Board Meeting - October 7, 2021

001order please rise and join me in a pledge to our flag i pledge allegiance to the lie of the united states of america and his republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all now we just did that okay um no action was taken in closed session uh at this point i will entertain a motion to adopt the agenda except we are adding oh revising i'm sorry we are revising item [Music] 7g second been moved in second almost a favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously we'll now move on to public comment this is an opportunity for uh members of the public staff and board members to address an item that is not on the agenda uh if you're watching us online i would encourage

002you to go ahead and write your comments uh there in the in the chat section there and uh we will read it for you we'll give you a few minutes to uh to do so is there anyone here who would like to address the board on an item that is not on the agenda all righty we will give folks online an opportunity to check in you know i see these strings standing behind us and i'm really looking forward to them being displaying our students art again i miss that we're getting closer yes sir all right okay all right not seeing any comments we will move on to the next item but if if you're there and you're still typing if we come back across your comments we will catch them in a little bit okay

003so moving on we'll move on to reports and we will start with robo education foundation and uh mr raven in the in the chat has noted that there's uh he has nothing new to report uh we have not received any matching grant requests from any of from any of the sites classrooms etc so enjoy a break neck i'll enjoy your break next week so those of you who have some ideas uh well he's waiting on your proposals mr de luce if we could go back to the comments for just a minute there was a question in the comments about discussion about forthcoming vaccine mandate um do i don't think we have that i think we have that on the agenda to discuss but maybe that is something we should put on the next agenda as

004an item to discuss i'm sure absolutely when we have more information yes all right thank you so very much good suggestion all right now we'll move on to uh continue on with reports and we'll move on to the roblox teachers association uh csca superintendent's report thank you very much good evening everyone um i am pleased to report that we had held our latinx heritage parent uh empowerment dinner last night right outside this building under a tent it was a very warm and welcoming event we had music we had food we had student art on display and we had a wonderful guest speaker i'd like to thank mrs cardona and mr boyd for representing the board last night our speaker was dr vidya viridiana who was the vice president of california state university in sacramento who

005spoke in a very warm tone with our families and our staff about the importance of acknowledging your path and facing the challenges in life and she talked a lot about her own experience as a young woman being raised a young girl being raised by a single mom and her path to becoming a vice president of a university it was a very inspiring speech and she had some really great information to share this is one of three dinners that will take place this year as is our tradition we do hold a black history month parent empowerment dinner in the month of february and this year we have added to the schedule a new event the asian pacific islander heritage month uh parent mr empowerment dinner that will happen in the month of may so we're very

006proud to be growing our our our program um being more responsive to the communities that we serve and um i'm just i'm excited about this um this growth that we'll be taking this year with our parent empowerment dinners uh update on our independent study program um i am pleased to say that the teachers did ratify the mou that is on tonight's agenda for the board's approval the program is characterized by teachers volunteering to teach independent study our a program will be a combination of both synchronous work so live instruction for students and that will be a minimum of 90 minutes a week focused on language arts and mathematics and eld and then the rest of their instructional day will be independent work the program has begun informally with some students some teachers got right on

007it but it will begin formally when we return from break on october 18th um as usual we have an update around uh covet 19. um i do want to be sure that everyone is aware that we do have a dashboard up and running on our website if you look at our covet 19 resource page that is updated twice a week and gives numbers of um positive cases at each individual school site i am pleased to say that generally cases are down and corn and the need to quarantine are down so that is of course great news our weekly testing continues and i'm pleased to share that the numbers of people who are being tested on a weekly basis continue to grow both staff and students and i will say i i personally um get it

008i am vaccinated but i i choose to take a test every week and i am i will say the process is very quick and very easy and i get my results in about eight hours so it's it's pretty efficient i'm really pleased we also um are pleased i was pleased uh a couple weeks ago to announce to staff um because school employees are considered essential workers and we do qualify for a pfizer booster shot if we received the pfizer vaccination and were fully vaccinated and have were fully vaccinated at least six months ago and i would like to acknowledge natomas unified school district who has been great about sharing the wealth and they put together their clinic that actually will take place tomorrow and you do need to register and we can get a booster

009shop tomorrow um speaking of covid i think we're hearing a little bit about the supply chain issues that are happening and we are experiencing enrollment in some ways we have had some issues with certain uh food supplies for our nutrition program that has caused us to need to change our menus from time to time i know we've had some issues acquiring masks our students seem to be going through them quite quickly but i think we have solved that to the most to the best of our ability the board has approved electric buses and you approved our we did received a great deal of money in grants but we did have to do some matching funds and that was all approved those electric buses have been delayed and they may even though we were hoping to

010see them um in the middle of the school year it appears that we may not be seeing them until the until june of 2022. and i'm just keeping my fingers crossed that our furniture orders which already take a really long time for our new buildings will not be impacted um by any supply chain issues so we'll keep your fingers crossed for us on that hazel health continues to be an important uh service that we provide for our families in roblox that's our telemedicine program i do want to share with the board i have a little handout that i'll send down the line here we were the uh we were the subject of a study done by the institute of educational sciences funded by the u.s department of education about how hazel health is working in

011the roma school district and there's some great findings at a glance and i will just share a couple of highlights um 26 of our students use the program uh 94 percent of students who had go to a hazel visit actually go back to class immediately which according to the study saved about 511 instructional hours for these students over two years so that's that's very exciting and it's exciting that we got this national attention on on this study we've done that have we done any press or maybe like a press release or something we have not that's definitely something we could look into doing okay absolutely i can talk to our our consultants about that i recently did have the opportunity to present these findings along with josh galloam from hazel health at a national telehealth

012and virtual care conference and we did that virtually and that was very well received and i am very excited to share that hazel will be growing this year we are adding on hazel heart which is telecounseling so now students can not only access a doctor for health issues but can now access a counselor by way of our social workers who will facilitate this process so it will give us another layer of support for students and because hazel is such a great partner i i feel it's important to acknowledge that they are providing this service in this first year at no cost to roblox this increased service and i also want to make it clear that we are not the guinea pigs they're not giving this to us free because they're figuring it out they have

013already piloted this program in other parts of the country and it's an already established program and they are providing the service in robla um at no additional cost for our contract so that's a wonderful acknowledgement of the partnership that that we have with them uh fall break happens in the robles school district next week uh many of our employees get a week off and uh we're we acknowledge that we this is a great time to have some time off it's been a stressful start of the year and i guess i would just like to end my report by wishing everyone a great fall break but also saying thank you um to all of our employees to our families to the board for um persevering i think that is something that is so important that needs

014to be acknowledged in the role of the school district this has been a very difficult start to the school year and the stress and anxiety for everyone is very high coming back to school after a year and a half has been difficult and then the coveted concerns on top of that and everyone is working so hard to really try to give our students some level of normalcy and make our families feel secure and safe and i have to say i feel like even though it's stressing everybody out a great deal it is uh it is something that is going well and when a problem comes up we work together to solve it so thank you to our employees at every level from administrators to certificated staff our teachers to our classified staff of course we

015couldn't do any of this without the support of the board and to our community organizations and just as a superintendent i'm very grateful for the work that everybody's doing and um i hope that those people who get some time off next week really are able to relax and that's my report okay we'll move on to board member reports we'll start with uh trustee devine nothing to report mr cardona i just want like to regenerate the thank you for the latin heritage dinner yesterday and i appreciate everybody who put a lot of effort to make it happen and because the food was great because it was great and a speaker it was really a beautiful person and it really touched our heart i thank you for everybody who put the airport dusty barnes nothing to report

016i just want to say thank you to trustee cardona and trustee boyd for representing the board but um we all wish we could attend these events and it's not possible all the time so thank you very much for that could i just interject um we've had some issues in the past around the youtube and people being able to hear us so i'm just going to remind the board to speak into their microphones and those of you who are going to speak to us tonight if you'd make sure to speak into the microphone at the podium as well thank you thank you for that reminder and thank you it was my pleasure to represent the board last night i think uh ms cardona would probably say the same um it was uh i enjoyed the dinner

017i enjoyed the food it was great but what i really liked most about it was seeing three of my former reading partner little students out there uh and their family who really engaged and um one of them come up and he just uh so uh enthusiastic telling me how much he has read already this year in class wanting to know if we were having reading partners and i had to tell them unfortunately not right now maybe we can get something later but it was good to see them uh it was good to see them and their parents involved and i do appreciate that and mr roberts i want to give you an extra thanks too for the way that you deal with those youngsters that come by and take them back i did go back

018afterwards and visit them and they were all having a great time back there um i got a question on the hazel health on the heart uh will the same uh uh parent buy-in apply to the counseling as it does to the medical or we're gonna have to have a separate buy-in no the um parents were notified that it's part of the program now they can of course opt out but we've been certified if you've already signed up for hazel this is a new service and you do not have to sign up again okay good yeah that's very interesting to hear real encouraging um and i want to thank you superintendent reyes for uh addressing that uh motor home homeless issue over across from over uh uh i had seen a lot of uh feed a

019lot of uh back and forth through next door on that there was a real concern in that neighborhood and what you did and uh our council person too i want to thank them for uh getting that because um uh you know nobody's more compassionate to the issues of the homeless than i am but um there's certain places that we really have to take safety into being and uh that's definitely one of them and uh finally i received my booster yesterday so uh i had a kaiser appointment i didn't need the uh uh i'm i'm definitely old enough to go ahead and qualify for it sorry when i got mine i felt no ill effects and uh it'll be nice to take the mask off that's all i got okay well i have a couple of

020things to report um actually one of the things is actually just prior to the last board meeting uh i received a a letter from the uh county uh the sacramento county grand jury uh i received it and it basically was reporting that they were going to be releasing a report uh recommending that that staff and that local school districts all sacramento county school districts be require or mandate that both eligible staff and students receive the covid19 vaccine or not be allowed to come to school uh it was it was kind of concerned me because along with it what came a cover letter that said don't divulge this to anyone otherwise you could be subject to and it listed several penal codes and that's all you had to say to me was penal code i'm like

021i don't want to break that but but i assumed i sent the letter over to our superintendent uh who who in turn uh reviewed it and talked with a number of our uh uh talked with our attorney uh but then at the same time uh two days later uh we shared it with a number of other folks and it was really kind of interesting because as it turned out uh in the letter they tightened the report they talked about the fact that they talked to local uh they talked to local education officials but as far as we know and i know reuben made calls and i made calls nobody that we know of got talked to nobody we know of was talked to in regards to this report additionally the data in the information was

022all information that's already available on the sacramento county website so it wasn't like there was a bunch of new information that was provided in any case it's a recommendation that was put forth and we're obligated to respond within 90 days and i think that uh in consultation with our attorney reuben will eventually be getting back to us on that but i wanted the board to know the reason why i did not inform you when it first happened was because i didn't know who i could talk to about it so once again i appreciate you for understanding my desire to uh well not get fined or wind up in jail but [Laughter] um but anyway i i just found it kind of interesting i didn't know that that was within the purview of the sacramento county

023uh grand jury and i well quite frankly still don't believe that it is um so there was that and the other thing was so this uh over this past weekend the uh region six for the second for the california school boards association delegates i had a virtual meeting and we had a presentation that was done that was done for us is you might you might have recognized or seen in the news lately that there's a lot of news about uh well raucous school board meetings individuals who are either upset about a critical race theory or who are upset about vaccine or mask mandates coming to school board meetings and in some cases uh in some cases being being completely over the top so in some cases actually bordering on or exceeding to you know threats

024of violence so one of the things that they participated that they did in this meeting was in this meeting was we had someone do a presentation on how to how to run or how to manage uh what to do in the event that this happens in one of your board meetings and uh they did a recording of it and i'm gonna make that recording available to all of the board members so that we can have an idea of it i'm just glad that uh you know amongst our board members and amongst our community we have not had this challenge or had this issue and i appreciate the robla family for being able to discuss even sensitive issues in a positive manner so but those those are the only items that i had to report thank

025you and with that we move on to presentations and we will start with summer 2021 freedom school report uh good evening superintendent members of the board welcome mr mine i don't think we've ever met before can you talk to the ladder yes thank you all right um 2021 cdf freedom schools um has been closed out uh it was interesting it was uh exciting it was challenging it was uh some it was successful though and it was successful in that we were once again able to connect with approximately 120 160 students every day from rover school district and neighboring school districts thank you superintendent but we were able to successfully implement the freedom school model with some challenges and we'll talk a bit about that as well um as you know the children defense fund freedom

026school started in 1991. it's rooted in the 1960 civil rights era of working bringing college students in front of our students younger kids and not only teaching them but also role modeling for them activism educational opportunities and what the future would look like it was inspired by the mississippi freedom school project of 1964. the principles around city of freedom school literacy culture learning community involving parents and having high standards the freedom school and our contract with robles school district allowed us to work with 160 scholars we hired 16 college students and college graduates to work with the students and also had two site coordinators as well as a site a site leader who was responsible for the entire project we were based at taylor street elementary and glenwood elementary school pictures of students there freedom

027school hosted um students at glenwood elementary school taylor elementary school uh 40 level ones 30 level twos 13 level threes 50 level ones 39 level twos 27 level threes split between glenwood and taylor street elementary school the students that we put in front of what we call student student leader interns servant leader interns the certainly interns were trained virtually this year for the first time ever normally we send them to tennessee for training this year we did virtual training that was held of course in sacramento we brought speakers from around the country to work with them to talk about curriculum development after tune afternoon activities social action projects impact the policies on those we serve as well as the historical roots of freedom school team building a total of 80 hours of training before freedom

028school started prepared them for their work in front of 160 students in roblox worked on mentoring mandated report writing parent engagement community engagement classroom management restorative justice and conflict resolution the daily schedule went from pretty much 8 30 to 3 p.m with activities primarily around the integrated reading curriculum it is a literacy based curriculum uh that that supports the joys of reading uh also the comprehensiveness of reading but the need for students to stay engaged at all times when in school this summer one challenge we had is that because we um had a had a partnership with the district our first week we were at full strength and after that we had to share students with the school campus summer program the challenge for that was that that our integrated reading curriculum which normally went

029all morning had to be broken up morning and then repeated in the afternoon for the new students who came it's a little different there were moments when we felt like we had to figure that out and next year we'll do an even better job okay the uh uh not just literacy but also the kids were involved with social actions uh an afternoon with art music and the like dance um physical fitness activities and such freedom school daily uh activities open up with harambe and harambe is a swahili term let's pull together uh that's typically where we invited board members to speak to the kids to read to the kids and from that they went into their integrated reading activities something inside so strong was the song the theme song for our program it has been

030the theme song for freedom school throughout the years and something that sounds so strong is really though what we had to remind ourselves for our kids that something inside so strong that you have will get you through today get you to the moment to the tough times as well um i read aloud guests included superintendent reyes borden uh boyd and other board members who participated throughout the summer and one thing you gotta remember i normally for those of you know this i don't normally do this presentation by myself so tonight you have me because it's a short presentation so there's going to be some things i'm going to make a mistake on and i want to show you didn't do it on purpose but it happens that was that mistake what kind of you to

031point it out mr okay cool the integrated reading curriculum included uh stories by authors who look and uh had the language of the kids a row bro the central dream i can make a difference in myself my family my community my country the world with hope education and action the six week program focus on those six themes and explore issues related to self-esteem and self-respect it offers ideas and encouragement to involve scholars in service to make connections that reading and writing are cohesive freedom school afternoon activities in addition to uh the integrated reading activity focus on stem arts sports health wellness uh social emotional learning character development hurt building history culture and more the health and wellness activities were popular with the kids as well as the the creative arts programs as you can see

032by pictures the youth justice work of freedom school really has its roles a bit its uh roots based in the original purpose behind freedom school our national day of social action allowed our kids to focus on youth justice allow the youth justice art gallery as well as the summer and the summer summer youth led rally um this year was held at uh martin luther king jr high school um our freedom school program for robertson development center has two other partners uh 120 kids who work for that sac city and 240 kids were working with that twin rivers and at the end of the the uh summer we put we brought all of our kids together colbert safewise um at the end of summer rally at uh martin luther king jr high school uh we also

033had field trips they were virtual and our kids took in the jurassic world virtual reality their causeway classic tour both uc davis as well as sac state stingers up uh deep sea virtual reality krakow art museum as well as american river college so talk to you about challenges i want to at least make sure that we recognize that some of our challenges had to do with the fact this is our first time we overlapped with summer program for rover so if we're going to do that during this coming we're going to work on a better way to recruit kids first and probably just start some things a little early in terms of organizing i think the funding that came in for the summer program for the district came at a time with our opportunity it

034was just a challenge for us to try to make that work scholars were not able to partake in a complete rrc lesson due to lunchtime arrivals um probably about one third to half of our kids came after lunch because the other they were in the earlier program that the school itself had and it was a literacy-based program so they complement each other but they were in different settings that was difficult to gather and for us the vri and the writing assessment that we do really gives you a true sense of how it is done and if you remember the vri and the writing assessment we've done was find a thing we bragged about probably won't hear me talk about that quite as much this year because it was difficult because of the attendance to make

035that work and to be honest with ourselves and to be honest with the national charity and defense fund covert also impacted us um we had students out absent multiple days and in some cases some parents once a kid uh we we reported that a child might have been um impacted um oppose it barcode for being close to another student they opted not to send them back we had some parents who opted not to send them back and that was something for us we weren't prepared for and it wasn't what we expected however we we persisted throughout the summer maintaining health and safety of school population was a priority so for us we made sure that if we had a situation where uh we might have a problem with covet we opted to error on the

036side of caution we probably stayed out a day or two longer than it might have been thought but our instruction was to make sure our kids were safe your kids and our kids are the same freedom school success individually administered an informal reading integrator in multiple measures to assess reading the purpose was to gain an insight into students independent reading level instructional reading level and comprehension level the word list allowed for graded reading passages and reading comprehended questions they were uh these components were part of the bri basic reading in inventory of the children defense fund put together as part of its evaluation the majority of those kids 63 of those kids maintain their gain in reading comprehension the data collection and lack of student gains were directly impacted by inconsistent attendant re uh related

037to covet and overlapping school-sponsored program and why i say the drop was in previous years 82 percent of the kids increased or maintained uh their reading comprehension so for us we recognize that was one of the challenges and if we're gonna we're gonna be on a campus uh with another program we're gonna have to figure out how to make that work some regression noted with lower scans found in intermediate grades our older kids were also the kids when parents said you don't have to go back to the summer program they opted not to and that was just a fact and 2019 field regressions noted only 18 of our scholars showed some decline in the previous year we had a uh we had a reading we had a writing assessment where informational exploratory prompts were given

038give an initial writing assessment during the first three days same for levels two three and we use a baseline data point for that grading rubric five key areas focus organization evidence vocabulary and conventions adjusted for level and we adjusted it for level grades the sli provided feedback to improve writing uh if you look at this is what our assessment looked like for our students at levels one i was level two assessment both grade scholars did a great job answering the prompts they provided a concluding sentence and then to write scholar did a great job answering the prompt and scott scala provided a concluding sentence uh this was this post test so it gave us a chance to see progress from the previous the key for freedom school and the key for robertson development center has

039been parent participation as the superintendent mentioned we're a part of robles parent engagement work uh most providing help for the latin heritage festival the african-american festival in this year the asian pacific garden festival freedom school has a weekly parent component there now parent involvement is critical point to student success as we all say parent participation is free it's key to student success the sick weekly workshops focus again on the main things i can make a difference in myself myself my family community country world with education and hope and increase family skills and resources empowered parents and build uh on family successes it was read it was led doctor by dr jones we did this virtually every week have between 25 and 30 parents to join us every week any questions no but i would like

040to say thank you for doing everything you can to or could to ensure that the kids have this opportunity especially with all the restrictions that you had to go through i'm sure it was extremely difficult for you guys since you're not technically a school trying to get all that in place and i want to say thank you from the staff and the students who attended your your freedom school and say thank you again thank you very much you said 25 to 30 parents participated in the weekly um workshops were they the same 25 or 30 or were they different typically the same 25 or 30 day because they stay connected it happens when you uh with freedom school when you get a parent group that's works with that that enjoys uh the presentation the presenter

041and dr sho dr shirley jones was our presenter did an excellent job they loved her and they came back it worked any feedback from them or so you can share with us and we're going to do this again we are um planning to do in the course of the year beyond all five campuses rotating to have a freedom school after school component that gives students on each five campuses the freedom zoo experience and gets them ready for the upcoming summer maybe we can um send invites to those parents uh personally advice for the um site council or so happy dude were the parent interactions or parent participation virtual or in person you were virtual okay we want to thank you for you know working with our kids and and for the flexibility you know we

042realized that things kind of came up uh kind of quickly this last summer but uh you know you've always been able to to to adapt and overcome so i know that as we come together if i don't know if we're going to be doing summer school next year uh but whether we do or whether we don't i know that working together we'll we'll uh it'll be a positive experience just like this year was we're already planning for freedom school so we're looking forward to it i must also compliment uh superintendent reyes the board for your support and working with robert your support for freedom school and the fact that this is one district when you really think about it we i as i tell you we're planning for freedom schools because it's already built into

043roblox schedule so really we appreciate that we are appreciative of that opportunity and uh it only allows us to be successful throughout the school year our children happy i just like to say i'm sitting here compiling a list uh what i think what strikes me the most up there is this young men and women that you have working and what i've said here the example they show in leadership they're amiable they're affectionate they're responsive but mostly their self-confidence that they demonstrate and that's what we want our scholars to see uh they set a really good example i do appreciate it uh uh and i appreciate the writing skills writing i think is so important i know you've always focused on that but i think one of the biggest things is an example that these young

044people are setting forth to them i do appreciate that having a conversation with superintendent reyes a couple days ago and said gotta figure out a way to get keep more the servant leader in terms who are going on into education to keep them here at roblox so we're going to make a specific effort this summer to connect with a partner with roblox to make that happen great thank you so very much thank you very much thank you excellent presentation you did a great job mr roberts i just want you to know that okay move on to enrollment update um i asked mr castillo if you would put together an update for the board just about where we are with enrollment this is something that our um adam used to do for us so i did

045ask corrado to pull some data together i know the board is always very see what what trends look like over time so thank you and i didn't give much notice i should acknowledge that but he did a great job as you will see so mr castillo good evening president superintendent reyes and board members uh today we will provide um some family or enrollment report we will review our current year we will compare this year versus last school year we will review some trends um as a total and also a kindergarteness and of course an opportunity for for questions and answers um some good news about enrollment is that it's really good news that us as we start our first day of school we have increasing enrollments from 1887 to 1935 to 1938 so we have

046increased enrollment if you look if you dig deeper into our enrollment you will see that we have um increase in every grade level um so overall you know except for one grade so um so that's our enrollment that's the good news we were really afraid at the beginning how will we study we started right how we finish but we got better as the year has been coming along so if we compare um this school year versus last year we have two years in a row that we are below 2000 students so we have a decreasing enrollment as a total 17 students again you dip in this analysis grade by grade level really are um our challenge is kindergartener because you go from 2020 to first grader they pretty much all moved to the second grade

047but our lowest enrollment gardener so this shows you look at the data more that we are retaining our students they are in our system yes we are having some challenges and getting new kindergarteners students and that moves along along the the school year the effects of declining enrollment so now it's like um trends from from 2014-15 to today again we have two years they are below 2000 and we always compare how we do this current year to the previous year because we get funded based on the greater order too for our ada we have two two years 2019 20 and 16 16 17 who increased other than that we had decreased i want to point out right now that we are getting funded in this year 1920 even though we are two because of kobe

04819. so this is our funded years so radiati does not get affected for this year but of course it will in the future if we continue decrease so so we have one more year to improve improve our enrollment so this data is exactly the same yes another visual one we have uh you see a declining enrollment that has happened except for for those two years 1617 in 1920 but we have been in declining so saying yes a visio from the numbers now let's look at kindergarten this is key this is how you know um again every every year to say 15 16 we have less kindergarteners in the year before even this year when we have increased as a total we have one less hintkin regarding it so this this count is as uh all

049these data is as uh october count the cbs its artificial numbers are in this in the cd so this is what we are presenting um again this is uh kindergarten same data yes on the graph for visual we are um declining a little bit every every year so that that is sort of enrollment report and we are available to answer any any questions any questions i know we had discussed looking into maybe getting somebody to help us get the the name of roblot out into the have we done that yet yeah we we do have our marketing consultant miss mcgowan who is working who is working with us this year and that's one of the projects that we're talking about so i i hope that one of the things you have noticed well first of

050all i hope you are following robo on social media and i do hope that you're seeing that we've really really pushed hard um thanks to her to be sure that we're getting a lot of really good positive information out there um we're doing a better job of getting press releases out um we're not getting a lot of response to them yet but you know it's a good it's a good thing that we're working on that and then we are talking about strategies just for recruitment we've been looking at preschool miss miss earhart um has been working on that actually for over a year now and um so we are continuing those efforts absolutely thank you yeah i realize we've been working real hard trying to address that issue especially through the preschool um i just

051want some i've seen uh the last couple years there seems to be some more building around the area um hopefully that's going to help us with our enrollment uh as it starts to fill in too there's a lot over there by uh arden fair but that's unfortunately twin rivers i hope they're going to prepare for it because that's going to ring a bunch i did not put this in the ground but i pointed out that it's a declining enrollment it's an issue in the state of california you know it's an issue a lot of a lot of districts are facing so this is not a unique issue we ask um hopefully with the new facilities and all the programs that we're doing but it's not uh so compared to as a percentage compared to all

052the districts even around the region we are not doing as baba that is it is uh it isn't it is an issue of course because our kids you know can we help us kids just from many from many different angles affect us you know from not funding to them thank you sir thank you all right move on to new hope charter school update good evening superintendent reyes members of the board and uh thank you for allowing me another opportunity to share an update on new hope charter school um so there are many things that uh i would like to share and will um and then we also uh we'll talk you know about our facility um in terms of the delays that we're facing there with getting that ready but it's easy to focus on

053what we don't have i'd like to start with what we do have so these are a couple of our students with their new hope charter school shirts and the the pictures that you'll see tonight are from our after school program arts programs as well as our home school or sorry our home visits that we did earlier this year so just to give a little context so let's begin so again this effort is always i always start with this slide right you all are probably tired of seeing this slide but i just have to keep bringing it back because it's about collaboration and building relational trust and in this particular presentation i'll highlight our families and the community with whom we're building that trust so this is another one of our families from one of our

054home visits uh where we took this picture and uh so moving forward so the first seven weeks of school uh concludes tomorrow actually and uh mr castillo just uh highlighted this uh in his presentation as well we have 145 students who stayed with us even though we have been doing virtual learning for the first seven weeks of school so we've lost some families but we've maintained a pretty high average daily attendance of almost 97 percent so 96.8 percent of our students are there day in and day out in attendance with us and um so we're very proud of that but our goal is really just to continue to make sure that we're providing um the best education for each of our students whether it's virtual or in person and what we're continuing to do though

055is just build these relationships with the families and that's what sustained uh their connection to us okay so this is again another home visit this is a family that the balderas family that is with us and their son who attends seventh grade and the teacher is miss bermudez in the mast there and so this was again before the school year began so we'll jump in and then in terms of our schedule as you all are aware we've maintained this focus on independent study through virtual learning and that's what we do in the mornings from 8 15 a.m to 1 30 p.m and then the after school arts and enrichment program which includes things like music with students learning violin or guitar and piano as this young man matthew here is doing that happens from 3

056to 5 pm we consistently have had between 30 to 40 students attending after school just coming on their own and pretty much the same students but we would definitely like to increase those numbers uh as we go forward especially once we have in-person uh students attending so but still we're proud of what we've been able to accomplish in these first six weeks with providing students something really positive and an opportunity to interact with one another and build relationships with one another as well as with our staff and this just the feedback that we've received from parents and students they really really are very positive about our after-school program so just wanted to highlight that then i have to bring it back to the school facility so there is progress being made but we were hoping

057that we would be able to get our classrooms and start in-person learning on october 18th when we returned returned from the fall break however we've had a delay so most recently with our construction meeting we're looking at potentially november 19th would be the time or the date that we would be able to get into our classroom so this is the the park that's adjacent to or on the glenwood elementary campus basically and definitely things are good things are happening we will have all of our classrooms it looks like um in the next few weeks have everything set up but our big obstacle continues to be just the power um they have in the power source to get the classrooms up and running so um we face many obstacles as you all are aware you've been

058with us for the past two and a half years and so while this is disappointing um you know in communicating this to staff to families to students that's hard but at the same time we know that building a school is not for the faint of heart running a school is not either and so we're just going to continue to push forward so and again just thank you all uh for your support and encouragement i've had uh several folks from our uh roblox school district family who've reached out to me and uh have really um offered words of encouragement and again it's this is disappointing but at the same time it's not going to defeat us we're going to press on and do everything we can to continue to provide our students with a great learning

059experience with whatever platform and whatever parameters we have at the time being so i will move forward to questions and discussion so the uh the hang up of the power is the result of the provider and not the district or you right is that that's correct yeah and our project manager mr flores will be able to perhaps elaborate more on that but um that's where we're at is uh we've been working with uh smud and uh just trying to get that process continue to keep that process moving and that takes time so again best case scenario is around thanksgiving time it could be pushed out further into december um and so we're just uh you know hoping and continuing to work hard get everything else done uh on that facility so yeah please you're much

060taller than i am the um so as regards the power you know we've uh we've looked at a number of options and the issue we've always had at glenwood is that the existing power supply at glenwood was built for the facilities that were in place so even when we uh are adding the kindergarten classrooms to the site we actually increased the power service to the site so that was one of the big challenges we had just for the kindergarten now what's happening on the on the new hope site side of things is we're now adding additional capacity for electricity and so we pretty much maxed out what we have on the gunwood site um currently and one of the big issues we have right now is that when you do a electrical service what happens

061is you take your design you calculate out all of the amperage that you would need in order to get to the site you submit that to smud now depending on how efficient smud is they go back they review the design and they say okay based on your power needs this is all the equipment we're going to require you to put into the ground uh from the street on into your site and they were they've been responsive we got those plans back the snag is that we're waiting for the actual components to build the service so just like everything else in covid we're experiencing long lead times in manufacturing so these aren't electrical components that we can go to home depot or lowe's or local provider and grab off the shelf these are things that are

062being built with a number of different components some of them have processors some of them don't some have like you know large amounts of metal that service in there so we're trying to bring all these pieces together and the problem we ran into is that the supply chain just isn't able to provide it in a timely basis so even though we got the design back from smud say back in june or july you know the the long lead times for these particular components has been the challenge all the way and that has also um like just as a note to the other robot projects this is something the board had brought up early in the pan then because you know how is it how are we going to be affected in terms of supply chain

063we face similar issues so as you may recall as we were finishing up the robla elementary two-story class building we were waiting on windows and we actually had this guy to arizona in a truck to pick up windows and bring them over here to short circuit that supply chain so we're doing everything we can uh to provide power to new hope charter uh one of the the uh options we had was temporarily providing the additional service that we were going to provide to the kindergarten classroom in order to power the the charter school unfortunately because of delays in the project a new new hope and the ability of the contractor on glenwood the window of time that we would be able to lend power to new hope is now too close and almost overlaps with

064what the empower needs would be need for us to complete the project at glenwood so we've looked at generators that presents issues with sql as well as obviously noise because because it's a school school site you have to provide um constant power for security uh and for data systems and so forth so it's one of those things where you run a generator for you know eight hours a day and shut it off it's something to be running all night so you look at a number of solutions continue to look at them but getting those components in is at this point our largest challenge good elaboration mr flores thank you any other thoughts yeah i'd like to say uh i think it was last week maybe two weeks ago i started uh uh turned down jesse

065towards glenwood and i saw this huge crane down there and i thought wow what kind of facility we're putting up there and i say they're putting some tilt ups back at the end of the street there so right but they were high enough and one or if i provide a little shade in the summer time for us over there might cut that cost down a little bit [Laughter] any other questions or comments thank you so very much for your presentation thank you okay now we're going to move on to robla resilience project discussion so i i can start this item mr deluse and then i uh you can join me in terms of uh this conversation with the board um i i guess i'll just remind everyone where we are uh with the rebel resilience

066project uh at a recent meeting we did have our evaluators present some data and then following up that meeting we did uh bring to the board contracts for this year's project and developed our schedule for moving forward recently we were scheduled to begin our first training and i shared information from the content contents of the training with the board and the uh the sharing of that information prompted some discussions between uh president toulouse and i that we felt were worthy of sharing with the rest of the board and um we think we have you know kind of uh thoughts around how to move forward regarding this work and we wanted to engage with the rest of the board around that so mr duluth i'll let you kind of take it from there and um we

067can then you know get thoughts from the rest of the board right so you know as you know a lot of my concern you know had to do with uh how some of the material was presented uh and the opportunities or rather the lack thereof really for for dialogue on some of the more controversial uh aspects of what we of the information that was being presented i mean we were presenting a lot of information in a relatively short period of time and there were some things that that that i had major concerns about it was the reason why in the beginning uh when we when we were reviewing the contract i really wanted to see everything that they were going i want to see the entire curriculum that was going to be presented before we

068in fact approved it because i wanted to have an idea of exactly what was going to be going forward and you know as a result they they committed to providing the information you know prior to each session and uh at uh i reached out to uh superintendent reyes prior to this one because prior to this first session and uh got a copy of the material and i have to say there was a lot that was in there that i was highly concerned about it was it was information it was perspectives and it was there there were things that were highly questionable uh things that i was in fact were was concerned that were going to be in a part of the presentation and what i didn't want to have happen was a kind of a

069replay of some of the last trainings from last year where something controversial has brought up someone and most of the time it was me raised a question about it and the challenge was was that the discussion and the just what do you want to call a discussion debate or whatever it is over that particular item it either dominated the conversation or really got us off track with being able to provide uh with being able to provide the full information and the full training um i was just really concerned because i know for a fact that a number of the things that are involved in this have been things that have brought about litigation with other employers with other governmental and both school district employers and there were things that were a major concern of mine

070as i as i noted when we went over the when we went over the data two-thirds of our employees did not participate in the post survey which and i realized they their aspect was well when you combine the people who are involved in the pre-survey and the people who are involved in the post survey what's 82 percent of the staff but when over two-thirds don't participate in the post survey the question that that raises is why now you can't assume that it was because they had an issue with the material but you also at the same time can't assume that they did not have or that there weren't some of them that had issues with the material so that was the uh that was the concern that i brought up with superintendent reyes because like

071i said what i didn't want to have happen was i'm going to be questioning in because you know i can't help myself when when i see something is incorrect when i see something that i have a question about it that i'm concerned about i'm going to raise that question especially in an environment where i'm told that we're supposed this is supposed to be an open dialogue um but at the same time i didn't want to have a situation where uh i could i could have seen where in this first in this first training there were going to be there was going to be a lot of uh off track i would say off track discussion but there's going to be a lot of discussion that was uh was going to get us was going to

072get us off track and so uh i met with superintendent reyes and i and i think uh he came up with a suggestion and trust me we we thought long and hard about how how to kind of address this and he came up with a suggestion that i think kind of solves our problem yes so well i hope so so um and i guess i just want to add a little bit of detail to uh you know how this process works so the presenters um we have an overall view of the topics that we'll be discussing this year during the sessions the presenters then give us the details of that information and then myself and a few other members of the robo staff review this information with them and give them feedback and we this

073is a new part of the process this year so they're required about three weeks ahead of every training to provide us with the contents of the training so that we can provide them with some feedback so by the time the board received um the contents it had already been vetted by myself and and other and other people so i want to just assure the board that i am indeed overseeing this uh this work as well as other staff members um but clearly mr duluse had a different point of view in terms of how this work would play out when we presented it to employees so um and mr duluth i think covered all of the other details very well so in moving forward one of the idea that i presented to him was the idea

074that if if this is work really about honoring different perspectives one strategy for doing that might be to go ahead and move forward continue to share the information with the board as the sessions happen um allow those sessions to be vetted again by myself and other staff members and then to move that forward and train staff members but following that and mr duluth is committed to participating in this training so he is gathering you know exactly what's happening but we would provide him then with an opportunity to share his alternative perspective to what's being discussed there now i think it's important i don't know that we talked about this detail mr deluse but i know we've talked about this in the past right that we will make it very clear that this is his perspective

075and that this is not necessarily a perspective of the entire robla school board and um you know we'll kind of attach those disclaimers to it if that's agreeable and then um mr deluse gets to present these uh you know these other um ways of thinking about this work and we would then and we would he would create this video himself and that that video then would be made available to people who were participating in resilience this year um resilience i'll remind everyone was mandatory training last year this year there is an opt-out option so for those who are choosing to participate we would offer them then the um the opportunity to view this um this piece that mr duluth were to create in response to the session so because we had kind of come up

076with this idea and felt like it might be a way to approach uh this particular uh i don't know what word we landed on mr julius craig a challenge or challenge um we felt because um [Music] the board should have some say as to their thoughts around you know this being a solution to to a moving forward i would like to make a comment i actually semi agree with his perspective uh when we get our report at the end of the year i would like actually the overall report and then a separate report from people who filled up both the pre and the post like so we can compare those separately event overall because i think that's what your problem was was you couldn't compare the befores and the actors um i'm sorry no one

077of the reasons why i like this because there is a lot of really good material that is provided and what yeah in this particular case so it's not a okay i want to put a stop to the training altogether because there's some i think there's some good stuff and and right well well but not just i mean what i'm talking about is not necessarily just about the data but in terms of the information's provided i'll give you an example i spend a lot of time doing when doing what i do for clients i spend a lot of time going through media across the spectrum right center left which is almost no center left but what i have found is is that usually what i can glean from both sides in terms of information is something

078that i find to be solid and something i can finding behind i can find to be very very useful and to utilize my challenge is is that there are some things that are presented that can create a hindrance to people being able to to for some to be able to receive and accept the material but i also know and recognize that there are some really solid nuggets some things there that can really help our staff providing a a good environment a more open environment for our students to be able to learn and i want to make sure that in particular those who either decide not to participate or who participate but get caught up on this or on that don't miss the opportunity to get those nuggets gotcha i'd just like to say uh you

079know unfortunately i didn't i've only attended one session last year so when you talk about things that are controversial it's a generality i'm not quite sure you're talking about but my my perspective that i see this resilience is was it evolved from the present day culture of the last couple of years the way society is seeing the importance of minorities being kind of squelched and we're trying to bring that into view and what i want to see is the fact that our staff our teachers are aware of the different um cultures different societies the different hindrances that people see when you say controversial a lot of them are controversial in other people's minds but i think the fact that it needs to be discussed and i don't know where you're at i don't know exactly

080what you thought you know addressing these issues but uh personally i feel if someone comes out with something that i feel strong about that that is offensive i'm not trying to change their mind i just want them to be aware of how i feel and that there's other ways of looking at it and they may not be right and it may not be wrong i don't think it's our our uh uh responsibility to judge right or wrong so much on these different perspectives but and allow them to be discussed the one problem i see that we talked about the last time is when you get in these discussions there is not enough time to address it and that is that's where i see the real feedback i like to you know i say i want

081to discuss them but uh and i've been in those scenarios in those forums where it comes up and you go on to tangents and you lose the issue and each of each each tangent each issue seems important it's important person to bring that up you know but there's not enough time so what you're suggesting i like i like the fact that um it's going to be vetted we can get your opinion and you have a chance to see what's going on but i just want to express the fact that uh when when you say it's controversial to me personally i don't necessarily feel that that means it should be eliminated i just you know until i know what the controversy is you know controversial should never be taboo controversial means we need to talk about

082it and figure out what's going on not just ignore the problem and i don't disagree i think it's important to understand that what we did last year and what we're continuing this year in terms of the anti-racism training and it is different than what we've been doing in terms of the resilience work that we've been doing um it is significantly different and it's something that's not very different that's being done uh in other areas and and the challenge is is that it once again it has been controversial and and keep in mind it's not controversial for no reason now whether you agree or you disagree with some of the information that is provided is is not as much the point it's a matter of making sure that all one that everyone has a perspective number

083two my biggest concern once again is how the material is presented is it being presented in a way that is going to cause some of our staff especially some of our staff who really kind of need to hear some in particular like i said some of these really there's some of this really good information that is going to cause them to tune out um that's the concern that's the concern that i have and that's the reason why i'm willing i was i was interested in doing this because i want to be able to once again provide that perspective sonia lewis is responding to us in the youtube chat if you guys want to pull it up and read it well i i'd like to before we get to comments from other people i want to

084be sure that we are hearing from the board and not not everybody's had an opportunity to talk yeah this is from the ascribe educational consulting so there was okay i i realized that but i'm saying i i'd like the board to respond first okay i'm sorry i'm i'm still i'm a processor so i'm still processing so um i missed a little bit of what you were saying he took a little bit tell me again so the challenge is is in there are a number of there are a number of and once again i'm only going by what i received in the first in the first packet of information there are a number of things a number of perspectives and other things that are being presented as as fact that i know in fact are theories

085that have been questioned and are and have been generally questioned my concern is that what i don't want to have happen is this so we're in the middle of the presentation i start raising questions or someone starts raising questions about well wait a minute what is this based on where does this come from what's the foundation what's the what is behind this or what is this well what about this and next thing you know instead of actually going through the material we're having a back and forth and we never actually get a chance to actually go through the material what i want is an opportunity to be able to present a different perspective um and once again i will just tell you that that ever since we first started discussing this and actually way before

086we even started discussing this um i i've spent a significant amount of time both talking with uh both talking with uh uh other educators uh reading books regarding critical race theory regarding ethnic studies regarding uh critical theory which is which is where critical race theory comes from uh as well as like working to try and understand some of the fundamental principles of where some of the stuff comes from and what it's founded and based on and i have some major concerns with some of it i don't have concerns with everything that's being presented in the in the in the uh anti-racism training that we're doing but there are some things that i do have question about and uh and concerns about and i wanted to be able to at least either either address those or

087present some of the really good material in a way that is where that is not included uh so that it's not a barrier to people to be being able to uh being able to uh receive the information that's being provided okay okay you think that this will be able to this will give you that outlet um i'm all for that um okay i do want it to be clear i i don't want anyone listening or on youtube or so to think that um critical race theory is is is something that is being taught in the schools in our schools right now so i want to make sure that that is very clear true um because that's a whole other discussion um but yeah if you believe that this will give you the outlet um i'm

088um i i see nothing wrong with this i i guess i would just like to add you know i don't feel that we should be afraid of differing opinions um i think that's one of the messages we're trying to have with resilience i also think that um i have said this to mr deleuze i have great faith that the people who participate in resilience in the rebel school district are people who can think for themselves and listen to what anybody has to say and take that information and incorporate it into their view of the world and possibly in in an effort to understand other people's views of the world um you know we are not it is never our intention whenever we do any professional development to present anything in in in uh that we

089present our employees with as the end-all be-all answer to any work that we do whether we're training custodians and how to use chemicals or training teachers in how to teach students how to read um we are simply finding knowledgeable people to share their information and there should always be alternative perspectives to those pieces and we shouldn't be afraid to allow those to be voiced and this i think is a a way to do that under the constraints that we have and as mr deluse has already said the constraints of time that we don't have hours and hours to debate everything that you know that we would maybe want to debate and this just gives a a forum for that i just made one more comment you know we have a five-person board um that board

090is obviously very diverse in uh when it comes to different opinions and um i think we're strong enough while we'll say we were strong enough for it i think that that's okay to be able to thank you to be able to try to address uh issues like this and make sure that everyone's um views and opinions are represented so i'm i'm fine with this and i'd just like to find finally i i agree with the two i mean i want to hear your opinion i know we differ a lot but i want to hear them and share them and and uh this is i hope we provide to our students as they go on a platform of all knowledge and let them uh have the ability to just decipher how they want to uh do

091this but it's not right to exclude somebody else's opinions absolutely so and i thank you for bringing that okay um did we want to read the comments from because i know that uh doctor do you want to go ahead and read i'm assuming we should okay uh it says here uh dr andrea moore and sonia lewis med has provided a thorough outline of all content that will show up in the facilitated learning opportunities going forward let us also keep in mind this year's this year's sessions are voluntary continuing the conversation on anti-racism with individuals who are passionate about improving the lens of racial harm slash oppression all material presented is backed by years of research and and the controversy of some topics are fortified in historical fact uh and warrant discussion fear is a powerful

092emotion and robla as a collective have proven to be savvy enough to matriculate through the challenge of addressing fear blame and shame and i very much thank you for those comments and i i would i would tend to agree with you that i think we are strong enough to matriculate through it and i think once again this is an opportunity to once again be able to have invent that conversation in a way that doesn't derail what it is uh the material doesn't it doesn't put off track the material that they're going to be presenting and there's some of the stuff that's in there that yeah i'm probably going to question and they're going to disagree with me we're going to disagree back and forth but i don't know about anybody else i thrive off of

093disagreement because that's how i learn at least for me a lot of people get get frustrated with me because i do like to debate but through debate i learn because i get a perspective that i didn't know and i didn't have before someone that's coming to me and discussing with me from a different perspective debate is does not have to be a negative thing disagreement does not have to be a negative thing the most important thing i think we want to get out of all of this is understanding we want to understand where one another are coming from and we want to understand where our students are coming from where their families are coming from and when we understand that then we're able to provide the best possible environment for our students to be able

094to succeed thank you thank you all right so with that we will move right along switching gears here all right now we're going to move on to facilities update thank you all president toulouse uh board members and superintendent this is the uh monthly or quarterly update on the projects that caldwell flores and winters incorporated is managed on behalf of the school district and we do appreciate the opportunity to serve the district we'll start with robla elementary we all know that the two-story uh was completed and the school has occupied the school has occupied that facility what's ongoing is the modular buildings classrooms and also kindergarten what you see in this particular photograph are the footings for the foundation of the modulars footings for the modular classroom buildings were last this week modernization of the existing

095administration building continues florin installed last week the elevator in the two-story classroom building is fully operational the contractor continues to complete punchless items the fossils items are minor and so we're expecting to provide some excellent looking modulars just like the two-story building that we've provided thus far this is belt avenue elementary school uh emilio and i toured that uh last week it's looking great we were pretty impressed with the outcome the colors uh the layout uh the stokline painting both interior and exterior has been completed lighting systems have been energized and hpe systems tested and that's ongoing installation of low voltage system epoxy flooring site work utilities door and door hardware our ongoing modernization work of existing student restrooms continue and anticipate it to be completed by the end of this month this is glenwood

096this is part of the new whole presentation on the opposite side the front end of this facility along uh jesse we're preparing to the construction for the oncoming modular buildings for the kindergarten construction of building footings forms foundation and site work preparation for delivery of the modular classroom buildings is complete we're just awaiting the arrival of the building's underground utility and tie-in connections workers ongoing for the modular classrooms some of this tie-in is also occurring at the site for the new hope facilities as well work on the sewer line and utility tie-in in the parking lot adjacent to the new hope there it is site continues work underway to evaluate the irrigation and landscape improvements to occur on campus here's a look ahead for robla foundation related site work will continue in october where classrooms

097expected to be delivered and installed on campus in early november the new modular classrooms scheduled to be housed by students first of the year when the district returns from the winter break bell avenue restroom modernizations is scheduled to be completed by the end of the month the two-story classroom and administration buildings are on schedule to be completed and how staff move in the building during the winter break the modernization of existing classrooms as well as the demolition of the existing library and adjacent classrooms to construct a new kindergarten classrooms will commence during the winter break and lastly glenwood as we saw in the photographs the kindergarten classrooms are scheduled to arrive on campus early november and reach student occupancy by february modernization of the existing classrooms and support spaces will commence upon construction completion of

098the modular classrooms now i'm available to answer any questions you may have on that update are we gonna have to update the power grid for robla update to power grid they're doing a glenwood for a new hope no okay i was just wondering if maybe we should get that part ordered now upgrade that we need the upgrade that we needed has already been completed okay cool yes i i know it was funny but i was serious like can we order it now uh make a couple comments uh not exactly to this uh but i've uh talked to a couple administrators at two of the new buildings and some of the issues that came up are beyond you know going back to the planning stage my comment is uh you know the uh 21st century classrooms

099look great and really doing it but some of the administrative uh facilities i'm hearing they're overlooked and so my suggestion is and it won't be our district but if you go to other districts is to involve the personnel uh that's gonna be using this facility some in some of the planning that might be done and uh i'm not gonna even bring it bring them up because i they can't be addressed right now uh but they were done but the one thing that i did here and i got a question about is uh the big displays in their rooms uh did i hear that they're not able to annotate when they're using that to teach a lesson that they can't annotate on that screen for the you know like uh highlight something for the students to

100use uh correct you know the uh the more recent technology from years back you can annotate from a variety of devices yeah with such an ipad yes but these particular monitors but they can change that data and manipulate it full time with the uh with a laptop and i i think actually i'd like to respond to this um you know we are um experiencing teachers being used to a type of technology and liking certain things about it and as we move forward um there are some new aspects to their new technology the new screens are not touch screens and teachers did get used to their promethean boards being touchscreen so they had their pen and they could do that but you can choose any input device for the new screens in their rooms so there

101are a variety of ways and i'm not a teacher but i know this right there are a variety of ways to annotate anything that you would like to annotate you can do it on your deck you could do it on the document camera and students can walk right up to the document and use a highlighter and do it that way um you can also do it from something on your um on your uh desktop computer so i think we just have to learn new ways of doing business um and um you know and obviously we have to train our teachers and get them used to it but i i will remind the board that we have been using this model now for years at some of our schools and um it's been working very well

102in terms of how it matches our instructional approaches thank you and i i assumed that it was you know we'll be able to do we wouldn't be taking a step backwards so it's just a matter of learning and uh anything okay thank you any other questions or comments thank you so very much thank you all right move on to bond program update good evening folks i appreciate ron taking the facilities update so that you got to see me twice the uh this evening we want to give the board at the request of cfw in the district an update where we are general obligation bond program and also uh review um uh with the board of proposed issuance uh from the measure k on authorization back in uh 2014 voters approved measure k that was our

10329.8 million dollar bond authorization that was a prop 39 uh election which required 55 approval from voters uh to date uh we have sold uh all the bonds from that from that authorization um less about 7.3 million dollars in remaining authorization uh this is separate and apart from our measure h bond authorization which is what was uh passed in 2018 that was our 46 million our bond operation which we had sold in one large chunk um back then uh both funds from ezra h and k have been used to fund the capital projects at main avenue bell avenue uh taylor glenwood uh i'm missing one and robla across the street um and so uh pursuant to the plan that was bought by the board in 2018 uh we've been completed the first phase of projects

104which is the reconstruction of robla the um and the design and the construction underway over at bell and then obviously over at glenwood as well uh as the board may recall uh that plan had a second phase of construction projects uh that was to provide some support facilities and additional classroom spaces to main avenue as the board may recall the original original plan for maine avenue included a library media center to date that has not been constructed that was part of the original vision of the school prior to cfw's involvement at taylor we've been talking about the replacement of the npr building as well as the reconfiguration of administrative space and an additional classroom um for uh for tk or kindergarten to be located there as well along with some some cosmetic improvements to the

105the older buildings so uh as we are moving uh out of the construction of bell robla and glenwood uh we are once again in a situation where we're going to start looking at planning for uh the next phase of projects in addition to that as we have discussed previously the challenges of covid challenges of potential escalation uh the other thing that we've been talking with the district about is issuing these bonds that also help uh provide a bit of a reserve in case if we have any additional cost increases or changeovers that come down the pipeline due to delays or due to any of the cost increase that may occur so as a result of that uh we're coming here this evening to talk about potentially issuing those bonds we'll talk about uh what we're

106going on what what we would do in terms of plan but the other thing i want to remind the board about is that as part of that 2019 plan we had anticipated uh receiving matching funds from the state and these funds were originally back in 2014 we were all hoping okay where's that state bond where's that state bond uh didn't materialize uh i finally showed up i think in 2016 uh which was the proposition 51 which was passed by voters uh that money came to fruition however by that time it had been four years since the previous authorization at the state level had been exhausted so we there's a tremendous backlog of applications and projects that the state has been issuing has been processing over the last few years the delay in receiving those funds

107has necessitated districts to accelerate the issuance of bonds previously so as you may recall back in 2019 we issued the series uh c from the measure k bonds because we had not received those dollars back from the state we are still in line for those those dollars we still anticipate being eligible to receive those dollars uh our best guesstimate of when the state will get to our application just to review it uh is november of next year um and uh in terms of getting money from the state back into the coffers of the district it would probably be sometime midway through uh 23 that we see those suns coming back to us so instead of waiting for that money to come back what we've been proposing with the district is to issue the reigning balance

108of those of the bond authorization in order to bring those projects forward and to mitigate any potential cost increases associated with planning and constructing those outstanding projects as i mentioned previously we have approximately 7.3 million dollars remain authorization uh which can be issued utilize a mixture of current interest bonds those are bonds that pay investors on a semi-annual basis uh interest payments and capital appreciation bonds which defer those interest payments to the year of maturity the district has issued both current response and capital appreciation bonds in the past we will go over the cost differential of those types of borrowing but because the capital preceding appreciation bonds defer interest payments to the investor until the principles paid off those tend to have a slightly higher overall cost of borrowing now the state put in rules

109back in 2014 regarding the um parameters in which you can issue those things the issue caps so for example you're not allowed to exceed a term of more than 25 years the loan itself cannot be greater than 25 years the repayment ratio which is how much money to pay back for every dollar you you borrow cannot exceed four dollars to one that means for every dollar you borrow you cannot have an interest rate that would necessitate you paying back more than four dollars for that dollar you borrow historically we've never we've ever reached those particular parameters since their inception i will tell you that way back in the mid 90s off the original authorization there may be one or two caps out there that may exceed that but that predates the statute from the law

110or from the state currently uh measure k which is the opposition we're talking about 2014 uh is uh estimated to libya tax this fiscal year of twenty three dollars per hundred thousand now when voters approved measure k they approved a tax rate of thirty dollars for a hundred thousand so what would be proposing to do is to restore the thirty dollar tax rate in order to create the revenue to pay these new bonds so voters agree to 30 bucks we're currently at 23. what we're supposed to do is to fill in that seven dollars uh in order to service uh these new bonds and repay them over time if if we do go forward with the issuance of bonds the increase would first be seen probably the earliest next tax year in 2223 but more

111likely in 2324 given the fact that we'll probably see some pay down interest due to the bond sale itself under state law elementary schools have a bond debt limit do not confuse this with the debt ceiling or in that nature but basically the state has an arbitrary number 1.25 percent of your total assessed valuation is what they deem to be um acceptable debt that does not require any additional authorization from the state now some years ago when we had measure h passed we went to the state and asked for additional bonding capacity they granted granted that to us we still have that capacity and today uh based on our assessed valuation for 21 22 we have sufficient bonding capacity to issue the 7.3 million dollars in remaining authorization assessed valuation is the basis in which

112we we look in terms of our ability to repay debt we actually have the assessed valuation records all the way back to 92. uh but in this just for brevity we've put it back from 2002 on to 2022. and you know what you'll see here is a fairly robust growth throughout the history of the bond program uh we did have some declines during the great recession as most districts did but we've returned to a growth model uh over the last couple years with some uh slowing up growth this past year uh primarily uh due to either the uh the pandemic or the movement of individuals from different areas of the district one thing to note is that this a b for does not capture the industrial park on bell avenue that has been recently completed

113that will come onto the rolls next year and it does not include the new building that you saw over there by jesse avenue as well so all the commercial development you've seen and all the residential you've seen in the last 12 months a lot of that will be coming online next year which will also contribute to the overall base for the tax where are we in terms of cost of borrowing so this is pretty illustrative um what we use to price bonds is what's called the the municipal market data index the mmd and what this is is a bundle of bonds that are being sold on a daily basis and we've seen as a market average of the rates being paid for those bonds and and in order to create a true index what they

114do is they take triple a uh credited bonds so these are issuers that are believed to be risk-free and so based on that uh we create an index or sorry somebody else creates an index would be peg uh risk two so for instance the district currently holds a double sorry a a plus rating okay it goes aaa double a a and there's pluses and minus in there but anything above what's called a triple b uh is considered investment grade anything below that is what you've heard the term junk bonds okay and so anything that's investment grade basically means that you know investors will see these particular um bonds as as relatively risk-free but there's a variance between no risk of triple a and a and what happens is we take this particular curve we price

115it against that in terms of you know what's the variance between no risk and the risk that the investor has when we started the program uh the average uh risk-free investments were paid to about 2.9 percent that was the borrowing cost for a 30-year bond um when we sold the second series is 3.32 and then back in last year in august of 2020 we're down to 1.49 so near historic lows uh once again we have data that goes back to 1970 something for those of you who are buying houses in the 70s and 80s interest rates were much higher than they are today but relatively even speaking last couple years uh wherever what's happened last 12 months is we vary pretty much between one point two four uh one point two five percent and about

116two percent in interest rates and so overall cost of borrowing remains fairly low and that's what's allowing us to access the remaining authorization is that interest rates are so low if interest rates were at three or four or five percent we would not be able to issue the bonds at this time given the tax rate constraints uh associated with the uh the tax rate of voters as i mentioned previously uh you know there are there's information that we are required to provide the board when contemplating the issuance of capital appreciation bonds and that's what is the overall cost of borrowing so uh what's important to understand here is that under no scenario today can we actually uh from a practical sense issue an all current interest bond structure so this i provided an example here

117in terms to be uh to illustrate it but if we were to just only do uh current interest bonds we'd only be able to access about half of that remaining authorization today so in this particular case if we go around the table at the bottom here and i know this doesn't work too well on the uh on the screen it actually works better than used to so we're constantly interested in about 7.3 million dollars as you can see here it's about 36 percent uh uh current response 64 capital appreciation bonds whereas the scenario in which it's all current response is 100 percent what you notice here is what we call the true interest cost of tick and that's basically the average interest rate uh being paid back to investors over time so with the blend

118of the sieves and the cabs is about 2.57 percent and with the sibs it's 2.63 now you may ask me why is the sips more expensive than caps it's because in order to generate the the dollar amounts associated with uh the 7.3 million dollars we would have to actually extend the term to 30 years so the money's a little more expensive whereas with the sibs and cabs we only require 25 years and we're only we're allowed to issue 25 years so uh the interest rates associated with that is actually a little bit lower the second thing is what's the total cost so what is this what is this going to cost taxpayers over time to issue 7.3 million dollars as you can notice over here the sims and cab structure is about 12.1 million dollars

119and they all sip is about 12.6 once again that's due to the slightly higher cost of the longer running sieves that are out there back to the repayment ratio that four to one i talked about uh the uh simpson cab structure is at one point six six to one that means for every dollar the district borrows we'll have to pay back a dollar and sixty six cents um sending the sibs one point seven three to one historically folks the interest sorry the the repair ratio is typically somewhere between two to three and a half uh to one so given where interest rates are today the cost of buying today is tremendously low um and once again that's what's allowing us to to even approach this particular endeavor in terms of timeline uh this evening we

120as required by law we have are presenting you with the the legal documents necessary to issue the bonds uh this is something that would be considered at the district's next board meeting if it's something that they chose to go forward with uh but we are required because we're using capital appreciation bonds to allow the board to review those documents and come back at a later date in order to seek approval uh it is our goal uh with the district to close this transaction by the end of the year and currently we will be pegging for about a december 15th closing date um and going forward from what we have there in summary you know we have the opportunity to issue the 7.3 million dollars that's left over it would have to include both the current

121response and they have precis application bonds um you know issue at this time will enable us to lock in interest rates that are near historic lows we're not at the bottom but we're pretty darn close and that would result in a increase in property taxes of about seven dollars per hundred thousand taking effect uh no sooner than um the fiscal year 2223 which would raise that up to thirty dollars per hundred thousand for those bonds and uh you know overall we have to continue to assume a a robust uh growth in our in our tax base as a whole can i yes sir i'm gonna ask you here look i'm trying to uh get this in mind so uh if we approve it this is where you'll go to the agency uh there's a point

122where they're actually selling them onto somebody buys the bond right can you point that out to where that's at on this absolutely so right now it's posted as december 1st now that date may move one way or the other so you're absolutely correct i apologize for not going to the process so following the the district's approval of documents is something that you want that the district moves forward with we would then go to the rate agencies and the rating she gives the district credit rating the same way that you personally have a credit rating and based on that credit rating uh as well as the the required disclosures we have to make to investors we put together a prospectus a booklet if you will about information regarding the bonds that is then circulated to investors

123insurance companies mom and pop brokers and so forth and they then solicit basically uh bids for those bonds and that period of time occurs uh typically as you can see here it'll occur somewhere november 31st december 1st at which time those interest rates are locked in and then uh there is a two-week closing period so just like an escrow for a house uh there's i think all the legal documents together you have to make sure everybody has verified their payments and so forth uh and then the bonds are the bonds uh then uh create the dollars that are then transferred to the county for for the district's use and the reason i ask that what i'm understanding is the fed says the interest might interest rates may start increasing early next year so be important

124for us to do that before that time then right that is correct sir and and so that's one of the things that we've been watching is that i can go back to the slide over here is i'm sure there there's video of me back in 2015 telling you man we're not going to get any lower than this there is video in there in in october 15 telling you hey guys it's rising you know we should probably issue bonds before it gets any out of hand and then of course you know there's the most recent video of me probably in august 2020 saying hey there's no way you know this is gonna this is gonna keep up so uh if you review the tape you know uh you could probably catch me uh telling you the

125same thing over again but you know i've been proven wrong all the way through and if i could predict the markets super accurately you'd be somewhere else right i would not be here lovely island someplace uh doing uh uh sailing around or something like that nature so yeah it's possible that you know interest rates fluctuate on a day-to-day basis it's possible that they rise uh you know as we um as we go forward especially you know with the the cost of money there's a reason why the federal government is currently considering you know spending 2.5 trillion dollars it's because the cost of 2.5 trillion dollars is low it's low relatively speaking um and so from that standpoint um you know it's possible that they go back up again it's possible they stay where they are

126um you know as always i can't give you an absolute in terms of where they're gonna go but what we know right now uh given the current market conditions is it's very variable for the district to borrow this money uh and to move forward with the project that has been contemplating thank you any other questions or comments just a clarifying question sure this is on slide two um uh i'm looking at uh it says it talks about the fourth bullet point project that taylor street and main avenue schedule and then the last bullet point district has the option of issuing the remaining bonds for the scheduled pending projects and i just want to verify that those are specific to taylor and and main they are not they do not have anything to do with measure

127h sorry so so it's a very good clarification to make when we did measure h we made sure that everything in measure k was permissible okay so basically that we made sure that the the the bond funds for measure k and measure h could go to either either projects now measure k is more restricted to measure h so you know we had to identify you know in broad terms you know which sites would be touching but when we wrote that language we made sure that you know our ability to do projects at any of the sites was permissible so the intent of the 2019 plan was that we would use those dollars to go back and and to uh further improvements at taylor and further improvement uh do further improvements at maine okay and then

128any dollars we had left over we would talk about okay what else can we go do now there have been opportunities the district has been presented in the past that um you know when advantageous we have diverted funds so for example if right now there is a program that is proposing to provide dollars for preschool facilities tk facilities and kindergarten facilities if the board and the district decides that for some reason that that it becomes a priority over um you know a library museum at main avenue as an example i'm not saying that this is on the table but as an example because you know we've gone by without it for seven or eight years and i know that is a project that a lot of people are invested in but let's say for instance

129the state is willing to to pay us to go and fix the preschool facilities this is the first time in probably over a decade that money's been available for preschools and that's something that the district would evaluate um and then one of the other things to point out is even if that option is provided to us it may not be permissible under the bond that we have so we'll continue to look at options we have out there but it is the district's intent to follow the 2019 plan and to make the improvements at this time that remain from the 2019 plan i think i get that sticking to the plan as best we can if something happens we will all come back here and we'll discuss it but right now we're trying to stick to

130the plan of the board agreed to back in 2019 as closely as possible that one was in english i i understand thank you so very much and we really do appreciate you making this clear this is you know obviously this is an opportunity where we're looking at to have an opportunity to get a bigger bang for our buck because the cost of the money is is less but also for our students to be able to in to be able to experience what we can do with those resources as opposed to waiting years down the line when we may or may not be able to to do the issue and so it's definitely something that we uh we will be giving strong consideration to and if i just may add for the board's context it took

131us 25 years to issue all the bonds from the 1992 authorization yeah it took us 25 years for measure k if we it will be seven years in which we've been able to access this money and in the case of measure h thanks to the efforts of the board the community and their support and quite frankly the track record of that the district has been able to have with its facilities program we issued all of that at once so you know to go from taking 25 years to work through a 30 million program to being able to generate you know close to 70 some odd million dollars in the last eight years um is a tremendous feat you know i'll tell you i don't know about you guys but i just got my tax bill

132and i was looking at you know all the bonds and everything on and i will tell you there's something rewarding about all right you know that's there but you can look right down the street and you see your money at work there's something about that that makes it uh happening makes it worth it definitely okay uh so now i'm assuming that we could just covered was there anything addition you need to provide in g on the resolution reauthorizing the issuance no g is there for the board's information okay good we will go over those documents at the next uh schedule board meeting that's what i figured okay thank you so much all right so then we'll move on to item h which is the williams act report nothing to report it's always one of my

133favorite reports i guess when there is something the report may not be as favorite okay moving right along uh first reading of revised policies regulations exhibits and or bylaws so we present these to the board for their consider your consideration and these will again you have the next month to review them and uh engage with us around any questions you may have and then we will come back to them in a month this is our homework assignment okay thank you so very much and now we'll move on to section six consent agenda i will entertain a motion to approve it's been moved and second and all is in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously uh item let's say moving on action items item a adopt resolution authorizing superintendent to submit new

134construction funding request applications for improvements to bell avenue elementary school [Music] oh there you go that was quick the the next six items we do need to take each one before you uh you inquire um this goes back to the the the district's eligibility for new construction and modernization dollars it's always been part of the plan to seek as much money from the state as possible in terms of reimbursements for the projects and the local investments made by voters and the district so similar to the once we did the completion of maine as well as taylor at this time we are submitting applications on behalf of the district state to seek reimbursement now the previous applications are on the current workload list that means that they are estimated to be funded from the existing prop

13551 bond authorization these applications will go on a list that's called applications beyond a funded authority or bonded authority which means that these applications will queue up at the state but there are not currently funds identified to pay those applications what's going to happen is that if and when and hopefully it's more when than if the state puts on a statewide bond measure as it did previously in march of the infamous prop 13 once voters consider that new bond program and fund that program then what will happen is the state will start processing those applications that time those applications are processed on a date stamped received priority so the sooner we get the applications in the further up the list we've become so in this figure case we are applying for both new construction as

136well as modernization funds at three campuses bell glenwood and i think robla um uh what the board and district should to note real quick is that modernization funding is based on site enrollment and age of facilities so if it's a permanent classroom over 25 years old or a portable classroom over over 20 years old and that you have teaching stations in those classrooms you're eligible for modernization dollars it's about 45 to 4 600 per student okay new construction funds are based on district-wide enrollment and the ability to house students what that means is that you take your total enrollment you take your number of permanent classroom teaching stations and whatever the difference is so if you have more enrollment then you have teaching stations then you're eligible for new construction dollars and that's usually the

137tune of about 11 000 per student in this case what we've done is the district has advanced all the funds necessary to do construction we are seeking reimbursement for the half that the uh the state owes us wherever possible something of note is that the way in which the district or sorry the opsc the office of public school construction reviews these applications is in the year of review what that means is that because we have declining enrollment that our new construction eligibility today may be let's say 100 students but if our enrollment continues to decline over time that come down to zero that said between now when they reviewed the application our our enrollment could increase which means that our eligibility could increase as well so we are seeking the maximum amount of eligible pupil

138grants in all cases but given the uncertainty of when these applications will be reviewed so for example we submitted an application for one of our projects down south in 2014 that got funded in 2018. so it took him four years to review the application um so depending on where we are you know once they review the applications we'll see where in terms of enrollment we'll continue to discuss it with opsc and determine what that funding is going to be it may be zero at that point and it may be more than what we apply for but at this point in time we're submitting all these now because there's no dollars at the state the state requires the board to acknowledge that you are submitting an application for which there is no funding at the state

139for so um this is that administrative stuff that they require of us and this item as well as the next five items are all within that vein so happy to answer any questions you may have i was going to see if we could combine 7 a through seven f they just said we have to just say we have to pass each one separately but uh but you are going to say the same thing for the next five items i'm not i can no no no no those comments apply to the next five items so the reason why this is required is because when opsc app reviews a document there are two things they're gonna ask a for the resolution and b for the minutes uh for the median in which the resolution was approved and

140because of that we had to have these these separate items so we tried to pair down the titles as much as we could for you we still have some in there okay watching any other discussion no three none will move forward to a vote all in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously item b adopt resolution authorizing superintendent to submit new construction funding request applications for improvements to glenwood elementary school moved second been moved in second is there any discussion or debate nope hearing none will move forward to a vote all is in favor please say opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously item c adopt resolution authorizing superintendents submit new construction funding request applications for improvements to robla elementary school moved in second is there any discussion or debate here you know we'll

141move forward to a vote all in favor please say aye aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously item d adopt resolution authorizing the superintendent to submit monetization funding request applications for improvements to bell avenue elementary school so been moved in second is there any discussion or debate hearing now we move forward to a vote also fair please say aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously item e adopt resolution authorizing the superintendent to submit modernization funding request applications for improvements to glenwood elementary school second we moved in second is there any discussion or debate hearing now we'll move forward to a vote also in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously item f adopt resolution authorizing the superintendent to submit modernization funding request applications for improvements to robla elementary school who moved second

142the moved in second is there any discussion or debate here you know move forward to a vote i'll further please say hi hi hi opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously item g revised this is a reason to reschedule uh october 28 2021 regular board meeting to november 10 2021. so this is this is actually at my request i will be actually out of the country on the 28th so we are asking to move that to that november 10th date we cannot do thursday that week because that's veteran's day so this is a wednesday just moved in a second is there any discussion or debate can there be a calendar invite sent out for that i'm pointing i'm looking at it she looked at you like they won't be [Laughter] but you better ask somebody okay seeing

143them [Laughter] sure [Laughter] just before a vote this does not constitute barbary does it oh it does not okay whatever it takes moving right along uh we'll move forward to photos in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously item h and winner contract with sammy's circuit second removed and seconded this is a consultant that i think the board um is familiar with we have worked with uh sammy circuit for some time uh the wonderful thing about this is that he is about empowerment of students so it very much is about our social emotional learning he's very much about physical activity uh which of course is wonderful for their physical health and then of course just positivity in general this is also kind of a parent involvement piece because it can involve the

144whole family um i know this is coming forth from mrs graham i'm sure she'd be happy to answer any questions but um this is just a great contract that we have wanted to bring forward now the one i attended wasn't just empowering the students it is empowering the parents too they were really into that and uh so if we should uh approve this i just ask that we get noticed when it's going to be here and i would recommend my fellow board members to attend one of these i think he'd really be pleased but they could see there any other discussion or debate here you know move forward to a vote all's in favor please say aye hi opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously item i approve entering into a contract with so lent i moved

145second removed and seconded uh this is a service uh needed for a uh we have a particular need to provide this service for a student and um so we bring the contract forward any other discussion or debate and reno move forward to a vote all's in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously item j approved mou between robla teachers association and robla school district regarding long-term independent study second moved and seconded this is the mou that i referred to in my report um after a great deal of work uh we were able to come to agreement with the teachers association into describing what we think will be a strong independent study program so we look um for uh approval from the board so that we can move forward with this any discussion

146or debate reno move forward to a vote all in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously now we're on to board member requests for future agenda items or reports trustee devine at this time trustee cardona rusty barnes trustee boyd yeah i have one uh we might have a discussion uh on uh what it would take to bring our ball fields into use and possibly using them um for something on the students if we do the soccer league uh i've had a couple of employees in the district comment about that i think it's a good idea you know uh my my children are in their 40s now and i think they were one of the last participants in the area little leagues around here something we lost a lot which is a lot

147for the kids so uh i don't know if we can but if we could just have a discussion and see what might be able to do with that and also what it may cost or what to distribute and actually we are currently having some discussions around that very topic so i can bring you into that okay and i have nothing so with that this meeting is a job thank you so very much for tuning in about the confusion i was reading through all seven of them to make sure they were all exactly the same and you