001Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing. Yeah, you got to get really close to it. Testing. There we go. All right. At this time, we will reconvene the April 21st Lammers Spring Valley School Board meeting. Um we have some announcements. Please be advised that this meeting is being recorded. If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the pink card on the back table and give it to the superintendent or the executive assistant. Participants on Zoom who would like to make a public comment must submit the public comment form by 6:10 p.m. And that brings us to the pledge of allegiance that will be led by students from Northmont Elementary. All right, thank you guys. Hello. Oh, there you go. Please stand up. Hats and hoods off. Right hand over your heart. Ready, begin. I pledge
002allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Turn off. Really good job. That was awesome. You guys are like professionals. Okay, moving on. We have the approval of the minutes of a previous meeting. I move to approve the minutes for the previous meeting. I'll second. >> Any questions or discussion regarding those minutes? All in favor, say I. I. I. Opposed? Okay, and that brings us to the approval of tonight's Board agenda. I'll move to approve tonight's Board agenda. Second. Any discussion or questions regarding this agenda? All in favor, say I. I. >> I. And that brings us to our spotlight on Northmont Elementary. All right, and we have a video. I'm going to ask
003Mr. Gelati to come up to the um podium and while we're playing the video and um and then Mr. Gelati, I'll have a few words after that. If you want the garden to grow, the first thing you need to take care of is the soil. When the soil is healthy, everything planted in it has a chance to grow strong. You can't stand in a garden and yell at the plants to grow better. You take care of the environment. You give it sunlight, water, attention. Then the plants do what plants are meant to do. They grow. That idea lives here at Northmont Elementary. Our school garden reminds us of it every day. When we work in the soil, plant seeds, and watch things grow, we learn something important. Growth happens when the environment is right. That's
004how school works, too. At Northmont, we help create and take care of the environment around us. Our motto here at Northmont is we are family, and that is because everyone here is a part of one community. We have the garden teacher, Ms. Williams. Ms. Williams is retired. She doesn't get paid. She still makes us really happy. We all work together to take care of our environment. We pick up trash. We keep the school clean, and we do safety patrol. And we maintain the garden because we are family. We have Mr. Gelati, and he's always here supporting us, trying his best to manage his whole school. Mr. Gelati is really nice. He can understand many things I'm trying to tell them that most people couldn't. We support each other. It feels really nice to help the
005younger kids. I love helping everyone because it makes everyone happy, and especially me. I have the biggest smile to make younger kids happy, and I love that about myself. We ask questions. We try new things. Our teachers, families, and community help make that possible. Our PTA helps bring our school together and creates opportunities for all of us to learn and celebrate. We have the best PTA here at Northmont, the most involved parents who do anything they can to give back to our school, whether it's showing up early to set up a jog-a-thon or staying late to clean up after a dance. Our parents are unparalleled with for their support of this school. Thank you, PTA, to do all of this for us. And our volunteers from Costco in the Mesa come to campus as reading
006buddies. They sit with us, read with us, and remind us that our whole community cares about our learning. All that cares helps us create the kind of place where students can grow, a place where curiosity grows, where confidence grows. Kind of like a garden. Mhm. Welcome to Northmont Elementary. Let us grow. Hard to get this one? Yeah, you can I either whichever one works. >> Okay. That this one or this one? All right. Okay. All right. Hard to follow that. Well, good evening uh Board members, cabinet, uh families, and colleagues. Um thank you for I have to give a huge shout-out to the colleagues and families that joined us uh this evening. Um It's I have to yeah. Um It's not it's not lost on me how lucky I am to uh lead a school
007that has this kind of support. So, I just have to say that. Um I'm the very proud principal at Northmont. This is my fourth year, and it just gets better and better. And for those of you that don't know me outside of work here at Northmont, um I love gardening, and when I'm not at Northmont, you will find me in the garden. Those of you that know me a little bit know that about me. I'm kind of obsessed. Allison, you definitely know that. Um uh but when Ron and Karen came to Northmont to film the video, they definitely connected with that gardening and um what that means at Northmont. And um Mrs. Cheryl Williams, who volunteers and works with all the classes at Northmont, um the impact that she makes at our school is amazing,
008and it really um all of our classes get to work in the garden every week. And they spend time pulling weeds, tilling the soil, um watering, planting, fertilizing, and even harvesting what they grow. And I've really I think of our school as a garden, and I think of us as educators as gardeners. That's how I've come to look at this work, and I think um every child is like a seed. And um I've come and each child is full of potential, and and you know, growing in their own time and you know, unique in their own way. And our job as educators is to create the conditions that make that happen. That's what we do. And at Northmont, um we we focus on a lot of things, but we've really focused in this year and
009in the past few years, but this year, literacy is our big focus. And so, at um at K through 2, what that looks like is we have um UFLY, with the University of Florida Institute um of foundations program uh for and that really focuses on phonemic awareness and phonics. And so, really building those foundational skills and a love of reading at the same time. And so, um and then in the upper grades, we're really focusing on really taking those foundational skills and then challenging our students even further, but also keeping that momentum going for that love of reading. So, um but also um you know, with the love of reading, I think of you know, when you walk into Sandy Fuller's class and you're seeing those book clubs happening. Um when you look at Sarah
010Bayless running the book clubs after school with those high-interest books to really capture students' imagination. Um really not wanting kids to lose the the love of reading um at those upper grades as they go into middle school. And so, um but you know, growth doesn't happen by accident. Um it happens very purposefully, and it happen it takes community. And so, um you know, with that in mind, um the parents um the community that is part of Northmont is the parents who feel welcome to come to our campus and be a part of their child's education, um the teachers who care um and for and that give the instruction that meet children where they're at today, but also see the potential of where they're going, um and where they can be, um the paraprofessionals who uh
011meet the the unique needs of what students need to be successful, um custodians who keep our campus clean and safe, the front office staff who make families feel welcome and provide care to students when they're at their most vulnerable, um the cafe staff that feed our students um and keep you know, keep their minds able to learn, the campus attendants who connect with our students and help students navigate tough social situations, the certificated support staff who support academics and social-emotional needs, as well as the um librarian who opens the whole world through books and reading and our ESS staff who cares for our students and supports them before and after school. You know, I'm going to close with just saying that you know, some some seeds when you think of gardening sprout in mere days.
012Tomatoes kind of do that. They just pop up and it happens really fast. Others take a whole season and some you might not see it happen for a while. It's going to take some time. But we're already planting new seeds at North Wild. We're always always you know, ready to go. Our teaching staff has been diving into inquiry-based learning as we prepare for our new math adoption coming next year. We're really excited about it. You know, we're preparing for this you know, that inquiry-based learning letting students wonder question and discover and really and we're just excited about what's ahead. And so the seeds were we planted this year are just beginning to grow and let's see what happens. Thank you for your time this this evening. Mr. Gerolati, can you introduce your students and then
013we'd love to get a picture with with all of you up here. Yes, definitely. We have Zakai. Zakai was on the microphone right over here. We have Xavier. Xavier right over here. We have Juniper and Paige. Come on up to you. Come on up. Now you get to be in the spotlight. Also, shout out to all of our Northmont staff that we have here tonight. Thanks for being here you guys. And we'll take a quick little break, very quick. If our friends that are here from Northmont want to go do something other than sit through the rest of the board meeting, then you can exit and I won't keep take a little break. Okay. That was a nice move. Yeah. You shout out a lot of teachers. Okay. Moving on to our next item, we
014have other staff communications and there is no communications listed. None. Which brings us to our report of the action taken in closed session. So It's like it sounds like um the Lion King. But then it sounded like a drone. That was weird. Um in closed session, the board voted unanimously to reject a claim and refer it to the JPA for investigation. Excellent and that brings us to public comment. Um during this time individual comments are limited to 3 minutes per person. Please refer to the timer displayed on the screen. While board members are not permitted to engage in dialogue or respond to questions during public comment, please know that we value and appreciate your input. Questions or comments requiring a response will be referred to the appropriate staff member for follow-up after the board meeting.
015If you would like a response, please be sure to provide your contact information on the public comment card. With that being said, I have one comment card, Shane Miller. Ready? I want to speak to an email recently sent out based on an update from the Office of Civil Rights. Although it stated that our district will not be impacted and that we will continue to protect and celebrate our students no matter their identity, it has only been in the past few years with some members who are still on the board that this board tried to deny curriculum that validated and protected these students despite the fact that it was in violation of Ed Code to try to block block that curriculum. I want to know how our district and our board plan to protect these children
016when this district has failed them in the past. I want to know how we plan to protect these kids when we currently are living in an administration that would rather have dead children than queer children. We have school sites that queer staff aren't even safe. So how are we going to make sure that these kids are? As a community member, I don't want placating statements. I want to see an actual accountability and how our district plans to do better and do right by these vulnerable groups in our populous. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any other cards? And any hands raised on Zoom? Okay, thank you. And that brings us to item 5A our report on California Community Schools Partnership Program Grant. All right. So really excited to share this. We have another video
017also that we're going to play for you tonight and we have our coordinator of our community schools program, Roberta Ewing. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you again for having us. Welcome to all of the the audience. We were here last year if you remember and gave you kind of overview of community schools. Today we're here to share with several of our team a little bit about the impact that community schools has had this year. We are very excited to tell you about that work and we also want to remind you of course that we center our work around our vision which is always about supporting students, engaging families and building stronger communities through partnership, resources, comprehensive education and providing comprehensive education to promote lifelong well-being. We do this by creating and and sustaining collaborative learning environments
018where all are supported and we provide equitable opportunities for staff, students, families and our community members not only with academic support and resources, but opportunities to highlight and have each member of our community grow. We'll remind you that our community schools work is based on the four community schools pillars, integrated supports, expanded learning opportunities, family and community engagement and collaborative leadership. In La Mesa Spring Valley specifically, the grant framework provides 13 community school facilitators at 13 of our sites. I'll just have add an aside that Northmont was originally in our grant application, but wasn't one of the schools that was selected and you can see how impressive they're doing even without the additional support of community schools. So hats off to to the folks at Northmont. In addition to our facilitators who carry out the
019day-to-day work at their sites, we also have two supporting school office assistants, two parent community liaisons and a leadership staff. This year we have realized that families would really like to engage with their community schools facilitators and the staff at their schools by having parent rooms or opportunities at the sites to engage. So we kind of paired back on our work with the community resource centers. We still have one location here in La Mesa that's co-located at La Mesa Dale. Beautiful facility. We'll have to figure out a way to get everybody over there to check that out. And then we're going to be opening up a Spring Valley location that'll be co-located at La Presa Elementary in the fall. We have a lot of data to share with you this evening when we talk about
020our impact. But before we jump into that, we want to give you the visual of exactly how community schools is impacting the students and families in La Mesa Spring Valley. Something special is happening at schools in the La Mesa Spring Valley School District and we want to show you exactly what that looks like. The Community Schools program is a district-wide investment in some of our most vibrant school communities, bringing together resources, partnerships, and people who are passionate about making sure every single student has everything they need to succeed. We believe that when students feel cared for, when their families feel supported, amazing things can happen. So, we work hard to connect our school communities to health services, mental health support, food resources, and so much more, right here on campus where it's easy and accessible.
021Because every family deserves a strong support system and we're proud to help you build it. We partner with incredible community organizations to bring services directly to our families, from vision and dental screenings to counseling referrals to career and housing resources, so that getting help is never complicated or out of reach. The energy doesn't stop when the school bell rings. Our after-school programs, enrichment clubs, and hands-on workshops give students a place to explore their passions, build new skills, and just have fun. Every child deserves a full and rich experience and we are committed to providing it. Some of our favorite moments happen when our families show up and they show up big. Family engagement nights, cultural celebrations, parenting workshops and education, these are spaces full of laughter, learning, and real connection. We don't just invite our
022families in, we celebrate them. It all comes together because of the incredible people behind this work. Our Community Schools team, our partner organizations, our teachers and staff, and our families all working side by side to make these schools the best they can possibly be. This year, our team hosted 150 events, connected over 1,000 families to resources, and grew our network to over 50 community partners. And every single one of those moments represents a family that felt seen, a student who felt supported, and a community that keeps getting stronger. Community Schools is about possibility. It's about showing up, building together, and believing deeply that every child in every one of those schools has something incredible to offer to the world. This is our community. This is our work and we are so proud of every single
023step. All right. Amazing. Amazing work by our team and especially want to shout out Keata Aubryana who worked with her husband to create that wonderful video for us tonight. Hi, I'm Elaine Pandoli. I'm the district nurse with the Community Schools team and I'm part of the leadership team. I have to tell you it's really my pleasure and my honor to work with with all of these folks and to support this work. Um you saw that beautiful video that Keata put together for us. Um now we're going to go through some impact data to share with you just some real numbers on kind of what the work has been that we've been doing. And as we go through this, I think you'll see that a through line here is really um the heart of this work
024is really all about relationships. Um but I'm going to first uh share a little bit of uh information on how we're supporting our students with our Community Schools team. As you can see, we have lots of numbers up here. Over 5,000 students are impacted by Playworks, which is a a recess program that we've been um implementing for 2 years now. Um I think as the nurse, I'll highlight under health services another one that's really been really successful this year. Um we have partnered with the Lions Club and they have been able to come out and do uh vision exams and provide glasses for nearly 300 of our students and some staff, too. So, that's been a really successful partnership and has really impacted a lot of our students in really um impactful ways. Um So,
025now I'm going to introduce Dex Harris and he is our Community Schools facilitator at Loma Elementary. He's going to share a little bit with you about um some specifics uh around uh supporting students there at Loma. Good evening. My name is Dex Harris. As she said, I'm from Loma Elementary and I want to showcase actually our wonderful staff at Loma Elementary and the ways that they continually build capacity. And so, I'm specifically going to be talking about our multicultural festival that we had about a month or two ago. Um you should have seen it. It was incredible. Our teachers came together um in a way that was really engaging with our families and they did that by uh decorating their doors to represent different countries from around the world. They did that by uh cooking
026food. Many of them cooked food from different countries, really good food uh for our families to sample and they uh also uh taught and instructed some of our students to be ambassadors of those countries. Uh and so, it was a really neat event. Uh I want to say almost half of our students attended and the majority of our staff attended and volunteered during that night. And so, it's really neat to see our our our our teachers and our other staff step up to the plate. And I want to do I want to I want to highlight this a little bit more by uh a text message, a message that I uh I received from one of our staff. And this is what it is. It says this, "I keep looking at photos of last night
027and I am so thankful you made this multicultural festival happen. My heart is just so happy and grateful that you made such an amazing, inclusive, fun event for our kids. I feel like our students and families loved it and felt seen. It always has been a hope of mine to create these feelings for our community and you did it so well. And I am grateful for the timing of it with the political environment and just the world we live in today. We don't send out much messaging to make sure our students and families feel safe and this was such a beautiful, non-confrontational way to promote inclusivity. This is the best event I have seen Loma have in terms of staff involvement, community guest involvement, and family involvement with volunteering and such. There are ways to
028improve no matter how many events that we run. Uh but she went on to thank and and said a couple more things. But this just goes to show how our staff is building capacity together, working as a team at Loma to create really incredible things. So, thank you for your time. Appreciate it." Thank you, Dex. Dex is is going to be presenting with uh his principal at our Community Schools uh presentation tomorrow. We'll be up in uh Temecula at Pechanga at a school climate conference where Dex and Tara get to highlight some of the amazing work uh at Loma as well as some other folks from our district will be sharing um some best practices for attendance. So, we're excited to try out our conference presentation and share uh some of this great work there,
029too. So, as Dex highlighted uh the work that it uh takes to sustain um and build capacity in our staff, um we know, and I'm going to backtrack just a touch. There we go. Um our staff growth and um numbers is the probably the the area that we would like to grow in the most. We know that staff is a is a direct pipeline to students and families and we want to uh continue to improve upon this relationship. Um one of the highlights of our staff impact, however, is that we presented last year about our positive home visits. 43 uh La Mesa Spring Valley staff members uh were trained and participated in those last summer and were able to visit almost 200 um La Mesa Spring Valley families. Uh positive home visit only and um
030many have reported uh just positive connections and helping the school year to be um more uh help helping families to be more communicated or or connected through the school year. Um so, we're going to continue with that program and um continue to work on our uh staff impact with Community Schools. Um before we go on, though, I want to share have Pauline Jimenez come up and share a little bit more about some of that student data that Elaine was referring to. Um Pauline is the Community Schools facilitator at Kempton Elementary. Hi, everybody. Thank you for being here. Um as she said, I am the community proud uh Community Schools facilitator at Kempton. I'm very honored to be there and it has been such a rewarding experience um through this year and a half. So, I'm
031going to talk a little bit about our junior coaches um since we talked about the impact with Playworks. That's been a big program that we have brought to our school to help during recess. And part of that is bringing on junior coaches. We started last year with our junior coaches and it's just been really neat to see that evolve. Right now, we have 32 junior coaches and they have help at all different recesses with first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth and fifth. The junior coaches are fourth and fifth graders and it's just a great opportunity for them to be leaders that maybe otherwise they wouldn't have had. They'll learn conflict resolution, helping others, empathy. An example I have is of a grandfather that's shared with me multiple times his student last year when we
032first started because it was kind of a quick turnaround. We got safe school ambassadors since okay, they're already trained, they're already our leaders, let's go to them. And as time went on, you know, we started to find other students that maybe would be great for this and through that they're like, I can be a junior coach. I was like, yeah, sure. Fill out this application. They had to get it signed by their teacher and get a recommendation. I interview them. We make check on their attendance, check on grades and even some that are maybe kind of riding the line. It's like, okay, you want to do this but you need to continue to show me that you're here at school every day, that you're doing well with your grades. I'm going to check in with
033your teachers and so they take it very seriously. So, this grandpa shared that now his grandson has grown so much in confidence. He wants to do everything. He's a fifth grader this year. He's in Folklorico. He's now a safe school ambassador. He's still a junior coach. He wants to participate in everything and he has a little sister in first grade that now aspires to also be a junior coach. So, that's been really neat to see. And they're not the only ones, obviously, but the kids take it seriously. They show up to their shifts. They put their little vest on and they're ready to go. The campus attendants have shared how helpful the students are and how much better it's made recess having them out there. They're out there teaching games to our younger kids and
034just really being an inspiration. So, thank you so much. Okay. So, a lot of our work revolves around engaging with families, encouraging them to come and participate more in their child's educational career. And we do that in lots of different ways. We from anywhere from providing essential needs like food and clothing. Each of our sites has a food distribution program. We have Casa that provides clothing and hygiene supplies to any student any family in the in the district. And another thing we're really proud of is our our home visits, our positive home visits that we've started last summer and we're continuing this summer. We're really trying to change the culture around visiting making home visits to families because for so many years and typically you go to a family's home when there's something wrong. And
035we're really trying to kind of shift all of that. We're trying to engage with families, get to know them at a deeper level in a positive way by visiting them on their turf, really. And to share a little bit more about that is David Weinberg, our community schools facilitator from Rolando. Hi everyone. My name's David and I am the community schools facilitator at Rolando. We have brought a lot of programs to the school including nutrition classes, family cooking classes. We've got a watchdogs program which is a volunteer dads who mentor the students. And then we also have a green team. They help us things like adopt a beach program. But I do want to talk about our community meetings. So, our community meetings, we have them about once a month and they're attended by you
036know, family members, parents, kids. We have child care and pizza. But they cover a number of different topics and I'm just going to read a quote from one of the parents who attended so that you have an idea about the impact. This is um As a parent attending Rolando Elementary Community Meeting on literacy, it was meaningful and encouraging experience. Hearing directly from educators, families and community members reinforced how deeply everyone cares about supporting children's reading development both at school and at home. I'm especially grateful for the presenters, for their leadership, dedication and openness in guiding the discussion. I also truly appreciated the opportunity to exchange ideas with other parents about what worked for their children and for mine and what what helps in building literacy skills. The meeting highlighted the importance of ongoing family engagement
037and I am planned to attend all future meetings as they play a vital role in strengthening our school community and supporting our children's success. So, the thing that stands out for me in that quote is really the strong community at Rolando and I'm just really grateful to be at that school and to be a part of the students and families' lives there. Thank you. Okay, so we've shared about students, staff and our families. Our last area of impact that we want to share with you this evening is our community. And we have over a hundred community partners that work generally with the district as a whole, not to mention the community partners that all of the sites are working with on a regular basis to support our mission and vision. Some of the support that
038the community schools partners provide is is financial. We've received over 700 donated items this year. Some specific donations that were very meaningful for families were when La Mesa PD and Heartland Fire stepped in at Christmas time and donated 25 bikes and helmets at the last minute when we were trying to make fulfill the wishes of all of the students at the community schools. But that just highlights a very small number of folks that are doing the work in our community. And we know of course that the work that we we do as a community schools team means that when we're building partnerships with the community, those are the things that are going to be the most sustainable when the grant is over. And here to share a little bit about some of the efforts at
039Sweetwater Springs Community School is Nika Armijo. Hi, my name is Nika. I work at Sweetwater Springs Elementary and one of the greatest joys of working at Sweetwater Springs is becoming a place where all the students know they can receive resources from my room. Some kids call it the little grocery outlet which is really nice. I have a bunch of parents that stop by frequently but occasionally there are some that I've never met before and it's really nice to connect with them and provide a space where they know they can receive resources and find things in their area to benefit from. For example, we partner a lot with local businesses. One most notably is Blackbird Diner because recently they donated like a thousand pancakes to us and we had a pancake breakfast for our attendance challenge
040with our mascot Skyler the Skyhawk. So, every single person on campus that day ate pancakes whether they wanted to or not. But on top of that, we've been able to do great things like provide free trees to all of La Mesa Spring Valley School District as a whole which is coming up next month. Hope you guys can all make it. We're also doing things like free brand new pairs of shoes where we let people in the community donate a brand new pair of shoes to our students. Our original goal was 20 pairs and now we're up to 120 which is incredible and I'm really proud to do that with Kelly and Roberta and Elaine and everyone at community schools. So, thank you. Thank you all. So, just a little snapshot of the work that we've
041been doing this year and next year we're going to come back and tell you about how 2026-2027 went. And just wanted to share a little bit about our focus for next year. Of course, we're going to continue all of the great collaboration. We're really going to deep dive into family and community engagement planning. We know that that keeps an eye on our sustainability. As well as making sure that we've gathered student voice. We're continuing work with staff especially with those positive home visits. And then the the usual work of community schools involving providing resources and enrichment opportunities for students, staff and families. And that brings us just about to the end and I'm happy to answer any questions, take comments or feedback. I don't have questions, just a couple of comments. I know that you
042guys have been doing such a great job throughout the last year. So, last year I know that you guys had a couple of webinars on know your rights, you know, especially as as there are a lot of questions in the community around immigration and and knowing their rights. Uh I would love to see that come back. Um but um I also got a chance to see the La Mesa Dale Community Center and um there was an event um a a talk for parents about reading with their students um in one morning there and it was really cool. There's a quite a few parents that showed up and they had great questions and were really engaged and it was um it was great to see that um these resources at work and um seeing some of
043the work that was also being able to be done with um with those gifts at um Christmas and what not. So, great job. Thank you. This is really important work for um a lot of our families and so thank you um for the work that you do. Thank you for sharing that. I I do want to mention about the La Mesa Community Resource Center for those that might not know is that the Resource Center is bookable by any community organization and that's an area of growth for us as well to build up um our reputation in the community and in San Diego East County um so that we can have represent and have community partner representation there. Um I know David has been there with uh with Tina when I happened to pop by and
044he mentioned that it would be great for all of the board members to be able to come and tour at some point. Anything else? I just want to tell you guys that I appreciate you guys so much. Um I live in in Kempton in the Kempton area and I did have a uh one one of my neighbors a child say that their parents lost their job, that they got laid off and um I'm like, "Oh, don't worry. You know, there's the Casa. You know, there's you know, don't worry about food or we could figure it out." And um so I'm very grateful that there is something in place for all our families where us as board members could say like if we got you, you could go here. Um we'll figure it out. So, um
045I know the mom reached out to me to and she knew about it, but I think because you guys are so open to to everyone and so inviting, like it wasn't a big issue to go ask for that help. So, um I appreciate you guys for that, too. Thank you. That should be our motto, guys. We'll figure it out. Yeah. I really liked in your presentation just numbers next to the different things that you do cuz you see like how many kids like are getting glasses thanks to your program or you're having their hearing checked and like to see those numbers and know like those are kids that needed something and you guys were able to to provide those things. So, thank you for that. Thank you. And then just one more thing. I was
046upset I didn't get to go to Culture Night cuz it did look fun, but I was out of I wasn't here. I was I wasn't here, but I was very excited. I was like, "I'm going to go." And then unfortunately I had to travel, so. There'll be many more things. We'll we'll get you. Yes, we'll let you make up for it. All right. Thank you all so much for having us. We'll see you next year with more great stuff. Thank you. Okay, that brings us to item 6A. This is resolution 252620 in support of the Close the State Accountability Gap Campaign. Does the Superintendent want to give us a background on this? Sure. So, um this is a campaign that CSBA is leading and the um you you wouldn't know necessarily what it's about based
047on the the name of the campaign. So, it's like maybe there needs to be some branding work there. Um but really it's about um something that's happened uh over the last 5 10 years where um all of the reporting around accountability and that sort of thing, the state's kind of lost its way on um the Local Control Funding Formula and LCAP. Like the intent of that was really to give local control to school districts. Um we know our communities and our students best and unfortunately just um in recent years it's been more and more where California districts are have just a tidal wave of um uh reporting and accountability type reports that we're submitting to the state that are very disjointed from each other. So, this effort on behalf of CSBA is to say ask
048the state ask Sacramento to please um align things with a focus on closing the achievement gap for our students and trust that um that the districts know what is best for their local communities. And I think along with this um there have been some bills put forward on maybe how to do this, right? Um and I know that some of our San Diego Assembly members have been spearheading some of that, which has been great to see. Um so, um yeah, thank you for that little background. Um I will move to approve um action resolution 252620. I'll second. Any additional questions? Okay, all in favor say I. I. I. Opposed? Okay, and that brings us to 6B, which is our board policy updates. I'll move to approve item 6B. Second. Any questions regarding these board policy
049updates? Um I do have one question. Um there is one of the updates um let me see if I can find it again. Um the policy 3515 recovery for property loss or damage um got it. Never mind. It looks like there has been an update. There had been a a decrease in value there. Um but I see that that has been updated now. So, >> Thank you. Never mind. Thank you. It was revised to reflect the education code. Um the numbers that were in there were um had been there forever, so. Got it. Okay, any additional questions? Um all in favor say I. I. I. Opposed? Okay, and that brings us to business services with our business consent items. Move item 7B. I'll second. 7A, sorry. I'll second. Any questions or discussion regarding these consent
050items? All in favor say I. I. I. Opposed? That takes us to our educational services consent items. I'll move to approve item 8A. I'll second. Any questions or discussion regarding the educational services consent items? Okay, all in favor say I. I. I. Opposed? And now our human resources consent items. I'll move to approve our human resources consent items and I would like to um also applaud the HR department on um hiring. There's a ton of paraprofessionals for special education on here, which is always good to see. I know that we are in dire need of of those. So, I'm glad to see some of those um quite a few of those on on this list. I'll second. Any other additional questions discussion? All in favor say I. I. Opposed? Okay, and 9B is our declaration
051of need for fully qualified educators. This is an annual declaration. I'll move to approve item 7 or 9. I think there's letters and numbers I have today. 9B. I'll second. Any questions discussions regarding this item? All in favor say I. I. I. Opposed? And that takes us to our announcements, reports, and communications from the board and superintendent. I just want to say I know that by the time we are we have our next board meeting, we'll be in the middle of teacher and staff appreciation week. So, I'm going to say it again then, too, but for those of you guys here, thank you for just giving your lives to your job and our schools and our children. And so, we're really thankful to have you guys and we're really honored that you guys would choose
052this path. So, thank you. No. I think No. Um I have a couple of things. Um first off, some of us were able to make it out to DC. Um spent some time in DC last week with the California School Boards Association. They do an annual um Coast to Coast Advocacy Week. And um we were able to meet with a couple of Congress members and advocate for fully funding our schools for um you know, that was the big bulk of what we were um advocating for, but then also for kind of some other safety and security issues with our students, online safety for our students, and um safe usage of AI and kind of how that is whether you like it or not the future. And so, um seeing what that looks like for making
053sure that legislation can be passed to protect our students and our students' data privacy. Um one of the things we were also able to talk to one of our Congress members about and I'd like to thank Shane for speaking today is about that OCR and what we can do collaboratively, you know, that in some ways may mean that the administration has us in their crosshairs. We'll see, hopefully it doesn't, but um but seeing, you know, as there's this is one of many rulings in the last few um few months and you know, there's some Supreme Court decisions being made that are really affecting our students and our our LGBTQ+ students in particular. And so making sure that we are doing um what we can, you know, as the OCR represents, we weren't always um doing
054all of the best things for our students and so making sure that we continue to do that moving forward. Um but one thing I did want to also bring up um on May 7th, the La Mesa Police Department will be hosting a um memorial ceremony for Officer Lauren Craven who died in the line of duty last year. They will be adding her name to the um La Mesa Police Department's uh peace officer's memorial. She will be the first name added to that. Um and so um that is an invitation open to the community um to be there to honor honor her sacrifice. Um and I feel like there's something else, but that's that's it. What she said about DC. No. Um yes, I also had the honor of going out to DC and meeting and
055um with uh with uh uh Sarah Jacobs' office and then also listening to a lot of uh political advisers and um them speaking about the climate of our education uh uh system and it was kind of scary just to hear about um the administration and you know, yes, we might have a target on this. But it's also really nice to hear that other um political advisers and also um congressional members and senators saying that education is a nonpartisan issue and I agree with that 100%. It is a nonpartisan issue. We all should need to worry about the kids, not about if we're what party we're from. So that was the big um thing I did learn being out in DC. It's a nonpartisan issue. Um another uh thing is one of our students, uh her
056name is uh Sana, uh passed away. She went to Rancho Elementary School and I went to her celebration of life and a lot of the staff members had a really um they had a very close connection to her because they she was in that school from TK to fifth grade. Um and um we want to make sure that the the staff members know that us as board members, like we definitely agree with them and um it was um it was very um um Sana had a lot of special needs and when she um the parents did give um they did donate some of her organs, so she was able to save eight eight individuals, uh which was an amazing gift uh to those eight individuals. Um so that's one another thing, but now let's move
057on to something else. Um this weekend, the Day of the Child Carnival will be at Kempton. Um I would love to see everyone there. Um and there's going to be food, um games, giveaways. My husband will be the DJ, so I just want to let everybody know he makes everyone dance. So get ready to do that. Um and then May um May 2nd, I'm not sure if we're going to be we're going to be here, but uh it's going to be Spring Valley Day and that is always um really uh cool to see the community because we do have a booth there, so a lot of the kids gravitate to the La Mesa Spring Valley booth. Um so that is all I have. Let me jump in real quick. I do recall that uh right
058now it's state testing, right? And so for all those kids, uh hopefully they get enough rest and, you know, a healthy breakfast. I know my son, whose birthday is today, was not so happy to have to take the test on his birthday, but uh but he is his first time doing it and he's uh we we talked about how important it is for everyone to do their best. And uh and also as the teachers are around the corner at the end of the year, I hope they uh um you know, hang in there and hopefully have all the support they need as they as they round this finish off the year. Um yeah, and that's it. Good. Excellent. I too attended the DC trip, which was really informative. We learned a lot. Um it was
059it was interesting, you know, this to sit here and go through a board meeting and then to sit like in the House of Representatives and like they're debating. Um just a really neat experience and important, I think, just the advocacy piece um and understanding what we're advocating for and what that looks like. Um and I also did celebrate the celebration of life for Sana, which was beautifully done. It was really neat to hear each of her um providers, whether it's speech or OT or adaptive PE, and just the words that they had to say and it just reminded, you know, reminds me that every person that's working at a school like touches the lives of kids in different ways. Um and she clearly touched the lives of every person that worked with her, so that
060was neat. And they did like a butterfly release cuz her colors were pink and purple and she loved butterflies and so people were saying like "Never again will I look at a butterfly without thinking of her." So that was really really a special event. So and that's about all I have. David? Yeah, I wanted to um just mention Rancho and their students and all as well. Um it was just really incredible to see everything um that just all the love that came from the staff and the students there to celebrate her. Um we were there on Friday for they did a memorial walk and it was so neat because they had stations all around the school. Um each class did an art project in her honor and they had like she really loved bubbles and
061she loved butterflies and so everything was themed um you know, the colors, the purple and pink and um met her parents and they were wonderful and anyway, it just really shows you um just how a community can come together to um touch the lives of people in the way that um she touched the lives of of the teachers and students there. So um just that was something that was very cool. Um I want to shout out La Mesa Dale, which recently received a Purple Star School recognition for their service um to military-connected families. Um so that's a a state designation and and something that we're really proud of and we'll be able to um have a video for them at our next um board meeting May. Um the last thing I wanted to mention is
062um our very own Director of Special Education, Eileen Cotter, um is being honored um as the special special ed administrator of the year by AXA Region 18, which is really exciting and we'll be going to a dinner. We'll be going to a dinner um to honor Eileen and and all of the other award winners um on Saturday, so um but man, Eileen is so deserving of it and um we're really lucky to have her in the role that she's in. Can I Can I embarrass her a little bit more? I knew you would. It's a bit more. So my children, of course I speak about my children all the time. All my children are adopted and they all went to um to Fletcher with um with Ms. Cotter. And um all my kids, she would
063tell all my kids in the IEP meetings, especially my daughter, she would tell her, "It's okay you're behind. You had a rough start in life." And she kept she held onto that because of her. She still says it to this day. And but she held onto that. And now my daughter is 19, a senior at UCLA, and she's about to graduate. And she always brings up Ms. Cotter all the All my kids do. They always speak about her. But that's one of the things that she ingrained in my children. When we would have IEP meetings and they're like, "Yeah, they're behind. They're like, I don't know how they're going to catch up." You know, just things like that. And she would say, "It's okay. You guys had a rough start in life." So that just
064shows you that you do make a huge impact on the children that you do serve. So I appreciate you. My kids appreciate you. Is that all? That's it. Yeah. So we can adjourn this meeting at 7:01 p.m. Okay.