you on the key parts of this budget where there's the appearance of a lot of money and all it really is the they're not breaking any big records it's just giving us when you really sort everything out that year-over-year growth that we were on a trajectory to get trajectory to get anyway had there not been coveted and let me show you that in the first in this next slide so and what we've you know working with um the assistant superintendent for business with Lisa Gonzalez we wanted to make sure

093that we were focused on some things as I presented her with all the data and the information that gave a fair picture of what's going on with the money so if you take a look at it probably one of the first issues that's really important for us is the cola issue so let's just say that we weren't in a profoundly bad economic forecast but they'd actually called it what it what it has turned out to be the revenue that we actually expect to have happen do you think they would have given us or maintained the idea of the zero Cola for the current year of course not so what the governor does is fairly builds in a cola for the year we're in the middle of he applies the formula of what would be the

094cola and he gets um he gets the the number that they're using and then when you set that you apply that Cola to this year and then you apply it next year's colon you get a compounded Cola a 3.84 percent it looks like a really big number but you got to remember that it's two different years but here's the major problem with the cola the governor only proposes it on the local control funding formula um but not many other programs at all so special ed for example and you guys know the amount of money that you're spending on special ed the idea in special ed and across all your categorical programs you're only getting the 1.5 not the 3.84 think about the implications of that with our labor Partners what are they going to want

095they're going to want the 3.84 of course but you're not getting money across the board and when we pay our people we don't pay them based on are you in special ed or not we're going to give you less we negotiate contracts that pay our people so you are going to be at a disadvantage and calibrating what that dollar amount really means is important so what we got to do is obviously we got to be you know letting Senator Glazier and our legislative delegation know this issue is a priority to fix it's one thing to say the budget's better and we all should just be very happy but there are some problems with this that got to get addressed or it's going to put the district in a very awkward situation so working on that

096Cola so that it's applied across the rest of the categorical programs particularly Special Ed is going to be really important the second bullet is about deferrals and you guys have all gotten used to now what deferrals really are which is the state promising to pay you someday but in the interim just go borrow the money can you imagine someone coming to you saying that oh by the way I really will pay you someday can you go borrow the money in the intermediate time and just act like there's no Cuts well so we've been through this a few times with this date before if we have an economy in a revenue situation that is what it is the first thing the governor should have done is back off all the deferrals he's actually implementing the deferrals

097with the idea of paying them off in each of the fiscal years this the end of this fiscal year he'll pay for it at the beginning of the next fiscal year in order to achieve that budget savings that's the way he handles it but note that in the blue there 3.7 billion is what is a balance remaining because he doesn't pay them all off so in a year when we have this unprecedented availability of one-time money what does it take to deal with deferral money one-time money he should be paying attention to these fundamental budget issues first before he comes up with ideas on how he wants to spend extra money that he's throwing around school districts in the form of some of these additional programs that he's created um it's it's it's really crazy

098when you look at his overall budget it's 19.1 billion dollars of new revenue and only about it's less than three billion dollars of ongoing funding it basically pays for that Cola you have there and a couple of other things but he does not he leaves unaddressed 3.7 billion dollars of deferrals we need to press on the legislature and the administration to get this right either at the May revise or when the budget is done or it will be an expense that haunts this in the future the state um Department of Finance and the nonpartisan legislative analyst has said that in 2022-23 the state starts having structural budget imbalances so we don't get this paid now when we have the money and we wait and they have an inability to actually give us the dough don't

099think that the people that you guys do your trans with or the borrowing that you do the short-term borrowing are not going to want you ultimately to settle up on those obligations that's why we've got to fight and make sure that these deferrals get paid off and then there's the incentive for in-person instruction it's this two billion dollar plan which you know I've been a bit critical of because number one he uses two billion dollars of prop 98 money we don't think there's enough money in the 2 billion just to pay for the covet tests alone and because they are Health oriented costs we think that ought to be paid not out of prop 98 money but out of Health money or out of what will be buckets of money coming from the Biden Administration

100think about it this way and again you know this Governor is is certainly close and has a relationship with the new Administration that you propose a budget that has two billion dollars of money for teaching and learning to be spent on covet testing and the president during the campaign has said and he's stuck by it he intends to open schools in in his first hundred days that means he's going to spend a lot of money on it why would we spend money out of prop 98 when we know there's the one-time dollars coming from Washington D.C particularly now we know the president has has called for 350 billion dollars for state and local governments to use for this under the prior plan that was passed or the the highest dollar amount proposal that was in

101Congress being considered when Pelosi and Democrats had their proposal they were proposing 160 billion for local governments the president's plan is 350 billion so assuming that he has to negotiate with somebody and he only gets half a loaf there's going to be plenty of money for the governor to use when he gets his share roughly 10 percent of whatever we end up getting to help pay for this and I'll talk a little bit more about that on the next slide but not just yet I want to talk a little bit about uh so there's the that has got a lot of controversy with it the rules are constantly changing I'm not sure what you guys as a district have decided to do on this and my advice is be careful what you wish for if

102you get in line for this money I believe you will have far more costs then they are going to be able to provide you in terms of monetary backfill now again if you got in line for it and then that extra money comes through maybe it all works out but it's a gamble that you would be having to take um and then the rules I think are going to change the governor had a meeting yesterday morning with a group of superintendents and talked about maybe relaxing some of the Cadence on the testing that would obviously make the the numbers pencil a little bit better if he really does do that so that's not all done yet so that next one is the learning loss mitigation fund again 4.6 billion dollars again of prop 98 one-time

103money this pot of money I kind of like because it um it's very flexible in how it's used and it's going to give you the board a lot of discretion about what models of expanded learning whether it's summer longer day longer year different models of approaches to dealing with learning the learning loss Gap that we're having to address so as long as it's pretty flexible gives a lot of local discretion that those kind of resources are important there are some people that are critical of this pot because if they didn't earmark it and send it to you this way categorize it would actually come to you anyway the difference is no strings attached the difference is that when it comes to you for a purpose like this what we call and some of you have

104been around a little longer than others relative to to seeing these budgets categorical programs and categorical programs like this are generally off the table so that means it's dedicated to solving this problem not necessarily to to land where most property dollars do which is right in the middle of the bargaining table now that said you're going to want to use this you're going to do summer programs you're going to do Extended Learning that's about paying teachers about paying classified staff you're going to be giving this to staff anyway so there's plenty to be in the mix as you go to the table to work with your unions on how you would approach that money um I think it's a good idea the way it's presented but again you know we've typically you know I used

105to be the lobbyist for School Board Association we always said send it all to us for local control so you might have a little different take on that and then finally the supplemental payments issue I wanted to tell you about csba has worked really hard over the last couple of years to focus on the issue of fair and full funding you're probably familiar with in that campaign guess what the legislature and the governor have done since that campaign was launched it was launched when Jerry Brown was governor up until last Summer's budget they'd done zero nothing to do anything about the base of school funding in California except they did this and it was big supplemental payments was a commitment by the governor and it wasn't just in the context of the budget crisis we

106were facing he said our funding in California in terms of Base funding needs to be adjusted upward we've got to make a commitment so he promised a budget that would give us 1.5 percent of the state's general fund on top of the prop 98 guarantee fold that in every year till we got to 12.5 billion and up the the base funding guarantee for schools from 38 of the general fund to 40 of the general fund in that time in this budget that he just introduced he walks that back it was actually passed in law it is actually the law so when the governor two weeks ago proposed that we not do it he actually has to propose the repeal of a law he helped get passed we ought to be fighting about that and what

107he's hoping is the distraction over you know we're doing better than we thought we were last summer and I'm giving you more money than you've ever gotten before and all these other things that we won't focus on this issue and we have to focus on this issue because it's the only thing that we've gotten that's meaningful to address base funding and it will have absolute implications for Mount Diablo so I just wanted to lay out these issues these are the key state issues and then I'm going to touch a little bit on federal issues let's go ahead and go to the next Slide the one thing I mentioned there about allocation approach um was that we all have to be really cognizant of the fact that while you guys do get Title One money and

108clearly you know you have a share of of of um of supplemental grant money that you're not in the concentration Grant formula deep enough so that you are big Winners under these approaches to fund districts that disproportionately only is calibrated to kids in poverty is that you guys know firsthand all of our kids are having needs right now all of our kids are lcfs lean or tilt toward kids in poverty is a is a good thing but creating other formulas that that so that at the end of the day you look at all the pots of money and none of them are sent out so that it increases the base it only goes for our kids predicated on poverty or some of the indexes that drive uh some of these pots of money can be

109a bad thing and we need to pay attention to make sure that they're they set aside some others funds somewhere to balance the disproportionate nature of the money that's going out uh in some of these formulas are being created and I'll start and I'll talk a little bit funny I think maybe I should stop there for a quick second and see if you guys have questions about any of the state stuff I talked about yeah I think that's what I was just going to suggest that we pause for questions yeah I can't see everyone on the screen right now so just unmute yourself if you have a question and jump in I'm just wondering when we know something right now it's all speculation it's sitting with the legislation when will we actually have some real

110numbers right so but when we really get more information and it right it really gels fast will be at what we call the May revision and this year we're not going to be delaying tax filing times so April 15th we'll file our taxes they're going to be slicing open envelopes and they will have probably a very accurate May in fact I think there's a chance that may revision will be bigger than this January budget forecast and again it's for the reasons I've talked about as long as we see a stock market that continues to behave the way it has and I'm not sure there's any big reason why it wouldn't um we can end up with even bigger numbers than we have now and again the thing that's really important to note is bigger numbers

111doesn't mean everybody's a wash and doe and you're just fine thank you very much it means there's an opportunity to fix some of these systemic problems that they're not doing right by our budget right now and maybe that'll be the solution to some of these key problems great question though other questions I appreciate the comment this is Linda Mayo I appreciate the comment about uh the deferrals and that those are going to continue forward uh that's what upsets me the most and perhaps you can address it a little bit more Mr Gordon is the fact that we have to take out trans there there is no early prepayment so we are stuck with the interest debt um regardless of what happens uh with the budget right such a great point is that when in November

112the nonpartisan legislative analyst said hey there's big money headed your way and the first thing we ought to do is roll back the implementation of the deferrals to try to alleviate the cost of borrowing and all those other implications that you have to jump through um they're doing that at a time when the governor doesn't really have any control right he has to wait till January well by the time he introduces his budget in January I think the reason why he decided not to try to roll back the deferrals before they ever implemented is because of what you're saying is that the cost of money is low and you would have had the cost of borrowing the borrowing cost no matter what so and then the other thing is that the other little trick to

113this for the governor is by actually implementing the deferrals and paying them off at the end of the fiscal year and out of funds out of the next fiscal year making that whole transaction actually occur but retiring most of it he actually creates a little bit of cushion in case something went dramatically wrong I mean as much as we had things go dramatically right and we didn't expect it the opposite can happen and covet's a great example of it so he gives himself a little bit of insurance on our dying and it's not comforting to know that they move forward or they continue that 3.7 billion dollar balance at the cost of leas when everything's supposed to be now okay it doesn't really feel like it when he keeps this stuff but great question yeah

114I had a similar question around the deferrals if if you know it seems like the smart thing to do would have been to remove the deferrals before we had to enter into the agreement which could have still happened in the beginning of January um but now if we're advocating uh for them to still pay it off this year uh but we don't find out until May I mean we've already committed to it in January so yeah is there a point to even advocating to remove this year's deferrals and it's not really part of what I've been saying only because again it's almost you know inescapable those the cost of borrowing and what you did do and it was probably a prudent measure to get into given what we were faced with so it's just about

115timing but the advocacy should be around saying this 3.7 billion dollar balance is a bunch of baloney and there's no reason the state should make us care because you guys will carry your share of that money and you will have money deferred next year again that you're going to have to cover until they pay it off and that's not good and then when they pay it off can they pay it off to us including our costs I mean that's a reasonable ask is that we would have never done this if they hadn't had what I call a profoundly wrong economic forecast those are we all had to bear in school districts it would be really awesome because guess what I mean it's a really great Point you're making that is out of general fund Monies

116that's out of discretionary money that you could be using for other kinds of purposes I think it's a reasonable thing to say the state should find some way to make sure that we are made up made whole for that my concern is that they won't um pay back all of the deferral they'll find a way to um say Sorry Charlie you only get part of it right and I think that is a very real possibility if they don't if they don't retire it soon they get themselves in a situation where they do have these structural deficits which both as I mentioned the Lao and Department of Finance are both projecting as early as we got to get this done by the way John I'll just tell you I've talked to the new budget subcommittee chairman

117John Laird who some of you might remember that name he was in the assembly he was chair of the budget committee several years he took you know he was out of the legislature for a while he just came back in a senate seat on the central coast and of course he knows everything about the budget because he used to share it and we got really lucky he it turns out he's now going to be the chairman of the education budget subcommittee in the Senate and we've had this conversation he totally gets it I think I think we've got a reasonably good chance that the legislature is not going to put up with this and they're going to say let's let's pay our debts first before we create a 4.6 billion dollar program for learning loss

118we we got to stabilize our base first the fundamentals of school finance and then let's see what we have to spend on some of these other programs and frankly let's leverage more of this Federal money there's plenty of it some other questions I just this is Keisha yes um I just wanted I you answered the question in trustee Mason's um question actually no the point I wanted to make is because people don't realize that this is the governor's proposal that he has to make every year in January and the rubber hits the road in May between May and June when the governor and the legislature has to um negotiate and then the second you just answered with trustee Mayo was what is your take I've listened to some of the hearings and I don't feel

119like the legislature is really going for this part of the governor's budget and so I was just going to ask what is your take from the legislature or how about the assembly side you didn't speak on yeah no both houses are there and I had a little conversation uh uh just uh today with the the chairman of the education committee Patrick O'Donnell and we were both chatting a little bit about I thought it was funny you'll you'll want to use this line he goes um one of the things that everybody says we ought to be doing is practicing policy based on good science and he said our problem is is we've got the epidemiological science and then we got this thing called political science and unfortunately it's the political science that's winning out so the

120the governor's gotten pretty clobbered by the legislature who have kind of a you know Unearthed what they think are the shortcomings of The Proposal I mean think about it this way if you did a rigorous testing regiment that is so expensive because it was a demand of our friends on the in the teachers unions and I totally understand why they want that but you did it at their behest and you spend all the money and you make all the effort and you create all these rules and you never did get them to endorse it they're not on board it's like why would you announce something when it has the support of nobody and it's just got all kinds of logistical problems so it's like you get their support and they want to return to school

121show me that package and let's see what that looks like because the goal here is to reopen safely and have our staff be willing to come back I just thought one other quick thing was you were talking about the cola and how it's not it doesn't cover categorical programs it's only one piece of the budget isn't that something we face every year that that the the public the general public looks at the cola and our employees say just just pass it on down you know if the whatever percent that Cola is that should be the percent raise that we agreed to but I've never seen it work that way because it doesn't cover it never covers everything in the budget and so we're not able to explain it very clearly to the public how that

122Cola does not apply to all staff it is true that we have gotten split calls before and there are always a certain number of categoricals that actually don't get it um and that's wrong and bad and I don't think it's you know I think that they ought to do something different however in probably at least 10 categorical programs almost they are typically slated to get the cola and they're the biggies like special ed and it ought to be there so yeah we do have that problem to some extent almost every year it's the fight worth fighting and many times we win it we we won it the year before last the legend came back and said come on we got to give Cola to these other programs and they did I I am not very

123optimistic about this as well Senator Laird seems to be on our side regarding the way this Cola gets applied um I'm sure Kevin McCarty is going to be in the same place he's the assembly budget sub-chair we're going to work on him as well all right thank you shall we move on anyone else all right yeah and I realize you guys boards should not have to spend this much time on this stuff so very quickly I'll just tell you this is an outline of the money that we just got in December and again to put it in context so there's that 6.7 billion dollar figure under Esser that's for K-12 and the one thing I wanted to warn you guys about in particular is that when we got money we got 6.8 billion dollars last

124spring and you guys got money out of that and it was probably a pretty impressive amount of money in total but when you got the money last spring you guys got the money for out of four different pots and you might remember one of the pots distributed a lot of money based on your special ed population one of the pots distributed money based on lcff another pot distributed money based on the number of kids you have in supplemental concentration grants and the final pot distributed it based on Title One kids this pot of money this time around and of course that old one was 6.8 million this 6.7 gets distributed exclusively on Title One you guys will get less money than you got before so it's really important for our community and our friends in

125labor and other people to know that there is this number that looks similar but our share of it is not going to be as much this time around and we got to be cognizant of that obviously we want as much as we can but going into it knowing everyone's saying that you guys are rolling in dough and you're going to say you know what it's actually not as much as we got last spring the other little headline that doesn't help us is that a bunch of you know Ed week and a bunch of publication even edsource did this and I told John fensterwall about this they all reported that you're getting four times more money than you got last spring that's four times more than what the Esser program went only one pot you got

126four pots last spring the smallest one of the smallest pots was a program called e-s-s-e-r and this this uh Elementary and secondary schools emergency relief Act this product I'm showing you now is number two it's Esser number two so it's important to know that it is that pot is four times bigger than the small pot but it's not total more money than you got last spring 6.7 billion this time it was 6.8 last time the state's not even getting four times the amount of money it's all about distribution and we have to watch that carefully as a district then there's the gear money this is money that the governor has a lot of discretion over except that a big chunk of it will get about 400 million dollars it's like 380 million dollars 187 million

127of it goes to private schools that are serving kids in poverty so Catholic schools and other schools that have you know numbers of kids that are in poverty are going to get that money so there'll be about 130 million dollars or so that the state actually has left over to distribute to anything from pre-k all the way to higher ed so the question is how much might the governor give us he has not decided yet so yes in fact the other thing that we just found out today the governor is actually thinking about not applying for the money which is totally nonsensical and it's because I don't know if somebody's putting pressure on them about don't go after money that just goes to private schools well a whole bunch of money comes to Public Schools

128so that would be like cutting off your nose type despite your face in any money California can get for free that serves the interest of kids especially kids in poverty it just makes no sense at all that he's thinking about not applying but that's out there and then the president's stimulus package I talked a little bit about the second bullet there the money for state and local government the first bullet is the money for schools 130 billion dollars is the proposal for K-12 13 billion dollars for California and what we're really hoping is that Linda darling Hammond who is the president of the state board and the governor's chief education advisor happens to be the chief education advisor to the transition team the Biden camp that they don't just send this out on title one

129but they actually give the state the latitude to distribute it in a way that all districts get to benefit somehow and there can be a focus on kids in poverty but for goodness sakes make sure that money of that magnitude actually really benefits all kids that and that'll help you guys out so that is it you got the show and tell for today and again you know we want to try to do what we can to try to help you know illuminate some of the numbers for the board whenever you guys are interested in having me I'm happy to do that thank you very much thank you Mr Gordon um that was that was very informational I think not only for us as board members and the decisions we need to make but for the

130public as well to understand uh how the system works and where exactly we are in in it at the moment thank you so much Mr Gordon good to be with you all thanks so much thank you okay so we'll move on to 12.0 board member reports uh let's see who would like to go first uh trustee Mayo would you like to be in I'm the first victim so welcome everybody it's good to see your faces again even if it is on a zoom call um I'd like to share that one of the events I attended in the last two weeks was the mdusd Education Foundation meeting on Monday and on February 1st we're launching our give 10 campaign uh where folks will be asked to give ten dollars it's a very nominal amount or give

13110 minutes of your time to promote the Education Foundation and its work on social media we believe this will have a great impact with our community raise some funds which we need to support uh programs within the district and it will benefit for everyone with the Positive news that folks will learn about in the programs that are happening within our schools so it has a multiple prong approach uh I would like to share two legislation Advocate advocacy events that are going to be held by PTA the first is the California state PTA virtual legislation conference which will be held February 8th and 9th and uh the second is the national PTA virtual legislation conference March 9th and 10th both are amazing and uh in particular if you're interested in the National one I would suggest

132you sign up Mr Kevin Gordon will be a presenter at the California one so he's always fun and entertaining and answers a lot of questions from individuals throughout California so it's at these conferences we learn where we have common situations and where we can have different situations and we can better Advocate with our legislators so um I think they're very valuable and recommend them highly the business education um Alliance meeting will be held on Monday uh February 1st at four to six pm via zoom and this is the collaboration between the Mount Diablo school district and Industry partners and um where they will be uh talking about um looking at the industry sector Max maps and uh getting input from the partners about anything that should be added the public is welcome to attend these

133so if you just do a Google search on the Mount Diablo uh web page you'll be able to find the uh Zoom link and sign up and then uh I would like to promote uh the contra cost to science and engineering Fair March 12th is the day of the uh judging for students I am the judge recruiter I'm looking for a 140 adults who love science and who love to work with students and appreciate uh the work that students do the judges would be involved between 8 A.M and 5 p.m we believe that there are going to be over 200 projects so I need at least 140 judges and the um the science fair is open of course as I've said before to students grades 7 through 12. it will be held virtually and um

134I would like to share that you don't have to have a lot of scientific experience just be able to understand the scientific theory and the work that students should be engaged in while they are conducting their experience are returning judges value the the day in working with each other and finding out what's new in science and um they appreciate the engagement that the students use with their students and in speaking with the adults so it's a very rewarding day if you're interested in signing up just type in Contra Costa or CC science fair and it will come up in your browser and you can click on uh bay the Contra Costa County science and engineering fair and go directly to the link to sign up thank you all right thank you trustee Mayo trustee and

135Zoe okay good evening everybody um to quote previously mentioned Nina Simone it's a new dawn it's a new day it's a new life and I'm actually feeling really good um one week into a new presidential Administration we already have a national response to this pandemic for public education on a second day President Biden issued an executive order on supporting the reopening and continuing continuing operation of schools and early childhood providers so indulge me for a moment while I share a few sections of this order that makes me excited and relieved for education so the executive order states that the Secretary of Education shall consistent with applicable law provide in consultation with the secretary of Health and Human Services evidence-based guidance to assist States and Elementary and secondary schools in deciding whether and how to reopen

136and how to remain open for in-person Learning and in safely conducting in-person learning including by implementing mitigation measures such as cleaning masking proper ventilation and testing provide advice to State local tribal and territorial educational authorities institutions of higher education local education agencies and Elementary and secondary schools regarding distance and online learning Blended learning and in-person learning and the promotion of Mental Health social emotional well-being and communication with parents and families and coordinate with the director of The Institute of Education Sciences to facilitate consistent with applicable applicable law the collection of data necessary to fully understand the impact of covid-19 pandemic on students and Educators including data on the status of in-person learning and these data shall be disaggregated by student demographics including race ethnicity disability English language learner status and Freer reduced lunch status or

137other appropriate indicators of family income so that's just oh one more consult with those who have been struggling for months with the enormous challenges of covid-19 Pandit the covid-19 pandemic poses for Education including students Educators unions families State local tribal and territorial officials and members of civil rights and disabilities rights organizations and carrying out the directives of this order so that's just part of it and I'm very excited about that um contrary to what some folks believe I really love science and I believe in science so this week on Tuesday we heard that federal health officials weigh in with a call for returning children to the nation's classrooms as soon as possible um depending on that certain mitigation um one that there's a preponderance of evidence that indicates that in-person instruction can be carried out

138safely as long as mass wearing and social distancing are maintained but I um but local officials also must be willing to impose limits on other settings like indoor dining bars or poorly ventilated gems so I just wanted to note that in spreading this week's news people leave out that part the limiting other settings in the in the community and that's a really important detail and then speaking of science California Department of Public Health issued new much more detailed guidelines for safe school reopenings and I've noted that the cohort guidance sticks to the September 4th guidance of no more than 14 children and two adults but this new 52-page guidance released on the 14th of this month covers space covering cleaning and disinfect disinfection ventilation asymptomatic testing what to do when there's an exposure at school

139and the importance of vaccines I encourage everyone in our community to visit cokeschools.covid19.ca.gov and scroll down and click on the K-12 school guidance and dig in 52 pages um I attended a webinar this week on school reopening hosted by the California School Board Association among the attendees 46 were from districts in full District learning 31 were from districts and that provide small group instruction and services for a small number of students three percent were full-time in person and 14 were in part-time in-person instruction um so key takeaways I learned from the future districts that we opened um when we could when districts could last fall which were Napa and Solana Beach which is in Southern California San Diego trust is key there needs to be trust that teachers and their families students and their families

140and the district and administration are all doing everything possible to keep each other safe Solano Beach requires every family participating in their hybrid model this to sign a contract that lays out the expectations of families testing is expensive as we just heard in that budget report while there have been no transmissions on campus as the research supports Napa's had no infections and Solano Beach has had 22 employee infections and around 50 child infections and 16 classrooms have had to close and be quarantined safety for employees needs to be established it's difficult to open schools when there are high Community infection rates and it's hard to stay open even when all of the mitigation measures are in place and followed closely then like a couple hundred other folks I attended the first in the series of

141mental health webinars this week so thank you to Dr Clark and all the staff who made this happen it was an opportunity for parents like myself to receive concrete tips on how to support their children and for parents to express to our counseling psychology and social work staff um what they need what we as parents need I take away I'd like to reiterate here is something that I reminded myself last spring when it became clear we weren't coming back to school and I was stressed about my own student falling behind falling behind according to and compared to Who besides the fact we're all in this together what we expect students to know at whatever grade and age is entirely human made and we can change it while we're safe at home teachers continue to teach

142and students continue to learn even when they're learning is not what we would have expected this year we need to give ourselves Grace as parents give our teachers Grace and especially give our children Grace as Dr Clark closed the session he said we are all suffering as of this morning we've had 55 835 coveted cases in Contra Costa County which is an increase of 6 000 since our last board meeting our seven day positivity rate though has fallen to 8.8 percent but there are there is a census tract in Bay Point which is in our school district which has a positivity rate of 16.5 and one in the monument that has a positivity rate of 23.6 percent I really hope that everyone stays home as much as possible so we can get closer to a

143safer return to school and finally I'm really excited to learn that a committee has been established at Ignacio Valley High School to address the racist imagery associated with their Warrior mascot last month Fresno Unified voted to change the mascot imagery for Fresno High School Warriors to so the way has been paved I appreciate the staff who recognize the problematic imagery and are committed to working in community to change it thank you for indulging me thank you trustee and say we all right uh trustee Mason thank you um I attended the on Mount Martin Luther King's birthday I attended the naacp's uh meeting where they had the swearing-in of all their new officers and um got to hear from Dr Mims again it's always a pleasure to hear from him he always teaches me something new

144I went to two listened to two different webinars one by Capital Advisors one through the county about budgets we're all concentrating on budgets I attended a webinar about opening schools that was talking about a program in Elk Grove where they've gone with the hubs approach and they're bringing in small groups of kids and so I was interested in hearing how that was successful for them uh I like all the rest of you I'm sure had an interview with the ccee and found that very interesting and I also um participated I think some of the other board members did with our peer coaching group as they looked at what the work that they're doing I found that very educational and interesting and thank them for their hard work and um I guess that oh and I

145did have time to pop in on the mental health webinar at the end it was the same night as another Zoom but I got to come in toward the end and listen to some of the feedback from the parents so um like I think um trustee and zaywe says there's a lot going on in this direction we're spending a lot of time thinking about this we're not just waiting till we meet once or twice a month to discuss it but it's on all of our mind all of the time thank you thank you trustee Mason trustee McFerrin all right hello everyone good evening um I'd like to share that um that I've had a busy couple of weeks doing some exciting things in the district um I too was able to attend the mental health

146webinar on Monday and it was wonderful to see so many people from the district providing such exceptional information and to see it so well attended um I especially it was nice especially to see um you know some of my four former colleagues at Mount um who gave really wonderful advice um I also last week was able to attend a budget advisory committee meeting um and so that I'm hope hopeful to attend more of those moving forward um it's really kind of focused on the governor's budget and there were some really interesting ideas and comments kind of about priorities from the other members of that team and then let's see um last week I was able to attend a meeting with our tisp group that's our teacher that's our teacher induction program and that was a

147particular interest to me because I'm I have a clear credential and so I've been through what was called the bitsa program 10 years ago and then I've served as a mentor in another district and they serve as a mentor now in akalani is working through the county program and so I was doing my own mid-year review with my participating teacher so it's especially interesting to see um how we're supporting our new teachers in Mount Diablo um I was really impressed with the materials that were presented to us especially there were some really wonderful resources that um that our test team is working um has worked to um to to gather and then they're they're consistently updating those which I thought was really wonderful to see um and then let's see oh and then a real

148highlight for me was a couple of weeks ago um I was invited to observe a transitional kindergarten Zoom class and I am at home in a classroom um even though I've only ever taught high school so I was fascinated um to see what a zoom class was like for transitional kindergarten um it was wonderful to see how um creative the teacher was and how um how much support there was from parents and in setting up and helping engage their students and also really just how hard working the students were at such a young age I was really impressed with them so it was wonderful to have that experience and that for me is really you know the Highlight um in the last couple of weeks um and so that's that's as much um that I

149can share fantastic thank you trustee McFerrin trustee alas thank you hi good evening everyone um I want to start out my report by talking a bit about what um the student advisory committee to the mountain diablo Education Foundation has been working on um trustee Mayo touched on the science and engineering fair that is coming up in a couple months um the sac has been working diligently to and increase equity and access of that fair to mdusd students and we have 46 students who fill out the interest form that I spoke about at my last um during my last board report and they come from various demographics and various high schools oh 48 students actually 18 high school students 30 middle school students from 15 different schools five high schools eight middle schools um and two

150alternative schools and there are currently nine students who are formerly registered to compete in the fair and we're going to be providing them resources such as Zoom hubs mentorships throughout the the process to make sure that they um have all the tools and resources that they need in order to compete and be successful so we are working diligently on that with the Contra Costa science and engineering Fair team so that is some good news um I recently attended a webinar held by the California Department of Education called Pathways to Recovery um Linda darling Hammond spoke there were superintendents Anaheim superintendents from across the state were their superintendent Thurmond and one of the big emphasis that they placed on you know as we think about the next couple years and as we think about education and

151as we think about how our students have fared and how our students have suffer during distance learning and the deficit that is going to be facing us in a couple years they pay some a very large emphasis on social emotional learning and tutoring which is why we have an upcoming um item later this this evening talking about tutoring Services um specifically for English language Learners and um given the fact that state state entities have placed such a huge emphasis on tutoring I'm very excited to um to see that action item uh through but that yeah so that was what I learned um from that webinar um and then something else um that came to my attention I know that there are a lot of parents community members um out there who are worried about um

152how how much we're prioritizing we're opening how much as a state I'm reopening is being prioritized um and in line with what Mr Gordon was talking about during our fiscal presentation right now the legislature is really packed um they are limiting the amount of bills that they have in their dockets and any education related bills or most education related bills are related to um covid um School reopening and giving funds for to schools um and just facilitating that process as much as possible and just to give an example um ab10 I believe is the bill number ab10 um introduced by something member Ting um is focused exclusively on school reopening um being supported by a lot of prominent names including um assembly member O'Donnell um so um just just to know that the legislature um

153is doing is prioritizing Covenant prioritizing schools um something else that I I also attend the um the mental health um webinar on Monday um and that was great to see um inputs from um counselors and Educators from across the district um in line with um mental health I spoke with um Dr Clark about this earlier and how much students are um how much student mental health um is is suffering um during this time and I spoke with um president count about this um I believe last week um Poway Unified School District in Sacramento City Unified um School unit Sacramento City Union School District recently passed a board resolution to expand the definition of personal illness to include mental illness and include Mental Health um that would you know remove a lot of the stigma um

154that students feel associated with talking about mental illness we're talking about mental health we're talking about potentially Suicidal Thoughts um and hopefully um um alleviate that that stress and that concern um with going out and talking to um a counselor about that I mean I know that we are being very intentional about providing resources as a school district um we are disseminating um you know the counselors um website and disseminating all those resources and I know um that um the mental health webinars and panels are going to to to continue um under Dr Clark's leadership and guidance um so that is a board resolution that I'm hoping we can bring up um to um expand that expand that definition and recognize that mental illness is as detrimental to Student Health as any um um conventional

155personal illness could be so that is something that I'm going to be working on um in the next couple uh days um next couple weeks months and then um I've spoken a bit about Civic engagement um and the state SEO Civic engagement um that we're looking to Pioneer as a school district I know that Samantha Allen and Jennifer Stacks are working to develop the criteria for that um so just a quick update there um I'm also hoping to um be able to this is something that I'm working on with um an education advocacy group called gen up to develop a Civic engagement pledge for school districts um so that we are you know verbally saying that we're prioritizing um Civic engagement with students um and that we're hoping to um facilitate voter information information about

156a democracy um and also within that pledge is opting into um the state seal which we're already in the process of doing so that's also something to look forward to um and then some good news for all the parents who are looking forward to reopening soon um Sports CIF Sports uh in the purple tier so that includes cross country which is my sport is coming back they're all coming back in February um so tennis golf I believe fall under those tiers and then we're going to be moving um forward into um March um with like with other other sports that can that can happen during the purple and red tier so like track um swimming um anything outside um that doesn't involve too much contact so that's those are coming back in February um and

157um also in line with that um I know that at least at my particular site Northgate um Glenn Barker is coming back um to um is going to be back on campus as in the Sports Medicine facility um so that athletes are going to have that um resource um as we um head back to sports and head back to competition um as we start getting cleared so that's some good news there um I'm trying to think if I have anything else to report out I believe that is it those are all my reports yeah all right thank you trustee alas wow everyone has been very very busy um you can tell that we're all very focused on education we continue to educate ourselves you know with all of these issues so thank you all for

158all of your time and efforts um as for me I've spent the last few weeks listening to a lot of different perspectives in our districts and I'm sure we've all heard a lot of different perspectives there's really a wide range that we see out there on the one hand we have coveted rates it's some of the highest that they've ever been we have new strains emerging we have families and staff within our mdusd community that have experienced you know the trauma of kovid we you know or deaths in their family we are hearing also from staff who are currently on site at our schools and offices including office managers secretaries Food Service workers custodians just for the fear that that people feel um you know anytime that they're they're out and expose to the public

159and these are people who are the engine that keeps even our distance learning uh education running really ensuring those key supports for students no matter what level of covid you know we've been in this whole time on the other hand we have families who feel that their students are really suffering from the isolation of distance learning with depression anxiety even at risk for suicide and these parents have serious concerns and have been contacting us asking us to open schools in person now sharing studies with us about covid you know spreading very little within schools um so I think we have the whole dichotomy of it in our district but I think one thing that um that we do all agree on is that vaccines are a key part of the solution um vaccinating School Employees

160immediately would greatly help our Public Schools both to continue the distance learning that we have um and The crucial community supports that we're providing as well as to really facilitate us to be able to adequately plan our safe reopenings of schools So to that end I've been communicating with school board presidents from throughout our County uh together we've drafted a letter to our County Health Department County Board of Supervisors and local legislators calling on them to ensure that all education workers in Contra Costa County school districts particularly those reporting to work in person have Priority Access to covid-19 vaccines and also that they provide clear communication about how education and child care workers are to receive their vaccines in addition the Contra Costa County School boards Association cccsba has added this letter to their meeting

161agenda for tomorrow night to vote on signing the letter as an organization uh all school board members and superintendents are welcome at the meeting um the the meeting will begin at 5 30 with a program and presentation on the state budget very similar to what Kevin Gordon did tonight but it will be with Miss uh Dennis Mr Dennis Myers from csva um as well as a q a and then the business meeting begins at 6 45. so I just wanted to share all of that that is going on um as uh I would like to sign on to the letter um as an individual we have a disclaimer there that it's it's School Board presidents from across the county but we're assigning as individuals um so in addition I want to shout out to Gregory

162Gardens for posting their uh wonderful Equity project on the National Day of Service webpage which enabled people all over the nation to support their efforts and I thought it was a great model that I know many of similar efforts have been going on throughout our various schools but that was really neat to be able to see them tap into an even wider network of support um and just a reminder for um because we know there's so many wonderful uh teachers parent volunteers staff members um out there doing incredible work every day that anyone can nominate anyone for a Medea Academy Award and the nominations are due February 26th and the event is May 6th and keeping in mind that there's awards for teachers and non-teachers and the new social justice award to an individual or

163small team acting to improve Equity racial Justice diversity and inclusion in our mdusd schools just wanted to make sure to share that out and lastly I want to I wanted to thank Dr Clark who had posted recently about um zoretta Hammond's book that's called culturally responsive teaching in the brain I think a lot of people are familiar with that book um and I got some good positive responses out there on in the Twitter Twitter World um because I think so there are a number of Mount Diablo teachers who have read this book talked about it in book clubs and in fact one responded and said wouldn't it be incredible if um well actually Dr Clark said it would be incredible if these Concepts were practiced in every classroom and school and then one of the

164teachers responded suggesting in all mdusd Community read of the book with facilitated discussions throughout the year so I thought that was a fascinating idea I would love to hear people's thoughts and input about how how we could actualize something like that um because I would certainly be interested it's a book that I've learned a lot from myself and uh that is all that I have as far as my port report all right discount yes I have a question about the letter you spoke of um we as a board haven't discussed that or made a decision you know come to a conclusion about it so when will that be on the agenda for our district and our board members to discuss um you know normally the process is the representative obtains the opinion of the board

165and then is permitted to sign and we haven't discussed that right um so I did ask our legal counsel about that because this has just come up in the last uh day so it was too short to be able to add it uh within the 72 hours for this agenda for a formal vote um and the uh the council was that because the letter has a specific disclaimer on it that specifies that uh the people who sign it are not it does not signify a vote of the school board that there's not a legal requirement for that but I wanted to mention it here uh regardless so to inform all of you and to share the letter with you so that you can let me know if there are concerns that you have um and

166I think at our next meeting February 10th we could bring forward then um a resolution uh or the letter itself for the board to to take formal action on as well so you're saying that individual s who attend this meeting can sign based on the disclaimer but if CS cccsba um is taking a vote and their board hasn't discussed it then the board members that are the representatives should refrain from voting is that correct so the vote tomorrow night at the CCC SBA meeting is a vote on whether csva as an organization should sign and then separately individually the board presidents are choosing whether to sign the letter or not so the vote is only whether ccc's SBA as an organization should sign and again the letter specifies that it it is not saying that

167every individual school district has voted on this I I'm having trouble with that so we'll figure it out tomorrow all right happy to discuss yes all right um so next we have superintendent's report Dr Clark listen and president count I just wanted to double check on the committee assignments Excuse me yes I skipped over that all right so 12.2 thank you is governing board committee assignments for 2021. um so we will we can hand out the handout to you but I wanted to announce the committee assignments for this year so we have the audit committee will be Keisha and zawi and myself Charisse count the facilities real estate will be Deborah Mason and Linda Mayo the budget um local control funding formula advisory committee will be Aaron McFerrin and Cherise count the career Pathways and

168Technical educational advisory committee will be Linda mayo and Keisha and zawi CAC Community advisory committee special education will be Linda mayo and Aaron McFerrin the d-lac district English language learner advisory committee will be Deborah Mason and myself Cherise count Equity advisory and disproportionality team Deborah Mason and Cherise count Bond oversight committee Linda mayo and Deborah Mason the CCC school boards Association is Linda Mayo as we had voted on previously the Mount Diablo Council of ptas is Linda mayo and Charisse cound the PAC parent advisory committee is Deborah Mason and Keisha and zawi and the school climate coordinated Health council is Deborah Mason and Aaron McFerrin and you didn't have to write that down they can it can be forwarded to you afterwards uh in that in that chart format but wanted to make sure to

169announce that all right and with that well we will move on to item 13. the superintendents report Dr Clark great thank you if I could get high technology bring up the PowerPoint thank you so much um next slide please so I wanted to share this because um you know I've set a goal to you know to be transparent and to make sure that that we are communicating um you know with our with our stakeholders and making sure that school administrators and employees have access to communicate with families and so we we implemented parent Square couple months ago and and so as a as a district host I I and others have have access to um you know to to charts such as this that really track our progress and so as you can you know

170as you can see it gives us sort of a total count of all the students that we have listed in in Aries all the staff members who we have who have email addresses and then at least a parent that is represented for for each of our for each of our students and so here this tells us about 95 percent of our of our total population is contactable and um and so if you look down in the in the center aisle you can see um the contactable parents and and the ones that are not contactable and then the ones that we have no information for and then you can also see what what languages families are accessing as they um as they utilize the the updates in parent Square can I have the next slide please

171and so this is um this is sort of um as you know with with parent Square you can either sign up to receive emails text messages or you can use the app and and get app messages so this gives us a breakdown of um of how many um parents are getting information through email and through text messages and through apps and as you can see a large majority of families are utilizing the text message feature so so again we want to make sure that we are not only pushing information out but one of the great things about parent square is that you can then receive information from from parents so not only our principals but teachers can have um you know can go back and forth with with Communications regarding things that are happening at

172school or things that are happening in the classroom so so so so so very pleased with um you know this has just been a short out of parent Square we've only been using it a couple months but the expectation is is that this will be this will be our number one um you know our number one tool for communication as as we're communicating with with our families can I have the next slide please um parent square has has 12 unique features and and Mount Diablo currently we are utilizing seven of those features and so this document here just gives a breakdown of of um the posts so you can see we have 909 posts to over 2 600 direct messages so those are direct messages that are going out to um to families more than

173likely these are questions about assignments or things that have to do with what's taking place in the classroom uh we we do have an ability to give alerts whether smart alerts you know reminders for particular activities that are coming up and calendar events um and then you know there's there's pictures and photos that are shared and files as well so um so so again just an overall demonstration of the usage to parent Square can I have the next slide please and then this I I made sure this was this was pretty small so that we don't have too much competition amongst our amongst our schools but this does basically show the schools that are using it the most and so um so I'll just kind of highlight maybe the the first five so so Woodside

174Elementary is our is our highest user and then it goes down to Sequoia Middle School Holbrook Language Academy Valley Verde Elementary Ignacio high school and El Dorado middle school and ren Ren Avenue Elementary are pretty much in a dead tie so um so again as you know as as superintendent and as my expectation is that we communicate often and regularly with our families I can monitor this and um you know provide guidance and assistance to schools that um you know that that again haven't fully adopted to parent Square I do want to acknowledge that we we still have some school or teachers or principals that are utilizing other platforms but our goal is to get everyone to to transition into parent Square so uh so again just wanted to kind of give that overall update

175on on on communication and then um clearly everyone knows that you know as uh we do a Friday letter out of the superintendent's office and we also do the organizational update that is not only emailed out to all of our stakeholders but is is posted on our um is posted on our website and um and is there um you know and memorialized on the on the superintendent's page okay the next slide please so I just you know I would obviously a huge topic that um that we've been talking about is um you know reopening schools getting students back on our on our campuses you know we've heard you know parent comments tonight we we've all received emails um so so I just want to spend you know a couple minutes just kind of talking about

176this and talking about where we are um you know as a superintendent and as an educator you know I want nothing more than um than our students back on campus I've been very very vocal about that since um you know since I've arrived in this District when we made the decision over summer to go 100 distance learning I I you know wanted to you know I wanted to implement a hybrid model and as that as the years gone on I I still feel feel very strongly about that and so um so so just so the um you know the staff and public are are well aware is that pretty much I spend all day every day um you know reading talking listening observing um Paul coven that that's what that's what my day is um

177filled with every single day so the notion that the district doesn't have a plan or we're not prepared or we're not thinking about this um you know I'm just going to um to assume that that's that's coming from a place of people who are who are fed up with this pandemic and who are advocating very strongly for their kids and um you know and I'm right 100 with them I um you know I I understand the detrimental effects of not being in school and mental health toll that is taken on our students and families and and staff I mean we are all we are all um suffering through this however we um we we are working um on ways that we can continue to support students although we're in a in a global pandemic and

178I just have to you know I have to be very clear and just very straightforward is that we've had a real lack of leadership coming from the federal level um you know there has not been a consistent um uh messaging levels of support support it's been politicized if you you know if you wear a mask and you believe in one political party if you don't wear a mask and you align with another political party and so there's been a lack of of information that has been out there and it's made it extremely difficult for um for school districts and school boards to be able to make well-informed well-supported decisions and as we heard in the presentations earlier the guidance is still changing right so um you know we we've had the governor's budget we've had

179the updated to the California Department of Public Health we've had the update to the you know that what the CDE has put out it's continuing to change you know back months ago we were debating on whether or not you know students should wear masks right now we're debating whether or not we should not only test all employees but test all all students when I price when we price that out um it would it would cost us you know over a million dollars a month to this was months ago when we first started looking at this a million dollars a month to test all students and all employees however since that time it has now changed the price has come down you know the price has come down a considerable amount however if we would have

180gone into contract with one of these vendors earlier on we'd be on the hook for a large sum of those dollars and so so as the as the guidance changes as the metrics change as the um you know as the leadership changes you know we're the ones who are left kind of giving the image that we don't know what's going on because we continue to get different information so we are hopeful that um you know that with the with the new Administration in and with their clear commitment to um to fighting this pandemic that that we can be on this path for reopening so in the meantime um back in November towards the end of November right before Thanksgiving break we did um you know we did enter into an agreement that um you know

181that allows students to pick up supplies on campuses to participate in legally required meetings so that would be um IEP meetings um you know language testing um psychological testing things of that nature they can they can come on campus and and participate in those meetings in our agreement we agreed that we would do um an in-person PSAT on January 26th we also agreed that students and staff could participate in voluntary one-on-one meetings but these were again voluntary for staff and voluntary for um for students but they they can do that and also and we've been um you know we we've been practicing this and and that we're able to students are able to come on campus and participate in County Health athletic or extracurricular activities or on-site Child Care programs so so this is you

182know this is on our books this this agreement is posted on our website I put complete copies of these Agreements are on our website under the latest updates for covid-19 responses um can I have the next slide please so I just wanted to just show it you know a picture kind of says a thousand words but this was one of the um entrances to um to to one of our PSAT sites so again you know there's clear signage there's hand sanitizers there's gloves there's um you know there's um you know there's there's there's wipes there's spray there's spray sanitizer there's you know a check-in area so you know so so again as as we begin to bring students on our campus or continue to bring students on our campus you know we will have multiple

183setups such as this can I have the next slide please this is what this is what you need uh yv looked like yesterday so you see on the left when we talk about um six feet this is what six feet looks like right so so whatever you know however we bring back students back onto our campuses we're always going to have to implement the six feet right until until the guidance changes but the guidance is very clear six feet that's why we have to have a hybrid model because we cannot fit um you know 30 28 kids in a classroom and still have six feet distance so on your on your left you see the preparation for the PSAT over at yv and on the right you actually see and and I would have to

184say for the you know for the for the administrators that went around and and witnessed this um you know we were all um very emotional when we saw this because these are kids back on our campus um you know working right now so be it this isn't like fun and games they're they're taking the PSAT but um you know the reports I received there were not one single issue with kids wearing masks I I know that had been a concern would would students actually wear their mask all of these students wear their mask not only in the testing sites but we even when they went out to their park to the parking lot and as they were socializing around their cars they kept a distance and they kept their Mass on um I also want

185to acknowledge the staff that came out and um and supported these students we had mainly primarily um our our classified staff were the ones who um supervised these these tests and testing sites and um you know and there were some certificated staff um you know who helped out as well but mainly it was it was classified staff so this is what it looked like to yv can I have the next slide please this is what it looked like on the left this is uh College Park and again the six feet so if all of our classrooms were were equal to the College Park uh multi-purpose room we could we could bring students back but you know for a full day right but we can't do that because we have to separate them out so that's

186what it looked like before the students got there and on the right you have what it looked like at um at Concord High and um again there was a probably um I I personally went to Concord High and and witnessed that and I counted 50 kids taking taking the exam um can I have the next slide please it was brought up earlier that now that we've moved into purple Athletics can can begin to start up you know we're we're um you know starting to you know again practice this week and then as they go into next week the seasons will start and it's you know cross-country tennis golf swimming and Diving um and and this is um you know this is a notice from CIF and these are some of our some of our high

187school cross-country kids can I have the next slide please um this is you know our our coaches throughout the district they have been holding these workouts since summer and um you know and I just want to highlight that that these coaches are are um you know absolutely amazing they're they're pretty much if you if you multiply out the time that they that they put into it um they are by far our lowest paid employees in the entire District um and and and they they do an incredible service so so as you can see there's there's multiple kids here at at this campus um you know stretching and you can see obviously it's night time obviously the kids are wearing masks you know and and they're on our campuses they're being safe they have a distance

188um but it's a it's so important for these types of events to happen and the more that we can do things like one-on-one meetings um you know Athletics extracurricular things like that then we can start to um you know really test our our systems that we have in place I mean we we have cleaning protocols we have um you know these athletes have been going through you know have been going through the the the Pod you know the Pod setups um you know when when there's an issue there's been contact tracing um you know they they all are um you know they know the expectations the coaches have been trained I mean so we're doing this on a daily basis in our you know in our um throughout the district however we still need to

189do more and there's still lots of unanswered questions that we are trying to work out so um so I just really want to highlight this that this is a a great thing that's taken place in our district and I'm more than sure that it's probably taken place as we as we speak right now and I have the next slide please so so this is what our County metrics looked like just a week ago um you know we were at 105 new cases for every 100 000 and that's Statewide and as you see in our County metrics we were at 60 cases per 100 000. if you remember back when the board approved our um you know our our reopening plan and our in our timeline and whatnot we were at a county metric of five

190cases so um so you can just see how it how it's exploded and this is what it looked like one week ago how however kind of the next slide please however there is light at the end of the tunnel you know we there are good things starting to happen as I I brought up about the about the new leadership I brought up you know about the new the new Focus we have a um you know we have a vaccine on the horizon um and our numbers now are starting to drop so this is from yesterday and you can see the slide I just showed you at the state level a week ago it was at 105 and now it's down to 71 and in the county we were at 60 a week ago now it's

191down to 44. so it's going to you know fingers crossed that it's going to continue to improve so what we don't want is we don't want to rush this again I it is it is my responsibility to bring the recommendation to the board it's not the unions it's not the it's not the parents it's not the classified staff or anyone else this rests solely on my shoulders as superintendent I take this um I I take this responsibility very seriously and I want to make sure that we have a system that is proven and and that is safe and that is effective and and again we have been left with 300 separate school districts throughout the state all to navigate this on our own so um so again there are no open districts in Contra Costa

192County right now there are no open districts in Alameda County right now so um I know we've we've heard of Napa we've heard of um some districts opening in Marin and I can go online right now and I can pull articles that are going to support um reopening and I can pull articles that make a case not to support reopening so I understand that so I really sympathize for our families out there who are getting these mixed messages either from you know the previous administration or what you pick up in in you know in the in the daily newspaper or or um you know on on on different websites depending on where you get your news from but the these are what we are following you know we are still in the middle of a

193global pandemic there is still you know new new strands of of covid that are that are mutating and um and so I'm still taking this extremely serious I'm not um you know I'm not downplaying this and and I know that you know there's lots of you know there's lots of people out there who just think you know tomorrow let's open schools or as soon as we go to red let's open schools or it's just not that simple and it's a little bit more complicated than that and I'm going to make sure that we turn over every stone and we make sure that all eyes are dotted and all T's across um in terms of safety and in terms of of of district-wide spread of this of this very deadly disease can I have the next

194slide please this is a um you know this is I I pulled this from the Contra Costa County Health Department website they have a they they update this every other day or so but as of yesterday there's been 93 000 vaccine 93 and 531 vaccines administered in Contra Costa County 78 000 of those were were individuals first Doses and 14 000 of those were were individuals second doses um so 8.5 of the of the population 16 and older have received their their first dose and 1.6 of the population have have received their second dose so again vaccinations vaccines are coming right again we learned that there was no there there was no articulation at the federal level with the states and there there was an articulation from the state to the counties that's why we're

195hearing about different counties opening up vaccines to Educators or to people over 65 or people in convalescent homes or what it is that's why it's it's all it's all disjointed so so how can we properly plan when all the information we are getting is disjointed and so um so I am I am pleased to say that the that the state has taken over the um the vaccination program so it will not be left up to the counties and so that's good news and so we can we can be on a clear consistent program to offer vaccinations um you know to our communities you know to our employees and um and and in some cases depend depending on their age to students and so I'm I'm not saying that we're waiting until every single person is

196vaccinated because it's still it's voluntary whether or not you get vaccinated um so so it's just real hard to to give a definitive of of this is what needs to happen when um before we bring kids back on our campus but what does need to happen is we need to have consistent reliable information so that we can properly so that we can properly open can I have the next slide please now just um last last week a week ago um we we um had another agreement where we can start um soon start with the small support hubs right so small group support hubs f s g s h so Administration will identify which students are in most need now of course we you know we we want to Target you know homeless Foster youth special

197education things things of that nature but as I've said before many times this disease does not it does not discriminate right everyone is suffering and and so so um through the administration we will we will identify students we will like uh and invite students in we will cohort them and we will put them in in support hubs it's voluntary for students and it's a voluntary for staff so again we have to work through this and we can't just snap our fingers and expect this to just happen we're we're we're developing this we're working on this um but but this is the these are positive steps in a good direction okay so and as you can see from the agreement we do have to follow some measures when it comes to what tier we're on and

198um and so again this this agreement is an a-page agreement so I just pulled out a couple sentences from it just to give an overall but you can read the entire agreement on our website which is posted under the latest updates for covid-19 response can I have the next slide please so reopening update we're always going to look at those County metrics they're not there yet so um so again and if if we were to turn into if we were to go into red tomorrow does that mean that that we're going to open no it does not because we still have widespread of the disease there are still people getting sick there are still people in the icus and there's still people who are passing away from this deadly disease and I know that um

199much has been said about students that students aren't dying from from covet however um we still do not fully understand the long-term effects of of this disease when it does happen and and and students do come down with covet they do catch covet they're not immune to catching the virus that they may not get sick at the same rate as some of the more advanced age individuals are getting their people with underlying health conditions but they're still Contracting the the virus we we need consistent federal state and County Guidance and it continues to change so um every look every piece of guidance that has come out has been um has been dissected by staff we've looked at it we have our plans in place we're ready for this um but the guidance continues to change

200the latest is that every staff member and student are going to be tested every two weeks and um and and we heard earlier that is that is something that um that that that we cannot we cannot guarantee at this at this point that that could happen we cannot deliver that and and and that guidance more than likely is going to change because others are sharing that transparent safety measures so yes so the safety measures are the same as they have been since um you know since summertime social distance mask wearing sanitation um and filtration systems where and I've shared before we've we've changed we're in the process of changing all of our filters to the to the um you know to the Merv 13s testing and vaccinations I've kind of touched on that already we

201still need to flesh that out of what that is going to look like um and and family commitments to hybrid schedule or distance learning so absolutely I was ready to go out with the survey back in um back in back in November to have actually November December to have parents commit to one or the other parents said that they wanted more information they wanted number one they wanted to ensure that their student kept their teacher and that they stayed at their same school so I put out a schedule that um that reflected that and although I put the schedule out one for elementary and one for secondary folks still needed more information and unfortunately um you know there's other steps that need to that need to happen before those before that information can be finalized

202so um when the when the time comes we will absolutely our survey is ready to go and we will ask parents for that commitment either you're in the hybrid or or you're not and and and and that's gonna that's that's gonna that's gonna happen soon I've said at the at the last um at the January 13th meeting when this was an agenda item I said that um we were in distance learning at least until March um so so again there's no reason to put it on the agenda for tonight we're going to talk about it I talk about it all day every day with staff um you know we have a we have an all-day negotiations scheduled for tomorrow you know so these things are these things are happening so I I meet with just

203and this is more for the public the board clearly knows it knows this but I meet with every board member for an hour every single week more than likely we talk about reopening and what that looks like and what what what's the district doing and you know all of those things so so again we're working on this it's just not the time right now to to open up our schools tomorrow can I have the next slide please I I um you know just wanted to touch real briefly on the mental health webinar we we posed four questions to our esteem panel um we we wanted to get information from a panel how how parents Guardians can create social opportunities for their students during distance learning we understand that's a challenge um how can you find

204support for child social emotional well-being within within the district resources um how can I how can I best support my child academically right a lot of parents fear that they're that their students are falling behind and whatnot that's very real and we gave suggestions on how they can support their their child academically and then you know students are there are many students who are lacking motivation during this pandemic and and how can we how can parents families Guardians support students and becoming more engaged in their classes can I have the next slide and and this was actually the panel so so so we had counselors from all three levels elementary middle and high an equity counselor because we we fully understand that that covet um the effects of covet you know adversely impacts um you

205know communities of color we had a psychologist on the panel we had a social worker on the panel we had a behavioral specialist on the panel and we had our College a College and Career advisor on the panel so it was a it was a very diverse panel coming up over the next couple weeks we are going to um use use different folks and sort of specialize this a little bit more just again to continue to provide support for our families who we know are out there struggling and all families are struggling in this because we we we've all have had our ways of life drastically changed can I have the next slide please so I just want to end on a couple let's send on a couple like high notes of things that are

206going on so you know life in a in the middle school so Middle School life so Oak Grove Middle School this was their great kindness challenge so it shows like each day of the week um you know so so I mean I'm just you know these are those things that just really just you know uh remind you of why you're in this profession like you know here they are really trying to implement kindness and and and and tap on the the um you know good things about what what kids have to offer and what they can do you know to really um positively impact the lives of others um and then I'm excited to see this this is a courtyard beautification this is the before shop so so so so I'm I'm excited to see

207what's going to be the after shot but um but again they you know Oak Grove put this out there so we're excited to see um the progress that they make on their on their beautiful Courtyard can I have the next slide please this is the the library at Foothill Middle School and so again you can see um you know in in many of our spaces they you know we're they're being social distance out so you know the way that you know the way that we um you know the way that we sat in the past we we just can't do with the with the current guidance that's out there that we have to have people six feet apart in and I know some people's eyes might be bad but but that is that is the

208Bernie meme in the back there um that this that the school put out so so anyway you know we got a lighten it we got to lighten we got to lighten this up a little bit because there really is just so much uh so much pain out there can I have the next slide this is uh uh from Mount Diablo High School this is their digital Innovation and design classes and these are these are you know staff who are putting these together for our students to pick up and and be able to take home and work on so like so things are happening you know I mean for one I said it at the beginning of this presentation I want kids back on campus right but it can't happen right now so the next we're

209we're doing the best we can to um to get through the worst you know the worst situation that any of us have lived through on a on a on a national and Global you know Global um you know Global Perspective but um but these are the staffs that at um you know Mount Diablo High putting together these these te packets for the for the digital Innovation and design course can I have the next slide and and and and just to just to kind of end my presentation I just want to highlight um you know three students from an Olympic High that you know they're in alternative school and you know credit deficient or whatnot and even during a pandemic and and again I don't know the story of these students but they they earned their

210diploma during these times and so I wanted to um recognize that and and and and highlight that and and these students these students achievements weren't only done by by only them there were others that contributed to that so whether it was you know the support they had at home or the support they had at the school site um you know we really want to take this opportunity to recognize um these students and there's others out there but I just I just pulled these three photos of these three students so so that concludes my presentation next slide I think it's just for questions so if I can entertain any questions from any of the trustees I'd be happy to if not very happy to move on to the other business of the board all right trustees

211any questions comments [Music] at explaining so um so again heart goes out to to um you know to all all students All Families all staff everybody um but we're gonna get through this and and and there is light at the end of the tunnel and um and we'll continue working on it but the responsibility falls on my shoulders and I take that responsibility very seriously thank you thank you very much Dr Clark I really appreciate all the information that you you're sharing and the progress that has been made I think you know a lot of people have questions about reopening and where that was on our agenda and it it is under superintendent's report that's where we have been reporting it um every meeting and we'll continue to do that and um I know that

212in December um we as a board you know expressed very clearly that we wanted um you know negotiations uh progress on small groups um and so the fact that that was able to be achieved last week so that small groups have that there is an official agreement with our employees with our teachers union on that is you know is progress and we need to recognize that as well as I appreciate you talking about how students are engaging in person in different ways because I think not everyone was aware that that that is happening and in the ways in which it is allowed under our current agreements to be happening so much appreciated and uh we'll continue to move forward so thank you so much all right next we have the consent agenda 14.0 items listed

213under consent agenda are considered routine and will be approved and adopted by a single motion there will be 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 do we have any items to uh to pull or do we have a motion for our consent agenda I would be happy to make a motion to uh accept the consent agenda as presented thank you trustee Mason second all right motion by trustee Mason and second by trustee Mayo and we'll put that to a vote so we'll start off with our student board member trustee Ellis yes trusty mail yes trustee Mason yes trustee McFerrin yes trustee and zabi yes and I also vote Yes motion passes 5-0 with

214concurrence from our student board member thank you very much all right moving right along we have uh that moves us to 17.0 business and action items 17.1 is review and potential approval of the Williams quarterly report for January 31st 2021. um I will I will take that um are there any are there any questions about the um about the Williams report I have a question yes how does the district use these reports because it's just check it's like more of a checklist um than helping us understand what people might have a complaint about um how does has the district or how could the district use it to better inform the community and um about what could be going wrong or could be founded that it's not going wrong um so that we can when it

215is wrong work together um to make changes the systemic changes that might be necessary right so so what the board is saying on this this is just the this is the format of the report that we have to um you know present in a in a public meeting however these um you know these complaints are coming in the form of you know whether it's a work order or whether it's a formal complaint that's filed we have board policy and we have um you know we have a process for filing a Williams complaint that falls under um Miss Sachs department and so I'll let her just kind of uh jump in there a second and just just explain what the Williams process is but but again I just want to remind the board that you're just

216seeing the template that we have to that we have to turn into the state or the county absolutely thank you Dr Clark so in 2000 there was a lawsuit and what the court decided was that every school district needed to have a complaint process when there were questions about uh instructional materials and questions about this assignments of Staff um facility issues um as well as at that point it had to do with the high school exit exam high school exit exam is no more but we still have the responsibility when there are complaints about textbooks instructional materials Miss assignments or facilities in order to investigate and directify them but most importantly to be transparent with the public to let folks know quarterly whether or not there's been official Williams complaints filed um so this is

217something you'll see several times a year each of our department heads are the ones that sign off you're seeing that there were two listed in the last quarter um they were on one complaint but there were two issues that were identified one was a question with regards to a teacher credential uh whether or not the individual was properly credentialed for the subject area that they were teaching in and then there was a question whether or not the student had adequate textbooks we do investigate all Williams uh complaints and so this is something that's either jumped into facilities the maintenance operations department or or the staff that I work with um in this complaint we did work with human resources to determine that the teacher was indeed properly credentialed and that the student did indeed have

218um the proper textbooks um what we also end up doing in this situation is when there is a complaint file after the investigation we do make sure that the investigation as well as the resolutions are in writing and that we submit that back to the complainant so this is something that's logged at the County office as well and every year actually the county office does physical visits of our campus um and review of our documents to ensure that our facilities are in good shape that we have adequate textbooks and that our teachers are properly credential for what their teacher thank you that's really helpful and I wonder if in the future for the quarterly Williams reports we can just like get that kind of detail since you were able to give it today um that

219that comes along I know the report is a um template but the detail would be helpful thank you thank you any other questions comments on this I believe this is oh this is this is for Action so we do need a motion to approve this I will make a motion that we approve the Williams quarterly report for January 31st 2021. second all right motion by trustee Mason and second by trustee Mayo we'll take this to a vote uh trustee Alice yes trustee Mason yes trustee Mayo yes trustee and zaywe yes trustee McFerrin yes I also vote Yes motion passes 5-0 with concurrence from our student board member thank you and thank you for the input uh trustee and Zoe I think um often times when we receive this report it's all zeros so there's not

220a lot of information to go with it but in this case there was something so you're always welcome to ask those questions all right uh 17.2 is review and potential approval of the contract between Mount Diablo Unified School District and fev tutoring to provide online tutoring support to English Learners in grades 6 to 12. Dr Clark yes and I'm going to turn this over to our um to our El Department um if there's questions you guys may I mean it's actually let me stop are there are there questions from the board if you have questions I have I have uh rep from our from our Yale Department who could entertain those questions but if there's no questions then there's no need to entertain it I have questions go ahead hold on I thought we were

221I thought if there was a presentation attached to this sorry um in the description on the agenda it says it's for ell or District identified failing students regardless of language well is it regardless of language it says or District identified failing students and I wasn't sure if it applies to English language Learners who are failing um or all students um that I didn't do a more presentation because all the information was attached to that board docket now this is an initiative from the English Learner in dual language services department and it's gonna be paid with categorical funds from title three so it's going to be only for English learners okay I was just clarifying because in the description it says or District identified failing students so I didn't know if that was only English language

222learner District identified failing students it's only for English Learners because it's being paid out of title three which are categorical funds for English learners um another question is I've heard from teachers and well even my own daughter who had forced to go to office hours that they already struggle getting students to attend office hours so how would this be more successful than what teachers are already able to offer you know we are gonna have two approaches you know as students are gonna be able to go for homework help and we are going to identify cohorts of the students that are having difficulties in their classes and they will uh and they will give in to a block of tutoring hours to help them improve their grades now uh one of the reasons why we selected

223this company it's because they will provide support with the families and engage engage in the families and contacting them so that students can participate is there any way that also um like classified staff could be utilized to contact families now like I said if if teachers are offering time um as they have office hours which I know is not one-on-one tutoring I'm not equating the two but if these are for students who are struggling um I'm just curious is have we invested in in engaging families so that the students are engaged with their own teacher you know that regarding this this project there's going to be a rollout okay now regarding to your question about the engagement of the parents every side has different resources on how do they engage their families and one of

224them is the community liaison you know that they work with the families at their side but that she and that changes from one school to the other um did you ask the teachers and parents if this would if this program would be helpful to their students you know uh we can't we discuss it with that dilac you know every year I put a pot of money for intervention and usually what's given to the schools and depending of the schools some teachers would do tutoring in other ones wouldn't so it was not um not everybody was receiving the same support So this year teachers were very stressed with the online so I put in I couldn't launch that tutoring done by the teachers therefore I look for an outside service and I did research about what

225companies their their there were actually I look at two companies one it's paper and the other one is Feb tutors and I went with Feb tutors because they provided uh more support not only they have the capability to provide homework help but also to provide a specific tutoring aligned to what we are teaching you know so um the deal act did did want to do an online tutoring that dlac wanted additional support for their students and I I didn't have a way to get the teachers in Dr Clark maybe a couple of meetings ago he showed a statistics of one school of the English Learners the percentages that they were failing you know and we do have in the district a specific funds that are for English Learners to to support them I understand so

226that's why I make that decision to go with this it's a new Initiative for us and we are going to see if what's successful we are now something that was very attractive to me is that we are going to get a coach and a data coach so they will be able to run reports for us you know categorical programs are heavily monitored and you require a lot of data and without one of the companies that I look at they didn't provide any of those Services that's why I went with this company additionally uh if when we enter into an agreement you know I want to see how is this agreement gonna benefit the students in the district and this company gave us a grant of a thousand hours over what we were buying and the

227other company didn't want to do anything additional for us so that was another reason yeah my questions aren't related so much to why choosing this company just why choosing this now um so the last thing I'll just offer is that another takeaway I got from the school board association's reopening webinar is that we need to find flexible opportunities for other adults to help students like like this right um because our teacher Workforce really need to break um they've been working very hard um all pandemic um and to this day and until we well forever but teachers work very hard but um I feel like just like teachers students May are Zoom fatigued they're tired of being online and so I wonder if there's any consideration in using utilizing this program over the summer which um

228in a time when everyone gets sort of a break but 10 to 12 hours over the summer for a student who's already struggling getting online now on the day-to-day um could be I'm not like assuming that everyone is but could be um that maybe it would be more effective because they don't have to compete the tutoring the hour a week of tutoring with um the pressure of daily zooms so that's just my last thought and yeah you know we have a situation in which students are failing and we need to provide support to this group of of a students okay and we are gonna use the hours as long as we have the hours and if we see that they are effective we can buy we can buy more more hours but we need to

229support the students that are failing and the fact that that's the there was the situation was not conducive to do tutoring in in person because we could only have one on one you know and we don't have that that demand power to that that teachers they didn't want to come on campus you know so we had to find another way that that support the students right now just to be clear I'm not against supporting the students at all and I'm not even going to offer it um because I think having like I said like they I learned this week having other adults have the opportunity to to help support students I think is great and there's examples of that in in neighboring districts even just through a core of volunteers um and and so I

230was just curious if we'd explored offering it in the summer um because people are Zoom fatigued and it could be more concentrated time so and and and I mean different discussion but I also don't think students should be getting grades now so because that's not inspiring um to have an f um but in the summer they could still catch up because the point isn't the grade the point is I think is actual learning and the actual absorption and understanding and and knowledge building um regardless of the grade that's what I appreciate about it right now that it's homework help for students who are like looking for the help right now and it's one one other Avenue so um I look forward to seeing how successful it is how many people use it um what works

231what doesn't it's uh you know I think some other school districts uh like I think Pittsburgh was using that other company that you mentioned um and offering tutoring not I think not only to English students but maybe wider so I would be curious about that too if this is successful do we consider you know using funding or things like that to expand to even more students using other other funding sources if it's successful I really like that this particular company is is um focused on connecting with the families and not just kind of providing a road service you know like I've seen some other ones where you can text this number and they will with your problem and then they will just send you the answer you know we really need that relationship building and

232the connection with the family and there seems to be some Focus with this there so I appreciate that any other comments or questions I have one please yes trust email um I appreciate the information from staff that all of the tutors are credentialed and that um the two every tutor will have a background check um for me and I believe Miss Mason that's usually pretty important we always look for that information on the documents and um that information was provided to us from staff so that's an important uh piece for our parents to other understand and for the record and um to uh Miss and zayway's comment about uh students being tired of Zoom I think this will be a little bit different because it'll be one-on-one and it can be virtual in addition to

233texting and although um my experience with teenagers especially teenagers is they are up at two and three in the morning or whenever and this this service will be available to them 24 7. so um it's surprising when adults watch TV and when students decide it's time to do their homework and that'll be an uh an opportunity to measure is for one thing how many how often or how many hours are our students up uh to accomplish the work that needs to be done for a variety of reasons we can't judge that I think the other thing that maybe that's was interesting to me was that these will be recorded every interaction will be recorded with the students so um perhaps the um Mrs Garces department will look at some of these and find good examples

234of how these tutors work with our students and be able to apply that to some of our instruction methods or how they engage with the students um so I I'm interested in um trying this as a pilot and my one question was it's since these are federal dollars if we did not spend them would they have to be returned uh you know we have we have uh 18 depending of the funding we have the 18 months to right spend the money right and we never want to return money and as and as um this Garces has shared our original plan of course was to have um actual teachers be the ones to engage in after school tutoring and in other situations where they could provide one-on-one support for students or a small group support so

235you know keeping you know it within that vein of trying to provide that supplemental um interaction with an individual that can help them either on a standard with homework or with a piece of writing we've got emerging bilingual students we've got emerging bilingual parents and they are not yet possibly comfortable looking at especially the secondary pieces of writing in order to provide that level of feedback so as we're thinking about additional time on the zooms it actually might be the students submitting a piece of writing and having them that individual help walk them through where they might feel that you know edits or Corrections could be made and so not only are we looking at supporting the students with their progress but we're also supporting that family unit so nobody feels that there's not a

236resource that's available in the event that that student does need that for them it's their you know the second language support their first language you know they're off and running but as they're becoming an emerging bilingual student by literate student that level of support from the home would be incredibly we think important in these times yes thank you all right do we have a motion on this item yes I will make a motion that we approve the contract between Mount Diablo Unified School District and fev tutoring to provide online tutoring support to English Learners in grades 6 to 12. thank you trustee Mason do you have a second I'm stuck in the motion all right uh motion by trustee Mason second by trustee McFerrin any further discussion all right we'll start with the vote with

237uh trustee Alice yes trustee Mason yes trustee McFerrin yes trustee and Zoe did your sound go out again I think that was yes okay there we go okay thank you I also vote Yes motion passes 5-0 with concurrence from the student board member votes yes too oh my goodness well now it's a vote of 5-0 thank you so much it's really hard to keep track with all these squares on the screen much appreciated all right so uh that was item 17.2 we have no items for 18.0 uh 19.020 is a future agenda items are there any future agenda items all right uh and hearing none um we will adjourn the meeting here at 9 24 pm thank you everyone thank you