Regular Meeting

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[26] Ray Rodriguez: During closed session, there was no action taken. We did talk about two expulsions, and we'll be voting on those later on in the meeting. So I always do this. I always make the report before the pledge, right? Superintendent, you have two young people that want to help us with the pledge?

[46] SPEAKER_08: I have two volunteers. were agreed to help us play. Young ladies, would you please step forward? Angela, can you help them?

[54] Ray Rodriguez: By young, is anybody under 60 to me?

[56] SPEAKER_50: OK.

[60] SPEAKER_08: Here we go. Two of our Lincoln students. They want to do it together.

[69] Diego Torres: All right.

[72] Ray Rodriguez: You want to let us know who you are, or you want to do that after they do the pledge?

[80] SPEAKER_48: Hi, my name is Bernice, and I'm in sixth grade, and I go to Lincoln Elementary. Hi, my name is Alondra, and I am in third grade, and I go to Lincoln Elementary.

[93] Ray Rodriguez: All right. Now, see the flag right there? We need to face the flag, and then just tell us what to do.

[107] SPEAKER_49: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[123] Ray Rodriguez: All right. Thank you. Good job. Now we want you to come back for the rest of the year at every meeting and lead us in the pledge. We already reported on closed session. So approval of the agenda. I need a motion and a second. Member Thomas, did you have something?

[153] Nancy Thomas: Yes, I would like to have the agenda approved with one minor change. My colleagues from the Newark Rotary and representatives from the Newark Educational Association are here to make an announcement. I would like to move that up to immediately after we approve the agenda.

[171] Ray Rodriguez: OK, I second that.

[173] Nancy Thomas: OK.

[173] Ray Rodriguez: Everybody, we don't have to vote. Just give me your hands if that's OK. OK, great. OK. OK. Go ahead, members.

[183] Nancy Thomas: May I invite my colleagues forward to make an announcement?

[193] SPEAKER_06: Good evening. It's been many years since I've spoken in this room, more than 10. And my name is John Bernard, and I'm pleased to be the interim principal at Newark Memorial High School. But equally important, I am pleased to be the president of Newark Rotary. And every year, Newark Rotary has a crab feed. And at the crab feed, there is an opportunity for the community to donate to a need within the community. And I'm happy to say that there was a significant amount of money raised that is going to be going towards the Newark Schools Foundation. And I'm happy to present a check for $6,300 to the president of that group. And I'm going to give it to you.

[238] Ray Rodriguez: I know he's going to be saying something right now. So, Mr. Terrence Grindell, would you like to introduce yourself?

[250] Terrence Grindall: Yes. You just did it, but I'm happy to begin. I'm Terrence Grindell. I'm the president of the Newark Educational Foundation. We are working hard to raise money to help children. We focus our efforts on science in the schools and helping to subsidize the science camp. Also, an important focus of ours is music in the schools. So I want to express our appreciation to the Newark Rotary Club, which I happen to be a member of. and their generous contribution to the Educational Foundation. This money will go towards instruments and equipment at the elementary school band that the foundation is supporting. We hope to be able to expand the program further with more instruments and more donations. So I do have two of our board members here, Athena Salazar and Jim Carter, who is hiding in the back. Just wanted to bring that to your attention. We also have some board members from the Newark Educational Foundation. So the foundation is active and alive and we want to continue to raise even more money to do things to make Newark schools even better than they are.

[327] Ray Rodriguez: Could you ask them to stand so we can recognize them if you don't mind?

[330] Terrence Grindall: Athena's standing here and Jim's in the back.

[333] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, excellent. Thank you. And we have our recently retired board member, member Jan Crocker here. And for those of you that don't know, Dr. John Bernard was our superintendent here a few years ago. And now he's helping us at the high school. And we really appreciate it. OK. Member Thomas, is that it? Or did you? That's it.

[362] Nancy Thomas: Thank you very much. I'm so proud to be part of the Newark Rotary Club. Thank you for all you do or we do.

[370] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Superintendent, we have the spotlight.

[373] SPEAKER_08: Yes, this evening our spotlight is McGregor campus. I'd like to bring Dr. Calderon forward to present our spotlight.

[383] SPEAKER_13: Thank you. Good evening, President Rodriguez, Clerk Thomas, new members. Welcome. And of course, superintendent's cabinet. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Julianne Calderon and I serve as your principal of alternative education for the Newark Unified School District. So we have here the logos of all the programs that are housed on the McGregor campus and our logo for all of our programs is one size does not fit all. So this is just a flow chart because we often get questions about how do we collaborate with Newark Memorial which is our main feeder school. And this should actually say Bridgepoint and Crossroads. And so the communication between the counselors at both sites is very good. It happens by phone. It happens via email pretty quickly within the school day. One of the changes that I implemented when I began was to get rid of the paper applications that we used to do, just because to me it felt like a lot more red tape. And I wanted to expedite those transfers for parents to be able to simply talk to their counselor, meet with their counselor, and make that transfer as needed. And so once that call or email happens, then there is a meeting with the entire family, parent, guardian, and student, meet with me and our counselor to talk about either the program at Bridgepoint or Crossroads. We take a look at transcript and kind of plot out potential classes. The enrollment paperwork is returned, our counselor creates a schedule, and then all of our students at Bridgepoint and hopefully next year for Crossroads attend what we now do as a mandatory student orientation. So they spend about an hour with the counselor kind of reviewing our mission, vision, school-wide learner outcomes, talking about our PBIS motto, talking about expectations, reviewing credit requirements, and basically kind of getting them acclimated a little bit better than in the past when students would just come in on rolling admissions and sometimes not get that transition. So I know one of the areas for growth was to make that transition go much more smoothly. So a snapshot of the first of our programs, one of the largest at the McGregor campus is Bridgepoint High School. And at this point, we are at 105 students as of today. That number will probably change after next Friday, which is the end of our third academic quarter, because we have more students coming to us from Newark Memorial. But this is an increase of 25 since last year's report. We have 14 sophomores, which is a grade that we wanted to grow. I think historically, the referrals to alternative education have been juniors and seniors. But we find that the sooner a student can get to us to recover credits, the sooner they can return to the comprehensive site to complete their academic time in Newark Unified at Newark Memorial. We have 39 11th graders, 42 12th graders, That number does include the members of the transition program. They are the mod severe adults from our district who continue to work with us until the 22nd birthday. Not surprisingly, in keeping with most alternative sites, the majority of Bridgepoint students are male with 65 and female students 40. So I'm really excited to share with you the revised and updated mission, vision, and school-wide learning outcomes. The WASC self-study is a process that really has affected Bridgepoint, I think, in a very positive way. And this year, we were able to include our students in the revision of our vision and school-wide learner outcomes. And so our WASC student focus group has met twice thus far and will continue to meet until the end of the school year. But their first task was to help us review and revisit the mission, vision, and school-wide learner outcomes. So this was a wonderful discussion that I was lucky to facilitate. I served as facilitator of this discussion, and our young people talked about the advantages of being at Bridgepoint some areas for growth, but most importantly, they articulated what they feel are the expectations for their academic and personal growth while at our site. And so you can read those for yourself, but I'll go ahead and say them. The mission, our mission is to motivate students to stay in school, reach their full potential, and become lifelong learners. Our vision, Bridgepoint High School is a safe, supportive learning environment where all students are supported and challenged to reach their full potential. And the school-wide learner outcomes through daily learning and collaboration, all Bridgepoint High School students will, one, take responsibility for their academic success through hard work and improved time management, two, graduate with a plan for achieving their college or career goals, and three, demonstrate positive citizenship and character as young adults and role models. And this is all student voice. These are all their words that I just put together for them in this document. So of course, we can't not discuss achievement data. And the students will actually be seeing this presentation at our next focus group meeting. And this is an area, of course, that we recognize both through the WASC self-study and our single plan as our area of definitely our number one priority is to improve the achievement of students. As most of you know, the majority of the students who come to Bridgepoint come to us credit deficient and often struggling in their academic skills. So in some ways, those results are in keeping with what we know already about their prior academic achievement. So plenty of room for growth in English language arts. As you can see, there is quite a lot of space for us to try to make up some of those gaps. And as is happening district-wide, math is definitely the area of greater need and higher, in some ways, higher priority. They are both high priority. But as you can see, the overall performance in math is not positive at this point. So how is it that we are implementing our vision? Well, we are doing a lot of both new and continuing things. at the site to be safe, supportive, and creating that positive learning environment. In the safe arena, we are embarking in our planning year for PBIS. I think alternative education in many ways already implements this. But we are doing it in name and officially, and we're super excited about that, because I think it's going to capture some of what our best practices already are. This year, I myself started giving out weekly attendance awards, because like most of our sites in our district, attendance is important. And when attendance is tied to credit attainment, it becomes very important. And so my students get to hear announcements over the PA, and they get a small prize that I hand deliver. So the kids like that, and they like being weekly winners. They like kind of having competitions with each other. I think there's a couple of young men who have been perfect all year and I think are battling it out to see who's going to be the perfect one at the very end. So that's very exciting. And then, of course, district-wide, we worked on new safety plans involving the site council in that work and working with Newark PD, which was, I think, important. supportive environment. This is something that I feel that we've done well, but we have, I was lucky to be able to work with our partners and expand our cost services. There are close to 70, I think 60 to 70% of our student body between both Bridgepoint and Crossroads have a cost referral. And so being able to expand those services through our partnership with East Bay Agency for Children, which provides for individual therapy and also through

[842] Nancy Thomas: Could you define what COST is? Because there's a lot of people in the audience that maybe do not know.

[847] SPEAKER_13: It stands for Coordination of Services Team. And so it is a site-based team. I'm on the team, the counselor. We have a district liaison, Ms. Victoria Garcia, who you may have seen present at this board meeting in the past, as well as our clinicians. So the therapists who provide the services are part of this. We get referrals from basically anyone a parent can refer, a student can self-refer. Teachers, of course, and staff can refer. And so the team meets weekly and we evaluate those referrals to see what kind of services the student or family needs, whether that's individual therapy, referrals outside of the school, support from our parent partner. And so we try to offer those services to our students to support their achievement. I think I already mentioned the new student orientation in which we orient all of our students to our programs. This year, our new counselor decided to liven up our report card night by hosting a parent resource fair. So it wasn't just an opportunity to come meet teachers, but they could also connect with various outside organizations and connect directly with those. And then, of course, learning environment. I'm really excited because almost everything except the bottom is brand new to our campus. So we are this year having, of course, in collaboration with our WASC visiting team, we are doing individual learning plans. And so every single student has an individual learning plan created when they have their intake with their family. And that's updated quarterly, and that's part of our new senior progress meetings. Because we want our students to know where they stand, know what credits they still need to earn, and feel that they have some control over their path and their progress. I'm very, very proud. You may have seen this on Twitter. We applied for the Hamilton Education Program and we got accepted. And what this means is that my students have been spending, they said three to five days of curriculum. It's really been more like two to three weeks of curriculum and just some really close reading of texts about the founding fathers and obviously building that background to fully enjoy the Hamilton musical. And so we'll be taking approximately 28 Bridgepoint students from English 3 with us to go see the latest production in San Francisco of Hamilton. So a lot of excited folks on campus. So I'll be sure to take photos and post those on Twitter. And you can just feel the excitement. And I'm very excited that we were able to do that. Something else that happened along the lines of our WASC team was they suggested that We break out the Englishes. We know credit recovery is super important, but learning is super important. And one of their suggestions was to break out all of those individual classes by grade level so that we could really do a deeper dive into the content. And so this year, we were able to offer a section of both English 3 and English 4. And of course, our ongoing partnership with Mission Valley ROP. Through them, we were able to host a holiday feast Our culinary arts students are working with outside organizations to cook meals. And so it's just another way that we are expanding and enriching what our students are experiencing at Bridgepoint. And of course, can't forget STEAM Week, which we'll be embarking on in May, which we're excited about as well. So lots of new changes, but all positive. I already mentioned PBIS. This is in typical Bridgepoint fashion. It's a little irreverent, our motto. Typically you hear safe, respectful, and responsible, and that's what I was pushing for. But my staff and students wanted to be just a little bit outside the box there and creative. And so our motto is be cool and take care of business. And it goes with the song and everything. And then we'll be calling our prizes Panther Prizes because we are the Bridgepoint Panthers. This is just a photo from that first holiday feast that our culinary arts hosted for the entire school, as well as guests. Member Martinez was there. Member President Rodriguez, Superintendent Sanchez came. We had administration from MVROP. and teachers from their program. So it was just a really wonderful meal to have the kids coordinate, cook, serve, and enjoy that meal as a school is a tradition that I hope, well, we're already planning to continue it. So it's something that I brought from my previous district and I want it to be a Bridgepoint tradition that we continue that. Also at McGregor campus is Crossroads. Now, I know in the past you've heard it referred to as Crossroads High School. And while that is true, we have mostly high school students, we are actually also serving middle school students. And I got an email from a family at an elementary school that is considering a Crossroads placement. Now, because the program is small, it is pretty close to full at this point in time. Currently, we have about 53 students. I think that number changed this morning. So we are still maxed out. As you can see, we have one 7th grader, one 8th grader, five freshmen, 14 sophomores, 16 11th graders, and 16 12th graders. And for everybody in the room who's wondering what's the difference, Crossroads is an independent studies program. And so the students who come there are not, shouldn't be credit deficient. They should be coming to us because they've got some extenuating life circumstances that prevents them from being in the classroom. And we want those students to eventually transition back to Newark Memorial or Newark Junior High so they can continue their education. This is their achievement results, similar to Bridgepoint. Again, many of our Crossroads students face emotional and physical health challenges that have gotten in the way of their attendance in school. And so unfortunately, that's led to some skill gaps and performance gaps. So those are the English language results there with 7% of students at proficiency. And then in math, exactly what we see at Bridgepoint, where math continues to be that high priority area. One major change this year is that At the request of WASC and their recommendation, we are now doing joint professional development once a month at Crossroads and Bridgepoint. We also collaborate at times with Newark Junior High and Newark Memorial. But at Bridgepoint, they are doing joint sessions, and so some of the topics have been growth mindset, increasing student talk in the classroom, academic language, and we are hoping that next year we'll launch school-wide writing. And of course, our STEAM work, which we're getting excited about and gearing up for. And finally, last but not least, we also serve our adults in our community. And so there are approximately 300 students enrolled this year. That includes summer ESL. I was informed that that's actually 315. And it was updated today. Some of the new courses that we're offering, this was based on student request. The ESL students were saying that they wanted more rigor. And so we listened to them. And so we're now offering, in addition to the multi-level ESL, we're offering a separate listening and speaking course and a separate reading and writing course to build those specific skills. We also brought back citizenship as a monthly workshop. This was something that was consistently requested, and so we were happy to be able to bring that back, and it's been a very popular offering. And I just want to thank you. There are a lot of events that I would like to invite our board and our cabinet to. BridgePoint's WASC visit will be on Cinco de Mayo at 3 p.m. So I hope that many of you can join us to meet our team for this year and then speak with them. Our STEAM showcase for both Bridgepoint and Crossroads will be on Thursday, May 23rd, 6 p.m. And of course, we'd love to see all of you at our graduation. This year, we are doing the adult education in the evening for the first time in a long time. It'll be on June 5th at 6 p.m. Crossroads graduation will be at June 11th at 7 p.m. and concluding with Bridgepoint's graduation on June 12th at 7 p.m. Thank you.

[1348] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. That was excellent. Thank you. My daughter went to Crossroads for a year, and it was the best thing that happened to her, in my opinion. She came back to the high school, and she was beyond with the grades and the units and the credits. So I'm glad that we have that avenue for our kids. And when this comes up, I don't remember, Thomas and I, one was the number of students. We want to make sure that when we have students at the high school, especially freshmen and sophomores, that instead of falling behind, they can go over to your site and then catch up, and then the transition is an easy one, going back. I think you mentioned that. Can you hit on that more?

[1411] SPEAKER_13: Yes. And so as you can see, there was an increase in sophomore referrals, which we are definitely promoting in our conversations with Newark administration, Newark counselors, as well as families. This wasn't reflected in my slideshow, but I even went to OOP to present and to talk about our programs, just because I feel like sometimes parents don't always hear about my program. They only hear about it when the student is in trouble. And I just wanted to go to say, here's who I am. I'm a resource. Feel free to give me a call about adult ed or Bridgepoint and Crossroads. And I think doing more of that kind of work in advance, being proactive, is definitely going to be helpful. As far as freshmen go, I think we definitely need to do some outside-the-box thinking. And this has been something that we've discussed in our secondary collaboration meetings. As far as freshmen attending continuation high schools, they can't attend Bridgepoint due to the age and grade requirement. However, I do think that as a secondary team, we can look at some other models of how we might support those freshmen in recovering credits.

[1468] Ray Rodriguez: Member Gutierrez.

[1470] SPEAKER_47: Hi, thank you. I actually just had a question. I thought it was a good time with such a large audience today to ask in regards to the citizenship class that you guys have for adults. Is it in multiple languages, or is it only currently in English?

[1487] SPEAKER_13: I think it's currently in English. I would have to ask. I know my parent partner does some work with the adult school to see if there's translation available or if she's available. It is very popular. Everyone is welcome. It's free. So please join us. I know this is going out on YouTube as well. So everyone is welcome. There's a session every month. So please come and check that out.

[1507] Ray Rodriguez: And I know in the past, years ago, we had traffic school. And it's been a while. And I was hoping that would be something that we would be discussing.

[1519] SPEAKER_13: That's something we are going to continue to explore. At this point in time, it's become quite costly. The person who teaches the program has to be certified. And so that would be an expense that we are trying to cut back on expenses and being thoughtful about how we spend money. And so that has been kind of the greatest obstacle is the time commitment for someone to get certified, as well as the expense of getting someone certified.

[1543] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. So I visited your school, and I know years ago you used to have a sweater or a shirt that said Bridgepoint. This one is for the junior high. Remember Crocker. This is a junior high one. So hopefully, if you do decide to do that as a fundraiser, the board would support you.

[1566] SPEAKER_13: Thank you so much. Spirit gear is coming, especially with PBIS. around the corner starting in the fall. And I know that WASC is big on having that image and that logo forming part of the mission and vision and student learner outcomes. So yes, you will be the first person I email when we put that order in.

[1583] Ray Rodriguez: And you've been with us now two years, I think?

[1585] SPEAKER_13: It's my second year, yes.

[1586] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah. We're very excited that you're there. And I know it's a tough learning curve, even with your experience. When you go to a new district and alternative school, it's not something that a lot of people, you know, want to go to. So, and I know it's your passion. It is. And I really, you know, it seems like we have the right person.

[1609] SPEAKER_13: Thank you. I appreciate the support.

[1611] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah. And we appreciate it. Anyone else? Okay. Thank you all. Oh, did you have anybody here from from your site?

[1619] SPEAKER_13: Yes, I did. I was really lucky to have my wonderful site council members here. We've got representation from Crossroads, my phenomenal teacher. I wish I could clone him and have him at Bridgepoint as well, but I can't lose him at Crossroads. So Mr. John Angelo, can you wave? Somewhere out there. They want to give you a hand, John. Come on in. I know he's very much in demand. Yes, he is. And then I also want to thank, I consider her superwoman. Somehow she's always there, whether it's Avanzando, or Site Council, or WASC Focus Group. She's become my go-to in my time at Bridgepoint. And I'm going to really miss her when her son graduates in June. Miss Blanco, she's on the Bridgepoint Site Council. If you can give a wave. I'd like to clone her, too.

[1677] Ray Rodriguez: So the wall in the back, was that already here, or was that part of your presentation?

[1682] SPEAKER_13: No, that is part of what we are showcasing tonight. So what you have is some digital art from our Crossroads program. You also have poetry, research projects, and art from Bridgepoint. And what I want to say about the research projects is in English Three and four, the opening assignment is for students to reflect on their educational journey and to really narrow down what has been an educational obstacle and then to go into what the research says about that obstacle. And so they've created some posters there about that. And those are, like I said, they're all personalized. So a student picks something that they themselves have experience with, either they themselves or their families, and write an essay and also put together a presentation about that educational obstacle. So those are back there.

[1730] Ray Rodriguez: That's great. And again, remember Thomas and I over the years, we appreciate the way you work with the other secondary sites on making sure that the transition is smooth and that everybody supports each other. And that's all a positive. And the adult school, because that's something that we've talked about a lot recently. I can't, I was amazed at 315, is that what you said?

[1758] SPEAKER_13: Yes, as of today. Go ahead Nancy.

[1761] Nancy Thomas: I'd just like to add that I really enjoyed the WASC visit that I attended and I plan to be there in May. Thank you.

[1771] SPEAKER_13: I look forward to it, thank you.

[1772] Ray Rodriguez: It's a very excellent day to have that Cinco de Mayo. Si. Anyone else? Superintendent? Thank you. Associate Superintendent? I know you had a lot to do with this, and I appreciate it. Oh, she did everything, right? OK. Thank you. And thank you for your staff and your teachers and the way you treat our parents. It's a tough transition when your child moves from the high school over to the alternative school. And you seem to have a way of making that happen in a positive way. And it's appreciated. Thank you. Thank you very much. OK, with that, we move to public comment. And we have member, Vice President Thomas, could you? Yeah, ask him to come up if you don't mind. 8.1. Sue Eustis, please.

[1837] Nancy Thomas: Ms. Eustis.

[1851] SPEAKER_41: Good evening board I'd like to ask For an indulgence and if I read my speech, it's gonna take me three and a half minutes. I Timed myself because I knew the three minutes were up there. Is it alright if I just read it so I don't break it into two That's okay, okay All right, first off, I want to introduce you to your classified bargaining unit. So everybody that's classified, could you please stand up? So I'm speaking, coming here and speaking to you tonight really does not give me a lot of great pleasure. I have worked in Newark Unified School District for 42 years. I have over 30 years experience at the negotiations table. I've seen a lot, but I've not seen anything like I've seen this last year. This last year, when we went to the table, we believed that we were not given correct figures, budget figures. We asked questions, but there didn't seem to be an interest in getting the answers to our questions. The numbers still do not match up. When presented with a Me Too clause, we tried to explain that we are not teachers, that the offer that they offered affects us much differently than it does the teachers. We appreciate the thought that the district believed it was a fair offer, but it is not. We explain that our needs are different. There appears to be absolutely no interest in talking about our needs. The district, it was the district's way or no way. I have never been through negotiations like these. There was no interest in hearing us at any time. We had trouble getting dates. You have to understand, many of our members can no longer live in Newark or surrounding cities. You must ask why and think about it for a long time, because they do not make a fair wage here. They have all had to move out of town, taking their kids with them, which has hurt us even further. They travel hours to get here, and then they have to travel hours to get home. The health care continues to increase, but the money set aside for our health care does not. The district is having trouble getting subs for food service, child care, custodians, paraprofessionals. We can't even hire maintenance men that are willing to come here and work. You need to think about why. It's because they don't make a living wage here. The district is not paying a fair wage. When we can't get sub, it forces our members to not take their breaks, sometimes not even take their lunch because they care about the kids. They want to make sure they're cared for and they want to make sure they're taught. My members are totally stressed. Some are getting sick. Others are getting injured on the job. We even have people not getting along with one another. And after talking to them for a long period of time, I understand that it's because of the stress in the environment that they're in because they can't get the job done in the time that you're giving them to do the job. The district is contracting out many of our jobs in the maintenance department. Why? Because we can't get people to take the jobs here. Why? Because we're not paying them a fair wage. We felt totally disrespected at the table. All we heard week after week was the district had no interest in making any other offer but the one that was on the table. So yes, we did take that offer back to our membership. And we recommended a yes vote. And in some cases, I had to even try to argue why we did make the recommendation. On Monday night, our members have spoken very clearly. Their answer is no. They want a fair wage increase and they want assurance that their health care needs will be protected. We are willing to go back to the table, but the district needs to make a reasonable offer. We, as a CSCA bargaining unit, hard worker here in Newark, deserve that. Thank you.

[2196] Nancy Thomas: Mary Bingham.

[2211] SPEAKER_31: My name is Mary Bingham and I serve on the negotiations team for CSCA Chapter 208. I wanted to express my disappointment with how the negotiations went. CSCA and the district began their negotiations of pay and allowances as well as health and welfare in October 2018. If you are questioning why we did not reach any type of tentative agreement, It was due to the fact that the district did not want to meet for weeks at a time and their schedule were just too busy. This was insulting because all of our jobs are demanding and we still managed to bend to the will of the district even if it's inconvenienced us. Even after scheduling a meeting, we often would see them canceled and postponed. We weren't even able to come to any kind of tentative agreement before March. After this tentative agreement was brought to the chapter, it was voted down. On the negotiations team, I am representing the food service department. They are some of the lowest paid people in the chapter. To them, a 0.5% can't raise their salary to compete with even local fast food restaurants. Imagine your child going to work for the first time and making either the same wage or more than you do. This is what they face every day. As my time is limited, I'm going to close out by saying that it's time to acknowledge the true needs of CSCA. Living in this area is incredibly expensive. Even a gallon of milk has doubled its cost in just a few years. Now is the time to give CSCA a livable wage.

[2318] Ray Rodriguez: We have one more, don't we?

[2325] Nancy Thomas: No, that was taken care of. That's it? So we're done.

[2340] Ray Rodriguez: OK. We have these cards. that you fill out if you want to approach the board on agenda items as we discuss different agenda items. And then this was just public comment on any item or on anything, or actually, because it's not on the agenda. So moving forward, we'll go to the superintendent's report. Superintendent Sanchez.

[2372] SPEAKER_08: Thank you, President Rodriguez. members of the board, ladies and gentlemen. I want to start this evening with Lincoln Elementary recognition. I'd like to start by asking Principal Angela Ehrlich to step forward. And anyone from the Lincoln Elementary site that's with her this evening, if you guys would step to the podium. So tonight, I would like to recognize and congratulate Lincoln Elementary for being named one of the top Bay Area public schools for underserved students. This was a round of applause for them. This recognition was based on your school's strong results in English and or math for low-income African-American and or low-income Latino students in the 17-18 school year. We want to congratulate and thank you for your hard-working team. This recognition shows how the tireless work of your certificated and classified staff, your strong parent involvement, and your wonderful students, all their hard work is to be applauded. We know that the report will be released publicly in April, followed by an event where your school will be honored on Saturday, April 27th. But we wanted to congratulate you here as well. But I wanted to take a moment to present you all with the certificate and invite you up to take a picture with the board. And we're going to present you with the certificate of recognition.

[2493] SPEAKER_50: Principal, I'd like to present you with this certificate of recognition.

[2520] Ray Rodriguez: to Lincoln Elementary School, where my granddaughter went for over seven years. And on behalf of the board and a very proud and appreciative community, we appreciate it, I think, that you guys are making it now. Introduce your family.

[2558] SPEAKER_22: That's my daughter, Ashley, my granddaughter, my son, he's my daughter, my grandson, my other daughter, my granddaughter, and my husband.

[2623] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, we need you to say something.

[2625] SPEAKER_22: Board, I would like to thank you so much for this honor. But you know it takes an entire village to raise our children. And this could not be possible without my dynamic staff. my dynamic students, and also my fantastic, fabulous parents. So I'd like to thank them all. This recognition is for all Lincoln community. Thanks to all your hard work staff. You guys are awesome. Parents, you guys rock. And students, go Lincoln Leopards.

[2662] Ray Rodriguez: Can you wait just a second? Years ago, Principal Pam Hughes moved over to Kennedy, as she was asked to. And we had a big void over at Lincoln Elementary. And the committee and you definitely outperform everyone. And how long has it been now?

[2690] Julienne Sumodobila: Six years.

[2690] Ray Rodriguez: Six years. And we're so fortunate to have you. That's one of our principles at the district, but especially at Lincoln Elementary. And great things are happening there. And it's because of your leadership. And we really appreciate it.

[2706] SPEAKER_22: Thank you so much. Thank you. It's an honor.

[2717] SPEAKER_08: Superintendent? Thank you. Congratulations again to Lincoln. At this time, I want to just do some follow up on the board requests. Member Zhang had requested fiscal review of professional services, and CBO Nguyen will be updating you this evening on those items. And we will also be updating a little bit on conferences and the trend that we're seeing in expenditures there. And this was provided in the Friday update on March 8 to the board. From President Rodriguez, we had a request about how does the qualified status impact the district. That will also be addressed this evening CBO wins report. And we're in process of coming forward to the board with some concepts on employee housing. So we'll be following up on that at an upcoming board meeting. For member Martinez, we're looking at following up on restorative justice and capturing ADA. We're kind of looking at a draft schedule of the calendar to schedule out study sessions going forward. And I believe that was attached. Is that correct? get those requests into SHAR and we'll continue to start filling that calendar up and kind of work with the board to sequence that. I think the last couple items here are also following up on ADIS follow-up status report. An email with the detailed status updated timeline and the original contract was sent to the board via mail, email March 13th. We plan to have ADIS present to the board in April. Revenue Enhancement Committee, this committee that Member Martinez and Member Thomas will be on will be presented during the staff report as well this evening. And no requests from Member Thomas from the last couple of meetings and Member Gutierrez also no requests. One more thing, we will be sending out Friday updates on the Fridays that we don't have board meetings. We tend to talk with you a lot during the week of the board meeting and this kind of helps release a little pressure. And we'll be providing that on every other Friday when we don't have board meetings. My last item is to turn it over to my friend, Cesar, who wants to do a brief report on the high screen.

[2851] SPEAKER_45: Thank you. I know it's not my designated time to report, but I would like to invite the board, the cabinet, and the members of the public to two important events for Newark Memorial. The first event is Memorial's Got Talent. So every year around March, April, we do have a talent show. So I believe there are 10 or 11 students performing. That's tomorrow night at 6.30 PM. in the Black Box Theater. Tickets are $3. The other thing is the athletics department will be having a crab feed. That's going to be Saturday at 5.30 PM at Swiss Park. Tickets are $50. They can be purchased from the athletics office, and I believe at the door, but I'm not sure. So go ahead and purchase those in advance. Thank you.

[2892] SPEAKER_08: Thank you, sir. And those aren't all the requests. I know that we do have some other requests that we need to clean up. And I'll be working with some other board members on those requests and make sure that we get those on the docket. Thank you. So that concludes my report at this time. President Rodriguez.

[2907] Ray Rodriguez: So on my request for the qualified status impact, that's something the whole board actually wanted.

[2914] SPEAKER_08: It'll be in the report this evening.

[2915] Ray Rodriguez: Right. And then the other thing on employee housing is something that it seems like the majority of the whole board is really interested in that. And I know member Thomas and I have over the years have wanted to push that forward.

[2930] SPEAKER_08: And remember, President Rodriguez, part of this is we're just trying to really tighten up the process so we don't lose anything. Right. And I appreciate that. So it's really more something that we're trying to make sure we manage those requests and get them taken care of by the board.

[2942] Ray Rodriguez: Right. OK. Thank you much. OK.

[2951] SPEAKER_08: We're moving into a second speaker on this one.

[2957] Ray Rodriguez: So we asked the audience if you could tone it down a little bit, if you don't mind, so that we can hear the report.

[2967] Nancy Thomas: That's going to... Do we have a speaker on this side?

[2970] Ray Rodriguez: I'm sorry. Mr. Newt, did you want to speak on this?

[2976] Cary Knoop: Yes, please. Good evening, board and staff, superintendents. First of all, I really personally want to thank Board Member Jiang and I know Board Member Thomas for asking the financial information, some detailed information. You know, I really believe that it's very important that board members.

[3002] SPEAKER_43: My apologies, President Rodriguez, I can't hear the speaker and what's being said.

[3006] Ray Rodriguez: My apologies. Why don't we wait a second because people are leaving. If you don't mind, Mr. Newkirk. Okay, if you're staying, just as courtesy, please, so we can hear our speaker, our gentleman that's speaking to the board at this time, Mr. Knoop.

[3033] Cary Knoop: Plus I have three new minutes, so. Uh-oh. You're too tough. You've got two minutes left. I've got two minutes left. Oh, my goodness. Okay, well, I can finish it in two minutes. It's not a lot of stuff. You know, the nice thing about having a fiscal recovery plan is that the public would want to see that on the agenda in a package, because now it's sort of like a Perry Mason, right? The lawsuit is there, and the criminal is going to be convicted, but on the last minute, somebody runs in and says, I got the final papers here, and it's all different. The guy is free or whatever. the public wants to see that plan and look at it and then comment it because there's nothing to comment on. So one thing is I appreciate it that, you know, the district states, they did everything in their power to look at the contracts for services. Can we restructure contracts? Can we get any money out of that? I appreciated that educational services looks like a program saying Is there any program we can cut that's not, you know, funded by a grant or that's a mandatory, you know, slot? And, well, I think the result is zero and it just baffles me, you know. Is there nothing we can cut? I understand we have to cut FTEs to make big dents in the budget. But even if we can cut 100, 200, $300,000, it's the principle here, you know. We want to be really fair to wherever we can get the money, so again, It's so important to do that extra effort. And even if we can keep one FTE, because we find some educational program where the amount of money can be flexibly allocated, we win. And I think it's important to look at that. So thanks.

[3151] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. So now we have a staff report. CFO Nguyen, can you introduce your partner?

[3166] SPEAKER_36: Thank you, Mr. Rodriguez. Tonight, we're going to talk about the fiscal accountability, fiscal recovery, as well as the service and operating expenditures report. So I have here with me Beverly from Ryland Services. She's going to cover the fiscal accountability as well as fiscal recovery report. Thank you.

[3185] SPEAKER_08: We may want to pause to allow everyone to get a copy of the documents.

[3194] Ray Rodriguez: Well, since I have a minute, Beverly, I wanted to thank you for joining us and helping us through these difficult times that we have right now with the budget crisis. And your expertise and the way you present yourself, it's excellent. And it comes at a great time for us. And so we can get this difficult task done and move forward. Thank you.

[3221] SPEAKER_19: Thank you. Newark has a special place in my heart. I don't know if any of you know, but when I became a certified public accountant, the first job I got in a school district was here in Newark. I worked here for three years, and it was at the beginning of when you started declining. We increased for three years, and after it left, Things changed, but it was very good. We didn't have to do any budget reductions the three years I was here. But it was a very pleasant experience for me. If any of you have audited in your life, you learn that it's a life that's difficult. You work seven days a week. You're in different spots. So coming to Newark was a great pleasant part of my life. So I very much enjoyed it. I'm going to start and want to look through there. Does everyone have their presentation? Yes, we do. Thank you. OK. President Rodriguez?

[3274] SPEAKER_08: Point of order. Look, if we want to let everyone know, there's a complete package. If everyone wants to grab a set, there's stuff back there. There's kind of stuff there.

[3286] Ray Rodriguez: So if we need to make more copies, we will. OK. Now, we didn't make plans for a translator in case we needed it. But if somebody needs it, would that be possible?

[3300] SPEAKER_08: Yes.

[3300] Ray Rodriguez: OK.

[3301] SPEAKER_08: Yes. And let me, if I may, while people have a chance to grab copies. Part of why you see the plan this evening and not in the packet is staff has been working on it up until right before this meeting. And these recommendations are, as we move towards the next interim report, the board will be looking at options and decisions. So there will be plenty of time for saturation and viewing of this recommendations after tonight's meeting. There's plenty of time to look at it now. I felt staff needed some time to pull it together. And we didn't want to disrupt that. So it'll be posted as a supplemental document post this meeting, and it'll be available to anyone.

[3343] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Para ustedes que hablan español, si quieren, tenemos personas que pueden explicar todo en español. Or si quieren puede hablar con el superintendent y hacer una cita para ustedes para que alguien le pueda explicar lo que estamos hablando porque esto es muy importante. Gracias por su atención. Thank you. Go ahead. [Translated] OK. For you who speak Spanish, if you want, we have people who can explain everything in Spanish. Or if you want you can talk to the superintendent and make an appointment for you so someone can explain what we're talking about because this is very important. Thanks for your attention. Thank you. Go ahead. [End] [Translated] OK. For you who speak Spanish, if you want, we have people who can explain everything in Spanish. Or if you want you can talk to the superintendent and make an appointment for you so someone can explain what we're talking about because this is very important. Thanks for your attention. Thank you. Go ahead. [Translated] OK. For you who speak Spanish, if you want, we have people who can explain everything in Spanish. Or if you want you can talk to the superintendent and make an appointment for you so someone can explain what we're talking about because this is very important. Thanks for your attention. Thank you. Go ahead. [End] [End]

[3380] SPEAKER_19: Superintendent Sanchez, President Rodriguez, honored members of the board and executive cabinet, Tonight, we were asked to prepare Ryland, the company I work for, and Terry Ryland worked directly with me on this presentation, and we worked with various members of WIN and the superintendent and the executive cabinet on this. So there are a lot of ideas in here you may have heard before, but we wanted to have it in one place for you. One of the things I want to go through is Your district has been in decline for a while. It's not something that came overnight. It's been a while. Declining enrollment districts, and they're happening all over the state right now, have certain strategies that need to be there for them. And your district really hasn't adhered to a lot of it. You've had a lot of special reserve accounts. You've had separate monies that from buildings that you've been able to tap. And one of the reasons why the reductions this year were a little bit more severe than they've been with teachers is because the district hadn't made the cuts at the time your revenues went down. What should have happened in the past years, and we'll go through that, is whenever your revenue goes down and goes down for enrollment, which is the base of your funding in the district, that's when you need to make the cuts, a little bit at a time, and that way you don't have to do anything devastating. And one of the effects comes to the classroom. And I know no one likes to touch the classroom, but when there's less students, you notice there was not a lot of protest when teachers were cut because there was very small classes throughout the district. And that was costing the district a lot. You couldn't do other things you needed to do during that time, such as give better raises because you had extra classroom teachers and very small classes. Now, that is something that I give the board accolades. You've done something about, you've taken steps, and that's a very good thing. Another thing that's affecting you right now is special education. Once again, that's a phenomenon that's not just in this district. It's across the state right now. I talked to Terri Ryland and she said she's seeing it everywhere, even in declining districts. Everybody's seeing their money being taken up by the special education department. You have to serve special education students like every other student. It's just more expensive. And the federal's not contributing what they need to and the state isn't. I can tell you our new governor thinks there needs to be something done for special education, but they're still studying it. They've been studying it for years. I'll go through a little bit of the STRS and PERS issues that were being helped a little bit this year. I'll go through AB 1200 where there's a qualified district, an unqualified district, and a negative district. I'm going to go through that in a summary fashion. The board has taken action, and I commend you. You've reduced positions. You've helped reduce costs. We're going to look at increasing revenues within a revenue enhancement committee. And we're going to actually review contribution in this district. One of the things is that when a program is not supported by federal or state or local sources, then you reach into the general fund to fund it. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. One of the things I just want you to know is when we're planning a budget which the district is doing right now, you're not planning for one year, you're planning for three years all the time. You have to plan that you can stay solvent for three years. This district is a declining district. 806 students over six years and only 1.5 FTE was reduced in the classroom. That's why you had so many reduced this year. Basically because 806 students and all the cuts were made outside of the classroom, particularly in classified. And that to me needs to be something that's not repeated. You basically still have the cuts going on in classified right now, so nothing is coming back. That was probably positions that need to be there, but that's something you've got to look at. The salary schedules and increases of one time, they have been made, but I can tell you from looking at your financials, you made them from one-time fundings, which is a problem. You have to make sure when you are giving salary increases, you do it with ongoing funding. The only way to keep supporting it is to use ongoing funding. You can't reach into a special reserve and expect it to be funded. That's one-time funding. The special education, which you must provide in your district, you've had increased enrollment the last two years. I discussed this with two board members and basically, you went up 66 the prior year and 22 this year. That increased the services. A lot of these kids came in with services under their individual educational program, the IEPs, that they were already in private schools or needed special services. So once again, that's an increased cost to you that you have to plan on. And once again, I talked to Terry, and it's happening across the state. It's not just here. So it isn't a particular problem here. Yes?

[3703] Nancy Thomas: The slides, could we be doing the slides? Sorry.

[3714] SPEAKER_19: We actually, the increase in special education obligations, it cost more for special education students and we have to be according to the individual educational program. So we must provide the services. A lot of the kids that are coming in the district already have that plan and it takes about a year to two to look at the programs because one of the things that you learn in special education is you just want to manage the cost the best you can and be cost effective. The enrollment, this is an interesting slide. You can see in all but six of the last 25 years, this district was in a decline. So it didn't happen overnight. You had a few years where you were increasing. Now what we're planning is that your demographics show that you're going to have some increases coming after next year, possibly in next year. But that's the percentage change going on. You can see from about 96 to 99. We're definitely increases going on, but from that point on, the line is trending down. So that's just percentages of enrollment. So overall, the trend line is down. So that shows your decline over the years. Special education students continue to increase. This is just giving you the numbers. Once again, this is not unusual at this point. But one of the things that can be done here at the district is to look at each of the programs to see, are they the right programs for the child? You know, it was 684 for special ed across the board and now it's 756. That's about a 10% increase in students, 72 students. Special day class students went up from 261 to 294, that's 33 students. Those are students across all of the disabilities at this point. And I have to say that, you know, maybe special programs have to be set up for certain types of disabilities. But I don't know if you know special education works with other districts in the area. So sometimes a district will take a disability Your SELPA, as they call it, needs to work with you on that to make sure that they can open programs if you don't have enough kids. The goal is that we service the kids in the whole SELPA. The SELPA here hasn't done a lot of helping you with that. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the STRS and PERS rates. You know they've been increasing over the years. But what I want to tell you is there's going to be a temporary reprieve. Supposedly, we were told in the December budget, I mean in the January budget, that he's going to put some one-time monies outside Prop 98 into it to actually reduce it 1% for a few years. What this is, it's not certain. We don't know if it'll get funded at the May revision but that he's told us, he knows there's quite a lot of pressure on school districts and during a time when the funding formula is basically flat at this point, you only get cost of living, that they're going to put some funding in to help the STRS. which is the teacher's retirement. You can see on the higher level is how it is right now. That lower level is if the proposal goes through. We all hope that proposal goes through and it will go well beyond one year. But right now, we don't know if it's actually going to materialize. On the other side, the PERS rates are still skyrocketing. Literally, we weren't even told they were going to skyrocket this much. From the next, we've given you out to 24 or 25, which is quite extensive. It's really gonna continue increasing. Temporary relief, it's still going up. STRS is still gonna go up, even if 1% down temporarily. AB 1200, AB 1200 are the fiscal rules for any school district that they must abide by. You prepare a budget by July 1st, You're doing a first and second interim and your first and second interim is planning the budget year and it's planning the next two years. So, when you think of your adopted budget, you've always got to think in multi-years. Whatever you agree on during that year, especially in negotiations, it has to be able to be supported for two years. The board is required to certify that and Certifications are actually positive, qualified, or negative. This district has had a qualified last two interim reports. And it will require an additional financial report that goes on this year. One of the things that happens, because this district is deficit spending, you've decreased your deficit spending. And I'll show a little slide later that it's coming down. Your deficit spending is coming down. And that's a very good thing. And that's because the board action. But the qualified certification here, and there's going to be more information in another package you have in detail, but I want to go a little bit over what it means right now. You could be assigned a fiscal expert. It could come from FCMAC. Sometimes FCMAC employs a local person and it would be here. It would require additional budget analysis and multi-year projections. They'd come in and help the district prepare those reports. All of your collective bargaining would have to go through that financial expert to make sure that you can't approve it on yourself. You have to have someone else look at it for you. Required to encumber all contracts, this district does encumber all contracts. So that's something that you have to do under this, but the district already does it. Also, if the district does not comply, they can withhold the superintendent's pay for noncompliance. So it doesn't affect the board, but it does affect the superintendent. I want to go over what happens with three consecutive qualified interim reports. There's going to be what's called now, it's a new rule, automatic engagement. They will look at three qualified reports and the county has told us that a fiscal advisor will be assigned. We've been told someone from the county office is going to be our fiscal advisor. And in the report that supports this, you're going to learn what the name of that advisor is. But they could also assign an advisor coming from FCMAC that you would have to pay for. So that's something to be aware of. These are just the budget assumptions that were already presented to you when the budget was prepared. So that's just there for your reference. The multi-year projection, this is where you can see the good things happen. Your deficit is decreasing. The first year, you see 1.8. The second year, you see 1.4. And the third year, you see 778. You're not through cutting yet. You're probably going to have to cut more. And it depends on the circumstances in the district. Yes.

[4123] SPEAKER_47: Just for clarification, in regards to the three consecutive, this is our third one, right? Yes. So OK, we are going to be assigned the fiscal advisor.

[4134] SPEAKER_19: The county says 88%. So we're in the second one?

[4137] SPEAKER_47: Second, yeah.

[4139] SPEAKER_19: Thank you for clarification. There's one third, there's going to be an interim coming now and it depends on if that's qualified. Got it. And we heard the county told us 88% sure that we might get an advisor from FCMAC. Okay. But they're quite busy now I heard. Thank you. A lot of people across the state are having issues. We're not alone in this, people. Literally, many districts are in budget reduction now. The flattening of the formula, we're not getting the growth money. The end of the one-time money. So a lot of districts are in this situation. It's not particular here. And the special education is about in all districts right now. The board action, I think these are the commendable things the board has done. You can see in the history. When you do budget cuts, they really should be balanced. You share them between all of the bargaining groups, you know, all the bargaining groups, teachers, classified, and leadership. In the past, your cuts have been not 1.5 FTEs, all that was cut in the classroom, in teachers. Most of the cuts came in classified. Most of the cuts came in administrators at the sites. and it came in classified at the district office maintenance and operations. So, literally what you want to do is you go forward, whoever is the largest bargaining unit probably should take the brunt of the cuts because literally the classroom with enrollment being down should have been impacted first, but that didn't happen at this district. That 1.5 that was done one year was at the Wood School. And you can imagine, you were down 600 students, you had a lot of classrooms that were basically, overstaffed, and that put pressure on the rest of the budget. And I just want to be blunt about that. That's just what happened. All those years, you were reaching into different places to fund it, and instead of making the cuts, if you made them right at the time, it might not have been so difficult for you. Make the cuts at the time the revenue goes down. If you're students, we had that happen this year. Yes.

[4265] Nancy Thomas: Could I ask a question about that? Sure. It seems to me that that there should be a process where the business office does the enrollment projections and then they allocate the staffing accordingly. Does that have to be a combined process between personnel and accounting? I mean, in the business office? How does that, how does it happen and how do we make sure it happens in the future?

[4294] SPEAKER_19: Well, it actually happens, you have a demographer who is doing some of your projections And unfortunately, some of them were over projected. So I don't know what the district did. I can't say. But just I'm going to give the example that I saw this year. Your demographic projection, the budget was prepared with the prior administration. And 168 students didn't show up this year that were in the budget. That literally occurs between the schools and what their enrollment's at, and then Business and personnel have to work together on making the adjustments then. One of the things that happened here at that point, the district absolutely solved. We're 168 students down this year. We're going to be 168 down next year. So literally, we worked together to identify, actually without human resources, we couldn't have identified as much as we did. And the Educational Services Department, whose staffs, you know, knows what the sites are staffed at. Both of these divisions worked with us to say, where is it overstaffed? You know, it wasn't us deciding in the business office. The business office said, with this many kids, you know, how many teachers do we need? So it takes a whole group working together. It isn't just one department. But it's the business department to inform the other departments that we have a problem. Our budget is down 168. That's a pretty major problem. Because at that point, you're already staffed. You staff the year before. And so you were overstaffed this year. I think one of the things that happened this year, why we didn't get a lot of protest is the high school, where a lot of the losses took place, they knew they were overstaffed. So the superintendent worked with them to say, hey, where do we need to make adjustments? And so we just said, where do the adjustments need to be made? And we left it to the sites to make the adjustments. Literally, I think that everyone did a good job. The junior high did a job, so we took some sections down and some teachers out. Fortunately, this district has a lot of attrition, so there didn't have to be a lot of layoffs at this point. It was pretty minimal because the attrition helped us with it. I think your district has a lot of attrition, and I've never seen it like this in any district I've been in. So you have a lot of attrition. That means your teachers are leaving. And I saw it specifically in special education. You were losing special education teachers, RSP teachers, SDC teachers. That's a problem because those teachers are hard to find. You know, you're searching for them. I'm sure you find that it's hard to find special education teachers and RSP speech therapists. You know, you're just understaffed there. But you can see that this particular year for 19-20, I think we made the appropriate reductions. And yes, it's weighted towards the teachers, but that's because we didn't cut teachers as we should before. You can see that literally 600,000 will probably have to be cut. Again, next year, we need to look at some more teachers and see what our enrollment is next year. The decline next year is supposed to be much less, but we still have the decline that took place the last few years. We have to look at the state economic factors. Are they going to change a lot on us? you know, presented with the information as we get in the May revision. Is things going to change? Are going to take away the STRS changes they made? We'll get more updated information. So the $2.2 million in cuts, I commend the board for doing that. That helps curb your deficit spending, which you need to do. Basically, the district has to operate within the means that you have. You need to operate within the revenue you bring in. That's just the way that all districts should operate. You reduced positions. You find out where the decline is. Some schools may be up. Some schools may be down. But you need to plan in the out years what's going to happen. And we are working with the demographers to say, where are the losses going to occur? So we are working with them. And they actually did predict a decline for next year for us. They didn't have the increase that they had this year. You also need to look into your collective bargaining agreements. Is there something else that can be looked at? During your negotiations, that's something you can all look at, the collective bargaining. There was actually one of the things that we're going to recommend when you read the report is one of the steps we need to do and as Thomas actually suggested it for us and we think it's a very good idea is conduct program reviews from the programs we have operating in this district. Are we operating them cost effectively? We need to take a look at all of them. If you, I know there's some programs that she has brought to my attention that absolutely are one of the first things we want to look at. You've been reducing general fund budget supplies and out of state travel. Part of the problem when you cut budget supplies, it's what I call a soft cut. They don't last because they're going to need the supplies. You do it and it really doesn't materialize because they need the supplies. They need their paper. These things go on. So when you make soft cuts like that, I'm going to tell you, they just don't materialize. You're going to spend it anyway. I think one of the probably most proactive actions that the district can take is to look at bringing in revenues in any way possible. Looking to the city of Newark to help us pay our water bills. Facilities fees need to be examined and compared with our areas. Improving ADA to enrollment ratio, that's a really good thing. I don't know if you know, when a student attends 180 days, that's the only time you're funded fully for that child. So you need the kid to be there in their seats to learn, and so the district can earn the money. And if you just change 1% in the attendance factor, we plan 96 conservatively, You can bring 400,000 more into the district. So doing the improvement and attendance is a major factor to help the child learn and for the funding. The district could look at a parcel tax election. There's a window of opportunity right now for parcel tax selection. One of the things in a parcel tax I can say that happened to me in a prior district is we were the public supported learning initiatives. fund what we should be funding, but they will fund learning initiatives they get excited about. I mean, you will have a person come in, do a survey for you to say, will your community support it? So it's worth looking into just to see, would our community support it? You don't go out and do it unless the community will support it. And you have a professional statistician look at it, and there are a lot of them out there that will help you with that. You can investigate savings through solar. That needs to happen. I want to talk a little bit about the contributions because this is affecting you and it's one of the things I think, your special ed contribution is at $7 million. That means taken out of the general fund unrestricted to special education. It's just my opinion and I talked to Terry about it, the president of the company I work for. We think that's a little high for a district your size, that maybe you just need to investigate. Are people in the program who maybe don't need to be? So it needs to be looked at, not like an investigation, but are kids classified in the program who maybe shouldn't be? Maybe your costs are coming from outside kids coming in. Look at how outside kids come in. Your routine maintenance funding, you guys didn't make any cuts there, so that's going to remain at 3%, but you can see your special ed contribution is increasing to 7.5 million. To me, that's something you need to be looking into. The major maintenance account, there's nothing you can do. There was flexibility in the prior years. There's not going to be any going forward. What are the next steps? Could you go back to that slide? Sure.

[4823] Nancy Thomas: So why did it go up from 1.2 million to 1.8 million for the major maintenance account?

[4836] SPEAKER_36: That is the percentage increase for routine maintenance accounts for enhancing our schools, maintenance and operations services, restricted funds.

[4848] Nancy Thomas: So what is that percentage for 17, 18, and 18, 19? I mean, I hope we're not putting more money into that account than the state's requiring us to.

[4859] SPEAKER_36: I believe in 16, 17, 17, 18, we did not fully contribute into the major means account. It was under 3%.

[4872] Nancy Thomas: But we put what the state said we had to, right?

[4876] SPEAKER_36: I believe. it was about 2.4 or 2.6% in the past years. But going forward, we have to invest in 3% for a major maintenance account.

[4886] Nancy Thomas: That seems like a much bigger jump than, it just seems like a big jump. What is that percentage from 1.26 to 1.78?

[4898] SPEAKER_36: Again, this is the 3%.

[4902] Elisa Martinez: The 3% is based off of the what?

[4904] SPEAKER_36: Of the expenditures, cost.

[4907] Nancy Thomas: No, our revenue, isn't it? Is it 3% of our revenue?

[4912] SPEAKER_36: It's similar to what we have to put in for Reserve for Economic Uncertainty.

[4916] Bowen Zhang: I think the number does make sense because we're talking about going from 2.4% to 3%. So you're really increasing by 25%. That's probably around that number.

[4925] SPEAKER_41: Wow.

[4926] Bowen Zhang: Yeah. So from 2.4 to- Yeah, you're right.

[4929] Nancy Thomas: Okay, thanks.

[4931] SPEAKER_19: And a lot of districts use that flexibility this past few years, but they can't going forward. They need to fund it at full 3%, yeah. And the only reason you wouldn't have to do that is because you have state funding and you have a bond. You know, that's why you have to do that.

[4948] Nancy Thomas: We are really fortunate to have the bond because we did take advantage of that flexibility and we have been spending bond money for things that would have otherwise come out of that account, right?

[4958] SPEAKER_19: Yes. So your community was very supportive of you in that. We need to continue budget reduction and brainstorming. One of the things this report talks about it is depending on where you bargain. and what you decide. And we do believe the employees, you need to make a decision where you prioritize, because not only should you prioritize the educational programs for the students, you need to prioritize your employees who support those. I mean, it's clearly stated in the report, teachers, classified, and administrators. And one of the things that I have advised Kion, Literally, at this point, what you have to be so you don't lose so many teachers is you have to actually be competitive with your local districts. That's the Fremont. That's the New Haven. You need to be competitive so people won't leave your district to go. You train them and then they go to the district nearby. Your salaries need to be competitive in all areas. They don't have to be the highest, just competitive. Look at revenue enhancement, that will help you. We have to adhere to a calendar and prepare a budget by July 1st. Fortunately, you've already made the reduction so that, you know, we can prepare the budget. We'll be updating the budget timeline. We'll be sending a budget calendar to you at the next board meeting so you can see the timing. Because once again, the budget has to be paired with the LCAP plan coming out of the Educational Services Department, the local educational plan. literally has to be prepared and made sure that we put it in the budget. So that, those two timelines will converge. Work to complete negotiations with your bargaining units, classified apparently is, you need to be bargaining with your classified. The other units are settled right now. We have to comply with LCFF and LCAP guidelines. And are there any other questions?

[5085] Nancy Thomas: One of the things that never seems to make it on the list, and in fact I think staff has said they don't want to recommend it, is that we look at consolidating schools. Yet one of our schools, one of our elementary schools has only 200 students from the attendance area in it. And all of the others are much lower than the 600 students

[5113] SPEAKER_19: We'll put that on the list.

[5114] Nancy Thomas: Absolutely, we'll put that on the list. Well, but I don't sense the support of staff. And when you don't sense the support of staff, I just don't think, I just don't have confidence that it's something that's on the radar. Maybe Nancy Thomas is the only one that really feels strongly about this, but I look at Area 3 and that we have that land there, I look at where the new students would be coming from, which is on that end of town. And I look at, in order to be able to build a school in seven years like we have to if we're going to maintain that land, we have to make decisions now about redistributing where our students are. And I don't know that the public would like to help fund a new school if our schools are not full right now. or that we can even use developer funds if we don't have the need for new schools.

[5178] Ray Rodriguez: So I really, I'm one person that really wants to see if there is a will or... At some point we'll bring it up and then see how much support, you know, you have from the rest of the board on this and then we'll move from there. Student Cesar?

[5203] SPEAKER_45: So returning to slide 11, when you say the three consecutive interim reports will involve a financial advisor, number one, what is the role of that financial advisor in terms of returning financial solvency to the district? And number two, what's the time between the arrival of the financial advisor and the point at which the district can confidently claim that fiscal solvency has been reattained?

[5231] SPEAKER_19: Those are very good questions. Right now, the state is quite busy. Literally, the state could contract with someone like me, literally, who had worked with FCMAC in the past. They try and bring people in from districts. So they have a lot of people who are out at districts right now helping them. A lot of them are in bargaining. challenges right now, and so they told us there's an 88% chance we'll have someone. That to me, we can make that if you find your own advisor, but they can find you one. You do have to pay for them, literally. There's no set timeline for it, but they want to help you prepare your budget, which is what we're doing right now. They will help you prepare your budget. When they come in, they work with the board, they work with staff to help them prepare a budget that's solvent and a multi-year projection, maybe projecting for several years. But they depend on the local staff to find, get them their information. It isn't like they're coming in with an idea preconceived. It's like I don't come in with an idea preconceived what we need to do. If the district wants to do it, that's something they look into. So you would work with the financial advisor, the things you want to do. One of the things they will use is local staff to help them with it because they want to minimize their costs. So as a FCMAC advisor, literally, it just depends. You can come in and tell them what you want. The board can tell them what you want them to do, but they're going to help you prepare your normal fiscal reports because that's the AB 1200. Right now, the point they're coming into is that it's called, What is it called when they're coming in right now?

[5348] SPEAKER_08: State administrator?

[5350] SPEAKER_19: It's not a state admin. It's just a fiscal advisor. Yeah. It's a fiscal advisor assigned.

[5357] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Thank you. Superintendent and then member Martinez.

[5363] SPEAKER_08: I would defer to member Martinez first. OK.

[5367] Ray Rodriguez: Good. Thank you.

[5368] Elisa Martinez: Thank you. Just to follow up on Member Thomas' point, we've had quite a bit of discussion on the school consolidation and school closure. Again, not a thing we need to or would want to ever explore, but I think right now you made a comment, well, do you want to see it on there? I think we've had a lot of discussion. I think if our projections for next year from our demographers are already projecting that decrease. And we already know we have that gap in funding. We still don't have our expenditures under control. We need to put it on there and start that discussion. It's not a great discussion, but we need to have it because we need to get some resolution on this.

[5420] Ray Rodriguez: Superintendent?

[5421] SPEAKER_08: So I would say, first of all, on school closure, it really is up to the board. Whatever the staff opinions are or aren't, really it's going to come down to, does the board majority want to close two schools or one school? And staff will do as the board wishes. That is our role. Our role is to give you advice and counsel at the end of the day. You work for the community, we work for you, and we'll take that direction as needed. I just need a board majority to say, we want you to work on closing one school, two schools, or consolidating. Staff will do what the board asks us to do. And I think that it should be on the list. I think it's something we have to explore fully. We have to look at everything. I think that's really important. I do want to also reiterate the importance of this idea of proportionality. It's hard to stay away from the classrooms when that is the largest employee group. So when you look at how that plays out and public comment we heard tonight from our classified, it helps you understand the history. And I appreciate the candor from Ryland. I appreciate the directness. But I think at the end of the day, this is the board's district. And we will do as the board directs staff. So I just want to be clear about that.

[5503] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you.

[5506] Bowen Zhang: Yeah, so I just want to add some comment regarding the school consolidation. So I think right now we have a sort of a seven-year contract for the potential school site on the Stevenson and Cherry. I think any part of the discussion of school closing or consolidation need to bring that piece in as part of the comprehensive. whether that's involving any real estate swap or consolidating land or how we deal with the surplus land. And maybe that one will, maybe the other extra factor that we can bring into this comprehensive discussion is potential employee housing.

[5550] Ray Rodriguez: So thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Any other questions? Did you need anything else from us, or was it?

[5558] SPEAKER_19: No, I just wanted to tell you that I went through the qualified, but there is something in your packet right now, and it's called fiscal accountability. It goes through, once again, the qualified status, the negative status, and the conditions you had asked for that. So it is provided for you, and I just recapped where we're at. So I just wanted you to know that.

[5581] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. There is one question I had on one of the slides It showed no cuts this year. Were there no cuts this year? I know we added expenses, but did we do any cuts? They were done the year before. Yeah, but we passed a resolution in August saying we wanted... But that was for next year. No, no, it was... Read the resolution. It says this year. For 19-20. No, no. The resolution was during this fiscal year, because we lost one-time money, so we asked that there be $550,000 worth of one-time cuts from that one-time money that we had.

[5625] Ray Rodriguez: And I don't, you know, I... Why don't we bring that resolution back at the next meeting?

[5631] SPEAKER_08: Let's investigate that. Yeah. Okay. Can we look at that, please? Kai, Beverly, thank you.

[5636] Ray Rodriguez: So doing a board request, if the majority of the board members, we can direct staff to identify the school, that Member Thomas has said, and look at how we would, the process involved in, because it basically, you're talking about a school community, and I know that each one of us, you know, it's a very difficult decision, and, but having 200 students, it's just difficult. So, I mean, you don't really have to close the school, you can condense, two schools together. But it's something that we should bring forward as soon as possible if the majority of the board agrees when we do our board request. OK. OK. Thank you. Go ahead.

[5690] SPEAKER_19: I just want to add one thing. I didn't point out that there is a fiscal recovery plan in here that I would appreciate that you reviewed. It has a lot of information. Not a lot of new things, but some new opinions coming in. that I would like you to read. It would be a good thing. Once again, it's not all new information but it's information that the district hasn't implemented at this point and we need to be vigilant about we're declining district and there are things we must do. This report talks about that. It talks about the fact that our Reductions will be less and less if we keep doing them on a timely basis and just do them in a timely manner. And that all your negotiations must be done with ongoing money. A lot of negotiations were done with one-time money. Well, we don't have one-time money anymore, so.

[5742] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. I noticed on page 6, there's a chart. Is this a part of the plan that we will be digging into our reserves?

[5755] SPEAKER_19: No.

[5757] SPEAKER_36: Okay Maybe you can Get with her and ask some more questions if you have some Thank You president Rodriguez tonight, I'm gonna talk about the service and operating expenses But before I do that, I want to give you a revenue enhancement committee flyer that hopefully we'll start next Wednesday, but we'll work around your schedule and

[5808] Ray Rodriguez: How much more do you have on the staff report?

[5810] SPEAKER_36: I'll make it quick. OK, thank you. But I would like to have Mr. Jung present while presenting this.

[5822] Ray Rodriguez: Can you, if he's gone for a few minutes, can we move to, and then we'll come back to it. Is that OK? Sure. OK. And since we're waiting, because it is important that all five board members be here. So we move to employee organizations. CSCA? Do you want to go first? Okay. No, no, no, you spoke very well. Anyone from NTA? From my teachers group?

[5874] SPEAKER_29: Welcome. My name is Sean Abruzzi. I've been in the school district for 19 years. And we are with the bargaining team to do our Sunshine articles.

[5898] Chery Villa: Good evening. My name is Cheri Villa. I've been with the district for 20 years. And I'm also on the bargaining team.

[5907] SPEAKER_40: I'm Gretchen Cava. I've been with the district for 23 years. And I'm on the bargaining team.

[5914] SPEAKER_33: Hi. I'm Katherine Jones. And I've been in the district for 30 years and on the bargaining team. Today, tonight we are here to read the sunshine letter of what we would like to open with you. The Newark Teachers Association, acting on behalf of its members, fundamentally supports the district goals of recruiting, retaining, and training a highly skilled, highly motivated teaching workforce while providing competitive compensation. We not only want to make ourselves a destination district We want to make sure our current employees have reason to stay in Newark. We value that. NTA also values fiscal solvency within the district while enhancing the notion that teachers are better able to serve all students in the classroom with resources and support necessary to provide a world-class education for the students in Newark. To that effect, the Newark Teachers Association formally presents the following sunshine proposals to open negotiations for the 2019-2020 school year. Article two, recognition. It is the association's intent to expand recognition to include previously unrecognized classifications. Article three, Association rights. It is the association's intent to align contract language with current law and association bylaws. Article 6, work year. It is the association's intent to define the time that bargaining unit members work during school year. Article 7, work day. It is the association's intent to restructure the work day for pre-K through 12. In Article 8, which is class size, it is the association's intent to look at ways to effectively reduce the student to staff ratios at all grade levels and in all disciplines with the core belief that students can learn better in smaller settings and that this provides a more highly motivated teaching workforce.

[6062] SPEAKER_40: Article 10, reassignment and transfer. It is the association's intent to clarify and define involuntary transfers and reassignments. Article 11, leave. It is the association's intent to clarify language for types of leave and how they are accounted. Article 13, compensation. It is the association's intent to negotiate a fair compensation package in such a way that is consistent with other districts with the core belief that a fairly and competitively compensated workforce is essential. Article 14, Safety. It is the association's intent to move language to other parts of the collective bargaining agreement. Article 16, Intermediate Discipline. It is the association's intent to review and rename this article to better align with the content of the article. Article 18, Peer Assistance and Review. It is the association's intent to delete Article 18, Peer Assistance and Review because this process is embedded in Article 9, Evaluation. It is the association's intent to replace this article with one entitled special education. In this new article, we intend to create language that will provide equity for all students and educators. Article 21, term and renegotiation. Article 22, signatures. It is the association's intent to create a new article on technology. In this new article, we intend to create language to structure and support the district's STEAM goals through the use of technology in a 21st century classroom. The Newark Teachers Association values a positive working relationship with the administration and governing board of the Newark Unified School District, and we look forward to a constructive round of negotiations to close the 2018-2019 collective bargaining agreement. Thank you.

[6168] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you for presenting your Sunshine Proposal Reopener for the Newark Teachers Association. Mr. Nguyen?

[6179] SPEAKER_36: All right. Well, some of you wanted more in-depth information in regards to the service and operating expenses. So tonight I'm going to go- Point of order.

[6187] SPEAKER_08: Point of order. I'm sorry. Pneuma.

[6190] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, I'm sorry. Since we're, right, do we have anybody from Pneuma? Excuse me, Mr. Nguyen. Hello.

[6205] Nicole Izant: Hi there.

[6207] SPEAKER_21: Ladies and gentlemen of the board, ladies and gentlemen of the executive cabinet, thank you so much for your time tonight. My name is Amanda Gallaher. I'm the principal of Music Elementary and Preschool next door, and it's my privilege to speak on behalf of NEWMA this evening. So this year, NEWMA really wanted to re-energize our association. So we surveyed our members and what came back to us was we really wanted to focus on our professional growth. So we've taken a lot of opportunities this year to really help support each other in that growth. And so most recently, one of the things we'd like to highlight is we had five of our principals attend the Bold and Courageous Leadership Equity Work Symposium. So there we got to attend workshops, get some private coaching specific to our district. That was really fabulous. We also had a goal of having three meetings this year focused on professional development. Our third meeting is coming up. And our focus is in technology, specifically the programs and technology we use in Newark. And Director Simon is going to come and lead that to help us kind of fine tune our skills. We're also all focused on our PLC, so the professional learning community. We do a lot of our work this year at our sites with this. And at the elementary level, our focus is mathematics and you can really tell by our iReady data that this work is paying off. So, I believe that will be coming to you if it already hasn't. So, another area that we wanted to focus on was our community partnerships and our collaborations with the group we worked with. So, most recently, the SPED Department, Director Willis, worked with her connections at National University for us to attend a teacher recruitment fair there. We know how hard it is to get special education teachers. So we wanted to be there. We had representation from secondary and elementary. And we were getting Newark out there, talking about all the pros of being part of the Newark family. And we got to meet a lot of new and enthusiastic teachers and do some great interviews and meet some wonderful candidates. We also have another part of our NEWMA organization you don't hear a lot about is our support providers. So our OT, our occupational therapists, they're part of our association. Right now they're working with Ascend, a group that we partner with and collaborate with to kind of staff us when we have a shortage to bring in some of the volunteers that they have that are hopeful OT candidates. And we're bringing them to our sites to volunteer with our students and with our staff so they can learn along with us. And hopefully they'll come here, they'll fall in love with us, and they'll want to join our team too. So our OTs are working really hard to spread the word about Newark and also build those relationships to help us have those staffing needs filled. Some of our sites are working with some community organizations to bring in parent workshops, because our most important partner is our parents, supporting our students. So right now, Snow is finishing up their face and heart workshop. They have two more sessions left. So that's some of the work that we've been doing most recently. We'd also like to invite you to join us to celebrate the success of some of our new teachers at the colloquium that will be on May 15th at 430. So if you're available, please come join us.

[6405] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you.

[6406] SPEAKER_21: Thank you.

[6410] Ray Rodriguez: I asked Leonora to send us the invite to all the board members. That should be a great event. Thank you.

[6416] SPEAKER_21: Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

[6420] Ray Rodriguez: OK, Mr. Nguyen.

[6424] SPEAKER_36: Thank you, Mr. Rodriguez, or President Rodriguez. All right, tonight I'm going to talk about the service and operating expenses. Some of you want a deep dive into the expenditures of the 5,000 object codes. So I broke it down. of the actuals of 2017-18, both restricted and unrestricted, and comparing that to what is projected for 18 and 19. Some of you wanted to know more about the mileage and conferences, so we'll dive into that as well. The printing, advertisement, assessment, basically miscellaneous expenses, as well as professional services. That is the big one, professional services, consultants, billing, and services. We'll dive into it right now. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Basically, for the monitoring conferences, this is the restricted funds. For the unrestricted funds, it was pretty much comparable. Sorry. Oh, you don't have one. OK. Let me go see if I can get one. OK. Right? So I'll go back to the previous slide. For the monitoring conferences, for the unrestricted, you don't see that much of a variance from 17-18 to 18-19. However, for the restricted side, there was a huge jump, about $45,000. But if you look at this, though, it is restricted funds and is funded by Title II funds, professional development, So in 17-18, we spent about $50,000. 18-19, we're projecting that we may spend about $96,000. There were some carryovers from last year to this year of $17,000. We're going to receive about $136,000 in terms of professional development of Title II funds. Some of it is going to bring in vendors to come in to do professional development with our teachers. Some of it, we're sending our teachers to conferences so that they can enrich themselves, but also to enrich our students. Some of you asked about the special enrollment. For special education, and I believe Beverly already chimed in on this, again, from 2016-17, 2018-19, we increased by 72 students in special education. The special day class students, where it's mild to moderate to severe students, whether it's their autism, they are in need of extra services, increased by 33 students from 2016-17 all the way to 2018-19. We have about 294. STC students. So thanks to Mr. Sanchez for receiving grants and funds from the California Collaborative Educational Funds. We received $450,000 in this grant. We're using it for board retreat, team building. But again, this is for restricted funds, community engagements, and some other ideas. So let's go into the printing, advertisements, assessment fees, and audits, and translation charges. Last year, basically miscellaneous funds. This is unrestricted. We spent about $103,000 last year. This year, we're looking at spending about $145,000. But the major difference between 17, 18 actuals to 18, 19 actuals is that we spent on marketing. Because last year, we only spent like about $750 in marketing, advertisement of our schools. But this year, we're bringing Volare to do our marketing to help us. advertise our school districts, our school sites. So here's the big one right here where a lot was talked about why we spent so much on services and other operating expenditures. It's because it's restricted funds, right? So 17-18 we spent $720,000. This year we're spending about $1.8 million projected. We couldn't fill some of the speech pathologist positions. It was about 3.6 positions. So that equates to about $381,000. We couldn't fill about 1.4 psychologists. That comes out to about $148,000. And then there were carryover from last year of the College Ready Block Grant, about $94,000. And then here's the big one. the Prop 39 for energy efficiency, there's still about $468,000 left available. So we carry that over. We're working with, I forgot the company's name, but Ms. Yvonne to bring in the energy efficiency electrical buses that's coming in. So she's working on that. So there were a lot of carryovers from prior years. I believe that was like about a $1,092,000 difference. So let's go to the unrestricted side. A variance of $495,000 last year. Actuals was $473,000. This year, we're projecting $968,000. So the variance here is that the board approved the semen contract for fire system to upgrade, to maintain the existing fire alarm system. So it equates to $113,000. Prior to me coming on board, by board approval, board request, we had an interim CBO, Mr. Lois Schauer, and then The board also requested more information regarding our overall budget, our fiscal solvency. So board request, so that was an expenditure right there. And then another caveat here is the election services last year in December. Two or three years ago, it was about $2.60 per registered voter. And I believe we have about 22,000 registered voters in the city of Newark. It went up to $3.50 per register of voters. And that's why it's now $77,000. So we're going to have to budget something similar to that next year for next year's election. Then there's also the LCFF LCAP, where after school tutoring, STEM program, and English language arts.

[6848] Nancy Thomas: Excuse me. Is our supplemental funds considered as part of the LCAP? But you're saying that's unrestricted.

[6858] SPEAKER_36: Yes, because we're using 0500. What's 0500 mean? That's unrestricted. That's the LCAP plan. So anything from 0, 0 to 2,099 on the resource code are considered unrestricted. Anything from 3,000 to 9,000 are considered restricted funds.

[6879] Nancy Thomas: OK, but I'm wondering the $230,000 for the I would have thought that after school tutoring would have come out of the restricted portion, the supplemental or concentration, not the unrestricted.

[6892] SPEAKER_36: Supplemental concentration is also unrestricted as well, part of the LCAP plan.

[6903] Nancy Thomas: That's a lot of, well, never mind.

[6906] SPEAKER_08: Let's explore that. Let's get a more definitive answer for the board, please.

[6912] SPEAKER_36: So then we got transportation cost. It's restricted funds. Last year was $48,000. So the variance was about $13,000. And we spent, for science camp, a charter bus for the elementary school site to attend science camp. So $2,000 per school site, roughly. And then the software license. We actually saved some money in terms of software license for unrestricted. However, for the restricted side, we, we, it was an increase in, in software license. We did, we invested in the iReady software using Title I funds, addressing the low income, the unduplicate people count, low income, foster youth, English language learners, students, students that apply for reinduced lunch. We also used Title III funds for Pearson education and the college readiness. But we also got a donation from Fremont Bank Foundation. of about $1,000. But that's where we're at. And we may spend less, but we're projecting it's about $129,000. But these are projected.

[6990] Ray Rodriguez: I had a question. Sure. On the science camp, I know the board had set a limit of $2,000 each. a lot of the schools do their own fundraising. So if they don't spend the $2,000, let's say they only spent $1,500. And most of them spend more than $2,000, and they do a lot of fundraising. But just in case they don't, what happens to the $500? Does it come back to the budget, or does the state decide?

[7021] SPEAKER_36: It can carry over. It can carry over to the next year? Next year, yes.

[7025] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Thank you. Anyone else?

[7032] SPEAKER_45: I guess the question would be more for the board than for Mr. Nguyen, but the approximately $6,000 that we're projected to spend for Naviance, I'm wondering why we're even spending that because in my time at the high school, I've never, not once, used the platform. It hasn't been advertised by the counselors, hasn't been advertised by any teachers. So I understand that it's a small value relative to the $130,000. that were projected to spend by year end. But it's a bit concerning that there's money being spent on software that's not being used by anyone at the site.

[7068] Nancy Thomas: Well, when we first introduced that program in 2013, almost every student was in on it. So now they're not requiring the students to do it?

[7081] SPEAKER_45: No. I've logged into mine because I've found information through clicking around on the school website. And so I've logged into my account, but it's not something that's actively advertised by the counselors, by teachers, by administration. Virtually nobody knows about it at Memorial. So I don't understand why the $6,000 is being spent. I know it's a good tool, but if we're not using it or if we're not making any effort to utilize it, then there's no point in spending the money.

[7110] Nancy Thomas: Well, that's certainly, I think, one of our programs we need to evaluate. Yeah, it's a problem to look at. I'll give this to you later. It's what Naviance was supposed to be doing all these years.

[7120] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Superintendent, is that... We can add that.

[7122] SPEAKER_08: We'll look at that and bring it back to the board.

[7124] Ray Rodriguez: Okay.

[7125] SPEAKER_08: Thank you.

[7126] Ray Rodriguez: Board member.

[7126] Bowen Zhang: John. Oh, just one question. The 45,000 PR cost, that's a one-time expense, right?

[7132] SPEAKER_36: That is one-time cost, yes. Okay.

[7137] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you, board members. A lot of information. Appreciate it. So you gave us a lot of, I had a question before you go. You gave us a lot of information on special ed expenses as part of your presentation. So when we have, if we do in the future have a presentation from special ed, could that just be a handout? I mean, I don't know, it's probably okay. When is that on? Do we have that, where special ed is going to make a presentation?

[7176] SPEAKER_24: So she did make a presentation, a staff report, I think about two months ago. Okay, so we're okay. But I think we need, I think as we're getting more information, probably more questions are coming up, we could look to see if we can agendize more.

[7188] Ray Rodriguez: No, that's good. Keep us informed on that.

[7191] Nancy Thomas: Could I ask a question?

[7193] Ray Rodriguez: Well, just give me one sec. That's okay. Member Gutierrez?

[7199] SPEAKER_47: I had a question probably more towards our superintendent. Member Thomas actually informed me of the Naviance software. So I looked into it. It does sound like a great program that could be great help to our students. But if it's not being used, I do agree that maybe we either promote it so we actually get the best use of it or we take it away. But my question was more towards what kind of research, and I don't need an answer now, but maybe just something to think about, to look into other programs that we do have that are a great tool, but if they are not being utilized, and whether we ask the teachers or, like I said, whatever method you guys need, but if we do have any kind of programs that maybe are not being utilized like that, and we can just save a little bit here and there, it would be good.

[7251] SPEAKER_08: We'll look into Navajo specifically, but I'll also see what else is going on.

[7255] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Member Thomas.

[7257] Nancy Thomas: Where is special ed transportation on this?

[7260] SPEAKER_36: Oh, yeah. So if you look at special ed transportation, if you look on, let me go here. I have the second slide here. So it's in the subagreement, the first section. It says special ed. Restricted $2.5 million for 17-18. And now in 18-19, it's projected to be $2.7 million. But that's a combination of outsourcing. transportation, Zoom, but that's also other, let me look it up here before, hold on a second here. So that's, we also outsource autism for centers, as well as Achievement Kids and some other speech therapist services.

[7306] Nancy Thomas: Okay, so. My specific question though is that we were supposed to save money with specialized transportation this year, and we were going to look into are we actually saving money because we keep getting contracts.

[7323] SPEAKER_36: So let me tell you where we're at right now. So 17-18, we spent $736,000 for transportation. Right now, we're projecting it can go lower or it can go higher. We're projecting that the Zoom services or transportation services can go to $842,000.

[7342] Nancy Thomas: So in effect, we're spending $100,000 more rather than. That could be a possibility. And is that because of, you know, I think it's important that we analyze why. Is that because Zoom is cost effective? Or is it because we have more special ed students that need transportation?

[7359] SPEAKER_36: That could be the case where we have more special ed students. Right.

[7362] Nancy Thomas: But you know, I think, and then when we talk about the increases in contracts for like speech therapists and things, I think it's really important that we be able to articulate how much of that increase is because we have more students, you know, and so when we go over budget by that much and we have to take money out of the general fund, I think it's important that we understand why these increases.

[7394] SPEAKER_24: Yes, and I'm going to ask our Director of Special Ed to work with Business Services because I'm also a little confused by looking at these numbers because I know we did save money with Zoom, but so I'm wondering if what we have are actuals and these are projected of what may happen. And so that might be some of the differences, but we do, I want to be able to kind of report it out to what has been sent, excuse me, spent to actuals and then what is a possibility so we could see that difference. because we were saving money with this last contract with Zoom. The other piece I'll have our director look at is in terms of staffing because we were not able to find a psychologist or a therapist. We actually were working with some long-term subs in some of these positions and then had a contract out. So I had anticipated some cost savings on that as she had also. So I think we'll have her work with you and maybe have a very detailed report in the areas of encumbered monies for positions that we didn't fill and then what we contracted for. Because some of these contracts, as you saw, we just brought back to the board. just a few meetings ago, which was later in the year.

[7468] Nancy Thomas: OK. Because I thought that we had already reduced the positions that weren't filled. So that money's still residing in our.

[7477] SPEAKER_24: No, that's what I wanted to be able to look into. That was our new practice.

[7480] SPEAKER_08: Yeah, we'll bring it back and clarify the question.

[7484] Ray Rodriguez: Appreciate it.

[7486] SPEAKER_36: So there is one more question I'd like to ask the board for the Revenue Enhancement Committee. Does the dates look fine to you? two of the five board members to attend the Revenue Enhancement Committee. It starts next week, next Wednesday.

[7505] SPEAKER_47: Just a clarification, you wanted to identify these two dates?

[7509] SPEAKER_36: Oh, two of the board members can attend.

[7514] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, I understand. Member Martinez, can you say yes? I cannot on the 27th. And that's the only day?

[7523] SPEAKER_08: As long as we only have two on any of the meetings, as long as we don't exceed that, it doesn't matter which two. So if any of you can attend any of them, we'll work with that. And so one of you can attend all, or however you want to work it.

[7536] Ray Rodriguez: OK, so the next one is next week.

[7537] SPEAKER_36: As long as we have more than two, we're OK.

[7540] Ray Rodriguez: May 27. And then the other ones, you've got to list them down there. Yes. OK.

[7542] SPEAKER_36: And you like. We're flexible.

[7544] Ray Rodriguez: Or at least one board member. That would be nice. Yeah. So go ahead.

[7549] SPEAKER_41: No, I can confirm for the 27th.

[7551] SPEAKER_47: OK.

[7552] Ray Rodriguez: So that's one. And then I can do May 1st. Anybody can do April 10th. So should we just get back to you? Yeah.

[7562] SPEAKER_36: You want to? It would be ideal if we had the same amount.

[7568] Ray Rodriguez: You'd like to have two, but at least have one. OK. OK.

[7571] Nancy Thomas: I mean, is this to go for partial taxes?

[7574] SPEAKER_36: No, this is up to the budget advisory, excuse me, the Revenue Enhancement Committee to investigate how we can generate revenues, whether it's the parcel tax, whether it's to increase our ADA to enrollment or enrollment to ADA ratio, that's one of them, looking at solar, looking at water irrigation.

[7596] Nancy Thomas: Okay. I'll try to see if I can go to some of that.

[7600] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, thank you. Thank you for giving us this and then we'll get back to you like Member Martinez says. OK, I'd like to open the public hearing on the Sunshine Proposal Reopener for Newark Teachers Association NTA contract. Would anyone like to address us on this public hearing? Seeing none, I'd like to close the public hearing. We go to old business, wish list, Schilling Elementary Marquis. Anyone like to bring superintendent?

[7644] SPEAKER_43: I'll address it actually for Ms. Condon with MOT who's been working with Dr. Windy from Schilling. So Schilling hadn't yet decided on their wish list that back in 2017 you had awarded $110 per pupil at the time and most of the schools purchased marquees with their wish list money. So Dr. Windy has worked with her school site council and parents. had requested a marquee for shilling. So in those costs is the marquee and the electrical to have it run and the marquee to be installed, if that could be approved. It is within there. I have the budget there. It's within the dollars that were allotted. And then secondly, the second item is with the remaining dollars, they would like to get a fence, I'm sorry, a gate with a push button, push handle by their child care area of the school. And again, even with those two, they are still within their budget. And the minutes are attached where the parents did sign off and approve on those purchases.

[7707] Ray Rodriguez: I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Need a motion and a second?

[7711] Nancy Thomas: I move that we approve 13.1.

[7714] Ray Rodriguez: Second? I second. You second. OK, that's fine. Member Martinez seconds. Member Thomas makes a motion. That's fine. I didn't know. Please vote. OK, motion passes unanimously. Thank you. 13.2, wish list, Schilling Elementary Gate. You already explained that. I need a motion and a second. Let me close this.

[7742] Nicole Pierce-Davis: I'll make a motion.

[7746] Ray Rodriguez: Member Gutierrez makes a motion. Need a second.

[7750] SPEAKER_45: I'll second, if I can. I don't know if I can.

[7755] Ray Rodriguez: You can vote. I think one of the board members has a second.

[7758] Nancy Thomas: I'll second it just to make sure.

[7760] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Member Thomas seconds it on top of your second. So we have two seconds. Okay, please, please vote. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. 13.3, City of Newark and Newark Unified School District Licensing Agreement, McGregor Field. Member Gutierrez and I put this on because we're on the committee and do you want to, since you're the new chair, do you want to kind of elaborate on this for me, please?

[7797] SPEAKER_47: I believe, just to confirm, we're still negotiating, right? No, sorry, we're waiting to hear back from our attorney.

[7804] SPEAKER_08: Let me give a little bit of an update. We recently just sent our attorney's red line response to the city's response. The one request I have on this item is to kind of get a little bit of a consensus from the board if we want it to be a three or a five-year agreement. And the conversation right now has been to migrate from a MOU to a license agreement. So that's kind of been the conversation. We're working with our legal now. We have a response from the city. I do believe we'll have something to bring more formally for action to the board at the next board meeting.

[7843] Ray Rodriguez: But it's more information because we still have to meet. There's no action tonight. Right. So I just need a consensus whether the three or five year from the board.

[7852] SPEAKER_47: So I would just like to give a little background in regards to that now that I'm thinking for the reminder. So what it was, I believe at this point the city had requested for a longer time frame. preferably five years, only because our experience with this contract was that it took a lot of time, the negotiating back and forth. So just for the sake of time, to them it sounded a little more reasonable to keep it at a five year. I believe our president liked maybe a shorter contract. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[7899] Ray Rodriguez: felt that three years, starting as soon as it goes through, and we vote on it in May, assuming it's approved by the committee. And then it goes to the city, and then we'll come back here. And then it would probably start in June, let's say. Right now, for the last 10 years, we've just been using the old contract going, you know, automatically shifts over at a dollar a year. So I just felt three years was fine. But I think that whether we decide to go with three or five years, I'm pretty sure everything would go through. But just want a consensus of the board, whether you feel are you OK with what they're asking is five years or three years, and then makes it easier for us when we meet with them next month.

[7952] SPEAKER_47: And then just to add to that, I believe that's just something that we can decide on here. And then the, I believe everything else pretty much on, on, on the agreement looks like, like we're okay. Like I said, we're waiting back for legal to answer just a couple of detailed questions, but, um, or details that need to be addressed on the actual contract itself. And, um, yeah, hopefully right now we can just decide on, on the timeframe.

[7979] Elisa Martinez: I just wanted to ask Superintendent Sanchez or staff, what is, do you have a recommendation?

[7984] SPEAKER_08: My recommendation is to go with the five year. It's taken so long to get to this point. I think five years still gives us a nice interval to test it out. And we have a clause in the contract currently that lets us exit the agreement with a 180-day notice.

[8000] Ray Rodriguez: OK. That's important.

[8001] Nancy Thomas: Member Thomas? I also agree with five years. And I noticed that at the end of five years, it'll automatically extend if we don't not extend it. My question is about the Whiteford site. And the board gave direction last fall that staff bring to us a recommendation for moving the district office to the Whiteford site, but we wanted to have the entire package. I'm sorry, Member Thomas, but this... No, it bears on this.

[8037] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, okay, go ahead.

[8039] Nancy Thomas: Part of that is parking. $150,000 was estimated for parking. I just want to make sure that the map, if there's need to encroach on McGregor Fields to take care of the parking, that we consider that. Is that OK? It's not out of the realm of the discussion?

[8059] SPEAKER_08: That's fine. Actually, we are. And I'm glad you brought it up. But I do plan to mark that out on the map before we finalize the final agreement.

[8066] Nancy Thomas: Good. Thank you.

[8067] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Good. So moving forward, we'll do the five-year. Is that OK? OK.

[8076] SPEAKER_47: Just clarifying. Is that OK with you?

[8079] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah. OK, good. 13.4, Board of Education Committee assignments. We've already done this, but because board meetings and new board members, member Martinez had asked that her and I switch. So I would be the primary for the SELPA, and then she would be alternate, and then Anyone else, I guess, if you weren't available and I wasn't, we have enough to where any board member, member Thomas or anybody else would be able to go. So on this one, I would need a vote since we voted before.

[8124] Nancy Thomas: I move that Mr. Rodriguez be the primary and Elisa be the alternate on the SELPA.

[8132] Bowen Zhang: I second.

[8136] Ray Rodriguez: You got it, Mr. Kino? OK. Please vote. OK, motion passes. Thank you. 14.1, Mr. Knuth. You still want to address us on this, or are you OK? The audit report.

[8168] Cary Knoop: Well, there's one little thing in the audit report. It says the McGregor site expenditures are not listed there. And I think, I know the total location amount was negative. But still, I think in that year at McGregor, work was done, HVACs, I think. But it's not on the audit report. It's just a little thing. OK. But, yeah.

[8188] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you for bringing that up. OK. We're going to have a report, or are we going to accept it, or what?

[8201] SPEAKER_36: It's not much of a, I mean, it's a report, but it's a standard report. If you look at page 22, there wasn't any audit findings. There's about $12.3 million available in the general obligation bond.

[8218] Nancy Thomas: I move acceptance of the audit report.

[8220] Ray Rodriguez: I second. Member Martinez seconds. Member Thomas moves. Please vote. Okay, motion passes unanimously. Thank you. 14.2, regular replacement, Chromebook purchase. Superintendent. Do you want us to just ask for a vote, or are you going to give us, just present it to us?

[8255] SPEAKER_24: Yes, there's no presentation. Mr. Simons is here for questions. This is part of the ongoing replacement cost for our Chromebooks.

[8262] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Need a motion and a second.

[8267] Bowen Zhang: Question on the Chromebook, the Chromebook version. That's fine. Go ahead. Yeah, so I want to ask you, what is that AC Anywhere charger that's costing a lot more than a unit of Chromebook?

[8279] SPEAKER_15: That's the cart that stores and charges the Chromebooks. It's the device that holds, stores, charges the Chromebooks. Charging cart.

[8289] Bowen Zhang: And charging cart costs five times.

[8293] SPEAKER_15: Correct. That's about right. Costs a lithium. Whether they can or should be cheaper is, I would tend to agree that I think they should be available cheaper, but it really isn't. cards aren't really available much cheaper than that. The ones that are, they're not very well constructed. We've tried purchasing those about five years ago. Units at about $800 a unit. They were made with shoddier sheet metal. They kind of fell apart in a couple of years from being moved around. The charging mechanics in them seemed to break. Part of what these cards have that's a little different is they have either timers or or based on how many units they're charging based on the draw. We were dripping breakers in classrooms by charging 30 computers all at once off one circuit.

[8338] Bowen Zhang: So one car can hold multiple Chromebooks to charge at the same time?

[8345] SPEAKER_15: So it charges based on the draw. Sometimes chargers are pulling less watts when the batteries are higher. So then it'll charge more at the same time. Otherwise, it'll charge less.

[8358] Ray Rodriguez: Member Thomas.

[8359] Nancy Thomas: I noticed that this is coming out of the LCFF supplemental and concentration. Was that the way it was in the budget?

[8367] SPEAKER_15: Last year as well, yes.

[8368] Nancy Thomas: And I guess my question is, and I think I commend your department for planning ahead for the replacement as we go. It just seems to me that we're spending so much over budget this year, $1.8 million more than we anticipated. And I'm wondering, because of some of the expenses in the LCFF, it's just a comment that it seems like we don't have good control on our budget this year with all the extra spending. And I think this is a good expenditure, but that's just a comment.

[8413] Ray Rodriguez: Student member? Cesar?

[8416] SPEAKER_45: So regarding the purchase of the actual Chromebooks totaling approximately $81,000, there was no way to reduce the memory from 16 gigs to 8 gigs? Because I feel like I don't think 8 to 16 is necessary, so.

[8431] SPEAKER_15: They don't sell an 8 gig model, I don't believe. That's not the RAM, that's the storage. Oh, sorry. The RAM is only 4 on these machines. 4, my bad.

[8439] SPEAKER_45: They're not, yeah. Yeah, that's my mistake. I guess my other question would be, Was there any consideration of any product with a different build quality that might stand up to the test of time than my last past the five-year mark?

[8455] SPEAKER_15: Yeah. So the last two years, we went with them. So the models change every year, obviously, right? Right. The way they sort of do their versioning is if you buy an older model, then Google only does support for x number of years from the release date. So the last couple of years, we purchased Dell models because they seemed to hold up a little better. Our break rate was below 1% with them versus about 3-plus with some of the other models we had. This year, we didn't go with the Dells because they haven't updated in two years. And I didn't want to buy computers that were going to not be useful in four years. So this is a brand new model from HP. It is a new model for us. We don't have a historical break percentage. With that said, before we bought it, we got a demo unit. We sort of took it through its places. It feels good. We think it's going to last. But ultimately, we won't know until we're using them. And we can't really say, well, we like this one. We're going to keep buying it for five years because that would be a really bad plan. OK. Thank you.

[8511] Ray Rodriguez: I have something quickly. The charging cart, how does that work? Do the students go up there? Or I'm just trying to understand. Or do they give it to the teacher?

[8523] SPEAKER_15: Different grade levels will handle it in different ways. I'm sure the secondary sites, the kids will go grab the computers themselves. They'll manage it. Yeah, the elementary. The lower grades, the teachers will probably be having a more hands-on role than that.

[8534] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, I didn't want the kids to get zapped, okay?

[8536] SPEAKER_15: Yeah, so that's another benefit of having carts that we feel like are clean. There are carts that we had that had sharp edges before that I didn't, you know, kids are going in there reaching computers. That's another consideration. There's all sort of little things we figured out, which is why we don't go with the cheapest cart anymore. Yeah. We go with one that we feel sort of presents a better long-term value.

[8553] Ray Rodriguez: Appreciate it. Thank you for having grandchildren in third grade at playing with Chromebooks.

[8561] Elisa Martinez: Yeah, these darn storage units. It's like, wow.

[8564] SPEAKER_15: Yeah, it does feel ridiculous.

[8565] Elisa Martinez: I feel the same way. And I recognize we're changing models. But at any point, would we anticipate that we wouldn't have to replace them every time, or they have to be restored?

[8576] SPEAKER_15: Yeah, so that would be one thing I would hope. We're changing now not all of the carts. We're replacing some of the earliest carts. But the carts, they'll probably last about two cycles of Chromebooks. One of the new things is the chargers are getting standardized now. So they're going, I don't know if you're familiar with the terminology, they're going to a USB-C, if you've heard of that word. So hopefully people will just be able to swap models without messing with anything.

[8599] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Thank you, Mr. Simon. Excellent. We don't have any more cards on any more items, so hopefully we can move quickly.

[8609] Nancy Thomas: 14. Yes, you do. I think you have one from Mr. Newcomb.

[8614] Ray Rodriguez: No, no, he already, on the audit. He's fine.

[8617] Nancy Thomas: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it was a policy that I saw. Yes, he does.

[8623] Ray Rodriguez: He does? Okay.

[8627] SPEAKER_47: No, no.

[8629] Ray Rodriguez: So we're on for 14.3 and 14.4? Okay, so we need a motion and a second for 14.3, agreement with Illuminate Education. 14.2. No, no, no. No, 14.2. Oh, we didn't vote on the Chromebook. OK. I need a motion and a second on 14.2, regular replacement Chromebook.

[8652] Nancy Thomas: I move that we support 14.2. OK.

[8655] Ray Rodriguez: Member Thomas moves. I'll second it. Member Gutierrez seconds. Please vote. Motion passes. Thank you. Need a motion and a second for 14.3, agreement with illuminated kitchen.

[8672] SPEAKER_47: I had a question on it.

[8674] Ray Rodriguez: OK, that's fine. Go ahead. Sometimes you can do a motion and a second and then have discussion. But go ahead. That's OK. Member Martinez.

[8685] Elisa Martinez: Sorry. So thank you. Ms. Salinas, you and I had spoken about this earlier. My concern with this particular proposal is I'm very excited that we're training Our staff and especially around the master schedule, huge hot button for many of us. The main area of concern for me is what is our return on investment for this training? How do we measure success? So that was something that I would like to see included as part of this expenditure.

[8729] Ray Rodriguez: You were addressing?

[8730] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, well, are you done? I'm sorry, I'm done.

[8734] Ray Rodriguez: I thought you were asking a question of Associate Superintendent Salinas.

[8737] Elisa Martinez: Well, it was a request, I mean, it was, right? I mean.

[8741] SPEAKER_24: Yes, so yes, we can. We are very happy that we received these one-time monies from the California Collaborative to do this, but you're right. How do we get a return on investment? This work will be with the site leadership and department chairs over at the high school and with ed services to really build the base. This landscape report will tell us how to build a better master schedule, but it's also going to provide training to build capacity so it's not just one person that's really focusing and running the master schedule. It's going to be a team approach, but then what we're expecting is that we will have success indicators and as I think we've heard the superintendent say before the master schedule should be something that happens all year long so our expectation will be that working with the principal and the team that there would be reports back we can work with them as to how that looks if it's coming to the Board of Education to give some updates during the school year. We also would anticipate that it's how to systematize when the high school goes out to the junior high to get requests for classes and how they build that, working with eighth graders. It'll be pretty multifaceted. So I do anticipate bringing back some points of information to share how they're making progress on this. Sorry.

[8828] Elisa Martinez: So just to clarify then, we should expect, as we discussed there will be, we'll call a baseline setting, right, from these folks. So would we then expect to see a baseline and then a recommended adherence to the use of the master schedule?

[8845] SPEAKER_24: It would be because, well, and we have to also know that the master schedule is being built right now. So this group is also going to come in, you know, and see what's the state of the state. So there's going to be some work there. We're also hoping to bank some time with this Once we have new staff in place also, because they will need to anticipate and fulfill this plan. So that's going to be part of it, but we're trying to capture it all. So we will be coming back with that. But again, we also want to be able to tie it to the evaluation of our administrators at that site to also see that it's being fulfilled. So that's all work. I know working with the superintendent, that's one of the things he also wants to be able to do.

[8890] SPEAKER_08: OK. I would add that I think it's also important to track how many people we've trained, who completed the training, and maybe ask Luminate to give us some progress monitoring of how the implementation is going. I think that's something we could easily add to keep the board informed on how this is rolling out.

[8906] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Thank you. Member Thomas and Member Gutierrez.

[8909] Nancy Thomas: Yeah. I think that this is putting the cart before the horse. It's like saying, OK, we can wait and we can accept this grant later.

[8919] SPEAKER_08: What we've done in the past with... We can accept it later. These funds sunset in June.

[8925] Nancy Thomas: Okay, well between now and June, I would feel comfortable if I saw a plan. I don't know what... You said a lot of things, but it's the same thing that happened with Naviance. It went away because the original plan wasn't implemented with fidelity. I would I would not want to see this go forward until I know what the plan is and what the measurables are and who the people are that are going to implement the plan and that it does have buy-in from the site and what is the ongoing cost of this Illuminate software? Is this a new software? We know nothing about what this is. Is it new software that we're going to get trained on? I just don't have enough information to approve this.

[8973] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Member Gutierrez, did you have anything?

[8978] SPEAKER_47: To piggyback on Member Thomas' questions, is that something that Ms. Salinas, you can answer right now? And then my second question, I wanted to ask you two as well. Is CCEE, sorry, is this program going to be ongoing or is this just one time that they're funding this program?

[8997] SPEAKER_24: So the first part, Illuminate is something we already have, and it's, we've now, I think we're in our second year or third year of Illuminate. So this is the system that we use to input test results and K-12. What we're doing with this specific contract, so that, there's no added cost in that sense. It is now a cost that is ongoing because that's where we store all of our data.

[9027] Nancy Thomas: Because there's a whole section in here about the software agreement. And so I assume that there's a module for developing the master schedule, and that's a special module.

[9039] SPEAKER_24: So that is what they're sharing and is part of this. This is one-time funding that we're getting. It does sunset on June 30. If you recall, we received the grant, and we received it so late that we also, and at the same time, we had this need with the high school.

[9056] Nancy Thomas: But are we replacing something that we?

[9058] SPEAKER_24: No. No, we're not replacing. What are we using for the master schedule right now?

[9062] SPEAKER_08: Synergy, we're still using. It really is a supplemental training to accelerate understanding of how to use the software we already have. That's how I understand this.

[9073] SPEAKER_24: And it is also how, you know, we're trying to solve, so I always go back to what problem are you trying to solve? From my understanding is that we have historically not staffed classrooms correctly in this district. Our master schedule needs support in the area of a strong course catalog that students are aware of what classes they can take and how those classes can be staffed. So what we're getting with Illuminate is an actual expert on master scheduling that will then train not just one person, not just the classified employee, but a whole team to really take this on as part of their work that they do every day throughout the year. So we thought it was a great opportunity to be able to use grant money one time, but it's building capacity. But I do take your point. We do have to have some measurable outcomes. But we don't know yet what the state of the state is. I think we have hunches. For example, we hear it and we have commenters at the podium that, you know, this class looks really small, or this class looks really big, or are kids being tracked correctly? There's a lot of different things out there that we still have not gotten to the bottom of. And I know that the superintendent had looked at, like, how do we do this work? Well, this was kind of like the aligning of the stars. We're actually getting funding to be able to do this with someone who is an expert in this. So it's not so much, how do I press the button and run a report? It's more, how do you do the planning? So if you look at the last page of the attachment, it speaks to what do they want. So we've sent them, in preparation for this, a copy of the course catalog. They wanted access to student handbooks. the testing calendar for local and state assessments. Do you have an MTSS plan, which is the multi-tier systems of support? What is your current professional development offerings that have been given to teachers? So, and what your school site plan. So they're going to take all of that working with the staff at the school to really be thoughtful about how do you program kids. And I can share that, you know, having met with the math department now, you know, we've had several meetings with them. there is a need to support our teachers with more around the math pathways and what they're seeing is not working in their classroom. So I anticipate that would be some of the things that will come out of this as well. But we won't know until we get the landscape report.

[9213] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, thank you. Member Gutierrez wasn't done with her question.

[9216] SPEAKER_47: No, it was just to clarify, because this is now just receiving training, not necessarily, I guess one of the concerns I heard was, is this going to be something that we're going to be ongoing every time? And if so, is CCEE no longer going to pay for that? And then are we going to be required to get it out of our funds? But so just to confirm, I mean, maybe can you clarify that?

[9241] SPEAKER_24: Sure. Yeah. So CCEE will sunset June 30th. In fact, our work, we just had a meeting with them last week. And so we're getting ready to come to the conclusion and do some planning around presenting to the board. If at the end of this we see that the site says hey we really would like more training on XYZ or we have a new registrar or we have a new we would look to see if we have internal capacity to do that. but it is not something that I anticipate that the district is going to take on in addition to what we're already doing with Illuminate. I can't say if the school site council, because you know they also have their allocation as a high school, if they as a team want to perhaps do more contracted work with this organization, they could certainly do that, but that's not something that we would anticipate paying out of district funds.

[9292] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Student member, Cesar?

[9296] SPEAKER_45: Yes, so I have to agree with Member Thomas' first comment that, you know, there's no concrete plan presented with this proposal. My only comprehension of this right now is that we're working to perfect the master schedule and ensure that classes are being presented in the best way possible for students such as myself. So seeing a timeline really helps, especially from a student perspective, helps to have confidence in the board the right thing is going to be done, and that the correct classes are going to be offered. Speaking from personal experience, like when AP Physics was brought back for one year, last year I took it, and not to comment too harshly on personnel, but it was not a positive experience in the class, and then it was removed for this year. So I hope that, you know, if this is approved by the board, that the training is followed through to completion and that the master schedule is perfected so that not only myself, but the future classes can have the same benefit, can have a good selection of classes to choose from. Possibly different than what we have right now.

[9363] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. I personally am satisfied with the explanation. Member Young, did you have something?

[9372] Bowen Zhang: I just want to ask the payment, I know it's $52,000, so what's the charging model of this software or whatever? Is this per organization or per number of users or per user?

[9386] SPEAKER_08: It really is not a, we're not purchasing software. What we're purchasing is training to use the software we already have. Part of the dilemma we have in this district, there's not a lot of understanding of how master scheduling works. And there's not a mental model for staff to look at or to lean into when they're developing a master schedule. So let me say it a different way. Historically, in this district, we've seen master schedules that are based on adult needs. This training would help us build a master schedule that's more geared towards student needs, to your point. So that's the shift of the mindset. If we didn't have this one-time money to do it, we just wouldn't do the training. But this is an opportunity to do training where we otherwise wouldn't. It's one-time expenditure, and actually, The CCEE wouldn't make this investment if it was supplanting what we're doing already. They'll do stuff to supplement, but they're not going to supplant the resources we have already. And I think part of the goals of this is just to build some capacity in staff. And staff's been asking for this. We'd like more training in master schedule. We need help with that. We really don't understand at a deeper level how we should structure it. And how do you build it based on what student needs are and how you look at the groupings and building course sections. Master scheduling is something that I'm very familiar with as a high school principal, and it's complex, and it's a puzzle. And what you can get is anything you want, but not everything you want. But there's a certain way that you build it based on what students need and how you structure it. So that's part of what we're hoping to do is to build some capacity in staff of how to philosophically build a schedule that's based on student needs and student performance.

[9487] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, Superintendent. I'm happy with the explanation. I'd like to move that we approve 14.3. We need a second. If I don't get one, then we'll... I'll second it. Okay. Okay, good. So, we have Member Rodriguez and Member Gutierrez seconds. Please vote. Okay, motion passes. all yeses except member Thomas. I think you've already explained yourself, or did you want to say anything else?

[9521] Nancy Thomas: Well, it's all about the lack of a plan. And the district with Naviance and with the APEOC, those things get implemented, and then we never hear anything about it. We were supposed to have a presentation on the makerspace in November that never happened. I just don't see the district following through on some of these things.

[9553] SPEAKER_08: The makerspace is in the queue coming. And I would take all your lists of requests and I'll put them in the next agenda so we don't lose any track of that. OK, thank you. So you have my commitment to that.

[9563] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah. We're going beyond this. So 14.4, did you want to address this, Mr. Knoop? Yes, please. It's the board policy administrative regulation 5.121. Grades, Evaluation of Student Achievement, First Reading.

[9578] Cary Knoop: Thank you. You know, when my eldest son joined Newark Unified, he went to first grade, and at that time, his report card looked 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. And, well, actually, when I used to go to school, my report card was between 0 and 10. But I think 5 is okay, or whether you use letters or numbers, it doesn't really matter. And then a few years later, it went back to four, and I got really worried because I don't believe in that, oh, let's do three, and before we know it, we're going to give everybody an A because everybody's equal and all that stuff. It's not helping the parents. It's not helping the kids. It's not helping getting excellent education, at least. I'm not an educator, but I just don't think that's a good idea. So I'm really happy to see in this AR, or board policy, a one to five. And so I'm glad about that because it informs the parents better what how the student is doing. And you know one to four is a little scarce and I'm definitely excited that we didn't go to one to three because that would have been not as good in my opinion. So I'm happy about it.

[9654] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. And by the way you have great kids.

[9657] Cary Knoop: Thank you. Thank you.

[9659] Ray Rodriguez: OK. We don't If you want to bring it back for a second reading, if not, I need a motion and a second.

[9665] SPEAKER_41: I'll move.

[9666] Ray Rodriguez: Member Gutierrez moves. I'll second. Member Thomas seconds. Please vote. OK, motion passes unanimously. Thank you. 14.5, board policy, administrative regulation, 5121.1, grades, and unexcused absences.

[9691] SPEAKER_24: Removal you remove this is to remove because we've absorbed it and absorbed it in the previous policy.

[9697] Ray Rodriguez: I love removals We have too many of those things. Okay. Okay. You need a motion and a second. Hold on. Let me clear I'll second Okay Member Gutierrez moves member Thomas seconds, please vote Remember Thomas Want to clear it

[9720] Nancy Thomas: I don't see where I can vote.

[9721] Ray Rodriguez: OK, let me clear it. OK, let's do it again. Please vote. Excellent. OK, motion passes. Thank you. 14.6, resolution to declare surplus equipment. I need a motion and a second. I move to approve. Member Martinez moves.

[9748] SPEAKER_47: I'll second.

[9749] Ray Rodriguez: Member Gutierrez seconds, please vote. Motion passes unanimously, thank you. 14.7, donations report. Need a motion and a second, and then we'll read the donations.

[9767] Nancy Thomas: I move that we accept the donations.

[9770] Ray Rodriguez: OK, Member Thomas moves.

[9772] SPEAKER_47: I'll second.

[9777] Ray Rodriguez: If we could carry seconds, please vote. Excellent. Motion passes. OK, donations report. I can start. I'll do the first three. Donation, $400 for Kennedy Elementary, December 13, 2018. Google, all right, for Diane Munson's classroom. In-kind donation of six portable bowling kits for Newark Unified School District. Bowling. Okay. December. We weren't invited. 7-18, 2018. Cloverleaf Family Bowl, Mr. Mike Hillman, for use in the elementary physical education classes. Yeah, it does take a toll on your arm. Okay. Next. Who wants to do snow in elementary? Number three.

[9834] SPEAKER_47: I would defer my time and my readings to the superintendent just for the sake of time.

[9838] Ray Rodriguez: Well, let me do snow since that's my grandbaby school. $500 for Snow Elementary, February 5th, 2019. Philanthropic Ventures Foundation for plants and Flagstaff for nature. Oh, they're redoing that nature. You guys are going to love it if you guys go there. Okay. Okay. Superintendent, do you want to help me with the next one?

[9859] SPEAKER_08: In kind donation of six filing cabinets and office supplies for Newark Junior High School from Fremont Bank. Purseal Santos for NJHS use. $4,759,000 for Graham Elementary. Woo-hoo. CPS for grandparents and staff for sixth grade science camp. Excellent. Should I keep going? In kind donation of Hoover Cordless vacuum cleaner for Newark Memorial High School. various donors to DonorsChoose for Ms. Jessica Ochoa's classroom, in-kind donation of trauma kit and emergency food and water, supply module for schools for Kennedy Elementary, donor Kennedy PTA for use in cases of emergency, totaling $5,659.50. All right. Thank you for everyone that supports our schools.

[9912] Ray Rodriguez: 15.1 personnel report, need a motion and a second. I move. Member Gutierrez moves. I'll second. Member Jones seconds. Discussion, anyone? OK, please vote. Oh, on this one, the student board member does not vote, right? Right. OK. So let's clear it. Open for voting. Again, the motion was made by member Gutierrez. Gutierrez. And member John seconds. OK. I'm getting the student member voting. So I don't know if it's. I'm abstaining. Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, no. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. It just shows that you're in, right? OK. Thank you. Member Gutierrez? Member Jones? OK, let's clear one more. No, we don't have to. Member Gutierrez?

[9977] Rachel Bloom: You didn't vote? No, I didn't.

[9979] Ray Rodriguez: He did. I got him. I need you. Oh, it's me? My apologies. There you go. That's OK. OK, motion passes unanimously by the board members. And student board member cannot vote. He's abstaining. OK, thank you. OK, now we go to the consent agenda. 16.1 is curricular, non-curricular overnight trip request for Newark Memorial High School Communications Academy seniors to Glendale, California. 16.2, Warren Report for February 2019. 16.3, minutes of the special board meeting December 13th. 2018, 16.4 minutes of the special board meeting, January 10th, 2018. 16.5 minutes of the regular board meeting, January 17th, 2018. And 16.6 minutes of the special board meeting, January 31st, 2018. I need a motion and a second. Unless you want to pull. Somebody want to pull? I had a request to speak, sorry.

[10046] Nancy Thomas: Did you want to pull any? I'd like to pull the warrants.

[10049] Ray Rodriguez: OK. You want to pull? 16.2. Member Martinez, do you want to pull one? Same one? OK, so I need a motion to approve 16.1, 16.3, 16.4, 16.5, 16.6. I need a motion and a second, please. I'll move. Member Gutierrez moves. I'll second. Member Martinez seconds.

[10068] Maria Huffer: Please vote.

[10083] Ray Rodriguez: OK, motion passes 14. I mean, I'm sorry, 16.2. Member Thomas first.

[10090] Nancy Thomas: Right. There's three warrants that I have questions about. One is to ADA paved ramp for the STAR Lab. Another is wheelchair lift at Kennedy. That's for $21,600. ADA sidewalk for the 700 building, that's for $5,300. So $21,000, $31,000. Anyway, it's about $40,000 or so for work that it seems to me we can be, instead of taking it out of the general fund, that we can be using either the bond or the Measure B. There's still some money, I understand, in Measure B. It seems to me that these are safety things that are are bond fundable, and I don't understand why we would be spending the general fund money for them.

[10153] SPEAKER_08: I would suggest that we would be open to an amendment to change the funding source, but it's up to you.

[10160] SPEAKER_36: Oh, definitely. I mean, we can definitely use bond funds. We can transfer from general fund to fund 21.

[10166] Nancy Thomas: OK, I think that's a great idea.

[10170] Ray Rodriguez: So we'll bring that back?

[10172] Elisa Martinez: We had talked about is this good or bad right in terms of expenditures so when I look at warrants I know that you know we're following the rules in terms of getting the approvals and whatnot but I think that this is the first place where we can start to understand How are we spending versus what's budgeted? And Kai, I know that we had spoken with you and Beverly around how can we get that monthly view from a plan versus actual, sorry. So I just wanted to touch on this one because I think this is our first point to understand where we're having the variance from our plan.

[10226] SPEAKER_43: My apologies for the interruption. President Rodriguez, we will need to make a motion to extend the meeting.

[10232] Ray Rodriguez: Hold on. We got three minutes, so we can vote this if you're OK to move it on. Somebody make a motion on 14.2, or you want to wait until we extend the time?

[10244] Nancy Thomas: I move that we extend the time to 10.30. OK.

[10246] Ray Rodriguez: I second. Please vote. Okay. 10.30, hopefully you're not long-winded and we can go at 10.15. Okay. Not you, Member Thomas.

[10266] Joy Lee: I wasn't talking.

[10267] Ray Rodriguez: I wasn't looking at anybody. Okay.

[10271] Nancy Thomas: Member Thomas?

[10275] Ray Rodriguez: I need a motion for 14.2.

[10276] SPEAKER_47: I'd like to move with the amendment that was requested by Member Thomas. I mean 16.2. Okay.

[10284] Ray Rodriguez: Member Gutierrez makes a motion to approve 16.2, the orange, with the amendment that Member Thomas put together.

[10291] Elisa Martinez: Okay, I need a second. I'll second.

[10294] Ray Rodriguez: Member Martinez seconds. Please vote. Motion passes unanimously, thank you. Okay, let's wait on OK, on the expulsions, I need a motion and a second on 17.1.

[10319] Nancy Thomas: I move that we accept the staff recommendation on 17.1.

[10322] Ray Rodriguez: OK, open voting. OK, on this one, the student member doesn't vote either, right? OK, just boy. OK, so he can abstain. OK, thank you. OK, I need a motion and a second. I'll second. Member Gutierrez. Who made a motion? Member Thomas. Member Gutierrez. Thank you very much. Please vote. OK, motion passes 3 to 2. Member Gutierrez and Member John have abstained, which is, but we still have the majority that wants to move on it. And so it's accepted. And also the student member abstained because they can't vote on this. 17.2 Confirmation of Expulsion from Pre-Discipline and Rehabilitation Plan E18-19-16. I need a motion and a second. Please vote. I need a motion and a second. I'm sorry.

[10393] Nancy Thomas: I move that we accept the staff recommendation on 17.2.

[10397] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. I'll second it. Member Gutierrez seconds. Please vote. Okay, member, okay, perfect. Okay, member John abstains. So we have four yes and one no, abstaining, and a student member. The reason I'm not asking why you're abstaining is because it's expulsions, okay, and we can't, okay, talk about it. other than just vote. Thank you. OK, next. Board of Education Committee Reports, Announcements, Requests, Debrief, and Discussion. Student member, you want to go first?

[10449] SPEAKER_45: No, I don't have anything.

[10451] Ray Rodriguez: All the stuff that's happening at the high school?

[10453] SPEAKER_45: It's exciting. Oh, well, yeah, I gave it during the superintendent support. I don't know if you want to hear it again. No, it's okay. No, no, you have other stuff. No, I don't have, no, I guess I can, the Rocketry Club is nearing, it's nearing the end of its, I think we have like three weeks before qualifications are due. So we've been out every weekend launching behind Ohlone College, the Newark campus. We've been launching, we are waiting to get new altimeters to make sure we have accurate readings to send to the National Association of Rocketry to ensure that we can have a good shot at making it to Virginia.

[10492] Ray Rodriguez: And thank you for staying with us all this time. Yeah. I appreciate it. Member Zhang. No problem.

[10499] Bowen Zhang: Oh, I just have a request for the, because we talk about we're going to have a special education report on the encroachment of special ed on our budget, so I just want to have an additional request to have a breakdown, a two-category breakdown of how we identify, the percentage being identified. Number one, based on ethnicity. Number two, based on the primary language spoken at home and compare that to New Haven and Fremont. So I want that ethnicity breakdown and primary language spoken at home breakdown to be included in our special ed report. Particularly, I want to see our percentage compared to New Haven and Fremont.

[10542] SPEAKER_24: Can I ask, is it by distinguishing the primary language?

[10548] Bowen Zhang: So on the ethnicity, I want to see the percentage breakdown of Asian-American, Caucasian, African-American, and Latino. Primary language spoken at home, English, Mandarin, and Spanish.

[10562] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Mrs. Eustis, can you wait until, because one of my requests involves you. OK? OK. Member Gutierrez.

[10570] SPEAKER_47: I would just like to ask after the training on Illuminate, if you guys could just give us a follow-up on the training, please.

[10583] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Anything else? That's it for me. OK. Member Martinez.

[10588] Elisa Martinez: Just on Illuminate, it would be the follow-up on the training, but also the metrics that you intend to use concretely, please. Thank you. we're always so busy talking about money that we don't we really really kind of get into the meat of our performance at schools. Obviously because of expulsion cases and just the metrics that we've seen I'm really curious as to how we the board get visibility into what resources we have for our students. So from a you know, many of our resources, I'll start at counselors. You know, I know that I hear things like, you know, there's X number of counselors and we've got over 1,000 students. What's the actual use of, you know, how many of our students are actually speaking to counselors and we're actively engaging and developing a plan for them? What is our methodology for tracking that? How would I get, how would we get visibility to that is one thing. that I'd like to get some perspective on. On the performance and obviously we saw that in our continuation and our independent study areas. Of course we see this in our higher grades. I am personally experiencing it with my kids in the lower grades. But what tutoring services do we have for our kids? And what are the sources of those tutoring services? I don't want you guys to go develop a ton of work. I just want to get, how do we baseline this, just so we get a perspective.

[10691] SPEAKER_08: I can actually answer the first one now. You will be seeing, we've now formalized the graduation committee, graduation requirement committee, and one of the functions of that is checking how kids are doing at the high school, who's on track, who's off track. I can email you that report tomorrow. And we will see that as a function of this policy we're going to bring forward because there's concerning data there that's very specific that is broke down by ethnicity and broke down by special ed, broke down by multiple different factors, A through G. So it's going to be brought forth through a committee and making a recommendation for strengthening our graduation policy. So you'll see it there.

[10733] Elisa Martinez: And that would be great, but I don't think it answers the question of our, you know, of our population, kid population, how many of them are actively being touched by counselors, and once again, that have an actual plan that's been developed for them.

[10751] Nancy Thomas: Thank you.

[10752] Ray Rodriguez: Excellent, thank you. Member Thomas.

[10754] Nancy Thomas: OK, I will put in writing some of the earlier requests that I did. But prior to Mr. Castillo mentioning Naviance, I was going to ask tonight that we have a really detailed report on Naviance, similar to the report that we received when we approved it back in 2013. And the same thing with our AP program, the equal opportunity That one, I believe, was started with a grant. And I'd like to see a report on how many kids are taking AP classes compared to what this plan was about, and how many are passing at a level three or above. And these are the two reports.

[10808] Ray Rodriguez: OK. OK. So I have some, and some of it is discussions or that I've heard from other board members that it's hard to remember everything. So I'm going to try to capture everything. But before I do that, Cesar, you are tremendous. OK? We had science night at Snow, and Cesar and his group came over and did the rocket. And those kids, they loved it. And I know you've been, do you do it at other schools or other people do?

[10840] SPEAKER_45: Yeah, so that was one of seven that we've held. So we hold them at all the elementary schools. The goal is really to get kids interested in rocketry at a young age. The rocketry program is something that I understand has a huge history at NMHS. We have won nationals, I think, in 2006, if I remember correctly. So it's a program that's been supported by School Site Council. We have a $5,000 grant annually. So it's something that people like myself who are on the Rocketry Council, we hold it near and dear to our hearts. It's important that we not only work for ourselves to get two nationals, but that we also continue the legacy so that other students can have the same opportunity in the future.

[10890] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Thank you. Excellent. Over here, it lists all our names, and then it says student. I think Cesar's been coming to some of these, and I know Sierra was part of it. If we can just make a minor change and add his name on there for me, if you don't mind.

[10907] SPEAKER_08: On the software? Yeah.

[10908] Ray Rodriguez: OK. OK, I have a few things. The special ed report, naturally. Thank you for bringing that up. That's great. School closure. I think we're at a point, and I know I would like to get some information on the savings on, well, first we need to identify the school that's at 200, and then the savings derived from that, and also the savings if we consolidate schools. If we can, I know if it's just one board member, it's not going to work, so I don't remember, Thomas wants it, and do we have others?

[10947] Elisa Martinez: I have asked for that as well. I would ask in addition to that, I don't think it should just be purely on numbers. Here's the lowest number, but rather we need to look at the geography of our city and make sure that we're going to make the right choice in terms of how we would consolidate. It may not be the school with the lowest enrollment.

[10968] Ray Rodriguez: No, it may not. Because for instance, in talking to the superintendent, Lincoln Elementary, out of their 400 students approximately, only around I think Kai told me only about maybe half of them belong to Lincoln and the other half. Yeah, go ahead.

[10987] SPEAKER_47: If I could just add to that same request in regards to the numbers that are being requested for school closure, but also the possibility, and if we can get numbers in regards to other programs that we could use those schools for, whether it be like a magnet school or things of that sort, so if other programs that could also be cost generating or help with enrollment, where it doesn't necessarily mean that we close the school, but we can use it for other purposes.

[11020] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Thank you. Mrs. Eustis, this is the one for you. I got a text on one of the parents that was here. It's part of the classified group. And they were volunteering to tutor, I mean, not tutor, to translate. So maybe we can have a meeting, if you can help us get the parents together, or the employees that are Spanish speakers, or anyone, and we can do it in Spanish. Would that be possible? I don't know if we can translate the report that Mr. Nguyen, is it possible? I don't know what the cost is there.

[11057] SPEAKER_08: I'm happy to meet with the employees. I think that's one part of it. I don't sure about, for someone to translate a board meeting or an official document, we need to have an official translator. And there's a standard we need to maintain for that to make sure we're fair with everyone. But I'm happy to meet with the employees.

[11072] Ray Rodriguez: So when you have your meeting, the Schilling parent, she said that she would volunteer if you want her help to translate for you. Could you help Mrs. Eustis get some of your Spanish speakers together? I don't think they fully understood the presentation on the fiscal. And that's very important that they understand that. OK. Thank you. And thank you for staying. I appreciate it. OK. I have just a couple more expulsions. I know Mr. Winton is retiring. It'd be nice to have a board workshop. I think with new board members, it's important to understand the whole process. And maybe we might have some new ideas on how to improve that.

[11124] SPEAKER_08: I didn't catch what was the topic.

[11126] Ray Rodriguez: Expulsion. Expulsion. OK. If we can have a workshop on that. And the last thing, remember, Martinez brought up tutoring. I know they have peer tutoring at the high school where my kids were there, and I think they still have it. But one of the things, when Cesar and his group were at the elementary schools, those kids light up. And some of the kids at the high school level want to make extra money, and there'd be excellent tutors. And I brought this up years ago, and for whatever reason, it never went anywhere. So I don't know if that's possible.

[11162] SPEAKER_24: I can share that. And I think you tutored last summer. We had students who tutored during the high school, excuse me, high school students who tutored during the summer program for math. We're going to be doing it again this summer. And so our principals, who you just approved this evening for summer school, will be conducting interviews. So we do it as a whole process so that any student can apply. And we work with the counselors and with, I think, the college and career readiness.

[11189] Ray Rodriguez: So do they get paid for that? Or is that volunteer? OK. Excellent. OK. Because sometimes they'll do it and not get paid and get community hours. And other times, they get paid.

[11199] SPEAKER_45: Yeah, I can attest to the summer. Yeah, it was employment. I was paid. But it was a good experience to be able to take the knowledge that I had gained and then teach it to others. Because it shows a new level of fulfillment and mastery once you're able to adequately teach. And then for me personally, it was great to have fun myself up there teaching. Because legitimately, I discovered things that I had not known before. as a result of teaching. And when the kids asked me, I was like, maybe I can prove it to them up there on the board. But no, it was a fun experience. I think it's good for the kids. I think it's good for the high school tutors at work as well. It's fulfilling for everyone.

[11242] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Excellent. Thank you. And back to translations. Member Uren, you could translate also. Sure.

[11252] SPEAKER_43: I just wanted to add to the tutoring. Also, we have a great partner at Newark Library, and she also gets our high school students and actually even some of our junior high students to help tutor after school at the libraries as well as another program.

[11266] Ray Rodriguez: Excellent. OK. Superintendent?

[11269] SPEAKER_08: I just wanted to clarify a couple of requests. I'm hearing the staff report on Navion, staff report on AP program, and return on investment. Maybe a study session on school closure? Or do you want like a staff report on school closure? Either one. Either one? But I don't know. There's a lot of information to cover. I'm just trying to figure out what the best way to bring it around is.

[11295] Elisa Martinez: It feels like we've talked a lot about it. How do we get to some concrete recommendations? I think that's kind of, so I'm not sure, Superintendent, if that means you guys present something or if it requires a study session. I think we've talked a lot about conceptually, so how do we get to say, now, here's what we found. Here's a recommendation based on these factors.

[11321] Ray Rodriguez: So the study session could be where you have a study session, and then you have it on the agenda where we make recommendations.

[11328] SPEAKER_08: Well, I'm hearing it's more than just school closure. It's also school consolidation, school reconfiguration, looking at other programs. There's more to it.

[11340] Richelle Piechowski: I would add.

[11341] SPEAKER_08: We need to involve a demographer.

[11343] SPEAKER_47: I think a study session probably sounds best because of everything that it's encompassing. And I think also because of the depth of the actual process to actually start that. So if it's something that we do want to proceed with, the detailed process that it takes just to start that I think is something that we do need to get educated on. So I would ask for a study session.

[11372] Ray Rodriguez: And I would concur. But then we have to put it on the fast track so we can move it forward. Great.

[11381] SPEAKER_08: OK. That helps a little bit.

[11383] Elisa Martinez: Sorry. Again, the only request, though, is many times my short experience, our study sessions are just kind of we're rehashing kind of the thing that we already talked about. if we could at least, maybe prior to the study session, work with a couple board members to say, OK, here's some of the pre-work that would be required so that we now are closer to getting to a decision when we do meet as a study session. OK.

[11412] Ray Rodriguez: Is there two board members that want to speak?

[11415] SPEAKER_47: OK. We can discuss that with our superintendent later.

[11419] SPEAKER_08: OK. OK. That helps. Anything else? There was one other thing. No, I think we'll be able to, in agenda setting, sequence when these things happen. So we'll work through that. OK. OK.

[11433] SPEAKER_29: Thank you. Great. Are we done?

[11438] SPEAKER_08: Meeting closed. You let us out early.

No minutes available.