ROWUSD School Board Meeting 1/6/2022 Second Session

001okay you're all set thank you 6.0 reconvene open session 6.1 call to order the board of trustees are hereby reconvening open session at five times thank you 5 12 pm 6.2 roll call trustees to identify themselves by first and last name to formally establish quorum natalie lindemann trustee area 4. bill millinger trustee area one dana ridlen trustee area 2. vindy gardner trusty area three jordan zerati trusty area five 7.0 closed session report 7.1 announcement of reportable actions taken during closed session we have none 8.0 public testimony at this time we don't have any public testimony but we may get one at 5 30 so we will come back to that for the current policies uh 8.3 or excuse me 8.2 again no comments at this time 8.3 rta and csda representatives there are none at

002this time 9.0 reports and presentations 9.1 setting direction csba california school board association conference report board of trustees i will go ahead and ask that bill starts us off with that okay since i haven't done this before natalie just uh tell me how much to so how many sessions yeah whatever i should okay i keep interrupting you i'm sorry um so typically what we do is we just let people know that the our school board attended the csba conference and and each board member presents out on any of the things that they attended that they feel like is relevant for our district um that they would like to share maybe new ideas um things that they learned that they think would be neat to implement in the district anything like that so it's just really

003a report out of uh those breakout sessions that you attended maybe general feelings about the the conference too are appropriate just everything focused on the conference and bill because it's a workshop it's more discussion based so so any of us can jump in and ask questions you know about about something you said or about a particular workshop or we can join or as nelly said if it's a new idea we can have discussion on it we can't take any action because it's a workshop but it's a it's a it's a conversation as well all right good so i can say i don't know yes you may so um i think we probably all did this in in selecting some of the workshops that that were of concern our interest to us so the first one

004i'm going to mention is the mental health workshop because i've been concerned about the mental health of and and i thought it was i really appreciated that they began with the statement something to this effect that we need to all be thinking of staff and students everybody is struggling with mental health issues we're obviously we've talked and been concerned about our staff and when we say staff we're talking about everyone everyone from our superintendent right to to every teacher to every classroom assistant to every aide to every cafeteria worker every bus driver i mean i i can't blame them all secretaries attendance workers um nurses everybody parents everybody is under stress and struggling with mental health issues and and i think all of us in our our whole our whole community as well as our

005whole school community needs to be aware that that everyone is struggling with that and that we all have a role in trying to work towards connectedness they use three words to provide a sense of safety we need to work towards connectedness balance and hope and that in and that involves people checking in on one another this can't just be about professionals and professional appointments or even counseling appointments it's about it's about everybody being concerned for one another we are in a resilient community one of the things they did mention that i thought was helpful there's a website called mha national.org for mental healthassociationnational.org and they've got so a number of excellent tools there one of the tools that's there is a mental health screening and it's actually a free mental health test that's at mha

006national.org and there were a number of other things that they they were looking at youth mental health the children's mental health well let's face it depression is up anxiety is up suicide is up and and we just have to keep working at what we can do all of us as a community to provide mental health encouragement for one another they talked about children's partnership uh and and even something called the standing rock an engagement of young people that's really working to fight against suicide and let's see and then finally they had some suggestions some of which cost money that it's just not out there but they said try to reduce the cost of services for people increase the number of counselors train an entire district and all staff with common language for dealing with mental

007health issues that that one stood out to me and and to make sure that we're having conversations with staff uh and that that again is admin certified classified students parents everybody and some of those conversations need to happen they said together um we we've heard we've heard about our teachers being stressed but the fact is is that everybody is our society is under severe stress right now and a severe mental health crisis frankly and so the more we can do to care about one another the better that was the mental health one may i ask a question bill in the presenters um was there a school district that was in with the presentation um you know sometimes it's a company sometimes it's it's csba itself so were there district presenters there was but i was

008not uh but i don't have that in my notes but i know that it's in our it's definitely in the notes we have online so did these districts um in terms of using um the you know paying for for those extra things that that you talked about was there a district who spoke that said we used esser money or we used this pot of money and we took advantage of blah blah blah do you know what i mean didn't know that they didn't they didn't cover at all not in this particular session yeah that i went to on mental wellness um it was long beach unified school district and they used lcap funding for it um their entire mental health uh department and and this is a huge district right long beach unified and i

009think they have 26 different sites if i'm remembering correctly off the top of my head that they are funding or are filtering through this um they call it the family resource center and they have um actually two different family resources center in north and south because again they're such a large district but all of their fundings through el cap so it's um sustainable awesome i i can't wait till you get to report out so for specifics because that's the thing about the shops is sometimes they they have broad umbrella and and when you're sitting there you want to go how did you do it what did you how did you imply you want the specifics of how of how something was done to try to help bridge that to if if it's something that we

010could do as well so i can't wait to hear the specifics under your report will do thanks bill you're welcome the the session that i had was actually counselors mental health counselors who were concerned about people issues and so they weren't looking at um programs like in the same way that probably natalie's session did another one that i attended and um cindy and i did this one together so she may have several things to add to it and that is just we we attended an equity session in which uh laguna the school district is talking about what they've been doing that but they're actually working with a very specific entity in uh and how they've been doing it but i was really um as we're looking at what they're doing like hey we're already we're

011going down the right road with the plans that we have that they talked about creating safe space safe places for people to communicate creating policies and programs and practices but taking your time to develop them they talked about that that the leadership needs to be in the process of learning that's what our committee is going to be doing um our subcommittee will be working at listening and and learning and being maybe pressed that's one thing that they talked about also that things um the whole conversation regarding uh equity and um and racial justice social justice can be can be difficult to to talk about sometimes i appreciated nothing that they said that that in coming up with a design strategic design there's no cookie cutter approach and i think that's really important to understand as

012we look at our district we're not the same as for example san bernardino unified or hesperia or whatever we are our own district and we need to work our own approach and well i really appreciated them emphasizing that and they emphasize one things that i know cindy and i are both concerned about it's making sure that we get community involvement they said that that's critical to get the extended student involvement as well not just not just we will be doing things with the subcommittee but but it can't just be the subcommittee it's got to be a number of other people and they talked about that making sure that you're you're getting diverse involvement from your community from the student body that you're working at including the quiet people the people that maybe wouldn't be talking

013um and and helping them to have a voice the way they said add voices as the silent voices make sure that you identify the silent voices uh don't be trying to make uh lots of decisions uh don't be trying to make lots of recommendations but instead listen and and work together and so like i said they had a a systematic approach uh a program that they use an actual consulting firm well i think we've got a pretty good program and i realize that now i'm talking about the committee but um but dr white and and her plan i think lines up with some of the suggestions and things that that they are doing they also said don't rush allow people to opt in when the time is right and and we need to be asking

014ourselves what are we teaching when it comes to ethnic studies for example and what aren't we teaching that that might be creating some type of inequity grant excuse me gap for people and cindy you want to add anything on that one sure just to let you know in our board documents for this meeting i um had mark upload all of my the presentations from the workshops i went to so you will find in that folder the powerpoint from from their um that we saw i think that bill really touched on everything there they did the same thing they didn't want to rush to make resolutions that became empty um they did have a a people in the community from this from the schools who who did protests but instead but it but really strongly from

015the lgbqt plus community because they feel very much marginalized and so they began this work um through not only the the protests the george george floyd protest but the resulting um disturbances that they had well protests from lgbqt plus community and um they did the same thing they they said it's going to be uncomfortable conversations which dr white has told us um but as long as we create these safe spaces where people can um speak and really be honest and bill's correct you look for the quietest people so we really need to do our due diligence in um kind of asking you know our quiet parents our quiet students and really do some pulling in of of some of our el parents our hispanic parents to bring in some of our our lgbqt plus students

016to come in to those that really are are hiding in the high school so to speak just marking their time through the four years and so bill's correct i think he did a good job i i've walked away from this feeling pretty darn good about the way we're approaching um equity and social justice and our our plan and our plan for building sustainability so that we're not done in five months but that we're continuing the work that will go on and so anyways the powerpoint presentation is in the board docs good thanks cindy and is that something natalie because i think we all probably download it and there's lots of resources for all of these with different workshops um so we probably want to put them in into the board folder yes okay i'm going

017to totally switch gears on you and i'm sure that others have uh maybe we're at this session and that is current legal issues and uh wow um there's there's too much too much detail uh to go into on that they they talked about ab138 and the whole change in um that's that's going with that with uh with the strategic the changing of strategic date for layoffs and all that one of the things that i'm going to point out though that they did emphasize that you want to change your seniority to date of higher and not based on the hours but but basic date on higher that was something they thought was really important because you have people that are working different positions and and how are you going to determine um where they are in

018seniority and they said do that based on date of hire so jenny that's something for you um oh wow hey yeah there's just i i jordan hopefully you attended this or someone else because there was so much detail whoops in current legal issues they talked about something for us the importance of a strong united team they actually had five subject areas that they really focused on the first one was ab138 the second one was having a strong united team and that they recommended again that board members that we uh dust off our 9 000 bylaws make sure that we're all re studying through them again and making sure that we've got those up to date as well and are we are we living our our philosophy are we living our our uh beliefs uh the

019things that that we say that that are our guiding principles are are we living them out they um encourage them our new president to to to really learn about the delegating how to run a board meeting and um and but we're supposed to let you know we're behind you madam president um then they went on and after talking about being a strong board there was a good bit of conversation about the anticipated vaccines requirements and and and as everyone knows there the governor has put out statements about vaccine requirements if they're going to happen they're not going to happen until end of after this school year and and they really don't know there continue to be um judicial rulings but that are and court cases even that are already occurring based on religious belief and

020and and grants and regulations of law and legislation that's still happening the con the um state senate and assembly the legislature in other words could enact some covet vaccine requirements themselves but none of those are happening at this time they mentioned that 10 of the boards have actually enacted their own vaccine mandate um that there is at this moment there's no exemption to not being tested and there's no due process right now they went on then to talk about the whole let them breathe all about masks and and and they did make this statement they said the cdph guidelines are guidelines not mandates i was a little uncomfortable with these next comments he said that it's up to the boards to make recommendations um and let's see but cdph guidance still is has a mask

021mandate and the court cannot determine the end of a state of emergency some people have wanted courts to do that but that is actually in the hands of the governor the government powers have to be interpreted broadly in the in a state of an emergency and elected officials not uh unelected judges need to be the ones making those decisions um so they went on and just said there was a good bit of discussion of as you can imagine about the mask mandate and the discomfort that people have about it and they continue to remind us to check with our local public health what is what is the county saying regarding the mass mandate they have the power of law enforcement and uh just for clarification in case anyone's wondering uh san bernardino county's department of

022public health has adopted cdph guidance as mandates so even if you were to not look at it from a state level and look at it at a local level it's being mandated and they reminded us if you don't follow the mandate you will not have your liability insurance which is very serious issue for any district to not have liability insurance to to to put the district in jeopardy like that because any lawsuit for uh somebody getting coveted you know anything we would be in major jeopardy and so that was big big red flags off from from everyone that was present in making their presentation which led me to pure politics that does sound like an oxymoron i'm sorry to to say um one of the things that in just talking about the politics of the

023times and and some you can probably see this that um the governor got a 68 positive support in the recall election and that has obviously affected what's going to happen with budgets with all kinds of things um because of the the the confidence that the governor has now that he has he has a support he has mandate behind him um but in the pure politics session the thing that stood out to me in there i could go into a number of stuff uh items but but the thing that i thought was really important for us and cindy i think you'll appreciate this is is our responsibility each one of us to connect with our legislators um we've got good respect from rosalisi and smitty they they both attend sessions with um our board members and

024across the area and but they said make sure that you're making contact with them that you're giving them your con our contact individual contact information and say we're available if they have questions about schools and they said when you call this this was an interesting comment they said when you call call them by their first name don't say can i speak to the honorable you know smitty smith um but i actually say i'd like to speak to smitty please um i i i'd like to speak to rosalisi um because you're at a respected level they appreciate school boards and and the representation and in fact it was funny thing is i was at a meeting where smitty was at right after this about a week later and he came over to me and i'm like

025you're the assemblyman and he came over to me and said bill thank you for your for your work and for serving on a school board and it was really an encouragement like okay so just a reminder there's there's lots of challenges ahead that's one of the things they said you know there's a lot of money coming right now this year and they explained why for because of personal income and the top 20 and stuff like that but they uh but they were again reminding us too much of this money half of it is probably going to be one-time funds and we still doesn't matter how much money they give us right now we are facing a severe problem coming in 2023 as we've all heard it's all been referred to as the the cliff that's

026coming in 2023 the the the declining enrollment there is that the bill that's been at least semi being discussed right now about the possibility of changing things from uh attendance to to actual enrollment and basing funds on that but no telling what's going to happen to that but something that we need to keep speaking up for and there's lots more i think it's time for me to let someone else talk madam president well very helpful information we do have uh two speakers waiting for public testimony so i'm gonna put a pause on our uh discussion that we're having and transition back to um 8.0 which is public testimony so 8.0 public testimony 8.1 public comment period for items listed on this agenda and non-agenda items within the subject matter jurisdiction of the governing board the

027public comment period is administered by state law and is the point in the meeting set aside for members of the public to share their opinions with the board open meeting laws do not permit the board to engage in dialogue or answer questions though it may not take action on non-agenda issues raised at the public comment period the board for example may refer any matter to the superintendent for review or take action to direct staff to place a matter of business on future agenda on a future agenda protocols for speakers any person wishing to address the governing board on agenda and non-agenda items within the subject matter of their jurisdiction must complete a speaker's form and submit it to the executive secretary to the superintendent before a meeting is called to order i'm just going to

028pause there because this was the workshop we came back from closed session uh prior to allowing uh to 5 30 which is when we asked speakers to be available and our modified procedures during covid allow us to do that so individual speakers are allowed three minutes to address the board on each agenda item the board limits the total time for public input on each item to 20 minutes speakers who have complaints against board members or staff are encouraged to seek resolution to these complaints by using the room of the world unified school district written complaint procedure rather than orally addressing them at a meeting the board will not respond to such complaints until the applicable complaint procedure bp dash ar 1312.1 has been followed and has reached the board level where a complaint concerns a

029district employee identifiable by name position or other facts the board cannot respond until proper written notice has been given to the employee pursuant to government code section five four nine five seven decorum the governing board is interested in the ideas and of all stakeholders and endeavors to incorporate community views into its deliberations and decisions at the same time it must be able to conduct its business in an organized and efficient manner free from material disruption therefore in accordance with board bylaw and governing code section 54957.9 audience members may not disrupt disturb or otherwise impede orderly conduct of this meeting open meeting laws do not confer any privilege or protection for expression beyond that otherwise provided by law the public's understanding and cooperation are appreciated 8.2 public comments so we will begin with bradley jobranski i

030hope i pronounced that correctly parent of students we're going to give it a moment for technology to catch up and see if he could get on with us bradley if you could hear us we see that you're logged in and you submitted your form as required so if you're able to it looks like you're muted if you can unmute now's your chance mark does everything look good on our end with technology it does okay is our second speaker mr witty um george are you available and we'll go ahead and let you go next am i on yes you are thank you george okay uh as ever my priority in speaking at these meetings is to work toward keeping in-person school open to the maximum extent possible but i'm concerned that our district is mishandling our

031response to covet and not taking the issue seriously enough as illustrated by these examples one we got a notice yesterday that students who've been vaccinated can just come right back to school even if they're aware of a first-hand exposure to someone with covid this is not only bad scientific practice but violates the cdc guidelines for probably a majority of the vaccinated students in the school because the effectiveness of the pfizer vaccine that the students got diminishes over time and due to mutations of the virus to the point that five months later the cdc considers those vaccinated with pfizer to actually be the equivalent of unvaccinated for the purposes of quarantine the pfizer vaccine has been shown to be only about 30 percent effective in preventing omicron infections after two shots the more effective it presents

032preventing hospitalizations so no those kids who got vaccinated with pfizer before about august 1st should not come back to school after a known exposure to someone with covid unless they got the booster which almost none have as it was only approved this week this was pointed out to the board and superintendent within within an hour of that errant notice going out but no correction has been issued students are worried enough about getting an excused absence that they're going back to school the next day acting as possible vectors for covid our son chris was vaccinated in may we are keeping him home after an exposure to a student with covid and we have no idea how this is going to be handled two we also got a message that our son had been exposed to the

033virus at school and that he should not come back to school in direct conflict with the message we got from michelle murphy the day before but then the attachment said that if he was vaccinated he should come to school even though as stated above this is out of compliance with cdc guidelines to say the least this conflicting messaging on such an important topic damages our confidence in our districts administration three i have to point out the obvious irony that the board moved to a zoom meeting on the basis that an in-person meeting today was too risky the meeting would have been about 20 people in a large room the school library for an hour and a half yet it's somehow so much safer to have 35 people in a room one quarter that size for

03430 out 35 hours a week that we can be careless with things like the isolation protocol this makes no sense and i detect no sense of urgency on the part of the board or the administration to optimize our safety protocols in the face of a far more contagious variant we're facing a real surge in cases here and it's time to let sound science and medical practices dictate policy and once again the actual qualified researchers at johns hopkins medical center harvard medical school stanford medical school and hundreds of other actual research institutions mandate for their own people in their own facilities one hundred percent vaccinated one hundred percent masked these people are actually qualified to do their own research and have done so and this is not just what they say to the media it's what

035they do to themselves and their families i can't fathom why we wouldn't follow their example and urge the board to exercise maximum caution in making decisions regarding our coveted protocol thank you for the opportunity to speak thank you i was waiting for you to finish a sentence but we are at three minutes thank you george thanks mark did our other speaker um log in again or do we know us it just shows that his uh his mic is muted bradley if you're able to unmute your mic we're just going to give it another moment so you have an opportunity to speak if possible all right well our apologies for whatever the technical difficulties are um i hope they get worked out and you're able to join us next time we are going to um then

036switch back to uh what we were doing in 9.1 which was setting direction we were having a discussion about our conference that we attended the california school board association and i think bill was wrapping up so i i wanted to invite jordan to share some of his highlights from the conference and things that he thinks uh we would like to hear about sure thank you i would just like to provide uh clarity on the press release that was put out by the district it wasn't due to potential risk it was due to a confirmed uh case amongst cabinet and board members so it was not it wasn't a concern out of risk it was it was because of a confirmed case that this decision was made i will talk about the annual education conference it

037was in person this year and i was very excited to go to all the sessions they had to offer they had more sessions available this year than than they did last year i feel like there was so many that i wanted to attend there was one on that bill had mentioned about legal issues coming up in 2022 i was not able to attend that one i think i was at uh open managing opeb liabilities um but there was so many that i wanted to watch uh i did hear that csba recorded all of the sessions i'm wondering if we might be able to get access to those i'm thinking out loud but i attended conferences on almost every topic that i could find uh we as a board do our very best each year to

038try to spread ourselves out over all of the sessions that are being offered at any given time during a time slot of during the three day conference they offer upwards of 15 plus sessions at the same time so you really have to read through each of them and then as cindy has mentioned earlier see who is presenting is it is it a a law firm is it a district is it somebody from an advocacy organization like capital advisors group or something like that um you know so you have to read through all those sometimes i'll upload documentation ahead of time so you can kind of get a sneak peek but i went to everything from let's see equity to uh raising funds for districts just you know particularly parcel tax they were talking about advocacy

039at the state and federal levels to managing opeb liabilities to uh let's see what else they have to have federal actions and legislation currently in the works so i am happy to talk about all of those uh with anyone that's interested uh my favorite one uh of course was uh managing oped liabilities within changing budgets i think that was my favorite one a lot of really interesting ideas what it comes down to is potential ways to be smart with districts monies and uh going through all of the options to uh manage op liabilities it's something and opeb for anyone wondering is other post-employment benefit liabilities so those uh are very real for every district and very very few districts have plans in place that uh help ensure that those open liabilities will be met in

040the future uh so very good i took probably two or three pages worth of notes on that one equity was great advocacy was a really good one i just want to mention that one too because bill mentioned it advocacy you know there's a whole session on on advocacy at the federal and state levels and how important it is for districts to be uh reaching out uh talking and being on a first name basis with our elected representatives uh you know i i know paul and i know ross alicia i haven't had a chance to talk to smitty yet but uh but maybe we'll be on a first name basis at some point um but it was very important in talking about how districts really need to step up to demonstrate uh to our our elected

041lawmakers the real needs of our district the inequities in funding you know in in our state uh you know the way our state funds things the inequity in you know how we don't get all federal funding that we're supposed to get so these are a lot of things that um that they talked through with a lot of uh steps um they brought in uh to this one they brought in a they brought in somebody from a school district that does advocacy work and they brought in uh several other consultants that do that type of work as well from the state and federal level and that was just really rang ring ho uh you know hit home uh that uh that there's a lot that could be done uh state legislature is coming back into session

042now and there's a lot of talk about what the future is going to be the governor's budget proposals coming out next week so very soon we'll be seeing his educational priorities and then we'll see what the legislature's educational priorities will be soon after that and we'll have an opportunity from now until the may revise to really start hitting the pavement to increase funding for our districts one that bill had mentioned earlier and cindy and michelle has also brought it to our attention is sp 830 it talks about funding the way districts are you know changing the way districts are funded uh from a average daily attendance to an average daily uh what was it enrollment membership average daily membership is the new phrase that um we'll have to monitor and see uh about you know

043if that's going to create more equitable funding for our districts it certainly would cost a lot more at the state level i think they put a price tag on this at three billion dollars so it's a big big piece of uh potential but also funding for our districts and we our little rim of the world unified school district has a chance to be part of that conversation especially considering that we have elected representatives that have been in our shoes before ross alicia cho our state senator has been in our position before and yukaipa kalamasa unified school district so she knows and understands the reality that uh that is you know uh insufficient budgets for school districts uh so that was a really i think uh great one that we could walk home with a lot

044of action items on um all the other ones i attended were really good from a educational perspective and then of course the last thing that i enjoy most about the annual education conference is being able to converse with other elected board members from all over the state there's over a thousand school districts and gosh hundreds showed up at the annual education conference and being able to talk to them about what they're facing in their districts and commiserate on issues but also collaborate on ideas for improvements and take some ideas back to our districts there's a lot of small rural districts that i think are in uh you know worse positions than we are and there are some that are you know but there's also nuggets of advice you can take back with that with them

045um lots of really exciting um conversations there i think i think it's a very energetic conference and i feel like most board members walk away feeling energized about the new year and so what can be done and what can we look into and slowly over time uh you know make those changes uh where where and when possible a lot of folks a lot of districts i was talking to as an example were talking about tara solace and you know wanting to investigate bring that into their district looking at the costs which have gone up uh you know to bring in kerasalas and uh you know what can be used to you know can we use esser funds for that can we you know is how can we as a district fund it and it just

046felt good that we've had carousels since pre-pandemic so it goes to show that um you know in some areas we're doing well and in some areas there's a lot of great ideas to take back to the table advocacy is the one that i think we could really help cindy out with a bit more um but i know that we all have an interest in it and i know that we all have done advocacy work in the past and we just i think uh ought to do a good bit more um so there's a good opportunity for that having just gone to the aac and and gone to all these sessions jordan did you did you take advocacy 101 he i believe that was the name of it yes yeah that's the one that got me

047started and the lady dennis mayer and and meyer and um terry v hill from fall river um did mine and um got me on the path in like a left advocacy 101 and immediately did an application for delegate assembly and san bernardino county school boards executive and so terry unfortunately passed away right before thanksgiving and i was that hit hard for me because i she was an inspiration to me but i'm it is a is a really amazing amazing class and i agree with you i i i think that that you and i've talked about this of of meeting as a board with our superintendent at least once a year with each of our elected officials to just have a chitty chat it doesn't need to be a complaining session it can be just hey

048let's educate you about these amazing things we have and here are our list of challenges and then if we have specific positions on bills we can bring them up with them so maybe the next time that they are in district um we can set up a meeting with um smitty and and uh senator ochoa bogue and and actually get it started to develop those relationships because i agree with you it's super fun to have a one-on-one and you know i think that we're in a unique position that are again i know that ross alicia will listen and i have talked with her before on school district issues and you know since she's been elected and she's also reached out and asked for information uh sydney sunk uh reached out and asked for some more info

049about um i can't remember what it was now but i sent a very long email back and said oh you asked for an opinion here you go uh and here's um is you know some considerations and here's what other districts have been doing here's what some other lawmakers are considering so again i think it's really great that we could advocate for you know whatever it is more funding for districts but coming to them with a potential solution for it not just like cindy said a complaining session but hey maybe here's some ideas to consider when you're thinking on or maybe writing legislation to help address this issue we're talking about so jordan i know that you mentioned coming out of one session parcel tax was disguised so why don't you give us a little little

050uh synopsis of why you were frustrated with that particular workshop coming out not frustrated but like uh so so because i thought it was it was a good tidbit of info i was really excited for this one because we obviously went for a bond measure a couple years back measure a and we didn't get it interestingly most bond measures did not pass uh 80 or so failed during that election it was very unusual in the state um so i was really excited when i saw uh it was called how to pass a parcel tax for employee compensation so not only was it a little bit different not a bond measure but a you know permanent parcel tax so you need that two-thirds majority there uh a super majority to pass it but it was also

051for a specific cost raising employee compensation and the district that pursued it was um they they uh some of it was a very well executed strategy and some of it was a bit of luck they said uh part of that luck was their um their uh election day was march 2020 but the first week of march 2020. so it was about a week and a half or so before the world stopped before all schools closed and what not um or rather schools move virtual uh so part of it was timing and part of it was very well executed strategy and the well executed strategy part was the part i was particularly interested in because i wanted you know to take some notes back and and um cindy said it was a little frustrating but i

052think overall reaffirming all of their strategies that they undertook were things that we did in measure a community meetings putting out as much information as possible giving interviews talking to the opposition and having real meaningful conversations about what their issues are what their concerns are and how we might be able to best address it talking to supporters and and getting some feed on the ground and really doing the advocacy work um and more importantly the educational work to educate folks how what is what are the districts needs you know sticking to the facts that was a big part of their things don't don't go down a uh par a pathway that just leads to pure arguments or emotion stick to the facts illustrate the needs in your districts uh explain what those needs you know

053what uh having the parcel tax or in our case a bond you know what it would do for the district and then illustrate a very clear picture paint a very clear picture of what happens if you don't pass the tax or if you don't pass a bond so that folks can really see and evaluate with the parcel tax or bond measure without the parcel tax and bond measure and you can see they're very very different i remember we we created a lot of great literature on that i remember jenny volunteered for the campaign and uh and put together some really great infographics for our district to showcase the sheer level of needs in our district and what will happen without it so again that was the frustration it was you know nothing against their district

054it was just everything they did i feel like we did um but perhaps we need to do better you know do the same but more yeah jordan i i would share your frustration having to listen to that and go like but what different do we need to do because ours failed and we did all of these things and you know maybe that's just the part where luck you know wasn't on our side um but also reassuring to know we had a lot of great people on our team putting together really solid ideas on things that we have been taught about that we researched that other districts have been successful in doing and we fought hard to get it by doing all of those things and it remains again frustrating that it didn't turn out in

055our favor and we are seeing the consequences of not getting those passed of not getting those funds um and our students are seeing the consequences of that and their staff and our everybody who who walks through the district will see those consequences um and you know it's really hard to just say like well we tried to help and you didn't let us in this way uh but that's how it feels so yeah it's frustrating even down to their um endorsement section that they talked about you know very influential you know the unit having the union on board for them they said it was very easy to get the union on board because they were passing a parcel tax for employee compensation um and kudos to them what they passed was permanent it was not there

056was no sunset on that parcel tax so you know big kudos to them on that uh but you know getting the unions on board and endorsing it getting community leaders on board and endorsing it getting teachers on board and endorsing it getting business leaders uh on board and endorsing it we did all of that through our website and through the newspapers and now as we look at this moving forward i'm curious from the rest of the board and jordan you might have some from the presentation of um how their community may have been different from ours in regards to the likelihood of passing a parcel tax and and what you know maybe this our our smaller rule more people are vacationers or we have owners that are you know not there full time and if

057that makes it a greater challenge to pass those i think partially yes um but you know it's hard to say because they have a very long history of uh passing bond measures and parcel taxes in in their district but the problem is almost every school district in the state does even rim has a successful parcel and bond tax history if you look back at our elections except for measure a so measure a was the the outlier um generally speaking it's you know it's a you're in a very good position if you have a bond measure on the ballot for education and maybe it was the unlucky part of that i think jordan that and nelly i think it was we weren't lucky i think that unfortunately that coming with increases in taxes over the since

058since measure w there has been an increase in taxes over and over and over again gas fuel tax those kinds of things it's like it's been like chinese water torture almost and i think that sometimes this may not be a referendum on us versus drawing the line in the sand of like we can't take it anymore you know more of a representation of where our community or where our state is as a whole because again the majority vast majority of these did not pass during that election um so i wanted to us to own any uh responsibility where we have it so we can make improvements in moving forward we don't make those same mistakes again um that being said it is important for us to understand how much of the responsibility is on us

059and how much of it was attributed to just where where people are in relation to the government in relation to attack being taxed in relation to their finances um all of those all of those things um kind of pointed to the fact that taxes more taxes is not something that anybody wanted during that election also add that might be a difference with our community is the um one i i heard a lot of feedback from crestline about the properties that weren't being used so there was some resistance as far as the bond initiative when um now with us looking at real estate and actually acting on it that might be the difference but i know that there was resistance there and also i heard resistance from our our older population ones who don't have kids

060in in you know in the district so chris senior citizens who are on a fixed income um the idea of um voting in favor of having more you know a higher higher financial obligation that was something that i was hearing about that there was resistance to as well now another difference because what i was really going in for is i wanted to go into the session and pick apart everything about our measure a campaign i wanted to see what did we do wrong what could we have done better you know let's rip i was hoping that i'd walk into the session and walk out of it thinking wow they ripped apart everything we did on measuring but no it's very reaffirming um one of the differences that they did was a flat tax per uh

061parcel so it wasn't based on uh home value so that was an interesting that was one interesting difference another one was it's a parcel tax so it's not it's not the district taking on debt it's the district you know being supported through taxpayer dollars so again they went for a parcel tax we went for a bond measure because we thought it'd be easier and generally that's the case um so those are two two of the big differences i think thank you jordan did anybody have any other questions for jordan about any of the workshops he attended all right uh dana would you like to present on yours you are on mute just so you know okay um now okay so um quick rundown of the um sessions that i've heard a lot of sessions that

062i thought were very worthwhile so quick rundown of the titles that i found to be sessions that i found to be the best was for starters i went to a partnership approach to mentally healthy schools that was put on by the partnership was taking place in daenerys unified school districts i'll talk about that in a moment how to improve student achievement without additional funding um the student voice and decision making and board governance that um i'm sure sydney will probably want to talk about as well not to mention the one we also attended on critical issues facing small school districts so backing up to a partnership approach to mentally healthy schools this was daenery is um rural a rural school district and um they did have a partnership with legacy health endowment so they did

063receive funding through grant money also they're in northern california and had involvement with stanford university professionals and the um the approach they took or the focus was on staff thinking was that they needed to you know they need to first focus on staff mental health you know i want to kind of like the concept of if you're an airplane you first make sure you have oxygen before you attend to the people around you um so over you know the last summer they um they put together this program that has been heavily written about building a mentally healthy system is this is their white paper on it and this is another report that quoting the superintendent i was weary and knew i needed something so the person who made the presentation was jeffrey lewis he is

064the partner he was actually the the president of the um the legacy endowment um basically the grant of the people who were providing the money and the services so what was really interesting though was how much effort and they put into the staff again they weren't using alcohol it wasn't in their el capita it was no cff funding it was outside funding they brought in a couple of different professionals dr nia shottery it was a stanford psychiatrist they met with um staff staff was really resistant their feeling was you know we don't want you know we don't want your help that was initially and so they had to overcome a lot of resistance to be able to get to the point of being productive um what they said at the presentation was starting now and

065um actually at the winter actually more so in the spring their focus was going to turn to the kids and the students they had already started conversations with students having those same professionals working on developing relationships with the students along with having the psychiatrist they also had lauren hodges who was a performance coach who also worked with with staff in wellness techniques and more individualized coaching to be able to make sure that they are taking care of themselves first so i thought that was really interesting um the um the documents that were attached to that presentation um i've asked mark to go ahead and put these same the ones that i was holding up into the folder um but i think that um i think right now like like bill mentioned and i'm sure natalie

066will be discussing as far as the mental health session that she went to we're hurting as a district the adults are struggling as are the kids as our whole community it isn't just an education phenomena and i found it really interesting how they really put a focused effort on staff and put together a cohesive program not pushing the kids aside but basically saying we need to be able to make sure our infrastructure is healthy and and well to be able to take on what was what we've already seen this school year um next session i want to talk about is how to improve student achievement without additional funding this was put on by various uh instructors that i've had for the master's in governance classes i attended and that was fantastic and again the documents

067from there they ran out of them the the session was so well attended they didn't have the supporting documents but they talked about some very actionable um strategies that's um that that we could um initiate to be able to um help with um help with our district student achievement so the six factors this is all very data driven too so um the based on the lighthouse study and then additional studies that they've done since and all that data is now available to us they found six factors supporting district improvement one setting um the setting visions and goals so being very clear in those visions and in our vision and setting measurable goals and aligning our resources to match priorities so that's one two having systems coherence three data used for continuous approve improvement for having

068a culture of support five investing in staff capacity at all levels and six planning for leadership turnover so um they said in regards to board meetings they were really recommending we take a look at our agenda making sure that we have 60 of the agenda focused on student learning they also recommended possibly looking at how we have our agenda organized and having it organized by strategic our strategic goals um they suggested looking at carmel unified school districts agendas they have done that in the past year and they found it to be really helpful to make sure that they are having a continued focus on um on district priorities um they also um have made a big appeal to involving investing in community engagement and that that's essential to the district and student success they said

069schools with high levels of trust within the community are three times more likely to yield positive outcomes and that's especially important to have transparency in community relations so the number of things they were talking about i felt proud of that we you know we are definitely i think doing a lot of wonderful things however um i think that there are areas of improvement and so um one of the handouts that um they had they i had them emailed to me because again they were out of them was 20 strategies school boards can utilize to improve student achievement without additional funding and then being very specific about those uh six different pillars on how to be able to really implement it within the district and then in addition um they have a governance brief they emailed

070it to me so that document hopefully will be in your folders and this brief is on the school board's role in creating the conditions for student achievement and as a review of the research so this is the this is the brief which i think is like five pages with a lot of a huge bibliography in addition i have a link to their website that has all of the research from which this was pulled so they said for you data monkeys out there there's there's a lot to back it up but um i felt this was a really really worthwhile session to attend and there were some real rock stars that were presenting at it um so let me see here um another session that i just was blown away by was student voice in decision

071making and board governance i know cindy was really excited about that as well and has had some meetings with other folks so i'll chime in i imagine when you talk about it um and then the critical issues facing small school districts that was a real intense to me um kind of a session there was one takeaway that i have written somewhere in my notes that kind of just kind of stored it away there was a lot of frustration with small school districts and not having all of the different departments and the support and all the things that we're continually organizing over but one of the attendees made a comment that when they were having some problems with connectivity within their district is they appealed to their cell providers to see if uh because uh that

072they found that when fires have swept through areas they've been put they put in temporary cell towers to be able to help with connectivity so that was one of the things that i was wondering about now would not be the time but with connectivity issues especially if we look at having to go um to go virtual or to help with our students that are in hard areas to to reach is seeing and verizon might have some temporary towers that they can put in along with all the hot spot efforts and the different things that we're doing to try and create that connectivity um i think that they that they also said you know the county supervisor because money's there and the temporary towers magically become permanent and so that was one thing is that you

073start with the temporaries that which then turn into the permanent exactly yeah so um and i i that's those are the just kind of a brief uh uh brief overview of uh what i got out of it frankly the um those four sessions in particular i thought were fantastic and jordana already um had mark upload the presentation for the critical issues facing small districts and i think too that some of the districts really emphasized looking at your community and looking at the resources um and and networking and so part of it was like creating those community partnerships um one district within the conversation talked about how um there's a reservation and they had a relationship that they developed with the reservation and the reservation is is really supporting that district in in programs financially just

074in so so many a myriad of ways and and jordan is like oh oh some of this stuff we just just can't grasp you know and so that's in like jordan expressing frustration of the parcel tax stuff it's like you you you go i we're trying so hard to maximize our community partnerships there's another school district i know pray there you pray they're unified that also has the same relationship locally with the um with the um um and indian tribe and they are at the foothill of the sierra the sierra nevadas they have a similar demographic and geography of ours but they have that relationship so frustrating and i i remember saying to somebody that we tried to pta tried to reach out to home depot you know because we were like oh home depot

075supports schools and they have this and that and then when you speak to the one down the hill they're like oh yeah you're not in our community you know because we're up and we're isolated and so we don't there's businesses and organizations that don't feel partnered to us because we're we're yeah it was it was super like a you jordy and i kind of felt frustrated like oh oh missed opportunity yeah yeah but i i also was appreciated having a whole bunch of small school districts represented in this room and like under current you had mentioned it also in meetings that you had gone to earlier cindy that there is a need for these small our smaller more rural districts to combine enforced and that a lot of the policies that are out there are

076really geared towards districts that have the department for this and a department for that and there was definitely that frustration was coming through about how our staff has to wear so many different hats that the um and we don't have the representation because we don't have people who can go to sacramento and just be there speaking for our district all the time it's just a different dynamic compared to an la unified or even a san bernardino unif unified and i think one of the the things though that the take away from this is like when in regards to the community um involvement is is that we do have great relationships with the businesses up here they do help us to the best of their ability we appreciate those connections and those relationships however large businesses

077don't exist on this mountain a home depot doesn't exist on this mountain we don't have a casino on this man like there are just so many um again limitations too they're they're usually privately owned mom and pop um even if our biggest of companies are family owned businesses or or and um their resources are limited too and we know that so our our asks are reasonable uh accordingly but it just doesn't fill that gap the way other districts are able to fill it and um i think the community expects us to get all this funding from from donations that doesn't occur in and it's not a lack of trying it's not a lack of ability to establish relationships and maintain them and and you know offer what we can you know in those relationships it's

078just that they don't exist and i think that michelle's done a good job in cobbling together small businesses that have helped us in various different ways and remed foundation has really um in the last decade i would say really really have become very focused their efforts are really focused and well managed well planned step by step throughout the year and they follow that plan and as a result we we have great support for both the school sites as well as avid and rop and i see and i think we in in having those relationships we really are trying to cobble stuff together but now he's right and jordana you're right i mean when you don't have um some of the like the high desert has access to car dealership that does this economic program for

079students and it seems to stop right at the base of the mountain and so you you think about all the opportunities um ucr you see riverside has opportunities that they push out into san bernardino like giving free bus passes for kids that want to take classes there in the summer you know and and yet we don't have that it stops at the base of the mountain because we don't have a bus transportation that that goes to ucr so it sometimes i feel like it does stop but i feel appreciative of over the relationships that all of us jordan and bill you guys go to crestline connects look at how much they've supported as a yes it's a small program but it's important scott's lodge i mean so through everybody's efforts we are taking them the

080max effort of creating those relationships that can can help this program or help this or help this we may have the opportunity for some of the larger corporations that we don't realize that we have do have connections to um i think of an example subaru who who markets up to here right right at the base of the mountain the subaru is of san bernardino saying hey come on crestline rather like arrowhead right or here here's another one stater brothers um is again a larger corporation so we probably have some ability to do that that maybe we haven't farmed the the same way yet and and i would say let's let's keep working at that even ah and i'm saying that wrong i know y'all know formerly san manuel um again they have concerns for up

081here on the mountain too um properties right on the edge of our mountains so i think there's some ways that we might be able to to to work at that more that's true you look at the amount of subarus on the mountain they dominate we're like we're like the advertisement for why you need a subaru just take a look at our mountain roads right now or or jeeps or jeeps too as well so there's there's some there's some opportunities we have that we might want to try to continue to work at more yeah and the same thing home depot yeah you're far away but you're the one that we saw back all of us shop at that home depot and so i you know it might be a matter of getting to the right person

082at the right time at the right moment in the right way to kind of be establishing that relationship but i know as cindy knows through pta we have reached out to certain businesses who you just mentioned and we do not get a positive or any response from them um interesting i mean they sell snow shovel they sell snow gear they sell you know snow blowers who do they think is buying them all well you also have you also have ace hardware which is again local entity or car quest i mean there there are entities that have broader and more statewide or national um you know connections so i do have to say i do want to say one thing um in working with home depot with the um rim high school hallway painting um ray

083shout out to ray um head of the the supervisor for the the paint department basically um in telling him what the project was going the scope of the project he was awesome he he said us and hooked us onto another contractor under another contractor number so that we could get contractor prices for all of our materials and paint so i mean there are yes we saved money and and bc and jenny knows this for twelve thousand dollars the entire inside of the school all the hallways in the weight room and and the doors were painted and you know that shout out to rey for for giving us those discounts to spread and i think you know it it's maybe little efforts repeatedly over and over and over again because again i'm not banging on home

084depot at all they have given me free plans for every teacher you know during teacher appreciation week but i think the scope that people expect us to get things on is like a new football field from home depot like it's just that isn't gonna happen or or we haven't found a way to make it happen yet um or so i think there's little ways where where we are getting our feet on the ground and getting donations that are are much on a much smaller scale that do help out and they they pay off in the long run but um when when we're looking at such massively large projects that we'd like to complete i don't think a financial ferry is just going to come over our school district and dust dust with money like it's

085just it's not going to happen no hvac system is going to push appear out of nowhere no matter how much we need it and how much we all want it like i have uh reached out to supervisor rutherford's office about that issue so perhaps you know you never know but i i doubt 20 million dollars will fall from the sky from the county janet might be our hero maybe she could help a little yes yes um okay anything else on diana's presentations no cindy would you like to go next or would you like me to it's go for it okay uh so i have jumped in when bill and jordana we attended the same thing sometimes i didn't even know jordana was in the room for the small schools one and until i heard her

086voice ask a question i'm like that's jordana so um so the first one on thursday that i went to which was an overflow of event and natalie and i were super lucky to get in the room called critical race theory ethnic studies and assembly bill and then i went to san bernardino city unified's how to create a systemic and effective family engagement program and it ended up being really really pertinent about a particular program that they do that feeds right into the a through g completion rate and requirements conversation and and i was like oh unintended positive consequence of going there and then of course jordan and i went to the student voice in decision making and board governance friday went to the one with jordana the small schools and then one that i found

087super interesting i sat next to dr avila from corona the meeting the needs no i'm sorry rialto is it rialto yeah i'm meeting the needs of long-term english learners in california public schools and then saturday bill and i went to the long beach unified equity journey so i know there was some overlap but it was really good and again i put in all all the documentation the um one on the language the long-term language i took pictures of their slideshow their presentation there is not on on the aec website so that's why you go huh why is that fuzzy well it's my pictures i don't know what to tell you so cr i'm going to start with critical race theory natalie and i went to that and it it should have been in the large

088general session room because people were turned away and there was a long line to get into it it should have been a boxing ring yeah it was crazy and then at the end whoo mediation needed to be some of those board numbers asking those questions so again this document is in the board docs it was presented by our own attorney law firm so that was kind of nice and so they talked about the diversity in california how it breaks out 39 latino 36 percent white 15 percent asian six percent african-american fewer than one percent native american or alaska alaskan alaska natives and then three percent multiracial or or other so and they presented a bunch of data jordana you and i girl love that data so there's a lot of graphs and data in this

089presentation which i'm not going to go over but the whole idea is the fact that look at your schools look at your school your teachers your staff your administrators because studies suggest that students benefit from having a diverse staff of having people that look like them and their own experiences working with them and we've heard that over and over in our diversity discussions that you you may have been involved in and they did go over what is critical race theory really big big big thing to take away critical race theory is an academic theory that emerged in 1970s this is really taught they said in law schools this is law to so that our future attorneys are looking at the laws on the book through the lens of equity of of systemic racist practices they

090brought up the housing redlining those kinds of things and so what it is is it a theory it's a theory it isn't like a textbook curriculum that you're going to give a child and say here's critical race theory and so um it says if i can just chime in and maybe echo or highlight again that it currently is taught in law school to adults who have completed at least a bachelor's degree and are well on their way to to becoming lawyers and i think in our um and i know in our community i have heard people say they're teach they're going to to force critical race theory on my child um or they're going to be teaching this to my child because it is a theory it's the state it's taught at that grad school

091level because that's the kind of um cognitive capacity that's required of it you know and and to be able to look at it in that sort of lens there's no legal mandate there's no curriculum written for um k through 12 on critical race theory that is implemented or must be implemented at this time yeah and it it's it is it's really about lawyers or potential lawyers looking at legal systems and policies of embedded systemic racist practices and laws and how that racism shaped public policies so it goes from laws to public policy and it's really lawyers who have to go into court really understanding looking at the laws and how that how racism has really from the very beginning been built into into the legal system and that out outlawing discrimination when you're talking in

092this theory is not the same as ensuring equity it's not the same you can make a law that bans discrimination but that doesn't eliminate the that that doesn't eliminate the problem that doesn't ensure equity it just doesn't so um the whole idea is that racism because of the way it's been embedded in public policy and in law and it it's a part of our everyday life whether we're aware of it or not we are subject uh subjected to the laws public policy and and sometimes we're not even aware that it is because we're not aware of a law we're not aware of this we're not aware of that so that's why this theory in law school is taught because it's their job to to look at that and see how it has impacted um someone

093in a case or a business in a case or whatever um and critical race theories focuses on outcomes and not in individual personal beliefs again legal system public policy um how housing discrimination redlining all those things um that have resulted from uh public policy and and law and we saw within that um presentation a a variety of school board elected school board officials and or superintendents that's really who is attending this conference make it a personal issue um and make it about personal beliefs and it became very heated and very debated and i think it's something that as time goes on um in in public education if there's more talk about it um that that personal beliefs are going to be construed you know weaved into it or it's going to be construed as personal

094beliefs versus a theory that is practiced in law school and in the in the presentation and what they said is that um the the protests that you've been seeing about um towards um critical race theory um in at school boards or in media and stuff have been mostly centered on elementary and secondary schools by parents and and political activists and groups that say that crt is going to promote discrimination against um the white group that it's divisive it's going to to shame a white student in the classroom it's going to promote hatred of america in its history and then it portrays white whites as oppressors and people of color as oppressed victims and again as natalie has pointed out this is a theory for lawyers taught at that level at a graduate school level and

095that most educators actually support the idea of anti-discrimination and they teach and their teaching strategies make schools safe in in teaching history and the historical uh events that have occurred um both in the united states and in the world through world history and but there's especially when the 1619 project came up to being that's really when the sort of the the lighter was was turned on to a very long fuse and i think that has really um brought a lot of debate and it's it's a project that was started by the new york times magazine in august 2019 on the 40th anniversary of the beginning of his american history and i'm not going to go into all of that it's all in our in the powerpoint presentation that you guys will see so they talked

096a bit about the really what critical race theory is and what it's not then sagging because this gets mixed up is california now is going to require ethnic studies and the the california state board of education developed through years and years and years with all these various different groups jewish groups black groups latina x groups latinx groups sorry said that incorrectly all the lgbqt plus all these groups had say in in an ethnic studies outline and what it should look like so there is something that's been developed through this process of many many years um and that was finally finally it's now required so assembly bill 101 is the bill and then starting in 25 a 20 25 and 26 school year they must we must offer students in grades 9 through 12 at least

097one semester course in ethnic studies and then starting with students in grades 9 through 12 who are graduating in the 20 29 20 uh 2030 gosh that sounds so far in the future they must complete one semester course in ethnic studies in order to graduate from high school so this is going to become a high school graduate grad graduation requirement and that it's it there's a model curriculum that's been developed by this the state board of education it there's existing ethnic studies courses there is an ex an existing one um the court the course has been approved a through g so students are not going to have one more course added to their load that is not an a3g pr approved course um however boards have the ability to um develop an ethnic studies course

098based on the model curriculum based on the ethnic studies outline and so that as we have been told by heather dominguez and michelle that that work is going to start in the spring is how are we going to develop what are we going to develop what is it going to look like and i'm sure it's going to be we're not going to rush the project the process because we do have time for implementation and um but you know it's it's we're just we're it's not the same it's not critical race theory it's an ethnic studies and that um this was the part that i loved in the presentation in the education code section 5122 6.7 if the commission on state mandates determines that this act contains costs mandated by the state reimbursement to local agencies

099and school district for those costs shall be made pursuant to part seven so jenny we'll see if that really happens might you know what i mean might be another unfunded mandate oh you're gonna have to develop it and pay for the books and then you're just not gonna get the money to do it so um the ethnic studies curriculum addresses institutionalized systems of advantage addresses the cause of racism and other forms of bigotry but but there they deleted out things that included biases and what from the input of the different groups involved in developing the the the framework the lessons focus on themes of identity history and movement social movements so you know when you study the 60s there you go that's a social move movement so not that i'm saying that i'm not ridic

100i'm not ridiculing any way the women's movement or civil rights movement whatever but so there's a bunch of of egg code referrals on discrimination that are in there everything from you know skin color to gender whatever so if somebody asks you about it there is a ton of egg code in that presentation and the unfortunate part is that as natalie said um there's there was a school board member who's also a parent who really opposed her child being subjected to critical race theory but obviously didn't understand what the attorneys were saying right natalie it was kind of heated that they're not being exposed to it so yeah it was very heated um and again i think that's just been the politicalization of it and the um kind of movements that's going on when you're reading

101bits and pieces of the media versus actually reading what the laws are did you read the assembly bill she probably didn't um so yeah it it made for some very interesting presentation at one point one of the attorneys really had to step in all right go to your corners kind of thing so i that i started with that one first because it was the it was i think that you know we're hearing questions about it so i wanted to spend a little bit of time um i went to a session called meeting the needs of long-time english learners and it was interesting they call them ltls another acronym and it's uh you'll see in the presentation it really focuses on identifying those students that are at risk of becoming long-term english learners and what do

102you do for those targeted almost like mts as three that third that highest level of intervention what does that look like and what they suggested was really looking at not just an el plan but part of your el plan being ltel's how are you going to do very intensive work with those ltls that are in danger of becoming el towels um there the five areas of focus are educator prepared preparation and professional learning resources and planning obviously curriculum and instruction again looking at your data and developing those relationships engagement relationships student focus and that all that also includes your parent groups the parents are a big support and if they understand what's the the process of eld and all the other uh components of of the english language program then they're more supportive of it

103and part of one of the the issues of course like we've discussed before is the english learners they're when they have to do eld or any other kind of interventions especially in the secondary that class takes away from an elective that they could be doing that that another a3g co uh uh course that they could be doing and so it becomes frustrating and you want to try to break the s the cycle before it gets started so that those students have maximum opportunity in the secondary and in there is a is a district action checklist a recommended checklist that i thought was interesting i'm not going to go through it then um let's then the san bernardino city unified the next generation engagement it was interest i was thinking it was about you know getting

104parents more involved right let's let's get those parents involved especially thinking about the equity committee and having to try to reach out make sure that we have good engagement from the different um stakeholder groups even though i know that we're not supposed to use the word stakeholder i'm doing it right now so anyways what in a synopsis what this one program they focused really heavily on was um basically college and career they took this program and they started with actually eighth graders but definitely ninth graders and they have the students look at a college they really want to go to so i'm going to pick ucla to to just as a nod to jordana and they have the students look at the freshman profile for the incoming class at ucla and they look at the

105s-a-t-a-c-t well that's not in existence anymore but the gpa the extracurriculars all those items of an admitted student and that becomes the goal for that student and what they do is they it's almost like backwards mapping jordana where you backwards map not only your course selection but also your extracurriculars your community service it's really detailed oriented and the plan almost like an individual learning plan is put together for that student and is checked every single year and all the teachers and the counselors talk the same language like if a student missed an assignment in the classroom does this fit your freshman profile does this fit within your goal of reaching your proof your freshman profile so it's checking and and supporting that that college climate and that they they have this this focus within that

106almost individual learning plan of okay what are you going to do to go above and beyond and they literally allocate hours for students to go above and beyond maybe using khan academy for study prep um taking it taking advantage of resources whether they're on campus or in the community and that is put into the mixture nana it's super cool i know i'm talking to you a lot but we've had this conversation about about uh you know in the college health class of what does that look like and so anyways it was really really cool um i steve wallace was talking to me when we met about the painting of room 101 which is going to become like a college and career hub so to speak um and i said hey i'll send you this presentation

107and hook you up with gwen rogers if you have questions about it because maybe there are pieces to the overall rim high school a3g plan that you could use so i thought that was cool and then if i can just add into that on my ad just commenting that's what you're talking about is really exciting especially if you're working with the students when they're freshmen because one of the frustrations i had when i was in the classroom dealing with juniors or seniors who are now starting to think about college juniors and then realizing that they've already by what they've done in the past couple years had already closed some doors so oftentimes freshmen are thinking ah so much in the future i don't want to think about it now but if they have goals and

108they could see that i just have to take this class instead of this class and that keeps my doors open for these different possible universities that could be really powerful and they they have brought that down into middle school so that eighth graders are having that conversation and walking these steps so that when they do their course selection for high school they're already having the long-term goal of i'm going to ucla i mean they may not say that they know they want to go to ucla because they're going to switch in 10th grade and want to go to usc but it's just the fact that they are having those conversations and those conversations are having are happening at mph through avid but this is more of a student-wide population every single student participates and to

109again add to your point i could think of a former valedictorian uh rim who um had chosen not to take certain classes uh junior and senior year and basically took themselves out of the running for their favorite university because they're they weren't thinking they they were looking at what was required for those programs rather than recommended and when you're trying to get into a competitive program getting counseled early on that really you should be looking at the recommended because you are you are competing with other students so what's what's the family engagement part well the families are very involved because the the these conversations are having with the family with the individual learning plans here's your kid wants to go to ucla here's here's what the kid needs to do and here are the above

110and beyond hours the kid is is is going to be doing working on a clown economy or whatever to be able to achieve the and meet or exceed the freshman profile which right now for ucla is really high so the last one student voice in decision making and board governance jordana you're gonna come you're we're gonna co-present this because we were both in this um together but really um it's a it's this district what let me see it's placer unified right yes placer union high school district there they they had very motivated students wanting to of course student board member and wanting to be more um effective as a student board member and the board and the superintendent said how do we we know what a student board member has their rights they have preference

111preferential non-binding voting they can present you know be part of our discussions um all of that but how do we take how do we get these kids engaged in leadership roles on another level and um what they started doing was that the student board member they started the voices student voices program which was led by the student board board member and this presentation is in your board docs but basically what it is is that the student board member the board and the superintendent agree on a topic that the student board member is going to take to the students student population to the this group um it's the voice counsel uh it's called the superintendent voice counsel so you have to apply as a student high school student and say it's 10 students let's just say

112the student board member is the one that leads the discussion the superintendent oversees of course but the topics are voted on by the board student board member the board and the superintendent so it's not willy nilly and it could be the topic of bullying it could be um the topic of equity maybe it's a an assignment from the equity committee that would be given to the student board member to take to the superintendent voice counsel and these these um the student board member then they talk about it they come up with ideas for solutions the actionable solutions and that whole thing is then presented by the student board member to the board at a board meeting and and it's really a couple months so they only do one topic per quarter basically because of the

113process that that it takes but it's solutions based um and it gets the kids thinking about how to solve a problem and you have the student buy-in and it and it empowers the student board member and the students at the high school level they feel like they are creating change that was the big takeaway is that the students feel empowered and that they are creating lifelong changes that benefit them that affect them and um and i know zachary's not on here right now but i i do also know he's very passionate about um trying to create ways for the student voice to be heard and i think um you know getting this information to him in this model might be of interest for everyone to look at because right now we have a very active

114and engaged willing student board member who and also this program also builds in training it's it the student board member goes to the csba training in august they go to canvas they go to um the csba conference they go to trainings and then what they do the the current student board member then mentors the last like month or or so the new student board member to transition so that the new student board member isn't like dear caught in the headlights in yeah one of the unfortunate thing about their position is that it's only one year um and so you know creating it for but bullying the groundwork for the next student board member to have um a different map to follow is is worth looking at but your point natalie um is that okay so

115this was uh there's four different high schools in this district so there's a student board member from each of those different high schools they were very clear to say this was not part of the asb program this was a completely different program and um they really strive to in the end and they had to interview with the school district not just be selected among their students and they really strive to have a diverse representation like it was really interesting hearing the students speak to how they felt like they their groups weren't necessarily represented normally within you know within um the normals i don't know school power structure so like you know not always having the most academic or the most active students as part of the student board member process they thought was really important

116they have a um they wrote a board governance handbook that was written by the students and that's part of their training and each year they revised that guidebook so they have very intensive training that happens over the summer that's required attendance but along the way the students put together their own training that they then give to the next group so it's it's it's meant to be a sustained program and again like what cindy said they're very strategic about what problems they're focused on and they're actionable so mention specifically with student vaping or students needing time to readjust to imperson after virtual so they were involved from the student perspective on how to be able to make those transitions more effective um and then uh and then for vaping having it be discipline not as much

117discipline but more of an educated process to uh deal with student behavior so they provided a different perspective to administration and how to be able to deal with student issues so it's really exciting to hear and and the voice counsel when we talked about um build the equity committee and the long beach unified and how you really have to reach out to the quiet ones the voice council was as jordana said really composed of of students beyond asb and leadership it was the quiet ones the ones that that really are are are not vocal but they have opinions they have ideas and the the soup the principles of these schools really helped go out there because they know their kids to to capture those quiet ones to bring them into voi to to apply for

118voice counsel and there was a video of one student he talked about how he was he was a quiet one you know never said even even in class and how he just blossomed in the in this manner participating still very shy in terms of presenting to us yes something he really struggled and but at the same time felt compelled to speak up because he really believed in what he was doing it's pretty really amazing to see and and that's the thing is that you really you really saw because this was presented the panel what were student board members the student board members from this district and man whoa eloquent articulate passionate i mean and and problem they really came at it as we helped create something that was lasting to help solve an issue that

119we are facing and it and so is super having students be that empowered um to be part of that pro of a process of solving issues in the district is is pretty amazing but adding to it one of the things that was interesting that one of the student board members mentioned is now they're talking about this whole mention the late start bill and how the students and talking to the students about it said you know it sounds good to sleep in but it started you know it started we've been i don't know resonating with us all these things we wouldn't be able to do if school started later so wanting to have more of a voice but having the district basically saying that's not coming from us that's coming from the state but bringing that

120up specifically and having them understood what they have power over and what they don't have power over but that in it but it again very it was struck in a structured way in a positive way and it was here's the here's the agreed-upon issue that's going to be presented and they have that one meeting then the next one is solutions based and then the student board member presents so it's over the course of several months that this this process takes place and it's not like a ton of meetings the voice counsel does not meet several times a week or a month even and and so there you go she just stops she forces herself to stop herself anybody have any other questions or comments on cindy's jordana and i left like super excited yeah yeah

121also knowing how zach is just i mean this would be a huge undertaking to try and establish such a program but we've had such great student board members lately and to um really help them be able to do what they wish to do and being more involved with the district and then we also are are it becomes almost a teaching program almost to help our students go into public service or maybe go in to be our next elected officials at the state or federal government it lays the groundwork for leadership and real change because they are promoting change so that's the other takeaway is that this is a this is something that can actually be a teachable program hands-on teachable program absolutely um okay for for mine that i attended um i'll try to i'm

122gonna be brief on some and go into more detail on others one of them that was a very interesting discussion was school personnel misconduct um strategies for prevention investigation and response and this is an area um that that isn't covered in in this type of detail in our trainings that we do um so i i found it really fascinating and um i am somewhat involved in in an organization that's that's beginning to set up tracking for um sexual misconduct in in sports and now this is the talk was about it occurring within the school districts and um with personnel being um uh tracked on this i'm very surprised to know that there is no tracking of this um unless there is a actual legal case or conviction um where they will be flagged in a

123live scan there is no other way to know if multiple allegations have been made against a teacher in another district um and so the the company or the organization that was discussing it was called sesame and they're really working on creating a national database and getting states to buy in to including teacher um or staff sorry all staff all personnel um discret uh misconduct into this system so that future employers um once they've left that district or removed from that district are able to know something about this this is just imperative to protecting our children and it was shocking to me that it does not um occur because again unless you're gonna get popped on a live scan there's no way to know uh what your your past has has been um and so they're

124while they're trying to create that they really talked about um what what can a district actually do and they in their research have found it also shockingly common um for reference checks to never be done on school personnel and that that is the place that you're able to catch previous misconduct potentially that a lot of districts just completely miss all together and i don't know the you know i know there are only certain things that a prior employer is allowed to disclose but one of those questions is would you hire them are they eligible for rehire would you hire them again and if they say no uh there's a huge red flag there and if if a district isn't even calling to ask that they're not doing their due diligence um in order to protect

125students um obviously many things were discussed in regards to under reporting of it the fact that it may be you know common knowledge or everybody knows that that's you know something's going on with that teacher or something's going on with that teacher and that student and that it's never formally reported in that one of the women on this was a victim herself and had been abused by a teacher that had abused 14 other students um and that she knew of that multiple people knew of but it was never formally addressed by the district um because it was never formally submitted to the district and i know i i i know the hesitation of of you know reporting and where fears come in with that and you don't want to be accused of making a false

126report or whatever but i just highly encourage you know students parents other faculty members anyone that if there is a suspicion it needs to be reported and then the proper investigation will be done um and and how you respond to the um to the uh alleged adult and how you respond to the student is also very important too and oftentimes the students um aren't responded to or aren't cared for it's just discipline or you know going to the adult and following the procedures for what discipline investigation yadda yadda looks like um where where the student sometimes gets missed and it's been the pattern of other districts to just say well the problem's removed and not recognized that there's just this um you know path of destruction that's been left that nobody's coming in to kind

127of clean up and care for obviously it doesn't only infect the student but all of the other students that have been exposed to that teacher or that student other professionals that have been exposed to that teacher the reputation of of education in general you've seen this spread in in areas such as the catholic church or gymnastics or you know and and it leaves a very negative taste in everyone's mouth obviously because the the follow-up um after that doesn't occur so really fascinating i mean shocking how how um how i guess unsophisticated our systems are for for tracking um previous claims of misconduct or anything like that so any questions or comments on that yeah natalie um i i'm in in not the same situations but kind of in the same situations um students have said

128that they're fearful of having going to the principal and having a conversation about behavior in the classroom because of potential retaliation and by the staff person and you know maybe their grade will maybe other microaggressions whatever and so did they talk about that as part of one of the under reportings as well is that students really don't want to speak up because they fear retribution absolutely and that's why abuse victims in general don't speak up or a portion of why they don't speak up and that being said i think if there is an education piece that goes to all students or all parent everyone that goes to everyone that says um these are how we will protect you if you do report um there would be more willingness to do that if there was the

129trust in the belief in a system in place knowing this is how i will be protected if i report this um whether it's it pans out to be a false or true allegation you know removing a student from a class because that will make them feel safer to report and not feel like there's a potential consequence is is an option that they laid out and to say you know if you're going to make an alley or if you're making a report about poor behavior and you're truly afraid that there will be retaliation from it then we'll protect you by keeping you away from that person essentially um you know easier to do in larger districts probably you know when we if you only have one teacher who teaches that one subject and that's the one

130that you you need um obviously there are challenges to that but um then then there would be a burden upon us or or administration and and the principle to ensure that well suddenly that student's getting really bad grades and that was after they made this allegation what's going on with that you know some more investigation requires um that that protection of this student and so it's not only getting the student mental health services off afterwards or or you know ensuring that their family and home life is is you know supporting them the way they need to but also making sure that they're still going to be set up for academic success afterwards and that an allegation um or report doesn't deter them off that path natalie it seems like there's a number of other issues

131too for just uh you touched on it very briefly there the false allegations so if you're going to try to track you know somebody's had allegations but how do you track was it a legit or a false allegation also is there tracking for for victims that's gonna you know how are you gonna follow up to see that that like you touched on how you're gonna see that the victim gets help seems like we have a fairly good investigation tool for our district i'm not sure how how our system is set up for ongoing care of victims but also again how do you make sure that we're not passing on information about a false allegation well and and how do we know that a false allegation is a true false allegation there are so many unknowns

132in situations like this um but but just a simple tracking gets you started somewhere and the this this uh sesame is is they've been around for 20 years and still are at ground zero in creating these things and how do you get past the the ones you were touching on where several people knew all about this that that several that that's the thing reporting's got to come from from more people than just and as a mandated reporter you are required to report so next is if i know you knew and you didn't report it you are now responsible too and there are um investigations into that consequences and and the response that's required there too sometimes it might just be more education sometimes it might be actually punishable so so what i'd be interested in

133knowing what we have to help educate our educators to um to help protect victims right right um and you know i don't know that heather oh heather is not on here today um but a wonderful question for her when it comes to staff training and education and what is provided to them on this um dana you might be able to speak to it from your experience as an educator um if you were provided kind of tools knowledge or education about how to respond and react to a report or allegation i'm someone that's hit hit on when you're going through your credentialing program and basically it's one of those things that as a teacher you would loop other individuals in so this is at the high school i don't know for um like elementary where there

134isn't a dedicated you know counseling office and the like but um yeah depending on the urgency raising flags immediately involving law enforcement as needed there were some things that i had to deal you know that you know had to get involved with um but it's not from my experience but frankly i was there with different administration um it wasn't something that was um like discussed on a regular basis and staff meetings in terms of um providing um um you know continual like this is what you need to do but i think every single adult who's in touch with students and not in touch but involve the students on the school sites are um are mindful of their uh mandatory reporter status yeah and what's and the responsibility that goes along with it jordana what is

135that repeat what you just said uh every every adult on cam every staff member is aware of their mandatory you know who is a mandatory reporter is aware of the obligations involved however like school districts down the hill will have departments you'd be able to call in to deal with situations this is one of those things that um our counselors have to deal with a lot already and it's one of those things that i found them to be excellent in making you know crisis situations a priority not to mention our administrators you know when i was there uh derek swim and also dave nygren and and i mean just they were very aware of need to be able to deal with such matters urgently and and and with care um but it is it's something

136that isn't necessarily explicitly provided his training on a regular basis so that i would think that there'd be some value in us having our leadership develop and make sure that there is some kind of annual training on that i i do believe we have annual mandate yeah reporter training and we have we do have actually thinking about it there is managers training online training that we had to do on a regular basis that we would be you know i know just to go through and and do the um watch the video read the read the read the material and click you know answer questions i don't know um that wasn't around when i first started teaching but when i went back into the classroom recently um there are there are like you know jenny just

137mentioned there are annually several topics that i know like with bloodborne pathogens and also sexual harassment and also um you know mandatory reporting student safety those are things that i know are continually addressed usually in the past it's been at the beginning of the year i imagine that's still the case um but you know sometimes just something being assigned it's not as personal as somebody standing up there and reminding us um i think because even even natalie touched on in a comment she made um that there's some hesitancy of reporting and she's a professional in the in the business and and people hesitate at reporting because they're afraid they're going to some somebody's going to get hurt by it and yet we we don't have an option to try to decide are we going to

138or not and i jenny i i wouldn't mind you chiming in here um it'd be helpful to know some of how we address some of those topics and have it go beyond just an assignment yeah we do have um it's mostly done through our personnel department but it's a collaboration of depending on the classification of employee there's probably a good 12 mandated trainings assigned to the each year to our staff some are specific to certificated some are specific to managers and some are specific to um you know did your different work classifications like custodial mechanics and behind the bus training so each manager will work individually with the person assistant super personnel and then along with our risk management to kind of see okay what does my department specifically need i'm going to use jim

139and his maintenance crew as an example they need items that are on top of mandated reporters they are mandated reporters so they get the suicide prevention the sexual harassment and the mandated reporters and those but in addition they may get um hazardous waste and proper lifting forklift certification so by classification we have a grid that is um if you're a teacher it's xyz and it's either by edcode or by um osha requirements some is just best practices um you know that our attorneys may recommend and then um some are um let's see osha ed code and some are the um the um the labor laws so we we have maybe three or four areas that we need to stay in compliance with i know cwa does the suicide prevention trainings and they may have additional

140ones for their special ed department so we are lucky enough with our jpa they offer some grids on you know it's almost like a flowchart if you're this classification you're mandated to do you know these 10 and we recommend you do these um four what we would do is we would meet with personnel in my department annually and really have that decided by todd at the time on you know how are we going to assign it and what's going to be an in-person training what's going to be assigned through um you know a computer like a powerpoint type option and then we um we monitor that we set a due date and then each principal or each manager actually gets a report of what um what employees have complied with their testing and what haven't

141and i think that's where our struggle is right now we had a little bit of disconnect on how we assigned trainings this year where we're going to stagger them a little bit because it got a little bit overwhelming for some staff that they got 12 assignments all at once but there are some that within eight weeks of school we have to have certain ones completed by and it's really our it's one of our best defenses um and i think natalie hit on it on number one did we do our due diligence in training someone that um on what they're supposed to do and if they did the training if they still didn't comply with the rules then that's an area that we can defend the district on is that we did everything we could and

142this person still you know um you know like they said you know did something wrong so um our struggle probably is um on just to be honest is being able to have the time to follow it up and and each manager with their crew you know we do have a tough time getting the participation up and um you know but it is in everyone's best interest especially if you hold the credential to do what your mandated you know the mandated trainings because it can actually impact someone's credential at that time so um you know that we've done some negotiations this year to try to find days to allow people more time to do the trainings and next year we're going to it looks like it's a question for heather but i think we're going to

143build in some training time on our pd days to not have it be so overwhelming you know because we have some that are a 15 minute you can do on a quick on a quick break and some are two hours right so thank you jenny that's helpful i think my my final thing i want to say on this topic in general is that um a reporter is not obligated to investigate you don't have to investigate first you don't have to find out the truth before you report you report someone else does the investigation just do what your job is in it and you can go to sleep peacefully and happily um okay the another one i did was um on cif the role of education-based athletics after covin uh a little premature because we're not

144after covent we're still right in the middle of covet but nonetheless we talked about it i want to study who's the executive director of science cif was the presenter on it um and i've talked as at not ad nauseam um about the role athletics plays in the health and wellness of our students and that when it comes to both mental health physical health uh being engaged in a community connectivity a feeling and sense of of pride and purpose athletics is a great place to be able to do that one of the consequences that they're seeing statewide from kovid is that a lot of the um seventh and eighth graders were not uh we're not having opportunities to do athletics um in in clubs things or in recreational things and so um getting the buy-in again

145for you know what will be freshmen or um people to to restart athletics is has been a challenge for some um some districts and um it it's interesting you know dr rios who we all watched he was one of the um what's the right word speakers big speakers keynote speaker keynote thank you that's what i was looking for um you know he really he he just highlighted the importance of of the connectivity and how having you know that that relationship between in his case it was the teacher in him but i've seen it over and over again with a coach and a student and how powerful that is and that that is um is healing is guiding is is motivation to come to school for many people who are athletic academically driven and that being

146athletically driven and knowing you have a coach there or a team there who's supporting you and counting on you um gets gets you going but again because because there's fewer access to club sports maybe because of people's finances these days or because of the fact that they were closed or um again recreational sports in the community a lot of those programs in other communities died because their funding sources went away people once they closed it was like we kind of forgot about them and they were talking about the having education-based athletics in middle school in 7th and 8th grade um and that you know having teams that can be driven by the district to provide those opportunities for students will help um just their lives and and and filter them into high school athletics and

147hopefully college athletics and beyond um so i i yeah it was a good presentation it was uh similar to the one he did two years ago but but with the twist of some of the consequences that kovit has had on athletics and um what the future of that will be is unknown you know olympics is coming up soon and there's still talk of is it going to happen is it not you see a lot of uh major major league or national teams you know aren't are canceling games and aren't um as prominent as they once were and it's really it's sad because it's a source of joy for many people and again this purpose for many students so they're their just desire from cif is that school boards continue to advocate for the funding that

148sports needs um in order to keep them in our schools for our kids i know that like for my own daughter kira um having adhd being able to play soccer being able to to do cross-country and track but especially soccer it was not only just you know the pride in in being part of a team for a common purpose but it was also necessary for her to have that physical release from being in class from seven to two having that physical relief allowed her to go back to do her homework she made her a better student they needed they need to decompress adhd kids really need that ability that time to decompress in some manner and for her it it was it was a need it's like i you know when she made me angry

149i i was told by the doctor do not take do not ground her by taking away soccer that would be the worst thing you could do don't do that find some other way of of discipline but don't do that because she won't be able to function she will physically not be able to do her homework and so it's also a health it's health getting kids active get it's so important it really is um so i again attended critical race theory and ethnic studies no need to cover it um and then the mental wellness center tiered approach it was called using the family resource center model to promote wellness and mental health at school sites uh this was long beach unified school district i know cindy you had a question about their funding um and so

150again it's lcap funding they didn't go into great detail about how they do it my understanding and it was presented by a superintendent a principal and two members of the mental health team uh what i liked about it is they have this tiered approach to identifying their students anybody can um submit a ticket similar to what we do with jim in regards to getting something fixed at a school site right so they they submit a ticket to the mental health center for the student and in every staff has access to this the students can also do it themselves though they said they get very few referrals that are student student driven i guess in that way um it tends to be staff driven um and the as soon as they go there then someone calls

151they talk to the student talk to the family to determine what the needs are needed are but they cover this this department covers um all their staff training for mental health family training so every week they have three group uh family groups where um it's it's essentially free group therapy uh for the families and then they have individual therapy and or kids so it's very different from what our counselors are are are doing um at our site our counselors are our school counselors these are psychologists um mfts amfts or marriage and family therapists licensed clinical social workers they're not um academic based counselors which is what we have at the high school and in middle school now i know they have to play both roles because they do have students that will come into them

152for mental health or emotional needs and though that that isn't their special training um i'm sure they're very sensitive they're they're skilled in in some of what students needs are but they're not doing therapy with them that's not their role um and that's not what their training is so it it's this program is fully you know the schools the the psychologists um or or marriage and family licensed clinical social workers um so they they have each of their school site pay every year out of their their school site oh cap funds to the overall wellness center so or resource center is what they call it so their resource center for example like i'm terrible at math and not going to do these numbers but hypothetically it's it costs 300 000 to run it for a

153year right and each school site pays a portion of that from their school site funds questions comments concerns about that no just that go michelle and i a couple years ago we went to several wellness center workshops to find out how they were set up and all that others and and that was one thing that again we walked away going wow okay where would we get the money out of our budget to be able to fund a very synchronized wellness program incorporating all schools in including elementary and um it i think that a president you know proposing that to the school site councils proposing that to the principals allowing the principals to take that down to their teachers and deter they've all said that they want a counselor on site they've all said it this

154is an opportunity this is a way to pay for it to have a entire center dedicated to the mental health of the students and their needs this is an option is it something that our site wants it might be worthwhile also to look at partnering like with room family services or with mountain counseling um in that i know that there's been times where they have had funding and they're looking for programs you know there's you know staffing ends up being an issue for them but that might be more long-term having strategic discussions with those organizations to be able to provide those services what they say is that the relief that the site feels because of them paying for that program it is well worth the money that they know that they're going to invest every

155year on so they get their funding and they go my you know this 30 000 or this 50 000 is going to that because that helps our students that helps our teachers that helps our staff like we know that those needs are taken care of because we we all know that the the um when children adults too are struggling with mental health issues it comes along with more behavior issues it comes along with more academic issues a lot of resources in time are being pulled away to care for these students and we're not actually doing it in the most effective way a lot of times it's it it pans out not at all sites not always but it's discipline and and that's not what's required you have to get to the core of what's actually

156going on with these these little students and um a lot of times it's not that they're not getting the mental health services they need so they see such a relief in increase in behavior issues and discipline issues as a result of having this program um and more family engagement right because now you have somebody who or a program who's dedicated to getting your family involved in in these situations with more high need high high needing of love students and it's not you know maybe a teacher who's responsible of tracking down this parent after they're you know all the time and not getting responses it's somebody's else's job to do that once they get engaged once they feel empowered once they feel connected once they have tools to know how to help their kid they're going

157to be more involved in in a site level or in an engagement with the teacher level too so was it was the suggestion was maybe um using utilizing psycho site funds and being written into the school plan so site council overseas and monitors that and that gotcha i mean okay got it it's a option for going no that's thinking outside of the box yeah like how i mean the the unfortunate part is is when a school has many different needs competing how you know what i'm saying it's like it's but you're right it it takes this is important to us this is the first thing that's funded and and that's what they do i i mean that's what they have all sites have agreed to do and it seems to be working out for them

158um sounds like something worth sharing at least right definitely because i like you say mental health affects everything and and clearly student behavior participation attendance educational everything is affected by by mental health so i'm sure every campus that is concerned about it and and students safe the safety of other students i mean we could go on and on the safety of the classroom and the environment is dependent on everybody having a certain level of mental stability too why wouldn't i just to me it touches so many different areas and could potentially create a more a stable environment at the school site it's hard to argue against that in my mind but again i'm a psychologist sitting here telling you that you know they might be like i need a copier to work and i don't

159care if the copier doesn't work it doesn't matter none of it so i don't know i'm with you natalie i'm with you i've also dealt with those copiers of lae and those ruin my mental health so yes they do [Music] um well so that ends you know the ones i wanted to report out any other questions or comments before we natalie i just wanted to go back to something and um i know that and it is on critical race theory and um i have a gentleman that i have high regard for he's a black african-american pastor tony evans he's an author he's just well known across the country and he says crt has been convoluted by an by a number of things and the thing that i think it's missed in some of these presentations

160which you're it's correct crt was a legal course taught in law school still is however crt now has become convoluted by the things that have happened in recent years including 1619 project which since cindy mentioned including even black lives matter including even um things that that that that continue that um have turned it in when people are talking crt they're really no longer talking that course in in illegal and that's why you have so many people then in that meeting i'm sure that we're upset because because parents are reacting to lessons and things that are being taught that go way beyond quote technical crt and i think we have to be careful when we try to respond and say oh well we're not teaching crt when that's really not what people are talking about they're

161talking about these much broader bigger unfortunately hostile issues and we need to be sensitive to that too so i just had to make that comment thank you no we do we do but part of our job as a school board is to give them information as well to to try and and and try to [Music] i guess for for lack of a better word present them with information that counters misinformation and try to to redirect the conversation however a lot of people now through media through other means of information have have come to a decision on what it is and and so we can only it's natalie i think it was natalie said it or about you not going down a path of argument arguing but listening just giving information but not really going into

162the the arguments and the emotions of it because there are a lot of people that do have have made a decision on what it is and go ahead add to that to your point and to bill's point um i've had some people reach out to me regarding the now being revised again math framework and um concerned about crt being involved in the math framework where yeah that's not part of law school curriculum that's not you know so i think that i mean what my approach has been with folks stating that concern is to ask more about what do you mean what are you talking about and try to better understand it and i think at this point there's um there's i think a lack of understanding from the folks who are um trying to put

163together like you know various curriculum at the state level and what they're trying to accomplish and folks who are um concerned about what their students might be being taught and there's a lack of communication that's coming out of the terms that are being used and the buzzwords and that's where i i think that we have like what bill had said i want to be careful about being dismissive of folks exactly that's my concern that's why we have to be listening to them and you're right asking the questions of like what is it that you're actually concerned about give me details because it because it it gives us more information so that when we go say to start the ethnic studies um curriculum curriculum that it we're hearing what people's concerns are and we're addressing those

164concerns along the way and we're transparent and we're informative and we keep educating because that's our job educating everybody as to every single part of the process and making sure that when they when it's their turn parents are part of the process community members are part of the process and so that way you are combating the misinformation with information that is that is in real time as we go through ethnic the ethnic studies part and and i don't ever want to be dismissive of somebody's what their dis exactly where their position is even if i agree or don't agree with it you have to be respectful at least where they're at all right so i believe that wraps up our discussion of uh csba conference report uh going back to the agenda 9.2 we did

165um remove from the calendar uh 9.3 equity and social justice committee update report trustee mellinger well thank you so we are actually getting ready for our very first meeting of the subcommittee which will be on january 18th at 5 30. um we've had a little bit of shifting going on with within the the people in the committee but um also i think i i hope i reported last time that dr white has already started meeting with our principals and we're already just we're moving through the process and um i know that i still have a concern that we find some of our hispanic alumni so we've established a portal um for people to give us names of alumni because one things we'll be doing is listening session with alumni um like cindy and i were

166chatting earlier um the the quiet people uh we need to find some some of them and so even though they're not technically on the committee we're still looking for people that can be a part of conversation and so each of you anybody watching this can actually give us names of people that are alumni that may have have experiences that would be beneficial for us to hear from do they need to be um living in our area do they have to be local at this point no no in fact uh because we can do listening that's the beauty now what we've learned in the last few years we can do listening through zoom uh through other one-on-one methods and all so we're looking at just at really just building the base of names and contact information

167and so that's in that excel folder in in the in the equity um folder so please we all have the ability that the board members to go in and add yes name and and a contact information so if so as you please reach out to alumni broad spectrum in age it could be a recent graduate as well as one that's 50 years ago um and put that and ask and then put there and put it on the spreadsheet yes so that so that's that's i think for me and for and for cindy we're really concerned that we built that base right now and build some more uh people into that that we can then have in listening sessions and um so our first meeting january 18th 5 30. so we'll be reporting about that after

168after we have that session okay thank you you said it all bill thank you thanks natalie 10.0 future meeting dates regular board meeting january 20th 2022 at 5 30 pm uh location is to be determined and it says here to determine if the january 20th meeting will be held in person or virtual um i would like to start the kind of discussion on that as jordan highlighted the reason that this had to go virtual is because there was a confirmed positive case amongst people who belong in this meeting and so my my personal preference is to do it in person unless at that time there is another um positive confirmed case amongst us and um then we would have to transition to virtual again do other people have thoughts or opinions about that do you

169i saw a thumbs up from cindy um i see a thumbs up from bill and dana and jordan you're on a different screen but can i get a thumbs up now if you have it okay um so i would add natalie that um we had others of us that were possibly um positive as well and so there there it was much bigger it was not about what was being stated earlier it was clearly about positive test results yeah there are positive cases here in direct exposure here amongst people that needed to be in this meeting um and so that that is why it was done this way um so we will do that january 20th meeting in person unless we remain in that situation it should be the case based off of dates and times

170that we know positive cases last for that we should all be clear by then hopefully so fingers crossed uh regular board meeting february 17th 2022 at 5 30 pm again to be determined i think that if we stick with that any way that we can do in person that is what we want to do if there are positive cases amongst people that must be in this meeting that will change per a california state mandate masks are required to be worn properly by fully covering your nose and mouth on all k-12 campuses while indoors and this board meeting is occurring while we are all in our private homes our offices and that's why we do not have masks on 11.1 adjournment can i get a motion bill in a second mindy any discussion required just that

171our president did a very good job of running the meeting yeah i appreciate you all thank you um and we're gonna do our vote uh individually so if bill you would like to be good natalie state the time please um don't we have to do the vote first usually no you don't usually we try to say it beforehand go ahead okay so the meetings adjourned at 7 52. i think you were right natalie and going with the vote first bill mellinger trustee area one aye hannah ritland area 2 aye mini gardner trustee area 3 i natalie lindemann trustee area 4i jordan zarate trusty area 5i meeting is adjourned by unanimous vote and the meetings adjourned at 7 53 or no it's not it was at 7 52.