Regular Meeting

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[6] Ray Rodriguez: Everybody will leave, right? So we just got back from closed session, and we're calling the open session to order. In closed session, we got updates on 4.1, public employee discipline slash dismissal, conference with labor unions, NTA and CSCA, public employee appointment. Got a bio on the person that's being recommended to be our new special ed director. Conference with legal counsel regarding anticipated litigation. So now we do the pledge. And thanks for member Nguyen. She wanted, was hoping that the young people here from Schilling Elementary would lead us all in the pledge. And the music students from the high school can also join in. I know you all have good voices. Okay, so everybody stand, please. Okay, go ahead, Principal Castillo.

[82] SPEAKER_32: To the Republic of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible,

[95] Ray Rodriguez: Justice for all. All right.

[99] SPEAKER_35: Superintendent.

[107] SPEAKER_18: Thank you, President Rodriguez. At this time, I'd like to introduce Dr. Wendy Leal to give us a student report. That's going to be very exciting, I hear. So Dr. Leal.

[122] SPEAKER_21: Thank you. Good evening, board members and cabinet members. I'm excited that this last month from September 15 to October 15, around the country, we've been celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. So to close that celebration, we did bring our shilling by Le Flacorico, which is a group totally organized and ran by our parent volunteers. for the last several years. And this is their first time they're able to, or they were invited to dance here. So they're very excited about this and hopefully it can continue for years to come. But also just a reminder that every month we should be celebrating our culture and our Hispanic heritage throughout the schools and throughout our district. So thank you and thank you students and parents for coming tonight.

[197] SPEAKER_18: Whatever you want to do. We're going to enjoy it anyway. Whatever. There's more people over there. Wherever they have more room.

[208] SPEAKER_35: He's cute. Well, my son, David, Sarah, Deborah, One, two, three. It's all right.

[308] SPEAKER_09: What color is the sky, mi amor, mi amor? You tell me that it's red, mi amor, mi amor. Where should I put my shoes, mi amor, mi amor? You say, put them on your head, mi amor, mi amor. You make me un poco loco Un poquititito loco The way you keep me guessing I'm nodding and I'm yessing Thou count it as a blessing That I'm only un poco loco

[366] SPEAKER_35: The loco that you make me It is just too loco-crazy In the sense that you're not making The liberties you're taking It is my cabeza shaking You're just too loco-loco It's just too loco-crazy It's my cabeza shaking It's just too loco-crazy It's my cabeza shaking It's just too loco-crazy It's my cabeza shaking It's just too loco-crazy Bravo! Bravo!

[430] SPEAKER_21: One more special dance.

[465] SPEAKER_18: This is the best report so far.

[585] SPEAKER_33: Cuando me traes a mi negra que la quiero ver aquí Con su hermoso becerra que hay letra que desde aquí Cuando me traes a mi negra que la quiero ver aquí Con su hermoso becerra que hay letra que desde aquí [Translated] When you bring me my nigger I want to see her here with her beautiful becerra that there are lyrics from here When you bring me my nigger I want to see her here with her beautiful becerra that there are lyrics from here [End] [Translated] When you bring me my nigger I want to see her here with her beautiful becerra that there are lyrics from here When you bring me my nigger I want to see her here with her beautiful becerra that there are lyrics from here [Translated] When you bring me my nigger I want to see her here with her beautiful becerra that there are lyrics from here When you bring me my nigger I want to see her here with her beautiful becerra that there are lyrics from here [End] [End]

[664] SPEAKER_21: Wow, thank you students. Gracias estudiantes por venir hoy. Gracias padres por traer los hijos hoy. Thank you parents for bringing your children today to perform for our board members. Thank you. [Translated] Wow, thank you students. Thanks students for coming today. Thanks parents for bringing the kids today. Thank you parents for bringing your children today to perform for our board members. Thank you. [End]

[675] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, Schilling. Hey.

[682] SPEAKER_35: And they got school tomorrow.

[688] SPEAKER_18: Buenas noches. Gracias. [Translated] Good night. Thank you. [End] [Translated] Good night. Thank you. [Translated] Good night. Thank you. [End] [End]

[706] Ray Rodriguez: Miss Hughes. Next, we have Spotlight for Kennedy Elementary. Woo!

[719] SPEAKER_38: So I have to just start with, really? That's who I'm following? I'm usually scheduled in February, and there's maybe two or three people here. And I follow the cutest children in the whole wide world. Go Schilling. That was awesome. Here we go, Kennedy, yay. Thank you. They are represented tonight. So I'm Pam Hughes. I'm the principal at Kennedy. It's my honor to be the principal at Kennedy and spend time with the students and the staff and the families every day. So thank you, Board of Education, for allowing me to come and spend just a few minutes of your precious time talking about Kennedy. We are the Eagles. Our mascot was drawn a couple years ago by a student, so we continue using that one. So yay, Kennedy. I'm going to talk about the mission statement a little bit later, so we don't really need to go over it now. Our basics. Wait. Oh, I just can't see it. This is the breakdown of our school. We have a little over 400 students. We have a TK classroom this year. We have two kindergartens, three first grade, two second grade, two third grade, a three four, a four, two fives, two sixes. We are about the same, I think we were 406 when I presented last year. So we are really close in our enrollment to last year. Our mission is to ensure high levels of learning for all students and to foster a community built on respect for one another. So we broke down This slide is gonna break down into two sections. The first one is how we build community, just like all of the other schools in Newark, we focus on PBIS, we have a student council, we have a student newspaper, we started it last year. We have a group of boys, they call themselves the Paper Boys, and they report on things that are happening at school. And we also have a cartoon that is part of that newspaper, and we distribute it to all the students. We have anti-bullying instruction happening in our classrooms. This year we're having mindfulness training. So we have a trainer who comes in and works with our staff once a month. And then she also goes into classrooms. So kids are learning how to focus their breathing. It helps in transitions. It's helping them learn how to calm themselves so they can solve conflicts. So we're really enjoying that kids are using the language all over the place. We are also using Big Life Journal. One of our parents shared this resource with us, and it is growth mindset, helping kids set goals, helping them learn that mistakes are a right, and our classrooms are all using different aspects of it. TK through sixth grade, it applies. We also have school-wide art projects. All of our students go into our art classroom at least every month. I had the privilege of substituting in kindergarten this week, and we actually had an art lesson scheduled, so we painted jack-o'-lanterns, and it was quite fun, and the kids were very engaged. We also focus on learning. Obviously, we're a school, that's our job. Like the other elementary schools, we're focused on professional learning communities. This is our second year of really having full-time implementation and it's the focus of most of our staff meetings. We have a maker space with a maker cart. We have digital learning. I walked into a sixth grade class last week and they were making videos to share what they had learned in social studies. So they're incorporating technology in all different aspects of our curriculum. We have art, we have a choir, we have music for minors, and we also have grade levels that do musical performances. So for example, second grade, every year does a musical. We have after school, we have coding and chess. That's for fee based. We've had that for years. This year we started a math club. So on Mondays we have math club and it is designed for kids who love math because it seems like so much of our after school activities are helping kids catch up. And so I really wanted to have something for students. that was fun for all those kids who love math. And it's actually full and we can't take any more students. I run it on Mondays after school and our district math Tosa, Melissa Moore has been such a really a benefit to me. She helped, I told her what I was planning and she helped gather materials and structure what we're doing in the days. So the kids are loving math club right now. We're also doing Math Challenge, which is something that kids do at home, and one of our parents got that started. The kids do the project, they turn it in, it gets sent in. We have quite a few students doing Math Challenge. We also have a homework club for kids who don't have support with homework at home. They go and work with Miss Myra, and she helps them, she explains the homework to them. She takes different grade levels on different days. So CASP results just came out. Woo-hoo, just in time for the presentation. So what I did is I just broke down ELA and math for you. I wanted to go back a few years because I think when you just see this year's, it kind of doesn't give you the big picture. So we went back to 16-17, and I'm going to use my math skills and round up when I'm supposed to. So 53% of our students met or exceeded the standard in ELA in 16-17. And then last year, two years ago, we saw a drop. And then this year, we're very happy to see the scores have gone up. So it's a seven-point gain from the previous year, but remember, we dipped. So it's not, you know, over the course of years, we are slowly, incrementally improving. Math is basically the same story where we were. We dropped a little bit last year, and then we made a game. So we've gone up 10% from last year, 10 percentage points, 47 to 57, which is great. But remember, we dipped. So while we're, woo-hoo, the scores are going higher, we're really compensating for the drop that we had the previous year. OK?

[1119] SPEAKER_18: Do all this before you go?

[1126] SPEAKER_38: It truly is a lot more fun to present the data when the scores are going up. The dashboard's not up, but I'm hopeful to see some more green this year. We are very disappointed with our yellow and orange from last year. So we have seen growth, and that's due to the hard work of our students and our teachers and our staff. It also, I believe, has to do with our professional learning communities, and I imagine that Every school that gets up here talks about it. But for us, what it really has been is focusing, focusing on small things. It's really basic. What do we want the kids to learn? How do we know that they've learned it? What do we do if they have learned it? And what do we do if they don't? And so our teachers and grade levels have come up with focus standards, and they are monitoring student achievement around those standards on a continuous cycle of improvement. And we focus in math. And I think that's why we saw a bigger growth in math in ELA. Our PBIS, we are SOAR. So be safe, be responsible, and be respectful. For us, PBIS is really about student engagement. And we do offer incentives. And our idea is that we want to tell kids that they're doing a great job with big things, small things, and often. So it might be a great achievement in the classroom. It might also being kind to someone who's fell on the playground. So it can be all sorts of things we want school to be. fun, fun, fun. So we want them to constantly be hearing what we think they're doing well. We also really use this as an avenue for student voice and student choice. So our students choose what are the activities that they're going to earn. So last year we did Lego Lunch. We did Minute to Win It's where they put the cookie on their forehead and got it in their mouths and all sorts of different competitions like that. We also had ice cream sundaes, but they came up with the ideas of what they wanted to have as the monthly incentive to spend their tickets. So art is a big deal. Usually, I'm here at the end of the year, and I am promoting the art show. It is coming again, but it's a little early for me to hand you invitations. But we believe that all students should have access to art instruction at every school, at every age. It's important. Every year, we do a big school project. Last year, we did painting of the murals. We had a nonprofit come in, and they worked with all of our students to come up with the design. And then all of the students voted on the color scheme. They had two choices based on what colors they said that they liked the first time the company was there. So these are some pictures of families actually painting the mural, and we got dirty. And it just happens when you're painting a mural. Here's our maker space and our maker cart. On the left-hand side, there's two little girls, and they're holding scissors in containers. And that picture was taken in a kindergarten classroom. Students are given the challenge how to improve your world. And these kindergarten students decided that how they could improve their world is that even though the teacher teaches them how to carry scissors safely, students don't always remember. So they designed these paper pockets that they taped together. They put all the scissors in so that when students were carrying scissors, they put them in their safety, I think they called it a safety pouch. So that's the idea of what our kids are doing. They're looking for ways to solve problems in their world. They're making reality, making their reality better. And we just took a few snapshots of Big Life Journal, because I know not everybody knows what that is. But basically, it's a book, and kids go through it. And our students aren't all going through the book page by page by page. But this gives you an example of some of the things that they work on when they're doing their Big Life Journal and their mindfulness work. So week one was making a difference in the world. And then there's goal setting, things that I like about myself, what happens when I make a mistake. It's those kinds of activities that the kids are doing in the classrooms. We also work really hard to create a sense of community. So on the left is our buddy bench that was donated by the San Jose Sharks after win number seven in the playoffs last year. Yay, go Sharks. And on the right, it's just a picture of a map that we had up in our office for a long time. At our international night a few years ago, we had a big map and kids made little flags from the countries that their families are from, and then they stuck them on the big map, and we didn't know what to do with it, but we wanted to somehow capture it. So we just put it in the office for a long time and it was in there. And kids would come in and look and try and see how many countries are represented and how many different flags and the colorful. They would talk about what the flags look like. So that's just one of the ways that we're attempting to make sure that kids feel like they belong to us, that they are part of our community. We are, we have a problem. And one of our problems is that we are bike rack is full. So we actually added a bike rack last year, a bike rack last year, we are part of the safe routes to school grant. So we did have rock and roll to school day already. That's the poster. So you can see we have a lot of kids walking and a lot of kids biking. And we're really pushing. We know that it helps kids, it helps their brains work after they've had some physical activity in the morning. So we're really promoting them coming to school. We're actually doing the second Tuesday of every month is now walk and ride your bike to school day. So our bike racks are full and we're looking for another bike. There's our whole staff picture and a great big thank you. Do you have any questions?

[1501] Ray Rodriguez: Ms. Hughes, thank you. Thank you so much.

[1503] SPEAKER_32: Thank you.

[1505] Ray Rodriguez: I was very fortunate. Ms. Hughes was a teacher at Graham Elementary when my Kids were there years ago, not too many years ago. And then she was at Lincoln when my granddaughter was there. And now Kennedy is so fortunate to have you.

[1524] SPEAKER_38: Oh, thank you. I'm very fortunate to have worked in Newark and had such a long career. My heart is really here with our students.

[1532] Ray Rodriguez: And I know you're a mentor to our newer administrators that we have, and I appreciate that also. Anyone? We thank you. Thank you so much.

[1543] SPEAKER_38: Thank you.

[1555] Ray Rodriguez: OK, we now go to 9.1, public comment on non-agenda items. This is a time where the public or the community can address the board on any item that's not on the agenda. We allow three minutes. I received notification that the students from the music department at the high school, and so if you're going to come as a group, we'll take you first. Welcome.

[1593] SPEAKER_10: Hello. I am Amanda Cordoba, the president of the advanced choir at Newark Memorial, and we are the students from the Newark Memorial High School music program. And we come with concerns about our standing music director slash teacher, Miss Anna Kadabat. We are aware that due to privacy concerns in relation to the discussion of employees in public meetings, we know none of you can respond, but tonight we respectfully request to be heard and we ask for a thoughtful response which includes an action plan and a clear direction is absolutely warranted. We presume this response would be conducted collaboratively among board members, administrators, teachers, and maybe even parents and students as well. This is a list of student concerns in relation to ineffective teaching in an environment which is stressful, unpredictable, and anxiety-provoking. Let us be clear, in no way, shape, or form is this a personal attack or a backlash because we know no one's Mrs. Hong. All of us are willing to work towards a proactive solution, but we need the buy-in of our leader. Our concerns are as follows. Aggression towards students when questions are asked and she shuts us down. very interruptive, for example, on the day that she returned from administrative leave. Instead of trying to make things better, we felt like she was being defensive and taking our constructive feedback in a negative way. There have been zero direct communication to the parents. We feel as though she's out to get us. We are sharing our concerns about teaching, because again and again, she shows that she holds a longstanding grudge. The environment has felt very hostile. When she returned from the administrative leave, she failed to abide by her regulations of just observing and she took charge and overstepped. While our teacher was away on leave for eight days, we had an alumni of the program be our substitute teacher. Although our sub, Ms. Ortiz, was not fully equipped to teach all of these classes, the shift was drastic. It was indescribably better in class and out of class. The decision-making issues, Ms. Shelby Ortiz quickly and efficiently helped bring in a parent volunteer to aid in the ways which she was lacking. She had someone help with piano. the fact that we were not allowed to play any instruments. Whereas miss would not play piano for us and would instruct students who did not know how to play any instruments to teach themselves parts on out of tune instruments and offering no support or clarification in those parts after the fact. Distribution of phone numbers and excessive messages late at night. Incompetent teaching lesson consistently lacks direction and instructs students to work independently without guidance. No initiative and authority, nothing is directed or set in place for students to achieve. And last concern, communication from teacher to student has been very poor and the students have agreed that we feel disrespected and talked down to. And that's the end of my list. And if you would like us to sing for you, we will.

[1778] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you. You guys are very orderly and respectful, and we love it. Thank you. And they stayed within three minutes, even though there's a whole bunch of them. We have public comment on non-general items. We normally allow a half hour, and then we have the three minutes. If it goes past a half hour, then we have to adjourn. that public comment and bring it back at the end of the meeting. Mr. Brutz.

[1836] SPEAKER_03: Good evening, honored trustees. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to speak today. I did nothing wrong. Last month, the California Teaching Commission reported the following. After review and consideration of all materials, we have determined to close the investigation of Paul Bretz and recommend no adverse action. For 10 months, Superintendent Sanchez and the Director of Human Resources, Ms. Saavedra, alleged that I lied, acted immorally, endangered students, and put my family through hell. In doing so, Sanchez and Saavedra have damaged the credibility of the Newark Unified School District. Everyone except Sanchez and Saavedra agreed I did nothing wrong. In January, the district's lawyers recommended my return. That recommendation was ignored by Mr. Sanchez. In March, the Skelly officer recommended a reduction in charges. That recommendation was ignored by Mr. Sanchez. Sanchez and Saavedra, as a means to keep the details silent, dropped the charges when I requested the appeal to the board in open session. Saavedra further discredited the district by omitting key witnesses when she reported her information to the CTC. She omitted the police as witnesses. She omitted the psychologist, the trauma therapist, the victims, and the parents of the victims. She omitted any witness statements despite being asked by the CTC. She falsely stated the reasoning for the police presence at board meetings. She stated that the police were called because I was threatening. It's a matter of public record that on April 22nd, the first time I came to the board meeting, I simply sat and listened. And the police were here five minutes after I arrived. As knowledge about my fight spread, credible and honest people have left this district. Half of the district administration are gone since March. A quarter of the Newark Memorial High School staff are gone. And some that have been replaced have been replaced without credentials. It will be impossible for the district to conduct any thorough investigations. My story and the district's efforts to destroy my career will be used to show the lack of credibility. Regardless of the outcome, Sanchez and Veja's actions will call into question the credibility of this district. The board has an ethical and moral responsibility to serve this community. You can no longer ignore these issues. You must separate the community from Sanchez and Saavedra. Their actions continue to pull this district down. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[2019] Ray Rodriguez: Mr. Castillo.

[2034] SPEAKER_48: Good evening. I would like to preface my statement by saying that at this time I'm speaking as a member of the public. At the October 2nd, 2019 board meeting, the Board of Education fielded public comment from Newark Memorial senior Allison Sunimono regarding assistant principal Ms. Karen Fugo's blatant mistreatment of advanced band students. They were initially told that the meeting was to resolve issues between themselves and new music director, Ms. Anna Kadabaugh. But it became clear that this was not Ms. Foucault's intent when she made comments at the band, including, your generation is so entitled and you all have no respect for your elders. On or about October 14th, 2019, a US government teacher in Newark Memorial told the students that mental illness does not exist and that you are all in denial about your mental health. This is in response to student class discussion about California Senate Bill 328 regarding the starting time for public and charter middle and high schools. when a student brought up the possibility of mental health days as another way to improve students' health. In the past few weeks, I've heard from my female peers that another government teacher is looking at and treating female students in an inappropriate manner. They say he spends much more time talking to them than he does to other students, and he always places their seats closest to his desk. On or about June 6, 2019, Interim Principal Mark Neal sent a campus monitor to pull me out of class and go to his office. You might recall this date from the meeting that the board held at music. He asked me how I planned to speak out against the board when I was a member of the board. I responded that I was on the board as a representative of the high school and not as a sworn member. He then backpedaled and explained that some teachers and staff were talking and wondered how I would justify my actions later that night. Board members and executive cabinet, there is a problem. Staff members are not treating students fairly. Staff members are intimidating students. Staff members are afraid to speak out about these injustices because they fear they will lose a job that already pays them too little. I ask you now, what do you plan to do about this? The time for change is now. Students no longer want to sit around and complain. They want to stand up and speak. I'm calling for the resignation of Human Resources Executive Director Jessica Saavedra due to blatant misjudgment of Ms. Fuca and Ms. Cataba. Ms. Fuqua has posted many anti-work messages on her Facebook account, which has since been changed to private. If you ask any of the students behind me, they can show you those messages. I am also calling for the resignation of Board President Ray Rodriguez, who in recent meetings has deferred to the interests of the Board in light of growing student affairs issues. The time for change is now, and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit by and let things continue to get worse. Thank you.

[2205] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, Mr. Castillo. Ismael Candas, welcome.

[2215] SPEAKER_11: Good evening, board members. Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Ismael Candelas. I am the quality assurance coach for Think Together, the expanded learning provider for the school district. First of all, I want to thank you for the opportunity to partner and be part of your learning community and be able to provide the students a safe place after school within our programs. On October 24, Think Together is taking part in a nationwide opportunity to expand and also to showcase the programs and the importance of having after school programs available for communities. For many years, Think Together has provided students after school space to be engaged in important after school activities and also take part in very interesting activities that really challenge them and also promote the learning that is later used as data for us to be able to collect and really reference some of the teachings that we do. Today we want to invite you to be able to come and experience the power of after school. We are having a showcase that is going to take place on October 24th at 4 p.m. at Schelling Elementary. It's a great opportunity for you to come by and see the power of the elements, the power of how students participate, and also the power of how we are able to bring our communities together. I have several flyers that I'm willing to leave behind. for you to be able to have information on how to come by and just really be part of that community, that experience on October 24th. It is a once a year opportunity to come by and witness the community coming together for expanded learning and after school safe spaces for students. Thank you very much.

[2335] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Ms. Bloom? Rachel Bloom? What did I want to say? Did you want to? Oh, I remember. I remember everything.

[2354] SPEAKER_35: OK, good. Welcome.

[2358] Rachel Bloom: Hi. I'm Rachel Bloom, science teacher at Graham and Schilling. And I wanted to say two things. One, tomorrow we have that professional development tomorrow. about Reader's Workshop and ELD. So as a science specialist, I'm super stoked to talk about ELD and how it works with science. They're set in frame. Science talks. It totally works. But it's ELD and Reader's Workshop. And so I asked about it. I'm like, are the science teachers, are we going to do, you know, whatever goes with science? And it's like, no, just go. OK. And then we get an email, like, bring your Unit 3 Reader's Workshop book with you. And the email before was prefaced with the principals wanted to be meaningful. And so I feel like the science teachers tried to make it more meaningful for us, but we weren't really heard. And of course, we're going to go and we're going to make the best of it that we can. Like science and PE, we're always kind of like on the outside and whatever we do, we just try to make it apply. But it would have been an opportunity for us to kind of differentiate for ourselves to like up our game. And of course, we'll be there and we'll listen to what they have to say and apply it to science. But that just would have been like an opportunity to improve science teaching in our STEAM district. And speaking of STEAM district, I don't think people know how hard Leonor Rebosura works to improve science education in our district. She has figured out how to get field trips for sixth graders and some other grades where Every sixth grade class in the district will be able to go. So when you ask any teacher what the stressful thing about getting a field trip is in Newark, they're going to say getting a bus. Like, I don't know if there are any teachers in here, but like legit, like a teacher, like they give up on field trips because it's so hard to get a bus. And Leonore. like, worked with MOT and with field trip people, like Coyote Hills and whatever, to find a field trip that addresses standards. And she got the bus. Like, she took 90% of the, OK, well, it's a little nervous, like, nerve-wracking taking kids out. Like, 80% of the stress that a teacher would have. And so now students are going to go on, like, standards-aligned field trips. And everyone's going to get that. And it's going to be super equal and equitable. It's not just going to be the teacher that has the, I don't know, she's able to deal with the stress. It's really ridiculous. So I think if you see her, just thank her or just like an attagirl or just something, because she moved mountains, the fact that she did this. And so I just hope that she gets some credit, because there would be kids that wouldn't be going on a field trip this year if it wasn't for her. So thank you.

[2531] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you much. Ms. Silvera, you're on.

[2553] SPEAKER_40: Hi again. I'm Angela. I'm coming today for two reasons. The first is I'm passing out. I think I don't have enough. I apologize. But you can share, just like some students have to. But this is what was passed out about the three-point rubric. Last meeting, it was stated that this was a transition into this, but this paperwork indicates that it's pretty much set. And also, it does not make any specifications of what is technically meeting standards. In my mind, going back to when I was in school, I'd say 70% and above was, that would constitute a three. But then I'm thinking when my fifth grader goes into sixth grade, if he gets a three this year, and we're like, yay, great job, we're so proud of you, and then next year he's getting a C, I'm going to flip out. Because to me, if he's meeting or exceeding, which it says both those words in there, to me that means that he should, I shouldn't, I don't know. I'm just concerned about that. I feel like there needs to be more clarification because also a two, what does that mean? I mean, is that the equivalent of a D and then a one is, I don't know. So I wanted you to see that because I know I didn't think you had gotten it yet. If you have then I'm sorry to waste some paper. The second thing I wanted to address was the potential of closing of schools. I understand that this is something that's coming up, that there are an economic crisis in Newark Unified. I understand that. I'm just wanting it to be more transparent because there was a study session on Tuesday, I believe it was, It wasn't put on YouTube to be able to watch from home. I saw the slideshow from it. It had very concerning numbers, such as Lincoln Elementary, which is my children's home school, had 388 students, which is incorrect. And it could fit 700, which if you have two special day classrooms, there's no way you could ever get to that, on top of the fact that supposedly you're not supposed to count portables for your numbers. And then I'm thinking, what are they going to do, shove kids inside the pod? I don't really understand, because every classroom's full. So that was the second thing, just to be more transparent and also to look at where you get your numbers from, because I'm not really seeing that they're accurate. you're going to get a chance to learn more about that. The 3rd thing is that Lincoln is doing fame that's fine arts and music experience. And myself and missus Silva are teaching it on Monday. So if you are interested in seeing what the entire school is going to be taught.

[2749] Ray Rodriguez: Before we move on to the superintendent's report, Ms. Hughes, I forgot to ask you to ask anybody that was here from Kennedy, and then also the back wall, if you don't mind. Sure. It looks beautiful back there.

[2766] SPEAKER_38: Great. Thank you. So we have, I don't want to mix up my Kennedy and Lincoln bulk. So Mrs. Saraz here. And Mrs. Aquino is here. And Mrs. Parks is a grandma at our school.

[2786] Megan McMillan: And anybody else? And we have some Kennedy students.

[2790] SPEAKER_38: So not Mandy. She's Lincoln. Kennedy students, Santa. Santa is good, OK?

[2796] SPEAKER_35: I'm going to go vote. Oh, yeah. Santa Kennedy students. They are. Good job. So proud of you.

[2806] SPEAKER_38: being eloquent. On the back wall, we have a smattering of different things. So I started on the left with sixth grade poetry. So our wonderful second year teacher, Ms. Chan, she always does this poetry where the kids take a picture, take a page out of a book, and then they choose words in it and create a poem and then they do art. So that's, and then on the If you go under the D and the Y on the bottom is TK work. So they're learning to put the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 on the cute little dogs and draw fire helmets. We have lots of where we're going to go to college and why we're going to do well in college. A lot of writing, some social studies, a mystery writing paragraph about ourselves, and a little bit of fall work just because it's fall, even though it's beautiful and warm here. Still, we're pretending that the leaves are falling right now.

[2863] Ray Rodriguez: That's the problem. Thank you. Thank you much. Appreciate it.

[2870] SPEAKER_18: Superintendent. Thank you, President Rodriguez, members of the board, ladies and gentlemen. I have just a few things today. First of all, I am asking for two board members to maybe join me on Tuesday, October 22nd after 10 a.m. to judge the doors at Graham Elementary for Unity Day. So there's Unity Day door judging. There's a big contest every year, and they ask us to come and judge. And actually, we could include Cesar if you're available. But it's during the day. But you are welcome. So if you are interested or you want to check your schedule, just let Char know if you're interested. And I guess first come, first serve, the first two to get their names in. We'll coordinate with you to meet at Graham and do some judging of the Unity Day doors. It's always very powerful to see the artwork the kids create and the theme. They always have a new theme each year. So let us know. October 22nd after 10 a.m. The next item is looking for a date. We have confirmed a date where the trainer is available. This is for governance training for CSBA. It's a combination of new beginnings for new board members as well as parliamentary procedure. And the date she's identified that she's available would be November 13th, potentially from 5 to 8 p.m. I don't know if that works for the board members, but if you want to check again and let Char know if you're available. Our trainer's name is Deb Dudley from CSBA. Just want to get an idea, I do know that Prior to the meeting, we knew Ms. Gutierrez wasn't available to be here, but she is available on that date. So she did say that date was possible. So I don't know if you want to have time to think about that. November 13, 5 to 8 PM is the suggested training time. And I think we had talked about trying to do it sooner than later. If that's not a good date, then we'll keep working towards another date sooner than later.

[2999] Elisa Martinez: I cannot.

[2999] SPEAKER_18: OK.

[3001] Elisa Martinez: I can argue that.

[3001] SPEAKER_18: OK, then we'll keep looking for a date. We really want to have everyone present. So if you guys do have some dates that you are available in November, let us know. We'll keep trying to schedule something for the whole team to be there. OK. The last one is I just want to check to kind of the consensus of the board. I was planning to start launching a larger scale committee kind of along the lines of what the community had mentioned to explore school consolidation. We know that takes time and there's a process. I have reached out to a few of my peer superintendents who've gone through that process to try to borrow ideas as to protocol and process. But I just wanted to check with the board that it's something I plan to proceed with unless you tell me to stop. So it looks like I have somewhat of consensus to proceed with that. OK. So we'll continue with that. Sure. That concludes my report at this time.

[3055] Ray Rodriguez: So again, the Unity Day at Graham?

[3059] SPEAKER_18: October 22nd after 10 a.m. and the governance training, we'll keep looking for a date.

[3065] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Because at this time of the year, a lot of schools ask board members to come for their Halloween, you know, choose the, you know, most outstanding pumpkin. So, we're going to be busy for the next couple of weeks. Yes. So, thank you for, you know, giving us that. I don't know if, just, I guess the board member that wants to go will let you know.

[3091] SPEAKER_18: Yeah, just let us know.

[3092] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. So we got a staff report. Superintendent.

[3097] SPEAKER_18: Okay. I'll turn it over to Miss Saavedra.

[3101] SPEAKER_22: Good evening board and members of the community. My name is Jessica Saavedra. I'm the Executive Director of Human Resources and tonight I bring you a short presentation on the Commission on Teaching Credentialing. I know there's been some questions and I wanted to make sure that I go over some of the protocols followed by California teaching credentialing. Do you want to just go down there?

[3132] Ray Rodriguez: Can I ask something real quick? So if anybody wants a hard copy of this, they can get it from the district office or?

[3143] SPEAKER_22: This is actually an attachment on the agenda.

[3147] Ray Rodriguez: No, but if somebody wants a hard copy, they can also come to the district office. Absolutely, yes. Thank you.

[3167] SPEAKER_22: What you see here on the front is three of the as you enter the California Commission on Credentialing for Teachers. These are three of the tabs that are open for the public and also for any district in order to check for specific people that are credentialed in California. Currently, Newark Unified School District currently has 292 teachers and 23 certificated managers that include principals and assistant principals as well. And due to the minimal staffing with CTC, 90% of the communication that we establish with them has to be done through email. As of October 8th, which is when I created this PowerPoint, the CTC was delayed back to until August 1st. The window that you see next to that sentence is actually the application status that appears on the website, on the actual website. So as you can see, we are months behind in regarding the applications of new teachers applying for credentials. All LEAs in California must follow a very strict and thorough process to verify and apply for teacher's credentials. Because there are California Ed codes in Title V regulations demands, Only a certified analyst is authorized and trained to complete this process. So, although anybody has the ability to go into California on the CTC website, only certificated people from a district has a special access to look at into people on where we are moving. The public has a different access to the credential views than certificated credentials analysts. that's included in the district and the county on IHE employees. And these are universities that we work with. They do not have access to what the credential analysts can see. The district at this point has no misassigned teachers. This is the hiring paper process that shortly describes or illustrates what we do when we find a teacher. After the teacher goes through an interview process with the hiring manager, which includes the principal, an assistant principal, or teachers from the site, once they make a recommendation, they receive a conditional offer of employment from the Human Resources Office. We call them, we make an appointment, and we go over what the conditional offer of employment means, which can vary from transcripts from the school, classes that they took, any specific credentials, any special traits that they bring to their position. With that said, then after all of those documents are clear, then we're able to notify them that pending board approval, they will be recommended for whatever the position is that they're applying for, whether it's a TK teacher all the way through a high school position. And only after the board approves it through a public forum like this, we are able to offer them a temporary contract. If this is a first, these are first year teachers brand new to the district, everybody that's brand new to the district receives a temporary contract. A credential analyst uses a section within the CTC website that has all the applications, forms, checklists, and leaflets they need to process credential permits, emergency permits, and waivers for the certificate employee. So in addition to everything that we require, such as transcripts and other documents, CTC has its own list of demands that an applicant must have in place prior to applying. currently they are approximately more than 10 types of emergency credentials or permits available for certificated employees and districts apply for these in order to cover their needs. In our district we do this process every spring so we do it once a year closest to the end of the school year and it simply just gives us the I guess the flexibility to say, to project, okay, we're having a hard time finding teachers in these areas. I said, okay, if we hire some students, interns, or someone that are currently in some sort of a program as teachers on emergency permits. In addition to the emergency permits, there are also waivers in local assignments options that allow certificated staff to teach in classrooms outside their credential areas. So, as you can see, there are many ways for someone that's interested in teaching, as long as they have some sort of certificated, a completion of at least a bachelor's degree and a completion of a CBEST test. that they will be able to apply for any of these types of emergency credentials. And just because a certificate employee is teaching under an emergency permit, waiver, or local assignment option does not mean that the employee is not an expert in that particular subject area. All emergency permits and waivers and local assignment options are legal teaching assignments according to CTC. So why are some reasons that we need so many emergency people or permits? And not just in our district, but across California. There are many reasons why we need them. One of them being the shortage of teachers, but also these are three examples of the biggest reasons why in Newark we need people on emergency credentials. One of them being maternity, paternity leave. Under California law, paid maternity and baby bonding. This requires us to provide our employees 24 to 28 weeks, so nearly six to seven months in one single year for maternity or paternity leave. In addition, we are also responsible to providing 12 more weeks of baby bonding leave, which is an additional four months, so that they are able to spend time with the new baby or their new families. if this doesn't follow during the summer months. Another reason why we require this emergency permit is our medical leave. Both medical and workers' comp leaves may last longer than 100 school days as the employee is allowed to use older sick leave and then utilize up to 100 more days as differential pay, which in a school district version is a disability type of pay. And last but not least, we have the special leave. This also is under the collective bargaining agreement with our partners in NTA per Article 1115, which means that, which states a certificate employees may be granted to take extended leave time for purposes satisfactory to the districts. And sometimes these vary and they must be approved prior for them to take them. Many of them have to do with personal reasons that are, beyond our control. Although not often, we have to grant those. For all these reasons above, if a district were not to utilize the emergency permit provisions as allowed by CTC, the alternative would be to rotate a new substitute into classrooms needing every 30 days. So teacher and substitute shortage, it's everywhere, and this is real. In California and across the United States, we're experiencing a teacher shortage as we have experienced in the last few years. The teacher shortage is large, is real, and is growing, and it's worse than we thought. When indicators of teaching quality, certification, relevant training experiences are taken into account, the shortage is even more acute than current estimated. Why does this matter for us? The shortage of teachers harm students, as we all know, teachers and the public education system as a whole. Lack of sufficient qualified teachers and staff impact the quality of the education our students receive. Unfortunately, the type of students that are more impacted by this are those students in low socioeconomic backgrounds. This is a very sad time because this profession is not as popular as it once was. In fact, 10% of the current teaching population leave every year for multiple reasons. Subject areas such as special education, mathematics, science, and foreign language are specially subject areas that are hard to fill. And oftentimes, districts will use a special emergency permit as an encouragement to the day-to-day substitute. We have had a new work. We've been very successful in recruiting our day-to-day substitutes. And in a way, invite them. We see their traits and we highlight their strengths. And we tend to convince them and encourage them to go and follow and get their own emergency, their credentials, so that they can stay and service our student population. It should be known that there are employees though that choose to be a day-to-day substitute because they like the flexibility of choosing the job and when to work and when not to work. And that's it for me. I just, I thought that this, you know, I know that there's been questions coming from the public and we've been discussing how this emergency permits work. I want to reassure the board that As of right now, all of the teachers that are servicing their students are credentialed. They have one type of credential or another.

[3807] Elisa Martinez: Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions, and I'll kind of read them out, and then you can figure out how to answer. But so I understand that there's a different type of exceptions, if you will. when we're trying to fill openings, whether it's an emergency permit, a waiver, or a local assignment option, are we looking, how do we categorize those positions that are being filled? Are they long-term sub-positions? Are they permanent positions that we're allowing under, you know, with these conditional, if you will? I'm just trying to understand, just kind of buckets, frankly. And then, knowing that this is an ongoing issue, You know, how do we track? I imagine there's some time factors associated with emergency permits or waivers or maybe help us understand if there is a time issue. And then how do we, if it is, how are we tracking? Sorry, it's a lot of questions. And then, and finally, I know you mentioned that we encourage folks to go and get their full certificate. But what tangibly are we doing?

[3885] SPEAKER_22: So if you want me to repeat some more, but... I think in a nutshell, the different types of credential depends on the position that the person is interested in following. Currently, because of those examples that I gave, we have people that are out in, rather than being to switch a 30-day sub, which is a type of credential, we encourage them to get long-term emergency credentials, which allows them to stay as long as needed. If it's for a multiple-subject credential, it's usually the one that most people approach us about. A multiple-subject credential will allow these teachers to teach in an elementary TK all the way through sixth grade. With secondary schools, it's a little bit different because they have to get a special permit to teach a subject, but that also exists to allow the teacher to teach for the remainder of, yes, long-term, for multiple months. The only caveat is that they know that the contract is a temporary contract pending on the person that actually, who actually owns the position or whose position we are giving them, health, or it varies whenever they're ready to come back.

[3971] SPEAKER_48: Thank you for your presentation, Director Saavedra. My question is with regards to, so I understand that we have, or the CTC has various types of credentials for whether it be for a clear credential for a teacher who remains in the position long term or various types of emergency or substitute credentials. I think the public's concern is with regards to the fact that positions are going unfilled for extended periods of time. and that we have teachers rotating or extended or emergency teachers with emergency permits cycling through classes. I know this happened two years ago in an AP psychology class my friends were taking and it was a concern for them because they weren't getting the education required to pass the AP exam. So I think the concern of the public is to make sure that the district is staffing positions as quickly as possible when a position opens So, I'd like to hear the, you know, how quickly that happens when a position becomes open so that we can fill it again and get a teacher back into that classroom.

[4035] SPEAKER_22: Sure. Usually when we have those temporary contracts right around the month of March, March 15th, is when we, the administrators at the sites start making recommendations. It's a whole year. effort to try to find the most qualified people to stay and to teach students in Newark. But this process starts roughly around, I want to say February, when we start analyzing what are going to be the needs the next fall, the following year. Yes, and unfortunately some of those, you know, like a psychologist, a psychology teacher, those are kind of hard to find. Currently, we're trying or we do multiple things that we need to be more aggressive about, such as going to job fairs in Alameda County office. We partner up with other districts. And we're just trying to be more aggressive in putting ourselves out there. Because although my motto is, although small, we're mighty, mighty and strong. And I think that for the most part, what I've seen is once people, once teachers arrive to Newark, I guess the small sense of the community that we have here, most of them feel comfortable and they tend to stay for multiple years. So there are different things that we're trying in order to recruit and retain teachers. But the teacher retention due to the different, you know, budgetary challenges that we have, not just in Newark but around California, are really different to predict whether somebody's going to be able to afford staying here or as we've been hearing all year long. So that's also hard to predict.

[4143] SPEAKER_48: So in regards to these monetary challenges, essentially what you're saying is that we're not offering enough in terms of salary. That's the long and short of it. So when you talk about aggressive practices when it comes to going to job fairs and going out to neighboring districts to see if their teachers might want to come to Newark, Are we also being aggressive in terms of the salary that we're offering? Because everyone in this room understands the challenges that we have from a financial perspective. Is the district doing enough to pay these teachers that they'll stay here?

[4176] SPEAKER_18: I can take that. The answer is twofold. I think certainly twofold. No, we're not paying teachers enough. That's simple. Obviously, it's a national crisis. I would tell you that it's hard to recruit with what we pay. It's hard to get them to stay with what we pay. But that is also elements that we negotiate with the union and we're in the middle of that negotiation right now. I think our union partners have worked hard to try to come to the table to reach agreement. We're not there yet. I have confidence we'll get there. But that is a challenge. I think nationally teachers are underpaid. Absolutely. And I think that's part of the challenge is coming to somewhere. Sometimes teachers come here and they take a pay cut. But after a while living in the Bay Area it's hard to absorb that for very long. So I think that we tend to see teachers that might come and start their careers here and get to year five. And we've seen some of the jobs recently, teaching and otherwise, go somewhere else for more money and benefits. So that is a long-term solution that we need to work with our partners to try to solve. I also would add that benefits is another factor. It's not just about money, it's also about benefits. So those are some factors that do affect our recruiting. So I think the aggressive part about it is really we have to do a better job of showing what the culture and climate is like here in Newark so they could see what it's like, so they could see how great our students are and what the community is like. But at the end of the day, money matters, especially in the Bay Area when you look at the cost of housing. So in my fourth year now, I see where it's really hard for people making a teacher's salary to even live in our community. And I think that's an increasing problem that we're dealing with. But we're not alone. I mean, compounded by a declining enrollment, increasing cost of STRS and PERS benefits. But those are some things we're wrestling with with our union partners. But it takes time. But I agree. We need to pay more.

[4301] SPEAKER_48: Yeah, because New Haven and Fremont don't have this problem. I believe that they pay a little bit more than Newark does. The fact of the matter is teachers come from Newark, they see that they're not getting paid as much, and then they go to neighboring districts.

[4315] SPEAKER_18: And neighboring districts that you described are increasing enrollment.

[4319] SPEAKER_48: Yeah. That helps too. So it's a snowball effect of parents want to send their kids where they're going to get a good education. So these teachers are motivated by the high pay to teach better. So it's a snowball effect of parents are going to neighboring districts. And then as a result, the teachers are leaving. So now the district's declining in enrollment. nothing's being done about it.

[4340] SPEAKER_18: Well I wouldn't say nothing's being done. I think our staff works very hard but it's a national challenge and California there's almost a third of the District of California dealing with declining enrollment are in a tough situation. The other point of impact is we're underfunded by the state and I've given these numbers before. We spend $250,000 a year on an incarcerated youth, $60,000 a year on an incarcerated adult, and $9,000... Point of order.

[4369] Elisa Martinez: I think, I mean, we're not going to solve the problem here. I think that... Thank you. We are very, we are aware that we have funding challenges and I would say we are not, we haven't done anything yet, but this is a difficult conversation and task at hand exactly for the reason that you're bringing up, so thank you.

[4391] Ray Rodriguez: I had a couple of questions. Coming from a family of teachers, my dad and my sister from Florida and Newark and Texas and everywhere, it's the profession that we all praise. But the pay in California is such where, coming from Florida for instance, it looks so so nice because they make more, especially in Northern California, even as opposed to Southern California. But naturally, once they get out here and they see the expenses, it's difficult. So my question was around interns, where we have partnerships with Patent Academy, with Cal State East Bay, and different others. Now, if they're in a credentialing program, And we have a partnership then. Do we bring them in as interns then? Is that the case sometimes?

[4459] SPEAKER_22: Yes, that's correct. Most teachers that are still getting credits through a credential program have to apply for an internship credential. That's one of the many types of credential, emergency credentials, that we can grant someone.

[4474] Ray Rodriguez: And because of our numbers, sometimes we have a challenge where we might wait until, you know, school is going to start in about a week or so, and then we have some openings. If we do waivers or we bring teachers in, do we check thoroughly that they're in a program, in a credentialing program?

[4494] SPEAKER_22: Yes, but again, I think the difference is we always want to start with the individuals that are closest to becoming teachers. So when we are looking into hiring or who is applying for a specific position, If the candidate is already in a credential or working on getting a credential, then we encourage that person to apply, and we help them apply for an internship credential. And our certificated manager does an excellent job communicating. We currently have multiple partnerships with different universities around the area.

[4533] Ray Rodriguez: Newark and Massachusetts have a partnership where if an individual or if a student wants to be a teacher, they have a program where at the first four years, not only do they get the degree, they also get the credentials. And it's something that I've been working on and working with the people up in Sacramento to see if we can come up with a better way. Because years ago, they told us that they were going to put things in place to make it easier to have people go into teaching. But it's difficult, especially when we're getting less than $10,000 sometimes per student as far as paying. Now, the CBEST, if a person is in college, and let's say they're a senior and they pass a CBEST, they still can't get emergency credentials.

[4585] SPEAKER_22: Unfortunately not. The candidate must have completed a bachelor's degree, must have a bachelor's degree in order And a CBEST to work in as a substitute, a long-term substitute.

[4599] Ray Rodriguez: And then we have probationary one and probationary two when it comes to, you know, before they, you know, they become permanent, right?

[4607] SPEAKER_22: That's correct. So the order of events is we, when we first hire someone, they're on a temporary contract that then become probationary one and then a probationary two before becoming a permanent teacher.

[4620] Ray Rodriguez: And then if we hire a teacher for let's say a month to be a sub and we need that teacher let's say for the rest of the year how does that work?

[4630] SPEAKER_22: Then the teacher must have a long-term substitute.

[4633] Ray Rodriguez: So they have to change their credentials.

[4636] SPEAKER_22: Yes and usually we, right, if A 30-day substitute teacher, it's the everyday one, the one that can sub in multiple classrooms, and it cannot go beyond the 30 days. Otherwise, we will have to apply, or that person will have to apply for a long-term substitute position.

[4656] Ray Rodriguez: Right. And then speaking generically, when, because as parents, if they're unhappy with a teacher, then naturally they want the district or the principal to move the teacher. And could you share with us, because we have a

[4671] SPEAKER_22: agreement with our teachers union and and there is a process in place and there's people have rights and everything and without getting specific just generically yes we actually have that it's part of the contract the the CBA contract that we have with our partners teachers that we will provide a due process for anyone that is that needs to improvement including an evaluation that that happens annually It begins with the principal and having a meeting with the person that's going to be evaluated, going over California's teacher standards for teaching, and selecting certain areas for this teacher to be evaluated on.

[4715] Ray Rodriguez: And for new teachers, we do have the mentoring program for new teachers.

[4719] SPEAKER_22: Yes, we do.

[4720] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you very much.

[4721] SPEAKER_22: You're very welcome.

[4725] Ray Rodriguez: With that, we go to our union partners. NTA, anybody here from NTA that would like to say anything? We are your partners, but we do not have a name sharing. OK. Anybody from CSCA? And NEWMA, anybody from NEWMA? We are also your partners. Thank you. Thank you for being our partners. It's all about kids when you really break it down. OK, we now move to old business. We were going to do a talk on board meeting and governance protocols. And Member Martinez and Member Gutierrez have been working on this. But because Member Gutierrez is not here, I'd like to move this to the next meeting, if that's OK. Because all of us need to be in. So OK, with that, we move to new business, 14.1. to adopt a budget for fiscal year 2021-2022, condition approval of the 2019-2020 adopted budget and resolution number 2158 to commit to budget balancing solutions for 2020-2021, 2021-2022 fiscal years. Ms. Dela Cruz. Miss Bloom?

[4817] Phuong Nguyen: No.

[4820] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, Miss Bloom and Miss Parks and Miss Alvara.

[4828] Rachel Bloom: Bruce, I want to say, I'm really sorry about the no thing. There's something, there's like a thought bubble and a speech bubble, and my thought bubble accidentally became my speech bubble, so I apologize that, I'm sorry. That was more of a, so sorry about that. That's okay. So this has to do with what we were talking about on Tuesday, and there was that, that graph of enrollment and then capacity, and I showed that graph to my colleagues, and we are super confused and don't understand how those numbers were acquired. So I posted on social media and someone said, I would like to state that for BGI this has to be wrong. There is no way we could fit 50 more students let alone 200. And I thought about Graham and how we have let's say like five open rooms and that's like 150 kids tops and it seems like we have room for like 300 or 400 more and then someone at other schools with pods, we're like, what are they going to do, stick kids in the pods with no windows? And so I was also thinking about, so at Graham, like we have a maker space, a science storage, a level library and everything. So I just want to make sure that when you're thinking about closing schools or whatever and how many we could fit, you know, there's kids like as sardines, but that's not, to the best learning environment. If we're going to be a STEAM school, we need to have those rooms open for maker spaces. If we're going to be a STEAM district, STEAM school, we need to have places for those science materials. And I know, Mr. Zhang, you were talking earlier about like asking where did you get this information? How did you come across this? And so I really appreciate that. I think this is also a really good time to understand where the numbers came from because my colleagues and I do not understand. We just want to make sure whatever decisions are reached, that they're reached with the board knowing all the information and that the information is correct and not misleading you. So thank you for your time. I just wanted to make sure that you heard that. Thank you.

[4961] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you much. Ms. Parks and then Ms. Silvera.

[4969] Cindy Parks: Sorry, I stepped out for a moment. I thought you were going to deal with the handbook and I had time. I, too, had a lot of concerns. I think I'm going to probably echo a lot of what Rachel just said. But I wasn't able to attend Tuesday's meeting due to some family commitments. And it seemed like there was a lot that went on there, more than what the agenda was really divulging was going to happen. It said that it was about the ACOE letter. And I understand that there's a myriad of things that you discussed. And the PowerPoint presentation shows that there was a lot more discussed than perhaps what the little item led the community to believe was happening. This is from Mr. Canson Chu today, our assemblyman. This talks about a community meeting. This lets the public know what's going on. Divulging in one little line sentences without attachments that give the community an idea of what's being discussed is not transparency if you walk into a meeting and that's where you're handed the discussion items. You, as a member of the community who looks at the agenda, we're assuming that what we see there is what's going to be discussed, which was the ACOE letter and how you were going to meet your commitments. Not all the myriad of things that you discussed and school closure was one of them. That's a hot topic. Don't you think that something like that shouldn't be on a special evening meeting at 6 o'clock on a Tuesday night out of the ordinary? I mean, there's a whole document from the AC on the CDE on how to go about practicing school closures. And in it, it talks about that it's empirical to gather information. You guys are just on the pinnacle of even just even having this discussion. And I'm getting text messages today saying you're going to vote to close or consolidate schools tonight. I didn't see that on the agenda. And I just think that the community now is, you know, you had the big June meeting where everybody showed up at music because they thought you were going to close music. There's so much misinformation because there's so little that's funneling out to us. You might, I don't know whether it's emails or whatever you're getting behind the scenes, but it's not filtering to the community and we're relying on rumors and on rumors that affect our lives. Whether it's families that have children in the district that maybe you're going to consider closing their school and they don't hear about it until the decision is made. I just feel like there is not transparency. It's one of your strategic imperatives. Where are you informing and communicating to the community? You're not doing that. And I just think that, you know, having a resolution where you're just going, there's nothing here. And I understand you really don't have to show until first interim, but you're going to have a discussion and we don't even know where that's going to go because it's all going to happen after we all talk. And I just had felt I had to say something, really not even knowing where you're going to even go with all of this. But if it is talking about closing schools or consolidation or building free $50 million schools, you know, I don't even know where it's going to go, but you need to be able to be forthright with the community so that we know where you're going and we can give our input.

[5173] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you.

[5181] SPEAKER_40: I was reminded as I'm sitting there and thinking about when we put our dog to sleep. We said that we put him to sleep and we didn't want to say, you know, he's dying or we didn't want to say those words, you know, we say we euthanize. I'm having a similar reaction to school consolidation that I am to those words. I feel like we are saying this, but the reality is we're closing schools, we're laying off teachers. And I want the board to say that. If that is what is happening, say it. Accept the responsibility. I went online tonight to look at the agenda item, and I saw this paper that said, for this item, saying that we need to cut one point I need to pull it back up, but 1.8 million for this next year, and then 600,000 or 668,000 the year after that. But that's all there was to it. I can write numbers on a piece of paper. I can say, oh, let's cut x or y. But without knowing this information is what actually you're looking at, it's really I'm sorry to say, but it really feels like I'm having a car salesman come up to me and be like, have this car. It's great. It's just consolidated. No, it's been broken down. Use the actual terms. When I approached Mr. Schimmel at the CBOC meeting about it, and I said, you're closing schools, he said, well, if that's what you want to call it, no. That's not what I want to call it. That is what it is. And I understand it's hard to say. I look at the numbers. I see what you see. I see that our schools are low enrollment, and that is a lot of extra overhead. OK, fine. And I get that this is a big deal. My children's school is literally in my backyard. I look over my fence and I see Lincoln. The idea of it closing breaks my heart. I hope it's not one of the ones you're thinking of, but I have no idea. And then I see these numbers that says that Lincoln is supposed to house 300 more children. And I say, wow, I could see how Lincoln would be looked at. And it is very upsetting. And I tell other parents, And they're like, what? Really? No. Link, they wouldn't do that to us. We have the best numbers. But maybe you would. And we just don't even know. And it's really, it's very hard. Thank you.

[5366] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Superintendent.

[5379] Marie dela Cruz: Ms. Delacruz. Yes, so thank you board members for, first of all, giving us your feedback and providing some input at our study session the other day. The main purpose of that study session was to discuss the ACOE letters and some of the potential budget balancing solutions that we could come up with. Just to give a little background, as we all know and we are aware, the district submitted a budget back in June, and the county superintendent had notified the district that our 19-20 adopted budget was conditionally approved. So in this notification, the county requires us to meet three conditions, and the first one was to submit our 18-19 unaudited actuals. and the second was to revise our adopted budget so that it included the recent amendments that were made after the budget was submitted, especially the CSCA 18-19 1% salary increase that was ratified. And the third is the board's approval and adoption of a plan that would incorporate additional budget balancing solutions. And so we've already met conditions one and two, and we are working on number three. So why are we being asked to create a budget balancing plan? Well, our district has an ongoing budget deficit. What that means is that our expenses have exceeded our revenues. And this ongoing deficit spending that we're going to be doing is reducing our reserves. Which consequently will. Will not be able to meet our 3% minimum reserve requirement. And eventually. Reserves will be depleted. And what happens if we do not have an approved budget. And so what does it take for us to balance our budget? There's really only two sides of the equation. We either increase our revenues, reduce expenditures, or do both. Just to give an example before I leave this, I know that sometimes, you know, we talk about deficit. If you think about your own savings account, personal savings, if your expenses go up and your income stays the same, you have to make adjustments. And either you cut back on your expenses, or you get another job, or you dip into your savings. And if you don't make the adjustments, eventually your savings will be gone. So in our budget balancing plan, the target amount, the minimum for 2021 is $1,850,000. That's what was included in the multi-year projection that was submitted to the county. And for 21-22, it's $668,000. That was already built into the multi-year. In addition to that, even with the $1.8 million and the $668,000, we are looking at a $2.3 million deficit this year. And in 2021, you're still looking at $795,000 shortfall. And in 21-22, there's $1,090,000. So altogether, when you're looking at 19-20, we have a $2.3 million shortfall. In 2021, you add up the 1.8 plus the 7.95, it's a $2.6 million shortfall. And in 21-22, if you add up the 668 and the 1,090, it's $1.7 million shortfall. So altogether for all three years, we're looking at $6.7 million in deficit. And then enrollment. So back in 13-14, the enrollment for the district was 6,294. And this year, we just got our CBEDS enrollment data. We're down to 5,735. So over the last several years, we lost a total of 559 students. So overall, our enrollment has been declining every year, even though we are slightly up this year. Historically, over the last five, six years, we've been declining. And next year, because of that trend, we're also projecting lower enrollment in the next two years. Total 107 students that's been included in our projection to be less in enrollment. So we're funded by ADA. which is the average daily attendance. And as we decline in enrollment, we're also declining in ADA. And that means that we're getting less funding. So this is the enrollment versus the capacity. And if you're looking at our enrollment, this is only the elementary and the one junior high. Our current enrollment in those schools is 3,916. And when we talk about capacity without portables, it's 5,800. And the reason why we say without portables, because that was the original capacity. The schools, you remember that one slide in 13-14 actually had over 6,000 students. So portables, when you bring in portables, it usually means you're in growth. and you're adding more space so that you can accommodate the growth. So just with the original capacity, we're 1,884 less in terms of what could be housed in our schools.

[5804] SPEAKER_18: So that is based on a square footage, not program, correct?

[5807] Marie dela Cruz: Correct. It's a formula, square footage. When they built the building, number of classrooms times number of students that it could accommodate. So it's all on square footage. It's not based on current usage. So here you have your chart. This is what it looks like, your enrollment and your capacity. The enrollment is the red and capacity is the blue. So for example, if we're looking at BGP, they're pretty close to capacity. BGI, their enrollment is at 463, and the capacity is 665. So there's potentially 200 spaces there. And then Graham, which is at 363, the capacity is 775. So there's over 400 spaces. And at Kennedy, it's 402 enrollment and 550 capacity. And then Lincoln is at 388 with 700 capacity. And Music at 311 with 550. And Schilling at 375 with 600 capacity. And Snow, 307 and 500 capacity. And then the junior high is at 893, which could hold 1,040. So one of the potential the ways that we could reduce our deficit is to look at ways that we could increase revenues and enhance our revenues. If we were to increase our attendance even by half a percentage point, which is 25 ADA, it's based on just basic 10,000 per student. It's potentially 250,000 more per year. And we have a cell tower proposal right now for another cell tower that could generate $20,000 a year. And applying for grants, these are very conservative estimates, $10,000 possibly. And in our use of facilities, we've been using Facilitron. I have a slide next that will show you how successful that's been. We're just projecting another $20,000. And if we were to do some fundraisers, maybe $5,000. Business partnerships, we have a lot of businesses in the Newark community, donations that we could possibly reach out and generate $10,000 a year. And then parcel tax, we've talked about that. And the general obligation bond, those are to be determined. So altogether, this year and the next two years, There's potential revenue of $650,000. So in our use of facilities, Facilitron came in in 17-18. And in that first year, we generated $81,084. And then in last year, 18-19, the district generated $142,000 from the use of facilities, which is a $61,000 increase. And I only put in $20,000 because we really only have a two-year history right now. So being conservative in the revenues that that's generating. Now, this is a list of recommended budget reductions. Keep in mind, our budget represents 85%, 87% in salaries and benefits. So in salaries and benefits, we're recommending a reduction of up to $900,000. And that could mean furloughs. It could mean limited overtime. It could mean reduction in positions. Those decisions have yet to be determined. But there's really no way that we can consider that, because the 15% left of the unrestricted discretionary funding, there's really not a lot. So we try to go through all the different budget line items, travel and conference. If we reduced it by half in the unrestricted side, we also have travel and conference budget on the restricted side. This is just most of this, if not all, is really focused on the unrestricted funds. So there's $40,000 there each year. And then in legal fees, $16,000 a year for the next two years. In non-instructional professional services, there's $40,000 potentially. And then instructional side, $30,000. And then in the supplemental materials, 10% of that would be a $7,000 reduction each year. And in the non-instruction materials and supplies, which would be office supplies, maintenance, custodial, 20% reduction is 96,000. And electricity, if we all contribute, turning off lights, computers. I'm sitting here. I see lights on over there. So just to be mindful of things that we could do to help. And 5% is only $50,000. We spend $1.5 million a year. in electricity. So anything we can do, even if it's 5%, would help. We have graphic arts, printing services, $26,000. Our advertising, 75% of that is $38,000. Software license fees, non-instructional, reducing that by $50,000 is $33,000 a year. And then instructional license fees by 10% is $28,000. Data processing services, non-instructional, again, half of that is $49,000. Assessment and fees, $22,000. And then if we were to consolidate two schools and close one, we're estimating $500,000 if we were to do this next year. And consolidating three schools and closing two would be an estimated million-dollar savings. school district. Now the average elementary school budget and restricted right now not including teachers is about 979,000. So this 500,000 again is conservative. And I just want to make it clear that we have not made any decisions to close schools. We have not made any decisions on which schools we would and some things that we need to consider. Because if you do not consolidate schools or find other ways to save money, there's $500,000 that we need to take from somewhere else. And right now, the only other place, unfortunately, would be salaries and benefits. Because all the other operational costs, non-instructional, really doesn't amount to much when you look at our entire budget. So all together, these recommended budget reductions for the next two years would add up to $3.3 million. So because we're talking about school consolidation and school closures, some of the things that we need to consider is time. If we were to think about doing this next year, we need to start tomorrow, sooner than later. There is the decision-making phase. and gathering of all the information and data and facts, verifying numbers, verifying capacity, the usage of all of these schools, getting community input and involvement, and creating a district advisory committee. Normally the intent of the DAC is to advise the board on the use of surplus property. If we were to close the school, obviously we need to consider what could we use the the school for if you're going to lease it or repurpose. Several facts need to be gathered. We need to continue to do enrollment projections, look at our boundaries and what the conditions are of the schools. Again, the school capacities, verifying those numbers, the educational programs that are being offered, maintaining those, the staffing requirements, the safety concerns, the cost savings projections, verifying those numbers, and what the impact would be on the district as a whole. And making a decision on which schools to consolidate, we have to look at the condition of all of the school facilities, what the capacity is of all the schools, any transportation issues, and the educational programs. So making a decision, again, we have not made any decisions on which schools to consolidate or how it's going to be consolidated. Several ideas are out there. And it's important to get community input and get staff involved in these decisions. If we do decide, then there's the implementation. It's going to take a whole district team to do the transition, staff. to have a transition plan with the staff and the students to let them know what is that going to look like. And communicating with the parents, the staff, the students, the community, what do we need to do, press releases, newsletters, websites, and community meetings, direct mailings, whatever it takes so that we have everybody well informed and involved. Some of the other recommendations that we considered is for this year because, again, we have a $2.3 million deficit this year. So anything we can do to reduce that deficit this year obviously will help. And if we had a hiring freeze, $200,000, again, that's very conservative. Maybe that's two positions that we have to look at. and see what positions are vacant, what we need to fill, what are critical and what's not. And then mid-year spending freeze, if we implemented a slowdown or a freeze in spending in January or February, we might be able to capture some of those funds and carry them over for next year. So altogether, what we're looking at, total revenue enhancements for 19-20 and expenditure reductions would be about $720,000. And in 2021, total possible resources would be $2.1 million, almost $2.2. And then in 21-22 is $1.8 million. So altogether, for this year and the next two years, would be about $4.7 million. So what's next is the staff will be recommending approval of the budget balancing solutions and resolution number 2158, which commits to implementing these budget reductions and revenue enhancements of up to $1.8 million in 2021 and $668,000 in 21-22. We plan to submit our response to the county tomorrow. And the county will review our response and do their analysis and determine the status of our adopted budget and revised budget by November 8th. Our LCAP right now is contingent upon our adopted budget approval as well. And we need to take whatever steps necessary if we are going to consider school consolidation. Keep in mind, this is not set in stone. We are, this is the first conversation, obviously, that we're having and recommendation of these cuts. We have to submit something to the county to let them know that we have considered, we have looked at it, we're reviewing. We know that we have a deficit, we have a shortfall, and this is our plan today. It doesn't mean that we can't change it tomorrow as long as we have a plan. And if we're gonna change the plan, we just need to let the county know what is that change. Any questions? Comments?

[6636] Ray Rodriguez: Member Martinez.

[6638] Elisa Martinez: So thank you for the review. It was a small crowd on Tuesday, so this is some of the information that you did present. Thank you for adding the additional detail that we asked for. That is very helpful. I do want to reiterate that nothing has been decided. We have, the topic of school closure is something that we have to explore. And I wanted to use that word because you're absolutely right, that is what it is. It's technically, we're consolidating, but at the end of the day something gets closed. So I wanted to, again, we went on the record on Tuesday saying we have not made any decisions. The committee that the superintendent referenced during his report is exactly to start the communication, to start the ascertaining of the data. Because that is, I know what we as a board have been very specific is, you know, we can see a lot of numbers. But where is the source and how do we make sure that we are doing the most responsible thing? So more of a comment, but thank you specifically for the additional data or level of granularity, if you will, in terms of where some of those cost reductions are coming from. I know materials was a big piece. So that is very helpful to see, you know, impact directly to the classroom versus some of the consumable side. So that is very helpful. Thank you.

[6737] Jodi Croce: You're welcome.

[6738] Bowen Zhang: Member John. Thank you for your report. I just have one question regarding the mid-year budget balancing resolution about the half a million spending freeze. What will be some example about the spending freeze mid-year that we can implement?

[6756] Marie dela Cruz: So really, all of our sites and our departments have their discretionary budget. And anything that is not spent by a certain date, if we establish a date, we would make a cutoff on all expenditures. Because by February, most of the expenditures, 80%, 90% should already have been made. Because if you're ordering in March, you're not receiving it until May or June. Students are gone. So we're hoping that we can at least make an attempt to try and slow down the spending or make mindful decisions in what the schools and the departments are spending their money on rather than just trying to spend it to spend it. And if it means carrying it over and if there's a plan for that carryover, we'd be open to that. So sometimes schools will have plans to spend their money for a certain program, or let's say there's a computer lab that needs to be replaced, and you just didn't have time to do it this year. We're not interested in not supporting those kinds of plans, but if you don't have time to do it this year, then let's talk about it. Maybe we can save that for next year. So it's really about capturing some of these expenditures that are made at the last minute and trying to have a definite cutoff on these budgets.

[6861] Bowen Zhang: So I just want to make a comment relating to communication and engagement. So since I got onto the board in January, so one thing I really have a, I really find out about this district and our board as a whole is We really severely lack of communication and engagement with the community and the members, our parents, our constituents, particularly when it comes to big topics. For example, our school board members don't really have a history of going to PTAs, meeting with the parents, taking questions and answers, facing our voters, our constituents. Our school board as a whole or district as a whole doesn't really have a habit or history holding regular town halls where we can meet our constituents, engage in a Q&A session, be in an interactive format. And so as a result, for many of our parents and our member of our community, the only thing they have when they try to engage with the board is the three minutes right in front of the podium. And due to whatever legal conflict and legal structure, we're not allowed to respond. But from the parents' perspective, They come here to speak for three minutes and we cannot respond, but they do get the impression or the perception of, well, you're ignoring us. You're not really listening to us because I spent three minutes talking about it. I didn't hear a word from you. So I think going forward for this process, we definitely need to change some of our old practices. Well, for example, a board member never been to a PTA meeting for years. Some parents in PTA meetings once told me, For eight years, you were the first one ever to show up to this PTA meeting. We thought nobody really knew us. And speaking for the superintendent going forward, I think we all know that our record on communication and engagement is not very impressive. So I guess for this important topic about whatever is general obligation bound, partial task, or we move forward with school closure plan, there's no margin of error for us anymore when it comes to engagement. So you've got to hold these meetings or forum, whatever, how we structure a meeting to be interactive, to be as quickly as possible and to schedule as many of these things as our members of our community demand. And lastly, I just want to briefly speak to the members of our community. We highly encourage your participation and this time we'll try to be, we'll definitely try our best to be, to have more frequent communication and engagement with our community and Your input, your participation is highly sought after. Your input actually will make a difference when it comes to our final decision making. That's what I want to say.

[7019] Elisa Martinez: Sorry, I have a point of order. I think let's bring it back to the discussion. Member Zhang, we hear you. And I think we should save those types of comments to the end of the meeting. Because I think that it's an incomplete statement. So I would ask that we bring it back to the topic at hand. So do we have any additional questions?

[7045] Ray Rodriguez: Excuse me. The student board member wanted to.

[7049] SPEAKER_48: So I have two questions. The first one is with regards to, so in the actual resolution text it says that we're implementing reductions for the next academic year of around $2 million. So those reductions are the sum total of what appeared in that presentation? No?

[7072] Marie dela Cruz: The presentation actually has more.

[7075] Kat Jones: Okay.

[7075] Marie dela Cruz: And the county specifically ask for additional budget balancing solutions. So it's the final decision. OK. Yeah. So the total is going to be more than what's in the resolution. But the resolution is worded to where we would reduce up to 1.8. But it could be more.

[7098] SPEAKER_48: So we're guaranteeing that that amount or more will be reduced? Yes. OK. And then my next question is what you just spoke about with regards to the discretionary budget of each school site and the possibility of it being carried over, and maybe Superintendent Sanchez, you can help me out with this, but as I understand it, that would mean that school site councils can carry funds in their SPSA from one year to the next? Is that what that's intended to mean, or does that mean something different?

[7125] SPEAKER_18: Typically, what it means is, let me describe it a different way. Generally, our cutoff date for ordering stuff is April 1st. because the rules that we have to engage with relative to spending these dollars require us to receive the materials before the end of the fiscal year. So the idea of slowing spending usually becomes a way of, OK, our new cutoff date would be potentially, let's say, February, February 1, for example. It doesn't mean we would not approve expenditures, but we would have a heavier scrutiny of what those expenditures are And if they're just buying paper for copiers, that's probably not going to be a problem. But if they're trying to install something that's pretty comprehensive, we wouldn't be able to get the equipment in time, or it's going to be something that we maybe can wait, we would do that. The other thing we've done in the past that was successful in the last few years is just having a conversation with principals. They know the context. We ask them to slow their spending. And it kind of goes along the lines of, please get what you need. But if there's other things that you kind of wanted that you can wait for, please wait. And in the past, we've been able to yield up and down an average of anywhere from $300,000 to $700,000 just on slowing spending. So it just really means being thoughtful about what you need and trying to slow our spending. That's kind of the approach.

[7214] SPEAKER_48: OK. But my question is related to CBO's comment about carrying over funds from one fiscal year to the next. So I'm on the school site council for Newark Memorial. And what I've been told is that funds that aren't spent devolve back to the general fund for the district. So is that an implication that there's going to be a change?

[7235] Marie dela Cruz: No. I think you're referring to the restricted side. So I'm referring to the unrestricted general fund. The restricted, we try not to carry over because then Sometimes the state will look at it, and if you have too much carryover, then they might think you may not be needing as much of a budget.

[7257] SPEAKER_18: But I think the question, to answer your question, I think what you're after is, of the general fund that is unspent, it goes back to general fund. It doesn't stay with the school.

[7266] SPEAKER_48: OK. So that wouldn't carry forward that portion of it. Right. OK. So each year, the school site council has a new set of money. to work with, and that money that's not spent goes back to the district. That's my question. Thank you.

[7279] Ray Rodriguez: I thought that's what it was. I can go. I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. I think the community assumes that when you talk about consolidating, you're talking about elementary schools, naturally. But years ago, we did have the alternative schools at the high school. So how would that change if that happened to be the school that we chose, the Bridgepoint campus, for instance, money-wise?

[7319] SPEAKER_18: It depends on what we do with the staffing. I think the challenge that we have, I think, in the district is that for many years we've been trying to solve budget deficit by tinkering with the 15% instead of looking at the 85% that is staffing. But I think it's feasible. I definitely am looking at some models where we could look at how we deploy not only alternative education, but online education and adult education. So once again, all those things are still on the table, and I think that's a conversation that we need to continue to have. I know that for the number of staffing we have there, considering how many students we have, we have to look at it. We have to look at it.

[7360] Ray Rodriguez: And then I had a question concerning the letters that we got from the county. Those are public documents now. And have we shared that with the community? Because that triggers the discussion, the resolution, the letters we got from the county.

[7375] Marie dela Cruz: Yes, the letters were attached to the last board meeting.

[7378] Ray Rodriguez: Right. Well, maybe moving forward, maybe we can attach them, if you don't mind, to any, as we discuss.

[7385] Nancy Thomas: Sure.

[7386] Ray Rodriguez: OK. If we don't make the cuts that are required by the county, then what happens then, superintendent?

[7399] SPEAKER_18: What happens is the county will come in and kind of do a mathematical exercise and just pretty much decide for us. Generally speaking, they send either a state administrator or a county administrator to come in. They look at the budget, and they either will decide where they're going to cut it from, And then our job is to execute it and the board won't have authority to oversee that. The board will have to vote for it. So the other way to answer it is either we decide based on what we know about our community or they decide for us without knowing anything about our community.

[7435] Ray Rodriguez: But they wouldn't have the restrictions we have as far as agreements we have, for instance, with our labor unions. Correct. So they can flatly just say 10% cut across the board and they can do that if they wanted to.

[7449] Marie dela Cruz: Yes, that's my understanding, yes.

[7451] Ray Rodriguez: We had a prior superintendent, Dr. Bernard, took over, I think, King City, and he shared some of that information with us. Now, so the mid-year, is that something we can implement right away? Not saying we're going to vote on it now, but in the future meeting, could that be something we can implement? Yes. And there would be some savings there. But we're supposed to cut, how much for 2019, 2020? 1.8. 1.8? Or is it 2.2?

[7488] Marie dela Cruz: For 19-20, it's not part of the condition, but we do have a $2.3 million deficit this year.

[7496] Ray Rodriguez: Right. So moving forward, that's got to be something we cut, right? Yes. And then, maybe Gutierrez is not here, has been talking about the setting up the committee, how soon would we be able to set that up?

[7512] SPEAKER_18: I'm going to work on that tomorrow.

[7513] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. And would that committee just be talking about consolidation or would we be talking about ways that we can, you know, help with the budget crush? Like, for instance, a lot of community members know that we approved the solar for the, and there would be our electric bill is very high. And it seems like there'd be savings there. And we already approved it. So I know that the savings aren't there right away when you do solar. But it has been approved by the board.

[7549] SPEAKER_18: So if I may, I'll answer your question. It really would be triggering three committees. One would be a specific school closure committee to look at all the dynamics and best practice on that. One would be a district advisory committee that would kind of help us shape What do we do with the property if we were to close the property? And the third one would be a district transition team that would start working on the other components of if it closes, how do we transition and communicate that? So those are the three that are on my radar as far as triggering the start of those committees.

[7581] Ray Rodriguez: And Soler?

[7582] Marie dela Cruz: In terms of the budget, we do have a budget advisory committee, and I think that would be the appropriate place to discuss items like solar and savings and any additional ideas for saving and generating revenue.

[7598] Ray Rodriguez: Because it is frustrating. I mean, we've been talking about solar for a few years, and we've had presentations, and the board did approve it. And yet, we don't see anything. We can follow up on that. Now, the last thing. Go ahead, Graham. I can wait.

[7613] Elisa Martinez: It was a follow-up to the timeline of the committee, because we are in a very tight timeline. So let's say we start tomorrow. I mean, there's a broad cross-section of our community that needs to be represented. What is a realistic timeline that we would like to be able to say, OK, here it is, here it's open for people to, I don't know if it's an application process or a selection process, But are we talking a week, two weeks, three weeks? What's any thoughts?

[7645] SPEAKER_18: I believe we could have something identified within two weeks. And generally speaking, having representation from each school site, requesting that from principals, a cross-section of principals as well. I think within two weeks, we could have a group identified and invite for a first meeting. Thank you.

[7665] Ray Rodriguez: Now, in reference to that. For school closure. How difficult would it be, to me it seems like it would be very difficult, we're already in almost November, to actually do a school closure by next year, from a staff perspective.

[7687] SPEAKER_18: Typically school closures take at least a year, study in best practice, and sometimes even a little bit more than a year, so the ways to look at it would be How aggressive do we want to be with that? I think that hearing what we've heard about communication, taking the full year would probably be recommended. And I generally have, speaking to the superintendents that I've talked to about that have had due reduction, they're pretty adamant that it takes at least a school year to get ready to do it for the following year. So I think part of what we're thinking about, what is the three year plan? So is the plan to, you know, and I think it's going to be a combination of things. Is it looking at school closure for next year? And maybe this year we look at spending some one-time money on purchasing solar so we reap those benefits quicker instead of leasing it. What do we do with property if we do surplus property? But I think that, but to answer your question, generally it's at least a year, a school year to look at going through a thorough process. But there are other cases where it has been done quicker and I need to make those calls as well. So I've only talked to two superintendents and I need to speak to two or three more.

[7756] Ray Rodriguez: So if the decision is made that one year is just too soon, then we have to come up with an alternative for the $500,000.

[7765] SPEAKER_18: It's got to come from somewhere else. Right. Correct. Yes, sir.

[7769] SPEAKER_32: OK.

[7771] Ray Rodriguez: So direction from staff, you just want us to approve the resolution, right?

[7776] Marie dela Cruz: Yes, I would recommend that the board approve the resolution to commit to the budget balancing solutions that we discussed.

[7787] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, and let me just read it just to be sure. And this is item 14.1 on the agenda. Conditional approval of the 2019-2020 adopted budget and resolution number 2158 to commit to budget balancing solutions for 2020-21 and 2021-22 fiscal years. Staff recommends the board adopt resolution number 2158 to commit to budget balancing solutions. Okay, so I need a motion and a second or further discussion.

[7822] Bowen Zhang: I move that we adopt resolution number 2158. I'll second it.

[7828] Phuong Nguyen: Please vote.

[7832] Ray Rodriguez: Let me clear it. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay, motion passes unanimously. Member Gutierrez is absent. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, 14.2, Ms. Parks. This is the agreement with Goodby Research Survey Consultant, which are the same people that did our survey prior to Measure G.

[7879] Cindy Parks: I forgot I even put in the paperwork for this one. So there is some background on here. It talks about your proposals. EMC said it included Chinese also. FM3 said interviews in English only and then you could do Spanish online. I quickly scanned through the contract and I did not see with this firm here if there was going to be done in another language or have that opportunity. for people that were perhaps wanting it in another language. And so I was just wondering if I could get clarification on whether this was going to include any other language other than English.

[7919] SPEAKER_18: Thank you. We'll address it.

[7922] Ray Rodriguez: OK. OK. Seeing nobody else. Superintendent?

[7927] SPEAKER_18: I'm going to ask Mr. Schimel to join me in presenting what we have in front of you.

[7933] SPEAKER_31: Thank you, Superintendent Sanchez. The previous item and this item go together. And they're two different options because Newark's got a fork in the road. And what we just talked about, and pretty thoroughly and very effectively, as Taylor Cruz talked about, we have a $46 million budget. 42 million of it is in people. And she shared very adequately and very accurately someplace between $2 and $4 million. Well, in all the rest of your budget, you only have $4 million because your deficit spending more than that. You only take in $46 million and you're spending about $48 million. So I think that's very important. And what districts do, change is difficult for people. Compare it to Blockbuster. 20 years ago, everybody went to Blockbuster. Nobody goes to Blockbuster today because it comes a different way. Things change. You used to have to go get your video. Then there was a company that mailed it to your mailbox. Now you push a couple buttons and say you're going to pay $5.95 and you get it. That analogy is very similar to Newark. And now that I don't have to sit on the desk anymore, I'm going to be very frank with the Board of Education, because that's what you hired me to do. You can keep doing what we've doing. We have 60-year-old buildings that are functionally obsolescent. They are not going to be effective for the children that are born today. Right now in Alameda County, there's probably 100 little people being born. And they'll be 10 years old in 2030. And these schools will not attract them. So that's one option. Keep cutting, band-aiding. The enrollment we've talked about, and this might be helpful to the community. Business department doesn't put it together. The state of California does. They have a very antiquated formula. In 1960, when those schools were built, they multiplied the number of rooms you have by 30. We didn't have preschool programs in 1960. We didn't have makerspace or innovation space. We didn't have TK programs. So when people say, well, where did you get this enrollment from? It didn't come from Newark. It came from the state of California. They just count boxes, each classroom. You had portables. They don't fund makerspace. They don't fund. preschool programs. There's some funding for it, but if you use the building in Newark, you pay for it. So that's one road the board has a choice of going down. There's another road that the board may choose to take a look at and restructure Newark to be competitive for 2030 rather than band-aiding an already 60-year-old school and schools have a 40 to 50-year-old lifespan. We've talked about consolidation and closing. Yes, that's true. We're going to take two sites and put it in one. But if you use the model we just talked about, you're going to do that eventually, but it's going to be in a 60-year-old site, wall-to-wall people, and you're going to have so much change, people are going to be very uncomfortable. We're suggesting that you run schools at the state norm, somewhere around 650 to 750. And you take two schools, put them into one brand new one. And we're going to have to do a lot to work with the community. And even things like celebrating the new school. You may even wanna change the names of your schools. Because if somebody loses music school, they're gonna feel they lost. So maybe the new school is Music Schiller, I'm making that up. So people don't lose their identity but they get, as the superintendent said several meetings ago, a brand new facility. That will do what? Lower your operating expenses and you won't have to go down that other $2 million road because you will have that money. That's one. Two, you will have very competitive facilities within a four to six year period of time. The other thing that you will be able to do at that point is possibly lease, you've heard me say many times I would never sell a school, but exchange properties to get a revenue stream. Why is that so important? As our student board members said earlier this evening, we are not getting the top salaries. And if you go down the road we just talked about, you're never gonna be able to do that. Medical benefits go up 5 to 10% a year. We have to create a source of revenue within Newark. And what's our biggest asset? The ground we have. All of our sites are 10, 11 acres. And that is a revenue source that will do two things. One, improve salaries. And two, I've only been here four months, but I know you have a commitment to pay back a loan. And I think that's a promise that needs to be kept to the community. So three years from now, when some of those properties start bringing in revenue, I would recommend to you the first thing that's done with that revenue is go to pay back the loan that you promised the community you were going to get. That will build trust. The second thing is you're going to have to do some things with attracting new teachers, teacher salaries, and you can't forget about classified. Classified pay the same amount for a loaf of bread as certificate. We hear from the community here, as some board members spoke tonight, that's very true. But it's a very small sample. We need to test this. We need to test the parcel tax. We need to test the bond. That's not something new I brought. You did that in 2011. The bond survey said you won't get 50%. And you know it takes 67 to pass it. So the board chose to do a bond at that point in time because it was around 55% and with some facilitation, you did pass the bond in 2012. This is what we're asking for but a much wider group. You have 7,000 voters, 6,800 may go up a little bit in Newark. We're looking at serving 400 families with a hybrid model. They used to do it with telephone calls only. And you remember some of our parents now are 28 years old and digital. And they don't do telephone calls. They do surveys that come on their cell phone and computer. So this hybrid model will be telephone calls, 400 people. will be called in your community. And they will also have the option of the survey. It will be in English and Spanish. They're going to be irresponsible not to use those two main languages. If the board wants to do Mandarin for a third language, there's an extra cost in the proposal, and you can direct us to do that. And what we want to do is use this as a communication tool so that parents have a choice. It is going to cost more money to be competitive in 2030. If we just want to keep doing what we're doing, they may tell you that. But at least you'll have 400 people that will give you some information. So the recommendation tonight is to hire Godby. They are the same people that did it. We are not recommending, there's some confusion, last time you used a company that did strategic planning for an election and a survey. I think that's a bit premature till we get the survey. Let's just get the survey, see what people think, and then if it's a bond, you can always do the strategy or a parcel tax later. So I stand ready for questions.

[8485] Elisa Martinez: Thank you, Mr. Schimel. You know, this process has just been very educational. It's a tough place to be in and a lot of responsibility, you know, as we march towards a decision of any, really whatever direction we go in. You said we're a fork in the road. I don't know that the action that we just spoke about with Ms. Dela Cruz and now this are mutually exclusive. If anybody goes back and listens to any of the meetings, my first meetings, one of the first things I had said is I would not support a tax. I would not support a bond until we can show some fiscal discipline. I think we're moving in that direction. part and this is just again one board member but you know I did run a campaign and I did talk to a lot of people and and I think that there is some some work we have to do right I'm not sure that that the survey right now is the right time and not saying no I'm just saying I think we should have more discussion about the timing of that Because I think we are embarking in trying to drive at those difficult conversations that we haven't had for a long time. To look at the spending controls. To look at rightsizing the district because we've been overspending for so long. And I think those are some objective measures that our community would be able to see, hey, maybe I do trust these folks to support, you know, a tax or a bond. And so that's kind of my soapbox, I'll say. And how I really, really feel in terms, I think it's something we need to do, this survey. I'm just concerned about the timing. One of the questions that I had asked, and I know I think Member Zhang, you as well, when we were talking about the numbers, when we were comparing the 400 million or the 600, I forget, the 800 million that ADIS had recommended versus what it would cost us. One of the questions I had asked was, what's a nice to have versus a must have? And so therefore, again, being able to articulate that conversation. We have not seen that information yet. To me, that's part of the fiscal discipline that district staff needs to bring to us as a board to help me be more comfortable in supporting that this is the right time to start the survey. I'll stop there.

[8654] Ray Rodriguez: I have some questions, Mr. Schimel. Thank you for taking the time for your presentation. My questions involve around timeline. So if we were to try to put something on the November 2020 ballot, how much time do we have?

[8679] SPEAKER_31: The Board of Education would have to take official action in August. of 20, plus or minus a few days, you notify the county. The reason that the survey now would be recommended is because you need to get some answers quickly, because if the community is not supporting that, then you only have another road to go down. And also, to do all of the different kinds of things. I concur with the superintendent that doing any kind of school closure for August of 20 is fraught with problems because you don't have new facilities. And you are going to change things. And that would be very difficult for a community to understand, giving up a space. When you have empty space, it doesn't stay empty. It gets filled up with things.

[8739] Ray Rodriguez: So there are different costs associated with putting a bond or parcel tax on the ballot. One would be, naturally, the surveying. And then you have to hire a company, like we did before. I forgot what they charge us. I think it was around 40,000. I'll have to try to remember how much they charge us.

[8767] SPEAKER_31: Actually, between the survey and the, there were two programs with TBEW. I may get those initials mixed up. Right. But it's the company that you hired. That is not a requirement. And I think that with the energy level of the board, with several people in the community, may not be something you actually need this time.

[8793] Ray Rodriguez: Got it. And then to the county cost to have it on the ballot.

[8799] SPEAKER_31: The reason I'm suggesting November of 20 is one for cost. It's a general election. So there'll be many things on the ballot. All the county register voters does is take how many ballot people in the entire city of Newark and they divide that up by the county ballot. If it was a special election, we'd be funding almost all the costs. And so that's why November, even if you were to put it together in March, and I don't think the board's ready to make that decision because I think the deadline is December, this coming December, 30 days from now, 45 days, that cost would be much higher. The lowest cost to put a ballot initiative would be November of 2020.

[8849] Ray Rodriguez: And my understanding is probably around $70,000, $80,000, I would imagine, or you don't?

[8856] SPEAKER_31: I haven't looked at one in Alabama.

[8858] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, we're waiting for the, yeah, I think you'll be close to that.

[8861] SPEAKER_18: You can find the answer out there. That's a number that I found.

[8863] Ray Rodriguez: Right, right. Is that what you're trying to pretend? So I'm not in favor of moving forward on this. I do think we need to discuss it more. That's why I was asking. We have August. We have board members that are involved in the community. I know before we did measure the GEO bond, we basically, most of us, or a few of us on the board already knew that it was going to be a hard sell to get the community to approve a parcel tax. And the GEO bond was a good alternative. So I don't think it's changed that much. I think As board members, we live in the community as opposed to somebody that comes in from outside. Even though they have their own ways of doing things and to get as much input as possible from the community, I just feel that based on my experience that I don't think we are there yet as far as the parcel tax. The GEO bond, I do think we can put that together. Since we have time. It's just something that I'm not ready to To move on right now. Okay member John.

[8946] Bowen Zhang: Thank you Question regarding the dollar amount so I the copy quote says 30,500 the total dollar amount is $31,950 that difference of roughly 1,000 1,000 1,450 Is that the additional language or?

[8966] SPEAKER_31: No, it's the additional cost to do the survey in Spanish.

[8969] Ray Rodriguez: It's rolled in. Oh, I see. Yeah, it's rolled in there. And then the extra, if we wanted it, to include Mandarin.

[8979] Bowen Zhang: And I see the preferred day is September the 5th? No, I guess. I guess the preferred day was already passed. Right. The timing of the survey. Yeah, if we were going to do the survey, say, by the end of this year, This is literally a year before the actual election, so how accurate the poll is going to be sometimes.

[9002] SPEAKER_31: These companies are very accurate and there's a reason why. Could you do the survey in February or March? Probably. Would you have the time to get the information? You're just going to lose time. You have to make a decision which one of the two roads you're going to go down. And if you wait, that timeline of the bond and getting it passed and informing the community and being transparent and giving the community a choice pretty much evaporates and you'll be left with the one course we all do, cut. And if we enter a recession, then you may see the state legislature come in like they did 10 years ago. I worked in this county 10 years ago. And we had furlough days because the state cut five school days. And that meant teachers lost five days, five days of benefits, and five days of credit for retirement. I don't know if that's going to happen, but that's what happened last time during the recession.

[9077] Ray Rodriguez: Right. Member Martinez.

[9079] Elisa Martinez: Sorry, I had already kind of made my comments, but these are actual questions. So to Member Zhang's point in terms of how far ahead this is, but like I said earlier, I'm not necessarily, I'm not saying no, I just feel like I don't have enough information to support this right now, to go, let's just go do this. I mean, do we have a few weeks to at least be able to have more dialogue I mean, I know that we'd had some conversation, I think, Superintendent Sanchez, about slowing it down to go faster later. And then I saw this on the agenda. So, you know, if we're talking a delay of a few weeks, a month, is that a deal breaker, is one question.

[9137] SPEAKER_31: Likely, to answer your question, likely not. You are coming up on holidays and so the goal that I saw for the district was the board to make a decision before the end of this year, yes or no, and then you could begin next year looking at which direction to go.

[9162] Elisa Martinez: Okay. Sorry, one more tactical question. And I'm not sure if I missed it, but is the selection process covered here in terms of how do we target? And I'm sorry, it's pretty wordy, so I may have missed it. In terms of if it's the 400 respondents, you know, or the X number, how are we selecting how much of the, you know, what percentage has kids, what percentage are, you know, sorry.

[9190] SPEAKER_31: The board could put a committee together with the community and or the board. You could do either one. We would be measuring, you've heard a lot about let's raise salaries. Maybe the community wants to leave the schools as they are and just raise teacher salary and put a million dollars into the budget. Maybe the community wants to do both. Maybe they just want to do a bond. I don't know. So the board would sit down with the consultant and help frame the questions that you want answered.

[9229] Elisa Martinez: Sorry. So framing the questions, but in terms of, does it, sorry, it goes out to everybody? I thought it was a sub, a microphone.

[9236] SPEAKER_31: They're going to, they randomly select 400 people.

[9239] Elisa Martinez: That was the question. Sorry, it was a randomly is the word I was looking for. It is random. Okay. Great. Thank you.

[9245] Ray Rodriguez: So I had a question. Mr. Schimel, the, and I've no, you've explained this already, just, just, just, if you don't mind explaining it again. Could you explain the difference between a parcel tax and let's say a GEO bond, and also the percentages, if you don't mind? Yes.

[9265] SPEAKER_31: A parcel tax requires 66.67%. 67%. And the way to describe that is one no vote wipes out two yes votes. So that means you have to get two people to say yes for everyone that says no. I think that's the easier way to do it. That is, can be used as an addition to the general fund. It usually goes in somewheres, anywhere from two years to four years to six years to ten years. It's per parcel. And so if a parcel is where Home Depot is on Thornton and Cedar, and that's just one parcel, then it would be that dollar amount. And $100 per parcel which could be a home site or the Home Depot site will raise $1.2 million for this district. And so $200 would raise 2.4 and so on. The threshold last time was $50. that people were willing to support from 2012 for that parcel tax, and only 50% of them were interested in doing that. So $50 would get you $600,000. Yeah, it wouldn't be very much. A bond. A bond is a different process. For the parcel tax, you can do whatever you particularly want with it. If it's for salaries, if it's for music program, art program, if it's for innovation spaces, it's up to the board. You tell the community what you're going to do with the money and they vote. A building bond is what's called a government obligation bond. And the community, the easiest way to look at it is they mortgage the community and each taxpayer pays on their assessed valuation, not the sales. If the house in Newark sells for $1 million, that is likely not the assessed valuation. Some words are about half of that. I think the assessed valuation when I looked at it is about $400,000 in Newark. You live on your own tax bill and find out. So it would be a maximum of $60 per 100,000. So let's say when I did those numbers and came up with 159 million, if you had a $400,000 SES valuation, it's $60, 100,000, that would be $240 a year for each of the next 30 years and that would get the money to build three new schools and do the things we talked about a few meetings back.

[9452] Ray Rodriguez: So that could be used for building new schools.

[9455] SPEAKER_31: Correct. And in many communities, they pass both. The key question is, would this community, with where they are today, do both of those?

[9465] Ray Rodriguez: Right. I know when we put together the Geobond that we got partnership from everybody. The unions were involved. And if you don't have the unions involved, it's going to be very difficult to move forward. And we were able to pass the GO bond, but barely by over 50%.

[9489] SPEAKER_31: And the comment that came back from your teachers union, Mr. Vedra asked me to speak to the bargaining group a couple of weeks ago. And I was quite pleased, impressed. with their union leaders who are saying some of the ideas we were talking about were very creative. Because I said, you're competing with cuts in kids to get a salary raise. You need another source. Right, for the parcel tax. No, for we were talking about the bond.

[9523] Ray Rodriguez: Right, to attract teachers into buildings. Got it. OK. Remember John, and then we can I need someone to call for the vote. Okay.

[9536] SPEAKER_32: Oh.

[9537] Bowen Zhang: Just a quick question on the parcel tax because you explained the parcel tax is $60 per 100,000.

[9543] SPEAKER_31: That's the bond, $60 per 100,000 assessed valuation. So the larger the home or the higher the assessed valuation, let's say that you had a million and a half dollar home in Newark. And that would be assessed valuation of $700,000?

[9564] Bowen Zhang: Yeah, I see that. Then I guess if that's based on, if the bond is based on your assessed value, shouldn't the payback period will be quite, like, fluctuating with the assessed value of your market? Because you got a big recession coming in, say, in four years. Your assessed value can go, say, for example, you buy a new home in Central Village or whatever village, which is the market rate $1 million. your assessed value on your property bill will be $1 million. Because due to Prop 13, you just bought a home. And then four years later, you got a recession. Your households dropped to $700,000. Then if that's the case, then the payback period for the bond can really vary quite a bit.

[9608] SPEAKER_31: Yes. Because if your property is assessed when you buy it at $1 million, and it drops to $700,000, then you pay $60 times $7. Not $60 times 10.

[9621] Bowen Zhang: So in that case, do we prolong the period of paying back the bond?

[9625] SPEAKER_31: No, they figure that out. It's a higher payment along the way. At that point, you will hire a financial advisor to come in and give you that kind of information. But that's not there yet.

[9644] Michael Milliken: OK.

[9647] SPEAKER_18: May I make a comment before you vote? Just a reminder to the board, this was the recommendation of the Revenue Enhancement Committee to start looking at polling before, especially in particular to a parcel tax or a GEO bond. That was the recommendation of the committee. I also wanted to share that I think the intent here was to find out if this door is open. The sooner that we know that, the better, as we look at other implications of the budget as we move forward in the year. And I do think that waiting until February, March to find out if there's support, we may find, I'd rather know if we don't have support sooner so we can take other steps instead of waiting until February, March to know we probably should have asked sooner. So that was just kind of the spirit behind it, but you know, whatever the board wants to do, we'll move forward in that direction.

[9701] Elisa Martinez: Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry, I need to say this because we were at the meeting at Music and I think the Revenue Enhancement Committee members spoke out and I don't recollect that they were actually very specific saying they had not recommended this because they didn't have any information and I just wanted to say that because that's what we heard.

[9722] SPEAKER_18: Well, I could clarify that. They came back at the next meeting because I pulled it and I brought the whole committee together and the next meeting they came back and they all agreed. And it's on the record, actually. It's in the record as them all agreeing. What they didn't agree about is what was in the PowerPoint and how some of the wording that was said. But in the end, they all voted and agreed that this is what they supported. So we do have that in the record. OK.

[9746] Elisa Martinez: That doesn't jive with my recollection with direct conversation. So I guess we can move to vote on this. I want to push back on your characterization, though, about I think I've I think we are being clear that we want some additional information that it is not a no. So I suppose if we vote on it right now and it is defeated, is your intent not to bring this back or would you consider pulling this item?

[9782] Bowen Zhang: Given member Gutierrez is not here, maybe we can. pull this and bring it back next time because if we have a like if we don't really have to support right now on the board to move forward without a full complete board member.

[9799] SPEAKER_18: If I could answer it this way, if the board were to pull it, I would ask what additional information you need in order for me to bring it back.

[9807] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, we can also vote on it and if it fails then we can ask.

[9810] SPEAKER_18: And it still could work the same way.

[9811] Ray Rodriguez: Right, it worked the same way.

[9812] SPEAKER_18: So either way, if it gets voted down. As you just tell me what additional you want, and then we would follow your direction.

[9818] Ray Rodriguez: So I need a motion, and then I'll second.

[9820] Phuong Nguyen: I just have a comment.

[9821] Ray Rodriguez: Sure, go ahead.

[9823] Phuong Nguyen: I just have a comment. Is there a way for us to do an unofficial poll, like with just the families in the district? We have their email addresses. Can we pull them through SurveyMonkey?

[9836] Ray Rodriguez: We could do our own.

[9839] SPEAKER_31: The answer to your question is yes. The validity of it. would be the question. These professional polling firms, they do that for all candidates. They do this for city tax measures, for utilities. And there's a whole niche field that just does this for school districts. Godbee does it for New Haven, I believe, and Fremont.

[9865] Ray Rodriguez: But they only poll 400 people, right?

[9868] SPEAKER_31: They'll poll as many as you want, but the higher you go, with the count, the more money it gets. I sort of picked the middle of the road. You saw in your data that they could go a 22-minute survey or an 18-minute survey. I sort of picked the middle of the road, 20 minutes, because I thought doing it in both languages would be more helpful. Right. Got it.

[9891] Phuong Nguyen: OK. I'm only asking because I think that if we do some sort of initial poll with our community, At least we can have an idea to go out to the committees so that they can get more involved in this process. And then obviously I would approve to go with the official polling so that we get the numbers.

[9917] SPEAKER_31: That could be done if you're asking staff to do that. From my limited knowledge, I'm not sure you have anybody on the staff here. Could we create a survey monkey? Yes. But how you distribute that in the language and getting it back is, it's a challenge. You may spend more money of staff time because they're not skilled at doing this as a profession. Thank you.

[9944] Bowen Zhang: So, Member Martinez, where's the additional information you want to get? Because maybe the board will also agree with you on whatever information you want to.

[9953] Elisa Martinez: I specifically spoke about some of the AIDS information. Again, if you think about where this conversation has gone, right? Do I want to go all the way back to when we said we weren't going to explore that? And then the first meeting of this school year, we started to explore it. And it went very, very quickly. And in fact, Member Zhang, you had asked a very important question that I hadn't thought to ask, which is, wait a minute, how did we come up with this really big number that AIDS, right, the 600 million? And so we keep comparing the solution to the $600 million. And I had asked for some information. This has been several weeks ago. I still don't have that. So frankly, that's part of, to me, that's the fiscal discipline that I'm talking about. Let's get our ducks in a row. If we can show that, hey, we've got the information, a lot of it has to do with our ability to articulate why we support or why we don't support our actions. And I personally believe I need to see that information.

[10013] SPEAKER_18: I have that information tonight. I can share it with the audience right now and the entire board. Even if you don't vote on this, it's in the report as well as a summary that I have in hand with me now. But either way, you're going to need time to look at it because it's dense. It's dense.

[10029] Bowen Zhang: One thing I did realize, we are worse of... We've gone back and forth.

[10033] Ray Rodriguez: I apologize. But, you know, we need to either call for the motion, I mean, call for the item or bring it back. What's the pleasure of the board?

[10046] Bowen Zhang: I would recommend bringing it back after the next study session because we can figure out that 600 million number in the next study session. We are already going to schedule three study sessions. We might very well just use half of the next study session to verify the 600 million number and then when we have a full board, when Member Gutierrez is also present.

[10063] Ray Rodriguez: Okay.

[10068] SPEAKER_31: Number 9. Clarification question, Board President. Does that mean that you want to see this item again on November 7th?

[10080] Ray Rodriguez: I don't know. And that is the recommendation, right? Right. Is that what you want? Next meeting, or?

[10083] SPEAKER_18: That is our next study session. Actually, that may work well, because the next study session is ADIS. And they'll be able to present the information that I have here tonight in their context, as well as the full detail of what's behind these numbers. And then, unless there's other information that you need in addition to what was mentioned, That might satisfy what the board's looking for here.

[10105] Ray Rodriguez: I'd rather you come back maybe the second meeting of November, give us more time. But then, like Mr. Schimel says, if we do yes, then that puts us where the survey's going to be done during the holidays.

[10121] SPEAKER_31: And that's not a good time. You would then postpone the survey until the first quarter of 20. And by then, you're going to have your first interim done.

[10131] Elisa Martinez: And the county's going to be looking... To the superintendent's point, and I think we did talk about this, it is up for presentation next week at least. I'm not sure if other board members have other questions. That would satisfy some of, I hope, my questions. I think, let's not wait beyond that. And it still hopefully doesn't put us at risk too much. So, I also recommend that the item is moved and moved until then.

[10158] Bowen Zhang: If necessary, call a special meeting vote on this.

[10160] Ray Rodriguez: That's fine. We can bring it back at the next meeting. November 7th? Sure. And then Member Gutierrez will be here. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[10169] Elisa Martinez: Thank you.

[10175] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, we need a motion to extend the meeting. I would suggest an hour, not that we're going to do that, but extend it to 11 o'clock.

[10184] Bowen Zhang: So I move to extend the meeting by 60 minutes?

[10188] Ray Rodriguez: I second. Please vote. Thank you, Member John. So it's extended 60 minutes, which is an hour, right? OK, let's do it. Member Nguyen, did you vote? OK. Thank you. OK. Motion passes. Student member abstaining.

[10225] SPEAKER_48: Actually, I apologize. I really got to go. It's 10 PM.

[10229] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Yeah. We figured, right?

[10231] SPEAKER_18: He needs his beauty rest.

[10232] Ray Rodriguez: Exactly. Thank you, Cesar, for staying so long. OK. Next item on the agenda is resolution number 2157 week of the school administrator. Need a motion and a second, please.

[10253] Phuong Nguyen: I move to vote on item number 14.3.

[10259] Ray Rodriguez: I second. Did I close? Open. Please vote. Okay, motion passes. Okay, we need to read it. Who's got it where they're looking at it?

[10282] SPEAKER_21: I am.

[10283] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, could you start then, please, Member Martinez? Yes.

[10285] Elisa Martinez: Week of the School Administrator, whereas leadership matters for California's public education system and the more than six million students it serves, and whereas school administrators are passionate, lifelong learners who believe in the value of quality public education and

[10305] Ray Rodriguez: whereas the title school administrator is a broad term used to define many educational leadership posts, superintendents, assistant superintendents, or associate superintendents, principals, assistant principals, special education and adult education leaders, curriculum and assessment leaders, school business officials, classified educational leaders, and other school district employees are considered administrators. And whereas providing quality service for student success is paramount for the profession. Want to go next? Sure. Let's see.

[10342] Phuong Nguyen: And whereas most school administrators began their career as teachers, the average administrator has served in public education for more than a decade. Most of California's superintendents have served in education for more than 20 years. Such experience is beneficial in their work to effectively and efficiently lead public education and improve student achievement. And?

[10369] Bowen Zhang: Whereas public schools operate with lean management systems across the nation, public schools employ fewer managers and supervisors than most public and private sector industries, including transportation, food service, manufacturing, utilities, construction, publishing, and public administration. And?

[10386] Ray Rodriguez: Superintendent?

[10387] Elisa Martinez: Go ahead. No, no, no. Go. OK. You want to go?

[10391] SPEAKER_18: Whereas school leaders depend on a network of support from school communities, fellow administrators, teachers, parents, students, business, community members, board trustees, colleagues, colleges and universities, community and faith-based organizations, elected officials, and district and county staff, and resources to promote ongoing student achievement and school success and... Can you take the next one too, if you don't mind? Whereas research shows that great schools are led by great principals and great districts are led by great superintendents, these site leaders are supported by extensive administrative networks throughout the state and?

[10422] Ray Rodriguez: Member Martinez, next two.

[10424] Elisa Martinez: Whereas the state of California had declared the second full week of October as the week of the school administrator in Education Code 4401, 015, sorry, .1 and whereas the future of California's public education system depends upon the quality of its leadership, now therefore.

[10442] Ray Rodriguez: Be resolved by the governing board of Newark Unified School District that all school leaders in the Newark Unified School District be commended for the contributions they make to successful student achievement, student learning. Passes and adopted the 17th day of October 2019 by four yeas. Thank you very much. OK, new business. 14.4, agreement with Curriculum Associates for iReady services. Need a motion and a second, unless we have a presentation or questions.

[10497] Elisa Martinez: I move to approve item 14.4. I second it.

[10504] Ray Rodriguez: OK, member Martinez moves, Mr. Jones seconds. Please vote. Motion passes, four ayes. Member Gutierrez, absent. 14.5, agreement with Jackie Melcher, behavioral health consultant. I need a motion and a second. Or discussion.

[10538] Bowen Zhang: I move to approve the agreement with Jackie Melcher, behavioral health consultant. I second.

[10547] Ray Rodriguez: Hold on. Please vote. Motion passes four ayes. Member Gutierrez absent. Donations report. Need a motion and a second.

[10572] Elisa Martinez: I move to approve item 14.6, donations report.

[10578] Phuong Nguyen: I second.

[10578] Ray Rodriguez: Member Nguyen seconds. Member Martinez moves.

[10585] SPEAKER_32: Please vote.

[10589] Ray Rodriguez: Motion passes, four ayes. Member Gutierrez is not here. Let's, Superintendent, can you read this for us?

[10596] SPEAKER_18: $210 from Music Elementary, from Your Cause LLC, trustee for PG&E, for school use as determined by the principal. An in-kind donation of a 10 by 20 dance floor and cyclorama curtain for Newark Memorial High School from Stage One Theater for all dance and studio theater users. An in-kind donation of rug, bean bag chairs, curtains, storage bench for Snow Elementary. Donors choose, from donors choose specifically for Miss Helena Salves' classroom. In-kind donation of books, recycled materials, and a storage unit for Snow Elementary. The donors, Judy, Thank you.

[10636] Ray Rodriguez: Member Nguyen, can you go from there? Thank you, Superintendent.

[10640] Phuong Nguyen: In-kind donation of first aid supplies for Snow Elementary. In-kind donation of hand-built buddy benches for Newark Unified School District school site. And $300 for Graham Elementary. And another $300 for Graham Elementary.

[10663] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Just so everybody, the donor for Snow was Isaiah Hicks. The donor for Birdie Benches was Gary Sivanek and Son. The donor at Graham was Allied Path Consulting. And the other donor at Graham was Alpha Delta Kappa. OK, thank you. Thank you much. 14.7, the LCAP, Local Control Accountability Plan Advisory. The administration recommends the membership be approved as presented to provide, let's see, academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. We are seeking approval of the attached membership of the 2019-2020 Local Control and Accountability LCAP Advisory Group. At its first meeting, the Advisory will review its bylaws, which would include rules regarding processes and procedures. The Director of Special Projects, Isabel Cervantes-Fonk, will facilitate the meetings. Motion passes. 14.8, carpet replacement, building 700 at Newark Memorial High School. Superintendent, did you want to address this since this is a big one?

[10772] SPEAKER_18: Just to say yay, I'm glad we're finally doing it. Other than that, this was the issue that was brought up and I know our team has worked hard to try to resolve it and I think we're replacing it with something other than carpet. Translate that for me.

[10788] Marie dela Cruz: This proposal is for replacement of the carpet with tile, the vinyl tile, in all of the classrooms in building 700. OK.

[10799] Ray Rodriguez: And the budget source is Measure G?

[10805] Marie dela Cruz: This will be bond Measure G funds. Right. OK.

[10810] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Need a motion and a second.

[10816] Elisa Martinez: Do we have to move first? What is the timing on this?

[10823] Marie dela Cruz: We are hoping to get this done, I would say, I want to say in four to six weeks because of the materials that needs to be ordered.

[10836] Elisa Martinez: Okay.

[10836] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. You want to make the motion?

[10841] Elisa Martinez: I move to approve Item 14.8, Carpet Replacement, Building 700. One second.

[10846] Ray Rodriguez: I second. Okay, Member Martinez moves, Member Nguyen seconds. Please vote. Motion passes. Four ayes. Member Gutierrez not here. Personnel Report. Consent Agenda, Personnel Report 15.1.

[10869] Bowen Zhang: motion and a second.

[10874] Ray Rodriguez: No, let's do it separately. It's only two items. If you don't mind.

[10880] Bowen Zhang: I vote.

[10883] Phuong Nguyen: I move to approve item 15.1.

[10887] Elisa Martinez: I second.

[10890] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, Mary Nguyen moves, member Martinez seconds. Please vote. Motion passes, flyers, member Gutierrez absent. Now, 15.2. Appointment of staff recommends the Board of Education approve the appointment of Director of Special Education.

[10917] Bowen Zhang: Do we have, oh, she's not present? No, she's not present. No, she'll be at the next meeting.

[10923] SPEAKER_32: Right?

[10924] SPEAKER_22: That's correct. Okay. Would you like me to introduce her anyway and say a little bit about her? Yes, staff would like to recommend Dr. Jen Hamilton for the special education director position. Dr. Jen Hamilton graduated from a doctoral educational leadership from St. Mary's College of California. She comes to us from Berkeley Unified School District after serving as their executive director of special education. Prior to Berkeley, she was the director of special education in Salina City Elementary School District, but left looking to work in a district using full inclusion. She has over 16 years of successful administrative experience spanning from preschool to secondary levels. Again, staff would like to recommend Dr. Jan Hamilton for the Special Ed position.

[10968] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Need a motion and a second.

[10972] Bowen Zhang: I move to appoint Dr. Jan Hamilton as our new Director of Special Education. Member John Moos needs a second.

[10980] Elisa Martinez: I second.

[10983] Ray Rodriguez: Please vote. All right, motion passes four ayes, public attorneys absent. So she'll be invited to the next meeting? Okay, excellent. And she starts right away. I mean, I'm asking you questions, we already voted.

[11008] SPEAKER_22: I believe she will need to share the news with her current employer. We are thinking about the typical two week transition period.

[11020] Elisa Martinez: Thank you.

[11025] Ray Rodriguez: We move to the consent agenda. Emma Martinez can you read the first four and I will take the last four.

[11034] Elisa Martinez: Item, yes, item 16.1, non-curricular overnight athletic trip request for Newark Memorial High men's basketball to travel to Modesto, California. Item 16.2, monthly finance review report July 2019. Item 16.3, monthly finance review report August 2019. And 16.4, signature card mid-year revision. 16.5, warm report for September 2019.

[11063] Ray Rodriguez: quarterly report on contracts, first quarter. Newark Memorial High School plan for student achievement, 16.7. 16.8, Williams uniform, I'm going to pull that one. So I need a motion for 16.1 through 16.7.

[11092] Elisa Martinez: to approve item 16.1 through item 16.7. I second.

[11098] Bowen Zhang: 0.8, right?

[11100] Penny DeLeon: No.

[11100] Bowen Zhang: No, I pulled for 0.8.

[11101] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, I see. Please vote. OK, motion passes four ayes. Ms. Bloom, you're on.

[11124] Rachel Bloom: So I think a theme, so one of the NGSS cross-cutting concepts is patterns. And so one of the patterns I've seen tonight seems to be information, transparency, getting the full picture, making sure the information is accurate. So taking that into consideration with, I'm sure you thought the little babies up here were like the cutest thing ever. So those are my babies from Schilling. And my babies have been boiling since the beginning of the year. They are roasted, steamed little babies. My classroom at Schilling has been up to 81 degrees a couple weeks ago. And everyone's like, oh my gosh, but it's October, but it's so hot. The classroom was getting up to like 80, 81 degrees. So I put in a Williams complaint and an OSHA complaint to the district and to OSHA. Part of this whole full picture thing is it says that there is one facilities conditions complaint, and it was honestly reported that it's unresolved. It's still not fixed. I appreciate that it was honestly reported that it was not resolved. But it doesn't say the nature of the complaint. So I don't know if it's counting what I put in or if it's something else. And so I think a lot of community members have said, can we add more specificity so we know? So I don't know. I think that's kind of my comment, and also just let you know that my little darlings there, they're so cute. Like, they're sitting, and I'm like, it's too hot. Like, they're miserable. They're miserable. And then when it gets cold, like, I don't know about HVAC, but if the AC doesn't work, does the heating also not work? And so then my, like, boiling little babies are going to become, like, baby sickles. I'm going to have, like, first grade sickles, sixth grader sickles, a Miss Bloom sickle. And so I just don't know, like, what it's about. I just wanted to complain a little bit about the AC not working, because I've been sweating like crazy. It's driving me nuts. And the kids are also miserable. But I've got to be honest. I'm so miserable. But also, they're miserable, too. So there you go. All right. Thank you.

[11252] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. I move that we approve 16.8. Need a second?

[11263] Elisa Martinez: I second.

[11264] Ray Rodriguez: Member Martinez seconds. Please vote. Motion passes. Member Gutierrez is not here. Okay, we move to Board of Education Committee Reports, Announcements, Requests, Debrief, and Discussion. Member Zhang, you want to go first?

[11285] Bowen Zhang: So, I got the literature for our school from the superintendent, and when we're talking about the Bayshore New Development Area tools, that's 1,800 families, so we probably need to print a lot more literature for Schilling particularly, and possibly for junior high and high school.

[11308] Ray Rodriguez: I have a couple. Again, October is a time where a lot of the schools have different things going on, whether it's Halloween or a fun run. So I would encourage the board to visit. I want to encourage the board to attend, like member John said, the PTA meetings if we can. I think it would be a prudent thing to do to maybe two of us go. And we were going to discuss this as a governor, so we can discuss it again in two weeks. But maybe have a staff member go with us. And we've got to let the school know ahead of time. Right, that's what I meant. Right, let the parenting group know. Right, that we're coming just in case they don't want us to come. I know that's not what you meant. When I first got on, like Member John, I wanted to go to each one of them. And I went to a whole bunch of them. But as Member John said, I haven't gone in, it's been a while. But I do try to go to the events. So I think it'd be good for us whether we're talking just a visit and thank you for your participation and helping your school. And that's a good way to leeway and take a lot of notes and questions and bring them back to staff so that we can get the proper answers to what community members want. you. Thank you. Superintendent we have talked about. Beginning mentoring program that we have as far as it zeroed out where it would not cost us anything. if we can get some the daycare. And then also with the adult school, get an update on that. And then the issue of capacity versus portables, even though Mr. Schimel broke that down, to me that if I'm out in the community, it doesn't fit because I need to know from practical how many kids we can put in the school, not what the state says based on square footage. So I don't know what that would require, whether we have to check with each principal and see if they can, with the custodian, find out how many kids can this school actually hold.

[11501] Phuong Nguyen: We're going to walk it.

[11502] Ray Rodriguez: Walk it? You want to walk it? Sure, I'm fine. I'm fine with that. Let's walk it, OK? And that's all I have. Member Martinez?

[11513] Elisa Martinez: Yes, actually, to that point, I know I appreciate that it's not a simple request, because we have been walking the schools, and there is space, and so there is, I don't think anyone is assuming that it's just walk-in ready. There is, right, so, I'm not sure if you guys can come up with an answer, or if that's the scope of the advisory committee, so maybe you all can respond to that. So, I have to ask, I know we're supposed to talk about the counselor questions. I've asked every meeting. So I believe you all said that you would, as superintendent, you would be presenting that. Do we have a date for that? Because I know ADIS is the next study session. So I'm curious when we're going to see that, the counselor, if you could send that out.

[11566] SPEAKER_18: It will be the second meeting of November.

[11569] Ray Rodriguez: That would be a good time to have it.

[11572] Elisa Martinez: The other thing is, as one of our speakers reminded me, I know that there's been a ton of requests out for, and we've got the back and forth of what do we fix, what do we don't, what we don't fix, I'm sorry. But there are some immediate needs and fixes. And one of the asks from a few weeks ago was, where are we on this maintenance log? How many requests are there, like the speaker we heard, Is it 10? Is it 20? Is it 50? And what is the reason why we haven't done it? Is it because we don't have the manpower? Because we don't have the materials? What is it? I mean, we need to have that clarity. Even if we don't move on it tomorrow, we still need to all have that clarity of the size of the challenge that's ahead of us. And then actually the last speaker also talked about forms We have a ton of forms and I know a bunch of them are regulatory But curious is do we have like a forms committee like if we wanted to get additional data? Information on some forms. How do we go about asking for that? Do we get I'm not sure if there's a process I've never heard

[11657] SPEAKER_22: I think the forms that we currently have on our website that include a Williams, you know, Williams complaint report and a uniform complaint report, those are, we're just following guidelines from the state. So the language, you know, replicates what they're asking us to do.

[11674] Elisa Martinez: Right. So in the spirit of folks wanting to get a sense of where their complaint is in or trying to, like the one we just showed, It is minimal. So if we wanted to modify that or say, hey, see attachment X or see this location for the detailed file of the complaint, I mean, those types of requests. OK.

[11694] SPEAKER_18: I would suggest attaching the complaint.

[11698] SPEAKER_22: No, I think we, in each complaint, I think we have a window of 10 days, 15, 10 to 15 days for a response. And I think it's what I'm hearing Ms. Martinez said is I think that the teachers are going out of their way to inform parents emailing us I personally got an

[11742] Phuong Nguyen: we want to make sure that you know if they put in a service request for the A C's to be done that they do get a response and in this case miss bloom also but yes, I think that would help out. The teachers to know that yes, you know the winter months are we're going to have a lot of heat. We're going to have a lot of heat in Indian summers. We get that the heat there's going to be a C so just want to make sure that you know everybody's issues get Thank you.

[11782] Marie dela Cruz: I'm just going to make a comment. If I could just in terms of the And we have quotes from the vendor, the outside contractor. And they're doing all of the work that has been requested. And we actually approved some repairs at Schilling, at Newark Memorial, at Newark Junior High. And most of the work has been completed. But we'll double check what's going on in the classroom. Because when we were there, there was an issue, I think, with the humidity. They went back there to check it out, and I believe there's a proposal to get that repaired.

[11835] SPEAKER_18: I have nothing at this time, President Rodriguez. I will yield my time. 10-17.

No minutes available.