PCS Board of Education Meeting: October 22, 2024

001All right. I'm going to reconvene this meeting at 6.01 p.m. And I will ask Trustee Webster to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Oh, great. And we're going to move into a public hearing And I have to gavel again. Sorry, y'all. All right. The public hearing is officially open on contract reopeners with CSEA and the districts. Jason, can you tell us what the public hearing is for? This is an opportunity for the public to make any comments on the proposed negotiations and the areas of negotiation that are proposed by CSEA and by the district. If anyone has any comments on the use contract reopeners. please fill out a public comment card and bring it over to Esmeralda. seen no one charging the stage. I'm going to close the public hearing. Always a delight. And

002now we have no action was taken in closed session, so we'll move on to our special recognitions reports and presentations, starting with our introduction of the new director of budget and accounting. All right. Thank you. I'd like to invite Helen Miller to come right up to the front right here. Sorry, Helena, I didn't give you that heads up, did I? You don't have to talk. You just have to talk. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Danny's taking notes in the back because he's next, right? So we're delighted to introduce Helen Miller as the new director of budget and accounting for Petaluma City Schools. Helen brings a wealth of experience and a deep commitment to education, making her a great addition to PCS. Helen began her career as an instructional assistant in yard duty staff at Guerneville School, later

003transitioning into payroll and accounts payable. After her time in Guerneville, she joined Santa Rosa City Schools as a budget technician and further honed her expertise at Sonoma Valley as a business manager before returning to Santa Rosa City as the district accountant. In 2023, Helen earned her CBO, Chief Business Official Certificate from CASBO, marking a significant accomplishment in her professional development. Helen's diverse background in school finance operations has prepared her well for this new role at Petaluma City Schools. We have no doubt that her experience and positive attitude will help her succeed and thrive. On a personal note, Helen grew up in Cloverdale, where both her parents were teachers. She's also a proud mother of a son who shares a special connection to her career. His birthday is on the same day that Helen began working

004with us at Petaluma. Please join me in giving Helen a warm welcome. We look forward to seeing the great work she will accomplish here. Thank you. I look forward to it. getting to know everybody more and working here for a long time so Thank you, Helen. Thank you and welcome. And then with that, we'll move on to introduction of our new assistant principal of adult education. And we'd like to invite Danny Kemper to the front. We're excited to introduce a new member of our team, Danny Camber, who will be joining us as assistant principal of Petaluma Adult School. Danny brings a wealth of experience and dedication that will be an incredible asset to our community. Danny assumed his duties on October 17, 2024. Danny graduated from the University of San Francisco in 2011 with degrees

005in European history, American history, and Spanish language and literature. In order to pursue a teaching career, he earned a master's degree and teaching credential from Stanford University in 2015. Most recently, he completed his master's in educational leadership at San Francisco State University in 2023. Danny has nine years experience as a classroom teacher and four years as a department chair at Novato High School. In addition to his teaching role, he coached football, track and field, and esports. Most recently, Danny held a teacher on special assignment position where he successfully led a team in reducing the number of at-risk students by 75% over three years and developed a student athlete intervention program resulting in an 87% reduction in academically ineligible students in its first season and a remarkable 100% success rate the following year. Danny has been

006honored twice as Novato High School Teacher of the Year. Growing up in Petaluma, Danny is thrilled to return to his roots. He lives in Roanoke Park with his wife, Baxter. Their golden retriever, Riley, and their 10-month-old son, George. Danny values being closest to family and is excited to contribute to our vibrant community. He is passionate about the mission of Petaluma Adult School and is grateful for the opportunity to work with Petaluma City Schools. Please join us in welcoming Danny to the PAS family, and we look forward to his positive impact on our students and community. Thank you, folks. I really appreciate the opportunity to come home. It's really nice to be back in Petaluma. They told me the job was going to be joyful and it has been joyful every single day that I've been

007here. Thank you so much for trusting in me. Awesome. And keeping up with the good vibes, we're going to move on to recognition of students of the month, starting with Kenilworth. Kenworth Junior High School is proud to introduce our October Student of the Month. Sophia Sophia was chosen Student of the Month because she is one of our most impressive student leaders. A 4.0 student, Sophia is also a talented musician. an important member of the Kenilworth leadership class. Fabulous, friendly, hardworking, respectful. a stellar student are just a few of the superlatives Sophia's teachers use to describe her. mr klemonock, who has Sophia in his band class for a second year. Proudly shared, Sophia's hands down one of my top players She has been first chair clarinet since she arrived at Kenilworth. In addition to playing in

008Kenworth's Symphonic Band. Sophia is also playing with the normal ones. The Noma Winds are a county ensemble. by Sonoma State's music department for Premier Junior High and High School Musicians. Ken Orth's leadership instructor, Mr. Mono, was eager to add. Sophia is a Renaissance woman. She can do it all. If she's not volunteering for one of her many leadership roles, she's helping a peer or she is figuring out what she can do around campus to support the Kenilworth community. After high school, Sophia would like to attend a university possibly UC Santa Barbara and pursue a degree in architecture. Kenworth Junior High is lucky to have Sophia as one of our students. We know Sophia will continue to do great things in the future. Congratulations, Sophia. Okay. I'll get one in the end as well. Kenworth Junior

009High School is proud to introduce our October Student of the Month, Nell Ho. Ninoa's Chosen Student of the Month because she is one of Kenworth's most outstanding student athletes. Enel is kind, hardworking, and is respected by her classmates and teachers. Impressively, Nell has earned a 4.0 grade point average her entire time at Kenworth. while participating and excelling in sports year round. Mr. Caldwell, you now's seventh grade history teacher, shared, Eunell is very determined. creative and humble. She gives her best on every assignment and is an excellent writer. Ms. Fahey, Ninell's BE teacher, enthusiastically added. You know, sets the bar high for herself and always exceeds it. He now leads by example and is an inspiration to her peers. Nell has not only excelled in the classroom at Kenworth. But she has also performed at a

010championship level for both the Colts cross country and track teams. Nell captured the eighth grade league title in cross country this fall, and she looks forward to defending her 800-meter and mile championships this spring for the Colts track team. When Enel is not winning races on the track for Kenworth, she can be found playing soccer and flag football. After high school, Nina plans to attend college, possibly in her dad's home state of Hawaii. We at Kenworth are confident Neil has a bright future ahead of her and the world is in good hands with me now. Congratulations, Ninau. Congratulations, Sophia and Neenel. And before I forget, Sophia's friends and family, can you please stand so we can recognize you and all your contributions? And then Nell, I know your friends and family are here too. If

011you all can please stand and we'll celebrate you. And don't worry, friends and family will have an opportunity for a picture with all of the students of the month at the end of this section. So thank you all and congratulations again. And next up, I want to call up the bantams at Petaluma Junior High. Petaluma Junior High School is proud to introduce our October Student of the Month, Samuel Hernandez Diaz. Samuel was chosen as PGHS October Student of the Month because he is all things Bantam. But most notably, Samuel is trustworthy, neighborly, and authentic. Mr. Dossary, Samuel's broadcasting teacher, said Samuel has the energy of everybody's favorite small-town mayor. He knows everyone and is always… And always has a kind word or three to share. He is friendly, genuine, and sets a great tone. Ms.

012Garvey Samuel's math teacher shared that Samuel is friendly, kind, and responsible, as well as being a focused and hardworking student. He is especially mindful of his friends who are not yet fluent in English, providing guidance in and out of the classroom. And Ms. Clodan added that Samuel is a diligent self-advocate who actively participates in his education. Samuel said that some of his favorite things about PJHS are all of his classes and spending time with his friends at school. Samuel said that outside of school, he likes to be outside and spend time with his animals. He is starting 4-H this year. Things that Samuel is looking forward to about high school are meeting his new friends and taking new courses. After high school, Sammy would like to attend a university and pursue a career as a

013cardiologist. Samuel brings a positive and inclusive energy to campus. He always says hello and asks how others are doing in a genuine concern. We can count on Samuel to lead a hand. To lend a hand with any task that needs to be done. Samuel is polite and genuine. Being greeted by Samuel is surely to be the highlight of anyone's day. Samuel's mom is especially proud of Samuel for working hard and setting new goals for himself all the time. Samuel's mom hopes he never changes and won't… And we won't agree more. We're lucky to have Samuel representing PJHS as our October Student of the Month. Congratulations, Samuel. Petaluma Junior High School is proud to introduce our October Student of the Month, Elena Gutierrez. Elena is being recognized as Student of the Month because she is kind,

014responsible, and an excellent citizen at school. Elena's teachers say that she is an active learner who is A leader and helper to all, Ms. Peterson, Elena's science teacher, says that Elena's amazing students and she is lucky to be Elena's teacher. Miss O, Elena's art teacher, shared that Elena is such a pleasure to have in class. She is kind, motivated. hardworking and a fantastic artist. She tries her best on all of her projects and never… and never quits until her work is of exceptional quality. I've never been amazed by the work that she has produced in both seventh and eighth grade. I look forward to Elena's artistic creations throughout the school year. When asked what she likes most about PGHS, she said that I enjoy all of PGHS, but there are definitely classes and teachers I

015enjoy more. I specifically enjoy leadership, art, and science, which includes the teachers of these subjects. Mr. Ostendorf and Ms. Peterson. I also love the dances BJHS holds because they're always really fun. Elena is looking forward to high school and having an opportunity to participate in all of the activities it has to offer. Elena shared that this about her plans after high school. I would like to go to college at Cal Berkeley. The main reason for this decision is because Berkeley has the best psychology program in the country, which is exactly what I would like to major in. In addition to being an accident. Outstanding scholar and leader at school, Elena also likes to hang out with her friends, practice Taekwondo, and participate in track and field at PGHS in the spring. Elena's family is also

016incredibly proud of her accomplishments, especially that Elena has recently became a second-degree black belt in Taekwondo. Elena's mom, Tabitha, shared that Elena has persevered in martial arts and has contributed to her exemplary leadership qualities. Elena's family also shared that she is and has always been independent and driven to succeed and push forward. Elena is not afraid to ask for help when she needs it. We are lucky to have Elena representing PJHS as our October Student of the Month. Congratulations, Elena. All right. Can I have Samwell's friends and family stand up, please, so we can celebrate your contributions? We know it takes a whole family and a whole village. And Elena, can I have your friends and family please stand up as well? Congratulations, Samuel and Elena. And then we're moving back across town to the

017Gauchos over at Casa Grande. Are they on Zoom? Oh, no. Okay. I was like, where'd they go? Starting off, we have Stella Cooney. While Stella has worked tirelessly in the classroom and at the JC, much like her other peers. She has exhibited her true strength through her multiple extracurriculars. She has co-founded the Positivity Project, a club on campus that destigmatizes the conversation around mental health and that has raised over $3,000 towards National Alliance on Mental Illness. After being awarded Sonoma County's Youth Volunteer of the Year. Stella got offered to join National Alliance of Mental Illness's Youth Board, where she collaborates with other schools on increasing mental health resources and awareness. One of her favorite opportunities has been being a part of her school's health official Students of America chapter, where she recently visited Washington, D.C.

018for a leadership academy. Filled with networking opportunities from state officials coming from all over the country. Stella also works at Stockholm, a local restaurant downtown where she is able to do her favorite thing, talk to people all shift. When she is not pursuing these passionate endeavors, she is either training for a half marathon or traveling the world. Which she hopes to continue doing at a four-year university next year while majoring in medical anthropology with hopes of becoming a naturopathic physician. Okay. Oh, no. Yeah. Pranav Krishna. Pranav is a senior at Casa Grande High School who has a variety of different interests. He has taken 14 honors classes, JC and AP courses, and has maintained good grades in all of them. He loves learning about almost anything and everything. He volunteers at Cirrus Community Garden at

019Petaluma and has been an intern of CAPS. Climate Action Pathway for Schools. Since last year when he learned where he has learned more about the environment and how we can reduce our environment impact. He is also a youth member of Petaluma City Climate Action Committee and is learning a lot about how government committees work. Pranav loves to help people. He is the vice president of tutoring Club and loves to tutor in a variety of subjects, including math, history, and science. He is the president of academic decathlon and is trying to restart the program at CASA, which has been very successful in the past. In his free time, he loves to read, do magic tricks, and do all sorts of hijinks with his brother and his friends. Pranav hopes to get into a good four-year university

020and further explore his diverse interests. Pranav would like to thank his friends and family for all the help they have given him. Thank you. And can we have Stella's friends and family please stand and be recognized? Thank you. And can we have Pranav's friends and family please stand and be welcome. Congratulations to you both and a big shout out to ACTEC, definitely, or CASA class of 2011 over here. With what time, Madeline Cloud? Moving on to Petaluma High Students of the Month. Okay, so first up, we have Corey Huppert. Corey is a senior at Petaluma High School. He does his best to stay very active in the school. He is a part of the varsity football team and also a chapter officer for FFA, and he's also a lead keeper at the Petaluma Wildlife Museum.

021Corey likes to spend his free time fishing and hanging out with his buddies. Congrats. Okay, I don't think Solom is here, but next up we have Salme Jimenez. Oh, okay. Salome is proud to be called a senior of Petaluma High School. In her four years at this school, she can say that the loving environment created by the staff and students contributed to her success academically and personally. Being a freshman at a new school after coming back from the COVID pandemic was tough at first, but in no time, Salome found her place and knew what she wanted to take from Petaluma High School. Each year, Salome challenged herself with rigorous courses trying to feed the unquenchable desire for knowledge. On the way, Salome found the perfect balance between her academic life and her responsibilities outside of

022school. Aside from school, Salome has the role as lead pianist at the church she assists in. After completing her assignments at home, she sits down and practices on her keyboard for the upcoming church service, knowing her performance has to be perfect for God. So far, Salome has enjoyed her senior year over the rest of her high school years. She has had the opportunity to be a bilingual student tutor to a class of English learners. The feeling of helping others with a language barrier and contributing to their success in high school has more value to Salome than having an A in a course. With this compassionate character and willingness to help those in need, Salome hopes to take it in her future career in public health and change the lives of others in a hospital setting.

023Congrats. Okay. All right. We have Corey's friends and family here in the audience to be celebrating. Congratulations. And Salome, your friends and family, if they could sing. And now moving over to San Antonio High School for our student of the semester. Yeah. We chose Lulu as our student of the semester because she exemplifies the model San Antonio student. Lulu joined San Antonio in the fall of 2023. She got to work immediately and her hard work on commitment to improvement paid off as soon as she earned A's and B's in most classes. Ms. Lauer recalls her first, sorry. Ms. Lauer recalls her first week at San Antonio on her first mentor day, she fiercely served as student representative on the PBIS focus group. According to Nikki Jackson, Lulu really worked hard during summer school, showed up

024consistently, and had good relationships with her teachers. She was a great community member at San Antonio, took pride in her charcuterie boards, and was always willing to help out when she needed. She's compassionate and cares about her fellow students, celebrates their successes, and we really were able to watch her mature and become a responsible community member at San Antonio. Ms. McGarry says she had the pleasure of having Lulu in both her English and government class last year. She was always engaged and confident discussing the subjects. She often showed empathy and was afraid to express her opinion. or was not afraid to express her opinion. She also joined Ms. McGarry in making smoothies with the cooking club. Her friend Kylie Miller says Lulu is passionate about what she is going to do in her future and

025that she cares a lot about her friends. Lulu graduated off the first grading period this year. She says she appreciates all the support she received during her time here at San Antonio and appreciates her tried for being there when she needed them. She also said she does nails on the side and is interested in possibly pursuing a career in cosmetology. Her positive attitude made a difference in our community. Congratulations. drag that. Thank you. Congratulations, Lulu, and congrats on graduating. Do we have Lulu's friends and family here in the audience to celebrate our student of the semester? If you can please stand. Yeah. And let's give it up one more time for all of our students of the month and students of the semester. Yeah. And keep on the theme of students, let's move into school

026reports from Petaluma Junior High. Hi, my name is Anna Ramirez Romo, and I am in eighth grade. Hi, my name is Riley Eberly and I'm in eighth grade. Hi, my name is Serafina Ghazoli and I'm in eighth grade. Hi, my name is Riley Pritchy and I'm in eighth grade. Hi, my name is Avery Eaton and I'm in seventh grade. Hello, my name is Sam Hernandez and I'm in eighth grade. We are here to tell you all about what makes PGHS so special. Last year at PJ Chess, we really prioritized three main things. Recruitment, building new programs, and campus culture. These paid off extraordinarily well for us. for us. So this year we decided to build on these priorities with a few twists. Our revised priorities for this school year are building community connections. Continuing to

027celebrate our campus culture and enhancing our academic opportunities and supports for our students. Let's take a closer look at each of these. First, let's see how we're strengthening our connection with our community. In May, EJHS hosted a series of workshops facilitated by PK, Parent Institute for quality education. These workshops train parents, most of which were predominantly Spanish speaking. how to support their students through their education, as well as how to partner with schools to increase family engagement. There were well over 45 parents graduates from this program. A few weeks ago, we held our first ever seventh grade parent boot camp. I'm sure you can imagine the transition from junior high can be challenging at times, even for parents. So we hosted our workshop that answered Many questions parents had about how they can best support

028their child academically and social emotionally as they begin their junior high journey. Who doesn't love a free lunch? Ray's Deli continues to be a favorite spot that the PGHS students visit after school. And this year we partnered with them to sponsor a student of the month, just like Sam. So each month, our two students of the month get treated to a sandwich and a drink for their academic achievements. Thank you, Raise for being such a great part of our community. Just last week, our entire 8th grade class went on a field trip to PHH PHS and SSU to see firsthand all of the potential opportunities ahead of us. Our field trips start at PHS where we were toured around campus by Link Cruise students. We then traveled up to SSU where we learned more about

029the Petaluma promise and visited several spots around campus. Guaranteed admission into the college is great and all, but our favorite part was definitely eating lunch in the dining commons. Fair enough. Next, let's see the new academic opportunities and support we are providing this year. One of the most popular classes on campus is our Intro to Digital Media. It's so popular, in fact, we doubled the number of sections we offered this year. So now our students get double the access to professional equipment, double the amount of airtime of our Bantam broadcast program, and of course, double the amount of Mr. Dossary. Speaking of doubling things, we have also doubled the sections of our advanced English and accelerated math programs in an effort to open access to these courses and challenge our students to push themselves academically,

030we are now on track to quadruple our offerings of advanced and accelerated classes by next year. Look at all these smart bantoms. And lastly, in alignment with the district goals. of supporting students with IEPs And multilingual learners, we are now offering collab ela courses in addition to existing collab math courses. classes to assist our students with IEPs. We also have Restructured our ELD program to better meet the needs of students with varying levels of English proficiency. Last but certainly not least, on our list of priorities that PJHS has been our school culture. We hear it all the time. The vibe at PJHS is so great. Well, that's because of our kind and inclusive students as well as our caring and supportive staff. All of our amazing campus activities, rallies, extracurriculars, along with our engaging classes

031make PGHS a fun and supportive place for students. To showcase how students and staff are coming together to create a safe, positive, and inclusive campus, PJHS is in year two of our Safe School Ambassadors program. Thanks to a grant from Sonoma County Offices of Education. A diverse group of staff members and students. There were some involved last year and some new. We're chosen to work with Some staff members in a two-day training to become active leaders amongst their peers to interrupt bullying, discrimination, or other behaviors that contradict our values at PEJHS. Students continue to meet monthly to discuss and find solutions to issues on campus. Word seems to have gotten out about all of the amazing students, staff, and programs at PJHS. From the beginning of last school year to the start of this one,

032we have grown our enrollment by almost 50 students, and we have a hunch that only more will follow. Last but not least, if there's one thing we're most proud of, it's winning the 2024 Petaluma Argus Careers people's choice for best public school. Let's see if we can go back to back in 2025. To sum things up, let's take a look at one of our first Bantoon broadcasts this year where students and staff talk about what makes PGHS special. And welcome to our first weekly update for the week of September 9th. Hello, Bantams. The theme for this week is what makes Petaluma Junior special. And what I think makes Potterman Jr. special is a commitment of our students and staff to making our campus the best in Petaluma. PJHS is awesome because of the staff and

033the people in it. PJHS is so special because of the positive vibes on campus. And how loving everyone is to each other. The people and the community, everybody here is really nice. And we have a really great campus. The staff, the students. the views, the roses, alfredo DJ, Jess is awesome because the campus. The staff and especially the principal and Ms. Garcia And the cookies. Probably the amazing campus and The great people. Staff is pretty great. In the cookies. The cookies are really bus. Yeah. Everything about Peter Luma Junior High School is awesome. I think what makes PGHS awesome is all the teachers and all the students that get involved with the school. And all of the… fun activities we have and I think that's what makes it very special. What makes PJHS awesome is

034all of the people. We have the best students, the best staff, and just the best families and it makes it a really fun place to be. I like all my classes, all my teachers, because they all work really hard to teach. Me and all the students what we need for life. And I appreciate that. My favorite part of being an assistant principal is that I get to know so many. Thank you all so much. And our last student presentation is from San Antonio High School, a school report. From there. Yeah. Hello, my name is Crystal Alvarado, and I'm a senior at San Antonio High School. This is my third year attending San Antonio. And I will be graduating at the end of the year, if not a little earlier. What I like most about our

035school is how welcoming our teachers and staff and our old are to all students, whether you are new or have been here for a long time, you are part of the community. I'm Oscar Burrow Hus, and I'm also a senior here at San Antonio. And this is my third year here as well. I anticipate graduating early in the middle of next semester, like Crystal said, the staff and teachers at San Antonio are some of the most welcoming people you will ever meet. The overall environment, in my opinion, has been The best I've experienced in my school career, there is always someone willing to help us. Here are some of the things we've been up to since we last presented to the school board. First, we'd like to recognize And thanks San Antonio's Syrians. Senior Daniel

036Vieira for representing alternative education as a student board member this year. We started off the year with 65 students over 50 of which were seniors. We've had a smooth start to the year and five students were able to graduate. At the end of the last grading period. We currently have 67 students enrolled, of which seven more will most likely graduate in November. We're looking for more students, so if you know any good candidates, send them our way. We held our first award ceremony of the year and presented certificates for students who earned honor roll and students who had perfect attendance. We had three students earn a GPA of 4.0 and another 23 students earn a GPA between 3.0 and 4.0. Seven students received awards for 100% attendance. Pablo Chavez Vasquez was our student of the

037grading period. On September 11th, we held our back to school night and pasta feed. While the wind kicked up, it was still great success with students and family members in attendance Ms. Big Gary and the students prepare to and served dinner for everyone. San Antonio senior Juan Jimenez and a couple of his band members played live music during the event. It was great to see a number of Parents, students, and siblings and staff, district administration gathered in the quad to celebrate our students and our school. On September 25th, we had our second mentor day of the year. During mentor days, all students will meet with their mentor teachers for a day of team building activities, which include classroom circles, reviewing individual credit needs, recording credits earned, and digital citizenship lessons. We ended the day with

038a basketball competition and handing out San Antonio senior t-shirts to all our new seniors. We again have Martin Tavisu working at San Antonio as a student mentor and coordinator of our suspension diversion program. Martin's program, Circle of Success, is invaluable and has benefited many students at San Antonio. when possible in lieu of suspension. MARN facilitates restorative work with students in a productive manner rather than just sending them home. One component of the diversion program is several hours of community service. Martin has been providing community service projects for students on the San Antonio campus. This way, they are also giving back to their school community. The cooking club is under the way again. With Ms. McGarry providing an opportunity for all students to be involved besides preparing the food for our pasta feed, the students met

039one day after school to make delicious fruit smoothies. This year, whoops. This year, Ms. Campos, our student advisor and college career coordinator, has started a series of Friday workshops for interested students. Each Friday, there's a different topic presented. Some topics include our resume building, SRJC account registration, scholarship information, time management, and other activities. So far, the workshops have been well attended and very well worth. worthwhile. Step up to Stevie's every other Friday morning before school. Mr. Stevenson and staff can be found at Stevie's Cafe out in the front of San Antonio every other Friday morning from 8.30 or eight o'clock to 830. They serve free hot… coffee and hot chocolate and a sweet treat for everyone. that wants to stop in. Students, parents, siblings, community members, if you're in the neighborhood at the time, stop

040on by. Here is a list of upcoming events for San Antonio High School. Thanks for your time and thank you for continuing to support alternative education. Thank you all. As promised, I'm going to let us have a break. But before I put us on break, I want a picture of all the students who presented or got an award tonight and then all of the students of the month. No, it's, yeah, it's crossed off on mine. They're going to be next time or in the spring. Yes. All right. I… Officially gaveling us out for five minutes. Thank you. All right. So now moving on to our report on recruiting and hiring of secondary teachers. Take it away, Jason. All right. We ready, Dave? Okay. All right. So, um. Thank you. So I put together a little

041bit of a presentation based off of our last conversation about both some of the practices that we're using in human resources for hiring, and then also some of the historical data of how we've been able to hire. planned on going in this order, first just talking about our recruiting practices, sharing with you some of the data from the last three years around our hiring. And then this was also kind of in the context of talking about staffing for a seven period schedule. So I'm going to relate this data then to that and then actually not talk about challenges in hiring, but actually talk about plans for not having challenging challenges in hiring. Tilting it a little bit. So first of all, our recruiting practices So as you may know, Ed Join is our main thing,

042and I shared a quote about EdJoin from EdJoin. I just thought it was funny. Apparently, they are the number one education job site. But in all seriousness, Ed Joint is like the number one place that all certificated staff are going. It is the main hub for hiring. We have tried some other ways to hire when things are tough and found that that was very unsuccessful. We are using other things for classified, but for certificated, EdJoin is the main place that we're going. One of the things that we have is we do have a dedicated staff member that's focused on recruiting. And so he also understands the ins and outs of EdJoin, which can be complicated. So we found that that's been a good shift over the past few years. We've also removed some of our

043application barriers for Medjoint. For example, we have removed, for many, many years had a two to five minute video that we were requiring of all applicants was was uh It may not sound like much, but it was a huge hurdle. It was from back in the time when we wanted to make sure people had knew how to use technology. But it was really becoming a barrier. The other thing is that we've removed the requirement for letters of recommendation because that was also another barrier of having people go and have to get those letters. So we've been looking at ways to streamline our process and make it a better process. So Edjoin is our main avenue. Another one is job fairs. So the main job fair that we found success is when we work with Sonoma

044State, because those are applicants already in our area that are familiar with the county, are able to, looking for jobs in this area. We also, I did include a picture. This is a picture of the virtual job share that we job fair that we went to in Tulare County. This was right as we were pulling out of the pandemic and it was a whole thing. We actually talked to a lot of candidates. And as soon as they found out where we were, they're like, oh, thanks, I'm out. And they put balance. So, you know, it was a lot of, we are finding when we did this that a lot of people were not really willing to relocate to this area when we were going down into this, like the fresno area But that is something

045to consider later when we talk about opportunities. Is there other places where we can recruit outside the area? to bring staff in. Another avenue for recruiting is we've over the past couple of years, we just started a residency program. So we actually have two residency grants. And one of those residency grants has the PRDEIR, which is an elementary grant, and we have eight residents. And the bottom one, the EDSP is a special ed residency grant. We have six residents this year. And then the second grant that we have is the STEM grant. That is a secondary grant for math and science teachers. This year we have three residents. And what the residency does is that Traditionally, student teaching is something that someone volunteers to do. And so that we're only going to get people that

046have the ability, the financial ability to be volunteering for up to a year of their time. And the residency actually has allocated 35 to $40,000 of stipends for those student teachers. So they're getting paid While they're doing their student teaching. So this is a huge step towards being able to bring more people into our system and give more people the opportunity to student teach and become a teacher. The other piece about this residency program is the agreement we make with these residences, kind of like we have first right of refusal, like we have an agreement that they're not going to look anywhere until we first are able to see if we can offer them a job. So it's a mutually beneficial relationship. Another couple of strategies that we've used these last couple of last year.

047This year, we tried something called a super sub. And what we were doing was was we didn't have our vacancy, all of our vacancies that we knew we might have coming up. And so we hired some people on contract that we said. If we don't have a position, we'll use them as a sub. Knowing that, expecting that we would be needing them. So we hired three elementary teachers and we hired one secondary teacher. they all were placed into permanent positions before school started. So it was kind of like hiring when the window was good, but we didn't know those vacancies were there. And then we placed them in, but we kind of had the cover that if that vacancy didn't materialize, we still would be using them for substituting, which is also a need that

048we have. The final thing is that when we have vacancies at the secondary level that we can't fill, we do have a practice of offering additional 0.2s. We work with our labor partners, the union, to first make sure did we try and hire that position. And then if we couldn't hire it, do we first offer that? Like, let's say we had a .2 vacancy in math. And we couldn't find another math teacher to take that, we would then see were there any math teachers that are not 1.0? And we would offer that first to them. And then we would offer that to, we work with our department chairs to offer it to teachers that could teach during their prep. So they're actually working a 1.2. So they're working over their contract. We're very cautious about

049that. Like we don't like to do that and we don't want to over, you know, it's a lot to ask teachers to do. But it has been a practice that we've had to use more the last couple of years than in years past, just because of the way hiring has been. So how has hiring men? Let's look at that. So I did share with you all some data. These are kind of similar graphs around that data. This is showing the last three years of hiring. I included all of our hires. In the last three years, you can see for the number at the top is the total. So in 22, 23, we had 55 total new hires in 23, 24, it was 58 total. And this year it was 51 total hires. And I broke

050it down into second elementary, secondary, special ed, and SOCC. SOCC and special ed are really, we're looking at some similar, there's some overlap with the credentials that they have, but they are different programs. So I separated them out. What you can see is that the 22 what was stood out to me in this is that the past two years, we were actually pretty heavy in elementary. When you think about the fact that our district is two thirds secondary and one third elementary, but yet our elementary was almost equal to our secondary and more those two years. That was interesting to note. This past year you can see the secondary hiring was much, much larger and actually more kind of proportional to what our staffing is. The other thing that I looked at when I was

051looking through the data was Because I'm thinking about how our ability to staff if we have an increased load. One of the things that I was looking at was how many teachers were we hiring after the first day of work, because that would, you know, our goal would be to hire people early. So when school starts, we have people in place. You can see over the past few years, you know. This year was much better than the two years prior. And we know the last two years we were really struggling. We had lots of Lots of pips and stips and lots of people on interns. We still have some of those, but it wasn't as much these last couple of years. You can also see that we were getting people in place earlier this year

052than we were able to in years past. So that was a good trend to see over the last three years. This last one was, I also was looking at of the staff that we're hiring, how many are we letting are we Are we separating service with them after the first year? This could be a range of things. They could move on. They could move away. They could be non reelected. They could resign. So I wasn't qualifying the reason, but These are the numbers for the last two years. I did want to highlight like for secondary, so this was about 23% of the staff that we hired. If we released five, that would be essentially 25% of what we've hired this year at 22 secondary staff members. So any questions so far on this part? Yeah.

053Do you do exit interviews for those teachers that weren't LED go or non-reelected that just chose to leave. We do exit like we have an exit survey that we give to people. So I don't meet with everyone that leaves and personally interview them, but we do a survey. And then I've had a couple of a couple of times where people have wanted to meet. And when they do, then I meet with them. But we do have survey data for the reasons about why they leave. And that's a combination of of some choice questions, you know, like fixed choice questions and some very open-ended questions. So we do have that data. Yeah. Any other questions on this part? I just want to make sure I have some scale correct here. Jason, about mid 50s per year

054in certificate hires that's about 12% of our certificated staff. 12 and a half, something like that. Is that right? Mid 50s. I mean, I would… I would estimate i'm ballparking that our certificated staff is in the four four fifties. Am I right on that okay so more like 10 or be a little over 10, 11%, 12%. Yeah, it'd be around 12%. Yeah. And then the flip of what you just showed So you're saying our retention rate for new hires is 75% after the first year. Roughly. Roughly, yeah, roughly. I think I didn't compare with each of the, because there's the numbers and how they relate to the overall number. This one I was trying to pull like 5% of five teachers of the 22 would be about 23%. But it's roughly… about that yeah Any

055other questions? Just I just was wondering about the um our enrollment numbers and how it impacts these charts. does it, you know, I mean, if you're hiring, you're hiring to replace or you're hiring because we're increasing Or is it a combination? I think it is a combination, like everything's dynamic like this last these last two years, we've been having to hire Bilingual teachers for our mcdell dual immersion program and like that, those are new teachers and we have schools that have been, we've had some attrition with enrollment. So we have some schools that have been downsizing and losing some staff. So it is a combination. I think just a couple, I can actually, there's two more slides that I wanted to point out, and then I'll take other questions, but this might answer part of

056yours, Maddie. I'm not sure. There was another piece with those point twos. I went back and counted how many teachers were on point twos for this year. So there were 16 teachers that are at 1.2. So that is essentially 3.2 FTE. So that's like, I would think of that as a hiring shortfall. So we hired 22 secondary teachers and we were short 3.2 teachers in that process. And there's a couple of reasons why that might be. It depends on the context and the situations. um and So looking at, we had 51 certificated staff overall. I kind of just was putting this in perspective. So like if we were looking at in general this year, what we were looking at was trying to, we should have, our target was a little bit over 25, that 3.2

057Because a partial teacher is still finding a teacher. Like if we have a 0.4 math, that's still finding somebody that can do that 0.4. So it's something over 25 hires was our goal this year. This year was much higher than the two years previous. But just sharing that. So, I mean, to your question, Maddie, I don't know like the fluctuations. It seems like every year is a little different depending on like the dynamic things we have going on in the district as programs change or open or things we lose, we lose staff. So, yeah. That's what I was wondering was kind of like what is the dynamic of it? Is it driven by enrollment? And it doesn't sound like that's a piece, but not the whole thing. And people retire. Yeah, I think there's a

058part like, yes, strictly like our staffing is driven by enrollment and there's a piece that I was, I think I'm trying to capture is like, what is like, there's this general, this kind of uniform, like Sheldon was pointing out, it's somewhere in the 50s, like every year we're going to have some turnover with people having other, you know, people leaving for whatever reason. They're starting a family or they're doing a new job or they're retiring. And so we have that amount that is just Probably kind of consistent. And then, you know, so how, if that's one factor that we can kind of predict is putting that into perspective with like, okay, how does that affect hiring for seven periods? I think I just put in a version of the slides Tony shared with you all

059last time, but I did want to point out like essentially he had put forward two possible suggestions and there's iterations between these but With seven periods for 9th through 12th grade, there is a cost associated and the staffing Separate from the staffing lift would be 20.8. So if we did that, we'd have to figure out how to be really aggressive about our recruiting. Because you can see that if we're looking to get 25 and struggle to hit 25, getting the 20, we'd have to make sure that we were really aggressive and thinking outside of the box about how we hit that number. This was from his slide, if we were doing just ninth and 10th grade, we're looking at a lift of about like 10.4 approximately. So that one is a little bit more manageable

060in terms of the lift. But I think either way, whichever way you wanted us to go, we just have to figure out what is the strategies to find the staff for that. Any questions about this part? The last two things that I just wanted to share was kind of our plans for hiring. So we know that we're more successful when we hire in the hiring window. So some of the things we're looking at is that we're working with the union and we're working with our secondary schools to start our process much earlier this year and for scheduling, student request scheduling, figuring out those so that we can have a real clear idea about what we need. that we look to hire as much as possible in the March and April timeframe. That's the best time

061to do it. And looking at is there a way to expand some job fair attendance, like looking, are there areas Maybe Fresno area isn't the best, but are there other areas? Is Chico a better place where you might be able to get some people? Are there spots where we can go to job fairs that we would get candidates that would be interested in relocating. The other thing that we're doing is we actually are doing a human resources offering audit I think we've shared that we were planning on that. So they're actually doing that, starting that audit tomorrow. So they're going to be looking, one, at workflow efficiency. So how can we be more efficient? in not only our processes, but also our recruitment. there also we've asked them to, I've asked them to look specifically

062about parts in our processes and our practices that might have bias or systemic racism that we can address. and and And address those things in the way that we work. So I'm hopeful that they will also give us some support in how we are more efficient about recruiting for new staff for next year. So, and that's it. Do you guys have any other questions? I have a question based off of the last slide. How are we trying to hire for diversity? And then when we do have diverse candidates. I know a lot of times if you walk into an interview. You don't see anybody that looks even remotely like you. You're like, I don't want to work here. So how are we ensuring that when we do have diverse candidates that the interview panel reflects.

063the diversity that we say that we want. Yeah, no, thank you for that question. So we have added into our hiring guide that some language, which I can't remember off the top of my head, but it addresses that our intention is to intentionally construct hiring committees that have diversity that are diverse and have diverse representation on them. When we look at our certificated within terms with like race our certificated staff is 90% white. So we run the challenge of like, how do we manage that without putting the burden on that other 10% to be on every hiring committee so we're how we're looking at how we navigate that. Our first step was to add that into the hiring guide and to try to work with our hiring committees like as we're forming them. So that's

064me working with our labor partners because when we choose a hiring committee. I will work. I will be selecting, at least at this level, I will be selecting the administration that might be involved. I'll turn to our labor partners and say we need, you know, we need three people from PFT or we need three people from CSEA. So working with them on on trying to ensure that we have some diversity on the hiring panels. And then we still have to continue to work to make sure that at the site there are also recognizing that that direction and navigating how to make that happen. So we have some we have where we have some We're moving in the right direction, but we have room to grow in that for sure. And then when there is a

065panel and there's maybe one or two people of color. Is there any like pre-work done like you need to give space to the people of color who are giving their input. Especially in a room where they are very much in the minority. Yeah. Right now, that is not in place. What I have been doing is I collected um a lot of resources like uh like hiring protocols and practices for bias training for hiring committees. So I'm looking at that now and I'm hoping also we get information from school services of California because I gave them that directive like we want feedback on how we that's one of the things that would be addressing that second part about bias and systemic racism. So I'm hoping to get some guidance from them on how we can grow

066in that, but I'm also looking at resources. So that is what we're working on, but it's not in place at this time. Yeah. On the same subject, I could… recommend, you know, other sources other pools of people you can draw on to get a more diverse interview committee include our neighboring districts and our parents. I mean, we have plenty of parents who can fit you know, those roles. And that's good practice too in terms of just getting the diversity of stakeholder groups represented on the committee. you know, I would encourage you to another practice that I'm learning is quite useful in getting the bottleneck expanded at the source. We always complain about the pipeline not being diverse enough and not being full. But there's a choke in that pipeline in the self-selection of applicants into

067a position based upon how you describe the position. And one of the things that we have seen very successful in getting diverse candidates to apply to submit their applications is naming criteria of evaluation that speak to the outcomes that we seek in our diverse students. So in our case, we are seeking candidates who have demonstrated abilities to advance EL students, to advance black students, to advance Hispanic students and that often removes the self-selection out for candidates who you know otherwise if they see a kind of vanilla um application, they just feel like I'm not going to fit there. They're not looking for somebody like me. So that's something I hope we can try to do too you know the the ask for this, Jason, I really appreciate the work you put in behind it. was

068to help us think about do we want to go with seven periods for everyone or seven periods for just nine and 10? And part of the information we wanted to know to help us think about that is how competitive have we been as a district in hiring? And so, you know, when I hear that we got 50 hires a year roughly in the last three years. that's out of how many applications. And, you know, how diverse of the applications And then, you know, and I did hear you say even with those 50 hires, we were short about 3.2 FTEs because we had to ask people to work overtime. And so can you give us a sense of that in terms of you know how many of those 50 were our first choice. And they, you

069know, how good is our yield on our offers? Yeah, I think for the I don't, I mean, this is somewhat anecdotal, you know, based on my perceptions of how things went. So I hope I'm answering this but the we had some really good hiring in the spring and we were able to fill those positions really quickly and we got the candidates we want. We had some amazing, we hired some great great new teachers to our ranks. And the shortfall and the being short I think this had more to do, I think that had more to do with some of our vacancies not being clear on what some of our vacancies were until later, like until we got into summer. And we have issues of when people resign in the summer like that. Also, we're a

070little bit over a barrel because now you have to do it in And a lot of the teachers that we're looking for have already found jobs for the year. I think the part about people leaving in the summer because their life changes or they make choices, there's not much we can do about that. But I think us really being working on being prepared and knowing our vacancies really well early can help to mitigate that we're getting those those first, you know, getting the ones that we're looking for, getting our first choice teachers and being able to make sure that we're working well with business, that we have a quick, a streamlined process like we've been working together to try and streamline that process so that we're not dragging our feet through the interview process, through

071the offering of a job, like that whole process. those like little technical pieces are don't seem as important as they are because when somebody's looking for a job and they have a job offer from three districts, the one that is most responsive and on the ball is the one that people feel good about going with. We are looking to do that. I think the part where we struggled was that we could have fixed was being more clear about all of our vacancies earlier, the ones that kind of evolved later. What is early? What's early in the cycle? Early to me is in March and April. March and April, you may be getting some in May as people say, you know, when people decide that they're not coming back in May or June, like you being

072able to respond quickly when we get that. But if we have clear ideas early on in March, April, and May about what we need to hire, that's when we're in the best position to to have a really good process to involve our stakeholders, to get the candidates that are really the strongest candidates that we're looking to bring into our district. Jason? The reason why I asked about exit interviews, and it's kind of part of this discussion, is are people leaving because of bias? Or because they're seeing systemic racism in our schools and they feel like they just can't. be here i can i can i can look look through our things with that lens and get that back information back to you. I think one of the things that just anecdotally I see in like

073one of the board goals is to diversify our staff. And I shared with you plans for how do we develop a high school pipeline and those things. we right now aren't seeing a lot of diverse candidates applying. So, I mean, I appreciate Sheldon's suggestion about is there ways to change how we advertise and recruit. I'm hoping from school services, we get more information. about how we recruit because I looked at the credential data and there are people of color coming through the credential programs much higher than you would imagine. Like in Northern California, it's almost 50%, it's 50 50, but we aren't seeing that in the application process. So is that kind of what the audit what you're hoping is that they can pinpoint kind of what we're doing that or you know how we

074can improve that, like, you know, targeting the outcomes. It's that last one. It's how it's how we can improve like how can we improve upon, like, I know that the HR team is working really hard and how can we improve and do better the the person that's going to be working with us, Daniel Connolly, is very like she's worked in HR for a long time across the state and works across the state. So she has a wealth of this worked in this area. This is a really good strategy. So she has a wealth of best practices that I'm hoping she'll be able to share with us, the ones that are most you know that would apply to our situation. Any other questions or comments about? So I didn't hear you say 20 is impossible. We

075can't do that and uh I don't know what's possible or impossible. I'm very nervous. As you, you know, as the board directs us, then we're going to do our best to do that thing. 20 makes me nervous. I mean, just looking at the numbers, we're three three FTE short of 25. And then now we're going to try and double that. I don't know. what the hiring will be like and if that was the charge, then we'd have to like get our very best game on, it would make me very nervous. I feel like Like if we were looking at just from the hiring perspective, I feel much more confident about being able to top our game and be able to add another 10.4 is to me a more comfortable, like I feel more comfortable about

076trying to hit that target But again, we'll do our best with however where you ask us to move forward. So then… Going forward. like next year. Mm-hmm. we would need to add 10 more teachers. But it's not 20 all at one time. Is that what what the hesitation is yes that's it you're still going to have to hire 20. Yes, but it would be hiring half of them half of them next year and half of them the year after that. That seems to me like a little bit more manageable. I do worry about the 20, just especially when we're looking at At being short this year, I think there's things that we can identify we could have done better, but we also, we were we were We are working hard and trying to interview teachers

077and get it out there so that the 20 does worry me a little bit. Go for it. I hope I'm not putting you on the spot. I probably am. have there been in all of our work, like with Arenda with the equity audit Um. with the work with the kings. Has there been any um What do you call them? Recommendations given about hiring No, we… No, I mean, not that I've been listening for that and I haven't heard that. I did meet with the Kings to talk about them doing the audit and we ended up going with school services. It was… Financially, they were very different. And to be honest like like school services does is like they have an HR focus. So, um. there hasn't been that but there is a piece that isn't

078about recruiting. There is a piece about retention. So like that speaks to culture. So the things that we're talking about in those other conversations with the Kings, that's very relevant to retaining, like if we hire, you know, if we hire a teacher of color and they say, oh, like I'm the only one here and I don't feel comfortable like they won't stay so that the conversations abound around culture are very relevant to being able to retain. staff of color if we, you know, once they're in our organization, like how do we make this a an organization where people feel like they belong, like they're welcome. I think that has been in those trainings very much. Okay. And that would be interesting too, as Ellen's bringing up the exit interviews if any people brought those things

079up. Because I mean, I hear that anecdotally too Yeah. I'll look through them through our certificated specific, but I'll look through both because I think culture would it would be applicable in both classified and certificated. I'll look through that. Yeah. Yeah. Great. All right. Thank you, Jason. And moving on to Amanda, compliance and procedures for oversight committees. I don't. I just did my own computer. Real quicker, Dave. Right there. Thank you. All right, tonight. Start again tonight. I have an overview. on compliance and procedures for our oversight and advisory committees. I'm going to start with our bond and on June 3rd, 2014, voters passed two bond measures, Measure EA and Measure C. And this just gives a brief overview of what the intention of the bonds were for, funds from the bonds issued will be

080used to improve the quality of education repair deteriorating plumbing and sewer systems upgrade inadequate electrical systems, increase student access to 21st century. technology, renovate PE fields and facilities for school and community use and modernize, renovate classrooms, restrooms, and school facilities. This is the very broad overview for the very long language. Along with the passage of those bonds was resolution 1415-3 confirming the appointment of the citizens bond oversight committee members. the oversight committee of the district was formed for measures E and Measure C with the purpose of actively reviewing and reporting on the expenditures of the measures and the bond proceeds. The COC is required to advise the public through at least one report per year, which shall be made available on the district's website as to whether the district is compliance. this piece is fitting

081to This evening, because we do have our chair of the bond oversight committee who will be Karen, who will be speaking later when the annual report is brought forward. The purpose of the committee is to inform the public concerning the expenditures that are happening and have happened at year end. This question has been coming up quite often with having two measures on the ballot right now on how to be involved on how the bond funds are spent. And that is done through the process of the facility's master plan and that ultimately the board makes the decision on how to spend the funds. the bond oversight committee ensures that the district is compliant with how the funds were spent. And this is all part of EDCODE Section 15278B. I just have a quick clarification. So for

082the 2014 bonds. There was no facilities master plan, correct? Correct. So who… So the board made all the decisions on individual projects? So I'm not, I don't looking through the historical documentation, I'm not really sure what happened from 2014 through 2021. Last year, we did a couple updates and brought forward a spreadsheet. And the board did vote on the remaining bond funds on how those were going to be spent. Prior to that, I'm not sure how the decision was made. Thank you. This is just a quick overview of the requirements of the committee to prepare and publish an annual report. hold at least one meeting a year, though the recommendation is to follow the Brown Act. Most school districts decide to by holding the notice 72 hours, they are allowed to hold emergency special meetings

083with 24 hour notice. And what the Bond Citizens Oversight Committee actually can hold meetings via email approval too. There must be seven members, but there are five required positions. the business organization, senior citizen organization. taxpayer organization, a parent or a guardian enrolled in the district. And one member who is both a parent and guardian and active in either site council or PTA. the other two positions are at large and through the resolution, the district elected what those would be. The oversight committee receives and reviews the annual performance and financial audits. Those are the independent audits that we work with NYRO and Nigro. We have our general fund audit and a bond performance audit is in addition to that. And then the oversight committee provides an annual compliance opinion. These are our current members and we

084do have two vacancies for the taxpayer organization. and a high school PTA or site council representative. This is just a quick, very broad overview view of how the current bond funds have been used quite a bit of rain repairs and replacement, some miscellaneous upgrades, a new building for accessibility drop off and parking alterations at some of our elementary school sites. portables were added using bond funds. Quite a bit of ADA access and safety and accessibility. This is a part of a requirement for going to DSA anytime you do an upgrade 20% of the costs do need to be spent on ADA access, electrical energy and efficient projects. There was a large replacement of underground gas lines out one of our comprehensive high schools. We are in the just finishing up two battery backup projects. Prop

08539 solar projects at nine of our sites. additional play areas and outdoor facilities, quite a few HVAC upgrades and replacements. quite a few painting projects at a lot of our sites and interior renovations and flooring. Okay, so that was just the brief overview of the oversight, the bond oversight committee, if there are any questions on that. I have a question you may not know the answer. I was just looking at the amounts and they're so small compared to what it seems like we're allowed to go out for. Were they the maximum that Do you know if they were the maximum the district was able to go out for? Because I feel like that's like a third of what our current bond measures are going out for and inflation hasn't been that bad. I don't know.

086And I can look into it. There could have been a previous bond. So our bonding capacity is whatever our current bonds are and in addition. Yeah, I think the 91 and 92 where bonds were still being paid off. 90%. They're still on my tax bill. So I think the last one's still being paid off this year. Thank you. Yeah. Do we want questions on the status of the bonds now or later where they have the report from our accountants? the report coming forward tonight is it does have the from the audit, but it's specifically the oversight. Yep, we can do it then. Okay, we'll wait till it. Great. Thanks. All right. The purpose of our parcel tax oversight committee is charged with overseeing expenditures funded by voter approved parcel taxes and ensuring that such district

087funds are spent in the manner intended by each ballot measure. The PTOC prepared excuse me, prepares an annual report regarding the expenditures of parcel tax funds supporting district programs and services. And I… Had one slide, I apologize, that is hidden Hopefully I can… quickly fix that. And put it in the right spot. Okay. There we go. Sorry about that. Dave, are you able to refresh? Maybe that will do it. Yeah, perfect. All right. These are our current parcel tax measures. So we have the 2007 Measure D parcel tax, which is roughly $765,000 a year and the new Measure E parcel tax, which is anticipated to be $108,000. Excuse me, $805,000 a year. And for our junior high district Measure C. formally measure K at just under $1.2 million per year. And these are our committee

088members for our parcel tax oversight committee. Often we have overlapping between the two. We're thankful for the members that will do that. It is very hard to get membership. And as you can see on specifically the parcel tax, we do have three vacancies that the taxpayer organization. the high school district site council rep and an elementary school parent representative. Moving forward, can we break with past practice of it sounds like it's been whoever applies first gets it. Can we change that? Absolutely. Could not do that. Yeah, absolutely. So what we can do is we can either we I can off the top of my head, think of two ways. We could either have if There are numerous applications for a position. We could have a committee who then makes a recommendation of one application or

089all of the applications can come forward to the board. I think it's probably better to just have it come to the board. Yeah, I think committifying it too much is going to be Dangerous. Because I feel like when we got to a point, Sheldon, it was a really nice process And even though we had way more applicants than we probably anticipated. at the end of the day, we got Sheldon out of it, so… I think it'll be a little extra time. for us as a board, but I think it's worth worth it unless, I mean, I think staff should still have the right to knock out anybody that like, like. If I said I had a kid in an elementary school district and you all find out I don't like yeah yeah like we definitely

090will verify. Verify that they are who they say they are. But otherwise, I think it's better if they all come to the board because it doesn't, it happens like once a year at most, right? It doesn't happened incredibly often. In a perfect world, it would be every two years because the positions would be filled. So when they're vacant this could be until we feel like it could be ongoing. Perfect. Yep. Great. Does that sound okay to… Oh, yeah. Also along those lines a little bit. you know the recruitment would be interesting to see how this is recruited how you know, how you know just what that process is in order to find not just the same people every year. Yep. Yep. You know, um. And because it's odd that we don't have a high school

091or elementary. Anyway, just think it off the top. Yeah, we definitely can get the message out there, the recruitment that we did in spring was a parent square notification and then had it on the district website. So we definitely can do more outreach maybe on our social media. And the paper too. Especially for the taxpayer organization. Apparently the one Sonoma County taxpayers Association like no longer exists and went defunct because no one joined it. So we're all taxpayers. It would be really cool to have a progressive takeover of the taxpayer Association if anyone wants to lead that, maybe that's what I'll do in two years. And then be on both of our committees and then come serve on this too. All right. So what I have the The parcel text is a little easier to

092spread out by year than the bond. So what we did is it's the expenditures for fiscal year 23 expenditures for fiscal year 24 and then what is budgeted for 25. So the committee will they Because we're waiting for the annual audit, it is a year in arrears. So what the committee reviewed and also with the bond were the expenditures for the 2223. during the 23-24 school year. So This year, the parcel tax is anticipated to, excuse me. This was at the end of last year, not this year, is the $766,000. Sorry, I heard you click. I didn't. I was just wondering what the other expenditures were. Yeah, it seems like a lot of money up there. Yep. So for the other expenditures, those specifically are contracted services and supplies and some equipment. Yeah. So… A

093couple of questions. Why the big jump for the proposed 25. and other expenditures. That is a great, hang on one second. And then where does the parcel tax that we just passed Because that was one of the things I wanted to ask later on was where does that come into? This is all from our old parcel tax, right? So our, as you can see, for the elementary specifically, we have overspent our parcel tax. So some of it is. that. But yes, the new $800,000, what that is going through the budget advisory committee this year. on ways to and through cabinet on how those funds can be expended, but they currently are not budgeted. the additional. And then when do we get those? In January. In January. and uh Okay, and that's 805,000 a year. Yes.

094Okay. In addition to the 700,000. They would not be distributed in the same way because no it was written very differently, right? Yes. Yes. Because it's for staff and Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. So some of these would still qualify and additional. There's additional language. So historically over the last three years at the elementary There have been music teachers charged there. reading specialists, which were reduced at the end of fiscal year 23. There were additional stipends given to librarians and some of the stipends are not built into the budget. So depending on what specifically that stipend is. there could still be stipends this year. The library assistance. the art docent coordinator and the other expenditures are specifically for um Current, I'll do the current year, $83,000 is budgeted to supplies. and $59,000 is budgeted to services.

095So I can get back to you on what specifically those are. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah. for the high school parcel tax, which is just under $1.2 million. you can see that historically the district has made a contribution from the general fund. And $600,000. just give or take $600,000 each year and As that has gone on, the teachers have been reduced in fiscal year 23, 6.2 teachers were, FTE were charged there. And in fiscal year 24 and 25, it was reduced to 4.2. So two less teachers. The librarians have remained at 4.0 FTE. the library assistants are at 2.0 FTE and the technology support specialists are at 2.0 FTE. for fiscal year 23, the $139,000 of other expenditures was to services contracts. I can look into what those were. And then in um Excuse

096me. I was looking at the grand total. Let me break that out right here. There was $121,000 of expenditures in supplies. $12,000 in services and $6,000 in equipment. Generally, equipment is something that equals over $500. I'm not sure specifically what was charged there. And then in fiscal year 24, Supplies were about $150,000 and services were about $100,000. And then this year, what is charged there is a service contract for roughly $126,000. One of the things that we did to mitigate the increasing costs without moving any of the salaries into the general fund is we moved all of the supplies that were budgeted. We used the zero resource Right. Sorry, the unrestricted funds. So, and this just shows the historical that the bond, oops, excuse me. parcel tax has historically been overspent. I'm sorry, I wasn't

097sure if there was a question. Okay. Do you have a question? from going from 23, like just down the line is the change for teachers is that like less are like working for the district or is it like a change in like pay That is a great question. So what happened between fiscal year 23 and 24? two teachers that had been charged there were removed. They likely were charged to another resource. likely the district received a lot of one-time funding due to the pandemic. to offset some of the costs, that's likely where they were charged to. But I can definitely see specifically which teachers were there and get back to you on that. So the top left corner, just again for clarity, it's how much the parcel tax is, and then the bottom is how

098much we charged. So then that's how much we over have been overspending by. Is that right? Yes. So, yep, the top left is what we get about each year. It fluctuates a little bit due to building and then parcel taxes at age 65, there is a senior exemption unlike the bond button. All right, any more questions on the parcel tax? All right. One more. Budget Advisory Committee. The purpose of the budget advisory committee is to provide recommendations on financial resource allocation. It comprises diverse educational partners, including board trustees, union representatives, parents, students. and district staff who analyze budget proposals and suggest priorities. Recommendations are then passed to the superintendent who refines them based on professional insight. The final proposal is presented to the Board of Trustees for approval, ensuring students needs are met effectively. Here

099are some of the goals of the budget advisory committee to develop an understanding of the district's financials. share information on revenues and expenditures and the status learn about the state budget allocation of resources, the difference between restricted and unrestricted carryover a lot of the terms that we use. The committee makes a recommendation regarding budget priorities which align with the district's visions, goals, priorities. local control and accountability plan and other comprehensive plans. The important to note is that all recommendations of the VAC are at the discretion of the board whether to implement. So I think we talk a lot about our committees and encouraging people to join if it's the bond, the parcel tax, the budget advisory committee. And just making sure that people understand that these committees, two of them. our compliance piece specifically, but

100something for the budget advisory. It's a recommendation to the superintendent and the board and Specifically, the budget advisory are tasked with very hard decision makings when we're looking at reducing our budget on years out and when roughly 89% of our budget is salaries and benefits that includes making the really tough decisions on recommending elimination of positions. So we just wanted to always remember that piece of the committee. The Budget Advisory Committee has, it is open to the public and we hope many people attend and learn about it and ask questions. But the voting members consist of three PFT, which is our certificated union members Three CSCA, which is our classified union members. three site administrators. We will have two at the secondary and one at the elementary for the district split. three community members, likely

101parents and we will We're still working out what that split will be. Will it be one elementary, one secondary, and one who is not a parent or will we do the one and the two and then one classified administrator And then that was just it. If there are any questions on the budget advisory committee. Yeah, I would say it's a good one for everyone to attend except board members because we can't break brown act so yeah well only only people I would say stay away. Student board members can come but Our next meeting is on the 30th at 430 here in the boardroom. Here in the boardroom. So if anyone's watching and wants to be involved in the budget advisory committee. We would love to see you there. Yep. And the focus in October will

102be on the parcel taxes. And then as we discuss those over the next two months, we will move into the fiscal year 26 budget and the proposed eliminations. Great. Thank you. Any other questions? So when you say that the next budget advisory will be on the parcel tax, one of the questions That I just persistently go over in my head are um how do we have a list? of how we're going to spend the money. a perspective and then do we have, so this is the committee that will be making the decisions. The recommendation yes and then so then so it's a budget advisory committee that will be making the recommendations as to how this parcel tax money is going to be spent going forward. Yes. So for the first question on what was your

103first question was about what's been budgeted there. So essentially, one. Sorry. One of the things that generally happens, and it's it's very common for districts with the size of budget that we have. It's called the rollover model. model where a lot of times things roll over and they continue to be charged to a specific resource until they no longer fit into that reset source. or the funding is not available. So like at one point it was determined to reduce the FTE for the teachers. I'm not sure how that determination was made. And other than that, the staffing over the last three years has remained the same for this piece of it. And what we did is we were working on reducing the expenditures because one of the things about staffing is that any layoffs or

104anything like that need to happen by March 15th. So if we're not looking at, and just because somebody is being not somebody a position is being charged here. It's not that there aren't other resources or other ways to pay for them, but the conversation really should be when we're talking about our general fund and we're needing to cut this much. that really does not take into consideration that that we may be overspending in some of our other resources to like it broadens the conversation of who did what should be charged there do the positions Are they district priorities? Do they need to use general fund? Do we have other restricted funding? So that really, when making the staffing, that is really the goal of the budget advisory committee this year. And like I said, everybody

105is open to have the conversation when it's time to make the recommendation to bring forward to the superintendent and the board that that will be only the voting members, but they will have heard all of the committees. for the new parcel tax that was the intention is to bring that to as part of budget advisory committee. We also can have a separate committee that is specifically for the new elementary parcel tax if that if the board would prefer that. The one piece that we talked about last year was supplementing the overspending of that, but that doesn't necessarily need to happen too because the smaller class sizes, I believe, is in both in teacher retention. So there is some overlap or we can be tasked with taking also the elementary And looking at the difference and

106bringing forward specifically for this parcel tax, what is the committee's recommendation for the $700,000 removing the additional and then having a separate conversation about the new parcel tax. So I'm happy to go either way. I guess my question is that I'm very unclear as to the process. that's being used to prioritize these expenditures. And… Especially, I mean, particularly for the new parcel tax and because it's only for elementary and it feels like There can be a lot of use of those funds so that we don't have to use the rollover, so that we don't have to impact our student advisors and things like that. I'm trying to grasp what the process is. So the process. And if it is with the budget advisory committee, and then if that prioritizing is done through the how it

107relates to our goals and objectives. I guess, but it's the process that bothers me. So the historical process has been rollover. that what has been charged there is that's This is the only information I have is that, you know, like, as you can see for these pieces um from fiscal year 24 to fiscal year 25 outside of the stipends, which could still happen because those are not specifically budgeted the what's being charged there has remained roughly the same for the new parcel tax. There has not been a committee. We have not budgeted that amount. So that is you know, the goal was to, in speaking in cabinet last year, was to make it part of budget advisory this year. My question to you is. is that the will of the board? Would you like it

108to be part of this bigger budget advisory or would you like to see a separate committee that is specifically for the new parcel tax? Because there is no process currently. Well, that would be my druther, but… I'm just that one thing, but one person but i i am So because we've been getting a lot of information about the use of the rollover. And I'm trying to, I'm sorry for taking, I know that I missed The last meeting, but I'm just trying to figure out how we If the rollover is always being used Does that mean that we did not then take from the general fund. Because we were always told that there was this that we were taking from the general fund in order to cover this deficit. for carryover specifically? Well, I'm just, you

109said it was rollover that paid for this. And so that I'm not feel like I'm getting two different messages no so Carry over and roll so two different things. So when I'm taught, sorry, let me clarify. So when I'm talking about a rollover budget, what I mean is, so say that 10 FTE were charged there last year. we rolled the budget. So that piece of it, I know that there have been questions on on carryover. So carryover So I have elementary up, so I'll use it. So say that it was flip flopped and that the Parcel tax was a million dollars and we only spent 766,000 in a year. We then would have $240,000 of carryover. Carryover is the remaining balance, but we have been overspending our parcel taxes for a new a number of

110years that there is no essential parcel tax carry over. There's been a contribution made from the general fund. And so any carryover that would have been allocated would have been made from a contribution from the general fund after the budget adoption, carryover does not happen until after the books are closed and generally in the end of September, beginning of October. So those are an additional contribution from the general fund. Which is then given to, and not only parcel tax, there's other restricted funds that contributions are made. So the reason why the carryover specifically stopped is when we brought forward the eliminations last Spring, February or March, the budget advisory had as part of the eliminations decided, moved forward with cutting the $1.2 million is what we decided that needed to be eliminated from the budget.

111And then that went to cabinet and the recommendation from the superintendent to you was to use any unrestricted any outside of grants and donations carry over funds to pay for keeping the TOSA slash AP for another year because they were meant to be part of the elimination from the recommendation from the budget advisory committee. the carryover that had historically happened in all different types of discretionary funding. was all non is unrestricted funds. So those were eliminated. And I do know that the timing and the message was not clear. We, through the process of EERC, have had conversations and have spoken to the principals and have offered those funds to employees to use. We also specifically to other… Depending on the restricted funds, there are other restricted funding sources. that can be used, but there is

112no parcel tax carryover that was taken away. Who determines how the carryover or the rollover, I'm still confused about the difference between the two. Who determines how that is spent. who it goes to. who makes those determinations? So a rollover budget is essentially the budget model that's been used in this district. It's very common for districts of this size. It's not It is a form of budgeting. that you you take the positions and you roll them into the next outside of eliminations. So that is how the budget has been historically set for each year. the carryover was determined by if the principals are given site discretionary funds and if a site was given $100,000 and they only spent 80, the carryover was the difference. So it wasn't it was whatever was offered. not spent that

113was moved to the next year. We've talked a lot about that last year. There's a lot of difference of opinions. If districts should allow for discretionary carryover, especially with unrestricted funds. One of the models is we've talked a lot about today's dollars on today's students. So that had been a historical practice in the district to allow for carryover. When the eliminations were brought to the board. And Matthew said that to save the Tosa positions, we would no longer do carryover. So ultimately, when the board voted on that. the board made the decision. And we've looked back and it's specifically, it is in the background information saying that That is how the funds would be used. Can I get a copy of Measure K just to see what it looks what's in it. of measure C,

114K. or see whatever it's called. Yeah. So see, okay, there's… Yeah, of course. Because I don't, I tried to find it and I couldn't. So I'm just kind of curious What did the voters actually vote for? If you would like for me to… I also, I mean, I'm happy to If I have it up, if you would like me to put it on the screen. No, that's okay. I need to be able to read. Okay, perfect. Yeah, so just send it to me. Thanks. So I just have one more question. And I just I'm not I'm very, I'm… clearing up a little bit. So Parcel tax funds are restricted. Is that correct? parcel tax funds in the state of California are unrestricted funds that are unrestricted that are that have to be spent on what

115the voters vote for. So that's how you can take a carryover and put it in the general fund. Because I thought that they were restricted funds and you wouldn't be able to do that if it was restricted, right? The carryover didn't come from the parcel tax to the general fund. It went from the general fund to the parcel tax yep it has become clear. Yeah. Any other… Questions. on oversight. Ideally. All right. Thank you very much. I hope we all have a little more. Clarity. I want to take a five minute break, but really five minutes, people. Really only five minutes, 8.09. All right. I'm reconvening this meeting at 810. And we are moving on to our grad requirement recommendation. So we are oh Thank you. Okay. Dave's got it. So we are following up

116on the last board meeting, the study session on the graduation requirement proposal. So we're going to be talking about a few things. So one is just information about required changes. to our graduation requirements based on new state mandates. As well as some additional proposals that we are making And then seeking feedback from the board about the next generation science standards recommendations about science. as well as CTE. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. Great to be back. I've been here the whole time, yeah. Go ahead and go to the next slide. Thanks, Dave. Oh, the goods. Perfect. All right, so thank you. Yes, and the microphone. So this is currently what we have on the books for our graduation requirements. You can see the list there. So again, we're just refreshing our memories on what we covered.

117at some length last we met on the topic. And you can see, just to note that we do have a current graduation requirement of 220 credits. With a six period day over the course of four years, students do have the opportunity to earn 240 credits. And this is our recommendation on behalf of Ed Services and Tony, who is not here this evening. For starting with the class of 2029. We, again, discussed this at length last we met. Highlights being an additional year of math. A year of VAPA, Visual and Performing Arts. two years of a world language. And then the additional state requirements of ethnic studies and financial literacy, which are upon us. Here. Noting also that We are recommending at this time of two years of science, but we'd love your feedback on an

118additional year, a third year of science to align with the next generation science standards. And also CTE pathway completion. Whether that's a default or a requirement, we'd love your feedback. on that as well. And this is just another iteration of that just without the the highlights there, just all the requirements listed in a row. And you'll notice, again, another important piece to consider Since we are moving to a seven period schedule students to have the opportunity to earn 280 credits over the course of four years. So again, recommendation, ideas, thoughts around that number of 220 or would we move that up? Again, weighing in the science piece as well as the CTE pathway. portion. And I'll just have one more slide here, just some additional thoughts to remind ourselves, and then we can go back

119and have some questions. and discussion if need be. Just a reminder that in order for students to be eligible to apply to a CSU, or you see they need to earn a grade of C or better. In that A through G approved. course, it is simply just an eligibility threshold. It doesn't mean that a student's automatically enrolled or admitted to that university. Petaluma Promise, apropos, today we toured 200 of our students from Kenilworth Junior High School. to Sonoma State, we had an amazing field trip. Ms. Fidejin. And I led the charge. And had a wonderful time. And thank you to the staff. and the leadership of Kenilworth. We have one more tour. We'll be there again on Thursday with the other half of the eighth grade class at Kenilworth. you're more than welcome to join

120us. With the promise agreement, that's guaranteed admission with the 3.0 or better, plus a number of other important perks. including priority housing, priority registration, the presidential scholarship. The Promise is an exciting piece that we're actively promoting. Important asterisks in this proposal for you is that students who earn less than a C will still earn the credit. If they earn a passing grade in the course, they still earn the credit. That's five credits per semester, 10 for the year. And finally, any student receiving a D or F will have priority in credit recovery to make make up that course, especially for courses that are required for the UC or CSU eligibility. So again, review, just refreshing our minds Moving on from the topic of parcel tax And… So with that, some questions, and I thank you,

121Gloria, for the wonderful introduction and curious what's on your mind. Thanks for that review. I remember an earlier conversation about I don't remember what the name of the when a student has a free period, I forgot what that's called. Off periods, yeah. Anyway, you… Joanna, you had referenced some ed code or law saying, you know, students have to be enrolled. And so I'm wondering. I don't know what number that is or whatever but In what you've presented here, Dan, you know. 220 required out of 240 possible pursued credits currently. And what I'm seeing is in the seven period model 220 required out of 280 possible uh you know what what's the committee's thoughts on the number of required units to pursue In order to keep the kids there in the senior year, because you can

122get to 220 and seven periods by your junior year So what's the committee's Thoughts on that? Do you want to answer that and I'll follow up? Well, it's an interesting question. I think it could be thought of a couple different ways. First off, if you're familiar with the state of California graduation requirements, they're far lower than our current 220. And the thought was, why would we raise that is because in order for if our job is to truly prepare our students for maximum success in college and career, then we set the bar at a certain level. And really, if we zoom out, that in my view. is is uh is what this is all about. Why we are recommending this change is to increased opportunity for our students. So 220, if the board decides, could

123remain the minimum requirement for students, but whether we would add additional opportunities for students to to enjoy and to enjoy further flesh out their their skills and their career connectedness and their future plans. So to speak. And then we could build in Different pieces of policy to put guardrails on that so that that is clear for our students. And I think that the focus of of this presentation is about the courses and the which courses we're going to require for graduation. I think there needs to be more discussion about the number of units that go along with that. And I know that some of the other presentations that I think it was more in the seven period bell schedule. that Tony had proposed different possibilities for that. So I think that's something, this is first

124reading. So I think we need to come back to that discussion for sure. And if you all have any thoughts about that, obviously this would be a good time to hear it. When we were looking at the budget proposal for the seven period day and starting with 9th and 10th. It would seem to me somewhat logical to increase graduation requirements for 9th and 10th. If I was a junior right now and I was going to be a senior next year and you told me that I had to take more classes. there'd be an issue. This is all for class of 2029. that we're talking about. Right. I know I'm just So yeah. Can I make my point? Yeah, thank you. So anyway, so… I see increasing those requirements for ninth and 10th graders. it would

125just make sense, especially when they have to take more classes. Yeah, along those Well, kind of along those lines, if we add another year to science. And if we add CTE, that automatically will bring up And that's kind of what we're talking about here. So it is relevant as to you know how many units we want to propose because I mean, personally, I'd like to see another year in science. And I'd love to see a CTE. Are you proposing another year in science and math? Because right now they just have it moved from two to three years in maps. You want three years math, three years science. Yeah. Did you have something to say? I was just curious if the goal Maybe I'm just like not understanding it. properly yet but if the goal is

126to have more students who are like college and career ready having a required um visual and performing arts class versus a CTE class. I'm just wondering what the purpose is for that. I'm just a little clear on the unclear on the question. What is the purpose of having Can you repeat again? The purpose of like requiring a VAPA class versus like a CTE course when like the goal I thought was to have more students who are college and career ready Good. Okay. So hopefully I'll answer effectively. So the VAPA requirement is area F for area A through G. eligibility and a CTE pathway, not necessarily can be. All of our CTE courses are now A through G. approved. And some of them count for other areas of A through G. We have many science courses,

127for example, that are CTE, especially in our health sciences, which you enjoy. many of those courses at Casa Grande are both Area D lab science and also a CTE pathway. So yeah, to really meet that ultimate goal of college and career readiness. And with our college and career indicator measure that the state now measures all of our student success. Through high school, they are looking for those both of those buckets to be filled, both A through G and CTE. And just hopefully to put a further button on the topic, if the district and the board moved towards a 240 credit. For example. graduation requirement then. And with third year of science and a CTE pathway completion, which would be two years. that would leave 35 credits of additional elective. available to students to take additional

128courses that are not necessarily within those required courses. So just there's some flexibility, obviously, with that, but those gives you one possible scenario And one that we do see with the 240, we do see that fairly commonly with a seven period day across the state. Yeah. I just wanted to follow up on Maya. question. I don't see how we can separate the issue of the courses required from the units required because even to deliver this, you know, it's contingent upon are going to seven periods And so anyway, I encourage the committee to address this. Another thing is on both what was posted on our agendas as well as this. I only count 215. I mean, tell me where I'm short five. Well, to your first point, so let me just say we will go back

129and come back with a clearer recommendation in terms of the… I just want to know what, you know, what the you know what our type A type students, which we have a lot of are going to do their senior year. You know, my, my hunch is we ought to bump up the required units, you know, by about 40 or something like that. So that we, you know, to take advantage of what Seven Periods offers us, which is amazing electives for students to really dive into what they love and to find out what they love But anyway, but on the more direct thing, where am I missing five? I got you. you have human interaction. No, you got three there, so that's 15. And then count them up. There's only 215. So it could be, and

130I didn't make this slide, so it could be that the electives need to be 35. Okay. We will do more work on this piece and come back with more information. And will students still be able to waive the one the year PE with the um with the varsity sport. Yeah. That's current practice with PE exemption, yes. So then it'll stay that way, right? Because it just says two years of PE, so it'll still be one year PE and then like the sports exemption There hasn't been any discussion of changing that policy okay Okay. And isn't human interaction a course that parents can opt out of? They can opt out of the sexual health portion of the class. And so that's part of what's part of the some of the issue is that students who need

131extra support classes then are parents who are opting out of the sexual health portion, they're ending up waving out of the hole. human interaction course, which shouldn't be happening. And so that's one of the other benefits of having the seven period day. is that students would be able to have the human interaction class, as well as their additional support class. But they should not be waving out of it, no. So we are proposing this for next school year. Is that correct? For the graduate, for the class of 2029. That's our current eighth graders. So next year. So, and just looking at the dashboard for CASA, I can pull up petal limit too, but I'm looking at CASA. And when I look at math. That is an area where we are struggling. our students as a

132district. The only categories that are green or above are our white students. Asian and biracial students. So then what about everyone else? how are we like if we move to the third year of math What's that going to look like in terms of support for all of the other students? So I think that's the conversation that has to happen, right, is that if we So we know that students rise to the level of our expectations, right? And so This is saying that to me, this is the message that we believe in you and we believe you can do this. And now it's our job as the educators to provide those supports, right? So that's the next piece is I don't know if it's going to be a committee or where that will happen, right? But

133gathering to identify How do we make this happen? What supports do we need to put in place? And I think, Dan, too, if you want to speak to the idea of the math classes that the different types of math classes that you had talked about. Sure. It's just, you know, we're Thank you. It is just an idea. But it's certainly an approach. It's an instructional approach. It's a structural programmatic approach with all of our required courses. I'll take you back to the example of the science courses that are both CTE career connected courses and very heavily science-y courses. We could and should consider Similar approaches with other content areas. Traditionally, math has not necessarily been one of those, at least in the state of California that I've seen. But there's opportunity there to consider different

134types of courses that would still meet the requirement. meet the requirements of the standards, but provide a different lens, a career connected lens, a more hands-on lens potentially for students to engage in that curriculum. So I'm a parent for next year, right? Let's say I have an incoming child. But let's say I have a sophomore who's already struggling with math right now. at CASA. And I'm like, just get through it. You'll be done. So then the next year, what does the district, what are we going to have in place to help for that third year of math? I don't think we can answer that right now. I mean, that is the work that we have to do is to identify what are the supports that are going to be put in place once we have

135clarity about this is the expectation, then it's the discussion of how do we get there. It's hard for me to, I mean, I really want as many students as possible to be A through G. But I also… want to be able to offer support as well at the same time. Yes, so I'm not saying that we wouldn't offer, we would wait to offer the support. I'd say that is what we spend this year. planning, right? It's the communication so that parents know that this is the change And then the work of getting those supports ready so that they're in place. Has that started? It sounds like you had an idea of something. But then what? Is there anything you can share with us? No, no, that is, I think that that has to be a

136bigger conversation with staff involved about what's the supports would be specifically. Bye, bye. No one. I was done. Well, since I did watch the last meeting Three and a half hours. It was fascinating. Thank you all because you asked all the questions I would have asked. But I did, I was jumping through my computer at one point because we did We've had three years of math. If you go back to that. Well, you don't have to, but we had two years of math and then we had math science related and it was a one year And there was always like what the hell is that and um And so, you know, but it was a requirement And so misery. It is now. So I don't know how we always filled that in, but it always

137had this math component of three years. So maybe… not making it quite so scary and maybe having these other options that you don't have to take trigonometry. Or whatever it's called now. Is it? What's also interesting, too, is that currently we do have about 75% of our students at both of our comprehensive sites that do take a third year of math already. So it's not, hopefully that puts it a little bit more in perspective. It's not as big of a lift as as it may seem, in my view. Yeah, and I want to make sure that I totally agree that we absolutely have to have supports in place. and well communicated to the students and to the parents. Sheldon, you had to take the gavel. You have to take the gavel. Thank you. Thank you.

138All right, so we are on ethnic studies update. I'm back. Okay. I sent her it. Right. Got our team here. So we are here to give an update on the work of the Ethnic Studies Committee And so… To start. Just want to recognize the members of the committee. We have Todd Siders, Jesse Redfield, Jess Lachon, Galdos, Marisa Alvarez, Megan McClellan, Nicole Wallmer, Shana Friedman, Shireen Jackson, Sandra Larson, Shannon Britton, Andrew Aha, Erica Noon. Myself, Tony, who uh And then we had support from SCO. as well, which was really helpful. We have had two full days of meetings this year as we have been doing this work And our work has really been focused on the mandate for the coming school year for 2526. Which is that we must offer one semester of ethnic studies. So

139that's really been the focus of the of the committee and the longer term requirement for the class of 2930 is that ethnic studies, one semester of ethnic studies would be a graduation requirement. over on the wrong side. Hello. Thank you. So some of the things we thought of as we, yeah, we'll just go. Some of the things we thought of, the considerations we made as we were meeting as a committee. was first of all, that we wanted to go beyond the mandate. We were given what do we want to give to our students? What do they deserve? What do they need? And actually, Sheldon, that comes up with your extra five on the 220 because we actually are hoping for a full year. requirement and a full year course. I know that the board did

140bring up the idea of a ninth grade requirement, and that is something we considered. We thought about is it better to get the students when they are young And we can really build that or do we do it when they are older and they actually have a little bit more lived experience, a little bit more functioning brain power to get there? And we also considered in ninth grade, we're already adding a seventh class to try to get students the ability to take every class as necessary on campus. Therefore, if we then made a ninth grade standalone course that would just kind of defeat the purpose of the seventh period being added. And we're also hoping and recommending that anyone who teaches an ethnic study course does get the appropriate training. SCO is currently offering a

141training every month, but it is during the school day. And so we're hoping that we can work with SCO to bring something to PCS so that everyone can have the appropriate training. And we've got three courses we're going to talk about that we're looking forward to. Am I the next one too? I am. Oh, okay. So one thing that we are offering at Petaluma High, we offered the idea of doing a English 9 class with an emphasis on ethnic studies. the kind of Concern here is then are we teaching multiculturally or are we actually teaching ethnic studies? And so we will need additional training for our English 9 teachers and It does all the things English 9 does, but with then the emphasis on ethnic studies. Looking as the slide says, on political, social, economic,

142and cultural experiences. It would then cover the four groups that were mentioned in the state guidelines, and we could also add in additional bits for what our community actually looks like so the students can see themselves in the curriculum. And we really emphasize not just looking at like power dynamics, thinking about identity. But joy and celebration and actually making sure our students see not just themselves in the struggles, but themselves in celebration and and how important identity is and how much Like that should be celebrated and loved in our community. And so yeah, we're looking at resistance, resilience, and perseverance. At Petaluma High, we are actually looking at working with ERWC to do kind of a test run with West Ed for a ninth grade ERWC curriculum, which is more nonfiction based. It's expository reading

143and writing curriculum. We already do it with our 12th graders. And they actually have, they're working on building in an integrating ethnic studies. And so part of this will be We would like to offer this moving forward regardless. But we might be doing it with the support of WestEd and the CSU system. It's… Hi, folks. So About four years ago in COVID, we presented at CASA the American Voices cluster, which was designed to represent all American voices. And that included a US history component and a junior English component. And I think the board welcomed it and I guess the good news is for follow-through, it's still going. We lost the clusters this year, but what I'm trying to do here with this class is to take the existing US history class And essentially convert it

144formally into an ethnic studies elective way that students could take their US history requirement. So that would be our offering for next year at CASA. And so what that looks like is instead of a chronological historical approach, we will look at Native Americans, Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans in seven about weak units. bringing in history. So it's kind of inside out, if you will. It's ethnic studies forward with stacking the US history state standards on tacking it on. instead of the more unfortunate traditional model of tackling on ethnic studies in a tokenistic sort of way. And That's pretty much the general idea. I could give a couple of examples really quickly just so that you understand where I'm going with this. So for example, if I were teaching African-American studies unit, I would use

145that as an introduction to people of color and their participation in World War II. So I'd bring in World War II, first and foremost from the eyes of the people of color who participated fought, died. for Native American history, I go back to the colonial days and bring in the foundation of America, but again, from the perspective, first and foremost of native americans And looking at the entire historical spectrum as much as any US history teacher could actually ever cover. This would include all the themes in the ethnic studies state guidelines. Including resiliency, including joy, including resistance. Oh, one more thing. There's also a risk, sorry, there's a really incredible textbook out there that we're hoping to get in addition to the current standards-based It is absolutely mind-blowing in terms of its quality and direction.

146So I just want to point out that I would actually supplement the course with that new textbook as well. Don't want to… shouldn't. Um. And then the course that we decided to come up with for a standalone course would be for 11th and 12th graders, so upper division, as Jesse Redfield touched on. So not only like getting them while we're young and kind of doing that integrated English 9 class, but also getting them later in 11th and 12th grade when we can talk about maybe more like serious topics because, again, that brain is a little bit more developed But in this class, it is kind of a humanities based class. So we learn about history, we learn about English, we watch different, we want to watch different films, read different pieces of text, but that

147explore socioeconomic, political, and cultural forces affecting American society today. And then it highlights basically everything that the California state guidelines covers. And we're using real life experiences to frame the structural and social dynamics of race, racism, and institutional racism in relation to the experience of people of color in the United States. So touching on as much as we can, and again, I think the reason why we wanted to do a year-long course is so that not everything is kind of shoved into one semester because it's a lot. It's a lot to teach and it's valuable. So we wanted to do a full year so that we can touch on all those things. We can touch on the politics and the sociology of ethnic studies. And then the course also emphasizes this was super important to

148the ethnic studies committee that Jesse Redfield also touched on and Todd Siders also touched on. The importance of talking not only about all the bad stuff, but also resistance movements and resilience movements and how despite everything that has happened that groups still come out and resist and rise up. And the course will provide students with knowledge, critical thinking. We'll have a lot of in-class conversations. A lot of reflections on our own identities. We talked a lot about interpersonal communication. And other skills for them to not only just have to take a course, not only have to take a required course, but to have them walk out as better citizens in their community who are willing to work with all people. I think that is everything. Thank you. So our next steps are to start to

149survey teachers about, you know, drumming up interest. I think there's a lot of passion in our committee, as you can see already, and a lot of just enthusiasm around these courses. So we want to do an interest survey to gauge teacher interest and to start talking about the training because it is a big component. So that's what we're working on also. You will have the course proposals coming to you later in this board meeting. Any questions? So I do want to point out that this was just two meetings worth. We absolutely would love more time to grow this. And so the standalone was our, we want to make sure this is offered. like for the requirement or like it needs to be there, but our hope is that it will grow. I know many nearby

150California wide districts go 14, 20 different electives you can choose from. And so our hope is that it will continue to grow. This is just the what's our first step and then where do we go from there? So which would meet the requirement would it be the the ethnic studies in the ELA class or the standalone elective? So for next year, all of these meet the requirement of offering an ethnic studies course. In terms of the graduation requirement, I think the committee needs to have some more discussion about that. The feeling right now is that what I that I understand is that the ninth grade that there's… there's a lot of um strong feelings about making sure that students take an upper division ethnic studies course when they're mature enough to really grapple with the

151full content. And so if the ninth grade class is allowed to count as meeting the graduation requirement, then students wouldn't have to take the upper division class. And so that's the tension right now. And so the current feeling is to somehow that we kind of don't want that ninth grade class to be able to check the box for meeting the graduation requirement. But that sort of has implications, right? So I think that needs more conversation, but that's where the committee is leaning right now. But for next year, offering these courses will meet next year's requirement. We want to yes and the requirement. I think because this has come up a few times about offering at 9th or 11th. But then that is centering the comfort of who? Because like that's more centered towards the white

152students For them, for them to feel comfortable. It's like we live in this skin and in this experience every day. So an incoming ninth grader is going to have 14 years of that racialized experience. so who's who's Who are we doing that for? That's just something to consider. I was going to say, I totally agree i think um I think are minoritized students, you know, someone mentioned, you know, when they've had the lived experience to understand and grapple with it. I think minoritized students have this lived experience from kindergarten. And the sooner the better. but um I think the grappling has to do with the, you know, the homogenous You know, perspective of these things. But anyway, I want to Overall, I'm super excited. I mean, this is like represents some of the most meaningful

153progress I've seen. And I love the fact that You're not asking us, I think you're not asking us to choose from the three, but do all three. And then as a start And I noticed, you know, the three course proposals, you know, it was pretty clear to me you know, I think it was Todd's who was the US history one pretty well fleshed out. The others were pretty sketchy. And my hunch is because It is sketchy. It's a couple of days meetings of worth of work but also giving latitude to the specific teachers to develop the courses as they would see fit. You know, when they get that assignment. Is that an accurate assumption? Okay. Sorry, I know you stood there to answer that, but we do really want to make sure that people are

154trained and people are not assigned this necessarily, but are going with this with their full hearts. Because again, the students don't deserve any less than that. And I do want to address, we are not worried so much about the majority's opinion For ninth graders, we want to bring it into the lower grades. We absolutely do. It's trying to figure out how to make that work. And that is one of the reasons we've offered ninth grade and possibly 10th grade to be integrated. We just want to do the yes and of we want to make sure that this is given the full support and dedication it deserves. We just don't want to phone it in. To put it poorly. And I will say half of the students at CASA are students of color. Yeah. So it's

155not even the majority. Yeah, exactly. These are half. So which again, which half are we But I think we're not saying that we don't want to offer in ninth grade, right? We're saying we want both. We want to offer in ninth grade so that they get that early exposure and the early engagement and we want them to take it again. when they're in the upper grades. And we did have this conversation explicitly about people of color are living this. We're feeling it. We're talking about it. When I think about like especially Todd's class, like that blew me away. Like I'm like, I want to take that class. And so when I think about, I almost offered to be your teacher's aide, but I was like, I don't think I could take that. When I talk

156about the complexity of the course, I'm not talking about, I'm not Honestly, I'm not thinking about people's comfort. I'm talking about the intellectual rigor wanting students of that age to have the opportunity to engage in that level of rigor is what I'm thinking about. And I feel like that's what the committee was thinking, but let me Again, I want to emphasize the both and approach. It was very clear right away from the committee that We understood what we were assigned, but we wanted to go beyond that. The passion in the committee and the teachers who are interested is what's going to carry this through. I don't have a programmatic step-by-step approach for inclusion at the ninth grade, but It's both and. I hear your concern, Joanna, very much about the population at CASA and You're

157absolutely right. There's no reason why students should wait. It should be in the junior high. It should be in the elementary. But my biggest fear after all the time I've taught My biggest fear is that it becomes just a checkbox. It becomes a place where we fill out balances the class schedule. And such important lessons are forgotten. by everybody so everybody I guess what I think we're going with this as a committee is trying to create a culture where more clauses can be added, where it's not a choice of which grade level, but all grade levels. Hi. I'm just thrilled that that you came up with three, after hearing the conversation from the last meeting on YouTube. I wasn't sure what to expect and I know there was a discussion about whether to have a

158semester, which I don't want at all. And I think that's where it's checking a box. And it was obvious to me that nothing in here was checking a box. And that if you have all these different options it will be hard to escape. I mean, you know, really, and then build on it. And so if we do agree to all three of them, that's a beginning. Is that how you're kind of And some of them are integrated. And so you're going to have them in a required class. But then also have it as an elective have it dynamic. I'm just your thoughtfulness on it your um I'm just… I'm hoping it will happen and i i hope i'm hoping As far as I can see, you're going to have at least a ninth grade if

159we pass it. Sorry. We'll have a ninth grade and then at 11, 12 and an 11 So that's a good start. But I agree to just have it everywhere. She has something to say. No? Were you talking about the 11th, 12th as Oh, I'm sorry, Joanna. Oh, I'm sorry, I have a good… Yes, I'll pay for it. I was just curious. Are the integrated courses? Because I think those are a great way to put the idea of ethnic studies in while people are still like students are still maturing so that way when you hit them with the full course, they can fully appreciate it for what it is. is the integrated course, especially for like freshman english Is that an option that students can like choose to or is that the required, that's the only

160option there is to take for freshman english So we did talk about that. It's unclear partially because If we do go forward with the grant, how Some of the classes will do the CSU ERWC program, some won't, but we are And I can't speak for the entire English department, so sorry, Petaluma High English department who's listening. But we are like hoping that this is something that would just be integrated in. So at least for English, it would just be the understanding that this is part of our English 9 curriculum. The additional concern there is then what happens to honors and AP classes. And so that would be an additional conversation for, again, making sure that people can't dodge out of it. But making sure, yeah, that This is just what we teach here. And you're

161going, like, we want you to learn this. Okay, my question was. the 11th, 12th grade year-long course would be a requirement or an elective. Do you want to talk? We're going for requirement. We're going for, yeah, I was going to say, I was like elective and I got kind of nervous, but no, we, we want it to be a requirement. So again, getting that ninth grade curriculum, getting them like. aware of these topics with the books that we would read in English 9 and then having 11 12th be required like follow through with what we learned in English sign and I mean, honestly, hopefully. Oh, but starting this next year. But that would be our decision. Yeah. Yeah. And starting… Ellen. that would be our decision. any three of those classes would meet the state

162requirement. But it's not a graduation requirement yet. So I think when we use the word requirement, right, differentiating between next year's requirement, which is just to offer versus a graduation requirement. So again, I think in terms of the graduation requirement, the committee needs more time to come up with a formal recommendation to you as to which classes should meet that requirement. you can see where the leaning is in terms of that. I'm all for a requirement. I love a requirement. So I was in the cemetery again yesterday. You know, it's my favorite place in Petaluma at this point. And I was with one of our librarians. She's actually the SCO librarian, Connie Williams, but she also works for the library. Maddie's good friend, Connie. And she had shared, and of course, I forgot the name,

163but it's like this resource through the library where I'm sure you guys know about it. And apparently your librarian do know um we're she can help create lessons with primary source documents and all these things. So she had mentioned that sounds like, Jesse, you're not in your head, so you know all about it. So besides that, like curriculum development and the SCO trainings, do you have any other trainings in mind? That sounds good to you or that you're pursuing? We've talked about if it could possibly be offered on one of our PD days, our professional development days. Because again, we want to offer it to as many people, whoever wants to take it, we want them to be trained in it because eventually we want everyone to have it somewhere. In their curriculum. But again,

164we've had two days so we haven't Fully pursued. I have reached out to a couple districts nearby that have ethnic studies and have been getting some help from them and some advice. We'll get back to you on that one. Thank you for doing this. I'm really impressed that what you got done in two days. That's amazing. Okay, any other questions or comments? Do you have any comments or questions? Okay, good. Actually, speaking of, I'm just going to call you out here. Hi, Olivia. We do, we're talking about getting student feedback as well before we officially move forward with like curriculum and things. This was, again, advice given to me by a teacher in Windsor, I believe. about forming, like asking people on students on campus from a variety of backgrounds and ethnicities, like what do

165you want to see in these classes? What is it that would be helpful? And so you're on my short list of people to talk to to help me bring people in. But we do like we To this point, like… This committee really did care. And we have been… Again, two days of not really fighting but like sussing out exactly what it is, like what can we do? And then, and shout out to gloria mentioning like, okay, cool, as we get this plan What's next year's plan? What's the following? What is our schedule? How do we get to a more robust offering. I just want to add that. Yes, you do. I am taking the training through scope. And I'm super excited about it. And in that process, and then coming to the committee, I can

166say that we are right in line with what the county is looking to do. The county wants standalone They're encouraging that. And they… want to offer as many classes to as many age groups and grade groups as possible. So it was really wonderful to go to that training and come to the committee meeting and know that PCS And so our like on the same wavelength in terms of what we want to offer to our students, both here in the city and in the county. So we can rely on or we can Collaborate with them and with their resources and They're excited to work with us as well as we continue to build Shout out to SCO. Well, and Zynga Wood. She's amazing. She's wonderful. I'm glad you're working with her. Thank you very much for

167the report. Thank you. Okay, we are on item number nine. Huh? You need a break? Okay, let's take a three-minute break. We're losing people. We are on item nine, comments from the public on special recognition reports, presentations, and non-agendized items. If you have any public comments make on any of those items, please fill out one of these sheets and bring them up here. No one else. Okay, so we have one speaker, Molly. you're up and you got four minutes. There's… Thank you all. You guys do this a lot, staying late, so thank you. My name is Molly Lunabas. I teach art at Casa Grande High School. I'm here to address a mistake made by Petaluma City Schools. Last spring, PCS mistakenly removed secondary visual and performing arts, VAPA, From decades-long parcel tax funding of Measure

168C, oftentimes referred to as Measure K, its original name from 2004. This parcel tax provides funding security in perpetuity for library, technology, and the arts. One of Measure C's main tenants is to, quote, maintain music and the fine arts. And by the way, Ellen, I have the original voter pamphlets that I can provide to you later. Removing VAPA from this parcel tax funding eliminates this core tenant and reverses over 20 years of precedence of VAPA support voted for by the taxpayers of Petaluma. This is illegal. We were blindsided by the mysterious disappearance of our allocated funds. The impact of this oversight has led to project delays. Insufficient materials. curriculum downgrades, and ultimately many frustrated and disappointed students. Eventually, this would lead to program cuts. I look forward to the immediate resolve of this mistake. especially

169ahead of the November election, where we have two much-needed bomb measures on the ballot. Returning VAPA to the protective funding of Measure C reassures the people of Petaluma that their vote counts. And that PCS can be trusted with their hard-earned money. Thank you in advance for your attention to this consequential mistake. And it's prompt resolution. Good night. Thank you, Molly. Okay, we are on item 10 adoption approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion to approve? I move to approve the agenda. I second. Any changes to it? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, the agenda is approved. Item 11, report on activities and correspondence of board members. I don't have Caitlin's list, so we'll just go down the aisle if anybody wants to share anything from their activities of

170the last couple of weeks, please do so. Joanna? Ava's not here, but she was homecoming queen. So we will acknowledge that. She was definitely the homecoming game. What did I do? Just… Kenilworth basketball. And the seventh grade world history play that Mr. Caldwell does every year. What was it for me? Ellen? Let's see. Your microphone. Your microphone. I just was at a lot of committee meetings. Oh. Maddie, anything you want to share? Yeah. So I was at the Climate Action Committee meeting and I met with one of our students of the month, Pranav Krishna for starting up the academic decathlon again. I guess I thought I might want to be an advisor but Anyway, we, we… We are working on it. And then the continuous improvement committee, but I did want to comment on the

171climate action. Go ahead. We had a wonderful presentation by one of our own MFTs, Caitlin Severin. I think she's at CASA. And she was talking about how much climate anxiety is impacting our students. Not only, well, particularly in their mental health and also in their academic performance. She had 45% of youth say that climate-related stress affects their daily lives. 59%. are very or extremely worried about climate change. And 75%. believe their future is frightening. And she just had a wonderful presentation and so I just want to bring this up because I'd like, first of all. to have climate anxiety questions be put on our youth truth and our pulse surveys. Because we don't have any data. And so if we can have some kind of try to start collecting how much climate anxiety is impacting

172our kids. First of all, their mental health. And then possibly how that is impacting their academic performance. And along with that, we're the resolution is coming. But it's going to be much more comprehensive and it's going to include comprehensive policy And, um. kind of um around climate action and environmental literacy. So it was a really great meeting. Thank you, Dan. All right. Thank you. Our student board members aren't here, and so we'll skip item 12 onto item 13, comments from the public on consent items. If there's anybody who would like to say anything. on our consent agenda, which is item 14. Raise your hand. Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to item 14, approval of the consent agenda by consolidated motion. Do I have a motion? I move to approve. Second. Hey, any questions, comments

173on the consent agenda? It's pretty short. Yeah. Okay. All those in favor say aye Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion carries a unanimous vote. Item 15, comments from the public on action items. If you have any comments on the several action items under item 16 now is the time to let us know. All right, seeing none, we'll move on to the action items 16.1.1 resolution 2425-14 declaring November is Native American Heritage Month. Do I have motion? I move to approve. I second. Any… comments or is there anybody who would like to read this into the record. I will. Please do, Manny. a resolution of the Board of Education of Petaluma City Elementary and Petaluma Joint Union High School Districts. Declaring November as Native American Heritage Month. Whereas from generation to generation, Native Americans handed down invaluable cultural

174knowledge and rich traditions which continue to thrive in Native American communities across our nation today. And whereas since the earliest days of our republic. Native Americans have played a vital role in our country's freedom and security, having served in all branches of the Americas armed forces. And whereas Native Americans are leaders in every aspect of our society, from the classroom to the boardroom, from academia to the military. And whereas Native Americans make up the ranks of both our district certificated and classified staff, as well as our student population. And whereas Native American and Alaska Native tribal governments are an integral part of social, political, and economic fabric of the United States. And whereas tribal America has brought to this great country. certain values and ideas that have become ingrained in the American spirit. the knowledge

175that humans can thrive and prosper. without destroying the natural environment. The understanding that people from different backgrounds, cultures, religions, and traditions can come together to build a great country. And the awareness that diversity can be the source of strength rather than division. And whereas while we pay tribute to Native American achievements, we must also acknowledge The parts of our shared history that have been marred by violence and tragic mistreatment. And whereas for centuries Native Americans face cruelty, injustice, and broken promises. And whereas our tribal communities face stark realities. including disproportionately high rates of poverty, unemployment, crime, and disease. And whereas the Petaluma City Schools Board of Education recognizes that each student's needs an opportunity Each student needs an opportunity to understand the common humanity underlying all people. to develop pride in their own identity and

176heritage. And to understand respect. and accept the identity and heritage of others. And whereas the Petaluma City Schools Board of Education is committed to enhancing equity Inclusion, diversity, and partnership and remains dedicated to providing schools and districts with resources and supports to implement the histories, social science standards and civic engagement. and promote understanding of economics, geography, world, and US history and government in schools. Now, therefore, be it resolved. that the Petaluma City Schools Board of Education proclaims the month of November as Native American Heritage Month. Thank you, Mandy. Any comments? or questions? Okay, seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Hi. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. We're on item 16.1.2. approval of the variable term waiver request for dual immersion language teacher Abigail Illiz. Eliza Razas. Do I have a… a motion to approve.

177I move to approve. A second. Jason, do you want to give us an introduction to this, please? Yeah, this is one of our teachers that is an intern, she is also working on her bilingual authorization. I think it says in this one, she needs to to complete the exam. So she is, we need this to have her still compliant and being able to teach in the classroom that she's placed in. Jason, how is this different from a PIP? um It's a great question, Ellen. So this one is, she's an intern, so she's in an intern program. And my understanding is the variable term waiver also has to do with it. She's also bilingual. We're looking for bilingual authorization. So she's in an intern program and she's requiring bilingual authorization and she's working on the exam.

178Whereas a lot of times we would be doing like an intern permit Something like that so i think this one and the next one is a little different, but they both have to do with these are both bilingual teachers that were looking for that authorization. Any other questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Hitting opposed? Motion carries unanimously. 16.1.3, second approval, I mean, second variable term waiver request of dual immersion language. Do I have a motion? I'm going to approve. Second. any questions on this? I presume this is a second person. Similar. Just as a side note, this person, Nico, does have a credential. She doesn't have a bilingual authorization. She was in our residency program last year at McDowell. So this is one of our first fruits of that program of somebody that

179we're hiring in. Yeah, so it is wonderful. Good. Great. All those in favor, say I Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. 16.1.4. Let's look at four, five, and six together because they kind of come as a set Second reading and approval of amended board policy 000 on vision, 0100 on philosophy, and 0200 on goals for the school district. And I have a motion to approve those three together. I move to approve those three together. I second. Okay. Do we need an introduction to this? Maybe Esmeralda? We previously brought these policies to you and my understanding is that the board was part of making the revisions to those policies. Apparently, we have been operating under this vision philosophy and goals without policy approval all these years. It's good we get it straight before, you know, before it's

180too late. Any questions or comments? I mean, these are exactly what we've been operating under for the time that we've been aboard. We just haven't put it into policy. Yeah, it's formal line. Okay, good. Seeing no comments. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. item 16.1.7, second reading and approval of amended board policy 0410 on non-discrimination in district programs and activities. Do I have a motion? I move to approve. Okay, so this is, would this be Esmeralda or Jason, I know that in your absence, I believe I brought that last board meeting or one of the board meetings Yeah, the second reading, we saw it a couple weeks, a couple of board meetings ago. So does anyone have any questions or final edits or anything on this? board policy. All

181right. Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously and 16.2, business services citizens bond oversight committee for measures E and C, and annual report to the Board of Education. Do I have a motion to accept? I move to accept. the oversight committee's report. A second. Amanda, we've already heard your presentation. Anything to add to this? I mean, this is where we have the actual Report, report. Yes, we have chair karen wonderful That's a piece. Karen, wonderful with us. I know. Yes. And I appreciate, it's a sound. This is on, okay? So I appreciate what Amanda did earlier, which is kind of give the context in the background for the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee. I'm the chair involved with this for a whole three months so far, so I don't have

182a vast history. But there are some of the members who have served on multiple committees before. We have Michael Webb and the vice chairs, Phoebe Ellis, so she's got a longer history than myself. As well as Josh Grove and Bailey Malone are the current members. And then there's two vacancies that was mentioned earlier. So if you know of anybody that represents either the tax organization or a high school site council representative or has kids in the district. It would be great to fill out that committee. We met three times since we were appointed in June. We met in July on the 10th, August 14th, and September 18th in an effort to review the documentation that was generated and then get it before the board here. So here we are. October and I'm glad it's in

183front of you all to approve. When we met, Amanda was present as the chief business officer, and then we had usually the construction manager who was able to answer a question. So we had pretty good participation. We didn't have anybody from the board directly or the superintendent participate, but we were able to get most of our questions answered. There's some lingering details. Our charge was to look specifically at fiscal year 2223. And so that was our primary focus. But I think for the benefit of the public and for future boards going forward, we've had some discussion with Amanda on making it a little more transparent on the website what schools have benefited from the grant or the bond funds over time and to what dollar amount and what kind of improvements have been made over

184the years. Some of that's covered in the report, but it's not granular enough to get to the dollar amounts. Right. So let's just talk about, it's referred to as measure E and C. So E is the elementary bond and then C is the secondary high school bonds, middle school and high school bonds. what we saw for 22-23 is the Measure E elementary bond expenditures were about $2.1 million. with a budget that was planned for those particular projects of 4.7. So there was about 43% of the budget was expended in 22-23 fiscal year. That was spent on three schools. The schools were grant McDowell and Penn Grove. Penn Grove had 95%. Almost 96% of that spent. And that was on total That was on projects that materially improve the infrastructure of Penn Grove Elementary. So there

185was an investment in a new six classroom building. And temporary portable classrooms. And some of that was going to carry over then into 2023, 24. Okay. The other two schools, Grant and McDowell, pretty much got summit deferred maintenance type investments on Roofing, exterior paint. And some investment in the multi and kitchen for one of the schools. It seems like from what we can see every year there's going to be kind of the major projects that get the bulk of the funding and then some smaller miscellaneous projects on the side. For that particular bond, the measure e bond The administrative, well, I should say construction manager salary and benefits, the bond audit and the bank bond issuance fees totaled. About 5.6% of what was funded okay what was what was expended, I should say. And that

186was $115,438. Those, the Nigro-NIGRO report documented that those expenditures for the construction manager and the other fees were compliant with the regulations around the bond. For measure C, which is the middle school and high school programs or bond. There were five schools that received funding expended in 22, 23 out of a budget of 7 million, about 4 million was spent. And so that was about 56% of what was authorized. So the rest will carry over, we think, to 2324. The bulk of those funds were spent on Casa Grande with a battery system, underground gas line emergency replacement. And building HVAC, restroom ADA, paint, and other HVAC. So again, nothing that's going to specifically address class size reduction or a capital, like a true capital change or improvement in function for students to the school other

187than maintaining air conditioning and maintaining the integrity of the building overall. CASA received… They spent 2.6 million out of the 3.9 that year on the CASA on the CASA improvements. Petaluma Junior High got battery backup for just under a million dollars. And then Petaluma High School. And Kenilworth and they had they had sub 100,000 to sub $20,000 investments okay So we're looking at CASA getting about 66%. Petaluma Junior High and Kenilworth Junior High getting around. 15 to 20%, and then the others were under 1%. But again, the Niger and Nigro report, the auditors found that the construction manager's salary benefits, bond audit, and bank bond issuance fees totaled around $183,000 or about 4.5%. of the total expended expenditures in 2023 and that they were qualified and compliant. So from the standpoint of the Citizen Oversight

188Committee, Citizen Bond Oversight Committee, we concurred with the findings of Niagara and Nigro. We were able to at least see spreadsheets that documented kind of the work that was completed. We didn't go to the schools and take a look at some of the improvements, but you can see them when you're driving by Penn Grove Elementary School. It's very transparent. what's been going on there, for example. One thing that that So as a conclusion for that, the Bond Citizens Oversight Committee found that the school district is in compliance with the requirements of paragraph three of subdivision B of Section 1 of Article 13a of the California Constitution for fiscal year. 2022, 23. The committee does want to share some comments though on what we're seeing just generally, because these bond funds were approved in 2014 and

189here we are 10 years later. And we also have another really important bond initiative on the ballot. So you know, like I mentioned, we don't have a transparent view. We're focused on one year at a time as we do these audits. And so Amanda and the committee discussed to make this more transparent for the public to upload to the website under the bond page. a listing by school of what projects were completed, what was the total investment, and what was the year that the work was completed. So people can understand kind of the scope of what are the overall benefits that they received, right? On the flip side of that, it does appear that um you know that the the oversight committee is a little concerned about the intensity of the spend just on deferred

190maintenance versus getting a real capital improvement that the community and the schools can get behind right So it's great to hear that there's going to be this facility master plan released in first quarter next year. And I think that will help gel up public input and understanding of of what the next bond funds can be used for and why, right? I think there's a little bit of lacking understanding of what they got with the money that we have so far. But it's super important because what's happening, I think, with our schools is a lot of people look at CASA. My daughter's a ninth grader there. And they say it looks exactly like it was when it was built, when they went there 30 years ago. And I think if you see declining enrollment, it becomes

191like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're not investing and you don't have that vision of what the next 20 or 30 years looks like for our school district. you know, people are going to look for other opportunities, right? Whether it's a different charter school in a different district, or if they can afford it, private school or they go down to San Marin in Nevada for STEM. investment and education. So that's one thing that we would love to see more is that long range plan. The facility master plan and the capital improvements that come out of it rather than you know just fixing what we've got. On a final note on that, we've heard a lot about the Performing Arts Center being on the 2014 bond project list and now appearing again on the 2024 bond project

192list. And there's a lot of feedback in the community. that, yeah, it would be great to have a community engagement place where students can perform You know, whether it's theater or concerts and everybody can come together in a single building, single room to be able to listen to their students apply the skills that they've learned in the district, right? Instead of For example, at a lot of schools, you can't get the full student body in a multi Anymore, right? Or they're playing and um portables, which the acoustic is Quality is just horrible in that case. So where I was raised in the Midwest. You know, we had actual theaters and it would be nice to see some of that. come back to the community here with some of these bond investments. And in short, investing

193in our school and our children and our community are essential for this sort of sustainable, desirable, and competitive school district, right? That attracts and retains not only families, but the teachers too. I think the teachers come in And they find some of the conditions can be pretty challenging here because of the age of the infrastructure. So I think we look forward to serving on a two-year term now. So we're hoping for a little bit more continuity. And if you guys have any questions. Let me know. Thank you for that report. Questions, sorry, is it Karen? Yeah. Thanks for that report and thank you for serving on this committee. Questions for Karen? I just have a question about, you know, I kind of looked at the list And that's you know several of them, of course,

194have been on for 10 years. But I did notice that there are things that we are looking at for like kitchen improvements and Grandstands. a variety and of course the Performing Arts Center, which of course is not listed But I was just wondering how it works in with if we do pass the bonds. In November. if these will just remain, I mean, how do they merge together? Do we just wait until the facilities master plan comes through and then we can mix or prioritize using both bonds? How does that work? So the list on this report is specific to the current bond. Yeah. So then what we will do is we will work on combining through resolution. And then this list will kind of morph into the facilities master plan and the overall program. And

195then the current CBOC will continue to audit all of the bond funds. It just makes the tracking on the projects a little bit easier to do it that way, the big picture. Thank you. Yeah. Oh yeah, you're welcome. Any other questions? Good. Let's see, we have a motion on the table to accept this report. All those in favor say aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. We are on item 16.1. No, 16 point. 4.1, second reading of policy 5145.76 discrimination. and sex-based harassment. Do I hear a motion? I move to approve. I second. Ms. Marla, do you want to introduce this to us in second reading? Yes, so this was just some updates to Title IX that came through in July 1, 2024. We brought this amended policy not too long ago, but we wanted to

196make sure that all the terminology was consistent with CSBA recommendations and federal law. Great. Any questions for Esmeralda? Okay, seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Item 17, comments from the public on discussion items. If there's anybody who would like to speak on the three things that are on our discussion. items. These are food services graduation requirements or ethnic studies. Raise your hand. Okay, and then we will move on to item 18.2.1 first reading of board policy and administrative reg afford food services operations and cafeteria fund. who's introducing this amanda? All right. Thank you. Tonight we bring forward the first read for both the board policy and administrative regulations for Policy. 3551. This is an updated policy for changes in the law, the specific language is on the meal

197sales. Each school day and nutritionally add a quick breakfast and lunch shall be made available at no cost to any student who requests a meal. This just updates that language for the universal meals. Love it. Any questions, concerns, comments, or any direction for Amanda from board members. Sounds good. Item 18.3.1. discussion of graduation requirements, board policy 6146.1. We heard kind of discussion or presentation already I want to ask the committee to calculate the required units credits. I'm pretty sure we're five off I kept on going over this 10 times and I can only get to 215. So please check on that. Any other… any additional discussions. We already had one earlier but any further discussion on this? I'm just concerned about the third year of math. That's the main. I like that we're adding in

198the VAPA requirement because should have been there anyway, the one year and the two years of language other than English is great too. And I know that if we do those, then the 30-year math will be the only thing holding That's back from being A through G. But I do still have some concerns. So could I get clarification on the issue of math? you know, the three years Is it three years of mathematics or math three, getting to math three? Okay, so it doesn't have to be A through G compliant necessarily. It's three years of mathematics. I know, I know, but… It doesn't have to be. But everything's A through G now, right? Yeah. All the classes? I think you can do like computer science can count as your math. I think that's what Dan

199was thinking. Yeah, and actually there's quite a bit of opening up from the state. Some updates are coming in. so data science computer science with some I'll be honest there, it has to still include a fair number of standards and things but It's broadening, it's opening up, and then a category that's called additional math, which is GBB. in development, and I think that's an exciting I think to speak to the concern. I totally hear you and i think you know our system of common assessment that we've been working towards could and should help inform placement appropriate intervention, all of that. as a robust system of support for all of our students. In addition to other targeted He's just that our school sites have specifically written to their CIPSA has some other pieces to support students

200along the way. I just think that before we make that decision, we should make sure that the supports are in place. good supports are in place for math before we decide to add another year. It's where you start, right? Because if we We're putting supports in place. What are we putting in force? What are we putting that in place for, right? So we need to have what the expectation is. This is where we want students to get. And these are those supports. That being said, we also have supports in place so when we come back. at the next reading, we can share We'll have an opportunity again, right, for second reading. So then we can come with more detailed report on what is already in the LCAP and the SIPSAs in terms of In terms

201of mass support. And then some additional plans about, you know, PHS is talking about doing a Saturday Academy. So things like that if there's other things that are being talked about right now. We can present that more. Can you use the advisory as a as kind of like a mentoring or a tutoring for those students that I mean, you know, kind of organize the advisory so that if a student needs those supports That's a period during the day. school day, I don't know, it's just an idea. I would like to ask the committee to give us their recommendations or options for minimum credits required for graduation under a seven period model, you know, out of because currently it's 220 out of 240 possible And now we're going to have 280 possible, what should be that

202number? And presumably whatever that number is, the gap is electives, which is wonderful. That's what we That's what we would want. But I'd like your recommendation, you know. keeping in mind, we want our students to be there their senior year. and um but uh Yeah. You know what the issues are. Any other comments or discussion or direction for the committee? working with them for future business, but since you asked something of the committee, I will too. I would want to know how many students are failing math one and math two right now. Just so we have an idea of the need. As we're looking at adding either math three or data science or computer science. Any others? All right, then we can move on to the next item which is the first reading on the

203new course proposals for ethnic studies. We already had the presentation and some discussion. any further discussion or direction for the committee. I think just reiterating the ninth grade Yes, totally. I totally agree. We need the ninth grade option. Yeah, you know, I think the committee um you know even the committee expressed this is the beginning and that's how I see it is If we can get just this done, it's amazing progress and progress. More progress than I've seen in my entire public education experience. And so I'm super excited and I know it's going to go further, but let's get this going. Any others? All right. We are on to future business. Anyone have any agenda items that they want to I've addressed. I know you guys missed me. Of course I do. I just have,

204I request um that summaries of all agenda items in the content section of the agenda Come back. I don't know when it got lost, but under the content section, you usually have the situation the plan and then who submitted it. And a lot of times there's nothing there And it's just it really at least gives me a disadvantage Also, if you can attach presentations, I know you're on a tight timeframe, but if you can attach the presentations to the agenda items for the same reason. It's really hard for me to process a lot of information Obviously. And without having anything ahead of time. And then the only other thing is that Trees. I know we all know what I'm talking about, but I'm just kind of like um I just need kind of some clarification

205eventually on why this project at Grant was was stopped. And also just kind of going forward. When I was thinking about this, think about the business office and the environmental literacy and climate action committee coordinating efforts. Because we've been talking a lot about shade and creating environments on our campuses Hopefully with new bond monies, but with whatever we can. I mean, relief is one of our big supporters and um community supporters. And so, I don't know, we're working on this revision of the board resolution from 2021 and it is going to be expanded into more policy Along with the resolution and policy initiatives, we're also working with the city on their climate initiatives. And so… to be able to coordinate all those efforts, you know, because they have they they have a shade audit thing

206that they're going to try to do also. So, you know, the more trees, the better. I mean, I can't tell you how many articles I've received recently about the importance of trees and reducing the heat and, you know. We're obviously getting 105 degrees temps at least a couple of times a year so and our kids just And we don't have air conditioning in some of our school sites. So it just, you know, to be able to have some real shade canopy and it's a pretty low cost answer. So certainly lower costs than air conditioning so anyway That's it for me. Anyone else? the transportation policy, as Joanna mentioned we need We need some AR on that. it will be brought to you the November board meeting. Perfect. The first meeting. Correct? First reading? for the

207AR? Sure, yes. Often we bring ARs just for approval, but first reading is perfect. But yeah, so we are still, we met with the comprehensive high schools but I was my understanding there was you also wanted me to do some research on what other districts are doing and costs so We're working on that piece of it. Okay, thank you. All right, anyone else? All right. That's the end of our meeting. We are adjourning at 9.50.