Regular - Part 2 Meeting

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[3] Nancy Thomas: are newly elected and sworn in board members, and a big thank you to Mr. Preciado for his service. Before we start, I understand that board member Crocker would like to make an announcement.

[23] SPEAKER_37: Dear Newark Unified School District Board of Education, it is with mixed feelings that I will be resigning effective tomorrow, December 5th, 2018. Superintendent Sanchez has my letter of resignation. While I am legally responsible to vote on matters before us this evening, I will be abstaining from discussing and voting on the board reorganization items. I will speak later to my reasons later on in the meeting.

[52] Jodi Croce: Thank you.

[58] Nancy Thomas: Later, miss.

[62] Ray Rodriguez: So now we have to plan a special event for member Crocker.

[68] Nancy Thomas: And order the plaque. Also next we move on to the election of officers. We usually follow a rotation. And since Ms. Crocker has announced her resignation, I would like to nominate Mr. Ray Rodriguez to be our next board president and I would look for a second to that nomination. I'll second it. Okay. Okay, please vote.

[120] SPEAKER_20: Four ayes and one, five ayes and one abstention. Congratulations, Mr. Rodriguez.

[154] Ray Rodriguez: Member Crocker was supposed to be president based on our rotation and she's been a godsend from the day she got here. Originally she helped us pass one of our bonds and a very very active retired teacher and been so fortunate to have her on the board all these years and we've gone through different board members for different reasons. And she's been a mainstay and she's, her dedication and the fact that she's always available, she comes to meetings and she's just, it's gonna be hard to not have you here. And I appreciate, as a lot of you know that, know us and anyone that's a servant that serves our community, It puts a lot of strain on our family and our loved ones. And Member Crocker has always been there, and her family has always been supportive. So I appreciate your family for being behind you and supporting you while you've been with us. What is it now, 12 years, I think? 15. 15 years. Anyway, thank you.

[232] Nancy Thomas: I'm sorry, Ms. Crocker, you were kind of telling me not to say anything. And so then I didn't say anything and now Mr. Rodriguez said it on behalf of both of us for sure because we've all spent your 15 years on the board together and we've made a lot of decisions and you've been rock-solid in terms of being prepared for the meetings and following through with all of your board assignments. We can only hope that all board members, now and into the future, will be as prepared as you are and follow through like you did and do. Thank you for your service. So next.

[277] Ray Rodriguez: With that, we're up. The next officer will be the officer vice president. And I'd like to nominate member Nancy Thomas as vice president. We need a second.

[292] Elisa Martinez: I second that. OK.

[295] Ray Rodriguez: Please vote.

[296] Nancy Thomas: Wait. I forgot to clear it. OK, please vote. We have five ayes with one abstention.

[312] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Since we're here, can you take a minute, or maybe the superintendent, and explain what happens now that a member, Crocker, I think you already said we got 60 days.

[324] Nancy Thomas: Yes. We just went through an application, I mean, an appointment process. I think the process worked pretty well. We may fine tune the way we do the interviews, but I would assume that this board would like to do it the same way we did it before. Therefore, what we have to have is a two-member subcommittee that looks at the applications that come in, and the two of them then would work out the suggested questions that would be asked. My recommendation would be Elisa and Mr. Rodriguez. If you two would be willing to do that, is that OK with you? OK. So superintendent, would you like to talk, or maybe Char would like to? talk about the process since we just went through it and how it would, it will unfold now?

[387] SPEAKER_25: I could not start. Um, so tomorrow morning I will email the letter to the county office, which starts the clock. Once the county superintendent receives the letter of resignation, we have a, they believe it was a 60 day window to make an appointment. Um, and we'll follow the same kind of process and timeframe that we did before. So probably looking at, we have to put it in proper notice in local circulation, post it on our website, make it available. There'll be applications that'll be available in that kind of a format. And we'll refine and probably change the questions and change them up a little bit. And then maybe refine some of the process. And we do have notes on the last process. So the good news is we recently did it, so it's fresh in our memory. But we should have someone identified within the 60-day window.

[442] Ray Rodriguez: So we would have to have the special board meeting no later than 60 days. But as far as when the applications are going to be in, you're going to give us the timeline?

[457] SPEAKER_25: Yeah, once we get it to the county superintendent, we will issue a timeline of what deadlines we need to meet. And we just had to share that with you, so we'll have to update the dates now with the new timeline according to state statute. But there's also, within 60 days, there's meetings that are already scheduled. And I was going to request later in the agenda a special meeting in January. But I think that, so we'll have a few opportunities to weigh in on the process. Thank you. Thank you much. And the only caveat is anything about the process will have to be done out in public. All of it will have to be done out in a public forum. And everything will be on the website and everything like before? Yes. But it'll be very similar to as far as the structure and the timeline as we have already done. OK. Great.

[504] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you.

[506] Nancy Thomas: OK. I have to apologize. One of our protocols is that we address each other formally by our last name. And it's hard for me because I've been visiting with you and talking to you all, so if I slip up, that's That's my problem. We'll try to follow our protocols and decorum here on the dais. OK, next, we have appointment of the superintendent at secretary of the board.

[538] SPEAKER_25: Do we have to vote on that? We have to vote on that? 8.6. I'm sorry, just to clarify, point of order. Yes, Nancy. We did clerk? That is. I'm the clerk. OK.

[546] Nancy Thomas: All right. Could I have a nomination to appoint the superintendent as secretary to the board?

[554] Ray Rodriguez: So move. That we appoint the superintendent as secretary of the Board of Education.

[561] Nancy Thomas: The student member wants to second? OK, please vote. Five ayes with one abstention. Congratulations. Thanks for your nomination. OK, next we have. The resolution with authorizing signatures. I would ask for a... I move to approve the resolution 2125. Ms. Martinez moves to approve. I second. Ms. Gutierrez seconds. Please vote. Five ayes with member Crocker abstaining. Thank you. Next, we move on to adoption of policies and bylaws. This is a requirement by Ed Code for this organizing meeting. So I will move that we adopt our policies and bylaws. Second. Ms. Gutierrez seconds. Please vote. meeting. 5 ayes with one abstention by Miss Crocker. as part of the regular organizational meeting we set the time of our meeting and our are set to start at 7 and I would entertain a motion to set the regular time of the meeting from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. 5 ayes with member Crocker abstaining. Thank you. The next item I'd like to have the board consider a pretty substantial change from past practice and that is to accommodate one of our board members who has difficulty making Tuesday meetings on a regular basis. I would like to see if this board will entertain moving our meetings from the Tuesday evening to Thursday evening. And if we do, we have to change our board policy, which we can do at our next special meeting. So is there any discussion on that?

[773] Ray Rodriguez: So could you elaborate, if you don't mind? I mean, we've always done the first and third Tuesday for as long as I can remember. I'm not saying we have to be ready for change, but I'm just trying to get a better understanding.

[790] Nancy Thomas: Well, Ms. Martinez, would you like to speak to this?

[798] Elisa Martinez: Member Rodriguez, it was my request. I travel quite a bit with work and though I have worked with my employer to try to always accommodate the meetings, I may not always be able to. So I've offered to join remotely. But the alternative being if we could move it to Thursdays, I'm pretty much usually back, I will be back to be able to join the meetings in person, which I would prefer.

[831] Nancy Thomas: I think it's very important that we're here face-to-face whenever we can. It doesn't work very well to have a member on the speaker because we don't always get a chance to acknowledge that member and have the vote happen. And so I would feel comfortable accommodating this request in anticipation that you would be open to it, the dates of the board meetings that we would approve is listed in this agenda item. And also, based on my suggestion, I ask that we have special study session meetings if there is a fifth Thursday in the month, that this would be a meeting we would not have to hold, but it would be a placeholder in case there is something we'd like to meet about in a special meeting. So I would really want to suggest that the board approve these meeting dates. These are Thursdays. Oh, these are Tuesdays. Okay. Then I would recommend that we have a motion to approve first and third Thursdays. Yeah. First and third Thursdays. We have a fifth Thursday that we set that aside as a potential study session meeting. And then if we approve those dates, we'll be posted on the web so the public knows.

[936] Ray Rodriguez: I'm fine with it. I think everybody knows the way I feel that it's so important for all the board members to be here. Now, in the past, you know, member Piersaldo and member Nguyen on occasion has been difficult for them to make the meetings. So accommodating member Martinez and so she can be here on Thursday. But I'm just one board member. How does that?

[963] SPEAKER_38: Sorry, I have no reservations for it, so.

[965] Ray Rodriguez: With Thursdays? And then it's understood that like tonight's meeting where we were having study sessions, are we still going to do that just one meeting where we have a study session, and the other one we go right into closed session, and then that's, is that going to continue?

[987] Nancy Thomas: I would suggest whoever sets up the agenda with the superintendent, you know, schedules a study session before the regular meeting, but these would be separate meetings entirely where we would start at 7 and go to 10 for special.

[1000] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, because I'm going to try to stick to just having one study session a month instead of, but Okay, so you've made the motion then?

[1008] Nancy Thomas: Did you want to second it? Since it's your thing. Yeah, I made the motion. Oh, I'm sorry.

[1014] SPEAKER_37: It's because they're not listed as the Thursdays. Mr. Mayor was asking to speak on the item.

[1020] Nancy Thomas: Oh, certainly, Mr. Mayor. Please speak on this item.

[1023] SPEAKER_20: All right, you can set the three minute time now. All right, I'll be under three minutes, I think. I'm just concerned that it wasn't published in the board minutes that there was a change that was going to happen. And a lot of the events that are scheduled in the school calendar are based on we don't do things on nights of board meetings. And so for the rest of the year, we would have difficulty. We'd have to change every single event that happens on those Thursdays because we don't want conflicts, school activities and board meetings. They shouldn't be competing.

[1064] Nancy Thomas: Staff, which meetings might be?

[1067] SPEAKER_20: Movie night, book fairs, back to school night, parent, you know. Pardon?

[1074] SPEAKER_15: Yeah. So right now, just looking, there are some site specifics and we do try to avoid board meeting nights. Sometimes we just can't avoid it because there's so many wonderful activities. We do have LCAP meetings right now scheduled for Thursdays, but we would make accommodations and we could move it to the music campus to do that as well. Oh, I'm sorry. Are they Wednesdays? Okay, good. Thank you.

[1102] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, unfortunately, you know, things like this, when they come up, they do require that we maybe make accommodations, but I'm... I have a question. Yes.

[1115] SPEAKER_38: The calendar year is... The events that they speak of is for this calendar year. Yes. we have a lot of a lot of work to do between now and June a whole lot of work especially with the budget and I worry

[1152] Nancy Thomas: They are mutually exclusive in a lot of ways, you know, that the group that would meet with the LCAP is not us or the group that would attend our meeting. And so if it's possible to change a meeting date that's already been set, you know, so that there's not a conflict with people that might want to be at the board meeting, then I would hope that staff would be open to resetting those dates. But I think it's important for us to stay with Thursdays starting next month.

[1182] SPEAKER_25: I'm sorry, if I may. What I would suggest is if this is kind of the direction of the board, we'd have to vote on it, but I can redline the bylaws, redline board policy, and then also look at the impact of what exactly falls on those days and bring that back as a package for the board to really look at, so we can kind of list those specific dates as we migrate to this Thursday pattern. That might give you... It's both time to put it in the public eye as well as time to process it all.

[1217] Nancy Thomas: And also, there's been months because of holidays and things like that where we've had the meetings on Tuesdays, but not necessarily the first and third Tuesdays. And I believe the board policy says we have meetings on Tuesdays. It doesn't specify whether it's a first and third. So we can do the same thing. with redlining the policy to state that it's Thursdays and gives us flexibility to switch a Thursday from one Thursday to another.

[1247] Ray Rodriguez: So again, I don't have any problem accommodating member Martinez, but there is a big picture here. For years, we've asked the school community to make sure that on the calendars for all the sites that they put down, the Tuesday meetings, And a lot of times that drives other things that they do. So if we put this off in, because we don't have a meeting until the second week of January anyway. So is it possible to put this off by then? It gives staff a little time to, I mean, if you want to vote on it right now, I'm fine. But we're changing the agenda and everything. And I would feel more comfortable if we just made it for, we voted on this in January. Would it be a problem on the Tuesday in January, just for that one time?

[1304] Elisa Martinez: No. Superintendent Sanchez, I think that what you're proposing makes sense, just to make sure we do understand the impact. So if we could do that, that'd be great.

[1316] SPEAKER_25: I think that what I would suggest that might be helpful is we also can run the scenarios first and third, as well as second and fourth, and see if one has less impact than the other. I do recommend that at least you make some kind of direction to staff so we can begin redlining the bylaws to go to Thursdays. I do agree that if Thursdays is the day that everyone's present, I think that is absolutely the way to go considering what is waiting for us to work on relative to budget and strategic planning and facility master planning and all of the business we have ahead. So I think that's really desirable. as far as the district, we can adjust as much as possible, but I was going to suggest later in the agenda to meet on January 10th, which is a Thursday, to do a special meeting to have a deeper conversation about the impact of this, so we can have something as ready soon for you to look at by January 10th, have a special meeting, and that could be one of the only agenda items or one of the very few agenda items for January 10th, which I believe is a Thursday. Is that correct, Char? for us to do a special meeting to kind of hash this out as a sole agenda item so we can really get to resolution. Because I don't want to wait too long because we are also waiting for the board to act so we can plan out all the other activities.

[1399] Ray Rodriguez: And that allows you to get on it right away?

[1401] SPEAKER_25: If everyone can commit to that date, I can have it ready by January 10th, which is the week after we get back from break.

[1406] Ray Rodriguez: And then January 17th would be our first regular board meeting on that Thursday. Well, depending on what scenario you pick, yes.

[1415] Nancy Thomas: So we can just leave this and then... Yeah, let's table this item and set January 10th as our next special meeting. It'll be a special meeting where we will solidify and codify the calendar.

[1434] Ray Rodriguez: I think we have consensus on moving in that direction to make sure that all of us are here. And that's what you want, right? We'll work those scenarios. OK. Got it. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. So you must be very, very special. That's the first step. It makes sense. No. No, I, again, when we need to do things to make sure that we're all here, especially all the important things that we do, I think it's something we should do.

[1468] Nancy Thomas: OK. Next, superintendent, we move on to student reports.

[1473] SPEAKER_25: Who is with us here? Let's start with Newark Junior High. It's usually been our tradition. Ladies, please come up. You don't need to say your last name, but your name and your grade would be great.

[1491] SPEAKER_29: So, hi. I'm Vanessa, eighth grade ASB president.

[1495] SPEAKER_14: Hi, I'm Vanessa, the ASB vice president. The 2018 and 2019 school year has been very successful so far, especially for the leadership program. The leadership program has been successful with fundraising, collaborating with one another, and constructing ideas to better the school.

[1512] SPEAKER_29: Last month, the leadership class produced a canned food drive. The purpose of the canned food drive was to help those who are less fortunate than us. We were able to raise over 14,000 cans throughout the school. We also presented the Let's Get Real bully presentations. The purpose of this presentation was to send a message to students about bullying and how it can impact our lives.

[1535] SPEAKER_14: Currently, we are doing a Toys for Tots to help kids. To do this, we are asking students to bring Barbie dolls, toy trucks, balls, and makeup, et cetera. This will be an opportunity for our school to give back to our community.

[1548] SPEAKER_29: Coming up, we're doing a winter carnival for our school to come together and celebrate the holidays. Leadership program has been working very hard. We seek to continue to progress. Thank you.

[1564] SPEAKER_25: representatives from McGregor campus.

[1571] SPEAKER_03: Good evening Superintendent Sanchez, board members, and cabinet members. My name is Autumn Durand. I am a senior at Bridgepoint High School. We had a report card night on November 15th at 7 p.m. There were 18 families in attendance as well as several community organizations tabling and sharing resources and food. Parents commented that the event was very successful. Our Bridgepoint Culinary Arts class prepared a meal for Feed My Sheep dining room. This meal served over 60 people on Tuesday, November 27th. We had one early graduate so far. Congratulations, Jennifer Lopez Lara. We had our first quarter assembly this past Friday. There were 19 students who made honor roll for GPA of 3.0 and above. There were 15 students who earned 17.5 credits or more. There were 13 students who earned one or more months of perfect attendance. Several students received teacher awards. Our canned food drive started this week. The winning class will be treated to pizza by the administration. Me and a teacher also have worked on a sock drive for the homeless. This Friday, we are having a school-wide holiday meal. Bridgepoint Culinary Arts will be cooking for students and staff. Hopefully, some of you will join. Have a nice night.

[1654] Jodi Croce: Thank you.

[1660] Nancy Thomas: Thank you very much. It's on my calendar. I hope some of the other board members can make it, too.

[1666] SPEAKER_25: Sierra, do you want to go next? Yeah. Is there anyone else presenting with you tonight?

[1670] SPEAKER_30: No, not tonight. But let's see. About a month ago we had our annual LOL or League of Leaders meeting. It's a tri-city meeting besides Logan where all the ASB cabinets and leadership meet together with all the other schools and we collaborate with ideas on what do you do, what do we do, and how can we improve together. And from it we actually gained a lot of new ideas and this year we are, So we had it at the beginning of this year. We usually have it at the end of every year, but this year we changed it. So now we can implement it throughout the school year and not forget about it over the summer. And so far it has worked really well. We're going to have our Winter Spirit Week, and we're taking a lot of ideas from the other schools within the next few weeks. It will include wonderful dress-up days, such as Christmas morning on Monday, Pajama Day. Santa's Workshop, Whoville, and then throughout the week, they will be doing battle of classes through Christmas lip-sync battles, choreography, and let's see, a rapid staff relay race, and et cetera. So we're really excited for this, and we actually, as of today, I talked to the other ASB cabinets, and we're looking to do a Tri-City Rally for the beginning of Spirit Week and before Christmas break. So we'll see how that will go. College apps for early action and UC have officially closed. A lot of seniors, including myself, have been receiving a lot of our early decision acceptance letters or rejection letters back within the past few weeks and continuing within the next few weeks. And then additionally, CSU applications actually got extended till December 15th. So our students are really happy about that because some of them are actually My classmates are having to deal with their families, dealing with the fires. That's why the extension was caused. So a lot of students are really thankful for that, where they can focus on their family and the college apps. Additionally, with the fires that have been happening, NMHS Athletics has come together, and we created a fundraiser for all of our sports teams to collect money, donations, or gift cards for the families. And they were sent with Coach K. and her husband to the victims within the shelters to help them when they have nothing. So we raised a few hundred dollars, thousand dollars, to send to those families. And we wanted to do any efforts we could. This Saturday, additionally, Newark Memorial will be hosting the third annual Christmas Come Unity Party. Come Unity, two separate words, because it is I spoke on this last year where the students of the high school and the community in general have come together and we threw on a big Christmas party for the people within the shelters in Newark. So we get a whole bunch of Christmas presents, we get what they need, necessities, and we throw on a big party for them with Santa coming and for the kids and there will be live performers and actually, The mayor of Newark, Alan Nagy, will be coming to celebrate with them. So I invite the board members, if you would like to come, you can. It will be in the commons this Saturday from 5 to 9 PM. It all started just from me and a few other kids making breakfast every Saturday morning with them and turned into a big Christmas party every year. So we're really excited for it. Let's see, OCC, Ohlone Connections, we are currently finishing up our college classes and finishing our fall term right now. So we're getting a lot of college credits. Me, myself, and my classmates are getting or acing all our college classes. And we're getting a lot of college credit. And a majority of our class are opting out of a lot of our freshman year credits going into college next year. So we're very happy about that. And OCC is beginning to accept students pretty soon. So acceptance will be coming up. Therapy week was just accepted. So we're going to throw on our first ever therapy week as finals come up where it includes like therapy dogs. So we're really excited about that, having puppies on campus. And we're going to have little other things like music, Or maybe put little slime if you want to make slime, because kids do it in elementary school. But we still enjoy that. So we're just going to really do that to alleviate the stresses, especially the seniors and juniors are coming down with their college jobs and applying. And additionally, elections for ASB cabinet will be happening earlier this school year. We're going to be handing out the applications within this week or next week, and elections will be taking place beginning to mid-January. And that is what I have for you tonight. Thank you. Thank you.

[1989] SPEAKER_25: I need to ask a question. What schools have you been accepted to so far?

[1994] SPEAKER_30: I have applied to five schools. I have received four acceptances so far. And I've been accepted to my top two. I'm waiting on my number one, though, Santa Clara University. I've been accepted to St. Mary's and Menlo. And I'm really excited because I was really worried I wouldn't be able to even have the opportunity to get into college for so long. So I've been working so hard that I've been accepted with almost full scholarships to a lot of them.

[2029] Nancy Thomas: Congratulations.

[2032] SPEAKER_25: That's a good answer. That's a really good answer.

[2041] Nancy Thomas: Madam Superintendent.

[2043] SPEAKER_25: Okay, I wanted to start with the PowerPoint before I introduce our communications firm. I recently attended a CSBA conference with member Thomas and member Gutierrez and we saw this presentation and a little workshop about marketing, your district and public engagement and I wanted to pull some of the best of that PowerPoint just to share with you And also so Valera could hear what we're thinking and because we're going to put them to work on some of these ideas. But I want to share kind of some of the ideas that we had here. One of the things that they felt was a really strong campaign that not only was community engagement but it was also great marketing was this idea of a billboard and is also advertising students that are graduating and what schools they've been accepted to. That was kind of the point of the question to Sierra, because I think Sierra is a great example of Newark Unified and products of our school system. And what happened, we heard from the presenter a little bit about, once this was up, other parents were starting to ask, when's my child going to be on that poster? I don't know if, Ms. Gutierrez, do you want to say anything about what else we heard in this workshop?

[2124] SPEAKER_38: It was very enlightening. It was a lot of information just on how highlight the positives of the school. And one of the things that most parents want to know is that if the students are going to come to this school, are they going to be able to get into really good colleges? This is a great example of it. And we have that here in Newark. We have students that are going to great colleges that are great success stories. So one of the things that was discussed is that we need to promote that. And we need to let people know that you can come to Newark, and you can be successful, and you can get into great schools. So that's part of this campaign.

[2160] Nancy Thomas: And Sierra's picture will be up there. At St. Mary's or?

[2164] SPEAKER_25: We'll see where she gets accepted. But the idea of So Can You is just a really good idea. And I think just sending that message that you can too, and you can be part of it. But it's not just for student groups. They're also, even though these are some other examples of great student exemplars, where they're going to college, you can too. They also had other campaigns for alumni and successful alumni, as they pointed to, that have gone on and done great things that are now out in the world of work or that have really moved on to higher education or whatever they're doing was part of it too. They also looked at, these are some other examples of that. This is Elk Grove. So there was three or actually four districts that presented some of the great ideas around what has been effective for them. So this is, again, alumni success stories. There's another one here. Let's see if we can get it to move. Can you help me prompt it? I don't know what's going on with this. There we go. I'll aim it at Kai. But just another examples of what that might look like. It was also embedded within how they rebranded the district. So it started having the same kind of look. This was kind of interesting, because it was also recruiting to think about careers in teaching, and working with students in the classroom. And that was really a great place to highlight some of the success stories we have with our employee groups. There's another one. Can I just add to that?

[2261] SPEAKER_38: One of the things that they were saying is sometimes they get complaints from parents saying, well, the teacher can't do this, the teacher can't do that. And that's where it was, well, hey, maybe you can be a teacher here. Maybe you can help things of that sort.

[2274] SPEAKER_25: One of my colleagues. who I've known for many years, she says that she's been evaluating teachers since she was in grade school because she was very critical of teachers and actually became a teacher, got a PhD in a very specific area of teaching. And that's really, there's some truth to that. And there's nothing wrong with that. The other part was with the rebranding. They came up with a logo. And when I say they, they had students have a contest district-wide to come up with what is the new logo, what's the new look, and how does that shape our branding. And just know these are all ideas and concepts, but we kind of took the best of and put it, I just cut and paste from that PowerPoint what they had. They also put together a strategic plan that aligned with this larger framework of the logo, the philosophy, who we are. which was a comprehensive strategic plan. This is another one I thought was interesting, where they also talked about other jobs within the district, teachers and special education teachers, school nurse, bus driver, school principal, vice principal, things that a lot of our students may not think about right away. But once we have them captured, we can get them to think about it. Because we do have a lot of homegrown teachers that grew up here, went to school here, went away, got their education, came back, and now work here. And that's something we want to encourage. I know why it works behind me. We have a couple more. They have a comprehensive strategic plan. And they also have an executive summary of a strategic plan, something that's easy to read if people want it. But they also have created that. But those are some ideas. We came back, I know member Thomas and member Gutierrez had talked with the city and I've made some calls today to try to connect to see how do we partner with them to use some of the billboards to maybe get a spot to do something like this off 880 or one of the other prominent billboard areas to start promoting our district and our success stories of our kids, of our employees, of what's going right in Newark Unified. So I wanted to share that with you and also I wanted We'll transition now to Valera Communications, and they're going to provide a little bit of an update to the board of what they've been up to and kind of maybe react to these crazy ideas a little bit. Let me introduce Rolando Bonilla with Valera Communications. There's a handout?

[2434] SPEAKER_05: OK. Good evening, everyone. First of all, let me start by saying I think it is unfair to have me speak after your students. They're already doing far better at their age than I ever, ever will. So thanks for that. My name is Rolando Bonilla. I'm the chief strategy officer for Rolando Strategic Advisors. We are a public relations parent stakeholder communications firm that focuses on public agencies, specifically school districts. I see tonight as the beginning of an ongoing conversation between our team and the board, as this is just the first of many conversations we'll be having with you in terms of updating you and getting your input. Tonight is that first step. I think where we are today is, first of all, it's been a pleasure to serve you. This is an amazing district with a lot of opportunity. And like many districts in the Bay Area, you're dealing with the issue of declining enrollment. You're dealing with the issue of how do you set yourself apart from other competitors? How do you get folks to recognize that you are the best value proposition in terms of an education for your children? So one of the first things that we focus really at the moment on four core tenets. The first is district school marketing. We focused on media relations, social media, and crisis communications. You know, the tools that Superintendent Sanchez just put on the screen, it's important to call them that. They're tools. Communication isn't about how many social media hits you put out. It's not about how many news stories you get out. Those are tools. The fundamental question to ask yourselves when you begin is, who are you? Who do you want to be? How do you want to be seen? What's the type of conversation you want to have with your community and your stakeholders? That's the genesis. When you have that, then you're able to utilize the tools that allow for you to have that ongoing conversation with your constituents, that ongoing conversation with your parents. and really put you in a position where the community feels that you are listening, that you are engaged. Because ultimately, I can put up billboards. We can put up great shots on Channel 2. We can do those things. But if our court constituents don't feel that we're having that two-way communication with them, then ultimately, those are just things that become background noise, but don't have the brand ambassadorship that your constituents can have for you because they're experiencing the value of the Newark Unified School District experience. So I see our role really multifaceted. The first more practical one is our team is going to and is acting as your public information unit. Our job is to work directly with earned media either to actually earn media or equally important to actually feel the phone calls have the conversations when media calls you. Why is that important? Having worked and working with many agencies throughout the state, school districts as well, that is really the litmus test for a lot of agencies in terms of not knowing how to handle that. Oftentimes what you hear from members of the press corps is, You know, we're just trying to have a fair conversation with them. No one's calling me back. Folks are sending me to other people. So we're really organizing and structuring that so that when those calls do come in, there's a level of professionalism. There's a level of understanding that the press is there really to have a conversation on behalf of the public. And we as a public agency have to be open and available for that. We're also working on the marketing and the earned media component of the district. We're still very much in the genesis of that, although we have already started some television. We've done some television with Univision. We've done some radio as well. And we're going to really put that into the rotation, really. Our goal is to have that on a monthly basis, proactive, third-party validation, us really going out there as thought leaders, having a conversation, not only about Newark, but a conversation as leaders in education about what we think is good in terms of an ongoing educational dialogue with community members. Social media, everyone's got a Facebook account. And there's this feeling that Facebook is simple, right? It's this back and forth with the photo. But in reality, it's not, right? When you look at a public agency, for one, you're governed. Just like public records, you're governed by a certain code that requires that you maintain that information. But also, more importantly, that you actually have that ongoing conversation, that you're actually using that platform as an opportunity by which to shape the image of who you are, where you're headed, but equally, to be honest, in terms of when there are shortcomings and having that conversation and giving that mea culpa, if necessary, in order to continue establishing that bond with your constituents. And I think you get the theme of where I'm headed, that everywhere we go starts with the premise that Your stakeholders, your parents, your PTAs, your members of the community, they need to feel like we're talking to them. But more importantly, they need to feel like we're listening and having an ongoing conversation. So I do have a document in front of you that will paint an outline of where we're headed. I think the back part of it shows some core tenants from our conversations with the enrollment committee. Obviously, through the Enrollment Committee, my colleague, Perla Rodriguez, has been attending those meetings. Through the Enrollment Committee, we're focusing on marketing, social media, communications infrastructure, enrollment, and customer service. Now, on the surface, these things sound pretty straightforward. Let's put out some brochures. Let's put out some social media posts. Let's get some television. But as I said earlier, it all begins with the understanding of who are we, where are we headed. What are the value propositions that we're most proud of? What are the areas that we feel need improvement? When the public feels that you are open that way and that you're willing to have those conversations, it strengthens your brand. It strengthens who you are. And it allows for you to achieve your goals of, for example, declining enrollment, people feeling that you are trusted, you're a trusted source, that you're being honest and direct with them. And that really goes a long way. We've got a couple of school board members who just ran for office. And I'm sure, as you know, when you put out mail pieces, right? Mail pieces are great. We're great. We're awesome. Vote for us. But at the end of the day, what really convinces people to vote for you isn't that mail piece, per se. It's having the opportunity to talk to you. It's having that opportunity to really feel that they're connected to you, that you're listening, that you're having that conversation. And big picture, that's really where we want to take this district. So with that, I really envision tonight being a little bit more of an introduction and overview. I really do want to open it up to questions, get a feel for what you're thinking, get a feel for what you think needs to happen. And again, this is the first conversation. And on a personal note, congratulations to the both of you for getting elected, having served as well. I know that as difficult as the campaign was, the work's just started. So congratulations, and I do look forward to working with all of you. I do have one of my colleagues here in the background, Diego Barragan, works with me, and we've got many people on our team that you'll be meeting as well. We've got a former member of the press that does video production. We've already done a lot of videos for the district, which you should be seeing on social media. We have an updated Facebook page. So a lot of cool things, a lot of exciting things. But tonight's really a get to know you and open it up to some questions.

[2890] Nancy Thomas: OK. Gee, I have some requests to speak. Are those from before, and they're old? OK. For the new board members, you can always push your button as a request to speak and when I'm paying attention. And next meeting, Mr. Rodriguez will be in charge of paying attention to call on you. But I would like to say welcome and thank you for the work you've already done. One of the things that the city has done and has been very effective is they have a quarterly newsletter that's mailed to all all residents of Newark. And I know other districts do that as well. Is that part of our plan?

[2935] SPEAKER_05: It is part of the plan. Superintendent Sanchez has been very clear about us needing to do that. So that is part of the plan, part of what we're putting together right now.

[2943] SPEAKER_37: OK. Ms. Crocker? Many of us who are long-term residents in Newark bristle at the thought that people say that the high school does not give you a good preparation. I have three sons that got a very good preparation from school. And I would like to see success stories. My oldest son is 50-something. So he's been around for a while, and he has done very well, and as has his two brothers. And I think that those are things that we need to remind people that numbers are not the answer to education, especially when we're talking about real estate numbers. Ms. Van Rossum.

[2982] SPEAKER_30: Additionally, the other schools, high schools within our Tri-City area, they're all known to the students and students' families by, oh, this school's good for arts, this school is known for, they're really good at science, this school's really good for sports. Like, why don't we highlight what Newark is good at? Like, find the key programs that we have that are individualistic to our school and that we're thriving at and make those key points in our campaign where students, oh, they have AMCA program. I want to be a part of that. Oh, they have the Ohlone Connections, and there's more students that can be involved in that, and they can get college credit, et cetera. I feel like that would be a really viable key point.

[3025] SPEAKER_37: Mr. Rodriguez.

[3027] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, Mr. Bonilla. One of my favorite ballplayers is Bobby Bonilla.

[3034] SPEAKER_05: I used to say in high school he was my uncle. Really? He did get me into a couple of proms, let me tell you.

[3042] Ray Rodriguez: So he's an excellent Puerto Rican ball player from Newark. Anyway, we appreciate you helping us. Marketing is something that's so important, especially nowadays. People don't think about marketing when it comes to school districts. We just think that kids are going to move in, and they're going to come, and that's it. But you're right. We're in a very competitive market with the neighboring school districts. And we need to get the word out on how wonderful we are here, and what wonderful teachers we have, and employees, and the programs, especially I had a recent conversation with the principal at St. Edwards, and she was talking about the eighth graders, that they want to come to our high school. And they can go to the Catholic high school, but they want to come to Newark. And they hear about our programs. And this is without us really marketing the MCA program and all the beautiful clubs we have and the wonderful students at the high school. And it applies to every one of our sites. And for the first time in 40 years, we have building going on. And not that there's that many kids with these million-dollar homes, but still, you know, we have to find a way to share what wonderful things we're doing. And it's more like member crackers. It's more than the numbers. We want to invite people to visit our sites and have the principal take them around so they can see. all the wonderful things that are going on at that particular site. So I'm very thankful and grateful that you're going to help us with this venture. Marketing is what's necessary nowadays to let people know in order for us to grow. So hopefully along the way, maybe we can get some sponsors to sponsors that we can do more. Because naturally, we're limited on money and what we can do. So I'm very excited. And thank you, superintendent, for bringing this on. So I'm looking forward to the next steps. I think we've got schedule. And I want to make sure that, as Ciara was talking about, the fact that we need to have meetings with the student base at the junior high and the high school, our secondary schools, and Bridgepoint. so that we can share with them because they have wonderful stories to tell. And the more we can get the students and the parents involved in helping us get the message out, you know, it's great.

[3224] Nancy Thomas: Ms. Martinez? Yes.

[3225] Elisa Martinez: Thank you again for your presentation. A couple of things that I learned, you know, during the campaign is that there are different messages, you know, for different segments of our population. I tend to be more in tune. Are there certain things that capture my attention? Citizens that no longer have kids in the district. So my only point is there's a messaging and I'd be interested to understand how you are looking at different stakeholders in terms of how we message who we are as a district and what we're contributing to our city, right? I think that's one. agree that we have to absolutely celebrate and it's something that I definitely notice that we don't do enough of is celebrate all the good things. However, we also know that we do have challenges and we have to be transparent about that. And so I think a lot of the messaging that I would be looking for is how do we, how are we transparent about those challenges and how do we communicate the things that we're doing to, you know, to bring everybody along. So I think that's going to be really important for me.

[3298] SPEAKER_05: Great. That's great input. And I think what you'll see in that process is the core of the message is the same. The difference is, of course, will be to the constituencies in terms of what's important to them, but still related back to the core, which goes back to the initial question of who are we, where are we headed. You'll definitely see that process, for sure.

[3322] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Thank you very much.

[3324] Abbey Keirns: Thank you.

[3326] Nancy Thomas: Good evening. Good evening. Superintendent.

[3328] SPEAKER_25: Do you have anything else? Thank you. I have a few other things. Avis Architects has begun the process of the site workshops. I just want to share that some of the other workshops that are upcoming, December 6th, Schilling Elementary, Kennedy Elementary, and Snow will be doing a workshop together on December 6th, 3 to 5 p.m. What's the location of that workshop, Shardita? The lead is at Schilling. Schilling? Is that right? Okay. And then December 13th at Newark Junior High School, 3.30 to 5.30. December 19th, Newark Memorial High School. January 10th, Lincoln Elementary, Music Elementary, Graham Elementary. Where's that one going to be held? Do you know, Luddy? OK, we'll have more by January 10th. I can't tell you off the top of my head. I would imagine it might be at Music, but we'll see. January 23rd will be a second one at Newark Junior High. January 30th will be a second one at Newark Memorial High School. So just to announce those in the record. I also am proud to announce that we just recently signed an MOU with Cal State East Bay, specific for an internship with speech pathologists working with our district. And I was going to ask for a special meeting January 10th, but I think we already have that in the queue. I did submit a final proposal to CCEE for $539,000, which hopefully we'll hear soon, maybe by the January 10th meeting I will have a formal letter offer, so we'll have a little bit over half a million dollars that could help us move forward with two math coaches, two data coaches, additional money for marketing and communication, as well as money to pay for the board to receive CSBA Masters in Governance training, and a couple other conferences, and some training for us to become a strong team. So that concludes my report.

[3454] Ray Rodriguez: Before you move on, can I just ask him something, Superintendent? First, I wanted to thank you for, you know, your continuing to move on the marketing plan. I think it's so important. This is a very busy month, as everybody knows. So many of our kids are involved in leadership and being involved with homeless and all these different things. So if you could keep us abreast of all that. And I know you already do a lot of that. And you might duplicate sometimes in getting us information, but I think that's better than, you know. So we can try to make as many of these as we possibly can. OK. No problem. Thank you.

[3498] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Next, we move on to public comment on non-agenda items. I don't believe I have any cards to address the board, but if anyone in the audience would like to address us on non-agenda items, I'd be open to recognizing you.

[3517] SPEAKER_37: OK. Ms. Eustis.

[3528] SPEAKER_32: I'm Sue Eustace, and I teach Tyco in your adult ed department. And I wanted to share with you, and I wasn't quite sure where to bring it up, so this is perfect. We had four of our beginning students perform at a Buddhist temple over in Fremont. And they performed with Terry. They had never performed before, but they wanted to do it for their temple. Ironically, what happened was they filmed this performance. And they did really quite well. And for beginners, they did really, really, really well. But they filmed it. And this was sent to 6 million people here in the United States. in China and in Japan. So it was sent to all their temples and these people, I actually saw it, they interviewed my husband, so he's on there, and one of the ladies, they asked to interview her that was actually a member of the temple. She says, oh no, she says, I don't think, I couldn't speak. So after she saw Terry speak and everything and after she performed, she says, I'm gonna go do that. So she went and she got interviewed. But I just thought I would share with you Just little things like that mean so much to those people. But here, I just thought it was just a simple little church performance. And I actually have the site. I watched it myself, the little clip. But it was sent to all the news stations in China. And it was really, really an interesting thing. The other thing that we did is we performed at the farmer's market. on Sunday. And so we promoted our new classes. We have a Chinese impressionist art teacher now. And we also, we brought toll painting objects from the toll painting class and had them on a table and everything and tried to promote our adult ed programs. But one other thing I want to share with you, which is really kind of interesting, I don't know if you know this, but it's, we, Newark has some really really good talented people. A number of years ago I think in 2009 this gentleman came to watch his sister take Taiko so she went ahead and she was doing the class and he just watched and he says you know he says I'm working on some music he says would you guys mind doing some drumming for me. So I have no idea who this guy was. He was from China. At least I thought he was. I think he is from China, Hong Kong. So anyway, we said, well, yeah, sure. We'll go ahead and do some drumming. What do you want? And so he wrote some music, I guess. And I said, well, we can't learn that. So we broke it into bits and had about 10 people playing different parts. And we went ahead and did that. And about six months later, In the mail came a, it was put into a movie. It was the movie album. for in 2008, I think the movie was, and it was Resurrection, let's see, The Three Kingdoms, Resurrection of the Dragon. It was a soundtrack. It was nominated for the Album of the Year in 2009.

[3740] Nancy Thomas: Sue, could you wrap it up so we are consistent with the three minutes? But maybe you could even tag it on to your discussion later when we call on you.

[3749] SPEAKER_32: But it's just simple things you don't know. Great news. But these are your Taiko students that did the performing in that song. Thank you. Thank you.

[3760] Nancy Thomas: OK, next we move on to staff reports. Superintendent, do you want to call on the chief business official, or do you want me to call on him? I'll let you call on him. OK. Mr. Wynn, would you like to provide your report?

[3777] SPEAKER_28: Yes, in January, we will have a demographic study from Davis Demographics. They're going to tell us about the enrollment projection that may increase our enrollment of the new housing development that may impact our enrollment. And also, we will be having a new fee schedule that will be coming out in January as well. We'll be presenting that too.

[3797] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Next, I assume Ms. Salinas is going to introduce this next item.

[3811] SPEAKER_15: Yes, good evening Board of Education members of the community. This evening we wanted to have some information. I know we had board requests and we have spoken about our English language learners in our district, but it was very important that we bring this forward. As you recall at one of our previous board meetings, you all had a first reading of a new board policy for ELs. and substantial changes. But we wanted to provide some underpinnings that are really crucial for you to understand and our community to understand as we start to look at this new roadmap that the Department of Ed has rolled out. So I'm going to introduce Ms. Robyn Sirt and we're going to co-present this.

[3848] SPEAKER_17: Good evening. So as Ms. Selena said, we've been doing a lot of work. I've been attending a lot of trainings at the state and learning a lot about our new EL roadmap. It's actually an exciting time for our English learners. It's a big transition. The reason why, as she said, we're sharing with you is all of the new policy that's come into play. Our last adopted policy was in 1998. So it was time. It was way overdue. So there was a call to action. And last year in July, the California State Board of Education unanimously adopted the new English learner roadmap. And just in the title alone, it's exciting because it's truly a roadmap on how we're going to support our English learners. The purpose for our roadmap, there was a desire for more inspirational and a vision for our English learners. I think in the past, there wasn't a really articulated vision for our English learners. And so now they brought a team of researchers and people in the field, really came together to create a vision and a mission for our English learners. It was really a time so we can see a significant progress because across the state, our English learner progress has really been stagnant. You can go on the California Department of Education and print off these really fancy books that they have now for everyone for the English learner roadmap. But really, like I said, it was an opportunity to strengthen our educational policies, programs, and practices. And what's really nice about the roadmap is that there are guiding documents that go along with it. With that being said, there is no clearly articulated program to use to support our English learners because the shift is really about supporting English learners we serve in our district. And I'll speak more to that in a little bit. The English, the roadmap does provide a common belief system, provides actual experiences, and I'll share a little bit more about that in the principles, and it provides resources that address the principles and elements. It is not, like I said, a defined program because, again, it's really about meeting the English learner needs in our district because English learners from district to district and from site to site are very different. The policy has a vision, a mission, and the four principles. And the research, it reflects the current research and consensus, sorry, on second language learning, bilingualism, program effectiveness, and policy research. The vision for the roadmap is that English learners fully and meaningfully access and participate in a 21st century education. You can continue to read that on. But I think the really exciting part of the roadmap is that we have a vision that our English learners still have rigorous academic expectations and that they participate fully in our academics and all parts of education, and they attain high levels of English proficiency. The mission really is that all of our schools affirm, welcome, and respond to the diverse range of our English learners, and it's really a strengths-based vision. Looking at the strengths of our English learners and how are we gonna support them, and then looking at, in both the vision and the mission, you'll see multiple languages. It's an exciting time in California. We're looking at for not just our English learners, but all of our students to be multilingual. The new roadmap has four principles. Principle one is really, again, looking at our English learners as assets, looking at their strengths, their needs, and their identities, and creating a program that supports them as a learner. Principle two is really looking about the intellectual quality of instruction. And again, this is really about rigorous academic programs and that we're providing our students with learning experiences that foster high levels of English proficiency. So it's also, again, looking through a different lens that we want to provide our students with experiences to help them progress with their English proficiency. The third principle is a systems conditions that support effectiveness. This is really about leadership. There's a call to action for us as leaders at the site level, at the district level, and at the state level to really collaborate and have conversations about how we support our English learners. And the last principle is a TK-12 articulation. So we're making sure as our students go through our system that we are supporting them and that there's articulation all the way TK-12. I'm giving you the quick version because I know it's late. All of the principles have elements that lead up to the, that are part of, all of the elements make up the principle. What's nice about the roadmap is that they've already created a crosswalk with our LCAP. And so you can find this document on the Department of Education. And it really takes each of the four principles and aligns them with the eight state priorities. And going through the training, I had a number of teachers with me as well. And so we're going to start to share this with our principals and start to share this with our LCAP advisory and our DELAC as well. So how will we shift our practices? All of the districts across California are starting to look. How are we going to shift with the new policy? We know we serve 23% of our students are English learners. So looking at this, we really thought it was important for us to see our district and our district data. And we disaggregated our primary languages. And we have over 43% of our students' primary language is not English. Sorry, ours is 44. The state average is 43. So we are above the state average. So we have students who come in speaking a variety of languages and we want to shift our mindset and really look at that this is an asset to our students and to get our families to see that it's an asset as well. I know the numbers kind of moved. I think they're back in their spots. But we wanted to share with you how many English learners at each school site and The light blue is our English learners. Those are our numbers as of 17-18. The RFAP, which means our students who are reclassified, those numbers are from 16-17. formula and figuring those out. What we will see this year, I'll speak to it in a little bit too, is that our numbers will increase with our new assessment that we're giving our students, but we thought it was important to share with you the number of English learners we have at every school site.

[4307] SPEAKER_15: And I think something important to add is that as we start to shift our mindset to an asset focused review of our students or review of our students, we also have to note that a lot of our students who are reclassified to fluent English proficient oftentimes will maintain their primary language. We don't currently offer any kind of a dual immersion program, but we certainly have our world language or modern languages at the high school. So if you recall, I think at this point now, it was about two years ago, we went ahead and brought to the board the seal of biliteracy. The seal of biliteracy, it helps us with our college readiness indicator. So that's another movement. Our students who write us,

[4354] SPEAKER_17: And as Ms. Salinas spoke, the big exciting change is that most districts are looking towards implementing dual immersion programs in their district, really to address the roadmap. We thought it was important to share with you some newcomer data. Newcomers are students who have been in the district less than a year. And so we wanted to share with you by sight, looking at the numbers. For BGP, we had 14 newcomers who scored in. This is the old assessment, the CELT assessment. So levels one and two are really our beginning levels. BGI had just one, because they're third grade and up. Kennedy had 15. I'm sorry. Graham had 15. Kennedy had seven. Lincoln, eight. Music, 19. Schilling, 31. Snow 10, the Junior High 9, and the Newark Memorial 10. The reason why I wanted to point out by school site, because I think it's important to note, BGP has 14, but if you consider their school, they have double the amount of classes. So in relation to the other schools, Graham, Music, and Schilling have the highest percentage of newcomers. And so we have to address their needs as well.

[4436] SPEAKER_15: And what I do want to add is that as we start to, again, individualize the program for our students, we see how at Schilling, we had more students who entered at what's considered a beginning level with this old assessment. But at some of our other schools, our students, as they were assessed, came in at higher levels. That could be for different reasons. It could be that perhaps the child was underschooled or is a refugee. It could be that the student is already bilingual and is actually coming in and testing at a higher level. So every English learner is very different. So as we start to develop our programs and look at best practices, we have to be very cognizant that our students will progress. They all need to learn English, but they're all going to progress at different levels. And we need to make sure that our programs are addressing this multiple of needs.

[4483] SPEAKER_17: And in fact, this week I worked with a team of teachers on our EL master plan, which hasn't been fully updated since probably 1998 as well. There's annual updates that happen. And so that was something specific we were looking at too, is defining our newcomers and defining the supports that our students need. And I'll be presenting that probably in June back. It'll take us a while. We're hoping to finish by June. And then the next slide is just reclassification rates by school site. Just more data for you to take a look at. We do have reclassification criteria here that we revisit every year. Ms. Saavedra worked last year on this with the team because we moved from the old assessment, the CELT assessment, to the LPAC. And so we need to determine what our criteria is. With our new criteria and the new LPAC, we actually are reclassifying a significant amount of students this year. We won't have that actual number because you can reclassify. We give the LPAC in the spring. And as soon as you get the results until February 1st, you can reclassify students when the next window opens for the LPAC. So it's a long time. So we continue to monitor students who may be on a bubble of reclassification. So we don't have those finalized numbers until then. And one more thing with that, the state is actually coming out with criteria in January. So we will make revisions to this based on those recommendations.

[4588] SPEAKER_15: differentiated across districts was that some school districts would have very stringent, tight criteria. In other school districts, it was a little bit looser. So you saw this uneven implementation as to what is truly the criteria of a reclassified student. When I worked in San Francisco Unified, we actually saw how we were looking at the criteria that we had in San Francisco, and we were still using content area grades. to reclassify a student. And then the advice was, why are you using your science grade? And when you dig deep, it was because the child wasn't completing their homework, which is a problem. But it should not bar a student from reclassifying because they're not turning in their homework. So you have to look at language acquisition at all times.

[4637] SPEAKER_17: All right, so kind of the historical context of our English language development in Newark Unified. We're just going back about four or five years. We had accelerated English as a focus for five of our sites, three elementary, the junior high, and the high school. We had some designated ELD and pullout support at the remaining three elementary schools. We have supplemental and outdated curriculum. Our EL master plan, as I shared with you, has only been minimally updated. And our board policy, the last revision was in 2015. And we, and CELT was the assessment that we used. And looking at CELT, our students, you can see there's more students who are starting to score in the lower bands. And so we were taking this data and looking at it and saying, what we're doing is not necessarily meeting the needs of our English learners. We are also looking at our reclassification data. We implemented Accelerated English, I believe, in 2014 and 15. And we saw an initial spike in 15-16 of reclassification rates and then flatlined. And so typically, we look at three to five years implementation of a program to see if it's working. I know what we're seeing is that our students have flatlined. It's not making the progress. We're not making the progress we had hoped. In addition, we have pretty much about the same amount of students who are considered long-term ELs. They're called LTELs. And that means they're more than four years that they've been English learners. Because typically, our English learners, we would hope, would be reclassified if they started with us in kindergarten by third grade. So our current EL practice, where we are now, we're status quo with our accelerated English, because we're all learning about the EL roadmap. We're learning about the new policies and the new practices that the state is recommending. And so we've stayed status quo with all of our schools that are using accelerated English, with the exception of we're piloting something called iLit for our sixth graders at Graham. and Schilling, the Junior High and Newark Memorial High School. And I-LIT was really based on feedback that we got from surrounding districts that were utilizing this program. And we worked with department chairs and teachers, our EL teachers. And this was one program we heard really good feedback on, so we are piloting it with these designated schools. In addition, we're implementing SIOP at Newark Memorial High School. Okay, now I'm going to not... A structured instruction observational protocol. And it's really the detailed lesson planning of how to support English learners in the content areas. Right now, we started with our ELA department. Our goal is to expand that with all of our departments. Because we know our English learners don't only have ELA. They have all of the content. So our next steps are really looking at providing professional development, starting with our department chairs.

[4840] SPEAKER_15: And in short, what SIOP does is that it supports teachers with when they are doing their lesson planning, they're always planning two objectives. They're planning a language objective to teach for English learners, but they're also planning a content objective. So if I'm a biology teacher, I'll have a language objective, and then I'll have a content area objective for the lesson.

[4865] SPEAKER_17: And so, as I shared earlier, on our new LPAC, we actually had really good results. Many of our students did well, scoring in the level 4 proficiency and level 3. To be considered for reclassification, you had an overall 4. You could have an overall three, there are four components of the LPAC, listening, speaking, reading, and writing. And so if you received a three, you could not have a one in any of those components. And they are continuing to update how they're scoring the LPAC and making accommodations for our students with disabilities. So there's still a work in progress. And then our next steps, with our roadmap, our new roadmap, one of the creators of the roadmap is, she was, her philosophy on English learners, she has been working with the Sobrato organization in Redwood City, and they've created something called SEAL. They were used as one of the illustrative examples of best practices for English learners. And so what we're going to do as a team is go visit some of the SEAL schools and get some input. They are now highly looked at or sought out by all districts since they were an illustrative example on best practices. But it's really a K-3. It's not a program. It's a K-3 philosophy on embedding support for English learners into the curriculum we already use. We're gathering information from our pilot teachers to determine our next steps. Hopefully, we'll be presenting our EL Master Plan by the end of the year. But along the way, we'll be getting feedback from our classified, as well as our DELAC, and presenting it to different people who are impacted by the plan, and then coming up with a finalized plan to you in May or June. I think that's it.

[5003] SPEAKER_09: Questions?

[5004] SPEAKER_33: Thank you.

[5008] SPEAKER_15: Thank you. We are hoping that we can bring this back at a study session so you have more time. I know there was a request also from our board about how does this fit with Readers and Writers Workshop and how do, so we're hoping to be able to bring that information back within the context of Readers and Writers Workshop of integrated ELD.

[5031] Nancy Thomas: And how much is it going to cost and how are we going to measure whether it's effective

[5037] SPEAKER_17: Yeah, and so you can actually look into SEAL as well. And that's something that we'll look at if that's the direction we go in. We're just exploring as well. They have a lot of data and research, which is why I think the state is supporting their program. In addition, like I said, the creator of SEAL helped write the roadmap. Yeah, and we're working this year on articulating what our designated ELD time is and what our integrated time is. Designated is specific focus on EL instruction. Sometimes it looks like a pull-out program. Sometimes it's working with a small group of English learners in the classroom. Integrated is what's happening embedded in the curriculum already.

[5084] Nancy Thomas: Thank you.

[5088] SPEAKER_14: Oh, yeah.

[5092] Nancy Thomas: Okay, Ms.

[5093] Julienne Sumodobila: Hurt, you don't have to go far.

[5098] Nancy Thomas: Next, we're going on to local control and accountability plan updates.

[5103] SPEAKER_17: So I wanted to come tonight and share with you an update where we are with our LCAP process. We started earlier this year, which was exciting. In the past, we haven't started till January, but we already started looking at the LCAP and meeting with advisory groups. So I just wanted to give you a quick update. As you know, the CDE requires school districts to set both district-wide and school-wide goals to help spell out specific actions needed to achieve the goals. And our students, underserved students that are our focus are English learners, foster youth, and low-income students. All members of the school community must be involved in developing, reviewing, and supporting the LCAP, which is why we have our LCAP Advisory Committee. In addition, we have a community event in January, the one that's on the Thursday. that we'll be looking at because we want to get input from our entire community and then we take the input from our community event as well as our DLAC and our LCAP advisory to make recommendations. We have our eight state priorities that we focus on in our LCAP. And we use the metrics to determine if we are accomplishing what we had hoped to in our LCAP. So this year, we've already held one meeting in October for our LCAP advisory. Our next meeting is tomorrow night. We've established the roles and responsibilities of our LCAP advisory, which is really a recommending body. It's not a voting body, but one that recommends based on what they're learning. Okay, we've shared the CASP data with them. In addition, we've had two DLAC meetings where we have presented information about the LCAP as well. And then our community event will be in January from two opportunities, so we can make sure we give our community multiple opportunities to participate. So either from 9 to 1130 or 6 to 8 p.m.

[5229] SPEAKER_25: Robin, something to remember, I think it would be helpful to share components of the roadmap model with the LCAP committee because there will be implications. I'm sure you're probably already thinking of that.

[5244] SPEAKER_17: I'm presenting almost that same presentation tomorrow.

[5247] SPEAKER_25: Because those things will come together and I think that's the whole philosophical shift. Teaching ELLs is everyone's responsibility and that's kind of part of the new structure of language acquisition as I understand it.

[5257] SPEAKER_17: Yes, so I presented also a similar presentation that I shared with you tonight at DLAC last week. Our timeline for our LCAP this year, our first meeting was just kind of the setting the stage. We have our meeting tomorrow. We've broken up our sessions this year a little differently. We are looking at each goal and having presenters come and share with the LCAP the action items within that goal. So whatever we planned, they can understand what exactly does that look like and what are the impacts. We're having each presenter share data and how it's affecting, how effective it is. and then making recommendations for LCAP for next year. So at the next three, we have broken up our five goals. And I have presenters for each of those meetings. And our participants, our LCAP advisory group, will pick a session that they want to learn a little bit more about, and then come back and share out to the whole group. And then finally, in May, we will take all of our recommendations from those meetings and put together our LCAP. and then bring a final one to you in June. Like I said, our advisory group is really there to gather input, develop some goals and actions, review the data, and then we will present the plan to you. I really wanted to share this. I found this graphic and I thought it was really important to remember that our LCAP advisory group is really one that has to take some time to get to learn what is in the LCAP, which is why we're doing the action items and the goal presentations. So if we say we are adding five counselors as part of our LCAP, tomorrow I have five counselors presenting on what they're doing and how effective it is. so really you taking the time to if we set a goal we need to review it and see how it's going and so we are in that learning phase as an LCAP advisory and going through the process we'll have stakeholder input at the community event and then we're going to take all of that as well as our recommendations from our DLOC and make our recommendations for our LCAP this year. But I really thought it was important to share with you that our LCAP advisory really has to learn what do these things look like and sound like and feel like and how are they impacting students. And then I just wanted to give you some quick highlights by goal. For goal one, which is student achievement, we have a K-12. I think this is the first time, I'm just going to say, in it forever, probably. I'm sure there's another time, but at least probably in the last 22 years that we've had a district-wide adoption of a curriculum and implementation at the same time. So we have our K-12 implementation of Big Ideas Math. We have Illuminate and I-Ready assessment already in place. Full-day kindergarten is also part of our student achievement and class size reduction. Both of those are part of LCAP. We have an NGSS plan and implementation. We have our Bayside Partnership. ESP is Elementary Site Science Partnership. Sorry, it's getting late. And that is where we're working with Alameda County and Cal State East Bay. And we have a group of our elementary science resource teachers, as well as classroom teachers working together through a grant from Cal State East Bay. the National Science Foundation, and that's part of our bigger plan for NGSS and what it's going to look like for our students. Our junior high is piloting two programs right now, currently as of today. They're in the middle of piloting Amplify. And my other hat as mom, I was sharing my seventh grader is really excited because she's talking about we have a patient, part of Amplify, we have a patient and here are all of her ailments and we have to diagnose what's wrong with her. So it's more of a hands-on approach. So this is one One program that we're looking at for science for the junior high. We have a makerspace task force that has met twice now. It's a group of teachers and administrators coming together to look at the different makerspaces around the district and make recommendations. We have monies allocated in our LCAP for makerspace. And so rather than everybody doing something a little different, we're trying to see what are some best practices, materials, and things that can be aligned district wide. In addition, we have Aloni coming in doing after school STEM classes for all of our sixth grade students. Professional development, we have Corwin coming in doing work with our junior high and high school on visible learning. Right now they're working with our department chairs. They've worked with our ELA and ELD departments last year. We have SIOP and ILIT for our English learners, the pilot that we talked about. West Coast Literacy is our readers and writers workshop, and it's exciting that it's a K-8 focus now, not just a K-6. We have our Illuminated Illuminate trainer of trainer models. So we have teacher leaders coming and getting training and taking it back to their sites. We have the new roadmap. We have all of these things implementing at the site. Pause at the high school and additional apex. After school intervention, we have Ohlone tutoring coming into our elementary Title I sites for fourth through sixth grade. We're finishing up our first session. They come once a week to the five Title I schools. And we'll be making recommendations for the second session beginning in January. BGI, Kennedy, Lincoln, and Schilling have their after school reading and math interventions in place. We are working with our multi-tiered system of support. Explorers is what we're calling ourselves. We have training at the Santa Clara County Office of Education. We're learning more about how RTI and PBIS go hand in hand for a multi-tiered support system, which is also important for our English learners.

[5638] SPEAKER_15: we heard our board last year loud and clear it's like what influence or what impact does PBIS have on academics in the classroom and so what we're doing this year is learning from Santa Clara where we're actually going to put together and we're a big group of teachers, administrators, psychologists, special education where we're looking at the two at the two tiers right at the different tiers and that includes the social emotional PBIS, but also the academics, which we have not yet rolled out. And I think that's important for this board. So we will be bringing that back to the board to share just our progress as this is the exploring year.

[5678] SPEAKER_17: The positions that are funded in LCAP that have already been in place, 40% of the library clerks at all elementary sites, five counselors at the junior high, high school, and alternative high school. We have the one school psychologist who is part of our MTSS team, supports the MTSS and students at the secondary. We have a 0.5 SDC teacher at the alternative high school. A 0.2 trainer of trainer for LPAC at EL is a teacher on special assignment, just 0.2. The 0.2 at the high school is really to coordinate all of the ELD support and provide PD. Goal number two, student engagement. We're continuing along the lines with our PBIS implementation. This year, we have Birch Grove Primary and Intermediate who are in their planning year. We have Snow, Kennedy, and Lincoln who are in year two of, it's actually year three, it's very confusing, but they're in their actual rollout year, number two. And then our high school and junior high and Graham are in year four, I believe. And Schilling has been in, they're now just maintaining the tier two supports that they have already implemented. We have coordination of services at all sites. This is really exciting that we have a team at every site who students are referred to for additional resources, whether they're academic or social emotional or mental health. So within that goal, we have a PBIS coach at every site, and we have a mental health clinician at Newark Memorial High School. In addition, we're using SWIS. It's a data collection system to input all of the data from PBIS so we can get back input, I mean, get back data to see how well PBIS is working. Some of the sites have been trained. They have not all been trained at this point. It really depends where they are in the implementation plan. Goal three, safe and respectful environments. We have 100% compliance at our Williams schools, 100% highly qualified teachers. We have full implementation of our E3 system, and we have increased the guest teacher rate. For goal number four, for parent involvement, we've had two meetings with DLAC. We've had our LCAP advisory, and all school sites have DLAC and school site council meetings. Our parent partners have put on a number of parent workshops, and our promotors have been meeting regularly. for goal five, which is advanced placement. When you have a minute, you can look at this. But it's really actually exciting. When I took the time, Ms. Torres gave me the information. And I calculated how many students. I mean, it's amazing how many AP offerings we have for our students. If each one of those represented a student, which it does, it's 1,000 students. On average, students take between two and three. So it's probably between 300 and 400 students who are taking AP classes, which is about a fourth of the school. So that's really exciting that students are taking this opportunity to challenge themselves and take rigorous courses.

[5881] SPEAKER_15: And I do want to add, although it's still embargoed and we're hoping to get that out as soon as possible, we are, I can say that we are hearing some very good news around this indicator and how this indicator is supporting college and career readiness. And I think it's a testament to some of the work that we've done with advanced placement and also with our Puente project.

[5901] SPEAKER_17: So you set me up nicely. So looking at our enrollment by ethnicity, I did break it down by male and female, so you could see that as well. But really, it's over, I think I have the actual number here. 50% of our students in AP classes are Hispanic students. And then it varies amongst the other ethnicities. But I think that's really exciting to see that it's really representative of the demographics of Newark Unified. And I really do believe that's because of the work of our Puente program and making sure that we have equity and access to our AP programs. So part of our process so far for the LCAP is really we're starting right at the beginning again this year. As I shared with you the timeline, we are going to be gathering input throughout the year, working with all of those stakeholder groups, and then bringing that to you in June for your approval. And then it heads on to the county office. Questions?

[5974] Nancy Thomas: I have a question. Yes. The timeline, it shows that the board has no involvement in this process until the public hearing. And it seems to me that the LCAP should mirror our strategic plan, and the strategic plan should mirror our LCAP. It feels to me that the board should have some early input on recommendations that you're hearing from the LCAP advisory committee and what you're thinking about in terms of what you're going to spend your money on and how you're going to measure success. And I know every year I've spoken to the need for when we report how well our LCAP is working, we don't report that we train teachers. We say how many teachers did we train? We've not used measurable objectives as part of our LCAP, and when we report out and we give our year-to-date progress, we oftentimes say we targeted $30,000, we expect to spend $30,000, but we never We never see evidence that staff has followed through and checked where we have spent money, where we haven't spent money, and how well we've implemented

[6073] SPEAKER_17: And that's what we're going through with the LCAP group. And so you're welcome to join us and see, because you'll see the data in those presentations. In our LCAP advisory group, I have more than 15 presentations. There wouldn't be enough time to present those all at the board meeting, but that might be a good opportunity for you to come. You don't get to weigh in, but you get to hear what they're hearing in their recommendations. As far as actuals, I know that's been a question like, what are the actual dollars being spent? And I have a meeting with Kai tomorrow to figure out how do we share that information with you as well as with our advisory and our DELAC.

[6110] Nancy Thomas: OK, because our budget is closely linked with the LCAP. And at the end of the year, we the board don't get any evaluation of how well we have spent that money.

[6127] SPEAKER_17: Right, and so I didn't attach the dollars on here, but I could do that part of it, but all of those items are listed in the LCAP and those are all of the things we've already spent the funds on. It's not the specific dollar amount and that's why I'll work with Kai to figure out how to present and share with you like the actuals, the actual actuals versus the estimated actuals. because we end the year and there isn't a carryover. So how we've created our goals is how we're spending them. But a way to share that back with you is definitely something that we can work together.

[6161] Nancy Thomas: I know other districts have had a presentation of the LCAP in April for the board. And in May, you presented to the advisory committee, but we don't even see it until June.

[6177] SPEAKER_17: Have you given any thought to that? Yeah, in October, when I came and shared about our process this year, there are two more times I'll be presenting to the board. I can't remember if it's January or February, and one time in April. So there are two more opportunities to share and update where we are with the LCAP. This was just our initial, how are we doing so far? And so we have two more opportunities to share that with you to know you know, after we've had several LCAP advisory meetings, where are we heading?

[6207] Nancy Thomas: I appreciate that, because it looked like we weren't involved.

[6210] SPEAKER_17: No, no, no. There's two more opportunities for input. And I mean, ideally, we would have our LCAP ready in April, too. But we also want to make sure that we're giving everybody opportunity to see everything that's written into the LCAP and give feedback on how we want to. Because it's a three-year LCAP, we have one more year in this one. And so we can't make huge changes. but we can make modifications or adjustments to it, but we can't make significant changes with it. And so that's why probably heading towards the next year, there are opportunities to make different changes, but the template and all of that may change. We don't know yet. We don't know what's happening with that. We still have one more year. So we're always writing one year ahead.

[6254] Nancy Thomas: Ms. Martinez.

[6258] Elisa Martinez: Hi. I was also reacting just to the timeline. We start pretty early by goal or one. I understand that we want to give time. My concern is maybe are we giving time for iterations as well? Because we are learning as we go. Conditions are changing as we go. what that plan is for that, planning for the final year. Is that my idea?

[6291] SPEAKER_17: Yes. OK. Yes. So with each section, so with each goal that's being presented, our advisory group will have an opportunity to give recommendations on that goal. And then at the next one, they'll have more goals that are presented. And then we'll take all of that feedback at the end and then start to really prioritize.

[6307] Elisa Martinez: Right. I think my only concern is, you know, I get it that we have to space it out. My concern is, you know, the one we worked on in January, when do we look at it again before we, you know, before we see it in June? So just, and I do plan on attending, you know, the LCAP meeting just to understand the process so we are more in touch with it. But just from a board visibility, just maybe think about how we might get a glimpse of progress and again that iterative nature that we would expect.

[6338] SPEAKER_17: Right. And as of this point, they're still making alterations to it to make changes depending on districts and differentiated assistance and what that looks like. So, the state is still making some changes. So, we haven't even started the rewrite for the 19-20. And honestly, that will happen a little bit but not much until all of our, until the end of March when we start to get all of the recommendations from the group.

[6367] Elisa Martinez: Got it. And one more quick question around AP, the numbers around APs. So that is enrollment. I'd be curious to see performance. Yes.

[6378] SPEAKER_17: And we don't have that data yet. That was current this year. We have last year's data. But this was just current enrollment for this year. So definitely, that's something we could share with you at the next update, too, is how they're doing. It would just be semester grades at this point. They don't take the AP tests until May. Got it.

[6397] Nancy Thomas: Mr. Rodriguez.

[6401] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, Ms. Sirt and Ms. Salinas. You guys make a good team. I know it's a difficult process. My question is, again, on the timeline, I'm wondering, because there's so much information that you've given us, if doing a board workshop might be better suited for us? When do you have to actually make a report to the board?

[6432] SPEAKER_17: In June is the actual when we bring it to you for approval. But we will do two additional updates along the way.

[6439] Ray Rodriguez: So the updates, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. It's OK. The updates could be done with a workshop. Definitely. It's just, you know, it's just this is so important, as Member Thomas and Member Martinez, that it's the more time that we can allow for it, the more information we have, the better it is, I think. Thank you for inviting us to come to the presentations that you do. This is where we are right now with the LCAP and we want to make sure that we do our best when it comes to this. Hopefully next time we'll do it, again, we'll do it as a workshop as opposed to a. Definitely.

[6480] SPEAKER_17: Because going back to that one graphic I shared with you, I think we're all in that learning process of it. And it's exciting because we're learning, but they're also changing it along the way. And so just continuing to make modifications and provide as much input and information to you along the way as possible.

[6501] Ray Rodriguez: And then as far as the AP classes, You know, it's very important to us to challenge our kids and to have those offerings, but we also want to make sure that we maximize the number of students that are in the classroom and to make sure that they're prepared when they take the test to get, you know, the A's or whatever it is in order for them to get college credit.

[6527] SPEAKER_17: Absolutely. And as Ms. Salinas shared, it's really important that we have the opportunities for AP classes for our students because that is one of the indicators for college and career readiness. But the class size is a struggle.

[6543] Nancy Thomas: I mean, I think it's important to measure ourselves against the enrollment. And I think the breakdown of the students enrolled is a great thing. But I think it's equally important to have a goal related to the number of students passing at each level. And we never have had that goal. And I hope that gets put in the LCAP. Because if students aren't passing, if they're not taking the test, and I think every student should take the test. And we should find the district funds if they can't afford the cost. And it should be paid for upfront. And they have to.

[6584] SPEAKER_17: Yes, that is part of the LCAP is we do fund that for our underserved students, a portion of it.

[6590] Nancy Thomas: OK, but I mean, I think they all should have to take it or else they shouldn't be in the class. It makes no sense to take an AP class if you're not going to take the test.

[6600] SPEAKER_17: We can share that with the LCAP committee as well.

[6603] Nancy Thomas: OK, thank you.

[6607] SPEAKER_17: Any other questions?

[6609] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Thank you. I think we're going to probably go after 10 o'clock, so remind me as it gets close to 10 if we have to extend the meeting.

[6632] SPEAKER_37: Let's see how fast we go.

[6635] Nancy Thomas: Keep the pressure on. I'll remind you.

[6638] SPEAKER_25: Got to have a goal.

[6641] Nancy Thomas: OK, next we move on to old business. This is the second reading on the board policy for English learners that we heard earlier. I would ask if someone has any questions or comments. Otherwise, I would entertain a motion. Move. I'll second. Ms. Kateri moves. Ms. Crocker seconds. Please vote. Five ayes. Ms. Crocker is voting this time. Good. Thank you. Next, we have 13.2, which is invoices from Banner that it recommended that we approve. Mr. Rodriguez moves. Ms. Crocker seconds. Please vote. you. Next we move on to new. Business and the appointment. Board representatives of the various

[6737] SPEAKER_25: You should have a handout in your packet. Everyone should have a packet. Would you show that?

[6742] Nancy Thomas: We should have this? Yes. OK. Thank you. OK. I would like to continue on that if you're all OK with that.

[6757] SPEAKER_37: May I suggest you go through and sort of explain what each one is? Oh, OK. They have no idea what these responsibilities are. Oh, OK.

[6767] Nancy Thomas: Well, for Mission Valley ROP, we put in almost a million dollars, over $900,000, and our students are served both at the Mission Valley ROP Center and with courses on our campus. And there's three board members, one from each of the participating districts, Fremont, us, and New Haven. And I've been on there for the last four or five years. The continuity, I think, has been helpful in terms of dealing with some critical issues and being able to ask pertinent questions and see what's happening. I think it's always beneficial to have new people. So, you know, if someone who is an alternate would, you know, could maybe transition into that role in the next year or the year after, that would be fine with me. But for now, I think it would be good to continue

[6825] Ray Rodriguez: That's what I would suggest. You've been on the RP for a long time, and I've been with the SELPA. But now that we have new board members, if they're alternates, then we can slowly transition so that they can also be the head person.

[6847] Nancy Thomas: Would one or the other of you like to be the alternate on that? That means you could come to the meetings

[6852] Ray Rodriguez: Well, can you tell us what time and the days normally?

[6854] Nancy Thomas: The meetings are the third Thursday and I think the third Thursday and they're at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. They usually don't last much more than an hour and a half.

[6867] Elisa Martinez: I could be alternate for that.

[6868] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. So the alternate doesn't vote, but you go and you... I mean, you can attend with Ms. Thompson, I mean, Member Thompson, Thomas, and be at the meeting, but you're basically just a non-looker. You don't vote.

[6884] Nancy Thomas: OK. I would entertain a motion to appoint Nancy as the ROP board member and Elisa as, I'm using first names, but as the alternate.

[6898] Ray Rodriguez: I would make a motion to Member Thomas to be the, primary and member Martinez to be the alternate for the RP. Okay.

[6908] Nancy Thomas: Second that. Please vote. Four ayes with member Crocker abstaining.

[6920] Ray Rodriguez: Now member Crocker and I were on that for a long time also, in case you forgot.

[6925] Nancy Thomas: No, I know and you've been on it. Ms. Crocker's been the alternate but hasn't, has busy Thursdays, right? Next, we talk about SELPA.

[6939] Ray Rodriguez: I would like to stay on SELPA. Member Nguyen was the alternate. We meet, what, maybe three times a year, superintendent, I think. And normally it's on maybe a Thursday at 1.30, I think, in the afternoon. But there's plenty of leeway. So you can change your schedule so you and go. And it's the special ed board partnership between the three districts. And I'd like to stay on it if that's OK. But at some point, hopefully, we can get someone else to, I don't know, member Gutierrez or member Martinez, if you'd like to on the SELPA board.

[6992] Elisa Martinez: This is one of the ones that I was hoping to be primary for. During the campaign, that was a topic that really surfaced in terms of we really need to start to communicate perhaps a bit more on the topic. Obviously, I know there's a lot to learn. So just in the context of just sharing my preference, this is the one that I had my eye on. I know, again, lots to learn. But I'll leave it to your recommendation as well.

[7028] Nancy Thomas: If that's your first choice, with Mr. Rodriguez maybe being the alternate, would you be open to that?

[7033] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, I'm fine.

[7034] Nancy Thomas: Okay, so.

[7035] Ray Rodriguez: And then we can get together if you want.

[7037] Nancy Thomas: Of course. Okay. Ms. Martinez will be primary and Mr. Rodriguez would be the alternate. So I will move that we appoint Ms. Martinez as the primary and Mr. Rodriguez as the alternate for the SELPA.

[7061] Ray Rodriguez: I'll second that.

[7062] Nancy Thomas: OK. Please vote. Four ayes, with member Crocker abstaining. OK, next. has a city school liaison. Would one of you that's been on that city school liaison talk about it?

[7086] SPEAKER_37: Frankie and I were on it, and it meets anywhere from three to five times a year. It's a time to discuss with the city manager and with two members of the council common areas of concern. We don't meet unless there's an that will be coming up that I think that we would be wise to partner with, in terms of the city, in terms of realizing, and actually looking to see where they're going. Oftentimes, Mr. Sanchez would talk about what's happening in the school district as information for them, and they would talk about what's happening in the city. So, it's a very informative kind of setting. It's a very interesting community to be in.

[7135] Nancy Thomas: I'm actually interested in. Okay. And there's two that are appointed. There's not an alternate. They're both full members.

[7145] SPEAKER_37: Right. We just had two people going. But you can do however you want to do it. It's because both Frankie and I wanted to go.

[7151] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah.

[7152] Nancy Thomas: I'll go with you if that's OK. OK. So the two members, I would make a motion that Ms. Gutierrez and Ms. Rodriguez be on the city liaison committee. Please vote.

[7172] Cary Knoop: Do we have a motion?

[7177] Michael Milliken: I didn't. Do we have a second? Gutierrez. Thank you.

[7183] Nancy Thomas: Four ayes, with member Crocker abstaining. The East Bay Induction Consortium, BITSA Induction Consortium.

[7197] Ray Rodriguez: This is an advisory. It used to be labeled as beginning teacher, but it's basically the same thing. And it's supporting our new teachers in a partnership with the other school districts in the area. So I've been on it. Being it as advisory, there's really no voting or anything on this one. I don't have a problem having two of us.

[7238] SPEAKER_37: It's a good place to get information about the program, to find out what they're doing. And so it's a matter of being for your education as much as anything, I think. It's an excellent program. Connection. And usually the number of meetings are limited.

[7252] Ray Rodriguez: Right. And we meet normally in the morning over at the Alameda County Board of Education. Probably normally would be either Thursday or Friday. But it's only two or three times a year. So I don't mind staying on this. But on this one, since there's really no voting, we can have two people go, just so you can get information on what's going on with beginning teacher mentoring programs.

[7286] SPEAKER_37: I think you'll enjoy it. Another point I'd like to bring up, the person who replaces me would probably like to have some sort of responsibility, too. So you may leave some blank.

[7297] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, why don't we just put Ray on it and leave it blank for the new member?

[7301] SPEAKER_38: OK. I can even be put as an alternate, just to kind of be in the background, and then leave the space for the second.

[7310] Nancy Thomas: OK. So I would move that Ms. Gutierrez and Mr. Rodriguez be on that committee, that group.

[7323] SPEAKER_38: keep in mind coffee as an alternate kind of meeting space for the new member to join.

[7330] SPEAKER_25: Point of order. Mr. Rodriguez, is your microphone on?

[7336] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. OK, I've made the motion. Does anyone second? I'll second. Ms. Martinez seconds. Please vote. Four ayes with member Crocker abstaining. Second chances, is that?

[7359] SPEAKER_37: It's no longer functioning in terms of advisory.

[7362] Nancy Thomas: Nor is the redevelopment committee. Yeah, so let's cross out the redevelopment committee. That leaves the audit committee. I would like to be on that. I would like to as well.

[7374] Diego Torres: I'll make a motion.

[7376] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, there's two people.

[7378] Ray Rodriguez: Well, why don't we discuss if we another board member comes, they just come as a non-looker and they don't participate. Then we'd have quorum of... No, it wouldn't only be a problem if you're voting, if you know... Or you're speaking.

[7399] SPEAKER_37: Yeah, if they want to watch or... Anyone can go to any of these, it's just a matter that you can't participate in.

[7406] Ray Rodriguez: So you can still go, but you can't participate.

[7409] Nancy Thomas: Okay, so... I'd like to make a motion that myself and Ms. Martinez be on the audit committee.

[7417] Ray Rodriguez: Second.

[7421] Nancy Thomas: Oh, wait. I have to close. I have to clear it. OK. Please vote. Please vote again. I hit the wrong button. of four ayes with Madam Crocker abstaining. Okay, so we move next to the delegate, CSBA delegate nomination. I would really be honored if my board colleagues would nominate me to be on the delegate assembly again.

[7469] SPEAKER_37: Second. Thank you, Mr. Carter. I'll second. Mr. Rodriguez.

[7474] Nancy Thomas: I'm going to vote on this one. Please vote. Five ayes. Thank you. One and all.

[7487] SPEAKER_37: How much time are you going to need? Do we need to extend? Yes.

[7492] Nancy Thomas: Yes, I think we should extend the meeting.

[7504] SPEAKER_28: It could be close to 10.30. It all depends on how much questions you have.

[7514] Ray Rodriguez: OK, how about make it 11 with the understanding that we're only going to take about 10 minutes?

[7522] Nancy Thomas: And we have a speaker on this item, Ms.

[7533] Nancy Thomas: So extended to when? 11. 11 o'clock. OK.

[7537] SPEAKER_37: I'll second that.

[7542] Nancy Thomas: I know. Please vote.

[7549] Mark Triplett: I have five ayes.

[7554] Nancy Thomas: Thank you.

[7563] SPEAKER_38: We'll see. Uh-oh.

[7570] Cindy Parks: If the door was open, I had to go there. OK. It was very interesting reading going through the first interim. And I just would like to bring a couple of items to your attention. On pages 13. 21, I don't expect you to follow through. I'll come back to it in a minute. But on 13, 21, 29, 38, 45, 52, 59, 63, 70, 77, 84, and 89, there is no beginning balance. So if you'll notice, let's just go to page, you can follow through if you want, on page 29, let's say.

[7623] Cindy Parks: Let's go start with 38. Sorry, I should have even looked to see. When you start off on, let's say, adult ed, on page 38, in item F1B, or F1A, there should have been an original balance when you guys approved the budget. And then in the second column is the board approved operating budget. Because there's no money in those items on any of the pages that I read you. In the far column on the left-hand side, it says new. And when I went through really quickly, because this is not my forte, but there are certain things that I look for when I'm going through the budget reports, I went back and I pulled the reports from last year just to make sure that there were numbers in here. So the common practice is to have the original budget in there along with the board approved operating budget when you send it to the county so they know what you have right in front of them versus what the projected total is and your difference, hence the new, because those columns weren't filled in. So this report doesn't have those columns on any of those pages filled in, hence now it's saying new, so those are items that are omitted that should be in this document. On page 85, which is fund 51. And this would be more a question for Kai himself. It showed original interest was $30,200. And now it's showing that the interest is going to be $71,396. And I wasn't sure why the difference in the bond interest, why it jumped so high. I don't know if he can address that now. On pages 131, 133, and 135, those are your pages that show your staffing levels. And one of the things that you did last year because you project, because of everything, the county getting involved in everything, you knew that you had to adjust them. Those adjustments that you're projecting on page 10, where you show your cuts, are not showing on this document here. And I know that there's the 45 days after the October 31st date, but I just want to remind you that in 2015 and in 2016, you did not approve within the 45 days. So if it takes you extra long to get it right, I would request that you fix the document in the areas that I've highlighted or mentioned to you. Better to be right than late. I mean, better to be late than right.

[7800] SPEAKER_28: Thank you. Thank you, Cindy, for that information. And I will respond to that at the end. Good evening board members, Superintendent Sanchez. Tonight I'm going to present the first interim report. Here are some of our building blocks. Oh, before I start, there was a minor error on the assumption page that on the reduction of 12 FTEs, it stated $144,000. It should state $1.32 million. So I just want to get that cleared out. So with that, I'm going to begin our first interim These are some of our building blocks or assumptions that LCFF is fully funded in 18-19. Our enrollment has declined in 2018-19. We were projected that enrollment was supposed to increase by 40 students this year. But in reality, we lost 96 students. So that's a double whammy in terms of what we projected and what we actually received in terms of our enrollment. So in reality, we lost In terms of revenues, about $1.3 million. Our attendance ratio, as I mentioned earlier in closed sessions, our enrollment, our attendance ratio is at 96.76%. How we got that number is the number of days the students attend classes divided by 180 school days. Our unduplicated people count is at 56.8%. That means that we get not only base funds, but we also get supplemental and concentration funds. This is targeted to low-income students, foster youth, English language learner students, and families, students that apply for free reduced lunch. Our one-time discretionary fund changed from $344 ADA to $184 ADA. All right, and then our lottery is at $151 of unrestricted ADA per ADA, then restricted is $53 per ADA. These are some of our expenditures assumptions that our CalSTRS and CalPERS rate continues to increase every single year. We are projected our CalPERS to increase by 2022 and 2023 to about 25%. And we're hoping that it's projected that CalSTRS, after 2021, that CalSTRS will maybe flatten out. But these are just assumptions. It may change. These are projected. Our step and column is that, so for a certificate, it's at 1.67%. Classified is 0.72%. And we're also looking at a reduction of our expenditures by $1.8 million. If you look at this historical enrollment, and we covered this during the budget advisory committee, that in 2000, we had 7,666 students enrolled in our school. But now, going forward, 17, 18 years later, we're at 5,913. That's a loss of about 1,700 students. That's $16 million, roughly. But if you look at For the past eight years, in 2011, 2012, we had 6,560 students. And now we are at, in 17-18, we're at 5,913. We lost about 680-something students, right? I mean, that's like $6 million if we count that, right? So I'm going to go, this is kind of, hard to explain. What we want to look at mainly is the ADA, because that is what we are being funded out of. And I'm going to go to the next slide, because it's going to tell us a little bit. I'm going to explain a little bit more on how to read this chart here. What we projected in the adopted budget that we were going to anticipate that our ADA is going to be at 5,749 students. But our actual numbers that came in based on the CalPASS report is at 5,587 students ADA. So what we're going to do is that we're going to take last year's ADA for this year's revenue for LCFF. The state allows us to take either the current year or previous year, whichever is higher. So we lost 47, roughly, ADA for this year. What's going to impact us next year in 19-20 because, let me go to the next slide, that we projected in 19-20, during our adopted budget, that ADA is going to be 5,828. But we're now projecting that ADA is going to be flat for our outer years for next year and 2021. So we can either take 18-19 ADA projection or we can take 19-20 projection. It doesn't matter because what we projected for our adopted budget that enrollment is going to increase by to 5,828. So we're going to be losing about 241. If our daily attendance or enrollment continues to decline, we may have to look even further reduction down the road. OK. So here's 2021. And again, during adopted budget, we were projecting that enrollment or average daily attendance It's going to be $5,867. But we're projecting flat enrollment. We can either take 1920s ADA projections, or we can take, when we're in 2021, we can take the current projection. Again, we're hoping that ADA will flatten or not increase, because we have a lot of new housing developments out there right now. But Davis Demographic is going to provide us information next month in terms of their studies. So they're projecting, they gave us a preliminary report that enrollment is projected to increase. But then again, they project that enrollment is supposed to increase two years ago when they did the demographic studies. As in the business service department, we want to project conservatively and not optimistically. And so last year was the only year for the last 10 years or 12 years that enrollment did increase. And it was rightfully so that to be optimistic that enrollment was supposed to increase. for 18-19, 19-20, and 20-21. So this is our district contribution to CalPERS and CalSTRS. It continued to increase year over year. And I'll share the next slide, how much the district has contributed year over year. But we're hoping that CalSTRS, After 2021, we'll start flatlining. But again, as I mentioned earlier, these are just assumptions, and it may change. So here's the rising cost of CalPERS and CalSTRS. If you look at 2013-14, the district contributed about $3.4 million, $3.3 million. But now if you look at, I wish I have a laser pointer here, but I think that's it. Okay. If you look at 18-19, we're almost double the contribution, right? We're looking at $6.8 million in contribution. And it only, and it continues to go higher. So here's a summary of our general fund that What the governor did in the enacted budget, the reason why our LCFF sources, they increased a little bit because the governor decided to put more funding into the base fund of the LCFF. And if you looked at the other state revenue, it went down. We have a negative. We went down to about $929,000. That's because the one-time discretionary fund went from $344 per ADA to $184 per ADA. All right? Could I ask a question about that?

[8413] Nancy Thomas: Sure. The LCFF sources, the variance is 55. We got, I believe, an extra 1.5%. Was that about?

[8425] SPEAKER_28: The COLA is in there, factored in there, yes.

[8428] Nancy Thomas: OK, but COLA would, I think, be more than $55,000. Is this a decrease also because the prior year ADA that we're using?

[8439] SPEAKER_28: We lost, again, we're using previous year's ADA in order to project 18-19 budget.

[8448] Nancy Thomas: OK, but the point I'm making is the LCFF sources is impacted by, number one, they gave us more money, but number two, we had to take money out because our projections on ADA went down. So the $55,000, if it was only the COLA, it would be more than $55,000.

[8471] SPEAKER_28: Right. Yeah, I mean, we would receive more revenues if our enrollment flatlined or increased. But it unfortunately didn't. Rather, it went down by 96 students. So in the end, our revenue will come in less, about $755,000. So here's a summary of our revenues. 82% of our revenue comes from LCFF funding. Then we get federal revenue, which is Title I, Title II, Title III. We get other state revenue, which is the one-time discretionary fund, state lotteries as well, and then CT funds. Then we also get local revenue, which is SELPA funds, as well as the use of facilities and donations, et cetera. So this is our expenditures. We, if you look at the variance for certificate salaries, it went down by $565,000 because we couldn't fill, I believe, two psychologist positions and three speech therapist positions. So what we did was the services and operating expenses went up because we have to outsource those services. And then on also special education continued to rise. We also, during the adopted budget, We projected that the services and operating expenses, we under-projected the adopted budget, because during the on-audit actuals, it was at $8.1 million of expenditures. So normally, when we project, especially for the services and operating expenses, We tend to project a little bit higher every single year because of the encroachments of special education. So in the end, the variance, our expenditure is going to increase by $600,000. So let me give you a summary of our expenditures. For every dollar we bring in, 49% of our expenditure goes to certificate salaries. 21% goes to employee benefits. 13% goes to classified salaries. 83% of that dollar are personnel. And we spend in services and operations to keep our campus up to par in operations. We spend 12%, but that's just a part of that chunk. A lot of that 12% goes to special education as well. We don't spend a lot of money on books and supplies, only about 4%. And then the capital outlay, barely 1%. So this is our multi-year projection we have here. As you can see, the only thing that's holding us up in terms of our revenues is the cost of living adjustments for the out-of-years. beginning fund balance of six point seven nine six million seventy nine thousand dollars But we are our expenditures exceeds our revenue for for every year for the next three years right two years out We will be fine in 1819 but if you look at our reserve it keeps on going down down and We'll be fine in 19-20, barely. We'll be OK in 19-20. But we won't meet our 3% minimum economic reserve in 2021. We only have, our ending fund balance is only $169,000. We will not meet that economic reserve of $2 million. So what we were looking at, the budget advisory committee was looking at reductions, ways how to, reduce our expenditures. And I'm going to go a little bit more in detail on the next slide. So the actions that we take now will have a more meaningful impact in their outer years. If we prolong the reduction, if we don't take any actions in terms of reducing our budget, we're going to have to reduce more in the outer years. So it's best that we take some type of actions now. And that, and I'll explain this later on the next steps, because the School Services of California is anticipating, I believe the UCLA Anderson School of Business as well, is anticipating that a recession may occur in 2021. So I feel that it is best for the district to take some actions now and not wait until when it's really back down the road. So these are just assumptions and ideas that the business advisory has looked at. We are looking at moving some 20% of custodial personnel expenses to Fund 13 because our custodians do take about at least two hours, but we're only looking at billing from the food services department about 20%, which is about an hour and a half a day to pay for custodial fees because the custodians do clean up the cafeteria during breakfast and lunchtime and then also after breakfast and lunchtime as well. And so that's about $260,000 in savings right there. And we're going to be billing the city of Newark for the water usage, for the use of facilities. Looking into generating about $50,000. And we're also looking at entertaining the idea of perhaps the high school students can pay for parking fees, parking pass, whether it's by semester or by year round. So I do know that towards the end of the school year, we have a lot of I won't say a lot. Some turnovers in terms of teachers decide to resign or quit because they found another position at another school district. Or it's too costly to live in the Bay Area that they found other employment or they moved out of the Bay Area to Central California. Or that they may take up a technology job in the private sector because it pays more. In addition to that, They are also, when I look at the J90, and we also had someone, a vendor, Keenan Associates to come in, just to take a look at our employees that have been here with the district that are 55 and above, that are 55 years old, that's been with the district for 20 plus years. We have a good number of employees that may potentially retire at the end of the school year. If we can look at maybe not refilling 12 positions, if we get that many teachers to retire or resign at the end of the school year, we can save about $1.32 million. We do have a good number of classified staff that's been with the district. There are some, there's a classified staff that is 75 years old and there's another one at 78 years old that we may, that person may, those people may retire at the end of this school year. But we'll get into a little bit more of that later on. This is what our, yes.

[9024] SPEAKER_25: Let me interrupt for a second. Go back one slide. I think this is important for the new board members. Go back one before that. The 3% of the reserve, is the number above the 3% in each of those columns equal to 3%?

[9040] SPEAKER_28: Yes.

[9041] SPEAKER_25: But this board has a commitment and policy to hold beyond 3%, I believe 6%? Correct. That's the board commitment. And I want to share with the new board members that the board also passed a resolution to not deficit spend. Go ahead go to the next slide So the Assumptions are just assumptions. This is not the recommendation. This is not where we are. This is not what it has to be But what is true on this page is we in order to not deficit spend we would have to cut out of our budget about 1.8 million to To kind of avoid that pitfall Doesn't necessarily mean we'll in the end cut that many certificated or that many classified or even implement the parking pass. But as we work closer with staff as well as the advisory, budget advisory, we will probably come together with more recommendations that are a little more specific. And what Kai has asked Kenan to do is to give us a preliminary evaluation of what we call kind of a golden handshake. So if you retire, there's a little bit of an incentive that's put together to incentivize that. But you never know if people are going to retire or not. I mean, there might be the person at 75 that really loves it and has no plan of retiring. So we'll see how that turns out.

[9135] SPEAKER_28: That is exactly correct. I also want to add to the point that this, what's your projection, does not include out-of-years negotiations at all. All right. So that's not factoring in. So whatever increase, salary increase, off schedule, on schedule, we may have to look at this again down the road. All right. So I just want to keep that in mind. This is our timeline here. So we are at December. I'm asking the board, well, I'll be asking the board to approve our first interim, that we're looking at measures to reduce our expenditures by $1.8 million. And then in January, the governor's proposal comes out, budget proposal comes out, and we'll find out a little bit more about the health of the economy, the health of California economy. But there's a lot of unknowns right now, especially with the new governor. We don't know what Mr. Newsom is going to do with LCFF. I don't know. We don't know if he's going to provide the one-time discretionary fund or whether he's going to increase or decrease the cost of living adjustments. And then in March 15, the second interim report is due. to the board, but then also to the county. And I need to submit the first interim report to the county by December 15th. And then we got the May revision from the governor in May. So the May revision will give us a more concrete idea of what the governor is going to do based on the January's proposed budget from the governor.

[9252] SPEAKER_37: I think it's important to note that the March 15th date also is a date beyond which you cannot release a certificate of teacher for the next year. It's assumed if they do not hear that they will be hired the following year. So it's really very important that the March 15th be really true in terms of no deficit spending.

[9278] SPEAKER_28: That is correct. Yeah, as you said, Ms. Crocker, we have to provide notices by March 15th for a certificate. That is correct. So again, the budget by- You're at 1020. Yes. Okay. 1020, okay. Just point of order. All right. So the road ahead here, 2019 and above and beyond, excuse me. So again, we spoke about the governor's lease of his proposal. We are the budget advisory committee is going to provide a list of possible reduction in 2018-19 and 19-20 and Which we're going to ask the governing board here to approve So we're looking at reducing our expenditures by 1.8 million dollars. We need to look at monitoring our enrollment and the bottom line is that we need to look at our expenditures to equal our revenues down the road here and All right. So Ed Code 42128 requires the school district governing board to approve and certify our first-in-room report. So what I'm asking is that, based on the information I'm providing you, that the board approve our first-in-room as a positive certification. But I do want to answer Mrs. Cindy's questionnaire. What the county main objective, they look at form 01 and our general fund. But besides that, for the other funds, okay, it's a setting issue and I'm addressing that. It's just a setting issue and that's all it is. The beginning fund balance, the adopted budget, the information is there. It's just a setting issue that I will upload from from our financial system escape to the SACS form. And that's all it is. It should be a simple fix. And I've reached out already to the county for information to address that. I hope that answered your question. Yeah, but I want to know when parking taxes will be lifted.

[9416] SPEAKER_25: Oh. We don't know yet. Well, we don't know the answer.

[9418] SPEAKER_28: But these are assumptions. I mean, um.

[9421] SPEAKER_25: Kai, let me help. So approving the first interim is assuring the county that we're working on something that's going to approximate reductions of $1.8 million at minimum.

[9449] SPEAKER_25: And when we get closer, we'll have a little more clarity. And before we get to the final approval, we should have that defined.

[9462] SPEAKER_25: But do we have a firm commitment to keep working towards finding and identifying with a lot of work by staff, how are we going to cut the 1.8? I think that's really what the county's looking for in my interactions with the county from last year. So I don't know how you frame that.

[9477] SPEAKER_28: That is absolutely correct. That is absolutely correct. Not only that the board has to approve the first interim, but we need to provide justification on what actions and steps that the district is doing in order to be fiscally solvent, in order to be fiscally responsible. So we have to provide an action item to the board, but also to the county of what steps we're taking to address our deficit spending.

[9507] SPEAKER_25: So let me ask a different question. When will the board decide on what the actual cuts will be? And when will they have time to look at the recommendations before they make the vote on the actual reductions?

[9522] SPEAKER_28: So we've been meeting for the last two months, eight sessions with the Budget Advisory Committee. I feel that I'm hoping we can provide some ideas, an action plan of concrete measures to reduce our expenditures by the next board meeting for the board to approve.

[9552] SPEAKER_25: Because, I'm sorry, go ahead. Typically what I think the board's going to want to see, and if I'm wrong, they'll correct me, is time to see it, time for it to sit with the public, have community engagement, take it to sites to kind of look at, Even though we have representation from the union, from union partners on the committee, typically with large decisions like this, the board's going to want to see it rest in concept in the public forum for a while before they come back and are willing to make a final either adjustment, modification, and recommendation. So I think part of what I would like to see is if we bring something in January to give time to come back and see how that impact is going to be. The largest pain point with this is going to be 85% of our budget and staffing. One way or the other, a large chunk of jobs are going to get cut to right size the district. So we're equal staffing ratio to the number of students we have. That's really the big struggle. And I think this year, I've told staff to be very careful and not saying that we're going to stay away from classrooms because we can't. It's impossible. Hold on. It's impossible because that's the largest employee group we have as teachers. So we have to really think about it in terms of how do we get to the 1.8? How do we project a budget that's going to be flat? I believe the demographics show that we are going to increase. I just don't think it's going to happen as soon as we'd hoped or as soon as we needed to. So I think that the assumptions, I want to be very clear. If I were to retitle them, I would say current concepts. I don't think it really is going to be an assumption or a final answer, but we have to get to the place where we can get down to brass tacks on what exactly comprises that 1.8. What's the list that the board recommends go in there? How do we put it in the public view? And ultimately, I think the board's going to want time with that. But I'll let the board speak to some of those pieces. That's really critical.

[9695] SPEAKER_28: I do want to make one more comment. If I go back to the previous slide here. So. As I mentioned to you earlier, that in 2011, 2012, our enrollment was at 6,560 students. And in 17-18, we're at 5,913. We lost about 685 students. That's $6 million. FTE, Certificated and Classified staff hasn't changed much for the past eight years. We have roughly the same number of Certificated staff as well as Classified staff. Questions, comments?

[9773] Elisa Martinez: Yes. Hi, Kai. Thank you. Thank you for that. So, yes, I do have concerns with assumptions. Completely understand, right? Coming into this, I understood the challenge that is ahead of us. But in terms of submitting, you know, this interim, and, you know, I did have some questions earlier in terms of, Making sure when we are projecting some assumptions that it is not just a spreadsheet number that makes it add up to the number. I totally get it that we haven't with the decline that we have stayed stagnant on staffing and that there is probably some real opportunity there. We have to be honest about that. However, how thoughtful are we going about you know, those numbers and the quantities. And my concern is once we get it on paper, then we kind of really go down that path, especially if we're talking in the next couple of months, we need to make a decision. Um, the reason again, it's all in the context of our performance, right? Um, it is a math game, but at the same time, we're just talking about the performance gaps that we have with our students. So therefore, um, As we all know, it's not that easy. What other options besides just the headcount? I am skeptical about any growth or even maintaining, unfortunately, the levels of enrollment. So in the context of really getting in there and not kicking the can down one more or two more months, what are we really thinking about? The size and being conservative and therefore being able to put a real Holistic picture of all the opportunities are in front of us So anyhow, you know, I know maybe it's big and broad but that's my biggest discomfort with the assumptions going in Again, it's let's assume that the assumptions were to hold true And that we could find folks to actually volunteer if you will I still am concerned on the performance side. So how are we trying to bridge those two? Those are my comments.

[9923] SPEAKER_28: OK, so the assumptions may change in terms of our enrollment. I'm hoping that enrollment will increase. I'm hoping that the budget advisory committee is wrong, that enrollment stays flat. What I originally projected, that enrollment will decline further. Because we want to project conservatively and not optimistically. But after a long, lengthy discussion with the Budget Advisory Committee, we felt that it is best to have a flat enrollment in the outer years. So that's what we did. Again, if our enrollment, say, does decline further next year, that enrollment does not stay flat, then we've got to look at further reduction. But if we take measures now, right now, immediate actions, it's going to have a meaningful impact in the outer years because it's going to compound if we don't fill positions. Whatever we reduce, we've got to make sure that we do our best that we don't refill whether it's positions or programs or et cetera.

[9998] Nancy Thomas: Ms.

[9999] SPEAKER_37: Crocker. I've been down this road a number of times in terms of cutting. And I think we've got to get a handle on the structural budget based on relationship to the number of students that we have, because that's our source of income. If we can find another source of income, that's great. But the bottom line is there has got to be a worst case scenario planning, which means you need plan A and plan B. That's correct. And so that's got to be decided. I think that, from my perspective, as a board member, I wanted to see the staff say, yeah, this is what will happen if the May revise is such and such. But the worst case scenario is it may not be there. And so this is what we have to do, and then be prepared to do it.

[10048] SPEAKER_28: That's correct.

[10049] SPEAKER_37: So if it's a matter of people, it's a matter of people. There's only 15% of our budget that is non-people.

[10056] SPEAKER_28: That's correct. And again, we've been meeting during the budget advisory committee. We looked at all options out there. We looked at all the low-hanging fruits in terms of transferring some of the costs to Fund 13. We're looking at even long-term goals where we may have to shut down a few schools. We don't know yet, but this is for discussion. We looked at long-term and short-term goals that may have a meaningful impact on our budget. We also looked at solar, how much of a reduction, how much of a saving we will have if we close a particular school down. I mean, we looked at talking about, oh, it will save, we don't have to employ a principal, an office manager, office clerk, custodian. We'll save money on electricity bills, because the building will be dark. So that adds up, right? And then that could be an ongoing saving. So that's where I'm at there. And we look at several scenarios. So we'll be bringing this to the board in January. We're having another meeting tomorrow as well.

[10144] SPEAKER_25: I would also add we do have two board members on one of the committees although I'm thinking as I hear people talk that we might need a study session in January to go deeper on this as well as maybe one of the directions to the board tonight would be helpful would be do you want us to put together three scenarios one that is CHI's original conservative projection one that's in between that and a flat So one that's the extreme situation, one that's flat, and maybe one in the middle. And then put that in front of the board to look at. There's a few ways to handle that. And our team is probably going to be carving out some time to really help go deeper with all of that. But I do think that we can create those scenarios. Ultimately, this is going to come back to a board decision, but I want to make sure Coming out of last year and coming out of people feeling like we really didn't engage them. It's not fun to engage when you have to cut. And I think that's part of the challenges. We're going to have to create a budget reduction meeting. This isn't about save my program. And that's always a challenge. So we have to maybe look at doing it differently. One of the things that I thought of was maybe it's me going with one board member to a site council to talk directly with those groups and do it differently. So part of it's the numbers part is probably the easiest part. The hard part is, you know, which scenario we use and how do we get input so that the community feels that we really did listen as much as possible. But as I could tell you, just Even tonight just explaining how funding works in California makes your eyes glaze over. It's painful. And after two minutes of starting to explain the funding formula people check out.

[10271] Nancy Thomas: Well I wanted to say that we need to differentiate our role as board members from staff's role and our role is to provide direction and then staff based on that direction, their role is to create plans and bring them to us for approval. I don't think this first interim reflects proper planning. We gave direction that because they took one-time money away, we passed a board resolution that staff was supposed to cut $515,000, something like that, from this year's budget of it's one-time money, find one-time cuts. They've only found about half that much. I think it's going to be really important to not just say, well, we're going to have teachers leave or people retire. And therefore, we're going to bank on 12 certificated and three classified employees to lead. It doesn't, we don't, we need to do a bottom, staff needs to do a bottoms up plan of how much staffing we need based on our enrollment and that hasn't happened. By just putting in the three year projection that we're going to decrease By that many employees, we're telling the county office that we're positively certifying ourselves before we do the work to show that we are. So I think our structural deficit is not about certificated and classified staffing. I think our structural deficit is about having too many, too small schools. Our schools are small. As we have lost students, we have the same number of overhead on our school sites of principals, the same number of office help, the same number of custodians, cleaning fewer classrooms, but full time in the evening. We have not looked at seriously at what I think we need to look at, and that is closing two schools, at least two schools, consolidating. And that will get rid of our structural deficit, because that'll be two fewer principals, four fewer office staff in each school, or office manager and clerk. It'll be librarians that we won't have. It'll be custodians that we won't have. It will be intervention teachers that maybe can be spread over more students. 600 students is the average, 550 to 600 students is the average K-6 school size in California. Our Fremont next door is looking at creating middle school model instructional materials are based on a middle school 678 model. This is, and we have the room at the junior high, this is a time to say, if we had started in September, we could have closed schools starting next year. It's too late now, but our three-year projection could show a balanced budget without a structural deficit going forward beginning the following year if we really were dedicated, and I just don't I don't hear people talking about it in the committee. It's kind of like they're looking at the fact that we have reserves. I'd like us to pretend we have zero reserves and act accordingly, but we don't do that. And that's what we've not done since I came on this board 20 years ago. We had over $20 million from what was called a tax override. And we whittled away at that, and we continue to whittle away at that. I think we have to be honest with the county that we haven't done the homework yet, and that we probably have a qualified or a negative, well, not negative, but qualified going out three years. I can't support this.

[10568] SPEAKER_28: Well, if we do a qualified certification or a negative certification, the county may bring in a fiscal advisor to the district, and that the board will have no jurisdiction in terms of what we can or cannot spend. So I really don't want to take the board to that route.

[10588] Nancy Thomas: Qualified doesn't do that. Negative does.

[10591] SPEAKER_28: Negative doesn't do that. But I got a letter from the county, and I can share that with you.

[10596] Nancy Thomas: Well, if we give them numbers that aren't based on doing doing an analysis, detailed data analysis that's the same.

[10607] Elisa Martinez: I'm sorry. I'm going to turn this off. Sorry. I'm on the same page, Kai. I think, again, the numbers, again, the information you're presenting is helpful for, again, just to wrap our heads around the size, you know, or beginning to understand the size of the gap. I, too, feel like we haven't done our homework. And maybe, you know, it's the understanding of why we're submitting this interim, but if it's to just kind of hurry up and check the box, I mean, absolutely, you know, I'm hearing you from a procedural what the risk is. That means we better get our homework done sooner rather than later before they, you know, before the county does come in. But it can't be, I don't feel, again, that, you know, we believe, we hope is a strategy that this happens. I too think that I can't support this and let's figure out how we get the homework done as soon as possible and let us know how we can be helpful in that process.

[10671] SPEAKER_28: So I mean, I would like for us to have a conditional positive certification then. So that way it gives us time to present to you next month of what actions were planned to take. Both Ms. Nancy and Ms. Crocker has been on the Budget Advisory Committee, and we've been detailing this already. So can we possibly have a conditional positive certification so that, and then we can provide you what action plans that we're going to present to the board in January.

[10710] SPEAKER_25: Kai, what I would suggest is, do you have the letter to share with the board?

[10714] SPEAKER_28: Yes, I do.

[10715] SPEAKER_25: I would share that. While you're sharing that, we did do a qualified last year. And in that year, it was not the end of the world. In fact, the county felt that it was honest. And they felt that they actually came in and kind of worked with us a little bit. I don't know if the rules have changed a little bit. So I'm curious to see what's in the letter.

[10736] SPEAKER_28: Let me read this here. If a school board district has a qualified or negative certification pursuant to section 42131, the county superintendent shall notify the governing board of the school district and the superintendent of public school instructions in writing of that determination that the basis for determination, the notification shall include the assumption used in making determination and shall be available to the public. The county superintendent of school shall report to the superintendent of public instructions on the financial condition of the school district and his or her proposed remedial action, and shall do at least one of the following and all actions that are necessary to ensure the district meet its financial obligations. Assign a fiscal expert paid by the county superintendent to advise the district on its financial problems. Conduct a study of financial and budgetary conditions of the district that includes, but is not limited to a review of internal controls. If, in the course of this review, the county superintendent determines that his or her office requires analytical assistance or expertise that is not available through the district, he or she may employ, on a short-term basis, the approval of superintendent of public instruction staff, including certificate public accountant, CPA, to provide assistance and expertise The district shall pay 75% and the county office of education shall pay 25% of that fiscal advisor. Direct the school district to submit a financial projection of all funds and cash balances of the district as of June 30th of the current year and subsequent fiscal years as he or she requires. Require the district to encumber all contracts and other obligations to prepare appropriate cash flow analysis and monthly and quarterly budget revisions and to appropriately record all receivable and payables. Direct the district to submit a proposal for addressing the fiscal condition that resulted in the determination that the district may not be able to meet its financial obligations. Withhold compensation of members of the governing board and the district superintendent for failure to provide a request of financial information. This action may be appealed to the superintendent of public school instructions pursuant to subdivision. Assign the fiscal crisis and management assistance team, which is literally FCMAT, that's coming out to meet with us this week, to review teacher hiring practices, teacher retention rate, percentage of provision of highly qualified teachers, and the extent of teacher missed assignments in the school district and provide the district with recommendation to streamline and improve teachers hiring process. Teacher retention rate, extent of teacher missed assignments, and provision of highly qualified teachers. If a review team is assigned to a school district, the district shall follow the recommendation of the team, unless the district chose good cause for failure to do so. The fiscal crisis and management assistance team may not recommend an action that would abrogate a contract that governs employment.

[10955] SPEAKER_25: So let me translate that. The short version is this. They'll work with us. Last year, we got a letter from them saying, we need you to focus on these kind of areas. But what they will do is say, just go down to the 3%. They have no care. even a little bit about saving beyond 3%, which is a problem for us, because we know that things can happen and we have an old system. So I do think we do need to do deeper homework and bring probably stronger recommendations. I don't think a qualified recommendation is the end of the world. And Kai may disagree with me about that, but ultimately I think that I would only say we need to stay away from negative. That's definitely not a place we want to be. The qualified is probably honest about where we are at this point in time. Because the county also knows the demons we're dealing with relative to the increase of STRS and FERS. And the state has a structural deficit. And even though the PowerPoint says we're fully funded, that's not true. We're fully funded back to, what, 2008 levels? It's not true full funding. So there's a little bit of their own misconception. And I also believe that in January, hopefully we have some relief. from what the governor brings forward. I don't know if we will or if it'll be worse. But I could go either way with either a conditional positive or a qualified. And if it triggers some assistance for us, I don't think that's the end of the world. And we went through that a little bit last year. And I don't know if the county is at that place with us. I think we've built some rapport with the county where they do want to help us. I don't see it as totally punitive. But that's not the case statewide. So I think that some of the opinion that's in that letter is driven by kind of the average of what happens in the state. We're very blessed to have the county superintendent we have and the team that they have willing to help us. And actually, the ironic thing is that Jeff Potter, that was formerly at the county, will be part of FCMAT. So I think we could lean into FCMAT. I think we still would be wise to ask for some outside help, because it's hard to get all on top of everything else the staff's doing, it's hard to get our hands around this in a way that is really deep and robust. I think looking at last year compared to this year, I think if cabinet and the board would spend more time this year together wrestling with it, ultimately that's where the decision comes anyway. You can do more with the community and do all of that. Last year I think it took it away from ultimately it's our responsibility. And I think if we could publicly do some of that work, it might pay off more than it would going to sites. So I'm kind of, either way, I'm at the will of the board, but I think that there's a way that we can go forward and just be honest. I have no problem with that.

[11139] SPEAKER_28: touch base on that too is that we also have the second interim report which is due in March 15th. So, and we'll have a better understanding of what the governor is planning to do with the new, with the governor's proposal coming out in January.

[11155] SPEAKER_25: And I think it's a more reasonable timeline to really have an authentic scenario in front of the board before March so that when March 15th comes we feel more confidence of what's been on the table and what's the final recommendation. And we can even put that into our narrative with submittal of a, if it's qualified or conditional, the language that this is what, here's our plan. Because that's what they're going to ask. What's your plan going to be? Even once you get the nasty mean letter, what's your plan to address it is what the county's going to say. It's kind of how they handled it last year.

[11191] SPEAKER_37: I heard from that letter that if we have a qualified that they are required to send people. Did I hear that wrong?

[11202] SPEAKER_28: That's what they say, they may send... Did I say may or they will?

[11206] SPEAKER_25: I thought... I think it says may.

[11209] SPEAKER_28: It says assign a fiscal expert paid by the county superintendent... Shall be assigned.

[11215] SPEAKER_37: It just says assigned. Shall be assigned. So that is not may. That is they shall be assigned. So that if we do qualify, that means that

[11227] SPEAKER_28: I can.

[11228] SPEAKER_37: If the word is there.

[11233] SPEAKER_28: It doesn't say shall. It says assign a fiscal expert paid by the county superintendent to advise the district on its financial problems.

[11239] Nancy Thomas: Does it say may or?

[11240] SPEAKER_28: It doesn't say may. I thought it said may.

[11243] Nancy Thomas: I'm still at the same place I was in my earlier comment. And I would welcome an expert to be sent because I guess I'm my confidence in our ability to move forward as quickly as we need to to make the kind of decisions we need. I think we need expert help. We have a lot of new staff at every level that, and it showed when we brought in the other, what's the company that came in, that they had a lot of I think we have a lot of experience and we are able to help us in a very short order get the budget last time. I think we need someone from the outside that can cause us to look in the mirror and not be delusional or make assumptions that aren't going to pan out in the end. we're going to have to do something. I think we did extend the meeting once, and I would hope that the board would, the parliamentary thing we need to do is suspend the rules and add more time so we can get through this agenda. Can I have someone vote to suspend the rules and extend the meeting one more time?

[11345] Elisa Martinez: I move to suspend the rules.

[11348] Nancy Thomas: I'll second it.

[11351] SPEAKER_38: Can I just ask, on housekeeping, do we go by that clock, or do we go by the computer clock?

[11358] Nancy Thomas: Oh, is it different?

[11359] SPEAKER_33: I think so. Yeah, it's 1058.

[11362] Nancy Thomas: OK, well, then we better first we can suspend the rules, and then we need to vote on how long to do it. So please vote on whether you're willing to suspend the rules. That's four ayes and Mr. Rodriguez voted no. I would like to have someone make a motion to extend the time till midnight, even though we may not be here that long.

[11396] SPEAKER_37: I would like to extend it till 11.15, because we can go around and around. I think 11.15 is sufficient. We can't go in by then. OK. I'll second that.

[11411] Nancy Thomas: Please vote. Please vote.

[11415] SPEAKER_37: Computer time.

[11417] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. OK, that's five ayes.

[11423] SPEAKER_28: So if we do a qualified certification, that means that we have to do a third interim. That will take away the time for the business services department. to work on the adopted budget for 2019-20. So that's why I'm hoping that we can get a conditional positive certification. We will bring you some ideas, suggestions to reduce the budget in January so that the board can approve actions and steps.

[11462] Nancy Thomas: OK. I guess it's time to close. Make a motion.

[11472] Elisa Martinez: I'm going to ask for clarification then. So there's the conditional, and then there's the qualify. Help me understand again. If I qualify, it triggers another interim, right?

[11491] SPEAKER_28: It will trigger a third interim, but also

[11496] Elisa Martinez: I didn't hear anything that we should necessarily shy away from. So would we move to do with qualifying? Could that be one of the motions?

[11513] Nancy Thomas: Actually, the numbers are what determine whether we're qualified. The numbers we have put down were based on assumptions regarding staffing. And so I think, you know, we'd have to turn it down and maybe they'll give us an extension to come back and redo the numbers so that we can feel comfortable with the qualified.

[11540] SPEAKER_28: We have until December 15th to submit this first interim to the county for their approval of what measures, steps that the district is doing to be physically solvent.

[11556] Nancy Thomas: So maybe an option is to have a special meeting next week and give you between now and then to convince us that the numbers that you're, from my standpoint as one board member, the numbers that you are creating are... Okay. So I guess my motion would be to table this and give the staff one week and come back next Tuesday night with the special meeting.

[11587] SPEAKER_25: How about next Thursday?

[11590] Nancy Thomas: Next Thursday with the special meeting.

[11591] Elisa Martinez: The 13th. I could join remotely on Tuesday.

[11594] Nancy Thomas: OK, no, let's do it Thursday then. Special meeting. Next Thursday.

[11599] SPEAKER_25: Start time? 6? 7 o'clock. We could start sooner.

[11605] SPEAKER_28: We could start sooner.

[11607] SPEAKER_25: It's a special meeting. If it's a special meeting, do they tend to go for? If it's only one agenda item, it's shorter.

[11615] SPEAKER_38: This isn't the norm.

[11620] SPEAKER_25: Yes, I think it usually goes shorter if it's one item. If we could start sooner, too. Do I hear 5 o'clock?

[11628] Nancy Thomas: 5 o'clock, OK. That's fine with me. Can you make 5 o'clock work?

[11634] SPEAKER_25: 5 o'clock, Tuesday the 13th. We'll table this. Thursday the 13th of December.

[11639] SPEAKER_28: Thursday the 13th. Thank you for considering this, and I appreciate your time.

[11643] SPEAKER_25: We'll get to work on it.

[11646] Nancy Thomas: 14.9, change order, revision with DECA Tech. I'd like to entertain a motion. Mr. Rodriguez moves. Second. Please vote. Five ayes, thank you. Next, the piggybacking on the- 14.9. 14.8 was pulled. Glendale Unified School District, in case we want to purchase Apple equipment in the future, it will save us money.

[11682] SPEAKER_37: Move to accept. Second.

[11686] Nancy Thomas: Please vote.

[11688] SPEAKER_37: Can you open it? You have to clear it.

[11692] Nancy Thomas: Oh, wait a minute. I didn't clear it. OK. Please vote. Five ayes, thank you.

[11706] Ray Rodriguez: The donations report.

[11713] SPEAKER_37: Rule of acceptance.

[11715] SPEAKER_25: You've already suspended the rules, Ray, point of order.

[11719] Nancy Thomas: You could do that. Open, I mean, please vote. Five ayes, thank you.

[11730] SPEAKER_37: Employee organizations.

[11732] Nancy Thomas: Employee organizations.

[11735] SPEAKER_25: NEWMA. Poor thing's been waiting for us.

[11737] Nancy Thomas: Oh my gosh, you've been back there this whole time? Loved every minute. It's OK.

[11741] SPEAKER_09: God bless you. Good evening. My name is Amanda Gallaher. I'm the principal of Music Elementary and Preschool right next door. I'm also the officer-at-large for our Newark Management Association, or NEWMA. On behalf of NEWMA, I'd like to first offer a warm welcome to all of our new board members tonight. Congratulations. We look forward to working with you and the rest of the board for the continued success of our district and our students. The mission of NEWMA is to support AXA's mission of supporting California's educational leaders, ensuring all students have the essential skills and knowledge needed to excel in championing public education. It's the goal of NEWMA officers to present at each and every board meeting during this part of the meeting. We would like to share the good work that we're doing apart and leading at our sites. or the good work we're a part of in leading our site. Sorry, it's late. So here's a few highlights from the fall. So at each site, we've been leading professional learning communities with the focus area of mathematical achievement. And we heard some of that from Ms. Sir earlier. We're updating our safety preparedness with a partnership with the Newark Police Department and further developing our comprehensive safety plans. We're working with ACSA, the Association of California School Administrators, to promote professional development opportunities and acknowledge our peers and their tireless work. And lastly, we're always looking for opportunities to connect with our families in different ways and support them. So this holiday season, we're partnering with our parent partners, and we're going to help bring some of the supplies and donations, the toys that our parents are unable to come pick up during their window. So we're going to make sure they get to their homes before the holidays. We're going to go deliver them this year. So we're really excited to be part of that work with our parent partners. And that's all for tonight. We look forward to seeing you next meeting. Thank you for the time.

[11861] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Thanks for waiting so long. Wow. It's great to hear from NEWMA. It is. CSCA, Ms. Eustis.

[11878] SPEAKER_32: That's all right. I'll just make it short and sweet. We have our chapter meeting coming up on December 10th. And more importantly is we're going to be having our Christmas event on December 17th. And again, this year we're going to be going to Claim Jumpers. And if you haven't already received an invitation, you will be receiving an invitation to attend our Christmas party. Please do. I think it's a good opportunity for all of us to talk and get to know one another. And before I leave the podium, I just want to say thank you to Miss Crocker. for all of her years of service. We haven't always agreed, but I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and the work that you have done. So thank you so much for your service.

[11942] Nancy Thomas: OK. Next, we move on to the personnel report 16.1. Move acceptance. Please vote. Five ayes, thank you. Next, we move on to the consent agenda, 17.1 to 17.8. Does anyone want to pull any of these? OK.

[11980] SPEAKER_37: Please vote. Five ayes, thank you.

[11991] Ray Rodriguez: The expulsion stipulation, E1819-09, and I will second that.

[12010] Nancy Thomas: I know that our newest board members didn't have a chance to look at it, so if the three of us approve it and you don't vote or vote to abstain, it'll still pass. Please vote. Three ayes, thank you. With members Gutierrez and Martinez abstaining. Okay. Second to the last thing we do is we get board requests and comments. Maybe we'll start with Ray and then Jan, and then we'll have the two newest board members finish up.

[12057] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, President Thomas. The SELPA had their sponsored the Special Olympics at American High School for Soccer, and they're also sponsoring, along with the Optimist Club, the Holiday Party, which is going to be on the 14th at the Pizza—what's the name of that pizza place? Shakers. It's on Thorton. It's on Fremont Boulevard. Yeah, Fremont Boulevard in Thornton. And that's going to be at 12 noon. Everybody's encouraged to participate, all three districts. And Mr. and Mrs. Claus will be there. I'm sorry, what was that date? Tuesday the 14th, right?

[12113] SPEAKER_37: It's Tuesday the 14th. I can't make it. I thought it was.

[12115] Ray Rodriguez: No, no, it's Wednesday.

[12118] SPEAKER_37: It's Wednesday the 14th?

[12121] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, it's next week. Okay, okay, so what's Tuesday?

[12127] SPEAKER_37: It is Friday after the birthday Excuse me, it's the 18th.

[12135] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, it's the 18th.

[12135] SPEAKER_37: So we got time 45 Which is a Tuesday?

[12141] Ray Rodriguez: My daughter puts it together. I don't remember the date so that's the 18th at noon love for you to come and The only thing I have as far as request is We've talked in the past about employer housing, and I'm hoping to get a report on that. Maybe we can get together and do a session or something. And that's all I have. And welcome to our new board members.

[12175] SPEAKER_37: Yeah, I want to say welcome to the new board members, too. It's delightful to have people that are excited about taking over this job, and this is a delight for me. 3 o'clock in the morning this morning, I finished the letter so I'd like to read it to you. I gave you a copy but I'd like to put it on the record. Dear Newark Unified School District Board of Education, it's with mixed feelings that I must resign from the Newark Unified School District Board of Education effective December 5, 2018. It's been 15 years since I was selected to fill a vacancy. These 15 years have been very rewarding years and I'm thankful to the community for entrusting me with this role. I have grown to appreciate the importance of the board's role, that of oversight of the district business. Oversight means just that, oversight. Board members, be wary of falling into the trap of thinking that you are responsible for the day-by-day running of the district. You are not. In fact, you are cautioned by all the best practices of the CSBA to steer clear behaviors that signal to the staff that your opinion is clearer and more insightful than their own. Such behaviors siphon off valuable time and energy that the staff needs to run the district. Such behaviors work to feed your own ego rather than advance the work of educating the youth. Board members in the past have stepped over that line and has proven to create more chaos than clarity. Your role is to be well-informed and provide a public forum to discuss the issues that may arise. Your job is to listen to all the voices in the community and then make informed decisions. You cannot please everyone, but you can be honest with everyone. There's going to be important changes in public education in the next 15 years. Flexibility will be the cornerstone. Our students are coming to the classroom with different experiences and skills than they did 15 years ago. We must acknowledge their experiences and help them to build on them. We must help them to be ready for what is now unknown. I came to the board with a passion to support public education. It is still my belief that the education provided in our public schools is one of the most important things which keeps our democracy relevant and healthy. Public education gives our students the opportunity to work and play with all of our community. Public education allows our students to be comfortable with and appreciate diversity. Thank you, Newark, for allowing me to be involved these past 15 years. I have been blessed to work with people who I've grown to appreciate and to love. Jan Crocker.

[12333] Nancy Thomas: Wow. Jan, it's just been a delight to be on the board with you over these last 15 years. I hate to see you go. I hope you'll stay involved in volunteer activities. No promises right now. And I hope we can do some travel together. And we'll stay, you know, and keep playing cards. Okay. Anyway, thank you. And congratulations, I guess, because right now I kind of wish I were in your shoes.

[12374] Ray Rodriguez: After the first interim report, I want to go with you, right? But anyway, I, too, want to thank you. You came on when we needed someone to step up, and you've done a wonderful job, and I realize the effect this has on your family and now your grandkids, and I know you want to spend more time with them, and I can appreciate that. So we are, you know, two new board members, so you're just a phone call away. So, and I know you'll be available to offer insight and... I'll tell you what to do, sure.

[12411] SPEAKER_37: Oh, sure.

[12413] Ray Rodriguez: And now you can tell everybody what to do without being a violation of the... There you go, there you go. Anyway, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you much.

[12421] Nancy Thomas: Thanks. Do you two want to go next? And then I'll wrap up.

[12425] Elisa Martinez: Go ahead. I just wanted to say that I feel cheated. I was really looking forward to working with you. Thank you. In coming to the meetings, I see your dedication and your honest devotion to this process. So again, I just wish we would have gotten a chance to work together. Thank you for everything you've done.

[12450] SPEAKER_38: I'm glad you're here. Thank you for your service. And just a little quick note on events going on. The Methodist Charity Program is having a fundraiser this Saturday, December 8th. at 11.30 at, this just gives me an address, so it's gonna be in the city, Union City, 4519 Navato Street, Union City. And they're doing a, what is it? When you paint a picture? Paint, yeah. And so, and there's gonna be drinks, drinks and interior food provided. Just a, anybody welcome to go. And I'm very excited to be here, so thank you. Great. I'm excited for it.

[12495] Nancy Thomas: Welcome, both of you. Oh, my gosh. I'm sorry. I was going to say I went to CSBA, and I was going to tell you all about each session I went to in detail. But in the interest of time, I think I'll skip that. I want to remind staff that we had asked for a makerspace presentation, so I would hope that that would be scheduled, even maybe if you can fit it in next week, but at least in January. When I asked about the fit reports, I know that We said that we passed to Williams. Well, the county only audits two sites, but every site is required to do a FIT report. And that really tells us the state of the safety planning and other activities.

[12557] SPEAKER_28: Right. Our director of MOT is on vacation, but we'll address it with her. So maybe we can have a presentation in January.

[12566] Nancy Thomas: OK. And then I had asked for the quarterly reports to be on the budget, I mean, on the quarterly contract reports to be on this agenda and it wasn't. So I'd like to remind you that the quarterly reports on contracts should come forward. And in saying that, I'm thinking that we have a lot of cutting to do and that maybe in a short time we can bring a discussion about whether we want to. These contracts anything over 10,000 instead of now it's about 45,000 just see an approved contracts they can be on the consent agenda, but just to kind of help us monitor spending until we get our structural deficit under control if if the board would be open to or the new President would be open to bringing that as an agenda item discussion. I'd appreciate it. And that's it. Superintendent?

[12635] SPEAKER_25: Just a reaction to some of that. Part of that would require a policy change. And I think we've got to be careful to not border into micromanagement with staff. I really don't have anything else to say. I do want to thank Jan for her service and for her guidance. certainly helping me personally in my transition to California. Um, I will be calling you and welcome, uh, recently reelected and newly elected and appointed members to the board. Um, and I'm really excited that we really, uh, need to and want to re-establish a strong team and strengthen the team for the sake of our kids and that's really what I'm excited about. But, thank you.

No minutes available.