Study Session Meeting

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[1] Ray Rodriguez: regular board meeting of the Newark Unified School District Board of Education. Today we're going to start with a 5 p.m. study session. Then we have the closed session at 6, but at 545 we'll suspend the meeting and then we'll have a special meeting where we're going to discuss the one item. And then we'll go to closed session at 6. After we close or adjourn the special meeting, then we'll go to closed session at 6. After we open the meeting, then we go to closed session. Then we have open session. So roll call. Ready? Thank you for filling in for Ms. Aquino. No problem. I appreciate it.

[60] SPEAKER_28: President Rodriguez.

[62] Ray Rodriguez: Present.

[63] SPEAKER_28: Vice President Thomas. Here. Member Martinez. Here. Member Gutierrez. Here. Member Zhang. Here.

[73] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. So we need the approval of the agenda. Need a motion. I move that we approve. A second, please.

[86] Nancy Thomas: I'll second.

[87] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Let's open for voting. Member Gutierrez makes a motion. Member Thomas seconds. Please vote. Well, let's see if it shows. Yeah, it's not showing. Student board member isn't here. I don't know. Maybe Larry can help us. Because when I do. OK.

[116] Nancy Thomas: We there? OK. Thank you.

[124] Ray Rodriguez: I should have went to the right, right? Okay, so we have the approval of the agenda, public comment on board study session items. The board study session is going to be on ADIS, is that pronounced it right? Update on Facilities Master Plan. That's our study session. So, do we have anybody? No. So, no one wants to, We do? Ms. Parks?

[154] SPEAKER_28: Oh, I'm sorry.

[155] Ray Rodriguez: Come on up. Hi, how are you?

[160] Cindy Parks: Hey, I took a lot of time making this speech. I expect to be heard.

[164] Ray Rodriguez: Took a lot of time to write that stuff in.

[167] Cindy Parks: I would like to, again, express my concern about the majority of the cost of the master plan being built to the bond. You haven't even finished the promised projects and have committed several hundreds of thousands of dollars to another plan. In the presentation before you, the district office, MOT, and Area 3 are mentioned. In fact, there's a lot of comments centered around Area 3, and yet I have heard there's little to no parent-generated comments in that area from the meetings. The bond is not allowed to pay for anything to do with those areas. Nevertheless, so far, all warrants to ADIS have been charged to the bond. Page 9 of the document shows that you had 58 workshops, yet only 174 stakeholders attended. I brought this up once before. Is the community not a stakeholder? Why haven't you solicited their input? When you go for a parcel tax or a bond, you're going to expect their support. Don't you think you should know how they feel? Page 22 has Kennedy's site map, which includes new hardcourt recommendations. Does ADIS know that you just spent $682,000 replacing the hard courts? And the shade areas mentioned, has their wish list been forgotten? That's on there. It's been 18 months it's been sitting there. Page 52 says school park is going to be up to 12 acres. It's only going to be nine. You would think it'd be a little bit more accurate. Page 53 says that one elementary school has only 286 students. That's not accurate either. Now let's talk about the six scenarios. Where did the merging of Birch Grove schools come from. Once again you had them separated. Now you separate them separately differently. Now you're going to merge them all together. The first scenario has Birch Grove K-8 in Area 3. Do you think the new residents in Area 3 are going to want a K-8 which will generate twelve hundred fifty parents driving their kids through the neighborhood to drop them off. Plus, Cherry is already severely impacted as commuters are utilizing it to bypass the freeway traffic. Scenario number three consolidates BGI and BGP all onto BGP. Does ADIS not know that Hetch Hetchy has an easement in which a pipe is buried in the back of the field? That pipe impacts your usable space. I would hope that for half a million dollars, ADIS would only provide viable options. That's, there's more that I could go into, but I'm done.

[318] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you for doing it under three minutes. Appreciate it. Anyone else? OK. Superintendent, it's on you.

[332] SPEAKER_02: Thank you, President Rodriguez, members of the board, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, I'd like to introduce Thang Do from ADIS. And he'll lead us through our study session on what's contained in the documents tonight. Before he starts I do want to share that the purpose for Ada's presenting tonight is not anywhere near a final recommendation. This is a status report for the board's request as well as what were they hired to do, what have they done, how far are they in completing those tasks. The entire contract was attached to the agenda and as you know this is a work in progress. One of the questions I had in a prior Committee meeting was well, why isn't this totally complete and I expect more and it should be more detailed But I didn't want to bring the board finished work I wanted you guys to weigh in before we get to final Recommendations so that if we have specific direction from the board we have a forum for you guys to have that conversation here With that I'll turn it over to thang and if you would introduce us with you thang and then let's let's get going I know we're on the timeline here superintendent before we start.

[394] Ray Rodriguez: I apologize I the workshop Basically, I guess the superintendent already shared with you that we were hoping that you would be able to give us your information in 15, 20 minutes so the board can discuss. And then some of the items that were brought up by Ms. Parks, will you be answering them or is the gentleman going to be answering at some point? At some point. We both will be in the process of the presentation. Okay. Thank you. Thank you much. Go ahead. Okay.

[422] SPEAKER_04: Well, thank you, Superintendent Sanchez. Good evening, President Rodriguez, members of the board. Ladies and gentlemen, I am Thang Do. I'm the CEO of Adis Architects. And this is Anna Harrison with Adis. Anna actually played a very big role in this entire planning effort and is here together with me to answer any questions that the board may have. So as the superintendent said, our purpose here tonight is to give you an update of where we are in our muscle planning process. In the interest of time, we're going to fly through the presentation very quickly. There are many slides involved. And so we're going to slow down toward the end where we're talking about scenarios that the board could weigh in and make decisions on. We first will give you an update of where we are in our process and then get into those topics. So this is the overall timeline without going into all the details. So we're now in mid-May. All the tasks to the left of that line are things that we have already completed. We're on track to complete the master plan and to go back to you for your final approval in October of 2019. And all the tasks on the right are those that remain. These are tasks listed. These are tasks under our contract and listed line by line. And the right-hand column shows the status of where we are, what has been completed, and what still remains, as well as, from the master planning side, the percentage of completion of each individual task. The stakeholder engagement process, we began with a district-wide visioning workshop. And some of, at least, member Thomas was there and perhaps others. And for the individual campuses, all campuses had two stakeholder engagement workshops. The junior high school and the high school had a third one, and the high school alone had four workshops altogether. And the number of workshops really were constrained by the resources that we had and the the scope and the contract that the board approved back in August of last year. The number of stakeholders that were engaged in the process at the district-wide visioning workshop, there were 58 stakeholders engaged at the elementary school level across all campuses, 90, 29 at the junior high school, 55 at the high school, to a total of 174 district-wide throughout the process. Up until now. There will be more stakeholder engagement because we have a few more workshops to go through. To begin with the district visioning workshop, we attempted to, we worked with stakeholders to establish guiding principles. And this is a chart that shows the principles that led to the guiding principles, which is at the center where the question mark is. And we looked at all the methods of instructional deliveries, considered them in this process, as well as consider the approach to plan to engage stakeholders, to bring everybody to work, to participate actively in the process, to act as designers. Ann came up with these guiding principles here, and I won't read them one by one, but in your presentation, in your packet, there are nine of them, and then there's a sub-description of each of those guiding principles as well. The stakeholders across all campuses came up with the challenges as well as opportunities. On the challenges side, these are the common ones that folks communicated to us, as well as the opportunities, those two columns on the right. And some of the key takeaways from these various workshops across the campuses, and again, I won't read each one of them, But these are what people actually say. These are actual quotes from participants. And the stakeholders also work with us to come up with what we call big implementable ideas, which are things that are transformative in nature but can be carried out. And again, we'll just go down the list. So the next section is really to show you, to give you a sense of what will appear in the final report when we come back in the time frame of September or October of this year. So we chose three sample campuses, Kennedy Elementary School, the Junior High School, and the High School. For starting with Kennedy, we always begin with a campus plan for each campus and then looked at the challenges that that site presents. And these challenges came from the stakeholders as well as our own assessment and planning team. Existing conditions in photograph. And the input by the stakeholders, the ideas that they came up with for that campus, which then culminate in The opportunities that that campus generates, opportunities to transform, to create a different kind of educational environment, the ones that have a star attached to them are what we call sort of signature projects. I mean, those are the projects that we want to highlight because they're projects that could be carried out and that responds to a number of the ideas or the priorities that the stakeholders came up with. In terms of big ideas at the elementary schools, and these are not campus specific, but the ideas range from creating a strong sense of curb appeal, taking advantage of outdoor-indoor connection, using the outdoor as learning opportunities, as well as creating other kind of spaces for the outdoor and environmental science, et cetera. As far as interior spaces, you know, looking at the libraries as more of a common kind of space, more of a community space, creating maker spaces and just creating more flexible, friendly interior educational environment with a lot of daylighting and view and that sort of thing. Moving on to the junior high school project, Newark Junior High School. In terms of challenges, these are the set of challenges that, again, the stakeholders as well as our assessment and planning team came up with, and photos of the existing conditions. The input from stakeholders, and they're listed on the right. And I'm going pretty fast, I realize that. I'm just trying to get to the section that the board is going to weigh in a lot on. And again, we list the opportunities at the junior high school. And again, the ones with a star attached are the ones that we want to call special attention to. Some of those evolve around the quad area, around learning communities, around creating a more logical location for administration of student services, as well as the entry experience for visitors and for students. and a maker space, as well as a bioscience space of some sort that can replace the pool that is not currently used. And big ideas at the junior high school level, the curb appeal issue, the idea of creating an approach where visitors are securely checked in and there's more control over who comes, who gets on and off the campus. Again, a lot of emphasis on taking advantage of the outdoor as learning opportunities. More on outdoor biotechnology, environmental science, and as well as maker spaces, various kinds of maker space and kind of sandpit kind of spaces. Looking at creating comfortable, flexible, day-lit interior spaces. And then moving on to the New World Memorial High School, in terms of the challenges of the site, which I'm sure you all know there are quite a few, and photographs of the existing conditions, the ideas that the stakeholders identified that are opportunities for the campus, which then culminated in this diagram and this map. At the high school, I want to dwell a little bit in a little greater detail. So the ideas that we're looking at is that there's a lot of discussion on the quad area, on how to really transform that into really the center of student social life and just campus life in general. The idea of recreating or redesigning the student commons experience, the cafeteria, to create something that is much more friendly, much more in keeping with what students experience elsewhere in their lives, in malls, or later on in the workplace, and so on and so forth. And then at the front of the campus, there are two options that we want to present. Option A in this diagram shows a demolition of the existing administration wing. and replacing that with a two-story structure that has the library on the ground floor and classrooms on the upper floor. And at the same time, converting the existing library into administration because that's at the front of the campus and that's easily identifiable by visitors and also has a good view onto the quad area. And then option B is a similar option, but it's a more ambitious plan which is to demolish and replace both the administration and the library, and replace that with a larger building that houses administration and library, and then possibly science facilities on the upper floor. Big ideas at the high school level, again, curb appeal connects all three great levels. A lot of emphasis on the commons area, looking at the quad area. The taking advantage or incorporate student art into the campus atmosphere, looking at natural light and indoor-outdoor connection, just creating interior spaces that encourage creativity, innovation, and flexibility of use, and creating various spaces that students can get their hands on, experimentation, make a space. As well as at the high school, there was a lot of discussion on the outdoors and on the environment. There's a lot of emphasis on incorporating environmental stewardship into the curriculum and into everyday student life. And so moving on to from that section to the, what we call the larger issues, there are other sides of the campus, and we won't talk too much about that, but we'll talk about the issue of how to optimize the facilities of the school district and then looking at different scenarios that how that optimization could take place. So of course we have the McGregor site. In fact this afternoon we just finished the second workshop at that campus. The district office, we will begin the the workshops in the coming weeks, as well as for maintenance operations and transportation. And area three is one area that needs to be considered and which goes into this discussion here. So from the point of view of optimizing the usage of facilities for the district, a few things that we noted, which is that the district has campuses that are underused in our view, in our work with other school districts. The elementary schools tend to be small in terms of student enrollment. And one school has less than 300 students. And the Newark Junior High School in particular is quite a bit underused. There's a whole wing that pretty much is used as storage and other non-essential uses. In terms of the potential of what we could do with that, we thought that we could look at how to consolidate, perhaps campuses could be consolidated, and in the process, the district could also look at the grade configuration, whether the current configuration, which is K-6 and 7-8, makes sense, or whether you want to look at a model of K-5 and 6-8. as well as looking at the issue of surplus sites and as a revenue generator. Now, all these issues are beyond the scope of what we were charged to do. We're raising them here because you cannot deal with a master plan without at least thinking about these issues. And finally, which leads us to a few key questions, which is that, Ultimately, the board should weigh in in terms of what is the optimal size for a school at each grade level in the district. As well as whether there should be a separate community engagement process to make decisions on these larger issues that are beyond the scope of this master plan study. We're we've come up with these six scenarios and I'm going to turn over to the superintendent to present them now There are many other scenarios that could come up that we can come up with these are six that we thought that were fairly Apparent and and they are not decisions. They're simply issues ideas that that we've generated so Thank you.

[1371] SPEAKER_02: Thank you thing and I want to be very clear and kind of explain what these scenarios are about The most important thing is none of these are decisions or final recommendations or anything like that. But I did want to take a look at scenarios looking at the district as a whole and how can we begin regrouping students in a way to maximize our facilities and really leverage that in a way that is going to fit with our facility master plan. So none of these are going to be there. I guess all of these are really designed In concept, not in actual. So I want to share that first as we go through scenarios. If you want to go to scenario one. Yes. So one is pretty straightforward, which is really a K-6 in area three. The capacity of that would be up to 600 students. It would not replace any schools or free up any property. And there would not be any surplus sites used. That's one scenario. And I know there's other implications for that. The second scenario is in capacity would look at a new Birch Grove in Area 3. That's an example where Birch Grove and BGI, BGP potentially could come together on one campus. Even though this says K-8, it could be any configuration. Since the schools were merged, but it might be nice if they're on one campus and they share one philosophy, one approach in a configuration that might make sense for them. That's one example of how that might work. Now, what that does in moving to one or two of those schools to that other site, it frees up some secondary effects, which is freeing up, well, we'll come back to that. You could also move district office, Bridgepoint, Crossroads, Adult Edge to one of those sites that's vacated, or do something different with the surplus. But that scenario does create some surplus sites to talk about other things that might be possible there. even employee housing, which is something we've been discussing. Let's go to Scenario 3. Capacity of Scenario 3 is consolidating. It doesn't have to be a BGP. It could be a BGI. I'm well aware of the hetch-hetchy issues we've had there. But the concept is that we would bring two schools together. It doesn't even have to be the BG schools. It could be other schools that might be physically close together to consolidate onto one campus, and whichever campus is going to be vacated, that would free up surplus property for the conversation with the board. And you see some secondary effects and potentially could create some surplus with McGregor or district office in this kind of example. This could be combined even with scenario one. So let's go to the next scenario. Taking an elementary school that might be lower in population and redistributing that among other schools, freeing up one elementary school That could have an elementary school site that's in surplus for us to consider something else to do with that property. Next one. This is looking at the idea of bringing down, going from five K-6 schools to some larger K-6 schools. So going from five elementaries at K-6 to four that are K-6 but a little bit larger. So the kind of the idea that we wanted you to begin thinking about What's the right size of the elementary? What's too small? What starts you feeling too big? So something to think about. And these consolidations do result in potential property being freed up. So we have to look at how we might play these scenarios together. Next one. This is an example where you look at consolidation into K-5 schools, but also considering a middle school model. So a large way to describe this would be kind of taking all sixth graders and moving them to a middle school configuration at the junior high, which brings the number down at the elementaries, which allows you to consolidate elementaries into a different configuration that would be K-5 instead of K-6. This could result in some secondary effects in freeing up property. This would bring the capacity of the K-5 schools to around 570 on average. and also be combined with other scenarios. So I don't think that's the last one, right?

[1644] SPEAKER_04: I believe, well, yes.

[1645] SPEAKER_02: Oh, and area three, just to give you some background information here, just to give you, I know that one of the board members had asked, what's the property, what's the cost to build new? This is approximate dollar values to build new, depending on the number of students and school size, in 2019 cost, 2022, and 2025. So those are pretty staggering numbers, and it requires us to think about how would we fund that. Next slide. So I would leave that slide as a holding slide for us to allow the board to have a conversation and weigh in. We just wanted to share some conceptual ideas. There's nothing there that is certainly set in stone. I know the board would want to weigh in on, you know, kind of what are some things you want us to think about or bring back to help you make a better informed decision or even include into final recommendations from ADIS and how we shape that and how it fits with what we're doing in other parts of the district. I'll just open it up to board questions. I know we're tight on time.

[1703] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Member Thomas, you asked for us to have the workshop. I think we all wanted it. But did you want to lead us in any questions you might have?

[1717] Nancy Thomas: Well, it's a lot to digest. Every one of those scenarios, I thought, hmm, that's something to think about. And of course, I think what you've pointed out about the need for community engagement is absolutely important. I think philosophically, if the board could talk about, because this impacts students, what's best for students? I know that Fremont is going to a 6-7-8 middle school model. Most of the school districts on the peninsula have 6-7-8 middle schools. The curriculum is geared towards sixth graders being in a middle school where they have specialists teaching math and science and language arts, for example. So that's something that appeals to me based on what I've read and understand about education and how students are best served. So that's one thing that kind of struck me on this. Another thing that struck me is Well, we didn't talk about it, but small schools cost more to operate when you have multiple small schools. And we're going to be looking at our third interim budget and our escalating deficit spending. And so consolidating schools in some of these scenarios will have an added benefit. I think the whole process of Getting community input is extremely important. I've looked at studies that other districts have done. There's a lot of norming and storming, and that's understandable. So it really requires, I think, making sure that we have a plan for getting community input in a very structured way, And I noticed some of the other plans that I've seen were done very expertly. In other words, you know, we may need to get some expert help in going forward and having the community engagement to make sure that we hear all voices. And we can't do that in less than a year, but if we're going to do it, And we can start sooner rather than later, that appeals to me. Those are just the off the top of my head comments.

[1880] Ray Rodriguez: I have some. It's frustrating because I've been in this community 45 years and I've had kids for the last 30 years go to the schools here and grandkids. So I know when member Gutierrez graduated a few years ago, We were probably over 8,000, at least, students. And then when my daughter Monica graduated in 2011, we were probably around 7,000. Now we're under 6,000. So because of that, you have to look at innovative ways to continue to move forward financially when you're losing a lot of students. And we're not the only one. So we're studying what other school districts are doing that are facing similar challenges. when it comes to declining enrollment. And I have ultimate faith with community input and with the administration, with the board that we just have now, that we'll come up with decisions. But at some point, you have to look at possibly closing down a school or consolidating a school. And these are not just schools, they're community hubs, you know, and you disrupt the whole community when you close down the school. And it's something that we don't take lightly, that it's very important to us that we minimize and come up with some innovative ways so that we can continue to move forward. And hopefully, as we have an open door policy, and maybe things will change where we'll at least level out and maybe even increase a little bit, hopefully, in the future. But that's where we're at. the start of us discussing all this. And I think the board understands the challenges that are before us. So we didn't mean to have you go 100 miles a minute here. And hopefully the board, if they're so inclined, will, if we feel we need another study session, maybe we can have you come back. But I think Member Gutierrez had something she wanted to ask.

[2025] SPEAKER_33: Hi. Thank you for your presentation. Yes, I did have a question. And this is something that I thought about. I attended one of the workshops. And I started thinking about this after. And as I was looking at this presentation, is that we see a lot of renovation. But maybe I didn't notice this. If there's any focus on our students with special needs, So if there's any renovations or changes that need to be made, but specifically focusing on our student community that has special needs.

[2061] Jodi Croce: Do you want to take this one?

[2061] SPEAKER_08: Yeah. I have a comment. Thank you so much for bringing that up because a lot of the innovation that's going on in school design and the way that we approach teaching is based upon what we learn from special education. It's based upon the differentiated instruction. And if you go into special education classrooms, you'll often see them implementing the kinds of primordial spaces that we're recommending for all kids. So they have cave spaces, they have soft materials, they have sensory rooms. So in essence, we're actually taking the lessons we've learned from those special needs kids and applying them, because we know all brains are different.

[2108] SPEAKER_33: And just to follow up with that, I know that whatever changes you guys make will be made up to code. But I'm also thinking more along the lines of physical disabilities that make it really challenging. We have some students with wheelchairs and things of that sort. The spaces that you recommend, I do understand the needs in an educational aspect, but I'm thinking also more in a physical aspect to make sure all these changes are going to be also accessible to our students.

[2134] SPEAKER_04: Right. Yes, thank you. And the less visible part of our master planning work is the facilities assessment work that had been done by a team of engineers and architects, and that's going to go into your report And that deals with very practical code compliant kind of issues, like if you need, if certain facilities are in compliance or not in compliance and what the recommendations of what needs to be done with those things. But that's all part of the master plan. It's just that part is not visible in the stakeholder engagement session. But thank you for answering.

[2164] SPEAKER_33: Is there any way to make those changes a little bit more visible? I know what you're saying in the sense that they will be up to code. So they will be there. But at least so that our stakeholders are also aware of that.

[2174] SPEAKER_04: Certainly. Yes, certainly. We'll elevate that to make them visible. Thank you.

[2181] Ray Rodriguez: Anyone else? I had a question. When the voters were so generous to give us Measure B, and then we spent over $20 million. I don't know exactly. I guess Ms. Parks would know exactly what we spent. But it was over $20 million at the high school and with the event center. When you go to a site, do you look at things that look good, and then look at ways to make it better, rather than just going in there and saying, we're going to. And I'm hoping that we would get something at some point, and make them feel better to know that we've done something right, as opposed to all changes.

[2226] SPEAKER_04: Yes. Our assessment and our recommendations go at different levels. So the one level is just the need, the modernization needs. We look at the conditions and the age of each facility and what needs to be done and the timeline in which that needs to be done. We also look at, from an educational point of view, from an educational and atmospheric point of view, environmental point of view, we also look at how certain spaces can be transformed. with natural lighting, with more flexibility, with different finishes, et cetera. And then we also look at the organizational issues in terms of whether the placement, the location of certain things are logical, and whether some functions need to be relocated, and so on and so forth. But yes, we do look at whether we can improve a facility as is rather than. Thank you.

[2288] Ray Rodriguez: Member Martinez.

[2292] Elisa Martinez: This is more directed to Superintendent Sanchez. I know we've been talking about it for a while and I think that as I think about a lot of the options and scenarios that we do need to consider to member Thomas's point. If I'm looking at, I'm not sure what page this is, but you know the actual timeline that we're needing to come to a vote. What I would like to ask is for a recommendation if we're going to work backwards from that date of decision. When would we need to start to have the community engagement sessions? Because I understand that we can't make, there's a lot of ideas, right? And we're going to be asked to vote. But if we don't understand what our footprint will look like, then it's going to be really hard to actually make those decisions. Right? So, you know, those decisions, that voting will be dependent on how we decide we're going to move forward overall. So my ask is, can you please come back with a recommendation as to when we need to start these community engagement sessions so that we actually have time to hire expert help if we need it. And then still allow us some time to actually turn through the findings. So if you can please come back with a recommendation.

[2365] SPEAKER_02: Absolutely. And I know we're in tight on time, but I would share that any kind of consolidation and redraft boundary will take at least a year. So I do think that what I wanted you guys to do, and the good thing is there's no action on anything tonight. But I do want to start you thinking about what scenarios might resonate that you feel might work in the community. But absolutely, we'll come back with some more concrete recommendations going forward. I just wanted you to have a chance to look at it. And then as you think about things, it may not even be tonight. You might email me tomorrow or in the middle of the night and say, I just thought about this. Please send those to us. And then we'll combine that with the final.

[2401] Elisa Martinez: And I hear you that any physical change, if you will, will take more than a year. But a decision is going to be pending. So we will need to make that decision. I don't think that line, we can't continue to move that line. So if you could please come to us with that.

[2414] SPEAKER_02: I just know that those have budget implications and it blends into our other conversation. But yes, I understand.

[2418] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. I just wanted to make another comment that in terms of the way we charge ADA's time, I remember talking in the beginning about, or understanding in the beginning that their time would be charged to various funds based on the amount of time they spend on various items.

[2443] Kat Jones: That is correct. Thank you.

[2447] SPEAKER_02: So we'll come back with further detail on that as well. We need to get back on track.

[2451] Ray Rodriguez: OK. We've all had a step for members. John, did you want to add anything? No. OK. Member Gutierrez, did you have something?

[2458] SPEAKER_33: Just a quick question, Superintendent. With all the previous sessions that ADIS has conducted, I know the teachers and students are invited, but are parents invited to these sessions as well?

[2469] SPEAKER_02: Yes.

[2470] SPEAKER_33: OK. It seems maybe there just needs to be a little more communication so more community members can attend if we can do more publicity.

[2479] SPEAKER_02: OK. We can do a stronger push towards the end here. That's it.

[2483] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Don't go away, because I'm going to be asking the board. Superintendent, in all my years, I don't remember and change is great, and every change is a learning opportunity, but having basically two meetings at the same time. So could you explain the scenario that led to that, if you don't mind?

[2506] SPEAKER_02: We are up against a tight timeline. I do want to have the board consider a job description, but before we can go forward, we need the board to approve the job description and weigh in before we can do that. No conversation about compensation will occur, as that is not a legal in the state of California to discuss compensation tonight. We won't be discussing compensation. We're just looking at an updated title and job description and contents of the principal to high school. So for tonight, what we'll do is be suspending the meeting we're in, going into a brief special meeting, having a short special meeting, getting some board direction, and then closing that out and going forward with the other meeting in a short period of time.

[2546] Ray Rodriguez: And you did talk to legal on this as far as how to maneuver. Yes, this is the correct way to go ahead and proceed. OK. Would you have a seat? You don't have to go anywhere. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you. Thank you. OK, with that, if the board OKs it, we'll suspend this meeting right now. And then I'll open the special board meeting. We do need a motion and a second, and then we'll go. Right. So I need a motion and a second to suspend the regular board meeting.

[2579] Nancy Thomas: I move we suspend the regular board meeting.

[2581] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, member Thomas moves.

[2584] SPEAKER_33: I'll second it.

[2585] Ray Rodriguez: Member Gutierrez seconds. Please vote. Okay, motion passes. Member Martinez abstains. Did you want to speak to that or?

[2603] Elisa Martinez: We're about to get into it. So the reason I'm abstaining is I just have some concerns about the topic we're about to discuss and it being in a special meeting that seems a little rushed to me, so.

[2624] Ray Rodriguez: So the regular board meeting for May 16th has been suspended. Our clock runs fast, so it's around 6.47 right now. I mean 5.47. So now I'd like to to the special board meeting for Thursday, May 16, 2019. We need the approval of the agenda. But we do have, does anybody wanted to speak on this before we, on the special board meeting? Mr. Merritt, did you want to speak on this? Oh, wait a minute. Let's approve the agenda first. I need a motion and a second, please.

[2666] Nancy Thomas: I move that we approve the agenda. I'll second it.

[2672] Ray Rodriguez: All in. Okay, please vote. Member Martinez, did you? Oh, that's right, you raised the same thing. Thank you. Okay, public comment. Now you can come up. The man in the red hat. So this is public comment on this particular special board meeting?

[2711] SPEAKER_10: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. The Newark Memorial High School Principal Job Description. Right.

[2718] Ray Rodriguez: But you can bring up any signs you want. I'm fine with that.

[2721] SPEAKER_10: Trust me, I know. So in my three minutes or less, what I'd really like to, my concerns with this are the immensity of the job. is, as previously job-descriptioned, I think, yeah, is huge. And with the elimination of deans, that made it even more difficult. And adding more responsibilities to the position and then not having a salary schedule posted with it concerns me as president of the Newark Teachers Association.

[2767] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you much. Appreciate it. Okay. Superintendent. Oh, go ahead.

[2773] Ray Rodriguez: Got it. Okay.

[2792] Cindy Parks: I'm very concerned about the last minute proposal for Newark Memorial principal job description. It is rarely a good idea to make severe changes without much thought. That's when most mistakes are made. Adding to a job description that really belongs as a regularly scheduled meeting so that the board and the community has enough time to review it. It does not make sense to me to have the responsibility of a principal of our largest school be responsible for supervising secondary curriculum and instruction. It seems supervising secondary curriculum and instruction is clearly the responsibility of educational services. Does educational services have a problem in managing that? Shouldn't the community expect the employees to take full responsibility for what they are supposed to do and not depend on other departments and personnel or outside companies? If the concern is that your current salary range doesn't meet the market demands, high school principal, you should increase the range rather than make some ad hoc hybrid job description. The individual hired will have their hands full providing leadership and fulfilling essential duties and responsibilities that are contained within the job description. Please postpone this vote and allow the community to know about this new job description and place it on a regularly scheduled meeting, which will allow you to then also discuss the salaries. Thank you.

[2886] SPEAKER_02: OK, to get back to Member Martinez's question, I think will help. Let's start there. Why this? Why now? Why so rushed? Part of the urgency is really around, this is the hiring season, the longer we wait, the more difficult it is to recruit talent to our district. That's one of the elements. We know that we cannot discuss in a formal setting salary and increasing the range and that we're, you know, as mentioned, we would have to do that at the next meeting and I am planning to do so. However, this would at least allow us to begin moving forward with with trying to shape this position the way we want to so that it does what we need it to do. The high school principalship, in my opinion, is the most difficult job of the entire district, even more difficult than mine. I can tell you that. To do it correctly, and knowing what I know after the year of turnover and churn we've had at the high school, we need to hire someone who's an experienced leader as a high school principal, not just an assistant principal moving to a principal position. So we need to be able to recruit talent, we need to be able to probably pay a little more, to attract that, and we need to have that talent remain for at least three years to stabilize the high school. This is something that the staff is very interested in. As I've talked with the high school, it's something that I know we all worry about. This is our only comprehensive high school. It's our flagship. And I really feel that we do need to look at this. I'm OK if we want to post it, if we want to postpone action on this and have it come to the next meeting again in the full package with compensation. make the world stop for me. But I do know there are strong candidates that might be interested if we were to get it approved and posted in a short cycle posting. I think the way we're structuring this package will be attractive to someone who's a sitting principal. So at the end of the day, if it isn't approved tonight and you ask me to bring it back, I'm OK with that. But I will tell you that we are also balancing it with experienced principals know the lay of the land. They know when the hiring season is. And as they get closer to the year, they're thinking, you know, I'm going to get a few weeks off. I want to plan that. And I'm just going to wait. I'm not going to move. Right now, we're kind of coming to the end of a prime time to hire. And I think that's really why it's in front of you. So the other responsibilities are not supervising secondary principals. The responsibilities that are here are really more about alignment of curriculum grade 7 through 12, which is seriously a concern. that we've had for a while and I think that having somebody really lead that and it should be the high school. I think the high school staff has pointed out we really do want to work more collaboratively and every time they feel like they're getting something going, they have a new leader and I think that this really speaks to the disability and the leader that we're trying to bring to bear. And I'm of anyone in the district is very interested in doing this correctly and The time frame is what the time frame is. But I would tell you that the only urgency of trying to do it sooner was trying to cast a wider net for talent. That was it. There's no other burning reason for me.

[3073] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Member Martinez to Chancellor.

[3077] Elisa Martinez: I do. I have a lot to say about this one. Since I saw it pop up on the agenda yesterday, I mean, it's really caused me to lose sleep. I think since I've joined, and I've been pretty vocal about my big main concern, of course, all of our schools, but certainly secondary. I just don't see, just given the issues that we all know our schools are facing, that combining this responsibility, if the intent is to command a bigger salary, let's have a conversation about that. I do believe that this is something in the wheelhouse of our assistant superintendent, so I'd like to understand what process we followed to arrive that this is the right solution for our district. Not for others, for our district, knowing what our needs are. I would like to ask that we pull this item and that we bring it back. I'd like to understand, me as a board member, what am I looking to approve? Let's assume we do come back with a with a justification from a process. Again, and I'm very clear about not to overstep my bounds, but I do want to understand the process and the visibility and the research that we're doing to, again, confirm that this is the right decision for our district. It is important to understand financial impact. So are we talking about, let's just say that our research and their process determines, is this the right answer for us? Are we talking about a significant increase in cost? Because we're also not eliminating, right? And again, I want to come back to my perceived responsibility lies in the house of the assistant superintendent. So I want to understand what is shifting that would justify this. So that is my ask. Otherwise, I just cannot support it.

[3193] SPEAKER_02: I may be able to answer part of that. What we're looking for here is a sitting principal. And most sitting principals of a high school that are successful are not going to want to take a lateral move to another high school principalship. They've already done that. There's no upper mobility. There's no visibility. The title matters. And in California, there's some restrictions on what you can use in the title and what you can't use, as I've learned recently. So I think part of the question to recruit someone that's a sitting principal is going to be, OK, why would I take a lateral move? We have to be able to answer that in a way that's meaningful. supervision of curriculum instruction is a step in that direction and I think that that that helps the person that would apply to say okay I got to explain to my superintendent why I'm going from principal to this other role of how it's promotion. That's really the rationale behind it. It's not anything more than that.

[3246] Elisa Martinez: And I hear you. I hear that there is a need to entice so let's think about that but we are not here to you know purely to entice the right individual without understanding what we are doing from our district's need perspective. So I hear you. Let's understand what it's going to take to appeal to those folks. But at the end of the day and at the root of all of our decisions, it has to be will it meet the needs of our schools that are frankly in, I won't call it crisis, but in a very significant need for improvement.

[3283] SPEAKER_02: I understand. Thank you.

[3287] Ray Rodriguez: We can go further, and sometimes we do as far as before we go to closed session. I don't know how much time we need.

[3295] SPEAKER_02: I'd like to hear from other board members. I think if you guys as a majority want to pull it, we pull it and we bring it all back at the next meeting.

[3302] Ray Rodriguez: There's board members that would like to have questions.

[3306] Nancy Thomas: Member Thomas. Actually, I don't want to pull it. I would like to see how the other board members feel before we decide to pull it. For now, I know we went out to get candidates. That's a long process. And then when you get candidates that aren't qualified, you have to ask yourself, especially in Newark, where we have one comprehensive high school, where we have had turnover year after year, maybe we need to make a bold step and trust the superintendent that this is a job description that will entice applicants and entice them in a timeline that will allow us to bring in several candidates from which we can choose. And I firmly believe that one of the problems we have in getting good candidates, not just because it's, we really need an experienced superintendent, I mean an experienced principal given what's happened. I agree. And so it's going to mean, it's going to be enticing that person with higher compensation, which we will be able to discuss at a regular meeting because we can't do it at a special meeting. But what I like about this, I like the fact that whoever will be in this job will have as a responsibility to collaborate and coordinate with the theater schools and to collaborate and coordinate with our continuation schools and make sure that students come in prepared and leave when they need to to have a different learning environment. I trust the superintendent in this. I think he's given it a lot of thought and I'm fine with moving on it so we can at least get it out there and see the lay of the land and see what kind of applicants we can get.

[3425] Ray Rodriguez: I have some thoughts.

[3428] SPEAKER_33: I just want to agree with Member Thomas on this because I do understand also the dire need of hiring adequate staff and I think it's something that we've discussed since I got here about a problem with turnover and probably not attracting enough candidates. Based on your reasoning, I do understand that it's important that we move quickly with this. So I would, again, like I said, agree with Member Thomas that I would agree that we keep this and not postpone it. I would like to be able to have the best candidates available. And if, based on your experience, it's going to mean that we wait later, we might lose on that, then I wouldn't want that to happen. I also do understand that compensation will be discussed later. It's something, seeing this job description, it seems like we have to go higher, but that doesn't necessarily mean that since we will be bringing that up for discussion and we should be able to negotiate that.

[3494] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, thank you. Member Zhang.

[3499] Bowen Zhang: So my question for Superintendent Sanchez is the reason we want to move today, the main reason is when it comes to timing, we want to have some advantage when it comes to early hire to attract these people, right?

[3512] SPEAKER_02: To give you a possible scenario would be if the board approves this tonight, we post for five days, we interview, and we bring it back on June 6 to approve possibly an appointment of the person and also a change in salary in the same meeting in the formal setting. So potentially we could hit that target by June 6 in an appropriate way.

[3533] Bowen Zhang: And speaking of the job description, which is different than before, the only difference is we add the supervisor. secondary curriculum and instruction. And the reason you want to do that is you want to attract an experienced sitting principal to move to a place where he will have more responsibility instead of just a flat lateral move. Correct. So for any public company in the private sector, the most important duty of a CEO is hiring. You're hiring the best right-hand man and left-hand man to build the executive team. So as a board, whether it's school board or it's a private, public company, the duty of the board generally is to assist the CEO to bring the best talent on board. So speaking of this, so I think I'm ready to move, if you think this will help you, attract the best candidate to the high school. Because our high school is, in many ways, is when many part of the community looking at our school system, our high school is, just like Member Martinez, is sort of in crisis. So if this can, you think if this can help you gaining an advantage from your unified perspective to have the best candidate to come in, then I think I can make the, I'm willing to move forward. I do believe that, yes.

[3613] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. I just have a thought, and then I'll get to you, Member Martinez, because each one of us had a chance to speak. My case was so upset at me, you know, they all graduated, you know, from 2000. 2007 to 2012 and you know every year we were just coming up you know it was hard to keep a principal more than a year and the community was really upset and we went through a difficult difficult time and so the way things are nowadays you you have to be innovative and come up with with something that's a little different and it isn't all about money because Administrators a lot of times like to be put in positions where they're supervisors. Because up the road, it leads to them being an assistant superintendent. And it just looks better on their resume. So it isn't all about money. So we have to find a way to have something out there that people see. And it gives them a reason for them to come to Newark. So it's very difficult out there. There's so much competition to get, especially a high school principal. So after Member Martinez speaks, I'll entertain a motion and a second to call for the question, if you don't mind, Member Martinez.

[3703] Elisa Martinez: Thank you. Thanks to the rest of the board for expressing your thoughts. I would like to ask you to reconsider. Just please, in your mind, have the current condition of the high school. the current crisis of the high school principal situation, the hiring process. I still have not heard what is the process we're going to follow to hire a principal. Let's just say this is what we're going to post. Will there be teacher involvement in the interviews, parents, students? What is the process? There is nothing attached to this job description or to a process. Superintendent Sanchez, I just heard you say, it is possible that next time not only will I ask you to approve the dollars, but also to approve the appointment. Please reconsider. I ask for my fellow board members.

[3758] Ray Rodriguez: So staff requests for the Board of Education to approve the job description from the new position of high school executive principal and supervisor of secondary curriculum and instruction.

[3770] Nancy Thomas: I move we approve the job description.

[3772] Ray Rodriguez: Member Thomas. Moves, need a second please. I'll second. Member John seconds. Please vote. Okay, motion passes four and member Martinez has already stated her opposition and it's well noted. Okay, so we move on. We're adjourning the special board meeting of the Newark Unified School District Board of Education. And the time is 6.07. So now we reopen the regular meeting at 6.07. And before we go to closed session, member, I mean, Mr. Hernandez, David, did you want to approach us on this? Before you speak, let me describe what the closed session is about. Just give us a minute. Sure. On the closed session agenda, we have public employee appointment or Employment Discipline Dismissal Release Complaint. Conference with Labor Negotiator Employee Organizations, NTA and CSCA. Conference with Labor Negotiator, actually wouldn't be Labor Negotiator for NEWMA. I'm representing Supervisors of Contracted Management. Okay.

[3877] SPEAKER_18: Welcome. Good evening, board members. David Hernandez. I'm the Executive Director of the Newark Teachers Association. I stand before you probably talking about the item that deals with negotiations with NTA. Frankly, I'm really kind of disappointed. I'm disappointed that just the other day I happened to be looking at the Newark website and happened to look at the item dealing with negotiations update number one. To my surprise, to find email posted on your website talking about the fact that that first session did not take place and putting the blame on the Teachers Association when in fact, in fact, we were given dates to look at. The actual meeting date was not confirmed even though I was one of them that responded to the email that said, yes, I can make the time. We wanted to have that first session with our team in totality. To have a missing link was not a good thing for us. And to look at your website and see that you have posted email from the president on there tells me one thing, that you're already starting these bargaining sessions in bad faith. We haven't even agreed to the ground rules yet. which will probably take place tomorrow, because there will be a session tomorrow. And I think that part of this session and dealing with ground rules will talk about wanting to file a joint community case. Well, I can tell you right now, that ain't going to happen. That is not going to happen. Because I am really upset that this is even on here. You should be upset that this was even allowed to be there on here. I'm dealing with enough things right now to have to be dealing with this. I'm dealing with a strike in New Haven. This is not a good way to start the negotiation process in this particular district. I think you need to reconsider how you do business around here. Thank you.

[4036] Megan McMillan: Thank you, board members and superintendent and the rest of the cabinet. So I teach in special education, as all of you know, preschool special ed. And one of my all-time favorite mentors in terms of education is BF Skinner. He's the founder of Applied Behavior Analysis. And he said that a failure is not always a mistake. It may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. And I can say that Coming back to my classroom after being out for a day last week and hearing the feedback that I got from my guest felt like a failure. I really did. And I cried because I was so frustrated. And this is someone that I really respect. He's someone that's worked in preschool special ed in New Haven for years and has subbed in our program for years. And his words were, what happened? This was such a well-oiled machine. Where is the staff? And I ask myself that same question every single day when I'm putting out fire after fire instead of teaching. And to hear that from my guest broke my heart. So as we go into negotiations, know that from the special ed side, We are hemorrhaging people left and right, and the people that are here are doing the best they can in the circumstances. But it's beginning more and more to feel like failure. And when it feels like that every day, it makes it harder and harder to keep coming. And I want to keep coming back. So I'm really, really adamant that in these negotiations, we find a common ground that's going to keep our special ed department strong and keep our kids learning. Thank you.

[4155] Ray Rodriguez: Mr. Merritt, did you still want to come up?

[4168] SPEAKER_10: I'm from the Newark Teachers Association. CSA has been showing me up, so I had to up my game. Last Friday, it was last Friday, two Fridays ago? Last Friday.

[4189] Joy Lee: It's May. I have no idea what day it is.

[4191] SPEAKER_10: I know it's May. Somebody told me it's May. I did come to the decision to postpone, cancel, delete, whatever you want to call it, our meeting with the Newark Unified School District negotiation team. And they sent me a letter. They sent you a letter. It was all the same letter we all got at the same time. And I didn't feel it was appropriate for me to respond to you in that forum. I questioned whether it was a Brown Act violation to do that. I didn't know. So I decided to read most of the letter, my response, that I sent to my members to you. And you can also find it on ntanewwork.org, which is our website, ntanewwork.org, under the bargaining tab. Dear NTA members and Newark community, We are ready. Your NTA negotiations team is strong and ready to provide the best service to our members at the table. Ms. Jessica Saavedra, Executive Director of Human Resources and Chief Negotiator for the Newark Unified School District, sent out an update that the NTA negotiation team feels contains some misinformation that needs to be clarified. On April 22nd, The first Monday of spring break, the members of the NTA negotiation teams received an email, and it listed some dates. And please let me know if there's any problems with any of those dates. Due to past practice, the NTA team considered this an inquiry of availability, not a direction to meet, and certainly not a confirmation that the meeting will take place. We have always operated in a collaborative spirit of deciding when to meet. Once we've come to the agreement of the date and the time, we have always received a calendar invite. I have a weekly meeting with HR, and on Thursday, May 2nd, and my original letter said April 2nd. I've corrected it. It was May 2nd. I attempted to clarify our dilemma. We were still confused whether or not we were going to meet with the NUSD negotiation team. I informed Mr. Vedra that we had not received a calendar invite and that two of our members confirmed that they could not attend. I was also concerned that due to the late hours, the teachers would not be able to get acceptable appropriate coverage for their classrooms. HR confirmed that they would make the arrangements and send out a calendar invite.

[4354] Ray Rodriguez: Mr. Merritt, I apologize.

[4356] SPEAKER_10: The rest of the email is on nta.org, ntanewark.org, and I'd appreciate you taking a look at that. We are ready. Thank you. Thank you much.

[4367] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, no other speakers? 6-17, we'll go to closed session.

No minutes available.