Regular Meeting

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[4] Nancy Thomas: and also regarding existing litigation. No action was taken. Would you please join me in the pledge? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, I would like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda unless there is any suggestions for alterations. Ms. Crocker moves to approve. I'll second. Mr. Preciado seconds. And I have to open up the voting. Just a second. Please vote. Four ayes. The agenda is approved. Next, we moved on to recognitions and celebrations. And this evening, it is our pleasure

[110] SPEAKER_13: Spotlight the McGregor campus superintendent Thank You president Thomas members of the board ladies and gentlemen at this time I would like to Introduce our principal McGregor campus Mrs. Julie Calderon Miss Calderon, would you please take it away?

[129] SPEAKER_40: Thank you very much. Good evening board members cabinet members. Thank and of course esteemed guests Thank you for your time this evening So it's been my pleasure to serve in my first job as a principal at the McGregor site. So again, thank you. So the McGregor site is home to three alternative education schools and programs. I'll start by talking about Bridgepoint Continuation High School.

[155] Kat Jones: So I think I'm doing this the right way. I hope so.

[159] SPEAKER_40: So Bridgepoint is home to 80 students at this point in time. We are currently still doing intake. So I have about six incoming fourth quarter students and we are still making contact with families and working with Newark Memorial to get more students to us. So if you know of any families or students for which Bridgepoint might be a good fit, please send them our way. The majority of those students are seniors, many of whom will be graduating in June. And quite a few of them are males. So there's 48 young men on campus. I'm happy to report that we were able to reinstate Joven Noble. which is a program that works with young men of different ethnicities on positive life skills. And so we were able to bring that back with the help of our COST team. I'll be talking about COST a little bit later in this presentation. Some of our focus areas this year at BridgePoint, well, I think the main one that has really kind of taken up a lot of our time and energy in a really positive manner has been our participation in our WASC self-study. So Bridgepoint High School will be hosting a WASC visiting team starting on April 30 until May 2, 2018. So I know that I'll be in touch with both the cabinet and the board to help participate as part of that visit. And this is our initial visit, meaning that we were accredited three years ago and given a three-year accreditation. And so this is the first time a committee will be coming to our school. to see what we've done with the original team's recommendations and what our goals are now. So it's been a really wonderful time for us to collaborate, to be reflective about our practice. For me, as a new principal, to kind of work with the team on looking at what we do well and looking on what our goals are for what we want to do in the future. So it's been a very, with a small staff, we've served as a committee as a whole. Typically, when you do a WASC, you do it with an entire school. And so you have anywhere from 50 to 80 people collaborating in different focus groups. Well, I've had a very strong team of six, apart from myself, working with me on the same process that the big schools go through. But I'm happy to report that we met our deadline and we're very excited to move on to the next phase of the process, which is preparing for our visit at the end of April. Some of our other focus areas that are very important. Attendance, of course, is big for all schools, but especially at Bridgepoint, because so many of our students come to us disillusioned, disconnected from school. And so it's really up to us to kind of revive the motivation to be in school. And so this is my biggest challenge as a principal of Bridgepoint, is to raise our attendance. And so this is something that we're going to continue to work on. And then what I feel what we are really good at is wraparound services. And I'm so excited that my parent partners are here. They're a crucial part of our cost team, our coordination of services team, which is currently serving combined between both Bridgepoint and Crossroads approximately 53% of the students in those programs. So 53% of Bridgepoint and Crossroads families are being served through cost, whether that's individual therapy for students, support groups for students, various connecting families with various resources, anywhere from legal services to basic needs like food and diapers, furniture for families, clothing. We are serving a lot of needs, but I'm really proud to say that I think we're doing a really great job and our families are very grateful to the wraparound services that we provide at Bridgepoint and Crossroads. This is just a photo. Tupi, and unfortunately this year we were unable to offer leadership, but a lot of the kind of students that would have been attracted to leadership are participating in Tupi, which is our tobacco prevention program. And so these young folks have gone to a couple of conferences now. They did one out in Dublin in the fall, and then recently in the winter they went out to UC Berkeley to the Clark Kerr campus and joined several hundred other high school students. and took part in training, and they also do mock trials. And so it's a great opportunity for Bridgepoint students to work with students from Bay Area high schools. We're also home at Bridgepoint to the TAL program, the Transition to Adult Living and Learning. We are currently at six special day class adult students. I was happy to be able to attend their Special Olympics at Memorial recently, and they had a lot of fun playing basketball. And they were very excited to see their principal. They really wanted me to get out there, I told them I would join them for track and field. I'm more a runner than a basketball player. But anyways, they're really a great group of students. Our focus areas with them is really including them as part of BridgePoint. So I'm happy to report that they take part in BridgePoint physical education. And they're also on a weekly basis now working with the culinary arts program. So that's been a really great opportunity for the BridgePoint students to work with the TAL students together on different cooking lessons. get technology-rich instruction and academic and life skills. And so that's exciting to go in there and to see Common Core education happening with our young adults. And then, of course, their workability opportunities that they're able to go out and work at CVS, work at Roundtable, get those life skills that are going to enable them to go out and be contributing members to the community. I'm now going to move on to talking about Crossroads Independent Study. We are currently home to 52 students. 30 young women, young girls are part of that, so the majority there are females. And an overwhelming majority of them are secondary students, 9th or 12th graders. We are serving a couple of middle schoolers, and we are actually open to elementary students. So again, just putting in a plug out there, if you know of families at the elementary and middle school level who may benefit from this type of placement, please reach out to me. Our focus area is at Crossroads. This year is the new principal. It was important to me to look at appropriate placement. I really want Crossroads to be, I mean, it's a privilege to be in a program like Crossroads where you're going to get that one-on-one instruction and really get your education tailored to you. And so, for me, it was just really important that we had students appropriately placed. you know, who are dealing with other issues such as truancy or credit deficiency might be better served at Bridgepoint and that students with unique needs would be better served at Crossroads. So it's just been a process of kind of making sure that people are appropriately placed. But I'm happy to report that overall we're seeing hearing good feedback from students and families about the individualized instruction. Again, expanding those wraparound services. Crossroads students also benefit from cost referrals. But I would love to see, again, Crossroads students taking part in some of the support groups that are available, such as Joven Noble, such as Tupi, giving them opportunity to take part in that. And again, just making sure all of our families are aware of what cost can connect them to. And of course, I can't forget the adults that are still lifelong learners in our district and who are benefiting from their time at the Newark Adult Education Center. So we've served, this number is probably higher now, but approximately 300 unduplicated students. Starting this past summer and the fall and winter quarters, we just began our spring quarter this week. We continue to offer morning and evening sessions. We offer ESL, GED, and high school diploma courses in the evenings. ESLs available during the day as well. One area that I'm really proud of are our parenting workshops. We've been able to offer bilingual workshops in nutrition, the parent project. We had an opportunity with a therapist to meet one-on-one with families that took part in the parent project. So these are really popular offerings and we always look forward to partner with outside agencies to continue to expand those because the demand is high. And then our, you know, our beloved and long time community education courses, you know, people come from different parts of the Bay Area to take part in our Tyco group and in our tool painting classes. So it's, when I go through and meet folks, it's always fun to hear, oh, I drove all the way from Santa Clara or I come from Richmond because they are just so connected to those community ed courses. So those continue. Our focus area in collaboration with the consortium here in the region, We had a recent meeting to talk about CTE, so expanding to include career technical education. Our adult ed program doesn't have currently a program, but I'm actually looking and really in talks to do possibly some culinary arts offerings, both, you know, a career pathway as well as possibly some community education because we have a culinary arts classroom that ROP has, you know, they're They're not willing to share their equipment, but it's my classroom. So they are all for seeing us offer some adult education in the culinary arts. And of course, citizenship, which we haven't offered this year, but we're looking to bring back next year. Because again, the community demand is high for that. Just want to thank all of you for your continued support, alternative education. may serve what a lot of people say is a small population, but it's a very needy population. It's a population that's incredibly appreciative of the support that you all continue to give us. And so thank you again for that.

[729] SPEAKER_13: Let's hold for questions.

[732] Nancy Thomas: Questions, anyone? Ms.

[734] SPEAKER_16: Crocker? I'm curious in terms of the students who are parents. Are they normally scheduled to your school or are they at the high school as well as at Bridgepoint? Or where does that population usually end up?

[751] SPEAKER_40: So the majority of my teen parents, I have 16 parents. Six? Six, yes, in total at both Bridgepoint and Crossroads. The majority of those are currently in Crossroads. We had one young mother who transferred to Bridgepoint in hopes that she could earn credits faster. But she found it difficult with the lack of child care. That became the complication. So she's back at Crossroads. But currently at Bridgepoint, I have a young father who sees his young daughter on the weekends, and then I do have one young mother. But attendance has been a challenge. She's working with our parent partners and her own case manager to try to get some care. That's our biggest obstacle with serving our teen parents, is the lack of on-site child care.

[789] SPEAKER_16: I thought we had a connection with an infant center.

[794] SPEAKER_40: We don't. Not currently. I mean, I would imagine that if For example, one of my young mothers works with Cal Learn, so she may be able to get a Cadango kind of connection, but it would be an outside. We don't have an infant-toddler center that I'm aware of within our district. I know we have a preschool, but they don't offer infant-toddler care, and that's what a lot of our young parents need help with.

[819] SPEAKER_16: Do you know what the student population is of parents? Do you know any idea in terms of how many are out there that may or may not be going to school? They not able to work? Do you have any information at all about that population?

[833] SPEAKER_40: I don't have any information on me. I know that Memorial also does a good job of connecting us with young parents. And so that's, of course, where the majority of our students have come from, have been from Memorial. But I don't know what the need is in terms of young parents who are out there that didn't complete their education.

[852] SPEAKER_16: I would be interested to find out if there's some way that we can identify Because the bottom line is, if we don't have child care, they can't breastfeed, they can't do what they need to be doing. And I think that we need to make sure that it's there and it's available so that they can continue. And I would love to see them, if they do not have an academic reason for being at Bridgepoint, I would love to see them at the high school. I think this is where they need to be because that's where the classes are. Oftentimes, it's the teen parents that are the stars. at a continuation school because oftentimes they've been placed there because they're parents, not because they academically need that kind of environment. So I would like to see a more inclusive kind of relationship. And I don't know what our population is. Six sounds little, but I would be delighted if that's all there is. I mean, truly. But it does sound like it's a small number. So I don't know whether there's other places where we could find out. Whether some of our kids go to Robertson in Fremont, I don't know.

[919] Nancy Thomas: I have a question. Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about the capacity that you have to add students and how you are working with the high school to identify students that could benefit from Bridgepoint?

[936] SPEAKER_40: So we have definitely room for more students. We could actually probably take another 40 more students. This year, we had an articulation meeting right at the beginning of the year with the high school that involved all administrators and all counselors, kind of revisiting again the process. In the past, the process was a written process, which was time-consuming for parents and sometimes got lost in the shuffle of paperwork. And so one of the first things I did was take, you know, to get rid of a written application and turn it into a shared Google file. where all parties could go on and enter information about students and update notes so that we all have access to this file to see who are the students, who are the families, what steps have been taken, have they met with their counselor to review their credits. Are parents involved? Has there been a meeting with parents? Because sometimes kids come and request, sometimes parents come and request, and this kind of streamlines the process. It's the first year that we're doing this Google Doc, but at least that way we are all in communication. So students aren't getting lost in the shuffle. Because sometimes we do hear, I've been waiting for months to have my application read, and we wanted to streamline that. So we are working closely with Memorial. The other way, of course, is the traditional way of picking up the phone and saying, hey, Julie, I've got this student. Can you accommodate? And so we do that as well with Memorial. But we are working closely with them.

[1016] SPEAKER_13: I would also add that we also scheduled an April 12th secondary collaboration meeting with not only with you, but the principal from Newark Memorial, as well as the junior high principal. Yes, so the junior high as well. And counselors to begin doing some planning towards next year and the idea of how do they work as a team, as a secondary team.

[1038] Nancy Thomas: I mean, I just think it's a real shame that we have credit deficient 16-year-olds who could benefit from Bridgepoint. And I'd like to see staff, you know, look at the impediments to making that happen. Why hasn't it happened? We've had over 100 students in recent years, I believe. So something's going on where I don't believe our students are any less needy at the high school of Bridgepoint experience.

[1068] SPEAKER_40: I would agree. And I, for one, want to also spend some time on some positive branding. I know that sometimes that's what I get told is that, you know, Parents are reluctant, and some parents do openly tell me, I've had some reservations about my student coming to Bridgepoint. But often, having them come to the site, visit the site, meet with me, meet with my staff, reassures them. Because I think there still is quite a lot, and this was the case for me in my previous district. There is a lot of some of those myths around alternative education and what that really means. And I think sometimes it's about having folks come and So we are having an open house on April 11th, which I'll be putting out on our website and sharing with our parent partners to share out, because I think it's a good opportunity for those freshman parents, even middle school parents, to come and check out the site and see who my staff is and what my site looks like. I think it's an opportunity for folks to come in and see things for themselves. Thank you. You're welcome.

[1129] Nancy Thomas: Yes, next we move on to the superintendent's report.

[1134] SPEAKER_13: Thank you, President Thomas, members of the board, ladies and gentlemen. I have three items to report on tonight, but I'm going to start with some good news. And I just want to update the community. I know that we had originally had this conversation about a budget, and we thought the worst case scenario was potentially going to be having to eliminate 20 positions out of the district. We've been working hard to bring that number down. We've been listening to community input. And we brought that number down to eight positions that we thought we were going to have to reduce. And I'm pleased to announce that we have one PE position that will be rescinded this week, resulting in zero layoffs after we've worked through this. So it's really good news. I know that we've been working close with our union partners And to get back to a zero really does show the effort of staff to try to find a different solution to stay away from the classroom, as we were asked to do, which we've been able to accomplish. And I think that getting to zero layoffs at this point, through other things that have happened, like resignations and retirements and other natural attrition that occurs, has really kind of just worked out in our favor. And that's part of it. And part of it is just hard work on staff's behalf. Especially you want to recognize our our HR team and Ed services team For just trying to find scenarios to make this work and really rethinking and relooking at everything So really good news, and I'll send out an update tomorrow as I usually do, but I just wanted to share that I don't know if there's any response to that, but I wanted to at least update you on that good news well I think that it's important for the public to understand that we had legal constraints, and it wasn't a matter of trying to

[1248] SPEAKER_16: make people uncomfortable in terms of the fact that there's a potential layoff. But we had to keep our options open until we could find out what the money was like and what the enrollment was like. So it was not a matter of trying to make people feel uncomfortable. It was a matter of what we needed to do legally to keep our options open. So I'm delighted that staff was able to work it out. And thank you very much.

[1270] SPEAKER_28: Thank you.

[1274] SPEAKER_13: Another point of clarification relative to budget is I've been receiving a lot of questions about certificated employees who are classified as temporary. And temporary employees are hired under a temporary contract with the district at their initial time of employment through June 30th. And this is understood at the time of hiring. There are many reasons that a certificated employee may be classified as temporary and not be eligible to enroll in probationary status, thereby starting to earn tenure with the So let me give you some of the reasons why someone would be categorized as temporary. Employee was hired to backfill for probationary permanent employee on an approved leave of absence. So that's one temporary person we would have covering for someone on leave of absence. But a second one would be employee may have been hired under the approved CTC emergency credentials, such as a special term contract, like a retiree working 75% or more of the school year, short term staff permit, provision for intern permit or teaching permit for statutory leave. So those are other examples of a temporary employee. And one other example is teachers who may have credential issues, such as they may need to earn additional authorizations, such as CLAD or English Learner Authorization. So even though the temporary contract under the teacher, the teacher signed at the beginning of the employment, states clearly that they're beginning and ending date of their contracted work year Under California Ed Code, there are formally released all teachers working under a temporary contract. It's a matter of formality. So we still have to do that. I think there was just a lot of clarification about what is a temporary employee. And Ed Code's confusing. So I thought I would just offer that for the public to understand that there's a lot of rules around it. We're heavily regulated.

[1389] Nancy Thomas: Any questions about that?

[1391] SPEAKER_13: The third and final item that I wanted to share with you actually the second, those are both under the first title. The second one is we had a great meeting with some students at the junior high school. And I wanna formally thank Wahab Salemi for taking the lead on coordinating and organizing this meeting. We talked about communication, we talked about junior high school to high school transition, we talked about bilingual students, we talked about programming. Overall I feel it was a very productive meeting I told the students I would be willing to come back with them next month and meet with them monthly. So I'm opening that to invite all board members if somebody else wants to come. I know member Crocker joined us, but I think it was a very productive meeting and really some astute young people. Is there anything you wanted to add?

[1441] SPEAKER_16: I just want to say that I think that they're concerned about what is happening in terms of the other students there and going on to high school and looking at a greater conversation between the junior high and the high school. in terms of teachers, in terms of curriculum, in terms of the students. And so I think that it was very productive. They had great questions. And they listened attentively. They were very polite. And they found that I think they were pleased that the superintendent came down to talk with them. And so it was a very good beginning. And I like the fact that you're offering this on a monthly basis. I think that's great. Shara was with us, and of course they know her, and so that was always a nice thing to have her there. Because it was a good familiar face. Good.

[1485] SPEAKER_13: Any other? Then my last item is just a little bit of an update. I would like to introduce Adriana Lopez, Maria Perez, and our parent partners who want to give us just a brief update on cost. It was brief enough to have them do it here instead of... Three minutes, because it's more than three minutes.

[1514] SPEAKER_29: Welcome. Hi, hi, hi. Hello, all. My name is Adriana Lopez, and this is my colleague.

[1521] Richelle Piechowski: Very impressed.

[1523] SPEAKER_29: And Diana Farias, it's our third one. She couldn't make it for tonight, but we are the Newark Unified School District Parent Partners team. We are here tonight to thank and appreciate all the support we have been receiving from our superintendent, Mr. Pat Sanchez, and our executive team for embracing our district families, especially the ones with the highest needs. Let me start sharing some information about the parent partner team and their role. What is a parent partner's mission? Our mission is to promote family wellness and parent involvement by initiating and implementing the family partnership process as well as providing support and follow up with families with their different needs. Just to mention some of our roles, parent partners empower and encourage families to participate in their children's education. We host and conduct informational workshops and worship series where we focus on parent empowerment, wellness, and health. We specialize in supporting families and students with high needs within our district community. For your information, for some people that may not know, Parent Partners Compensation are not part of the district budget. This is through funds given to the Center for Healthy Schools and Communities from Alameda County Health Care Services. that NUSD, the Newark Unified School District, school administrators, and parent partners, along with all the collaborators, just to mention a few, La Familia, Tri-City Health Center, Alameda County to Borneo-Vasquez Health Center, EPA, which is the East Bay Agency for Children, et cetera, are the bridge that connect families to resources in order to build strong students and citizens. We all as a team provide these services and connect our families to these resources through our district coordination of services team known as COST. I'm proud to share with you that as of today, this program has helped serve 628 families and we are anticipating to serve more families before the end of this school year, 628. Some of the main resources that our families need support with are Food closed. shoes, therapy, health, and legal services. While looking for clothes and shoes, which are two of our biggest needs, the parent partners reached out One Child, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing disadvantaged children with new clothing and new school supplies. One Child began in Fremont, California 18 years ago, and with the lead of Mr. Tony Dutra as a CEO, it now serves families throughout the Bay Area. One Child's goal is to promote self-esteem in underprivileged and underserved children. One Child offers these services on a volunteer basis through donations focused in bringing joy to the lives of children, one child at a time. Looking to attain clothing assistance for our family, we found that this organization is considering to expand their services to other nearby communities. besides the ones they already covered. For this reason, we would like to invite our board members to come and visit one child's Fremont location and to consider the possibility to start a collaboration with them for the families within our district and our community, especially for those high-needed families who do not have transportation to get to their Fremont location. Parent partners, thank you very much in advance, and we will kindly make any appointments or help with any necessary arrangements for any of you to come to One Child location in Fremont. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to go to their website, www.onechild.org, or please feel free to contact me or any parent partner. Thank you very much from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you on behalf of the most needed families in our district.

[1771] SPEAKER_13: One thing I want to add, I was able to go visit the One Child Center. And one thing I really thought was very powerful about that visit is they're very thoughtful about how they do it. What they offer is resources for families, and it looks like a small store. But they only bring in one family at a time. There's never overlap. They're really treated with a lot of dignity and respect. And everything they get is brand new. There's nothing that's used that they get. They get new notebooks for kids for school. They get backpacks. They get new clothing. They get to kind of go shopping. And they leave with stuff that they need that's new. And I thought that was powerful. And they really do it just by fundraising. It's not something that they do and they would charge us for. But I think it's worth at least going to look at and something that could be beneficial to our community.

[1822] SPEAKER_29: And they do one family at a time. So they make appointments. They have a really good system. and dynamic and they take that family. It's either, we have, we've been having a lot of single moms and dads lately. So they take the families with all their children and they get to choose. They get to even go in and feed the clothes right there. So it's a really good environment for the whole family. So that really helps with their self-esteem. So we will really like you to come and think about that. Thank you. Thank you.

[1860] SPEAKER_13: Thank you. Any comments?

[1862] SPEAKER_17: Yeah, I was going to say, in light of thinking about what we did with facilities on our space, this could potentially be a good use of district space, mapping out some sort of room as a partnership, right? So if you don't charge this particular partner as an example, that would be the partnership. And then you help kind of fundraise. So that way, you could provide a Newark site. So maybe we can think about those types of things.

[1885] SPEAKER_13: Actually, that's what they're considering for us, They just need space. They'll revamp it, and they raise money. And they would help us build our own system to raise money as well. So they're not really asking for money, but they did look at some of the space. But I think it'd be good to have a few board members to go see it for yourself. And I think one board member has gone. I think Mr. Rodriguez has gone to visit. Is that correct? Yes. But it's open to everyone, and we'll schedule it appropriately. If you just let Char know, we'll work it out. Good. And that concludes my report. Thank you.

[1921] Nancy Thomas: So next we move on to staff reports and superintendent. Oh, excuse me. No, next we move on to public comment on non-agenda items. And we have several folks that are going to be addressing us. And we do have a translator here if anyone needs translation. So I'd like to call on Maria Zavala.

[1955] SPEAKER_11: Maria, do you need someone to translate for you?

[1958] SPEAKER_33: Yes, please.

[1960] SPEAKER_11: Permit us.

[1961] Guadalupe Lopez: Thank you.

[1970] SPEAKER_13: Waiting for the translator. Here she comes.

[1979] Nancy Thomas: And just to let you know that when there is translation, you get double the time if you need it.

[1986] SPEAKER_30: OK. Muchas gracias.

[1995] SPEAKER_33: Thank you. Empezamos. Buenas tardes, estimado miembro de la mesa directiva. [Translated] Thank you. We started. Good afternoon, dear board member. [End] [Translated] Thank you. We started. Good afternoon, dear board member. [Translated] Thank you. We started. Good afternoon, dear board member. [End] [End]

[2003] SPEAKER_30: Good evening, members of the board.

[2007] SPEAKER_33: and staff from the Newark School District.

[2009] SPEAKER_30: My name is Maria Zavala.

[2011] SPEAKER_33: I'm the mother of a child from Chile. We are here this evening to thank our superintendent,

[2037] SPEAKER_30: Mr. Sanchez for giving us this opportunity.

[2041] SPEAKER_33: And because he's open to listen to us whenever we have a need, he's open to listen and he's there. He's there to talk about the budgets and issues that go around the school, but specifically to talk about our school. preocupaciones y necesidades para apoyar nuestros hijos en su educación y crecimiento.

[2104] SPEAKER_30: She's glad that there was a conversation to talk about the school, specifically the needs of their children.

[2113] SPEAKER_33: También queremos agradecer el apoyo, trayendo talleres para educar y informar más a los padres de cómo [Translated] We also want to thank the support, bringing workshops to educate and inform parents more about how [End] [Translated] We also want to thank the support, bringing workshops to educate and inform parents more about how [Translated] We also want to thank the support, bringing workshops to educate and inform parents more about how [End] [End]

[2131] SPEAKER_30: She is thankful as well for the opportunity and for the workshops that they bring to the school to teach parents so they can learn about how the school district system and the education works here in the district.

[2154] SPEAKER_33: Empezar a traer nuevos programas a que apoyen a nuestra escuela y a crecer de la misma manera con el proyecto, escuchandonos y traer un programa bilingüe de inversión dual. [Translated] Start bringing new programs to support our school and grow in the same way with the project, listening to us and bringing a dual investment bilingual program. [End] [Translated] Start bringing new programs to support our school and grow in the same way with the project, listening to us and bringing a dual investment bilingual program. [Translated] Start bringing new programs to support our school and grow in the same way with the project, listening to us and bringing a dual investment bilingual program. [End] [End]

[2192] SPEAKER_30: Okay, she's also thankful for any other programs that are provided by the district. Specifically just thanks them for being able to bring bilingual education and or dual immersion classes.

[2216] SPEAKER_33: nuevas a nuestro distrito y a valorar el bilingüismo en nuestras familias. [Translated] new to our district and to value bilingualism in our families. [End] [Translated] new to our district and to value bilingualism in our families. [Translated] new to our district and to value bilingualism in our families. [End] [End]

[2226] SPEAKER_30: These bilingual programs will help to bring more families to the community and also will help to value the bilingual education and bilingual families.

[2240] SPEAKER_33: También gracias por permitir que los papás [Translated] Also thanks for allowing parents [End] [Translated] Also thanks for allowing parents [Translated] Also thanks for allowing parents [End] [End]

[2248] SPEAKER_30: Thank you for allowing the parents to participate in the selection of the principal of the school.

[2257] SPEAKER_33: Thank you for your support and your time and for helping our families. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[2276] SPEAKER_29: I just want to clarify that it's a dual immersion. It's not really bilingual, but it's dual immersion.

[2284] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Next, Lydia Arroyo.

[2289] SPEAKER_11: Thank you.

[2289] SPEAKER_32: Buenas tardes a todos los miembros de la mesa directiva. I'm here because I'd like to thank Mr. Sanchez for the support that he provided him, especially to help his son graduate last year.

[2333] SPEAKER_30: My son was ill and he had to stay home for a long period of time.

[2338] SPEAKER_32: Unfortunately, our education system cannot adapt it to certain situations.

[2356] SPEAKER_30: Talking about the special needs program.

[2358] SPEAKER_32: I want to thank Mr. Sanchez for listening to me and for listening to my son. Please help. Because my son was able to graduate from high school.

[2383] SPEAKER_30: And he could take and reach his goals to attend the university.

[2389] SPEAKER_32: And to study engineering. Thank you, Mr. Sanchez, for helping us so that my son's dreams do not go to the trash. Everything goes well.

[2413] SPEAKER_30: Please support our families because we need it.

[2417] SPEAKER_32: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Cary Knoop. Mr. Newk.

[2443] Cary Knoop: Great job, Mrs. Sanchez. Yeah. Congratulations. Imagine you're in a school, and there's a lockdown. The alarm goes. You don't know what happens. You're in fear. Now, imagine that happens to children. Now, if it's maybe K to 3, they probably don't realize these things. They just think it's all exciting. But middle school kids, high school kids, Imagine you're in such a situation. You're locked in the rooms and you don't know what happens. Maybe you have to send SMS to your friends and saying, you know, this may be my last SMS. I'm serious. So, of course, we need to do drills. That's part of what we need to do. But is it wise to not announce drills? To say, well, we just want to not tell the kids. Who knows, maybe not tell the parents. and just do these drills as a surprise. I have really big concerns about that, because we have to think of the health of the kids. These experiences can be traumatic. We should not treat that lightly. Law enforcement probably sees it differently, but they have different objectives. You know, law enforcement, they have to deal with this, well, hopefully not on a daily basis, and they don't on a daily basis, but they have to be prepared. And they have to, you know, be tough. They have to do many drills to get really, be able to deal with this situation. We cannot do that to the kids, in my opinion. And so, we don't have full authority. I mean, technically, the federal government could put in a homeless security team and just do a test at the high school. We have, unfortunately, no control over that. But it hasn't happened here, but it has happened in other states. In Newark, a SWAT team would come in and just test the readiness of the kids. In my mind, you know, terror is part of life, unfortunately. And I think the best way to deal with terror is to go on with life. Don't let terrorist or terror break you down. You have to move on. You cannot change your life because of terror. When you have drills, I understand drills are mandatory, you have to do drills, but think about the kids and make sure that you don't terrify or traumatize them.

[2602] Guadalupe Lopez: Thanks. Thank you.

[2617] Nancy Thomas: Did I have one for Ms. Parks? No. OK. Next, we move on to staff reports.

[2629] SPEAKER_13: We got all of them? OK. Who's up for staff report? Oh, Mr. Richards. Let me, before Mr. Richards go, I do want to circle back. This was something that was brought up by a community member at one of our last meetings. And I was circling back to kind of share what we've looked at with this and I asked Mr. Richards to provide a little bit of update on I think the community member referred to it as a golden handshake so I just wanted to say that for the public that we're circling back with an item that was kind of brought to our attention by the community member.

[2666] SPEAKER_21: So this is going to be just sort of a general overall review of various early retirement incentive program possibilities that are out there that schools can participate in. as well as a little bit of history with regard to Newark, and some unique situations that we have in Newark with regard to the programs. So in general, as the name, probably most, one of the most self-explaining names ever, is basically an incentive to get employees who are not yet at full retirement age, but are at at least the minimum retirement age to incentivize them to retire early, with the possibility being that either if positions are not replaced, Or if they are replaced, they're replaced with someone who is much lower on the salary schedule. There would be a savings to the district over time. And there are several different possibilities out there with regard to retirement incentive programs. Both CalSTRS and CalPERS each offer one. And then there are other possibilities that are offered by other private outside entities that can take the form of annuities or lump sum payments or a combination of the two. One of the questions that came up as I was preparing this was, didn't we already look into this last year? And we did begin looking at it last year because we talked about whether or not we needed to potentially look at one to generate some savings for the district. And then we ended up having a substantial number of our teachers resign and or retire during last school year. So much so, actually, that we were quite worried about the reverse problem. We had a rather large exodus going on and HR was facing the largest number of new ads to have to add to the district that we have faced in many, many years. And so we ended up doing the reverse, in essence, in our settlement of the contract with the Newark Teachers Association in that we offered a retention bonus as we were trying to stave off what was a rather large turnover in the teaching course last year. The last time that I know of of record that the district did do a state early retirement incentive was during the 0203 school years when the severe economic downturn took place. And the district, according to PERS's information, actually offered two, a three-month window in September to December of 2002, and then a six-month window from January to June of 2003. So they both occurred within the same year, but they did a 90-day and a 180-day in the same fiscal year, which is rather unusual, but it can be done. But the minimum window is 90 days, and the maximum is 180 under PERS, and that was what the district did. They actually did one of each during that year. And that's the state's last record of us doing one through one of their programs. There are some requirements and some limitations to what can be offered in an early retirement incentive program. The main overarching requirement under any of them is the district has to be able to demonstrate savings. Now the time period of that varies by the type of program, because what the code says basically is you have to show savings over the period of whatever the incentive is. There are requirements with regard to that, because every year there's some level of attrition. We have some level of employees who will either retire or resign on an annual basis. And so you can't count natural attrition toward the savings. You've got to figure out what is over and above what your average normal attrition is to generate how much savings you would potentially have. But if you make an offering, the requirement is the same offering has to be made to all. So you can't say, for example, if our average turnover is 25 teachers, You can't say teachers 26 through 50 can have this incentive, but the first 25 cannot. You have to offer the same incentive to all 50. And you have to calculate the savings accordingly, but only off of what would be above the normal attrition rate. Additionally, you have to factor in as part of the cost of the program post-retirement health. For the classified employees that are in CVT, their contract dictates how much post-retirement help they get, and it varies based on when they were hired in the district, as far as to what age they receive payout. And then for teachers, it's the CalPERS minimum that we have to cover for all of the retirees that are under the PERS system. We don't have a contribution above the CalPERS minimum in this district for the certificated employees. A little known fact, and one of the things that is in school services report, which was also attached to this particular agenda item, with regard to when looking at early retirement incentives is once something becomes ongoing, it really isn't much functional as a retirement incentive. It basically becomes part of your natural attrition. And we actually already have two sections of our teacher's contract that have early retirement incentives built in. They're not huge in dollar amount, but they are continuous. The teachers under their current contract, if they send in their letter of intent to retire by February the 1st in or before the year at which they reach the age of 60, then they can get 850 a year towards health premiums until they reach the age of 65 over and above the CalPERS minimum. Additionally, if they give notice three years in advance, anywhere between the ages of 55 and 60, then they get an additional 300 per year for five years on top of that. With regard to the plans that are available, STRS has a two-year service credit plan. They used to have what was called the 2 plus 2, where they got two years of age credit and two years of service credit. That went away under PEPRA. So all that survives now is the two-year service credit plan. Again, it has to be designed to show that there's going to be a net savings to the district. And the entire cost of the actuarial value of the plan has to either be paid up front to CalSTRS or over an eight-year period at which the districts charge 7.5% interest. For the classified employees that are members of CalPERS, there's what the board can pass is what's called a two-year service credit resolution. So similar, then it gives two years of service credit toward the retirement system. But there are some extra certifications that we have to do, that it's due to either mandatory transfers, layoffs, or demotions that constitute at least 1% of the job classification, department, or organizational unit, and that at least one vacancy will be permanently unfilled. So what's different about CalPERS and CalSTRS is CalPERS will allow you to carve it. You could say, for example, a particular division is going to meet these qualifications, so it's only offered to those divisions. What you can't do, what you cannot do, is say it's offered only for one bargaining unit and not for all the other not for anyone else at all. It's a weird wording in the law, because if you had a department that was wholly within one bargaining unit, I don't know how you would change that, but that is the way the law technically reads. The distinction cannot be by bargaining unit, but it can be by department. So the cost of completing the plan has to go public 14 days before the board adopts it, and then the board elects either a 90- or a 180-day window period and can choose to offer either one or two years' worth of service credit. And again, the district did that once or twice, 190 and 180 back in the 02-03 service year. So it's been 15 years since that's been done. It's not often nowadays that we hear a lot of districts doing either the PERS or the STRS retirement plans, largely because of the amount of savings that you have to be able to show over the period of time, because it's quite costly to give those extra two years of service credit. Sometimes it works, but it takes some pretty unusual situations. There are three that I know of, other alternative plans that are out there. Two that have been kind of widely known for a long time, Kenan's and Parr's. Oddly enough, on the very day, actually the very next day after our board meeting when the question was first brought up several weeks ago, I actually got an email from a third firm called Highmark that has a voluntary retirement incentive program for schools. I had actually never heard of Highmark. until I got their email, but it happened to come on the day that we were having it. I don't know if they were watching our board meeting or how they knew to send me an email that day, but they each have plans. They are quite flexible. They allow us to kind of carve eligibility and do a lot more things creatively that we may want to do. But again, the overarching rule still applies. You have to be able to show net savings to the district over the length of the time of the incentive whenever you use one of the alternative plans. So that is the extent of sort of what's out there in the universe. Given the high turnover we had last year, we haven't done an assessment in the current year of where everybody is on the scattergram of age versus retirement. But it's mainly just to give the board this information so that if the board wants to give directive for us to do some further work, bring in one or two of these other firms, or maybe all three of the outside firms will work. pull the costs for PERS and STRS to bring you back additional information. You can let us know if there's an interest on the board towards moving toward that. But we'd probably just kind of give a general update because we haven't talked about these in quite a while.

[3226] Maria Huffer: Thank you.

[3228] SPEAKER_19: I would say it's worth exploring, especially if it doesn't take financial commitment on our part to just look and see where we're at and whether such any plans that you

[3240] SPEAKER_21: I do know for certain that Keenan and Parrs do not charge to do the assessment for their plans. I'm not sure about Highmark. I'd have to get in further contact with them because I've never seen their plan before.

[3249] SPEAKER_19: If there's no charge and it's worth the study, there's no harm, right, in doing so. So I would say move forward is my opinion.

[3262] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Superintendent, next.

[3270] SPEAKER_13: Yes, I'm reporting under staff this time. I want to start with, actually I'm going to let Char pull up the PowerPoint presentation, the larger of the two, and I'm not going to go through all these slides with you. I want to kind of hit the highlights and I know that this has been in the packet for a while. Certainly recommend reading the article if you haven't had time and it's really a good article, especially if you have a high school kid for you to look at. But I want to go on to, keep going through slides. I'll tell you. Back up a little bit more. OK. Go forward one. One more. Keep going. Keep going. There you go. Go back one. Oh.

[3321] SPEAKER_11: It's touchy. That's OK.

[3325] SPEAKER_13: That one. So one of the things about A-G that I think is really important is it really does take a comprehensive approach. Really looking at policy and I do believe we have adopted A-G a default. I think that was something that was in the queue, I would say probably May, probably June of 2016. Because I think it was a conversation this board was having prior to me starting. We also need to take a deeper look at how is that playing out in implementation. Specifically, and I think this is kind of our conversation as far as the workshop, you know, how do we know kids are getting it? What do we do when they don't? And how do we help kids that, what are we doing for kids that do get it and want to be accelerated? So the idea of extended time, and creating those opportunities for kids to access A through G. How does it play out with curriculum and instruction and assessment? That's kind of the question. How do we know they've learned it? And then access and placement are really critical. And I'm going to come back to that in a minute. But I also wanted to point to, let's see if this works from here. Probably too far. We'll try it again, Char. I guess I can do that. OK, so don't move, Brian. Don't flinch. So really, the idea of graduation requirements, A through G is default. And currently, we're still functioning in a traditional setting, which is probably OK. I think that a traditional schedule does allow you to do customizing of individual schedules for high school students. Let's go to the next slide. Here's our data on A through G. So it was pulled by The source, obviously, is the Silicon Valley Ed Foundation. They provide these resources to us for free, which I like. And actually, they've got a good pool of people that are pretty experienced at this work. But it shows percentages of A through G proficiency as disaggregated by race. So as you can see, there's some room for improvement, obviously. And I have another report I'll share with you in a moment. What the data is telling us is there's a lot of room for improvement. And I think that one of the key levers that we learned in our conversation with this organization is it really comes down to math as a real gatekeeper in grades 3, grade 8, and grade 9 as a key lever. And I'm going to point to some data here in a moment. So I want you to keep that in mind, especially relative to, the handout. So I'm going to refer you to the handout, which is our SBAC data handout. I don't know if you can click out. I'll let Char click out over there. OK. But the handout that was in the packet, I know the board has it in front of them. I think we could pull it up on the regular agenda. Can you pull it? Let's pull it up there. Because I'm not going to go to the PowerPoint anymore. So can we exit the PowerPoint and just pull the regular agenda on the board? So just, it's in the packet but I could tell you that if you look at the Newark Unified School District SBAC results, it reinforces the data that shows that we have to do better and I think that one of the ways of doing better is Actually, since we can't pull that up for the audience, Char, let's go back to the two slide PowerPoint. That's probably going to be more helpful. So let her pull that up. Let's go forward one. Okay. Go one more slide. That's the one I want. So one of the key levers that research is indicating now is that by grade 3 is a better indicator of A through G preparation than any other measure. That's something that we're learning from the partnership with Silicon Valley Ed Foundation. And then again you look at grades 4, 6, 9, 8, 9 which is critical and then into the high school year. But part of what we're seeing is just we need to really ramp up math. And as you look at the regular A through G, and I'll read you those so you don't have to click back to the slide, but the A through G requirements are really about two years of history and social science, four years of English, three years of math, but four years is recommended, two years of language arts, three years is recommended, and one year of visual performing arts which would be consecutive semesters. So have that one full year. And those are the current A through G course requirements. So part of the conversation I think that I wanted to share with the board is how do we align our resources and really have more of a congruent way of a scope and sequence so that people know if they're on track or off track in moving towards A through G. and trying to impact the numbers that I showed you in the reports that were in the packet of as our baseline and how do we start putting some metrics around that, or as Francisco would say, progress monitoring, are we making an impact on that and some of the metrics that we were looking at to improve that. That's part of our conversation, but I also would like to open it up for a moment to either Leti or Ali. I know Ali's had some experience in A through G, and Leti and I have been kind of having this conversation with principles as well about math specifically.

[3729] SPEAKER_39: So as you know math has been a focus for us this year and actually this week our teachers will be voting on the math adoption and bringing that forward to share with the board. But what we noticed was that as we start to do our deeper work around instructional walkthroughs, work with our teachers and professional development, we saw that If we don't give our staff the tools and professional development that they need, it's not fair to really demand that of them. So that's part of the work that we've been doing this year. But we've also noticed that we do have to get together a work group of teachers and counselors and our administrators to really look at what does A through G look like? What is the student, a high school student profile? that would match the needs of our students. And so some of the work that still has not been done, and we've started the work with our administrators and we're expanding the group, is to look at what does three years of mathematics look like. You remember earlier this year we had our science department chair came forward and we looked at the integrated science pathway, but then what we still have to do is the other part, which is we have to look at are we going to look at three years of science for our students. as part of the graduation requirements. But that can't be a discussion done piecemeal. It has to be a full discussion with all stakeholders at the table really because sometimes there can be some unintended consequences. So we need to make sure that we have a student profile that really is reflective of a well-rounded graduate of Newark Memorial High School and the McGregor campus as well. So that's what we're hoping to do and bring forward that as we're starting to do deeper work in this area, And also taking into account the conversation we had earlier at the study session around STEAM, is that what does a graduate profile look like for a student who graduates from Newark Memorial or the McGregor campus? And so those are some of the next steps that we're starting to do now.

[3848] SPEAKER_13: Any comments, Ollie? No, I think it's a nice. Part of what it means for us as we start moving into having some larger discussions in secondary, and I'm sure Tom's familiar with this, probably more than any of us, is really looking at, on this slide that's in front of you, some of the things that they've identified as high leverage things to focus on. So increasing the number of students completing A through G requirements. That's kind of obvious by our data. Accelerate A through G completion rates in kids that are lower performing, in groups that are, student groups, learning groups that are not doing well. increasing the number of students successfully completing 8th grade algebra. That's a key metric. And they've identified the specific courses. Increasing enrollment and success in calculus and increasing enrollment and success in advanced placement classes. So I think that's really a good kind of learning from our partners in this Eastside Alliance. And then clicking back to the other slide. These two slides are really great to put out on your refrigerator if you have a high school kid or even a any student in the system. Because it kind of points out, what are some key academic things to be thinking about? Like, one that stands out for me that you wouldn't just jump to, if you look at grades 12 and 13, all the academic, getting them to calculus, completing three or more AP classes, four years of math. But as you do that, on the other side, you have to look at, how are you helping to manage time and stress? Because those kids get overwhelmed and overloaded And how are they getting involved in other aspects of the school that are maybe not as academic? And that they're getting a plan for financial aid. So this is a really great graphic that a parent can use. But it also should be something we think about what activities we're doing as a system to support this K through 12. So I just wanted to kind of put that in front of you. We're going to do a deeper dive on the 12th, I think. Is it April 12th that we have the secondary? I mentioned it earlier, with all the principles of secondary and counselors to kind of work with them a little closer and try to take lessons learned from this partnership. And we'll probably be participating in some of those at a very low or free cost to learn from some of the lessons learned on east side. But I just wanted to share that with you. Certainly open to questions. And it's just really kind of conceptually a way to look at A through G. that I think is helpful kind of at a parent level.

[4012] Nancy Thomas: Okay. Frankie? I mean, Mr. Preciado.

[4016] SPEAKER_28: That's fine.

[4017] SPEAKER_17: So, thank you for the presentation and for the information. So, I have several questions and comments, so I'm going to try to just limit to maybe one or two, and then let other folks, and then put a lot of different things that strike me. So, the first question I have, on the Newark data A through G slide, ENR, does that mean enrolled? Or what does ENR mean?

[4041] SPEAKER_13: Let me look at it. On the slide. On the slide.

[4049] Nancy Thomas: No, this one here. Yeah. Yes, the one. Yes. What does ENR mean?

[4056] SPEAKER_13: I'm not sure. This one. Yes, that one. Let me come back to that. Let me find it here. OK.

[4069] SPEAKER_17: Yes, what does ENR mean?

[4072] SPEAKER_11: Go ahead. OK. Oh.

[4078] Nancy Thomas: It looks like the percentage of students.

[4080] SPEAKER_13: It's got to be the percentage of enrollment. Yes.

[4082] SPEAKER_17: OK. And is that for that timeline, for that year?

[4087] SPEAKER_13: For which year? That would probably be.

[4090] SPEAKER_17: Probably 2016. It's an average. OK. And then the percentage is the graduation rate of A through G, correct?

[4101] SPEAKER_13: The numbers underneath the column like 2016 is the percentage of kids who are proficient or above in A-G.

[4109] SPEAKER_17: At the time of graduation?

[4111] SPEAKER_13: In that school year, that graduating year, yes.

[4115] Nancy Thomas: What do you mean? Proficient or above? You mean you completed A-G.

[4119] SPEAKER_17: They're A-G ready. So I'm going to point out one of my comments and this will go to my other piece. So, if we have a 48 percent, almost 50 percent of Hispanic Latino enrolled, and we have only 22.5 percent, we have a big problem. And we need to address that. I mean, we need to address it all in terms of the A through G, but that'll be further comment. So, my question, too, is tracking into AG versus non-AG. So, is this happening? I hope, because the last time we had this conversation, We weren't tracking our kids in terms of the A through G track and non-A through G track. As a student, I went through that process. And it's unfortunate of how it was tracked, because I was one of three Latinos in my class of the IBAP track. So I want to know how this happens in terms of folks being in the A through G track versus non, or selection. How does that process?

[4187] SPEAKER_13: Part of what we're going to be doing is taking this as a framework to analyze where we are right now and what is working and what's not working at the high schools. And the work we're going to be doing with the secondary principals on the 12th is going to be, first of all, do they know the data? And second of all, what's the plan to try to mitigate? And like you said, Hispanic and African-American percentage-wise, kind of inversely, you see it's only 6.4% of the enrollment, but it's 17.2% are ready A through G, also a concern. So part of, I think, what we have to do is use the slide that I showed earlier that had those, the PowerPoint that had only two slides in it, is kind of the framework for how are we gonna monitor and evaluate what's currently going on. and using those elements as kind of a test area to see kind of a checklist of how are those things going to really get a plan around what is the current state and how do we improve it based on those key elements that they know will make it more successful.

[4258] SPEAKER_17: Okay, based off of that slide that you're talking about where I think that the 8th grade SBAC results in 11th grade, so thank you for breaking that down. I always stress this, I have to stress it again that I think it's unacceptable that we have 76.95% of all our students are not at standard. And then 85.91% of Latino students are not at standard. And I think that's just unacceptable. I know whenever we get the data that it is what it is. But for me, it goes to my next comment, then when are we having, creating a plan to make sure that we address this? So for me, in terms of the timeline, I know you have some next steps, but I'd like a more concrete, So this, to me, is in line with strategic imperative one, academic excellence. So we should have an A through G plan, from my perspective, as a priority to show as an example that, look, here's the scores that we can recognize where we're at. But if we don't have a plan, how are we going to get better? So we need to have a plan. My thoughts would be by this summer, if at all possible, so that we can start implementing it in the fall. so that we see these numbers going up, just like the positive things that we saw with the, I can't remember, I'm forgetting the name, but the Readers and Writers Workshop that we, when we have a plan and we implement it, then things go up. So for me, my comment is figuring out, like, comment slash question, like, when can we have a plan?

[4350] SPEAKER_13: I think we can have something, at least initial steps, of what we're going to do starting next year differently to really start making an impact. And it really comes down to having a tight control over the master schedule and making sure we're in. One of the big elements in the conversation we had with, it was Manny, Barbara that came to talk with us. One of the key things is placement of students. And even though there's some stuff we need to do more at earlier grades, there's some stuff we can do sooner. And some of it's also, that's why I think it's so important to have the principal from McGregor campus there, the junior high principal there, to really think about how do we attack this problem as a team instead of looking at it like three different schools. So that's kind of how. So I think it's reasonable.

[4397] SPEAKER_17: And for me, it's having the plan with measurable goals. And sorry for my frustration is because having gone through this being the K through 12 process, it's unfortunate or unacceptable that we have similar rates of A through G, given where we're at right now.

[4417] SPEAKER_13: I can tell you we'll have some specific next steps at the strategic imperative one interval that's planned. I think it's in May.

[4426] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Ms. Crocker and then Mr. Nguyen.

[4430] SPEAKER_16: I'm coming at it from a little different angle. I've watched the last 20 years this whole problem in terms of algebra in ninth grade. There was a time when 40% of the kids were failing algebra in ninth grade. I happen to have a situation in my family where my son was not mature enough. So he could not understand in eighth grade what he could understand in ninth grade. And I think that we have got to be aware and we have got to be realistic in terms of what we expect the kids to do. They must be, if they're young, they must be ready for the concepts. That being said, that if they're not getting it more the same doesn't make any difference. We've got to approach it a different way so that the concepts, they're getting the concepts. And that means not taking the class over again. That means intervention after the first six weeks. And that means that the teachers have to be understanding. I presented the information. They didn't get it. Oh, well, you can't do that. You've got to go back to them understanding what it is. People have different mindsets. They have different mind abilities. And I hate for kids to think, because they didn't do well in algebra in eighth grade, they're never going to do it. So we have got to be really careful when we talk about A through G and talk about four years of math, that we're being realistic with where the kid is developmentally and how we're doing it. And that means we need to attack it a different way.

[4530] Nancy Thomas: Mr. Nguyen?

[4531] SPEAKER_19: So to kind of piggyback on that, and then I have my own little thing. So A to G only needs Algebra 2. So they don't necessarily have to finish Algebra in the 8th grade. They have four chances through the 9th and 12th grade year to do three levels of math, Algebra, Geometry, Algebra 2.

[4550] SPEAKER_16: But they're talking about doing four levels, four years of math.

[4552] SPEAKER_19: But A to G is still, I mean, that's the requirement, right? It's two years, but you have to get to the Algebra 2 level. The four-year add-on is just our own doing that we want to encourage students to take math, but it's not part of the A through G mandate. I've been of the opinion, and at the last, not the last, but at several board meetings ago, when ROP gave their presentation, and I asked a very specific question about the, what I call, a la carte ROP classes that are offered at Newark Memorial. in regards to how many of those classes are A through G? And we didn't get a response to that, and hopefully we can get a response in a Friday update or later on. To correlate with that question, I then ask, at the Fremont schools, how many of their classes that are offered onsite at their schools are A through G, and is there an equity issue in distributing those courses? I think there's something fundamentally wrong with either the master schedule at the high school, the course selections, or the way we program kids into these courses. There's no correlation, though there's a little correlation, but there is no direct correlation between SBAC scores and A through G approval rate. I'd like to know how many courses, of all the courses we offer at the high school, are A through G and how many are not. I think that would be step one, right? Including all the RP classes, all the elective courses, et cetera, et cetera. And examine how students are placed and how they're encouraged to enroll in these classes, how they are recovering classes if they're not getting that C or higher to be A or G. And what are we doing for students who, because of getting a D in one class, still are able to graduate but not A to G approved? Are we tracking those students? Are we intervening? Are we providing them summer school opportunities, after school opportunities? What are we doing to intervene, provide interventions so that we, those kids can recover that grade? Because a single semester out of those 15 courses of a D can basically ruin their A to G chances. And I'll give you an example of, and I just pulled up, you know, a comparison high school, San Lorenzo High School. Right? Which I think, I mean, we're not comparing ourselves to Mission San Jose because it's a different demographic group or Irvington even. But San Lorenzo, I would say, would be a fair comparison. If not, we are demographically, socioeconomically higher than San Lorenzo High School. Their CASP results for English is 25% of students who are proficient or exceeding. Twenty-five. Newark Memorial is 62.5% in the SBAC score. Okay? Their math is 14% of their students are proficient or advanced. Memorials is 25%. But their A to G rate is 39.8%, and ours is 31.6. So there is something fundamentally wrong, and we need to fix that because our students are way too smart, and our teachers are way too talented for us to show this type of numbers.

[4761] Nancy Thomas: I'd like to also say that you gave me some input about your high school.

[4767] SPEAKER_19: And you've been in this.

[4770] Nancy Thomas: You don't want to talk about that?

[4772] SPEAKER_13: OK. What I would say, I think that it does start with the metrics. And I think part of the conversation with the high school, I think that was eye-opening. Certainly for the high school administrative team was, this idea of are ninth graders on track or off track? And I've not let go of that concept. And I think that I know that we've seen some improvement, but it's not enough. And I think it comes down to how are we building the master schedule based on this kind of concept of what are the key critical things that are going to help? And let's build it backward from there based on data and where kids are and what's our plan to address it with staffing and with sections. But even though We went from last year number of kids to this year. Last year to this year comparison, we had an increase of about 7% more kids being on track. I think that if we had had more of a focus only on ninth grade, we would have had more results at the high school and a higher percentage of kids be on track. So now, lesson learned, and now we need to go to the next iteration and say, OK, let's focus in. And if we're going to do something that we think was successful, like PAWS, Let's narrow the scope to ninth grade and have a larger impact. But it even goes earlier than that. It has to go down to the junior high. And I think that if the way that I want to frame it for the junior high and the alternative school and Crossroads and Newark Memorial is you guys are the team. The cavalry is not coming. This is how many staff we have and how many teachers we have, how many sections we have. How do we solve this problem with what we have? Knowing that the data is what it is, how do we offer more in junior high to get kids and keep kids on track? How do we offer more at the high school to get kids and keep kids on track? Because some of the tools that Julie has at her disposal might be better to have at the high school on that campus more frequently. Maybe not every day, but maybe three days a week there's an option. We're going to kind of look at it from a larger sense of, if we thought of that all as one large master schedule, how would we build it? And so that's kind of how we're going to have this conversation. But I think we'll probably have that group report under this category when we get to the, I believe it's May, strategic imperative one is what I'm hearing, to have a report on, OK, what's your plan based on the data? And it shows how you're going to move the needle.

[4930] Nancy Thomas: And I'd like to say that I'm on the ROP board. And we had a wonderful presentation from, and I forget his name, the ROP teacher at the high school. He has six sections of 190 students. And the courses he's teaching are A to G. So they're G level courses in business. And he had two students that just spoke about this teacher and how wonderful his courses are and every year he seems to be getting more and more enrollment. So I can come back, I'll talk to him and I can come back with the entire A to G sequence and how many of our students are in A to G from ROP.

[4980] SPEAKER_39: And we can work on getting the other data. I think that's really a good look, a deeper look that we have to look at. I do want to share that at our meeting with Ohlone as we're finalizing our MOU with them to bring back to the board here, part of the conversation was around could we also offer the Ohlone English 1A for students who we could see if we could offer it using the syllabus that Ohlone uses to also have another opportunity for students who then would be able to have that class transfer to any university that could offer it. So it was another opportunity for our students who are, and it would be in regards to not necessarily an AP course, but it would be a just completely transferable English 1A, which I thought was also intriguing, along with the other classes that are the prerequisites for English 1A for some of our students. and offer that as an extended opportunity after school.

[5039] SPEAKER_13: Let me just close with one more slide. Would you click forward to the slide that says extended time? Sure. And this is something that will be very specific that I think has to be in the plan in some iteration when we come back to report on this. Almost there. Keep going. There we go. So I asked Manny Barbara, where do we start? Because we have to pick something that's doable where to start. He said extended time is probably the biggest lever to start with. And really looking at placement with extended time, what are we doing during the day within the kid's schedule? What are we doing within the week within a student's schedule? What do we do within the year? How are we addressing summer loss? How do we look at that differently? Do we need to repackage summer school into what I call summer school now? Or sooner in maybe nine-week intervals and not wait until it's too late and then expect them to come outside of the school year? So the loss is pretty staggering in the summer. 900 hours, we kind of lose ground in math. And really being able to provide that within the structure, and that really does fit within the PLC model that we talked about earlier is knowing that those are things that we have within our means, then what sections are we allocating and what does it show up on a kid's schedule like for a kid that needs to recover a class or get more time or how do we build it into a system. So there's more to come on this. I think this is a great partner for us. I do want to bring him in to present to the board soon. But I wanted to kind of give you a preview of what we're going to be doing with the secondary team and includes junior high. And I'm excited to kind of have them think outside of the box about what can we do to build a schedule that's based on data and student needs and how do we start moving in that direction. The one caution we have to have is if there's starting implications for credits, we have to really be careful because there's a lot of rules around how you roll out credits. But I think one thing I want to say is The big factor that prevents tracking is we have to have this be a decision from a kid and the family. They need to help drive this as well. So this idea of having a plan and having parents sign off, and sometimes the kid gets forced going A through G. And if that's what the parents want, we're going to have to work to support that. But I think the difference to avoid tracking is giving some choice for kids. And I think that's back to kind of remember Crocker's point is, It's not for everybody, but then what do we offer for them? And even if we did give them a different option, there can be A through G embedded within that. I know one of the courses we had in a school where I worked that you wouldn't think was high-level math, but it really was, was CNC machining. A lot of high-level math, geometry, algebra involved. And there's some places where that really fits. So more to come on this. This is just the first of a series of reports. But I wanted to kind of get you thinking about A through G. And we will be bringing some stuff back for the board to look at more in depth.

[5248] Nancy Thomas: I hope we look at the junior high, too, and especially when it comes to time. I know there are models where you have a seven period day and double block sessions, so two blocks for math. If math is our real focus, let's put our Emphasis on more time. More time is what matters. So that's another thing.

[5272] SPEAKER_17: And I said to member Wynn's point, if we can really think about how students are placed in the courses. And I really appreciate the insight that he provided of some of the specific data as a starting point. So I would echo that. And for me, all I ask for is what I'm looking for is a plan with next steps, a timeline, so we can then measure what we're doing. If we need to start with this, that's OK. But for me, it's mapping out the plan. Because I think for far too long, we've kind of just done a not focused approach. And I think we need to have a focused approach, especially given that we want to commit to being a STEAM district. We can't say, yeah, we want to be a STEAM district, yay, and then look at all the programs that we have.

[5319] Nancy Thomas: And does the high school truly believe that, A to G is a default curriculum. Are they acting in that regard in terms of how they're setting up next year's master schedule? That's my question.

[5333] SPEAKER_11: So yes, I'm going to find out.

[5337] SPEAKER_13: And we'll be hiring with someone who has a heavy experience in master schedule. That's one of my key elements.

[5345] Nancy Thomas: And math or science background would be nice.

[5347] SPEAKER_13: Hey, we want it all. Of course. Thank you. I just thought that concludes my report. I just wanted to give you a, we'll come back to it. And there's a lot of dense information in there.

[5358] Nancy Thomas: Okay. Next we move on to a public hearing and we have a speaker that would like to address this public hearing. I think you speak within the public hearing. So I will open up the public hearing on school facilities, developer fees increase. Mr. New.

[5382] Cary Knoop: I'm afraid I'm going to have to put my math skills to the test here. So I looked at the study that came with this thing. And so it looks like five years from now, we're going to have 8,299 kids in the district. Yeah. And we're going to have 5,220 dwelling units in five years. So I took a look at what the city council showed us their forecast. And these numbers are not the same. There's a difference, significant difference. I mean, I tried to calculate it one way or the other. And you know, 2,700, 3,500, that's about it. So I just want to let everybody know that, again, it may be my lack of math skills. It's good where I would be. But I think there is some discrepancy here. I think somebody ought to take a look at that. Thank you.

[5442] Nancy Thomas: Thank you, Mr. Knuth. Seeing no one else, we will close this public hearing. Next, we move on to 12.1, which is adoption of the school facilities developer fees increase. Mr. Richards.

[5466] SPEAKER_21: So the proposal before the board is to adjust our level one developer fees to the new amount approved by the State Allocation Board this past January. We did update the developer study. I do know that they contacted the city to get the numbers with regard to projected growth in housing, so I'm not sure what different information Mr. New perceived than what the folks from School Works received, but I do know they were in contact with the city to get the information. With regard to that, the evaluation's been done with regard to what the code requires for our compliance. And we recommend that the board go ahead and adopt the new rates so that we can put them into place. They go into place 60 days after the board takes action.

[5512] Nancy Thomas: Mr. Bracciato? So I'll move to approve. I will second. OK, I'd like to discuss what implication would there be if these 8,000 units that Mr. Newt mentioned do not materialize. What implication would it have for us if approving this this evening?

[5537] SPEAKER_21: There is enough gap of eligibility over and above the minimum state rate for, I mean the maximum state rate for level one that it would not have an impact because our full eligibility is quite a bit higher than what that level one rate is. I would not even have a concern over that.

[5555] Nancy Thomas: OK, so these numbers, in effect, we can prove this increase without worrying about the number discrepancy if there is one?

[5569] SPEAKER_21: No. And we have to do that. We have to readopt this every other year. So if there were to be a significant change of information reported from the city in the next biennial cycle, then it'll be recalculated at that point in time.

[5581] Nancy Thomas: OK, thank you. So we have a motion by Mr. Preciado and a second by Member Crocker. Please vote. Four ayes. Thank you. Next, we move on to 12.2. Proposal for the architect services of a district wide facilities master plan. Mr. Superintendent, maybe you could Explain why this is coming to us in this form and introduce it I'd like to I think part of what I've seen here is We need to ask a few more questions.

[5628] SPEAKER_13: I don't think we're ready to take action yet. I Believe this is the one this is the ad hoc And what I'm recommending is that A small ad hoc committee worked with me to kind of vet this group a little bit further. SVA has provided a sample of additional plans and examples of a facility master plan, energy master plan. But I think we still have a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions about what the community process is going to look like, what's that input going to look like. I also want to hopefully, I think what I would suggest the ad hoc scope would be, maybe is a better way to answer it, would be to help me really get clear about what would the work be done, what would be the work that we would like them to do, knowing that we want to have a real authentic community process that isn't kind of preloaded with, you know, with things that we're trying to force upon people, but really engages community in getting excited about what this could look like. And I think that the other reason that I want to kind of slow this down and have time to really think is the conversation we had earlier about STEAM is kind of relevant to that as well, as we start moving and looking at where we want to be in 20 years. And I wish we had 8,829 students coming and other projections show lower I'd be happy even being in the middle but I think that what we know for sure is that we want to have kind of a steam kind of focus and as we look at energy master planning and strategic master planning that it would be helpful for us to do a little bit of a small group conversation with this firm before we bring it back for a vote of the board at the next meeting so that's kind of what I recall from the notes that we were looking at, any comments, Mr. Richards, that you would add to that?

[5768] SPEAKER_21: No, I think that you've summed up kind of all the various areas that we've been looking at. And so when we had docked previously this idea of bringing forth an ad hoc and then reviewing it further, I think that's the way to go.

[5783] Nancy Thomas: Excuse me, Mr. Newp, you asked to speak on this.

[5791] Cary Knoop: I really welcome the superintendent's thoughtful consideration about making the process an engaging process where the question is out. We need the community to help us answer the question. Eventually, the decisions are the board, but we need to have a process. We don't want a process where we already made up our minds, and now we've got to sell it. So I appreciate that, but on the other hand, I don't hear anything from the board members. The board members are quiet about this. I don't hear any single board member that says, we want more open about this. I'm concerned about this process. Instead, we're getting a ad hoc committee, which, by the way, is not a Brown Act committee. It's the closed committee. An ad hoc committee is an advisory committee for a certain time frame. It means it does research and it reports to the board. That's the normal definition of an ad hoc committee. But again, the board here in my opinion, fails. I don't hear board members speak out about we want to make this process open. It's the superintendent, and I praise him for that, if I may. But again, the board is silent, and it's just indicative.

[5866] Nancy Thomas: Sorry. I'm not silent. I have a lot of notes here, and I'm sure that our other board members will. Well, anyway, let's start the discussion, and I will start it. OK, I really feel that Superintendent Sanchez, I completely agree with you on getting community input. I think we did that when we did the reductions. We had a lot of discussions, a lot of meetings out in the community and at our schools. And I anticipate no less than what we've done for the budget to do going forward. I'd like to make the point that there are things that we've already accomplished, a lot of stuff that we've looked into. We had the initial Kitchell report for Measure G. We had the Dutra and Graydon study on the facilities as they exist now and opportunities for consolidating areas, making certain parcels excess and being able to sell off property to get more capital gains without losing the functionality that we need. We did the Measure G. We've already completed a lot of projects. And we have our developer fee reports. And we have our Davis demographic study. And I would hope that we would ask SBA to really school themselves and immerse themselves in what we have already done so far so that they're not reinventing the wheel. And I think the areas that we need to investigate with the community are, what is their feeling on access to neighborhood schools? How important is that to the community? What about pedestrian and bike commuters and safety, fencing, for example? Is there something with regard to safety and fencing that we need to look at in the future because of what's happened recently? Are we giving a priority to students who reside in their attendance area, and should we ask the public about that. What is the impact of areas two, three, and four on student school attendance areas that they would feed into? And do we have enough room in those schools? Or do we have to create or build a new school in area three where we already have land? What is the cost and feasibility, for example, of relocating the district office to the McGregor site, which has lots of underutilized space, banking this space, which is in bad need of upgrade if we were to continue using it, and it's probably not cost effective. And what could we get if we were to sell this and use that capital money for some of the projects that we need? What's the cost and feasibility of building a school in Area 3? What about modernizations of the junior high and the high school facilities to promote and support a strong STEAM curriculum, what are the current areas of concern around HVAC and door locks, some of the things that have kind of bubbled up to the surface. And with all of that input and input from the board and input from the staff and what they learn when they're actually looking at all of our sites, you know, what, how are we going to help them prioritize the recommendations they make. So those are just some of the things that I jotted down because I think it's very important that we make sure that, however it happens, that we have a lot of openness, a lot of community input, a lot of discussion about whether or not we need a school. Within each of our schools, do we value green space? Do we value space for STEM activities? So forth. That's my thought. Mr. Nguyen.

[6122] SPEAKER_19: Thank you. And at the previous meeting when I requested a sample of a strategic plan that both firms recently completed, so the SBA sent in their sample report, and I did have the opportunity to read 303 pages of the report. And the vast majority of this report is basically a facilities assessment Not necessarily an input session. They essentially went to every school site in Washington Unified School District. And basically did a, probably with MLT or someone, did a assessment on roofing conditions, on walls, hardscape, et cetera, et cetera. And they just synthesized that information. From my understanding of a master plan of a district strategic facilities master plan, is they do that in addition to making sure that when they visit every single school that they speak to that community and get input and have that community present or give to them, provide to the firm their vision of what the future of facilities at the district, at the school, and their community looks like. They do this for all the schools. They do it with the board, and we tell them our vision. They have the same meeting with you guys to tell them your vision and mission. and to combine all those visions together to create this document. That was starkly missing from this 303 pages. There was none of that. This boiled down to basically an assessment of the physical conditions of all the schools in Washington Unified. And so the fact that they have sent us this as sort of their exemplar, right, I would imagine, I would surmise that this is their best showing. as a sample of what they can produce. You know, frankly, I'm very disappointed in the caliber of this product. It doesn't fit what you mentioned earlier about getting the vision of everyone involved, involving all stakeholders and providing input. At the end of the report, their recommendation was, you know, fix roofing, fix some hardscape, do ADA accessibility. Well, we probably don't need to pay someone X hundred thousand dollars to tell us we need to fix those items.

[6272] Nancy Thomas: Thank you.

[6277] SPEAKER_16: You're looking for an ad hoc committee to do what?

[6281] SPEAKER_13: Really to get clear about what is the scope of work that we need to put out to either this group or any group. We might even go back out to take other proposals but have a more refined scope of work. So what I'm thinking about is There's kind of three bubbles on my notes here. The first bubble is really, what's the background? Do you really know our district? Have you reviewed where we've been? Have you looked at foundational documents, like the studies that member Thomas mentioned, plus other documents of what we've had with student performance? And they need to get to know us first. And then the next bubble is really, what's the engagement process? And what does that look like? And really more of a grassroots, instead of a top-down process that starts with the site level and bubbling that up. And then the final bubble is really is what are the recommendations that are based on kind of what Member Nguyen mentioned of areas of agreement after doing this whole process in a kind of no surprises plan. When the plan finally gets into the recommendation form, no one's like shocked if they're saying Where did that come from? I never talked about that. I never heard about that. So I think that's part of it. I think that generally when you put out an RFP, it's somewhat vague. And I think that maybe we need to take a step back, reevaluate, and maybe resubmit another proposal. We have time. There's no reason that we have to use this company. But I think if in engaging with this company to get really clear on what we want, and develop a better scope that they can bid on, then I think we can get better products back from them. But what I can say is we've spent a lot of time, I've spent a lot of time with every member of this board talking about this one-on-one and I think sometimes this type of work and narrowing the scope can't be done in a large group as easily. It's very difficult. Sometimes it's better to brew in a small group and work and then come back and kind of slow that wheel down a little bit. I kind of agree, I think I would have liked to have seen a better final product and more of examples of, because I've told them from the beginning, before they even got to be in the finalist, or as they're actually part of our finalist interview, this board's going to ask a lot of questions about what's your community process. And it still was not as deep as I would have liked to have seen. But at the same time, in their defense, We probably could have made that more explicit in the initial RFP. So maybe we need to refine the RFP and go out again. But I think that's kind of the scope of work that I need some help with. But I think it's probably best done in a smaller group, because getting everyone together is difficult.

[6462] SPEAKER_16: The other piece is, if you were talking, you only presented one. You're talking about desiring to present one, or are you talking about desiring to present more than one?

[6471] SPEAKER_13: I think I ultimately would like to help get down to one, but my urgency comes from the place of I'd like to get this ball rolling before the end of this year so they could start this community process even this summer into next year. So it's not something that I think we have to get done by the end of April. But boy, it'd be nice to have something start at least as late as March. I mean, and I mean something start identify a group that we think is going to be able to deliver a product that we want. But I don't know if, because to me it's feeling like maybe the RFP wasn't explicit enough, and maybe that's why we didn't get the quality that we wanted. But, and I think Brian was the first one to say, I was surprised on the quality of product that they delivered. Do you want to expand on that?

[6530] SPEAKER_21: Actually when I reviewed the report I actually came to the same conclusion that you did Tom that this looked surprisingly similar to The report we had done in 2011 that's sitting on a shelf in the business office now. That was the initial Report of the assessments that was done, and I did not see what I felt was a master plan Now we do have a couple of other firms that initially proposed that we paper screened out initially when we tried to get down to four out of all the applicants and it quite possibly may end up being that the recommendation of the ad hoc committee after they meet the superintendent I would be to go back out again. We may potentially want to consider doing that with a firm that has more of a visionary style plan of what we what is we're looking for. Part of why I wanted to get additional clarification with the board after we received the packages was this exact concern, was that does this really meet what we're looking for? Because I'm not sure that it does.

[6587] SPEAKER_19: Yeah, and the 303 pages, that's not a master plan.

[6592] SPEAKER_17: Mr. Preciado. So I was going to say, I agree with having an ad hoc committee in terms of having that kind of deep analysis. From my perspective, it's thinking about what do you envision? and thinking the big picture for the district. So the specific type of community input would be like member Thomas mentioned in terms of like area three, whether or not it should exist. And then if it should exist, what types of academic programs? Is this a K-6 or is this a K-8 engineering folks or robotics folks? You know, like that type of community, specific community input is what I would ask the ad hoc committee to, think about in terms of the framework and I don't know how you want to move forward with volunteers?

[6642] SPEAKER_13: I think two things. As we start really moving towards solidifying STEAM as a focus at the next board meeting, I think that can be a big driver behind this. So I think at minimum, that gives me two meetings out before this ad hoc committee would report back. But I'm willing to work with a couple of board members behind the scenes to try to refine our scope. And if the committee ends up saying, you know what, let's just go back out and have a better polished RFP that's really clear. Because I think one of the good things about it, even though we're not ready to adopt, is I think we're all getting clearer about what we want. And it's OK to slow it down, because we're the ones that pay for it. So I think that's OK, but I'm just looking for one or two board members to work with me on it. And then we can take the pace from there. So that's all.

[6704] Nancy Thomas: Well, let's see how board members feel about wanting to be on this ad hoc committee.

[6709] SPEAKER_19: I wouldn't mind being on it.

[6710] Nancy Thomas: Tom, I've seen what you've done at your site. And so I think you have a good background. OK. Mr. Preciado, do you? Yeah, I'm OK with that. I think Tom would be a good choice for one of the members. Yeah. Mr. Preciado, I think you'd be fine. How about Jana, are you?

[6730] SPEAKER_16: At this point, I think Frankie might be a good, if you have the time to do it.

[6736] Nancy Thomas: So I think we have two volunteers.

[6738] SPEAKER_28: Are you a volunteer or a voluntold?

[6740] SPEAKER_17: A voluntold? That's right.

[6744] SPEAKER_13: OK. I will try to, and I can, I'll work with your schedules. I know you're both very busy. I can come to you if I need to. OK. Thank you very much.

[6755] Nancy Thomas: Thank you.

[6758] SPEAKER_16: No action necessary.

[6760] Nancy Thomas: Nope. Next, we move to the bond audit report.

[6765] SPEAKER_21: So attached to the agenda is the audit report from Christie, White, and Associates with regard to Measure G. And the report was actually presented to the Bond Oversight Committee at their last meeting last week. And I just realized I can't actually see it on my screen.

[6799] SPEAKER_16: My screen is locked.

[6803] Diego Torres: Oh, here we go.

[6820] SPEAKER_21: So the auditor's report itself begins on page two, where they delineate out what they do with regard to the audit. The opinion's actually in the first subheading of the second page of the opinion, which is on page three, that indicates that the financial statements do present fairly in all material specs, financial position of the general obligation bond for Measure G as of June 30th, and the changes of financial position for the year in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. So at June 30th, there were remaining assets of about $17 million. We had accounts payable of $1 million, so net remaining assets for Measure G of just over $16 million as of June the 30th. The other key area that the board is usually keen on getting questions answered about is whether or not there's any audit findings or compliance matters. We have their report on internal controls and compliance. It's on page 15 and 16 of the report. And their report on performance begins on page 17 of the report that delineates all the things that they did and all the tests that they did. And I'm very pleased to report that we actually had no findings. Again, this year we had no findings. Last year we did actually have a, not a finding, but we did have an adjusting entry that we had to post with regard to an accrual, but we had none of those this year. So we have no findings related to the performance or to the financial reporting of the bond this time.

[6931] Nancy Thomas: Is there any question or comment from board members? I would entertain a motion.

[6939] SPEAKER_16: I move acceptance of the bond audit report. I second.

[6943] Nancy Thomas: OK. Moved by Member Crocker, seconded by Member Preciado. Please vote.

[6956] SPEAKER_17: I'm glad there was no voting.

[6957] Nancy Thomas: Four ayes. Yeah. Thank you. Next, E-rate Category 2 Wireless Upgrade.

[6973] SPEAKER_21: So we'll let Mr. Simon come on up and talk a little bit about this. I'll introduce it briefly. You'll recall a couple of months ago, we pulled last year's award. We had awarded this about a year ago. When we got our free and reduced lunch information for the current year, we discovered we were actually going to have a better eligibility tier if we pulled it and rebid it. And so that is exactly what we've done. So I'll let Mr. Simon present the findings.

[6998] SPEAKER_20: It's pretty much exactly what Mr. Richter said. Good job, Larry. Now, if you'll recall last year, the cost of the district was around $360,000 to $380,000, somewhere in that range, $1,000 to do the project, which is still very good considering what it is. It's about 180 now. So that's what we're bringing forward to the board as the cost to the district. It's for a full upgrade, essentially, of the wireless LAN hardware we have in the district. A lot of the hardware we installed last time stays in place. It's still very useful that we did through the bond project five years ago. This keeps the core of the network and replaces the wireless equipment. So that's essentially what this is. Are there any questions about this?

[7046] Nancy Thomas: I noticed that it's funded out of Measure G. But I thought, you know, we did have a lot of technology in the Russian funds. Mr. Richards, should this be coming out of Russian or should it be coming out of Measure G?

[7068] SPEAKER_21: It's eligible to be done out of either one because technology is in the bond and technology is also in the Measure G. So if the board were to choose to fund it the other way around, when we awarded it last year, it was split between e-rate and the bond. And so we kept that funding mechanism because this was a re-bid of last year's bid. But if the board wishes to change that around, then that's the board's prerogative.

[7094] Nancy Thomas: I'm just wondering what effect it has on the balance of technology, or what is the balance of technology then we are having for our year three rollout in the Russian?

[7109] SPEAKER_20: So we've been under every year in terms of the Chromebooks. We became an underestimate every year. So we were ahead of schedule in that regard. What's left is the final year of that piece, and then the AV project. Those are the two other pieces.

[7122] Nancy Thomas: So there was no, the e-rate was never part of that?

[7124] SPEAKER_20: It was never originally planned for that, that I'm aware of. We did have wireless and technology in the original bonds. That would make a lot of sense.

[7133] SPEAKER_17: Yeah, Mr. Preciado. I was going to ask in terms of the longevity, and that's one of the things with any technology. So what's your thoughts on it?

[7142] SPEAKER_20: So I would say what we plan for and what we price around in this document is an eight-year lifespan. I would say an eight year is very healthy, but it will go longer if we need it to. But an eight year is a good plan for this kind of equipment. Thank you.

[7164] Nancy Thomas: I would open. I'll move to approve. Mr. Preciado moves.

[7169] Mark Triplett: I second.

[7172] Nancy Thomas: Second by Mr. Nguyen. Please vote. Sorry. That's a mistake. OK, please vote. Four ayes, thank you. Next, we moved on to board policy administrative regulation 5123.

[7207] SPEAKER_39: Yes, good evening. I come forward for a first reading our promotion, acceleration, and retention policy. This is something that needs to be updated so that we are current as we look to work with our students who are promoting, accelerating, or retaining, and we come forward at first reading.

[7236] Nancy Thomas: Are there any questions or comments from the board?

[7238] SPEAKER_16: I notice that it's not as specific as it was. Is there a reason for that?

[7244] SPEAKER_39: To align with what CSBA is suggesting, but also through our AR, we felt that we had to We felt that we had to align it through the SST process and update a lot of our forms that are pretty much very much out of date.

[7274] Nancy Thomas: I had noticed a small typo earlier but this is going to come back so I'll talk to you offline about it.

[7282] SPEAKER_39: And I can also add a lot of the old language of the old star language, that's all the far below basic, below basic, that did come out also with our new mechanism.

[7298] Nancy Thomas: Do you feel there's any maybe difficulty in people between the green that is our wording and later on There's additional wording, I believe. Is there any conflict?

[7322] SPEAKER_39: Is it conflict with our wording and CSBA? Is that the question?

[7328] Nancy Thomas: No, I don't. Maybe I should have written down my comments earlier, but I'll ask you offline when we bring this back. OK, we're going to bring that back for a second reading. Next, we move to 12.6, transitional kindergarten.

[7358] SPEAKER_39: Yes, so this evening, we bring forward for first reading, this is actually a new policy for Newark Unified School District. When we brought transitional kindergarten to our school district, we should have aligned a board policy, and so we bring that forward. I do want to share that some of the language that it really speaks to, I think, is emphasizing that Transitional Kindergarten is a two-year program and also gives us the opportunity to, again, align our practices to ensure that our students who are in TK participate as a full student in our district. And so we bring that forward for your first reading.

[7401] SPEAKER_16: The TK Kindergarten is designed for the younger student, is that correct? So it's not a full two years.

[7411] SPEAKER_39: Well, no, it's not a full two years. So TK, essentially, kindergarten becomes a two-year program. So TK is year one. And kindergarten, as we've known it before, is year two.

[7422] SPEAKER_16: Does TK start in September or January?

[7426] SPEAKER_39: It starts in September. It's a regular school year. It's just a brand new grade level. And it's for students who are not quite eligible for kindergarten. And it also includes a lot of the early education standards, along with kindergarten, some kindergarten readiness.

[7444] SPEAKER_16: Good. I'm glad to see that we're doing that. It's good.

[7446] Nancy Thomas: Is it a full day program? In our district, it is not. No. OK. OK. Thank you. Seeing no one wanting to speak to this any further, we will move on. The Citizens Bond Oversight Committee presentation of information. Last week, we really didn't have a chance because we condensed the meeting to really have a discussion following the presentation that Ms. Parks made. So I would invite Ms. Parks to come up and talk to this issue.

[7488] Cindy Parks: Thank you. Since there are two board members that weren't here last time, I was advised to just go ahead and read the speech that I gave last time. On behalf of the Measure G Citizens Bond Oversight Committee, I would like to extend our thanks for placing the item on the agenda on such a notice. I'm just going to reread to you what I read before for those that weren't there. The last six years, the CBOC has taken seriously its responsibilities to this community. We have met quarterly, diligently kept an eye on the various projects in the Measure G finances. It hasn't been without struggles. If you recall, the first two years, we had issues with the information provided by the audit firm. In previous annual reports, we have cited the committee's struggles to get annual facility tours and the lack of receiving necessary information in a timely fashion. As the chair, the committee has directed me to bring a situation to your attention and seek your assistance. On January 4th, 2018, the CBOC had a special meeting in which we toured half of the school sites. With us on the tour was the interim MOT director, Shelly Arthur, and two Vanna representatives, Robert Sands and Eric Barger. The tour took place on Ms. Arthur's first day as interim MOT director. We were fully aware Ms. Arthur would have limited answers pertaining to the projects. However, Mr. Sands had been working in Newark for almost three years and Mr. Barger oversaw the play structure projects. As we toured the various sites, it was very apparent the Vanna representatives couldn't answer the questions posed by the committee members. Mr. Knoop, as the committee's secretary, documented the questions, and at the conclusion of the tour, he spoke with Ms. Arthur and Mr. Sands about his plans to email over the committee's questions to the district office. Mr. Knoop emailed the various questions on January 8th, 2018. On January 9th, 2018, Mr. Simons addressed the security camera concerns. On January 22nd, Mr. Knoop sent a follow-up email in which he asked for a response timeline for the remainder of the questions. In the district's reply email, he was told a response would be sent by the end of that week, beginning of the next week. On February 13, 2018, the committee had a special meeting to discuss the 16-17 annual report and for the district to provide an update on the questions generated from the tour. At the meeting, the committee did not receive answers to the questions and the members expressed frustration with respect to being ignored. By a vote of the membership, If by the end of business on February 21st, 2018, the district failed to respond in writing to the committee's questions, I was directed as chair to bring this matter to your attention. I'm here today because the committee didn't receive their district's response until late yesterday afternoon. Needless to say, the committee has not met to discuss the response. However, we should not have to wait two months and resort to requesting an item to be placed on the agenda in order to prompt the district to communicate with us. This is a symptom of a much larger issue. We have tried to diligently do our job and have been hindered by a lack of timely responses. There needs to be a professional relationship between the district and the CBOC. In conclusion, we need the situation remedied so we can fulfill our responsibility to the newer taxpayers. Since I read that speech two weeks ago, let me provide you with an update from our meeting that we had last Tuesday. We were provided with the documents the day before I spoke two weeks ago but we hadn't again reviewed it. As a committee we reviewed the documents last week. The HVAC question that we had which our question was to please provide a breakdown of the total number of HVAC units by site. We asked to please provide the number of units replaced at each site. The report that we received was produced by Banner and was difficult to interpret the totals. Whenever we saw a report, it always referenced HVAC. This report was broken down by HV and AC. According to the report, the only sites which had existing HV was the high school and the junior high. Question to all of you. Percentage-wise, how many HV units would you think have been replaced? Would you be surprised to hear it's only 25%? That's what the staff percentage is, or that was confirmed by staff. To give you a history of our tour, we were given various misinformation about the new structures by the Banner staff. When we were asking for placement, because when we went on the tour, they would say, oh, yeah, we replaced two sites. Well, I can tell you personally, I went up to one that they said was brand new, and you could see the rusting on it. And when I questioned them on it, it's like, oh, I guess that one isn't one of the new ones. So that's why we ended up asking for a map of each site that we toured and where the new structures were. Some of the structures said that they were for two to five-year-olds, yet they were out on the field near the upper grade playground on Music, where the two to five-year-olds, a heart in the preschool at Music and the kindergarten is in the fenced area. And they didn't get new structures, and that said five to 12 in that area. One of our members was really concerned about cost equity. And that was one of the reasons that we asked for a breakdown of the place structures is just to know that there was cost equity. So there were different things that we had asked for. And so what we got was we got, we were told that they received, let's see, we received copies of all the purchase invoices for all of the various different sites. But we were told that there were no maps that were available. So the more recent request came actually at one of the board meetings on February 20th, which was prompted a question asked at our meeting last week. And the question was regarding the $90,000 interest that was being credited to Fund 21. In Fund 21, there's not only the Measure G, there is leftover money from Measure B. So there's a $90,000 interest credit which is being credited to non-Measure G. There's only about $55,000 that had been sitting that's non-Measure B, I'm sorry, that's Measure B that's non-Measure G, yet it got $90,000 worth of interest. We have millions. sitting in Measure G, and we only got $35,000 in interest. So the question was posed, and we're still waiting for that answer and haven't received that. So that's, in essence, some of our concerns. We're not getting the responses, or we're not getting responses that fully answer questions and are seeking your assistance.

[7921] Nancy Thomas: Mr. Wynn.

[7924] SPEAKER_19: Thank you, Ms. Parks. So first question, Vanderbilt has left our district, correct? Because they had their final presentation about a month ago? I think we... Are they still working in our district?

[7936] SPEAKER_21: They're still working on closeout related to the projects that they manage. So we're still doing the punch list at the high school on several items that remain from D.L. Falk. So they're still here in a limited capacity.

[7952] SPEAKER_19: Do we have an action plan as far as how to address the concerns that CBOC has brought up?

[7957] SPEAKER_21: Yes. So Mr. Newt and I are going to be reviewing his question. He sent me some additional information on Thursday related to his question. So we're pulling data together on his interest question. And then with regard to the HVAC, I've communicated with Robert and Shane. I'm waiting for a further update to get some clarification on questions that were raised regarding their spreadsheet. of HVAC units.

[7983] SPEAKER_19: Beyond the questions that need to be addressed, are there anything else that we can do? Because I'm getting a sense that something is askew in regards to how the program was managed.

[8003] SPEAKER_13: If I may, I think that some of these things, at least on the Vanner side, we can expect them to complete before final payment. I think we have some leverage with Vanner to do some things before they exit completely. And I think that what I would like is just to, once we're able to sort what is our staff responsibility from what's Vanner's responsibility, I have no problem going to Vanner myself and saying, these are the things I need you to deliver. It's strange to me, split AC from HV. That makes no sense in any shape or form. me speaking from an industrial engineering background. So I believe you. So I think Mr. Richards and I need to work with the CBOC more closely and get those questions answered. But I need to sort out what is Vanner's responsibility, because we've spent a lot of money with them, and I don't want to have that much money be spent for somewhat of a long answer. And I find it hard to believe they don't have a map of where those things are. So I think I just need to get involved a little bit more with that. But I think we can leverage Vanner. Do we have a final payout for Vanner? I think is my question. Is there any money we do them?

[8090] SPEAKER_21: They have not submitted their final billing yet.

[8092] SPEAKER_13: So we have leverage, is my point. So I think that's one way that we can say, before you leave, these are some things we need answered.

[8101] SPEAKER_19: I would go beyond answer, because I think it's more than simply answering questions. I think it's looking at the overall big picture of it, whether we were given the products that we were promised, whether the work was done that we were promised to get done, and how it was tracked and monitored. Remember, this goes back all the way to the high school HVAC issue with DL Fox. And during that time, I was very adamant about whose responsibility was it to monitor and track during these construction meetings to make sure that was on target. And we were told that that was on Vanner. And at that time of that discussion, there was supposed to be a conversation with Vanner in regards to how that fell through due to their lack of follow-up or meetings, and therefore pushed that project, in essence, a year behind schedule. So this isn't a new conversation. This is more of the same in regards to issues that I've expressed in regards to Vanner all the way back to Memorial and D.L. Falk.

[8174] Nancy Thomas: Regarding the play structures, we were told that all the play structures needed to be replaced in the district and now to hear that there are play structures that are rusted out or have rust on them, not rusted out, but have rust on them. And I was surprised when the actual contracted price came in well below what we originally approved. So now it makes sense if there were not all of the play structures. replaced. So I think we need to look into whether we need to replace all the play structures and spend the money that we had originally estimated was needed to have state-of-the-art play structures for our kids. So I'd like to see that whole area reviewed. Also, I think the responsiveness has to be dealt with. I think any time we promise information in a certain amount of time, we need to follow through with it. If someone comes to us with questions, we should at least respond in some way, I think, in 48 hours, and then beyond that, when we will get the complete response, if it's something we have to work on. I think if there's not an X by Y, which is, I will do this by this date, there's no commitment. If you do have an X by Y, and Y is the date, and the date passes, again, there's a feeling of betrayal and no commitment. So I think it's really important that in all of our dealings with the community or with the CBOC or with whoever it is, responsiveness requires that we not leave people hanging for months on end or weeks on end or never getting back to them with the answers that we say we will do. but clearly give them a date by which we will close the issue, whatever it is.

[8310] SPEAKER_16: You're going to take care of that, Mr. Sanchez? I'm going to get involved.

[8313] SPEAKER_29: Thank you.

[8319] Nancy Thomas: Next, we move on to 12.8, monthly business transaction reports.

[8330] SPEAKER_21: These were already approved by the board at the last board meeting. We re-agendized them at President Thomas' request, so I'm not sure what additional questions, if any, any of the board members have, but these are the same reports that were actually presented at our last board meeting.

[8345] Kat Jones: They were approved?

[8346] SPEAKER_21: Yes, they were.

[8347] SPEAKER_13: This was part of the monthly progress monitoring of our budget. I thought it was important to put it back on the agenda because we didn't really have time to talk about it, but it's something the board was desiring relative to, where are we relative to how much we're spending, I think it was still worth putting it back on the agenda to let the public know that the board is being, is observing their fiduciary responsibility.

[8371] Nancy Thomas: Right, and we really didn't have a chance to comment on it because we called the rest of the agenda, but I like this report, the second one, the fund balance summary. I think that really, you know, helps us see that at 40 50% of the year, we're sort of tracking our revenues and our expenditures. I have a question about the inter-fund transfers in and out. But I think you had said that the $3 million is not, I mean, yes, the $3 million is not something that we will end the year with, but that we've kept it this way for cash flow flow purposes.

[8418] SPEAKER_21: The second half of property taxes posts in April as everyone knows their taxes are due on April the 10th. Toward the end of April the county will actually post the property taxes to our accounts and then when they do we'll be able to project out the rest of the year but usually the March payroll and the November payroll are the two low points for cash.

[8439] Nancy Thomas: Okay do you have any idea what how much we would we'll have to pull out of fund 17 rough numbers, ballpark numbers?

[8450] SPEAKER_21: I would say that somewhere between 1 and 2 million we'll be able to go back into Fund 17, but I don't have a precise number at this time.

[8464] Nancy Thomas: The question I had on the other account component summary activity change page, I think that would be helpful if we had better descriptions Those are abbreviated descriptions. I mean, I know what leases and rent is, but I'm not sure what ERAF is, or PY taxes, or HOX, or EPA.

[8493] SPEAKER_21: Those actually happen to be descriptions that we don't. The short description of accounts, unfortunately, is something that for certain object codes we don't control, the county controls. But what those are, as we're looking at the property taxes, revenue is not a side the board looks at with particular regularity at this level of detail. But the 80 series, or 8011 through 8047, are what are known as now the local control funding formula. So 8011 is our state aid portion. And then beginning with 8012 is the Education Protection Act. That's the money that was part of that extra tax that was passed a few years ago and then was renewed two elections ago now. the EPA, the Education Protection Act funding, it's a portion, it's a subset of our local control funding formula, but it gets reported with its own separate object code.

[8555] Nancy Thomas: What I'm asking though is can we have a, can you insert a longer description, put this in a spreadsheet and then create a longer description?

[8564] SPEAKER_21: I can work with staff to see what we can accomplish on making a better legend, sure.

[8569] Nancy Thomas: But thank you for these reports.

[8571] SPEAKER_16: And it would be nice to have the fund identified other than fund one to people in terms of at least having a reference in terms of what the funds are. Yeah. OK. Just for clarity for people looking at it. OK. Right.

[8583] SPEAKER_17: Mr. Preciado? Yeah, so from my perspective, and this is just, again, my view, I'm not as interested in terms of the account component of more of the specific descriptions. I'm more of thinking of, so, The fund balance summary, I like that one, but if there's a way to make it even more public friendly. So just like we had the different areas when we were talking about the different cuts that we were going to make and figure out the high level items. I don't know if it's organized in that way, but thinking about, OK, here is the staff salaries, whatever, and we are about 49%. So kind of more public friendly, like if I passed out this page 1 of 11 of the fund balance summary to anyone who's not an accountant or CPA or knows how to read financial reports. It's not really accessible from my perspective. But I do like the percentages because that says a lot in terms of where we're at. So what I take from that one would be, if you look at the total expenditures, there's the budget, there's the actual encumbrance, and then what's available, 43%. Member Thomas mentioned in terms of where we're at, in terms of the year, it was the end of January. So figuring out that we're on track. So I guess that's just my two cents with that.

[8671] SPEAKER_21: Okay, well there are many other reports in the system. We'll pull some of the others that are available and see if there's one that more closely aligns to that people think is more user-friendly.

[8684] Nancy Thomas: And I think if you could introduce it with a narrative of areas where maybe like we've got 14% for services and operating expenses. What does that 14% mean when the year's halfway over? If you could kind of make a narrative out of it and pull issues out that we might want to know about or help us figure out what questions we'd ask if we were more knowledgeable about some of these accounts. for example, or the seasonality of reporting that would require, like I spoke with you today offline, seasonality of our water and gas usage and how that might translate into a percentage that isn't indicative of where we are in the year, a month to month. Do you know what I mean?

[8742] SPEAKER_21: Yes, I understand what you're asking.

[8747] Nancy Thomas: Anything else? We'll keep working on it. OK, thank you.

[8758] SPEAKER_16: We're down to 15 minutes. Are we going to be able to?

[8762] SPEAKER_19: It's consent. The rest is consent item.

[8764] Nancy Thomas: I think the rest is consent. It should go pretty quickly, but we have employee organizations. Susan, would you like to address this?

[8780] SPEAKER_38: I haven't been up for a while. I really don't have a lot to say, although I always say that and don't talk too much. But there's a lot of things that you guys are doing, and the CBO reports, the CBOCs, and things to bring up to surface so people could see what's going on and being transparent. And that's the thing I see that's lacking in whatever anybody brings up to the podium, is the transparency. And I just kind of want to say that Being an employee of the district and being a community member as well, and being a parent of kids that went through our school district, I think that what we lack in a district is educating our community. And why I say that is you can ask the community to come to a committee meeting and discuss what they want to keep, but unless they understand what we are required to do as a school district based on our headcoats and the laws, they're not going to understand some of the decisions we have to make. And I think educating them, you know, just like the report you were talking about temporary teachers, you know, had they seen something like that before, maybe the comments coming up would be different. You know, finding the money to figure out how to keep these teachers, we could have stopped all that drama had we worked on certain things before. But we can't, we make decisions based on what we're required to do. Some of them good, some of them bad. But unless you educate the public, they're not going to be able to respond to us or anyone in helping. And they're going to constantly feel like they have been ignored when they bring things forward. And that's just an observation I see that I don't know how we'll do it, but I think that's what we have to do. We have to concentrate on educating them on how we have to make this decision. or why we're having to make this decision. So with that, I guess I'll see you next two weeks. Thanks. Thank you.

[8919] Nancy Thomas: Next, we move on to the consent agenda, non-personnel items. Are there no personnel items this time? OK. Is there any one of these that would like to be pulled? And no one from the public is asked to speak to this. Seeing none, I will entertain a motion.

[8944] SPEAKER_16: Acceptance of what, 14-1 through 7? Yes.

[8947] SPEAKER_19: Yeah, I'll move to accept.

[8949] Nancy Thomas: I'll second that. OK. Member Nguyen makes a motion. Member Crocker seconds. Please vote. Four ayes, thank you. Finally, we move on to Board of Education Committee Reports, Announcements, Requests, Debrief, and Discussion. Mr. Nguyen.

[8974] SPEAKER_19: Thank you. My apologies for missing the last board meeting. I was at a WASC visit up in Luther Burbank High School. And not to throw any additional salt onto the proverbial wound, but they do very well with Aidergy. There's Aidergy eligibility as well. Same size as Memorial. minority enrollment of 95%, 92% free and reduced lunch. So it's a very, very needy community. Their ELA CAF scores are lower than Memorial's. They're at 42%. Their math is much lower than Memorial. They're at 13.1%. But their A through G is 51.5%. Sorry. Member Cracker.

[9021] SPEAKER_16: The only comment I would make has to do with the visit to the junior high. That's all I have today.

[9029] Nancy Thomas: No request. Member Picciotto.

[9032] SPEAKER_17: Yes, echoing Member Nguyen's comment in terms of we need to spend a lot more time focusing on academics and the planning and making sure that we're having these conversations so we figure out how to move forward collectively and building on that. For the city school liaison, I would ask if there are any board members who have agenda items that want to be discussed, if they can send it to myself or member Crocker so that they can get placed on the next meeting.

[9063] SPEAKER_16: And that's all I have. Do we have a date for the next meeting? Yes. What is it? April 16th. April 16th, so we have another. Actually, it's before the next meeting, isn't it?

[9073] Chery Villa: It's a date we're ready to post before the 9th for the city.

[9079] Nancy Thomas: Okay, all I have to say is that I went up to the Legislative Action Day and we talked to our legislators and talked about the importance of adequate funding and some other issues and I think they were very receptive. I don't know how quickly or if they'll be able to move on the issues that we brought, but they listened and they were a lot more knowledgeable, I would say, about our issues than the previous year when I went. So I think CSBA is doing a good job for us. Also, at the last ROP meeting, I mentioned earlier that we had a presentation from the teacher, ROP teacher at the high school that teaches 190 students. And he had two of his students give testimonials And it sounds like he's doing a fantastic job. And the students are engaged. They love the course. They're learning a lot from him. They showed us a resume, how they learned how to write a resume. A lot of good information. And I'm wondering if the board would be open to having them come in. It's only a five or 10 minute presentation. And it helps us, I think, understand what ROP is doing for us. So maybe I can ask if that can be put on the next agenda. I'll talk offline with you, Letty, or you, Mr. Sanchez. Yes. OK, thank you. Either one's fine. Superintendent?

[9176] SPEAKER_13: I think one addition that I wanted to mention in my concluding comments, as we think about facility master plan, strategic plan, and energy master plan, is the element of safety and security for our buildings. I think that's one thing that we can't let fall off the radar, especially in light of recent events, you know, even today and things that are happening around the world. I think we have to kind of probably take a step back and look at that as part of this community process. If we do something like that with another architect, that's something that I think we need to ask some experts to help us with. And on a personal note, I want to share As a proud father, my son is now an 11th grader pitching varsity. So that's good. And my daughter has scored well above grade level in math. So they're both doing well in those regards. So very different kids, but that's all I have at this time.

[9236] Nancy Thomas: Oh, I just had one observation, if you don't mind me cycling back. I know we had a wonderful presentation about one child and the parent partners. I think it would be helpful if we would agendize that in the future so that you know otherwise it's almost like a non-agenda item and they should have been restricted to three minutes but just in the future. Okay. Thank you.

[9264] Nancy Thomas: Thank you guys.

No minutes available.