Regular Meeting

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[52] Ray Rodriguez: Coming back from closed session, no decisions made, just shared information. OK, so we go to Pledge of Allegiance. Superintendent, do we have any, maybe someone from the junior high that wants to lead us in the pledge? If not.

[79] SPEAKER_38: We do have someone from the junior high.

[82] Elisa Martinez: that's being voluntold right now.

[95] Ray Rodriguez: Would you tell us who you are please?

[98] SPEAKER_22: My name is Alyssa Ornelas.

[100] SPEAKER_60: My name is Andrew Ewing.

[102] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you for doing this. Appreciate it.

[106] SPEAKER_22: 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.

[124] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. That was very nice. You could have easily said, stand up, face the flag, pledge, right? And demanded us to do that. You've got to remember, I was in the Marine Corps, so I'm used to being told what to do. But OK, so I've already reported on what we discussed in closed session. So we have the school spotlight, Newark Junior High Superintendent. Did you report? I didn't hear. Yeah. Out of order. Superintendent, you want to do the spotlight? Associate Superintendent. OK, Associate Superintendent Salinas.

[166] SPEAKER_31: President Mark Neal, if you could please join us, and also the two wonderful students who are here to present. Ms.

[171] SPEAKER_46: Neal.

[173] SPEAKER_31: He'll share a little bit about the spotlight and the work for tonight.

[176] Ray Rodriguez: Welcome.

[181] SPEAKER_06: Good evening, school board, Superintendent Sanchez, Kai, Leti, Jessica. Thank you for allowing us this time to speak and present. our year in review, so I brought with me two fabulous leadership students, Andrew and Alyssa, and they will start us off tonight.

[201] Ray Rodriguez: Excellent, thank you.

[208] SPEAKER_22: I'm Alyssa Arnelis, and this is Andrew Ewing, and we're from Newark Junior High School, and we're here to tell you what's so great about our school. Everything we do is for the students and to keep them actively involved in the school community. And here are some things that we do.

[230] SPEAKER_60: First off, we play music in the quad every Friday at lunch. We play all different types of music, like pop, salsa, hip hop, and country. Sometimes we have dance-offs, and students make a circle around dancers. It is really fun. It's time for all the students. Leadership students are in charge of the music, and you can see the two of our classmates in the upper left-hand corner.

[263] SPEAKER_22: We also have school dances. And off of the money that we make from it, we get a DJ, we get decorations, and we sell food. We've had a spring fling and a neon dance so far, and the students seem to have fun at them.

[282] SPEAKER_60: Our rallies are really fun, time for everyone. They are a way to bring us all together as a community. We've had a couple of school rallies this year, a back to school rally where Mr. Neil introduces all the teachers to the students and we go over the school rules. And we recently had a multicultural rally where several students performed acts based on their culture.

[306] SPEAKER_22: Our school does a lot to give back. We've had a breast cancer awareness event, pennies for patients, teacher appreciation. We've had a canned food drive, and one of our teachers made blankets for the homeless. We've also had a no one eats alone day.

[328] SPEAKER_60: Carnivals. We do a carnival for every holiday, like Halloween, Easter, and Christmas. We have tons of games set up by the leadership students. We give candy for prizes. We play the music from Music in the Quad. And we have a longer lunch given to us by Mr. Neal.

[348] SPEAKER_22: The web leaders usually help at the rallies. And they're used as tour guides. And they give advice to the seventh graders. The seventh graders look up to them.

[362] SPEAKER_60: The band and choir are both winning under the direction of Mr. Hernandez. They originally went to Disneyland for a competition and came back with two awards. If you are available, please come to our spring concerts. Choir is on June 4th, band is on June 6th.

[383] SPEAKER_22: If you win this go-around for our spelling bee and our geography bee, you have a chance to compete at state. And our geography bee winner qualified for the state finals.

[398] SPEAKER_60: For Spirit Week, we did PJ Day, Twin Day, Sports Day, Disney Day. We had many participants, and the school was very happy with it.

[411] SPEAKER_22: We're looking up to many events. So far, we have the 8th grade dance, Great America, the award ceremony, the promotion ceremony, the teacher versus student basketball rally, and class elections coming up. We look forward to them. Thank you all for listening, and those are some things that make our school great.

[439] Cary Knoop: My turn.

[440] SPEAKER_06: I just want to go back to the Geography Bee. We started doing the Geography Bee about three years ago as a way to pique kids' interest in geography. And this year was the first year that we had a seventh grader actually won Geography Bee. There's a two-step process. You have to be the school winner. And then you have to actually do a test online. And we've never had a student qualify for the state finals. And this is the first year we had a student qualify for the state finals. And it was a seventh grader. So we were quite proud of Alessandra Castaneda. So great job. Mr. Merritt, you're responsible for that. I just want to talk a little bit about what we're doing as a staff to improve the lives of students at Newark Junior High School. So this is just our demographic data. It hasn't changed much over the years. Our two biggest things that we work on this year are the PLCs and PBIS. And I'll talk a little bit about PLC approach that we're doing district wide. This is a really interesting quote I liked, this is what the research says about teams of teachers is that the very essence of a learning community, teams of teachers is a focus on and commitment to the learning of each student. And I can confidently say that that's what we're committed to at Newark Junior High School. We have collaboration time every Friday and some of that time is spent in staff meetings, but most of that time is spent as departments actually sitting and talking about data and looking at student work and talking about what we can do to improve the lives of students. Excuse me, Mr. Neal.

[547] Nancy Thomas: I'm sorry. Would you mind saying what PLC and PBIS stand for because I'm sure there are people that don't know.

[555] SPEAKER_06: POC stands for professional learning community and PBIS stands for positive behavior intervention systems and I'll get to that momentarily. But the professional learning community piece is really about teachers working together to improve the lives of students. So we do that every Friday on a weekly basis and one of the things that we're struggling with still and trying to come up with a solution for and I think we found the intervention piece at the junior high level and how do we actually find time during the school day to provide the intervention for students that actually need it. And so that's one of the things that we're working on and kind of have a plan in place for next year. Elementary schools are doing some flex time. I think the high school has their pause and now the junior high school next year will have an intervention time during the school day to address the needs. And we're going to focus on math next year because that's The easiest one to focus on because math already has an intervention piece into their program and so it'll be easy for us to put that within the school day and actually focus on improving students' math scores. This is some of the data that I just wanted to talk about, our chronic absenteeism rate and our EL data. You can see on the left that our absenteeism rate is about 5.4%, which I think is still too high. But as compared to the state, which is 9%, we're doing fairly well. I know that district-wide, we struggle with that. And for whatever reason, we just try and do a pretty good job of making sure students come to school I think they have a lot of fun based on the presentation by the kids, so maybe that's a part of it. But we want to bring that number down next year as well. And on the right-hand side, I think since I've been the principal at Newark Junior High, my focus has been on EL students and trying to increase the rate of re-designation for our students and making sure those students are successful. And we've done a good job, and we've kind of fallen a little bit the last couple of years. I lost some really good teachers. who decided to stay home and be parents and just wanted to raise their kids. But it was a big hit to us. So we're working on retraining some teachers to get back to that level. And so I just wanted to show the data as compared to how the state of California looks as well. This is our EL8 data over the last two years. And you can look at this. We had a little drop. from one year to the next, and I attribute that to the loss of some really fabulous teachers, like I just talked about, you know, wanting to stay home and be a parent, which is fabulous. But I don't want to look at it as though it's a negative for us, because we're actually working really hard right now to be consistent, and we're doing readers and writers workshop along with the elementary sites, so we're all speaking the same language, so students will come into junior high school having had at least four years of Readers and Writers Workshop. And so we'll be able to progress a little bit faster. One of our focus for next year is really about reading comprehension instruction and how do we actually move struggling readers at the junior high school level. And so we should see some of that data coming forth in the next two years after we've implemented this program. This is our math as well. And kind of the same thing, you know, students coming into junior high school and we do have a math placement test, as you guys know, trying to put students in the right place and making sure that we help struggling students but also push those students who are able to be pushed. on an average basis yearly about 25 to 37th grade students who take algebra at the junior high school and those students go on to take geometry in eighth grade and then are successful all throughout high school at the upper level as well. So that's something that we should be proud of. I just wanted to throw the sixth grade data in from the math as well because I like to talk about the data in terms of cohorts. So it's difficult to look at data because we're a two-year school, and I appreciate the conversation about six, seven, and eight, because that's what we actually, I believe we need that to be highly successful, because three years has a truly positive impact on students, but also on the parent community as well. So my point is that when you look at year to year, half of our population leaves every year. And so if you look at 7th grade one year to 7th grade the next, it's difficult to compare those because those are two different types of students because it's like you could have a really great 7th grade class one year and a struggling class the next year. And so it's difficult to compare that. But if you look at cohorts from 6th grade and then that next year's 7th grade and 8th grade, you actually see progression in math. And it's difficult to toggle back and forth, but if you have time later, to do that, or I can present that data at some other time. But when you look at the data over time, I believe we do a pretty good job of teaching kids math at the junior high school. My last thing I want to talk about is the positive behavior intervention systems. This is, we spent a lot of time, as every other school did in the district, putting this into place, because we wanted to do it the right way. And one of the things that we were successful doing was getting every teacher on the same page. So we did this experiment. We walked around and we recorded students and we asked them, what are the school rules? Because before we did this, we had a myriad of school rules and students had various answers. And so we realized students should really fully understand what the school rules were. So as every other school has done, we've come up with three school rules. Be safe, be respectful, be responsible. And within those three areas, you can talk about how that looks in the classroom, how it looks in the locker room, how it looks in the quad, how it looks in the cafeteria. So students now can actually tell you what the school rules are, but what they mean and where they are in that area. So we did have a rough start to the school year. Seventh grade class was a little rambunctious. And so it took a full quarter for me and Mr. Matterhorn, the assistant principal, to really kind of crack down. But really what it was about was, having the teachers all on the same page and letting the students know, this is the rule, these are the rules, this is how it works. And when there's a consistency, which we have now from class to class, so for instance, you can't do this in Ms. Jones' class, but you can do this in Mr. Merritt's class, for lack of a better person to choose. Sorry. But my point of that was there's a consistency now that every teacher speaks the same language, so students understand we all speak the same language and they follow that. So what happened when it was rambunctious, we just kind of cracked down. We remained consistent. We have the same tardy policy. So students are in class, on time, and ready to learn. So we have a consistent policy where you have to be in your seat when the bell rings and ready to learn. And every student does it, with the exception of a couple of stragglers here and there. But every single classroom teacher is at their door before the bell rings, greeting students as they walk in, and then when the bell rings, it's on. We go from bell to bell. And so that consistency over time has an impact on students' behavior. And you can see that now at the junior high school, where we had a few altercations early on, and now I think we've had one since January. And so that's really benefited the positive behavior support system. Because the biggest piece of that is being positive. So one thing we didn't talk about was we hand out Google coupons. Catch you being good. So you're being good. Hey, here you go. Here's a coupon. Here's a coupon. And students take those coupons. They can use them to get into the rec room at lunchtime. They can go to a student store, get a pencil eraser. They can get an Otter Pop after school. So there's something that you get that's tangible that students really want. And so we reward positive behavior, which is the entire point of this. It's not really just about discipline. It's about rewarding positive behavior. we got to a point where about 93% of our students have had no referrals over the course of the school year. And that's a really big deal for us. And so I just wanted to point that out, that that's what PBIS really is about. It's not just about discipline. It's about the positiveness. But it's really about the consistency amongst the teachers and students recognize that. And so that's where we are for junior high for this year. It's great. We're student-centered. Students do a lot of work on campus. And I'm going to show you a video right now. It was put together by students. I have one student, Gershon, who's actually doing the end of the year video, but he's not done. So we kind of chopped up and took some video from previous years. So you'll see some individuals that you actually recognize on that video. But he put it together with the help of other students as well. So this is it, New Virginia High School.

[1097] SPEAKER_44: Ha ha ha. ♪ Got that gas all in my feet ♪ ♪ Feel that hot blood in my body ♪ ♪ When it drops, ooh ♪ ♪ I can't take my eyes off of it ♪ ♪ Movin' so phenomenally ♪ ♪ Come on, I'm gonna get it rockin' ♪ ♪ Don't stop, it's another night ♪ ♪ It's another day, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go ♪ It's the magic, it's the magic, it's the magic. And I can see what you do when you dance, dance, dance. You know what you got creeping up on you, so just dance, dance, dance. All those things I shouldn't do, but you dance, dance, dance. And I know how you feel when you're supposed to keep dancing. It's in the air, so my blood is rushing on. Don't need no reason to be in trouble.

[1217] SPEAKER_44: I can't see but you when you dance, dance, dance, feel it I've been creepin' up on you so just dance, dance, dance, y'all All those things I shouldn't do but you dance, dance, dance, feel it Ain't nobody can beat this

[1249] SPEAKER_06: I did want to give props to Ms. Chavez. She had to leave. She was a little too hyper in the front row here earlier. But she's our art teacher, and all that artwork on the back belongs to her students. She does fabulous work with those kids, and she creates really intriguing projects with those kids. So I just had to give her a shout out for that artwork as well. So there it is. Thank you. Thank you.

[1277] Ray Rodriguez: Member Thomas.

[1278] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Wonderful presentation. Thanks. Member John.

[1280] Bowen Zhang: So thank you, Principal. Thank you, Principal Neal and Alyssa, Andrew. Thank you for your presentation. So I do have some questions regarding the math and English dashboard scores. So I want to further disaggregate the data a bit. So if you look at the four core groups within our student body in the junior high, namely the English learner, the disabled children, The social, economically disadvantaged children and Hispanic, these four groups. Last year, all of these four core groups have a decline in performance in both English and math. So can you talk about what could possibly be the cause for this? decline across these four core groups of our main student body in junior high?

[1331] SPEAKER_06: I'll talk about students with disabilities first. Those are our special ed students. And that's a struggle in general for us as far as the resource kids, but also the STC students as well. And the STC Before we adopted Big Ideas Math, we had springboard math at the junior high school, which we kind of had to get rid of because we realized that it was targeted mostly at mainstream kids who could handle math. There was a lot of reading involved in that. And so our SDC and our special ed students really weren't able to access that curriculum as well. And so there's a natural struggle when you're in special ed with those subjects when there's a lot of reading involved. One of our issues also is the computer adaptive test. And so that is hit hard for all of our groups, especially our EL groups. So our EL students are struggling, our beginners and our intermediates. Our advanced EL students actually do fairly well, but it's our beginners and our intermediates that struggle the most. And a lot of it's based on just reading. The Hispanic group, I don't really have the answers to why those particular students struggle other than the fact that All of our EL students, well, 99% of our EL students are Hispanic as well.

[1406] Bowen Zhang: What was the fourth group? Socially economically disadvantaged schools.

[1414] SPEAKER_06: Part of the problem with that group is we're not allowed to know who they are because of privacy issues. So it's always tough. So what we have to do is the processes that we employ to make sure all students are successful, we have to really kind of drill down to analyze data on a weekly basis, primarily in math. So in math, especially, there's analysts of data weekly to try and figure out how students are doing. So what we figured out over the last two years is that our students do well when it comes to written tests. So when they're taking the tests that are standards-based in class, they do well. But then when they take the computer tests, all of a sudden, they all fall apart. And so what we've done this school year to address that is We're giving students more tests on the computer to keep them ready, but making them write down all of their work on paper as well. So in order to get a good grade, you have to do both. And so we've seen success with that over the course of the school year. We'll just see how it looks now, because we're testing this week. So today, we just finished testing. So we'll see if all the work we put in this year to address that issue with all those groups comes into play, because we believe that was primarily the issue. Because the instruction was there, because we see it in a weekly basis when they take their weekly test. But it's all on paper. They're writing it out. They're doing the work. But then when they go to take the test on the computer, They're not following through with that. So we've made sure this year, every single classroom, that they follow through with actually writing it down while they're on the computer as well.

[1504] Bowen Zhang: Okay, so I actually do want to follow up on the math part that you talk about. Because there's this one group in your junior high, not only they're in the blue category in the color range, they're actually improving by more than 12 points. That's namely the Asian American group in the junior high. So generally, we know there will be some gaps between different groups. But they more or less move in the same direction. But last year, you really have this divergent direction where, like I said, the previous four groups, they were declining. And this group is really just improving quite a bit. So going forward, knowing this divergence between different groups, do you have any plan or strategy to help the struggling groups and also at the same time challenge the high-performing groups so they can do more? Or like, how are you going to handle this divergence? Because we generally don't see this kind of divergence. We generally see them moving in the same direction, although we do have some gaps. But they more or less move in the same direction.

[1569] SPEAKER_06: No, that's a very valid point. And I don't have the full answer right this minute, because I hadn't really thought of that. I mean, I've seen it, but I hadn't thought about that as far as this meeting is concerned. But I will say that I think In the end, in math especially, a lot of our, all of our kids take grade level classes or higher. So in our grade level math seven and math eight classes, those are usually our struggling students. And then we have an advanced class in seventh grade, and we have advanced classes in eighth grade. I think in those classes, you end up finding majority Asian students in those classes as well. And so they're able to go faster and move faster throughout the curriculum and so those students were able to perform better on this test but also throughout the year and move faster because the more you know the faster you can go. And so what we deal with a lot of students in 7th grade is students that are still struggling to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. So we spend a lot of time working on that to try and build those prerequisite skills and still move forward at the same time. And that's the only explanation I can give for it is that, because that's what we see literally on a yearly basis.

[1645] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Member Gutierrez.

[1649] SPEAKER_53: Hi, Principal Neal. I want to give you props as well and say thank you for your hard work. I also wanted to add that I think it's very important that students take practice exams in the same conditions as the exams. So the work that you guys are doing to make sure that they're mimicking the same condition as the final exams is very important. And the props of being able to have students say that they're having fun in school is also very important. You don't hear that often. It's, I hate school. I'll have to go to school. So to be able to change that environment and that attitude to have students say, we're excited, and we're happy, and we're having fun at school, keep it up. Thank you. Appreciate that.

[1694] Nancy Thomas: Member Thomas. Mr. Bowen's comments kind of made me think about heterogeneous groupings. And what do you think about that? And what do you think about the benefit of more heterogeneous groupings?

[1713] SPEAKER_06: I can tell you, honestly, over the last couple of years, we've had that discussion. We've seen it. We go to conferences. We went to a presentation where we found out about San Francisco Unified doing that and Berkeley Unified doing that as well. And it's a valid discussion. But I also know that there are parents in Newark of students who are advanced who push that and want that for their students. So for instance, I think it was two or three years ago, we didn't have a seventh grade advanced language arts class because we just felt like students weren't coming in at the advanced level. And I got a lot of pushback from parents because the question that I was asked was, what are you doing for the students who are capable of doing the work? And so I think It's about educating parents about what's best for all students, including their own students. So it's a very valid point that we can actually have. And I'm not against it. I just know that we have to involve the parent community on that and have that discussion prior to doing it.

[1777] Nancy Thomas: And maybe we can also look at the teachers that we assigned to teach our most needy students.

[1785] SPEAKER_06: Well, I can tell you, for instance, when I had a little more FTE to work with, Ms. Haley who is our math department chair, we actually had a class for our lowest performing 7th graders and she at the time, probably still is one of our best math teachers, and she took that on and took those students and over the course of the year she moved those students. So we have done a good job of putting the lowest kids with our best teachers. Two years ago, three years ago, we had Mountain View District come and visit our school to look at our EL program. And I remember the superintendent and the principal were there and they asked me, how do you do this? And I said, my best teachers teach my EL kids. And they went, oh, gotcha. Because sometimes you need the best people to teach the lowest students. And that's how we were able to actually perform so well for years in EL, because of that reason. And so it's kind of the same thing with math. You have to have your best teachers teaching your lowest students. So I'm open for the discussion, definitely.

[1849] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, Mr. Neal. Thank you. Could you have any of your staff that's here, any parents from junior high stand, if they don't mind?

[1856] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, stand up, because there's a lot of people here.

[1868] Ray Rodriguez: I just had a quick question for you. A lot of parents have a lot of anxiety when their sixth grader is getting ready to go to the junior high, as you know. And could you just share what, and I know you have already as far as working with the sixth grade students and parents to kind of ease the tension that the junior high is actually a great place to be?

[1895] SPEAKER_06: Right. So when I arrived here eight years ago, the principal at the time, well before me, was doing site visits at elementary sites. So one of the things I decided to change was to have the sixth graders come to the junior high school and visit. So they can walk around, they can see it, they can walk into a classroom, they can see things and not have to worry about being afraid of it. And that has worked exceptionally well over the last eight years. For the parent piece, I didn't do it as much this year, and that was my fault. I'll go back to it next year. But doing Coffee with the Principal for elementary parents, not so much for my own parents, but for elementary parents to come in and just have a conversation, because they are really anxious. And that happens everywhere across the nation when you go from various levels. And so that's one of the things that we do, well I did, but we also had our incoming 7th grade parent night where we had our counselor there as well and my entire staff to talk to parents and show them what's going on and talk to them. This year I've done a pretty good job of communicating with 6th grade parents and letting them know I can email 6th grade parents now and let them know what's going on so we got a lot of parents for a PTA meeting. We had a PTA drive. We started an actual PTA. We were a parent club, and now we're a PTA. We had 80 members sign up for that, and half of those members were sixth grade parents. And so we brought them in. And the final thing we do to try and make students feel really better is We have web day in the summertime where students come in, 7th grade are web leaders going into 8th grade and the 6th graders come into the junior high for half a day and they spend half a day and they walk around, they get to know the school and they realize who their web leader is and they talk about all the junior high school stuff and then on the first day of school the web leaders have their shirts on so the 6th graders coming in feel worried, then they can go find their web leader or find someone with that blue web shirt on to go, oh, hey, where's K5? Oh, OK. And they let them know. So they have a student on campus that they can go to to feel safe and ask a question, because they spent that time in the summertime with them. And so those are the really big issues that we do to try and make sure students feel safe. The parent piece, it's always tough because parents are always going to be anxious about the next transition stage. But I've tried to make them feel comfortable by allowing them to come on to campus. They can come observe at lunch or whenever they want, just so they can see. Because I have many parents who went to the junior high school a long time ago when the junior high school was still scary. And now when you walk on campus, a lot of parents are like, oh, wow, it's much different now. Because it literally is, I call it, a big elementary school. All the kids are just big elementary school kids. They're just big bodies with the same minds. And they just like to have fun. The boys still want to run around and play tag. And the girls want to be on Snapchat all day. So it's just, so I mean, they're not allowed to, but they want to. So back to your point that they have fun because they do. We try and make it fun. The music in the quad really is a big deal. The kids just love hearing. their music. They get to sit around and chill. Sometimes they dance. We have dance offs. Sometimes we have rap battles and they challenge me and lose. Um, so we just have a good time. I mean, I try to make it a fun place because A lot of people, adults, have really negative memories of junior high slash middle school. It's kind of the worst time. Elementary school, you're cute. Junior high school, you're going through your ugly phase, and then you get cuter in high school. So a lot of people have really negative memories of either bullying or just bad experiences in junior high school. And I try and really take that piece away from kids now so they can have a positive view of junior high school. And I think I did that because when I go to high school and visit those kids, are happy to see me and other staff members. And so that's what we do.

[2135] Ray Rodriguez: Well, there's someone right here that wants to talk to you. Sierra, go ahead. My hero.

[2142] SPEAKER_59: I just want to implore everything that you have done at the junior high and all the staff members. Being a student that went to the junior high, it's hard. I mean, it's tough. It's really nerve wracking. I'm pretty close with all the sixth graders at BGI. And I've talked to them about what they're excited for in their transition, including my brother. And they're just really excited for all the activities. They've heard all good things about the robotics, the STEM, the band, choir, everything. And so being a parent in general, like worrying about the junior high, it's a rough time. It's really figuring yourself out for these kids. And this program, there was no instance where if a student just went to a staff member, they are totally capable of sitting in the classroom and just having lunch with them. I'm still really close with a lot of my teachers there, including a lot of students that are my age, seniors, where they're coming to our graduations. There is no better staff than the staff at the junior high, and they've really put in their effort to make sure that all the students feel welcome and really, like, are able to succeed in whatever environment they are in and whatever education level they're at. And I just want to implore you for that, and thank you again.

[2223] Ray Rodriguez: Just one more thing and let you go. I just personally want to thank you for your strong stance on anti-bullying and make sure there's no bullying in the school. I'm going to start crying. But my granddaughter, as you know, went through a tough time when she was in seventh grade. And that seems to be the toughest time. And I know that at the junior high level, whether the teachers and all our employees go the extra mile, because that's probably the toughest age group to teach and to monitor. And kids were making fun of her skin color and everything. And she was having a rough time. And you got right in there and worked with the kids that were bullying her and with her. And she's in Northridge right now starting. And from then on, everything, eighth grade was beautiful. And we're going to have our promotion in a couple of weeks. Let me know. And I just want to thank you as a Grandparent parent on what you've done at the junior high and your whole staff and you guys, you know What you're doing there is wonderful and we really appreciate it.

[2293] SPEAKER_06: I appreciate that race seriously sincerely I saw her, you know, like a few months ago because she works she was working at Fremont Rec Center, so it was good to see her. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.

[2305] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you very much. Excellent OK, with that, we shift gears a little bit. And so we have seven. We have seven individuals that have filled out these cards. And if you don't know, Ms. Parks right there can tell you where they're at. Or Ms. Eustace in the back. So if you want to fill these out. What we do is we allow you three minutes In this case, this is public comment on non-agenda items. So this is anything that you want to talk about that's not on the agenda. And so we have seven. So we're good, because we normally try to keep it to a half hour. And if it does go longer than that, then we go to the end of the meeting. So we try to be courteous under three minutes. When there's 20 seconds left, maybe Member Gutierrez can give you a little nod or something so that you can finish your thoughts. And if somebody needs a translator, our superintendent can find someone. And just about everyone that I see in here speak English real well, but if you do need a translator, aqui estamos para ayudarlo. So we hear that. We want to make this whole thing positive and I know that there's a lot going on right now and it leads to some tension and I've been on the board a long time and I've been president a few times, so it's all about being courteous to each other. So with that, Ms. Parks, you're first. Public comment on non-agenda items. Welcome.

[2437] Cindy Parks: Good evening. I would just like to get a clarification, if I could. And I know you can't answer now, so I'm looking forward to this being at a later date. Is at the end of the closed session, when you came out and announced at the last meeting, you said that the superintendent's contract was extended by one year. I was under the impression that that needed to be agendized during a regular board meeting and that you would need to publicly vote on that. So I was a little surprised that you just came out and announced that that had taken place and there was no vote.

[2468] Ray Rodriguez: That was my, if you don't mind, that was my screw up. We had just finished the evaluation and the board, it was a positive evaluation. So I went right there with... You're eating into my three minutes. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, you can have more time. I just want you to know that it will be in public because that's what we do with contracts. You can have as much time as you want as far as I'm concerned.

[2494] Cindy Parks: Go ahead. I appreciate you taking ownership of that. I'm sure the community does also. There was another item that I brought up with the previous two meetings. I don't do this just on behalf of myself. I have other people in the community that ask me. because there is a large contingency of the community that does watch online or they do watch the videos at another date. And the issue regarding the Dr. Bernard being at the high school, yes, I'm going to bring that up again, I'm sorry. But we finally got an answer at the last meeting, and the answer that we received at the May 2nd meeting stated that Dr. Bernard doesn't have to receive board approval as a substitute administrator. He fills out a time card. However, your board policy 4121 states, under hiring, the superintendent or designee shall recommend candidates for substitute or temporary positions for board approval, and shall ensure that all substitutes and temporary teachers are employees are assigned in accordance with the law and authorization specified in the credential. So just for clarification, this is the procedure, and apparently that step was missed with Dr. Bernard. He was not listed on the PAL. If that is how he is, if he is not under contract, then he should have gone through the PAL system and been approved by you. Or if he had a contract, that contract would have been approved by you. don't know if there's any other individuals out there that are working for the district that were not approved by you, that would seem to be a problem. Thank you.

[2589] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Bratz. And after Mr. Bratz, Ms. Hopkins. Welcome.

[2608] SPEAKER_10: Good evening. My name is Paul Brettson. For a short time, I was the principal of the Newark Memorial High School, a job I cherished. The staff I worked with and the students and parents I served inspired me to be a better educator. As the Newark Memorial principal, my message was simple. Value each other. Put students first. Make our school into something our students and parents can be proud of. This message was abruptly silenced on November 15th. The district website claims some of the core beliefs are shared accountability and transparency. Board members, as I address you this evening, I ask yourselves, are we being true to our core values? On November 15th, I was placed on administrative paid leave. I asked what policies, laws, or regulations I violated. I received no answer. I was told I can resign with one month's pay. I refused because I had done nothing wrong, did not know what I was being accused of, and had an assignment as Newark Memorial Principal through the end of the year. In January, I was told by my lawyer and the district's lawyer that they had agreed that I would return to work on January 15th. However, the day before I was supposed to return, I was told the district was considering other options. This told me that even though the district's lawyers told them there was no case, The district decided to pursue my termination regardless. In February, I was served with what's called a statement of charges. This is what districts provide when they intend to fire somebody. The statement of charges claimed I violated various education codes, yet provided absolutely no evidence. At that time, I thought it was an intimidation tactic to force my resignation. we presented our case before a neutral district employee to the extent any district employee could be truly neutral. After our presentation, even a member of upper level management recommended the charges be reduced. Regardless, the district pushed forward. It was only when I requested a hearing in open session that could be heard by the public, the charges were magically dropped. Ask yourself, what happened there? Ask yourself, is that true to our core beliefs of accountability and transparency? But it gets worse. Even though I had done nothing wrong, I was provided notice of reassignment and forced to remain on paid administrative leave. Excuse me, Mr. President.

[2779] Ray Rodriguez: Go ahead. Just a time. Oh, just a time. You're interjecting, please. Thank you.

[2784] SPEAKER_10: Thank you. Please understand exactly what that means. The district is paying my salary to do nothing. The district is paying somebody else to do a job for which I am ready and able. I have a stain on my professional record, and for what? All charges were dropped.

[2802] Ray Rodriguez: Over the last several months, Mr. Barrett, I'm sorry, your time's up. Can you let us know? No, we got, no, no. Hold on. Hold on a second. Hold on. No, no. Can you tell me how much more time you need, sir?

[2814] SPEAKER_10: A minute. OK, thank you. Over the last several months, I've asked myself what to do. Do I take the path of least resistance, shut up, and do whatever I can to salvage my career? Or do I speak out and do what little I can to make sure this doesn't happen to others? I found the answer in our students. We tell our students to do what is right and not what is convenient. How can I, in good conscience, tell our students to do what is right and not what is convenient if I don't model that behavior? My choice became clear. I stand before you risking my career, not because it's convenient, but because it's the right thing to do. In closing, I'd like to recognize the staff, parents, and students who have reached out to me during the time I've been away. It's humbling to know that I've been in your thoughts and prayers. This past week, I've had the opportunity to start telling my story, and it's been a healing experience. In order for me to move on, I need to forgive those that have caused harm to my family and me. Please know that I forgive you. The Newark Unified School District has an ethical obligation to teach. We now have an opportunity to model for our students what we ask of them every day, to learn from our mistakes. The question now before us is, will we? Thank you.

[2929] SPEAKER_53: If I may, Mr. President, just as a point of order, I understand the importance of Mr. Brett's having to speak, but I also want to respect the fact that all of the other members of the community only have three minutes to speak. So if we can continue to abide by that rule, please.

[2943] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Thank you. And just to be clear, any individual can come up and talk about themselves if they want and address the board, but we as a board and our administration cannot because that's a privacy issue and it's personnel, okay. So that's why we can't have a dialogue, okay. Ms. Hopkins.

[2971] SPEAKER_30: Hi everybody, I'm Kelly Hopkins. I'm a parent of a student at Newark Memorial High School and I'm a business owner who has donated a lot of money to the high school. Mr. Bretz brought up some extremely valid points, and I'm totally moved by what he said, as I think a lot of you are. And I'd like to know, I have donated over $30,000 to the high school in the last four and a half years, to Newark Memorial, and I wanna know, what are the hidden costs in the money, the employee time, the morale associated with the district's pursuit of Mr. Bretz? To be specific, I wanna know, I want you to quantify the legal expenses and staff time, and I'd like an answer to that. I'd also like to know if the charges were dropped against Mr. Brett, if the charges were dropped, why is Mr. Brett still on administered paid leave? As a taxpayer and a parent and a donator to the school, I'm super curious as to why we're actually paying for three principals. And I bring this up because I received two documents with two different principals' names on it. Ms. Paula Banquiero and Dr. Bernard, I called the school, nobody knows who the principal is. They have no idea who this woman is. So who is running the ship at the high school? No one seems to know. More so, is the district doubling down on a bad decision in getting rid of the principal? Or are you guys hiding something? Because that's what it feels like. I'd also like to know if you as board members had any idea of the information that was just presented when you made your decision to deny the tort for Mr. Brett, and why has it taken since November of 2018 My final question to you is it appears that every administrator at Newark Memorial and many district employees, including the neutral employee who recommended that Mr. Bretz's charges be reduced have either retired or resigned. Is there a connection between Mr. Bretz's administrative leave, his tort claim against the district, and the mass exodus of administrative personnel from Newark? In closing, I just want to state that Mr. Bretz was an amazing principal. He touched many of the teachers, students, and the parents. in ways that you will never understand. He was on campus all the time. He was visible. He was positive. You guys made a great Aaron Judgment. And I hope that you realize the damage that you have done, the confusion for the students, and the lack of communication that you have had with the parents is ridiculous. You need to take a page out of his playbook and look to see how he communicated with us. Because it was constant communication, whether it be through email, text messages, positive affirmations that were available to both students and parents. You guys need to step up your game. It is a sad state that you guys are in. And what has occurred at the high school is a travesty. You guys gotta clean up your ass. That's all I have to say.

[3156] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Mandarita Moreno.

[3165] SPEAKER_50: Good evening. Welcome. Good evening members of the board. I am very nervous again, but I am here again to fight for my rights and the rights of others, of getting better paid, better wages. Again, I like to repeat myself by saying that we are hard workers. We're committed. We work with certified staff. We really, really try hard every day. We are very loyal. working for Newark Unified School District. I feel that we deserve to be treated just as equal as certified staff. Again, I keep mentioning them because I kind of feel that they get a lot more benefits than we do. And I understand they have college, they have more education than we do. I went to college too. So I could be considered certified, but I am not. But I do do my job and I see others doing the same thing as me. We work super hard, like I said, I just feel that we need to get better treatment. I just feel that we're just not being heard. And I don't understand why. I mean, we're just trying to make a living. And again, someone mentioned the COLA, which is where we're supposed to be. And we're way below that. And it's important that, to me, it's important that you understand that if we stick around, it's because we love our job. Well, I'm not going to say that I deserve, but we all deserve better pay to stick around because it's getting more difficult and more difficult every day. Thank you so much.

[3275] Ray Rodriguez: Miss Christina Sierra. Welcome.

[3292] SPEAKER_27: Thank you. Good evening. I'm Christina Sierra. I'm a special education paraeducator for 13 years with the district, and I currently work at Newark Memorial High School. Sorry, I'm a little nervous. Mr. Paul Bretz is a good man. And I get emotional telling this because it's not fair what's happening to him or what happened to him. It's not fair to our kids. It's not fair to our staff. In the 13 years that I have been in this district, he is hands down the best principal I have ever worked with. He was involved in our school. He made our kids involved. He included our kids, special ed especially, who is usually not included in a lot of things. When I came to work, I felt encouraged. I felt empowered. I felt inspired because Mr. Bretz was going to be on campus. He made us feel safe. He let us know how much he cared. Morning announcements, he would tell us how he felt that we were in a safe place, that he was a safe person to come and talk to. And that made not only our kids feel safe, but staff as well. So this is a mistake. Mr. Bretz needs to be at Newark Memorial High School. That is his home. That's where he belongs. So that's what I wanted to say about Mr. Bretz. Thank you. Second of all, what I have been thinking about tonight is we are Newark Unified School District, correct? I think the board has forgotten what the word unified means. We need to work together to come to an agreement. We deserve better than this. Our children deserve better than this. And as a parent, I may get in trouble for saying this, but my son is a 16-year-old sophomore, not in this district. I'm just going to leave it at that. So, we need to remember that, what it means to be unified and work together as a team, as a community, and please keep that in mind. We are Newark Unified School District. Thank you.

[3456] Ray Rodriguez: Mr. Juan Montalvo.

[3465] SPEAKER_37: Good evening, members of the board.

[3467] Ray Rodriguez: Good evening.

[3468] SPEAKER_37: My name is Juan Montalvo, and I work for the MOT as a ground maintenance. The reason because I'm here in front of you, members of the board, is to bring out the necessity that is so important for all of us that you, members of the board, understand the need of you, of our certified people. We know that, and you guys, members of the board also, too, know that it's so critical is living in the Bay Area. It's very expensive, and I think We, and all of us here, in all the departments, we need a better pay, a better center where we can live a little bit more comfortable in this part of the Bay Area. And it's very hard. Sometimes I want to bring out to your attention, when we are in all the departments, I'm pretty sure you already know that we are shorthanded. And I want to put my example on myself. About two weeks and a half, I was with pneumonia. And when I came back to work, and we love our district, and I love my district. And everything on the site that I take care as a ground maintenance, look like this, and things overgrow. But we put an effort to try to start, you know, put everything in order. And we did, and we tried. Once again, please, members of the board, we want to express ourselves to consider to hire more people for cover all those positions that are open or empty, that have been covered. And not only that, but to have a better pay for those that are coming and for those that are already working. That's all I have to say, members of the board.

[3601] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Ms. Doot, Noel Doot.

[3619] SPEAKER_32: Welcome. Thank you. My name is Noel Doot. I live and work in Newark. I have worked for NUSD for 28 years, 25 of them as a special education aide. In 1978, when my husband and I bought a home here, We had a lot of macaroni and cheese. I wanted new countertops in my home, but I knew I had to wait and prioritize because that's how I was raised, that you don't spend money you don't have. Years ago, I made to the then sitting NUSD board some really wacky revenue suggestions. They included no new non-mandated conferences or programs for one year. Try it for one year and then see where you are. It got wackier. I suggested at the time that instead of having two, three, four, five assistant superintendents, we hire one superintendent and have that person do those jobs. We knew it was a lot to do. One year. Flip it. My husband and I suggested hire two assistant superintendents, not a main superintendent, see if they can balance the jobs that need to be done. Try it for a year. It'll help our revenue. Then I got crazy. I said, let's all as a district agree to freeze all of our salaries for one year. Well, my union laughed me out the door. The sitting board laughed me out the door, not surprisingly. You must have cut some costs because when the classified CPI mandatory training was given this year. There were no muffins, no coffee, no fruit. I can live without that. However, that room had icicles in it. It was freezing. And we asked, could we turn the heat on? Oh, no. No, no, no. Because when you turn the heat on in there, the little room in there gets like an oven. All right. OK. You know, we teach ratios in school. 5% to my salary. would net me $12 a month. The ratio to administrative workers and credentialed workers doesn't even compare. We are tired. I am tired. And I am losing my passion after 25 years, and that is not good for the children. There is so much good in this district. But it's overshadowed by the continued nonsense that is allowed to happen. And I'm embarrassed by a district that refuses to fix holes in walls, broken desks, etc., etc., etc., but continues to entertain a shiny new district office. All this touchy-feely fantasy by Atis, a workshop I attended. You know, it would be great. It would be just as great as when I wanted my new countertops, but we need to wait. I got 15 seconds from two weeks ago. We need to wait until we can afford it and can responsibly pay our bills. I implore you. to prioritize spending in a far different fashion than you have. Thank you. Thank you.

[3864] Ray Rodriguez: Ms. Eustace. And then Mr. Merritt. And that's it. That's the last speakers we have.

[3885] SPEAKER_48: About a week and a half ago, I met with my members of CSCA Chapter 208. My members confirmed loudly that they are not happy with the offer of a half a percent on and a half a percent off the salary schedule. You received 3%. I find it not amusing that that money went somewhere, but it's not coming to us. It's time that you consider your employees, all of your employees. We're not asking to be at the top of the classified salary schedule here in the Bay Area. We're not asking for that. We have classified employees who are working two and three jobs. I know of one person that's working eight hours here and doing two other jobs in order to pay for what they make here in our district pays their rent only. They have to do other jobs in order to have food, in order to have PG&E. They have to do that in order to survive. You may not have seen the soup line that we had tonight. We had fun with it. But sadly enough, a lot of our employees are having to go to the food bank pantries to get food to supplement their income. That's happening here. It's not funny, but it's happening. We're not receiving adequate salaries anymore. We feel as if we're at the bottom of the barrel. What we're asking for is not unreasonable. It is more than fair. Do the right thing. Reconsider. Give us an adequate salary increase now. It's the fair thing to do. Please. Thank you.

[4026] Ray Rodriguez: Mr. Merritt.

[4034] SPEAKER_36: I should run for office. OK, so there's two things that I want to talk about, and they're not agenda items. Thank you. Number one. When we changed our board meetings or your board meetings to Thursday, we forgot to take into account some little things like open house. Tonight, we had two elementary school open houses. And you'll see a little sea of red in the back. Some of those, most of those teachers were at their open house tonight. many hours preparing, and yet they're still here. Because there is an agenda item on the board later that affects those teachers, those students, and those families. Shame on you for putting it on an agenda item on a day when so many had other responsibilities. Number two, I think I fell asleep last time, and I apologize for that. I really wanted to talk about your approval of your changing your policy on grants and crowdsource funding. And it's ridiculous that you think that you need to manage those things because what are my treasures are somebody else's junk. And so if I spend time, my own time, out there asking people to give money to my classroom, I'm going to use that material to the best of my ability. And I may take it to my next classroom, or I may leave it behind. But I'm going to tell you that of every classroom that I've moved into, I've had to throw away 90% of what was left in the classroom because it didn't apply to me. And to have extra responsibility of asking permission and validating that it's worth my own time, which is off the clock, is ridiculous. So my last DonorsChoose project was funded. I paid the last $146, and I'm going to write my thank you notes, and I'm going to close the account. And if I need something for my class, then you will fund it, or the kids will go without. OK. I have 30 seconds left. Rosa Parks said, the only tired I was was tired of giving in. And I am not tired of giving in yet. Yes.

[4214] Ray Rodriguez: OK, we now move to 8.1, superintendent report. Superintendent.

[4221] SPEAKER_38: Thank you, President Rodriguez, members of the board, ladies and gentlemen. I just have a few items tonight for the board to think about. We would like to have a special meeting per the board request. And a couple of dates we're looking at would be May 21st or 22nd. This special meeting would be specifically to look at budget and to look at potential budget options and reduction. Excuse me, superintendent.

[4250] Ray Rodriguez: We're going to take a moment. Those of you who are leaving, because it's hard to hear the superintendent. So we just take a moment. I think we can hear you, superintendent. Go ahead.

[4277] SPEAKER_38: OK. So per board request, we're trying to schedule a special meeting to have a deeper dive into budget reduction ideas and cut lists and looking at all of the things that need to be weighed as we look at making reductions for the 1920, 21, or actually, is it 1920? Yeah, 2021 school year. I apologize. And the dates we're looking at that we're considering for the special meeting would be either May 21 or May 22nd, I don't know what the availability of the board would be on those days, but we wanted to begin having a deeper discussion. And the reason we wanted it sooner in May is that we know that we want to have no surprises for you as we come towards, what's the date with the June, June 3rd? Adopted budget June 3rd or June 6th? June 6th. June 6th is the adopted budget, so this was an effort to try to spend some more time with the board specifically looking at those. So if the board could take a moment and look at their calendar. What day are you proposing? Again, May 21st or May 22nd?

[4349] Nancy Thomas: May 21st works better. May 22nd, there's an LCAP meeting that maybe staff wants to go to. Other board members?

[4360] Bowen Zhang: 21st is a Wednesday, right?

[4362] Nancy Thomas: No, Tuesday. 21st, Tuesday. 21st is a Tuesday?

[4364] Bowen Zhang: Yeah, 22nd is a Wednesday. OK, 21st works.

[4367] SPEAKER_30: 21st is OK?

[4373] SPEAKER_38: Member Rodriguez and Member Gutierrez, what do you think about 21st? It would be the time up to the board. Did you say about the 21st?

[4381] Elisa Martinez: Yeah, the 21st. I can do that. I'll be coming from Emeryville, so I would prefer a little later. 5.30 at the earliest for me.

[4392] SPEAKER_53: How long do you think we need?

[4394] SPEAKER_38: I'd like to get at least a couple hours. These are heavy conversations. 5.30 is OK.

[4403] Nancy Thomas: No, 5.30.

[4404] SPEAKER_38: 5.30 is OK. It's up to the board.

[4406] Nancy Thomas: Or even 6 for me.

[4407] SPEAKER_38: The goal is to have the team there.

[4410] Bowen Zhang: How late can you start? If it's going to be a couple of hours.

[4414] SPEAKER_38: I could start at 9 PM. Just kidding. I won't be here. If you want to start at 6 and go till 8, we can make that work. I think for me, the time doesn't matter because it's important that you guys can be there to have the conversation. So it's really up to the board. I'll make my. day work, well, what you need.

[4434] Nancy Thomas: 530? Yeah, 530.

[4438] SPEAKER_53: 530. 530's fine.

[4440] SPEAKER_38: OK. 530, 730.

[4441] SPEAKER_53: 530 to 730. OK.

[4443] SPEAKER_38: OK, would you note that, please, Sarah? Thank you very much for that. Next topic is some next steps with the board retreat. I do have a handout that I will share. Well, let me wait on the handout. Been trying to secure a facilitator for the next board team retreat, our governance retreat. Mr. Steve Ladd is not available on this date, but I still want to see if this date's available for you because I want to find a different facilitator. And the reason I'm trying to do it sooner is that if we select a facilitator prior to June 30th, CCEE will pay for that. So that's part of it. The day I'm proposing is Saturday, June 22nd. So I don't know if that's available for you guys to have a retreat on a Saturday. I know that a couple of members have expressed interest with me to work on the contents of that day to get some real clear measurables and some team goals as well as some goals for the district. Does that work for most of you, the Saturday, the 22nd? Any preference on time of day, start time, end time?

[4521] Bowen Zhang: Can we start in the afternoon?

[4524] SPEAKER_38: Noon to four, something like that?

[4525] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, that's hard for me. I like the nine to three. That allows us six hours to really get into it.

[4533] SPEAKER_53: I like the noon to four.

[4537] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, noon to four is fine with me.

[4539] SPEAKER_38: Other members, what do you feel? That's fine with me. Maybe five, let me put together a proposal. OK, so Sarah, would you note that Saturday, June 26?

[4548] Ray Rodriguez: I do have someone I was going to, and maybe Member Thomas can chime in on this. When you came, we had that workshop done by the attorney, Skull Hine, I think, Laura, remember? She did the retreat for us. Yeah, she was good. Yeah, she was good. She was very good. Laura? Conhine, I think, and she has Mesa in her name.

[4577] SPEAKER_38: I can research that.

[4578] Ray Rodriguez: No, no, I'll send you the info. I have it. She did the workshop for Loney, and then she did ours. And you were there, I think.

[4585] SPEAKER_38: One of the rules of the funding source is it should be someone that's either an AXA member or a CSBA member so that they will pay for it. But there might be another list of names we could look at.

[4597] Ray Rodriguez: She might be one of those. We don't know. She might be. Because she's done workshops.

[4600] Nancy Thomas: Well, I'm not sure then it's the one I'm thinking of.

[4602] Vicenta Ditto: No.

[4604] Nancy Thomas: isn't the one that, not the one that came to the Sillman Center.

[4612] Ray Rodriguez: No, the one that was recommended by Vivian with Ohlone.

[4617] SPEAKER_53: Just for the interest of time, is this something that we can discuss later?

[4620] SPEAKER_38: Yeah. I'm glad we have time.

[4621] Nancy Thomas: Please let me know. I'll put it down.

[4625] SPEAKER_38: So please hold from noon to 5, just in case. Right, we're good. And we'll send out an update.

[4631] Ray Rodriguez: I think the preference was noon to four. I know, I'm trying to squeeze in an hour. OK, that's fine.

[4636] SPEAKER_38: Noon to four, I heard you. The last item that is on my report, I do have a couple others. But in the interest of time, I'm going to hold those for next time. I do have a report for you just for information that's coming on what I did at CCEE, what the status is. I'll be bringing that back to the next student superintendent report. Could you share that with us at Friday update? Yeah, I can send it to you as a Friday update as well. Update of city licensing agreement, which is attached to the agenda under this category. This is not for action. It's information only. I wanted to put it in front of the board. And if any of the members of the committee want to chime in, I just wanted to share that we're close. We're going back and forth with the city. I've been working with Mr. Banoon, and I think we're within 95% completion. But I just wanted to share that that's the current version, and more to come soon.

[4688] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you much.

[4690] SPEAKER_38: That concludes my report if there's no questions for me.

[4693] Ray Rodriguez: No, that's fine. Thank you, Member Gutierrez, for keeping us on track. 9.1, staff report. Associate Superintendent Salinas. English learners roadmap and programs update.

[4710] SPEAKER_31: Yes, good evening, board president, members of the board, community. This evening, Ms. Robin Sert, who is our director of special projects, will give an update on the work that she's been doing with our teachers, with our administrators, and will give us a really great picture as the next steps as we start to look at programs for English language learners.

[4732] Ray Rodriguez: Welcome, Ms. Sert.

[4735] SPEAKER_18: Well, thank you. Thank you, Board President Rodriguez, board members. Superintendent Sanchez and Executive Cabinet, I have the honor tonight to actually share with you our EL master plan. Back in the fall, I shared with you the updated EL roadmap, and I wanted to follow up with you. Can you hit present? Okay. All right. While she's working on that, I did, yeah.

[4764] SPEAKER_53: Just out of respect for our speakers, I know a conversation in the public, if it could just be lowered, please. Thank you very much.

[4772] SPEAKER_18: Thank you. So we annually update our EL Master Plan, but we have not done a complete update for at least 10 years. And so I've been working with staff this year to update our EL Master Plan. I'm presenting tonight to share with you some of the highlights that we've been working on. But we will be bringing this plan to you in June for your approval. I just wanted to highlight it because I know the next two board meetings are going to be very full. So I wanted to give you the highlights of the work that's been happening. I'm presenting tonight, but I want to share with you behind the scenes work. I've had Miss Jessica Tomasini from Snow, an ELD intervention teacher. Ms. Corey Cruz from Graham, an intervention ELD teacher, and Ms. Jeannie Chung, our ELD lead at the high school, have all been working with me. We've spent several hours and days updating our plan to be current with the current policies and current instructional programs. So tonight, I'm just going to highlight for you really what's going to be in the plan. Some changes, as I said, it hasn't had a full update for at least 10 years. And so in the new plan, you're going to see the English learner roadmap. And I'm going to talk just briefly about that. The new standards and framework, the new assessment, which is called the LPAC, the initial and summative and what that process looks like, and then our instructional programs. In addition, I did want to say we are also getting support from Ms. Miranda Dinsmore who helps us with all of our EL data as well as helping us update our plan. We will be taking this plan to our DLAC for input as well as our EL liaisons. So really looking district wide, getting input from all of our stakeholders on this plan before we put it into place. So I just wanted to remind you the call to action that happened in July of 2017. We shifted our policy from Prop 58 to Prop 227, and really looking at our English learners as an asset to all of our districts. And the state has now created a roadmap for us. The exciting thing about the roadmap is it's the vision and mission and the guiding principles but it allows districts autonomy to create the program that's going to best support our English learners. So I took a look at all of the guiding principles and really narrowed them down so I could share with you really what is at the heart of the work for our English learners. And the really the most exciting shift is that, as I said, our students are assets to our district. we have to move from the deficit mindset, from the mindset of I have an English learner in my class to I'm excited to have an English learner in my class and how am I going to support them? How are we going to positively use their culture in our class to impact all students? And so really shifting that mindset to be an asset-based education for our English learners. Also a shift is the sociocultural competence and that's really fostering positive attitudes among students regarding their own as well as others diverse and complex cultures. So it's the celebration of the diversity that all of our students bring and how are we going to bring that into the classroom and celebrate it and honor it and learn from each other. And then another important shift is the alignment and articulation. We really need to have an alignment TK-12. And at the end, I will share with you what our roadmap and vision is for our English learners. But again, this is the roadmap from the state, and it's really looking at making sure we have an alignment. Again, there's a big focus with the new roadmap on bilingualism. Actually, it's on multilingualism and biliteracy. And it's really looking at that all of our students have an opportunity to learn languages and skills in more than one language. And we will be looking at that. It's up to you. Do you want to share now?

[5038] SPEAKER_31: I think some of the deep work that Ms. Sturt has done and also our principals have started to look at, and we heard from the board, how do we start to look at a model program and bringing dual immersion to our district? So you all approved a board policy that allowed us to do that moving forward in the past. But we're looking at, we're taking a team of teachers from Schilling Elementary to go look at what dual immersion could look like in our district, to look at a planning year for next year. But first we had to give the background and support to our teachers to really learn more about it. So we will be taking a team this summer. We will also invite the board, if the board would like to join us, it's fairly local, to learn a little bit more about the best practices that our neighbors have done. In my background, I started two dual immersions. One was Mandarin English and one Spanish English. And so it can definitely be done. And this is really looking at 21st century skills and what the state is telling us. This really can put our work moving forward.

[5099] SPEAKER_18: The next piece is rigorous academics for all. And again, this is a really important piece to highlight is that our English learners deserve a rigorous academic experience just like all of our students. So ensuring that all of our students have the appropriate learning experiences wherever they are in their learning. We're focusing on academic language as well as academic achievement across the curriculum. This is really about integrating our students versus separating our students. And then finally, systematic support. The professional development that we need to provide our teachers and our staff on the shift of the roadmap is going to be key and critical to our next steps. So in 2012, we actually had state adopted standards for English learners. And then in 2014, they adopted the framework and they married the two together. So the California standards are designed to work in tandem. the California EL standards are designed to work in tandem with the ELA standards. And so that's the figure that you see here is on how it all works together. And I'm gonna break it down for you in the next slide, but it's about providing a robust, comprehensive instructional program for our English learners. The growing research shows, I know when I went to school, what we were all shared and we studied was that it takes three to five years to gain another language. The growing research is showing it takes four to seven years. So it takes a lot longer for our students to learn another language. And that English language development proficiency, there's benefits from the coherent and aligned instruction, as I shared before, and can take place as an integrated process. The shift that we're making as a district is that it's happening simultaneously. At the same time our students are provided ELD intensive support. It shouldn't happen in isolation and it shouldn't be one or the other. It's happening simultaneously. And then again the benefits of bilingualism and then differentiating the support we give for our students. OK, so another highlight in our roadmap is understanding the new assessment, the LPAC, English Language Proficiency Assessment of California. And so this replaced the old assessment, which was called CELT. And so the process that, how it works in our districts, so you have some background if you're, for your knowledge and to be able to share with your constituents, is that it all starts with a home language survey. When our families register, you fill out a home language survey. And if you mark any other language in the first three, then we are required by the state to assess you with English and whatever the current English language assessment is currently it's the LPAC and it's the initial assessment that we provide. If you mark number four that you that another language may be spoken in the home that's when we do a little further research and interview with the families and dig a little bit deeper. but we are required by law for the first three. We cannot change that home language survey. So when parents are filling them out, I know there's been a little bit of hesitation in our families of being honest. We want our families to be honest because we want to provide every child with the services that they need. to strengthen either their English language skills or whatever support they need. And so the home language survey is the first indicator for us of the support we need to provide for the students. So the first thing we'll do is provide them the initial assessment, which has to happen within the first 30 days. of the student registering with us. So that can happen any time of the year. Our biggest initial assessments happen in the fall because that's when most of our students come. But if a student came and there were still 30 days left of school, we would have to do the initial LPAC with them. And based on those initial results, a student is either determined, they call it an IFEP, Initially Fluent English Proficient, or an English Learner, Novice as a Beginner, or Intermediate. And if a child is scored as a Novice or Intermediate, they will also be given the Summative LPAC Assessment within the same year. So typically it's the fall and then the spring. The spring is when we give the Summative Assessment, But if a student comes in February and we give them that initial assessment and they're identified as an English learner, they will have to take that summative that could be within a few weeks or a few months. And these are all the requirements that are required of us. These aren't Things that we can change. After a student takes the summative LPAC, they are scored. And those scores are already coming in from this year for us. It's very quick that it happens. And they are given a level that they're at. Level one is minimally developed English proficiency. Level two somewhat. Level three moderately. And level four is well developed. And then we go through the reclassification process, which I'll go into a little bit deeper. Within the LPAC, there are the four levels that I just shared with you, and those are correlated with the ELD standards. So the standards are what we're focusing on in the classroom. The LPAC is the assessment piece, the summative assessment piece. And these are called the performance level descriptors. And so students as far as the standards are in one of the categories, emerging, expanding, or bridging. And that really explains what particular skills that they are working on. So a student who is emerging is typically progressing very quickly. and moving through the performance levels, a student who is expanding is challenged to increase their English skills, and then a bridging student is bridging over into where we would start to consider for reclassification. And this is how, in this chart, you'll see how the LPAC and the performance level descriptors are correlated with each other. So that's the assessment. And once a student is identified as an English learner, the instructional programs that we have here in Newark, these are the goals for our English learners. So when we present the master plan to you, it's about a 55-page document. You'll see these goals outlined in there, and these are for all of our English learners. We want to provide them access to high-quality standards. We want to offer research-based programs, provide process for monitoring the effectiveness of our programs, engage our English learners in meaningful cultural, social, and academic opportunities, provide ongoing high-quality staff development for our teachers and our staff, to ensure that we're utilizing the strategies that we've had the opportunity to have professional development on, and then increase English learner participation in advanced and academic programs and enrichment opportunities. And our goal is to strengthen parent-guardian involvement and engagement in the educational process. So in our instructional programs, it's important to understand that with the shift, you used to probably hear the term, those of you that have been in education for a while, sedai, so sheltered instruction. That is no longer a term that we use. Now we have integrated and designated English language development. And this is the shift that came with a common core and the framework. And this is really about, there's three focus areas. One is learning to use English purposefully, the why. The second one is interacting in meaningful ways, the how. How do you use language to collaborate with others? And finally, understanding how English works, the what. Understanding structures of text. Understanding and expanding enriching ideas. And so it's really what you're seeing with this shift is the shift that we had with the Common Core as well. It's about enhancing the language through collaboration, through understanding the purpose and the why behind utilizing language. And the two terms you'll hear is integrated and designated ELD. Integrated is defined by, it's across all content areas. So regardless if a student is in ELA or a student is in math, there should be time in the classroom that's integrated where our English learners are receiving additional support in the classroom. It's integrated into the content areas. It's not something happening separate. It's happening within and across the content areas. Designated time is a particular time where we support our students on their skills with English. Integrated time is content-based. Designated time is about developing proficiency with their English language skills. And so it's a protected time during the school day. It does not mean it's happening outside of the classroom. It could look like small group instruction in the classroom. It could look like a pull-out program. It looks different at every site, but it's really a protected time focusing on developing English language skills. So our recommendations as a team was the daily minimum time to devote to designated time. Because we know that there's integration happening in the classroom, but we want to make sure we're focusing on the designated time for developing English language proficiency. So our recommendations are a minimum of 150 minutes per week. Remember, this is the targeted time. depending on where they are as in the performance level indicators. So are they a student who's emerging? That's a student who's really going to get, particularly at minimum, 150 minutes a week. If a student's at bridging, that's going to look very different. Additionally, additional time should be allocated for our students who, like as I said, are emerging and expanding, but bridging, the time will be less. And then at the secondary, it's typically a daily block or a period at the junior high and high school. So some of our instructional programs, the overview of just quickly of what we offer here in Newark. We have a newcomer education and that's really a newcomer is defined as a student who's been in the US less than two years. And so, and our newcomers come in with different education as well. And so, there are two types of newcomers we have. We have students who have had adequate formal education. And so, we provide support for them in one way. And then, we have students who come who maybe who had limited or breaks. Oh, I thought you were saying. Finished. Have limited or interrupted education prior to coming to the United States.

[5803] SPEAKER_38: So just a question, on the newcomer intake, are we also looking at assessing knowledge in core areas? Like a student may not understand English, I get that, but math is pretty universal. Is there other core areas that we might check to see where their academic knowledge is?

[5819] SPEAKER_18: Yeah, so the initial assessment is the initial LPAC that gives us their English learner proficiency, but then we also, when they're in their classes, we also determine what was their formal education. At the high school, our counselors are looking at their transcripts. And that's been a big focus this year, international transcripts and working on the correlation. And then finding what has their educational process been. Some of that is through an interview process with the families as well, through that home language survey and getting more information. Digging a little bit deeper, what has been their formal schooling and what support can we provide them?

[5858] SPEAKER_38: Thank you. That's really important.

[5860] SPEAKER_31: And I think to add to that, we're looking at some professional development for our registrar and for our counselors at the secondary level, because it is reading the foreign international transcripts that can be difficult, not just because of the language, but I think it's translating to what we have as an equivalency. But back to your point, we have a lot of students who have had formal education, and we don't want to stop them from the areas such as mathematics or science. So they are continuing to advance in that.

[5887] SPEAKER_38: Thank you.

[5890] SPEAKER_18: Another one of our programs is our structured English immersion. And that's really looking at the designated, the minimum times that I shared with you previously. Students are receiving the most intensive support. And then the English language mainstream is really what's happening within the classroom. in every classroom and the support that's happening there. We do have a seal of biliteracy here in Newark. I believe that was new last year. Our students who take the Spanish for Spanish speakers and then take the AP test and score or get a passing score on that will get the seal of biliteracy on their diploma. We also have a new assessment from the state, a Spanish assessment as well that we will be using with our students next year because that will be part of the requirements to be proficient on that assessment as well to get the seal of biliteracy. Yes, sorry, and for other languages as well. This is where we started initially this past year. And then for our special education students, and here's where the most work needs to happen of support because typically our special education students remain English learners for a number of years. And so it's really the role of the IEP team to address the support for our English learners through their IEP goals. But it's really difficult usually for our special education students to be reclassified. So the state is coming out with new criteria for us. We're anxiously awaiting that because we want to make sure we're reclassifying our special education students as well, especially if language really isn't the area of need of support for them. And then in our elementaries, we have designated and integrated time. And at the junior high, as I shared before, we have a period for ELA. At the high school, we also have sheltered classes for science, social studies, and math. And so the sheltered class, the teacher utilizes a variety of strategies to support English learners. In addition, the bilingual aid is in there to support them. I did want to share also, before I go on to the characteristics, I think it's important for us to note, I just went to a training for our English learners that's called the Global Impact Initiative of 2018. By the year 2040, 75% of our students who graduate will be multilingual. And so I think the exciting work that we're doing, I'm starting to shift that way. World languages and English language development are going to merge together. And it's going to be a really exciting time for all of our students because all of our students are going to be language learners. And so utilizing all of the strategies our world language teachers use as well as our English language development, it's gonna be a really exciting time for all of our students because they're gonna be graduating multilingual. Another part of our EL master plan is looking at our students who are considered, you'll hear the term LTEL, a long term English learner. And characteristics of our LTELs, they've been in California schools for more than six years. And they still have not made progress on the LPAC assessment and in their academic achievement. And so these are the students we wanna look a little more deeply at and how we can support them. Because oftentimes, sometimes we have students in the high school who've been English learners since kindergarten. And they become frustrated because they've been in the same type of program. And so we're looking to further our programs and deepen them to make sure we are supporting our students who have been English learners for a long time. And making sure we're giving targeted support to them. Typically, there's an underlying issue. It's not usually the English language acquisition. That's the issue. And so really looking at our long-term English learners, what are we doing to support them? And what other resources do we have? Our current reclassification criteria is here for you. So the state has four, sorry, yes, four criteria that we have to look at. One is the standardized assessment, which is the LPAC. One is a basic skills assessment, one is teacher evaluation, and one is parent opinion. So this was the criteria that Ms. Saavedra and her team worked on last year. The team worked on that on the LPAC, you had to get a four. So as I shared with you before, the four levels, you had to get an overall score. So when you receive your scores, you get an overall score, but you also receive a score for listening, speaking, reading, and writing. OK, so the first time we would look at a student for reclassification is based on their LPAC score. So if they receive a 4, then we look at our benchmarks for our district for basic skills. And so currently, it was our IREDI or SBAC scores and proficiency on the SBAC assessment. Remember that because I'm going to share with you the shift for our criteria for next year. Because we're asking our English learners to be proficient on the assessment and we know our English only students aren't proficient currently as well. So be mindful of that as I share with you the shift. And then teacher evaluation and reporting. And then we bring in the parent and we talk to the parent. What do you feel about reclassifying your child? Parents are a big part of the reclassification process. The state came out with their criteria in January of 2019, and Ms. Saavedra and her team did a really good job because we met the exact criteria. The one criteria that they shared was that students had to have the overall four on an LPAC, and we already had that. So with that criteria, we did have some decline this year with our reclassification rate. And so I wanted to share with you why. It's a pretty significant decline, but the assessment window changed for us. Previously, the CELT was given in the fall, and we would get the results by January and then reclassify students. The LPAC is given the summative LPAC is given in the spring and then we get the results in August. So when we got them in January, we had time to reclassify those students and look at them over a period of time with the rest of the criteria. With the shift, we got the assessment results and we started the reclassification process. We can now reclassify students up until January 30th. So that's the process we use this year. Unfortunately, reclassification data cuts off on October 1st with CalPADS. And so we have a low number this year, but I will say at our reclassification ceremony, we reclassified 165 students. So that's much, much higher than that 6% you're seeing here. You're gonna see a bump next year because those numbers are gonna fall into next year's numbers and then they'll even out. And so we have our recommendations for our staff is that we do all of our initial reclassifications by September 30th, so they'll fall on that CALPADS date. And then any students, because we have some students that we still want to continue to follow, we're not quite sure if they're ready for reclassification, we will do that by January 31st. So new criteria that we are recommending, it's exactly the same with the exception of, as I said, with the SBAC. We are expecting our English learners to be proficient on the SBAC. We're expecting all students to be there. But right now, our criteria is something above what our English only students are doing. And so we did a lot of research and we found many districts now have shifted their criteria, the basic skills criteria, to be within 5% of how our English only students are performing. And so what we did collectively was looked at the cutoff numbers for being proficient and where our English only students were falling. And then we, our EL students are now expected to be within 5% of that. And so that seems like a fair and equitable way to hold our students accountable to the growth that our English only students are making as well. And that will also help us with our reclassification rates. Our next steps, as I shared, we'll be bringing the 50-page document to you in June for approval. It's really exciting times, 10 years in the making. And so the team will be coming with me then to share that plan with you. We'll be providing professional development continue to provide on ELD standards and the plan, as well as high leverage strategies. We just attended a conference. Ms. Chung, who's at the secondary site, attended the session on high leverage strategies to help students pass the LPAC as well. And so that's going to be other strategies we're sharing with our staff. We are excited. I shared with you about the roadmap in the fall that the exemplar from the state was the Sobrato Early Academic Language Model. Ms. Lori Olson actually led this initiative with SEAL and she also co-authored the roadmap. And so we spent many visits at sites. I think I was there six times and taking all of our elementary principals and administrators and some of their teachers to see SEAL in action. SEAL is a model, it is not a program. It's a model of instruction. It's about integrating high leverage strategies into the curriculum instruction happening on a daily basis. The way their model works is we train our TK and first grade teachers over two years. The second year we train our second and third grade teachers. The exciting thing is we have been accepted by the SEAL, the Sobrato Foundation to participate. They also interview us to see that we're a good fit for their model. And so we got the good news just a little bit ago. And so we're excited that this is gonna be our three year plan with focused intensive support for our TK through third grade students. And ideally, we would be reclassifying them at the end of third grade. All of this is going to be funded through Title III funding. So this Title III funding is generated for our English learners. In addition, part of that program is to have support for teachers for the integrated work that they're going to be doing in the classroom. So we will be having two full-time coaches that are funded through the Comprehensive Support and Improvement Grant that will support our teachers in developing this integrated thematic And then for our fourth through sixth grade, a lot of what happens in SEAL is based on the guided language acquisition development. And so we're gonna work with our fourth through sixth grade teachers. At one point in our district, I think we almost had 100% of our teachers trained and we moved in a different direction. So I know many of our teachers are excited to get back to this work because it's proven research based strategies that work. So, we, if teachers are new, we're going to provide a training for them. If they've had the training, we're looking at a refresher course for them. And that's through Title II funding, again, for our English learners, specifically for professional development. And then for 7th through 12th, we have SIOP, which is Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol. And it's, again, it's about Changing the instructional practices that are happening in the classroom to support our English learners. We had last year six teachers do the virtual training in the summer. We're offering it again this summer. And I just talked to Mr. Neal and we're going to be working with his entire staff. next year to look at SIUP for the entire junior high staff. And so again, looking at a TK-12 approach, what are we doing for all of our students? And as Ms. Salinas shared with you before, we are exploring and planning for a dual immersion at Schilling Elementary with the hopes of opening for fall of 2020. So just overall, this is the work that we've been doing this year in updating our EL Master Plan. In addition, the team has worked on updating all of our forms, who are very much outdated, and updating all of our ELD report cards, TK-12. So there's been a lot of work the staff has been doing to update all of this for our teachers to start the year with all of the support and a comprehensive plan for our English learners. Thank you. Questions?

[6707] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, Ms. Sirt. That was a long staff report. Sorry. No, no, no. It's not your fault. It's something that we have to do. So no, I thought that you handled it very well. It's very difficult to do a report like this where it takes a while. And I thought you did excellent. So board members, any questions? OK. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[6735] SPEAKER_53: Wait a minute, hold on. Not a question, but I wanted to say thank you for all your hard work. I know that sometimes we don't hear it or we don't say it as much, but I do want to say thank you for all your hard work.

[6745] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, and everyone else involved in putting this together.

[6749] SPEAKER_18: Yeah, it's definitely a team effort.

[6751] SPEAKER_53: And I do want to say that I'm also looking forward to the still emerging program. Very excited.

[6756] SPEAKER_18: Thank you.

[6757] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, it's great that it's over. It's shilling. So what happens, I just have something. So Schilling, what happens after that? Is that shared with everybody else?

[6770] SPEAKER_31: Yes. So the process is first to do kind of an exploratory group to go look at it and what it could look like for dual immersion. And it's essentially a strand within a school, right? So it starts at kindergarten and first grade and every year it builds. But the other piece is right now Dr. Wendy is actually looking at conducting a survey because we want to hear from the parents and the community as to what language. Because I'll tell you my experience has been sometimes it's Spanish, sometimes it's Mandarin, it could be Farsi, we don't know yet. So she is going to, she's in the process of building that survey to hear from the parent community at Schilling. And then we would roll out a whole plan that starts from recruitment of students, recruitment of teachers that want to participate in it, and then building out a three- to four-year plan. And that would all come also before you to hear a little bit as it's going. But first, it's the exploratory team that goes out to see it.

[6821] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, I love the multi-language approach, you know. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[6827] SPEAKER_50: Thank you.

[6828] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, Member Thomas, hold on.

[6833] Nancy Thomas: Actually, I kind of wanted to know about the funding. Have we gone into how much this is going to cost?

[6841] SPEAKER_31: So for the dual immersion, essentially, we can look at some of the Title III funding for the professional development. But it really becomes your regular general fund that you use. Because in essence, it's the same program, but you're just using it in the other language. So it's not necessarily another expense. It's looking at where you're buying consumable X, right? You're buying it in Farsi or you're buying it in Mandarin. and in English. But because you do, and I don't want to get too far ahead, but depending on the model, a 50-50 model, for example, teachers, the native English speaking, the teacher who's teaching English and a teacher who's teaching the target language, they basically share the resources. And so it's not another added expense. But the professional development, we would look at Title III for that.

[6892] Nancy Thomas: Speaking of professional development, we have a terrible time getting substitutes to release our teachers to get professional development. If we don't fix that, and you're just doing a spot here and a small group there, it's not going to be implemented with fidelity. So I hope there's something we can do to make sure that the teachers get trained and measure whether they're getting trained.

[6924] Ray Rodriguez: So we have A lot on the agenda after this. So do I get a motion and a second to extend the meeting in case we need it at minimum of what, an hour? Until 11? Is that OK? Or did anybody have any other suggestion? It doesn't mean we're going to do that. I'm going to try to get out of here, get us out of here sooner. But do I get a motion and a second?

[6954] Elisa Martinez: I move to extend the meeting until at least 11. OK.

[6958] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Member Martinez? Second. I'll make the second. Please vote. OK. Member Gutierrez? No, which means in order to Keep her on my good side. I have to try to get us out of here by 10. I agree.

[6988] SPEAKER_53: I think it's to keep all of us on your good side.

[6991] Ray Rodriguez: I know. OK. So employer organizations, Ms. Eustis first, and then Mr. Merritt, and then anyone from NEWMA. Again, hello.

[7016] SPEAKER_48: Good evening.

[7017] Ray Rodriguez: Good evening.

[7019] SPEAKER_48: On a lighter note, I wanted to remind the board that CSCW week is coming up May 20th. And we are going to be going to Claim Jumpers 6 p.m. So it would be an opportunity for all of you to talk to my members. I'm sure that they would be happy to talk to you and tell you about what's going on in their lives. But we're there to celebrate. I'll be there. We're going to be there to celebrate classified school employees. What time? 6 PM. Thank you. Yeah. And then on June 3, we're going to be honoring seven members from our bargaining unit for retirement. And most of them have worked 15 years or up to about 26 years. We honor them. We're going to be taking them to dinner at the Olive Garden. That's on June 3rd. And that's also at 6 p.m. And then later in the summer, we have our California School Employees Conference in Las Vegas. And it's going to start July 28th and go through August 2nd. We have two members of the bargaining unit, Maria Huffer and Bertha D'Andra. are going to be going representing the chapter, I also will be going because I'm a life member of CSCA. And so I just kind of wanted to give you a little bit of an update of some of the really fun things that are coming up for us. Summer, our executive board is going to be getting together at the end of June, and we're going to be working to setting up our whole next year. Because we set up our chapter meetings, our executive board meetings, we all do that. at the beginning of the year, and then it's kind of laid out. We even set our events so that it's a little bit easier to deal with, because we know exactly when it's going to happen. So anyway, we're going to have some fun times this summer. So thank you.

[7147] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you much.

[7154] SPEAKER_36: Yes, sir. I left my sign at home. So I wanted to update on a couple of things. So some questions that some people had from the board, some of the board members had, were where do our teachers live? And 30% of them live here in Newark. My computer stopped working, but I think that's about 60, that would be about 60 people. I can do math. And then 20% live in Fremont. The next biggest area is Hayward, about almost 11% live in Hayward. We also live in places like Tracy, Stockton, Fairfield. So there's some people that spend a lot of time on the road to do what they do because they love Newark. And it's that time of the year again, and I was going to try to keep it positive, but I do have to tell you that even tonight I got a phone call What's the last date I can resign without getting in trouble? I've gotten those calls every day for the last two weeks. And some days, it's more than one person. So we need to continue to strive to make this a destination district and a district to stay in. Ten people live in Castro Valley, including me. Anybody want a carpool? I did want to put a little plug in that in my home school district, Castro Valley, last Thursday they had their board meeting and they approved a resolution to fly the pride flag in June. And on May 30th, they're going to raise the flag at the Castro Valley High School, the pride flag at Castro Valley High School. And about a year or two ago, the Castro Valley Pride Association sent a message to the school district that said, would teachers fly the pride flag in their classroom? And they originally bought 100 flags, and they were gone in no time at all. So something to think about.

[7299] SPEAKER_48: Let's do it.

[7300] SPEAKER_36: I'd put a pride flag in my classroom. I would too. All right, thank you.

[7306] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Anyone from NEWMA? OK, so we go to old business. Addendum to master contract between the MIRI Center and Newark Unified School District, 11.1. The staff recommends the board ratify the agreement. Anyone want to, any questions on these? Are you moving on it? You move? I second. Okay, member Thomas moves, member John seconds. Please vote. Okay, motion passes. Member Martinez now, did you want to address that?

[7363] Elisa Martinez: Sure, I think that we've had a lot of discussion, and I can talk and talk, but really as we look at contracts, if I don't have any background, it's hard for me to accept. So I think that's my position. It's been, I think, I hope, a consistent position.

[7386] Ray Rodriguez: So that's why. Thank you. Was Ms. Willis supposed to be here for these?

[7395] SPEAKER_31: Unfortunately, she's not able to be here tonight, but I can speak to, I have, did you want me to speak to the Mary?

[7401] Ray Rodriguez: No, no, no, it's fine. 11.2, addendum to master contract with Ascend Rehab. The staff recommends the board ratify the agreement to the original master contract. Discussion, questions? Member Thomas?

[7421] Nancy Thomas: I feel similar to what I wanted to take a tear. Member Martinez, this is coming to us late. Obviously, we have already been spending more than the contract because this is for three months and there's not three months left. I, too, feel I would like to be able to vote no because I want to send a message that contracts are not being brought to us in a timely fashion and they're not being brought to us with complete information that we need. So I'll vote yes, but I really want to send that strong message that we're not handling contracts very well.

[7463] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Member John.

[7465] Bowen Zhang: Oh, I just have some questions about, it looks like this is still filling the FTE position that we're supposed to fill, right? And we're having a hard time filling these FTE positions.

[7479] SPEAKER_31: Yes, unfortunately, I know that at the last meeting, so this is carried over from the last meeting because there was some more information that was needed. So if you look at the attachment that's there, the spending is all within what we had budgeted. But as you know, and this might be something to consider as we look at the next school year. But what we had planned was that we did not want to bring large contracts when we had not filled the positions because we wanted to ensure we were still looking to fill these positions. But unfortunately, that's causing us to keep coming back each time to show that. But I did want to draw your attention. Director Willis did attach a PowerPoint to give some further clarification. And this will also carry into the extended school year work where we'll have some support that's needed as well.

[7529] Bowen Zhang: So the plan is fill this position within three months, right?

[7536] SPEAKER_31: Well, we're going to keep working on it. I will say this, that the special education department and principals have really been doing a lot of interviews. They've gone out to at least three fairs, employment fairs, and we've got folks signing contracts. We're looking forward to seeing how much we can fill these positions, but as we know also, it's a shortage across the state of California. I do want to say that once we look at the funding across, we had such an increase with the number of special education students, but, and there was also an increase with step and column and all of that, but we still stayed level to last year's budget.

[7577] Bowen Zhang: And this is six equivalent FTE, right? Equivalent to six FTE for the three months?

[7584] SPEAKER_31: I don't believe, so I believe, let me look at where she listed on here. This is, it's not so much that it's by equivalent. I will draw attention to, based on the caseload, she has speech and language services for 347 students via 5.2 FT. Yes, there you go. and a .8 for OT, for Occupational Therapy.

[7609] Bowen Zhang: Yeah, so if, say, suppose within three months you fill this position, what will be the approximate cost of having this full-time position compared to the contract, which is close to $300,000 in three months?

[7621] SPEAKER_31: Right, so it's going to depend on what time of the year they come in. We have a little bit, we have about 19 days left of school, so it just depends on the prorated. We can certainly crunch those numbers. I could work with business services to get that. With this contract, certainly if we find it, if we find the staffing to do it, I don't foresee that just because everyone right now is closing out the school year. But we are actively looking for 19-20.

[7645] Bowen Zhang: But theoretically, six full-time positions should be much cheaper than this $300,000, right?

[7652] SPEAKER_31: It actually would probably be less. But again, I can crunch the numbers for the rest of the three months, yes. Okay.

[7660] Ray Rodriguez: Member Martinez.

[7665] Elisa Martinez: So thank you, and I did review the presentation. This has been an ongoing issue, and you're right, Leti, that I don't think that it's going to change by the end of the school year. I think what I'm concerned about, if we look at the rate that we're burning through cash, let's call it, to cover contracts, we know, and we've heard loud and clear from you, it's really hard to find folks. So to member Zhang's questions, help us understand, you know, if we need to pay more to attract, what does that look like? I can't believe that we would still be spending anywhere near what we've been spending on contracts. So, I think that's really important that we are where we are now. We'd like to see, I know I'd like to see a proposal as to what is that range that would make us competitive and, again, approximate cost benefit, if you will. Again, yeah. Yes, absolutely.

[7727] Nancy Thomas: I'm the number 347 really strikes me it's about 6 or 7% of our students need speech therapy that seems like a an awful big number and how does that compare with other districts are we over identifying. I mean I hate to think that we're spending money that that children will outgrow whatever speech.

[7752] SPEAKER_31: I can certainly resend. I know that Director Willis has sent that data forward. I don't have it on my computer right now, but I can resend it so we can look at the actual numbers of speech.

[7761] Bowen Zhang: Well, I had a similar request just a couple of weeks ago when I talked about primary language spoken at home and ethnicity-based. I think, I wouldn't say over-identify, I'll just give you my impression of the number. I think among Asian-American students, we are lower than Fremont, but among all the other races, we are higher than Fremont and New Haven. That's what I remember correctly.

[7782] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, so I think we should look at that again. I can resend it, yes. Or maybe, I don't think it's a matter of telling us, I think it's a matter of staff looking at it and seeing if they can reduce that number.

[7796] SPEAKER_31: Well, yes, within the parameters of identifying students, yes.

[7802] Nancy Thomas: But I mean, you know, if you find that we have of much larger numbers than other districts in certain ethnicities, that's something to really look at.

[7813] Ray Rodriguez: OK. OK, this was brought back. The staff recommends the board ratify the agreement to the original master contract.

[7818] SPEAKER_53: I want to move that we vote on 11.2.

[7820] Bowen Zhang: I second.

[7823] Ray Rodriguez: Please vote. OK, motion passes. Member Martinez, no. And you already stated the reason why, right? Is that correct?

[7842] Elisa Martinez: Yes. And in this case, again, I appreciate the numbers. It was a significant shift in terms of cost from the previous estimate. I understand that there was an error. It's still concerning to me that there would be such a large shift.

[7859] SPEAKER_31: Yes. The error and then the department added on the ESY, the extended school year.

[7868] Ray Rodriguez: OK, so now we move to new business. Is there anybody here from Kennedy Elementary? OK, great. OK, we've got, this is exciting. Yeah, the mural for Kennedy Elementary School. Who wants to, Superintendent, you want to go first?

[7891] SPEAKER_38: I think I'll let Principal Hughes explain what they're up to.

[7897] SPEAKER_26: All right so tonight representing Kennedy's art community we have Laura Ruiz and Ann Williams who are our coordinators. They are parents at the school who work really hard to make sure that art happens for every student in every classroom every month. And they've now recovered from all the effort and hard work for the art show because it's over and they've recovered. So now they're here to talk about our mural. that we're really hoping that you'll approve tonight to help beautify our campus and help our students. They had a big say in what's in the mural or the proposed mural. So I'm going to turn it over to Laura and Ann.

[7943] SPEAKER_13: Hello. Good evening. We've been working over a year with this nonprofit company that's called Color Corps. And they'll be helping us. to think about how can we create a better school for the students, and not only the art, but a place where the students can feel better. So we've been working the past three months with the students. We've been doing surveys about colors. They've been learning about colors, but not only colors, but how do you feel at a school and how would you like to feel at a school. So we had two assemblies at a school with this nonprofit company, and the kids, they picked their favorite colors based on how those colors make them feel and there were beautiful words like playful and calm and safe and it was a great experience and also this company is working with another design company in San Francisco so with all the input from the students they come up with a design into color schemes and the students get to vote and they were so excited and they're so proud that they can pick where they go to school and how the school is going to look like. And they came up with this. I think you have access to that at this time. And the designers were talking about they want to bring the nature. And when you look at the design, the flower is supposed to be their size. So they can take pictures. They can feel happy. And they only designed one wall that is going to be for, we hope it's going to be for the art room. But also, it's going to have another wall through the library. So we're very excited about that. Do you have any questions? It's beautiful.

[8041] Ray Rodriguez: It's beautiful. I wanted to ask you the, I know there was a lot of work being done to raise money. And like you say, with nonprofits. Um, so if you can, um, get us the information so we can add them to denote donations report, maybe at the next meeting or, well, actually our PTA runs the, this, um, art program and every year

[8065] SPEAKER_13: You also guys received an invitation to our art show. Mrs. Thomas came last year and so with that we asked for donations from the parents. We have a raffle and we write to different businesses. We have families that donate the stuff to doing the raffle. We have cash donations for our families. So part of that is going to the art program for the next year and part is we hope to have one project per year to bring into the school. So that is part of our money. Also, Color Corps is going to help in funding this project. We're going to have a muralist. We hope to have a paint day where everybody is going to be painting. Kelly Moore is going to donate the paintings for this mural. And we also, Mrs. Williams wrote a grant to the, And we got $500 from them.

[8122] Ray Rodriguez: That's great. Thank you. So if you want to, we can add them on to a donations report in the future if you want. And then if you want to invite them to come, we can recognize whoever you want. And we'd love to do that.

[8133] SPEAKER_13: Okay. We'll talk about that.

[8134] Ray Rodriguez: And thank you for all the hard work. And we're looking forward to going over there.

[8138] SPEAKER_13: Okay. Thank you. So you approve it?

[8141] Ray Rodriguez: Okay.

[8141] SPEAKER_53: So I need a motion and a second. I'll make the motion for 12.1. I'll second that.

[8146] Ray Rodriguez: Member Gutierrez makes a motion. Member Thomas seconds. Please vote. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Houston. 12.2, elementary interior and exterior Lighting for Schilling Elementary. Yeah. OK. It's on you.

[8182] SPEAKER_52: OK. So I have been before you all and I really should change my job title to finding the money person. OK.

[8191] Ray Rodriguez: We need more of those. Let me tell you.

[8194] SPEAKER_52: You know us as your energy and water efficiency people and my colleague Puck Ananta our engineer who you probably see all over your campuses. changing out your lights and whatever. So I have a corporate background, and my background is in banking. And so it always dismayed me while I was in banking that the banks never invested in the communities. It really broke my heart. And they had a million reasons why it was so difficult. And it was really very difficult for me to accept. So I was also part of a PG&E project when I worked at Alameda County Office of Ed. And what I tried to do is to figure out how to get money to schools. How? Because you do not have money for infrastructure. for the things that you need so that you can run your schools efficiently and cost effectively. So this is my last PG&E pilot project. Five years, haven't seen a penny, but I finally got your $100,000 from Wells Fargo Bank.

[8265] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah.

[8267] SPEAKER_52: Oh my God. But the carrot with this grant is that you have to approve the Fremont Bank loan. And how it works is all federal banks have to donate to what we call disadvantaged schools. I'm not going to even use my PowerPoint. It doesn't matter. We're late. We're tired. Who wants to use a PowerPoint? So what you have to do is, as a bank, they went. Earth Day Network is in Washington, DC. They changed the law, which is hard to believe, for all federal banks. that yes they can invest in disadvantaged schools in energy and water efficiency. So that now is part of the federal register. So this project the reason why Wells Fargo gave you 100 grand is so that we can get a loan. You know so you have an interior and exterior lighting project at Schilling. OK. The lighting sucks. OK. It's too bright. There are dark spots, there are light spots. I mean, it's really kind of nuts. So we have to go in and we look at what is light at the table level. It's supposed to be 30 to 40 foot candles. In some spots, because it's so uneven, it's 100 foot candles. So you have all that glaring light into the children's eye, reflecting off of screens, et cetera. And no ability to dim the lights. So the PUC had originally estimated that it was going to cost us about $130,000 to do this project. So with Wells Fargo donating $100,000, that then made it like $30-some-thousand. And Wells is also going to give you some interest rate credits. So I had to run around to try and find a bank. Fremont Bank is your bank. And they agreed to give you this little tiny loan, which no one wants to do because it's so small. And the amount of time to handle a big loan or a little loan is a big pain in the neck. It makes no difference for the processing time, getting it through credit, et cetera. I was running all over the country trying to get you the $35,000 loan. I finally got a loan from Fremont Bank for that second half, OK, to cover the whole cost of the interior lighting project. And the purpose is to say, if we save you $15,500 a year in energy efficiency for your exterior and interior lighting, you can pay that loan off in less than three years. So can I mimic that throughout the Bay Area? Because this is a pilot. So can I take that and get another bank? to a number of banks to make investments in schools in energy and water efficiency and use the savings to pay it back in 3 years or whatever and then thereafter you have good quality infrastructure. You have things that will help your students your teachers your staff with correct lighting and you will have a lower operating cost thereafter, once you pay it off. Okay, so that's really how those two things hook together. So if this project is successful, we will then go out to more schools in the Bay Area, because we now are working, believe it or not, we're going to do this. We're going to do this. We're going to do this in Alameda County Marin County and Contra Costa County. Because people keep bothering us and say we want to help you want to help you want your money. Okay. We want you to find resources so we can do this. Okay because the prop 39 funds are going to end in 2020. Okay. I need to a consortium of other schools who have disadvantaged schools, you know, with high and free and reduced lunches, so that we can do more pockets of these throughout the Bay Area, throughout California, throughout the country, because it's meant to be a countrywide product, because it's regulated by the feds throughout our country. So anyway, so the purpose is to get money to Schilling, to start off this pilot project, to improve the lighting for your students and staff, and to show the banks and the government that we can do this.

[8555] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you so much. We don't want you to go anywhere, though. Forget about all those other places. We want you to stay here. So we have 12.2, 12.3. So member Jean and then member Thomas.

[8572] Bowen Zhang: My question is, are we borrowing $35,000 or $36,000? Well, it's $35,000.

[8577] SPEAKER_52: But if I add the fee on, there's $250 fee. And then I have to count in the interest. Now, it's possible we can pay it off faster. But I try and estimate, in a conservative way, the most amount that you would have to pay back.

[8591] Bowen Zhang: And on one of the slides, it looks like the pilot loan is $38,000 if you add all that up.

[8600] SPEAKER_52: It is with the maximum amount of interest. So if for example Wells Fargo is going to give us an interest payment to cut down the interest. So I'm just going to get that money and you can use it to pay start paying it down right away. OK. Anyway so. But right now with fifteen thousand five hundred dollars you're going to pay that back in two point some years. It's less than the three years. So therefore, if we pay it off sooner, you're going to have less interest. OK?

[8638] Ray Rodriguez: OK. OK. Member Thomas.

[8641] Nancy Thomas: Well, here's my thought. My thought is if we don't take the loan and we pay for it out of our bond money, then we don't have to pay interest and the savings accrues to our general fund that we don't have to pay back from our general fund.

[8659] SPEAKER_52: You don't get the $100,000 and I have to find another place.

[8662] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, I didn't understand that part. Could you explain that part, why we have to take a loan?

[8666] SPEAKER_52: Okay, the whole purpose of this is to show the federal government and the banks that if we have a program where we save energy in a disadvantaged school, OK, which we know we can do. There's strict engineering. We've been doing it under Prop 39. If they can pay it back, then the banks will lend. I'm convinced.

[8689] Nancy Thomas: It's fine.

[8691] SPEAKER_52: Thank you. I mean, it's one or the other.

[8695] Nancy Thomas: I know. I mean, not all are one. While I've got your attention, and they're bringing that up, you know, you find a lot of water leaks, right?

[8705] SPEAKER_52: Yes, and that is a Prop 1 project that I'm trying to work on as soon as I finish this one.

[8709] Nancy Thomas: Well, but we have money in Russian. We have already two million. No, but I would rather get your free money. Huh? Thank you. Well, that's fine if you can get us free money. But in the meantime, that sole purpose of that money that was approved in the Russian budget was for landscaping, including irrigation. And it just seems to me that we're paying for leaking water. Time is running out, so.

[8736] SPEAKER_52: Well, right, okay, so we managed to get the legislature in California to change the law in 2017. And in there, we put in Prop 1 that they shall pay for leak repair and detection because of the leaks that we found at Newark Junior High School. Okay, so we're using you as a guinea pig.

[8758] Ray Rodriguez: No, you're good. You are. Thank you.

[8763] SPEAKER_52: Because we got to find your money.

[8765] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah. I did talk to Al, who's the manager of Wells Fargo, the local. And he wants to talk to you and maybe get you some more money. OK. OK. I move approval. OK. Member Thomas moves approval. Member Gutierrez seconds it.

[8780] Bowen Zhang: Are we approving 12.2 and 12.3 at the same time?

[8783] Ray Rodriguez: No, separate. 12.2 first and then 12.3.

[8787] Bowen Zhang: Can we make a motion to approve that in one motion?

[8792] Ray Rodriguez: Normally we do it because they list it separately, but we'll get through it right away. OK, 12.2, we have a motion and a second. Please vote.

[8806] SPEAKER_53: I'm sorry, who moved and who seconded? Thomas, and I second.

[8810] Ray Rodriguez: Member Thomas moves. Member Gutierrez seconds. OK, Member John, 12.3.

[8816] Bowen Zhang: I make a motion to approve 12.3.

[8821] Nancy Thomas: I'll second.

[8822] Ray Rodriguez: Member John moves. Member Thomas seconds. Please vote. You can vote on this, by the way. Thank you. If you want. OK. OK.

[8839] Nancy Thomas: Thank you.

[8840] Ray Rodriguez: Motion passed. Thank you.

[8841] SPEAKER_52: Thank you for hanging in there. I thank you for really allowing us to do a lot of innovative things here and making a difference. that I dream of. Thank you. Thank you.

[8857] Ray Rodriguez: That's great. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[8860] SPEAKER_53: Yeah.

[8861] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Donations report.

[8869] Nancy Thomas: I move we accept the donations report.

[8871] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Member Thomas moves. I'll second it. Member Gutierrez seconds. Please vote. I'm sorry.

[8885] SPEAKER_53: You want to do yours?

[8893] Ray Rodriguez: OK. OK, motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Can we read those quickly? Do my best. I'll start. $60 donation to Newark Junior High School from Walter Silva for girls volleyball. $50 for Newark Junior High. Josefina Fernandez for Flag Football. You want to go to next? Starting with Schilling.

[8924] SPEAKER_53: $500 for Schilling Elementary. Donor is James Episcopal Church. And it's for the Garden Club. $700 donations for Newark Junior High School by Above All Plumbing. for 8th grade trip to Great America and $100 for Newark Memorial High School for Rocketry Club by Lisa Martinez.

[8951] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Member Thomas, you want to go next?

[8955] Nancy Thomas: $100 for Newark Memorial High, Terry Marzano for Rocketry Club supplies for competition. $100 for Newark Memorial High, Nancy Thomas for Rocketry Club supplies for competition, and I'd like $267 for Newark Memorial High School from various people donating cash during the board meeting for the Rocketry Club. And I want to read the last one because I saw this Sharks buddy bench at Kennedy School that the San Jose Sharks donated. It's just so cute and nice and it came after one day of getting the grant. I did that when I rode my bike to school, which is a very nice program that Kennedy has as well. Total was $1,877. Thank you. OK, 12.5, class size TK3.

[9006] Ray Rodriguez: Staff recommends the board approve for the 2019-2020 school year. Purpose to change the class size limit. The student teacher ratio for grades TK through 3rd for the 2019-2020 school year. Board approval is needed. Erksett from Newark Teacher's Association, collective bargaining, article 8. The Board may, in its discretion, on an annual basis, elect to increase the CSL-CSM class size limit, class size maximum, up to and including 29 to 31, provided, however, that the CSL shall be established at the beginning of each school year and shall not be changed mid-year. Superintendent, right now, our class size, my understanding, is 24 to 1? No.

[9083] SPEAKER_38: We're approaching 26 to 1. You want to speak to this?

[9088] Ray Rodriguez: And then I'll ask Mr. Merrick.

[9090] SPEAKER_40: Currently, last year the board voted to increase the number and even though we're saying 29 will be the max, currently we have staffed at 26. There are some classrooms that are 29 in certain schools, but not everybody's there.

[9105] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, thank you. Mr. Merrick.

[9114] SPEAKER_36: This is a perplexity to me. It says K, but remember that TK is part of K in somebody's mind. Not mine, but they're very different individuals. 29. 29 TK students walking in a line from their classroom to the gate. to see their parents after being in school. Bless those teachers for taking care of that. And I know at least two TK classes, right? PGP and Lincoln had 29 TK students. So the perplexity to me is that not last year, but the year before, We went through this, and I do remember Ms. Kawabata coming up and talking as a kindergarten teacher how ridiculous it would be to put 29 kids in a classroom. The PTA and CTA recommend 20. Our contract says 24. The state authorized some funds to keep class sizes at or below 24 at some point. The evidence is there. Students learn better in smaller class sizes. Especially in this age group, they're not only learning math and English, they're also learning how to keep their hands to themselves and use a Kleenex when their nose is running. They don't even know how to drink milk out of a milk carton yet. You want scores to increase? You want test scores to increase when they get to the third grade? Don't put them in a class size of 29. Baffling. Baffling. Now, last year, let's come to last year. Because I would talk about, we had this conversation, not last year, but the year before. And then, because you did approve to increase class size, which you have to do each year. It's on you. You have to approve it. You did two years ago. Then last year, originally staffing was at 26. OK. But then some schools went up to 29. And I said, when did you approve it? Oh, it was in the budget. It was in the budget. Nobody found it. If it's in the budget, why isn't it in the budget this year? Why are you doing it different this year? Why did you do it different two years ago? So if you approve this, I want you each to volunteer one hour a week in a class size of 29, TK through three. Thank you.

[9302] Ray Rodriguez: Mr. Ramon Minmer. And we ran out of slips because I know there's other people. Mr. Ramon Medina.

[9316] SPEAKER_16: Good job. Medina.

[9319] Ray Rodriguez: Medina.

[9319] SPEAKER_16: Medina. That's right. Thank you very much. It's been a tiring. I've been up since 5 o'clock, so I'm glad I wrote this down. But my name's Ramon Medina. I'm a parent at music school. Increasing class sizes at the TK and third grades is a step in the wrong direction. The early grades are foundation to a solid background in literacy and reasoning. I don't know, during your time when I was in school, back when I came to this country in 84, you know, I remember being in third grade, and I had about 18 students at John Gill in Railroad City. And I was an ESL student, and I learned with flashcards English. It's, this grade, there are small groups and individualized attention help build readers and problem solvers. In Newark, we follow the Lucy Calkins's literacy model, which relies on mini lessons and small groups, personalized conferences to build vocabulary, comprehension, and reading skills. So I think you guys got to look at that. You guys bought it. I'm not sure if many of your board members were part of that vote. But I found out today that that model doesn't even meet a lot of the California standards. So maybe you're wasting money there again. I'm not sure yet, but I will find out. If the size of the class increases, the results is limited personalized time for instructions. We want to turn away from lecture assembly lines. I think you guys got to understand what a lecture assembly line is, and hopefully all of you know that. We should give our primary teachers the ability to teach and intentionally group students, not add more students, and crowd the classrooms. Because we're getting all this new programs or new ways of designing rooms and all that. Well, crowded classrooms are not going to do it. If you want to go and look like an Apple building, which I was there for three hours today, and they're in small groups, and they're not crowded. Because crowdness doesn't help you think. So I really hope you guys understand the power you guys have right now to make sure you stop this. You want to bring more students to Newark? You've got to be competitive. You wanted more money? You've got to stay competitive. Because there's a lot of parents that I've talked to over the last couple of weeks that have told me, I don't want my student at Newark. And I ask them why. And the first thing they tell me is, Guys, some of your classes are just my kindergarten. I've talked to five parents in my district and my school. I live in music and all of them don't want to come in kindergarten because it's too crowded. So I just lost in my neighborhood right behind Home Depot, five, seven kids that are not coming. So I hope you guys understand that you're not only losing kids, but you're losing that ability to have parents believe in you. So if you guys want to change, you guys got to start by doing that and listening to some of us. Thank you very much.

[9542] SPEAKER_35: Good evening. David Hernandez again, Executive Director of NTA. I wasn't going to get up to speak, but then I saw that item on the board. As a former kindergarten teacher, I'm appalled that you would want to put 29 kids in a classroom. We're about prevention. We're about teaching children at the youngest level in order to succeed. And where do we get them? At the youngest stage when they're sponges and they can absorb. By putting more kids in the classroom, we all know the studies say, the more students in the classroom, the least amount of attention they're going to get. And this is when we start talking about the primary kids and they start getting to the middle grades in high school where we're saying, we have to remedial this, remedial that. Well, when we stop and think about it, how many kids were there at the primary grades? If you're going to be putting more kids in a particular classroom, you're not going to provide them with the services that we need. And in this day of age, we have all kinds of students. The diversity, the newer cast. You can't afford to put more kids in the classroom. It was mentioned here about recruitment and retention. Do you want to open yourselves up to charter schools that go out and say, we could put less kids in our particular classroom? The school might not last five years, but we'll open up a charter school, and we can have less kids. Competition is fierce out there. And don't do the mistake of having to put Raise the class size at the primary grades where you're going to pay for it later on. Because your investment, where you don't put it at the youngest age, you're going to pay for it later on at the later stage. And I'm not just saying it because I'm a former kindergarten teacher. I say it because I work with many districts and I see what's going on. And districts right now, I understand funding might be tough. But you've got to think about the future and the benefits of education for the children of your district. And if you do want Newark to be a destination district, you're going to have to be able to prove to the community out there that our district is one that provides and has pride in educating our kids at the youngest level in order for them to be successful when they go into the middle grades and to the high school. Because we don't want to spend extra money on remedial classes. We want to spend money on enrichment classes, because we don't have to reteach. So I'm hoping that as you consider this item, that you seriously look at the message you're also providing to the people in which you are changing their working conditions. Because when you change the teacher's working conditions, you change the student's learning conditions. Thank you.

[9720] Ray Rodriguez: Ms. Melody Ambershani. A-M-I-R-E-H-S-A-N-I.

[9735] Penny DeLeon: Melody.

[9735] Ray Rodriguez: Melody. Okay. Ms. Megan McMillan. And then Ms. Melissa Robinson.

[9750] Megan McMillan: So I've got to change hats, because this time, when I address you, I'm addressing you as a parent. I have three daughters that we live in Fremont, but all of my kids go to school in Newark. They all go to Snowe. My oldest is a sixth grader this year. And I have a fifth grader, and I have a first grader. And I talked about her a little bit last year, or two years ago, when she was getting ready to go into kindergarten. And this first conversation about class size happened. And I said, you know, I've got that kid. I've got that kid that tests every limit and pushes every boundary. And she did a lot in kindergarten. First grade has been better, and she's been able to turn it around. And I was talking to her yesterday, and I said, remind me, how many kids are in your class? 20? Oh, amazing. And she's able to learn and stay on task and not have all of those minor behavior forms coming home every day with PBIS. And yeah, she's made tremendous gains in talking to her teacher. Oh my gosh, yeah, it started off kind of dicey, but she's really made it. She has a diagnosis of ADHD and of emotional regulation disorder. And yet we haven't had to implement a 504 this year because her teacher is doing great and able to handle her and get to know her because there's 20 kids in the class. And if this happens and she jumps up into second grade and there are nine more children in that room, she is going to do everything in her power to make sure that she still gets that amount of attention. But it won't be in a good way. So please make the right decision tonight for her and for the rest of the students in the district. They deserve it. Thank you.

[9856] SPEAKER_49: Hi, my name is Melissa Robinson. I'm a parent of two children at Music Elementary School. My son is currently in first grade, and he has a nice small class, and he is doing well. And I really, really, really appreciate having that closer attention. He has needed some attention, and so he's gotten it. He is flourishing, and I would like to see that continue through third grade. My daughter is in fourth grade. She's moved up into a class that has 31 students. I can see the difference in her this year. I can see how one person, I don't care how good a teacher you are, one person to have 31 kids. I mean, she's older. She's not TK, Kinder, first, second, third. but it still has a big effect on her education. There's just the classroom sizes don't increase with the number of people in it. There's only so much you can do and so many places you can put kids when there's things that go on. And so I thank you and plead with you. Please make the class sizes small for the little ones. Thank you.

[9934] Ray Rodriguez: That's our last speaker, so now it comes to the board. Superintendent, did you want to... Sure, I can speak to part of this.

[9941] SPEAKER_38: I would say the last part that wasn't read in the record that needs to be read is our efforts will be made to lower class, to keep class staffing lower than 29 to 1. This is flexibility in kind of a worst case scenario. We know that having large class sizes at the lower grades does not help kids. We know that we need to adhere to higher class sizes in secondary to make that happen. And that's something that we've been tightening up with the high school and we have done so. But this is part of our agreement. It doesn't mean we're voting, no one's voting tonight to move class size to 29 to 1 at every school. This allows flexibility and it creates the notice to the union that we may consider this if we need to. But we have had no discussions. on increasing staff class size in K-3 at this point thus far.

[9996] Ray Rodriguez: Member Martinez.

[10003] Elisa Martinez: Again, just like, I understand, thank you for your comments, Superintendent Sanchez. And I understand that we need flexibility, but keep coming back to even our earlier conversation at the beginning of the meeting in terms of Do we understand the needs of our district? And do we even open the door? We all understand we have a lot of funding issues. But at my core, that's one thing that I always have believed in. And I mean, all of us, I think, as we've gone through our school systems in the early years, we've benefited from small class sizes. So I just wanted to say that I understand and I acknowledge that but I think we need to find a better way and I mean that is the hard work that we have to do as a board but we need to look for funding options and not compromise these early years.

[10069] Nancy Thomas: I agree that the lower class sizes to make cuts. The cuts that we make are important and as low as we can make them this board. Told superintendent last year we had to make cuts that the first thing we want to bring back is 24 to one. I'm in K 3. One of the things I hope staff will consider. The board never actually before December 2nd. They turn 5 between December 3rd and January 31st. We are paying and giving free TK to those students until they do turn 5. That's very expensive. I know it helps the students, but if they're in a class of 29, maybe we have to reconsider, both because it costs money and also because it's not a good thing to have 29 kids in a TK class.

[10139] Ray Rodriguez: Member Zhang.

[10142] Bowen Zhang: Well, so I think I've read a lot of studies about children when they're reaching the third grade, how well you read at the third grade and how well you are at arithmetic pretty much determine your economic future in the next, from your fourth grade, maybe even to college, to grad school. So from TK to three, that's probably the golden period that you really want to make the upfront investment, making sure the children read well and can do basic arithmetic, and going forward, we'll have a lot easier time to bring up letter year after year, grade after grade. So I think when it comes to educating TK to third grade children, we need to exercise excess caution about increasing the class size. So I think this is, for me, this is upfront investment at the exactly the right time, we spend the money there, keep the class size reasonable, and later on, so we can reap the reward from the investment. So I will be very hesitant to be, I want to, I hope that staff can look into alternatives and savings and the other thing, we do have declining enrollment, so it is, I think it's hard to explain to the community that you want to have the flexibility of higher class size when you have declining enrollment. So it is hard to explain to the people in our city.

[10238] Ray Rodriguez: 24 to 1 was originally proposed to us by the state a few years back. And they gave us money. And then, as happens a lot of times, they took it away. So I thought, Superintendent, that the board had asked you to, like you stated, that you work on the upper grades so we can keep the K-3. I think when Frankie was here, we had said that 25, 26 to 1. Isn't that something? So it concerns me that There's some classrooms that are 29 to 1, because our intent was to keep it to 25, 26 to 1, 26 to 1.

[10289] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, we said we wanted an average of 26. But because of flexibility, they could go up. But now we have classrooms of 20 and some of 29. So I don't know how you can do it with master scheduling.

[10306] SPEAKER_38: So the key word there is the average is 26. And there is some that are higher, some are lower. Let me speak to this from an educator standpoint. Absolutely agree we need to keep class size low in early years. But it will come at a cost somewhere else. So the cost of keeping class size low at early years, K-3 for example, is going to mean we need to reduce somewhere else and it's going to be staffing. So I think that this is really a philosophical piece that the board needs to wrestle with. This is part of the current negotiated agreement that we have to do. I don't want to get into negotiating in public. We need to be careful with that. But I also am very aware that in Texas, the way they calculate the number of student, of prison cells they need is based on a third grade reading score with the extreme degree of accuracy. So investing in early childhood education is not lost on me. And I think that this is the kind of commitment that if you make, it will pay off in the long run, but you need to hold the line. That means that every other thing that comes forward, this has to be a higher priority than that. You have to hold the line. When you get lobbied to not reduce other positions in the district and upper levels and other people at the high school line up 40 deep to make public comment, you have to hold the line. So am I willing to get behind that and say, let's hold the line on lowering class size K-3? Yes, but it's not my decision. It is the board's decision. This is flexibility. This one's run on averages. I think that we're working within the scope of the agreement. But do I feel that raising class size at those levels is going to help us? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But do I also feel that we need to make some larger cuts? in other areas that are gonna be in positions, knowing that 85%, larger than 85% of our budget is tied up in staffing, we can have more for those teachers we have or the positions we have. They'll just be less of those positions. It's just math. We've been in declining enrollment. Until we see the whites of their eyes enrolling with us, we can't believe that they're actually gonna come until we have counted in October. We have to move forward conservatively. This is a big lift, but if there was one issue that I think we probably need to come to some agreement on, this would probably be it. I can tell you, every study will tell you, you keep a lower class size at these grades, it will make a difference. It will absolutely make a difference. And those kids are more likely to stay with you. But it has to come and be funded from somewhere else in the system. And there's no avoiding that anymore. There's only 15% that's not staffing that you can play with. After that, there's nothing else. We're cutting bone now.

[10489] Ray Rodriguez: So if we use the 26 to 1, which the board already had asked.

[10493] SPEAKER_38: That's what's currently in place.

[10494] Ray Rodriguez: Right. And make sure, and the board directs staff to make sure that no one is over 26 to 1. Do you know what? We'll have to figure out what financial impact could If you have some classes that are over 26 to 1, those things will have to change.

[10515] SPEAKER_38: We're there now. And the dilemma with the averaging to 26 to 1 still means we'll have some class size at 29 and some lower. It works out on an average. So I think that it becomes a question of, do we want to adhere to an average? Or do we want to say no class will be at a certain number or above a certain number? And that will come with a cost. That's all. I think it's a cost worth paying. I don't work for the community. You guys work for the community. You guys have the final say on this. I work for you, and I will do as you direct me.

[10547] Bowen Zhang: Can we have a study session on the different scenarios? Like, what would be the cost if we say no cost over 29? And what would be the scenario where we say average 26?

[10558] SPEAKER_38: I would have to ask legal to get advice on how we could talk about that, because this is a subject that is a topic within negotiations. I'd be willing to figure it out.

[10571] Ray Rodriguez: So we have this, everybody has spoken, so I'm sorry. Okay, go ahead.

[10579] SPEAKER_53: I just have a question. If you can just educate me on this, why do some classes have such a large number like 28 and why do some have 20?

[10587] Ray Rodriguez: I'm wondering that also.

[10589] SPEAKER_38: You want to speak to how we did the averages?

[10592] SPEAKER_40: Yes, it depends on the number of students each school has. So BGP being one of them that has the higher, the 29 kids in some of the classrooms, it's because the option would be to redirect those three extra students. And that's also difficult for staff and for the parents to go through because who do you select? How do you select the three that will be sent away, considering that we can't go over the 26? The 29, we do shoot for staffing at 26, which is currently what we're doing. The 29, like the superintendent Sanchez was saying, it just allows us flexibility so that in those cases, those scenarios, we avoid having to redirect the students.

[10639] SPEAKER_53: So the example of BGP, does that mean all, let's say first grade, all first grade are high or one first grade is not?

[10647] SPEAKER_40: It most likely impact one or two of the grade levels. Sorry. Not the whole grade level, but a specific classroom.

[10656] SPEAKER_53: Okay, I guess that's what, let's just say we're focused all on first graders. Is it that one classroom has 29, within that same school, one classroom has 29, one has 20, one has 25?

[10666] SPEAKER_40: No, the principal in the school still tries to do their best to balance out the classrooms, but because, you know, depending on the number of students, again, some of them or one or two of them may have more than 26. Thank you.

[10683] Ray Rodriguez: Member Thomas and then Member Martí.

[10685] Nancy Thomas: I think we already passed a resolution that said that we were going to decrease the number of NTA positions by 13, and five of those were at the elementary level. And part of that was the ongoing commitment to staff at an average of 26 to 1. So I mean, if we can delay this while we look at specific cuts that we have asked staff to bring to us program cuts and other kind of cuts. Maybe we can delay this. How much time do we have to do this? In June. So I suggest we work on this in a workshop, try to see if we can get to 26 top, maybe cut it at 26, depending on what other cuts staff brings to us in their recommendations.

[10745] Ray Rodriguez: Superintendent, do you?

[10747] SPEAKER_38: I'd be comfortable with that. I just know that, I just want to be transparent. If we say, if let's say we decide we're going to go to 25 versus 26, that increases the number we're going to cut. If we go to 24, that increases the number we're going to cut. Just be aware that you push here, it comes up somewhere else. So I'm fine with that.

[10765] Ray Rodriguez: I'm fine to bring it back. So can we do a workshop at the next meeting then on this?

[10769] SPEAKER_38: We'll get the schedules out when I get to my report, and I'll see when we can schedule it.

[10774] Elisa Martinez: I think I wanted to come back to the unanswered question of averages versus actual real actual number. I think we again I think we I hear Jessica that you know it is a tough question in terms of when we do get to into that situation. I think if we are going to go down the path of a workshop we're going to have to look at how we're going to do that. But again this is my personal opinion we'll see how the rest of the board feels is that the assumption would be it's it's the number 26, it's not an average of or whatever the number is and if that comes with us having to develop a policy because it's not you you know where where we prioritize So what are the rules around prioritization? It won't be pretty if we get there, if we have to, but at least we've got something documented that people would have to live by. So that would be my ask.

[10842] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Member John.

[10845] Bowen Zhang: Oh, I'm just going to ask for the grade four through six and junior high and high school, what are the current averages and the legal limit from that?

[10856] SPEAKER_38: We can provide that.

[10858] Ray Rodriguez: So I'll give it to superintendent, see if we can bring it back to the, if everybody's in agreement at the next meeting. And if we need to do a workshop, we will.

[10869] Nancy Thomas: Or later. I mean, we have to.

[10871] Ray Rodriguez: Well, I don't know. How much time do we have?

[10874] Nancy Thomas: We have till the end of June.

[10875] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, the end of June.

[10878] Nancy Thomas: June 6. Oh, June 6 meeting, we can't do it at the following meeting?

[10883] SPEAKER_40: I think as long as it's before June 30.

[10886] Nancy Thomas: That's what I meant.

[10887] SPEAKER_50: to the end of June.

[10892] SPEAKER_40: Basically, we need to let staff know where they're going to be assigned. So this kind of gets in the middle of that.

[10898] Ray Rodriguez: The sooner the better, right?

[10900] SPEAKER_38: And I will also get legal opinion on what parts can we talk about. Thank you. 12.6, third interim report for 2018-2019.

[10917] Ray Rodriguez: I don't have anybody that wants to address this. I need a motion and a second.

[10920] Rachel Bloom: Conversation.

[10921] SPEAKER_52: Point of order. On the class size, was there a motion?

[10926] SPEAKER_38: We're going to bring it back.

[10928] Nancy Thomas: We tabled it.

[10929] SPEAKER_38: It was tabled. We're to be bringing it back to the next board meeting. We're going to try to also schedule a study session.

[10936] Ray Rodriguez: OK. 12.6. You're going to have a handout.

[10954] SPEAKER_43: Good evening board members, Superintendent Sanchez. Tonight I'm going to talk about the third interim report. Basically, the general fund consists of unrestricted funds as well as restricted funds that consist of routine maintenance funds, supplemental funds, LCFF. We've got our beginning fund balance minus or surplus of our, a difference between our revenue and our expenditures equals our funding fund balance. Then we have designation as well as our economic minimum reserves. Here's an example of our revenues. Like I said, I mentioned earlier, our LCFF. Our LCFF is based on our average daily attendance, as well as unduplicated pupil count. We get our funds for supplemental and concentration funds based on unduplicated pupil count. We also get federal revenues, Title I, Title II, Title III, that focus on Title II is for professional development. Title I is for unduplicated pupil count students. We also get special education funding and other categorical programs. We also get state lottery funds and one-time discretionary fund. However, next year, we'll probably know more about it next week on the May revision from the governor's proposed budget. And we also get local revenues from self-help funds, the lease, use of facilities, interest income, and any donations from the Newark Educational Foundation. And then inter-district transfer from the special reserves and other contributions. Here's some assumptions for our third interim report. You've seen this before in regards to our second interim report. The governor decides to reduce the CalSTRS from 18.3% to 17%. for 19-20, another 1% down for 20-21, and then a 0.5 in 20-21 in the outer years. However, there are rumors right now that's stating that he may go down further for the CalSTRS contribution from 18.3 to possibly 16.65, which will help the district out, which will help every single school district out. Some other assumptions, we get state lottery funds, $151 per ADA for unrestricted, and then $53 for restricted funds. We are projecting right now for CalSTRS rate, 16.28% for current year, 1920, 17.1, because we won't know if the governor's going to really actually going lower the contribution to 16.65. We'll probably find that out next week. And then the CalPERS, he's not going to fund anything for CalPERS, only CalSTRS. So as you can see in this chart here, our CalPERS continue to increase. By 2021, it will be about 23.4% that the district has to contribute. The second column is about 1.67% for certificated, and then the classified is about 0.72. And again, I just want to thank the board to pass the resolution 3120 in the amount of $2.2 million reduction. So this is the first year we're doing online registration for elementary schools. We have a total of, so far as of today, about 3,623 students. have registered for our district. 2,108 has not. And then about 80 students are not planning to return to our district next year. So that comes out to be about 5,731 projecting enrollment for 19 and 20 school year. What we projected for 19-20 is 5,701. We're getting close. Hopefully, we don't go below 5,701. If we do, then we have to make some adjustments to our LCFF calculations, our revenues, basically.

[11256] Nancy Thomas: When we have students not returning, we have students that come in also.

[11260] SPEAKER_43: Oh, yeah.

[11261] Nancy Thomas: Do you ever estimate that?

[11262] SPEAKER_43: I mean, is that not a- It's a combination that's in there because we did have some parents that want to send their kids to Newark Unified School District. Here's our summary of our revenues from adopted budget to third interim for LCFF. Again, we lost some revenues because of our enrollment decline. We projected that our enrollment was going to be way up, but in reality, we lost 100-something students. So we lost in LCFF funding. The previous governor did increase the base fund, so that's why You saw some of the offsetting because our enrollment declined so much, but he increased the LCFF in base funds, so that's why 30 room is pretty much close to what the adopted budget was. Federal revenue, we increased in federal revenue. That's because there were a lot of carryovers from prior years, from Title I, Title II. And then other state revenues, it went down because of the, Previous governor decided on the enacted budget back in July, he decided to decrease the one-time discretionary fund from $344 to $184 per ADA. I also have other documentations. Mr. Nguyen, excuse me.

[11360] Ray Rodriguez: The board only extended the time to 11.

[11363] SPEAKER_43: OK. I'll make this.

[11365] Ray Rodriguez: No, no. I just want to know how long. Because we're going to need at least 15 minutes.

[11369] SPEAKER_43: Sure. Give me about five minutes. OK. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Thank you. All right. But hurry up. Just kidding. OK. And we got, if you notice that the local revenue went up by $476,000. That's because we got one-time local funds from the CCCEE grant, which is very generous. Thank you, Mr. Sanchez, for getting us that grant. So here's our revenues here. 81% is from LCFF. We got state, other local revenues. And then our expenditures. consists of certificate salaries, speech therapist, psychologist, assistant principals, classified, paraeducators, maintenance and operations, office staff, confidentials. Employee benefits, the statutory benefits, CalSTRS, CalPERS, contributions, OSDI, unemployment workers compensation, and then The medical benefits only applies to classified staff, books and supplies, service and operating expense. I'm going to go through this in a few minutes with everyone here. Other outgoes, mission ROP and cafeteria funds, intradistrict, intrafund transfer out. So here's our expenditure summary. Our certificate salaries from adopted budget to third interim went down because we couldn't fill some of the positions. Speech therapist, speech pathologist, I mentioned that to you during second interim report. The classified salaries, I believe we hired a electrician or an HVAC person. Is Susan here? Susan's not here. But we did hire, so that's why it's a classified salary increase a little bit. And then we also got some grants, and some of the grants were applied to some of these salaries. And then employee benefits went down a little bit, but it's pretty comparable by 19,000. Books and supplies increased. And the reason why, I guess last week someone had an inquiry in regards to why did the books and supplies went up so much. It's because normally during March, we have a deadline, a cutoff deadline where school site needs to submit their purchase requisition ins so they can order their books and supplies. And then there's also movements in terms of transfers, budget transfers, from one budget to another budget. So that's why it's an increase. That's because a lot of school sites want to submit their purchase requisition in so that they can buy their equipment or books, whatever the case may be, before the March 30th deadline.

[11543] Nancy Thomas: Yes. But that 500 took us over budget. How could we approve spending that took us over the budget? What? That books and supplies, 500K or whatever it was, was over budget. How do we allow purchases that are over the budget?

[11565] SPEAKER_43: Well, there was budgeted in terms of, let me get my documentations here. Well, then if it was- There were some funds that were transferred from LCAP to Books and Supplies because they didn't have enough time to spend some of their site allocations. So they moved the funds from LCAP funds, as an example, to Books and Supplies so they can order some equipment.

[11596] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, but our expenses went up by $980,000. from February from March to April, our expenses. So if you took it out of something else, how did our expenses go up $900,000?

[11613] SPEAKER_43: In which? In the books and supplies?

[11622] Nancy Thomas: No. You said overall, if they spent more on books and supplies, they took it out of LCFF or some other place. Right. So how do we get $900,000? and $81,000 increase in expenses.

[11637] SPEAKER_43: I'm sorry, where do you see the $981,000?

[11641] Nancy Thomas: I mean, I see it in the reports that you give us and from the third interim report. It shows what the expenses are overall. And of that, 287 was certificated salaries went up. 98,000 classified salaries went up. And 99,000 books and supplies went out. 520,000 was an increase in services and operating. It's on the last page.

[11671] SPEAKER_43: OK, so I'm going to go explain the service and operating expense for you right now.

[11676] SPEAKER_38: Here's a document I'd like you to have.

[11681] Nancy Thomas: You can share those with the audience.

[11682] SPEAKER_38: OK, would you pass those to the audience, please?

[11686] Nancy Thomas: I mean, I'm sorry for interrupting, but it doesn't make any sense that.

[11691] SPEAKER_43: So again, so yes. There were some carryovers, so we have to budget it for the expenditures and for our budget. We have Prop 39 that came in, so we have to budget that, that we're going to spend it this year. We're going to try to spend it. We also have some carryover from Title I and Title II. We also have some CCE grant.

[11711] Nancy Thomas: Well, we knew that at the beginning of the year.

[11715] SPEAKER_43: All right. And it should have been in the budget. Right, right. So let me further explain.

[11719] Ray Rodriguez: So I'm going to need to interrupt just for a second. I'm going to let you finish, Mr. Nguyen. But first, I need the superintendent to look at the items that are after this to see what we can move to the next meeting or what has to be voted on now.

[11742] SPEAKER_38: The consent agenda is a high priority for me.

[11748] Ray Rodriguez: Do you mind just taking a minute so we can? Sure. Staffing.

[11754] SPEAKER_38: with Mr. Nguyen's consent and 13 and 14, all of those are important.

[11762] Ray Rodriguez: We need to hire those people, yes. Can we look at those for 13.1? Need a motion and a second.

[11770] Bowen Zhang: So I move to approve 13.1 to 13.3. I'd like to pull an appointment of assistant principals.

[11775] Elisa Martinez: What process, what do we have there?

[11783] Ray Rodriguez: OK, you want to pull that? OK, so 13.1 and 13.3. Well, no, he already moved on 13.1. So let's just do that, please. Member John and Member Rodriguez seconds on 13.1. Please vote. Okay, motion passes three and one nay. Because of time, did you want to address that or are you okay?

[11825] Nancy Thomas: Just briefly, I don't want to vote for numbers. I don't know who those people are. I think if we can do something different in the future, I can vote.

[11835] SPEAKER_38: Okay, 13. We can go into closed session and we can share that with you. We have the information, we just didn't get to it.

[11841] Ray Rodriguez: Well, we can't because we're limited to 11 o'clock.

[11845] Nancy Thomas: I mean, it passed. My vote was very similar to other votes this evening where we have a problem because of the process.

[11853] Ray Rodriguez: Right. OK. 13.3, appointment of pupil services coordinator. Did you want to address that real quick? Go ahead, Jessica.

[11874] SPEAKER_40: I was going to make a recommendation for an appointment of of the person that was selected. So basically what we do is HR conducted a rigorous research for the pupil services position coordinator position and we are happy to report that I'm bringing up a name forward by to to you forward by the committee that was the two representatives of NEWMA, and then we forwarded the names to eCabinet, who had a second interview with the person, and we brought up a name for you tonight to consider the appointment of the coordinator of pupil services. Her name is Ana Leon. And she comes to us with eight years of experience as both as a clinical case manager for the city of Fremont, and she's also been a program manager for student support services at the Fremont Unified School District. She has a social worker credential, and she knows the importance of including parents in the treatment of children and their challenges. She also enjoys working with school sites supporting services.

[11950] Ray Rodriguez: OK, thank you. 13.3, need a motion and a second. I move to approve 13.3. I second. Please vote. What happened to Lucy? She had to leave. OK, motion passes. Did you want to address 13.2? Go ahead.

[11975] SPEAKER_40: Yes, so similar to 13.3, We conducted a rigorous research for the high school school assistant principals, and again, we're happy to report that I'm bringing up to you two names, Lisa Strom and Karen Foucault. These two persons were, again, selected by a panel that consisted of a principal, a teacher, the school's secretary, a counselor, a special ed representative, and myself as the Facilitator of the meeting again. We brought we interview several Candidates we selected the top three that came and met with executive cabinet last Monday And and these are the two names that e cabinet is making a recommendation for your approval tonight Okay, so on this one.

[12028] Ray Rodriguez: We really don't have a conversation. We either voted yes or no on it Okay, because it's personnel Yes, absolutely I have my notes here excuse me

[12043] SPEAKER_40: Lisa Strom is coming to Newark from Santa Clara. She comes to us with eight years of experience in secondary education. She has worked with various areas and more specifically in developing and implementing AP curriculum that includes Saturday School Academy for AP. She's been an instructional coach. She values collaboration among staff members and is very happy to join NUSD Newark Memorial High School. Our second candidate that's been recommended tonight, her name is Karen Foucault. She is moving back into the area. She brings 14 plus years of working with secondary students. She's dedicated, innovative, and a solid collaborator, eager to get to know Newark Memorial students and staff.

[12088] Bowen Zhang: And where was she before this? You said she's moving back. Where is she moving back?

[12092] SPEAKER_40: She is.

[12092] Nancy Thomas: She's currently living in Vasellia. What's her current position?

[12099] Ray Rodriguez: assistant principal That's correct, okay need a motion and a second Okay, and remember Rodriguez seconds, please vote Okay motion passes 3-1 nay so We go to consent calendar non-personnel. We have 14.1 warrant report for April 2019, 14.2 minutes of the regular board meeting for May 2nd, minutes of the special board meeting for May 4th, a non-curricular trip request for Schilling 6th grade to travel to Hayward, non-curricular trip request for Kennedy 4th grade to travel to Newark. These are end of the year events that they have.

[12156] Bowen Zhang: I move to approve 14.1 through 14.5.

[12159] Ray Rodriguez: I'll second. OK, member Thomas seconds. Member John moves. All in. OK, open to voting. OK, please vote. OK, motion passes unanimously. OK, Mr. Nguyen, you can finish now. Thank you. Thank you, board and staff.

[12192] SPEAKER_43: All right. So I want to address Mrs. Thomas' question. So in regards to the carryovers, as well as the service and operating expenses. So in federal revenues, we carried over to Title II about $75,000. The Individuals with Disability Education Act, IDA, The district received more than over $100,000 that was not budgeted. And then the low performance students funding, we did not budget that. That was about $202,000. So that went into services and operating expense that was budgeted. We received revenues, and then we also budgeted that we're going to use the funds.

[12238] Nancy Thomas: OK. I think those carryovers are on this sheet that you gave us a couple. How long ago did you give that to us?

[12245] SPEAKER_43: Probably about a couple of weeks ago, I believe. I mean, I believe Miss Beverly gave that to you.

[12252] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, it's been a while. But in each case, it's a carryover. And then the current year, the total spending is what you expect to spend. So what I'm getting at is if all of these are showing up in the last month, this $900,000 that was, they should have already been in the budget.

[12278] SPEAKER_43: It was part of second interim. We did clean things up. We did look at all of our expenditures in terms of certificate salaries, cost by salary, employee benefits. And we cleared things out. And that's why you see some differences. And again, we were trying to get ready for adopted budget.

[12301] Nancy Thomas: So there's $310,000 that we got from CCEE for LCAP 1 and 2, and that was, I guess we got the revenue this year?

[12314] SPEAKER_43: Yes, the revenue came in for this one time CCEE.

[12318] Nancy Thomas: But it shows that we expect to spend it this year in this chart.

[12323] SPEAKER_43: That's where it's budgeted, yes.

[12325] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, but if these are for positions that we're going to have for next year, they shouldn't be budgeted in this year's budget.

[12334] SPEAKER_43: No, it's not budget for next year. This is for this year.

[12341] SPEAKER_53: Yes.

[12343] SPEAKER_31: So for the CCEE money, that is not for positions. It's more for services. So you remember like the Illuminates Landscape Report, some of the board work. All of that is going to be mostly services and contracts, and actually also hourly pay for clerks and just some folks to do more work with the end date of June 30. So that is not, those aren't new positions. And in terms of the low performing money, what the state gave, of course, thank you for the money, but why so late? But what they allowed us to do is to carry it over. So for the low performing, we're actually budgeting it out for two years out. And so it'll show there, but it's not spent. Because we need to pay for, if you recall, we're gonna do two TOSAs to support one for language arts and one for math for two years. But this is just the first installment. And then we're going to get the other $200,000 of the low performing.

[12397] Nancy Thomas: I looked at those numbers, and it sounded like the numbers for salaries.

[12400] SPEAKER_46: Oh, yeah.

[12400] Nancy Thomas: No, sorry. Yes. For services.

[12402] Ray Rodriguez: OK. So we're running out of time. Does this have to be voted on tonight?

[12407] SPEAKER_43: There's no vote. It's just an information session.

[12409] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, OK.

[12409] SPEAKER_43: Information? Right. Because third interim, there's a vote to accept third interim.

[12416] Ray Rodriguez: That's it?

[12416] SPEAKER_43: But you don't have to do a, you don't have to certify us whether it's a positive, qualified, or negative certification. It's just an information, really.

[12426] Elisa Martinez: Go ahead. Just a quick comment. I know that, as I read the letter, I think that the thing that the county is still asking us is around our expenditure control. And I think that, to me, I know we don't have to vote to approve to a positive conditional, but that still continues to be a concern. So I think, assuming that it's accepted by the county, We need to continue working that in-house because it's still not, it doesn't inspire a ton of confidence, right, that we actually do have a plan to control cost.

[12463] Bowen Zhang: Right. So how likely do you think the county will actually look at this and say this is actually a positive qualification?

[12472] SPEAKER_43: Right. Mrs. Young, the third-year enrollment would not need to be approved, whether it's positive

[12480] Bowen Zhang: You just submit to the county and yes, how would county look at a third interim report?

[12484] SPEAKER_43: Oh, yeah, they're gonna look at thoroughly and they're gonna come back with any questions and I'm gonna have to and does the county need to Certify this as positive qualification. No, what happens is that it's going to be submitted to To Alameda County, but also California Department of Education also to the state controller's office They're gonna have to review our third interim report because we have to Qualified certification.

[12512] SPEAKER_38: If I may help clarify, and I think this is to Member Martinez's point, in the letter it specifically identifies fiscal stabilization plan and for the conditions resulted in the termination the district may not be eligible to meet its financial obligations and submitted a fiscal stabilization plan by February 15th to the ACOE. So those are two very tangible, specific things. that we need clarity on, and maybe reach out to the county to make sure that we hit those targets on or before the deadline.

[12546] Nancy Thomas: And I'd like to say to Mrs. Martinez's comments, I don't have faith in these numbers because they keep moving, they keep changing. For a million dollars in new revenue since March to April, and $900,000 in expenses. I don't think they're adequately explained.

[12575] SPEAKER_43: OK, so let me explain a little bit more on the LCFF funding, too. We receive more funding because I'm budgeting the third interim also on P2. Our P2 is at $5,540. I don't have the document in front of me. But what we projected, we projected conservatively at about $5,520. So it's a difference of about $200,000. Let's go back to your revenue question here. So again, we had, like I said, for federal revenue, we had Title II carryovers. We had ID, EA, the Individual Disability Education Act. We received revenue of $100,000 that was not budgeted. And then we have other state revenue that came in for low performance student funding that we did not budget for $202,000. Then we also have Prop 47 funds that came in about $110,000.

[12641] Nancy Thomas: I'm just shocked because at the beginning of the year, we had 66 that we budgeted, $66 million. And then we had a big decline because of our enrollment. And then ever since that decline, it's been going up. And now we have more money than we had at the beginning of the year.

[12663] SPEAKER_43: Again, there are some carryovers. And then there were resources.

[12668] Nancy Thomas: But carryover should have been in the budget, right?

[12671] Ray Rodriguez: OK, so we're out of time. Excuse me. I'm sorry. We do have a special board meeting next Tuesday.

[12675] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, let's cover this next Tuesday.

[12678] SPEAKER_38: Is that OK? I think that the contents of the special board meetings, as I've heard today, is going to be two things. Budget, these questions, as well as K-3. Those are all budget related.

[12692] Ray Rodriguez: OK. So we can bring it back. We can talk about it Tuesday. OK? Thank you. Thank you for the handouts. And I'm sure that if any board member has any questions, I'll reach out to you. Yes. You know, if the superintendent gives us permission to talk to you. So anyway, thank you. And I apologize. It's just that we have the time.

[12713] SPEAKER_43: I totally understand. Thank you for your time.

[12715] Ray Rodriguez: OK. So I'll get with the superintendent and see how much, if we can, on Tuesday, if you can finish it up, if that's OK. Oh, definitely.

[12723] SPEAKER_43: I'll be more than happy to. OK, great.

[12727] Ray Rodriguez: OK, with that, we move to Board of Education Committee Reports. Mr. John, do you have anything?

[12734] Bowen Zhang: Well, last week's bite to school day is fun. It was fun. I was at the music elementary and I believe member Thomas was at Kennedy Elementary, right?

[12744] Nancy Thomas: Well, I had my helmet on in my picture.

[12746] Bowen Zhang: Yeah, I walked there, so. Requests, I remembering the board training day and the superintendent mentioned we have 30% overall staff turnover rate, 25% teaching staff turnover rate. I think this turnover rate is a bit alarming and given the cost of living in our area. So, I do think certain employee housing might help to stabilize our turnover rate. So, but before moving forward with that, I hope whether the staff can develop a sort of a survey to look at the teachers who are renters or the new teachers, whether they're interested in any sort of employee housing. If they're not, then we probably don't need to proceed. If there is overwhelming interest, when it comes to employee housing, then we'll take the next step. And I hope the survey, the samples we survey should be accurate, not survey the people who already own homes in Newark. That wouldn't make sense. I hope we can have the targeted population surveyed.

[12813] Ray Rodriguez: You know, employee housing doesn't apply to board members. You know that, right?

[12823] Elisa Martinez: Yeah, I was fortunate enough to walk through our secondary campuses last week with Superintendent Sanchez. So, again, very, you know, interested, excited in terms of what our plans are. I know we have a lot of challenges. Which brings me back to the same thing. You know what I'm going to ask, because it's, I think, my fourth or fifth meeting asking this. And remind me again, do we have a plan when we're going to bring back the data that I've requested around?

[12859] SPEAKER_38: June 16th, I believe was the date. What are we doing the report on on-track, off-track? What was our target date?

[12865] Elisa Martinez: I believe it's June 16th. Right. And again, just to clarify, on-track, off-track, that's interesting to get the numbers, but again, my question with the... It will tell you about counselors and the status.

[12877] SPEAKER_38: On-track, off-track is decided by how many kids have enough credits to graduate. how many kids are on track by grade level. We'll also be incorporating AP, and we'll also be incorporating progressive discipline. So those are the elements that I think we'll get to.

[12895] Elisa Martinez: That's a loaded day session. I think my original ask actually was around touch points with counselors. So I want to make sure that doesn't get lost.

[12906] SPEAKER_38: Well, it won't get lost. I'm not trying to avoid the question. I just believe that To get an idea of how the counselors are doing, we need to see how the students are progressing with credits. But I could certainly have the counselors be here to be able to speak to what are we doing to address those issues. I'm happy to incorporate that.

[12922] Elisa Martinez: So one of the things, and again, I know I'm only one board member, but we've had lots of weeks. And I said, I think even if we know we don't have a report, we're not actively tracking it, even if it's just looking at touch, manual touch points, my hypothesis is, right, and I'm not an expert as you are, but I'd like to see the correlation of, right, of assuming the kids that will fall into the struggling category, how often are we really touching them? So again, I think it's a comprehensive picture, Superintendent Sanchez, so I just want to make sure we don't lose that detail. Okay, thank you.

[12967] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, Member Thomas.

[12969] Nancy Thomas: I was happy to go to bike to school day at Kennedy. I noticed that the requests that had been on the agenda under your report, superintendent, are gone. Right?

[12987] SPEAKER_38: I think that was just a function of Char trying to get the agenda together. It'll come back on. OK. They haven't gone anywhere.

[12996] Nancy Thomas: Okay, this might be part of on track, off track, but I found the number of Apex classes that students are taking. I assume some of them are being taken during the day, during times when classes are, there's room in classrooms. I really am concerned about the number of Apex classes that our students are taking. To me, it should be after school or for summer credit recovery, not during the school day, so I would like to see staff respond to the need for that and the cost for it and maybe seek a board approval for it if it's a change in our policy.

[13040] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, thank you. The only thing I have quickly is anytime there's something at the high school, because Sierra gave us so much time for the last year, I'm going to those and I encourage other board members to go. Next week we have the senior awards and And it'd be nice to have board members there, because Sierra Nestle will be getting a lot of awards. She got a full scholarship to Menlo College for wrestling. And then anything else that's happening at the sites. And no requests. Superintendent, anything?

[13075] SPEAKER_38: I do want to share that I was on an important call with Tony Thurmond this week. And we do have an opportunity at a grant to explore employee housing. I'll be following up more on that later.

[13086] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, that is so good. Thank you. Okay, that's it. You got it? Okay. 11 o'clock.

[13090] SPEAKER_38: We did it. Thank you.

No minutes available.