Regular - Part 2 Meeting

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[27] SPEAKER_47: Okay. Okay. you

[285] Ray Rodriguez: And we're reconvening from close session to public session. Before we go to the pledge, I would like to take this time to ask for a moment of silence to honor the memory of those lost in the Oakland fire. Please keep their loved ones in our thoughts and prayers just for a moment of silence if you don't mind. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now, I didn't do that by myself, right? Mrs. Arteaga. Monica, my daughter, helped me put it together, okay? I think women in our family kind of tend to do everything for us, which is fine. So we'd like to go and do the Pledge of Allegiance. I need a young person. Tiffany, any Ariana? Come on, come on up. Ariana doesn't want to come up. You bringing the girls up? Okay, thank you. Okay, introduce yourself and let us know who you are.

[371] SPEAKER_46: Okay, I'm Alexis.

[379] Ray Rodriguez: This is Linaia. Linaia and Rina. Okay. Ready?

[383] SPEAKER_46: Ready, set, go.

[385] SPEAKER_47: I pledge allegiance 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.

[405] Ray Rodriguez: So I'm going to report out on closed session items. Mrs. Parks. Oh, on the item A which is Public Employee Discipline, Dismissal and Release, I have two statements to read. The board approved by a vote of 5 to 0, a settlement agreement with an employee and accepted the employee's resignation effective December 31st, 2016. The board also approved by a vote of 5 to 0, an employee severance agreement with a certificated administrator effective today, December 6th, 2016. Okay, so that takes care of item A, public employee appointment or employment. We did discuss the director of special education and that'll be on the personal item for us to vote on. Under item C, conference with legal counsel, Superintendent Sanchez and Mr. Richards gave us an update on a litigation case. Conference with labor negotiator, Assistant Superintendent of HR, Ms. Salinas and our chief business official, Mr. Richards, gave us an update on the negotiations with the NTA, which is our teachers union, and CSCA, which is our classifying union. And that's the items that we discussed during closed session. We now go to item 10, which is oath of office. Now, we corrected the way it's written when we met earlier and basically, it's the oath of office ceremony and the honorable Vivian Larson, Board of Trustees with the Ohlone Community College District who will be administrating the oath honoring newly elected members of the Newark Unified School District Board of Education, the Honorable Jan Crocker, the Honorable Frankie Francisco Preciado, and the Honorable Ray J. Rodriguez. Now, prior to that, since it's an item that's on the agenda, so after the oath, then any member of the community can actually say something. And I know, and anybody in the audience, Assemblymember Chiu is here, and we have other individuals. So if you just fill out a form for us and let us know if you want to speak after we do the oath. And then after that, we'll take a recess of 10 to 15 minutes to celebrate this important event. oath that we're doing for three newly elected members. So with that, Trustee, Honorable, Vivian Larson, can you come up please?

[642] Ray Rodriguez: I need help putting it on. Jan's good. Jan's going to do it.

[646] SPEAKER_41: She's good at it.

[647] Ray Rodriguez: I'm going to poke myself in the eye. Don't poke me too hard. I'm Lydia Larson.

[686] SPEAKER_50: I'm a trustee at the Ohlone College, Community College, and it is an honor and a pleasure to do this, officiate this oath of office with my colleagues and friends and the new member, continuing member of the Ohlone, I mean, excuse me, of the Newark Unified School District Board of Education. So please repeat after me and raise your right hand. And after I say I, you will say your names, please. I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties Upon I am about to enter. Upon I am about to enter.

[794] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, let's go back. So anyone that wants to come up, assembly members? If you want to be the first. Thank you. You have to tell us who you are.

[811] SPEAKER_61: Thank you very much, Mr. President and honorable board members. I did submit a card, so I'm glad to be here with all of you this evening. First of all, I want to congratulate the newly reelected school board members. And as a school board member myself back in 2001, I really deeply appreciate all of your hard work as a board member. And I also want to have a shout out to all the educators, including the administrators, the teachers, and the CSCA members. And you have the greatest opportunity to bring up the next generation of the leaders of our community. I also want to take this opportunity to welcome the superintendent, Mr. Sanchez, and definitely use this opportunity to wish all of you a very happy holidays and Merry Christmas to you all. And last but not least, I want to personally congratulate Frankie. Can I call you Frankie? for passing the bar. I know it was a real, real challenge, and you worked hard on it, and so congratulations. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak.

[901] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, Assemblymember, for joining us for this important event. Anyone else? Okay, now we'll turn it, there's nobody else who wants to speak, so we'll turn it over to the individual board members so they can kind of share with you what's in their heart. Frankie, you want to go first? Sure, so. Attorney Francisco. Right.

[926] SPEAKER_52: Thank you, Assemblymember Chiu. Appreciate that. Today I had the opportunity to be part of two swearing-in ceremonies. So the first one was for the attorney, and then now here on the school board. And I think they're both a privilege. I think it's also a responsibility to make sure that we do what's right and in our roles, thinking about justice and supporting people. So that's why I decided to do both actually, both being an attorney and to be a school board member. I'd like to thank my family and my wife and kids for coming out here and supporting me and to all the community members who've supported me. As you guys know, I'm a homegrown Newark resident, this is my family, so you're all my family. Thank you.

[984] SPEAKER_48: I'm delighted to be starting my 14th year as school board member, and it has been a wonderful, wonderful time. There's been a lot of ups and downs, and I assume that they will continue to be up and down for the next four years. But Newark is a special place, and we care deeply for our children. We passed a bond election, which means that we want to make sure the facilities are as high quality as we can make them. And so we're working on that. And we want to have input from everybody in the Newark community. We also are looking for new leaders in the Newark community. We need to have the next generation step up. My kids are 30 years out of school, I think, 20 years at least, 25, 30 years out of school. So I think that we need to have new people that are interested and taking leadership roles. And so I would like to use this time to have you think about what you can do. It is a wonderful job. I can't imagine what my life would be like if I had not taken this position. And it's wonderful. It is time-consuming, however. So think about it. And thank you very much for supporting me. I'm looking forward to another four years of wonderful activities in our schools, getting better and better. Thank you.

[1063] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. I'm very excited to be part of Newark Unified School District. My family is excited because we didn't have to run an election because we were not opposed. So they didn't have to go door to door and pass out flyers. This, I'm going to be starting my sixth term. So I've been on over 20 years and this will be my last term. And I've had the pleasure of having Newark teachers, Newark administrators, and Newark classified, helped my children graduate from Newark schools, six of my children, and my other daughter graduated from Mount Eden High School, don't boo, okay, in Hayward, but they're all here, or a lot of them are here, and my grandchildren are here, and I've had two granddaughters graduate from Newark Memorial, and I have grandchildren in the schools and grandchildren that are going to be in the schools. My wife, Anne, is here. She's supported me all these years when I did have to walk precincts. And it's been a pleasure being on the board. It's not easy because we have five members and majority rules, the three of us, and everything according to the Brown Act has to be in public. And so, we're very, very understanding of that and the importance of speaking freely when we have a meeting and talking about important items that we talk about and a lot of that is the budget. We're very fortunate to live in California because we have Governor Brown and the Assemblymember Chu and the Assemblymembers and the Senators, Senator Wieckowski is our representative. And they've allowed us in the last few years to run the district without budget cuts which is very, very important. And a few years ago, we had to do a lot of budget cuts. So, it's been very, very challenging. We have a new superintendent, Mr. Pat Sanchez that the board and that's the most important thing we do as a board is elect a superintendent. And I feel we've done an excellent job and we're very excited to start working with him and move the district forward. So, again, I want to thank you for allowing me this opportunity to serve my community and I promise to continue to work hard for our kids to try to make sure that our kids get the best education possible so they can go to college and, you know, career to work, you know, military, whatever they want to do but we want to make sure that when our kids graduate from Newark, we have outstanding citizens that are ready to roll in whatever venture they choose. So again, thank you. And for that now, unless anybody else wants to say something, we'll break for 15 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes. And Walk, please come with us and to right here. And then we have some refreshments. and some cookies, et cetera. Thank you. Thank you everybody for joining us. I appreciate it.

[1529] SPEAKER_46: do ? ?

[2239] SPEAKER_46: you

[2349] Ray Rodriguez: It's 7.45 and we are reconvening to public session from our little get-together. Thank you, Superintendent and your Superintendent's Council and thank you to Patty Sandoval, our Administrative Assistant. for helping us put this on, it's really appreciated. Letty, Ms. Sandoval Letty, right? Okay, so Letty and Patty, okay? Thank you all for, and then we got somebody taking Patty's place? What's your name? Okay, I'm sorry, you've been here before, thank you, thank you for filling in, appreciate it. Okay, so it comes, we come to item 11 which is the annual organization of the Board of Education. We do this every year, the first meeting in December.

[2411] SPEAKER_41: That's item 13. Huh? That should be item 13.

[2414] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, did we change it? Okay. I have another one. So what do we have? Let me, I'm sorry. Item 13. Okay, item 13. Right. Okay, annual organization of the Board of Education. We do it every year, the first meeting in December. This is when I choose, well we choose as a board our new president for next year and our new clerk or vice president. So I need a motion and a second for a president.

[2443] Nancy Thomas: I move to nominate Tom Glynn as our president.

[2448] Ray Rodriguez: I'll second that.

[2449] SPEAKER_43: Okay, member Thomas, member Crocker, okay.

[2462] Ray Rodriguez: Please vote. Okay, motion passes six ayes. And now we need a motion for our clerk or vice president of the board. I move the nomination of Nancy Thomas. I'll second. Okay. Member Crocker moves. Member Wentz seconds. For Honorable Member Thomas. for the vice president or the clerk. Okay. Please vote. Motion passes six ayes. Member Nguyen, would you like to say something? And Member Thomas, as our new president and vice president.

[2521] SPEAKER_41: Thank you very much. I certainly look forward to it. I know this is your last meeting, and for this cycle at least, and I'll take the reins at the next meeting. And I have very large shoes to fill. And so there will be a learning curve. Obviously, it's my first go around as the board president. And I can only hope to do as well of this job as you have done, and member Crocker has done, and all others in the past have done. Thank you.

[2548] Nancy Thomas: Thank you, I look forward to supporting the board as clerk and I hope Mr. Wynn isn't absent for many meetings.

[2558] Ray Rodriguez: But the nice thing is member Wynn has a very experienced board member to be his vice president or the clerk. So, congratulations. Everybody want to give him a hand, please? Thank you. Okay, with that we move to appointment Appoint superintendent as secretary of the board. Move to approve. Member Nguyen. Second. Member Preciado. It is clear to please vote. And I'm not voting. OK. Motion passes six ayes. Superintendent, would you like to say something?

[2609] SPEAKER_22: I would just like to say thank you. I'm honored to serve. And stability and leadership is one of the most important things in public education. And I think it's so remarkable that we're continuing with the team that we have. And I think that's going to be good for our district and ultimately good for our students. So that's all. Thank you.

[2626] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. We're very happy to have you. Let's give him a hand. Thank you. Item D, authorized signatures. Authorize the president of the board to sign documents for the board and for the clerk to sign documents in absence of the president. Need a motion and a second.

[2646] SPEAKER_50: Could I ask a question?

[2649] Nancy Thomas: We usually have the clerk sign documents except those that require the president's signature.

[2657] SPEAKER_47: Okay.

[2659] Nancy Thomas: They just preclude the clerk from signing the documents that we usually sign.

[2664] Ray Rodriguez: I don't think so, but if you want to add that to the... I don't think it changes anything that we've previously done. Yeah. Okay. We just use the language we've always used. I so move. Okay. Member Crocker moves. Member Nguyen seconds.

[2682] SPEAKER_52: So maybe change the language in addition to the president? You want to do that? I'm wondering in terms of changing the language in addition to the president? Yes, I think... Okay, that's fine.

[2692] Ray Rodriguez: Who made the motion?

[2694] SPEAKER_52: I just want to make sure, because you're right. I'm just thinking of the process-wise. The way it reads is the president has to sign all the documents unless he or she is absent.

[2704] SPEAKER_41: How about for the president and or the clerk? No, because the second part where it reads, and for the clerk to sign documents in the absence of the president takes a subservient role to the first statement. So you have it in the whole sentence.

[2720] SPEAKER_52: Yeah, so that the clerk can sign it in the absence of the president. It's there. But Member Thomas was saying that the clerk is the one who actually signs it on a regular basis.

[2731] SPEAKER_41: Yeah, when it calls for it. So there are documents here that calls for the clerk's signature, and there's some that calls for both signatures, and there's some that calls for the president's signature.

[2742] SPEAKER_48: Well, how about offering the president and or the clerk to sign documents? That's fine, you made the motion if you want to make... I will change my motion to do that, Mr. Wayne.

[2754] SPEAKER_43: Seconded? Sure.

[2757] SPEAKER_48: So would we authorize the president and or the clerk of the board to sign documents for the board?

[2767] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, we have a motion and we have a second. Please vote. Motion passes. Six ayes unanimously. Next item is item E, adoption of policies and bylaws. We have a speaker. Ms. Cindy Parks. Ms. Parks, you want to come up and address the board on this item?

[2790] Cindy Parks: Thank you. Thank you. And as you are going to approve the policies and bylaws, I would respectfully request that you bring in CSBA to review your policies and your bylaws as was brought forth when you approved the math pathways few months ago that legally was out of compliance in your board policies. There are quarterly updates that you receive from CSBA that have not been updated in a timely fashion. And over the course of time, you're seeing an influx of policies that are updated that have been out of compliance for years. And I believe that on your books right now, if you were to to actually have them come in. You would be shocked at how many are out of date. And I would respectfully request that while you are approving these today as they stand, that you take a serious look at having CSBA come in and provide you direction, audit your books, and bring all of your policies and bylaws up to compliance. Thank you.

[2856] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you much. So we have this on the agenda. It's... I move that we adopt our policies and bylaws.

[2867] SPEAKER_43: and bylaws a second okay please vote motion passes unanimously and I'm

[2891] Ray Rodriguez: I'll ask the superintendent member, I mean Mrs. Parks to look at her request and work with CSBA because it's always good to bring people in to kind of update us on stuff. Fixed time of meetings, start the meeting at 7 and end it at 10. We've done that for a few years now. I need a motion and a second and discussion. I move. Member Crocker moves. I'll second. Starting at 7, which is what we do now. Remember when?

[2926] SPEAKER_52: Any discussion? Does this include like today we started at 5? So that just means like the meeting time? Yeah, the actual meeting, the open session.

[2938] Ray Rodriguez: Although sometimes we go at 7 or 5, right? We do our best to start at 7. And we definitely attend unless a board member makes a motion to extend, and then the board has to move to extend. So I have a motion and a second. Please vote. Motion passes unanimously, six ayes. Meeting dates, we have a board meeting on the 20th of December. We have one January 17th, February the 7th, February the 21st, March the 7th. And can you help me, Tom, with the rest of it, please?

[2992] SPEAKER_22: Yes. If I may clarify, President Rodriguez. Yes, sir. This was put on as a discussion potential action item as a result of our retreat. And what I have in front of you that Patty and I put together is a proposed sequence to be able to move to one official board meeting a month and then use the time slot that was being used for the second board meeting a month to do a deeper study session. So we could have a deeper dive into issues. But reserving that time slot on the calendar for study sessions, that's why you see February 21st would be the first in that sequence that gives us January to kind of ramp up to get ready. And that's the proposal that was kind of an idea that came out of our board retreat. One thing I do want to ask is if we do do a study session on the second one, the time frame might look different. It might start at 6 and maybe go to 8 or 9 if we needed to, depending on when board members are able to get here. That was the purpose of this to have a little bit of discussion and give us, Patty and I, some direction as are you okay with this? I know initially you wanted me to start it in January. I think February gives us enough time to get ramped up.

[3072] Ray Rodriguez: That's the... Let me just for clarification for everyone, our meetings are scheduled the first Tuesday of the month, start at 7 o'clock and the third Tuesday of the month. We do make some exceptions during the summer sometimes. and during the holiday season. But that's normally the way we do it. So, this is open for discussion. Do we want to discuss this now? Yes. Okay. Member Nguyen.

[3101] SPEAKER_41: I think Ms. Nguyen had it first. Oh, Member Crockford first.

[3106] SPEAKER_48: It is, we have tried to do this in the past and invariably there's something that comes up that requires an official meeting. So by holding the 21st of February, the 21st of March and so on for study session, does not mean there will not be work that we do at a regular meeting. And so it gives us that option to do it. The time that we start that regular meeting will be 7 o'clock, as we always have done, I assume. For the study session? No, not for the study session. For the meeting. If there's a need for a meeting. For example, if we have new employees that we have to elect, or if there's something that is time sensitive that we have to pass. The time should start at 7. Right. So the people will know that.

[3144] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah. That's what it is. So if, if, I'm sorry, Madam McCracken. If you read, it says regular meetings. So there are still regular meetings. Correct. But the superintendent wants to make them study sessions. Right. So we're still gonna start at 7 for the regular meeting. And then the study session could be an hour before or after we finish with the regular meeting. Right. We can complete the study session. We can do that.

[3165] SPEAKER_48: I think it's important.

[3166] SPEAKER_41: Wait, no, no. That we keep. I thought the model was to, to limit, to reserve one of the meetings as just a study session in its entirety.

[3175] Ray Rodriguez: Well, but it's still a regular meeting, which means we start at 7. So if we start, if it's a study session, the meeting starts at 7, and then it goes on until 10, which is a regular meeting. We can also add on and start earlier at 6. But at 7 o'clock, the regular meeting would have to start.

[3195] SPEAKER_48: If there's a need for it, if there's special, If there is something that has to be passed because it's time sensitive, that should be part of the meeting agenda. And from my perspective, it should start at 7. So everyone knows that something is going to be decided or voted upon of importance.

[3217] SPEAKER_41: So you're saying regardless of whether it's a study session or a regular board meeting, it's always start to 7.

[3223] SPEAKER_48: 7 o'clock, the official part of the meeting. Study sessions, I think, can start whenever it works. And what you would do is you would stop the session at 7 o'clock if there's business to do, do the business, and then go back to the study session.

[3236] Ray Rodriguez: That's my understanding. OK. Is that OK with that? Are you OK? I'm fine with it. OK. Other board members? Member Thomas?

[3244] Nancy Thomas: Well, my thought is that we've tried this in the past, and they've morphed into regular meetings instead of study sessions. If we have our regular meetings only once a month, the ones that are posted there, and the study sessions being special meetings, we should say, no, we're not going to cover any regular business at that time and really dedicate ourselves to doing study sessions.

[3271] SPEAKER_48: That's going to be hard to do. But what happens at regular meetings, we schedule people to talk about their schools. We schedule staff reports. So the thing that takes the time is not the business part. It's not the consent agenda. And it's not something we have to vote on in terms of personnel. It's all the other things that come that we need to find out about. So I don't think, in other words, we don't plan, you as a president would not plan for February 21st to be anything but a study session. But something comes up and we need to pass something in terms of fiscal or a contract that has to happen or a hire that has to happen. That is not a time consuming thing. It's just a matter of you don't plan.

[3315] SPEAKER_41: We just have to be disciplined and not devolve into it. Right.

[3318] SPEAKER_48: And it's the staff that's setting it up.

[3320] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah. So it's going to put a lot of responsibility on staff to do as much as possible during the first meeting that requires action. And then if there is something that's lagging, be it the budget or whatever, then that could be something that would be discussed during the study session at 7 and then we go back into the study session. That's my understanding. But it would be study session initially for the whole thing.

[3351] SPEAKER_41: So with this initial calendar, I do see two potential, well I see one conflict that I would have and then later on just, so on February 21st, I'm at a conference and so.

[3364] Nancy Thomas: I'm going to be out of town. I'm going to be out of town.

[3366] Ray Rodriguez: And that's the time we normally set aside because it's the third Tuesday of the month. So as board members, normally we set that aside. But if we have at least three board members, we could probably still have something. You don't. We won't have. We won't? So then you're dismissing a whole meeting, so we're back to just having one meeting.

[3387] SPEAKER_41: No, we don't have to dismiss it. We can move it to a different day, to the 14th.

[3392] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Well, it's up to the board.

[3394] SPEAKER_41: Or whatever, you know.

[3396] Ray Rodriguez: Yes. Yeah. As board members, normally we set aside the first and third Tuesday for the meetings and we do that all year long. And, but if some board members aren't going to be there then if we don't have three board members then we can't have a meeting. Now, can we still have a study session with two board members? I think yes.

[3417] SPEAKER_41: But why would we want to do that?

[3418] Ray Rodriguez: We wouldn't want to do that but I'm just trying to, you know,

[3422] SPEAKER_41: I mean, since we're organizing now, wouldn't it be simpler to just... To change the date?

[3426] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah. Yeah, if everybody agrees. I'm fine with the 14th.

[3431] SPEAKER_52: I just second the 14th. Okay.

[3433] Ray Rodriguez: You can only do the 1st and the 3rd, right? Okay.

[3436] Nancy Thomas: Member Thomas? I'm going to be out of town the whole month after the 8th.

[3443] Ray Rodriguez: After the meeting of the 7th?

[3446] Nancy Thomas: I'll be here February 7th and from February 8th for the rest of the month. I will be out of town.

[3452] Ray Rodriguez: So one of the things is to take that date out completely and then maybe have three in March.

[3458] SPEAKER_48: I would prefer that.

[3461] Bowen Zhang: Yeah.

[3463] Nancy Thomas: Member Grisialdo, are you okay with that? We have things in terms of... And it doesn't have to be on a Tuesday. It can be on another day so Mr. Grisialdo can... So this would be tentative for a study session if we need one in March.

[3477] Ray Rodriguez: That would be up to you, Superintendent.

[3479] SPEAKER_52: That works for me in terms of the 21st.

[3482] SPEAKER_41: Okay. And then the second potential conflict I see is November 21st and that's, that would be a Tuesday on Thanksgiving week when our schools are all off.

[3491] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah. Normally that would be tentative and then we just, as a placeholder, did you want to get rid of it altogether?

[3497] SPEAKER_26: We normally do not have a meeting in November for a second meeting.

[3501] Ray Rodriguez: So let's get that one out. So in November we'll just have one meeting and then in December we'll go back to what we did except for this year. We just have one meeting in December.

[3511] SPEAKER_22: OK. Allow me to draft it, and I'll bring something back December 20th for you to review.

[3517] Ray Rodriguez: OK, good. So you're going to bring it back with the corrected.

[3520] SPEAKER_22: Yes. I'll make some changes. I'm changing to February 21st with the recommendation and then November 21st with the recommendation.

[3527] SPEAKER_52: You want us to vote on that today? We can just do it right now.

[3530] SPEAKER_48: But we don't have the... Okay, so eliminate February 21.

[3533] Ray Rodriguez: Eliminate February 21. Did you want to add another one in March or just leave that open for two?

[3538] SPEAKER_52: We can talk about that any time. Well, I said leave it at two and then if we don't want to add one... Right.

[3542] Ray Rodriguez: We need one? Okay, you got it. So we'll change February and line out the 21st. and then November the 21st, and then are we going to have the same issue next December where we need two meetings or are we good with one meeting?

[3560] SPEAKER_22: I think it's too soon to tell. I think we agreed we were going to pilot this structure for a while and then review if it's working.

[3566] SPEAKER_41: Okay. We can always change it. We're probably going to need two because of the first interim, right? Right. Before the new year.

[3570] Ray Rodriguez: Mr. Richards, what do you think? You want to add the second meeting just in case in December?

[3579] SPEAKER_26: School will still be in on the 19th of December. We might want to consider, if it be the will of the board to only have one meeting, although I know this may create a problem, Mr. Preciado, you can chime in. We might switch the date from the 5th to the 12th, which would get us closer to the statutory deadline of the 15th and give us a fighting chance of actually making it for a first interim. We currently only have one. We can't do that? We can't do that. Well then, at the moment, I would say leave it as it is and if we need to call an extra meeting in December, we make that decision as we get closer to the end of next year.

[3612] Ray Rodriguez: Is that okay with the board? Thank you, Mr. Richards. Okay, so I need someone to make a motion after the superintendent tells us what we did.

[3621] Nancy Thomas: I move that we approve the dates listed with the exception of striking February 21st and November 21st.

[3628] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, that was pretty easy. I'll second. Okay, so member Thomas and member Nguyen. Please vote. Motion passes. Thank you. Superintendent, next is on you. The student reports and then the recognitions.

[3655] SPEAKER_22: Sierra, I hand you the mic.

[3658] SPEAKER_54: OK. We have a very busy month coming up. We have a It's a Wonderful Life. It's a holiday classic play. This will be going on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from December 2nd through the 11th. Students are $10. Adults and seniors are $12. It would be great if anyone would come and support our programs. We're having another food fair this Friday if you would like to come again and actually go to my clubs instead of walking by. So that would always help. There's always a lot of really good food. Cinderella's Winter Ball will be on Friday, December 16th from 7 to 10 p.m. So also if you would like to come. And then we're having our first winter rally. This will be on Thursday, December 22nd in the event center at 1139. I'm really excited for this. We're going to see all the spirit come back. And then we're having a link crew meeting for the freshmen to really just keep them, like, see how they're doing throughout the year. And we're going to give them hot cocoa after school on Wednesday, December 21st. And that will be very exciting. And then the Newark Symphonic Winds, it's a free holiday concert performance. This will be at the Newark Memorial High School Theater. This will be on December 18th, Sunday, 7 to 9 p.m. Then, we are currently having a Newark Memorial canned food drive throughout the whole entire school. We usually contribute about 2,000 cans every year. You're completely welcome if you'd like to donate some. The class who brings in the most gets a pizza party, so I mean, people are pretty pumped about that. This will be going on from November 1st till December 20th. Then, just this past weekend, we had the I believe it's called the Rich Swift Wrestling Tournament. And we had a lot of great cougar wrestlers coming out. Evan Smith and Marcos Calvo, they were named all tournament at the Rich Swift Memorial. Evan was 5 and 0 at 132 pounds with three pins and one tech fall. Marcos was 4 and 1 with three pins. And the Cougars finished with a 3 and 2 record as a team. We also had Alexander Pereira and Gabriel Jasso medal at this tournament. This is a really big deal. We're just starting the season off and so we're really excited to see how we go with this. Leadership is also having, they have five adopted families, so we are all contributing, coming together as a school and getting gifts for families around the community. And then the athletic department is also, every team has families that we're contributing and donating towards. If you would also like to contribute, let us know. We are really excited about this. It feels good giving back within the giving season while also bringing our community in as a whole. And then recently, Coach Hess, he has been holding character building classes every week for the past month or so. And it's really great having such a huge impact to our sports community. where he's really shaping our character, not just in our sports, but how we come and grow as students once we leave high school. And so it's had a really big impact on the students throughout the school. And then a reflection on the CSBA conference I went to last Friday. It was a really great opportunity. I really enjoyed it. I really got to see how I can lengthen my growth not only just like here, but throughout the school. Because when it comes down to it, I am representing the whole entire district, rather than just the high school. And so I want to really implement some more things where we can see how the student body as a whole can come and contribute into the board and really speak. Because I mean, when it comes down to it, you're kind of serving us. You are serving us. Yeah. And so I'm really excited to do that. And it was just a really great opportunity. Thank you for that.

[3939] SPEAKER_22: Good. Thank you, Sierra. Any comments for Sierra from the board?

[3948] Nancy Thomas: And we look forward to your increased activities based on what you learned.

[3954] Ray Rodriguez: I have one. We've never had a sophomore. as the student member of the board. And in spite of the fact that you're young, you're great, you're very enthusiastic, it's obvious that you're very involved in what's happening at the school, at the high school. And we appreciate the fact that you're here and that you keep us up to date on what's happening at New Memorial High School. Thank you. Thank you for all your time that you spend attending our meetings.

[3993] SPEAKER_22: We'd like to move on to recognition celebrations. President Rodriguez.

[3998] Ray Rodriguez: We have Newark Memorial High School, the Acknowledgement of Staff and Student. Superintendent.

[4004] SPEAKER_22: I'm going to welcome MC Huerta to the mic. And she has a whole group of people with her to recognize. Welcome, Grace.

[4016] SPEAKER_33: Good evening. Good evening, Superintendent Sanchez. executive board and school board members, student and the Newark community. This evening, I'm going to introduce a group of people to you and basically strut our stuff here at Newark Memorial High School. We take pride in everything that we do at Newark Memorial and the folks that I'm going to introduce to you this evening are models of excellence at Newark Memorial High School. First, I'd like to call up Officer Sandoval, School Resource Officer Salvador Sandoval. Officer Sandoval has been part of the Newark Memorial staff since 2014-15 school year. It was at this time that he began teaching our law enforcement class, something which has been a great success for our site. This class has instilled in our students what it means to be a member of the law enforcement community and also echoes many of the characteristics we strive to teach every day, punctuality, hard work, honesty, respect, and pride. Officer Sandoval's law enforcement class is only the tip of the iceberg in regards to what he has done for our site. He is currently in his second full year as our site resource officer and is doing an exceptional job. SRO Sandoval has made school site safety his number one priority. He has expanded our emergency responses depending on the type of threat. and has developed a four-tier system aligned with the run height five protocol. He has successfully packaged this information so that the students and staff understand the importance of these protocols. In addition to this, SRO Sandoval has also revamped our traffic procedures ensuring that all students are safe during pickup and drop-off times as well as minimizing the overall traffic. All of this would be considered outstanding work, but what makes Officer Sandoval truly exceptional is his drive to connect with our students and develop meaningful relationships with them. Whether it be a simple smile, a wave to students passing by, or by displaying warmth and calm during a student's most dire times, Officer Sandoval always knows what role to play. Thank you. Officer Sandoval, from the bottom of our hearts, for all you do for our students and the Newark Memorial High School community.

[4207] Michael Milliken: Hold on.

[4208] SPEAKER_22: Don't walk away. Freeze. Just kidding. We would like to take a photo with you, but is there anything you'd like to say before we take a photo with you? You can tell us who's with you in uniform also today. Oh, boy. Thank you. You don't have to say anything. Oh, no. You can. Keep it short, though.

[4226] SPEAKER_25: Dr. Bowman will say that I talk too much, so I might.

[4229] SPEAKER_22: 10 o'clock's the stop time.

[4230] SPEAKER_25: Keep it brief.

[4231] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, everyone. This means a lot. Thank you.

[4233] SPEAKER_43: I'm here, Lieutenant Arguello and Sergeant Kovach in the back, hiding in the corner.

[4239] SPEAKER_41: They're part of the command staff that tell me what to do.

[4242] SPEAKER_22: Well, congratulations. And we're going to ask you to come up. And if they want to join us for a photo, we'd love that.

[4247] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you for not mentioning that you went to Monedan High School. Appreciate that.

[4251] SPEAKER_22: And would you please, is your family here with you? No. OK. All right.

[4322] SPEAKER_22: We'll stand out here. Keep rolling.

[4330] SPEAKER_33: OK. Next person up, Mrs. Sonia Torres, counselor, our academic counselor. For more than a decade, Sonia Torres has been working to support all of our students' academic and emotional needs in and out of school hours. She has spent countless unpaid hours after school to work with students and parents on on-track graduation, provide evening sessions on college applications, host parent workshops on college planning, and respond to families' questions about off-site resources. As a Puente Program Counselor, Sonia is instrumental in increasing the enrollment of traditionally underserved students in AP courses. She organizes college campus visits, alumni panels, and community service events which encourage low-income, first-generation students to aspire to seek higher education and be change agents in Newark. Sonia is an outstanding role model whose actions embody her passion and conviction for students' well-being and success. We would like to recognize her for her service this evening and express our appreciation and love.

[4414] SPEAKER_10: Thank you. Yes, to thank my work family, Rachel, Patty, and Nancy. as well as admin and my husband Jesse and my two children Diego and Maya who are also students in Newark. There you go.

[4494] SPEAKER_33: Mr. Clyde Johnson, please come up. It is with pleasure that I recommend Clyde Johnson for the classified employee recognition. Clyde does excellent work at Newark Memorial High School and maintains a clean and safe grounds on campus. He does his work with pride and a smile. Whenever the high school has a special event, Clyde works collaboratively with the maintenance team to make sure that the school grounds are immaculate and clean. I can rely on Clyde for anything. During report card night, back to school night, or the opening day of school, Clyde made sure that the campus looked its best and was well manicured. I appreciate everything that Clyde does for the campus, the Newark Memorial High School students, and community. His work reflects high standards. He is an excellent role model for our students and staff. He is highly conscientious, is a pleasure to work with, and have on the Newark Memorial High School grounds and maintenance team. Your excellent work ethic does not go unnoticed, and thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all that you do. Clyde.

[4589] Michael Milliken: It's like sage.

[4594] SPEAKER_41: Oh my gosh. I'm not much of a speech. I want to say thank you for this opportunity.

[4600] SPEAKER_26: I'd like to thank you for my family and as well as the Newark Memorial High.

[4623] SPEAKER_22: So who's the young man here?

[4624] SPEAKER_46: He's like, no. All right.

[4666] SPEAKER_33: There's two students and one more adult. Mr. Jesus Sanchez, please come up. Jesus Sanchez is an excellent worker and begins every day, every job with a smile. He began working at Newark Memorial High School this school year. and brings with him a wealth of knowledge and experience in the field of maintenance and operations. Jesus is respected and loved by all of his coworkers, staff, and the students. He does not hesitate to help anyone and does his work with pride and efficiency. He takes initiative when fulfilling his daily routine, and if he notices that something else needs attention, he takes it upon himself to get it done. Jesus is highly conscientious about his work and excellent, and an excellent communicator. For example, in an effort to expand the seating in the academic success tutorial program for the students, I asked Jesus if he could move 20 to 30 more desks into the STAR Lab. He responded to my request without hesitation, letting me know how many desks were available. informed me when he could complete the job and notified me when the job was done. He is an excellent role model and an asset to the Newark Memorial High School community and family. Thank you, Jesus, for everything that you do for our students and staff. We appreciate you.

[4776] SPEAKER_06: All I'm going to say is thank you for this recognition. I wasn't expecting it. It's my few months that I've been at the high school, I wasn't expecting this. I know people have been there for longer, haven't gotten anything. All I do is just my job.

[4837] SPEAKER_33: Can I have student of the year, Katli Tron. Is Katli here? Katli. Katli is a critical thinker, self-motivated, and a natural leader who loves serving others. She will take it upon herself to find opportunities to help and easily identifies areas for improvement. One of the things that I appreciate the most about Katli is her ability to not only identify problems and offer solutions, but she always takes action. Catley always follows through in everything that she does and has the natural ability to make the others around her better, as proven by her selection in many leadership and team captain roles. What sets Catley apart from her peers is her tenacity, ability to lead, and motivate others. Congratulations.

[4914] SPEAKER_55: Thank you, everyone. I'd like to thank my coach, my friends, teammates over there. I'd also like to thank my dad, who's been my support system since day one, and my two teachers, who's always been there for me, Coach K and Sister Sharon. Thank you, guys.

[4945] SPEAKER_46: One more word.

[4971] Ray Rodriguez: This is it. This is it. This is the last one. Student of the year, Aaron Lim. Please come up.

[4999] SPEAKER_33: Aaron has been in advanced band all four of his high school years. He has grown from a fairly quiet member of the saxophone section into an optimistic, gregarious bundle of energy that can be focused on getting the entire band pumped up for the field show or reaching out to individual members of the band to give them confidence and assurances that they are an important part of the band. His dedication to and enthusiasm in the role of drum major has earned him recognition and kudos from students, parents, administration, and the community. I am so happy that he is being honored for his contribution to what makes Newark Memorial High School so full of Cougar pride. Congratulations.

[5057] SPEAKER_59: I'd just like to say thank you to my family because you all are the ones that keep me going and make it so that everything's all great to go. I want to thank the school because Newark's such a great place to be and that's what, you know, I want to make the place a little better with every interaction. I was going somewhere with that but I don't know, we're running out of time. So yeah, thank you for everyone for everything and yeah.

[5093] SPEAKER_46: Fucked up.

[5134] SPEAKER_22: President Rodriguez, congratulations on the 100th. President Rodriguez, that concludes our recognitions and celebrations.

[5158] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, Superintendent Sanchez. It's 8.30 and it's time for us to have a public comment on non-agenda items and Member Nguyen. We do.

[5166] SPEAKER_41: So our first speaker is Angela Ringlin. Ringlin, I'm sorry.

[5172] Ray Rodriguez: Now, Ms. Nguyen, we do have your item that is gonna be item D under the superintendent's report and we also have it under new business Item D in new business, so if if you're gonna speak on that then if you could just wait a minute Okay, and then you could speak when the superintendent does his his report if you don't mind. Okay. Thank you Okay, Ricardo Corte. Ricardo welcome

[5212] SPEAKER_19: Good evening, honorable board members and Superintendent Sanchez. My name is Ricardo Corte, Newark resident. I wanted to make a few comments on the 2030 strategic plan for the district. First of all, the plans sound like an excellent idea if you're a real estate developer. But for the rest of us, residents and former and current students of Newark, eliminating open space and play fields at the junior high, McGregor, and or music doesn't sound all that great. I support getting more money for the district, but money does not last forever. Of course, some of the buildings at our schools are in need of repair, but I would hope the district would pursue with more urgent issues, such as the quality of education with Newark public schools. For instance, in eighth grade, I had Miss Halford for English, who offered one of the most rigorous classes throughout my education in Newark. Despite for 30 years serving as an excellent English teacher and as a department head, Ms. Halford was forced to resign because of a power struggle with administration. Shortly after, Fremont School District told her they would pay her double what Newark was paying her, and she was hired on the spot. How many other first-rate student teachers have been driven away by our district and administration? As a sophomore at Memorial, I had Mr. Pangburn for chemistry. I believe he had been teaching at the high school for likely more than a decade. Unfortunately, his class, on the other hand, was not rigorous in any sense. Students could do whatever they wanted in his class, and frankly, I did not learn much at all. A year or two later, a fight broke out in his class, and it was posted on YouTube. Presumably, the only reason he was forced to resign was because of the video. His class was one of many others, even in some of my AP classes, that reflected that some people really should not become teachers. This issue has continued long after I have graduated from high school. One example who I will not name, but is currently employed by Newark Unified, also allows his students to just do whatever they want in his class. One of my family members who was in his class complained that his class made her feel like she was just wasting her time. Despite serious concern also expressed from other teachers in the department, administration has just decided to let him have a number of second chances. Who is accountable for ensuring students are getting everything they can from their classes and thus averting parents from otherwise considering private schools? So to be honest, you will have to excuse my skepticism when a real estate developer is up here telling Newark that new buildings is what our schools need to become award-winning, premier, innovative.

[5382] Ray Rodriguez: Our students and residents... Excuse me, I'm sorry, but you have 20 seconds.

[5386] SPEAKER_19: Yes, I'm almost done. Thank you. Our students and residents need more open space in play fields, not less. But even more so, they need solutions crafted by parents, teachers, and students before those from real estate developers. Thank you.

[5401] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Mr. Steven Lawrence. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

[5413] SPEAKER_25: Thank you. Um, I'm also a resident in Newark. Um, I spent some time reviewing the documents, um, that were part of the agenda packet, I believe when, when that 2030 plan was proposed. I know it was not something the school board was deciding on or anything. It was just something being presented. I looked through the enrollment forecast, which seemed like a pretty important part of the information. This is what would forecast over the next five to six years the enrollment we expect in the district. There were a lot of concerning numbers in the Davis study that was included. Some of the main concerns were the numbers around the housing projections in Newark. While it had a lot of accurate information, it grossly underrated. The numbers were very low for the area in three and four developments. They did not reflect what the cities has in their planning documents. The numbers also only included projects basically in an approved state in which the entire project was approved or a development agreement related to the project was approved. It did not include all the housing on the city's 2015 housing element. So if you were to take what's currently approved, take the housing element, maybe eliminate some things from the housing element that look less likely or might be controversial, you come out with a number around 5,000 units of proposed housing over the next six years. So currently, Newark has like 13,000 unchanged housing units. So that's an almost 50% increase in the number of housing units in the district. Another big concern in the Davis-Johnson study is what they call the student yield. This is where you estimate per house how many students you would expect to see from that. The study used about an eighth of a student for a multi-unit. property and about a quarter of a student for a normal single family detached property. If you look at the average yield of the current housing in Newark, we have about two-fifths, it's 40% rate of students per house, so it's much higher. I know, I'm running out of time, thank you. If you look at some other enrollment forecasters, let's say from Fremont, is a little higher because they have a slightly lower school enrollment. But it's relatively comparable. They're estimating like a 60% student to household unit estimate. So you're looking at like double compared to other studies. The number of students per house is actually around double what that Davis study forecasted. There was also, to a lesser degree, I had some concerns over the Other main driver in enrollment, which is birth rates, the data in the study used for birth rates wasn't really based on anything. It was just kind of a, let's take the last five years of birth rates and let's just kind of replay them again as if... I'm sorry, you're basically out of time. I apologize. Thank you. Okay. That was my last point. And anyway, if we're going to, um, our enrollment forecast, we should do a new study, whether that be related to estimating surplus capacity or figuring out if we need to raise our developer impact fees, that sort of thing. Thank you. Thank you.

[5624] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you much. Okay, anyone else? That's it. Okay, so public comment on non-agenda items. Sorry. Did you want to speak? Yes, I filled out a card. For the public comment on non-agenda items? Yes. Come on up.

[5643] SPEAKER_43: I don't, wait.

[5646] SPEAKER_07: Good evening. My name is Angela. I'm also a Newark resident. This is my first time addressing this board this evening. My son just entered the district. I just want to thank you for partnering with the city of Newark on a lease agreement for McGregor Field and also for the community's use of the junior high. I believe partnerships like this help improve the district's physical education test results. Thank you for also approving a contract in September for a developer fee justification survey and a school facilities needs analysis. Having developers pay their fair share of impacts is a value that I share with this board. And a little extra money can't help, can't hurt. But my main reason for being here tonight is because I also reviewed the footage from the board's October meeting. I've reviewed Dutra's facility strategic planning document, which he titles 2030. A little bit misleading. The Davis enrollment forecast is a seven year enrollment forecast. So 2030, it's not really a long term plan. I'm not sure why it's titled that way. I was hoping for a 20 year forecast. I wish to recap some of Dutra's ideas for faculty housing. His ideas involve three schools, Milani, Junior High, and Music. Involving selling off some land and leasing much more. His ideas involve rezoning ASAP to avoid lengthy public processes. I think that's pretty slick. Dutra's credibility, he's a housing developer. There's a conflict of interest with him doing any planning for the district. Davis' projections indicate an increase of just a couple hundred students. Dutra depends on such projections to show surplus land. It should be noted that Dutra and Davis worked together on another project similar to this study. Districts are in the business of education. How can a district also ensure lease contracts that return positive cash flow without taking on expenses? Attorney fees, for example? Leasing land is a slippery slope. Once rezoned, selling it is easy. Piece of cake. Dutra's redesign plan creates what he calls a funding gap. Funding gaps lead to selling off land. So let's step back. That's what I'm asking. What problems are we trying to solve? Dutra implies that teacher retention is the problem. Let's have more public discourse on the subject, another agenda item perhaps, and I'm really sorry that I missed the October meeting. Is housing the number one cause of low teacher retention? It might be. I don't know. Are there alternative solutions to leasing selling public land? Infill projects of private parcels are listed on the city's housing element. Gentleman just mentioned that the study didn't take into account all of those developments. In fact, area three and four, it's off by 600 homes. In that same October meeting, I heard the words, our public land is a valuable asset. Once it's gone, it's gone. The superintendent said that. I appreciate that comment. I also appreciate your desire to consider magnet programs. I'm looking forward to the school impact fee study that you, the contract you approved. Really after some money from the developers. If I had more time, I'd discuss Davis' forecast, which had some numbers that don't match the city's housing element. By the way, if you'd like more public comments on this subject, Wednesday folders, brilliant way to disseminate information. I'm sorry, you're almost out of time. Thank you.

[5870] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else? That ends our public comment on the agenda items which is item 18. So we go back to item 16 which is the superintendent's report. Before I have the superintendent start his report, the board in Approving the agenda at 5 o'clock, decided to move things around a little bit and so we know someone would like to address us on the new business item which is the place structure. So we're going to add this to the superintendent's report for discussion and I think Angela, you wanted to address us before the superintendent starts. if you wanted to address us at this time. It's okay, Superintendent.

[5929] SPEAKER_22: Yes, I just have one request that we would replace site wish list with that so that it resolves both of those things for me.

[5938] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, excellent. Okay, thank you. Thank you for being here. We wanted to get you home so you'll be with your kids.

[5944] SPEAKER_53: Thanks. I do actually have five kids and three Kennedy Elementary students. Very nice for you to take my time.

[5951] Ray Rodriguez: We appreciate the ADA, which for all the kids. Yes.

[5955] SPEAKER_53: Thank you. Thank you. Like I said, I'm a parent of three Kennedy Elementary students. And last year, towards the beginning of the school year, one of the place structures had a bridge that went out. And I mentioned it to our office. And the office staff said that the maintenance and operations had been informed of it. But it's now a whole year and plus later, and it not only didn't get repaired, but the playground has further deteriorated. And I was told by maintenance that a certified repair and installation company came out and assessed the playground and determined that the structures were unsafe and not cost effective to repair. Our main play structure for grades 2 through 6 is not usable at all. There's like three swings that the majority of the school have to play on as far as structures go. My three children who are grades 2 through 6 come home and tell me that they have no place to play and that they can't even run in the fields because it's limited there because of the supervision. They could wait for the swings, but it's a long line. And play is actually a really critical thing. There's studies that show play is linked to intellectual development. It's not just a frivolous thing. So the structures are unsafe. And there's construction-type fencing around the structure. But it is still, I mean, kids sometimes get through. And they're still near the play areas. I know that this is an agenda item that you plan to address the removal of it. And I just urge that this be expedited, the removal of the structures. I know it's probably going to get pushed off a couple of weeks because of your agenda and your time. And I'm concerned for how much further. I mean, there's the Christmas break. And will we go a full two years without having a play structure for the older grades to play on at Kennedy? And I understand this isn't just Kennedy's concern. I think all the playgrounds were put in at the same time. I'm just urging action and expedited action for our children and for the children of our community.

[6082] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you. This is going to be again on the agenda on December 20th. And you're welcome to address this again if you want.

[6090] SPEAKER_53: I have many parents that are interested in speaking up about the issue and do want to come. And so when I had heard it would possibly be pushed to the 20th, then we let them know. So I just wanted to come and speak that we are concerned and we are We want our children to have a safe school to be at.

[6106] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you for addressing the board.

[6107] SPEAKER_53: I know you do, too. Thank you. I appreciate it.

[6108] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Superintendent, you want to finish your report?

[6114] SPEAKER_22: Yes. And before I start my report, I do want to share a little bit of information relative to public comment. I certainly would like to meet with any and all of the individuals that commented tonight. I'm glad to clarify a lot of what was in that plan. It really is not Dutra's plan, and it's not anything we're taking action on. It's a concept of what has been a result of a series of surveys that I've done. I've surveyed over 250 employees. I've surveyed all the principals. I've been still in the process of surveying communities. So there is a community survey that's online. I'd love to hear from all of you on that in detail. So it's not decided. It's not a foregone conclusion. I agree we are actually looking at a demographic study to get more accurate and updated data on that. But I'm happy to meet with any of you individually or separately or however you want to do that to talk a little bit more outside of this forum. And I'm happy to do that. I think that it'd be helpful for everybody in the community to know what we're doing. It's very important to me that we don't move forward without a lot of agreement from our community and that when we do make decisions that it's not a surprise. So that's something that I'm working on and something that's important to this board. But I want to be clear about that that matters. And I definitely wanted to say that. And happy to meet with you guys. And I'm happy to come to you. I know many of you work. But I think that if you live and have kids in our district, I definitely work for you. And I'd like to hear your thoughts. With that, I do want to talk about the play structures. And I'm going to ask Mr. Richards to give us a little bit of a history. Part of why I pulled that off when I talked about the wish list, the wish list is kind of an initial phase of me talking with every school, asking what they needed. However, in that request for what they needed, there was this question, what happened to the playgrounds and was that approved, was that not approved? And we're looking at what was approved in some prior board action. We felt that because of the safety issue, we need to escalate that as well. Because it's not just one school. There's three schools that I'm aware of that need probably something to look at. But I'm going to have Mr. Richards give us a little bit of background and then have a little board discussion so we can provide further clarity for the board.

[6257] SPEAKER_26: The play structures at all of the elementary schools were looked at. Vince brought someone in to take a look at our play structures. As the board knows, as many board members know, we've had some of them down. Actually, there's one play structure at Music Elementary that has actually been closed off longer than I've been in the district. My first day in the district, it was actually taped up and had not been in use for some time prior to my coming to the district. Then we had the two play structures, the same type of structure at Graham and John F. Kennedy, where the bridges failed. And the issue that we have with those bridges is due to the age of the structures, they are no longer manufacturing the parts that we need to be able to repair them. We can't get replacement parts anymore for the bridges. there are structural integrity issues with some of the supports anyway with them. And so it was recommended that the four most severely damaged play structures be removed. And so those are the four play structures that we're bringing before the board this evening. There are some other issues at some of the other play structures as well, but they are not as severely depreciated as these particular ones are. We may be looking in the future at having some additional issues come forth with regard to the play structures. But at this time, Vince's primary concern was how quickly can he get crews out there to make sure that we don't We're continually re-roping them off as the stuff that's taping them off is deteriorating from time to time. And so we're trying to keep the students protected because we really don't want them on those parts of the play structures that aren't really safe for them to be on. There is a portion of one that we've determined can continue to be used for a while. There's another chain that's not related to a bridge that's also broken. That can actually be removed and that one can stay in place for the time being. However, for the purpose of protection of the district from liability, as well as just protecting students in general, especially where the bridges are broken. Those are of significant concern, as is the one at Music, which just has been cordoned off with plywood to keep students from being able to fall from the structure and to block them from climbing onto the structure. Because again, that one is so severely aged that we cannot get anything that could possibly replace it. the structure itself is not really sound to be climbed upon anymore. So those are the ones that we're bringing forward for action at this time and then to begin the process of allowing the principals and their staff to begin reviewing replacement structures that are similar in size and style to what they've had because it'd be serving the same age groups. at their campuses, but to begin that process and get it rolling. We hadn't brought it forward and with having reviewed with Vanners, we were preparing for their presentation this evening where we were with the budgets of some of the items that had been originally presented. with Measure G, there is still some funding that was related to playgrounds that hadn't been utilized. And so those four structures are severe enough that we're moving them sort of ahead of the rest of the class, even before we would do any further assessments on any of the other sites, just because they present the most challenge. There was some question that had come up I understand from some of the board with regard to whether or not we could just remove the bridges and let the play structures, the rest of them stand and continue to be used. Because of the way that they're designed, much of their structural integrity is reliant upon all of the pieces being there. So they're not recommending that we go that route. And I am not a playground construction stability expert. So I'm not going to try and second guess what the recommendation was. At least that won't be my recommendation at this time.

[6509] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Before, did you have anything else? Okay. So, and we can, the board can discuss it. Before we go to Member Crocker, from day one since I've been here, school safety or the safety of our children has been number one as far as our priority. So, we really need to move on this as soon as possible. Now, we have a later run for action. And then if we need to have more discussion on the 20th. But I think it's important that we move on this. Member Crocker.

[6543] SPEAKER_48: It disturbs me that they have been in this situation for two years. I can't think of anything worse than a child looking at something that's boarded off. They can't play. And that doesn't mean that they don't. It doesn't mean that after school they're not there playing. I think that this is an ASAP. situation, whatever, I think it needs to come down. And then we build up, but it needs to get down, so it should not be out there.

[6573] SPEAKER_41: And I, I would echo those sentiments as far as I know we're supposed to discuss, but I don't think there's any point of discussion. I think it's, it's one of those non-negotiables, because the, the play structures for elementary students, that's something they interact with every single day. And so. I think it is prudent for us to move on this as soon as possible so that those students can have that feature in their school. Right.

[6596] Ray Rodriguez: Member Persiello.

[6597] SPEAKER_52: I'm just wondering why, if this is a safety issue, how come it wasn't brought up earlier?

[6602] Ray Rodriguez: I'm wondering the same thing.

[6603] SPEAKER_52: We had plenty of discussions with Vander on all kinds of different buildings. But I mean, this is frustrating to say the least.

[6611] SPEAKER_41: Yeah, I wish it would have been brought to our attention in April. And then that way, we could have it done during the summertime.

[6621] SPEAKER_22: If I may add a comment. Yeah, go ahead. Part of, I think, how this has come to our attention and my attention has really just been spending time with the principals, asking them to ask their community what they need. Even though the wish list was primarily thinking about what remains, what might be something we could do to improve, I think the idea of listening to schools matters. And I think that sometimes the idea of, listening to our customers and people who have kids in our district. And I know sometimes the sequence of things is out of sequence for what the board may be worried about. But I do think that even relative to the Measure G dollars, the first priority in the Measure G language is safety. So I think that's kind of why I recommended that we pull it from the wish list and think about another way to deploy it quickly because because of the nature of the urgency, but also because one of the things that I've heard in the feedback and surveying that I've done in this community is there's a strong interest in improving curb appeal. And I think the way, I think member Crocker described a kid looking at something that's boarded up that they can't play on is powerful. It's powerful. So I think that for me, it's, You know, there's lots of things that I wonder, but I think this is one that is something we have to figure out a way. How we do it and where it's funded, those are dilemmas that we have as a board and as leaders of the district. But I think that there's a lot of interest in our community to speak up. And I'm glad to see that people are speaking up. And they are starting to trust that their voices are going to be heard. And I think that matters. I think we need to pay attention to that.

[6741] SPEAKER_26: And I would also just mention I did task the maintenance department with first before we brought something forward about replacing the structures to determine whether or not we could bring someone in to repair them and what we would take to do it. And it was only once we had exhausted all the possibilities with, can we replace it? Can we get something manufactured that could fix the chains for the bridges and keep the structure? It was only after we brought in an outside assessor that basically said, no, it's too late. We're too far gone to be able to do that, that I'm actually recommending that it come forward for a full replacement. We try to be as frugal as we can with the limited amount of funding that we have, but we're simply at a point where we're beyond that point of being able to try and do a reconstruction in place, and it does need to be a replacement.

[6789] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you.

[6790] Nancy Thomas: Member Thomas. I had a chance to go out and look at the structures today, and I took some pictures that I'm sharing with the board. I was gassed. I was absolutely gassed at how poor all of our older structures are. They've not been maintained at all. In the kindergarten area, Fort Kennedy, The slide is broken. Now that's a newer structure. The slide can be replaced. The swings can be fixed. There's only two or three swings. Those swings can be fixed. And they've been on the list for years to be fixed. There's structures that are not slated for replacement that have big parts missing on them, a zip line that's missing or monkey bars that are missing. They're just missing. So it's like, I don't think replacing four structures is enough. I think what we need to do is we need to look at the rest of our bond funds, and we need to fix every single subpar play structure in town on our school sites. And I think that removing the structures is important. If any of the structures that are partially can be made safe so that kids can use it until the end of the year. But my recommendation would be to spend time between now and this summer, or starting now, so that we can have maybe all of that work done next summer, so that starting on next year, all of our play structures are sandblasted, painted, resurfaced. The things I learned today in my visit to Kennedy that were relayed by the person that looked there, there was a lot of things that are really in terrible shape that can be refixed. But it's going to be very expensive. But I mean, if you want my priority, it just went up to the top when I made that visit today.

[6928] Ray Rodriguez: putting blame on anyone because that doesn't get us anywhere. The fact is that we pride ourselves as a board on safety and ultimately the board has to take responsibility because we're the board of education and we've for whatever reason this this is kind of went by us and so it's important to get this voted on get it done so we can get this all fixed up. Okay. Thank you. So we'll this item will come under new business and then we can vote on it and hopefully get it passed.

[6964] Michael Milliken: Okay.

[6965] SPEAKER_22: Superintendent, do you have anything else? No, I'm ready to move to the next item. Okay, go ahead. I'm going to ask Mr. Simon to join me and help us with the technology update. I think you'll be using technology for your presentation.

[7024] SPEAKER_27: It would be helpful if I could see what I'm talking about.

[7034] SPEAKER_22: And I understand this has some updated components. Yeah, I'll tell you that as we go through. Thank you.

[7043] SPEAKER_27: So it's been a while since I've been in front of you. I'm happy to be back. So I'm going to go through our update very quickly. Actually, can somebody get the lights for me in the front? Thank you.

[7056] SPEAKER_22: OK. On the table in the back.

[7061] SPEAKER_27: So the first slide is just a recap from last March when we had talked about some funding the board approved for technology. The board approved about $975,000 for teacher stations 1.3-ish million for student devices. We've started that project, and I'm going to cover what we've done so far and where we're going. And I sort of have some rough projections on the right side there on what's remaining and projected total cost. Currently, I believe we're going to come in under budget on both projects. This is where we're at right now with computers in the schools and the ratio of computers to students. It's also, the information's also on page one of the packet in a little more detail. You can see the enrollment, this enrollment data might be a little bit old, and then where our target devices are, because we aren't targeting one-to-one, we called it one-to-any a couple years ago, which means a ratio slightly below that, but it meant a pod of computers for kids in the K through one grades, and then two through twelve having more than that. And I have some pictures of kids using computers. This is at SNEL from last year. And here's another one.

[7155] SPEAKER_27: Oh, terrible. So back on the student computers, the deployment schedule, this is the predicted timeline for the deployment schedule. Our deployments have been predicated on the staff having their Google certified educator level one. So this has sort of been in flux as that proceeds. Our current working plan is to assess the teachers that RGC won this February and plan our next round of deployments accordingly. This is roughly what I predict. I'll note that I made one change to the slide that was in the packet to here. In red, those are the numbers I changed, I added for BGI and SNOW based on some updated information I had. I'm going to go over now some of the different options we've been going through with the teacher stations. Teacher station is sort of a fancy word for projector. It sounds more advanced than it really is, but it really is just getting some of the basic I think most, just about any teacher needs today to be functional in their classroom. So we've been piloting a lot of different options since the board approved this project back in March and we've been looking at a lot of different. So this next slide is some of the comparisons. You can't really read it there, but it's also on page 2 of the packet. It just talks about some of the positives and negatives of the different options we're piloting. I'm going to show you some pictures of those as well, and then we're going to talk about our recommendation.

[7250] Diego Torres: Go ahead.

[7251] SPEAKER_48: I have a question. The laser ceiling-mounted projector versus the ceiling-mounted projector. Is the laser any concern? I know lasers sometimes are a concern in terms of damage to the retina.

[7264] SPEAKER_27: Very, very good question. No, that isn't a concern with this round of laser. It's called the laser phosphor projector. Basically, the difference is the projected light is essentially the same way it comes out. But the difference in the two technologies, the laser projector doesn't have any bulbs. So instead of having the image degrade over a year or two, as you've probably seen in any projector, this one included, that's probably eight years old now. So it's not one narrow beam? No, that isn't a risk. The laser itself doesn't exit the projector, it's within the projector. So this is the comparison matrix. I'm not going to go through the different line items, but it sort of gives the pluses and minuses of each kind. This was sort of a, I called it a long shot for us, the idea of using flat screen TVs instead of projectors. The big upside to a flat screen TV is it lasts forever. A lot of you guys probably have TVs you bought 10 years ago and they still work fine. And they're much cheaper now. It's actually a lot cheaper to put in a TV than it is a projector. So we've been piloting with these. I think the feedback is just going to end up where they're just a little too small right now. They're just not ready for our classrooms, and they take up too much wall real estate that teachers would otherwise use in the classrooms. This would be another same concept, lower, not up high, to split the boards. This was a pilot we had on a cart. The upside we had here, especially at the elementary level, was the flexibility where a mobile cart could give them, if they're sort of using their room in smaller groups and they don't want everyone to focus on the TV, they could move it around and do anything with it. But again, I think the size isn't there. This is an example of a pretty basic ceiling-mounted projector with a large screen that could display content to the students. This would be either the ceiling-mounted projector or the ceiling-mounted laser projector. The white area would be the visible area. Obviously a very large screen, but there really was no difference in cost to a small screen to a large screen. Especially at the rear of the room, we had a lot better feedback from students and teachers about the increased size. This is just an example of what one would look like installed. This is in a science room at Newark Memorial. And so all of these pictures are also in the packet as well. We did have a couple of issues with this, with the ceiling mounted projectors, and we've had them for years, with vibrations coming from the HVAC system up above. Those are issues you don't have with something like the television. We're working on solutions for that, but the more those sort of issues come up, the more expensive these things become. Just want to make you guys aware of some of the things we've been seeing with them. This is just an example of what an interactive whiteboard would look like if it was installed in the classroom. Basically, an interactive whiteboard is a short throw projector that goes above one of the whiteboards and allows the students and teachers to interact with either a pen or with their fingers. We're not recommending this purely based on cost. It's a very expensive solution, as you will see here. This is the cost estimates and breakdowns of the different ideas. and what we think they'll cost over their lifespan, a lifespan of 10 years. We are recommending the ceiling-mounted or the laser ceiling-mounted projector for reasons that it's very common to a lot of the schools now. A lot of the schools already have them, and they're already working them. Even if they're not installed, they use them on desks. They're familiar with them. They'll have the least barrier to implementation from the teacher's perspective, and I believe it's the most cost-effective. Any questions about the difference teacher stations or the different things I've shown you so far.

[7507] Nancy Thomas: Which would you recommend, ceiling-mounted projector or the laser ceiling-mounted projector?

[7512] SPEAKER_27: So the thing with the laser ceiling-mounted, the laser projectors are, if they work as they're advertised, they're the best of both worlds. There are no bulbs, there's no replacement. You have it, you have it for seven years, ten years, and it just lasts. So there's a lot less maintenance hours and maintenance costs. This sort of downside is it's new technology, so we don't totally have, it's not really as vetted as the traditional projector. Right now we're leaning towards the ceiling mounted laser projector, but we're still sort of doing our homework there and doing our research and talking to other districts that use them. I'm really trying to figure out the most sustainable solution for the district. That's kind of where we're approaching this from.

[7555] SPEAKER_48: Where did you have the, I guess, I'm not sure what it is, the projector that's unportable? Is there not one that you have some of them at, I was at Bunker, excuse me, Birch Grove Primary. What do they have there?

[7571] SPEAKER_27: They have ceiling mounted projectors. It's basically the same as, the ceiling mounted and the ceiling mounted laser is basically the same concept. They have, not through this project, they have those. A lot of those installs we've come across are not really done properly. The electrical work's not really done properly. The bracing's not really done properly. So some of it will probably have to be repaired or, you know, brought up to standard when we do this project. But it's similar in concept. And then we would have, as part of this, kind of see it, we would have a set of controls and termination available at the front of the classroom. That's the little blue box you can see on the right side available for the teachers to use. Just turn it off and on. These aren't, what we're looking at aren't really like, they aren't the top of the line, the cutting edge, but they're really giving sort of the basic what you need in the classroom to the teachers, I believe.

[7626] SPEAKER_48: I think from a teacher's perspective, having something stable, located, you don't have to move around, it's nice, but it is large enough to have flexibility for where you're going to have it projected to.

[7638] SPEAKER_27: Right, and that's why we went with the large screen. It really is viewable from any corner of the room and readable and legible.

[7643] SPEAKER_48: The fact that you can overwrite

[7645] SPEAKER_27: And yeah, and so instead of going with the interactive projector or the really high-end thing like that, we're making the focus piece of this sort of the HD projector. And the idea is then we can then add wireless projection on top of it for a lower cost, things like that, which sort of add packages without a ton of cost to keep it sustainable at a district-wide approach.

[7669] Diego Torres: OK.

[7674] SPEAKER_27: All right, so like I said, right now, we're recommending the ceiling-mounted installed projectors. This is just sort of informational for the board where we've gone with this. And we think the lasers are going to be the best sort of bang for your buck on this. And currently, the sites maintain their projectors with site funds. We're just going to need to figure that out in the long term now and how we're going to approach that. But that sort of gets into my next slide, which is cost to maintain. And this is not just about projectors. This is about everything. It was too much information to throw up in a slide, so I put it in the sheet. It's on page 7. And I'm just going to talk about it briefly. And the numbers may sort of jump out at you and shock you, but I'd like to note this isn't new expenditures for the district. This would just be the total cost to maintain technology in the district. And actually, this is lower than what we've been spending in the last five years because we've sort of been spending more and faster in the last five years in total sum of technology spent. And this is at absolute ideal levels. If you replaced everything exactly when we wanted to. That's sort of what this number represents. Bulk of the cost comes in the student devices obviously. Then there's similar costs for the staff devices and then I have projections on the classroom maybe maintenance costs. The only things not included in here are the enterprise technology. That would be like the wireless, the network infrastructure, those pieces, and any software.

[7769] SPEAKER_48: You're talking about which page is this on?

[7771] SPEAKER_27: I have it marked as page 7 in the packet. And so the total estimated annual dollars I have at eventually when we get to that point would be $567,000 annually. Like I said, that's at the absolute ideal level. You may end up somewhere not quite there. And that is not too different than what we spend some total in technology today. Any questions about that sheet or the numbers on there?

[7805] SPEAKER_48: So we're saying that by giving this upfront amount of money, the district is going to be able to maintain the quality and replacement ability in the budget that we are using now?

[7818] SPEAKER_27: I'm saying this is what it would cost, what it will cost to maintain everything at its absolute ideal level. As far as budgeting production and those pieces, I would really have to speak with Brian in more detail.

[7836] SPEAKER_48: So, if I can... Well, I'm thinking that there's an upfront cost, your beginning cost. Then you're talking about the maintenance of that. Once that initial money is spent, and you're saying that maintains that amount, to maintain it and to replace down the line is the same. On a regular replacement schedule. On a planned schedule.

[7861] SPEAKER_27: So this would be, the planned schedule would be, I just had five years for everything here. In reality, your AV is going to last a lot longer. We generally stretch the student computers a little bit longer. It's going to vary. It's going to bubble depending on, and it really depends on sort of the life of things. Sometimes you'll buy something and it'll last you eight years. Sometimes it'll last you three years, you know. Those are sort of hard to give projections beyond five years on. But this would be sort of an ideal level of maintenance on those things.

[7895] SPEAKER_41: So thank you for the report. Just a couple of things as far as the funding and some concerns that I have in regards to the funding. So we push for one-to-one, which is what the board has wanted. We wanted more students to have greater level interaction with the technology so that they're familiar with aspect testing when it comes in the springtime. And as a byproduct in 19-20, you know, we're going to have to replenish, replace, those, those items. And so I think we need to start thinking about a plan on how to do that. In looking at the, the overall report, I do see some schools that are still relatively low from a racial standpoint. I think I had here Graham. There were a couple schools that were at 64%.

[7944] SPEAKER_27: Would you like me to flip back to the.

[7947] SPEAKER_41: Sure. Memorial was low, factor was 0.64, and then BGI.

[7954] SPEAKER_27: I can give a little background on this if you like. A lot of the schools that are higher are schools that in the first sort of year, I would say around 2010, when the Chromebooks really started taking hold in education, not just in Newark, but state and nationwide, they sort of took initiative on their own and jumped into it. So they are sort of accelerated. I would call it accelerated in that timeline.

[7976] SPEAKER_41: So can we strategically deploy our devices moving forward to offset for that so that Memorial and BGI can then catch up with the rest of the school so that there's a greater level of equity?

[7990] SPEAKER_27: That's what we're doing here. All the elementaries will be at their target by this summer if the plan goes to things. There are two reasons we don't want to just buy everything at once, or we would have just bought it all last summer. It'll make that 19-20 target you talked about be 17-18, right? And it'll also mean that instead of things sort of failing on the timeline and everything, you have a reasonable amount to replace every year, you'll have a big cliff where everything will drop off.

[8017] SPEAKER_41: So the two big takeaway concerns I have from the overall report, and it's not a concern on the report itself, but just as far as where we're going with this and what we need to do to start planning for this impending expenditures is that. I'm wanting to say that and I don't think you showed on here but in your report, it has a device ratio versus staff of staffing of IT and our devices.

[8040] SPEAKER_27: Yeah, so that's, I'm, yeah, I'm actually only about. Oh, you're not finished yet. Yeah, I'm not finished yet actually. It's, I'll go into that now. So that was, that was about the student computers and the AV. There is another, A big piece to our thing is E-rate. E-rate is the system the federal government has to help fund networks and technology in schools, primarily around wireless networks and that piece. That's on page 8 of the packet if you want to follow along. I have a sort of an impact summary written up there, but I'm just going to explain it to you. So there are two major components called Category 1 and Category 2. I'm going to talk about Category 2 first. Category 2 is A system they have created where they'll give us funding to replace our network infrastructure. And what it is, is we have an allocation on a five-year cycle. And your allocation is based on your number of students and your number of free and reduced students. We are in the 60% discount bracket right now. And we missed the 80% discount bracket by about 0.5 free and reduced percent students. So that's unfortunate. But that's the bracket room. We're in year two of our category two cycle. As far as last year and this year, the federal government did fund the entire rate. We need to decide if and when we want to move on this. What this essentially means is that we can do $921,000 worth of project at an expense of $368,000 to the district. So the sort of question marks here are if there will be changes to the FCC and the funding model they have, whether these funds will be available. In the past, it wasn't called Category 2. It was called something else. But the funds were a lot less available. They wouldn't have been available to districts like Newark. Because of some changes E-Rate made, they are more available now. But we don't know if that will change in the future. So I just wanted to present this information to you so you know this is our funding from the federal government for network infrastructure. It can only go to network infrastructure. It can't go to student devices or anything like that. Essentially getting wireless into the classrooms and pulling cables and things like that. So that's our Category 2 allocation from the FCC. So I want to talk about sort of the negative now is the Category 1 changes. The FCC decided to remove voice services from E-rate. So that has drastically, is going to drastically increase our telecommunication cost if we make no changes. Last year, our cost was $66,000. Next year, we're predicting $140,000. And thereafter, $192,000 without any changes on our end. But we are working to try and remediate that. So here's the breakdown by service. A little hard to see, but basically, the big cost is coming from our voice system. Right now, we're on a hosted voice over IP system, and we have some existing analog lines. The discounts from the FCC for those are going away. They did the phase out over a period of three years. But we dropped from the 80% bracket I talked about down to the 60% bracket. So we had sort of a double whammy where we had double reduction, which is why the jump goes from 66 to 140 in one year. So the largest cost is the voice services. Right now we're exploring replacement systems for our current phone system and the way we do our ad phone lines essentially. I think we're seeing a lot of progress on there. It's a little premature for me to say how much or what. But I think we're going to have a significant reduction in cost with the new system. We're not looking at actually replacing phones in classrooms. We're just looking at replacing the back end that sort of powers everything. But these new systems do, they will require, because it's not hosted by a phone company, it will require us to maintain more qualified staff to maintain the system. So sort of my last thing I want to show you is sort of how technology has grown. On the left is 2009. We had about 2,700 devices. That was about when I started here. We're just north of 10,000 now. We haven't changed in staffing there. So on the right, you see a graph that shows you the It's not a great number to count the number of devices, the number of tech staff, but it does give you an idea for the changes and challenges we've had over the last seven years. We've gone, our ratio has obviously increased. And so that is the entirety of my presentation, and I'll take any questions you might have now.

[8321] Ray Rodriguez: Before we go to Member Thomas and then Member Nguyen, I didn't want you to think when you said we were under budget that the board wasn't excited. I mean, we were. You know, so anytime you say under budget, you know, we're, I mean, we wanted to give you an applause. We just got kind of lost in the whole thing. But thank you for doing that.

[8339] SPEAKER_27: I'd like to note our last four projects have been under budget. That's great. Thank you. I'm happy about that.

[8344] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Member Thomas.

[8348] SPEAKER_41: I yield to Member Nguyen. Thank you so I can finish my thought before I forget it. So the two items that are, again, red flags to me is the rise in, in staff versus device ratio. And then obviously the $500,000 bill that's going to be recurring starting in 1920. And so I think... 1920. Yeah, 2019-20. Okay. So I think we need to start planning on how to address that. I know some districts who have taken several different approaches on how to deal with recurring technological expenses year in, year out. And, and maybe it's an approach that perhaps we can explore and, and look at and, and it's gonna take some while to develop and hopefully we get our, our act together, we can get something in place you know, in that time so that we're not facing this sharp cliff. One is perhaps look at a, a, a tech bond. Not, not necessarily a general obligation, general obligation into construction bond, but there's a technology bond that you can give for 20 years that comes at a automatic renewal of every five years. So the total bond and interest you're paying back is very minimal compared to a regular bond. And so that can help you sustain technology-related costs. And not just devices, but I think we really ought to look at devices, additional staffing, and then PD for the teachers on how to effectively use technology as well. But that recurring tech bond can certainly pay for that. The other avenue would be some sort of parcel tax that can help support that if we have it very specific and very strategic and saying this is solely for, you know, creating and maintaining that 21st century classroom environment with updated technology and giving our students the, you know, the high tech learning environment and only have that money developed for that, we can frame it as such. Or the third option is try to start allocating money from the general fund and that's going to be on Mr. Richards to try to figure that out. Okay.

[8488] Nancy Thomas: Well, that was basically what my concern was going to be. Without getting additional revenue from the bond or from a parcel tax, we're looking at There's already been an increase in your staff, and it looks like your workload isn't right. How many technicians since?

[8507] SPEAKER_27: Right. We've had the same number. I'm including myself in that number. Maybe I shouldn't. But we had three people when I started. It went down to two during the recession, and then we went back up to three.

[8519] Nancy Thomas: Up to three. OK. Anyway, the workload has obviously increased a lot. The maintenance, because we've gotten so much more technology, the big investment we're making in devices is going to cause these numbers to be projected into our budget every year. I would assume Mr. Richards would put those in the budget. And we're already deficit spending. My big concern is how are we going to pay for the ongoing cost of this technology? If we don't get extra revenue, how do we build a budget for next year and a three-year budget?

[8562] SPEAKER_27: So that's one of the big reasons I wanted to include that information for the board so you can see it. I will note again that that number is the total expenditure of technology. It's not new money. It's what needs to be spent in some total. And we have spent north of that amount since at least 2011, 2012. And I'm including money the schools spend and everything. That counts the total expenditure of technology. But it is going to be a serious concern. And we do have to plan for it, which is why I'm trying to bring it to you so you have the information this early.

[8595] Nancy Thomas: How much money are we spending now on maintaining the projectors and things that the schools are paying for maintaining? Is this inclusive of what we already have?

[8608] SPEAKER_27: So they're all spending it themselves. They spend individually. A lot of times things go longer than they should. You don't want to be having the kids squint and look at a dim screen. So this would be the sum total cost to maintain it at the ideal level, the absolute ideal level. I don't know that things are necessarily getting maintained at the ideal level now. The Chrome devices definitely are. Some of the schools do more with the projection than others. But we would like to get everybody onto sort of a level playing field, having the same base that they can all work off of.

[8642] Nancy Thomas: Then one more thing that strikes me. When we approved the technology plan, it was primarily for computers, devices like that, projectors. But if you go on a funding page, a lot of our teachers and especially at the high school are going to have different kinds of technology means, like a 3D printer for the art program. Since we didn't say, you know, we were really talking about computers, is there any money in the budget so these teachers don't have to go out and try to raise their own money for a fancy printer for a class?

[8685] SPEAKER_27: I don't have the information on that, to be honest with you. I think a lot of them, some of them do it through GoFundMes because they want to try the new thing. I know some sites use the site discretionary funds to do those things as well, but I personally don't have that information on me.

[8698] Nancy Thomas: It seems to me that a photography class may not need a Chromebook for every student.

[8704] SPEAKER_27: Yeah, that's not in the numbers for that because they have The classes that are built around computers that are labs with Macs and some with PCs, like the video lab, those and PE classes aren't built into the numbers.

[8718] Nancy Thomas: I'm suggesting maybe they need to be.

[8721] SPEAKER_27: Oh, OK. You mean instead of what they're using?

[8724] Nancy Thomas: Well, no. I mean, I would think that part of our technology plan should include things like high-end printers out of the photography class. It shouldn't be just for computers.

[8736] SPEAKER_27: Right. Peripherals. Peripherals. Peripherals. You also have software, other soft costs, you know.

[8744] Nancy Thomas: Yeah. And I would think that your department would need to be doing a needs assessment and making sure that the photography teacher isn't left out in terms of what the needs are.

[8760] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Thank you. Madam Cracker.

[8762] SPEAKER_48: Tell me, what is the E-rate?

[8764] SPEAKER_27: E-rate is a program the federal government has to fund telecommunications in school. It started covering primarily phones and those lines and T1s and the old lines. They've shifted a few years ago to be trying to fund wireless in schools, which is why they're going away from voice and just to wireless. So it primarily funds our internet connection, and that's category one. Category two will let us buy new internet equipment that we have. So category one funds our build AT&T, category two funds are access points and those kind of things.

[8797] SPEAKER_48: So the voice system that you're talking about there is the phone system within the schools. Yes. And that is AT&T provider?

[8804] SPEAKER_27: So the history to that is we used to have a phone system, an on-premise phone system, a lucent phone system. About three years ago, we shifted to a hosted voice system. Actually, if we had still had the old system, our bill would be even higher right now, going even higher because of the way it functioned. But the new hosted voice system is hosted through AT&T. It's actually, it's AT&T subcontracted to a company called Astra. And they essentially, the hardware that runs the phones in the backend is run in their server farm in the cloud somewhere. It was very economical at the time, because a lot of that cost was defrayed by E-rate. But now with the changes to Category 2, obviously that's not going to be the case anymore. So we're exploring different avenues to potentially bring the system back on site.

[8855] SPEAKER_48: What is WAN? W-A-N? W-A-N, WAN.

[8858] SPEAKER_27: Oh, WAN, Wide Area Network. The network that runs everything. Your ability to get to the internet in a classroom is predicated on the WAN working properly.

[8871] SPEAKER_48: And that's our equipment, right?

[8875] SPEAKER_27: It's a marriage of the two. It's part AT&T, part us.

[8881] Ray Rodriguez: OK, we need to, we've been on the item for a while, and it's not actually an action item. But just a couple more comments, and then we need to move on, Mr. Winn. And member Thomas.

[8894] SPEAKER_41: Just briefly that I think education overall hasn't taken that shift yet. Or we're actually well past the threshold for when technology was considered as a perk. But in today's age, it's a necessity. And so we almost have to treat these devices as if they were textbooks and account and plan for the constant expenditures. of these items. So that's definitely something we need to prioritize.

[8919] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Thank you. Superintendent, back on you. Anything else?

[8924] SPEAKER_22: No, I just think that we'll continue with Mr. Simon to begin to put together a technology, larger scale plan, replacement schedule. But it's a great start. Thank you for providing all this information. Thank you, Larry.

[8938] Ray Rodriguez: Excellent presentation. Thank you. OK. Did you want to go ahead?

[8945] SPEAKER_48: I just want to thank you. This is a very complete, very concise report. It gives a lot of data, which I appreciate, which means I'm going to have to sit down and read it and really think about it, because these are not things that I work with every day. But nonetheless, it's there. So I truly appreciate all the work that you've done with this and the global approach. And I think that it's going to serve us well when we make our decisions. So thank you.

[8971] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you, Larry. Appreciate it. Did you want to talk about community engagement?

[8975] SPEAKER_22: Yes. Briefly, I just wanted to publicly recognize, and we'll do it formally at the next meeting, but I wanted to recognize Mary Sayers and her nutrition services team for the support of our community engagement evening the other, last week I guess it was, on the 30th, is that right? It seems like it's been one week. But just it was remarkable to have over 225 parents from our community come and give input and start understanding what LCAP means and how they really do have a voice. But I think Mary and her team will be inviting. And it was more than just Mary's team. The high school team did an outstanding job of just clearing the deck and helping us get things set up and helping us avoid pitfalls. All the principals that helped. have conversations with their staff and bring parents to the room. And I think that the lesson learned is parents want to come if they're talking about their school. And district meetings tend to be kind of boring. So we were able to kind of leverage our principals to get input on larger system issues and just a job well done by the entire team at the high school, nutrition services. And I would like to also call out Patty Sandoval, who was kind of the quiet person behind the scenes, keeping everything moving forward and making it successful, will bring forward a formal recognition and laundry list of people in December, the next meeting in December, for recognitions and celebrations. I just wanted to acknowledge staff while it's still in recent memory, and we'll bring those folks back.

[9088] Ray Rodriguez: Member Crocker and I were there, and we wanted to share some thoughts. Member Crocker.

[9091] SPEAKER_48: Right. I happened to be there and thoroughly enjoyed the whole process. I went along to a lot of different school sites, and they were very well prepared. They had different conversations at each one, because there were different issues that were there, but it was very well attended. And I think they were able to move along on their process of deciding what they needed and what they needed to do. And each one is going to continue that when they go back to the site. So it's not certainly the end of the process. It's sort of the middle. And seeing all the district schools there doing the same thing, I think, had power. So I want to thank you, Superintendent Sanchez, for organizing that. I do appreciate it. I think it was a step in the right direction.

[9139] Ray Rodriguez: I do, too. If things don't go well, you get the heat, right? So, this is, this meeting, I thought there were about 300 people maybe with, you know, especially the long line for people standing to eat, you know. But, you know, as a new superintendent, you were able to, in your own way and with the help of all your staff, put together a meeting where I, in my 20 years, I, you know, I don't remember where so many people attended. But the problem is now that you've done it once, we want you to do it all the time. So in the future, with your future meetings, we're really looking forward to those. And I think the community is. Everybody was excited. We couldn't get people to leave. And there were groups from different schools, and they all enjoyed the whole thing. The principals, like you said, did an excellent job. So thank you. Thank you for being our Chief and and putting that together. I appreciate it. Okay.

[9207] SPEAKER_22: Next we go to staff report superintendent I'm gonna ask Janet Handley to come up and help me with the staff report and we do have a PowerPoint for you and a lot of data Can I I know it after 10 o'clock we have to make looks like we're gonna go over so if we can Yeah, I was gonna thank you Frankie.

[9227] Ray Rodriguez: I was gonna just suggest just I know we're not going to be here till midnight, but to make it until midnight, just in case, and then we can leave early, if somebody wants to make that motion. Nobody wants to make the motion to midnight. It doesn't mean we're going to be here till then.

[9243] SPEAKER_48: I'd like to move that we extend the meeting until 11 o'clock.

[9245] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Now, so at 11 o'clock, we got to go. You want to second that, Member Perciale? I'll second it. Okay. Please vote. Show of hands. Okay. Okay.

[9257] SPEAKER_48: Our student member can leave if she needs to.

[9260] Ray Rodriguez: You can leave now if you want. Okay. I'm sorry Superintendent to interrupt you. Go ahead.

[9265] SPEAKER_22: That's okay. So we want to give a little bit of a snapshot of the state of schools and provide some data for the board and kind of information. So we'll just kind of walk you through some slides. And there is a handout in the back of the other people from the community handouts that they would make more copies. It's several slides. But I'll try to move through it pretty quickly. Because I'm hoping for earlier than 10, 30. But we'll see how it goes. So is there a clicker, or do you want me to come down there? What do you think?

[9320] SPEAKER_14: Whatever is comfortable for you.

[9323] SPEAKER_22: I'll just use a clicker from here if that's okay. And we'll kind of do it as a team. So these are some of the initiatives that we have as a district and some of the federal requirements. I'm not going to read slides to you, but I think you see there's just a lot of converging requirements. We're moving into an environment of increased testing. And I think that one of the things that it feels like is sometimes it feels like we test kids more than we actually have time to teach them. So we list them all on the page in this regard to show you just how many different requirements that we have to meet and how complex it is. And how LCAP is certainly still somewhat of a compliance document. But I think our interest in sharing this with you tonight set a baseline of where we are so we can begin moving forward. Revision, keep moving, mission, core beliefs, we know those things. Some of the things that have been accomplished are a past Williams facility inspection, established partnership with California Collaborative, the CCE, Dr. Kahn, Carl Kahn, I think that's going to be great. We had a successful board retreat. Our community engagement series is off to a good start, which I'll put in one more plug for that. The next one will be an alumni panel talking about were they ready for college, facilitated by Francisco Preciado, Esquire, going forward. So he's helping with that. Really excited to know that conversation, listening to our kids. And we're still in the process of conducting a community survey. and got the school painted, oversaw HVAC. That's a lot. These are some enrollment trends that you'll see. We used to be a district of 7,500 students. And I really think that I'd like to see us get back to that. I don't know how, when. That's going to take a lot of engagement of our staff and a lot of agreement of our staff. And I've begun talking with my first school today about, Ultimately, as we move into the summer, I want every school to start developing a four-year plan of how they're going to have a new identity, what they're doing for academic improvement, and how they're going to measure that over a four-year trajectory. That compiled into a larger document will be the district strategic plan, but more of a grassroots up instead of top-down approach. But the enrollment is concerning, and I know we'll be talking more about that as we go into budgeting. But I think it's good to have some of this data in front of you. our ethnic breakdown, we still see a large portion of our community, and we also see how diverse we are. Smarter balanced, some of the strategies around professional learning communities and high levels of rigor, instead of going into a lot of detail and regurgitating, What that approach is, let me simplify it for you and give you a bit of an executive summary. The main concept behind professional learning communities and positive behavior support intervention system is that we treat all kids as if they were our own. And what do we do to make it better? We do what it takes. And our goal is to move resources in that way and move quicker in that domain and really not get down into the idea of have any kind of idea of deficit thinking about our kids, but really looking at kids from the sense of what do they bring to the table, what are their assets, how do we build them up, and how do we serve all kids at high levels. So we'll begin really looking at what are the key instructional models. And I'd like to see us move away from small incremental gains of 3%, 5%, 10% to really start shooting for the top. excellence should be our target, not the middle of the bell curve. So we'll begin looking at that. But LCAP is a federal document, it feels like. And it's what we have to work with now. In conversations with the state of California, I think we're going to eventually see the budgeting process be married with LCAP and academic planning. It's just not there yet. But for right now, this is kind of what we have to do. The other component of LCAP that I think is critical is that we actually have real community engagement and high levels of active, really listening. And we've begun that process with our engagement series and changing the approach from a principal level. As I continue to say, the point of change is a classroom. The unit of change is the schoolhouse. And the district exists to serve schools, not the other way around. And this kind of leans into a little bit of what technology was about one of the strategies really raising the floor for what happens in classrooms, but not just academically or with technology, but just so teachers have what they need. We're beginning to see a lot of really good feedback in the survey from teachers. They're identifying what they need. They need less programs to start and stop. They want to see more coherence in the plan. They don't want to see adopting new programs because somebody went to a conference That's what I'm hearing from teachers. Involvement's critical. We're going to continue to expand. And I'm actually in the process of creating a principal and administrator evaluation that requires that as part of their evaluation process. Not in a punitive way, but in a way to ask the question, what are you doing with community involvement? What's your plan for this year? I think that's important, especially since it's required for LCAP. And the whole concept here is people support what they help create and have you really talk to your community to see if they're supporting where you're going. And if not, you probably need to start having those conversations. Our principals are really excited about that because they're already doing it. And I'm glad to see that it's starting to take root. I'm going to move through these to a couple of key points I want to point out. They're still seeing a significant gap between economically disadvantaged kids and how they compare to other students, English learners is how they compare, and black and Latino males. We'll get back to that in a minute. This slide is important to look at on some other balance, who met or exceeded standards. And if I were to juxtaposition this slide with the slide on ethnicity, you would see that even though Hispanic is one of our largest populations, performing at the lower level. And that's something we have to really pay attention to. And I think as we begin discussing equity as a board, I think that's something that we're going to have to start looking at. And I'll probably be bringing forward some equity policy recommendations, because I think that's going to matter in how we approach that. Janet, anything you want to add here on EL?

[9782] SPEAKER_14: No. You highlighted, actually, what I was going to highlight. So we're on the same page.

[9791] SPEAKER_22: Mathematics, similar trend. So I think part of what we've started looking at with English learners is are they getting enough minutes in English? Are we providing enough support? Are they getting 90 minutes or 45 minutes per the federal requirements? What are we doing to extend the day and extend opportunities for learning for kids that need extra help? And what are we doing to accelerate the kids that are already on pace and that are not behind? Those are things we have to consider. Mathematics by ethnicity, similar trend.

[9833] SPEAKER_14: On the CELT level, if I could just interject right here, the reason we've changed our slide on this one is we've really put it out according to the five CELT levels. And the reason for that is in our new accountability system, we're going to be measured on do we move our students up one CELT level and also the reclassification rate. So the reason we put the chart into that format is so we could get a sense of what percent of our students are we getting moved up a level and kind of really looking at where they're sitting at the different levels. When we get to LPAC, we'll probably have six levels, but we did this visually so we can kind of start looking and seeing how we can change and adapt our instruction. This one's going away next year. This is our last year of AMAOs. AMA01 did talk about your percent of students that are acquiring English, which is really where they're going on the accountability system. We have it in here because it's required by LCAP, but it is going away. On this chart here, if you take a look at it, what you're going to see is it takes a look at how many English learners we have and how many get reclassified. What you cannot do is statistically go to the last column and assume that you're going to, in 15-16, be able to calculate that that is our percentage of reclassification. The state does a calculation that compares last year's kids. And so it does not equate statistically. They do a calculation at the State Department for that. But basically, it gives us an idea of what we're doing for reclass, and that will impact our accountability as it comes forward.

[9936] SPEAKER_22: So A through G completion, I think you had another report that had some of this information. So what we're seeing here is there is some concern, especially English language learners, special education, socioeconomic disadvantage, but I think And I think the slide we'll compile next is breakdown by ethnicity. So that's something we need to come back to. Let's go forward, and I'll come back and address this. Is there anything you want to add about this, though, before I go forward?

[9969] SPEAKER_14: The only thing I want to talk about for a second is the English language learners. And so when you look at the EL data, it can be very misleading at times, because When the EL students acquire their language level, we reclassify them, and then they don't show up in our data. So we do have Hispanic kids that are completing the A to G rate well, but your EL looks as if they're not achieving it. It's because we reclass them, and then they don't get counted into the count in that manner. So with that one, what you really want to do is go look and see how we're doing with our Hispanic population on that one. On this one here, oh, go ahead. On the stop signs, what we were doing is saying if we met our goal in the LCAP, we had the three goals. So when you look at goal two, we are out. We have a couple pieces of data that need to come in before we have a complete look at where we're at on our goal two. But what we do know is that we were able to Let's see. Attendance rates increased, and there was a significant increase to access in the mental, behavioral, and social supports. Suspension and expulsion remained steady, and our goal was that it was to decrease. So we didn't achieve our goal in that area just because we didn't see a decrease in the suspension and expulsions.

[10057] SPEAKER_22: Insurance is remaining relatively flat, but I think we also need to This is also telling if you look at it by ethnicity. This is just interesting information, but I think that we have to really look at how do we start improving attendance and maybe creating some incentives. I know that generally, truancy court is not a panacea or a silver bullet by any way, shape, or form. So we've got to think about how we engage students differently. Dropout rates. ELL is very concerning, certainly. We see some good news in SPED overall. It's interesting, I think, that we look at it by race. There's also some concerning information here. So as we start talking with the high school about creating an extended day and more interventions and building, as we say, a better ninth grader and having more ninth graders proceed on track onto 10th grade. That'll start impacting this. But as I said, this is baseline. So we're beginning to see this is our starting point. Middle school, relatively flat.

[10141] SPEAKER_14: Very almost inconsequential because it's really just 2%. When you look at it visually, you think there's more there. But the numbers are very small, to the point where some years we didn't even have any.

[10159] SPEAKER_22: High school dropout. Oh, I'm sorry. Graduation rates. I was still stuck on the other slide. This looks good. But when you compare this to the slide on A through G, it does raise the question of, is the rigor there? Are we really preparing kids? Are they getting enough minutes? Are we able to really prepare them for college? And that remains to be studied more. And we need to look more in depth at that. And I'm actually meeting with Adams County Office of Ed tomorrow to get further background data and detailed data on why that contrast is occurring. Why do we have such a lower percentage of kids A through G, yet we still have pretty high graduation rates?

[10204] SPEAKER_48: Did you ever check on this classification of the class?

[10207] SPEAKER_22: I am. That's part of the conversation tomorrow. Yes. So graduation rates here for Hispanics, when we look at this slide and you think about Hispanic and black, then you go back and look at the other slide of how low their performance was on A through G, that's where I'm digging deeper to find more background data to see what that is exactly.

[10237] SPEAKER_41: So 14-15, across the board, it shows a plus 95% for all. But overall, on the previous slide, it had us at 85%. So something is off.

[10249] SPEAKER_22: You know what happened to that? Was there a change in the calculation? Do you know, Janet?

[10254] SPEAKER_14: On the ethnicity one, which one are you referring to, the ethnicity?

[10258] SPEAKER_41: So in this current slide, if you just take 2014-2015 and you add up black, Hispanic, two or more, and white, By average, you're looking at at least over 95% graduation rate. But when you go back to two slides before, it only shows us at 85. Oh, yeah, go forward one. Only has us at 86%. So there's some data incongruencies there.

[10286] SPEAKER_22: There's some discrepancies. And we are digging deeper into that. But I wanted to at least get you something that gets approximate, and then we'll go deeper. That's not even close. No, no. But there's a problem there. That's not right. There's a problem.

[10301] SPEAKER_14: Yeah. We also didn't show all ethnicities. I chose on these charts to only do the largest five ethnicities, only for the fact that if we're going to make an action plan, we need to really start with our populations that are the greatest. you don't see a full smattering of all of our ethnicities.

[10325] SPEAKER_41: But the others won't bring up those. Not that statistically.

[10331] SPEAKER_22: So that's something we'll do in our debrief. I'd like to see it more by all ethnicities as well.

[10337] SPEAKER_14: Expulsion is not by percent. Those are just single digit numbers, only because the numbers were too small and percentage would be very misleading.

[10347] Nancy Thomas: It's a lot better than it was about five or 10 years ago.

[10351] SPEAKER_22: And I would say PBIS, PLCs has a big impact on that. Relatively no numbers still, but you still see of the groups, African-American, I would guess male probably the highest, but still it's numbers is better than percentage on that one. Want to walk through these?

[10380] SPEAKER_14: Goal three is really the Williams goal that talks about our facilities, our staffing, and staffing facilities and textbooks. And so all of the reports, the fit report doesn't really come out until a little later. So we're still waiting for the results for this year on this. And we are looking to expand that to the other schools as well. But pretty much, we have met compliance. And that's what this one is about is Have we done our sufficiency hearing? Do we have any misassignments? And are our facilities fit? Do we meet the state criteria on that? And we have outside people that come in and do the Williams visit, and they're the ones that do the rating on the fit report.

[10423] SPEAKER_41: So is that last column for this current year or last year?

[10425] SPEAKER_14: Yeah, for this current year.

[10427] SPEAKER_41: OK, that's a typo.

[10427] SPEAKER_22: Let's try to move quickly.

[10434] SPEAKER_41: I know it's late, but I think we're 16, 17, right? It's clear. We are 16, 17.

[10438] SPEAKER_14: And then on the parent involvement, we have, for parent involvement, we had done a survey. And if you take a look at that, the survey results have significantly changed every year in terms of participation. That really has to do with the methodology of how the different parent surveys have done. Mr. Sanchez is doing it different this year, so I think we'll have a much higher level of participation, and it will go back up. Last year, due to different factors, there was only a two-week window that it was done. The year before, there was a shift and it was done online. And the year before that, they had gone to every single open house and had the parents do a paper pencil. So we're getting different levels of participation. And I think this year, I'm looking forward, we'll have some good results when Mr. Sanchez gets his survey all reported.

[10487] SPEAKER_22: Let me speak to that briefly. Let me give you a short answer. Those surveys were very difficult. They were too long and cumbersome and really boring for parents. So I think it was approaching 100 questions.

[10503] SPEAKER_14: They were long. Yes.

[10505] SPEAKER_22: So that's part of what we're trying to consolidate and make it a little bit less brain damage for parents.

[10512] SPEAKER_41: For DLAC specifically. Right. But I would note another statistical anomaly or outlier, because 13-14, you have a 68% parent input, parent survey. that drops to 1% and then 6%. So is that accurate data that's being presented?

[10528] SPEAKER_14: Yes, that is accurate data. We have double checked it. And it goes to the methodology. So the 68% occurred the year that they went out to school sites. And on their open house, they sat there and got all the parents and did paper, pencil. Got it. So they had a very high level of participation. Then the next year, it went online. And it went online, and I'm not sure how long the window was open, but for quite a while. But it was online, and they were just asking people to go to the, you had to go into the website to do it. And then the last year, the one that was long and boring, also had a two-week. There was a very short window in which parents could participate. So that really created a lot of issue, too. So it really is true data. It just really goes to show how much your methodology can really impact your parent participation rate.

[10578] Nancy Thomas: And then I remember in 2013-14, when you did have it at the open houses, there was a very uneven response from school to school. Because some schools, and it really goes down, I think, to the principal and the staff at the school reaching out to the parents and encouraging them. Because we had great numbers from Lincoln And then other elementary schools had very low participation percentages compared to Lincoln. So I think we need to recognize the principals that are doing a good job and encourage more of that reaching out to parents.

[10618] SPEAKER_14: I agree with you. Even last year, we saw a big difference in participation. And there were a couple of principals that had done a very creative, great job in there. And their participation was much, much higher. So you are right. You've got to give kudos to the principals, because they really make it happen. Did you want to say anything else on this slide?

[10642] SPEAKER_22: No. We're good? OK. Let's try to move quickly. I know everybody's getting on the rope.

[10647] SPEAKER_14: Goal five, yes, we met our goals. This has to do with AP, and this is unduplicated. Students counts being able to increase taking and passing the AP exam. And we won that award last year because of our participation and our participation with a wide variety of students participating. Here is some data on it. And again, we did it first of all by subgroups, and then we're doing it by our ethnic groups. And that pretty much wraps up the report.

[10681] SPEAKER_22: Thank you. Any questions? Further questions from the board? We're still doing a debrief. No, we've got to ping the questions. Yeah, we've got to validate a lot of data still.

[10686] SPEAKER_41: Oh, I'm sorry. No, I was right. Thank you.

[10688] Leonor Rebosura: OK.

[10692] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Excellent report.

[10694] SPEAKER_22: Thank you, Janet. And Dr. Hilberg, who prepared that.

[10700] Ray Rodriguez: OK, we move into consent agenda. Item A, personal items. We got item A1. Need a motion. Move to approve. Okay, member Nguyen, member Thomas, it's open for voting.

[10721] SPEAKER_43: Member Crocker? I just, there we go. Okay, excellent.

[10728] Ray Rodriguez: Motion passes five ayes, student member wouldn't vote on this and she left. She stayed a long time, which is great. Personal item A2, appointment of special education director. I move to approve. Need a motion and a second. I move to approve. Second. Moves, member Crocker seconds. Member Grisiello.

[10762] SPEAKER_43: Thank you.

[10766] Ray Rodriguez: Motion passes, five ayes. Item eight three approval of temp FTE for operations and safety supervisor in a motion and a second. I'll move to approve. Member Nguyen moves. Member Crocker seconds. Motion passes. Five ayes, unanimous, thank you. Superintendent, could you make the announcement about our new special ed director please or Leti?

[10806] SPEAKER_22: Do you have a name, Leti?

[10809] SPEAKER_38: Yes, I'm very happy to announce that after a panel interview and a final round, we do have a director for special education. Her name is Jennifer Willis and she will be joining us as soon as we can make arrangements. She is currently a director of special education in our neighborhood district. And as soon as we can get her on board, we will bring her to the board to introduce her and we'll get an announcement out to all of staff tomorrow morning. Thank you.

[10837] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you for hanging in there. This has been a long process and we're going to bring Charlene back to thank her for, OK, that'd be great. And Mr. O'Bannon, you didn't do very much. I think Charlene did most of it. Thank you. And she's gonna stay on until, for it, is there gonna be a transition time?

[10862] SPEAKER_38: Yes, she is almost done with time, but Ms. Okamoto has been working diligently and we will do a transition, absolutely.

[10869] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, we go to item B, non-personnel items. Oh, and you will bring her to the next meeting on the 20th, right? Non-personnel items, item B1, resolution number 2034, unity. By recursive of board member resolution number 2034 on unity will be brought forward. It is recommended the board adopt the resolution. So I need a motion and a second and then I'm going to ask Frankie to read it.

[10897] SPEAKER_43: Hold on.

[10899] Ray Rodriguez: A move to approve. Member Thomas, move to approve.

[10901] SPEAKER_41: We're doing the discussion after the move because I'd like to pull it for discussion on this.

[10905] SPEAKER_52: Yeah. I'll second.

[10906] Ray Rodriguez: Member Brucella seconds. Please vote.

[10910] Kat Jones: Wait, what?

[10910] SPEAKER_52: No, he wants to do the discussion.

[10911] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, I'm sorry. Read the resolution. OK.

[10913] SPEAKER_52: No, he wants us to discuss it.

[10915] Ray Rodriguez: OK, great. All right, let's discuss it.

[10918] SPEAKER_41: OK. So thank you for the board member who brought this up. I agree with the overall message of equity and unity and treating everyone with equality and respect and whatnot. I feel that the resolution has some language in there that is very specific and I think may go counter to, to the the, the notion of healing. And I think everyone on this board has, has stated in a board meeting publicly, publicly and privately that, that they're all for equity and, and unity and, and, and whatnot. However, I do have some reservations about some very specific language within that resolution. And I'd like to, to, to still convey the same message. But perhaps take a more neutral stance on, on the overall message, if that makes sense.

[10975] SPEAKER_48: The third item.

[10977] Ray Rodriguez: Cool. Member Crocker, your question?

[10979] SPEAKER_48: I was wondering if he was talking about the third stanza.

[10983] SPEAKER_41: Let me look at, let me pull up, there's, there's two areas that were, I had concerns about. And I believe one is the, the. the third, the third, the third part and then the sixth stanza has, has items in there that to me are, are very, there's a, there's a, there's a phrase for it, it's called an echo chamber of things that we've commonly heard. And then the last item, where it's, that we commit to building bridges and not, not walls. And again, that's very specific towards a particular message. Again, I don't, you know, I applaud the message. I totally support what we're trying to convey. I would just like to see it expressed in a different way.

[11053] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. I personally like it the way it is. And member Purcell, would you like to address member Nguyen's concerns?

[11059] SPEAKER_52: Sure. I just wanted to see if you had suggestions for specific language because I think I want to know what suggestions you would have for specific language.

[11074] SPEAKER_41: »: I think a starting point would be removing not walls. Because like I said, it is a very specific statement that we are making, right?

[11082] SPEAKER_52: »: I think that is part of the whole message in terms of building those bridges.

[11090] Ray Rodriguez: »: Member Thomas?

[11094] Nancy Thomas: For example, number three, there is this sense of fear among certain groups, real sense of fear. I think to water down the language is to not recognize that something is really wrong and terrible that's happening in our country right now, and for us to speak out against the things that are wrong and hurtful and not helpful. is a good thing. I think we should do that.

[11125] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah. Whether we agree or disagree, it's there. And I like acknowledging it and dealing with it head on.

[11136] SPEAKER_41: I'd just like for us to take a more neutral stance, that we can advocate for all these things that we value as a board and as an institution, but not have it be so... Because I think, in a way, this can add to the notion of divisiveness.

[11152] Ray Rodriguez: I don't agree, but that's fine. You have a right to have your own opinion on it. Anyone else?

[11157] SPEAKER_52: I guess I'm just wondering in terms of, because obviously, if we want to make a stance, it would be good to make a stance, all of us, not some of us. That's the whole point. But in terms of, that's why I ask, what types of specific language? Because there's a point in terms of, I think, making a mess, but I don't want to be too neutral from my perspective. then it takes away from the actual message of promoting tolerance and respect as opposed to what's been out there as a real sense of fear in many communities. So if you have specific suggestions for language that we could discuss, I think that would be a starting point.

[11200] SPEAKER_41: Can we bring this back with you and I work on a second draft of this?

[11207] SPEAKER_48: I'm ready to roll it out. Is it timely enough? Is there a time factor to it?

[11212] SPEAKER_52: No, I mean, it's more of, I guess, the timeliness would be figuring out if we can't make a stance of right now in terms of where our values are, then can we make that stance two weeks from now or a month from now?

[11228] SPEAKER_41: But there's not a question of values. We all know where we stand on our values. It's how we state the values.

[11233] SPEAKER_52: Sure, and that's why if we can figure out crafting, if there's certain things that you want to remove, now or kind of tweak, I think we can have that discussion. Because if you said the message is, you appreciate the message, then like what specific, right?

[11254] SPEAKER_41: So, so if, if we're reading this from the very top, whereas it is the mission of the unit, Newark Unified School District is to inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and response with respect to productivism. Great, that's perfect, right? There's nothing Whereas Newark Unified School District is comprised of students, parents, staff, and residents that belong to diverse racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. Perfect, that's just a statement. The current national climate has been filled with hateful rhetoric, attacking various groups of people, and has created a sense of fear. To me, that's borderline.

[11288] Ray Rodriguez: But I can live with that. Okay, so you don't want to make changes there. You're okay with that?

[11293] SPEAKER_41: Let me just go through the whole thing. Whereas the Newark Unified School District has a long history of working with everyone to support the success of our students and the uplifting of our community. Perfect. There's nothing wrong with that. One of our nation's founding fathers, the Declaration of Independence, affirms the self-evident truth that all people are created equal. Sure. Therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Education of the Newark Unified School District would treat everyone equally and not tolerate bullism, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia. I think that string of words is parroting a lot of the phraseology of what's pervasive within the current zeitgeist of our culture right now, right?

[11342] Ray Rodriguez: Because it's... So how would you change that, Tom? What recommendation would you make to...

[11353] SPEAKER_41: Why don't we just leave it at treat everyone equally? Why do we need to stay bullying? Because when we treat everyone equally, we're not, we're saying that, I mean, we're treating everyone, you know, without bullying, without racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia. I mean, you can add a ton of other phobias to this line, right?

[11370] SPEAKER_52: So then my suggestion would be, what about treat everyone equally? But to make the point, though, that we're not going to tolerate. So not tolerate bullying and any form of discrimination against our students and community.

[11381] SPEAKER_41: Sure, that's fine. But omit the phobias and the isms, because there's a lot of that words being parroted all around everywhere. And then further, it'd be resolved that we not compromise our values and continue to maintain a safe space. Again, that phrase is controversial, the safe space issue. Where all ethnicities, languages, cultures, and religions are accepted and affirmed, that hate is unacceptable. Again, you're repeating the previous stanza of the core message is treating everyone with equity and respect. And then on the last one, that we commit to building bridges, not walls, that will engage in productive discourse to heal our nation and unite our community in order to address the fact that injustice to one on the basis of hate is injustice to all. I mean, that word hate, again,

[11440] SPEAKER_52: I guess I don't see we're against hate, any type of hate, right? Right. On any side. So to me, I don't see now how that's an issue in terms of the hate piece or the safe space either for that. So I can see in terms of, therefore, the first, therefore, say we will not tolerate any form of discrimination against our students and community. Because for me, in terms of the next one, I mean, what else would you call it? Like you want to create a space that is safe for everyone. I don't see that.

[11480] Ray Rodriguez: I think we're just expressing what we're already doing. And that's what we're about when you're in education.

[11487] SPEAKER_52: That's what I was trying to get at.

[11489] SPEAKER_41: It's just strange to me that that vernacular of safe space in my 20 years of education, when you describe a school setting, you describe as a nurturing, a supportive environment. Nurturing positive environment. Supporting, nurturing positive space environment and not necessarily safe space. It's just a new terminology.

[11511] SPEAKER_52: So then maintain a safe environment. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Because that's. That's fine with me. Yeah.

[11518] SPEAKER_41: Yeah. That works because then it doesn't, you know. Okay.

[11521] SPEAKER_52: That's okay. So then maybe we go back so then, I don't know if this is being, so we can figure out in terms So it would be the first, therefore, to be resolved, and not tolerate, and then it says not tolerate bullying, and then scratch up from racism all the way to xenophobia, and put any form of discrimination against our students and community.

[11546] SPEAKER_48: I think if you're going to put bullying in, you need to put the other items. talking about, you now tolerate any discrimination. If you're going to specify that, then the other things need to be specified too.

[11562] SPEAKER_41: But I don't think we're not specifying bullying though, are we?

[11566] SPEAKER_52: Oh yeah, I had said not tolerate bullying, but so you're saying not tolerate any form of discrimination against our students. Right.

[11571] Nancy Thomas: Okay. Well I thought you were leaving bullying in.

[11574] SPEAKER_52: I had said bullying, but no.

[11575] SPEAKER_48: I think that if I mean, I'm for the list as far as that goes, but I think if we eliminate the list, we eliminate the list.

[11583] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, I'm for the list too, but bullying is at the essence of what we don't like.

[11588] Nancy Thomas: I think bullying kind of is the form of that oftentimes students express racism, sexism, homophobia.

[11601] SPEAKER_48: It can be subtle, but bullying is an issue that we have in schools. There's no doubt about that. But it is certainly not the only issue. And if we're talking about making people feel comfortable that are diverse, then bullying is part of it.

[11619] SPEAKER_52: Maybe I can see how it's separate. So it's like bullying and any form of discrimination, because any discrimination would encompass those types of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, as opposed to bullying is not essentially this type of discrimination, right? It's people being mean for the section.

[11636] Nancy Thomas: So it's different. And it's a focus of our district.

[11639] SPEAKER_41: So let me take five steps back here. Don't we have an equity policy in board policy committed or?

[11651] SPEAKER_22: I looked today. We do not have a specific equity policy. I think we do need to recommend. There is equity spoken to in the Because I remember. In the values of the board. Right. And I can get it here for you quickly, actually. But as far as equity policy, no. But there is speaking to equity in the values and mission of the district. So it is there. It's present there. I'll find it.

[11677] SPEAKER_52: So even if we haven't, though, I think this is making a statement of where we stand as a board. And in light of this current hurtful rhetoric that's been created, it's us taking a stance that that is not okay with us. Just like we've taken stances and other resolutions on not having the, the oil trains come through our community and other resolutions supporting various things. This is us taking a stance, um, like formally.

[11712] SPEAKER_41: Right. And, and, and where I, again, this is where I feel we, we turn to murky water is, is I would like us to take a stand on principle and not necessarily on politics. And it seems like in the original context of this resolution, we're certainly choosing a stand on politics versus the essence of the message. I'm all for the message. I just wanted to phrase it a little bit differently.

[11735] SPEAKER_52: I guess for me, to me, it's not politics. It's values. To me, when you talk about politics, you can talk about the specific policies or issues that are going on. But for me, the values of of standing up for everyone, irrespective of your background. And that hasn't been created in this environment. And I think it's important for us to take a stance that we support everyone. And it's not OK to have that type of dialogue. And this is just a statement that we're saying, this is where we stand. But I mean, so I'm OK with. breaking it down in terms of what we were doing, but if you're now saying that you're against the whole... No, no, no.

[11787] SPEAKER_41: It's just... No, I mean, we can move forward with this, but like I said, I like to augment the phrasing so that we keep integrity to the message that we're trying to convey, which is treating everyone with the equality, respect, support and nurture our students. But I guess we shouldn't use phrasing that, you know, that to me seems obvious. That makes people uncomfortable. Yeah, it makes people uncomfortable. It makes us put a stance.

[11822] Ray Rodriguez: You want to make a person uncomfortable.

[11824] SPEAKER_52: That's not what we want. But for me, a safe space is a safe space. But safe environment, that's fine.

[11833] SPEAKER_41: You're still saying the same thing and that's okay with me for me Yeah, it's about a safe nurturing environment is something that we've used in academia as far as describing what we want to achieve So we're therefore resolved.

[11843] SPEAKER_52: We were the first one we were done second one Maintain a safe environment and then you're you're okay with the rest, right?

[11851] SPEAKER_41: Well, I think this is language cultures and religions are accepted and from the hate is unacceptable. Okay.

[11857] SPEAKER_52: Okay, and then the next one that's this is probably the most What is that? That we commit to building bridges, not walls.

[11868] Ray Rodriguez: And what's wrong with that?

[11870] SPEAKER_48: Walls is the bridge.

[11872] Ray Rodriguez: Walls? We're committing to building bridges, not walls.

[11880] SPEAKER_41: Again, in the discourse of academic vernacular, walls has never come up. So what's another term? if that was. What are we building bridges to? Obstacles? No, what are we building bridges to? What are we trying to convey?

[11897] Ray Rodriguez: You're building bridges.

[11899] SPEAKER_41: We usually say we build community, right? That we strive to build community or respect and whatnot.

[11905] SPEAKER_48: Commit to building bridges between communities. Right. That's fine. And we have a productive discourse.

[11909] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, we have so many different cultures and everything. I'm good with that. And we're building bridges to bring people together.

[11914] SPEAKER_41: Sure. OK? So we commit to building bridges to connect our diverse communities together.

[11925] Ray Rodriguez: Not obstacles. Or do you want to put, what do you think, Frankie?

[11930] SPEAKER_52: For me, I know, so this is one of the ones, like the other ones I'm okay with, but this is one of the ones in terms of, yeah, we want to commit to building bridges, not walls. And in light of the, again, the current rhetoric that's out there of having a safe space for people. A safe environment. or safe environment.

[11952] Ray Rodriguez: So what's your understanding of what a wall is? To me, a wall is something that prevents somebody from moving forward. You don't want to have walls.

[11964] SPEAKER_41: No, no, no. Don't go insulting our audience with that. No. Because the thing is that that wall in this election cycle is a very charged word.

[11974] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, but you're making it political. We're not talking about an election cycle.

[11976] SPEAKER_41: I'm making it a political. I'm trying to make it not political.

[11980] Ray Rodriguez: We're talking about kids in our system, OK? We're committed to not having walls that prevent them from moving forward, OK?

[11991] SPEAKER_41: Obstacles. In your 24 years on this board, when has that word walls to represent obstacles that students face have been used?

[12000] SPEAKER_52: It's been used a lot. So if you put that we commit to building bridges, not obstacles, and we'll engage in productive, then you will be OK with moving forward.

[12009] SPEAKER_41: I don't see why that obstacle needs to be in there. I think what member Crocker stated is fine. That we commit to building bridges to connect our diverse communities. But what's wrong with obstacles if we're not using them? We're not eliminating obstacles. You're not using them.

[12021] SPEAKER_52: Obstacles is fine. So then that way it'd be a compromise for you. Okay. Okay. So it'd be, we commit to building bridges, not obstacles, and we'll engage in productive discourse to heal our nation and unite our community in order to address the fact that an injustice to one on the basis of hate is an injustice to all.

[12048] SPEAKER_48: We're saying what we are doing, what is important to us, not what is not important or what is evil to us. Exactly, exactly. And I don't know if that's the tone of the movie. Can I offer some language? Because of all these things, we are building, we want to build connections between peoples. And we'll engage in productive discourse to heal our nation and unite our community, to address the fact that injustice to one on the basis of hate is injustice to all.

[12084] SPEAKER_52: And I'd say for on either side, I don't hear anyone hate. Absolutely. Hate is hate. So that's it for me. Like now, to me, you can't say that the word hate is political, because that has a defined meaning.

[12096] SPEAKER_48: If we say building connections between peoples.

[12099] SPEAKER_22: Can I offer a suggestion? Please. We commit to building bridges. and interrupting the barriers that prevent us from engaging in productive discourse, something along those lines maybe. Part of what I, one of the first things I told principals that is important to me based on what the board told me was important to them was it's their job to interrupt inequity and it's their job to interrupt racism and all the isms in the laundry list there, but it's their job to ensure that all kids have a safe, nurturing learning environment in which to attend school. So maybe there's a way to just turn the phrase of, you know, we commit to building bridges and removing barriers or interrupting barriers to success. Maybe there's a way somewhere in there to approximate a statement. I think interrupting it, because it's a call to interrupt When a kid is feeling like that, it's a call to leadership to interrupt it. I think there's something in the word interrupt that resonates with me. I think it's kind of behind the spirit of what you're after as well.

[12172] SPEAKER_52: OK, so then, that we commit to building bridges and interrupting barriers to success. That doesn't sound right.

[12181] SPEAKER_48: And interrupt barriers to a productive discourse.

[12187] SPEAKER_22: How about interrupting inequity when when we see it. Maybe that's a better way to say it. I don't know.

[12195] Ray Rodriguez: Well, a barrier prevents our children from achieving what we're saying that they have a right to achieve.

[12202] SPEAKER_22: I could be more direct in saying.

[12205] SPEAKER_41: Yeah, I've seen a lot of interrupting. Limiting barriers to success.

[12209] SPEAKER_22: Deficit thinking about our students and community. How about that? That's what it is. We're committed to interrupting deficit thinking about students and community that we serve. Something like that, maybe, I don't know.

[12222] Ray Rodriguez: Well, this is not easy, naturally, because you've got five different opinions, and each one of us has faced, you know, I've done nothing my whole life and break down walls and barriers, and each one of us has different, you know, experience in that, and whether we face that or not. But I like what Frankie has done, and I, okay, but, you know, We're trying to work it out to where we can get, you want a whole five?

[12251] SPEAKER_52: Because that's the whole point. I mean, yeah, we could get three and get it done, but the whole point is to be united on this.

[12260] Ray Rodriguez: I think we're united that we want our kids to succeed and we want to eliminate anything that prevents them from succeeding.

[12265] SPEAKER_52: So do you like the word barriers over obstacles? So then building bridges, not barriers?

[12270] SPEAKER_41: I would say building bridges and removing barriers. that impede upon our students' success or removing barriers that prevent our students from being successful.

[12278] SPEAKER_52: And removing barriers that prevent our students from being successful.

[12284] Nancy Thomas: Yeah. And will engage in productive discourse.

[12293] SPEAKER_48: I like the fact that to address the fact that injustice to one on the basis of hate isn't just at all. That's very powerful and should stay.

[12304] SPEAKER_52: So if that's the only piece, is everyone OK with that?

[12307] SPEAKER_48: I can live with that. So we can commit to building bridges.

[12310] SPEAKER_52: So in terms of the language that we're going over, do you want us to repeat some of it, or is that typed up? I think you need to.

[12322] SPEAKER_22: Let's track it one more time, and I think we're getting close to the end. OK. Is somebody typing? Do we have a Word document? Okay, you want to read back where we are? We're okay all the way through four, I believe.

[12335] SPEAKER_52: One, two, three, four, five, six. So the first one was, therefore be it resolved on the first one. And we're going to put where it says treat everyone equally and not tolerate bullying. And then we're going to strike racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia.

[12355] SPEAKER_41: I thought we were going to strike bullying, too. I think bullying.

[12357] SPEAKER_48: We will not tolerate any discrimination against our students. I thought you said because bullying was separate. I know.

[12362] SPEAKER_52: So it was going to be not tolerate bullying and any form of discrimination against our students. Yeah, I like to have bullying instead.

[12368] SPEAKER_48: Or any.

[12369] SPEAKER_52: Or any, yes.

[12370] SPEAKER_48: Or any. Right. Okay.

[12372] Bowen Zhang: So.

[12372] SPEAKER_22: So bullying or any form.

[12374] SPEAKER_52: So bullying or any form of discrimination against our students and community. You okay with that? Yeah.

[12378] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, Tom's okay.

[12379] SPEAKER_52: Two, three, four, five, six. And the next one, seven, further resolved. It's maintain a safe space, change space to environment.

[12388] SPEAKER_41: I would say safe, nurturing environment for our students, right?

[12395] SPEAKER_48: Well, I think it describes what it is over there. I think that's fine. Safe environment is fine.

[12400] SPEAKER_52: And then the one under that, the further resolved, it was that we commit to building bridges and then striking not walls and removing barriers that prevent our students from being successful. Engaging and productive. And leaving the rest, right? Yeah, and leave the rest. Go and engaging. Oh, I'm sorry. And engaging and productive.

[12425] SPEAKER_47: And will engage.

[12426] SPEAKER_48: No, the students are engaged, we're talking about. No.

[12430] SPEAKER_52: Everyone.

[12431] SPEAKER_06: We're committing to this. We are.

[12433] SPEAKER_52: Yeah. So that we can. So let's read the text.

[12436] SPEAKER_22: You want to try reading it back to us? Can you read it back from the beginning from the top?

[12446] SPEAKER_44: So, the first change was in the Senate State Charter, therefore be it resolved, is that right? That the Board of Education of Newark Unified School District will treat everyone equally and not tolerate bullying or any form of discrimination against our students and the community. And then, Further resolve that we will not compromise our values and will continue to maintain a safe environment where all ethnicities, languages, cultures, and religions are accepted and affirmed that hate is unacceptable. Further resolve that we commit to building bridges and removing barriers that prevent our students from being successful and will engage in productive discourse to heal our nation and unite our community in order to address the fact that an injustice to one on the basis of hate is an injustice to all.

[12499] SPEAKER_52: So with those changes, we have them. So we're going to make those changes to the motion. And then we will.

[12508] Ray Rodriguez: OK, so who's going to make the motion based on the changes?

[12510] SPEAKER_52: There's already a motion and a second. So we have to agree.

[12514] Nancy Thomas: I will take away my previous motion. And I will say that we accept the resolution with the amendments stated.

[12527] SPEAKER_52: And I second that.

[12528] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, Frankie seconds. Okay, please vote. Okay. Motion passes, five ayes. Okay, before we move on, no, I'll wait. B2, minutes of the regular board meeting of October 4th. I need a motion and a second.

[12549] SPEAKER_43: I move the exemptions. I'll second. Okay.

[12557] Ray Rodriguez: Please vote. Motion passes. I think. Those were five ayes. Thank you. Board comments on consent agenda items. I just have a quick comment. Anybody else?

[12574] SPEAKER_52: I just want to say thank you for all the board members for really taking a stance in terms of supporting the resolution of creating a safe environment and a place where everyone feels welcome in light of what's happening in the world.

[12592] Ray Rodriguez: I too would like to, I'm sorry, go ahead.

[12594] SPEAKER_41: I said thank you for the flexibility because I think we achieved the message that we were trying to convey without jumping into some potentially hot water.

[12606] Ray Rodriguez: I don't necessarily agree with that, but I do appreciate the fact that they were able to work through that. Thank you, Member Preciado, for your time in putting it together and thank you for the whole board. We don't have to agree on everything and we can have constructive dialogue even though it might seem like we're at odds with each other, it's what we do. But bottom line, when you really look at each one of us, we're in it for the kids. We might disagree on how to get there, but the message is we're on the board because we love kids and we want the best for our kids and our community. Member Crocker.

[12647] SPEAKER_48: I just want to thank Ms. Anderball for the format of the minutes. I think that they are excellent and I appreciate all the work that's gone into getting where we are, so thank you.

[12658] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Employee Organizations, CSCA. Thank you for waiting. I almost forgot what I was going to say. Hey, if we only go to one meeting in the future, this might be what happens all the time.

[12671] SPEAKER_40: I actually wasn't going to say too much, and then I got involved, and I was going to say all this, and God knows what I'm going to say now. So hello, President Rodriguez and our trustees and Superintendent Sanchez and executive board. I would first like to congratulate our members in their continued positions for the next four years. I also ran unopposed and will be running with you as the president of CSCA again this fall. So I'm not letting go of letting you go. So we'll be working together. OK. I would also like to thank Ms. Leticia Salinas for the negotiations with CSCA. I think we're moving forward. We've only had two sessions, but we've actually booked some more dates, and I'm looking forward to getting to a point where we can resolve some things on that. I would like to thank Superintendent Sanchez for your due diligence in reaching out to the community and both the Newark community as well as the district community and finding out what are the positive changes that we need for here. I think it's very important that we do become, you know, have that unity across the board for everybody. Everybody has an option. Everybody has choices. Everybody needs to feel important with what our decisions are made. There's a couple things I want to say, but I don't know if I can say them. So I will ask before I mention them. One being, can I mention anything about the playground structure? Or do I have to wait till the 20th? When you have a, can I say something? You can, but we've already pretty much committed to it. No, it's on the agenda. Can I say something in regards to it?

[12803] Ray Rodriguez: Well, you're supposed to wait, but that's fine. It's fine. I'm trying. I'm considering what I'm doing.

[12810] SPEAKER_40: Okay, I want to I want to bring up the point of the fact that we're talking about a playground structure that has been in disarray for several years and As you know, I work in the maintenance department. It seems like I always come up and talk about the maintenance department Because I'm constantly Trying to build that department and get more help and more people in there. We need people to maintain this district. And as many things as you want here, we don't have the manpower to do this. Why I say the playground structures is it's frustrating when I hear things like, you don't know that we've had these playground structure issues for years. Because we've been fighting to get them fixed and replaced for years. And there's usually no money, or we're trying to, like Mr. Richard said, we're trying to see the best ways we can to see if we can fix them. But what you don't know is that we cannot fix them, regardless of the fact that they're antique kind of equipment. They are playground equipment and safety issues that we can only touch if we're certified repair people for the playground equipment. We spend so much money on items at this district, but we don't certify our people to maintain the equipment we have. So you're going to look at new equipment, and we're going to be back to square one. Of course, we'll have warranties and stuff, but you need to really certify the employees that are here to maintain the equipment that you have to fix. We cannot keep spending money. We spend so much money on outside services because we don't train the people we have to do what needs to be done in-house. There's no reason we can't do things in-house. It's hard to do it when you only have five people doing it, but if those people were trained to do certain things, you'd save a heck of a lot of money just by having them serve. So that's something I think when you're looking at these new structures, and I think they should all be replaced throughout the whole district, but there are these three schools that are probably the most damaged, and all we can do is border them up because we can't do anything to fix them. We don't want the kids scared. But I think an important thing, and when you're deciding these things, we tend to decide what to spend, how to spend it, and how to prioritize it based on who comes up to this podium and says, this is what's important. It's like our IT. I love Larry's presentation. He always comes up with a fantastic presentation. And luckily, we have funds that come in to cut it down so much. But again, we're looking at manpower that needs to maintain this stuff. But we constantly get hit with, I can't do manpower because our enrollment is down. But we find money to get outside contractors to do the work that we need in here. So there's got to be a balance some way to make things work for this district. So we could stop spending money frivolously, as far as I'm concerned. As much money as we spend, we waste money. And that's where we have to stop. We have to start thinking about the people we have working here, to keep them here, and to train them to maintain the equipment so that we can make the school safe for our kids. and make the things we're looking at. We're looking at, what, a half a million dollars to maintain an IT program. That's crazy. But that's the way of our life. That's what we need for school. But we need to look beyond what it cost us to get it. Because we could bring it in. Unless we can maintain it and keep it going, it's going to cost us a lot more. So those are some of the things that I feel. And I'm always going, when we talk about equity, We're always going to HR or, you know, our employee relations. Leticia will tell you, we're always fighting for people's positions, to bring positions in. There may not be the number of students you want in here, but the work never went away. And people need to do that work. And we need to bring people up to par so we can actually pay them and keep them going for the work that we have. I think that will eliminate a lot what we send outside instead of worrying about, you know, the people we have home. Anyway, just a couple things I had to say, and I do want to say that we're going to miss Shelly. Shelly is the part-time person you're trying to hire until she actually retires in June, the operations and safety supervisor. She's been here for almost 30 years. She will be missed. And on December the 15th, we will have cake and punch for her here. So please, if you haven't gotten the invitation, please give me an RSVP that you'll come and just come and say goodbye. And we will probably, I'm going to be, not probably, I will set up a retirement party for her as it gets closer to her actual date. But she'll be gone for six months. So we need that help. And the other thing I have to say is CSCA is having their party on Monday the 12th. And you are all invited. Some of you have already RSVPed. If you haven't, let me know. And we can put you on the list. With that said, hopefully I'll see you all on the 20th. And if not, everybody have a nice holiday. Thanks.

[13167] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you very much. OK, next would be NTA. But we have someone that filled out, but they didn't put their name. So. Just NTA, yeah. Right. So NTA, you want to come up? I'm already here. OK, thanks. I appreciate it. That's OK. You don't have to fill out one of the forms. You just, we just. Oh, right.

[13190] SPEAKER_56: You're set. Thank you. Last month, many of our students and families woke up to a nation they hardly recognized. Students as young as kindergarten have voiced fears that they would be sent away from a city and school that they love, or that they would lose family members because of an election they had no control over. School boards like LAUSD have announced that they would fight to the fullest extent of the law to keep their student, parent, and staff information safe from agencies that would harm them under orders from an incoming administration. San Francisco Unified stated that they would not permit agents of Immigration Customs Enforcement to come onto campus without being accompanied by district leadership. I think we can all agree that our students deserve to feel welcome in a safe learning environment. In the interest of keeping Newark Unified School District a safe and welcoming place for families, the association requests that similar language be placed for endorsement on an upcoming agenda.

[13243] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, if you wanna share that with the superintendent, I'm sure we can work it, thank you. Appreciate it. Okay, anyone else? NEWMA? Okay, we move to new business item A, appointment of member to the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee. I need a motion and a second. I move to second. Member Crocker moves, member Nguyen seconds. Open for voting. Okay, yes. Okay. Motion passes, five ayes. Superintendent, if you can ask the individual maybe to come to the next meeting so we can introduce them. Are they here? OK. You want to? Lenny, would you? You want someone to introduce?

[13291] SPEAKER_22: Is Cindy here?

[13294] Ray Rodriguez: That's OK. You're here.

[13295] SPEAKER_22: You've been here a while. Cindy, is this CBOC? Yeah.

[13301] Ray Rodriguez: You want to come up and introduce yourself if you don't mind? I remember.

[13308] SPEAKER_22: We did, I think we did amend the agenda.

[13312] Ray Rodriguez: Let me look. So you have 30 seconds to tell us everything about yourself.

[13316] SPEAKER_22: Let me clarify the agenda component. He will be completing the balance of the July 1 to June 30th term. He will be starting effective tomorrow once the board accepts. But I wanted to, Cindy, would you introduce him? And I read a little bit of your history and your story and what you've done. You served in the military? Coast Guard. In the Coast Guard. And thank you for your service. Thank you. I think that's important. But just wanted to clarify that This will be completing this term, but he will be starting once he's acted on on the board.

[13360] Ray Rodriguez: We already did. Thank you. Welcome. We're happy that you decided to set, you know, put some of your private time aside to, you know, be on that committee. We really appreciate it.

[13376] SPEAKER_21: Well, you'll probably hear from me a few times along the way. Uh, I'm new to the community. I've been here about six years. Um, I've been witness to the small area of the school that immediately it touches me. My daughter's a student at Lincoln right now. And, uh, you know, I've been trying to locate the time and the effort to become invested in this community. And I think this is a first step in this direction. So I welcome the chance to be able to work with you folks to forward. And I also congratulations to Councilor Preciado. Welcome to the club, sir. And, you know, I hope to see everybody out there and I want to try and bring in inputs from folks that I meet in the city as well and try and get another gateway of information to you guys if that's all right.

[13429] Ray Rodriguez: I'm sure your presence on the committee will be appreciated and welcome by all. Thank you. Okay, then we go to Item B, Resolution Number 2032, Accounting and Development Fees. Move to approve. Member Nguyen moves.

[13449] Nancy Thomas: I'll second.

[13450] Ray Rodriguez: Member Thomas seconds. Discussion? Okay, please vote. Motion passes. Five ayes, thank you. Item C, approval of form J13-A, attendance waiver. Move to approve. Member Nguyen moves. Second. Member Crocker seconds. Open for voting. Motion passes five ayes, thank you. Item D, place structure safety replacement. I need a motion and a second. Member Crocker moves.

[13499] SPEAKER_41: Right, so let's clarify this.

[13501] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, I was hoping to make a motion.

[13506] Ray Rodriguez: OK, Member Thomas, you want to make the motion instead?

[13509] SPEAKER_48: OK, we have a second on the motion as it is.

[13512] Nancy Thomas: There is no motion as it is. I have moved.

[13515] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, she's moved. Do you want to take back your motion?

[13517] Nancy Thomas: No.

[13518] SPEAKER_48: You beat me to it. Well, if you'd like to discuss it, we can modify it. What you want to change?

[13528] Ray Rodriguez: Did you want to change anything, or she beat you to making the motion, is that the problem?

[13532] Nancy Thomas: Well, I wanted to expand the motion.

[13534] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, go ahead, expand the motion.

[13535] Nancy Thomas: Well, no.

[13536] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, we need a second. We need a second first. I second it. Sure. You want to expand the motion?

[13542] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, I think after visiting the schools today and seeing the condition of all of the play structures, I think, first of all, I'm not sure which four structures, because I think our slate of removal, but certainly they need to be removed. So I think the action or the action I'd like to see this board take is to remove those structures and not only replace the structures we remove, but repair and renovate all of the place structures in the district that need repair and renovation. And that would mean that when staff comes back to us with the details, they will have a list so that we don't have problems that have existed for two years staying while we have these brand new four place structures, but the others are broken. There's no swings. These are things that can be repaired. And even one of the ones that was fenced off, if it's possible to repair and replace, it's not an obsolete, it's a relatively new structure. So I would like to see it, see us approve a motion that it's comprehensive, that we are replacing, removing and replacing the four structures along with renovating all of and repairing all of the, all of the place structures that need renovating and repairing. And this is a Measure G item. We've got $12 million in Measure G. And that will be coming to us. By the time they can plan that, we will already have looked at other priorities as well.

[13673] SPEAKER_52: So even though I agree with that, my only question would be, So what if the cost is $14 million and we don't have it? There's no cost.

[13682] SPEAKER_41: It's $50,000 times seven schools, so about $400,000 max. OK.

[13686] SPEAKER_52: Yeah, we're not talking about huge numbers. OK, I don't know.

[13689] Nancy Thomas: No, it may be more than that. I predict it will be more than that.

[13695] SPEAKER_41: So are there playground structures that were installed at a later date than all the others? or are they all pretty much the same age and they're just the level of wear is different?

[13704] SPEAKER_26: No, it varies from site to site. Perhaps what we could agendize for a future meeting when I can have Vince here with me, we'll put together an inventory of the structures and the status of what came out of the inspection reports that were done because all the schools were inspected. So we'll put together a sort of an inventory report and come back with the board with a projected repair slash replacement cost site by site so that we can have a fuller discussion about it. These four as far as the removals were just because they were a safety priority. So, we'll bring back at a future meeting the comprehensive list of the status of all the playground structures in the district.

[13748] SPEAKER_41: I think one thing that we just consider though is if we are moving to replace these structures in item D and those are to be let's say 20 years old. And if there's another school out there that has a structure that's 20 years old and that they've just done a much better job of maintaining that structure, now they feel penalized for doing a good job of maintaining that structure. We simply tell them, well, you're going to get a repaint or repair and the other school who has the same structure, everything is all the same time as you did are getting a replacement.

[13778] SPEAKER_26: So as a principal, I would go... Well, not all structures are built the same. So it may not be that it was the same structure originally. It may have been a bigger investment at the time. That's why we need to bring back a more comprehensive report for the board's review.

[13788] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, we, excuse me.

[13790] SPEAKER_26: We have four minutes.

[13791] Ray Rodriguez: No, no, excuse me. We have four minutes, and we can't, if you'd have followed my lead, we could have went over, but we can't. So let's get this approved. We can bring it back in the 20th to have more discussion on it.

[13805] SPEAKER_52: So how about this to satisfy everyone, we move to approve what's currently on there in terms of the 45 to 70,000 range for the four sites using measure G funds and we make it as part of the motion that we prioritize an inventory for repairs of playgrounds to bring back at the next meeting.

[13827] Ray Rodriguez: I'm sorry I skipped member Crocker if you don't mind.

[13832] SPEAKER_48: I would like to suggest that we pass as it is. We've already gotten the commitment from Brian Richards that he's going to go through and do an inventory and we can address it the next time.

[13844] SPEAKER_21: So let's do that.

[13845] Nancy Thomas: I will not be able to vote for that because I think it's so imperative that we not just look at these four structures but that we look at improving everything. We do everything piecemeal. You notice that? We do everything piecemeal and I think we need to have a comprehensive approval of the cost of... We're running out of time, so we need a second.

[13868] SPEAKER_52: So you're not okay with the prioritized inventory for repairs and playgrounds?

[13871] SPEAKER_48: That's fine if you want to add it to it. That works for me. But essentially... Okay, so we need a motion, please.

[13877] Ray Rodriguez: I have made the motion.

[13879] SPEAKER_48: Okay, so who's going to second? So we are talking about... I second already. The wording is there and instruct Mr. Richards to inventory the place structures at the remaining sites, and come up with suggestions in terms of replacement. Okay, I'm fine, let's vote.

[13899] SPEAKER_52: We're running out of time, I'm sorry. We have to call the vote, or else we won't be able to. Yeah, we gotta call the vote, if not, we're not gonna make it. For this one, we have to call the vote, or else we won't be able to.

[13907] Nancy Thomas: I can't vote unless I know that that cost estimate will be there when we are asked to approve the cost of the replacement.

[13915] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, we understand. Okay, the motion's there, the second, please vote. Okay, item passes unanimously. The next piece was... Okay, here's what I'm going to recommend is that the appointments to the different committees and everything, that doesn't have to be done now, that can be done at the next meeting.

[13939] SPEAKER_41: But let's do the Delegate Assembly, I move to approve item E. Okay, good. Let's do that. A second.

[13944] SPEAKER_47: Let's get a second.

[13953] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, motion passes. The other thing would be we have to do the expulsion. That's got to be done. I move to approve staff recommendation. Second. Member Nguyen moves to approve staff recommendation. We have a second. Member Thomas. I have to clear it, sorry. Let's vote again.

[13981] SPEAKER_52: Can we do it by hand because we have like one minute?

[13983] Ray Rodriguez: No, I got it right now. Everybody vote? Okay, that's clear. Motion passes. Five ayes, close. Okay, so now I would like to move that all the committees be turned over, I mean switched over to the 20th meeting. Okay, so we're at the end. Superintendent, it's on you.

[14004] SPEAKER_52: No reports?

[14007] Ray Rodriguez: Any reports?

[14008] SPEAKER_22: I attended. Go ahead. The swearing in of member Preciado today. I have pictures I will share.

[14017] SPEAKER_48: Okay.

[14018] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Okay. We're good? We need your signatures. Okay.

[14023] Ray Rodriguez: 11 o'clock. Next time, hopefully one member will make a recommendation.

No minutes available.