Board Meeting 09 22 20 Special Board Meeting

001good afternoon it is 4 P.M on September 22nd and we have a special meeting of the mdusd board and we're going to go ahead and we will start with roll call and I will start with vice president Mason here Ms Mayo here Ms turkey here here and I'm here so all five board members and uh if folks will go ahead and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance please foreign [Music] we do have so typically at a uh special meeting the only public comment would be for items uh which are on the agenda for that special meeting however our posting indicated uh that it would be a general public comment for uh things not on the agenda so we do have about 10 voicemails and we're going to go ahead and we'll play those so

002uh item 3.1 is public comment so the public May address the board regarding any item within the jurisdiction of the Board of Education of the mdusd that is not on the agenda these presentations are limited to three minutes each or a total of 30 minutes for all speakers or three minute uh the three minute limit may be shortened if there are multiple speakers on any one subject the public comment period maybe move to the end of the meeting speakers are not allowed to yield their time and as we've stated before so the board is able to receive information but since these matters are not agendized the board is not able to engage in a dialogue rather what we can do is perhaps ask a clarifying question of Staff or task staff to follow up and

003I am hopeful that at our Monday meeting on the 28th that we'll be able to incorporate uh public speakers uh via Zoom so that the speakers will actually be able to join us in the meeting instead of just doing recorded voicemails so that is what we are aiming for on September 28th so with that I will pause and give staff an opportunity to go ahead and play the 10 or so voicemails that we have received thank you foreign we've had three days without tears he's not engaged during zoom and is not connecting with peers during class time please consider the health and well-being of our students groups of students need to be brought back to school for face-to-face learning this is not okay I am the mother of a third grader at non-table elementary and

004a sixth grader at Diablo View Middle School here in Clayton our teachers have done a great job adjusting to distance learning but nothing can replace in-person instruction my daughter who's 11 and at a very crucial crucial age has gone from loving school being in leadership playing the violin and band to dreading school and dreading being online all day she is in tears almost every day and both of my kids are losing their love for learning this has been going on for six months now and we need to learn to live safely with covet 19. my children deserves the option of an in-person education even if it's hybrid I urge you open schools as soon as possible we are failing our kids by keeping them in front of a computer all day thank you my name

005is David shui I'm a resident of Clayton former three-time mayor and 16-year council member I would like to call and express my displeasure that the board has not um basically met in good faith with the Clayton Valley Charter High School to resolve the issues with the facilities it's my understanding the school has offered even more than what you asked for originally and they've got no response I urge you to please meet in good faith and resolve this dispute get the money that the MDS into USD believes is owed and that Clayton is willing to offer so that Clayton conveners money to improve our campus for our students thank you hello I am a parent of a student that attends in Creighton Valley Charter High School I'm coming in response to us um then making improvements

006to our campus and we have informed that you have blocked or have rejected our offer um we ask that you reconsider considering the pandemic our students do not need another situation we would like to continue being um students of Clinton Valley Charter High School so if you please reconsider and approve our project measure C projects thank you hello this message is for the board meeting I am a parent of two children at Mount Diablo Elementary in Clayton a kindergartner and a first grader my kindergartner is getting no learning even though he has an amazing teacher it is very hard to get a kindergartner engaged through a computer he's extremely shy he never wants to voice anything never wants to talk when I try to teach him he doesn't want to listen to me his sweet

007teacher does one-on-ones with him which is great but distance learning is not a replacement for education for a kindergartner please open up schools for our little one oh hi this is Brian Thomas I live here in Concord California obviously inside the district my son Luke Thomas is a student at Clayton Valley Charter High School you have a board meeting coming up and I understand there's some kind of an issue with the forest problems and Communications and negotiations with the school why has the Board of Education rejected the offer and not responded to Communications from Clayton Valley Clayton Valley has offered this shirt everything they asked for and more so why don't you agree into the offer why is a USD cutting programs when uh Creighton Valley is willing to pay an additional two million dollars

008our white is Mount Diablo Unified School District want to pay more legal fees to keep this going on instead of Simply coming to terms and negotiating in good faith and finally are you going I'd like you to agree to the settlement the next regular Monday meeting on Monday September 28th thank you very much [Music] please get our kindergartners back to school hi my name is Tonya Ford I am a parent of a CB THS student who's in their sophomore year I'm calling because it's incredibly disappointing to hear that the board is still not willing to accept the offer given by CD CHS and has ignored the request for a response and attempt to come to an agreement uh wasting money on medication gives the appearance that the desire of the board is to continue to

009waste dollars instead of investing in the Improvement of programs for students who attend cbchs it's time to come to agreement so that the faculty families and students can move forward focusing on a solid Educational Foundation thank you for your time and listening hello my name is Will Cortez my son Jacob Cortez of 10 Clayton Valley Charter School um I would like for you guys to help out as much as possible my son went from being at below 2.0 student to being 3.5 um and you know now he has dreams to go to college all I can say that playing Valley trying to have done wonders for my youngest son um you know so again I ask and I beg you guys to please help out the school anyway uh possible again my name is Will

010Cortez and I have a son that attends Clayton Valley Charter School thank you hi um as a resident of the area that Mount Diablo school district is in I asked that Mount Diablo School District works on bettering itself versus spending time and energy and money trying to make another school unsuccessful I expect the district to stick to its word to negotiate timely and be open with arguments and honestly work for a solution I expect my district to have integrity less ego and to do what is best for our community as a whole thank you and that concludes voice comments and that concludes and I will unmute uh sorry uh so we will move along to uh 4.0 uh business action items so starting with 4.1 which is the public hearing on the learning continuity and

011attendance plan uh for 2020 21 uh the the renamed or re-acronymed lcap so Dr Clark over to you yep and I'm gonna I'm gonna turn this over to Miss Jen Sachs and she will be leading this discussion Ms sacks absolutely hello everyone um I really want to recognize the team that's actually on the zoom this afternoon um this document was certainly not um created in isolation we had individuals across um the districts helping us pull the bits and pieces together and I also want to recognize Dr Lisa Gonzalez as well as Dr Wendy Gilly who will help present this what we're referring to as the LCP to the community for a public hearing next slide so the learning continuity plan or what we're referring to as the LCP is a key part of the overall

012budget package that was approved during the summer of 2020. um the budget itself was trying to seek you know trying to address funding stability for schools while also providing information up and down the state of California on how our schools were responding um to the covid pandemic I think even though president Lawrence you mentioned the the lcap the LCP is actually not meant to take the place of the lcap it is not that comprehensive of a document it's actually pretty narrow in scope um it's really wanting us to focus on the pandemic that we've been living through since spring 2020 um and also focus on the plans as we opened up School this year in a very very different educational model what will happen is um in January the state will actually issue a new

013template for the local control accountability plan as they reorient us to a new timeline next slide the learning continuity plan addresses the following areas it starts off with general information um just kind of an overarching kind of picture of the district and the impact the pandemic had on the community at large uh stakeholder engagement how did we collect information in order to develop the document the continuity of learning how are we ensuring that we continue with the learning regardless of the the design that we ended up opening school with the people oh let me move my there we go pupil learning loss um is the other section which is really about how are we going to be addressing people learning loss which unfortunately is something where um it was such a significant disruption in the

014spring and then through the summer as folks were kind of reorienting themselves to this new covid-19 environment how he opened up in the fall we have a responsibility to take a look at the learning loss and try to identify different types of differentiation and supports in order to address that mental health and social emotional well-being well-being um our our families our staff our students have been traumatized in many instances with regards to what has occurred so how are we pulling together supports in that area people and family engagement and Outreach our families are definitely Partners as we've opened up school um especially because they're really the the home teacher they're individuals that have students 24 7 in their house um engaging with online instruction but also they are really um addressing quite a bit of

015Education um as they are the home teacher for their students School nutrition is an area that from the very beginning um Mount Diablo worked very very hard in order to Pivot pretty quickly to ensure that we had food and nutritional meals for our community and the last part of the plan focuses on crease and improved services with students with unique needs and this is an area that's actually very similar to what we have in the lcap which is how are we really um providing differentiated support for our underserved student groups I think it's important to getting back to the point of this not being a local control accountability plan that this learning continuity and attendance plan only includes the learning loss mitigation funds and these three funding sources are more specifically the coronavis release funds

016otherwise known as CRF the governor's emergency um emerging engagement funds gear and then prop 98 General funds to be used by December 30th 2020. next slide so as I mentioned each of these sections um there's quite a bit of detail in the plan itself the LCP just overall actions as a response to covid is we utilize quite a bit of the information that was included in the roadmap to reopening and we just again want to thank the the task force members as well as the community the public our employees our students our families for providing us a lot of information from the surveys that we um that we collected that data as well as the feedback and suggestions that came up from that we know that um covid-19 has disproportionately impacted our historically underserved communities

017more than anybody else we knew that our students needed access not only to instructional resources in print but also online and of course that meant that laptop distribution Chromebooks Wi-Fi internet access was of the highest priority for our communities we knew after the spring into the summer and into the fall that training for teachers staff staff students and families was incredibly important families are as I said individuals that are the teachers at home and so making sure that they were aware about how to get on different platforms utilizing different tools was essential and then our shift in staff duties has been significant and there's an area of the uh the plan that speaks specifically about that and that's really to meet the needs of the distance learning and it's something that is temporary and basis

018so as we look to hopefully fingers crossed reopening um that they would then go back to their more normal duties next slide So within the section addressing stakeholder engagement again we really took a look at the student family and staff surveys that were collected in the spring and in the summer we utilized the information from the task force groups um including many of our Union representation that were on those committees but as we have worked on different mous and contract issues that feedback has been incredibly important to the LCP we took a look at board meeting public comment and different reports we have asked for feedback from all of our different advisory committees the community advisory committee Equity advisory our parent advisory our district English learner advisory committee so we want to thank them for

019all of their input this is a public hearing um occurring on September 22nd and then this plan will be presented back to the school board for approval on September 28th we know this is a very very tight timeline we have survey that are available on our district website under the lcap link that you can go on to to provide any type of feedback input thoughts about the different sections because our deadline to the county office is September 30th now with this LCP please don't think that if we receive additional input thoughts and ideas or the context of which we're providing education changes we would be bringing the LCP back if there needs to be changes made to the document in order to ensure that it actually meets our district and our community needs next slide

020the next section within the LCP talks about continuity of learning and really the continuity and learning are those different um educational models that within our reopening plan we discussed right now we're in a full-time distance learning but as we begin to open up we move into a different color we're having conversations with our different Union Partners to take a look at what metrics we would need to have in place in order to then make the determination to bring back small groups from there we would maybe move into a hybrid model and then from there full distance learning all of this is discussed on the continuity of learning but regardless of the educational model we are in we need to have the priority being given to our students with the highest needs we need to make

021sure the health and safety Protocols are followed and under SB 98 students must have access to high quality rigorous first instruction and again that's regardless of the type of educational model that Mount Diablo is is working under next slide so right now as we all know we are in distance learning um underneath continuity of learning you know what does this mean well we have worked to provide Equitable access to digital and printed curriculum we have several schools that are actually on a particular schedule with their families where the students are picking up materials that might be extra glue sticks it might be workbooks it might be even library books and so every other week or so they're picking up that and again we understand that that platform where the Google classrooms and the Seesaw classrooms

022are located that is incredibly important so those devices and those hot spots are things that we're constantly monitoring the instruction will follow and has been following standards and scope and sequence work we have curriculum Specialists and teachers on special assignment that have been working in teams with classroom teachers in order to make sure that all of that information is available in teacher Google classrooms um so it's at teachers and administrators fingertips consistent Learning Management Systems um this was something that we heard a lot of feedback on in the spring everyone appreciated the teachers um quick response to creating all sorts of different um gosh access points and platforms and tools and all of that but it was a bit overwhelming for our students and families so as we opened up the school year consistent Learning

023Management Systems uh were adopted consistent video conference and communication tools have been used our district is really accessing Zoom quite a bit as well as Google meets and then utilizing one single sign-on through clever so there might be several different supplemental programs offered to families and to students but having One dashboard where there's almost different um just different tiles that students can access makes it a lot easier especially for our younger our younger students we are monitoring participation in progress using a variety of different codes within our Aries system which is our student data management system and we have a very robust distance learning professional development plan in order where they have synchronous professional development asynchronous which would be webinars that have been recorded or different types of other methods and then also we have

024tiered support so it's differentiated by the individual needing the support um from the very very basic beginning all the way up through folks that really consider themselves experts and this is not only for our teachers but it's also for our classroom assistants support staff as well as our parents and families and I really want to shout out to our adult education team that have put together quite a few offerings in English and Spanish for our families next slide so I'm going to hand over the mic to Dr wendia Gilly who will share about a couple of the additional sections in the LCP supporting our pupils with unique needs good afternoon thank you for having me today to speak about our plan um so some of the special services that we're ensuring our students have access

025to are the ones that they're entitled to in the regular school year also such as our students who are identified as English language Learners they will continue to receive the same services in terms of designated integrated English language development we want to ensure that they're continuing to make progress in their acquisition of English language skills and we want to make sure that we also have bilingual staff an ability to reach out to our community in their communication language that they find most appropriate for them to make sure that we're including them in the services that they need for their children regarding our homeless and Foster youth we also are making special attempts to reach out to those populations one of our main goals there is that they did receive the home first priority to make

026sure that they had not only access to the devices that they needed but also the to the connectivity the internet and those types of things and for our students and families for whom that was not an option we wanted to prioritize even paper and pencil materials for them so they could continue to learn we also had school supplies available and other Community Resources along with continuing to monitor their progress and continuing our social work Outreach to ensure that any barriers that were stopping them participating in school could be addressed and potentially overcome through either District services or referral to outside agencies next slide please for students with disabilities they also did receive priority foreign devices and connectivity and then we also made sure that we had adaptive technology available so for such as our students

027who needed a larger screen or other equipment in order to access their online classes paper and pencil was most appropriate for some of our students who really were struggling to access synchronous learning so we wanted to make sure that again as we're trying to address learning loss that they had continued opportunities to access their program We are continuing to monitor that progress as they go and that's done by a variety of classroom staff and along with our related service providers who are providing those services including speech OT and PT through Telehealth services in addition to push-in services and also the single simple pull out services we did expand our reading intervention programs for our Orting going on-based reading intervention programs and those are also available online in our K-12 programs in both our resource program

028and our special day class and we also continued our counseling services we were able to partner with our classified staff in order to not only ensure that our students had access to support within their regular classrooms but also that they could receive additional tutoring from our classified staff and sometimes that looked like tutoring and sometimes that would simply help with executive functioning skills in order to complete their work that they were unable to do independently due to their disability we've tried to communicate regularly with families and we do plan on prioritizing them as we return to in-person instruction next slide please also as we are looking at the student learning loss we do have a neural multi-tiered systems of support to make sure that all of our systems not only align in terms of need

029but also across the different departments throughout the district that we are going ahead and speaking with each other and making sure that efforts are not duplicated but also that there are no gaps we're continuing to monitor progress for our students and we have implemented both our SST process and our care team processes at our school sites in order to catch those students who really are falling behind because while we know that all students are struggling we also do know that some of the students continue to have disabilities and we will continue to need to identify those students through both Universal screeners and formative assessments in order to maximize the time that we do have for instruction we're focusing on the priority standards and a common scope and sequence to ensure that we are able to

030address the gaps when we come back and ensure we can get everybody where they need to be we have those online intervention programs as I shared the resource support programs and intervention programs and all of our teachers do offer Virtual Office hours which are well attended and that those hours are available for individual students for families and they're also sometimes used for small group interventions we have created an extensive teacher professional learning community and I will say that that is one of the things that we're very proud of our teachers went from March some of them really struggling to go to the online systems to know where I would say that they are experts in those areas and while we can't always accommodate for you know internet glitches or computer glitches or system glitches we'll

031say the amount of learning that has gone on for our staff is truly remarkable and I would be remiss if I did not also address our classified staff who have also engaged in extensive professional learning opportunities and have really been true assets in helping our students as they adjust to this new learning style while they adjust to it themselves we've also offered grading rubrics and for all of our teachers to ensure that students are graded fairly across back across the platforms and ensure they're not punished um you know through grades for things that are out of their control and also our attendance interventions this year have taken on a different tone um usually it's a reactive process where we are reacting when students are not coming to school through School attendance review teams Etc however

032this year we're trying to be proactive and really try to identify those barriers to attendance and learning before the student continues to fall further behind next slide please we also are very aware of the mental health and social emotional well-being of our students and as I mentioned before we're ensuring that that is across the multi-tiered systems of support we have an extensive program in our district we have our counselors working with our students we also have our school psychologists and our therapists and in addition we have several outside Community Health agencies who are offering support to our students we have available social emotional learning modules for our staff teachers that they can help deliver to the students along with the Professional Network for our site leaders in order to ensure that they also are prepared

033to address the whole child we have community building activities and then we are now expanding our social emotional learning where you just signed a contract that we are going to expanding that not only to some of our school sites but also to our central office and also most importantly offering those services to our families in the outcoming week so they also can participate our PBIS program is also in place across the different School sites to ensure that the foundational expectations are still in place many of our School site staff have been entrained in trauma-informed practices and restorative justice practices and hopefully as we refocus on Equity we can Ensure again that there is a place for everybody and that everybody's learning loss is addressed it's the best way possible and again I've also mentioned that

034we did start our district and site care teams and that is to address the social emotional needs of students unlike the SST process that typically is more of a focus on the academic side of it those two processes tend to go hand in hand but those programs are up and running now and so that as students require extra support there is a vehicle for them to either be referred to services within the district or without outside of the district we continue our hope and Foster youth services to ensure that they are enrolled in school in a timely manner and that they have access to the um services that they need in order to make sure that they're ready for school and in addition one of our favorite Parts is our virtual staff lounges we know

035that that's a huge part of our teacher connection is really connecting with each other when we want to make sure that they still have that opportunity this time is hard for everyone and it's a surprisingly well attended event that we're quite proud to host next slide please and as far as supporting not only our staff but we also want to make sure that everyone feels like they're still connected to the district even though we're far apart so we have tried to increase our communication across an entire variety of platforms in addition a key part for us was the number of laptops and hot spots we purchased and even though some of those devices are still on back order we do believe that we have people connected and you know we're hoping to get more um

036devices in as they become available we do have very tight monitoring of Engagement and participation through synchronous and asynchronous instruction because we know that it is difficult for every student to participate in instruction at the same time due to their own family circumstances or due to their own learning style simply as they're learning from home so there are multiple attendance and participation criteria being tracked that's part of the state requirement but it also helps us to navigate who really does need support to engage further we do have our staff calling out to families who are not engaged or not participating or even those students who are not participating in some of the daily activities but are simply turning in assignments we're trying to figure out how to get those more engaged in order to keep

037up those social connections and also the connections with our staff in our school we're offering a variety of family and student trainings and those don't only include in the technical areas of you know how to get on Google or how to access Zoom we also have a whole other category of trainings and things like how do you set up a virtual play date for your students how do you make sure you know your student has a good workspace how do you juggle multiple students in your family to make sure that we are addressing all of the needs that are new during this particularly strange time and again we've already talked about the care teams and the attendance Outreach in order to make sure they're back attending with us next slide please and I'm going to

038turn it over to our next presenter who is Dr Lisa Gonzalez who will talk about school nutrition thank you um we're really excited to share that we've continued our meal service district-wide so we currently have 12 locations there's curbside pickup with the exception of time is when it's been really Smoky and there's been air quality issues and it's been inside pickup but we do have those meals available Monday Wednesdays and Fridays we started with a window during the lunch time and we had those windows available to coincide with the time that students would have breaks in their school days we took a look at all the schedules district-wide and this pretty much covered everyone and then we got feedback from our parents that let us know that either the parents may be at home with

039multiple students or they were working so we added an evening meal service this started last week and we'd like to give a big shout out to our cares teams at our many sites because they've been assisting with us as well so we do have two times per day when families can go and pick up meals for multiple days those meals include fresh vegetable vegetables fresh fruit milk and a variety of healthy entrees courtesy of our food Nutrition department that recently received its award and certification for eat real which means they were the first school district where the first school district in the state and in the nation to be able to receive that so A kudos to the team there um likewise when distance learning ends we will have all of our sites that continue

040to be open to serve meals so that's been real important and one of the things that we are working on now is at those 12 meal service centers having bus routes that are off of those where we've identified places where students could benefit for having meals delivered out into the community in locations where we would have those available and we're in the process of working on those Logistics now next slide please the learning loss mitigation funds um you know it's amazing what the different funds have come in and what the restrictions are and how we receive the money um what some of the stipulations are for those but a great deal of the funds need to be used by December 30th um and then we are hopeful that there's going to be heroes act funding

041that also comes in that allows us to continue some of the great work that we will have started so the bullets that you see on the slides and on the screen in front of you give you some ideas as to what the money can be used for but we have approximately 19 million seven hundred and eighty six thousand seven hundred and seventy seven hundred and seven dollars um to be used through learning loss mitigation and there is a component of a lot of these funds and it's called Equitable service and Equitable service means that our local private schools who submitted Title One plans in the 20 19 2020 school year have an opportunity to partake in some of these expenses as well and so we have put some of those in our budget not calling

042out the specific schools but the categories of where they would be using those funds next slide please our next steps are really as follows right now today we're having our public hearing we're going to continue to open up and receive and respond to feedback into parent questions we will be bringing this forward for board approval on September 28th and then moving forward we do have the uh the opportunity for changes as needed and and certainly with the unknown of covid-19 and what it may look like for reopening there may be some shifts that we have to do in our plan but certainly we've been working very closely with our Auditors we've been working with Crow that's our auditing firm and we've been doubling triple checking all the expenses and the proper categories and what the

043stipulations are and are not to make sure that we're certainly being the um the best stewards that we can of taxpayer dollars and with that said I believe our next slide is opening up for questions and uh we've got a number of us who can assist great thank you for that do we have questions from board members or discussion well I have one correction and a couple of questions or Corrections on the um let me see what section it is it's the access to devices and connectivity they have the Bay Point Health District Lister there is no Baypoint health district that I'm aware of there's a Los Medanos Community Health Care District which I'm assuming is what they are referring to they gave fifteen thousand dollars which I have to say I'm a little disappointed

044that it sat over there with no contact from the district and their executive director finally had to drive it over to the district himself um first off just general concerns that I just want us to keep our eye on is the issues with um connecting to our Foster and homeless students um I feel like I feel the cares program after school program is doing good but I think that we could maybe they could do a little bit more during those after school hours with support for kids that need a little extra one-on-one time that was one of their main components they always used to start the day with homework help so I think that might be something we could look at as far as I could see it might be happening I didn't see that

045that was happening and then the last on the fiscal part of it I'm assuming on the form it has how much we're spending and then there's a a column that says contributing yes or nothing I'm guessing is yes mean our general fund contribution and if that's what it is could the board see a breakdown of what is the money that we've got for covid versus what we're putting in for our general fund and then one of my favorite topics I noticed the ptosis I was wondering if we could see a number of how many toses we have now how many we had last year and the split on how many of those are being paid for by the covid funds and how many are are we paying out of our general fund and then um

046lastly is a question about um that the time and it's not so much a presentation as things we keep hearing from parents the time that kids are spending um online isn't that a lot of that dictated by the state the state has said that there will be so many hours of one-to-one instruction and and break that down and what kind of instruction will be and that we will verify what that that instruction is so that is my comments and questions thank you great thank you Ms Mason other board questions and comments I would like to thank the counselors for creating a new website that's available um with a complete collection of resources that is available it's intended for students parents and staff members and I look forward to having it more links to it in

047different site locations on our webs on the website because I think that folks don't necessarily know where to look for it so it's it's an outstanding document it is it's exciting uh it's vibrant and so I hope that uh it will be made more visible um for folks to access and then um I did some um work regarding the funding Pages because normally in our lcap presentation there's a final document that's a summary of all the expenditures and I was looking for that and um Miss Gonzalez mentioned uh 19 million almost 20 million dollars and my calculations uh came up with 26 million dollars so I'm hoping that someone could explain uh my mistake and um of that 26 million dollars 10 million was for total contributing means that the action directly or uh principally

048supports English language Learners free and reduced lunch and special ed homeless or low-income students so I would just like clarification regarding the total numbers perhaps there's some numbers that uh some dollar amounts that are repeated between the different categories um the um so I I was looking for the detail I went back to our June 30th budget adoption and then I went to our 45-day adoption and was looking for the numbers uh within those documents and just was having a little bit of trouble in um cross-referencing the figures so more information like that would be helpful so uh it's not that I don't think these expenditures are um worthwhile I do believe we've been doing good work I'm also interested in knowing how much is left yet that we should be spending by December so

049great thank you Ms Mayo other board questions or comments okay I can just I would just kind of add on to it Miss Mayo is saying I think um first of all thank you for all the work it's a little overwhelming to read the plan itself um there's so much going on in there um and I know that the format is restrictive in a lot of ways so I appreciate all the detail that's in there um you know I think just again building on the to better understand uh the funding um and so Mrs Mayo's Point what is the actual total that we're looking at here um you know the prop 98 General funds to be used by December 30th um is a little confusing to me so just some clarification on you know if

050there's a can you really point to a specific dollar amount for that uh there were a couple of there's one area in particular that um you know I was when I was reading the description I was wondering if um the I guess I have to assume although that last section of prop 98 funds is a little confusing to me that we're talking about the CTE there's a whole section devoted to CT towards the end and so you know is that meaning that these dollars that we're getting um special dollars that were getting being used for that and so just raised some questions my mind is um some of them sound like things we were doing we've been doing ongoing and so you know wouldn't we be just using those same funds so I think just

051overall clarification on there's this you know General description of it but I think if too much as much as you can point to dollar amounts and further clarify um you know why something would be taken out of this pot in the example that I gave you know with why wouldn't it be I think it's called about work based learning coordinators which I understood we have on staff already and so what's different about that is I guess with the question so um yeah and I guess the only other thing it's very vague and my is this is just you know what kind of data are we going to be able to get from this process and what's required so we there's again so many impressive services and activities and at some point will that all be

052able to be Quantified uh in terms of the number of Outreach there was to students or families in crisis those kinds of things I think would help kind of bring it all to life a little bit more sure uh Dr Clark before we go much further do you uh do you want to either any thoughts or I I'm sure not having all the answers to the things that have been brought up but anything that you'd want to share before I looked uh Ms count for for comments and make a couple comments myself no I mean the the whole reason why we're we're presenting this today again is to get feedback is to get input and so um you know I know this this hearing is being recorded we'll go back and look at this and

053and um in some instances we'll make adjustments to the documents and others we just can't because the the questions are sort of outside of the scope of what it is that we're doing but um you know we're putting ourselves out there by asking for this feedback and so we don't necessarily we're not responding to what we're just taking notes of it and then we'll respond as we go back in and and continue to work on the document and the process okay uh Ms count okay thank you um I want to Echo a few of the things that have already been said um um let's see trustee Mason talking about um the question on the tosas I had that question as well um because that was a decision I thought we had made to cut a

054certain number of ptosas and was this a decision to bring them back and use um specifically the lmf llmf funding to do so I was not aware of that decision um and um and then in terms of what trustee mayo and Durkee were both saying in terms of the the fiscal transparency here um I would want us to make sure that this document is clear and even if the format doesn't lend itself to that that we can still add our own Clarity um you know to our own Community around that so having a you know perhaps a chart that is that lists out all the learning loss Medical education fund dollars with total and so that we can see and then out of that as trustee Mayo was saying you know how how many of

055those um were a yes under the category of are supporting those particular students that these funds are are targeted at um so I think that would be incredibly valuable information not only for our board but for our community for our budget advisory committee for example um and then in terms of the uh data in general as Ms durkey was saying I also had that question and I think that's something that could be added to the report under the section where uh page 14 where we talk about effectiveness of strategies um in there if we could Define what data we will use moving forward at the district level I can see some description in there about how an individual School may take this data and analyze it to to change their strategies and adapt throughout the

056course of the year but I think that's something we also should be doing at the district level to get a picture so that we don't just find out at the end of the year that our dashboard you know especially our red and orange categories are still as bad as ever right we want to know earlier what's going on with those so I would say there's a couple of pieces of of data that we should and it could be tracking even immediately I've been wondering what it what the numbers were for spring but we could also find out for fall I think our technology allows us to do this to where we could see um our total enrollment versus how many students have logged in at all into their classrooms um how many of those have

057submitted work and how many of those are on track to pass their classes right um and then if we could get that data overall as the district and then also by school and then also breaking it out in terms of some of our areas where we want to make sure that we are serving our underserved students which could be English language Learners homeless Foster youth African-American students Hispanic students to make sure that if if there's any sort of data showing that certain categories of students are struggling but then we have really targeted strategies to those students I think I was looking at some of the data from last year our Native American students suddenly had an increase in suspensions but we have very few Native American students in the district so that seems to me

058like that could be a very targeted solution right we should know who those students are and be able to figure out what's going to work for them talk to their families figure out what's what's going on there right so anyway so those are some ideas of big picture data that we could look at um then so that's just my reaction to what everyone else is saying here um the other uh pieces that I was looking at here are in the beginning of the report um so the other two categories that I'm looking at are family feedback are we taking that feedback and then um the data Effectiveness and the fiscal transparency so I think we've already gone over the fiscal transparency and the data Effectiveness but in terms of the family feedback I just want

059to go into that in a little bit more detail um on pages two and three I thought it was really great to be able to see the feedback that has come in from our families um you know whether it's the CAC the d-lac equity advisory committee the PAC I think that's fantastic that we have feedback from all of those groups one thing that I'm seeing across a number of them is a need for um multiple languages for um not only for us to be transmitting information out in multiple languages but also to identify families that uh tools that families that do not speak English or Spanish can use to contact school to receive support so I kind of seeing that as a theme of some of the feedback that we've received and what I'm not

060clear on is what where in the actual plan we are addressing that what is our strategy are we using a particular tool um I've heard of a few of them out there you know I think some schools are using Class Dojo I'm not clear whether that has two-way communication or just one way there's some are using talking points in in some cases we have bilingual staff um but I'm I I would love to see a breakdown of our bilingual staff you know of the I think we have 50 languages I'm not sure um spoken in our district of that you know how many students do we have that speak all the different languages and then versus how many staff do we have that speak those various languages they're able to do that that direct Outreach

061to the families that we so desperately need right now um so that was one I did see some other suggestions in here as well from the pack there was a question about more adaptive technology for students um and I'm not clear whether that's in our plan and then um whether we would continue to host the PSAT sat other college entrance assessments I know in some other districts they are providing that and I'm not clear where we where we stand on that particular item and whether it made it into our plan um let's see all right and then as we as we move forward you know just just being able to understand some of the specifics I think would be great there's a few places where there's something very general and it's it's not clear what

062it is so like on page four um high quality online instructional tools are being purchased to supplement core materials um and an exploration of interactive online materials would be great for us maybe a future study session or or uh some sort of session with the community to find to discuss what tools were looked at and what tools were chosen so that everyone's clear I think sometimes there's been some confusion out there did we purchase this or not um are we looking at it that sort of thing um on page five there is a mention of the PPE and the HVAC filters um on that I just had a question of what's kind of our status if we were to open up schools have we are the new filters in every location um do we have

063enough of them have we changed them after the smoke days um just kind of status on that um also on page five it mentions that mdusd has adopted curriculum and I'm not clear what curriculum we've adopted recently I'm not sure if that's distance learning tools that that's referring to um I'm almost there let's see oh and then okay on page 16 let's jump to page 16. um I too was impressed thank you uh trustee mayo and and trustee Durkee looking at the um counseling new counseling page really like that um I think there's a few things that could be added there because in this paragraph it mentions students of color and lgbtqia plus youth but then when you go to the counseling page I'm not really clear where those resources are I think we have

064resources that could be added and I understand that that that's a new page that's just been created but we do have you know our new board Equity policy our anti-racism resolution and we have our policy around transgender which I saw in the public comments here for tonight's meeting as well um that uh and I've heard this from families as well just the question of with distance learning how are we protecting our our transgender youth um and how are we creating a welcoming environment for all genders and um I know that in the The Suicide Prevention event that CDE just held last week they talked about um the idea that just um providing an environment where everyone um provides their preferred pronouns like on your Zoom name which I don't have here but I should um

065so you know like cherries can she her right just by a teacher modeling that and allowing students to put in their preferred name and gender um that that actually decreases suicide rates significantly in that community so that's the type of thing that is I believe it's already kind of covered by our board policy um we just need to adapt it to the current distance learning situation so I would love to see um that section on page 16 include that we will ensure that students proper students chosen names and pronouns will be used in distance learning [Music] and I think that's it from me thank you all right thank you uh I had 13 pages of notes but all the other trustees already mentioned them all so um I'll I'll say thank you to to staff

066I will Echo my fellow board members I think um you know as we get in uh further into the data that is something we will certainly want to see and I think we'll work with the superintendent as a governing board to determine some of that will be part of the superintendent's evaluation and one of the things we looked at the superintendent for is for us to jointly Define what are the key metrics that we want to look at and whether those measurements and you know as a a final piece I would just say I think we need to you know have a really clear understanding that for the rest of this school year the vast majority of mdusd students if not all mdusd students are probably going to be in distance learning and so we

067need to continue to find ways as board member Mason mentioned to help support those students you know if there are small groups of targeted student populations that we can welcome back safely into our schools we certainly want to explore that but I think that the the majority of our students will be spending the rest of the school year in in distance learning and so we need to continue to uh you know improve upon what we're only what slightly more than a month into and I think we've already learned a great deal continued to adapt but find more ways such as you know through cares and other ways to support our students as they move forward so that that's my only other comment so do we have any other questions or comments just you know um

068this this document is not replacing our our l cap and so it's not meant to um to go as deep and as wide as our as our lcap goes uh again it's just a um you know sort of a a mid-level plan of what it is that we're currently doing right now to you know to to support our students who are experiencing learning loss so um so again lots of you know lots of good feedback and like I said we will definitely um use you know try to be more just descriptive in certain areas and maybe try to try to tweak some areas but um you know but again this is this is something that we haven't necessarily worked on in isolation and um you know we're working with our with our partner districts and

069you know having having think groups and and talking about you know what's appropriate to go on this plan and what doesn't necessarily belong in this plan so um so I I mean I'd love to hear all the feedback and I love to hear how engaged everyone is but but again um you know just just kind of wanted to to lay that out there and I'm sure when the time comes Miss sacks can you know can explain you know a little bit more in detail if need be of really you know if if our plan is hitting all the points that you know that we're required to do um you know for the for the county and state so just to let you know anything else mistakes yeah it's just one last point to exactly what

070you shared we did allow the county office a sneak peek at the draft and actually we had a conversation today and our draft is actually being shared with other districts they felt as something that's you know never kind of been done before with regards to can you tell a narrative story about what you know where your district has been since the closure occurred and how you're pulling together the bits and pieces and launching forward and a situation that again is pretty Uncharted Territory um and so but again your feedback is is really really you know helpful and we're going to be collecting it there's again two surveys on our district website under the El Cap one in English and one in Spanish um the templates they're also available on the CDE website and other languages

071so folks can take a look at what they look like and I want to thank you trustee count for um for that feedback early in the game because I think that's that's definitely helpful we're really hoping to have all the input and feedback um collected uh late Thursday so then we can put the finishing touches on a draft for Mondays um board meeting and again this is a document that can be brought back later in the event that our context changes our budget changes or anything such as that and then in January is when we start to take a look at our new lcap which is again the more comprehensive document where we've got tons of data a lot of information our entire budgets included so um to Dr Clark's point this is a very

072um a petite a very small narrow kind of focused document but one that is really focused on those learning loss mitigation funds I was gonna say let's be sure to thank someone at the state for calling this the l cap along with the lcap but it's not actually the lcat because that's not confusing at all so thank you Miss axon Dr Clark for helping uh explain the difference there but Ms count um one more thing that came to mind as you as you both were speaking is um uh to trustee Mayo's Point um the uh the question of um at what is the mechanism for us to discuss the um the choices as to how the learning loss mitigation funds are spent have they already all been allocated and spent or how much is left

073that still needs to be decided um and spent by December um where are we in that process and will we be discussing that as you know through this document or are we discussing this through uh our discussion of our budget um in a different agenda item but um but I think that that is something that we have not as a board really gotten specific details on how the money's intended to be spent and what the strategies are and then the measurements of Effectiveness this this as to your point the this document is one piece in terms of how we report that to the state but in terms of the actual decisions about the funding that's something that I'm I'm curious about because I do see in some cases you know large amounts of funding that

074are going to things like professional development teacher training as opposed to you know specific um items that would go directly to students um so there's kind of the weighing factors of those the items that are that are listed as no under contributing versus those that aren't listed as yes okay great so uh we're going to move along uh to item 4.2 which is near and dear to my heart the review of the roadmap to a strategic technology plan so uh Dr Clark I'll leave it to you to introduce uh this item and the staff who will be presenting yep so so again I just want to um I just you know for first of all I want to just you know this is here it is a you know Tuesday afternoon and we're having this

075meeting but um we we have a great deal of work that needs to take place within our within our technology department and how it interacts and relates and supports our entire district and I think that um definitely um having 29 000 students and over 2 000 staff you know really Embrace um distance learning starting last March and continuing on has really sort of um in increased that um you know that urgency and so what we want to do today is sort of we want to share sort of the component of a technology plan and and and and as we um you know work towards really developing and implementing a um a relevant um up-to-date technology plan to meet the needs that we have now but also the needs that we're going to um have in

076the future we want to start that discussion now because it's gonna is going to require um you know lots of input lots of um you know lots of these these types of discussions and presentations and um you know and really a a shift in in how we do things so I'm going to introduce some Dr Lisa Gonzalez and uh Robert siffford director of technology and our in our CBO so they will take this item with their team thank you Dr Clark I appreciate that um president Lawrence members of the board members of the community um it's actually I'm really pleased to be speaking to you today uh about our road map for uh a strategic technology plan um I've been here as I think you know just over six weeks as you can see from

077the the backdrop I haven't even quite had a chance to settle into my office at this point uh so much to do but I'll get there um so basically uh we are really presenting today a road map for a sustainably supported and student-centered uh learning focused uh technology plan that really also addresses the the infrastructure security and Core Business Systems uh needs that we have to really Empower this learning uh and if we could go to the next slide please I want to start where we really should always start um and it's not always something that I.T folks always keep you know front of mind to start here but we really need to do that and I think making sure that we do that is is critically important so our students live in a different

078world than I think most of us here grew up in myself certainly included I look at my 13 year old my youngest uh 13 year old um and you know she's tapping away on her iPhone and uh becoming a bit of a YouTuber um and so I think back 13 years ago to 2007 and I'd like to kind of start there just with a really really brief history lesson I suppose of technology in the last um you know the last 13 years so just to kind of set the tone here 2007 was the year that Facebook was was really launched um I think most of us here can sort of think a long time before that um and and really it's very instructive to think 2007 was not that long ago do you think if

079you think back to what you were doing in 2007 um that's when Facebook started and so that's one of the first really major social media um platforms that really changed a lot of the way that we interact with each other online 2010 uh the first iPad uh this was the launch of the first iPad in 2010 that's 10 years ago um now that's that's a lot for my 13 year old but it's not a lot for me uh at 47 years of age looking back 13 years not very 10 years not not very far ago 2015 uh was uh the point at which we reached 50 Market penetration of uh cell phones smartphones so that's just five years ago that half of folks um in our country had a smartphone uh with access to the

080internet five years ago jumping ahead to 2033 uh that's 13 years from now uh and the way that's relevant to me is think back 13 years to 2007 think ahead 13 years to 2033 2033 is when our our current class of kindergartners is going to graduate so when we think of 2020 uh when we place 2020 in the middle there where we are right now the question really to me is what can we do to prepare them for a world uh that we don't really know what it's going to look like um we don't you know when you think of the differences between 2007 and 2020 and the difference is that we're going to see 13 years from now when our kindergartens graduate what's that going to look like and how can we do what

081we need to do to make sure that they're ready for that so if we can go to the next slide one of the organizations doing work in this area and there are many many um I could have uh brought an example from from a dozen organizations doing this but when we talk about the future of work and what um what the world is going to look like and what we need to prepare kids for the answer that the world economic Forum has come up with is we don't really know exactly um we do know that there's going to be an increased premium on digital and social emotional skills we know that there's an increased need to be able to collaborate with peers residing all over the place all over the globe understanding cultural nuances and

082and using digital tools through which these interactions can happen so that's that's a really important um kind of way to think about what education needs to look like into the future and how technology kind of fits in there so if we can move to the next slide just to take this example just a little further and again this is just one example um but the world economic Forum has put together an education 4.0 framework uh and again this is this is just an example this is not necessarily something that mdusd should adopt you know in in this kind of um framework but it gives you an idea of where a lot of the thinking is happening in our in our uh you know among our think tanks and and folks that are really considering what

083education needs to look like and how technology can can Empower that um I won't go into this in any detail at all um but you can see that um really this is grounded in the idea of the fourth Industrial Revolution where technology is really embedded and Inseparable from society it's no longer just a place that we go uh you know we go to Facebook to look at look for other people and then we back out again that's not really the world we're in now we're in this world where technology is just embedded in everything we do so if we could go to the next slide turning to us in mdusd uh what skills do our students need because that's really where the rubber hits the road on this what skills do our students need to

084thrive in this kind of world so looking at it from one lens and this is just one lens the lens of employment and who would you hot air as an employer graduating from mdusd would you hire student a or would you hire student B uh so student a has a more traditional sort of Education with a lot of the content areas represented the way we've done this for for a number of years um and not not to denigrate that at all uh because that's that's been foundational to a lot of the successes that our society has had student B on the other hand has all of that Content Mastery but they have some additional skills they have modern 21st century learning skills they have the ability to use computers in a really thorough and thoughtful

085way interact with those they have the ability to learn in a variety of modalities that's obviously becoming more important in 2020 since March where uh you know that's really been sort of thrust Upon Us in a way that none of us really anticipated and then things around computer science but more particularly computational thinking so ideas around how to break down uh how to break down tasks how to break down thinking into component parts to really get at um solutions to problems so um obviously in the in the kind of context we're in today over of a resume meeting uh I think you know this is more of a rhetorical question than a than something obviously ask for responses on but but you know the question of which student would you hire I think is a

086is a valid um question for for the role of Technology um in our in our world and in our educational priorities uh on the next slide thank you what we do have in mbusd is we we don't have to start from scratch with a lot of this work of course as you all know a lot of the work a lot of the foundations have been laid for this work this is a board adopted portrait of an mdusc graduate and I won't go into all of these in any detail because this is work that's been been done in the past but you can see there that a lot of those uh a lot of those pieces kind of mirror uh the the uh the concepts that were presented by the the world economic forum uh when

087we're talking about effective and ethical users of Technology um when we're talking about effective communicators folks that can think in complex ways uh take you know be more self-directed in their learning when necessary those sorts of things are things that we already State as a district that are important to us and important to our our kids so moving along to the next slide please this sort of brings us to uh you know for our purposes in mdusd why is technology important for this um and I think it's it's a it's a question that's really important for us to ask because there's sort of a an assumption that it's there it's the way we do a lot of things in our society most of our Industries have been really transformed by technology integration into uh their

088uh just a way of doing business the way that that um the way that they operate our society uh when we think of our activities at home and in the community a lot of these are are proctored through technology a lot of these use technology in one way or another you can open your garage door with your cell phone today I certainly didn't grow up with that there's a lot of things there that that are are just around us so it's important in education that we're thinking about why we use technology why technology is important and the real answer is right that at that top bullet point it's not about technology it's about learning how can we make this about learning and make sure that that's our Focus technology fits in where um where uh

089fits in a place where um learning is what's important our students um deserve Equitable access to educational experiences that's important to to keep in mind because technology while we often think of it um in terms of a challenge in terms of how much how can we get technology to all of our students the reality is if we do this correctly if we do this thoughtfully technology is actually a creator of equity has the potential to be a creator of equity and help students to graduate and have opportunities for careers college and life that they may not have had without that modern educational resources help students prepare for a complex technology-rich world so it's important to note that when we look at why technology is used in a particular educational setting um it's not just about

090the technology it's about how it's used and how it supports that learning and then Educators um of course uh and and this is of course has has come right to the fore since March is Educators rely on Modern Technologies to empower effective instruction that is of course that's not going to change um you know we all we're all talking about sort of a new normal um after um we are able to deal effectively with the pandemic and and the changes that that's created but we now have um you know every student and every teacher uh in our district engaging with each other through technology and that's going to continue to create an impetus for educators to rely on these Technologies um you know in in the kinds of contexts that the technology is valuable for

091so if we could move to the next slide so there's a number of challenges and opportunities that we have as a district this is maybe not a complete list um but I think it's a it's a pretty solid list to talk about or to at least sort of plant the seeds of here are the things that need to be addressed in a in a really systemic and thoughtful technology plan challenges include uh as I previously mentioned making sure that we have Equitable access to devices and connectivity we have a lot of technology in our district as you all know when you visit schools when you see students using Technologies we've got a lot of Technology it's not to be completely blunt it's not always equitably distributed through our district and addressing that is an important

092thing for all of our students and teachers and families supporting distance learning of course is very topical right now but that obviously has been in place prior to uh you know our full distance learning model and it will continue to be in place after in one way or another um we need to make sure that professional learning is there so that all of our staff and teachers have the ability to meet the needs that they have in learning how to use technology effectively um ensuring student safety and privacy is very critical um we need to make sure that um you know all of our use of Technology all of our students use of technology is really a safe and uh and private uh so that information is is uh kept um where it should be

093used for its appropriate purposes and not for other purposes uh and that takes a lot of effort to do that um making sure that we have a strong cyber security posture making sure that our district network is secure from um external uh forces that we wouldn't want um uh in our Network we need to make sure that we have adequate Enterprise level Technology support that means we have a district of uh around 29 000 students um well over 2 000 teachers and and many more staff uh and we are by any definition an Enterprise level I.T operation um and I think that's important that we can we conceive of ourselves that way to make sure that we can provide the services necessary for all of our users all of the users of technology in our

094district in Equitable and responsive way and then finally sustainability which I've already addressed couple of opportunities um that we have and I'll be brief but supporting digital learning tools that support meaningful instruction so really making sure that as we've been doing especially especially since March but long before that of course making sure that the the tools that we use are really meaningfully selected to support instruction and that we continue to select those tools in ways that are really valuable for students um effective uh in in promoting good learning um and are safe another opportunity uh is to modernize some of our um some of our business systems uh business plus is a great example um we need to be fully utilizing the scope of business plus there are modules within there uh that we are

095not necessarily using to their full capacity so examining these processes is absolutely critical uh to make sure that we're using the tools we have effectively so that we can really focus on our Core Business of educating kids coordinating our technology purchasing is another we as many districts do um we have a rather decentralized method of purchasing technology which is a challenge in the sense that it's um it creates some inequities in our district uh in terms of the availability of Technology from site to site so trying to coordinate that purchasing better so we can take advantage of um you know any discounts available with bulk purchasing making sure that we're Distributing and supporting that technology as effectively as possible and then there's another one that may be out on the horizon a little bit but

096really thinking about one-to-one technology programs is another opportunity we have a lot of schools that have enough devices for every student and and staff member but do we really think of them as ways as as one-to-one programs where every student has a device 24 7 for their own use and so thinking about those as we know many other districts have done successfully thinking about how to leverage those that technology uh to make sure that we're we're providing um education for our students that is uh really timely and effective and maybe goes beyond the classroom all right if we could Advance one more slide so so this is really um this is really a call to action uh around a long-range strategic technology plan uh we need to have a really focused really thoughtful approach to

097how we're going to move towards um having a full plan in place that will really guide us into the future and when I say long range a lot of plans in the past have been three to five years I think we need to go I think we need to think a little bigger than that I think really a 10-year plan uh is appropriate for us but the key piece is here it's got to be focused on learning and teaching it's got to start with why are we doing this for our kids what is it we we're doing and as I said we've got many many of those pieces in place you just heard about our learning continuity plan um uh process and and that's focused on how are we supporting kids learning and that's the

098focus of a technology plan any good technology plan for us as well um Core Business Services of course are are a piece of that um but in in the scheme of things ultimately they support teaching and learning as well so this is really uh where we need to go I think as a district so um in closing uh really the second last slide here I have if we could Advance one more and I'll dive in just a little bit here um because I think it's really important that we consider how to make sure that the these components of a technology plan are in place in a really considered and thoughtful plan um firstly of course learning and teaching we need to consider all of these different options um that's kind of uh in our face

099right at the moment around distance and hybrid and face-to-face models but I do think those will continue in one way or another and we need to be ready for those we need to think about modern learning modern learning styles modern learning techniques modern pedagogies around especially digital literacy making sure that students have the ability to learn digitally to produce content digitally to think digitally and then good digital citizenship habits as well so we need to be thinking about how students how we're going to support students in making mistakes in learning what it is to be a good digital citizen learning how to behave appropriately appropriately online second bullet point Equitable available technology we need to make sure that our technology is not only equitably distributed but we need to make sure it's available it needs

100to be available when needed it needs to be something that we're not having to think about is this going to work or is this not to any more uh to any greater extent than necessary and so one of the things that is absolutely critical I believe is making sure that of course a robust Network architecture exists and to do that really requires a full assessment of our Network to really look at every building every uh I won't say every cable as such but really you know to the point of every cable every wireless access point we need to really you know dive into our data center and really do a full Network assessment so that we can really identify how we're going to move forward with this and what are the priorities there we need

101to make sure that we have sustainability if we're going to build a robust Network and maintain a robust Network sustainability of that but also of the user facing devices for instance is sustainable so we need to establish appropriate refresh Cycles we need to be thinking about not only what does it cost to purchase this equipment but what does it cost to support this equipment going forward and when are we going to replace it are we going to replace it in you know three years five years you know those are decisions that need to be made so that we can anticipate what that looks like into the future and how much we need to be able to support this into the future and then I did also mention I already mentioned the Enterprise approach to Technology

102support but just briefly really if we're going to have these kinds of approaches to technology and really systematizing how we think of Technology making sure that our um you know the test Department who by the way is uh and I and I as I said I've been here six weeks and this is a really phenomenal group of people this is um it I am I'm really proud to be part of this department um because they are really working incredibly hard um to support uh a whole new model of how we're how we're doing technology to help our kids learn and our teachers teach uh and so you know really making sure that they have the support they need they have the structures in place to be able to address work tickets as they come up

103to make sure that they have the information they need they have the documentation they need to be able to provide that kind of Enterprise level uh support um third bullet security safety and privacy always on the top of our minds of course uh cyber security have already addressed but um it is in this world where we uh we see uh ransomware attacks on school districts on other organizations on a daily basis uh we need to make sure that our systems are secure uh as secure as possible um and making make sure that we have the right Tools in place the right monitoring place monitoring in place and that we have an approach that really uh elevates and makes sure that we have a a really robust cyber security posture and then additionally on the on

104the safety and privacy piece uh on the side that side of things safe and secure digital tools um we know that uh you know not every digital tool is made the same um we have a world where we have uh a lot of different uh vendors that are that have a lot of different tools some of them are great some of them are not so great some of them are great in certain circumstances some of them are not and so we need to be thinking really clearly and continuing to think about how we're going to deploy digital tools and make sure that their policies and our policies about using those tools are very safe and secure best practices this is this is I think another um really important piece is um we are in this

105we are experts in many in many ways we're not all experts at everything uh nobody is technology is a very uh Dynamic uh world uh it is a place where if you think back to a technology department of 30 years ago we had folks that knew most everything in in how a technology operation could work that that doesn't exist today there is no expert in it there are experts in portions of I.T uh and I think it's really important that we continue to have uh as much input and as much uh help and assistance with uh providing us with um ideas and places to bounce ideas off and making sure that we've got um really a good lens on the best practices that exist uh nationally locally regionally and I think uh digital advisors has

106been providing that for us this is not a forever kind of thing uh our work with digital advisors I don't think is a forever effort it's a uh you know it's a let's get us to a place to where we need to be uh kind of effort um so I'll leave that at that and then finally funding um when we talk about funding uh we really have um some opportunities there um but we need to use them responsibly so responsible use of course of major J we have access to e-rate funding uh through the uh the FCC the federal uh Federal program that provides us with reimbursements for a lot of our infrastructure and uh internet connectivity expenditures that we will obviously continue and that provides us with a ton of ability to do things

107we otherwise wouldn't be able to do so really working those into our approach and with that I will uh if we can move to the last slide I will ask if anybody else Dr Gonzalez uh Dr Clark have anything to add for taking questions yeah no thank you Robert that was a great deal of information shared with it with the board at this time and so now just as staff we just want to just listen and let the board have a discussion about this about what they've heard we'll take copious this notes and um and and we'll go from there but at least we have a we have a framework of really what we're facing in technology and what we'd like to accomplish over the over the upcoming months and years so um with that

108I'll turn it back over to president Lawrence yep thank you uh board comments and questions okay um thank you it's good to to meet you Mr sydford and and um I appreciate the work that you've put into this and the and the the structure of the plan that you've laid out um I think where we're coming from is um a feeling that this is a long time coming um you know we've had an expired plan for some time um and the urgency is real um and so we really need to get into specifics I think and action um responsibly of course with the right decisions but um but I think action is one of the key pieces um we you know to to the point of the first half or three quarters of your of

109your presentation are things that you know I think we've been aware of for quite some time I have a daughter who's in seventh grade and when she started kindergarten her principal here in mdusd was talking about those things um as well so we understand the importance we understand the need um and I think now we just have the urgency particularly with our current distance learning so a couple of things one one piece that I would like to see in the components of the plan development is how are we involving the community in the process I think that there used to be a technology advisory committee I haven't really seen that active since I joined the board in 2018. um and though there was a uh with the remote learning committees that were happening uh in

110in planning for this fall there was a technology committee and I did appreciate the way that was constituted because it was really great to be able to hear a discussion happen between um you know teachers and staff but also parents and principals and and having the tis staff there as well there were a number of recommendations that group made that also I think have not yet been implemented um and it was really it was really great to hear them even just talking about the help desk what what could that look like versus what it has looked like in the past you know we had a teacher in adult learning who had some some experience and expertise talking with with the test staff and really a meeting of the minds about what what's really possible there

111in terms of streamlining it and making it accessible not only for staff but also for families so I would say if you haven't seen the notes from that group take a look and let's figure out how we can really tap into the expertise of our parents and families as well I think a number of parents have come forward and asked to join the technology team and help out we have people who are you know Network experts and and computer scientists and all kinds of things so I think we have a rich community that we can really tap into in terms of expertise and also resources so that's one piece um secondly I would say the um I appreciate you saying that uh responsible use of measure J um I think that's that's really the first

112step in terms of um uh the the bigger picture technology backbone that we need to make sure is in place um so I look forward to seeing a specific proposal for measure J and um you know how quickly we can get that into place so that all of our school sites you know have the Broadband access that we need I mean even right now in some sites just having all the teachers on at the same time it can get slow and and challenging so um there's definitely some urgency there on the measure J piece though we have been spending money on digital advisors so far um I would say the last presentation that they gave to our board was very very general all stuff that we already knew um not really I'm not sure what

113the investment was uh worth there so um going forward with digital advisors if we're going to continue to spend money on those Consultants it really needs to be something that's you know not obvious something that is really an expertise that we're tapping into if they really do have you know connections with um the state level resources then then I would like to see them actually bring those to our district um you know and if we're not going to use them then let's not pay them okay and then lastly the section on uh teaching learning and teaching you talk about when the components you have distance hybrid face-to-face modern learning um so again that's that's very very general at this stage but I think um if we can look at the specifics um of of our

114plans for for teaching and learning in terms of technology I know that there's a list of you know tools that our teachers or parents have been looking for um how are we making those decisions who's getting the input whether it's you know Zoom or Google meet whether it's zern or you know um Khan Academy whatever right um we need to get those decisions into place get all the feedback and then move forward um and then along those lines too I think under teaching and learning would be that same data about access you talk about the Equitable access and I love that um but we really need to make sure that all of our students are able to have access to distance learning right now um so for the students who either have not logged on

115at all or very rarely if we can collect the data as to how many of those are there and what's going on you know do they not have internet do they um not do they have a device but they don't know how to use it I'm hearing a lot of that that there are you know newcomer families and things that are just having trouble figuring out how to use the device so if we can figure out where the glitch is then we can aim the strategy I think really focus it on the answer right if the answer is just that we need to be providing Tech help to our families maybe there are Partnerships out there like like the Tech Exchange that some other schools districts have partnered with where you can text in any

116different language and and get help with your device so but for our district I'm not clear where we stand right now how many of our students have access to the internet and a device and how many of them are logging on so including that data in our results will be helpful thank you Miss count other board members right uh so I would um I do have a comment yes Ms mail so I um communicated earlier with Mr sidford and I appreciate the responses that you provided to me uh they were most helpful um the um no so most of you know my vintage here on the board although I'm not a digital native I've been involved with computers and Technology since 1985-86 and Pleasant Hill Elementary School was one of the first to purchase Commodores

117for uh computer instruction and we sewed covers and did instruction and printed manuals and the kids learned coding at that particular time of course it's Advanced and you know Apple took off providing a computer for every school office so um then that was the first uh Journey perhaps for individual School sites to step into computers um you know there's the story in West Contra where uh computers set for years in the warehouse and weren't delivered to school sites and used fortunately Mount Diablo has been advancing I'm grateful in one way to the pandemic if for nothing else it has forced every individual in the district who wants to be involved in education to move into the digital world and this has advanced our instruction I believe uh greatly there are uh cautions I remember last

118spring when Mrs agili made a presentation about the um overwhelming digital contact and for house for some students it's not appropriate so we need to find the appropriate approaches for each individual student and perhaps you know we need to be mindful of those students who are taking home their Chrome devices do they have younger assemblies that could be negatively affected by the exposure to the digital screens the because it does change the brain development if you believe in that particular science I'm excited to see this progress the I think what's important for us to remember is we have been aware of many of the needs over these years but there's always been a pandemic that has happened that has set us back whether it was a need for health benefits or it was a need

119for employee salary days or it was a need for construction but now yes based on this pandemic we are going to need to focus on how we next spend our measure Jane funds and how we convince our community uh how critical this is I look forward to working with everyone I know that you'll each take some time to educate me better so that I am a better uh digital user and uh but I'll keep up with you and we'll understand more and more how our students are engaging in this world I strongly support the digital citizenship and whether that's delivered in the classroom or the by by The Librarians or by parent volunteers that is going to be essential in our work with our students and our staff as we move forward in this particular

120Journey thank you great thank you Ms Mayo Ms jerky or Ms Mason so I don't really have any additional comments I just want to say thank you for the presentation um I did um appreciate the inclusion of The Graduate profile that was developed in um and uh you know it was just it your presentation I appreciate that context as and yes we have all kind of been down you know in that world for some time but you know very limited in what we've been able to do so it's great to see that recognized so thank you so uh Mr sydford I'd say thank you for the presentation I think that you know there many of the points are well taken um you know I I will say from the private sector standpoint um you know

121from a a hiring perspective digital facility is one of the first things that you know we look for in in hiring people and having um people who who have the skills um and and there are quite a few who don't um and so that's one of the things I think we need to continue to look at as we strive to you know help our students graduate being College ready or career ready and that you know for many of them who can transition into jobs upon graduation um that you know need the ability to navigate today's Digital World um you know I'm reminded that when I uh came to the board eight years ago that you know at that time we weren't uh we were not broadcasting our board meetings not every uh teacher had an

122email address that was a a controversial issue and and we've come a long way in many respects but every month when I opened the envelope containing uh the direct deposit summary of the board stipend um I'm reminded that there there is still a ways to go I think that you know having a student-centric approach to this and parent-centric approach you know I think they're um Ms Mayo's point about you know when we try to find the silver lining in this pandemic and its acceleration of a digital transformation and you know teachers uh getting a crash course in zoom and Google classroom and and things like that um and but at the same time recognizing you know how do we continue to find ways to become a more customer-centric organization in terms of you know when

123we ask parents to still come into an office to turn in um address verifications what can we do electronically how can we help them and then keeping in mind I think uh Mr Sid for you touched on this and I heard other trustees mention this that making sure that as we lay out our technology plan that it is most influenced and most developed by the people who are closest to the classroom that instead of a top-down directive of here is what it looks like instead because technology is not a replacement um it needs to be a complement to the teaching that is occurring and so it is a tool to facilitate teaching but not a replacement for teaching and so that that we have a clear understanding of what our teachers need what our students

124need what is working what is not and being very close to that as well as I certainly agree with the concepts that are measure J funds should be very targeted towards long-lasting infrastructure that provides access and not sure short-term needs that will Outlast the that won't come close to to matching the the time frame of the bond so you know for us to purchase technology that in two or three years will be outdated using Bond money is not a wise expenditure but instead continuing to look at the infrastructure and I think we do see that there are gaps and you know I I I've said that if the state of California can find a hundred billion dollars to to build High-Speed Rail to to Bakersfield we should also be investing in infrastructure and you know

125even when you go from Walnut Creek or Pleasant Hill or Concord BART station into San Francisco and being able to actually access the internet in a reasonable way and things like that but I think we're seeing that that we need to make sure every student has accessed um and the the understanding of the technology that they need to be successful as we move forward so I appreciate the presentation and I also I'm delighted to see us building expertise in-house so that we are not relying on outside consultants and instead continuing to build that in-house so I appreciate that as well and you know thank you to Dr Gonzalez for helping uh us identify folks who can get us in that direction and make that transition away from outside Consultants those are some great points I

126just wanted to um to Echo that uh what you just said about um the expertise that we have in-house and and the need for the the actual users to be the ones to to be designing what we're what we're using um I I don't know if you know Mr sedford that we um uh in Mount Diablo have hosted the stem Symposium for the region for a number of years um and our teachers are the ones who are presenting and leading that um and teachers come from other districts to come to that event so you'll want to make sure to reach out and meet um you know some of the experts that are out there you know Shauna Haas is one of our award-winning teachers who runs that and there are many others as well and

127so um so tapping into that expertise before deciding to go and you know hire an outside consultant for something that that we have the expertise for in-house I think is really key um and to trustee Mayo's point I think that you know we really really are at a transformational stage right now up up until March there was a digital divide but all school districts could assume that well as long as we have technology on site and in our local libraries and in our community that you know students didn't need to have access at home right they could come to school early stay late go to the library access technology when needed but it wasn't uh it wasn't something that was necessary it was just kind of a luxury at home you know like HBO or

128something and I think all of us need to make that mind shift and that's what creates the urgency um you know around us in this environment is that really if we can figure out the data for our school district about you know how many of our students have access or don't and what our needs are and be able to then express that to the state then together we can really advocate for you know Broadband access for all for example right which is needed not just for education but also for employment and so many other Essentials in the world today so um appreciate all the work that you're doing and looking forward to seeing how the plan comes together great thank you Miss count um yes Dr Clark okay I just wanted to jump in just

129real quick before we moved on but um you know just just two important things is that you know of course you know we're gonna the only reason why we're doing this is to support learning in the classroom so so the reason why we have technology the reason why we have the structure and whatnot is to support learning what we want to ship what we want to shift towards is is when when teachers and when when staff you know who are directly working with kids have ideas or have needs we want the conversation to go from staff saying that this is what we are trying to do and then Robert and his team can say okay this is how we can then support you and make that happen instead of no we can't do that because

130our system or no because this is what we have so so really the whole detail in it all is really creating that that collaboration and then I and then I just wanted to touch and I'm going to ask Dr Gonzalez to kind of expand on this a little more but I think that we're not quite fully understanding the role of digital advisors um you know as one of our Consultants they are not um you know they are not here to help us with these um real you know um how many devices should we get and should we go with iPad or Chromebook things like that I mean they're really helping us from a you know from a higher level like for example I I know you've heard of the you know the how they helped

131us uncover you know the millions of dollars we were missing out on on erase trade and things to that nature and so they're much more of a high level think partner but I think Dr Gonzalez can probably explain it a lot better than I can but I really would like you know just for her just briefly to touch on it so that we don't have this misconception of what they're here for and what they're not here for so Dr Gonzalez your your summary right there was a really good one they're not only a thought partner but really they have connections across every single realm of technology and they're really helping us build that Foundation especially with the measure J funds I can't tell you how many times in the spring once they arrived and started

132helping us that they were reviewing every proposal coming my direction and and what they were helping me understand was you know it can't be knee-jerk you've got to have step one and step two and step three and you know you're getting proposals for Band-Aids and you really need to address the entire system and so it's not it's not the most effective way to try to look at and spend your funds and I just want to point out some real key numbers uh to the board that first of all they helped us work with our assessment system to not only get out of the contract but they helped us negotiate a fifty thousand dollar uh credit back to the district that has pretty much paid for the bulk of their first year of work um they

133worked with us on a school messenger discount and are now helping us vet some other uh companies that we can look at but that was valued an eighteen thousand dollar discount that they were able to get for us um with regard to our transition to to G Suite because they had done that before in other districts they were able to help us negotiate twenty seven thousand dollars off of that contract we saved another nine thousand dollars in just the approach to sys Cloud that we needed they were able to uncover 2.7 million dollars worth of funding that we didn't properly address in e-rate and a very short window for another e-way e-rate um Broadband increase bandwidth uh just opened up it's only going to be available for one month we are currently without an e-rate

134consultant and they found a very infrequently used but very legal approach to going back and taking a look at old rfps that have been submitted in other areas and using those to piggyback if you will into a way to get that funding request in right away that would enable us to tap into another another million dollars worth of bandwidth for our schools that we wouldn't have had and regardless of the expertise that individuals like Robert and the folks on his team or even myself or Dr Clark would have these are high level relationships and strategy that you know it would probably take us seven eight nine ten years to be able to develop and we're able to tap into that practically 24 7. um so I wanted to make sure that everybody understood that digital

135advisors relationship and I'd be happy to put that in the organizational update as well I I think that's really useful and I I would just say I think the the presentation we received from them really didn't touch on any of that and that would have been very useful so I think that um your your updates on that are very well taken and it certainly seems uh to be a better use of funds to have them helping and certainly helping pay for themselves uh in that versus the the presentation which was pretty generic and did didn't really touch on those types of things so I greatly appreciate that clarification so okay do we have anything else on this item otherwise we'll move along yeah okay uh so we're going to move along to facilities and uh

136Dr Clark over to you yeah but I'm gonna I'm gonna just quickly turn this over to the um to the to the team so um so we can discuss this again um you know um I know the board took action a couple months ago at reducing some of the rates for some of our facilities for for child care I know we have issues with some of our field use and we just want to have a conversation about what's going on with our with our facilities and our need to continue to revisit this and um clearly we don't want to get too far without the board so that's why we're having this so Lisa I'm gonna turn it over to you and then you can turn it over to whoever's gonna to if Melanie's going to

137leave this or or someone else so go for it I'd like to introduce our assistant director of Maintenance and operations um Melanie Melanie can Melanie kozlow she can go ahead and introduce um Janet and make sure that she gets the title right because I never want to misspeak on the title but you know we really want to make sure that the key individuals who are doing the work are here and sharing with the board so it was really important that we have other staff join us tonight and then I believe our uh that associate general counsel Cesar Alvarado will be opening up uh part of this as well so team take it away hi good evening everyone um before we uh let Cesar handle our first slide I do want to introduce Janet Richardson she

138is our administrative secretary here in maintenance and operations um she's definitely is the glue that holds us together on most days um as well as um with the recently departed counterpart of hers through retirement um she has taken on the day-to-day activity of our Civic permit system um as well as all the behind the scenes that she takes care of with facility um use so Janet um I just wanted to introduce you to the board um Cesar if you're there I think we can go um to the first slide okay good evening everyone and we we had a discussion brief uh before on this issue and I think that the main point to bring here for the board is that the issue of facilities use fees and what those fees are they are dictated by

139Statute and so the basic point is that under the Civic Center act uh facilities need to be be made available to a number of entities uh and those the fees that are charged are dictated by Statute but basically what it means is that the district has to be able to calculate what it calls its direct cost that is it needs to calculate uh the costs that are of operating maintaining maintaining all of our school facilities that includes repair restoration and reverse prefer refurbishment of school facilities and grounds so that it can then have a a set amount that it will charge to all of its uh all of the uh entries using our facilities depending on whether those entities are either members of the public or they are serving a an educational interest they are

140non-profit serving and educational interests or they are our school facility they are actually School related entities that are are within the educational uh program of Mount Diablo Unified School District so we do have a board policy that directly addresses this issue as to what the amounts are going to be charged just we refer you to board policy one three three zero which uh currently sets forth how those charges are being implemented but I can think one of the key issues for now is trying to actually recalculate what those costs are for us going forward and go ahead Melanie great thank you Cesar um and one of the things that we did upload to the docket um besides just the information on the slide is the full verbiage for the Civics interact for your reading pleasure

141um so we'll go ahead and turn it over to Janet now [Music] so I'm behind this and it's kind of something that's near and dear to my heart so um we currently have 23 Active Child Care leases and 22 of them are at elementary sites and we have one at a middle school of those lease agreements we hold we have 21 are actually land leases that vary in size from 1920 square feet to 4980 square feet um every single one of those leases have a rental amount of one dollar per year there are two lease agreements where the sites occupy classrooms at the sites and they um average they're they're 128 a year on one of the sites for our classroom and another um use is two classrooms and they pay 300 a month that

142includes all of the utilities we've also uploaded an example of one of the lease agreements for you to look at next slide So currently um all of we we bill out every month for trash trash services sewer and water all of our sites have pay their own PG e except for a couple we have one site that pays all of their own utilities so we don't Bill them for anything we have two sites that pay for trash only and one site actually has a lease that states they do not pay for any utilities we analyze all of our utilities this year and um enacted a a new rate effective October of 2020 based on that formula the average amount that is paid for utilities is 145 dollars a month okay thank you next slide um

143one of the things we wanted to touch base on and just kind of acknowledge is how our child care providers were affected because of the pandemic um and the subsequent school closures so what we understand is that most of our child most of the child care providers on our campuses went from a two to four hour business on average to an eight to ten hour a day business before covid the majority of our child care providers typically provided care in their own building on our campus there were some exceptions with some after school maybe math club or homework club or something like that where a campus or sorry a provider would rent for a portion of the afternoon a classroom or two in order to hold those programs now due to local and state level

144authorities and Licensing some providers required additional space on campus in order to meet the families that they serve uh child care centers are required to submit a facility use permit for space they need outside of their own building and they are required to pay for the um and are required to pay uh for the rental and custodial if applicable uh one um of the questions that we've been hearing or concerns that we've been hearing um is that we raised rates during the pandemic and so one of the clarifications that I just wanted to make was this is not accurate information the cost for the space stayed the same per hour so our prior um uh charge which was last updated in 2015 is the same rate that we have today um I think that what

145the shock was is renting a space for a couple hours per day versus renting the space for eight to ten hours which brings us to what Dr Clark had mentioned that back in August we did come to the board with a recommendation for a temporary rent reduced rate which reduced our rates by 50 percent event and due to continued concern and and uh need for our support we did reduce that rate by an additional 25 of the rented uh of the posted rate in order to support our um child care providers or the child care providers on our sites uh next slide um so one of the things that we also wanted to do is it's kind of too much to tackle all at once so we wanted to advise you what we would be

146bringing forward um at Future meetings for future board action um so one of the things that we need to be working on is some of our verbal agreements so there are history years and years worth of history of facility uses some documented some um Sports organization help us with care of our facilities in exchange for use of the um the facilities and these are things that we're going through and we're trying to correct um these agreements make sure that they are memorialized and that we work with our general counsel in order to do that I did state in the last slide that our current fee schedule and that would be mainly for our um facility use through the civics Civic permit system was last updated in 2015 so we are going to be bringing um

147some data that we've been analyzing um and just and bring forward some information of a future uh rate increase to bring everything up to what it should be just as an example um uh a sports uh user sorry like a soccer club or something like that they have a uh the ability to rent a field so let's say we've got an elementary school that has three soccer fields on campus um once you hit 550 of a rental per season um and excuse our error that is actually a three-month um uh season not a five-month season uh you get maxed out at 550 so a soccer club could rent one two three fields on a campus for 550 each and essentially have exclusive use of that field for seven days a week so one of the

148things we want to do is look at how we do that um to be able to allow more of the public to be able to utilize and also get the fair rate um our Fields definitely need some rest time and that type of thing food bring in that forward and also to analyze and adjust you know our our costs and what our charges are um Janet you want to touch base on the board policies right and just to review the the currently our free schedule is again from 2015 and includes the direct cut costs and we'd like to make sure that we include the operational costs as well so we would like to recommend that there be language added to board policy to include future pandemics hopefully there aren't any or natural disasters but regarding

149the use of our district facilities that was a recommendation put forth at a casbo conference and I felt it was important and then another thing we'd like to recommend is having in the policy board policy language about bringing the fee schedule back to the board every two years and have it reviewed just to make sure that we're remaining current and up to date on that schedule um and with that that comes to the conclusion of our presentation um so were there any questions I just want to oh go ahead Joanne oh go ahead you can go I didn't I was just gonna say I was just going to comment that I think it's long overdue and I think we should be consistent with what we charge people across the board I think we should be

150charging more particularly for the child cares I don't I'll leave it up to you guys to figure out what's fair but a dollar a year is ridiculous to me so I'm glad I'm looking forward to your recommendations I figure you guys know more about it than than we know and Cesar knows what's in the law what we can charge and look forward to your next presentation thank you thank you I said I I don't know if I zoned out or got confused but on on Slide Five where you have how did they how did it affect the how did covert affect child care and so on 8 10 20 um we reduced the posted rates by 50 and then says rate further reduced another 25 so how did that last thing happen the additional 25

151just to just am I reading that right so the board approved on August 10th to reduce to 50 of hosted rates so we did 50 and then an additional 25. is that how you read that yeah so um so so there were there were some there were some child cares that had reached out who were who were struggling and um and so we worked we worked individually with those particular child cares on um you know on trying to help them continue to be able to serve our families but but again that was something that um was was done on an individual basis that um that again you know we had to make this adjustment just because we're in the middle of this pandemic but we would like to move away from those sorts of practices

152and that came through that came through the superintendent's office okay and just one minor comment when we initially were speaking with all of our child care providers we had um some Zoom meetings where many of us met with them in a in a open communicative session many of them thought that they were going to need space that they ended up not not needing and so while we had maybe five six seven different sites or sorry different providers reaching out thinking they were going to or believing that they were going to have more of our students um in the end I think it was one or maybe two child care uh providers that actually are renting space and the other either in their own building only which is great um or are not even open yet

153because they don't have the needs so we have some centers like Diana dare that has you know facilities on multiple of our sites they've sort of combined kids at a few sites and they're not open everywhere that's the same with our YMCA uh child care provider um and so I think the thought was that they were going to need it and ended up not needing it okay so just again going on a previous slide you say it's 23 lease agreements and 21 of them are just uh land leases and that's what's a dollar a year if they have their own building they're just paying a dollar a year for the land if they're using our space then they chart they are charged these fees that we're talking about correct we just reduced 50 and then

154in some cases another 25 okay I got it thank you other questions or discussion um I appreciate the review I think it's always important to review our agreements that we have with the centers and um the for the use of our athletic fields as well the um some of the comments that I received and I guess I'm the only one that received them was it seems like Mount Diablo is trying to remove Child Care Facilities off of our campuses I know I'm hoping that's not the case another comment that got back to me was that the district thinks that we make fistfuls of money while we operate these child carriers and they disagree with that some of the child cares are actually actually operated by a volunteer board of directors so the only employees they

155have are the site manager and the staff working at those sites so there's no you know the presumably there's not an individual making a lot of money um so contrary to miss Mason I'm a little bit concerned that um that our uh consideration be just and fair when we're looking at uh the situations I noticed that um the slide that Mr Alvarez spoke to use the words allows school districts and another one the other one that was in the PDF says that a school district um um it doesn't necessarily say that we must charge a certain amount or a minimum amount so I guess I need to do a little bit more study regarding the Ed codes and the regulations to understand what we are required to do or is it something that it gives

156us the authority to do this within certain parameters I do believe that child care is important for our families across the district I'm totally grateful for the cares after school program but that Services certain communities that necessarily aren't available in the remainder of our communities yes they may be higher wealth communities but there are still struggling families in those communities and the daycare providers on probably can provide the best service for the best value on our school campuses so I hope that we are not interested in eliminating the child care another piece that went along with that was the statement that we needed to secure our campuses so that um you know there were fences everywhere and we didn't have walk-on people and that the daycares were located at the back of our campuses and

157that implied that um there was perhaps inappropriate access to the campuses by individuals um I'm believed that our parents for the most part are trustworthy and that um we should not be excluding them or their children from our campuses and you know we need to look at all of these issues when we're looking at the um policies that we are seeking to establish regarding the fields I have argued unsuccessfully with Administration that we needed to look at the field use for many years and I do agree with Mrs Richardson's comment and Melanie's comment that the fields do need rest periods between the use on the campus especially after rainy days where it's grass Turf and we frequently see this those fields used daily so I welcome the further review of this and look forward to

158the policies as they come forward thank you um let's see I I think I I think about child care from the perspective of um what is the need in the community right now and how can we be a good partner um with uh all the child care providers in the area to make sure that we're meeting the need so when we refer people to um uh what's called Coco kids um to the child care resource and referral um you know if they hear back there are no child care availability in my area and I'm an essential worker you know trying to go work in a hospital but I have you know young kids that need need child care and the one that normally exists on the school campus is closed that's the kind of scenario

159that really concerns me right um if if we've closed the one on our campus and that has been the um the source of child care and as to trustee Mayo's Point um affordable child care in the area then um are we contributing to the lack of child care in that scenario right so looking at what some other school districts have done I know in some cases um they've uh actually provided the the extra classroom space for free in return for teachers getting priority for the child care at that site um that's one example um you know and then also is there priority for essential workers throughout the area um so I don't know what the possibilities are in our district because it looks like um we've not had a system in place before to provide

160teacher child care I think in this in the district where they did that they already had a system where teachers were had some sort of priority for child care at their site um whereas I think a number of our sites were already full um with families um at the site and teachers weren't necessarily seeking Child Care at the site where they teach so um given the the disparities as well that we have different agreements in different places um I agree that we should try to be you know as as fair and across the board in terms of our fees it does seem odd that we have one site for example that you mentioned that doesn't pay any utilities um not sure the reasoning behind that if that was due to a particular need or if

161that was or if that's the site where the volunteer run um daycare is located I'm not sure but um I guess I would just say um how can you know what what is for example our teacher need for child care I think we did a survey of our teachers in Mount Diablo to find out who needs daycare um which would be really helpful for them to be able to focus and teach um is that need still there and to what degree and is that something that we can help with through through our system or um you know are all of our daycare is full because they can serve many fewer children within the space they have and we're not providing them the room to expand right um so could we find out what is the

162need in terms of our our teachers and staff um and our community and then how can we be a good partner in that I'll I'll certainly Dr Clark in a moment defer to you but I would just share you know this is something that Ms Mason and I helped facilitate over the summer prior to uh Dr Clark's um joining us and you know there there are several different pieces here and I'll try to address them was one I think and this is something Miss Mason's brought up for quite some time is that we have not had consistency and been clear on a policy and so I think that was one of the things we were striving for um too you know I I will just say that we had a number of different uh Child

163Care Facilities reach out some of them existing and things like that in every single one of those we tried to find a way to partner with them we do need to balance the fact that when someone is using uh if they're using our facilities their costs incurred on our part in terms of cleaning and maintenance and things like that and we did look at you know reduce reduced fee structures and things like that because um you know as Ms Mayo pointed out there are certainly some many of these that are um you know parent-led uh volunteer organizations non-profits and so we wanted to balance that and so we tried to be consistent and accommodating and I I have not heard anything other than positive feedback from the people who we dealt with um that you

164know they would Express concerns they worked with Melanie they worked with Dr Clark they out worked with other members of staff and we were just very good partners and and I I'm not aware of anyone coming back after uh Ms Mason and I you know helped get them pointed in the right direction um of anyone who who was not satisfied with you know how how we helped solve um because at the end of the day the number one priority was we want to provide a safe environment for as many of our students as we can um and as we need to and so that's kind of resoundingly the feedback I've received um Dr Clark I would turn it over to you beyond that yeah I would just say that um you know we we have

165you know I have to you know really acknowledge staff that staff has been willing to bend over backwards and in order to support these facilities so um you know I I know that you know what trustee Mayo shared that that's some sentiment that's out there that there is this narrative although maybe just held by a few that we are some way looking to capitalize on this pandemic and that we are standing in the way of um you know of these facilities you know meeting the needs of their of their families and and and and speaking for the for the district that couldn't be further away from the truth but in doing that what we you know what we have found is that we it is very difficult to manage you know all of these different

166facilities with different agreements and different price scales and things to that nature when we have very limited staff and um you know and and we're facing many many challenges so so that's part of the reason why why we're just sort of bringing this forward and just seeing that there is a need for some consistency there is a need to um you know to really look at our practices and to look at our facilities and to look at our Partnerships and um you know and to go forward but but then you know I I think the employee daycare is something that's a little um you know that's just a little difficult to look at right now because we're not requiring our teachers to be on campus and one of the reasons why our teachers ask not

167to be required to be on campus because they have child care so so and and in many districts when there is teacher child care it's done in sort of a co-op um framework because you know if you're just talking about putting teacher kids in with with regular kids sometimes that's not the case sometimes teachers do their own child care and it's doing a a co-op system so we haven't even begun to you know to really explore that and so so I just think that that this really just shows the complexity of this yes and um you know I definitely want to tip my cap to Janet and and the Melanie because they're the ones on the on the front lines you know trying to accommodate folks but trying to do it within the policies and

168within the rules of the district and that's difficult and so we want to be able to you know we want to be able to make that as clear as possible so that our folks can you know can really work their magic with the community and and make this a win-win situation so um so again we don't have the answer today but again going forward we're going to look at bringing multiple proposals back and definitely looking for input from any and all on on how we can continue to you know to improve our service in this area yeah and then my I I guess my last please Dr Clark I just I was just going to say that I just wanted to be crystal clear that the district and the the board you know I'll speak

169for the board and superintendent that we have not we have not looked to capitalize on a pandemic and and make money off of this situation it's the furthest from it we're actually losing money in many instances and um and so that's that's the concern and I just want to be 100 clear that we're actually doing 100 the opposite of what that small narrative is that's out there so sorry I'll defer you uh president Lawrence no thank you I think that was great additional information um and so on a slightly different uh you were asking for feedback so one question I have is just with our facilities I know that you and staff have uh started to open some of our facilities but I know others um where fields are still closed and um I'm not

170sure if like all the basketball hoops are back up and you know I think there's this balance between um you know wanting to not encourage huge groups of people and to protect our facilities and we also want to make sure I certainly understand keeping um campus and you know adjacent Fields closed during school when we do have teachers on campus providing instruction and when we have daycare but I know you know as I mentioned earlier I I don't know that we're you know it it doesn't yet seem like there's a uh foreseeable end to a lot of these shelter in place you know I think that some aspects of it we need to be prepared that it's going to continue and so I think families and and our students are looking for you know exercise

171and Recreation and having accessibility to the fields and things like that so I'm wondering kind of where we are district-wide uh if you would mind sharing that yeah so I'll touch on it and then Melanie if I if I um if I leave out some major details or something you can you can bail me out but um you know so so I made the decision you know I don't know a month ago six weeks ago or so where we still you know we're in this we're in this Sheltering place we're in the you know we're in the purple we're in the most restrictive area and and it's how does it look when you drive around town and you see a you know a softball team out you know having a game on one of our

172facilities or soccer practice or things like those taking or people calling the office wanting to wanting to rent space either in a field or a facility and so you know so you know I made the decision in consultation with with Dr Gonzalez and Melanie that we would just close everything down during this period um and and I believe we did make we did make a couple of exceptions I believe we have a you know we have a faith-based group that's meeting Outdoors at one of our facility so we didn't want to you know we didn't want to stop that um you know but we just said any new any new um you know applications or whatnot we just were not going to accept at this time and now you know um you know we're receiving

173word that that the county might we might be shifting into uh into another level in terms of active covert cases and Contra Costa County and so then we're going to revisit that at that point is does it make sense now to reopen up some of our facilities as the county starts to reopen so um so that's kind of where where we are now Melanie did I leave anything out the only other thing is that we do have high school conditioning so Sports conditioning have proved at all of our five major high schools and we're starting to see um which uh Samantha Allen and I will be working with our high schools like we did with our sports or athletic departments for our um for some other groups that are looking at doing a similar um

174you know social distance type school student event and so we're just kind of working on those things but as far as any outside user we are not accepting new applications for use at this time we are finding um use happening all over the place and it's one thing if it's you know a family tossing a ball around using our field as their park or running you know running around a track or something like that but we're also finding that many of our spaces as we know are wide open and great because it does allow when it's safe for use of our facilities but we've been hearing information about you know Youth Sports taking place on our Fields unauthorized as well as adult sports and so one of the things that we're doing is just going

175to be looking for some Direction like Dr Clark said as we move into this next phase it's one thing to be safe and it's another thing to use the facility and we get those phone calls why are you allowing something you know we're really not we're just trying to work within the guidelines that we have so that we can continue to open so we'll just defer to Dr Clark and the board as we do lessen some of those restrictions but right now we are not approving um any outside users and I certainly think that is a a why guys policy and even you know I I will say I I'm glad to see that we are um you know working very thoughtfully and um with our High School athletics um but I know that uh

176we've had high school athletes in our district who have tested positive for coven and I think we've seen you know organized sports sports at you know especially at the University level where they've had um infections run rampant and things like you know the the national championship LSU football team where I think more than half their their players have tested positive for covid and so I think that is certainly something that you know lends itself to the let's go slow let's be diligent and we also even though the um you know mortality rate of high school athletes you know is presumably much much lower than you know at-risk populations and things like that one of the things we don't know is what is the potential long-term Health damage that might be done to people who who

177do contract this disease and I think that's something for us to be mindful of um more I guess I I'm wondering where where we are with not not for organized uh groups but rather you know opening fields for people who want to run and for families who do want to kick or throw a ball around and and some of those uh more ad hoc and I think we would certainly want to share with the community here's what we're doing this is not open for you know seven seven uh basketball teams to suddenly all congregate and start practicing and scrimmages and things like that but in an ad hoc fashion are we able to start looking at that because I think in some ways the fact that our facilities are limited in use is then causing

178people to go to other facilities and some of our own facilities that um are very open and we're pushing more people into a smaller number of spots now it's certainly possible if we open up more spots more people will come but I I would like to see us consider things like opening the tracks and things like that if we can do so safely and for individual and small informal use versus organized activities um beyond what we're doing for our our own high school you know athletes and and things like the faith-based organization that Dr Clark mentioned are you talking about like in general if there's a field um attached to a school but the school is still fenced off whether that gate is left unlocked or locked like on a weekend that sort of thing

179right like for the just just Community Access yes and my question was just for um Dr Clark and Melanie I've seen teams that are not our teams at Riverview because they can come in the Riverside do you want me to I'm not going to say anything to them but do you want me to tell you guys report it or just just know that's where we are right now no if if you can just shoot me an email safely from your home then we can follow up but but yeah um you know I think a lot more will um you know will come to light as as the county Works towards coming off of this um you know coming off of this tier that we're currently in but um but it is it is a catch-22

180because you know we we do have limited maintenance on on who can upkeep our fields and then when we have individuals who are out there and and you know we don't want to you know we had a situation where you know one of our maintenance workers was you know was basically attacked by a by a Community member and things like that and we don't want to put them in that situation but by all means we want our Fields available if a family wants to go out and kick the ball or run around and stuff like that there's you know there's there's we want to support that but we also don't want teams coming in from other cities and things like that who just see a field that's not being supervisor that's not chained off because

181most fields are and and so again we carry liability with that there's a you know there's a there's a bunch to that but in terms of what president Lawrence was was asking for we will come up with some guidance for for um you know for our maintenance department and and we'll share that with the schools so that we're all on the same page and I think just to add we uh we do have um some signage um that we've been working on obtaining where as we you know preparing for this next phase so maybe you know at some of our elementary schools that are wide open um of course you know families can come and use the field once we open back up but identifying that the backstop in the ball field is still closed

182um so we are getting ourselves prepared for that um and we'll be obviously communicating with that as we move into the next phase I also think that there would need to be language around playground equipment you know the the primary playground equipment as well as the um what is it called the Elementary playground equipment the age uh third three grades three through five uh because once a family comes on to the playground uh if the playground itself the playground equipment is not fenced off the kids will be on that and that's one of the areas that are still restricted in all of our parks at least uh in the parks that I'm seeing because young children um you know you can't keep young kids from each other and they want to play and talk and

183hug and do all those kinds of things and it's also the challenge for us to continually sanitize that playground equipment versus um the Open Fields which I can understand where Mr Lawrence is coming from I just know uh am concerned about human nature and the challenges that you're going to set up for Mrs Richardson and Melanie in approving those permits and allowing people uh to be on the campuses and that the calls are going to increase to our weekend security folks about um uh Rogue groups uh playing on our fields I think even pre-covid that our district was not necessarily consistent across the board as to which gates are left unlocked or locked at various campuses so it is something to consider um as we move forward you know beyond covid um to consider you

184know who is upkeeping the fields in some cases they had been locked because um you know it was hard to maintain them and get them ready for school on a Monday if if you know the community was not um you know really uh picking up all their trash and and dogs and all those kinds of things um and so uh one other thing to consider As you move forward I think is the Partnerships with the various cities in some cases I think there have been Partnerships where um you know there's um collaboration in terms of upkeep of the fields and the and um the Locking and unlocking of gates at various times and things like that so just keep keep that in mind and you just want to add one other really quick thing because

185we've touched base on the tracks a few times just to remind everyone that our high school stadiums which do contain the synthetic tracks are always locked on weekends unless a user a youth event is taking place where we have District staff on site to be able to maintain so I think just kind of as we're thinking of moving into that next phase we do have many elementary schools and middle schools that have you know a track whether it be decomposed granite or asphalt um but just keep in mind when we're talking about those running tracks if we're speaking of the high schools that is something that requires an additional you know person on site and all of that and to be able to protect those so just wanted to put that out there food for

186a thought of course and I'm certainly not suggesting that but rather at the ones that we we have in the past had open and things like that at the the elementary and and we do have many elementary schools that before didn't have a paved track that we've tried to turn from decomposed Granite into asphalt over the last two years um so we'll actually maybe have some more more of those facilities available like we did that at Ayers Elementary and I believe Sequoia Elementary I'm just you know two projects right off the top of my head I appreciate the information that the tracks at the high school levels are to be locked on weekends because there are a couple of communities that continually ask that question and I'll be able to share with them in certainty

187that they're supposed to be locked and no one should be on those tracks thank you great any other questions or comments on this topic all right thank you everyone very much appreciated uh so we move along to item 4.4 which is the review and potential approval to recreate uh three uh full-time employee teacher induction and support program coaches uh Dr Clark yes I'm going to um introduce uh Dr Rubio for this for this item and he can um he can introduce and explain this particular request good morning Dr Rubio uh hi board members good afternoon good evening I'm a little under the weather today I'm sorry um uh this request is coming before you uh because uh we do have uh somewhat urgent need to provide some support for um approximately uh 42 or 43

188a new teachers to the district uh we are requesting uh that we are able to reinstate and rehire for three additional FTE so we can support new teachers um and I'd like to ask um Jen Sachs if she could chime in uh at some point in a moment um the background I think uh this year you're familiar with um and the need um so we're certainly happy to entertain any questions uh our primary concern is getting something in place as we work through some details with Medea regarding the contract language that requires that there is a program and that that design is negotiated with them and I don't know Janet Jen if you wanted to add anything you can um our board members if you have a question you know just that last count um

189we have 44 first year teachers and um let's see let me just do the difference 28 second year teachers and so it's a total of 72 first and second years yeah thanks any questions board members regarding I I would just say that uh you know in a a lifetime ago in early March uh when we looked at this you know at the time we were looking at reducing the number of teachers we were not projecting a pandemic which would wreak havoc on uh our teacher ranks and um you know we had supported as a board and I certainly did of uh cutting back the the um for this position but always with the the statement that hey if our needs changed and and we needed to bring it back that we would be in the

190position to do so and and so certainly under the circumstances um it seems worthy of consideration and so appreciate that it's been brought back I think the biggest impact was the pars right I I don't want to create the impression that we've had a lot of teachers um have tragic endings with us because I think actually yes the pars but also I do think if anybody was on the fence um the pandemic was something that they just really had to kind of reflect on whether or not they were wanting to continue yeah okay I I think the good news is we have 44 yeah new teachers too so I mean that's like yeah no I should have chosen my words perhaps yeah differently but not not in the sense that I I do know that

191many teachers as a combination of pars and with right because they were in at-risk groups they made the decision to go ahead and uh you know retire from the district right right and I appreciate that oh go ahead go ahead no I was just gonna move us on and make a motion oh okay I just wanted to say I appreciate that um that you're coming back to the board with this even though there was a prior decision um I think this is this is a good example of um you know really being Mindful and um uh focused on our teacher and student needs you know to make sure that our new teachers are successful and have the support that they need and this appears to be the best model to do that um so I

192think it's a great idea yeah let me just add very very quickly I want to take a moment to appreciate the leadership put a teacher's Union uh for collaborating with us and trying to come up with a quick solution here how we still have some things to work out regarding what temporary health these teachers can receive while we try to quickly move forward and and follow the contractual process that's required to hire these three people if you approve tonight so we're hopeful that both the union leadership and us together can really prioritize the need of these 40 people because they're just a little bit of a gap right now on how we see temporary help so fingers across then but I do appreciate that their willingness to collaborate on yes okay Mr President I move

193to approve the recreation of 3.0 FTE teacher induction and support program coach positions second motion by Ms durkey second by Ms Mayo Ms Mayo how do you vote Yes Ms Durkee yes Ms count yes Ms Mason reluctantly yes uh I will also vote Yes uh item passes 5-0 so thank you for that uh at this point Dr Clark do we have anything else to cover oh we've I think we've covered a great deal I think um you know I'm going to be asking that um trustees just to give us feedback this is the first study session that we've done under you know under my time here and we want to make these valuable for the you know for the trustees to be able to gather information and um you know and talk about relevant topics

194so I will be looking for that for that feedback so thank you very much president Lawrence absolutely thank you for organizing it I think it would it agreed it was very productive I think we had a chance to go in depth on several issues and and cover some important things so um with that I'm going to uh adjourn the meeting and do something slightly different uh which is I'm going to adjourn it um in memory of a woman who I think has had a profound impact on the lives of many of our our students and whose loss is one that I've heard from from our community and students and that is a Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and so I'll be adjourning the meeting in her honor so thank you good evening and we

195will see you next Monday